The Project Gutenberg EBook of Malvina of Brittany, by Jerome K. Jerome
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Malvina of Brittany
Author: Jerome K. Jerome
Posting Date: November 19, 2008 [EBook #2023]
Release Date: January, 2000
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MALVINA OF BRITTANY ***
Produced by Les Bowler. HTML version by Al Haines.
MALVINA OF BRITTANY
by
Jerome K. Jerome
Contents.
MALVINA OF BRITTANY.
The Preface.
I. The Story.
II. How it came about.
III. How cousin Christopher became mixed up with it.
IV. How it was kept from Mrs. Arlington.
V. How it was told to Mrs. Marigold.
VI. And how it was finished too soon.
The Prologue.
THE STREET OF THE BLANK WALL.
HIS EVENING OUT.
THE LESSON.
SYLVIA OF THE LETTERS.
THE FAWN GLOVES.
MALVINA OF BRITTANY.
THE PREFACE.
The Doctor never did believe this story, but claims for it that, to a
great extent, it has altered his whole outlook on life.
"Of course, what actually happened--what took place under my own nose,"
continued the Doctor, "I do not dispute. And then there is the case of
Mrs. Marigold. That was unfortunate, I admit, and still is, especially
for Marigold. But, standing by itself, it proves nothing. These
fluffy, giggling women--as often as not it is a mere shell that they
shed with their first youth--one never knows what is underneath. With
regard to the others, the whole thing rests upon a simple scientific
basis. The idea was 'in the air,' as we say--a passing brain-wave.
And when it had worked itself out there was an end of it. As for all
this Jack-and-the-Beanstalk tomfoolery--"
There came from the darkening uplands the sound of a lost soul. It
rose and fell and died away.
"Blowing stones," explained the Doctor, stopping to refill his pipe.
"One finds them in these parts. Hollowed out during the glacial
period. Always just about twilight that one hears it. Rush of air
caused by sudden sinking of the temperature. That's how all these sort
of ideas get started."
The Doctor, having lit his pipe, resumed his stride.
"I don't say," continued the Doctor, "that it would have happened
without her coming. Undoubtedly it was she who supplied the necessary
psychic conditions. There was that about her--a sort of atmosphere.
That quaint archaic French of hers--King Arthur and the round table and
Merlin; it seemed to recreate it all. An artful minx, that is the only
explanation. But while she was looking at you, out of that curious
aloofness of hers--"
The Doctor left the sentence uncompleted.
"As for old Littlecherry," the Doctor began again quite suddenly,
"that's his speciality--folklore, occultism, all that flummery. If you
knocked at his door with the original Sleeping Beauty on your arm he'd
only fuss round her with cushions and hope that she'd had a good night.
Found a seed once--chipped it out of an old fossil, and grew it in a
pot in his study. About the most dilapidated weed you ever saw.
Talked about it as if he had re-discovered the Elixir of Life. Even if
he didn't say anything in actually so many words, there was the way he
went about. That of itself was enough to have started the whole thing,
to say nothing of that loony old Irish housekeeper of his, with her
head stuffed full of elves and banshees and the Lord knows what."
Again the Doctor lapsed into silence. One by one the lights of the
village peeped upward out of the depths. A long, low line of light,
creeping like some luminous dragon across the horizon, showed the track
of the Great Western express moving stealthily towards Swindon.
"It was altogether out of the common," continued the Doctor, "quite out
of the common, the whole thing. But if you are going to accept old
Littlecherry's explanation of it--"
The Doctor struck his foot against a long grey stone, half hidden in
the grass, and only just saved himself from falling.
"Remains of some old cromlech," explained the Doctor. "Somewhere about
here, if we were to dig down, we should find a withered bundle of bones
crouching over the dust of a prehistoric luncheon-basket. Interesting
neighbourhood!"
The descent was rough. The Doctor did not talk again until we had
reached the outskirts of the village.
"I wonder what's become of them?" mused the Doctor. "A rum go, the
whole thing. I should like to have got to the bottom of it."
We had reached the Doctor's gate. The Doctor pushed it open and passed
in. He seemed to have forgotten me.
"A taking little minx," I heard him muttering to himself as he fumbled
with the door. "And no doubt meant well. But as for that
cock-and-bull story--"
I pieced it together from the utterly divergent versions furnished me
by the Professor and the Doctor, assisted, so far as later incidents
are concerned, by knowledge common to the village.
I. THE STORY.
It commenced, so I calculate, about the year 2000 B.C., or, to be more
precise--for figures are not the strong point of the old
chroniclers--when King Heremon ruled over Ireland and Harbundia was
Queen of the White Ladies of Brittany, the fairy Malvina being her
favourite attendant. It is with Malvina that this story is chiefly
concerned. Various quite pleasant happenings are recorded to her
credit. The White Ladies belonged to the "good people," and, on the
whole, lived up to their reputation. But in Malvina, side by side with
much that is commendable, there appears to have existed a most
reprehensible spirit of mischief, displaying itself in pranks that,
excusable, or at all events understandable, in, say, a pixy or a
pigwidgeon, strike one as altogether unworthy of a well-principled
White Lady, posing as the friend and benefactress of mankind. For
merely refusing to dance with her--at midnight, by the shores of a
mountain lake; neither the time nor the place calculated to appeal to
an elderly gentleman, suffering possibly from rheumatism--she on one
occasion transformed an eminently respectable proprietor of tin mines
into a nightingale, necessitating a change of habits that to a business
man must have been singularly irritating. On another occasion a quite
important queen, having had the misfortune to quarrel with Malvina over
some absurd point of etiquette in connection with a lizard, seems, on
waking the next morning, to have found herself changed into what one
judges, from the somewhat vague description afforded by the ancient
chroniclers, to have been a sort of vegetable marrow.
Such changes, according to the Professor, who is prepared to maintain
that evidence of an historical nature exists sufficient to prove that
the White Ladies formed at one time an actual living community, must be
taken in an allegorical sense. Just as modern lunatics believe
themselves to be china vases or poll-parrots, and think and behave as
such, so it must have been easy, the Professor argues, for beings of
superior intelligence to have exerted hypnotic influence upon the
superstitious savages by whom they were surrounded, and who,
intellectually considered, could have been little more than children.
"Take Nebuchadnezzar." I am still quoting the Professor. "Nowadays we
should put him into a strait-waistcoat. Had he lived in Northern
Europe instead of Southern Asia, legend would have told us how some
Kobold or Stromkarl had turned him into a composite amalgamation of a
serpent, a cat and a kangaroo." Be that as it may, this passion for
change--in other people--seems to have grown upon Malvina until she
must have become little short of a public nuisance, and eventually it
landed her in trouble.
The incident is unique in the annals of the White Ladies, and the
chroniclers dwell upon it with evident satisfaction. It came about
through the betrothal of King Heremon's only son, Prince Gerbot, to the
Princess Berchta of Normandy. Malvina seems to have said nothing, but
to have bided her time. The White Ladies of Brittany, it must be
remembered, were not fairies pure and simple. Under certain conditions
they were capable of becoming women, and this fact, one takes it, must
have exerted a disturbing influence upon their relationships with
eligible male mortals. Prince Gerbot may not have been altogether
blameless. Young men in those sadly unenlightened days may not, in
their dealings with ladies, white or otherwise, have always been the
soul of discretion and propriety. One would like to think the best of
her.
But even the best is indefensible. On the day appointed for the
wedding she seems to have surpassed herself. Into what particular
shape or form she altered the wretched Prince Gerbot; or into what
shape or form she persuaded him that he had been altered, it really, so
far as the moral responsibility of Malvina is concerned, seems to be
immaterial; the chronicle does not state: evidently something too
indelicate for a self-respecting chronicler to even hint at. As,
judging from other passages in the book, squeamishness does not seem to
have been the author's literary failing, the sensitive reader can feel
only grateful for the omission. It would have been altogether too
harrowing.
It had, of course, from Malvina's point of view, the desired effect.
The Princess Berchta appears to have given one look and then to have
fallen fainting into the arms of her attendants. The marriage was
postponed indefinitely, and Malvina, one sadly suspects, chortled. Her
triumph was short-lived.
Unfortunately for her, King Heremon had always been a patron of the
arts and science of his period. Among his friends were to be reckoned
magicians, genii, the Nine Korrigans or Fays of Brittany--all sorts of
parties capable of exerting influence, and, as events proved, only too
willing. Ambassadors waited upon Queen Harbundia; and Harbundia, even
had she wished, as on many previous occasions, to stand by her
favourite, had no alternative. The fairy Malvina was called upon to
return to Prince Gerbot his proper body and all therein contained.
She flatly refused. A self-willed, obstinate fairy, suffering from
swelled head. And then there was that personal note. Merely that he
should marry the Princess Berchta! She would see King Heremon, and
Anniamus, in his silly old wizard's robe, and the Fays of Brittany, and
all the rest of them--! A really nice White Lady may not have cared to
finish the sentence, even to herself. One imagines the flash of the
fairy eye, the stamp of the fairy foot. What could they do to her, any
of them, with all their clacking of tongues and their wagging of heads?
She, an immortal fairy! She would change Prince Gerbot back at a time
of her own choosing. Let them attend to their own tricks and leave her
to mind hers. One pictures long walks and talks between the distracted
Harbundia and her refractory favourite--appeals to reason, to
sentiment: "For my sake." "Don't you see?" "After all, dear, and
even if he did."
It seems to have ended by Harbundia losing all patience. One thing
there was she could do that Malvina seems either not to have known of
or not to have anticipated. A solemn meeting of the White Ladies was
convened for the night of the midsummer moon. The place of meeting is
described by the ancient chroniclers with more than their usual
exactitude. It was on the land that the magician Kalyb had, ages ago,
raised up above all Brittany to form the grave of King Taramis. The
"Sea of the Seven Islands" lay to the north. One guesses it to be the
ridge formed by the Arree Mountains. "The Lady of the Fountain"
appears to have been present, suggesting the deep green pool from which
the river D'Argent takes its source. Roughly speaking, one would place
it halfway between the modern towns of Morlaix and Callac.
Pedestrians, even of the present day, speak of the still loneliness of
that high plateau, treeless, houseless, with no sign of human hand
there but that high, towering monolith round which the shrill winds
moan incessantly. There, possibly on some broken fragment of those
great grey stones, Queen Harbundia sat in judgment. And the judgment
was--and from it there was no appeal--that the fairy Malvina should be
cast out from among the community of the White Ladies of Brittany.
Over the face of the earth she should wander, alone and unforgiven.
Solemnly from the book of the roll-call of the White Ladies the name of
Malvina was struck out for ever.
The blow must have fallen upon Malvina as heavily as it was unexpected.
Without a word, without one backward look, she seems to have departed.
One pictures the white, frozen face, the wide-open, unseeing eyes, the
trembling, uncertain steps, the groping hands, the deathlike silence
clinging like grave-clothes round about her.
From that night the fairy Malvina disappears from the book of the
chroniclers of the White Ladies of Brittany, from legend and from
folklore whatsoever. She does not appear again in history till the
year A.D. 1914.
II. HOW IT CAME ABOUT.
It was on an evening towards the end of June, 1914, that Flight
Commander Raffleton, temporarily attached to the French Squadron then
harboured at Brest, received instructions by wireless to return at once
to the British Air Service Headquarters at Farnborough, in Hampshire.
The night, thanks to a glorious full moon, would afford all the light
he required, and young Raffleton determined to set out at once. He
appears to have left the flying ground just outside the arsenal at
Brest about nine o'clock. A little beyond Huelgoat he began to
experience trouble with the carburettor. His idea at first was to push
on to Lannion, where he would be able to secure expert assistance; but
matters only getting worse, and noticing beneath him a convenient
stretch of level ground, he decided to descend and attend to it
himself. He alighted without difficulty and proceeded to investigate.
The job took him, unaided, longer than he had anticipated. It was a
warm, close night, with hardly a breath of wind, and when he had
finished he was feeling hot and tired. He had drawn on his helmet and
was on the point of stepping into his seat, when the beauty of the
night suggested to him that it would be pleasant, before starting off
again, to stretch his legs and cool himself a little. He lit a cigar
and looked round about him.
The plateau on which he had alighted was a table-land standing high
above the surrounding country. It stretched around him, treeless,
houseless. There was nothing to break the lines of the horizon but a
group of gaunt grey stones, the remains, so he told himself, of some
ancient menhir, common enough to the lonely desert lands of Brittany.
In general the stones lie overthrown and scattered, but this particular
specimen had by some strange chance remained undisturbed through all
the centuries. Mildly interested, Flight Commander Raffleton strolled
leisurely towards it. The moon was at its zenith. How still the quiet
night must have been was impressed upon him by the fact that he
distinctly heard, and counted, the strokes of a church clock which must
have been at least six miles away. He remembers looking at his watch
and noting that there was a slight difference between his own and the
church time. He made it eight minutes past twelve. With the dying
away of the last vibrations of the distant bell the silence and the
solitude of the place seemed to return and settle down upon it with
increased insistence. While he was working it had not troubled him,
but beside the black shadows thrown by those hoary stones it had the
effect almost of a presence. It was with a sense of relief that he
contemplated returning to his machine and starting up his engine. It
would whir and buzz and give back to him a comfortable feeling of life
and security. He would walk round the stones just once and then be
off. It was wonderful how they had defied old Time. As they had been
placed there, quite possibly ten thousand years ago, so they still
stood, the altar of that vast, empty sky-roofed temple. And while he
was gazing at them, his cigar between his lips, struggling with a
strange forgotten impulse that was tugging at his knees, there came
from the very heart of the great grey stones the measured rise and fall
of a soft, even breathing.
Young Raffleton frankly confesses that his first impulse was to cut and
run. Only his soldier's training kept his feet firm on the heather.
Of course, the explanation was simple. Some animal had made the place
its nest. But then what animal was ever known to sleep so soundly as
not to be disturbed by human footsteps? If wounded, and so unable to
escape, it would not be breathing with that quiet, soft regularity,
contrasting so strangely with the stillness and the silence all round.
Possibly an owl's nest. Young owlets make that sort of noise--the
"snorers," so country people call them. Young Raffleton threw away his
cigar and went down upon his knees to grope among the shadows, and,
doing so, he touched something warm and soft and yielding.
But it wasn't an owl. He must have touched her very lightly, for even
then she did not wake. She lay there with her head upon her arm. And
now close to her, his eyes growing used to the shadows, he saw her
quite plainly, the wonder of the parted lips, the gleam of the white
limbs beneath their flimsy covering.
Of course, what he ought to have done was to have risen gently and
moved away. Then he could have coughed. And if that did not wake her
he might have touched her lightly, say, on the shoulder, and have
called to her, first softly, then a little louder, "Mademoiselle," or
"Mon enfant." Even better, he might have stolen away on tiptoe and
left her there sleeping.
This idea does not seem to have occurred to him. One makes the excuse
for him that he was but three-and-twenty, that, framed in the purple
moonlight, she seemed to him the most beautiful creature his eyes had
ever seen. And then there was the brooding mystery of it all, that
atmosphere of far-off primeval times from which the roots of life still
draw their sap. One takes it he forgot that he was Flight Commander
Raffleton, officer and gentleman; forgot the proper etiquette applying
to the case of ladies found sleeping upon lonely moors without a
chaperon. Greater still, the possibility that he never thought of
anything at all, but, just impelled by a power beyond himself, bent
down and kissed her.
Not a platonic kiss upon the brow, not a brotherly kiss upon the cheek,
but a kiss full upon the parted lips, a kiss of worship and amazement,
such as that with which Adam in all probability awakened Eve.
Her eyes opened, and, just a little sleepily, she looked at him. There
could have been no doubt in her mind as to what had happened. His lips
were still pressing hers. But she did not seem in the least surprised,
and most certainly not angry. Raising herself to a sitting posture,
she smiled and held out her hand that he might help her up. And, alone
in that vast temple, star-roofed and moon-illumined, beside that grim
grey altar of forgotten rites, hand in hand they stood and looked at
one another.
"I beg your pardon," said Commander Raffleton. "I'm afraid I have
disturbed you."
He remembered afterwards that in his confusion he had spoken to her in
English. But she answered him in French, a quaint, old-fashioned
French such as one rarely finds but in the pages of old missals. He
would have had some difficulty in translating it literally, but the
meaning of it was, adapted to our modern idiom:
"Don't mention it. I'm so glad you've come."
He gathered she had been expecting him. He was not quite sure whether
he ought not to apologise for being apparently a little late. True, he
had no recollection of any such appointment. But then at that
particular moment Commander Raffleton may be said to have had no
consciousness of anything beyond just himself and the wondrous other
beside him. Somewhere outside was moonlight and a world; but all that
seemed unimportant. It was she who broke the silence.
"How did you get here?" she asked.
He did not mean to be enigmatical. He was chiefly concerned with still
gazing at her.
"I flew here," he answered. Her eyes opened wider at that, but with
interest, not doubt.
"Where are your wings?" she asked. She was leaning sideways, trying to
get a view of his back.
He laughed. It made her seem more human, that curiosity about his back.
"Over there," he answered. She looked, and for the first time saw the
great shimmering sails gleaming like silver under the moonlight.
She moved towards it, and he followed, noticing without surprise that
the heather seemed to make no sign of yielding to the pressure of her
white feet.
She halted a little away from it, and he came and stood beside her.
Even to Commander Raffleton himself it looked as if the great wings
were quivering, like the outstretched pinions of a bird preening itself
before flight.
"Is it alive?" she asked.
"Not till I whisper to it," he answered. He was losing a little of his
fear of her. She turned to him.
"Shall we go?" she asked.
He stared at her. She was quite serious, that was evident. She was to
put her hand in his and go away with him. It was all settled. That is
why he had come. To her it did not matter where. That was his affair.
But where he went she was to go. That was quite clearly the programme
in her mind.
To his credit, let it be recorded, he did make an effort. Against all
the forces of nature, against his twenty-three years and the red blood
pulsing in his veins, against the fumes of the midsummer moonlight
encompassing him and the voices of the stars, against the demons of
poetry and romance and mystery chanting their witches' music in his
ears, against the marvel and the glory of her as she stood beside him,
clothed in the purple of the night, Flight Commander Raffleton fought
the good fight for common sense.
Young persons who, scantily clad, go to sleep on the heather, five
miles from the nearest human habitation, are to be avoided by
well-brought-up young officers of His Majesty's Aerial Service. The
incidence of their being uncannily beautiful and alluring should serve
as an additional note of warning. The girl had had a row with her
mother and wanted to get away. It was this infernal moonlight that was
chiefly responsible. No wonder dogs bayed at it. He almost fancied he
could hear one now. Nice, respectable, wholesome-minded things, dogs.
No damned sentiment about them. What if he had kissed her! One is not
bound for life to every woman one kisses. Not the first time she had
been kissed, unless all the young men in Brittany were blind or white
blooded. All this pretended innocence and simplicity! It was just put
on. If not, she must be a lunatic. The proper thing to do was to say
good-bye with a laugh and a jest, start up his machine and be off to
England--dear old practical, merry England, where he could get
breakfast and a bath.
It wasn't a fair fight; one feels it. Poor little prim Common Sense,
with her defiant, turned-up nose and her shrill giggle and her innate
vulgarity. And against her the stillness of the night, and the music
of the ages, and the beating of his heart.
So it all fell down about his feet, a little crumbled dust that a
passing breath of wind seemed to scatter, leaving him helpless,
spellbound by the magic of her eyes.
"Who are you?" he asked her.
"Malvina," she answered him. "I am a fairy."
III. HOW COUSIN CHRISTOPHER BECAME MIXED UP WITH IT.
It did just occur to him that maybe he had not made that descent quite
as successfully as he had thought he had; that maybe he had come down
on his head; that in consequence he had done with the experiences of
Flight Commander Raffleton and was now about to enter on a new and less
circumscribed existence. If so, the beginning, to an adventuresome
young spirit, seemed promising. It was Malvina's voice that recalled
him from this train of musing.
"Shall we go?" she repeated, and this time the note in her voice
suggested command rather than question.
Why not? Whatever had happened to him, at whatever plane of existence
he was now arrived, the machine apparently had followed him.
Mechanically he started it up. The familiar whir of the engine brought
back to him the possibility of his being alive in the ordinary
acceptation of the term. It also suggested to him the practical
advisability of insisting that Malvina should put on his spare coat.
Malvina being five feet three, and the coat having been built for a man
of six feet one, the effect under ordinary circumstances would have
been comic. What finally convinced Commander Raffleton that Malvina
really was a fairy was that, in that coat, with the collar standing up
some six inches above her head, she looked more like one than ever.
Neither of them spoke. Somehow it did not seem to be needed. He
helped her to climb into her seat and tucked the coat about her feet.
She answered by the same smile with which she had first stretched out
her hand to him. It was just a smile of endless content, as if all her
troubles were now over. Commander Raffleton sincerely hoped they were.
A momentary flash of intelligence suggested to him that his were just
beginning.
Commander Raffleton's subconscious self it must have been that took
charge of the machine. He seems, keeping a few miles inland, to have
followed the line of the coast to a little south of the Hague
lighthouse. Thereabouts he remembers descending for the purpose of
replenishing his tank. Not having anticipated a passenger, he had
filled up before starting with a spare supply of petrol, an incident
that was fortunate. Malvina appears to have been interested in
watching what she probably regarded as some novel breed of dragon being
nourished from tins extricated from under her feet, but to have
accepted this, together with all other details of the flight, as in the
natural scheme of things. The monster refreshed, tugged, spurned the
ground, and rose again with a roar; and the creeping sea rushed down.
One has the notion that for Flight Commander Raffleton, as for the rest
of us, there lies in wait to test the heart of him the ugly and the
commonplace. So large a portion of the years will be for him a
business of mean hopes and fears, of sordid struggle, of low cares and
vulgar fret. But also one has the conviction that there will always
remain with him, to make life wonderful, the memory of that night when,
godlike, he rode upon the winds of heaven crowned with the glory of the
world's desire. Now and again he turned his head to look at her, and
still, as ever, her eyes answered him with that strange deep content
that seemed to wrap them both around as with a garment of immortality.
One gathers dimly something of what he felt from the look that would
unconsciously come into his eyes when speaking of that enchanted
journey, from the sudden dumbness with which the commonplace words
would die away upon his lips. Well for him that his lesser self kept
firm hold upon the wheel or maybe a few broken spars, tossing upon the
waves, would have been all that was left to tell of a promising young
aviator who, on a summer night of June, had thought he could reach the
stars.
Half-way across the dawn came flaming up over the Needles, and later
there stole from east to west a long, low line of mist-enshrouded land.
One by one headland and cliff, flashing with gold, rose out of the sea,
and the white-winged gulls flew out to meet them. Almost he expected
them to turn into spirits, circling round Malvina with cries of welcome.
Nearer and nearer they drew, while gradually the mist rose upward as
the moonlight grew fainter. And all at once the sweep of the Chesil
Bank stood out before them, with Weymouth sheltering behind it.
It may have been the bathing-machines, or the gasometer beyond the
railway station, or the flag above the Royal Hotel. The curtains of
the night fell suddenly away from him. The workaday world came
knocking at the door.
He looked at his watch. It was a little after four. He had wired them
at the camp to expect him in the morning. They would be looking out
for him. By continuing his course he and Malvina could be there about
breakfast-time. He could introduce her to the colonel: "Allow me,
Colonel Goodyer, the fairy Malvina." It was either that or dropping
Malvina somewhere between Weymouth and Farnborough. He decided,
without much consideration, that this latter course would be
preferable. But where? What was he to do with her? There was Aunt
Emily. Hadn't she said something about wanting a French governess for
Georgina? True, Malvina's French was a trifle old-fashioned in form,
but her accent was charming. And as for salary--- There presented
itself the thought of Uncle Felix and the three elder boys.
Instinctively he felt that Malvina would not be Aunt Emily's idea. His
father, had the dear old gentleman been alive, would have been a safe
refuge. They had always understood one another, he and his father.
But his mother! He was not at all sure. He visualised the scene: the
drawing-room at Chester Terrace. His mother's soft, rustling entrance.
Her affectionate but well-bred greeting. And then the disconcerting
silence with which she would await his explanation of Malvina. The
fact that she was a fairy he would probably omit to mention. Faced by
his mother's gold-rimmed pince-nez, he did not see himself insisting
upon that detail: "A young lady I happened to find asleep on a moor in
Brittany. And seeing it was a fine night, and there being just room in
the machine. And she--I mean I--well, here we are." There would
follow such a painful silence, and then the raising of the delicately
arched eyebrows: "You mean, my dear lad, that you have allowed
this"--there would be a slight hesitation here--"this young person to
leave her home, her people, her friends and relations in Brittany, in
order to attach herself to you. May I ask in what capacity?"
For that was precisely how it would look, and not only to his mother.
Suppose by a miracle it really represented the facts. Suppose that, in
spite of the overwhelming evidence in her favour--of the night and the
moon and the stars, and the feeling that had come to him from the
moment he had kissed her--suppose that, in spite of all this, it turned
out that she wasn't a fairy. Suppose that suggestion of vulgar Common
Sense, that she was just a little minx that had run away from home, had
really hit the mark. Suppose inquiries were already on foot. A hundred
horse-power aeroplane does not go about unnoticed. Wasn't there a law
about this sort of thing--something about "decoying" and "young girls"?
He hadn't "decoyed" her. If anything, it was the other way about. But
would her consent be a valid defence? How old was she? That would be
the question. In reality he supposed about a thousand years or so.
Possibly more. Unfortunately, she didn't look it. A coldly suspicious
magistrate would probably consider sixteen a much better guess. Quite
possibly he was going to get into a devil of a mess over this business.
He cast a glance behind him. Malvina responded with her changeless
smile of ineffable content. For the first time it caused him a
distinct feeling of irritation.
They were almost over Weymouth by this time. He could read plainly the
advertisement posters outside the cinema theatre facing the esplanade:
"Wilkins and the Mermaid. Comic Drama." There was a picture of the
lady combing her hair; also of Wilkins, a stoutish gentleman in striped
bathing costume.
That mad impulse that had come to him with the first breath of dawn, to
shake the dwindling world from his pinions, to plunge upward towards
the stars never to return--he wished to Heaven he had yielded to it.
And then suddenly there leapt to him the thought of Cousin Christopher.
Dear old Cousin Christopher, fifty-eight and a bachelor. Why had it
not occurred to him before? Out of the sky there appeared to Commander
Raffleton the vision of "Cousin Christopher" as a plump, rubicund angel
in a panama hat and a pepper-and-salt tweed suit holding out a
lifebelt. Cousin Christopher would take to Malvina as some motherly
hen to an orphaned duckling. A fairy discovered asleep beside one of
the ancient menhirs of Brittany. His only fear would be that you might
want to take her away before he had written a paper about her. He
would be down from Oxford at his cottage. Commander Raffleton could not
for the moment remember the name of the village. It would come to him.
It was northwest of Newbury. You crossed Salisbury Plain and made
straight for Magdalen Tower. The Downs reached almost to the orchard
gate. There was a level stretch of sward nearly half a mile long. It
seemed to Commander Raffleton that Cousin Christopher had been created
and carefully preserved by Providence for this particular job.
He was no longer the moonstruck youth of the previous night, on whom
phantasy and imagination could play what pranks they chose. That part
of him the keen, fresh morning air had driven back into its cell. He
was Commander Raffleton, an eager and alert young engineer with all his
wits about him. At this point that has to be remembered. Descending
on a lonely reach of shore he proceeded to again disturb Malvina for
the purpose of extracting tins. He expected his passenger would in
broad daylight prove to be a pretty, childish-looking girl, somewhat
dishevelled, with, maybe, a tinge of blue about the nose, the natural
result of a three-hours' flight at fifty miles an hour. It was with a
startling return of his original sensations when first she had come to
life beneath his kiss that he halted a few feet away and stared at her.
The night was gone, and the silence. She stood there facing the
sunlight, clad in a Burberry overcoat half a dozen sizes too large for
her. Beyond her was a row of bathing-machines, and beyond that again a
gasometer. A goods train half a mile away was noisily shunting trucks.
And yet the glamour was about her still; something indescribable but
quite palpable--something out of which she looked at you as from
another world.
He took her proffered hand, and she leapt out lightly. She was not in
the least dishevelled. It seemed as if the air must be her proper
element. She looked about her, interested, but not curious. Her first
thought was for the machine.
"Poor thing!" she said. "He must be tired."
That faint tremor of fear that had come to him when beneath the
menhir's shadow he had watched the opening of her eyes, returned to
him. It was not an unpleasant sensation. Rather it added a piquancy
to their relationship. But it was distinctly real. She watched the
feeding of the monster; and then he came again and stood beside her on
the yellow sands.
"England!" he explained with a wave of his hand. One fancies she had
the impression that it belonged to him. Graciously she repeated the
name. And somehow, as it fell from her lips, it conjured up to
Commander Raffleton a land of wonder and romance.
"I have heard of it," she added. "I think I shall like it."
He answered that he hoped she would. He was deadly serious about it.
He possessed, generally speaking, a sense of humour; but for the moment
this must have deserted him. He told her he was going to leave her in
the care of a wise and learned man called "Cousin Christopher"; his
description no doubt suggesting to Malvina a friendly magician. He
himself would have to go away for a little while, but would return.
It did not seem to matter to Malvina, these minor details. It was
evident--the idea in her mind--that he had been appointed to her.
Whether as master or servant it was less easy to conjecture: probably a
mixture of both, with preference towards the latter.
He mentioned again that he would not be away for longer than he could
help. There was no necessity for this repetition. She wasn't doubting
it.
Weymouth with its bathing machines and its gasometer faded away. King
Rufus was out a-hunting as they passed over the New Forest, and from
Salisbury Plain, as they looked down, the pixies waved their hands and
laughed. Later, they heard the clang of the anvil, telling them they
were in the neighbourhood of Wayland Smith's cave; and so planed down
sweetly and without a jar just beyond Cousin Christopher's orchard gate.
A shepherd's boy was whistling somewhere upon the Downs, and in the
valley a ploughman had just harnessed his team; but the village was
hidden from them by the sweep of the hills, and no other being was in
sight. He helped Malvina out, and leaving her seated on a fallen
branch beneath a walnut tree, proceeded cautiously towards the house.
He found a little maid in the garden. She had run out of the house on
hearing the sound of his propeller and was staring up into the sky, so
that she never saw him until he put his hand upon her shoulder, and
then was fortunately too frightened to scream. He gave her hasty
instructions. She was to knock at the Professor's door and tell him
that his cousin, Commander Raffleton, was there, and would he come down
at once, by himself, into the orchard. Commander Raffleton would rather
not come in. Would the Professor come down at once and speak to
Commander Raffleton in the orchard.
She went back into the house, repeating it all to herself, a little
scared.
"Good God!" said Cousin Christopher from beneath the bedclothes. "He
isn't hurt, is he?"
The little maid, through the jar of the door, thought not. Anyhow, he
didn't look it. But would the Professor kindly come at once? Commander
Raffleton was waiting for him--in the orchard.
So Cousin Christopher, in bedroom slippers, without socks, wearing a
mustard-coloured dressing-gown and a black skull cap upon his head--the
very picture of a friendly magician--trotted hastily downstairs and
through the garden, talking to himself about "foolhardy boys" and
"knowing it would happen"; and was much relieved to meet young Arthur
Raffleton coming towards him, evidently sound in wind and limb. And
then began to wonder why the devil he had been frightened out of bed at
six o'clock in the morning if nothing was the matter.
But something clearly was. Before speaking Arthur Raffleton looked
carefully about him in a manner suggestive of mystery, if not of crime;
and still without a word, taking Cousin Christopher by the arm, led the
way to the farther end of the orchard. And there, on a fallen branch
beneath the walnut tree, Cousin Christopher saw apparently a khaki
coat, with nothing in it, which, as they approached it, rose up.
But it did not rise very high. The back of the coat was towards them.
Its collar stood out against the sky line. But there wasn't any head.
Standing upright, it turned round, and peeping out of its folds Cousin
Christopher saw a child's face. And then looking closer saw that it
wasn't a child. And then wasn't quite sure what it was; so that coming
to a sudden halt in front of it, Cousin Christopher stared at it with
round wide eyes, and then at Flight Commander Raffleton.
It was to Malvina that Flight Commander Raffleton addressed himself.
"This," he said, "is Professor Littlecherry, my Cousin Christopher,
about whom I told you."
It was obvious that Malvina regarded the Professor as a person of
importance. Evidently her intention was to curtsy, an operation that,
hampered by those trailing yards of clinging khaki, might prove--so it
flashed upon the Professor--not only difficult but dangerous.
"Allow me," said the Professor.
His idea was to help Malvina out of Commander Raffleton's coat, and
Malvina was preparing to assist him. Commander Raffleton was only just
in time.
"I don't think," said Commander Raffleton. "If you don't mind I think
we'd better leave that for Mrs. Muldoon."
The Professor let go the coat. Malvina appeared a shade disappointed.
One opines that not unreasonably she may have thought to make a better
impression without it. But a smiling acquiescence in all arrangements
made for her welfare seems to have been one of her charms.
"Perhaps," suggested Commander Raffleton to Malvina while refastening a
few of the more important buttons, "if you wouldn't mind explaining
yourself to my Cousin Christopher just exactly who and what you
are--you'd do it so much better than I should." (What Commander
Raffleton was saying to himself was: "If I tell the dear old Johnny,
he'll think I'm pulling his leg. It will sound altogether different
the way she will put it.") "You're sure you don't mind?"
Malvina hadn't the slightest objection. She accomplished her
curtsy--or rather it looked as if the coat were curtsying--quite
gracefully, and with a dignity one would not have expected from it.
"I am the fairy Malvina," she explained to the Professor. "You may
have heard of me. I was the favourite of Harbundia, Queen of the White
Ladies of Brittany. But that was long ago."
The friendly magician was staring at her with a pair of round eyes that
in spite of their amazement looked kindly and understanding. They
probably encouraged Malvina to complete the confession of her sad brief
history.
"It was when King Heremon ruled over Ireland," she continued. "I did a
very foolish and a wicked thing, and was punished for it by being cast
out from the companionship of my fellows. Since then"--the coat made
the slightest of pathetic gestures--"I have wandered alone."
It ought to have sounded so ridiculous to them both; told on English
soil in the year One Thousand Nine Hundred and Fourteen to a smart
young officer of Engineers and an elderly Oxford Professor. Across the
road the doctor's odd man was opening garage doors; a noisy milk cart
was clattering through the village a little late for the London train;
a faint odour of eggs and bacon came wafted through the garden, mingled
with the scent of lavender and pinks. For Commander Raffleton, maybe,
there was excuse. This story, so far as it has gone, has tried to make
that clear. But the Professor! He ought to have exploded in a burst
of Homeric laughter, or else to have shaken his head at her and warned
her where little girls go to who do this sort of thing.
Instead of which he stared from Commander Raffleton to Malvina, and
from Malvina back to Commander Raffleton with eyes so astonishingly
round that they might have been drawn with a compass.
"God bless my soul!" said the Professor. "But this is most
extraordinary!"
"Was there a King Heremon of Ireland?" asked Commander Raffleton. The
Professor was a well-known authority on these matters.
"Of course there was a King Heremon of Ireland," answered the Professor
quite petulantly--as if the Commander had wanted to know if there had
ever been a Julius Caesar or a Napoleon. "And so there was a Queen
Harbundia. Malvina is always spoken of in connection with her."
"What did she do?" inquired Commander Raffleton. They both of them
seemed to be oblivious of Malvina's presence.
"I forget for the moment," confessed the professor. "I must look it
up. Something, if I remember rightly, in connection with the daughter
of King Dancrat. He founded the Norman dynasty. William the Conqueror
and all that lot. Good Lord!"
"Would you mind her staying with you for a time until I can make
arrangements," suggested Commander Raffleton. "I'd be awfully obliged
if you would."
What the Professor's answer might have been had he been allowed to
exercise such stock of wits as he possessed, it is impossible to say.
Of course he was interested--excited, if you will. Folklore, legend,
tradition; these had been his lifelong hobbies. Apart from anything
else, here at least was a kindred spirit. Seemed to know a thing or
two. Where had she learned it? Might not there be sources unknown to
the Professor?
But to take her in! To establish her in the only spare bedroom. To
introduce her--as what? to English village society. To the new people
at the Manor House. To the member of Parliament with his innocent
young wife who had taken the vicarage for the summer. To Dawson, R.A.,
and the Calthorpes!
He might, had he thought it worth his while, have found some
respectable French family and boarded her out. There was a man he had
known for years at Oxford, a cabinetmaker; the wife a most worthy
woman. He could have gone over there from time to time, his notebook
in his pocket, and have interviewed her.
Left to himself, he might have behaved as a sane and rational citizen;
or he might not. There are records favouring the latter possibility.
The thing is not certain. But as regards this particular incident in
his career he must be held exonerated. The decision was taken out of
his hands.
To Malvina, on first landing in England, Commander Raffleton had stated
his intention of leaving her temporarily in the care of the wise and
learned Christopher. To Malvina, regarding the Commander as a gift
from the gods, that had settled the matter. The wise and learned
Christopher, of course, knew of this coming. In all probability it was
he--under the guidance of the gods--who had arranged the whole sequence
of events. There remained only to tender him her gratitude. She did
not wait for the Professor's reply. The coat a little hindered her
but, on the other hand, added perhaps an appealing touch of its own.
Taking the wise and learned Christopher's hand in both her own, she
knelt and kissed it.
And in that quaint archaic French of hers, that long study of the
Chronicles of Froissart enabled the Professor to understand:
"I thank you," she said, "for your noble courtesy and hospitality."
In some mysterious way the whole affair had suddenly become imbued with
the dignity of an historical event. The Professor had the sudden
impression--and indeed it never altogether left him so long as Malvina
remained--that he was a great and powerful personage. A sister
potentate; incidentally--though, of course, in high politics such
points are immaterial--the most bewilderingly beautiful being he had
ever seen; had graciously consented to become his guest. The
Professor, with a bow that might have been acquired at the court of
King Rene, expressed his sense of the honour done to him. What else
could a self-respecting potentate do? The incident was closed.
Flight Commander Raffleton seems to have done nothing in the direction
of re-opening it. On the contrary, he appears to have used this
precise moment for explaining to the Professor how absolutely necessary
it was that he should depart for Farnborough without another moment's
loss of time. Commander Raffleton added that he would "look them both
up again" the first afternoon he could get away; and was sure that if
the Professor would get Malvina to speak slowly, he would soon find her
French easy to understand.
It did occur to the Professor to ask Commander Raffleton where he had
found Malvina--that is, if he remembered. Also what he was going to do
about her--that is, if he happened to know. Commander Raffleton,
regretting his great need of haste, explained that he had found Malvina
asleep beside a menhir not far from Huelgoat, in Brittany, and was
afraid that he had woke her up. For further particulars, would the
Professor kindly apply to Malvina? For himself, he would never, he
felt sure, be able to thank the professor sufficiently.
In conclusion, and without giving further opportunity for discussion,
the Commander seems to have shaken his Cousin Christopher by the hand
with much enthusiasm; and then to have turned to Malvina. She did not
move, but her eyes were fixed on him. And he came to her slowly. And
without a word he kissed her full upon the lips.
"That is twice you have kissed me," said Malvina--and a curious little
smile played round her mouth. "The third time I shall become a woman."
IV. HOW IT WAS KEPT FROM MRS. ARLINGTON.
What surprised the Professor himself, when he came to think of it, was
that, left alone with Malvina, and in spite of all the circumstances,
he felt neither embarrassment nor perplexity. It was as if, so far as
they two were concerned, the whole thing was quite simple--almost
humorous. It would be the other people who would have to worry.
The little serving maid was hovering about the garden. She was
evidently curious and trying to get a peep. Mrs. Muldoon's voice could
be heard calling to her from the kitchen. There was this question of
clothes.
"You haven't brought anything with you?" asked the Professor. "I mean,
in the way of a frock of any sort."
Malvina, with a smile, gave a little gesture. It implied that all
there was of her and hers stood before him.
"We shall have to find you something," said the Professor. "Something
in which you can go about--"
The Professor had intended to say "our world," but hesitated, not
feeling positive at the moment to which he himself belonged; Malvina's
or Mrs. Muldoon's. So he made it "the" world instead. Another gesture
conveyed to him that Malvina was entirely in his hands.
"What really have you got on?" asked the Professor. "I mean
underneath. Is it anything possible--for a day or two?"
Now Commander Raffleton, for some reason of his own not at all clear to
Malvina, had forbidden the taking off of the coat. But had said
nothing about undoing it. So by way of response Malvina undid it.
Upon which the Professor, to Malvina's surprise, acted precisely as
Commander Raffleton had done. That is to say, he hastily re-closed the
coat, returning the buttons to their buttonholes.
The fear may have come to Malvina that she was doomed never to be rid
of Commander Raffleton's coat.
"I wonder," mused the Professor, "if anyone in the village--" The
little serving maid flittering among the gooseberry bushes--she was
pretending to be gathering goose-berries--caught the Professor's eye.
"We will consult my chatelaine, Mrs. Muldoon," suggested the Professor.
"I think we shall be able to manage."
The Professor tendered Malvina his arm. With her other hand she
gathered up the skirts of the Commander's coat.
"I think," said the Professor with a sudden inspiration as they passed
through the garden, "I think I shall explain to Mrs. Muldoon that you
have just come straight from a fancy-dress ball."
They found Mrs. Muldoon in the kitchen. A less convincing story than
that by which the Professor sought to account to Mrs. Muldoon for the
how and the why of Malvina it would be impossible to imagine. Mrs.
Muldoon out of sheer kindness appears to have cut him short.
"I'll not be asking ye any questions," said Mrs. Muldoon, "so there'll
be no need for ye to imperil your immortal soul. If ye'll just give a
thought to your own appearance and leave the colleen to me and
Drusilla, we'll make her maybe a bit dacent."
The reference to his own appearance disconcerted the Professor. He had
not anticipated, when hastening into his dressing gown and slippers and
not bothering about his socks, that he was on his way to meet the chief
lady-in-waiting of Queen Harbundia. Demanding that shaving water
should be immediately sent up to him, he appears to have retired into
the bathroom.
It was while he was shaving that Mrs. Muldoon, knocking at the door,
demanded to speak to him. From her tone the Professor came to the
conclusion that the house was on fire. He opened the door, and Mrs.
Muldoon, seeing he was respectable, slipped in and closed it behind her.
"Where did ye find her? How did she get here?" demanded Mrs. Muldoon.
Never before had the Professor seen Mrs. Muldoon other than a placid,
good-humoured body. She was trembling from head to foot.
"I told you," explained the Professor. "Young Arthur--"
"I'm not asking ye what ye told me," interrupted Mrs. Muldoon. "I'm
asking ye for the truth, if ye know it."
The Professor put a chair for Mrs. Muldoon, and Mrs. Muldoon dropped
down upon it.
"What's the matter?" questioned the Professor. "What's happened?"
Mrs. Muldoon glanced round her, and her voice was an hysterical whisper.
"It's no mortal woman ye've brought into the house," said Mrs. Muldoon.
"It's a fairy."
Whether up to that moment the Professor had really believed Malvina's
story, or whether lurking at the back of his mind there had all along
been an innate conviction that the thing was absurd, the Professor
himself is now unable to say. To the front of the Professor lay
Oxford--political economy, the higher criticism, the rise and progress
of rationalism. Behind him, fading away into the dim horizon of
humanity, lay an unmapped land where for forty years he had loved to
wander; a spirit-haunted land of buried mysteries, lost pathways,
leading unto hidden gates of knowledge.
And now upon the trembling balance descended Mrs. Muldoon plump.
"How do you know?" demanded the Professor.
"Shure, don't I know the mark?" replied Mrs. Muldoon almost
contemptuously. "Wasn't my own sister's child stolen away the very day
of its birth and in its place--"
The little serving maid tapped at the door.
Mademoiselle was "finished." What was to be done with her?
"Don't ask me," protested Mrs. Muldoon, still in a terrified whisper.
"I couldn't do it. Not if all the saints were to go down upon their
knees and pray to me."
Common-sense argument would not have prevailed with Mrs. Muldoon. The
Professor felt that; added to which he had not any handy. He directed,
through the door, that "Mademoiselle" should be shown into the
dining-room, and listened till Drusilla's footsteps had died away.
"Have you ever heard of the White Ladies?" whispered the Professor to
Mrs. Muldoon.
There was not much in the fairy line, one takes it, that Mrs. Muldoon
had not heard of and believed. Was the Professor sure?
The Professor gave Mrs. Muldoon his word of honour as a gentleman. The
"White Ladies," as Mrs. Muldoon was of course aware, belonged to the
"good people." Provided nobody offended her there was nothing to fear.
"Shure, it won't be meself that'll cross her," said Mrs. Muldoon.
"She won't be staying very long," added the Professor. "We will just
be nice to her."
"She's got a kind face," admitted Mrs. Muldoon, "and a pleasant way
with her." The good body's spirits were perceptibly rising. The
favour of a "White Lady" might be worth cultivating.
"We must make a friend of her," urged the Professor, seizing his
opportunity.
"And mind," whispered the Professor as he opened the door for Mrs.
Muldoon to slip out, "not a word. She doesn't want it known."
One is convinced that Mrs. Muldoon left the bathroom resolved that, so
far as she could help it, no breath of suspicion that Malvina was other
than what in Drusilla's holiday frock she would appear to be should
escape into the village. It was quite a pleasant little frock of a
summery character, with short sleeves and loose about the neck, and
fitted Malvina, in every sense, much better than the most elaborate
confection would have done. The boots were not so successful. Malvina
solved the problem by leaving them behind her, together with the
stockings, whenever she went out. That she knew this was wrong is
proved by the fact that invariably she tried to hide them. They would
be found in the most unlikely places; hidden behind books in the
Professor's study, crammed into empty tea canisters in Mrs. Muldoon's
storeroom. Mrs. Muldoon was not to be persuaded even to abstract them.
The canister with its contents would be placed in silence upon the
Professor's table. Malvina on returning would be confronted by a pair
of stern, unsympathetic boots. The corners of the fairy mouth would
droop in lines suggestive of penitence and contrition.
Had the Professor been firm she would have yielded. But from the black
accusing boots the Professor could not keep his eyes from wandering to
the guilty white feet, and at once in his heart becoming "counsel for
the defence." Must get a pair of sandals next time he went to Oxford.
Anyhow, something more dainty than those grim, uncompromising boots.
Besides, it was not often that Malvina ventured beyond the orchard. At
least not during the day time--perhaps one ought to say not during that
part of the day time when the village was astir. For Malvina appears
to have been an early riser. Somewhere about the middle of the night,
as any Christian body would have timed it, Mrs. Muldoon--waking and
sleeping during this period in a state of high nervous tension--would
hear the sound of a softly opened door; peeping from a raised corner of
the blind, would catch a glimpse of fluttering garments that seemed to
melt into the dawn; would hear coming fainter and fainter from the
uplands an unknown song, mingling with the answering voices of the
birds.
It was on the uplands between dawn and sunrise that Malvina made the
acquaintance of the Arlington twins.
They ought, of course, to have been in bed--all three of them, for the
matter of that. The excuse for the twins was their Uncle George. He
had been telling them all about the Uffington spectre and Wayland
Smith's cave, and had given them "Puck" as a birthday present. They
were always given their birthday presents between them, because
otherwise they did not care for them. They had retired to their
respective bedrooms at ten o'clock and taken it in turns to lie awake.
At the first streak of dawn Victoria, who had been watching by her
window, woke Victor, as arranged. Victor was for giving it up and
going to sleep again, but Victoria reminding him of the "oath," they
dressed themselves quite simply, and let themselves down by the ivy.
They came across Malvina close to the tail of the White Horse. They
knew she was a fairy the moment they saw her. But they were not
frightened--at least not very much. It was Victor who spoke first.
Taking off his hat and going down on one knee, he wished Malvina good
morning and hoped she was quite well. Malvina, who seemed pleased to
see them, made answer, and here it was that Victoria took charge of the
affair. The Arlington twins until they were nine had shared a French
nurse between them; and then Victor, going to school, had gradually
forgotten; while Victoria, remaining at home, had continued her
conversations with "madame."
"Oh!" said Victoria. "Then you must be a French fairy."
Now the Professor had impressed upon Malvina that for reasons needless
to be explained--anyhow, he never had explained them--she was not to
mention that she was a fairy. But he had not told her to deny it.
Indeed how could she? The most that could be expected from her was
that she should maintain silence on the point. So in answer to
Victoria she explained that her name was Malvina, and that she had
flown across from Brittany in company with "Sir Arthur," adding that
she had often heard of England and had wished to see it.
"How do you like it?" demanded Victoria.
Malvina confessed herself charmed with it. Nowhere had she ever met so
many birds. Malvina raised her hand and they all three stood in
silence, listening. The sky was ablaze and the air seemed filled with
their music. The twins were sure that there were millions of them.
They must have come from miles and miles and miles, to sing to Malvina.
Also the people. They were so good and kind and round. Malvina for the
present was staying with--accepting the protection, was how she put it,
of the wise and learned Christopher. The "habitation" could be seen
from where they stood, its chimneys peeping from among the trees. The
twins exchanged a meaning glance. Had they not all along suspected the
Professor! His black skull cap, and his big hooked nose, and the
yellow-leaved, worm-eaten books--of magic: all doubts were now
removed--that for hours he would sit poring over through owlish
gold-rimmed spectacles!
Victor's French was coming back to him. He was anxious to know if
Malvina had ever met Sir Launcelot--"to talk to."
A little cloud gathered upon Malvina's face. Yes, she had known them
all: King Uthur and Igraine and Sir Ulfias of the Isles. Talked with
them, walked with them in the fair lands of France. (It ought to have
been England, but Malvina shook her head. Maybe they had travelled.)
It was she who had saved Sir Tristram from the wiles of Morgan le Fay.
"Though that, of course," explained Malvina, "was never known."
The twins were curious why it should have been "of course," but did not
like to interrupt again. There were others before and after. Most of
them the twins had never heard of until they came to Charlemagne,
beyond which Malvina's reminiscences appeared to fade.
They had all of them been very courteous to her, and some of them
indeed quite charming. But...
One gathers they had never been to Malvina more than mere
acquaintances, such as one passes the time with while waiting--and
longing.
"But you liked Sir Launcelot," urged Victor. He was wishful that
Malvina should admire Sir Launcelot, feeling how much there was in
common between that early lamented knight and himself. That little
affair with Sir Bedivere. It was just how he would have behaved
himself.
Ah! yes, admitted Malvina. She had "liked" him. He was always so--so
"excellent."
"But he was not--none of them were my own people, my own dear
companions." The little cloud had settled down again.
It was Bruno who recalled the three of them to the period of
contemporary history.
Polley the cowman's first duty in the morning was to let Bruno loose
for a run. He arrived panting and breathless, and evidently offended
at not having been included in the escapade. He could have given them
both away quite easily if he had not been the most forgiving of
black-and-tan collies. As it was, he had been worrying himself crazy
for the last half-hour, feeling sure they had forgotten the time.
"Don't you know it's nearly six o'clock? That in less than half an
hour Jane will be knocking at your doors with glasses of hot milk, and
will probably drop them and scream when she finds your beds empty and
the window wide open." That is what he had intended should be his
first words, but on scenting Malvina they went from him entirely. He
gave her one look and flopped down flat, wriggling towards her, whining
and wagging his tail at the same time. Malvina acknowledged his homage
by laughing and patting his head with her foot, and that sent him into
the seventh heaven of delight. They all four descended the hill
together and parted at the orchard gate. The twins expressed a polite
but quite sincere hope that they would have the pleasure of seeing
Malvina again; but Malvina, seized maybe with sudden doubts as to
whether she had behaved with discretion, appears to have replied
evasively. Ten minutes later she was lying asleep, the golden head
pillowed on the round white arm; as Mrs. Muldoon on her way down to the
kitchen saw for herself. And the twins, fortunate enough to find a
side door open, slipped into the house unnoticed and scrambled back
into their beds.
It was quarter past nine when Mrs. Arlington came in herself and woke
them up. She was short-tempered with them both and had evidently been
crying. They had their breakfast in the kitchen.
During lunch hardly a word was spoken. And there was no pudding. Mr.
Arlington, a stout, florid gentleman, had no time for pudding. The rest
might sit and enjoy it at their leisure, but not so Mr. Arlington.
Somebody had to see to things--that is, if they were not to be allowed
to go to rack and ruin. If other people could not be relied upon to do
their duty, so that everything inside the house and out of it was
thrown upon one pair of shoulders, then it followed as a natural
consequence that that pair of shoulders could not spare the necessary
time to properly finish its meals. This it was that was at the root of
the decay of English farming. When farmers' wives, to say nothing of
sons and daughters old enough one might imagine to be anxious to do
something in repayment for the money and care lavished upon them, had
all put their shoulders to the wheel, then English farming had
prospered. When, on the other hand, other people shirked their fair
share of labour and responsibility, leaving to one pair of hands...
It was the eldest Arlington girl's quite audible remark that pa could
have eaten two helpings of pudding while he had been talking, that
caused Mr. Arlington to lose the thread of his discourse. To put it
quite bluntly, what Mr. Arlington meant to say was this: He had never
wanted to be a farmer--at least not in the beginning. Other men in his
position, having acquired competency by years of self-sacrificing
labour, would have retired to a well-earned leisure. Having yielded to
persuasion and taken on the job, he was going to see it through; and
everybody else was going to do their share or there would be trouble.
Mr. Arlington, swallowing the remains of his glass in a single gulp,
spoilt a dignified exit by violently hiccoughing, and Mrs. Arlington
rang the bell furiously for the parlourmaid to clear away. The pudding
passed untouched from before the very eyes of the twins. It was a
black-currant pudding with brown sugar.
That night Mrs. Arlington appears to have confided in the twins, partly
for her own relief and partly for their moral benefit. If Mrs.
Arlington had enjoyed the blessing in disguise of a less indulgent
mother, all might have been well. By nature Mrs. Arlington had been
endowed with an active and energetic temperament. "Miss
Can't-sit-still-a-minute," her nurse had always called her.
Unfortunately it had been allowed to sink into disuse; was now in all
probability beyond hope of recovery. Their father was quite right.
When they had lived in Bayswater and the business was in Mincing Lane
it did not matter. Now it was different. A farmer's wife ought to be
up at six; she ought to see that everybody else was up at six; servants
looked after, kept up to the mark; children encouraged by their
mother's example. Organisation. That was what was wanted. The day
mapped out; to every hour its appointed task. Then, instead of the
morning being gone before you could turn yourself round, and confusion
made worse confounded by your leaving off what you were doing and
trying to do six things at once that you couldn't remember whether you
had done or whether you hadn't...
Here Mrs. Arlington appears to have dissolved into tears. Generally
speaking, she was a placid, smiling, most amiable lady, quite
delightful to have about the house provided all you demanded of her
were pleasant looks and a sunny disposition. The twins appear to have
joined their tears to hers. Tucked in and left to themselves, one
imagines the problem being discussed with grave seriousness, much
whispered conversation, then slept upon, the morning bringing with it
ideas. The result being that the next evening, between high tea and
supper, Mrs. Muldoon, answering herself the knock at the door, found
twin figures standing hand in hand on the Professor's step.
They asked her if "the Fairy" was in.
V. HOW IT WAS TOLD TO MRS. MARIGOLD.
There was no need of the proverbial feather. Mrs. Muldoon made a grab
at the settle but missed it. She caught at a chair, but that gave way.
It was the floor that finally stopped her.
"We're so sorry," apologised Victor. "We thought you knew. We ought
to have said Mademoiselle Malvina."
Mrs. Muldoon regained her feet, and without answering walked straight
into the study.
"They want to know," said Mrs. Muldoon, "if the Fairy's in." The
Professor, with his back to the window, was reading. The light in the
room was somewhat faint.
"Who wants to know?" demanded the Professor.
"The twins from the Manor House," explained Mrs. Muldoon.
"But what?--but who?" began the Professor.
"Shall I say 'not at home'?" suggested Mrs. Muldoon. "Or hadn't you
better see them yourself."
"Show them in," directed the Professor.
They came in, looking a little scared and still holding one another by
the hand. They wished the Professor good evening, and when he rose
they backed away from him. The Professor shook hands with them, but
they did not let go, so that Victoria gave him her right hand and
Victor his left, and then at the Professor's invitation they sat
themselves down on the extreme edge of the sofa.
"I hope we do not disturb you," said Victor. "We wanted to see
Mademoiselle Malvina."
"Why do you want to see Mademoiselle Malvina?" inquired the Professor.
"It is something very private," said Victor.
"We wanted to ask her a great favour," said Victoria.
"I'm sorry," said the Professor, "but she isn't in. At least, I don't
think so." (The Professor never was quite sure. "She slips in and out
making no more noise than a wind-driven rose leaf," was Mrs. Muldoon's
explanation.) "Hadn't you better tell me? Leave me to put it to her."
They looked at one another. It would never do to offend the wise and
learned Christopher. Besides, a magician, it is to be assumed, has
more ways than one of learning what people are thinking.
"It is about mamma," explained Victoria. "We wondered if Malvina would
mind changing her."
The Professor had been reading up Malvina. It flashed across him that
this had always been her speciality: Changing people. How had the
Arlington twins discovered it? And why did they want their mother
changed? And what did they want her changed into? It was shocking
when you come to think of it! The Professor became suddenly so stern,
that if the twins could have seen his expression--which, owing to the
fading light, they couldn't--they would have been too frightened to
answer.
"Why do you want your mother changed?" demanded the Professor. Even as
it was his voice alarmed them.
"It's for her own good," faltered Victoria.
"Of course we don't mean into anything," explained Victor.
"Only her inside," added Victoria.
"We thought that Malvina might be able to improve her," completed
Victor.
It was still very disgraceful. What were we coming to when children
went about clamouring for their mothers to be "improved"! The
atmosphere was charged with indignation. The twins felt it.
"She wants to be," persisted Victoria. "She wants to be energetic and
to get up early in the morning and do things."
"You see," added Victor, "she was never properly brought up."
The Professor maintains stoutly that his only intention was a joke. It
was not even as if anything objectionable had been suggested. The
Professor himself had on occasions been made the confidant of both.
"Best woman that ever lived, if only one could graft a little energy
upon her. No sense of time. Too easy-going. No idea of keeping
people up to the mark." So Mr. Arlington, over the nuts and wine.
"It's pure laziness. Oh, yes, it is. My friends say I'm so 'restful';
but that's the proper explanation of it--born laziness. And yet I try.
You have no idea, Professor Littlecherry, how much I try." So Mrs.
Arlington, laughingly, while admiring the Professor's roses.
Besides, how absurd to believe that Malvina could possibly change
anybody! Way back, when the human brain was yet in process of
evolution, such things may have been possible. Hypnotic suggestion,
mesmeric influence, dormant brain cells quickened into activity by
magnetic vibration. All that had been lost. These were the days of
George the Fifth, not of King Heremon. What the Professor was really
after was: How would Malvina receive the proposal? Of course she
would try to get out of it. A dear little thing. But could any sane
man, professor of mathematics...
Malvina was standing beside him. No one had remarked her entrance. The
eyes of the twins had been glued upon the wise and learned Christopher.
The Professor, when he was thinking, never saw anything. Still, it was
rather startling.
"We should never change what the good God has once fashioned," said
Malvina. She spoke very gravely. The childishness seemed to have
fallen from her.
"You didn't always think so," said the Professor. It nettled the
Professor that all idea of this being a good joke had departed with the
sound of Malvina's voice. She had that way with her.
She made a little gesture. It conveyed to the Professor that his
remark had not been altogether in good taste.
"I speak as one who has learned," said Malvina.
"I beg your pardon," said the Professor. "I ought not to have said
that."
Malvina accepted the Professor's apology with a bow.
"But this is something very different," continued the Professor. Quite
another interest had taken hold of the Professor. It was easy enough
to summon Dame Commonsense to one's aid when Malvina was not present.
Before those strange eyes the good lady had a habit of sneaking away.
Suppose--of course the idea was ridiculous, but suppose--something did
happen! As a psychological experiment was not one justified? What was
the beginning of all science but applied curiosity? Malvina might be
able--and willing--to explain how it was done. That is, if anything
did happen, which, of course, it wouldn't, and so much the better.
This thing had got to be ended.
"It would be using a gift not for one's own purposes, but to help
others," urged the Professor.
"You see," urged Victor, "mamma really wants to be changed."
"And papa wants it too," urged Victoria.
"It seems to me, if I may so express it," added the Professor, "that
really it would be in the nature of making amends for--well, for--for
our youthful follies," concluded the Professor a little nervously.
Malvina's eyes were fixed on the Professor. In the dim light of the
low-ceilinged room, those eyes seemed all of her that was visible.
"You wish it?" said Malvina.
It was not at all fair, as the Professor told himself afterwards, her
laying the responsibility on him. If she really was the original
Malvina, lady-in-waiting to Queen Harbundia, then she was quite old
enough to have decided for herself. From the Professor's calculations
she must now be about three thousand eight hundred. The Professor
himself was not yet sixty; in comparison a mere babe! But Malvina's
eyes were compelling.
"Well, it can't do any harm," said the Professor. And Malvina seems to
have accepted that as her authority.
"Let her come to the Cross Stones at sundown," directed Malvina.
The Professor saw the twins to the door. For some reason the Professor
could not have explained, they all three walked out on tiptoe. Old Mr.
Brent, the postman, was passing, and the twins ran after him and each
took a hand. Malvina was still standing where the Professor had left
her. It was very absurd, but the Professor felt frightened. He went
into the kitchen, where it was light and cheerful, and started Mrs.
Muldoon on Home Rule. When he returned to the parlour Malvina was gone.
The twins did not talk that night, and decided next morning not to say
a word, but just to ask their mother to come for an evening walk with
them. The fear was that she might demand reasons. But, quite oddly,
she consented without question. It seemed to the twins that it was
Mrs. Arlington herself who took the pathway leading past the cave, and
when they reached the Cross Stones she sat down and apparently had
forgotten their existence. They stole away without her noticing them,
but did not quite know what to do with themselves. They ran for half a
mile till they came to the wood; there they remained awhile, careful
not to venture within; and then they crept back. They found their
mother sitting just as they had left her. They thought she was asleep,
but her eyes were wide open. They were tremendously relieved, though
what they had feared they never knew. They sat down, one on each side
of her, and each took a hand, but in spite of her eyes being open, it
was quite a time before she seemed conscious of their return. She rose
and slowly looked about her, and as she did so the church clock struck
nine. She could not at first believe it was so late. Convinced by
looking at her watch--there was just light enough for her to see
it--she became all at once more angry than the twins had ever known
her, and for the first time in their lives they both experienced the
sensation of having their ears boxed. Nine o'clock was the proper time
for supper and they were half an hour from home, and it was all their
fault. It did not take them half an hour. It took them twenty
minutes, Mrs. Arlington striding ahead and the twins panting breathless
behind her. Mr. Arlington had not yet returned. He came in five
minutes afterwards, and Mrs. Arlington told him what she thought of
him. It was the shortest supper within the twins' recollection. They
found themselves in bed ten minutes in advance of the record. They
could hear their mother's voice from the kitchen. A jug of milk had
been overlooked and had gone sour. She had given Jane a week's notice
before the clock struck ten.
It was from Mr. Arlington that the Professor heard the news. Mr.
Arlington could not stop an instant, dinner being at twelve sharp and
it wanting but ten minutes to; but seems to have yielded to temptation.
The breakfast hour at the Manor Farm was now six a.m., had been so
since Thursday; the whole family fully dressed and Mrs. Arlington
presiding. If the Professor did not believe it he could come round any
morning and see for himself. The Professor appears to have taken Mr.
Arlington's word for it. By six-thirty everybody at their job and Mrs.
Arlington at hers, consisting chiefly of seeing to it for the rest of
the day that everybody was. Lights out at ten and everybody in bed;
most of them only too glad to be there. "Quite right; keeps us all up
to the mark," was Mr. Arlington's opinion (this was on Saturday). Just
what was wanted. Not perhaps for a permanency; and, of course, there
were drawbacks. The strenuous life--seeing to it that everybody else
leads the strenuous life; it does not go with unmixed amiability.
Particularly in the beginning. New-born zeal: must expect it to
outrun discretion. Does not do to discourage it. Modifications to be
suggested later. Taken all round, Mr. Arlington's view was that the
thing must be regarded almost as the answer to a prayer. Mr.
Arlington's eyes on their way to higher levels, appear to have been
arrested by the church clock. It decided Mr. Arlington to resume his
homeward way without further loss of time. At the bend of the lane the
Professor, looking back, observed that Mr. Arlington had broken into a
trot.
This seems to have been the end of the Professor, regarded as a sane
and intelligent member of modern society. He had not been sure at the
time, but it was now revealed to him that when he had urged Malvina to
test her strength, so to express it, on the unfortunate Mrs. Arlington,
it was with the conviction that the result would restore him to his
mental equilibrium. That Malvina with a wave of her wand--or whatever
the hocus-pocus may have been--would be able to transform the hitherto
incorrigibly indolent and easy-going Mrs. Arlington into a sort of
feminine Lloyd George, had not really entered into his calculations.
Forgetting his lunch, he must have wandered aimlessly about, not
returning home until late in the afternoon. During dinner he appears
to have been rather restless and nervous--"jumpy," according to the
evidence of the little serving maid. Once he sprang out of his chair
as if shot when the little serving maid accidentally let fall a
table-spoon; and twice he upset the salt. It was at mealtime that, as
a rule, the Professor found his attitude towards Malvina most
sceptical. A fairy who could put away quite a respectable cut from the
joint, followed by two helpings of pie, does take a bit of believing
in. To-night the Professor found no difficulty. The White Ladies had
never been averse to accepting mortal hospitality. There must always
have been a certain adaptability. Malvina, since that fateful night of
her banishment, had, one supposes, passed through varied experiences.
For present purposes she had assumed the form of a jeune fille of the
twentieth century (anno Domini). An appreciation of Mrs. Muldoon's
excellent cooking, together with a glass of light sound claret, would
naturally go with it.
One takes it that he could not for a moment get Mrs. Arlington out of
his mind. More than once, stealing a covert glance across the table,
it seemed to him that Malvina was regarding him with a mocking smile.
Some impish spirit it must have been that had prompted him. For
thousands of years Malvina had led--at all events so far as was
known--a reformed and blameless existence; had subdued and put behind
her that fatal passion of hers for change: in other people. What
madness to have revived it! And no Queen Harbundia handy now to keep
her in check. The Professor had a distinct sensation, while peeling a
pear, that he was being turned into a guinea-pig--a curious feeling of
shrinking about the legs. So vivid was the impression, that
involuntarily the Professor jumped off his chair and ran to look at
himself in the mirror over the sideboard. He was not fully relieved
even then. It may have been the mirror. It was very old; one of those
things with little gilt balls all round it; and it looked to the
Professor as if his nose was growing straight out of his face.
Malvina, trusting he had not been taken suddenly ill, asked if there
was anything she could do for him. He seems to have earnestly begged
her not to think of it.
The Professor had taught Malvina cribbage, and usually of an evening
they played a hand or two. But to-night the Professor was not in the
mood, and Malvina had contented herself with a book. She was
particularly fond of the old chroniclers. The Professor had an entire
shelf of them, many in the original French. Making believe to be
reading himself, he heard Malvina break into a cheerful laugh, and went
and looked over her shoulder. She was reading the history of her own
encounter with the proprietor of tin mines, an elderly gentleman
disliking late hours, whom she had turned into a nightingale. It
occurred to the Professor that prior to the Arlington case the
recalling of this incident would have brought to her shame and remorse.
Now she seemed to think it funny.
"A silly trick," commented the Professor. He spoke quite heatedly. "No
one has any right to go about changing people. Muddling up things they
don't understand. No right whatever."
Malvina looked up. She gave a little sigh.
"Not for one's own pleasure or revenge," she made answer. Her tone was
filled with meekness. It had a touch of self-reproach. "That is very
wrong, of course. But changing them for their own good--at least, not
changing, improving."
"Little hypocrite!" muttered the Professor to himself. "She's got back
a taste for her old tricks, and Lord knows now where she'll stop."
The Professor spent the rest of the evening among his indexes in search
of the latest information regarding Queen Harbundia.
Meanwhile the Arlington affair had got about the village. The twins in
all probability had been unable to keep their secret. Jane, the
dismissed, had looked in to give Mrs. Muldoon her version of Thursday
night's scene in the Arlington kitchen, and Mrs. Muldoon, with a sense
of things impending, may unconsciously have dropped hints.
The Marigolds met the Arlingtons on Sunday, after morning service, and
heard all about it. That is to say, they met Mr. Arlington and the
other children; Mrs. Arlington, with the two elder girls, having
already attended early communion at seven. Mrs. Marigold was a pretty,
fluffy, engaging little woman, ten years younger than her husband. She
could not have been altogether a fool, or she would not have known it.
Marigold, rising politician, ought, of course, to have married a woman
able to help him; but seems to have fallen in love with her a few miles
out of Brussels, over a convent wall. Mr. Arlington was not a regular
church-goer, but felt on this occasion that he owed it to his Maker.
He was still in love with his new wife. But not blindly. Later on a
guiding hand might be necessary. But first let the new seed get firmly
rooted. Marigold's engagements necessitated his returning to town on
Sunday afternoon, and Mrs. Marigold walked part of the way with him to
the station. On her way back across the fields she picked up the
Arlington twins. Later, she seems to have called in at the cottage and
spoken to Mrs. Muldoon about Jane, who, she had heard, was in want of a
place. A little before sunset she was seen by the Doctor climbing the
path to the Warren. Malvina that evening was missing for dinner. When
she returned she seemed pleased with herself.
VI. AND HOW IT WAS FINISHED TOO SOON.
Some days later--it may have been the next week; the exact date appears
to have got mislaid--Marigold, M.P., looked in on the Professor. They
talked about Tariff Reform, and then Marigold got up and made sure for
himself that the door was tight closed.
"You know my wife," he said. "We've been married six years, and
there's never been a cloud between us except one. Of course, she's not
brainy. That is, at least..."
The Professor jumped out of his chair.
"If you take my advice," he said, "you'll leave her alone." He spoke
with passion and conviction.
Marigold looked up.
"It's just what I wish to goodness I had done," he answered. "I blame
myself entirely."
"So long as we see our own mistakes," said the Professor, "there is
hope for us all. You go straight home, young man, and tell her you've
changed your mind. Tell her you don't want her with brains. Tell her
you like her best without. You get that into her head before anything
else happens."
"I've tried to," said Marigold. "She says it's too late. That the
light has come to her and she can't help it."
It was the Professor's turn to stare. He had not heard anything of
Sunday's transactions. He had been hoping against hope that the
Arlington affair would remain a locked secret between himself and the
twins, and had done his best to think about everything else.
"She's joined the Fabian Society," continued Marigold gloomily.
"They've put her in the nursery. And the W.S.P.U. If it gets about
before the next election I'll have to look out for another
constituency--that's all."
"How did you hear about her?" asked the Professor.
"I didn't hear about her," answered Marigold. "If I had I mightn't
have gone up to town. You think it right," he added, "to--to encourage
such people?"
"Who's encouraging her?" demanded the professor. "If fools didn't go
about thinking they could improve every other fool but themselves, this
sort of thing wouldn't happen. Arlington had an amiable,
sweet-tempered wife, and instead of thanking God and keeping quiet
about it, he worries her out of her life because she is not the
managing woman. Well, now he's got the managing woman. I met him on
Wednesday with a bump on his forehead as big as an egg. Says he fell
over the mat. It can't be done. You can't have a person changed just
as far as you want them changed and there stop. You let 'em alone or
you change them altogether, and then they don't know themselves what
they're going to turn out. A sensible man in your position would have
been only too thankful for a wife who didn't poke her nose into his
affairs, and with whom he could get away from his confounded politics.
You've been hinting to her about once a month, I expect, what a tragedy
it was that you hadn't married a woman with brains. Well, now she's
found her brains and is using them. Why shouldn't she belong to the
Fabian Society and the W.S.P.U? Shows independence of character. Best
thing for you to do is to join them yourself. Then you'll be able to
work together."
"I'm sorry," said Marigold rising. "I didn't know you agreed with her."
"Who said I agreed with her?" snapped the Professor. "I'm in a very
awkward position."
"I suppose," said Marigold--he was hesitating with the door in his
hand--"it wouldn't be of any use my seeing her myself?"
"I believe," said the Professor, "that she is fond of the neighbourhood
of the Cross Stones towards sundown. You can choose for yourself, but
if I were you I should think twice about it."
"I was wondering," said Marigold, "whether, if I put it to her as a
personal favour, she might not be willing to see Edith again and
persuade her that she was only joking?"
A light began to break upon the Professor.
"What do you think has happened?" he asked.
"Well," explained Marigold, "I take it that your young foreign friend
has met my wife and talked politics to her, and that what has happened
is the result. She must be a young person of extraordinary ability;
but it would be only losing one convert, and I could make it up to her
in--in other ways." He spoke with unconscious pathos. It rather
touched the Professor.
"It might mean," said the Professor--"that is, assuming that it can be
done at all--Mrs. Marigold's returning to her former self entirely,
taking no further interest in politics whatever."
"I should be so very grateful," answered Marigold.
The Professor had mislaid his spectacles, but thinks there was a tear
in Marigold's eye.
"I'll do what I can," said the Professor. "Of course, you mustn't
count on it. It may be easier to start a woman thinking than to stop
her, even for a--" The Professor checked himself just in time. "I'll
talk to her," he said; and Marigold gripped his hand and departed.
It was about time he did. The full extent of Malvina's activities
during those few midsummer weeks, till the return of Flight Commander
Raffleton, will never perhaps be fully revealed. According to the
Doctor, the whole business has been grossly exaggerated. There are
those who talk as if half the village had been taken to pieces, altered
and improved and sent back home again in a mental state unrecognisable
by their own mothers. Certain it is that Dawson, R.A., generally
described by everybody except his wife as "a lovable little man," and
whose only fault was an incurable habit of punning, both in season--if
such a period there be--and more often out, suddenly one morning
smashed a Dutch interior, fifteen inches by nine, over the astonished
head of Mrs. Dawson. It clung round her neck, recalling biblical
pictures of the head of John the Baptist, and the frame-work had to be
sawn through before she could get it off. As to the story about his
having been caught by Mrs. Dawson's aunt kissing the housemaid behind
the waterbutt, that, as the Doctor admits, is a bit of bad luck that
might have happened to anyone. But whether there was really any
evidence connecting him with Dolly Calthorpe's unaccountable missing of
the last train home, is of course, a more serious matter. Mrs. Dawson,
a handsome, high-spirited woman herself, may have found Dawson, as
originally fashioned, trying to the nerves; though even then the
question arises: Why have married him? But there is a difference, as
Mrs. Dawson has pointed out, between a husband who hasn't enough of the
natural man in him and a husband who has a deal too much. It is
difficult to regulate these matters.
Altogether, and taking an outside estimate, the Doctor's opinion is
that there may have been half a dozen, who, with Malvina's assistance,
succeeded in hypnotising themselves into temporary insanity. When
Malvina, a little disappointed, but yielding quite sweetly her own
judgment to that of the wise and learned Christopher, consented to
"restore" them, the explanation was that, having spent their burst of
ill-acquired energy, they fell back at the first suggestion to their
former selves.
Mrs. Arlington does not agree with the Doctor. She had been trying to
reform herself for quite a long time and had miserably failed. There
was something about them--it might almost be described as an
aroma--that prompted her that evening to take the twins into her
confidence; a sort of intuition that in some way they could help her.
It remained with her all the next day; and when the twins returned in
the evening, in company with the postman, she knew instinctively that
they had been about her business. It was this same intuitive desire
that drew her to the Downs. She is confident she would have taken that
walk to the Cross Stones even if the twins had not proposed it.
Indeed, according to her own account, she was not aware that the twins
had accompanied her. There was something about the stones; a sense as
of a presence. She knew when she reached them that she had arrived at
the appointed place; and when there appeared to her--coming from where
she could not tell--a diminutive figure that seemed in some mysterious
way as if it were clothed merely in the fading light, she remembered
distinctly that she was neither surprised nor alarmed. The diminutive
lady sat down beside her and took Mrs. Arlington's hands in both her
own. She spoke in a strange language, but Mrs. Arlington at the time
understood it, though now the meaning of it had passed from her. Mrs.
Arlington felt as if her body were being taken away from her. She had a
sense of falling, a feeling that she must make some desperate effort to
rise again. The strange little lady was helping her, assisting her to
make this supreme effort. It was as if ages were passing. She was
wrestling with unknown powers. Suddenly she seemed to slip from them.
The little lady was holding her up. Clasping each other, they rose and
rose and rose. Mrs. Arlington had a firm conviction that she must
always be struggling upward, or they would overtake her and drag her
down again. When she awoke the little lady had gone, but that feeling
remained with her; that passionate acceptance of ceaseless struggle,
activity, contention, as now the end and aim of her existence. At
first she did not recollect where she was. A strange colourless light
was around her, and a strange singing as of myriads of birds. And then
the clock struck nine and life came back to her with a rush. But with
it still that conviction that she must seize hold of herself and
everybody else and get things done. Its immediate expression, as
already has been mentioned, was experienced by the twins.
When, after a talk with the Professor, aided and abetted by Mr.
Arlington and the eldest Arlington girl, she consented to pay that
second visit to the stones, it was with very different sensations that
she climbed the grass-grown path. The little lady had met her as
before, but the curious deep eyes looked sadly, and Mrs. Arlington had
the impression, generally speaking, that she was about to assist at her
own funeral. Again the little lady took her by the hands, and again
she experienced that terror of falling. But instead of ending with
contest and effort she seemed to pass into a sleep, and when she opened
her eyes she was again alone. Feeling a little chilly and unreasonably
tired, she walked slowly home, and not being hungry, retired supperless
to bed. Quite unable to explain why, she seems to have cried herself
to sleep.
One supposes that something of a similar nature may have occurred to
the others--with the exception of Mrs. Marigold. It was the case of
Mrs. Marigold that, as the Doctor grudgingly admits, went far to weaken
his hypothesis. Mrs. Marigold, having emerged, was spreading herself,
much to her own satisfaction. She had discarded her wedding ring as a
relic of barbarism--of the days when women were mere goods and
chattels, and had made her first speech at a meeting in favour of
marriage reform. Subterfuge, in her case, had to be resorted to.
Malvina had tearfully consented, and Marigold, M.P., was to bring Mrs.
Marigold to the Cross Stones that same evening and there leave her,
explaining to her that Malvina had expressed a wish to see her
again--"just for a chat."
All might have ended well if only Commander Raffleton had not appeared
framed in the parlour door just as Malvina was starting. His Cousin
Christopher had written to the Commander. Indeed, after the Arlington
affair, quite pressingly, and once or twice had thought he heard the
sound of Flight Commander Raffleton's propeller, but on each occasion
had been disappointed. "Affairs of State," Cousin Christopher had
explained to Malvina, who, familiar one takes it with the calls upon
knights and warriors through all the ages, had approved.
He stood there with his helmet in his hand.
"Only arrived this afternoon from France," he explained. "Haven't a
moment to spare."
But he had just time to go straight to Malvina. He laughed as he took
her in his arms and kissed her full upon the lips.
When last he had kissed her--it had been in the orchard; the Professor
had been witness to it--Malvina had remained quite passive, only that
curious little smile about her lips. But now an odd thing happened. A
quivering seemed to pass through all her body, so that it swayed and
trembled. The Professor feared she was going to fall; and, maybe to
save herself, she put up her arms about Commander Raffleton's neck, and
with a strange low cry--it sounded to the Professor like the cry one
sometimes hears at night from some little dying creature of the
woods--she clung to him sobbing.
It must have been a while later when the chiming of the clock recalled
to the Professor the appointment with Mrs. Marigold.
"You will only just have time," he said, gently seeking to release her.
"I'll promise to keep him till you come back." And as Malvina did not
seem to understand, he reminded her.
But still she made no movement, save for a little gesture of the hands
as if she were seeking to lay hold of something unseen. And then she
dropped her arms and looked from one of them to the other. The
Professor did not think of it at the time, but remembered afterwards;
that strange aloofness of hers, as if she were looking at you from
another world. One no longer felt it.
"I am so sorry," she said. "It is too late. I am only a woman."
And Mrs. Marigold is still thinking.
THE PROLOGUE.
And here follows the Prologue. It ought, of course, to have been
written first, but nobody knew of it until quite the end entirely. It
was told to Commander Raffleton by a French comrade, who in days of
peace had been a painter, mingling with others of his kind, especially
such as found their inspiration in the wide horizons and legend-haunted
dells of old-world Brittany. Afterwards the Commander told it to the
Professor, and the Professor's only stipulation was that it should not
be told to the Doctor, at least for a time. For the Doctor would see
in it only confirmation for his own narrow sense-bound theories, while
to the Professor it confirmed beyond a doubt the absolute truth of this
story.
It commenced in the year Eighteen hundred and ninety-eight (anno
Domini), on a particularly unpleasant evening in late February--"a
stormy winter's night," one would describe it, were one writing mere
romance. It came to the lonely cottage of Madame Lavigne on the edge
of the moor that surrounds the sunken village of Aven-a-Christ. Madame
Lavigne, who was knitting stockings--for she lived by knitting
stockings--heard, as she thought, a passing of feet, and what seemed
like a tap at the door. She dismissed the idea, for who would be
passing at such an hour, and where there was no road? But a few
minutes later the tapping came again, and Madame Lavigne, taking her
candle in her hand, went to see who was there. The instant she
released the latch a gust of wind blew out the candle, and Madame
Lavigne could see no one. She called, but there was no answer. She
was about to close the door again when she heard a faint sound. It was
not exactly a cry. It was as if someone she could not see, in the
tiniest of voices, had said something she could not understand.
Madame Lavigne crossed herself and muttered a prayer, and then she
heard it again. It seemed to come from close at her feet, and feeling
with her hands--for she thought it might be a stray cat--she found
quite a large parcel, It was warm and soft, though, of course, a bit
wet, and Madame Lavigne brought it in, and having closed the door and
re-lit her candle, laid it on the table. And then she saw it was the
tiniest of babies.
It must always be a difficult situation. Madame Lavigne did what most
people would have done in the case. She unrolled the wrappings, and
taking the little thing on her lap, sat down in front of the dull peat
fire and considered. It seemed wonderfully contented, and Madame
Lavigne thought the best thing to do would be to undress it and put it
to bed, and then go on with her knitting. She would consult Father Jean
in the morning and take his advice. She had never seen such fine
clothes. She took them off one by one, lovingly feeling their texture,
and when she finally removed the last little shift and the little white
thing lay exposed, Madame Lavigne sprang up with a cry and all but
dropped it into the fire. For she saw by the mark that every Breton
peasant knows that it was not a child but a fairy.
Her proper course, as she well knew, was to have opened the door and
flung it out into the darkness. Most women of the village would have
done so, and spent the rest of the night on their knees. But someone
must have chosen with foresight. There came to Madame Lavigne the
memory of her good man and her three tall sons, taken from her one by
one by the jealous sea, and, come what might of it, she could not do
it. The little thing understood, that was clear, for it smiled quite
knowingly and stretched out its little hands, touching Madame Lavigne's
brown withered skin, and stirring forgotten beatings of her heart.
Father Jean--one takes him to have been a tolerant, gently wise old
gentleman--could see no harm. That is, if Madame Lavigne could afford
the luxury. Maybe it was a good fairy. Would bring her luck. And
certain it is that the cackling of Madame's hens was heard more often
than before, and the weeds seemed fewer in the little patch of garden
that Madame Lavigne had rescued from the moor.
Of course, the news spread. One gathers that Madame Lavigne rather
gave herself airs. But the neighbours shook their heads, and the
child grew up lonely and avoided. Fortunately, the cottage was far
from other houses, and there was always the great moor with its deep
hiding-places. Father Jean was her sole playmate. He would take her
with him on his long tramps through his scattered district, leaving her
screened among the furze and bracken near to the solitary farmsteads
where he made his visitations.
He had learnt it was useless: all attempt of Mother Church to scold
out of this sea and moor-girt flock their pagan superstitions. He
would leave it to time. Later, perhaps opportunity might occur to
place the child in some convent, where she would learn to forget, and
grow into a good Catholic. Meanwhile, one had to take pity on the
little lonely creature. Not entirely for her own sake maybe; a dear
affectionate little soul strangely wise; so she seemed to Father Jean.
Under the shade of trees or sharing warm shelter with the soft-eyed
cows, he would teach her from his small stock of knowledge. Every now
and then she would startle him with an intuition, a comment strangely
unchildlike. It was as if she had known all about it, long ago.
Father Jean would steal a swift glance at her from under his shaggy
eyebrows and fall into a silence. It was curious also how the wild
things of the field and wood seemed unafraid of her. At times,
returning to where he had left her hidden, he would pause, wondering
to whom she was talking, and then as he drew nearer would hear the
stealing away of little feet, the startled flutter of wings. She had
elfish ways, of which it seemed impossible to cure her. Often the good
man, returning from some late visit of mercy with his lantern and his
stout oak cudgel, would pause and listen to a wandering voice. It was
never near enough for him to hear the words, and the voice was strange
to him, though he knew it could be no one else. Madame Lavigne would
shrug her shoulders. How could she help it? It was not for her to
cross the "child," even supposing bolts and bars likely to be of any
use. Father Jean gave it up in despair. Neither was it for him either
to be too often forbidding and lecturing. Maybe the cunning tender
ways had wove their web about the childless old gentleman's heart,
making him also somewhat afraid. Perhaps other distractions! For
Madame Lavigne would never allow her to do anything but the lightest of
work. He would teach her to read. So quickly she learnt that it
seemed to Father Jean she must be making believe not to have known it
already. But he had his reward in watching the joy with which she
would devour, for preference, the quaint printed volumes of romance and
history that he would bring home to her from his rare journeyings to
the distant town.
It was when she was about thirteen that the ladies and gentlemen came
from Paris. Of course they were not real ladies and gentlemen. Only a
little company of artists seeking new fields. They had "done" the
coast and the timbered houses of the narrow streets, and one of them
had suggested exploring the solitary, unknown inlands. They came across
her seated on an old grey stone reading from an ancient-looking book,
and she had risen and curtsied to them. She was never afraid. It was
she who excited fear. Often she would look after the children flying
from her, feeling a little sad. But, of course, it could not be
helped. She was a fairy. She would have done them no harm, but this
they could not be expected to understand. It was a delightful change;
meeting human beings who neither screamed nor hastily recited their
paternosters, but who, instead, returned one's smile. They asked her
where she lived, and she showed them. They were staying at
Aven-a-Christ; and one of the ladies was brave enough even to kiss her.
Laughing and talking they all walked down the hill together. They
found Madame Lavigne working in her garden. Madame Lavigne washed her
hands of all responsibility. It was for Suzanne to decide. It seemed
they wanted to make a picture of her, sitting on the grey stone where
they had found her. It was surely only kind to let them; so next
morning she was there again waiting for them. They gave her a
five-franc piece. Madame Lavigne was doubtful of handling it, but
Father Jean vouched for it as being good Republican money; and as the
days went by Madame Lavigne's black stocking grew heavier and heavier
as she hung it again each night in the chimney.
It was the lady who had first kissed her that discovered who she was.
They had all of them felt sure from the beginning that she was a fairy,
and that "Suzanne" could not be her real name. They found it in the
"Heptameron of Friar Bonnet. In which is recorded the numerous
adventures of the valiant and puissant King Ryence of Bretagne," which
one of them had picked up on the Quai aux Fleurs and brought with him.
It told all about the White Ladies, and therein she was described.
There could be no mistaking her; the fair body that was like to a
willow swayed by the wind. The white feet that could pass, leaving the
dew unshaken from the grass. The eyes blue and deep as mountain lakes.
The golden locks of which the sun was jealous.
It was all quite clear. She was Malvina, once favourite to Harbundia,
Queen of the White Ladies of Brittany. For reasons--further allusion
to which politeness forbade--she had been a wanderer, no one knowing
what had become of her. And now the whim had taken her to reappear as
a little Breton peasant girl, near to the scene of her past glories.
They knelt before her, offering her homage, and all the ladies kissed
her. The gentlemen of the party thought their turn would follow. But
it never did. It was not their own shyness that stood in their way:
one must do them that justice. It was as if some youthful queen,
exiled and unknown amongst strangers, had been suddenly recognised by a
little band of her faithful subjects, passing by chance that way. So
that, instead of frolic and laughter, as had been intended, they
remained standing with bared heads; and no one liked to be the first to
speak.
She put them at their ease--or tried to--with a gracious gesture. But
enjoined upon them all her wish for secrecy. And so dismissed they
seem to have returned to the village a marvellously sober little party,
experiencing all the sensations of honest folk admitted to their first
glimpse of high society.
They came again next year--at least a few of them--bringing with them a
dress more worthy of Malvina's wearing. It was as near as Paris could
achieve to the true and original costume as described by the good Friar
Bonnet, the which had been woven in a single night by the wizard spider
Karai out of moonlight. Malvina accepted it with gracious thanks, and
was evidently pleased to find herself again in fit and proper clothes.
It was hidden away for rare occasions where only Malvina knew. But the
lady who had first kissed her, and whose speciality was fairies,
craving permission, Malvina consented to wear it while sitting for her
portrait. The picture one may still see in the Palais des Beaux Arts
at Nantes (the Bretonne Room). It represents her standing straight as
an arrow, a lone little figure in the centre of a treeless moor. The
painting of the robe is said to be very wonderful. "Malvina of
Brittany" is the inscription, the date being Nineteen Hundred and
Thirteen.
The next year Malvina was no longer there. Madame Lavigne, folding
knotted hands, had muttered her last paternoster. Pere Jean had urged
the convent. But for the first time, with him, she had been frankly
obstinate. Some fancy seemed to have got into the child's head.
Something that she evidently connected with the vast treeless moor
rising southward to where the ancient menhir of King Taramis crowned
its summit. The good man yielded, as usual. For the present there
were Madame Lavigne's small savings. Suzanne's wants were but few.
The rare shopping necessary Father Jean could see to himself. With the
coming of winter he would broach the subject again, and then be quite
firm. Just these were the summer nights when Suzanne loved to roam;
and as for danger! there was not a lad for ten leagues round who would
not have run a mile to avoid passing, even in daylight, that cottage
standing where the moor dips down to the sealands.
But one surmises that even a fairy may feel lonesome. Especially a
banished fairy, hanging as it were between earth and air, knowing
mortal maidens kissed and courted, while one's own companions kept away
from one in hiding. Maybe the fancy came to her that, after all these
years, they might forgive her. Still, it was their meeting place, so
legend ran, especially of midsummer nights. Rare it was now for human
eye to catch a glimpse of the shimmering robes, but high on the
treeless moor to the music of the Lady of the Fountain, one might still
hear, were one brave enough to venture, the rhythm of their dancing
feet. If she sought them, softly calling, might they not reveal
themselves to her, make room for her once again in the whirling circle?
One has the idea that the moonlight frock may have added to her hopes.
Philosophy admits that feeling oneself well dressed gives confidence.
If all of them had not disappeared--been kissed three times upon the
lips by mortal man and so become a woman? It seems to have been a
possibility for which your White Lady had to be prepared. That is, if
she chose to suffer it. If not, it was unfortunate for the too daring
mortal. But if he gained favour in her eyes! That he was brave, his
wooing proved. If, added thereto, he were comely, with kind strong
ways, and eyes that drew you? History proves that such dreams must
have come even to White Ladies. Maybe more especially on midsummer
nights when the moon is at its full. It was on such a night that Sir
Gerylon had woke Malvina's sister Sighile with a kiss. A true White
Lady must always dare to face her fate.
It seems to have befallen Malvina. Some told Father Jean how he had
arrived in a chariot drawn by winged horses, the thunder of his passing
waking many in the sleeping villages beneath. And others how he had
come in the form of a great bird. Father Jean had heard strange sounds
himself, and certain it was that Suzanne had disappeared.
Father Jean heard another version a few weeks later, told him by an
English officer of Engineers who had ridden from the nearest station on
a bicycle and who arrived hot and ravenously thirsty. And Father Jean,
under promise of seeing Suzanne on the first opportunity, believed it.
But to most of his flock it sounded an impossible rigmarole, told for
the purpose of disguising the truth.
So ends my story--or rather the story I have pieced together from
information of a contradictory nature received. Whatever you make of
it; whether with the Doctor you explain it away; or whether with
Professor Littlecherry, LL.D., F.R.S., you believe the world not
altogether explored and mapped, the fact remains that Malvina of
Brittany has passed away. To the younger Mrs. Raffleton, listening on
the Sussex Downs to dull, distant sounds that make her heart beat, and
very nervous of telegraph boys, has come already some of the
disadvantages attendant on her new rank of womanhood. And yet one
gathers, looking down into those strange deep eyes, that she would not
change anything about her, even if now she could.
THE STREET OF THE BLANK WALL.
I had turned off from the Edgware Road into a street leading west, the
atmosphere of which had appealed to me. It was a place of quiet houses
standing behind little gardens. They had the usual names printed on
the stuccoed gateposts. The fading twilight was just sufficient to
enable one to read them. There was a Laburnum Villa, and The Cedars,
and a Cairngorm, rising to the height of three storeys, with a curious
little turret that branched out at the top, and was crowned with a
conical roof, so that it looked as if wearing a witch's hat.
Especially when two small windows just below the eaves sprang suddenly
into light, and gave one the feeling of a pair of wicked eyes suddenly
flashed upon one.
The street curved to the right, ending in an open space through which
passed a canal beneath a low arched bridge. There were still the same
quiet houses behind their small gardens, and I watched for a while the
lamplighter picking out the shape of the canal, that widened just above
the bridge into a lake with an island in the middle. After that I must
have wandered in a circle, for later on I found myself back in the same
spot, though I do not suppose I had passed a dozen people on my way;
and then I set to work to find my way back to Paddington.
I thought I had taken the road by which I had come, but the half light
must have deceived me. Not that it mattered. They had a lurking
mystery about them, these silent streets with their suggestion of
hushed movement behind drawn curtains, of whispered voices behind the
flimsy walls. Occasionally there would escape the sound of laughter,
suddenly stifled as it seemed, and once the sudden cry of a child.
It was in a short street of semi-detached villas facing a high blank
wall that, as I passed, I saw a blind move half-way up, revealing a
woman's face. A gas lamp, the only one the street possessed, was
nearly opposite. I thought at first it was the face of a girl, and
then, as I looked again, it might have been the face of an old woman.
One could not distinguish the colouring. In any case, the cold, blue
gaslight would have made it seem pallid.
The remarkable feature was the eyes. It might have been, of course,
that they alone caught the light and held it, rendering them uncannily
large and brilliant. Or it might have been that the rest of the face
was small and delicate, out of all proportion to them. She may have
seen me, for the blind was drawn down again, and I passed on.
There was no particular reason why, but the incident lingered with me.
The sudden raising of the blind, as of the curtain of some small
theatre, the barely furnished room coming dimly into view, and the
woman standing there, close to the footlights, as to my fancy it
seemed. And then the sudden ringing down of the curtain before the
play had begun. I turned at the corner of the street. The blind had
been drawn up again, and I saw again the slight, girlish figure
silhouetted against the side panes of the bow window.
At the same moment a man knocked up against me. It was not his fault.
I had stopped abruptly, not giving him time to avoid me. We both
apologised, blaming the darkness. It may have been my fancy, but I had
the feeling that, instead of going on his way, he had turned and was
following me. I waited till the next corner, and then swung round on
my heel. But there was no sign of him, and after a while I found
myself back in the Edgware Road.
Once or twice, in idle mood, I sought the street again, but without
success; and the thing would, I expect, have faded from my memory, but
that one evening, on my way home from Paddington, I came across the
woman in the Harrow Road. There was no mistaking her. She almost
touched me as she came out of a fishmonger's shop, and unconsciously,
at the beginning, I found myself following her. This time I noticed
the turnings, and five minutes' walking brought us to the street. Half
a dozen times I must have been within a hundred yards of it. I
lingered at the corner. She had not noticed me, and just as she
reached the house a man came out of the shadows beyond the lamp-post
and joined her.
I was due at a bachelor gathering that evening, and after dinner, the
affair being fresh in my mind, I talked about it. I am not sure, but I
think it was in connection with a discussion on Maeterlinck. It was
that sudden lifting of the blind that had caught hold of me. As if,
blundering into an empty theatre, I had caught a glimpse of some drama
being played in secret. We passed to other topics, and when I was
leaving a fellow guest asked me which way I was going. I told him,
and, it being a fine night, he proposed that we should walk together.
And in the quiet of Harley Street he confessed that his desire had not
been entirely the pleasure of my company.
"It is rather curious," he said, "but today there suddenly came to my
remembrance a case that for nearly eleven years I have never given a
thought to. And now, on top of it, comes your description of that
woman's face. I am wondering if it can be the same."
"It was the eyes," I said, "that struck me as so remarkable."
"It was the eyes that I chiefly remember her by," he replied. "Would
you know the street again?"
We walked a little while in silence.
"It may seem, perhaps, odd to you," I answered, "but it would trouble
me, the idea of any harm coming to her through me. What was the case?"
"You can feel quite safe on that point," he assured me. "I was her
counsel--that is, if it is the same woman. How was she dressed?"
I could not see the reason for his question. He could hardly expect
her to be wearing the clothes of eleven years ago.
"I don't think I noticed," I answered. "Some sort of a blouse, I
suppose." And then I recollected. "Ah, yes, there was something
uncommon," I added. "An unusually broad band of velvet, it looked
like, round her neck."
"I thought so," he said. "Yes. It must be the same."
We had reached Marylebone Road, where our ways parted.
"I will look you up to-morrow afternoon, if I may," he said. "We might
take a stroll round together."
He called on me about half-past five, and we reached the street just as
the one solitary gas-lamp had been lighted. I pointed out the house to
him, and he crossed over and looked at the number.
"Quite right," he said, on returning. "I made inquiries this morning.
She was released six weeks ago on ticket-of-leave."
He took my arm.
"Not much use hanging about," he said. "The blind won't go up
to-night. Rather a clever idea, selecting a house just opposite a
lamp-post."
He had an engagement that evening; but later on he told me the
story--that is, so far as he then knew it.
* * *
It was in the early days of the garden suburb movement. One of the
first sites chosen was off the Finchley Road. The place was in the
building, and one of the streets--Laleham Gardens--had only some half a
dozen houses in it, all unoccupied save one. It was a lonely, loose
end of the suburb, terminating suddenly in open fields. From the
unfinished end of the road the ground sloped down somewhat steeply to a
pond, and beyond that began a small wood. The one house occupied had
been bought by a young married couple named Hepworth.
The husband was a good-looking, pleasant young fellow. Being
clean-shaven, his exact age was difficult to judge. The wife, it was
quite evident, was little more than a girl. About the man there was a
suggestion of weakness. At least, that was the impression left on the
mind of the house-agent. To-day he would decide, and to-morrow he
changed his mind. Jetson, the agent, had almost given up hope of
bringing off a deal. In the end it was Mrs. Hepworth who, taking the
matter into her own hands, fixed upon the house in Laleham Gardens.
Young Hepworth found fault with it on the ground of its isolation. He
himself was often away for days at a time, travelling on business, and
was afraid she would be nervous. He had been very persistent on this
point; but in whispered conversations she had persuaded him out of his
objection. It was one of those pretty, fussy little houses; and it
seemed to have taken her fancy. Added to which, according to her
argument, it was just within their means, which none of the others
were. Young Hepworth may have given the usual references, but if so
they were never taken up. The house was sold on the company's usual
terms. The deposit was paid by a cheque, which was duly cleared, and
the house itself was security for the rest. The company's solicitor,
with Hepworth's consent, acted for both parties.
It was early in June when the Hepworths moved in. They furnished only
one bedroom; and kept no servant, a charwoman coming in every morning
and going away about six in the evening. Jetson was their nearest
neighbour. His wife and daughters called on them, and confess to have
taken a liking to them both. Indeed, between one of the Jetson girls,
the youngest, and Mrs. Hepworth there seems to have sprung up a close
friendship. Young Hepworth, the husband, was always charming, and
evidently took great pains to make himself agreeable. But with regard
to him they had the feeling that he was never altogether at his ease.
They described him--though that, of course, was after the event--as
having left upon them the impression of a haunted man.
There was one occasion in particular. It was about ten o'clock. The
Jetsons had been spending the evening with the Hepworths, and were just
on the point of leaving, when there came a sudden, clear knock at the
door. It turned out to be Jetson's foreman, who had to leave by an
early train in the morning, and had found that he needed some further
instructions. But the terror in Hepworth's face was unmistakable. He
had turned a look towards his wife that was almost of despair; and it
had seemed to the Jetsons--or, talking it over afterwards, they may
have suggested the idea to each other--that there came a flash of
contempt into her eyes, though it yielded the next instant to an
expression of pity. She had risen, and already moved some steps
towards the door, when young Hepworth had stopped her, and gone out
himself. But the curious thing was that, according to the foreman's
account, Hepworth never opened the front door, but came upon him
stealthily from behind. He must have slipped out by the back and crept
round the house.
The incident had puzzled the Jetsons, especially that involuntary flash
of contempt that had come into Mrs. Hepworth's eyes. She had always
appeared to adore her husband, and of the two, if possible, to be the
one most in love with the other. They had no friends or acquaintances
except the Jetsons. No one else among their neighbours had taken the
trouble to call on them, and no stranger to the suburb had, so far as
was known, ever been seen in Laleham Gardens.
Until one evening a little before Christmas.
Jetson was on his way home from his office in the Finchley Road. There
had been a mist hanging about all day, and with nightfall it had
settled down into a whitish fog. Soon after leaving the Finchley Road,
Jetson noticed in front of him a man wearing a long, yellow mackintosh,
and some sort of soft felt hat. He gave Jetson the idea of being a
sailor; it may have been merely the stiff, serviceable mackintosh. At
the corner of Laleham Gardens the man turned, and glanced up at the
name upon the lamp-post, so that Jetson had a full view of him.
Evidently it was the street for which he was looking. Jetson, somewhat
curious, the Hepworths' house being still the only one occupied, paused
at the corner, and watched. The Hepworths' house was, of course, the
only one in the road that showed any light. The man, when he came to
the gate, struck a match for the purpose of reading the number.
Satisfied it was the house he wanted, he pushed open the gate and went
up the path.
But, instead of using the bell or knocker, Jetson was surprised to hear
him give three raps on the door with his stick. There was no answer,
and Jetson, whose interest was now thoroughly aroused, crossed to the
other corner, from where he could command a better view. Twice the man
repeated his three raps on the door, each time a little louder, and the
third time the door was opened. Jetson could not tell by whom, for
whoever it was kept behind it.
He could just see one wall of the passage, with a pair of old naval
cutlasses crossed above the picture of a three-masted schooner that he
knew hung there. The door was opened just sufficient, and the man
slipped in, and the door was closed behind him. Jetson had turned to
continue his way, when the fancy seized him to give one glance back.
The house was in complete darkness, though a moment before Jetson was
positive there had been a light in the ground floor window.
It all sounded very important afterwards, but at the time there was
nothing to suggest to Jetson anything very much out of the common.
Because for six months no friend or relation had called to see them,
that was no reason why one never should. In the fog, a stranger may
have thought it simpler to knock at the door with his stick than to
fumble in search of a bell. The Hepworths lived chiefly in the room at
the back. The light in the drawing-room may have been switched off for
economy's sake. Jetson recounted the incident on reaching home, not as
anything remarkable, but just as one mentions an item of gossip. The
only one who appears to have attached any meaning to the affair was
Jetson's youngest daughter, then a girl of eighteen. She asked one or
two questions about the man, and, during the evening, slipped out by
herself and ran round to the Hepworths. She found the house empty. At
all events, she could obtain no answer, and the place, back and front,
seemed to her to be uncannily silent.
Jetson called the next morning, something of his daughter's uneasiness
having communicated itself to him. Mrs. Hepworth herself opened the
door to him. In his evidence at the trial, Jetson admitted that her
appearance had startled him. She seems to have anticipated his
questions by at once explaining that she had had news of an unpleasant
nature, and had been worrying over it all night. Her husband had been
called away suddenly to America, where it would be necessary for her to
join him as soon as possible. She would come round to Jetson's office
later in the day to make arrangements about getting rid of the house
and furniture.
The story seemed to reasonably account for the stranger's visit, and
Jetson, expressing his sympathy and promising all help in his power,
continued his way to the office. She called in the afternoon and
handed him over the keys, retaining one for herself. She wished the
furniture to be sold by auction, and he was to accept almost any offer
for the house. She would try and see him again before sailing; if not,
she would write him with her address. She was perfectly cool and
collected. She had called on his wife and daughters in the afternoon,
and had wished them good-bye.
Outside Jetson's office she hailed a cab, and returned in it to Laleham
Gardens to collect her boxes. The next time Jetson saw her she was in
the dock, charged with being an accomplice in the murder of her husband.
* * *
The body had been discovered in a pond some hundred yards from the
unfinished end of Laleham Gardens. A house was in course of erection
on a neighbouring plot, and a workman, in dipping up a pail of water,
had dropped in his watch. He and his mate, worrying round with a rake,
had drawn up pieces of torn clothing, and this, of course, had led to
the pond being properly dragged. Otherwise the discovery might never
have been made.
The body, heavily weighted with a number of flat-irons fastened to it
by a chain and padlock, had sunk deep into the soft mud, and might have
remained there till it rotted. A valuable gold repeater, that Jetson
remembered young Hepworth having told him had been a presentation to
his father, was in its usual pocket, and a cameo ring that Hepworth had
always worn on his third finger was likewise fished up from the mud.
Evidently the murder belonged to the category of crimes passionel. The
theory of the prosecution was that it had been committed by a man who,
before her marriage, had been Mrs. Hepworth's lover.
The evidence, contrasted with the almost spiritually beautiful face of
the woman in the dock, came as a surprise to everyone in court.
Originally connected with an English circus troupe touring in Holland,
she appears, about seventeen, to have been engaged as a "song and dance
artiste" at a particularly shady cafe chantant in Rotterdam, frequented
chiefly by sailors. From there a man, an English sailor known as
Charlie Martin, took her away, and for some months she had lived with
him at a small estaminet the other side of the river. Later, they left
Rotterdam and came to London, where they took lodgings in Poplar, near
to the docks.
It was from this address in Poplar that, some ten months before the
murder, she had married young Hepworth. What had become of Martin was
not known. The natural assumption was that, his money being exhausted,
he had returned to his calling, though his name, for some reason, could
not be found in any ship's list.
That he was one and the same with the man that Jetson had watched till
the door of the Hepworths' house had closed upon him there could be no
doubt. Jetson described him as a thick-set, handsome-looking man, with
a reddish beard and moustache. Earlier in the day he had been seen at
Hampstead, where he had dined at a small coffee-shop in the High
Street. The girl who had waited on him had also been struck by the
bold, piercing eyes and the curly red beard. It had been an off-time,
between two and three, when he had dined there, and the girl admitted
that she had found him a "pleasant-spoken gentleman," and "inclined to
be merry." He had told her that he had arrived in England only three
days ago, and that he hoped that evening to see his sweetheart. He had
accompanied the words with a laugh, and the girl thought--though, of
course, this may have been after-suggestion--that an ugly look followed
the laugh.
One imagines that it was this man's return that had been the fear
constantly haunting young Hepworth. The three raps on the door, it was
urged by the prosecution, was a pre-arranged or pre-understood signal,
and the door had been opened by the woman. Whether the husband was in
the house, or whether they waited for him, could not be said. He had
been killed by a bullet entering through the back of the neck; the man
had evidently come prepared.
Ten days had elapsed between the murder and the finding of the body,
and the man was never traced. A postman had met him coming from the
neighbourhood of Laleham Gardens at about half-past nine. In the fog,
they had all but bumped into one another, and the man had immediately
turned away his face.
About the soft felt hat there was nothing to excite attention, but the
long, stiff, yellow mackintosh was quite unusual. The postman had
caught only a momentary glimpse of the face, but was certain it was
clean shaven. This made a sensation in court for the moment, but only
until the calling of the next witness. The charwoman usually employed
by the Hepworths had not been admitted to the house on the morning of
Mrs. Hepworth's departure. Mrs. Hepworth had met her at the door and
paid her a week's money in lieu of notice, explaining to her that she
would not be wanted any more. Jetson, thinking he might possibly do
better by letting the house furnished, had sent for this woman, and
instructed her to give the place a thorough cleaning. Sweeping the
carpet in the dining-room with a dustpan and brush, she had discovered
a number of short red hairs. The man, before leaving the house, had
shaved himself.
That he had still retained the long, yellow mackintosh may have been
with the idea of starting a false clue. Having served its purpose, it
could be discarded. The beard would not have been so easy. What
roundabout way he may have taken one cannot say, but it must have been
some time during the night or early morning that he reached young
Hepworth's office in Fenchurch Street. Mrs. Hepworth had evidently
provided him with the key.
There he seems to have hidden the hat and mackintosh and to have taken
in exchange some clothes belonging to the murdered man. Hepworth's
clerk, Ellenby, an elderly man--of the type that one generally
describes as of gentlemanly appearance--was accustomed to his master
being away unexpectedly on business, which was that of a ships'
furnisher. He always kept an overcoat and a bag ready packed in the
office. Missing them, Ellenby had assumed that his master had been
called away by an early train. He would have been worried after a few
days, but that he had received a telegram--as he then supposed from his
master--explaining that young Hepworth had gone to Ireland and would be
away for some days. It was nothing unusual for Hepworth to be absent,
superintending the furnishing of a ship, for a fortnight at a time, and
nothing had transpired in the office necessitating special
instructions. The telegram had been handed in at Charing Cross, but
the time chosen had been a busy period of the day, and no one had any
recollection of the sender. Hepworth's clerk unhesitatingly identified
the body as that of his employer, for whom it was evident that he had
entertained a feeling of affection. About Mrs. Hepworth he said as
little as he could. While she was awaiting her trial it had been
necessary for him to see her once or twice with reference to the
business. Previous to this, he knew nothing about her.
The woman's own attitude throughout the trial had been quite
unexplainable. Beyond agreeing to a formal plea of "Not guilty," she
had made no attempt to defend herself. What little assistance her
solicitors had obtained had been given them, not by the woman herself,
but by Hepworth's clerk, more for the sake of his dead master than out
of any sympathy towards the wife. She herself appeared utterly
indifferent. Only once had she been betrayed into a momentary emotion.
It was when her solicitors were urging her almost angrily to give them
some particulars upon a point they thought might be helpful to her case.
"He's dead!" she had cried out almost with a note of exultation. "Dead!
Dead! What else matters?"
The next moment she had apologised for her outburst.
"Nothing can do any good," she had said. "Let the thing take its
course."
It was the astounding callousness of the woman that told against her
both with the judge and the jury. That shaving in the dining-room, the
murdered man's body not yet cold! It must have been done with
Hepworth's safety-razor. She must have brought it down to him, found
him a looking-glass, brought him soap and water and a towel, afterwards
removing all traces. Except those few red hairs that had clung,
unnoticed, to the carpet. That nest of flat-irons used to weight the
body! It must have been she who had thought of them. The idea would
never have occurred to a man. The chain and padlock with which to
fasten them. She only could have known that such things were in the
house. It must have been she who had planned the exchange of clothes
in Hepworth's office, giving him the key. She it must have been who
had thought of the pond, holding open the door while the man had
staggered out under his ghastly burden; waited, keeping watch,
listening to hear the splash.
Evidently it had been her intention to go off with the murderer--to
live with him! That story about America. If all had gone well, it
would have accounted for everything. After leaving Laleham Gardens she
had taken lodgings in a small house in Kentish Town under the name of
Howard, giving herself out to be a chorus singer, her husband being an
actor on tour. To make the thing plausible, she had obtained
employment in one of the pantomimes. Not for a moment had she lost her
head. No one had ever called at her lodgings, and there had come no
letters for her. Every hour of her day could be accounted for. Their
plans must have been worked out over the corpse of her murdered
husband. She was found guilty of being an "accessory after the fact,"
and sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude.
That brought the story up to eleven years ago. After the trial,
interested in spite of himself, my friend had ferreted out some further
particulars. Inquiries at Liverpool had procured him the information
that Hepworth's father, a shipowner in a small way, had been well known
and highly respected. He was retired from business when he died, some
three years previous to the date of the murder. His wife had survived
him by only a few months. Besides Michael, the murdered son, there
were two other children--an elder brother, who was thought to have gone
abroad to one of the colonies, and a sister who had married a French
naval officer. Either they had not heard of the case or had not wished
to have their names dragged into it. Young Michael had started life as
an architect, and was supposed to have been doing well, but after the
death of his parents had disappeared from the neighbourhood, and, until
the trial, none of his acquaintances up North ever knew what had become
of him.
But a further item of knowledge that my friend's inquiries had elicited
had somewhat puzzled him. Hepworth's clerk, Ellenby, had been the
confidential clerk of Hepworth's father! He had entered the service of
the firm as a boy; and when Hepworth senior retired, Ellenby--with the
old gentleman's assistance--had started in business for himself as a
ships' furnisher! Nothing of all this came out at the trial. Ellenby
had not been cross-examined. There was no need for it. But it seemed
odd, under all the circumstances, that he had not volunteered the
information. It may, of course, have been for the sake of the brother
and sister. Hepworth is a common enough name in the North. He may
have hoped to keep the family out of connection with the case.
As regards the woman, my friend could learn nothing further beyond the
fact that, in her contract with the music-hall agent in Rotterdam, she
had described herself as the daughter of an English musician, and had
stated that both her parents were dead. She may have engaged herself
without knowing the character of the hall, and the man, Charlie Martin,
with his handsome face and pleasing sailor ways, and at least an
Englishman, may have seemed to her a welcome escape.
She may have been passionately fond of him, and young Hepworth--crazy
about her, for she was beautiful enough to turn any man's head--may in
Martin's absence have lied to her, told her he was dead--lord knows
what!--to induce her to marry him. The murder may have seemed to her a
sort of grim justice.
But even so, her cold-blooded callousness was surely abnormal! She had
married him, lived with him for nearly a year. To the Jetsons she had
given the impression of being a woman deeply in love with her husband.
It could not have been mere acting kept up day after day.
"There was something else." We were discussing the case in my friend's
chambers. His brief of eleven years ago was open before him. He was
pacing up and down with his hands in his pockets, thinking as he
talked. "Something that never came out. There was a curious feeling
she gave me in that moment when sentence was pronounced upon her. It
was as if, instead of being condemned, she had triumphed. Acting! If
she had acted during the trial, pretended remorse, even pity, I could
have got her off with five years. She seemed to be unable to disguise
the absolute physical relief she felt at the thought that he was dead,
that his hand would never again touch her. There must have been
something that had suddenly been revealed to her, something that had
turned her love to hate.
"There must be something fine about the man, too." That was another
suggestion that came to him as he stood staring out of the window
across the river. "She's paid and has got her receipt, but he is still
'wanted.' He is risking his neck every evening he watches for the
raising of that blind."
His thought took another turn.
"Yet how could he have let her go through those ten years of living
death while he walked the streets scot free? Some time during the
trial--the evidence piling up against her day by day--why didn't he
come forward, if only to stand beside her? Get himself hanged, if only
out of mere decency?"
He sat down, took the brief up in his hand without looking at it.
"Or was that the reward that she claimed? That he should wait, keeping
alive the one hope that would make the suffering possible to her?
Yes," he continued, musing, "I can see a man who cared for a woman
taking that as his punishment."
Now that his interest in the case had been revived he seemed unable to
keep it out of his mind. Since our joint visit I had once or twice
passed through the street by myself, and on the last occasion had again
seen the raising of the blind. It obsessed him--the desire to meet the
man face to face. A handsome, bold, masterful man, he conceived him.
But there must be something more for such a woman to have sold her
soul--almost, one might say--for the sake of him.
There was just one chance of succeeding. Each time he had come from
the direction of the Edgware Road. By keeping well out of sight at the
other end of the street, and watching till he entered it, one might
time oneself to come upon him just under the lamp. He would hardly be
likely to turn and go back; that would be to give himself away. He
would probably content himself with pretending to be like ourselves,
merely hurrying through, and in his turn watching till we had
disappeared.
Fortune seemed inclined to favour us. About the usual time the blind
was gently raised, and very soon afterwards there came round the corner
the figure of a man. We entered the street ourselves a few seconds
later, and it seemed likely that, as we had planned, we should come
face to face with him under the gaslight. He walked towards us,
stooping and with bent head. We expected him to pass the house by. To
our surprise he stopped when he came to it, and pushed open the gate.
In another moment we should have lost all chance of seeing anything
more of him except his bent back. With a couple of strides my friend
was behind him. He laid his hand on the man's shoulder and forced him
to turn round. It was an old, wrinkled face with gentle, rather watery
eyes.
We were both so taken aback that for a moment we could say nothing. My
friend stammered out an apology about having mistaken the house, and
rejoined me. At the corner we burst out laughing almost
simultaneously. And then my friend suddenly stopped and stared at me.
"Hepworth's old clerk!" he said. "Ellenby!"
* * *
It seemed to him monstrous. The man had been more than a clerk. The
family had treated him as a friend. Hepworth's father had set him up
in business. For the murdered lad he had had a sincere attachment; he
had left that conviction on all of them. What was the meaning of it?
A directory was on the mantelpiece. It was the next afternoon. I had
called upon him in his chambers. It was just an idea that came to me.
I crossed over and opened it, and there was his name, "Ellenby and Co.,
Ships' Furnishers," in a court off the Minories.
Was he helping her for the sake of his dead master--trying to get her
away from the man. But why? The woman had stood by and watched the
lad murdered. How could he bear even to look on her again?
Unless there had been that something that had not come out--something
he had learnt later--that excused even that monstrous callousness of
hers.
Yet what could there be? It had all been so planned, so cold-blooded.
That shaving in the dining-room! It was that seemed most to stick in
his throat. She must have brought him down a looking-glass; there was
not one in the room. Why couldn't he have gone upstairs into the
bathroom, where Hepworth always shaved himself, where he would have
found everything to his hand?
He had been moving about the room, talking disjointedly as he paced,
and suddenly he stopped and looked at me.
"Why in the dining-room?" he demanded of me.
He was jingling some keys in his pocket. It was a habit of his when
cross-examining, and I felt as if somehow I knew; and, without
thinking--so it seemed to me--I answered him.
"Perhaps," I said, "it was easier to bring a razor down than to carry a
dead man up."
He leant with his arms across the table, his eyes glittering with
excitement.
"Can't you see it?" he said. "That little back parlour with its fussy
ornaments. The three of them standing round the table, Hepworth's
hands nervously clutching a chair. The reproaches, the taunts, the
threats. Young Hepworth--he struck everyone as a weak man, a man
physically afraid--white, stammering, not knowing which way to look.
The woman's eyes turning from one to the other. That flash of contempt
again--she could not help it--followed, worse still, by pity. If only
he could have answered back, held his own! If only he had not been
afraid! And then that fatal turning away with a sneering laugh one
imagines, the bold, dominating eyes no longer there to cower him.
"That must have been the moment. The bullet, if you remember, entered
through the back of the man's neck. Hepworth must always have been
picturing to himself this meeting--tenants of garden suburbs do not
carry loaded revolvers as a habit--dwelling upon it till he had worked
himself up into a frenzy of hate and fear. Weak men always fly to
extremes. If there was no other way, he would kill him.
"Can't you hear the silence? After the reverberations had died away!
And then they are both down on their knees, patting him, feeling for
his heart. The man must have gone down like a felled ox; there were no
traces of blood on the carpet. The house is far from any neighbour;
the shot in all probability has not been heard. If only they can get
rid of the body! The pond--not a hundred yards away!"
He reached for the brief, still lying among his papers; hurriedly
turned the scored pages.
"What easier? A house being built on the very next plot. Wheelbarrows
to be had for the taking. A line of planks reaching down to the edge.
Depth of water where the body was discovered four feet six inches.
Nothing to do but just tip up the barrow.
"Think a minute. Must weigh him down, lest he rise to accuse us;
weight him heavily, so that he will sink lower and lower into the soft
mud, lie there till he rots.
"Think again. Think it out to the end. Suppose, in spite of all our
precautions, he does rise? Suppose the chain slips? The workmen going
to and fro for water--suppose they do discover him?
"He is lying on his back, remember. They would have turned him over to
feel for his heart. Have closed his eyes, most probably, not liking
their stare.
"It would be the woman who first thought of it. She has seen them both
lying with closed eyes beside her. It may have always been in her
mind, the likeness between them. With Hepworth's watch in his pocket,
Hepworth's ring on his finger! If only it was not for the beard--that
fierce, curling, red beard!
"They creep to the window and peer out. Fog still thick as soup. Not a
soul, not a sound. Plenty of time.
"Then to get away, to hide till one is sure. Put on the mackintosh. A
man in a yellow mackintosh may have been seen to enter; let him be seen
to go away. In some dark corner or some empty railway carriage take it
off and roll it up. Then make for the office. Wait there for Ellenby.
True as steel, Ellenby; good business man. Be guided by Ellenby."
He flung the brief from him with a laugh.
"Why, there's not a missing link!" he cried. "And to think that not a
fool among us ever thought of it!"
"Everything fitting into its place," I suggested, "except young
Hepworth. Can you see him, from your description of him, sitting down
and coolly elaborating plans for escape, the corpse of the murdered man
stretched beside him on the hearthrug?"
"No," he answered. "But I can see her doing it, a woman who for week
after week kept silence while we raged and stormed at her, a woman who
for three hours sat like a statue while old Cutbush painted her to a
crowded court as a modern Jezebel, who rose up from her seat when that
sentence of fifteen years' penal servitude was pronounced upon her with
a look of triumph in her eyes, and walked out of court as if she had
been a girl going to meet her lover.
"I'll wager," he added, "it was she who did the shaving. Hepworth
would have cut him, even with a safety-razor."
"It must have been the other one, Martin," I said, "that she loathed.
That almost exultation at the thought that he was dead," I reminded him.
"Yes," he mused. "She made no attempt to disguise it. Curious there
having been that likeness between them." He looked at his watch. "Do
you care to come with me?" he said.
"Where are you going?" I asked him.
"We may just catch him," he answered. "Ellenby and Co."
* * *
The office was on the top floor of an old-fashioned house in a
cul-de-sac off the Minories. Mr. Ellenby was out, so the lanky
office-boy informed us, but would be sure to return before evening; and
we sat and waited by the meagre fire till, as the dusk was falling, we
heard his footsteps on the creaking stairs.
He halted a moment in the doorway, recognising us apparently without
surprise; and then, with a hope that we had not been kept waiting long,
he led the way into an inner room.
"I do not suppose you remember me," said my friend, as soon as the door
was closed. "I fancy that, until last night, you never saw me without
my wig and gown. It makes a difference. I was Mrs. Hepworth's senior
counsel."
It was unmistakable, the look of relief that came into the old, dim
eyes. Evidently the incident of the previous evening had suggested to
him an enemy.
"You were very good," he murmured. "Mrs. Hepworth was overwrought at
the time, but she was very grateful, I know, for all your efforts."
I thought I detected a faint smile on my friend's lips.
"I must apologise for my rudeness to you of last night," he continued.
"I expected, when I took the liberty of turning you round, that I was
going to find myself face to face with a much younger man."
"I took you to be a detective," answered Ellenby, in his soft, gentle
voice. "You will forgive me, I'm sure. I am rather short-sighted. Of
course, I can only conjecture, but if you will take my word, I can
assure you that Mrs. Hepworth has never seen or heard from the man
Charlie Martin since the date of"--he hesitated a moment--"of the
murder."
"It would have been difficult," agreed my friend, "seeing that Charlie
Martin lies buried in Highgate Cemetery."
Old as he was, he sprang from his chair, white and trembling.
"What have you come here for?" he demanded.
"I took more than a professional interest in the case," answered my
friend. "Ten years ago I was younger than I am now. It may have been
her youth--her extreme beauty. I think Mrs. Hepworth, in allowing her
husband to visit her--here where her address is known to the police,
and watch at any moment may be set upon her--is placing him in a
position of grave danger. If you care to lay before me any facts that
will allow me to judge of the case, I am prepared to put my experience,
and, if need be, my assistance, at her service."
His self-possession had returned to him.
"If you will excuse me," he said, "I will tell the boy that he can go."
We heard him, a moment later, turn the key in the outer door; and when
he came back and had made up the fire, he told us the beginning of the
story.
The name of the man buried in Highgate Cemetery was Hepworth, after
all. Not Michael, but Alex, the elder brother.
From boyhood he had been violent, brutal, unscrupulous. Judging from
Ellenby's story, it was difficult to accept him as a product of modern
civilisation. Rather he would seem to have been a throwback to some
savage, buccaneering ancestor. To expect him to work, while he could
live in vicious idleness at somebody else's expense, was found to be
hopeless. His debts were paid for about the third or fourth time, and
he was shipped off to the Colonies. Unfortunately, there were no means
of keeping him there. So soon as the money provided him had been
squandered, he returned, demanding more by menaces and threats.
Meeting with unexpected firmness, he seems to have regarded theft and
forgery as the only alternative left to him. To save him from
punishment and the family name from disgrace, his parents' savings were
sacrificed. It was grief and shame that, according to Ellenby, killed
them both within a few months of one another.
Deprived by this blow of what he no doubt had come to consider his
natural means of support, and his sister, fortunately for herself,
being well out of his reach, he next fixed upon his brother Michael as
his stay-by. Michael, weak, timid, and not perhaps without some
remains of boyish affection for a strong, handsome, elder brother,
foolishly yielded. The demands, of course, increased, until, in the
end, it came almost as a relief when the man's vicious life led to his
getting mixed up with a crime of a particularly odious nature. He was
anxious now for his own sake to get away, and Michael, with little
enough to spare for himself, provided him with the means, on the solemn
understanding that he would never return.
But the worry and misery of it all had left young Michael a broken man.
Unable to concentrate his mind any longer upon his profession, his
craving was to get away from all his old associations--to make a fresh
start in life. It was Ellenby who suggested London and the ship
furnishing business, where Michael's small remaining capital would be
of service. The name of Hepworth would be valuable in shipping
circles, and Ellenby, arguing this consideration, but chiefly with the
hope of giving young Michael more interest in the business, had
insisted that the firm should be Hepworth and Co.
They had not been started a year before the man returned, as usual
demanding more money. Michael, acting under Ellenby's guidance,
refused in terms that convinced his brother that the game of bullying
was up. He waited a while, and then wrote pathetically that he was ill
and starving. If only for the sake of his young wife, would not
Michael come and see them?
This was the first they had heard of his marriage. There was just a
faint hope that it might have effected a change, and Michael, against
Ellenby's advice, decided to go. In a miserable lodging-house in the
East End he found the young wife, but not his brother, who did not
return till he was on the point of leaving. In the interval the girl
seems to have confided her story to Michael.
She had been a singer, engaged at a music-hall in Rotterdam. There
Alex Hepworth, calling himself Charlie Martin, had met her and made
love to her. When he chose, he could be agreeable enough, and no doubt
her youth and beauty had given to his protestations, for the time
being, a genuine ring of admiration and desire. It was to escape from
her surroundings, more than anything else, that she had consented. She
was little more than a child, and anything seemed preferable to the
nightly horror to which her life exposed her.
He had never married her. At least, that was her belief at the time.
During his first drunken bout he had flung it in her face that the form
they had gone through was mere bunkum. Unfortunately for her, this was
a lie. He had always been coolly calculating. It was probably with
the idea of a safe investment that he had seen to it that the ceremony
had been strictly legal.
Her life with him, so soon as the first novelty of her had worn off,
had been unspeakable. The band that she wore round her neck was to
hide where, in a fit of savagery, because she had refused to earn money
for him on the streets, he had tried to cut her throat. Now that she
had got back to England she intended to leave him. If he followed and
killed her she did not care.
It was for her sake that young Hepworth eventually offered to help his
brother again, on the condition that he would go away by himself. To
this the other agreed. He seems to have given a short display of
remorse. There must have been a grin on his face as he turned away.
His cunning eyes had foreseen what was likely to happen. The idea of
blackmail was no doubt in his mind from the beginning. With the charge
of bigamy as a weapon in his hand, he might rely for the rest of his
life upon a steady and increasing income.
Michael saw his brother off as a second-class passenger on a ship bound
for the Cape. Of course, there was little chance of his keeping his
word, but there was always the chance of his getting himself knocked on
the head in some brawl. Anyhow, he would be out of the way for a
season, and the girl, Lola, would be left. A month later he married
her, and four months after that received a letter from his brother
containing messages to Mrs. Martin, "from her loving husband, Charlie,"
who hoped before long to have the pleasure of seeing her again.
Inquiries through the English Consul in Rotterdam proved that the
threat was no mere bluff. The marriage had been legal and binding.
What happened on the night of the murder, was very much as my friend
had reconstructed it. Ellenby, reaching the office at his usual time
the next morning, had found Hepworth waiting for him. There he had
remained in hiding until one morning, with dyed hair and a slight
moustache, he had ventured forth.
Had the man's death been brought about by any other means, Ellenby
would have counselled his coming forward and facing his trial, as he
himself was anxious to do; but, viewed in conjunction with the relief
the man's death must have been to both of them, that loaded revolver
was too suggestive of premeditation. The isolation of the house, that
conveniently near pond, would look as if thought of beforehand. Even
if pleading extreme provocation, Michael escaped the rope, a long term
of penal servitude would be inevitable.
Nor was it certain that even then the woman would go free. The
murdered man would still, by a strange freak, be her husband; the
murderer--in the eye of the law--her lover.
Her passionate will had prevailed. Young Hepworth had sailed for
America. There he had no difficulty in obtaining employment--of
course, under another name--in an architects office; and later had set
up for himself. Since the night of the murder they had not seen each
other till some three weeks ago.
* * *
I never saw the woman again. My friend, I believe, called on her.
Hepworth had already returned to America, and my friend had succeeded
in obtaining for her some sort of a police permit that practically left
her free.
Sometimes of an evening I find myself passing through the street. And
always I have the feeling of having blundered into an empty
theatre--where the play is ended.
HIS EVENING OUT.
The evidence of the park-keeper, David Bristow, of Gilder Street,
Camden Town, is as follows:
I was on duty in St. James's Park on Thursday evening, my sphere
extending from the Mall to the northern shore of the ornamental water
east of the suspension bridge. At five-and-twenty to seven I took up a
position between the peninsula and the bridge to await my colleague.
He ought to have relieved me at half-past six, but did not arrive until
a few minutes before seven, owing, so he explained, to the breaking
down of his motor-'bus--which may have been true or may not, as the
saying is.
I had just come to a halt, when my attention was arrested by a lady. I
am unable to explain why the presence of a lady in St. James's Park
should have seemed in any way worthy of notice except that, for certain
reasons, she reminded me of my first wife. I observed that she
hesitated between one of the public seats and two vacant chairs
standing by themselves a little farther to the east. Eventually she
selected one of the chairs, and, having cleaned it with an evening
paper--the birds in this portion of the Park being extremely
prolific--sat down upon it. There was plenty of room upon the public
seat close to it, except for some children who were playing touch; and
in consequence of this I judged her to be a person of means.
I walked to a point from where I could command the southern approaches
to the bridge, my colleague arriving sometimes by way of Birdcage Walk
and sometimes by way of the Horse Guards Parade. Not seeing any signs
of him in the direction of the bridge, I turned back. A little way
past the chair where the lady was sitting I met Mr. Parable. I know
Mr. Parable quite well by sight. He was wearing the usual grey suit
and soft felt hat with which the pictures in the newspapers have made
us all familiar. I judged that Mr. Parable had come from the Houses of
Parliament, and the next morning my suspicions were confirmed by
reading that he had been present at a tea-party given on the terrace by
Mr. Will Crooks. Mr. Parable conveyed to me the suggestion of a man
absorbed in thought, and not quite aware of what he was doing; but in
this, of course, I may have been mistaken. He paused for a moment to
look over the railings at the pelican. Mr. Parable said something to
the pelican which I was not near enough to overhear; and then, still
apparently in a state of abstraction, crossed the path and seated
himself on the chair next to that occupied by the young lady.
From the tree against which I was standing I was able to watch the
subsequent proceedings unobserved. The lady looked at Mr. Parable and
then turned away and smiled to herself. It was a peculiar smile, and,
again in some way I am unable to explain, reminded me of my first wife.
It was not till the pelican put down his other leg and walked away that
Mr. Parable, turning his gaze westward, became aware of the lady's
presence.
From information that has subsequently come to my knowledge, I am
prepared to believe that Mr. Parable, from the beginning, really
thought the lady was a friend of his. What the lady thought is a
matter for conjecture; I can only speak to the facts. Mr. Parable
looked at the lady once or twice. Indeed, one might say with truth
that he kept on doing it. The lady, it must be admitted, behaved for a
while with extreme propriety; but after a time, as I felt must happen,
their eyes met, and then it was I heard her say:
"Good evening, Mr. Parable."
She accompanied the words with the same peculiar smile to which I have
already alluded. The exact words of Mr. Parable's reply I cannot
remember. But it was to the effect that he had thought from the first
that he had known her but had not been quite sure. It was at this
point that, thinking I saw my colleague approaching, I went to meet
him. I found I was mistaken, and slowly retraced my steps. I passed
Mr. Parable and the lady. They were talking together with what I
should describe as animation. I went as far as the southern extremity
of the suspension bridge, and must have waited there quite ten minutes
before returning eastward. It was while I was passing behind them on
the grass, partially screened by the rhododendrons, that I heard Mr.
Parable say to the lady:
"Why shouldn't we have it together?"
To which the lady replied:
"But what about Miss Clebb?"
I could not overhear what followed, owing to their sinking their
voices. It seemed to be an argument. It ended with the young lady
laughing and then rising. Mr. Parable also rose, and they walked off
together. As they passed me I heard the lady say:
"I wonder if there's any place in London where you're not likely to be
recognised."
Mr. Parable, who gave me the idea of being in a state of growing
excitement, replied quite loudly:
"Oh, let 'em!"
I was following behind them when the lady suddenly stopped.
"I know!" she said. "The Popular Cafe."
The park-keeper said he was convinced he would know the lady again,
having taken particular notice of her. She had brown eyes and was
wearing a black hat supplemented with poppies.
* * *
Arthur Horton, waiter at the Popular Cafe, states as follows:
I know Mr. John Parable by sight. Have often heard him speak at public
meetings. Am a bit of a Socialist myself. Remember his dining at the
Popular Cafe on the evening of Thursday. Didn't recognise him
immediately on his entrance for two reasons. One was his hat, and the
other was his girl. I took it from him and hung it up. I mean, of
course, the hat. It was a brand-new bowler, a trifle ikey about the
brim. Have always associated him with a soft grey felt. But never
with girls. Females, yes, to any extent. But this was the real
article. You know what I mean--the sort of girl that you turn round to
look after. It was she who selected the table in the corner behind the
door. Been there before, I should say.
I should, in the ordinary course of business, have addressed Mr.
Parable by name, such being our instructions in the case of customers
known to us. But, putting the hat and the girl together, I decided not
to. Mr. Parable was all for our three-and-six-penny table d'hote; he
evidently not wanting to think. But the lady wouldn't hear of it.
"Remember Miss Clebb," she reminded him.
Of course, at the time I did not know what was meant. She ordered thin
soup, a grilled sole, and cutlets au gratin. It certainly couldn't
have been the dinner. With regard to the champagne, he would have his
own way. I picked him out a dry '94, that you might have weaned a baby
on. I suppose it was the whole thing combined.
It was after the sole that I heard Mr. Parable laugh. I could hardly
credit my ears, but half-way through the cutlets he did it again.
There are two kinds of women. There is the woman who, the more she
eats and drinks, the stodgier she gets, and the woman who lights up
after it. I suggested a peche Melba between them, and when I returned
with it, Mr. Parable was sitting with his elbows on the table gazing
across at her with an expression that I can only describe as quite
human. It was when I brought the coffee that he turned to me and asked:
"What's doing? Nothing stuffy," he added. "Is there an Exhibition
anywhere--something in the open air?"
"You are forgetting Miss Clebb," the lady reminded him.
"For two pins," said Mr. Parable, "I would get up at the meeting and
tell Miss Clebb what I really think about her."
I suggested the Earl's Court Exhibition, little thinking at the time
what it was going to lead to; but the lady at first wouldn't hear of
it, and the party at the next table calling for their bill (they had
asked for it once or twice before, when I came to think of it), I had
to go across to them.
When I got back the argument had just concluded, and the lady was
holding up her finger.
"On condition that we leave at half-past nine, and that you go straight
to Caxton Hall," she said.
"We'll see about it," said Mr. Parable, and offered me half a crown.
Tips being against the rules, I couldn't take it. Besides, one of the
jumpers had his eye on me. I explained to him, jocosely, that I was
doing it for a bet. He was surprised when I handed him his hat, but,
the lady whispering to him, he remembered himself in time.
As they went out together I heard Mr. Parable say to the lady:
"It's funny what a shocking memory I have for names."
To which the lady replied:
"You'll think it funnier still to-morrow." And then she laughed.
Mr. Horton thought he would know the lady again. He puts down her age
at about twenty-six, describing her--to use his own piquant
expression--as "a bit of all right." She had brown eyes and a taking
way with her.
* * *
Miss Ida Jenks, in charge of the Eastern Cigarette Kiosk at the Earl's
Court Exhibition, gives the following particulars:
From where I generally stand I can easily command a view of the
interior of the Victoria Hall; that is, of course, to say when the
doors are open, as on a warm night is usually the case.
On the evening of Thursday, the twenty-seventh, it was fairly well
occupied, but not to any great extent. One couple attracted my
attention by reason of the gentleman's erratic steering. Had he been
my partner I should have suggested a polka, the tango not being the
sort of dance that can be picked up in an evening. What I mean to say
is, that he struck me as being more willing than experienced. Some of
the bumps she got would have made me cross; but we all have our
fancies, and, so far as I could judge, they both appeared to be
enjoying themselves. It was after the "Hitchy Koo" that they came
outside.
The seat to the left of the door is popular by reason of its being
partly screened by bushes, but by leaning forward a little it is quite
possible for me to see what goes on there. They were the first couple
out, having had a bad collision near the bandstand, so easily secured
it. The gentleman was laughing.
There was something about him from the first that made me think I knew
him, and when he took off his hat to wipe his head it came to me all of
a sudden, he being the exact image of his effigy at Madame Tussaud's,
which, by a curious coincidence, I happened to have visited with a
friend that very afternoon. The lady was what some people would call
good-looking, and others mightn't.
I was watching them, naturally a little interested. Mr. Parable, in
helping the lady to adjust her cloak, drew her--it may have been by
accident--towards him; and then it was that a florid gentleman with a
short pipe in his mouth stepped forward and addressed the lady. He
raised his hat and, remarking "Good evening," added that he hoped she
was "having a pleasant time." His tone, I should explain, was
sarcastic.
The young woman, whatever else may be said of her, struck me as
behaving quite correctly. Replying to his salutation with a cold and
distant bow, she rose, and, turning to Mr. Parable, observed that she
thought it was perhaps time for them to be going.
The gentleman, who had taken his pipe from his mouth, said--again in a
sarcastic tone--that he thought so too, and offered the lady his arm.
"I don't think we need trouble you," said Mr. Parable, and stepped
between them.
To describe what followed I, being a lady, am hampered for words. I
remember seeing Mr. Parable's hat go up into the air, and then the next
moment the florid gentleman's head was lying on my counter smothered in
cigarettes. I naturally screamed for the police, but the crowd was
dead against me; and it was only after what I believe in technical
language would be termed "the fourth round" that they appeared upon the
scene.
The last I saw of Mr. Parable he was shaking a young constable who had
lost his helmet, while three other policemen had hold of him from
behind. The florid gentleman's hat I found on the floor of my kiosk
and returned to him; but after a useless attempt to get it on his head,
he disappeared with it in his hand. The lady was nowhere to be seen.
Miss Jenks thinks she would know her again. She was wearing a hat
trimmed with black chiffon and a spray of poppies, and was slightly
freckled.
* * *
Superintendent S. Wade, in answer to questions put to him by our
representative, vouchsafed the following replies:
Yes. I was in charge at the Vine Street Police Station on the night of
Thursday, the twenty-seventh.
No. I have no recollection of a charge of any description being
preferred against any gentleman of the name of Parable.
Yes. A gentleman was brought in about ten o'clock charged with
brawling at the Earl's Court Exhibition and assaulting a constable in
the discharge of his duty.
The gentleman gave the name of Mr. Archibald Quincey, Harcourt
Buildings, Temple.
No. The gentleman made no application respecting bail, electing to
pass the night in the cells. A certain amount of discretion is
permitted to us, and we made him as comfortable as possible.
Yes. A lady.
No. About a gentleman who had got himself into trouble at the Earl's
Court Exhibition. She mentioned no name.
I showed her the charge sheet. She thanked me and went away.
That I cannot say. I can only tell you that at nine-fifteen on Friday
morning bail was tendered, and, after inquiries, accepted in the person
of Julius Addison Tupp, of the Sunnybrook Steam Laundry, Twickenham.
That is no business of ours.
The accused who, I had seen to it, had had a cup of tea and a little
toast at seven-thirty, left in company with Mr. Tupp soon after ten.
Superintendent Wade admitted he had known cases where accused parties,
to avoid unpleasantness, had stated their names to be other than their
own, but declined to discuss the matter further.
Superintendent Wade, while expressing his regret that he had no more
time to bestow upon our representative, thought it highly probable that
he would know the lady again if he saw her.
Without professing to be a judge of such matters, Superintendent Wade
thinks she might be described as a highly intelligent young woman, and
of exceptionally prepossessing appearance.
* * *
From Mr. Julius Tupp, of the Sunnybrook Steam Laundry, Twickenham, upon
whom our representative next called, we have been unable to obtain much
assistance, Mr. Tupp replying to all questions put to him by the one
formula, "Not talking."
Fortunately, our representative, on his way out through the drying
ground, was able to obtain a brief interview with Mrs. Tupp.
Mrs. Tupp remembers admitting a young lady to the house on the morning
of Friday, the twenty-eighth, when she opened the door to take in the
milk. The lady, Mrs. Tupp remembers, spoke in a husky voice, the
result, as the young lady explained with a pleasant laugh, of having
passed the night wandering about Ham Common, she having been
misdirected the previous evening by a fool of a railway porter, and not
wishing to disturb the neighbourhood by waking people up at two o'clock
in the morning, which, in Mrs. Tupp's opinion, was sensible of her.
Mrs. Tupp describes the young lady as of agreeable manners, but
looking, naturally, a bit washed out. The lady asked for Mr. Tupp,
explaining that a friend of his was in trouble, which did not in the
least surprise Mrs. Tupp, she herself not holding with Socialists and
such like. Mr. Tupp, on being informed, dressed hastily and went
downstairs, and he and the young lady left the house together. Mr.
Tupp, on being questioned as to the name of his friend, had called up
that it was no one Mrs. Tupp would know, a Mr. Quince--it may have been
Quincey.
Mrs. Tupp is aware that Mr. Parable is also a Socialist, and is
acquainted with the saying about thieves hanging together. But has
worked for Mr. Parable for years and has always found him a most
satisfactory client; and, Mr. Tupp appearing at this point, our
representative thanked Mrs. Tupp for her information and took his
departure.
* * *
Mr. Horatius Condor, Junior, who consented to partake of luncheon in
company with our representative at the Holborn Restaurant, was at first
disinclined to be of much assistance, but eventually supplied our
representative with the following information:
My relationship to Mr. Archibald Quincey, Harcourt Buildings, Temple,
is perhaps a little difficult to define.
How he himself regards me I am never quite sure. There will be days
together when we will be quite friendly like, and at other times he
will be that offhanded and peremptory you might think I was his
blooming office boy.
On Friday morning, the twenty-eighth, I didn't get to Harcourt
Buildings at the usual time, knowing that Mr. Quincey would not be
there himself, he having arranged to interview Mr. Parable for the
Daily Chronicle at ten o'clock. I allowed him half an hour, to be
quite safe, and he came in at a quarter past eleven.
He took no notice of me. For about ten minutes--it may have been
less--he walked up and down the room, cursing and swearing and kicking
the furniture about. He landed an occasional walnut table in the
middle of my shins, upon which I took the opportunity of wishing him
"Good morning," and he sort of woke up, as you might say.
"How did the interview go off?" I says. "Got anything interesting?"
"Yes," he says; "quite interesting. Oh, yes, decidedly interesting."
He was holding himself in, if you understand, speaking with horrible
slowness and deliberation.
"D'you know where he was last night?" he asks me.
"Yes," I says; "Caxton Hall, wasn't it?--meeting to demand the release
of Miss Clebb."
He leans across the table till his face was within a few inches of mine.
"Guess again," he says.
I wasn't doing any guessing. He had hurt me with the walnut table, and
I was feeling a bit short-tempered.
"Oh! don't make a game of it," I says. "It's too early in the morning."
"At the Earl's Court Exhibition," he says; "dancing the tango with a
lady that he picked up in St. James's Park."
"Well," I says, "why not? He don't often get much fun." I thought it
best to treat it lightly.
He takes no notice of my observation.
"A rival comes upon the scene," he continues--"a fatheaded ass,
according to my information--and they have a stand-up fight. He gets
run in and spends the night in a Vine Street police cell."
I suppose I was grinning without knowing it.
"Funny, ain't it?" he says.
"Well," I says, "it has its humorous side, hasn't it? What'll he get?"
"I am not worrying about what HE is going to get," he answers back. "I
am worrying about what _I_ am going to get."
I thought he had gone dotty.
"What's it got to do with you?" I says.
"If old Wotherspoon is in a good humour," he continues, "and the
constable's head has gone down a bit between now and Wednesday, I may
get off with forty shillings and a public reprimand.
"On the other hand," he goes on--he was working himself into a sort of
fit--"if the constable's head goes on swelling, and old Wotherspoon's
liver gets worse, I've got to be prepared for a month without the
option. That is, if I am fool enough--"
He had left both the doors open, which in the daytime we generally do,
our chambers being at the top. Miss Dorton--that's Mr. Parable's
secretary--barges into the room. She didn't seem to notice me. She
staggers to a chair and bursts into tears.
"He's gone," she says; "he's taken cook with him and gone."
"Gone!" says the guv'nor. "Where's he gone?"
"To Fingest," she says through her sobs--"to the cottage. Miss
Bulstrode came in just after you had left," she says. "He wants to get
away from everyone and have a few days' quiet. And then he is coming
back, and he is going to do it himself."
"Do what?" says the guv'nor, irritable like.
"Fourteen days," she wails. "It'll kill him."
"But the case doesn't come on till Wednesday," says the guv'nor. "How
do you know it's going to be fourteen days?"
"Miss Bulstrode," she says, "she's seen the magistrate. He says he
always gives fourteen days in cases of unprovoked assault."
"But it wasn't unprovoked," says the guv'nor. "The other man began it
by knocking off his hat. It was self-defence."
"She put that to him," she says, "and he agreed that that would alter
his view of the case. But, you see," she continues, "we can't find the
other man. He isn't likely to come forward of his own accord."
"The girl must know," says the guv'nor--"this girl he picks up in St.
James's Park, and goes dancing with. The man must have been some
friend of hers."
"But we can't find her either," she says. "He doesn't even know her
name--he can't remember it."
"You will do it, won't you?" she says.
"Do what?" says the guv'nor again.
"The fourteen days," she says.
"But I thought you said he was going to do it himself?" he says.
"But he mustn't," she says. "Miss Bulstrode is coming round to see
you. Think of it! Think of the headlines in the papers," she says.
"Think of the Fabian Society. Think of the Suffrage cause. We mustn't
let him."
"What about me?" says the guv'nor. "Doesn't anybody care for me?"
"You don't matter," she says. "Besides," she says, "with your
influence you'll be able to keep it out of the papers. If it comes out
that it was Mr. Parable, nothing on earth will be able to."
The guv'nor was almost as much excited by this time as she was.
"I'll see the Fabian Society and the Women's Vote and the Home for Lost
Cats at Battersea, and all the rest of the blessed bag of tricks--"
I'd been thinking to myself, and had just worked it out.
"What's he want to take his cook down with him for?" I says.
"To cook for him," says the guv'nor. "What d'you generally want a cook
for?"
"Rats!" I says. "Does he usually take his cook with him?"
"No," answered Miss Dorton. "Now I come to think of it, he has always
hitherto put up with Mrs. Meadows."
"You will find the lady down at Fingest," I says, "sitting opposite him
and enjoying a recherche dinner for two."
The guv'nor slaps me on the back, and lifts Miss Dorton out of her
chair.
"You get on back," he says, "and telephone to Miss Bulstrode. I'll be
round at half-past twelve."
Miss Dorton went out in a dazed sort of condition, and the guv'nor
gives me a sovereign, and tells me I can have the rest of the day to
myself.
Mr. Condor, Junior, considers that what happened subsequently goes to
prove that he was right more than it proves that he was wrong.
Mr. Condor, Junior, also promised to send us a photograph of himself
for reproduction, but, unfortunately, up to the time of going to press
it had not arrived.
* * *
From Mrs. Meadows, widow of the late Corporal John Meadows, V.C.,
Turberville, Bucks, the following further particulars were obtained by
our local representative:
I have done for Mr. Parable now for some years past, my cottage being
only a mile off, which makes it easy for me to look after him.
Mr. Parable likes the place to be always ready so that he can drop in
when he chooses, he sometimes giving me warning and sometimes not. It
was about the end of last month--on a Friday, if I remember
rightly--that he suddenly turned up.
As a rule, he walks from Henley station, but on this occasion he
arrived in a fly, he having a young woman with him, and she having a
bag--his cook, as he explained to me. As a rule, I do everything for
Mr. Parable, sleeping in the cottage when he is there; but to tell the
truth, I was glad to see her. I never was much of a cook myself, as my
poor dead husband has remarked on more than one occasion, and I don't
pretend to be. Mr. Parable added, apologetic like, that he had been
suffering lately from indigestion.
"I am only too pleased to see her," I says. "There are the two beds in
my room, and we shan't quarrel." She was quite a sensible young woman,
as I had judged from the first look at her, though suffering at the
time from a cold. She hires a bicycle from Emma Tidd, who only uses it
on a Sunday, and, taking a market basket, off she starts for Henley,
Mr. Parable saying he would go with her to show her the way.
They were gone a goodish time, which, seeing it's eight miles, didn't
so much surprise me; and when they got back we all three had dinner
together, Mr. Parable arguing that it made for what he called "labour
saving." Afterwards I cleared away, leaving them talking together; and
later on they had a walk round the garden, it being a moonlight night,
but a bit too cold for my fancy.
In the morning I had a chat with her before he was down. She seemed a
bit worried.
"I hope people won't get talking," she says. "He would insist on my
coming."
"Well," I says, "surely a gent can bring his cook along with him to
cook for him. And as for people talking, what I always say is, one may
just as well give them something to talk about and save them the
trouble of making it up."
"If only I was a plain, middle-aged woman," she says, "it would be all
right."
"Perhaps you will be, all in good time," I says, but, of course, I
could see what she was driving at. A nice, clean, pleasant-faced young
woman she was, and not of the ordinary class. "Meanwhile," I says, "if
you don't mind taking a bit of motherly advice, you might remember that
your place is the kitchen, and his the parlour. He's a dear good man,
I know, but human nature is human nature, and it's no good pretending
it isn't."
She and I had our breakfast together before he was up, so that when he
came down he had to have his alone, but afterwards she comes into the
kitchen and closes the door.
"He wants to show me the way to High Wycombe," she says. "He will have
it there are better shops at Wycombe. What ought I to do?"
My experience is that advising folks to do what they don't want to do
isn't the way to do it.
"What d'you think yourself?" I asked her.
"I feel like going with him," she says, "and making the most of every
mile."
And then she began to cry.
"What's the harm!" she says. "I have heard him from a dozen platforms
ridiculing class distinctions. Besides," she says, "my people have
been farmers for generations. What was Miss Bulstrode's father but a
grocer? He ran a hundred shops instead of one. What difference does
that make?"
"When did it all begin?" I says. "When did he first take notice of you
like?"
"The day before yesterday," she answers. "He had never seen me
before," she says. "I was just 'Cook'--something in a cap and apron
that he passed occasionally on the stairs. On Thursday he saw me in my
best clothes, and fell in love with me. He doesn't know it himself,
poor dear, not yet, but that's what he's done."
Well, I couldn't contradict her, not after the way I had seen him
looking at her across the table.
"What are your feelings towards him," I says, "to be quite honest? He's
rather a good catch for a young person in your position."
"That's my trouble," she says. "I can't help thinking of that. And
then to be 'Mrs. John Parable'! That's enough to turn a woman's head."
"He'd be a bit difficult to live with," I says.
"Geniuses always are," she says; "it's easy enough if you just think of
them as children. He'd be a bit fractious at times, that's all.
Underneath, he's just the kindest, dearest--"
"Oh, you take your basket and go to High Wycombe," I says. "He might
do worse."
I wasn't expecting them back soon, and they didn't come back soon. In
the afternoon a motor stops at the gate, and out of it steps Miss
Bulstrode, Miss Dorton--that's the young lady that writes for him--and
Mr. Quincey. I told them I couldn't say when he'd be back, and they
said it didn't matter, they just happening to be passing.
"Did anybody call on him yesterday?" asks Miss Bulstrode, careless
like--"a lady?"
"No," I says; "you are the first as yet."
"He's brought his cook down with him, hasn't he?" says Mr. Quincey.
"Yes," I says, "and a very good cook too," which was the truth.
"I'd like just to speak a few words with her," says Miss Bulstrode.
"Sorry, m'am," I says, "but she's out at present; she's gone to
Wycombe."
"Gone to Wycombe!" they all says together.
"To market," I says. "It's a little farther, but, of course, it stands
to reason the shops there are better."
They looked at one another.
"That settles it," says Mr. Quincey. "Delicacies worthy to be set
before her not available nearer than Wycombe, but must be had. There's
going to be a pleasant little dinner here to-night."
"The hussy!" says Miss Bulstrode, under her breath.
They whispered together for a moment, then they turns to me.
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Meadows," says Mr. Quincey. "You needn't say we
called. He wanted to be alone, and it might vex him."
I said I wouldn't, and I didn't. They climbed back into the motor and
went off.
Before dinner I had call to go into the woodshed. I heard a scuttling
as I opened the door. If I am not mistaken, Miss Dorton was hiding in
the corner where we keep the coke. I didn't see any good in making a
fuss, so I left her there. When I got back to the kitchen, cook asked
me if we'd got any parsley.
"You'll find a bit in the front," I says, "to the left of the gate,"
and she went out. She came back looking scared.
"Anybody keep goats round here?" she asked me.
"Not that I know of, nearer than Ibstone Common," I says.
"I could have sworn I saw a goat's face looking at me out of the
gooseberry bushes while I was picking the parsley," she says. "It had
a beard."
"It's the half light," I says. "One can imagine anything."
"I do hope I'm not getting nervy," she says.
I thought I'd have another look round, and made the excuse that I
wanted a pail of water. I was stooping over the well, which is just
under the mulberry tree, when something fell close to me and lodged
upon the bricks. It was a hairpin. I fixed the cover carefully upon
the well in case of accident, and when I got in I went round myself and
was careful to see that all the curtains were drawn.
Just before we three sat down to dinner again I took cook aside.
"I shouldn't go for any stroll in the garden to-night," I says. "People
from the village may be about, and we don't want them gossiping." And
she thanked me.
Next night they were there again. I thought I wouldn't spoil the
dinner, but mention it afterwards. I saw to it again that the curtains
were drawn, and slipped the catch of both the doors. And just as well
that I did.
I had always heard that Mr. Parable was an amusing speaker, but on
previous visits had not myself noticed it. But this time he seemed ten
years younger than I had ever known him before; and during dinner,
while we were talking and laughing quite merry like, I had the feeling
more than once that people were meandering about outside. I had just
finished clearing away, and cook was making the coffee, when there came
a knock at the door.
"Who's that?" says Mr. Parable. "I am not at home to anyone."
"I'll see," I says. And on my way I slipped into the kitchen.
"Coffee for one, cook," I says, and she understood. Her cap and apron
were hanging behind the door. I flung them across to her, and she
caught them; and then I opened the front door.
They pushed past me without speaking, and went straight into the
parlour. And they didn't waste many words on him either.
"Where is she?" asked Miss Bulstrode.
"Where's who?" says Mr. Parable.
"Don't lie about it," said Miss Bulstrode, making no effort to control
herself. "The hussy you've been dining with?"
"Do you mean Mrs. Meadows?" says Mr. Parable.
I thought she was going to shake him.
"Where have you hidden her?" she says.
It was at that moment cook entered with the coffee.
If they had taken the trouble to look at her they might have had an
idea. The tray was trembling in her hands, and in her haste and
excitement she had put on her cap the wrong way round. But she kept
control of her voice, and asked if she should bring some more coffee.
"Ah, yes! You'd all like some coffee, wouldn't you?" says Mr. Parable.
Miss Bulstrode did not reply, but Mr. Quincey said he was cold and
would like it. It was a nasty night, with a thin rain.
"Thank you, sir," says cook, and we went out together.
Cottages are only cottages, and if people in the parlour persist in
talking loudly, people in the kitchen can't very well help overhearing.
There was a good deal of talk about "fourteen days," which Mr. Parable
said he was going to do himself, and which Miss Dorton said he mustn't,
because, if he did, it would be a victory for the enemies of humanity.
Mr. Parable said something about "humanity," which I didn't rightly
hear, but, whatever it was, it started Miss Dorton crying; and Miss
Bulstrode called Mr. Parable a "blind Samson," who had had his hair cut
by a designing minx who had been hired to do it.
It was all French to me, but cook was drinking in every word, and when
she returned from taking them in their coffee she made no bones about
it, but took up her place at the door with her ear to the keyhole.
It was Mr. Quincey who got them all quiet, and then he began to explain
things. It seemed that if they could only find a certain gentleman and
persuade him to come forward and acknowledge that he began a row, that
then all would be well. Mr. Quincey would be fined forty shillings,
and Mr. Parable's name would never appear. Failing that, Mr. Parable,
according to Mr. Quincey, could do his fourteen days himself.
"I've told you once," says Mr. Parable, "and I tell you again, that I
don't know the man's name, and can't give it you."
"We are not asking you to," says Mr. Quincey. "You give us the name of
your tango partner, and we'll do the rest."
I could see cook's face; I had got a bit interested myself, and we were
both close to the door. She hardly seemed to be breathing.
"I am sorry," says Mr. Parable, speaking very deliberate-like, "but I
am not going to have her name dragged into this business."
"It wouldn't be," says Mr. Quincey. "All we want to get out of her is
the name and address of the gentleman who was so anxious to see her
home."
"Who was he?" says Miss Bulstrode. "Her husband?"
"No," says Mr. Parable; "he wasn't."
"Then who was he?" says Miss Bulstrode. "He must have been something
to her--fiance?"
"I am going to do the fourteen days myself," says Mr. Parable. "I
shall come out all the fresher after a fortnight's complete rest and
change."
Cook leaves the door with a smile on her face that made her look quite
beautiful, and, taking some paper from the dresser drawer, began to
write a letter.
They went on talking in the other room for another ten minutes, and
then Mr. Parable lets them out himself, and goes a little way with
them. When he came back we could hear him walking up and down the
other room.
She had written and stamped the envelope; it was lying on the table.
"'Joseph Onions, Esq.,'" I says, reading the address. "'Auctioneer and
House Agent, Broadway, Hammersmith.' Is that the young man?"
"That is the young man," she says, folding her letter and putting it in
the envelope.
"And was he your fiance?" I asked.
"No," she says. "But he will be if he does what I'm telling him to do."
"And what about Mr. Parable?" I says.
"A little joke that will amuse him later on," she says, slipping a
cloak on her shoulders. "How once he nearly married his cook."
"I shan't be a minute," she says. And, with the letter in her hand,
she slips out.
Mrs. Meadows, we understand, has expressed indignation at our
publication of this interview, she being under the impression that she
was simply having a friendly gossip with a neighbour. Our
representative, however, is sure he explained to Mrs. Meadows that his
visit was official; and, in any case, our duty to the public must be
held to exonerate us from all blame in the matter.
* * *
Mr. Joseph Onions, of the Broadway, Hammersmith, auctioneer and house
agent, expressed himself to our representative as most surprised at the
turn that events had subsequently taken. The letter that Mr. Onions
received from Miss Comfort Price was explicit and definite. It was to
the effect that if he would call upon a certain Mr. Quincey, of
Harcourt Buildings, Temple, and acknowledge that it was he who began
the row at the Earl's Court Exhibition on the evening of the
twenty-seventh, that then the engagement between himself and Miss
Price, hitherto unacknowledged by the lady, might be regarded as a fact.
Mr. Onions, who describes himself as essentially a business man,
decided before complying with Miss Price's request to take a few
preliminary steps. As the result of judiciously conducted inquiries,
first at the Vine Street Police Station, and secondly at Twickenham,
Mr. Onions arrived later in the day at Mr. Quincey's chambers, with, to
use his own expression, all the cards in his hand. It was Mr. Quincey
who, professing himself unable to comply with Mr. Onion's suggestion,
arranged the interview with Miss Bulstrode. And it was Miss Bulstrode
herself who, on condition that Mr. Onions added to the undertaking the
further condition that he would marry Miss Price before the end of the
month, offered to make it two hundred. It was in their joint
interest--Mr. Onions regarding himself and Miss Price as now one--that
Mr. Onions suggested her making it three, using such arguments as,
under the circumstances, naturally occurred to him--as, for example,
the damage caused to the lady's reputation by the whole proceedings,
culminating in a night spent by the lady, according to her own account,
on Ham Common. That the price demanded was reasonable Mr. Onions
considers as proved by Miss Bulstrode's eventual acceptance of his
terms. That, having got out of him all that he wanted, Mr. Quincey
should have "considered it his duty" to communicate the entire details
of the transaction to Miss Price, through the medium of Mr. Andrews,
thinking it "as well she should know the character of the man she
proposed to marry," Mr. Onions considers a gross breach of etiquette as
between gentlemen; and having regard to Miss Price's after behaviour,
Mr. Onions can only say that she is not the girl he took her for.
Mr. Aaron Andrews, on whom our representative called, was desirous at
first of not being drawn into the matter; but on our representative
explaining to him that our only desire was to contradict false rumours
likely to be harmful to Mr. Parable's reputation, Mr. Andrews saw the
necessity of putting our representative in possession of the truth.
She came back on Tuesday afternoon, explained Mr. Andrews, and I had a
talk with her.
"It is all right, Mr. Andrews," she told me; "they've been in
communication with my young man, and Miss Bulstrode has seen the
magistrate privately. The case will be dismissed with a fine of forty
shillings, and Mr. Quincey has arranged to keep it out of the papers."
"Well, all's well that ends well," I answered; "but it might have been
better, my girl, if you had mentioned that young man of yours a bit
earlier."
"I did not know it was of any importance," she explained. "Mr. Parable
told me nothing. If it hadn't been for chance, I should never have
known what was happening."
I had always liked the young woman. Mr. Quincey had suggested my
waiting till after Wednesday. But there seemed to me no particular
object in delay.
"Are you fond of him?" I asked her.
"Yes," she answered. "I am fonder than--" And then she stopped
herself suddenly and flared scarlet. "Who are you talking about?" she
demanded.
"This young man of yours," I said. "Mr.--What's his name--Onions?"
"Oh, that?" she answered. "Oh, yes; he's all right."
"And if he wasn't?" I said, and she looked at me hard.
"I told him," she said, "that if he would do what I asked him to do,
I'd marry him. And he seems to have done it."
"There are ways of doing everything," I said; and, seeing it wasn't
going to break her heart, I told her just the plain facts. She
listened without a word, and when I had finished she put her arms round
my neck and kissed me. I am old enough to be her grandfather, but
twenty years ago it might have upset me.
"I think I shall be able to save Miss Bulstrode that three hundred
pounds," she laughed, and ran upstairs and changed her things. When
later I looked into the kitchen she was humming.
Mr. John came up by the car, and I could see he was in one of his moods.
"Pack me some things for a walking tour," he said. "Don't forget the
knapsack. I am going to Scotland by the eight-thirty."
"Will you be away long?" I asked him.
"It depends upon how long it takes me," he answered. "When I come back
I am going to be married."
"Who is the lady?" I asked, though, of course, I knew.
"Miss Bulstrode," he said.
"Well," I said, "she--"
"That will do," he said; "I have had all that from the three of them
for the last two days. She is a Socialist, and a Suffragist, and all
the rest of it, and my ideal helpmate. She is well off, and that will
enable me to devote all my time to putting the world to rights without
bothering about anything else. Our home will be the nursery of
advanced ideas. We shall share together the joys and delights of the
public platform. What more can any man want?"
"You will want your dinner early," I said, "if you are going by the
eight-thirty. I had better tell cook--"
He interrupted me again.
"You can tell cook to go to the devil," he said.
I naturally stared at him.
"She is going to marry a beastly little rotter of a rent collector that
she doesn't care a damn for," he went on.
I could not understand why he seemed so mad about it.
"I don't see, in any case, what it's got to do with you," I said, "but,
as a matter of fact, she isn't."
"Isn't what?" he said, stopping short and turning on me.
"Isn't going to marry him," I answered.
"Why not?" he demanded.
"Better ask her," I suggested.
I didn't know at the time that it was a silly thing to say, and I am
not sure that I should not have said it if I had. When he is in one of
his moods I always seem to get into one of mine. I have looked after
Mr. John ever since he was a baby, so that we do not either of us treat
the other quite as perhaps we ought to.
"Tell cook I want her," he said.
"She is just in the middle--" I began.
"I don't care where she is," he said. He seemed determined never to
let me finish a sentence. "Send her up here."
She was in the kitchen by herself.
"He wants to see you at once," I said.
"Who does?" she asked.
"Mr. John," I said.
"What's he want to see me for?" she asked.
"How do I know?" I answered.
"But you do," she said. She always had an obstinate twist in her, and,
feeling it would save time, I told her what had happened.
"Well," I said, "aren't you going?"
She was standing stock still staring at the pastry she was making. She
turned to me, and there was a curious smile about her lips.
"Do you know what you ought to be wearing?" she said. "Wings, and a
little bow and arrow."
She didn't even think to wipe her hands, but went straight upstairs. It
was about half an hour later when the bell rang. Mr. John was standing
by the window.
"Is that bag ready?" he said.
"It will be," I said.
I went out into the hall and returned with the clothes brush.
"What are you going to do?" he said.
"Perhaps you don't know it," I said, "but you are all over flour."
"Cook's going with me to Scotland," he said.
I have looked after Mr. John ever since he was a boy. He was forty-two
last birthday, but when I shook hands with him through the cab window I
could have sworn he was twenty-five again.
THE LESSON.
The first time I met him, to my knowledge, was on an evil-smelling,
one-funnelled steam boat that in those days plied between London Bridge
and Antwerp. He was walking the deck arm-in-arm with a showily dressed
but decidedly attractive young woman; both of them talking and laughing
loudly. It struck me as odd, finding him a fellow-traveller by such a
route. The passage occupied eighteen hours, and the first-class return
fare was one pound twelve and six, including three meals each way;
drinks, as the contract was careful to explain, being extra. I was
earning thirty shillings a week at the time as clerk with a firm of
agents in Fenchurch Street. Our business was the purchasing of
articles on commission for customers in India, and I had learned to be
a judge of values. The beaver lined coat he was wearing--for the
evening, although it was late summer, was chilly--must have cost him a
couple of hundred pounds, while his carelessly displayed jewellery he
could easily have pawned for a thousand or more.
I could not help staring at him, and once, as they passed, he returned
my look.
After dinner, as I was leaning with my back against the gunwale on the
starboard side, he came out of the only private cabin that the vessel
boasted, and taking up a position opposite to me, with his legs well
apart and a big cigar between his thick lips, stood coolly regarding
me, as if appraising me.
"Treating yourself to a little holiday on the Continent?" he inquired.
I had not been quite sure before he spoke, but his lisp, though slight,
betrayed the Jew. His features were coarse, almost brutal; but the
restless eyes were so brilliant, the whole face so suggestive of power
and character, that, taking him as a whole, the feeling he inspired was
admiration, tempered by fear. His tone was one of kindly contempt--the
tone of a man accustomed to find most people his inferiors, and too
used to the discovery to be conceited about it.
Behind it was a note of authority that it did not occur to me to
dispute.
"Yes," I answered, adding the information that I had never been abroad
before, and had heard that Antwerp was an interesting town.
"How long have you got?" he asked.
"A fortnight," I told him.
"Like to see a bit more than Antwerp, if you could afford it, wouldn't
you?" he suggested. "Fascinating little country Holland. Just long
enough--a fortnight--to do the whole of it. I'm a Dutchman, a Dutch
Jew."
"You speak English just like an Englishman," I told him. It was
somehow in my mind to please him. I could hardly have explained why.
"And half a dozen other languages equally well," he answered, laughing.
"I left Amsterdam when I was eighteen as steerage passenger in an
emigrant ship. I haven't seen it since."
He closed the cabin door behind him, and, crossing over, laid a strong
hand on my shoulder.
"I will make a proposal to you," he said. "My business is not of the
kind that can be put out of mind, even for a few days, and there are
reasons"--he glanced over his shoulder towards the cabin door, and gave
vent to a short laugh--"why I did not want to bring any of my own staff
with me. If you care for a short tour, all expenses paid at slap-up
hotels and a ten-pound note in your pocket at the end, you can have it
for two hours' work a day."
I suppose my face expressed my acceptance, for he did not wait for me
to speak.
"Only one thing I stipulate for," he added, "that you mind your own
business and keep your mouth shut. You're by yourself, aren't you?"
"Yes," I told him.
He wrote on a sheet of his notebook, and, tearing it out, handed it to
me.
"That's your hotel at Antwerp," he said. "You are Mr. Horatio Jones's
secretary." He chuckled to himself as he repeated the name, which
certainly did not fit him. "Knock at my sitting-room door at nine
o'clock tomorrow morning. Good night!"
He ended the conversation as abruptly as he had begun it, and returned
to his cabin.
I got a glimpse of him next morning, coming out of the hotel bureau. He
was speaking to the manager in French, and had evidently given
instructions concerning me, for I found myself preceded by an
obsequious waiter to quite a charming bedroom on the second floor,
while the "English breakfast" placed before me later in the coffee-room
was of a size and character that in those days I did not often enjoy.
About the work, also, he was as good as his word. I was rarely
occupied for more than two hours each morning. The duties consisted
chiefly of writing letters and sending off telegrams. The letters he
signed and had posted himself, so that I never learnt his real
name--not during that fortnight--but I gathered enough to be aware that
he was a man whose business interests must have been colossal and
world-wide.
He never introduced me to "Mrs. Horatio Jones," and after a few days he
seemed to be bored with her, so that often I would take her place as
his companion in afternoon excursions.
I could not help liking the man. Strength always compels the adoration
of youth; and there was something big and heroic about him. His
daring, his swift decisions, his utter unscrupulousness, his occasional
cruelty when necessity seemed to demand it. One could imagine him in
earlier days a born leader of savage hordes, a lover of fighting for
its own sake, meeting all obstacles with fierce welcome, forcing his
way onward, indifferent to the misery and destruction caused by his
progress, his eyes never swerving from their goal; yet not without a
sense of rough justice, not altogether without kindliness when it could
be indulged in without danger.
One afternoon he took me with him into the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam,
and threading his way without hesitation through its maze of unsavoury
slums, paused before a narrow three-storeyed house overlooking a
stagnant backwater.
"The room I was born in," he explained. "Window with the broken pane
on the second floor. It has never been mended."
I stole a glance at him. His face betrayed no suggestion of sentiment,
but rather of amusement. He offered me a cigar, which I was glad of,
for the stench from the offal-laden water behind us was distracting,
and for a while we both smoked in silence: he with his eyes
half-closed; it was a trick of his when working out a business problem.
"Curious, my making such a choice," he remarked. "A butcher's
assistant for my father and a consumptive buttonhole-maker for my
mother. I suppose I knew what I was about. Quite the right thing for
me to have done, as it turned out."
I stared at him, wondering whether he was speaking seriously or in grim
jest. He was given at times to making odd remarks. There was a vein
of the fantastic in him that was continually cropping out and
astonishing me.
"It was a bit risky," I suggested. "Better choose something a little
safer next time."
He looked round at me sharply, and, not quite sure of his mood, I kept
a grave face.
"Perhaps you are right," he agreed, with a laugh. "We must have a talk
about it one day."
After that visit to the Goortgasse he was less reserved with me, and
would often talk to me on subjects that I should never have guessed
would have interested him. I found him a curious mixture. Behind the
shrewd, cynical man of business I caught continual glimpses of the
visionary.
I parted from him at The Hague. He paid my fare back to London, and
gave me an extra pound for travelling expenses, together with the
ten-pound note he had promised me. He had packed off "Mrs. Horatio
Jones" some days before, to the relief, I imagine, of both of them, and
he himself continued his journey to Berlin. I never expected to see
him again, although for the next few months I often thought of him, and
even tried to discover him by inquiries in the City. I had, however,
very little to go upon, and after I had left Fenchurch Street behind
me, and drifted into literature, I forgot him.
Until one day I received a letter addressed to the care of my
publishers. It bore the Swiss postmark, and opening it and turning to
the signature I sat wondering for the moment where I had met "Horatio
Jones." And then I remembered.
He was lying bruised and broken in a woodcutter's hut on the slopes of
the Jungfrau. Had been playing a fool's trick, so he described it,
thinking he could climb mountains at his age. They would carry him
down to Lauterbrunnen as soon as he could be moved farther with safety,
but for the present he had no one to talk to but the nurse and a Swiss
doctor who climbed up to see him every third day. He begged me, if I
could spare the time, to come over and spend a week with him. He
enclosed a hundred-pound cheque for my expenses, making no apology for
doing so. He was complimentary about my first book, which he had been
reading, and asked me to telegraph him my reply, giving me his real
name, which, as I had guessed it would, proved to be one of the best
known in the financial world. My time was my own now, and I wired him
that I would be with him the following Monday.
He was lying in the sun outside the hut when I arrived late in the
afternoon, after a three-hours' climb followed by a porter carrying my
small amount of luggage. He could not raise his hand, but his
strangely brilliant eyes spoke their welcome.
"I am glad you were able to come," he said. "I have no near relations,
and my friends--if that is the right term--are business men who would
be bored to tears. Besides, they are not the people I feel I want to
talk to, now."
He was entirely reconciled to the coming of death. Indeed, there were
moments when he gave me the idea that he was looking forward to it with
an awed curiosity. With the conventional notion of cheering him, I
talked of staying till he was able to return with me to civilisation,
but he only laughed.
"I am not going back," he said. "Not that way. What they may do
afterwards with these broken bones does not much concern either you or
me.
"It's a good place to die in," he continued. "A man can think up here."
It was difficult to feel sorry for him, his own fate appearing to make
so little difference to himself. The world was still full of interest
to him--not his own particular corner of it: that, he gave me to
understand, he had tidied up and dismissed from his mind. It was the
future, its coming problems, its possibilities, its new developments,
about which he seemed eager to talk. One might have imagined him a
young man with the years before him.
One evening--it was near the end--we were alone together. The
woodcutter and his wife had gone down into the valley to see their
children, and the nurse, leaving him in my charge, had gone for a walk.
We had carried him round to his favourite side of the hut facing the
towering mass of the Jungfrau. As the shadows lengthened it seemed to
come nearer to us, and there fell a silence upon us.
Gradually I became aware that his piercing eyes were fixed on me, and
in answer I turned and looked at him.
"I wonder if we shall meet again," he said, "or, what is more
important, if we shall remember one another."
I was puzzled for the moment. We had discussed more than once the
various religions of mankind, and his attitude towards the orthodox
beliefs had always been that of amused contempt.
"It has been growing upon me these last few days," he continued. "It
flashed across me the first time I saw you on the boat. We were
fellow-students. Something, I don't know what, drew us very close
together. There was a woman. They were burning her. And then there
was a rush of people and a sudden darkness, and your eyes close to
mine."
I suppose it was some form of hypnotism, for, as he spoke, his
searching eyes fixed on mine, there came to me a dream of narrow
streets filled with a strange crowd, of painted houses such as I had
never seen, and a haunting fear that seemed to be always lurking behind
each shadow. I shook myself free, but not without an effort.
"So that's what you meant," I said, "that evening in the Goortgasse.
You believe in it?"
"A curious thing happened to me," he said, "when I was a child. I
could hardly have been six years old. I had gone to Ghent with my
parents. I think it was to visit some relative. One day we went into
the castle. It was in ruins then, but has since been restored. We were
in what was once the council chamber. I stole away by myself to the
other end of the great room and, not knowing why I did so, I touched a
spring concealed in the masonry, and a door swung open with a harsh,
grinding noise. I remember peering round the opening. The others had
their backs towards me, and I slipped through and closed the door
behind me. I seemed instinctively to know my way. I ran down a flight
of steps and along dark corridors through which I had to feel my way
with my hands, till I came to a small door in an angle of the wall. I
knew the room that lay the other side. A photograph was taken of it
and published years afterwards, when the place was discovered, and it
was exactly as I knew it with its way out underneath the city wall
through one of the small houses in the Aussermarkt.
"I could not open the door. Some stones had fallen against it, and
fearing to get punished, I made my way back into the council room. It
was empty when I reached it. They were searching for me in the other
rooms, and I never told them of my adventure."
At any other time I might have laughed. Later, recalling his talk that
evening, I dismissed the whole story as mere suggestion, based upon the
imagination of a child; but at the time those strangely brilliant eyes
had taken possession of me. They remained still fixed upon me as I sat
on the low rail of the veranda watching his white face, into which the
hues of death seemed already to be creeping.
I had a feeling that, through them, he was trying to force remembrance
of himself upon me. The man himself--the very soul of him--seemed to
be concentrated in them. Something formless and yet distinct was
visualising itself before me. It came to me as a physical relief when
a spasm of pain caused him to turn his eyes away from me.
"You will find a letter when I am gone," he went on, after a moment's
silence. "I thought that you might come too late, or that I might not
have strength enough to tell you. I felt that out of the few people I
have met outside business, you would be the most likely not to dismiss
the matter as mere nonsense. What I am glad of myself, and what I wish
you to remember, is that I am dying with all my faculties about me.
The one thing I have always feared through life was old age, with its
gradual mental decay. It has always seemed to me that I have died more
or less suddenly while still in possession of my will. I have always
thanked God for that."
He closed his eyes, but I do not think he was sleeping; and a little
later the nurse returned, and we carried him indoors. I had no further
conversation with him, though at his wish during the following two days
I continued to read to him, and on the third day he died.
I found the letter he had spoken of. He had told me where it would be.
It contained a bundle of banknotes which he was giving me--so he
wrote--with the advice to get rid of them as quickly as possible.
"If I had not loved you," the letter continued, "I would have left you
an income, and you would have blessed me, instead of cursing me, as you
should have done, for spoiling your life."
This world was a school, so he viewed it, for the making of men; and
the one thing essential to a man was strength. One gathered the
impression of a deeply religious man. In these days he would, no
doubt, have been claimed as a theosophist; but his beliefs he had made
for, and adapted to, himself--to his vehement, conquering temperament.
God needed men to serve Him--to help Him. So, through many changes,
through many ages, God gave men life: that by contest and by struggle
they might ever increase in strength; to those who proved themselves
most fit the sterner task, the humbler beginnings, the greater
obstacles. And the crown of well-doing was ever victory. He appeared
to have convinced himself that he was one of the chosen, that he was
destined for great ends. He had been a slave in the time of the
Pharaohs; a priest in Babylon; had clung to the swaying ladders in the
sack of Rome; had won his way into the councils when Europe was a
battlefield of contending tribes; had climbed to power in the days of
the Borgias.
To most of us, I suppose, there come at odd moments haunting thoughts
of strangely familiar, far-off things; and one wonders whether they are
memories or dreams. We dismiss them as we grow older and the present
with its crowding interests shuts them out; but in youth they were more
persistent. With him they appeared to have remained, growing in
reality. His recent existence, closed under the white sheet in the hut
behind me as I read, was only one chapter of the story; he was looking
forward to the next.
He wondered, so the letter ran, whether he would have any voice in
choosing it. In either event he was curious of the result. What he
anticipated confidently were new opportunities, wider experience. In
what shape would these come to him?
The letter ended with a strange request. It was that, on returning to
England, I should continue to think of him: not of the dead man I had
known, the Jewish banker, the voice familiar to me, the trick of
speech, of manner--all such being but the changing clothes--but of the
man himself, the soul of him, that would seek and perhaps succeed in
revealing itself to me.
A postscript concluded the letter, to which at the time I attached no
importance. He had made a purchase of the hut in which he had died.
After his removal it was to remain empty.
I folded the letter and placed it among other papers, and passing into
the hut took a farewell glance at the massive, rugged face. The mask
might have served a sculptor for the embodiment of strength. He gave
one the feeling that having conquered death he was sleeping.
I did what he had requested of me. Indeed, I could not help it. I
thought of him constantly. That may have been the explanation of it.
I was bicycling through Norfolk, and one afternoon, to escape a coming
thunderstorm, I knocked at the door of a lonely cottage on the
outskirts of a common. The woman, a kindly bustling person, asked me
in; and hoping I would excuse her, as she was busy ironing, returned to
her work in another room. I thought myself alone, and was standing at
the window watching the pouring rain. After a while, without knowing
why, I turned. And then I saw a child seated on a high chair behind a
table in a dark corner of the room. A book of pictures was open before
it, but it was looking at me. I could hear the sound of the woman at
her ironing in the other room. Outside there was the steady thrashing
of the rain. The child was looking at me with large, round eyes filled
with a terrible pathos. I noticed that the little body was misshapen.
It never moved; it made no sound; but I had the feeling that out of
those strangely wistful eyes something was trying to speak to me.
Something was forming itself before me--not visible to my sight; but it
was there, in the room. It was the man I had last looked upon as,
dying, he sat beside me in the hut below the Jungfrau. But something
had happened to him. Moved by instinct I went over to him and lifted
him out of his chair, and with a sob the little wizened arms closed
round my neck and he clung to me crying--a pitiful, low, wailing cry.
Hearing his cry, the woman came back. A comely, healthy-looking woman.
She took him from my arms and comforted him.
"He gets a bit sorry for himself at times," she explained. "At least,
so I fancy. You see, he can't run about like other children, or do
anything without getting pains."
"Was it an accident?" I asked.
"No," she answered, "and his father as fine a man as you would find in
a day's march. Just a visitation of God, as they tell me. Sure I
don't know why. There never was a better little lad, and clever, too,
when he's not in pain. Draws wonderfully."
The storm had passed. He grew quieter in her arms, and when I had
promised to come again and bring him a new picture-book, a little
grateful smile flickered across the drawn face, but he would not talk.
I kept in touch with him. Mere curiosity would have made me do that.
He grew more normal as the years went by, and gradually the fancy that
had come to me at our first meeting faded farther into the background.
Sometimes, using the very language of the dead man's letter, I would
talk to him, wondering if by any chance some flash of memory would come
back to him, and once or twice it seemed to me that into the mild,
pathetic eyes there came a look that I had seen before, but it passed
away, and indeed, it was difficult to think of this sad little human
oddity, with its pleading helplessness, in connection with the strong,
swift, conquering spirit that I had watched passing away amid the
silence of the mountains.
The one thing that brought joy to him was his art. I cannot help
thinking that, but for his health, he would have made a name for
himself. His work was always clever and original, but it was the work
of an invalid.
"I shall never be great," he said to me once. "I have such wonderful
dreams, but when it comes to working them out there is something that
hampers me. It always seems to me as if at the last moment a hand was
stretched out that clutched me by the feet. I long so, but I have not
the strength. It is terrible to be one of the weaklings."
It clung to me, that word he had used. For a man to know he is weak;
it sounds a paradox, but a man must be strong to know that. And
dwelling upon this, and upon his patience and his gentleness, there
came to me suddenly remembrance of that postscript, the significance of
which I had not understood.
He was a young man of about three- or four-and-twenty at the time. His
father had died, and he was living in poor lodgings in the south of
London, supporting himself and his mother by strenuous, ill-paid work.
"I want you to come with me for a few days' holiday," I told him.
I had some difficulty in getting him to accept my help, for he was very
proud in his sensitive, apologetic way. But I succeeded eventually,
persuading him it would be good for his work. Physically the journey
must have cost him dear, for he could never move his body without pain,
but the changing landscapes and the strange cities more than repaid
him; and when one morning I woke him early and he saw for the first
time the distant mountains clothed in dawn, there came a new light into
his eyes.
We reached the hut late in the afternoon. I had made my arrangements
so that we should be there alone. Our needs were simple, and in
various wanderings I had learnt to be independent. I did not tell him
why I had brought him there, beyond the beauty and stillness of the
place. Purposely I left him much alone there, making ever-lengthening
walks my excuse, and though he was always glad of my return I felt that
the desire was growing upon him to be there by himself.
One evening, having climbed farther than I had intended, I lost my way.
It was not safe in that neighbourhood to try new pathways in the dark,
and chancing upon a deserted shelter, I made myself a bed upon the
straw.
I found him seated outside the hut when I returned, and he greeted me
as if he had been expecting me just at that moment and not before. He
guessed just what had happened, he told me, and had not been alarmed.
During the day I found him watching me, and in the evening, as we sat
in his favourite place outside the hut, he turned to me.
"You think it true?" he said. "That you and I sat here years ago and
talked?"
"I cannot tell," I answered. "I only know that he died here, if there
be such a thing as death--that no one has ever lived here since. I
doubt if the door has ever been opened till we came."
"They have always been with me," he continued, "these dreams. But I
have always dismissed them. They seemed so ludicrous. Always there
came to me wealth, power, victory. Life was so easy."
He laid his thin hand on mine. A strange new look came into his
eyes--a look of hope, almost of joy.
"Do you know what it seems to me?" he said. "You will laugh perhaps,
but the thought has come to me up here that God has some fine use for
me. Success was making me feeble. He has given me weakness and
failure that I may learn strength. The great thing is to be strong."
SYLVIA OF THE LETTERS.
Old Ab Herrick, so most people called him. Not that he was actually
old; the term was an expression of liking rather than any reflection on
his years. He lived in an old-fashioned house--old-fashioned, that is,
for New York--on the south side of West Twentieth Street: once upon a
time, but that was long ago, quite a fashionable quarter. The house,
together with Mrs. Travers, had been left him by a maiden aunt. An
"apartment" would, of course, have been more suitable to a bachelor of
simple habits, but the situation was convenient from a journalistic
point of view, and for fifteen years Abner Herrick had lived and worked
there.
Then one evening, after a three days' absence, Abner Herrick returned
to West Twentieth Street, bringing with him a little girl wrapped up in
a shawl, and a wooden box tied with a piece of cord. He put the box on
the table; and the young lady, loosening her shawl, walked to the
window and sat down facing the room.
Mrs. Travers took the box off the table and put it on the floor--it was
quite a little box--and waited.
"This young lady," explained Abner Herrick, "is Miss Ann Kavanagh,
daughter of--of an old friend of mine."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Travers, and remained still expectant.
"Miss Kavanagh," continued Abner Herrick, "will be staying with us
for--" He appeared to be uncertain of the length of Miss Kavanagh's
visit. He left the sentence unfinished and took refuge in more
pressing questions.
"What about the bedroom on the second floor? Is it ready? Sheets
aired--all that sort of thing?"
"It can be," replied Mrs. Travers. The tone was suggestive of judgment
reserved.
"I think, if you don't mind, Mrs. Travers, that we'd like to go to bed
as soon as possible." From force of habit Abner S. Herrick in speaking
employed as a rule the editorial "we." "We have been travelling all
day and we are very tired. To-morrow morning--"
"I'd like some supper," said Miss Kavanagh from her seat in the window,
without moving.
"Of course," agreed Miss Kavanagh's host, with a feeble pretence that
the subject had been on the tip of his tongue. As a matter of fact, he
really had forgotten all about it. "We might have it up here while the
room is being got ready. Perhaps a little--"
"A soft boiled egg and a glass of milk, if you please, Mrs. Travers,"
interrupted Miss Kavanagh, still from her seat at the window.
"I'll see about it," said Mrs. Travers, and went out, taking the quite
small box with her.
Such was the coming into this story of Ann Kavanagh at the age of eight
years; or, as Miss Kavanagh herself would have explained, had the
question been put to her, eight years and seven months, for Ann
Kavanagh was a precise young lady. She was not beautiful--not then.
She was much too sharp featured; the little pointed chin protruding
into space to quite a dangerous extent. Her large dark eyes were her
one redeeming feature. But the level brows above them were much too
ready with their frown. A sallow complexion and nondescript hair
deprived her of that charm of colouring on which youth can generally
depend for attraction, whatever its faults of form. Nor could it
truthfully be said that sweetness of disposition afforded compensation.
"A self-willed, cantankerous little imp I call her," was Mrs. Travers's
comment, expressed after one of the many trials of strength between
them, from which Miss Kavanagh had as usual emerged triumphant.
"It's her father," explained Abner Herrick, feeling himself unable to
contradict.
"It's unfortunate," answered Mrs. Travers, "whatever it is."
To Uncle Ab himself, as she had come to call him, she could on occasion
be yielding and affectionate; but that, as Mrs. Travers took care to
point out to her, was a small thing to her credit.
"If you had the instincts of an ordinary Christian child," explained
Mrs. Travers to her, "you'd be thinking twenty-four hours a day of what
you could do to repay him for all his loving kindness to you; instead
of causing him, as you know you do, a dozen heartaches in a week.
You're an ungrateful little monkey, and when he's gone you'll--"
Upon which Miss Kavanagh, not waiting to hear more, flew upstairs and,
locking herself in her own room, gave herself up to howling and
remorse; but was careful not to emerge until she felt bad tempered
again; and able, should opportunity present itself, to renew the
contest with Mrs. Travers unhampered by sentiment.
But Mrs. Travers's words had sunk in deeper than that good lady herself
had hoped for; and one evening, when Abner Herrick was seated at his
desk penning a scathing indictment of the President for lack of
firmness and decision on the tariff question, Ann, putting her thin
arms round his neck and rubbing her little sallow face against his
right-hand whisker, took him to task on the subject.
"You're not bringing me up properly--not as you ought to," explained
Ann. "You give way to me too much, and you never scold me."
"Not scold you!" exclaimed Abner with a certain warmth of indignation.
"Why, I'm doing it all--"
"Not what _I_ call scolding," continued Ann. "It's very wrong of you.
I shall grow up horrid if you don't help me."
As Ann with great clearness pointed out to him, there was no one else
to undertake the job with any chance of success. If Abner failed her,
then she supposed there was no hope for her: she would end by becoming
a wicked woman, and everybody, including herself, would hate her. It
was a sad prospect. The contemplation of it brought tears to Ann's
eyes.
He saw the justice of her complaint and promised to turn over a new
leaf. He honestly meant to do so; but, like many another repentant
sinner, found himself feeble before the difficulties of performance. He
might have succeeded better had it not been for her soft deep eyes
beneath her level brows.
"You're not much like your mother," so he explained to her one day,
"except about the eyes. Looking into your eyes I can almost see your
mother."
He was smoking a pipe beside the fire, and Ann, who ought to have been
in bed, had perched herself upon one of the arms of his chair and was
kicking a hole in the worn leather with her little heels.
"She was very beautiful, my mother, wasn't she?" suggested Ann.
Abner Herrick blew a cloud from his pipe and watched carefully the
curling smoke.
"In a way, yes," he answered. "Quite beautiful."
"What do you mean, 'In a way'?" demanded Ann with some asperity.
"It was a spiritual beauty, your mother's," Abner explained. "The soul
looking out of her eyes. I don't think it possible to imagine a more
beautiful disposition than your mother's. Whenever I think of your
mother," continued Abner after a pause, "Wordsworth's lines always come
into my mind."
He murmured the quotation to himself, but loud enough to be heard by
sharp ears. Miss Kavanagh was mollified.
"You were in love with my mother, weren't you?" she questioned him
kindly.
"Yes, I suppose I was," mused Abner, still with his gaze upon the
curling smoke.
"What do you mean by 'you suppose you were'?" snapped Ann. "Didn't you
know?"
The tone recalled him from his dreams.
"I was in love with your mother very much," he corrected himself,
turning to her with a smile.
"Then why didn't you marry her?" asked Ann. "Wouldn't she have you?"
"I never asked her," explained Abner.
"Why not?" persisted Ann, returning to asperity.
He thought a moment.
"You wouldn't understand," he told her.
"Yes, I would," retorted Ann.
"No, you wouldn't," he contradicted her quite shortly. They were both
beginning to lose patience with one another. "No woman ever could."
"I'm not a woman," explained Ann, "and I'm very smart. You've said so
yourself."
"Not so smart as all that," growled Abner. "Added to which, it's time
for you to go to bed."
Her anger with him was such that it rendered her absolutely polite. It
had that occasional effect upon her. She slid from the arm of his
chair and stood beside him, a rigid figure of frozen femininity.
"I think you are quite right, Uncle Herrick. Good night!" But at the
door she could not resist a parting shot:
"You might have been my father, and then perhaps she wouldn't have
died. I think it was very wicked of you."
After she was gone Abner sat gazing into the fire, and his pipe went
out. Eventually the beginnings of a smile stole to the corners of his
mouth, but before it could spread any farther he dismissed it with a
sigh.
Abner, for the next day or two, feared a renewal of the conversation,
but Ann appeared to have forgotten it; and as time went by it faded
from Abner's own memory. Until one evening quite a while later.
The morning had brought him his English mail. It had been arriving
with some regularity, and Ann had noticed that Abner always opened it
before his other correspondence. One letter he read through twice, and
Ann, who was pretending to be reading the newspaper, felt that he was
looking at her.
"I have been thinking, my dear," said Abner, "that it must be rather
lonely for you here, all by yourself."
"It would be," answered Ann, "if I were here all by myself."
"I mean," said Abner, "without any other young person to talk to
and--and to play with."
"You forget," said Ann, "that I'm nearly thirteen."
"God bless my soul," said Abner. "How time does fly!"
"Who is she?" asked Ann.
"It isn't a 'she,'" explained Abner. "It's a 'he.' Poor little chap
lost his mother two years ago, and now his father's dead. I
thought--it occurred to me we might put him up for a time. Look after
him a bit. What do you think? It would make the house more lively,
wouldn't it?"
"It might," said Ann.
She sat very silent, and Abner, whose conscience was troubling him,
watched her a little anxiously. After a time she looked up.
"What's he like?" she asked.
"Precisely what I am wondering myself," confessed Abner. "We shall
have to wait and see. But his mother--his mother," repeated Abner,
"was the most beautiful woman I have ever known. If he is anything
like she was as a girl--" He left the sentence unfinished.
"You have not seen her since--since she was young?" questioned Ann.
Abner shook his head. "She married an Englishman. He took her back
with him to London."
"I don't like Englishmen," said Ann.
"They have their points," suggested Abner. "Besides, boys take after
their mothers, they say." And Abner rose and gathered his letters
together.
Ann remained very thoughtful all that day. In the evening, when Abner
for a moment laid down his pen for the purpose of relighting his pipe,
Ann came to him, seating herself on the corner of the desk.
"I suppose," she said, "that's why you never married mother?"
Abner's mind at the moment was much occupied with the Panama Canal.
"What mother?" he asked. "Whose mother?"
"My mother," answered Ann. "I suppose men are like that."
"What are you talking about?" said Abner, dismissing altogether the
Panama Canal.
"You loved my mother very much," explained Ann with cold deliberation.
"She always made you think of Wordsworth's perfect woman."
"Who told you all that?" demanded Abner.
"You did."
"I did?"
"It was the day you took me away from Miss Carew's because she said she
couldn't manage me," Ann informed him.
"Good Lord! Why, that must be two years ago," mused Abner.
"Three," Ann corrected him. "All but a few days."
"I wish you'd use your memory for things you're wanted to remember,"
growled Abner.
"You said you had never asked her to marry you," pursued Ann
relentlessly; "you wouldn't tell me why. You said I shouldn't
understand."
"My fault," muttered Abner. "I forget you're a child. You ask all
sorts of questions that never ought to enter your head, and I'm fool
enough to answer you."
One small tear that had made its escape unnoticed by her was stealing
down her cheek. He wiped it away and took one of her small paws in
both his hands.
"I loved your mother very dearly," he said gravely. "I had loved her
from a child. But no woman will ever understand the power that beauty
has upon a man. You see we're built that way. It's Nature's lure.
Later on, of course, I might have forgotten; but then it was too late.
Can you forgive me?"
"But you still love her," reasoned Ann through her tears, "or you
wouldn't want him to come here."
"She had such a hard time of it," pleaded Abner. "It made things
easier to her, my giving her my word that I would always look after the
boy. You'll help me?"
"I'll try," said Ann. But there was not much promise in the tone.
Nor did Matthew Pole himself, when he arrived, do much to help matters.
He was so hopelessly English. At least, that was the way Ann put it.
He was shy and sensitive. It is a trying combination. It made him
appear stupid and conceited. A lonely childhood had rendered him
unsociable, unadaptable. A dreamy, imaginative temperament imposed
upon him long moods of silence: a liking for long solitary walks. For
the first time Ann and Mrs. Travers were in agreement.
"A sulky young dog," commented Mrs. Travers. "If I were your uncle I'd
look out for a job for him in San Francisco."
"You see," said Ann in excuse for him, "it's such a foggy country,
England. It makes them like that."
"It's a pity they can't get out of it," said Mrs. Travers.
Also, sixteen is an awkward age for a boy. Virtues, still in the
chrysalis state, are struggling to escape from their parent vices.
Pride, an excellent quality making for courage and patience, still
appears in the swathings of arrogance. Sincerity still expresses
itself in the language of rudeness. Kindness itself is apt to be
mistaken for amazing impertinence and love of interference.
It was kindness--a genuine desire to be useful, that prompted him to
point out to Ann her undoubted faults and failings, nerved him to the
task of bringing her up in the way she should go. Mrs. Travers had
long since washed her hands of the entire business. Uncle Ab, as
Matthew also called him, had proved himself a weakling. Providence, so
it seemed to Matthew, must have been waiting impatiently for his
advent. Ann at first thought it was some new school of humour. When
she found he was serious she set herself to cure him. But she never
did. He was too conscientious for that. The instincts of the guide,
philosopher, and friend to humanity in general were already too strong
in him. There were times when Abner almost wished that Matthew Pole
senior had lived a little longer.
But he did not lose hope. At the back of his mind was the fancy that
these two children of his loves would come together. Nothing is quite
so sentimental as a healthy old bachelor. He pictured them making
unity from his confusions; in imagination heard the patter on the
stairs of tiny feet. To all intents and purposes he would be a
grandfather. Priding himself on his cunning, he kept his dream to
himself, as he thought, but under-estimated Ann's smartness.
For days together she would follow Matthew with her eyes, watching him
from behind her long lashes, listening in silence to everything he
said, vainly seeking to find points in him. He was unaware of her
generous intentions. He had a vague feeling he was being criticised.
He resented it even in those days.
"I do try," said Ann suddenly one evening apropos of nothing at all.
"No one will ever know how hard I try not to dislike him."
Abner looked up.
"Sometimes," continued Ann, "I tell myself I have almost succeeded. And
then he will go and do something that will bring it all on again."
"What does he do?" asked Abner.
"Oh, I can't tell you," confessed Ann. "If I told you it would sound
as if it was my fault. It's all so silly. And then he thinks such a
lot of himself. If one only knew why! He can't tell you himself when
you ask him."
"You have asked him?" queried Abner.
"I wanted to know," explained Ann. "I thought there might be something
in him that I could like."
"Why do you want to like him?" asked Abner, wondering how much she had
guessed.
"I know," wailed Ann. "You are hoping that when I am grown up I shall
marry him. And I don't want to. It's so ungrateful of me."
"Well, you're not grown up yet," Abner consoled her. "And so long as
you are feeling like that about it, I'm not likely to want you to marry
him."
"It would make you so happy," sobbed Ann.
"Yes, but we've got to think of the boy, don't forget that," laughed
Abner. "Perhaps he might object."
"He would. I know he would," cried Ann with conviction. "He's no
better than I am."
"Have you been asking him to?" demanded Abner, springing up from his
chair.
"Not to marry me," explained Ann. "But I told him he must be an
unnatural little beast not to try to like me when he knew how you loved
me."
"Helpful way of putting it," growled Abner. "And what did he say to
that?"
"Admitted it," flashed Ann indignantly. "Said he had tried."
Abner succeeded in persuading her that the path of dignity and virtue
lay in her dismissing the whole subject from her mind.
He had made a mistake, so he told himself. Age may be attracted by
contrast, but youth has no use for its opposite. He would send Matthew
away. He could return for week-ends. Continually so close to one
another, they saw only one another's specks and flaws; there is no
beauty without perspective. Matthew wanted the corners rubbed off him,
that was all. Mixing more with men, his priggishness would be laughed
out of him. Otherwise he was quite a decent youngster, clean minded,
high principled. Clever, too: he often said quite unexpected things.
With approaching womanhood, changes were taking place in Ann. Seeing
her every day one hardly noticed them; but there were times when,
standing before him flushed from a walk or bending over him to kiss him
before starting for some friendly dance, Abner would blink his eyes and
be puzzled. The thin arms were growing round and firm; the sallow
complexion warming into olive; the once patchy, mouse-coloured hair
darkening into a rich harmony of brown. The eyes beneath her level
brows, that had always been her charm, still reminded Abner of her
mother; but there was more light in them, more danger.
"I'll run down to Albany and talk to Jephson about him," decided Abner.
"He can come home on Saturdays."
The plot might have succeeded: one never can tell. But a New York
blizzard put a stop to it. The cars broke down, and Abner, walking
home in thin shoes from a meeting, caught a chill, which, being
neglected, proved fatal.
Abner was troubled as he lay upon his bed. The children were sitting
very silent by the window. He sent Matthew out on a message, and then
beckoned Ann to come to him. He loved the boy, too, but Ann was nearer
to him.
"You haven't thought any more," he whispered, "about--"
"No," answered Ann. "You wished me not to."
"You must never think," he said, "to show your love for my memory by
doing anything that would not make you happy. If I am anywhere
around," he continued with a smile, "it will be your good I shall be
watching for, not my own way. You will remember that?"
He had meant to do more for them, but the end had come so much sooner
than he had expected. To Ann he left the house (Mrs. Travers had
already retired on a small pension) and a sum that, judiciously
invested, the friend and attorney thought should be sufficient for her
needs, even supposing--The friend and attorney, pausing to dwell upon
the oval face with its dark eyes, left the sentence unfinished.
To Matthew he wrote a loving letter, enclosing a thousand dollars. He
knew that Matthew, now in a position to earn his living as a
journalist, would rather have taken nothing. It was to be looked upon
merely as a parting gift. Matthew decided to spend it on travel. It
would fit him the better for his journalistic career, so he explained
to Ann. But in his heart he had other ambitions. It would enable him
to put them to the test.
So there came an evening when Ann stood waving a handkerchief as a
great liner cast its moorings. She watched it till its lights grew
dim, and then returned to West Twentieth Street. Strangers would take
possession of it on the morrow. Ann had her supper in the kitchen in
company with the nurse, who had stayed on at her request; and that
night, slipping noiselessly from her room, she lay upon the floor, her
head resting against the arm of the chair where Abner had been wont to
sit and smoke his evening pipe; somehow it seemed to comfort her. And
Matthew the while, beneath the stars, was pacing the silent deck of the
great liner and planning out the future.
To only one other being had he ever confided his dreams. She lay in
the churchyard; and there was nothing left to encourage him but his own
heart. But he had no doubts. He would be a great writer. His two
hundred pounds would support him till he had gained a foothold. After
that he would climb swiftly. He had done right, so he told himself, to
turn his back on journalism: the grave of literature. He would see men
and cities, writing as he went. Looking back, years later, he was able
to congratulate himself on having chosen the right road. He thought it
would lead him by easy ascent to fame and fortune. It did better for
him than that. It led him through poverty and loneliness, through hope
deferred and heartache--through long nights of fear, when pride and
confidence fell upon him, leaving him only the courage to endure.
His great poems, his brilliant essays, had been rejected so often that
even he himself had lost all love for them. At the suggestion of an
editor more kindly than the general run, and urged by need, he had
written some short pieces of a less ambitious nature. It was in bitter
disappointment he commenced them, regarding them as mere pot-boilers.
He would not give them his name. He signed them "Aston Rowant." It
was the name of the village in Oxfordshire where he had been born. It
occurred to him by chance. It would serve the purpose as well as
another. As the work progressed it grew upon him. He made his stories
out of incidents and people he had seen; everyday comedies and
tragedies that he had lived among, of things that he had felt; and when
after their appearance in the magazine a publisher was found willing to
make them into a book, hope revived in him.
It was but short-lived. The few reviews that reached him contained
nothing but ridicule. So he had no place even as a literary hack!
He was living in Paris at the time in a noisy, evil-smelling street
leading out of the Quai Saint-Michel. He thought of Chatterton, and
would loaf on the bridges looking down into the river where the drowned
lights twinkled.
And then one day there came to him a letter, sent on to him from the
publisher of his one book. It was signed "Sylvia," nothing else, and
bore no address. Matthew picked up the envelope. The postmark was
"London, S.E."
It was a childish letter. A prosperous, well-fed genius, familiar with
such, might have smiled at it. To Matthew in his despair it brought
healing. She had found the book lying in an empty railway carriage;
and undeterred by moral scruples had taken it home with her. It had
remained forgotten for a time, until when the end really seemed to have
come her hand by chance had fallen on it. She fancied some kind little
wandering spirit--the spirit perhaps of someone who had known what it
was to be lonely and very sad and just about broken almost--must have
manoeuvred the whole thing. It had seemed to her as though some strong
and gentle hand had been laid upon her in the darkness. She no longer
felt friendless. And so on.
The book, he remembered, contained a reference to the magazine in which
the sketches had first appeared. She would be sure to have noticed
this. He would send her his answer. He drew his chair up to the
flimsy table, and all that night he wrote.
He did not have to think. It came to him, and for the first time since
the beginning of things he had no fear of its not being accepted. It
was mostly about himself, and the rest was about her, but to most of
those who read it two months later it seemed to be about themselves.
The editor wrote a charming letter, thanking him for it; but at the
time the chief thing that worried him was whether "Sylvia" had seen it.
He waited anxiously for a few weeks, and then received her second
letter. It was a more womanly letter than the first. She had
understood the story, and her words of thanks almost conveyed to him
the flush of pleasure with which she had read it. His friendship, she
confessed, would be very sweet to her, and still more delightful the
thought that he had need of her: that she also had something to give.
She would write, as he wished, her real thoughts and feelings. They
would never know one another, and that would give her boldness. They
would be comrades, meeting only in dreamland.
In this way commenced the whimsical romance of Sylvia and Aston Rowant;
for it was too late now to change the name--it had become a name to
conjure with. The stories, poems, and essays followed now in regular
succession. The anxiously expected letters reached him in orderly
procession. They grew in interest, in helpfulness. They became the
letters of a wonderfully sane, broad-minded, thoughtful woman--a woman
of insight, of fine judgment. Their praise was rare enough to be
precious. Often they would contain just criticism, tempered by
sympathy, lightened by humour. Of her troubles, sorrows, fears, she
came to write less and less, and even then not until they were past and
she could laugh at them. The subtlest flattery she gave him was the
suggestion that he had taught her to put these things into their proper
place. Intimate, self-revealing as her letters were, it was curious he
never shaped from them any satisfactory image of the writer.
A brave, kind, tender woman. A self-forgetting, quickly-forgiving
woman. A many-sided woman, responding to joy, to laughter: a merry
lady, at times. Yet by no means a perfect woman. There could be
flashes of temper, one felt that; quite often occasional
unreasonableness; a tongue that could be cutting. A sweet, restful,
greatly loving woman, but still a woman: it would be wise to remember
that. So he read her from her letters. But herself, the eyes, and
hair, and lips of her, the voice and laugh and smile of her, the hands
and feet of her, always they eluded him.
He was in Alaska one spring, where he had gone to collect material for
his work, when he received the last letter she ever wrote him. They
neither of them knew then it would be the last. She was leaving
London, so the postscript informed him, sailing on the following
Saturday for New York, where for the future she intended to live.
It worried him that postscript. He could not make out for a long time
why it worried him. Suddenly, in a waste of endless snows, the
explanation flashed across him. Sylvia of the letters was a living
woman! She could travel--with a box, he supposed, possibly with two or
three, and parcels. Could take tickets, walk up a gangway, stagger
about a deck feeling, maybe, a little seasick. All these years he had
been living with her in dreamland she had been, if he had only known
it, a Miss Somebody-or-other, who must have stood every morning in
front of a looking-glass with hairpins in her mouth. He had never
thought of her doing these things; it shocked him. He could not help
feeling it was indelicate of her--coming to life in this sudden,
uncalled-for manner.
He struggled with this new conception of her, and had almost forgiven
her, when a further and still more startling suggestion arrived to
plague him. If she really lived why should he not see her, speak to
her? So long as she had remained in her hidden temple, situate in the
vague recesses of London, S.E., her letters had contented him. But now
that she had moved, now that she was no longer a voice but a woman!
Well, it would be interesting to see what she was like. He imagined
the introduction: "Miss Somebody-or-other, allow me to present you to
Mr. Matthew Pole." She would have no idea he was Aston Rowant. If she
happened to be young, beautiful, in all ways satisfactory, he would
announce himself. How astonished, how delighted she would be.
But if not! If she were elderly, plain? The wisest, wittiest of women
have been known to have an incipient moustache. A beautiful spirit
can, and sometimes does, look out of goggle eyes. Suppose she suffered
from indigestion and had a shiny nose! Would her letters ever again
have the same charm for him? Absurd that they should not. But would
they?
The risk was too great. Giving the matter long and careful
consideration, he decided to send her back into dreamland.
But somehow she would not go back into dreamland, would persist in
remaining in New York, a living, breathing woman.
Yet even so, how could he find her? He might, say, in a poem convey to
her his desire for a meeting. Would she comply? And if she did, what
would be his position, supposing the inspection to result unfavourably
for her? Could he, in effect, say to her: "Thank you for letting me
have a look at you; that is all I wanted. Good-bye"?
She must, she should remain in dreamland. He would forget her
postscript; in future throw her envelopes unglanced at into the
wastepaper basket. Having by this simple exercise of his will replaced
her in London, he himself started for New York--on his way back to
Europe, so he told himself. Still, being in New York, there was no
reason for not lingering there a while, if merely to renew old memories.
Of course, if he had really wanted to find Sylvia it would have been
easy from the date upon the envelope to have discovered the ship
"sailing the following Saturday." Passengers were compelled to
register their names in full, and to state their intended movements
after arrival in America. Sylvia was not a common Christian name. By
the help of a five-dollar bill or two--. The idea had not occurred to
him before. He dismissed it from his mind and sought a quiet hotel up
town.
New York was changed less than he had anticipated. West Twentieth
Street in particular was precisely as, leaning out of the cab window,
he had looked back upon it ten years ago. Business had more and more
taken possession of it, but had not as yet altered its appearance. His
conscience smote him as he turned the corner that he had never once
written to Ann. He had meant to, it goes without saying, but during
those first years of struggle and failure his pride had held him back.
She had always thought him a fool; he had felt she did. He would wait
till he could write to her of success, of victory. And then when it
had slowly, almost imperceptibly, arrived--! He wondered why he never
had. Quite a nice little girl, in some respects. If only she had been
less conceited, less self-willed. Also rather a pretty girl she had
shown signs of becoming. There were times-- He remembered an evening
before the lamps were lighted. She had fallen asleep curled up in
Abner's easy chair, one small hand resting upon the arm. She had
always had quite attractive hands--a little too thin. Something had
moved him to steal across softly without waking her. He smiled at the
memory.
And then her eyes, beneath the level brows! It was surprising how Ann
was coming back to him. Perhaps they would be able to tell him, the
people of the house, what had become of her. If they were decent
people they would let him wander round a while. He would explain that
he had lived there in Abner Herrick's time. The room where they had
sometimes been agreeable to one another while Abner, pretending to
read, had sat watching them out of the corner of an eye. He would like
to sit there for a few moments, by himself.
He forgot that he had rung the bell. A very young servant had answered
the door and was staring at him. He would have walked in if the small
servant had not planted herself deliberately in his way. It recalled
him to himself.
"I beg pardon," said Matthew, "but would you please tell me who lives
here?"
The small servant looked him up and down with growing suspicion.
"Miss Kavanagh lives here," she said. "What do you want?"
The surprise was so great it rendered him speechless. In another
moment the small servant would have slammed the door.
"Miss Ann Kavanagh?" he inquired, just in time.
"That's her name," admitted the small servant, less suspicious.
"Will you please tell her Mr. Pole--Mr. Matthew Pole," he requested.
"I'll see first if she is in," said the small servant, and shut the
door.
It gave Matthew a few minutes to recover himself, for which he was
glad. Then the door opened again suddenly.
"You are to come upstairs," said the small servant.
It sounded so like Ann that it quite put him at his ease. He followed
the small servant up the stairs.
"Mr. Matthew Pole," she announced severely, and closed the door behind
him.
Ann was standing by the window and came to meet him. It was in front
of Abner's empty chair that they shook hands.
"So you have come back to the old house," said Matthew.
"Yes," she answered. "It never let well. The last people who had it
gave it up at Christmas. It seemed the best thing to do, even from a
purely economical point of view.
"What have you been doing all these years?" she asked him.
"Oh, knocking about," he answered. "Earning my living." He was
curious to discover what she thought of Matthew, first of all.
"It seems to have agreed with you," she commented, with a glance that
took him in generally, including his clothes.
"Yes," he answered. "I have had more luck than perhaps I deserved."
"I am glad of that," said Ann.
He laughed. "So you haven't changed so very much," he said. "Except in
appearance.
"Isn't that the most important part of a woman?" suggested Ann.
"Yes," he answered, thinking. "I suppose it is."
She was certainly very beautiful.
"How long are you stopping in New York?" she asked him.
"Oh, not long," he explained.
"Don't leave it for another ten years," she said, "before letting me
know what is happening to you. We didn't get on very well together as
children; but we mustn't let him think we're not friends. It would
hurt him."
She spoke quite seriously, as if she were expecting him any moment to
open the door and join them. Involuntarily Matthew glanced round the
room. Nothing seemed altered. The worn carpet, the faded curtains,
Abner's easy chair, his pipe upon the corner of the mantelpiece beside
the vase of spills.
"It is curious," he said, "finding this vein of fancy, of tenderness in
you. I always regarded you as such a practical, unsentimental young
person."
"Perhaps we neither of us knew each other too well, in those days," she
answered.
The small servant entered with the tea.
"What have you been doing with yourself?" he asked, drawing his chair
up to the table.
She waited till the small servant had withdrawn.
"Oh, knocking about," she answered. "Earning my living."
"It seems to have agreed with you," he repeated, smiling.
"It's all right now," she answered. "It was a bit of a struggle at
first."
"Yes," he agreed. "Life doesn't temper the wind to the human lamb. But
was there any need in your case?" he asked. "I thought--"
"Oh, that all went," she explained. "Except the house."
"I'm sorry," said Matthew. "I didn't know."
"Oh, we have been a couple of pigs," she laughed, replying to his
thoughts. "I did sometimes think of writing you. I kept the address
you gave me. Not for any assistance; I wanted to fight it out for
myself. But I was a bit lonely."
"Why didn't you?" he asked.
She hesitated for a moment.
"It's rather soon to make up one's mind," she said, "but you seem to me
to have changed. Your voice sounds so different. But as a boy--well,
you were a bit of a prig, weren't you? I imagined you writing me good
advice and excellent short sermons. And it wasn't that that I was
wanting."
"I think I understand," he said. "I'm glad you got through.
"What is your line?" he asked. "Journalism?"
"No," she answered. "Too self-opinionated."
She opened a bureau that had always been her own and handed him a
programme. "Miss Ann Kavanagh, Contralto," was announced on it as one
of the chief attractions.
"I didn't know you had a voice," said Matthew.
"You used to complain of it," she reminded him.
"Your speaking voice," he corrected her. "And it wasn't the quality of
that I objected to. It was the quantity."
She laughed.
"Yes, we kept ourselves pretty busy bringing one another up," she
admitted.
They talked a while longer: of Abner and his kind, quaint ways; of old
friends. Ann had lost touch with most of them. She had studied
singing in Brussels, and afterwards her master had moved to London and
she had followed him. She had only just lately returned to New York.
The small servant entered to clear away the tea things. She said she
thought that Ann had rung. Her tone implied that anyhow it was time
she had. Matthew rose and Ann held out her hand.
"I shall be at the concert," he said.
"It isn't till next week," Ann reminded him.
"Oh, I'm not in any particular hurry," said Matthew. "Are you
generally in of an afternoon?"
"Sometimes," said Ann.
He thought as he sat watching her from his stall that she was one of
the most beautiful women he had ever seen. Her voice was not great.
She had warned him not to expect too much.
"It will never set the Thames on fire," she had said. "I thought at
first that it would. But such as it is I thank God for it."
It was worth that. It was sweet and clear and had a tender quality.
Matthew waited for her at the end. She was feeling well disposed
towards all creatures and accepted his suggestion of supper with
gracious condescension.
He had called on her once or twice during the preceding days. It was
due to her after his long neglect of her, he told himself, and had
found improvement in her. But to-night she seemed to take a freakish
pleasure in letting him see that there was much of the old Ann still
left in her: the frank conceit of her; the amazing
self-opinionatedness of her; the waywardness, the wilfulness, the
unreasonableness of her; the general uppishness and dictatorialness of
her; the contradictoriness and flat impertinence of her; the swift
temper and exasperating tongue of her.
It was almost as if she were warning him. "You see, I am not changed,
except, as you say, in appearance. I am still Ann with all the old
faults and failings that once made life in the same house with me a
constant trial to you. Just now my very imperfections appear charms.
You have been looking at the sun--at the glory of my face, at the
wonder of my arms and hands. Your eyes are blinded. But that will
pass. And underneath I am still Ann. Just Ann."
They had quarrelled in the cab on the way home. He forgot what it was
about, but Ann had said some quite rude things, and her face not being
there in the darkness to excuse her, it had made him very angry. She
had laughed again on the steps, and they had shaken hands. But walking
home through the still streets Sylvia had plucked at his elbow.
What fools we mortals be--especially men! Here was a noble woman--a
restful, understanding, tenderly loving woman; a woman as nearly
approaching perfection as it was safe for a woman to go! This
marvellous woman was waiting for him with outstretched arms (why should
he doubt it?)--and just because Nature had at last succeeded in making
a temporary success of Ann's skin and had fashioned a rounded line
above her shoulder-blade! It made him quite cross with himself. Ten
years ago she had been gawky and sallow-complexioned. Ten years hence
she might catch the yellow jaundice and lose it all. Passages in
Sylvia's letters returned to him. He remembered that far-off evening
in his Paris attic when she had knocked at his door with her great gift
of thanks. Recalled how her soft shadow hand had stilled his pain. He
spent the next two days with Sylvia. He re-read all her letters, lived
again the scenes and moods in which he had replied to them.
Her personality still defied the efforts of his imagination, but he
ended by convincing himself that he would know her when he saw her. But
counting up the women on Fifth Avenue towards whom he had felt
instinctively drawn, and finding that the number had already reached
eleven, began to doubt his intuition. On the morning of the third day
he met Ann by chance in a bookseller's shop. Her back was towards him.
She was glancing through Aston Rowant's latest volume.
"What I," said the cheerful young lady who was attending to her, "like
about him is that he understands women so well."
"What I like about him," said Ann, "is that he doesn't pretend to."
"There's something in that," agreed the cheerful young lady. "They say
he's here in New York."
Ann looked up.
"So I've been told," said the cheerful young lady.
"I wonder what he's like?" said Ann.
"He wrote for a long time under another name," volunteered the cheerful
young lady. "He's quite an elderly man."
It irritated Matthew. He spoke without thinking.
"No, he isn't," he said. "He's quite young."
The ladies turned and looked at him.
"You know him?" queried Ann. She was most astonished, and appeared
disbelieving. That irritated him further.
"If you care about it," he said. "I will introduce you to him."
Ann made no answer. He bought a copy of the book for himself, and they
went out together. They turned towards the park.
Ann seemed thoughtful. "What is he doing here in New York?" she
wondered.
"Looking for a lady named Sylvia," answered Matthew.
He thought the time was come to break it to her that he was a great and
famous man. Then perhaps she would be sorry she had said what she had
said in the cab. Seeing he had made up his mind that his relationship
to her in the future would be that of an affectionate brother, there
would be no harm in also letting her know about Sylvia. That also
might be good for her.
They walked two blocks before Ann spoke. Matthew, anticipating a
pleasurable conversation, felt no desire to hasten matters.
"How intimate are you with him?" she demanded. "I don't think he would
have said that to a mere acquaintance."
"I'm not a mere acquaintance," said Matthew. "I've known him a long
time."
"You never told me," complained Ann.
"Didn't know it would interest you," replied Matthew.
He waited for further questions, but they did not come. At
Thirty-fourth Street he saved her from being run over and killed, and
again at Forty-second Street. Just inside the park she stopped
abruptly and held out her hand.
"Tell him," she replied, "that if he is really serious about finding
Sylvia, I may--I don't say I can--but I may be able to help him."
He did not take her hand, but stood stock still in the middle of the
path and stared at her.
"You!" he said. "You know her?"
She was prepared for his surprise. She was also prepared--not with a
lie, that implies evil intention. Her only object was to have a talk
with the gentleman and see what he was like before deciding on her
future proceedings--let us say, with a plausible story.
"We crossed on the same boat," she said. "We found there was a good
deal in common between us. She--she told me things." When you came to
think it out it was almost the truth.
"What is she like?" demanded Matthew.
"Oh, just--well, not exactly--" It was an awkward question. There
came to her relief the reflection that there was really no need for her
to answer it.
"What's it got to do with you?" she said.
"I am Aston Rowant," said Matthew.
The Central Park, together with the universe in general, fell away and
disappeared. Somewhere out of chaos was sounding a plaintive voice:
"What is she like? Can't you tell me? Is she young or old?"
It seemed to have been going on for ages. She made one supreme
gigantic effort, causing the Central Park to reappear, dimly, faintly,
but it was there again. She was sitting on a seat. Matthew--Aston
Rowant, whatever it was--was seated beside her.
"You've seen her? What is she like?"
"I can't tell you."
He was evidently very cross with her. It seemed so unkind of him.
"Why can't you tell me--or, why won't you tell me? Do you mean she's
too awful for words?"
"No, certainly not--as a matter of fact--"
"Well, what?"
She felt she must get away or there would be hysterics somewhere. She
sprang up and began to walk rapidly towards the gate. He followed her.
"I'll write you," said Ann.
"But why--?"
"I can't," said Ann. "I've got a rehearsal."
A car was passing. She made a dash for it and clambered on. Before he
could make up his mind it had gathered speed.
Ann let herself in with her key. She called downstairs to the small
servant that she wasn't to be disturbed for anything. She locked the
door.
So it was to Matthew that for six years she had been pouring out her
inmost thoughts and feelings! It was to Matthew that she had laid bare
her tenderest, most sacred dreams! It was at Matthew's feet that for
six years she had been sitting, gazing up with respectful admiration,
with reverential devotion! She recalled her letters, almost passage
for passage, till she had to hold her hands to her face to cool it.
Her indignation, one might almost say fury, lasted till tea-time.
In the evening--it was in the evening time that she had always written
to him--a more reasonable frame of mind asserted itself. After all, it
was hardly his fault. He couldn't have known who she was. He didn't
know now. She had wanted to write. Without doubt he had helped her,
comforted her loneliness; had given her a charming friendship, a
delightful comradeship. Much of his work had been written for her, to
her. It was fine work. She had been proud of her share in it. Even
allowing there were faults--irritability, shortness of temper, a
tendency to bossiness!--underneath it all was a man. The gallant
struggle, the difficulties overcome, the long suffering, the high
courage--all that she, reading between the lines, had divined of his
life's battle! Yes, it was a man she had worshipped. A woman need not
be ashamed of that. As Matthew he had seemed to her conceited,
priggish. As Aston Rowant she wondered at his modesty, his patience.
And all these years he had been dreaming of her; had followed her to
New York; had--
There came a sudden mood so ludicrous, so absurdly unreasonable that
Ann herself stopped to laugh at it. Yet it was real, and it hurt. He
had come to New York thinking of Sylvia, yearning for Sylvia. He had
come to New York with one desire: to find Sylvia. And the first
pretty woman that had come across his path had sent Sylvia clean out of
his head. There could be no question of that. When Ann Kavanagh
stretched out her hand to him in that very room a fortnight ago he had
stood before her dazzled, captured. From that moment Sylvia had been
tossed aside and forgotten. Ann Kavanagh could have done what she
liked with him. She had quarrelled with him that evening of the
concert. She had meant to quarrel with him.
And then for the first time he had remembered Sylvia. That was her
reward--Sylvia's: it was Sylvia she was thinking of--for six years'
devoted friendship; for the help, the inspiration she had given him.
As Sylvia, she suffered from a very genuine and explainable wave of
indignant jealousy. As Ann, she admitted he ought not to have done it,
but felt there was excuse for him. Between the two she feared her mind
would eventually give way. On the morning of the second day she sent
Matthew a note asking him to call in the afternoon. Sylvia might be
there, or she might not. She would mention it to her.
She dressed herself in a quiet, dark-coloured frock. It seemed
uncommittal and suitable to the occasion. It also happened to be the
colour that best suited her. She would not have the lamps lighted.
Matthew arrived in a dark serge suit and a blue necktie, so that the
general effect was quiet. Ann greeted him with kindliness and put him
with his face to what little light there was. She chose for herself
the window-seat. Sylvia had not arrived. She might be a little
late--that is, if she came at all.
They talked about the weather for a while. Matthew was of opinion they
were going to have some rain. Ann, who was in one of her contradictory
moods, thought there was frost in the air.
"What did you say to her?" he asked.
"Sylvia? Oh, what you told me," replied Ann. "That you had come to
New York to--to look for her."
"What did she say?" he asked.
"Said you'd taken your time about it," retorted Ann.
Matthew looked up with an injured expression.
"It was her own idea that we should never meet," he explained.
"Um!" Ann grunted.
"What do you think yourself she will be like?" she continued. "Have
you formed any notion?"
"It is curious," he replied. "I have never been able to conjure up any
picture of her until just now."
"Why 'just now'?" demanded Ann.
"I had an idea I should find her here when I opened the door," he
answered. "You were standing in the shadow. It seemed to be just what
I had expected."
"You would have been satisfied?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
There was silence for a moment.
"Uncle Ab made a mistake," he continued. "He ought to have sent me
away. Let me come home now and then."
"You mean," said Ann, "that if you had seen less of me you might have
liked me better?"
"Quite right," he admitted. "We never see the things that are always
there."
"A thin, gawky girl with a bad complexion," she suggested. "Would it
have been of any use?"
"You must always have been wonderful with those eyes," he answered.
"And your hands were beautiful even then."
"I used to cry sometimes when I looked at myself in the glass as a
child," she confessed. "My hands were the only thing that consoled me."
"I kissed them once," he told her. "You were asleep, curled up in
Uncle Ab's chair."
"I wasn't asleep," said Ann.
She was seated with one foot tucked underneath her. She didn't look a
bit grown up.
"You always thought me a fool," he said.
"It used to make me so angry with you," said Ann, "that you seemed to
have no go, no ambition in you. I wanted you to wake up--do something.
If I had known you were a budding genius--"
"I did hint it to you," said he.
"Oh, of course it was all my fault," said Ann.
He rose. "You think she means to come?" he asked. Ann also had risen.
"Is she so very wonderful?" she asked.
"I may be exaggerating to myself," he answered. "But I am not sure
that I could go on with my work without her--not now."
"You forgot her," flashed Ann, "till we happened to quarrel in the cab."
"I often do," he confessed. "Till something goes wrong. Then she
comes to me. As she did on that first evening, six years ago. You
see, I have been more or less living with her since then," he added
with a smile.
"In dreamland," Ann corrected.
"Yes, but in my case," he answered, "the best part of my life is passed
in dreamland."
"And when you are not in dreamland?" she demanded. "When you're just
irritable, short-tempered, cranky Matthew Pole. What's she going to do
about you then?"
"She'll put up with me," said Matthew.
"No she won't," said Ann. "She'll snap your head off. Most of the
'putting up with' you'll have to do."
He tried to get between her and the window, but she kept her face close
to the pane.
"You make me tired with Sylvia," she said. "It's about time you did
know what she's like. She's just the commonplace, short-tempered,
disagreeable-if-she-doesn't-get-her-own-way, unreasonable woman. Only
more so."
He drew her away from the window by brute force.
"So you're Sylvia," he said.
"I thought that would get it into your head," said Ann.
It was not at all the way she had meant to break it to him. She had
meant the conversation to be chiefly about Sylvia. She had a high
opinion of Sylvia, a much higher opinion than she had of Ann Kavanagh.
If he proved to be worthy of her--of Sylvia, that is, then, with the
whimsical smile that she felt belonged to Sylvia, she would remark
quite simply, "Well, what have you got to say to her?"
What had happened to interfere with the programme was Ann Kavanagh. It
seemed that Ann Kavanagh had disliked Matthew Pole less than she had
thought she did. It was after he had sailed away that little Ann
Kavanagh had discovered this. If only he had shown a little more
interest in, a little more appreciation of, Ann Kavanagh! He could be
kind and thoughtful in a patronising sort of way. Even that would not
have mattered if there had been any justification for his airs of
superiority.
Ann Kavanagh, who ought to have taken a back seat on this occasion, had
persisted in coming to the front. It was so like her.
"Well," she said, "what are you going to say to her?" She did get it
in, after all.
"I was going," said Matthew, "to talk to her about Art and Literature,
touching, maybe, upon a few other subjects. Also, I might have
suggested our seeing each other again once or twice, just to get better
acquainted. And then I was going away."
"Why going away?" asked Ann.
"To see if I could forget you."
She turned to him. The fading light was full upon her face.
"I don't believe you could--again," she said.
"No," he agreed. "I'm afraid I couldn't."
"You're sure there's nobody else," said Ann, "that you're in love with.
Only us two?"
"Only you two," he said.
She was standing with her hand on old Abner's empty chair. "You've got
to choose," she said. She was trembling. Her voice sounded just a
little hard.
He came and stood beside her. "I want Ann," he said.
She held out her hand to him.
"I'm so glad you said Ann," she laughed.
THE FAWN GLOVES.
Always he remembered her as he saw her first: the little spiritual
face, the little brown shoes pointed downwards, their toes just
touching the ground; the little fawn gloves folded upon her lap. He
was not conscious of having noticed her with any particular attention:
a plainly dressed, childish-looking figure alone on a seat between him
and the setting sun. Even had he felt curious his shyness would have
prevented his deliberately running the risk of meeting her eyes. Yet
immediately he had passed her he saw her again, quite clearly: the
pale oval face, the brown shoes, and, between them, the little fawn
gloves folded one over the other. All down the Broad Walk and across
Primrose Hill, he saw her silhouetted against the sinking sun. At
least that much of her: the wistful face and the trim brown shoes and
the little folded hands; until the sun went down behind the high
chimneys of the brewery beyond Swiss Cottage, and then she faded.
She was there again the next evening, precisely in the same place.
Usually he walked home by the Hampstead Road. Only occasionally, when
the beauty of the evening tempted him, would he take the longer way by
Regent Street and through the Park. But so often it made him feel sad,
the quiet Park, forcing upon him the sense of his own loneliness.
He would walk down merely as far as the Great Vase, so he arranged with
himself. If she were not there--it was not likely that she would
be--he would turn back into Albany Street. The newsvendors' shops with
their display of the cheaper illustrated papers, the second-hand
furniture dealers with their faded engravings and old prints, would
give him something to look at, to take away his thoughts from himself.
But seeing her in the distance, almost the moment he had entered the
gate, it came to him how disappointed he would have been had the seat
in front of the red tulip bed been vacant. A little away from her he
paused, turning to look at the flowers. He thought that, waiting his
opportunity, he might be able to steal a glance at her undetected.
Once for a moment he did so, but venturing a second time their eyes
met, or he fancied they did, and blushing furiously he hurried past.
But again she came with him, or, rather, preceded him. On each empty
seat between him and the sinking sun he saw her quite plainly: the
pale oval face and the brown shoes, and, between them, the fawn gloves
folded one upon the other.
Only this evening, about the small, sensitive mouth there seemed to be
hovering just the faintest suggestion of a timid smile. And this time
she lingered with him past Queen's Crescent and the Malden Road, till
he turned into Carlton Street. It was dark in the passage, and he had
to grope his way up the stairs, but with his hand on the door of the
bed-sitting room on the third floor he felt less afraid of the solitude
that would rise to meet him.
All day long in the dingy back office in Abingdon Street, Westminster,
where from ten to six each day he sat copying briefs and petitions, he
thought over what he would say to her; tactful beginnings by means of
which he would slide into conversation with her. Up Portland Place he
would rehearse them to himself. But at Cambridge Gate, when the little
fawn gloves came in view, the words would run away, to join him again
maybe at the gate into the Chester Road, leaving him meanwhile to pass
her with stiff, hurried steps and eyes fixed straight in front of him.
And so it might have continued, but that one evening she was no longer
at her usual seat. A crowd of noisy children swarmed over it, and
suddenly it seemed to him as if the trees and flowers had all turned
drab. A terror gnawed at his heart, and he hurried on, more for the
need of movement than with any definite object. And just beyond a bed
of geraniums that had hidden his view she was seated on a chair, and
stopping with a jerk absolutely in front of her, he said, quite angrily:
"Oh! there you are!"
Which was not a bit the speech with which he had intended to introduce
himself, but served his purpose just as well--perhaps better.
She did not resent his words or the tone.
"It was the children," she explained. "They wanted to play; so I
thought I would come on a little farther."
Upon which, as a matter of course, he took the chair beside her, and it
did not occur to either of them that they had not known one another
since the beginning, when between St. John's Wood and Albany Street God
planted a garden.
Each evening they would linger there, listening to the pleading passion
of the blackbird's note, the thrush's call to joy and hope. He loved
her gentle ways. From the bold challenges, the sly glances of
invitation flashed upon him in the street or from some neighbouring
table in the cheap luncheon room he had always shrunk confused and
awkward. Her shyness gave him confidence. It was she who was half
afraid, whose eyes would fall beneath his gaze, who would tremble at
his touch, giving him the delights of manly dominion, of tender
authority. It was he who insisted on the aristocratic seclusion
afforded by the private chair; who, with the careless indifference of a
man to whom pennies were unimportant, would pay for them both. Once on
his way through Piccadilly Circus he had paused by the fountain to
glance at a great basket of lilies of the valley, struck suddenly by
the thought how strangely their little pale petals seemed suggestive of
her.
"'Ere y' are, honey. Her favourite flower!" cried the girl, with a
grin, holding a bunch towards him.
"How much?" he had asked, vainly trying to keep the blood from rushing
to his face.
The girl paused a moment, a coarse, kindly creature.
"Sixpence," she demanded; and he bought them. She had meant to ask him
a shilling, and knew he would have paid it. "Same as silly fool!" she
called herself as she pocketed the money.
He gave them to her with a fine lordly air, and watched her while she
pinned them to her blouse, and a squirrel halting in the middle of the
walk watched her also with his head on one side, wondering what was the
good of them that she should store them with so much care. She did not
thank him in words, but there were tears in her eyes when she turned
her face to his, and one of the little fawn gloves stole out and sought
his hand. He took it in both his, and would have held it, but she
withdrew it almost hurriedly.
They appealed to him, her gloves, in spite of their being old and much
mended; and he was glad they were of kid. Had they been of cotton,
such as girls of her class usually wore, the thought of pressing his
lips to them would have put his teeth on edge. He loved the little
brown shoes, that must have been expensive when new, for they still
kept their shape. And the fringe of dainty petticoat, always so
spotless and with never a tear, and the neat, plain stockings that
showed below the closely fitting frock. So often he had noticed girls,
showily, extravagantly dressed, but with red bare hands and sloppy
shoes. Handsome girls, some of them, attractive enough if you were not
of a finicking nature, to whom the little accessories are almost of
more importance than the whole.
He loved her voice, so different from the strident tones that every now
and then, as some couple, laughing and talking, passed them, would fall
upon him almost like a blow; her quick, graceful movements that always
brought back to his memory the vision of hill and stream. In her
little brown shoes and gloves and the frock which was also of a shade
of brown though darker, she was strangely suggestive to him of a fawn.
The gentle look, the swift, soft movements that have taken place before
they are seen; the haunting suggestion of fear never quite conquered,
as if the little nervous limbs were always ready for sudden flight. He
called her that one day. Neither of them had ever thought to ask one
another's names; it did not seem to matter.
"My little brown fawn," he had whispered, "I am always expecting you to
suddenly dig your little heels into the ground and spring away"; and
she had laughed and drawn a little closer to him. And even that was
just the movement of a fawn. He had known them, creeping near to them
upon the hill-sides when he was a child.
There was much in common between them, so they found. Though he could
claim a few distant relatives scattered about the North, they were
both, for all practical purposes, alone in the world. To her, also,
home meant a bed-sitting room--"over there," as she indicated with a
wave of the little fawn glove embracing the north-west district
generally; and he did not press her for any more precise address.
It was easy enough for him to picture it: the mean, close-smelling
street somewhere in the neighbourhood of Lisson Grove, or farther on
towards the Harrow Road. Always he preferred to say good-bye to her at
some point in the Outer Circle, with its peaceful vista of fine trees
and stately houses, watching her little fawn-like figure fading away
into the twilight.
No friend or relative had she ever known, except the pale,
girlish-looking mother who had died soon after they had come to London.
The elderly landlady had let her stay on, helping in the work of the
house; and when even this last refuge had failed her, well-meaning folk
had interested themselves and secured her employment. It was light and
fairly well paid, but there were objections to it, so he gathered, more
from her halting silences than from what she said. She had tried for a
time to find something else, but it was so difficult without help or
resources. There was nothing really to complain about it, except--
And then she paused with a sudden clasp of the gloved hands, and,
seeing the troubled look in her eyes, he had changed the conversation.
It did not matter; he would take her away from it. It was very sweet
to him, the thought of putting a protective arm about this little
fragile creature whose weakness gave him strength. He was not always
going to be a clerk in an office. He was going to write poetry, books,
plays. Already he had earned a little. He told her of his hopes, and
her great faith in him gave him new courage. One evening, finding a
seat where few people ever passed, he read to her. And she had
understood. All unconsciously she laughed in the right places, and
when his own voice trembled, and he found it difficult to continue for
the lump in his own throat, glancing at her he saw the tears were in
her eyes. It was the first time he had tasted sympathy.
And so spring grew to summer. And then one evening a great thing
happened. He could not make out at first what it was about her: some
little added fragrance that made itself oddly felt, while she herself
seemed to be conscious of increased dignity. It was not until he took
her hand to say good-bye that he discovered it. There was something
different about the feel of her, and, looking down at the little hand
that lay in his, he found the reason. She had on a pair of new gloves.
They were still of the same fawn colour, but so smooth and soft and
cool. They fitted closely without a wrinkle, displaying the slightness
and the gracefulness of the hands beneath. The twilight had almost
faded, and, save for the broad back of a disappearing policeman, they
had the Outer Circle to themselves; and, the sudden impulse coming to
him, he dropped on one knee, as they do in plays and story books and
sometimes elsewhere, and pressed the little fawn gloves to his lips in
a long, passionate kiss. The sound of approaching footsteps made him
rise hurriedly. She did not move, but her whole body was trembling, and
in her eyes was a look that was almost of fear. The approaching
footsteps came nearer, but a bend of the road still screened them.
Swiftly and in silence she put her arms about his neck and kissed him.
It was a strange, cold kiss, but almost fierce, and then without a word
she turned and walked away; and he watched her to the corner of Hanover
Gate, but she did not look back.
It was almost as if it had raised a barrier between them, that kiss.
The next evening she came to meet him with a smile as usual, but in her
eyes was still that odd suggestion of lurking fear; and when, seated
beside her, he put his hand on hers it seemed to him she shrank away
from him. It was an unconscious movement. It brought back to him that
haunting memory of hill and stream when some soft-eyed fawn, strayed
from her fellows, would let him approach quite close to her, and then,
when he put out his hand to caress her, would start away with a swift,
quivering movement.
"Do you always wear gloves?" he asked her one evening a little later.
"Yes," she answered, speaking low; "when I'm out of doors."
"But this is not out of doors," he had pleaded. "We have come into the
garden. Won't you take them off?"
She had looked at him from under bent brows, as if trying to read him.
She did not answer him then. But on the way out, on the last seat
close to the gate, she had sat down, motioning him to sit beside her.
Quietly she unbuttoned the fawn gloves; drew each one off and laid them
aside. And then, for the first time, he saw her hands.
Had he looked at her, seen the faint hope die out, the mute agony in
the quiet eyes watching him, he would have tried to hide the disgust,
the physical repulsion that showed itself so plainly in his face, in
the involuntary movement with which he drew away from her. They were
small and shapely with rounded curves, but raw and seared as with hot
irons, with a growth of red, angry-coloured warts, and the nails all
worn away.
"I ought to have shown them to you before," she said simply as she drew
the gloves on again. "It was silly of me. I ought to have known."
He tried to comfort her, but his phrases came meaningless and halting.
It was the work, she explained as they walked on. It made your hands
like that after a time. If only she could have got out of it earlier!
But now! It was no good worrying about it now.
They parted near to the Hanover Gate, but to-night he did not stand
watching her as he had always done till she waved a last good-bye to
him just before disappearing; so whether she turned or not he never
knew.
He did not go to meet her the next evening. A dozen times his
footsteps led him unconsciously almost to the gate. Then he would
hurry away again, pace the mean streets, jostling stupidly against the
passers-by. The pale, sweet face, the little nymph-like figure, the
little brown shoes kept calling to him. If only there would pass away
the horror of those hands! All the artist in him shuddered at the
memory of them. Always he had imagined them under the neat, smooth
gloves as fitting in with all the rest of her, dreaming of the time
when he would hold them in his own, caressing them, kissing them.
Would it be possible to forget them, to reconcile oneself to them? He
must think--must get away from these crowded streets where faces seemed
to grin at him. He remembered that Parliament had just risen, that
work was slack in the office. He would ask that he might take his
holiday now--the next day. And they had agreed.
He packed a few things into a knapsack. From the voices of the hills
and streams he would find counsel.
He took no count of his wanderings. One evening at a lonely inn he met
a young doctor. The innkeeper's wife was expecting to be taken with
child that night, and the doctor was waiting downstairs till summoned.
While they were talking, the idea came to him. Why had he not thought
of it? Overcoming his shyness, he put his questions. What work would
it be that would cause such injuries? He described them, seeing them
before him in the shadows of the dimly lighted room, those poor,
pitiful little hands.
Oh! a dozen things might account for it--the doctor's voice sounded
callous--the handling of flax, even of linen under certain conditions.
Chemicals entered so much nowadays into all sorts of processes and
preparations. All this new photography, cheap colour printing, dyeing
and cleaning, metal work. Might all be avoided by providing rubber
gloves. It ought to be made compulsory. The doctor seemed inclined to
hold forth. He interrupted him.
But could it be cured? Was there any hope?
Cured? Hope? Of course it could be cured. It was only local--the
effect being confined to the hands proved that. A poisoned condition
of the skin aggravated by general poverty of blood. Take her away from
it; let her have plenty of fresh air and careful diet, using some such
simple ointment or another as any local man, seeing them, would
prescribe; and in three or four months they would recover.
He could hardly stay to thank the young doctor. He wanted to get away
by himself, to shout, to wave his arms, to leap. Had it been possible
he would have returned that very night. He cursed himself for the
fancifulness that had prevented his inquiring her address. He could
have sent a telegram. Rising at dawn, for he had not attempted to
sleep, he walked the ten miles to the nearest railway station, and
waited for the train. All day long it seemed to creep with him through
the endless country. But London came at last.
It was still the afternoon, but he did not care to go to his room.
Leaving his knapsack at the station, he made his way to Westminster. He
wanted all things to be unchanged, so that between this evening and
their parting it might seem as if there had merely passed an ugly
dream; and timing himself, he reached the park just at their usual hour.
He waited till the gates were closed, but she did not come. All day
long at the back of his mind had been that fear, but he had driven it
away. She was ill, just a headache, or merely tired.
And the next evening he told himself the same. He dared not whisper to
himself anything else. And each succeeding evening again. He never
remembered how many. For a time he would sit watching the path by
which she had always come; and when the hour was long past he would
rise and walk towards the gate, look east and west, and then return.
One evening he stopped one of the park-keepers and questioned him.
Yes, the man remembered her quite well: the young lady with the fawn
gloves. She had come once or twice--maybe oftener, the park-keeper
could not be sure--and had waited. No, there had been nothing to show
that she was in any way upset. She had just sat there for a time, now
and then walking a little way and then coming back again, until the
closing hour, and then she had gone. He left his address with the
park-keeper. The man promised to let him know if he ever saw her there
again.
Sometimes, instead of the park, he would haunt the mean streets about
Lisson Grove and far beyond the other side of the Edgware Road, pacing
them till night fell. But he never found her.
He wondered, beating against the bars of his poverty, if money would
have helped him. But the grim, endless city, hiding its million
secrets, seemed to mock the thought. A few pounds he had scraped
together he spent in advertisements; but he expected no response, and
none came. It was not likely she would see them.
And so after a time the park, and even the streets round about it,
became hateful to him; and he moved away to another part of London,
hoping to forget. But he never quite succeeded. Always it would come
back to him when he was not thinking: the broad, quiet walk with its
prim trees and gay beds of flowers. And always he would see her seated
there, framed by the fading light. At least, that much of her: the
little spiritual face, and the brown shoes pointing downwards, and
between them the little fawn gloves folded upon her lap.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Malvina of Brittany, by Jerome K. Jerome
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MALVINA OF BRITTANY ***
***** This file should be named 2023.txt or 2023.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
https://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/2/2023/
Produced by Les Bowler. HTML version by Al Haines.
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
https://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at https://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit https://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
https://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
