Short Fiction

By P. G. Wodehouse.

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When Papa Swore in Hindustani

“Sylvia!”

“Yes, papa.”

“That infernal dog of yours⁠—”

“Oh, papa!”

“Yes, that infernal dog of yours has been at my carnations again!”

Colonel Reynolds, V.C., glared sternly across the table at Miss Sylvia Reynolds, and Miss Sylvia Reynolds looked in a deprecatory manner back at Colonel Reynolds, V.C.; while the dog in question⁠—a foppish pug⁠—happening to meet the colonel’s eye in transit, crawled unostentatiously under the sideboard, and began to wrestle with a bad conscience.

“Oh, naughty Tommy!” said Miss Reynolds mildly, in the direction of the sideboard.

“Yes, my dear,” assented the colonel; “and if you could convey to him the information that if he does it once more⁠—yes, just once more!⁠—I shall shoot him on the spot you would be doing him a kindness.” And the colonel bit a large crescent out of his toast, with all the energy and conviction of a man who has thoroughly made up his mind. “At six o’clock this morning,” continued he, in a voice of gentle melancholy, “I happened to look out of my bedroom window, and saw him. He had then destroyed two of my best plants, and was commencing on a third, with every appearance of self-satisfaction. I threw two large brushes and a boot at him.”

“Oh, papa! They didn’t hit him?”

“No, my dear, they did not. The brushes missed him by several yards, and the boot smashed a fourth carnation. However, I was so fortunate as to attract his attention, and he left off.”

“I can’t think what makes him do it. I suppose it’s bones. He’s got bones buried all over the garden.”

“Well, if he does it again, you’ll find that there will be a few more bones buried in the garden!” said the colonel grimly; and he subsided into his paper.

Sylvia loved the dog partly for its own sake, but principally for that of the giver, one Reginald Dallas, whom it had struck at an early period of their acquaintance that he and Miss Sylvia Reynolds were made for one another. On communicating this discovery to Sylvia herself he had found that her views upon the subject were identical with his own; and all would have gone well had it not been for a melancholy accident.

One day while out shooting with the colonel, with whom he was doing his best to ingratiate himself, with a view to obtaining his consent to the match, he had allowed his sporting instincts to carry him away to such a degree that, in sporting parlance, he wiped his eye badly. Now, the colonel prided himself with justice on his powers as a shot; but on this particular day he had a touch of liver, which resulted in his shooting over the birds, and under the birds, and on each side of the birds, but very rarely at the birds. Dallas being in especially good form, it was found, when the bag came to be counted, that, while he had shot seventy brace, the colonel had only managed to secure five and a half!

His bad marksmanship destroyed the last remnant of his temper. He swore for half an hour in Hindustani, and for another half-hour in English. After that he felt better. And when, at the end of dinner, Sylvia came to him with the absurd request that she might marry Mr. Reginald Dallas he did not have a fit, but merely signified in fairly moderate terms his entire and absolute refusal to think of such a thing.

This had happened a month before, and the pug, which had changed hands in the earlier days of the friendship, still remained, at the imminent risk of its life, to soothe Sylvia and madden her father.

It was generally felt that the way to find favour in the eyes of Sylvia⁠—which were a charming blue, and well worth finding favour in⁠—was to show an intelligent and affectionate interest in her dog. This was so up to a certain point; but no farther, for the mournful recollection of Mr. Dallas prevented her from meeting their advances in quite the spirit they could have wished.

However, they persevered, and scarcely a week went by in which Thomas was not rescued from an artfully arranged horrible fate by somebody.

But all their energy was in reality wasted, for Sylvia remembered her faithful Reggie, who corresponded vigorously every day, and refused to be put off with worthless imitations. The lovesick swains, however, could not be expected to know of this, and the rescuing of Tommy proceeded briskly, now one, now another, playing the role of hero.

The very day after the conversation above recorded had taken place a terrible tragedy occurred.

The colonel, returning from a poor day’s shooting, observed through the mist that was beginning to rise a small form busily engaged in excavating in the precious carnation-bed. Slipping in a cartridge, he fired; and the skill which had deserted him during the day came back to him. There was a yelp; then silence. And Sylvia, rushing out from the house, found the luckless Thomas breathing his last on a heap of uprooted carnations.

The news was not long in spreading. The cook told the postman, and the postman thoughtfully handed it on to the servants at the rest of the houses on his round. By noon it was public property; and in the afternoon, at various times from two to five, nineteen young men were struck, quite independently of one another, with a brilliant idea.

The results of this idea were apparent on the following day.

“Is this all?” asked the colonel of the servant, as she brought in a couple of letters at breakfast-time.

“There’s a hamper for Miss Sylvia, sir.”

“A hamper, is there? Well, bring it in.”

“If you please, sir, there’s several of them.”

“What? Several? How many are there?”

“Nineteen, sir,” said Mary, restraining with some difficulty an inclination to giggle.

“Eh? What? Nineteen? Nonsense! Where are they?”

“We’ve put them in the coachhouse for the present, sir. And if you please, sir, cook says she thinks there’s something alive in them.”

“Something alive?”

“Yes, sir. And John says he thinks it’s dogs, sir!”

The colonel uttered a sound that was almost a bark, and, followed by Sylvia, rushed to the coachhouse. There, sure enough, as far as the eye could reach, were the hampers; and, as they looked, a sound proceeded from one of them that was unmistakably the plaintive note of a dog that has been shut up, and is getting tired of it.

Instantly the other eighteen hampers joined in, until the whole coachhouse rang with the noise.

The colonel subsided against a wall, and began to express himself softly in Hindustani.

“Poor dears!” said Sylvia. “How stuffy they must be feeling!”

She ran to the house, and returned with a basin of water.

“Poor dears!” she said again. “You’ll soon have something to drink.”

She knelt down by the nearest hamper, and cut the cord that fastened it. A pug jumped out like a jack-in-the-box, and rushed to the water. Sylvia continued her work of mercy, and by the time the colonel had recovered sufficiently to be able to express his views in English, eighteen more pugs had joined their companion.

“Get out, you brute!” shouted the colonel, as a dog insinuated itself between his legs. “Sylvia, put them back again this minute! You had no business to let them out. Put them back!”

“But I can’t, papa. I can’t catch them.”

She looked helplessly from him to the seething mass of dogs, and back again.

“Where’s my gun?” began the colonel.

“Papa, don’t! You couldn’t be so cruel! They aren’t doing any harm, poor things!”

“If I knew who sent them⁠—”

“Perhaps there’s something to show. Yes; here’s a visiting-card in this hamper.”

“Whose is it?” bellowed the colonel through the din.

“J. D’Arcy Henderson, The Firs,” read Sylvia, at the top of her voice.

“Young blackguard!” bawled the colonel.

“I expect there’s one in each of the hampers. Yes; here’s another. W. K. Ross, The Elms.”

The colonel came across, and began to examine the hampers with his own hand. Each hamper contained a visiting-card, and each card bore the name of a neighbour. The colonel returned to the breakfast-room, and laid the nineteen cards out in a row on the table.

“H’m!” he said, at last. “Mr. Reginald Dallas does not seem to be represented.”

Sylvia said nothing.

“No; he seems not to be represented. I did not give him credit for so much sense.” Then he dropped the subject, and breakfast proceeded in silence.

A young gentleman met the colonel on his walk that morning.

“Morning, colonel!” said he.

“Good morning!” said the colonel grimly.

“Er⁠—colonel, I⁠—er⁠—suppose Miss Reynolds got that dog all right?”

“To which dog do you refer?”

“It was a pug, you know. It ought to have arrived by this time.”

“Yes. I am inclined to think it has. Had it any special characteristics?”

“No, I don’t think so. Just an ordinary pug.”

“Well, young man, if you will go to my coachhouse, you will find nineteen ordinary pugs; and if you would kindly select your beast, and shoot it, I should be much obliged.”

“Nineteen?” said the other, in astonishment. “Why, are you setting up as a dog-fancier in your old age, colonel?”

This was too much for the colonel. He exploded.

“Old age! Confound your impudence! Dog-fancier! No, sir! I have not become a dog-fancier in what you are pleased to call my old age! But while there is no law to prevent a lot of dashed young puppies like yourself, sir⁠—like yourself⁠—sending your confounded pug-dogs to my daughter, who ought to have known better than to have let them out of their dashed hampers, I have no defence.

“Dog-fancier! Gad! Unless those dogs are removed by this time tomorrow, sir, they will go straight to the Battersea Home, where I devoutly trust they will poison them. Here are the cards of the other gentlemen who were kind enough to think that I might wish to set up for a dog-fancier in my old age. Perhaps you will kindly return them to their owners, and tell them what I have just said.” And he strode off, leaving the young man in a species of trance.

“Sylvia!” said the colonel, on arriving home.

“Yes, papa.”

“Do you still want to marry that Dallas fellow? Now, for Heaven’s sake, don’t start crying! Goodness knows I’ve been worried enough this morning without that. Please answer a plain question in a fairly sane manner. Do you, or do you not?”

“Of course I do, papa.”

“Then you may. He’s the furthest from being a fool of any of the young puppies who live about here, and he knows one end of a gun from the other. I’ll write to him now.”

“Dear Dallas” (wrote the colonel)⁠—“I find, on consideration, that you are the only sensible person in the neighbourhood. I hope you will come to lunch today. And if you still want to marry my daughter, you may.”

To which Dallas replied by return of messenger:

“Thanks for both invitations. I will.”

An hour later he arrived in person, and the course of true love pulled itself together, and began to run smooth again.

Tom, Dick, and Harry

“It’s like this.”

Tom Ellison sat down on the bed, and paused.

“Whack it out,” said Dick Henley encouragingly.

“We’re all friends here, and the password’s ‘Portland.’ What’s the matter?”

“I hate talking to a man when he’s shaving. I don’t want to have you cutting your head off.”

“Don’t worry about me. This is a safety razor. And, anyhow, what’s the excitement? Going to make my flesh creep?”

Tom Ellison kicked uncomfortably at the chair he was trying to balance on one leg.

“It’s so hard to explain.”

“Have a dash at it.”

“Well, look here, Dick, we’ve always been pals. What?”

“Of course we have.”

“We went to the Empire last Boatrace night together⁠—”

“And got chucked out simultaneously.”

“In fact, we’ve always been pals. What?”

“Of course we have.”

“Then, whenever there was a rag on, and a bonner in the quad, you always knew you could help yourself to my chairs.”

“You had the run of mine.”

“We’ve shared each other’s baccy.”

“And whisky.”

“In short, we’ve always been pals. What?”

“Of course we have.”

“Then,” said Tom Ellison, “what are you trying to cut me out for?”

“Cut you out?”

“You know what I mean. What do you think I came here for? To play cricket? Rot! I’d much rather have gone on tour with the Authentics. I came here to propose to Dolly Burn.”

Dick Henley frowned.

“I wish you’d speak of her as Miss Burn,” he said austerely.

“There you are, you see,” said Tom with sombre triumph; “you oughtn’t to have noticed a thing like that. It oughtn’t to matter to you what I call her. I always think of her as Dolly.”

“You’ve no right to.”

“I shall have soon.”

“I’ll bet you won’t.”

“How much?”

“Ten to one in anything.”

“Done,” said Tom. “I mean,” he added hastily, “don’t be a fool. There are some things one can’t bet on. As you ought to have known,” he said primly.

“Now, look here,” said Dick, “this thing has got to be settled. You say I’m trying to cut you out. I like that! We may fairly describe that as rich. As if my love were the same sort of passing fancy that yours is. You know you fall in love, as you call it, with every girl you meet.”

“I don’t.”

“Very well. If the subject is painful we won’t discuss it. Still, how about that girl you used to rave about last summer? Ethel Something?”

Tom blushed.

“A mere platonic friendship. We both collected autographs. And, if it comes to that, how about Dora Thingummy? You had enough to say about her last winter.”

Dick reddened.

“We were on good terms. Nothing more. She always sliced with her brassy. So did I. It formed a sort of bond.”

There was a pause.

“After all,” resumed Dick, “I don’t see the point of all this. Why rake up the past? You aren’t writing my life.”

“You started raking.”

“Well, to drop that, what do you propose to do about this? You’re a good chap, Tom, when you aren’t making an ass of yourself; but I’m hanged if I’m going to have you interfering between me and Dolly.”

“Miss Burn.”

Another pause.

“Look here,” said Dick. “Cards on the table. I’ve loved her since last Commem.”

“So have I.”

“We went up the Char together in a Canader. Alone.”

“She also did the trip with me. No chaperone.”

“Twice with me.”

“Same here.”

“She gave me a couple of dances at the Oriel ball.”

“So she did me. She said my dancing was so much better than the average young man’s.”

“She told me I must have had a great deal of practice at waltzing.”

“In the matter of photographs,” said Tom, “she gave me one.”

“Me, too.”

“Do you mean ‘also’ or ‘a brace’?” inquired Tom anxiously.

“ ‘Also,’ ” confessed Dick with reluctance.

“Signed?”

“Rather!”

A third pause.

“I tell you what it is,” said Tom; “we must agree on something, or we shall both get left. All we’re doing now is to confuse the poor girl. She evidently likes us both the same. What I mean is, we’re both so alike that she can’t possibly make a choice unless one of us chucks it. You don’t feel like chucking it, Dick. What?”

“You needn’t be more of an idiot than you can help.”

“I only asked. So we are evidently both determined to stick to it. We shall have to toss, then, to settle which is to back out and give the other man a show.”

“Toss!” shouted Dick. “For Dolly! Never!”

“But we must do something. You won’t back out like a sensible man. We must settle it somehow.”

“It’s all right,” said Dick. “I’ve got it. We both seem to have come here and let ourselves in for this rotten little village match, on a wicket which will probably be all holes and hillocks, simply for Dolly’s sake. So it’s only right that we should let the match decide this thing for us. It won’t be so cold-blooded as tossing. See?”

“You mean⁠—?”

“Whichever of us makes the bigger score today wins. The loser has to keep absolutely off the grass. Not so much as a look or a remark about the weather. Then, of course, after the winner has had his innings, if he hasn’t brought the thing off, and she has chucked him, the loser can have a look in. But not a moment before. Understand?”

“All right.”

“It’ll give an interest to a rotten match,” said Dick.

Tom rose to a point of order.

“There’s one objection. You, being a stodgy sort of bat, and having a habit of sitting on the splice, always get put in first. I’m a hitter, so they generally shove me in about fourth wicket. In this sort of match the man who goes in fourth wicket is likely to be not out half a dozen at the end of the innings. Nobody stays in more than three balls. Whereas you, going in first, will have time for a decent knock before the rot starts. Follow?”

“I don’t want to take any advantage of you,” said Dick condescendingly. “I shan’t need it. We’ll see Drew after breakfast and get him to put us both in first.”

The Rev. Henry Drew, cricketing curate, was the captain of the side.

Consulted on the matter after breakfast, the Rev. Henry looked grave. He was taking this match very seriously, and held decided views on the subject of managing his team.

“The point is, my dear Ellison,” he said, “that I want the bowling broken a bit before you go in. Then your free, aggressive style would have a better chance. I was thinking of putting you in fourth wicket. Would not that suit you?”

“I thought so. Tell him, Dick.”

“Look here, Drew,” said Dick; “you’ll regard what I’m going to say as said under seal of the confessional and that sort of thing, won’t you?”

“I shall, of course, respect any confidence you impart to me, my dear Henley. What is this dreadful secret?”

Dick explained.

“So you see,” he concluded, “it’s absolutely necessary that we should start fair.”

The Rev. Henry looked as disturbed as if he had suddenly detected symptoms of Pelagianism in a member of his Sunday school class.

“Is such a contest quite⁠—? Is it not a little⁠—um?” he said.

“Not at all,” said Dick, hastening to justify himself and friend. “We must settle the thing somehow, and neither of us will back out. If we didn’t do this we should have to toss.”

“Heaven forbid!” said the curate, shocked.

“Well, is it a deal? Will you put us in first?”

“Very well.”

“Thanks,” said Tom.

“Good of you,” said Dick.

“Don’t mention it,” said Harry.

There are two sorts of country cricket. There is the variety you get at a country-house, where the wicket is prepared with a care as meticulous as that in fashion on any county ground; where red marl and suchlike aids to smoothness have been injected into the turf all through the winter; and where the out-fielding is good and the boundaries spacious. And there is the village match, where cows are apt to stroll on to the pitch before the innings and cover-point stands up to his neck in a furze-bush.

The game which was to decide the fate of Tom and Dick belonged to the latter variety. A pitch had been mown in the middle of a meadow (kindly lent by Farmer Rollitt on condition that he should be allowed to umpire, and his eldest son Ted put on to bowl first). The team consisted of certain horny-handed sons of toil, with terrific golf-shots in the direction of square-leg, and the enemy’s ranks were composed of the same material. Tom and Dick, in ordinary circumstances, would have gone in to bat in such a match with a feeling of lofty disdain, as befitting experts from the civilised world, come to teach the rustic mind what was what.

But on the present occasion the thought of all that depended on their bats induced a state of nerves which would have done credit to a test match.

“Would you mind taking first b-b-ball, old man?” said Tom.

“All r-right,” said Dick. He had been on the point of making the request himself, but it would not do to let Tom see that he was nervous.

He took guard from Farmer Rollitt, and settled himself into position to face the first delivery.

Whether it is due to the pure air of the country or to daily manual toil is not known, but the fact remains that bowlers in village matches, whatever their other shortcomings, seldom fall short in the matter of speed. The present trundler, having swung his arm round like a flail, bounded to the crease and sent down a ball which hummed in the air. It pitched halfway between the wickets in a slight hollow caused by the foot of a cow and shot. Dick reached blindly forward, and the next moment his off-stump was out of the ground.

A howl of approval went up from the supporters of the enemy, lying under the trees.

Tom sat down, limp with joy. Dick out for a duck! What incredible good fortune! He began to frame in his mind epigrammatic sentences for use in the scene which would so shortly take place between Miss Dolly Burn and himself. The next man came in and played flukily but successfully through the rest of the over. “Just a single,” said Tom to himself as he faced the bowler at the other end. “Just one solitary single. Miss Burn⁠—may I call you Dolly? Do you remember that moonlight night? On the Char? In my Canadian canoe? We two?”

“ ’S that?” shrieked bowler and wicket-keeper as one man.

Tom looked blankly at them. He had not gone within a mile and a half of the ball, he was certain. And yet⁠—there was the umpire with his hand raised, as if he were the Pope bestowing a blessing.

He walked quickly back to the trees, flung off his pads, and began to smoke furiously.

“Well?” said a voice.

Dick was standing before him, grinning like a gargoyle.

“Of all the absolutely delirious decisions⁠—” began Tom.

“Oh, yes,” said Dick rudely, “I know all about that. Why, I could hear the click from where I was sitting. The point is, what’s to be done now? We shall have to settle it on the second innings.”

“If there is one.”

“Oh, there’ll be a second innings all right. There’s another man out. On a wicket like this we shall all be out in an hour, and we’ll have the other side out in another hour, and then we’ll start again on this business. I shall play a big game next innings. It was only that infernal ball shooting that did me.”

“And I,” said Tom; “if the umpire has got over his fit of delirium tremens, or been removed to Colney Hatch, shall almost certainly make a century.”

It was four o’clock by the time Tom and Dick went to the wickets for the second time. Their side had been headed by their opponents by a dozen on the first innings⁠—68 to 56.

A splendid spirit of confidence animated the two batsmen. The umpire who had effected Tom’s downfall in the first innings had since received a hard drive in the small of the back as he turned coyly away to avoid the ball, and was now being massaged by strong men in the taproom of the village inn. It was the sort of occurrence, said Tom, which proved once and for all the existence of an all-seeing, benevolent Providence.

As for Dick, he had smoothed out a few of the more important mountain-ranges which marred the smoothness of the wicket, and was feeling that all was right with the world.

The pair started well. The demon bowler of the enemy, having been fêted considerably under the trees by enthusiastic admirers during the innings of his side, was a little incoherent in his deliveries. Four full-pitches did he send down to Dick in his first over, and Dick had placed 16 to his credit before Tom, who had had to look on anxiously, had opened his account. Dick was a slow scorer as a rule, but he knew a full-pitch to leg when he saw one.

From his place at the other crease Tom could see Miss Burn and her mother sitting under the trees, watching the game.

The sight nerved him. By the time he had played through his first over he had reduced Dick’s lead by half. An oyster would have hit out in such circumstances, and Tom was always an aggressive batsman. By the end of the third over the scores were level. Each had made 20.

Enthusiasm ran high amongst the spectators, or such of them as were natives of the village. Such a stand for the first wicket had not been seen in all the matches ever played in the neighbourhood. When Tom, with a nice straight drive (which should have been a 4, but was stopped by a cow and turned into a single), brought up the century, small boys burst buttons and octogenarians wept like babes.

The bowling was collared. The demon had long since retired grumbling to the deep field. Weird trundlers, with actions like nothing else on earth, had been tried, had fired their ringing shot, and passed. One individual had gone on with lobs, to the acute delight of everybody except the fieldsmen who had to retrieve the balls and the above-mentioned cow. And still Tom and Dick stayed in and smote, while in the west the sun slowly sank.

The Rev. Henry looked anxious. It was magnificent, but it must not be overdone. A little more and they would not have time to get the foe out for the second time. In which case the latter would win on the first innings. And this thought was as gall to him.

He walked out and addressed the rival captain.

“I think,” said he, “we will close our innings.”

Tom and Dick made two beelines for the scorer and waited palpitatingly for the verdict.

“What’s my score?” panted Tom.

“Fifty-fower, sur.”

“And mine?” gasped Dick.

“Fifty-fower, too, sur.”

“You see, my dear fellows,” said the Rev. Henry when they had finished⁠—and his voice was like unto oil that is poured into a wound⁠—“we had to win this match, and if you had gone on batting we should not have had time to get them out. As it is, we shall have to hurry.”

“But, hang it⁠—” said Tom.

“But, look here⁠—” said Dick.

“Yes?”

“What on earth are we to do?” said Tom.

“We’re in precisely the same hole as we were before,” said Dick.

“We don’t know how to manage it.”

“We’re absolutely bunkered.”

“Our competition, you see.”

“About Miss Burn, don’t you know.”

“Which is to propose first?”

“We can’t settle it.”

The Rev. Henry smiled a faint, saintly smile and raised a protesting hand.

“My advice,” he said, “is that both of you should refrain from proposing.”

“What?” said Dick.

“Wha-at?” said Tom.

“You see,” purred the Rev. Henry, “you are both very young fellows. Probably you do not know your own minds. You take these things too seri⁠—”

“Now, look here,” said Tom.

“None of that rot,” said Dick.

“I shall propose tonight.”

“I shall propose this evening.”

“I shouldn’t,” said the Rev. Henry. “The fact is⁠—”

“Well?”

“Well?”

“I didn’t tell you before, for fear it should put you off your game; but Miss Burn is engaged already, and has been for three days.”

The two rivals started.

“Engaged!” cried Tom.

“Whom to?” hissed Dick.

“Me,” murmured Harry.

In Alcala

I

In Alcala, as in most of New York’s apartment houses, the schedule of prices is like a badly rolled cigarette⁠—thick in the middle and thin at both ends. The rooms halfway up are expensive; some of them almost as expensive as if Fashion, instead of being gone forever, were still lingering. The top rooms are cheap, the ground-floor rooms cheaper still.

Cheapest of all was the hall-bedroom. Its furniture was of the simplest. It consisted of a chair, another chair, a worn carpet, and a folding-bed. The folding-bed had an air of depression and baffled hopes. For years it had been trying to look like a bookcase in the daytime, and now it looked more like a folding-bed than ever. There was also a plain deal table, much stained with ink. At this, night after night, sometimes far into the morning, Rutherford Maxwell would sit and write stories. Now and then it happened that one would be a good story, and find a market.

Rutherford Maxwell was an Englishman, and the younger son of an Englishman; and his lot was the lot of the younger sons all the world over. He was by profession one of the numerous employees of the New Asiatic Bank, which has its branches all over the world. It is a sound, trustworthy institution, and steady-going relatives would assure Rutherford that he was lucky to have got a berth in it. Rutherford did not agree with them. However sound and trustworthy, it was not exactly romantic. Nor did it err on the side of over-lavishness to those who served it. Rutherford’s salary was small. So were his prospects⁠—if he remained in the bank. At a very early date he had registered a vow that he would not. And the road that led out of it for him was the uphill road of literature.

He was thankful for small mercies. Fate had not been over-kind up to the present, but at least she had dispatched him to New York, the centre of things, where he would have the chance to try, instead of to some spot off the map. Whether he won or lost, at any rate he was in the ring, and could fight. So every night he sat in Alcala, and wrote. Sometimes he would only try to write, and that was torture.

There is never an hour of the day or night when Alcala is wholly asleep. The middle of the house is a sort of chorus girl belt, while in the upper rooms there are reporters and other nightbirds. Long after he had gone to bed, Rutherford would hear footsteps passing his door and the sound of voices in the passage. He grew to welcome them. They seemed to connect him with the outer world. But for them he was alone after he had left the office, utterly alone, as it is possible to be only in the heart of a great city. Some nights he would hear scraps of conversations, at rare intervals a name. He used to build up in his mind identities for the owners of the names. One in particular, Peggy, gave him much food for thought. He pictured her as bright and vivacious. This was because she sang sometimes as she passed his door. She had been singing when he first heard her name. “Oh, cut it out, Peggy,” a girl’s voice had said. “Don’t you get enough of that tune at the theatre?” He felt that he would like to meet Peggy.

June came, and July, making an oven of New York, bringing close, scorching days and nights when the pen seemed made of lead; and still Rutherford worked on, sipping ice-water, in his shirtsleeves, and filling the sheets of paper slowly, but with a dogged persistence which the weather could not kill. Despite the heat, he was cheerful. Things were beginning to run his way a little now. A novelette, an airy trifle, conceived in days when the thermometer was lower and it was possible to think, and worked out almost mechanically, had been accepted by a magazine of a higher standing than those which hitherto had shown him hospitality. He began to dream of a holiday in the woods. The holiday spirit was abroad. Alcala was emptying itself. It would not be long before he too would be able to get away.

He was so deep in his thoughts that at first he did not hear the knocking at the door. But it was a sharp, insistent knocking, and forced itself upon his attention. He got up and turned the handle.

Outside in the passage was standing a girl, tall and sleepy-eyed. She wore a picture-hat and a costume the keynote of which was a certain aggressive attractiveness. There was no room for doubt as to which particular brand of scent was her favourite at the moment.

She gazed at Rutherford dully. Like Banquo’s ghost, she had no speculation in her eyes. Rutherford looked at her inquiringly, somewhat conscious of his shirtsleeves.

“Did you knock?” he said, opening, as a man must do, with the inevitable foolish question.

The apparition spoke.

“Say,” she said, “got a cigarette?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t,” said Rutherford, apologetically. “I’ve been smoking a pipe. I’m very sorry.”

“What?” said the apparition.

“I’m afraid I haven’t.”

“Oh!” A pause. “Say, got a cigarette?”

The intellectual pressure of the conversation was beginning to be a little too much for Rutherford. Combined with the heat of the night it made his head swim.

His visitor advanced into the room. Arriving at the table, she began fiddling with its contents. The pen seemed to fascinate her. She picked it up and inspected it closely.

“Say, what d’you call this?” she said.

“That’s a pen,” said Rutherford, soothingly. “A fountain-pen.”

“Oh!” A pause. “Say, got a cigarette?”

Rutherford clutched a chair with one hand, and his forehead with the other. He was in sore straits.

At this moment Rescue arrived, not before it was needed. A brisk sound of footsteps in the passage, and there appeared in the doorway a second girl.

“What do you think you’re doing, Gladys?” demanded the newcomer. “You mustn’t come butting into folks’ rooms this way. Who’s your friend?”

“My name is Maxwell,” began Rutherford eagerly.

“What say, Peggy?” said the seeker after cigarettes, dropping a sheet of manuscript to the floor.

Rutherford looked at the girl in the doorway with interest. So this was Peggy. She was little, and trim of figure. That was how he had always imagined her. Her dress was simpler than the other’s. The face beneath the picture-hat was small and well-shaped, the nose delicately tip-tilted, the chin determined, the mouth a little wide and suggesting good-humour. A pair of grey eyes looked steadily into his before transferring themselves to the statuesque being at the table.

“Don’t monkey with the man’s inkwell, Gladys. Come along up to bed.”

“What? Say, got a cigarette?”

“There’s plenty upstairs. Come along.”

The other went with perfect docility. At the door she paused, and inspected Rutherford with a grave stare.

“Good night, boy!” she said, with haughty condescension.

“Good night!” said Rutherford.

“Pleased to have met you. Good night.”

“Good night!” said Rutherford.

“Good night!”

“Come along, Gladys,” said Peggy, firmly.

Gladys went.

Rutherford sat down and dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief, feeling a little weak. He was not used to visitors.

II

He had lit his pipe, and was rereading his night’s work preparatory to turning in, when there was another knock at the door. This time there was no waiting. He was in the state of mind when one hears the smallest noise.

“Come in!” he cried.

It was Peggy.

Rutherford jumped to his feet.

“Won’t you⁠—” he began, pushing the chair forward.

She seated herself with composure on the table. She no longer wore the picture-hat, and Rutherford, looking at her, came to the conclusion that the change was an improvement.

“This’ll do for me,” she said. “Thought I’d just look in. I’m sorry about Gladys. She isn’t often like that. It’s the hot weather.”

“It is hot,” said Rutherford.

“You’ve noticed it? Bully for you! Back to the bench for Sherlock Holmes. Did Gladys try to shoot herself?”

“Good heavens, no! Why?”

“She did once. But I stole her gun, and I suppose she hasn’t thought to get another. She’s a good girl really, only she gets like that sometimes in the hot weather.” She looked round the room for a moment, then gazed unwinkingly at Rutherford. “What did you say your name was?” she asked.

“Rutherford Maxwell.”

“Gee! That’s going some, isn’t it? Wants amputation, a name like that. I call it mean to give a poor, defenceless kid a cuss-word like⁠—what’s it? Rutherford? I got it⁠—to go through the world with. Haven’t you got something shorter⁠—Tom, or Charles or something?”

“I’m afraid not.”

The round, grey eyes fixed him again.

“I shall call you George,” she decided at last.

“Thanks, I wish you would,” said Rutherford.

“George it is, then. You can call me Peggy. Peggy Norton’s my name.”

“Thanks, I will.”

“Say, you’re English, aren’t you?” she said.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“You’re so strong on the gratitude thing. It’s ‘Thanks, thanks,’ all the time. Not that I mind it, George.”

“Thanks. Sorry. I should say, ‘Oh, you Peggy!’ ”

She looked at him curiously.

“How d’you like New York, George?”

“Fine⁠—tonight.”

“Been to Coney?”

“Not yet.”

“You should. Say, what do you do, George?”

“What do I do?”

“Cut it out, George! Don’t answer back as though we were a vaudeville team doing a crosstalk act. What do you do? When your boss crowds your envelope on to you Saturdays, what’s it for?”

“I’m in a bank.”

“Like it?”

“Hate it!”

“Why don’t you quit, then?”

“Can’t afford to. There’s money in being in a bank. Not much, it’s true, but what there is of it is good.”

“What are you doing out of bed at this time of night? They don’t work you all day, do they?”

“No; they’d like to, but they don’t. I have been writing.”

“Writing what? Say, you don’t mind my putting you on the witness stand, do you? If you do, say so, and I’ll cut out the District Attorney act and talk about the weather.”

“Not a bit, really, I assure you. Please ask as many questions as you like.”

“Guess there’s no doubt about your being English, George. We don’t have time over here to shoot it off like that. If you’d have just said ‘Sure!’ I’d have got a line on your meaning. You don’t mind me doing schoolmarm, George, do you? It’s all for your good.”

“Sure,” said Rutherford, with a grin.

She smiled approvingly.

“That’s better! You’re Little Willie, the Apt Pupil, all right. What were we talking about before we switched off on to the educational rail? I know⁠—about your writing. What were you writing?”

“A story.”

“For a paper?”

“For a magazine.”

“What! One of the fiction stories about the Gibson hero and the girl whose life he saved, like you read?”

“That’s the idea.”

She looked at him with a new interest.

“Gee, George, who’d have thought it! Fancy you being one of the highbrows! You ought to hang out a sign. You look just ordinary.”

“Thanks!”

“I mean as far as the grey matter goes. I didn’t mean you were a bad looker. You’re not. You’ve got nice eyes, George.”

“Thanks.”

“I like the shape of your nose, too.”

“I say, thanks!”

“And your hair’s just lovely!”

“I say, really. Thanks awfully!”

She eyed him in silence for a moment. Then she burst out:

“You say you don’t like the bank?”

“I certainly don’t.”

“And you’d like to strike some paying line of business?”

“Sure.”

“Then why don’t you make your fortune by hiring yourself out to a museum as the biggest human clam in captivity? That’s what you are. You sit there just saying ‘Thanks,’ and ‘Bai Jawve, thanks awf’lly,’ while a girl’s telling you nice things about your eyes and hair, and you don’t do a thing!”

Rutherford threw back his head and roared with laughter.

“I’m sorry!” he said. “Slowness is our national failing, you know.”

“I believe you.”

“Tell me about yourself. You know all about me, by now. What do you do besides brightening up the dull evenings of poor devils of bank-clerks?”

“Give you three guesses.”

“Stage?”

“Gee! You’re the human sleuth all right, all right! It’s a home run every time when you get your deductive theories unlimbered. Yes, George; the stage it is. I’m an actorine⁠—one of the pony ballet in The Island of Girls at the Melody. Seen our show?”

“Not yet. I’ll go tomorrow.”

“Great! I’ll let them know, so that they can have the awning out and the red carpet down. It’s a cute little piece.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Well, if I see you in front tomorrow, I’ll give you half a smile, so that you shan’t feel you haven’t got your money’s worth. Good night, George!”

“Good night, Peggy!”

She jumped down from the table. Her eye was caught by the photographs on the mantelpiece. She began to examine them.

“Who are these Willies?” she said, picking up a group.

“That is the football team of my old school. The lout with the sheepish smirk, holding the ball, is myself as I was before the cares of the world soured me.”

Her eye wandered along the mantelpiece, and she swooped down on a cabinet photograph of a girl.

“And who’s this, George?” she cried.

He took the photograph from her, and replaced it, with a curious blend of shyness and defiance, in the very centre of the mantelpiece. For a moment he stood looking intently at it, his elbows resting on the imitation marble.

“Who is it?” asked Peggy. “Wake up, George. Who’s this?”

Rutherford started.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was thinking about something.”

“I bet you were. You looked like it. Well, who is she?”

“Eh! Oh, that’s a girl.”

Peggy laughed satirically.

“Thanks awf’lly, as you would say. I’ve got eyes, George.”

“I noticed that,” said Rutherford, smiling. “Charming ones, too.”

“Gee! What would she say if she heard you talking like that!”

She came a step nearer, looking up at him. Their eyes met.

“She would say,” said Rutherford, slowly: “ ‘I know you love me, and I know I can trust you, and I haven’t the slightest objection to your telling Miss Norton the truth about her eyes. Miss Norton is a dear, good little sort, one of the best, in fact, and I hope you’ll be great pals!’ ”

There was a silence.

“She’d say that, would she?” said Peggy, at last.

“She would.”

Peggy looked at the photograph, and back again at Rutherford.

“You’re pretty fond of her, George, I guess, aren’t you?”

“I am,” said Rutherford, quietly.

“George.”

“Yes?”

“George, she’s a pretty good long way away, isn’t she?”

She looked up at him with a curious light in her grey eyes. Rutherford met her glance steadily.

“Not to me,” he said. “She’s here now, and all the time.”

He stepped away and picked up the sheaf of papers which he had dropped at Peggy’s entrance. Peggy laughed.

“Good night, Georgie boy,” she said. “I mustn’t keep you up any more, or you’ll be late in the morning. And what would the bank do then? Smash or something, I guess. Good night, Georgie! See you again one of these old evenings.”

“Good night, Peggy!”

The door closed behind her. He heard her footsteps hesitate, stop, and then move quickly on once more.

III

He saw much of her after this first visit. Gradually it became an understood thing between them that she should look in on her return from the theatre. He grew to expect her, and to feel restless when she was late. Once she brought the cigarette-loving Gladys with her, but the experiment was not a success. Gladys was languid and rather overpoweringly refined, and conversation became forced. After that, Peggy came alone.

Generally she found him working. His industry amazed her.

“Gee, George,” she said one night, sitting in her favourite place on the table, from which he had moved a little pile of manuscript to make room for her. “Don’t you ever let up for a second? Seems to me you write all the time.”

Rutherford laughed.

“I’ll take a rest,” he said, “when there’s a bit more demand for my stuff than there is at present. When I’m in the twenty-cents-a-word class I’ll write once a month, and spend the rest of my time travelling.”

Peggy shook her head.

“No travelling for mine,” she said. “Seems to me it’s just cussedness that makes people go away from Broadway when they’ve got plunks enough to stay there and enjoy themselves.”

“Do you like Broadway, Peggy?”

“Do I like Broadway? Does a kid like candy? Why, don’t you?”

“It’s all right for the time. It’s not my ideal.”

“Oh, and what particular sort of little old Paradise do you hanker after?”

He puffed at his pipe, and looked dreamily at her through the smoke.

“Way over in England, Peggy, there’s a county called Worcestershire. And somewhere near the edge of that there’s a grey house with gables, and there’s a lawn and a meadow and a shrubbery, and an orchard and a rose-garden, and a big cedar on the terrace before you get to the rose-garden. And if you climb to the top of that cedar, you can see the river through the apple trees in the orchard. And in the distance there are hills. And⁠—”

“Of all the rube joints!” exclaimed Peggy, in deep disgust. “Why, a day of that would be about twenty-three hours and a bit too long for me. Broadway for mine! Put me where I can touch Forty-Second Street without overbalancing, and then you can leave me. I never thought you were such a hayseed, George.”

“Don’t worry, Peggy. It’ll be a long time, I expect, before I go there. I’ve got to make my fortune first.”

“Getting anywhere near the John D. class yet?”

“I’ve still some way to go. But things are moving, I think. Do you know, Peggy, you remind me of a little Billiken, sitting on that table?”

“Thank you, George. I always knew my mouth was rather wide, but I did think I had Billiken to the bad. Do you do that sort of Candid Friend stunt with her?” She pointed to the photograph on the mantelpiece. It was the first time since the night when they had met that she had made any allusion to it. By silent agreement the subject had been ruled out between them. “By the way, you never told me her name.”

“Halliday,” said Rutherford, shortly.

“What else?”

“Alice.”

“Don’t bite at me, George! I’m not hurting you. Tell me about her. I’m interested. Does she live in the grey house with the pigs and chickens and all them roses, and the rest of the rube outfit?”

“No.”

“Be chummy, George. What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m sorry, Peggy,” he said. “I’m a fool. It’s only that it all seems so damned hopeless! Here am I, earning about half a dollar a year, and⁠—Still, it’s no use kicking, is it? Besides, I may make a home run with my writing one of these days. That’s what I meant when I said you were a Billiken, Peggy. Do you know, you’ve brought me luck. Ever since I met you, I’ve been doing twice as well. You’re my mascot.”

“Bully for me! We’ve all got our uses in the world, haven’t we? I wonder if it would help any if I was to kiss you, George?”

“Don’t you do it. One mustn’t work a mascot too hard.”

She jumped down, and came across the room to where he sat, looking down at him with the round, grey eyes that always reminded him of a kitten’s.

“George!”

“Yes?”

“Oh, nothing!”

She turned away to the mantelpiece, and stood gazing at the photograph, her back towards him.

“George!”

“Hullo?”

“Say, what colour eyes has she got?”

“Grey.”

“Like mine?”

“Darker than yours.”

“Nicer than mine?”

“Don’t you think we might talk about something else?”

She swung round, her fists clenched, her face blazing.

“I hate you!” she cried. “I do! I wish I’d never seen you! I wish⁠—”

She leaned on the mantelpiece, burying her face in her arms, and burst into a passion of sobs. Rutherford leaped up, shocked and helpless. He sprang to her, and placed a hand gently on her shoulder.

“Peggy, old girl⁠—”

She broke from him.

“Don’t you touch me! Don’t you do it! Gee, I wish I’d never seen you!”

She ran to the door, darted through, and banged it behind her.

Rutherford remained where he stood, motionless. Then, almost mechanically, he felt in his pocket for matches, and relit his pipe.

Half an hour passed. Then the door opened slowly. Peggy came in. She was pale, and her eyes were red. She smiled⁠—a pathetic little smile.

“Peggy!”

He took a step towards her.

She held out her hand.

“I’m sorry, George. I feel mean.”

“Dear old girl, what rot!”

“I do. You don’t know how mean I feel. You’ve been real nice to me, George. Thought I’d look in and say I was sorry. Good night, George!”

On the following night he waited, but she did not come. The nights went by, and still she did not come. And one morning, reading his paper, he saw that The Island of Girls had gone west to Chicago.

IV

Things were not running well for Rutherford. He had had his vacation, a golden fortnight of fresh air and sunshine in the Catskills, and was back in Alcala, trying with poor success, to pick up the threads of his work. But though the Indian Summer had begun, and there was energy in the air, night after night he sat idle in his room; night after night went wearily to bed, oppressed with a dull sense of failure. He could not work. He was restless. His thoughts would not concentrate themselves. Something was wrong; and he knew what it was, though he fought against admitting it to himself. It was the absence of Peggy that had brought about the change. Not till now had he realized to the full how greatly her visits had stimulated him. He had called her laughingly his mascot; but the thing was no joke. It was true. Her absence was robbing him of the power to write.

He was lonely. For the first time since he had come to New York he was really lonely. Solitude had not hurt him till now. In his black moments it had been enough for him to look up at the photograph on the mantelpiece, and instantly he was alone no longer. But now the photograph had lost its magic. It could not hold him. Always his mind would wander back to the little, black-haired ghost that sat on the table, smiling at him, and questioning him with its grey eyes.

And the days went by, unvarying in their monotony. And always the ghost sat on the table, smiling at him.

With the Fall came the reopening of the theatres. One by one the electric signs blazed out along Broadway, spreading the message that the dull days were over, and New York was itself again. At the Melody, where ages ago The Island of Girls had run its lighthearted course, a new musical piece was in rehearsal. Alcala was full once more. The nightly snatches of conversation outside his door had recommenced. He listened for her voice, but he never heard it.

He sat up, waiting, into the small hours, but she did not come. Once he had been trying to write, and had fallen, as usual, to brooding⁠—there was a soft knock at the door. In an instant he had bounded from his chair, and turned the handle. It was one of the reporters from upstairs, who had run out of matches. Rutherford gave him a handful. The reporter went out, wondering what the man had laughed at.

There is balm in Broadway, especially by night. Depression vanishes before the cheerfulness of the great white way when the lights are lit and the human tide is in full flood. Rutherford had developed of late a habit of patrolling the neighbourhood of Forty-Second Street at theatre-time. He found it did him good. There is a gaiety, a bonhomie, in the atmosphere of the New York streets. Rutherford loved to stand on the sidewalk and watch the passersby, weaving stories round them.

One night his wanderings had brought him to Herald Square. The theatres were just emptying themselves. This was the time he liked best. He drew to one side to watch, and as he moved he saw Peggy.

She was standing at the corner, buttoning a glove. He was by her side in an instant.

“Peggy!” he cried.

She was looking pale and tired, but the colour came back to her cheeks as she held out her hand. There was no trace of embarrassment in her manner; only a frank pleasure at seeing him again.

“Where have you been?” he said. “I couldn’t think what had become of you.”

She looked at him curiously.

“Did you miss me, George?”

“Miss you? Of course I did. My work’s been going all to pieces since you went away.”

“I only came back last night. I’m in the new piece at the Madison. Gee, I’m tired, George! We’ve been rehearsing all day.”

He took her by the arm.

“Come along and have some supper. You look worn out. By Jove, Peggy, it’s good seeing you again! Can you walk as far as Rector’s, or shall I carry you?”

“Guess I can walk that far. But Rector’s? Has your rich uncle died and left you a fortune, George?”

“Don’t you worry, Peggy. This is an occasion. I thought I was never going to see you again. I’ll buy you the whole hotel, if you like.”

“Just supper’ll do, I guess. You’re getting quite the rounder, George.”

“You bet I am. There are all sorts of sides to my character you’ve never so much as dreamed of.”

They seemed to know Peggy at Rector’s. Paul, the head waiter, beamed upon her paternally. One or two men turned and looked after her as she passed. The waiters smiled slight but friendly smiles. Rutherford, intent on her, noticed none of these things.

Despite her protests, he ordered an elaborate and expensive supper. He was particular about the wine. The waiter, who had been doubtful about him, was won over, and went off to execute the order, reflecting that it was never safe to judge a man by his clothes, and that Rutherford was probably one of these eccentric young millionaires who didn’t care how they dressed.

“Well?” said Peggy, when he had finished.

“Well?” said Rutherford.

“You’re looking brown, George.”

“I’ve been away in the Catskills.”

“Still as strong on the rube proposition as ever?”

“Yes. But Broadway has its points, too.”

“Oh, you’re beginning to see that? Gee, I’m glad to be back. I’ve had enough of the Wild West. If anybody ever tries to steer you west of Eleventh Avenue, George, don’t you go. There’s nothing doing. How have you been making out at your writing stunt?”

“Pretty well. But I wanted you. I was lost without my mascot. I’ve got a story in this month’s Wilson’s. A long story, and paid accordingly. That’s why I’m able to go about giving suppers to great actresses.”

“I read it on the train,” said Peggy. “It’s dandy. Do you know what you ought to do, George? You ought to turn it into a play. There’s a heap of money in plays.”

“I know. But who wants a play by an unknown man?”

“I know who would want ‘Willie in the Wilderness,’ if you made it into a play, and that’s Winfield Knight. Ever seen him?”

“I saw him in The Outsider. He’s clever.”

“He’s It, if he gets a part to suit him. If he doesn’t, he don’t amount to a row of beans. It’s just a gamble. This thing he’s in now is no good. The part doesn’t begin to fit him. In a month he’ll be squealing for another play, so’s you can hear him in Connecticut.”

“He shall not squeal in vain,” said Rutherford. “If he wants my work, who am I that I should stand in the way of his simple pleasures? I’ll start on the thing tomorrow.”

“I can help you some too, I guess. I used to know Winfield Knight. I can put you wise on lots of things about him that’ll help you work up Willie’s character so’s it’ll fit him like a glove.”

Rutherford raised his glass.

“Peggy,” he said, “you’re more than a mascot. You ought to be drawing a big commission on everything I write. It beats me how any of these other fellows ever write anything without you there to help them. I wonder what’s the most expensive cigar they keep here? I must have it, whatever it is. Noblesse oblige. We popular playwrights mustn’t be seen in public smoking any cheap stuff.”

It was Rutherford’s artistic temperament which, when they left the restaurant, made him hail a taxicab. Taxicabs are not for young men drawing infinitesimal salaries in banks, even if those salaries are supplemented at rare intervals by a short story in a magazine. Peggy was for returning to Alcala by car, but Rutherford refused to countenance such an anticlimax.

Peggy nestled into the corner of the cab, with a tired sigh, and there was silence as they moved smoothly up Broadway.

He peered at her in the dim light. She looked very small and wistful and fragile. Suddenly an intense desire surged over him to pick her up and crush her to him. He fought against it. He tried to fix his thoughts on the girl at home, to tell himself that he was a man of honour. His fingers, gripping the edge of the seat, tightened till every muscle of his arm was rigid.

The cab, crossing a rough piece of road, jolted Peggy from her corner. Her hand fell on his.

“Peggy!” he cried, hoarsely.

Her grey eyes were wet. He could see them glisten. And then his arms were round her, and he was covering her upturned face with kisses.

The cab drew up at the entrance to Alcala. They alighted in silence, and without a word made their way through into the hall. From force of habit, Rutherford glanced at the letter-rack on the wall at the foot of the stairs. There was one letter in his pigeonhole.

Mechanically he drew it out; and, as his eyes fell on the handwriting, something seemed to snap inside him.

He looked at Peggy, standing on the bottom stair, and back again at the envelope in his hand. His mood was changing with a violence that left him physically weak. He felt dazed, as if he had wakened out of a trance.

With a strong effort he mastered himself. Peggy had mounted a few steps, and was looking back at him over her shoulder. He could read the meaning now in the grey eyes.

“Good night, Peggy,” he said in a low voice. She turned, facing him, and for a moment neither moved.

“Good night!” said Rutherford again.

Her lips parted, as if she were about to speak, but she said nothing.

Then she turned again, and began to walk slowly upstairs.

He stood watching her till she had reached the top of the long flight. She did not look back.

V

Peggy’s nightly visits began afresh after this, and the ghost on the table troubled Rutherford no more. His restlessness left him. He began to write with a new vigour and success. In after years he wrote many plays, most of them good, clear-cut pieces of work, but none that came from him with the utter absence of labour which made the writing of Willie in the Wilderness a joy. He wrote easily, without effort. And always Peggy was there, helping, stimulating, encouraging.

Sometimes, when he came in after dinner to settle down to work, he would find a piece of paper on his table covered with her schoolgirl scrawl. It would run somewhat as follows:

“He is proud of his arms. They are skinny, but he thinks them the limit. Better put in a shirtsleeve scene for Willie somewhere.”

“He thinks he has a beautiful profile. Couldn’t you make one of the girls say something about Willie having the goods in that line?”

“He is crazy about golf.”

“He is proud of his French accent. Couldn’t you make Willie speak a little piece in French?”

“He” being Winfield Knight.

And so, little by little, the character of Willie grew, till it ceased to be the Willie of the magazine story, and became Winfield Knight himself, with improvements. The task began to fascinate Rutherford. It was like planning a pleasant surprise for a child. “He’ll like that,” he would say to himself, as he wrote in some speech enabling Willie to display one of the accomplishments, real or imagined, of the absent actor. Peggy read it, and approved. It was she who suggested the big speech in the second act where Willie described the progress of his love affair in terms of the golf-links. From her, too, came information as to little traits in the man’s character which the stranger would not have suspected.

As the play progressed Rutherford was amazed at the completeness of the character he had built. It lived. Willie in the magazine story might have been anyone. He fitted into the story, but you could not see him. He had no real individuality. But Willie in the play! He felt that he would recognize him in the street. There was all the difference between the two that there is between a nameless figure in some cheap picture and a portrait by Sargent. There were times when the story of the play seemed thin to him, and the other characters wooden, but in his blackest moods he was sure of Willie. All the contradictions in the character rang true: the humour, the pathos, the surface vanity covering a real diffidence, the strength and weakness fighting one another.

“You’re alive, my son,” said Rutherford, admiringly, as he read the sheets. “But you don’t belong to me.”

At last there came the day when the play was finished, when the last line was written, and the last possible alteration made; and later, the day when Rutherford, bearing the brown-paper-covered package under his arm, called at the Players’ Club to keep an appointment with Winfield Knight.

Almost from the first Rutherford had a feeling that he had met the man before, that he knew him. As their acquaintance progressed⁠—the actor was in an expansive mood, and talked much before coming to business⁠—the feeling grew. Then he understood. This was Willie, and no other. The likeness was extraordinary. Little turns of thought, little expressions⁠—they were all in the play.

The actor paused in a description of how he had almost beaten a champion at golf, and looked at the parcel.

“Is that the play?” he said.

“Yes,” said Rutherford. “Shall I read it?”

“Guess I’ll just look through it myself. Where’s Act I? Here we are! Have a cigar while you’re waiting?”

Rutherford settled himself in his chair, and watched the other’s face. For the first few pages, which contained some tame dialogue between minor characters, it was blank.

“ ‘Enter Willie,’ ” he said. “Am I Willie?”

“I hope so,” said Rutherford, with a smile. “It’s the star part.”

“H’m.”

He went on reading. Rutherford watched him with furtive keenness. There was a line coming at the bottom of the page which he was then reading which ought to hit him, an epigram on golf, a whimsical thought put almost exactly as he had put it himself five minutes back when telling his golf story.

The shot did not miss fire. The chuckle from the actor and the sigh of relief from Rutherford were almost simultaneous. Winfield Knight turned to him.

“That’s a dandy line about golf,” said he.

Rutherford puffed complacently at his cigar.

“There’s lots more of them in the piece,” he said.

“Bully for you,” said the actor. And went on reading.

Three-quarters of an hour passed before he spoke again. Then he looked up.

“It’s me,” he said; “it’s me all the time. I wish I’d seen this before I put on the punk I’m doing now. This is me from the drive off the tee. It’s great! Say, what’ll you have?”

Rutherford leaned back in his chair, his mind in a whirl. He had arrived at last. His struggles were over. He would not admit of the possibility of the play being a failure. He was a made man. He could go where he pleased, and do as he pleased.

It gave him something of a shock to find how persistently his thoughts refused to remain in England. Try as he might to keep them there, they kept flitting back to Alcala.

VI

Willie in the Wilderness was not a failure. It was a triumph. Principally, it is true, a personal triumph for Winfield Knight. Everyone was agreed that he had never had a part that suited him so well. Critics forgave the blunders of the piece for the sake of its principal character. The play was a curiously amateurish thing. It was only later that Rutherford learned craft and caution. When he wrote Willie he was a colt, rambling unchecked through the field of play-writing, ignorant of its pitfalls. But, with all its faults, Willie in the Wilderness was a success. It might, as one critic pointed out, be more of a monologue act for Winfield Knight than a play, but that did not affect Rutherford.

It was late on the opening night when he returned to Alcala. He had tried to get away earlier. He wanted to see Peggy. But Winfield Knight, flushed with success, was in his most expansive mood. He seized upon Rutherford and would not let him go. There was supper, a gay, uproarious supper, at which everybody seemed to be congratulating everybody else. Men he had never met before shook him warmly by the hand. Somebody made a speech, despite the efforts of the rest of the company to prevent him. Rutherford sat there, dazed, out of touch with the mood of the party. He wanted Peggy. He was tired of all this excitement and noise. He had had enough of it. All he asked was to be allowed to slip away quietly and go home. He wanted to think, to try and realize what all this meant to him.

At length the party broke up in one last explosion of handshaking and congratulations; and, eluding Winfield Knight, who proposed to take him off to his club, he started to walk up Broadway.

It was late when he reached Alcala. There was a light in his room. Peggy had waited up to hear the news.

She jumped off the table as he came in.

“Well?” she cried.

Rutherford sat down and stretched out his legs.

“It’s a success,” he said. “A tremendous success!”

Peggy clapped her hands.

“Bully for you, George! I knew it would be. Tell me all about it. Was Winfield good?”

“He was the whole piece. There was nothing in it but him.” He rose and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Peggy, old girl, I don’t know what to say. You know as well as I do that it’s all owing to you that the piece has been a success. If I hadn’t had your help⁠—”

Peggy laughed.

“Oh, beat it, George!” she said. “Don’t you come jollying me. I look like a highbrow playwright, don’t I! No; I’m real glad you’ve made a hit, George, but don’t start handing out any story about it’s not being your own. I didn’t do a thing.”

“You did. You did everything.”

“I didn’t. But, say, don’t let’s start quarrelling. Tell me more about it. How many calls did you take.”

He told her all that had happened. When he had finished, there was a silence.

“I guess you’ll be quitting soon, George?” said Peggy, at last. “Now that you’ve made a home run. You’ll be going back to that rube joint, with the cows and hens⁠—isn’t that it?”

Rutherford did not reply. He was staring thoughtfully at the floor. He did not seem to have heard.

“I guess that girl’ll be glad to see you,” she went on. “Shall you cable tomorrow, George? And then you’ll get married and go and live in the rube house, and become a regular hayseed and⁠—” She broke off suddenly, with a catch in her voice. “Gee,” she whispered, halt to herself, “I’ll be sorry when you go, George.”

He sprang up.

“Peggy!”

He seized her by the arm. He heard the quick intake of her breath.

“Peggy, listen!” He gripped her till she winced with pain. “I’m not going back. I’m never going back. I’m a cad, I’m a hound! I know I am. But I’m not going back. I’m going to stay here with you. I want you, Peggy. Do you hear? I want you!”

She tried to draw herself away, but he held her.

“I love you, Peggy! Peggy, will you be my wife?”

There was utter astonishment in her grey eyes. Her face was very white.

“Will you, Peggy?”

He dropped her arm.

“Will you, Peggy?”

“No!” she cried.

He drew back.

“No!” she cried sharply, as if it hurt her to speak. “I wouldn’t play you such a mean trick. I’m too fond of you, George. There’s never been anybody just like you. You’ve been mighty good to me. I’ve never met a man who treated me like you. You’re the only real white man that’s ever happened to me, and I guess I’m not going to play you a low-down trick like spoiling your life. George, I thought you knew. Honest, I thought you knew. How did you think I lived in a swell place like this, if you didn’t know? How did you suppose everyone knew me at Rector’s? How did you think I’d managed to find out so much about Winfield Knight? Can’t you guess?”

She drew a long breath.

“I⁠—”

He interrupted her hoarsely.

“Is there anyone now, Peggy?”

“Yes,” she said, “there is.”

“You don’t love him, Peggy, do you?”

“Love him?” She laughed bitterly. “No; I don’t love him.”

“Then come to me, dear,” he said.

She shook her head in silence. Rutherford sat down, his chin resting in his hands. She came across to him, and smoothed his hair.

“It wouldn’t do, George,” she said. “Honest, it wouldn’t do. Listen. When we first met, I⁠—I rather liked you, George, and I was mad at you for being so fond of the other girl and taking no notice of me⁠—not in the way I wanted, and I tried⁠—Gee, I feel mean. It was all my fault. I didn’t think it would matter. There didn’t seem no chance then of your being able to go back and have the sort of good time you wanted; and I thought you’d just stay here and we’d be pals and⁠—but now you can go back, it’s all different. I couldn’t keep you. It would be too mean. You see, you don’t really want to stop. You think you do, but you don’t!”

“I love you,” he muttered.

“You’ll forget me. It’s all just a Broadway dream, George. Think of it like that. Broadway’s got you now, but you don’t really belong. You’re not like me. It’s not in your blood, so’s you can’t get it out. It’s the chickens and roses you want really. Just a Broadway dream. That’s what it is. George, when I was a kid, I remember crying and crying for a lump of candy in the window of a store till one of my brothers up and bought it for me just to stop the racket. Gee! For about a minute I was the busiest thing that ever happened, eating away. And then it didn’t seem to interest me no more. Broadway’s like that for you, George. You go back to the girl and the cows and all of it. It’ll hurt some, I guess, but I reckon you’ll be glad you did.”

She stooped swiftly, and kissed him on the forehead.

“I’ll miss you, dear,” she said, softly, and was gone.

Rutherford sat on, motionless. Outside, the blackness changed to grey, and the grey to white. He got up. He felt very stiff and cold.

“A Broadway dream!” he muttered.

He went to the mantelpiece and took up the photograph. He carried it to the window where he could see it better.

A shaft of sunlight pierced the curtains and fell upon it.

Out of School

Mark you, I am not defending James Datchett. I hold no brief for James. On the contrary, I am very decidedly of the opinion that he should not have done it. I merely say that there were extenuating circumstances. Just that. Ext. circ. Nothing more.

Let us review the matter calmly and judicially, not condemning James offhand, but rather probing the whole affair to its core, to see if we can confirm my view that it is possible to find excuses for him.

We will begin at the time when the subject of the Colonies first showed a tendency to creep menacingly into the daily chitchat of his Uncle Frederick.

James’s Uncle Frederick was always talking more or less about the Colonies, having made a substantial fortune out in Western Australia, but it was only when James came down from Oxford that the thing became really menacing. Up to that time the uncle had merely spoken of the Colonies as Colonies. Now he began to speak of them with sinister reference to his nephew. He starred James. It became a case of “Frederick Knott presents James Datchett in ‘The Colonies,’ ” and there seemed every prospect that the production would be an early one; for if there was one section of the public which Mr. Knott disliked more than another, it was Young Men Who Ought To Be Out Earning Their Livings Instead Of Idling At Home. He expressed his views on the subject with some eloquence whenever he visited his sister’s house. Mrs. Datchett was a widow, and since her husband’s death had been in the habit of accepting every utterance of her brother Frederick as a piece of genuine all-wool wisdom; though, as a matter of fact, James’s uncle had just about enough brain to make a jaybird fly crooked, and no more. He had made his money through keeping sheep. And any fool can keep sheep. However, he had this reputation for wisdom, and what he said went. It was not long, therefore, before it was evident that the ranks of the Y.M.W.O.T.B.O.E.T.L.I.O.I.A.H. were about to lose a member.

James, for his part, was all against the Colonies. As a setting for his career, that is to say. He was no Little Englander. He had no earthly objection to Great Britain having Colonies. By all means have Colonies. They could rely on him for moral support. But when it came to legging it out to West Australia to act as a sort of valet to Uncle Frederick’s beastly sheep⁠—no. Not for James. For him the literary life. Yes, that was James’s dream⁠—to have a stab at the literary life. At Oxford he had contributed to the Isis, and since coming down had been endeavouring to do the same to the papers of the Metropolis. He had had no success so far. But some inward voice seemed to tell him⁠—(Read on. Read on. This is no story about the young beginner’s struggles in London. We do not get within fifty miles of Fleet Street.)

A temporary compromise was effected between the two parties by the securing for James of a post as assistant-master at Harrow House, the private school of one Blatherwick, M.A., the understanding being that if he could hold the job he could remain in England and write, if it pleased him, in his spare time. But if he fell short in any way as a handler of small boys he was to descend a step in the animal kingdom and be matched against the West Australian sheep. There was to be no second chance in the event of failure. From the way Uncle Frederick talked James almost got the idea that he attached a spiritual importance to a connection with sheep. He seemed to strive with a sort of religious frenzy to convert James to West Australia. So James went to Harrow House with much the same emotions that the Old Guard must have felt on their way up the hill at Waterloo.

Harrow House was a grim mansion on the outskirts of Dover. It is better, of course, to be on the outskirts of Dover than actually in it, but when you have said that you have said everything. James’s impressions of that portion of his life were made up almost entirely of chalk. Chalk in the schoolroom, chalk all over the countryside, chalk in the milk. In this universe of chalk he taught bored boys the rudiments of Latin, geography, and arithmetic, and in the evenings, after a stately cup of coffee with Mr. Blatherwick in his study, went to his room and wrote stories. The life had the advantage of offering few distractions. Except for Mr. Blatherwick and a weird freak who came up from Dover on Tuesdays and Fridays to teach French, he saw nobody.

It was about five weeks from the beginning of term that the river of life at Harrow House became ruffled for the new assistant-master.

I want you to follow me very closely here. As far as the excusing of James’s conduct is concerned, it is now or never. If I fail at this point to touch you, I have shot my bolt.

Let us marshal the facts.

In the first place it was a perfectly ripping morning.

Moreover he had received at breakfast a letter from the editor of a monthly magazine accepting a short story.

This had never happened to him before.

He was twenty-two.

And, just as he rounded the angle of the house, he came upon Violet, taking the air like himself.

Violet was one of the housemaids, a trim, energetic little person with round blue eyes and a friendly smile. She smiled at James now. James halted.

“Good morning, sir,” said Violet.

From my list of contributory causes I find that I have omitted one item⁠—viz., that there did not appear to be anybody else about.

James looked meditatively at Violet. Violet looked smilingly at James. The morning was just as ripping as it had been a moment before. James was still twenty-two. And the editor’s letter had not ceased to crackle in his breast-pocket.

Consequently James stooped, and⁠—in a purely brotherly way⁠—kissed Violet.

This, of course, was wrong. It was no part of James’s duties as assistant-master at Harrow House to wander about bestowing brotherly kisses on housemaids. On the other hand, there was no great harm done. In the circles in which Violet moved the kiss was equivalent to the handshake of loftier society. Everybody who came to the back door kissed Violet. The carrier did; so did the grocer, the baker, the butcher, the gardener, the postman, the policeman, and the fishmonger. They were men of widely differing views on most points. On religion, politics, and the prospects of the entrants for the three o’clock race their opinions clashed. But in one respect they were unanimous. Whenever they came to the back door of Harrow House they all kissed Violet.

“I’ve had a story accepted by the Universal Magazine,” said James, casually.

“Have you, sir?” said Violet.

“It’s a pretty good magazine. I shall probably do a great deal for it from time to time. The editor seems a decent chap.”

“Does he, sir?”

“I shan’t tie myself up in any way, of course, unless I get very good terms. But I shall certainly let him see a good lot of my stuff. Jolly morning, isn’t it?”

He strolled on; and Violet, having sniffed the air for a few more minutes with her tip-tilted nose, went indoors to attend to her work.

Five minutes later James, back in the atmosphere of chalk, was writing on the blackboard certain sentences for his class to turn into Latin prose. A somewhat topical note ran through them. As thus:

“The uncle of Balbus wished him to tend sheep in the Colonies (Provincia).”

“Balbus said that England was good enough for him (placeo).”

“Balbus sent a story (versus) to Maecenas, who replied that he hoped to use it in due course.”

His mind floated away from the classroom when a shrill voice brought him back.

“Sir, please, sir, what does ‘due course’ mean?”

James reflected. “Alter it to ‘immediately,’ ” he said.

“Balbus is a great man,” he wrote on the blackboard.

Two minutes later he was in the office of an important magazine, and there was a look of relief on the editor’s face, for James had practically promised to do a series of twelve short stories for him.

It has been well observed that when a writer has a story rejected he should send that story to another editor, but that when he has one accepted he should send another story to that editor. Acting on this excellent plan, James, being off duty for an hour after tea, smoked a pipe in his bedroom and settled down to work on a second effort for the Universal.

He was getting on rather well when his flow of ideas was broken by a knock on the door.

“Come in,” yelled James. (Your author is notoriously irritable.)

The newcomer was Adolf. Adolf was one of that numerous band of Swiss and German youths who come to this country prepared to give their services ridiculously cheap in exchange for the opportunity of learning the English language. Mr. Blatherwick held the view that for a private school a male front-door opener was superior to a female, arguing that the parents of prospective pupils would be impressed by the sight of a man in livery. He would have liked something a bit more imposing than Adolf, but the latter was the showiest thing that could be got for the money, so he made the best of it, and engaged him. After all, an astigmatic parent, seeing Adolf in a dim light, might be impressed by him. You never could tell.

“Well?” said James, glaring.

“Anysing vrom dze fillage, sare?”

The bulk of Adolf’s perquisites consisted of the tips he received for going to the general store down the road for tobacco, stamps, and so on. “No. Get out,” growled James, turning to his work.

He was surprised to find that Adolf, so far from getting out, came in and shut the door.

“Zst!” said Adolf, with a finger on his lips.

James stared.

“In dze garten zis morning,” proceeded his visitor, grinning like a gargoyle, “I did zee you giss Violed. Zo!”

James’s heart missed a beat. Considered purely as a situation, his present position was not ideal. He had to work hard, and there was not much money attached to the job. But it was what the situation stood for that counted. It was his little rock of safety in the midst of a surging ocean of West Australian sheep. Once let him lose his grip on it, and there was no chance for him. He would be swept away beyond hope of return.

“What do you mean?” he said hoarsely.

“In dze garten. I you vrom a window did zee. You und Violed. Zo!” And Adolf, in the worst taste, gave a realistic imitation of the scene, himself sustaining the role of James.

James said nothing. The whole world seemed to be filled with a vast baaing, as of countless flocks.

“Lizzun!” said Adolf. “Berhaps I Herr Blazzervig dell. Berhaps not I do. Zo!”

James roused himself. At all costs he must placate this worm. Mr. Blatherwick was an austere man. He would not overlook such a crime.

He appealed to the other’s chivalry.

“What about Violet?” he said. “Surely you don’t want to lose the poor girl her job? They’d be bound to sack her, too.”

Adolf’s eyes gleamed.

“Zo? Lizzun! When I do gom virst here, I myself do to giss Violed vunce vish. But she do push dze zide of my face, and my lof is durned to hate.”

James listened attentively to this tabloid tragedy, but made no comment.

“Anysing vrom dze fillage, sare?”

Adolf’s voice was meaning. James produced a half-crown.

“Here you are, then. Get me half a dozen stamps and keep the change.”

“Zdamps? Yes, sare. At vunce.”

James’s last impression of the departing one was of a vast and greasy grin, stretching most of the way across his face.

Adolf, as blackmailer, in which role he now showed himself, differed in some respects from the conventional blackmailer of fiction. It may be that he was doubtful as to how much James would stand, or it may be that his soul as a general rule was above money. At any rate, in actual specie he took very little from his victim. He seemed to wish to be sent to the village oftener than before, but that was all. Half a crown a week would have covered James’s financial loss.

But he asserted himself in another way. In his most lighthearted moments Adolf never forgot the reason which had brought him to England. He had come to the country to learn the language, and he meant to do it. The difficulty which had always handicapped him hitherto⁠—namely, the poverty of the vocabularies of those in the servants’ quarters⁠—was now removed. He appointed James tutor-in-chief of the English language to himself, and saw that he entered upon his duties at once.

The first time that he accosted James in the passage outside the classroom, and desired him to explain certain difficult words in a leading article of yesterday’s paper, James was pleased. Adolf, he thought, regarded the painful episode as closed. He had accepted the half-crown as the full price of silence, and was now endeavouring to be friendly in order to make amends.

This right-minded conduct gratified James. He felt genially disposed toward Adolf. He read the leading article, and proceeded to give a full and kindly explanation of the hard words. He took trouble over it. He went into the derivations of the words. He touched on certain rather tricky sub-meanings of the same. Adolf went away with any doubts he might have had of James’s capabilities as a teacher of English definitely scattered. He felt that he had got hold of the right man.

There was a shade less geniality in James’s manner when the same thing happened on the following morning. But he did not refuse to help the untutored foreigner. The lecture was less exhaustive than that of the previous morning, but we must suppose that it satisfied Adolf, for he came again next day, his faith in his teacher undiminished.

James was trying to write a story. He turned on the student.

“Get out!” he howled. “And take that beastly paper away. Can’t you see I’m busy? Do you think I can spend all my time teaching you to read? Get out!”

“Dere some hard vord vos,” said Adolf, patiently, “of which I gannot dze meaning.”

James briefly cursed the hard word.

“But,” proceeded Adolf, “of one vord, of dze vord ‘giss,’ I dze meaning know. Zo!”

James looked at him. There was a pause.

Two minutes later the English lesson was in full swing.

All that James had ever heard or read about the wonderful devotion to study of the modern German young man came home to him during the next two weeks. Our English youth fritters away its time in idleness and pleasure-seeking. The German concentrates. Adolf concentrated like a porous plaster. Every day after breakfast, just when the success of James’s literary career depended on absolute seclusion, he would come trotting up for his lesson. James’s writing practically ceased.

This sort of thing cannot last. There is a limit, and Adolf reached it when he attempted to add night-classes to the existing curriculum.

James, as had been said, was in the habit of taking coffee with Mr. Blatherwick in his study after seeing the boys into bed. It was while he was on his way to keep this appointment, a fortnight after his first interview with Adolf, that the young student waylaid him with the evening paper.

Something should have warned Adolf that the moment was not well chosen. To begin with, James had a headache, the result of a hard day with the boys. Then that morning’s English lesson had caused him to forget entirely an idea which had promised to be the nucleus of an excellent plot. And, lastly, passing through the hall but an instant before, he had met Violet, carrying the coffee and the evening post to the study, and she had given him two long envelopes addressed in his own handwriting. He was brooding over these, preparatory to opening them, at the very moment when Adolf addressed him.

“Eggscuse,” said Adolf, opening the paper.

James’s eyes gleamed ominously.

“Zere are here,” continued Adolf, unseeing, “some beyond-gombarison hard vords vich I do nod onderstand. For eggsample⁠—”

It was at this point that James kicked him.

Adolf leaped like a stricken chamois.

“Vot iss?” he cried.

With these long envelopes in his hand James cared for nothing. He kicked Adolf again.

“Zo!” said the student, having bounded away. He added a few words in his native tongue, and proceeded. “Vait! Lizzun! I zay to you, vait! Brezendly, ven I haf dze zilver bolished und my odder dudies zo numerous berformed, I do Herr Blazzervig vil vith von liddle szdory vich you do know go. Zo!”

He shot off to his lair.

James turned away and went down the passage to restore his nervous tissues with coffee.

Meanwhile, in the study, leaning against the mantelpiece in moody reflection, Mr. Blatherwick was musing sadly on the hardships of the schoolmaster’s life. The proprietor of Harrow House was a long, grave man, one of the last to hold out against the anti-whisker crusade. He had expressionless hazel eyes, and a general air of being present in body but absent in spirit. Mothers who visited the school to introduce their sons put his vagueness down to activity of mind. “That busy brain,” they thought, “is never at rest. Even while he is talking to us some abstruse point in the classics is occupying his mind.”

What was occupying his mind at the present moment was the thoroughly unsatisfactory conduct of his wife’s brother, Bertie Baxter. The more tensely he brooded over the salient points in the life-history of his wife’s brother, Bertie Baxter, the deeper did the iron become embedded in his soul. Bertie was one of Nature’s touchers. This is the age of the specialist, Bertie’s speciality was borrowing money. He was a man of almost eerie versatility in this direction. Time could not wither nor custom stale his infinite variety. He could borrow with a breezy bluffness which made the thing practically a holdup. And anon, when his victim had steeled himself against this method, he could extract another five-pound note from his little hoard with the delicacy of one playing spillikins. Mr. Blatherwick had been a goldmine to him for years. As a rule, the proprietor of Harrow House unbelted without complaint, for Bertie, as every good borrower should, had that knack of making his victim feel during the actual moment of paying over, as if he had just made a rather good investment. But released from the spell of his brother-in-law’s personal magnetism, Mr. Blatherwick was apt to brood. He was brooding now. Why, he was asking himself morosely, should he be harassed by this Bertie? It was not as if Bertie was penniless. He had a little income of his own. No, it was pure lack of consideration. Who was Bertie that he⁠—

At this point in his meditations Violet entered with the after-dinner coffee and the evening post.

Mr. Blatherwick took the letters. There were two of them, and one he saw, with a rush of indignation, was in the handwriting of his brother-in-law. Mr. Blatherwick’s blood simmered. So the fellow thought he could borrow by post, did he? Not even trouble to pay a visit, eh? He tore the letter open, and the first thing he saw was a cheque for five pounds.

Mr. Blatherwick was astounded. That a letter from his brother-in-law should not contain a request for money was surprising; that it should contain a cheque, even for five pounds, was miraculous.

He opened the second letter. It was short, but full of the finest, noblest sentiments; to wit, that the writer, Charles J. Pickersgill, having heard the school so highly spoken of by his friend, Mr. Herbert Baxter, would be glad if Mr. Blatherwick could take in his three sons, aged seven, nine, and eleven respectively, at the earliest convenient date.

Mr. Blatherwick’s first feeling was one of remorse that even in thought he should have been harsh to the golden-hearted Bertie. His next was one of elation.

Violet, meanwhile, stood patiently before him with the coffee. Mr. Blatherwick helped himself. His eye fell on Violet.

Violet was a friendly, warmhearted little thing. She saw that Mr. Blatherwick had had good news; and, as the bearer of the letters which had contained it, she felt almost responsible. She smiled kindly up at Mr. Blatherwick.

Mr. Blatherwick’s dreamy hazel eye rested pensively upon her. The major portion of his mind was far away in the future, dealing with visions of a school grown to colossal proportions, and patronized by millionaires. The section of it which still worked in the present was just large enough to enable him to understand that he felt kindly, and even almost grateful, to Violet. Unfortunately it was too small to make him see how wrong it was to kiss her in a vague, fatherly way across the coffee tray just as James Datchett walked into the room.

James paused. Mr. Blatherwick coughed. Violet, absolutely unmoved, supplied James with coffee, and bustled out of the room.

She left behind her a somewhat massive silence.

Mr. Blatherwick coughed again.

“It looks like rain,” said James, carelessly.

“Ah?” said Mr. Blatherwick.

“Very like rain,” said James.

“Indeed!” said Mr. Blatherwick.

A pause.

“Pity if it rains,” said James.

“True,” said Mr. Blatherwick.

Another pause.

“Er⁠—Datchett,” said Mr. Blatherwick.

“Yes,” said James.

“I⁠—er⁠—feel that perhaps⁠—”

James waited attentively.

“Have you sugar?”

“Plenty, thanks,” said James.

“I shall be sorry if it rains,” said Mr. Blatherwick.

Conversation languished.

James laid his cup down.

“I have some writing to do,” he said. “I think I’ll be going upstairs now.”

“Er⁠—just so,” said Mr. Blatherwick, with relief. “Just so. An excellent idea.”

“Er⁠—Datchett,” said Mr. Blatherwick next day, after breakfast.

“Yes?” said James.

A feeling of content was over him this morning. The sun had broken through the clouds. One of the long envelopes which he had received on the previous night had turned out, on examination, to contain a letter from the editor accepting the story if he would reconstruct certain passages indicated in the margin.

“I have⁠—ah⁠—unfortunately been compelled to dismiss Adolf,” said Mr. Blatherwick.

“Yes?” said James. He had missed Adolf’s shining morning face.

“Yes. After you had left me last night he came to my study with a malicious⁠—er⁠—fabrication respecting yourself which I need not⁠—ah⁠—particularize.”

James looked pained. Awful thing it is, this nourishing vipers in one’s bosom.

“Why, I’ve been giving Adolf English lessons nearly every day lately. No sense of gratitude, these foreigners,” he said, sadly.

“So I was compelled,” proceeded Mr. Blatherwick, “to⁠—in fact, just so.”

James nodded sympathetically.

“Do you know anything about West Australia?” he asked, changing the subject. “It’s a fine country, I believe. I had thought of going there at one time.”

“Indeed?” said Mr. Blatherwick.

“But I’ve given up the idea now,” said James.

Ahead of Schedule

It was to Wilson, his valet, with whom he frequently chatted in airy fashion before rising of a morning, that Rollo Finch first disclosed his great idea. Wilson was a man of silent habit, and men of silent habit rarely escaped Rollo’s confidences.

“Wilson,” he said one morning from the recesses of his bed, as the valet entered with his shaving-water, “have you ever been in love?”

“Yes, sir,” said the valet, unperturbed.

One would hardly have expected the answer to be in the affirmative. Like most valets and all chauffeurs, Wilson gave the impression of being above the softer emotions.

“What happened?” inquired Rollo.

“It came to nothing, sir,” said Wilson, beginning to strop the razor with no appearance of concern.

“Ah!” said Rollo. “And I bet I know why. You didn’t go the right way to work.”

“No, sir?”

“Not one fellow in a hundred does. I know. I’ve thought it out. I’ve been thinking the deuce of a lot about it lately. It’s dashed tricky, this making love. Most fellows haven’t a notion how to work it. No system. No system, Wilson, old scout.”

“No, sir?”

“Now, I have a system. And I’ll tell it you. It may do you a bit of good next time you feel that impulse. You’re not dead yet. Now, my system is simply to go to it gradually, by degrees. Work by schedule. See what I mean?”

“Not entirely, sir.”

“Well, I’ll give you the details. First thing, you want to find the girl.”

“Just so, sir.”

“Well, when you’ve found her, what do you do? You just look at her. See what I mean?”

“Not entirely, sir.”

“Look at her, my boy. That’s just the start⁠—the foundation. You develop from that. But you keep away. That’s the point. I’ve thought this thing out. Mind you, I don’t claim absolutely all the credit for the idea myself. It’s by way of being based on Christian Science. Absent treatment, and all that. But most of it’s mine. All the fine work.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Yes. Absolutely all the fine work. Here’s the thing in a nutshell. You find the girl. Right. Of course, you’ve got to meet her once, just to establish the connection. Then you get busy. First week, looks. Just look at her. Second week, letters. Write to her every day. Third week, flowers. Send her some every afternoon. Fourth week, presents with a bit more class about them. Bit of jewellery now and then. See what I mean? Fifth week⁠—lunches and suppers and things. Sixth week, propose, though you can do it in the fifth week if you see a chance. You’ve got to leave that to the fellow’s judgement. Well, there you are. See what I mean?”

Wilson stropped his master’s razor thoughtfully.

“A trifle elaborate, sir, is it not?” he said.

Rollo thumped the counterpane.

“I knew you’d say that. That’s what nine fellows out of ten would say. They’d want to rush it. I tell you, Wilson, old scout, you can’t rush it.”

Wilson brooded awhile, his mind back in the passionate past.

“In Market Bumpstead, sir⁠—”

“What the deuce is Market Bumpstead?”

“A village, sir, where I lived until I came to London.”

“Well?”

“In Market Bumpstead, sir, the prevailing custom was to escort the young lady home from church, buy her some little present⁠—some ribbons, possibly⁠—next day, take her for a walk, and kiss her, sir.”

Wilson’s voice, as he unfolded these devices of the dashing youth of Market Bumpstead, had taken on an animation quite unsuitable to a conscientious valet. He gave the impression of a man who does not depend on idle rumour for his facts. His eye gleamed unprofessionally for a moment before resuming its habitual expression of quiet introspection.

Rollo shook his head.

“That sort of thing might work in a village,” he said, “but you want something better for London.”

Rollo Finch⁠—in the present unsatisfactory state of the law parents may still christen a child Rollo⁠—was a youth to whom Nature had given a cheerful disposition not marred by any superfluity of brain. Everyone liked Rollo⁠—the great majority on sight, the rest as soon as they heard that he would be a millionaire on the death of his Uncle Andrew. There is a subtle something, a sort of nebulous charm, as it were, about young men who will be millionaires on the death of their Uncle Andrew which softens the ruggedest misanthrope.

Rollo’s mother had been a Miss Galloway, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.; and Andrew Galloway, the world-famous Braces King, the inventor and proprietor of the inimitable “Tried and Proven,” was her brother. His braces had penetrated to every corner of the earth. Wherever civilization reigned you would find men wearing Galloway’s “Tried and Proven.”

Between Rollo and this human benefactor there had always existed friendly relations, and it was an open secret that, unless his uncle were to marry and supply the world with little Galloways as well as braces, the young man would come into his money.

So Rollo moved on his way through life, popular and happy. Always merry and bright. That was Rollo.

Or nearly always. For there were moments⁠—we all have our greyer moments⁠—when he could have wished that Mr. Galloway had been a trifle older or a trifle less robust. The Braces potentate was at present passing, in excellent health, through the Indian summer of life. He was, moreover, as has been stated, by birth and residence a Pittsburgh man. And the tendency of middle-aged Pittsburgh millionaires to marry chorus girls is notoriously like the homing instinct of pigeons. Something⁠—it may be the smoke⁠—seems to work on them like a charm.

In the case of Andrew Galloway, Nature had been thwarted up till now by the accident of an unfortunate attachment in early life. The facts were not fully known, but it was generally understood that his fiancée had exercised Woman’s prerogative and changed her mind. Also, that she had done this on the actual wedding-day, causing annoyance to all, and had clinched the matter by eloping to Jersey City with the prospective bridegroom’s own coachman. Whatever the facts, there was no doubt about their result. Mr. Galloway, having abjured woman utterly, had flung himself with moody energy into the manufacture and propagation of his “Tried and Proven” Braces, and had found consolation in it ever since. He would be strong, he told himself, like his braces. Hearts might snap beneath a sudden strain. Not so the “Tried and Proven.” Love might tug and tug again, but never more should the trousers of passion break away from the tough, masterful braces of self-control.

As Mr. Galloway had been in this frame of mind for a matter of eleven years, it seemed to Rollo not unreasonable to hope that he might continue in it permanently. He had the very strongest objection to his uncle marrying a chorus girl; and, as the years went on and the disaster did not happen, his hopes of playing the role of heir till the fall of the curtain grew stronger and stronger. He was one of those young men who must be heirs or nothing. This is the age of the specialist, and years ago Rollo had settled on his career. Even as a boy, hardly capable of connected thought, he had been convinced that his speciality, the one thing he could do really well, was to inherit money. All he wanted was a chance. It would be bitter if Fate should withhold it from him.

He did not object on principle to men marrying chorus girls. On the contrary, he wanted to marry one himself.

It was this fact which had given that turn to his thoughts which had finally resulted in the schedule.

The first intimation that Wilson had that the schedule was actually to be put into practical operation was when his employer, one Monday evening, requested him to buy a medium-sized bunch of the best red roses and deliver them personally, with a note, to Miss Marguerite Parker at the stage-door of the Duke of Cornwall’s Theatre.

Wilson received the order in his customary gravely deferential manner, and was turning to go; but Rollo had more to add.

“Flowers, Wilson,” he said, significantly.

“So I understood you to say, sir. I will see to it at once.”

“See what I mean? Third week, Wilson.”

“Indeed, sir?”

Rollo remained for a moment in what he would have called thought.

“Charming girl, Wilson.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“Seen the show?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“You should,” said Rollo, earnestly. “Take my advice, old scout, and see it first chance you get. It’s topping. I’ve had the same seat in the middle of the front row of the stalls for two weeks.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“Looks, Wilson! The good old schedule.”

“Have you noticed any satisfactory results, sir?”

“It’s working. On Saturday night she looked at me five times. She’s a delightful girl, Wilson. Nice, quiet girl⁠—not the usual sort. I met her first at a lunch at Oddy’s. She’s the last girl on the O.P. side. I’m sure you’d like her, Wilson.”

“I have every confidence in your taste, sir.”

“You’ll see her for yourself this evening. Don’t let the fellow at the stage-door put you off. Slip him half a crown or a couple of quid or something, and say you must see her personally. Are you a close observer, Wilson?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Because I want you to notice particularly how she takes it. See that she reads the note in your presence. I’ve taken a good deal of trouble over that note, Wilson. It’s a good note. Well expressed. Watch her face while she’s reading it.”

“Very good, sir. Excuse me, sir.”

“Eh?”

“I had almost forgotten to mention it. Mr. Galloway rang up on the telephone shortly before you came in.”

“What! Is he in England?”

Mr. Galloway was in the habit of taking occasional trips to Great Britain to confer with the general manager of his London branch. Rollo had grown accustomed to receiving no notice of these visits.

“He arrived two days ago on the Baltic, sir. He left a message that he was in London for a week, and would be glad if you would dine with him tomorrow at his club.”

Rollo nodded. On these occasions it was his practice to hold himself unreservedly at Mr. Galloway’s disposal. The latter’s invitations were royal commands. Rollo was glad that the visit had happened now. In another two weeks it might have been disastrous to the schedule.

The club to which the Braces King belonged was a richly but gloomily furnished building in Pall Mall, a place of soft carpets, shaded lights, and whispers. Grave, elderly men moved noiselessly to and fro, or sat in meditative silence in deep armchairs. Sometimes the visitor felt that he was in a cathedral, sometimes in a Turkish bath; while now and then there was a suggestion of the waiting-room of a more than usually prosperous dentist. It was magnificent, but not exhilarating.

Rollo was shown into the smoking-room, where his uncle received him. There was a good deal of Mr. Andrew Galloway. Grief, gnawing at his heart, had not sagged his ample waistcoat, which preceded him as he moved in much the same manner as Birnam Woods preceded the army of Macduff. A well-nourished hand crept round the corner of the edifice and enveloped Rollo’s in a powerful grip.

“Ah, my boy!” bellowed Mr. Galloway cheerfully. His voice was always loud. “Glad you’ve come.”

It would be absurd to say that Rollo looked at his uncle keenly. He was not capable of looking keenly at anyone. But certainly a puzzled expression came into his face. Whether it was the heartiness of the other’s handshake or the unusual cheeriness of his voice, he could not say; but something gave him the impression that a curious change had come over the Braces King. When they had met before during the last few years Mr. Galloway had been practically sixteen stone five of blood and iron⁠—one of those stern, soured men. His attitude had been that of one for whom Life’s music had ceased. Had he then inserted another record? His manner conveyed that idea.

Sustained thought always gave Rollo a headache. He ceased to speculate.

“Still got the same chef here, uncle?” he said. “Deuced brainy fellow. I always like dining here.”

“Here!” Mr. Galloway surveyed the somnolent occupants of the room with spirited scorn. “We aren’t going to dine in this forsaken old mausoleum. I’ve sent in my resignation today. If I find myself wanting this sort of thing at any time, I’ll go to Paris and hunt up the Morgue. Bunch of old deadbeats! Bah! I’ve engaged a table at Romano’s. That’s more in my line. Get your coat, and let’s be going.”

In the cab Rollo risked the headache. At whatever cost this thing must be pondered over. His uncle prattled gaily throughout the journey. Once he whooped⁠—some weird, forgotten college yell, dragged from the misty depths of the past. It was passing strange. And in this unusual manner the two rolled into the Strand, and drew up at Romano’s door.

Mr. Galloway was a good trencherman. At a very early date he had realized that a man who wishes to make satisfactory braces must keep his strength up. He wanted a good deal here below, and he wanted it warm and well cooked. It was, therefore, not immediately that his dinner with Rollo became a feast of reason and a flow of soul. Indeed, the two revellers had lighted their cigars before the elder gave forth any remark that was not purely gastronomic.

When he did jerk the conversation up on to a higher plane, he jerked it hard. He sent it shooting into the realms of the soulful with a whiz.

“Rollo,” he said, blowing a smoke-ring, “do you believe in affinities?”

Rollo, in the act of sipping a liqueur brandy, lowered his glass in surprise. His head was singing slightly as the result of some rather spirited Bollinger (extra sec), and he wondered if he had heard aright.

Mr. Galloway continued, his voice rising as he spoke.

“My boy,” he said, “I feel young tonight for the first time in years. And, hang it, I’m not so old! Men have married at twice my age.”

Strictly speaking, this was incorrect, unless one counted Methuselah; but perhaps Mr. Galloway spoke figuratively.

“Three times my age,” he proceeded, leaning back and blowing smoke, thereby missing his nephew’s agitated start. “Four times my age. Five times my age. Six⁠—”

He pulled himself together in some confusion. A generous wine, that Bollinger. He must be careful.

He coughed.

“Are you⁠—you aren’t⁠—are you⁠—” Rollo paused. “Are you thinking of getting married, uncle?”

Mr. Galloway’s gaze was still on the ceiling.

“A great deal of nonsense,” he yelled severely, “is talked about men lowering themselves by marrying actresses. I was a guest at a supper-party last night at which an actress was present. And a more charming, sensible girl I never wish to meet. Not one of your silly, brainless chits who don’t know the difference between lobster Newburg and canvasback duck, and who prefer sweet champagne to dry. No, sir! Not one of your mincing, affected kind who pretend they never touch anything except a spoonful of cold consommé. No, sir! Good, healthy appetite. Enjoyed her food, and knew why she was enjoying it. I give you my word, my boy, until I met her I didn’t know a woman existed who could talk so damned sensibly about a bavaroise au rhum.”

He suspended his striking tribute in order to relight his cigar.

“She can use a chafing-dish,” he resumed, his voice vibrating with emotion. “She told me so. She said she could fix chicken so that a man would leave home for it.” He paused, momentarily overcome. “And Welsh rarebits,” he added reverently.

He puffed hard at his cigar.

“Yes,” he said. “Welsh rarebits, too. And because,” he shouted wrathfully, “because, forsooth, she earns an honest living by singing in the chorus of a comic opera, a whole bunch of snivelling idiots will say I have made a fool of myself. Let them!” he bellowed, sitting up and glaring at Rollo. “I say, let them! I’ll show them that Andrew Galloway is not the man to⁠—to⁠—is not the man⁠—” He stopped. “Well, anyway, I’ll show them,” he concluded rather lamely.

Rollo eyed him with fallen jaw. His liqueur had turned to wormwood. He had been fearing this for years. You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, but she will return. Blood will tell. Once a Pittsburgh millionaire, always a Pittsburgh millionaire. For eleven years his uncle had fought against his natural propensities, with apparent success; but Nature had won in the end. His words could have no other meaning. Andrew Galloway was going to marry a chorus girl.

Mr. Galloway rapped on the table, and ordered another kummel.

“Marguerite Parker!” he roared dreamily, rolling the words round his tongue, like port.

“Marguerite Parker!” exclaimed Rollo, bounding in his chair.

His uncle met his eye sternly.

“That was the name I said. You seem to know it. Perhaps you have something to say against the lady. Eh? Have you? Have you? I warn you to be careful. What do you know of Miss Parker? Speak!”

“Er⁠—no, no. Oh, no! I just know the name, that’s all. I⁠—I rather think I met her once at lunch. Or it may have been somebody else. I know it was someone.”

He plunged at his glass. His uncle’s gaze relaxed its austerity.

“I hope you will meet her many more times at lunch, my boy. I hope you will come to look upon her as a second mother.”

This was where Rollo asked if he might have a little more brandy.

When the restorative came he drank it at a gulp; then looked across at his uncle. The great man still mused.

“Er⁠—when is it to be?” asked Rollo. “The wedding, and all that?”

“Hardly before the Fall, I think. No, not before the Fall. I shall be busy till then. I have taken no steps in the matter yet.”

“No steps? You mean⁠—? Haven’t you⁠—haven’t you proposed?”

“I have had no time. Be reasonable, my boy; be reasonable.”

“Oh!” said Rollo.

He breathed a long breath. A suspicion of silver lining had become visible through the clouds.

“I doubt,” said Mr. Galloway, meditatively, “if I shall be able to find time till the end of the week. I am very busy. Let me see. Tomorrow? No. Meeting of the shareholders. Thursday? Friday? No. No, it will have to stand over till Saturday. After Saturday’s matinee. That will do excellently.”

There is a dramatic spectacle to be observed every day in this land of ours, which, though deserving of recognition, no artist has yet pictured on canvas. We allude to the suburban season-ticket holder’s sudden flash of speed. Everyone must have seen at one time or another a happy, bright-faced season-ticket holder strolling placidly towards the station, humming, perhaps, in his lightheartedness, some gay air. He feels secure. Fate cannot touch him, for he has left himself for once plenty of time to catch that 8:50, for which he has so often sprinted like the gazelle of the prairie. As he strolls, suddenly his eye falls on the church clock. The next moment with a passionate cry he is endeavouring to lower his record for the fifty-yard dash. All the while his watch has been fifteen minutes slow.

In just such a case was Rollo Finch. He had fancied that he had plenty of time. And now, in an instant, the fact was borne in upon him that he must hurry.

For the greater part of the night of his uncle’s dinner he lay sleepless, vainly endeavouring to find a way out of the difficulty. It was not till early morning that he faced the inevitable. He hated to abandon the schedule. To do so meant changing a well-ordered advance into a forlorn hope. But circumstances compelled it. There are moments when speed alone can save love’s season-ticket holder.

On the following afternoon he acted. It was no occasion for stint. He had to condense into one day the carefully considered movements of two weeks, and to the best of his ability he did so. He bought three bouquets, a bracelet, and a gold Billiken with ruby eyes, and sent them to the theatre by messenger-boy. With them went an invitation to supper.

Then, with the feeling that he had done all that was possible, he returned to his flat and waited for the hour.

He dressed with more than usual care that night. Your wise general never throws away a move. He was particular about his tie. As a rule, Wilson selected one for him. But there had been times when Wilson had made mistakes. One could not rely absolutely on Wilson’s taste in ties. He did not blame him. Better men than Wilson had gone wrong over an evening tie. But tonight there must be no taking of chances.

“Where do we keep our ties, Wilson?” he asked.

“The closet to the right of the door, sir. The first twelve shallow shelves, counting from the top, sir. They contain a fair selection of our various cravats. Replicas in bulk are to be found in the third nest of drawers in your dressing-room, sir.”

“I only want one, my good man. I’m not a regiment. Ah! I stake all on this one. Not a word, Wilson. No discussion. This is the tie I wear. What’s the time?”

“Eight minutes to eleven, sir.”

“I must be off. I shall be late. I shan’t want you any more tonight. Don’t wait for me.”

“Very good, sir.”

Rollo left the room, pale but determined, and hailed a taxi.

It is a pleasant spot, the vestibule of the Carlton Hotel. Glare⁠—glitter⁠—distant music⁠—fair women⁠—brave men. But one can have too much of it, and as the moments pass, and she does not arrive, a chill seems to creep into the atmosphere. We wait on, hoping against hope, and at last, just as waiters and commissionaires are beginning to eye us with suspicion, we face the truth. She is not coming. Then out we crawl into cold, callous Pall Mall, and so home. You have been through it, dear reader, and so have I.

And so, at eleven forty-five that evening, had Rollo. For a full three-quarters of an hour he waited, scanning the face of each new arrival with the anxious scrutiny of a lost dog seeking its master; but at fourteen minutes to twelve the last faint flicker of hope had died away. A girl may be a quarter of an hour late for supper. She may be half an hour late. But there is a limit, and to Rollo’s mind forty-five minutes passed it. At ten minutes to twelve a uniformed official outside the Carlton signalled to a taxicab, and there entered it a young man whose faith in Woman was dead.

Rollo meditated bitterly as he drove home. It was not so much the fact that she had not come that stirred him. Many things may keep a girl from supper. It was the calm way in which she had ignored the invitation. When you send a girl three bouquets, a bracelet, and a gold Billiken with ruby eyes, you do not expect an entire absence of recognition. Even a penny-in-the-slot machine treats you better than that. It may give you hairpins when you want matches but at least it takes some notice of you.

He was still deep in gloomy thought when he inserted his latchkey and opened the door of his flat.

He was roused from his reflections by a laugh from the sitting-room. He started. It was a pleasant laugh, and musical, but it sent Rollo diving, outraged, for the handle of the door. What was a woman doing in his sitting-room at this hour? Was his flat an hotel?

The advent of an unbidden guest rarely fails to produce a certain gêne. The sudden appearance of Rollo caused a dead silence.

It was broken by the fall of a chair on the carpet as Wilson rose hurriedly to his feet.

Rollo stood in the doorway, an impressive statue of restrained indignation. He could see the outlying portions of a girl in blue at the further end of the table, but Wilson obscured his vision.

“Didn’t expect you back, sir,” said Wilson.

For the first time in the history of their acquaintance his accustomed calm seemed somewhat ruffled.

“So I should think,” said Rollo. “I believe you, by George!”

“You had better explain, Jim,” said a dispassionate voice from the end of the table.

Wilson stepped aside.

“My wife, sir,” he said, apologetically, but with pride.

“Your wife!”

“We were married this morning, sir.”

The lady nodded cheerfully at Rollo. She was small and slight, with an impudent nose and a mass of brown hair.

“Awfully glad to meet you,” she said, cracking a walnut.

Rollo gaped.

She looked at him again.

“We’ve met, haven’t we? Oh yes, I remember. We met at lunch once. And you sent me some flowers. It was ever so kind of you,” she said, beaming.

She cracked another nut. She seemed to consider that the introductions were complete and that formality could now be dispensed with once more. She appeared at peace with all men.

The situation was slipping from Rollo’s grip. He continued to gape.

Then he remembered his grievance.

“I think you might have let me know you weren’t coming to supper.”

“Supper?”

“I sent a note to the theatre this afternoon.”

“I haven’t been to the theatre today. They let me off because I was going to be married. I’m so sorry. I hope you didn’t wait long.”

Rollo’s resentment melted before the friendliness of her smile.

“Hardly any time,” he said, untruthfully.

“If I might explain, sir,” said Wilson.

“By George! If you can, you’ll save me from a brainstorm. Cut loose, and don’t be afraid you’ll bore me. You won’t.”

“Mrs. Wilson and I are old friends, sir. We come from the same town. In fact⁠—”

Rollo’s face cleared.

“By George! Market what’s-its-name! Why, of course. Then she⁠—”

“Just so, sir. If you recollect, you asked me once if I had ever been in love, and I replied in the affirmative.”

“And it was⁠—”

“Mrs. Wilson and I were engaged to be married before either of us came to London. There was a misunderstanding, which was entirely my⁠—”

“Jim! It was mine.”

“No, it was all through my being a fool.”

“It was not. You know it wasn’t!”

Rollo intervened.

“Well?”

“And when you sent me with the flowers, sir⁠—well, we talked it over again, and⁠—that was how it came about, sir.”

The bride looked up from her walnuts.

“You aren’t angry?” she smiled up at Rollo.

“Angry?” He reflected. Of course, it was only reasonable that he should be a little⁠—well, not exactly angry, but⁠—And then for the first time it came to him that the situation was not entirely without its compensations. Until that moment he had completely forgotten Mr. Galloway.

“Angry?” he said. “Great Scott, no! Jolly glad I came back in time to get a bit of the wedding-breakfast. I want it, I can tell you. I’m hungry. Here we all are, eh? Let’s enjoy ourselves. Wilson, old scout, bustle about and give us your imitation of a bridegroom mixing a ‘B. and S.’ for the best man. Mrs. Wilson, if you’ll look in at the theatre tomorrow you’ll find one or two small wedding presents waiting for you. Three bouquets⁠—they’ll be a bit withered, I’m afraid⁠—a bracelet, and a gold Billiken with ruby eyes. I hope he’ll bring you luck. Oh, Wilson!”

“Sir?”

“Touching this little business⁠—don’t answer if it’s a delicate question, but I should like to know⁠—I suppose you didn’t try the schedule. What? More the Market Thingummy method, eh? The one you described to me?”

“Market Bumpstead, sir?” said Wilson. “On those lines.”

Rollo nodded thoughtfully.

“It seems to me,” he said, “they know a thing or two down in Market Bumpstead.”

“A very rising little place, sir,” assented Wilson.

By Advice of Counsel

The traveller champed meditatively at his steak. He paid no attention to the altercation which was in progress between the waiter and the man at the other end of the dingy room. The sounds of strife ceased. The waiter came over to the traveller’s table and stood behind his chair. He was ruffled.

“If he meant lamb,” he said, querulously, “why didn’t he say ‘lamb,’ so’s a feller could hear him? I thought he said ‘ham,’ so I brought ham. Now Lord Percy gets all peevish.”

He laughed bitterly. The traveller made no reply.

“If people spoke distinct,” said the waiter, “there wouldn’t be half the trouble there is in the world. Not half the trouble there wouldn’t be. I shouldn’t be here, for one thing. In this restawrong, I mean.” A sigh escaped him.

“I shouldn’t,” he said, “and that’s the truth. I should be getting up when I pleased, eating and drinking all I wanted, and carrying on same as in the good old days. You wouldn’t think, to look at me, would you now, that I was once like the lily of the field?”

The waiter was a tall, stringy man, who gave the impression of having no spine. In that he drooped, he might have been said to resemble a flower, but in no other respect. He had sandy hair, weak eyes set close together, and a day’s growth of red stubble on his chin. One could not see him in the lily class.

“What I mean to say is, I didn’t toil, neither did I spin. Ah, them was happy days! Lying on me back, plenty of tobacco, something cool in a jug⁠—”

He sighed once more.

“Did you ever know a man of the name of Moore? Jerry Moore?”

The traveller applied himself to his steak in silence.

“Nice feller. Simple sort of feller. Big. Quiet. Bit deaf in one ear. Straw-coloured hair. Blue eyes. ’Andsome, rather. Had a ’ouse just outside of Reigate. Has it still. Money of his own. Left him by his pa. Simple sort of feller. Not much to say for himself. I used to know him well in them days. Used to live with him. Nice feller he was. Big. Bit hard of hearing. Got a sleepy kind of grin, like this⁠—something.”

The traveller sipped his beer in thoughtful silence.

“I reckon you never met him,” said the waiter. “Maybe you never knew Gentleman Bailey, either? We always called him that. He was one of these broken-down Eton or ’Arrer fellers, folks said. We struck up a partnership kind of casual, both being on the tramp together, and after a while we ’appened to be round about Reigate. And the first house we come to was this Jerry Moore’s. He come up just as we was sliding to the back door, and grins that sleepy grin. Like this⁠—something. ‘ ’Ullo!’ he says. Gentleman kind of gives a whoop, and hollers, ‘If it ain’t my old pal, Jerry Moore! Jack,’ he says to me, ‘this is my old pal, Mr. Jerry Moore, wot I met in ’appier days down at Ramsgate one summer.’

“They shakes hands, and Jerry Moore says, ‘Is this a friend of yours, Bailey?’ looking at me. Gentleman introduces me. ‘We are partners,’ he says, ‘partners in misfortune. This is my friend, Mr. Roach.’

“ ‘Come along in,’ says Jerry.

“So we went in, and he makes us at home. He’s a bachelor, and lives all by himself in this desirable ’ouse.

“Well, I seen pretty quick that Jerry thinks the world of Gentleman. All that evening he’s acting as if he’s as pleased as Punch to have him there. Couldn’t do enough for him. It was a bit of all right, I said to meself. It was, too.

“Next day we gets up late and has a good breakfast, and sits on the lawn and smokes. The sun was shining, the little birds was singing, and there wasn’t a thing, east, west, north, or south, that looked like work. If I had been asked my address at that moment, on oath, I wouldn’t have hesitated a second. I should have answered, ‘No. 1, Easy Street.’ You see, Jerry Moore was one of these slow, simple fellers, and you could tell in a moment what a lot he thought of Gentleman. Gentleman, you see, had a way with him. Not haughty, he wasn’t. More affable, I should call it. He sort of made you feel that all men are born equal, but that it was awful good of him to be talking to you, and that he wouldn’t do it for everybody. It went down proper with Jerry Moore. Jerry would sit and listen to him giving his views on things by the hour. By the end of the first day I was having visions of sitting in that garden a white-baked old man, and being laid out, when my time should come, in Jerry’s front room.”

He paused, his mind evidently in the past, among the cigars and big breakfasts. Presently he took up his tale.

“This here Jerry Moore was a simple sort of feller. Deafies are like that. Ever noticed? Not that Jerry was a real deafy. His hearing was a bit off, but he could foller you if you spoke to him nice and clear. Well, I was saying, he was kind of simple. Liked to put in his days pottering about the little garden he’d made for himself, looking after his flowers and his fowls, and sit of an evening listening to Gentleman ’olding forth on Life. He was a philosopher, Gentleman was. And Jerry took everything he said as gospel. He didn’t want no proofs. ’E and the King of Denmark would have been great pals. He just sat by with his big blue eyes getting rounder every minute and lapped it up.

“Now you’d think a man like that could be counted on, wouldn’t you? Would he want anything more? Not he, you’d say. You’d be wrong. Believe me, there isn’t a man on earth that’s fixed and contented but what a woman can’t knock his old Paradise into ’ash with one punch.

“It wasn’t long before I begin to notice a change in Jerry. He never had been what you’d call a champion catch-as-catch-can talker, but now he was silenter than ever. And he got a habit of switching Gentleman off from his theories on Life in general to Woman in particular. This suited Gentleman just right. What he didn’t know about Woman wasn’t knowledge.

“Gentleman was too busy talking to have time to get suspicious, but I wasn’t; and one day I draws Gentleman aside and puts it to him straight. ‘Gentleman,’ I says, ‘Jerry Moore is in love!’

“Well, this was a nasty knock, of course, for Gentleman. He knew as well as I did what it would mean if Jerry was to lead home a blushing bride through that front door. It would be outside into the cold, hard world for the bachelor friends. Gentleman sees that quick, and his jaw drops. I goes on. ‘All the time,’ I says, ‘that you’re talking away of an evening, Jerry’s seeing visions of a little woman sitting in your chair. And you can bet we don’t enter into them visions. He may dream of little feet pattering about the house,’ I says, ‘but they aren’t ours; and you can ’ave something on that both ways. Look alive, Gentleman,’ I says, ‘and think out some plan, or we might as well be padding the hoof now.’

“Well, Gentleman did what he could. In his evening discourses he started to give it to Woman all he knew. Began to talk about Delilahs and Jezebels and Fools-there-was and the rest of it, and what a mug a feller was to let a female into ’is cosy home, who’d only make him spend his days hooking her up, and his nights wondering how to get back the blankets without waking her. My, he was crisp! Enough to have given Romeo the jumps, you’d have thought. But, lor! It’s no good talking to them when they’ve got it bad.

“A few days later we caught him with the goods, talking in the road to a girl in a pink dress.

“I couldn’t but admit that Jerry had picked one right from the top of the basket. This wasn’t one of them languishing sort wot sits about in cosy corners and reads storybooks, and don’t care what’s happening in the home so long as they find out what became of the hero in his duel with the Grand Duke. She was a brown, slim, wiry-looking little thing. You know. Held her chin up and looked you up and down with eyes the colour of Scotch whisky, as much as to say, ‘Well, what about it?’ You could tell without looking at her, just by the feel of the atmosphere when she was near, that she had as much snap and go in her as Jerry Moore hadn’t, which was a good bit. I knew, just as sure as I was standing there on one leg, that this was the sort of girl who would have me and Gentleman out of that house about three seconds after the clergyman had tied the knot.

“Jerry says, ‘These are my friends, Miss Tuxton⁠—Mr. Bailey and Mr. Roach. They are staying with me for a visit. This is Miss Jane Tuxton,’ he says to us. ‘I was just going to see Miss Tuxton home,’ he says, sort of wistful. ‘Excellent,’ says Gentleman. ‘We’ll come too.’ And we all goes along. There wasn’t much done in the way of conversation. Jerry never was one for pushing out the words; nor was I, when in the presence of the sect; and Miss Jane had her chin in the air, as if she thought me and Gentleman was not needed in any way whatsoever. The only talk before we turned her in at the garden gate was done by Gentleman, who told a pretty long story about a friend of his in Upper Sydenham who had been silly enough to marry, and had had trouble ever since.

“That night, after we had went to bed, I said to Gentleman, ‘Gentleman,’ I says, ‘what’s going to be done about this? We’ve got about as much chance, if Jerry marries that girl,’ I says, ‘as a couple of helpless chocolate creams at a schoolgirls’ picnic.’ ‘If,’ says Gentleman. ‘He ain’t married her yet. That is a girl of character, Jack. Trust me. Didn’t she strike you as a girl who would like a man with a bit of devil in him, a man with some go in him, a you-be-darned kind of man? Does Jerry fill the bill? He’s more like a doormat with “Welcome” written on it, than anything else.’

“Well, we seen a good deal of Miss Jane in the next week or so. We keeps Jerry under⁠—what’s it the heroine says in the melodrama? ‘Oh, cruel, cruel, S P something.’ Espionage, that’s it. We keeps Jerry under espionage, and whenever he goes trickling round after the girl, we goes trickling round after him.

“ ‘Things is running our way,’ says Gentleman to me, after one of these meetings. ‘That girl is getting cross with Jerry. She wants Reckless Rudolf, not a man who stands and grins when other men butt in on him and his girl. Mark my words, Jack. She’ll get tired of Jerry, and go off and marry a soldier, and we’ll live happy ever after.’ ‘Think so?’ I says. ‘Sure of it,’ said Gentleman.

“It was the Sunday after this that Jerry Moore announces to us, wriggling, that he had an engagement to take supper with Jane and her folks. He’d have liked to have slipped away secret, but we was keeping him under espionage too crisp for that, so he has to tell us. ‘Excellent,’ said Gentleman. ‘It will be a great treat to Jack and myself to meet the family. We will go along with you.’ So off we all goes, and pushes our boots in sociable fashion under the Tuxton table. I looked at Miss Jane out of the corner of my eye; and, honest, that chin of hers was sticking out a foot, and Jerry didn’t dare look at her. Love’s young dream, I muses to myself, how swift it fades when a man has the nature and disposition of a lop-eared rabbit!

“The Tuxtons was four in number, not counting the parrot, and all male. There was Pa Tuxton, an old feller with a beard and glasses; a fat uncle; a big brother, who worked in a bank and was dressed like Moses in all his glory; and a little brother with a snub nose, that cheeky you’d have been surprised. And the parrot in its cage and a fat yellow dog. And they’re all making themselves pleasant to Jerry, the wealthy future son-in-law, something awful. It’s ‘How are the fowls, Mr. Moore?’ and ‘A little bit of this pie, Mr. Moore; Jane made it,’ and Jerry sitting there with a feeble grin, saying ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and nothing much more, while Miss Jane’s eyes are snapping like Fifth of November fireworks. I could feel Jerry’s chances going back a mile a minute. I felt as happy as a little child that evening. I sang going back home.

“Gentleman’s pleased, too. ‘Jack,’ he says to me when we’re in bed, ‘this is too easy. In my most sanguinary dreams I hardly hoped for this. No girl of spirit’s going to love a man who behaves that way to her parents. The way to win the heart of a certain type of girl,’ he says, beginning on his theories, ‘the type to which Jane Tuxton belongs, is to be rude to her family. I’ve got Jane Tuxton sized up and labelled. Her kind wants her folks to dislike her young man. She wants to feel that she’s the only one in the family that’s got the sense to see the hidden good in Willie. She doesn’t want to be one of a crowd hollering out what a nice young man he is. It takes some pluck in a man to stand up to a girl’s family, and that’s what Jane Tuxton is looking for in Jerry. Take it from one who has studied the sect,’ says Gentleman, ‘from John o’ Groat’s to Land’s End, and back again.’

“Next day Jerry Moore’s looking as if he’d only sixpence in the world and had swallowed it. ‘What’s the matter, Jerry?’ says Gentleman. Jerry heaves a sigh. ‘Bailey,’ he says, ‘and you, Mr. Roach, I expect you both seen how it is with me. I love Miss Jane Tuxton, and you seen for yourselves what transpires. She don’t value me, not tuppence.’ ‘Say not so,’ says Gentleman, sympathetic. ‘You’re doing fine. If you knew the sect as I do you wouldn’t go by mere superficial silences and chin-tiltings. I can read a girl’s heart, Jerry,’ he says, patting him on the shoulder, ‘and I tell you you’re doing fine. All you want now is a little rapid work, and you win easy. To make the thing a cert,’ he says, getting up, ‘all you have to do is to make a dead set at her folks.’ He winks at me. ‘Don’t just sit there like you did last night. Show ’em you’ve got something in you. You know what folks are: they think themselves the most important things on the map. Well, go to work. Consult them all you know. Every opportunity you get. There’s nothing like consulting a girl’s folks to put you in good with her.’ And he pats Jerry on the shoulder again and goes indoors to find his pipe.

“Jerry turns to me. ‘Do you think that’s really so?’ he says. I says, ‘I do.’ ‘He knows all about girls, I reckon,’ says Jerry. ‘You can go by him every time,’ I says. ‘Well, well,’ says Jerry, sort of thoughtful.”

The waiter paused. His eye was sad and dreamy. Then he took up the burden of his tale.

“First thing that happens is that Gentleman has a sore tooth on the next Sunday, so don’t feel like coming along with us. He sits at home, dosing it with whisky, and Jerry and me goes off alone.

“So Jerry and me pikes off, and once more we prepares to settle down around the board. I hadn’t noticed Jerry particular, but just now I catches sight of his face in the light of the lamp. Ever see one of those fighters when he’s sitting in his corner before a fight, waiting for the gong to go? Well, Jerry looks like that; and it surprises me.

“I told you about the fat yellow dog that permeated the Tuxton’s house, didn’t I? The family thought a lot of that dog, though of all the ugly brutes I ever met he was the worst. Sniffing round and growling all the time. Well, this evening he comes up to Jerry just as he’s going to sit down, and starts to growl. Old Pa Tuxton looks over his glasses and licks his tongue. ‘Rover! Rover!’ he says, kind of mild. ‘Naughty Rover; he don’t like strangers, I’m afraid.’ Jerry looks at Pa Tuxton, and he looks at the dog, and I’m just expecting him to say ‘No’ or ‘Yes,’ same as the other night, when he lets out a nasty laugh⁠—one of them bitter laughs. ‘Ho!’ he says. ‘Ho! don’t he? Then perhaps he’d better get further away from them.’ And he ups with his boot and⁠—well, the dog hit the far wall.

“Jerry sits down and pulls up his chair. ‘I don’t approve,’ he says, fierce, ‘of folks keeping great, fat, ugly, bad-tempered yellow dogs that are a nuisance to all. I don’t like it.’

“There was a silence you could have scooped out with a spoon. Have you ever had a rabbit turn round on you and growl? That’s how we all felt when Jerry outs with them crisp words. They took our breath away.

“While we were getting it back again the parrot, which was in its cage, let out a squawk. Honest, I jumped a foot in my chair.

“Jerry gets up very deliberate, and walks over to the parrot. ‘Is this a menagerie?’ he says. ‘Can’t a man have supper in peace without an image like you starting to holler? Go to sleep.’

“We was all staring at him surprised, especially Uncle Dick Tuxton, whose particular pet the parrot was. He’d brought him home all the way from some foreign parts.

“ ‘Hello, Billy!’ says the bird, shrugging his shoulders and puffing himself up. ‘R-r-r-r! R-r-r-r! ’lo, Billy! ’lo, ’lo, ’lo! R-r Wah!’

“Jerry gives its cage a bang.

“ ‘Don’t talk back at me,’ he says, ‘or I’ll knock your head off. You think because you’ve got a green tail you’re someone.’ And he stalks back to his chair and sits glaring at Uncle Dick.

“Well, all this wasn’t what you might call promoting an easy flow of conversation. Everyone’s looking at Jerry, ’specially me, wondering what next, and trying to get their breath, and Jerry’s frowning at the cold beef, and there’s a sort of awkward pause. Miss Jane is the first to get busy. She bustles about and gets the food served out, and we begins to eat. But still there’s not so much conversation that you’d notice it. This goes on till we reaches the concluding stages, and then Uncle Dick comes up to the scratch.

“ ‘How is the fowls, Mr. Moore?’ he says.

“ ‘Gimme some more pie,’ says Jerry. ‘What?’

“Uncle Dick repeats his remark.

“ ‘Fowls?’ says Jerry. ‘What do you know about fowls? Your notion of a fowl is an ugly bird with a green tail, a Wellington nose, and⁠—gimme a bit of cheese.’

“Uncle Dick’s fond of the parrot, so he speaks up for him. ‘Polly’s always been reckoned a handsome bird,’ he says.

“ ‘He wants stuffing,’ says Jerry.

“And Uncle Dick drops out of the talk.

“Up comes big brother, Ralph his name was. He’s the bank-clerk and a dude. He gives his cuffs a flick, and starts in to make things jolly all round by telling a story about a man he knows named Wotherspoon. Jerry fixes him with his eye, and, halfway through, interrupts.

“ ‘That waistcoat of yours is fierce,’ he says.

“ ‘Pardon?’ says Ralph.

“ ‘That waistcoat of yours,’ says Jerry. ‘It hurts me eyes. It’s like an electric sign.’

“ ‘Why, Jerry,’ I says, but he just scowls at me and I stops.

“Ralph is proud of his clothes, and he isn’t going to stand this. He glares at Jerry and Jerry glares at him.

“ ‘Who do you think you are?’ says Ralph, breathing hard.

“ ‘Button up your coat,’ says Jerry.

“ ‘Look ’ere!’ says Ralph.

“ ‘Cover it up, I tell you,’ says Jerry. ‘Do you want to blind me?’ Pa Tuxton interrupts.

“ ‘Why, Mr. Moore,’ he begins, sort of soothing; when the small brother, who’s been staring at Jerry, chips in. I told you he was cheeky.

“He says, ‘Pa, what a funny nose Mr. Moore’s got!’

“And that did it. Jerry rises, very slow, and leans across the table and clips the kid brother one side of the ear-’ole. And then there’s a general imbroglio, everyone standing up and the kid hollering and the dog barking.

“ ‘If you’d brought him up better,’ says Jerry, severe, to Pa Tuxton, ‘this wouldn’t ever have happened.’ ”

“Pa Tuxton gives a sort of howl.

“ ‘Mr. Moore,’ he yells, ‘what is the meaning of this extraordinary behaviour? You come here and strike me child⁠—’

“Jerry bangs on the table.

“ ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘and I’d strike him again. Listen to me,’ he says. ‘You think just because I’m quiet I ain’t got no spirit. You think all I can do is to sit and smile. You think⁠—Bah! You aren’t on to the hidden depths in me character. I’m one of them still waters that runs deep. I’m⁠—Here, you get out of it! Yes, all of you! Except Jane. Jane and me wants this room to have a private talk in. I’ve got a lot of things to say to Jane. Are you going?’

“I turns to the crowd. I was awful disturbed. ‘You mustn’t take any notice,’ I says. ‘He ain’t well. He ain’t himself.’ When just then the parrot cuts with another of them squawks. Jerry jumps at it.

“ ‘You first,’ he says, and flings the cage out of the window. ‘Now you,’ he says to the yellow dog, putting him out through the door. And then he folds his arms and scowls at us, and we all notice suddenly that he’s very big. We look at one another, and we begins to edge towards the door. All except Jane, who’s staring at Jerry as if he’s a ghost.

“ ‘Mr. Moore,’ says Pa Tuxton, dignified, ‘we’ll leave you. You’re drunk.’

“ ‘I’m not drunk,’ says Jerry. ‘I’m in love.’

“ ‘Jane,’ says Pa Tuxton, ‘come with me, and leave this ruffian to himself.’

“ ‘Jane,’ says Jerry, ‘stop here, and come and lay your head on my shoulder.’

“ ‘Jane,’ says Pa Tuxton, ‘do you hear me?’

“ ‘Jane,’ says Jerry, ‘I’m waiting.’

“She looks from one to the other for a spell, and then she moves to where Jerry’s standing.

“ ‘I’ll stop,’ she says, sort of quiet.

“And we drifts out.”

The waiter snorted.

“I got back home quick as I could,” he said, “and relates the proceedings to Gentleman. Gentleman’s rattled. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he says. ‘Don’t stand there and tell me Jerry Moore did them things. Why, it ain’t in the man. ’Specially after what I said to him about the way he ought to behave. How could he have done so?’ Just then in comes Jerry, beaming all over. ‘Boys,’ he shouts, ‘congratulate me. It’s all right. We’ve fixed it up. She says she hadn’t known me properly before. She says she’d always reckoned me a sheep, while all the time I was one of them strong, silent men.’ He turns to Gentleman⁠—”

The man at the other end of the room was calling for his bill.

“All right, all right,” said the waiter. “Coming! He turns to Gentleman,” he went on rapidly, “and he says, ‘Bailey, I owe it all to you, because if you hadn’t told me to insult her folks⁠—’ ”

He leaned on the traveller’s table and fixed him with an eye that pleaded for sympathy.

“ ’Ow about that?” he said. “Isn’t that crisp? ‘Insult her folks!’ Them was his very words. ‘Insult her folks!’ ”

The traveller looked at him inquiringly.

“Can you beat it?” said the waiter.

“I don’t know what you are saying,” said the traveller. “If it is important, write it on a slip of paper. I am stone-deaf.”

Deep Waters

Historians of the social life of the later Roman Empire speak of a certain young man of Ariminum, who would jump into rivers and swim in ’em. When his friends said, “You fish!” he would answer, “Oh, pish! Fish can’t swim like me, they’ve no vim in ’em.”

Just such another was George Barnert Callender.

On land, in his land clothes, George was a young man who excited little remark. He looked very much like other young men. He was much about the ordinary height. His carriage suggested the possession of an ordinary amount of physical strength. Such was George⁠—on shore. But remove his clothes, drape him in a bathing-suit, and insert him in the water, and instantly, like the gentleman in The Tempest, he “suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange.” Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George’s mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breaststroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did the crawl, strong men gasped. When he swam on his back, you felt that that was the only possible method of progression.

George came to Marvis Bay at about five o’clock one evening in July. Marvis Bay has a well-established reputation as a summer resort, and, while not perhaps in every respect the paradise which the excitable writer of the local guidebook asserts it to be, on the whole it earns its reputation. Its sands are smooth and firm, sloping almost imperceptibly into the ocean. There is surf for those who like it, and smoother water beyond for those whose ideals in bathing are not confined to jumping up and down on a given jellyfish. At the northern end of the beach there is a long pier. It was to this that George made his way on his arrival.

It was pleasant on the pier. Once you had passed the initial zareba of fruit stands, souvenir stands, ice-cream stands, and the lair of the enthusiast whose aim in life it was to sell you picture postcards, and had won through to the long walk where the seats were, you were practically alone with Nature. At this hour of the day the place was deserted; George had it to himself. He strolled slowly along. The water glittered under the sun-rays, breaking into a flurry of white foam as it reached the beach. A cool breeze blew. The whole scenic arrangements were a great improvement on the stuffy city he had left. Not that George had come to Marvis Bay with the single aim of finding an antidote to metropolitan stuffiness. There was a more important reason. In three days Marvis Bay was to be the scene of the production of Fate’s Footballs, a comedy in four acts by G. Barnert Callender. For George, though you would not have suspected it from his exterior, was one of those in whose cerebra the grey matter splashes restlessly about, producing strong curtains and crisp dialogue. The company was due at Marvis Bay on the following evening for the last spasm of rehearsals.

George’s mind, as he paced the pier, was divided between the beauties of Nature and the forthcoming crisis in his affairs in the ratio of one-eighth to the former and seven-eighths to the latter. At the moment when he had left London, thoroughly disgusted with the entire theatrical world in general and the company which was rehearsing Fate’s Footballs in particular, rehearsals had just reached that stage of brisk delirium when the author toys with his bottle of poison and the stage manager becomes icily polite. The Footpills⁠—as Arthur Mifflin, the leading juvenile in the great play, insisted upon calling it, much to George’s disapproval⁠—was his first piece. Never before had he been in one of those kitchens where many cooks prepare, and sometimes spoil, the theatrical broth. Consequently the chaos seemed to him unique. Had he been a more experienced dramatist, he would have said to himself, “ ’Twas ever thus.” As it was, what he said to himself⁠—and others⁠—was more forcible.

He was trying to dismiss the whole thing from his mind⁠—a feat which had hitherto proved beyond his powers⁠—when Fate, in an unusually kindly mood, enabled him to do so in a flash by presenting to his jaundiced gaze what, on consideration, he decided was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. “When a man’s afraid,” shrewdly sings the bard, “a beautiful maid is a cheering sight to see.” In the present instance the sight acted on George like a tonic. He forgot that the lady to whom an injudicious management had assigned the role of heroine in Fate’s Footballs invariably⁠—no doubt from the best motives⁠—omitted to give the cynical roué his cue for the big speech in Act III. His mind no longer dwelt on the fact that Arthur Mifflin, an estimable person in private life, and one who had been a friend of his at Cambridge, preferred to deliver the impassioned lines of the great renunciation scene in a manner suggesting a small boy (and a sufferer from nasal catarrh at that) speaking a piece at a Sunday school treat. The recollection of the hideous depression and gloom which the leading comedian had radiated in great clouds fled from him like some grisly nightmare before the goddess of day. Every cell in his brain was occupied, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, by the girl swimming in the water below.

She swam well. His practised eye saw that. Her strong, easy strokes carried her swiftly over the swell of the waves. He stared, transfixed. He was a well-brought-up young man, and he knew how ill-bred it was to stare; but this was a special occasion. Ordinary rules of conventional etiquette could not apply to a case like this. He stared. More, he gaped. As the girl passed on into the shadow of the pier he leaned farther over the rail, and his neck extended in joints like a telescope.

At this point the girl turned to swim on her back. Her eyes met his. Hers were deep and clear; his, bulging. For what seemed an eternity to George, she continued to look at him. Then, turning over again, she shot past under the pier.

George’s neck was now at its full stretch. No power of will or muscle could add another yard to it. Realizing this, he leaned farther over the rail, and farther still. His hat slid from his hand. He grabbed at it, and, overbalancing, fell with a splash into the water.

Now, in ordinary circumstances, to fall twelve feet into the ocean with all his clothes on would have incommoded George little. He would hardly have noticed it. He would have swum to shore with merely a feeling of amused self-reproach akin to that of the man who absentmindedly walks into a lamppost in the street. When, therefore, he came to the surface he prepared without agitation to strike out in his usual bold fashion. At this moment, however, two hands, grasping him beneath the arms, lifted his head still farther from the waves, and a voice in his ear said, “Keep still; don’t struggle. There’s no danger.”

George did not struggle. His brain, working with the cool rapidity of a buzz-saw in an icebox, had planned a line of action. Few things are more difficult in this world for a young man than the securing of an introduction to the right girl under just the right conditions. When he is looking his best he is presented to her in the midst of a crowd, and is swept away after a rapid handshake. When there is no crowd he has toothache, or the sun has just begun to make his nose peel. Thousands of young lives have been saddened in this manner.

How different was George’s case! By this simple accident, he reflected, as, helping the good work along with an occasional surreptitious leg-stroke, he was towed shorewards, there had been formed an acquaintanceship, if nothing more, which could not lightly be broken. A girl who has saved a man from drowning cannot pass him by next day with a formal bow. And what a girl, too! There had been a time, in extreme youth, when his feminine ideal was the sort of girl who has fuzzy, golden hair, and drops things. Indeed in his first year at the University he had said⁠—and written⁠—as much to one of the type, the episode concluding with a strong little drama, in which a wrathful, cheque-signing father had starred, supported by a subdued, misogynistic son. Which things, aided by the march of time, had turned George’s tastes towards the healthy, open-air girl, who did things instead of dropping them.

The pleasantest functions must come to an end sooner or later; and in due season George felt his heels grate on the sand. His preserver loosed her hold. They stood up and faced each other. George began to express his gratitude as best he could⁠—it was not easy to find neat, convincing sentences on the spur of the moment⁠—but she cut him short.

“Of course, it was nothing. Nothing at all,” she said, brushing the seawater from her eyes. “It was just lucky I happened to be there.”

“It was splendid,” said the infatuated dramatist. “It was magnificent. It⁠—”

He saw that she was smiling.

“You’re very wet,” she said.

George glanced down at his soaked clothes. It had been a nice suit once.

“Hadn’t you better hurry back and change into something dry?”

Looking round about him, George perceived that sundry of the inquisitive were swooping down, with speculation in their eyes. It was time to depart.

“Have you far to go?”

“Not far. I’m staying at the Beach View Hotel.”

“Why, so am I. I hope we shall meet again.”

“We shall,” said George confidently.

“How did you happen to fall in?”

“I was⁠—er⁠—I was looking at something in the water.”

“I thought you were,” said the girl, quietly.

George blushed.

“I know,” he said, “it was abominably rude of me to stare like that; but⁠—”

“You should learn to swim,” interrupted the girl. “I can’t understand why every boy in the country isn’t made to learn to swim before he’s ten years old. And it isn’t a bit difficult, really. I could teach you in a week.”

The struggle between George and George’s conscience was brief. The conscience, weak by nature and flabby from long want of exercise, had no sort of chance from the start.

“I wish you would,” said George. And with those words he realized that he had definitely committed himself to his hypocritical role. Till that moment explanation would have been difficult, but possible. Now it was impossible.

“I will,” said the girl. “I’ll start tomorrow if you like.” She waded into the water.

“We’ll talk it over at the hotel,” she said, hastily. “Here comes a crowd of horrid people. I’m going to swim out again.”

She hurried into deeper water, while George, turning, made his way through a growing throng of goggling spectators. Of the fifteen who got within speaking distance of him, six told him that he was wet. The other nine asked him if he had fallen.

Her name was Vaughan, and she was visiting Marvis Bay in company with an aunt. So much George ascertained from the management of the hotel. Later, after dinner, meeting both ladies on the esplanade, he gleaned further information⁠—to wit, that her first name was Mary, that her aunt was glad to make his acquaintance, liked Marvis Bay but preferred Trouville, and thought it was getting a little chilly and would go indoors.

The elimination of the third factor had a restorative effect upon George’s conversation, which had begun to languish. In feminine society as a rule he was apt to be constrained, but with Mary Vaughan it was different. Within a couple of minutes he was pouring out his troubles. The cue-withholding leading lady, the stick-like Mifflin, the funereal comedian⁠—up they all came, and she, gently sympathetic, was endeavouring, not without success, to prove to him that things were not so bad as they seemed.

“It’s sure to be all right on the night,” she said.

How rare is the combination of beauty and intelligence! George thought he had never heard such a clearheaded, well-expressed remark.

“I suppose it will,” he said, “but they were very bad when I left. Mifflin, for instance. He seems to think Nature intended him for a Napoleon of Advertising. He has a bee in his bonnet about booming the piece. Sits up at nights, when he ought to be sleeping or studying his part, thinking out new schemes for advertising the show. And the comedian. His speciality is drawing me aside and asking me to write in new scenes for him. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I just came away and left them to fight it out among themselves.”

“I’m sure you have no need to worry. A play with such a good story is certain to succeed.”

George had previously obliged with a brief description of the plot of The Footpills.

“Did you like the story?” he said, tenderly.

“I thought it was fine.”

“How sympathetic you are!” cooed George, glutinously, edging a little closer. “Do you know⁠—”

“Shall we be going back to the hotel?” said the girl.

Those noisome creatures, the hired murderers of Fate’s Footpills, descended upon Marvis Bay early next afternoon, and George, meeting them at the station, in reluctant pursuance of a promise given to Arthur Mifflin, felt moodily that, if only they could make their acting one-half as full of colour as their clothes, the play would be one of the most pronounced successes of modern times. In the forefront gleamed, like the white plumes of Navarre, the light flannel suit of Arthur Mifflin, the woodenest juvenile in captivity.

His woodenness was, however, confined to stage rehearsals. It may be mentioned that, once the run of a piece had begun, he was sufficiently volatile, and in private life he was almost excessively so⁠—a fact which had been noted at an early date by the keen-eyed authorities of his University, the discovery leading to his tearing himself away from Alma Mater by request with some suddenness. He was a long, slender youth, with green eyes, jet-black hair, and a passionate fondness for the sound of his own voice.

“Well, here we are,” he said, kicking breezily at George’s leg with his cane.

“I saw you,” said George, coldly, sidestepping.

“The whole team,” continued Mr. Mifflin; “all bright, bonny, and trained to the minute.”

“What happened after I left?” George asked. “Has anybody begun to act yet? Or are they waiting till the dress-rehearsal?”

“The rehearsals,” admitted Mr. Mifflin, handsomely, “weren’t perfect; but you wait. It’ll be all right on the night.”

George thought he had never heard such a futile, vapid remark.

“Besides,” said Mr. Mifflin, “I have an idea which will make the show. Lend me your ear⁠—both ears. You shall have them back. Tell me: what pulls people into a theatre? A good play? Sometimes. But failing that, as in the present case, what? Fine acting by the leading juvenile? We have that, but it is not enough. No, my boy; advertisement is the thing. Look at all these men on the beach. Are they going to roll in of their own free wills to see a play like The Footpills? Not on your life. About the time the curtain rises every man of them will be sitting in his own private corner of the beach⁠—”

“How many corners do you think the beach has?”

“Gazing into a girl’s eyes, singing, ‘Shine on, thou harvest moon,’ and telling her how his boss is practically dependent on his advice. You know.”

“I don’t,” said George, coldly.

“Unless,” proceeded Mr. Mifflin, “we advertise. And by advertise, I mean advertise in the right way. We have a Press-agent, but for all the good he does he might be back on the old farm, gathering in the hay. Luckily for us, I am among those present. I have brains, I have resource. What’s that?”

“I said nothing.”

“I thought you did. Well, I have an idea which will drag these people like a magnet. I thought it out coming down in the train.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll tell you later. There are a few details to be worked upon first. Meanwhile, let us trickle to the seafront and take a sail in one of those boats. I am at my best in a boat. I rather fancy Nature intended me for a Viking.”

Matters having been arranged with the financier to whom the boat belonged, they set forth. Mr. Mifflin, having remarked, “Yo-ho!” in a meditative voice, seated himself at the helm, somewhat saddened by his failure to borrow a quid of tobacco from the Ocean Beauty’s proprietor. For, as he justly observed, without properties and makeup, where were you? George, being skilled in the ways of boats, was in charge of the sheet. The summer day had lost its oppressive heat. The sun no longer beat down on the face of the waters. A fresh breeze had sprung up. George, manipulating the sheet automatically, fell into a reverie. A moment comes in the life of every man when an inward voice whispers to him, “This is The One!” In George’s case the voice had not whispered; it had shouted. From now onward there could be but one woman in the world for him. From now onwards⁠—The Ocean Beauty gave a sudden plunge. George woke up.

“What the deuce are you doing with that tiller?” he inquired.

“My gentle somnambulist,” said Mr. Mifflin, aggrieved, “I was doing nothing with this tiller. We will now form a commission to inquire into what you were doing with that sheet. Were you asleep?”

“My fault,” said George; “I was thinking.”

“If you must break the habit of a lifetime,” said Mr. Mifflin, complainingly, “I wish you would wait till we get ashore. You nearly upset us.”

“It shan’t happen again. They are tricky, these sailing boats⁠—turn over in a second. Whatever you do, don’t get her broadside on. There’s more breeze out here than I thought there was.”

Mr. Mifflin uttered a startled exclamation.

“What’s the matter?” asked George.

“Just like a flash,” said Mr. Mifflin, complacently. “It’s always the way with me. Give me time, and the artistic idea is bound to come. Just some little thought, some little, apparently obvious, idea which stamps the man of genius. It beats me why I didn’t think of it before. Why, of course, a costume piece with a male star is a hundred times more effective.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I see now,” continued Mr. Mifflin, “that there was a flaw in my original plan. My idea was this. We were talking in the train about the bathing down here, and Jane happened to say she could swim some, and it suddenly came to me.”

Jane was the leading woman, she who omitted to give cues.

“I said to myself, ‘George is a sportsman. He will be delighted to do a little thing like that.’ ”

“Like to do what?”

“Why, rescue Jane.”

“What!”

“She and you,” said Mr. Mifflin, “were to go in swimming together, while I waited on the sands, holding our boneheaded Press-agent on a leash. About a hundred yards from the shore up go her arms. Piercing scream. Agitated crowds on the beach. What is the matter? What has happened? A touch of cramp. Will she be drowned? No! G. Barnert Callender, author of Fate’s Footballs, which opens at the Beach Theatre on Monday evening next, at eight-fifteen sharp, will save her. See! He has her. He is bringing her in. She is safe. How pleased her mother will be! And the public, what a bit of luck for them! They will be able to see her act at eight-fifteen sharp on Monday after all. Back you come to the shore. Cheering crowds. Weeping women. Strong situation. I unleash the Press-agent, and off he shoots, in time to get the story into the evening paper. It was a great idea, but I see now there were one or two flaws in it.”

“You do, do you?” said George.

“It occurs to me on reflection that after all you wouldn’t have agreed to it. A something, I don’t know what, which is lacking in your nature, would have made you reject the scheme.”

“I’m glad that occurred to you.”

“And a far greater flaw was that it was too altruistic. It boomed you and it boomed Jane, but I didn’t get a thing out of it. My revised scheme is a thousand times better in every way.”

“Don’t say you have another.”

“I have. And,” added Mr. Mifflin, with modest pride, “it is a winner. This time I unhesitatingly assert that I have the goods. In about one minute from now you will hear me exclaim, in a clear musical voice, the single word, ‘Jump!’ That is your cue to leap over the side as quick as you can move, for at that precise moment this spanking craft is going to capsize.”

George spun round in his seat. Mr. Mifflin’s face was shining with kindly enthusiasm. The shore was at least two hundred yards away, and that morning he had had his first swimming-lesson.

“A movement of the tiller will do it. These accidents are common objects of the seashore. I may mention that I can swim just enough to keep myself afloat; so it’s up to you. I wouldn’t do this for everyone, but, seeing that we were boys together⁠—Are you ready?”

“Stop!” cried George. “Don’t do it! Listen!”

“Are you ready?”

The Ocean Beauty gave a plunge.

“You lunatic! Listen to me. It⁠—”

“Jump!” said Mr. Mifflin.

George came to the surface some yards from the overturned boat, and, looking round for Mr. Mifflin, discovered that great thinker treading water a few feet away.

“Get to work, George,” he remarked.

It is not easy to shake one’s fist at a man when in deep water, but George managed it.

“For twopence,” he cried, “I’d leave you to look after yourself.”

“You can do better than that,” said Mr. Mifflin. “I’ll give you threepence to tow me in. Hurry up. It’s cold.”

In gloomy silence George gripped him by the elbows. Mr. Mifflin looked over his shoulder.

“We shall have a good house,” he said. “The stalls are full already, and the dress-circle’s filling. Work away, George, you’re doing fine. This act is going to be a scream from start to finish.”

With pleasant conversation he endeavoured to while away the monotony of the journey; but George made no reply. He was doing some rapid thinking. With ordinary luck, he felt bitterly, all would have been well. He could have gone on splashing vigorously under his teacher’s care for a week, gradually improving till he emerged into a reasonably proficient swimmer. But now! In an age of miracles he might have explained away his present performance; but how was he to⁠—And then there came to him an idea⁠—simple, as all great ideas are, but magnificent.

He stopped and trod water.

“Tired?” said Mr. Mifflin. “Well, take a rest,” he added, kindly, “take a rest. No need to hurry.”

“Look here,” said George, “this piece is going to be recast. We’re going to exchange parts. You’re rescuing me. See? Never mind why. I haven’t time to explain it to you now. Do you understand?”

“No,” said Mr. Mifflin.

“I’ll get behind you and push you; but don’t forget, when we get to the shore, that you’ve done the rescuing.”

Mr. Mifflin pondered.

“Is this wise?” he said. “It is a strong part, the rescuer, but I’m not sure the other wouldn’t suit my style better. The silent handgrip, the catch in the voice. You want a practised actor for that. I don’t think you’d be up to it, George.”

“Never mind about me. That’s how it’s going to be.”

Mr. Mifflin pondered once more.

“No,” he said at length, “it wouldn’t do. You mean well, George, but it would kill the show. We’ll go on as before.”

“Will we?” said George, unpleasantly. “Would you like to know what I’m going to do to you, then? I’m going to hit you very hard under the jaw, and I’m going to take hold of your neck and squeeze it till you lose consciousness, and then I’m going to drag you to the beach and tell people I had to hit you because you lost your head and struggled.”

Mr. Mifflin pondered for the third time.

“You are?” he said.

“I am,” said George.

“Then,” said Mr. Mifflin, cordially, “say no more. I take your point. My objections are removed. But,” he concluded, “this is the last time I come bathing with you, George.”

Mr. Mifflin’s artistic misgivings as to his colleague’s ability to handle so subtle a part as that of rescuee were more than justified on their arrival. A large and interested audience had collected by the time they reached the shore, an audience to which any artist should have been glad to play; but George, forcing his way through, hurried to the hotel without attempting to satisfy them. Not a single silent handshake did he bestow on his rescuer. There was no catch in his voice as he made the one remark which he did make⁠—to a man with whiskers who asked him if the boat had upset. As an exhibition of rapid footwork his performance was good. In other respects it was poor.

He had just changed his wet clothes⁠—it seemed to him that he had been doing nothing but change his wet clothes since he had come to Marvis Bay⁠—when Mr. Mifflin entered in a bathrobe.

“They lent me this downstairs,” he explained, “while they dried my clothes. They would do anything for me. I’m the popular hero. My boy, you made the mistake of your life when you threw up the rescuer part. It has all the fat. I see that now. The rescuer plays the other man off the stage every time. I’ve just been interviewed by the fellow on the local newspaper. He’s correspondent to a couple of London papers. The country will ring with this thing. I’ve told them all the parts I’ve ever played and my favourite breakfast food. There’s a man coming up to take my photograph tomorrow. Footpills stock has gone up with a run. Wait till Monday and see what sort of a house we shall draw. By the way, the reporter fellow said one funny thing. He asked if you weren’t the same man who was rescued yesterday by a girl. I said of course not⁠—that you had only come down yesterday. But he stuck to it that you were.”

“He was quite right.”

“What!”

“I was.”

Mr. Mifflin sat down on the bed.

“This fellow fell off the pier, and a girl brought him in.”

George nodded.

“And that was you?”

George nodded.

Mr. Mifflin’s eyes opened wide.

“It’s the heat,” he declared, finally. “That and the worry of rehearsals. I expect a doctor could give the technical name for it. It’s a what-do-you-call-it⁠—an obsession. You often hear of cases. Fellows who are absolutely sane really, but cracked on one particular subject. Some of them think they’re teapots and things. You’ve got a craving for being rescued from drowning. What happens, old man? Do you suddenly get the delusion that you can’t swim? No, it can’t be that, because you were doing all the swimming for the two of us just now. I don’t know, though. Maybe you didn’t realize that you were swimming?”

George finished lacing his shoe and looked up.

“Listen,” he said; “I’ll talk slow, so that you can understand. Suppose you fell off a pier, and a girl took a great deal of trouble to get you to the shore, would you say, ‘Much obliged, but you needn’t have been so officious. I can swim perfectly well?’ ”

Mr. Mifflin considered this point. Intelligence began to dawn in his face. “There is more in this than meets the eye,” he said. “Tell me all.”

“This morning”⁠—George’s voice grew dreamy⁠—“she gave me a swimming-lesson. She thought it was my first. Don’t cackle like that. There’s nothing to laugh at.”

Mr. Mifflin contradicted this assertion.

“There is you,” he said, simply. “This should be a lesson to you, George. Avoid deceit. In future be simple and straightforward. Take me as your model. You have managed to scrape through this time. Don’t risk it again. You are young. There is still time to make a fresh start. It only needs willpower. Meanwhile, lend me something to wear. They are going to take a week drying my clothes.”

There was a rehearsal at the Beach Theatre that evening. George attended it in a spirit of resignation and left it in one of elation. Three days had passed since his last sight of the company at work, and in those three days, apparently, the impossible had been achieved. There was a snap and go about the piece now. The leading lady had at length mastered that cue, and gave it out with bell-like clearness. Arthur Mifflin, as if refreshed and braced by his saltwater bath, was infusing a welcome vigour into his part. And even the comedian, George could not help admitting, showed signs of being on the eve of becoming funny. It was with a light heart and a light step that he made his way back to the hotel.

In the veranda were a number of basket-chairs. Only one was occupied. He recognized the occupant.

“I’ve just come back from a rehearsal,” he said, seating himself beside her.

“Really?”

“The whole thing is different,” he went on, buoyantly. “They know their lines. They act as if they meant it. Arthur Mifflin’s fine. The comedian’s improved till you wouldn’t know him. I’m awfully pleased about it.”

“Really?”

George felt damped.

“I thought you might be pleased, too,” he said, lamely.

“Of course I am glad that things are going well. Your accident this afternoon was lucky, too, in a way, was it not? It will interest people in the play.”

“You heard about it?”

“I have been hearing about nothing else.”

“Curious it happening so soon after⁠—”

“And so soon before the production of your play. Most curious.”

There was a silence. George began to feel uneasy. You could never tell with women, of course. It might be nothing; but it looked uncommonly as if⁠—

He changed the subject.

“How is your aunt this evening, Miss Vaughan?”

“Quite well, thank you. She went in. She found it a little chilly.”

George heartily commended her good sense. A little chilly did not begin to express it. If the girl had been like this all the evening, he wondered her aunt had not caught pneumonia. He tried again.

“Will you have time to give me another lesson tomorrow?” he said.

She turned on him.

“Mr. Callender, don’t you think this farce has gone on long enough?”

Once, in the dear, dead days beyond recall, when but a happy child, George had been smitten unexpectedly by a sportive playmate a bare half-inch below his third waistcoat-button. The resulting emotions were still green in his memory. As he had felt then, so did he feel now.

“Miss Vaughan! I don’t understand.”

“Really?”

“What have I done?”

“You have forgotten how to swim.”

A warm and prickly sensation began to manifest itself in the region of George’s forehead.

“Forgotten!”

“Forgotten. And in a few months. I thought I had seen you before, and today I remembered. It was just about this time last year that I saw you at Hayling Island swimming perfectly wonderfully, and today you are taking lessons. Can you explain it?”

A frog-like croak was the best George could do in that line.

She went on.

“Business is business, I suppose, and a play has to be advertised somehow. But⁠—”

“You don’t think⁠—” croaked George.

“I should have thought it rather beneath the dignity of an author; but, of course, you know your own business best. Only I object to being a conspirator. I am sorry for your sake that yesterday’s episode attracted so little attention. Today it was much more satisfactory, wasn’t it? I am so glad.”

There was a massive silence for about a hundred years.

“I think I’ll go for a short stroll,” said George.

Scarcely had he disappeared when the long form of Mr. Mifflin emerged from the shadow beyond the veranda.

“Could you spare me a moment?”

The girl looked up. The man was a stranger. She inclined her head coldly.

“My name is Mifflin,” said the other, dropping comfortably into the chair which had held the remains of George.

The girl inclined her head again more coldly; but it took more than that to embarrass Mr. Mifflin. Dynamite might have done it, but not coldness.

“The Mifflin,” he explained, crossing his legs. “I overheard your conversation just now.”

“You were listening?” said the girl, scornfully.

“For all I was worth,” said Mr. Mifflin. “These things are very much a matter of habit. For years I have been playing in pieces where I have had to stand concealed up stage, drinking in the private conversation of other people, and the thing has become a second nature to me. However, leaving that point for a moment, what I wish to say is that I heard you⁠—unknowingly, of course⁠—doing a good man a grave injustice.”

“Mr. Callender could have defended himself if he had wished.”

“I was not referring to George. The injustice was to myself.”

“To you?”

“I was the sole author of this afternoon’s little drama. I like George, but I cannot permit him to pose in any way as my collaborator. George has old-fashioned ideas. He does not keep abreast of the times. He can write plays, but he needs a man with a big brain to boom them for him. So, far from being entitled to any credit for this afternoon’s work, he was actually opposed to it.”

“Then why did he pretend you had saved him?” she demanded.

“George’s,” said Mr. Mifflin, “is essentially a chivalrous nature. At any crisis demanding a display of the finer feelings he is there with the goods before you can turn round. His friends frequently wrangle warmly as to whether he is most like Bayard, Lancelot, or Happy Hooligan. Some say one, some the other. It seems that yesterday you saved him from a watery grave without giving him time to explain that he could save himself. What could he do? He said to himself, ‘She must never know!’ and acted accordingly. But let us leave George, and return⁠—”

“Thank you, Mr. Mifflin.” There was a break in her laugh. “I don’t think there is any necessity. I think I understand now. It was very clever of you.”

“It was more than cleverness,” said Mr. Mifflin, rising. “It was genius.”

A white form came to meet George as he reentered the veranda.

“Mr. Callender!”

He stopped.

“I’m very sorry I said such horrid things to you just now. I have been talking to Mr. Mifflin, and I want to say I think it was ever so nice and thoughtful of you. I understand everything.”

George did not, by a good deal; but he understood sufficient for his needs. He shot forward as if some strong hand were behind him with a needle.

“Miss Vaughan⁠—Mary⁠—I⁠—”

“I think I hear aunt calling,” said she.

But a benevolent Providence has ordained that aunts cannot call forever; and it is on record that when George entered his box on the two hundredth night of that great London success, Fate’s Footballs, he did not enter it alone.

Misunderstood

The profession of Mr. James (“Spider”) Buffin was pocket-picking. His hobby was revenge. James had no objection to letting the sun go down on his wrath. Indeed, it was after dark that he corrected his numerous enemies most satisfactorily. It was on a dark night, while he was settling a small score against one Kelly, a mere acquaintance, that he first fell foul of Constable Keating, whose beat took him through the regions which James most frequented.

James, having “laid for” Mr. Kelly, met him in a murky side-street down Clerkenwell way, and attended to his needs with a sandbag.

It was here that Constable Keating first came prominently into his life. Just as James, with the satisfying feeling that his duty had been done, was preparing to depart, Officer Keating, who had been a distant spectator of the affair, charged up and seized him.

It was intolerable that he should interfere in a purely private falling-out between one gentleman and another, but there was nothing to be done. The policeman weighed close upon fourteen stone, and could have eaten Mr. Buffin. The latter, inwardly seething, went quietly, and in due season was stowed away at the Government’s expense for the space of sixty days.

Physically, there is no doubt that his detention did him good. The regular hours and the substitution of bread and water for his wonted diet improved his health thirty percent. It was mentally that he suffered. His was one of those just-as-good cheap-substitute minds, incapable of harbouring more than one idea at a time, and during those sixty days of quiet seclusion it was filled with an ever-growing resentment against Officer Keating. Every day, as he moved about his appointed tasks, he brooded on his wrongs. Every night was to him but the end of another day that kept him from settling down to the serious business of Revenge. To be haled to prison for correcting a private enemy with a sandbag⁠—that was what stung. In the privacy of his cell he dwelt unceasingly on the necessity for revenge. The thing began to take on to him the aspect almost of a Holy Mission, a sort of Crusade.

The days slipped by, bringing winter to Clerkenwell, and with it Mr. Buffin. He returned to his old haunts one Friday night, thin but in excellent condition. One of the first acquaintances he met was Officer Keating. The policeman, who had a good memory for faces, recognised him, and stopped.

“So you’re out, young feller?” he said genially. When not in the active discharge of his professional duties the policeman was a kindly man. He bore Mr. Buffin no grudge.

“Um,” said Mr. Buffin.

“Feeling fine, eh?”

“Um.”

“Goin’ round to see some of the chaps and pass them the time of day, I shouldn’t wonder?”

“Um.”

“Well, you keep clear of that lot down in Frith Street, young feller. They’re no good. And if you get mixed up with them, first thing you know, you’ll be in trouble again. And you want to keep out of that now.”

“Um.”

“If you never get into trouble,” said the policeman sententiously, “you’ll never have to get out of it.”

“Um,” said Mr. Buffin. If he had a fault as a conversationalist, it was a certain tendency to monotony, a certain lack of sparkle and variety in his small-talk.

Constable Keating, with a dignified but friendly wave of the hand, as one should say, “You have our leave to depart,” went on his way; while Mr. Buffin, raging, shuffled off in the opposite direction, thinking as hard as his limited mental equipment would allow him.

His thoughts, which were many and confused, finally composed themselves into some order. He arrived at a definite conclusion, which was that if the great settlement was to be carried through successfully it must be done when the policeman was off duty. Till then he had pictured himself catching Officer Keating in an unguarded moment on his beat. This, he now saw, was out of the question. On his beat the policeman had no unguarded moments. There was a quiet alertness in his poise, a danger-signal in itself.

There was only one thing for Mr. Buffin to do. Greatly as it would go against the grain, he must foregather with the man, win his confidence, put himself in a position where he would be able to find out what he did with himself when off duty.

The policeman offered no obstacle to the move. A supreme self-confidence was his leading characteristic. Few London policemen are diffident, and Mr. Keating was no exception. It never occurred to him that there could be an ulterior motive behind Mr. Buffin’s advances. He regarded Mr. Buffin much as one regards a dog which one has had to chastise. One does not expect the dog to lie in wait and bite. Officer Keating did not expect Mr. Buffin to lie in wait and bite.

So every day, as he strolled on his beat, there sidled up to him the meagre form of Spider Buffin. Every day there greeted him the Spider’s “Good morning, Mr. Keating,” till the sight of Officer Keating walking solidly along the pavement with Spider Buffin shuffling along at his side, listening with rapt interest to his views on Life and his hints on Deportment, became a familiar spectacle in Clerkenwell.

Mr. Buffin played his part well. In fact, too well. It was on the seventh day that, sidling along in the direction of his favourite place of refreshment, he found himself tapped on the shoulder. At the same moment an arm, linking itself in his, brought him gently to a halt. Beside him were standing two of the most eminent of the great Frith Street Gang, Otto the Sausage and Rabbit Butler. It was the finger of the Rabbit that had tapped his shoulder. The arm tucked in his was the arm of Otto the Sausage.

“Hi, Spider,” said Mr. Butler, “Sid wants to see you a minute.”

The Spider’s legs felt boneless. There was nothing in the words to alarm a man, but his practised ear had seemed to detect a certain unpleasant dryness in the speaker’s tone. Sid Marks, the all-powerful leader of the Frith Street Gang, was a youth whose company the Spider had always avoided with some care.

The great Sid, seated in state at a neighbouring hostelry, fixed his visitor with a cold and questioning eye. Mr. Buffin looked nervous and interrogative. Mr. Marks spoke.

“Your pal Keating pinched Porky Binns this mornin’,” said Sid.

The Spider’s heart turned to water.

“You and that slop,” observed Sid dreamily, “have been bloomin’ thick these days.”

Mr. Buffin did not affect to misunderstand. Sid Marks was looking at him in that nasty way. Otto the Sausage was looking at him in that nasty way. Rabbit Butler was looking at him in that nasty way. This was an occasion where manly frankness was the quality most to be aimed at. To be misunderstood in the circles in which Mr. Buffin moved meant something more than the mere risk of being treated with cold displeasure.

He began to explain with feverish eagerness.

“Strike me, Sid,” he stammered, “it ain’t like that. It’s all right. Blimey, you don’t fink I’m a nark?”

Mr. Marks chewed a straw in silence.

“I’m layin’ for him, Sid,” babbled Mr. Buffin. “That’s true. Strike me if it ain’t. I’m just tryin’ to find out where he goes when he’s off duty. He pinched me, so I’m layin’ for him.”

Mr. Marks perpended. Rabbit Butler respectfully gave it as his opinion that it would be well to put Mr. Buffin through it. There was nothing like being on the safe side. By putting Mr. Buffin through it, argued Rabbit Butler, they would stand to win either way. If he had “smitched” to Officer Keating about Porky Binns he would deserve it. If he had not⁠—well, it would prevent him doing so on some future occasion. Play for safety, was Mr. Butler’s advice, seconded by Otto the Sausage. Mr. Buffin, pale to the lips, thought he had never met two more unpleasant persons.

The Great Sid, having chewed his straw for a while in silence, delivered judgment. The prisoner should have the benefit of the doubt this time. His story, however unplausible, might possibly be true. Officer Keating undoubtedly had pinched him. That was in his favour.

“You can hop it this time,” he said, “but if you ever do start smitchin’, Spider, yer knows what’ll happen.”

Mr. Buffin withdrew, quaking.

Matters had now come to a head. Unless he very speedily gave proof of his pure and noble intentions, life would become extremely unsafe for him. He must act at once. The thought of what would happen should another of the Frith Streeters be pinched before he, Mr. Buffin, could prove himself innocent of the crime of friendliness with Officer Keating, turned him cold.

Fate played into his hands. On the very next morning Mr. Keating, all unsuspecting, asked him to go to his home with a message for his wife.

“Tell her,” said Mr. Keating, “a newspaper gent has given me seats for the play tonight, and I’ll be home at a quarter to seven.”

Mr. Buffin felt as Cromwell must have felt at Dunbar when the Scots left their stronghold on the hills and came down to the open plain.

The winter had set in with some severity that year, and Mr. Buffin’s toes, as he stood in the shadows close to the entrance of the villa where Officer Keating lived when off duty, were soon thoroughly frozen. He did not dare to stamp his feet, for at any moment now the victim might arrive. And when the victim weighs fourteen stone, against the high priest’s eight and a half, it behooves the latter to be circumspect, if the sacrifice is to be anything like a success. So Mr. Buffin waited and froze in silence. It was a painful process, and he added it to the black score which already stood against Officer Keating. Never had his thirst for revenge been more tormenting. It is doubtful if a strictly logical and impartial judge would have held Mr. Keating to blame for the fact that Sid Marks’ suspicions (and all that those suspicions entailed) had fallen upon Mr. Buffin; but the Spider did so. He felt fiercely resentful against the policeman for placing him in such an unpleasant and dangerous position. As his thoughts ran on the matter, he twisted his fingers tighter round his stick.

As he did so there came from down the road the brisk tramp of feet and a cheerful whistling of “The Wearing of the Green.” It is a lugubrious song as a rule, but, as rendered by Officer Keating returning home with theatre tickets, it had all the joyousness of a march-tune.

Every muscle in Mr. Buffin’s body stiffened. He gripped his stick and waited. The road was deserted. In another moment.⁠ ⁠…

And then, from nowhere, dark indistinct forms darted out like rats. The whistling stopped in the middle of a bar. A deep-chested oath rang out, and then a confused medley of sound, the rasping of feet, a growling almost canine, a sharp yelp, gasps, and over all the vast voice of Officer Keating threatening slaughter.

For a moment Mr. Buffin stood incapable of motion. The thing had been so sudden, so unexpected. And then, as he realised what was happening, there swept over him in a wave a sense of intolerable injustice. It is not easy to describe his emotions, but they resembled most nearly those of an inventor whose patent has been infringed, or an author whose idea has been stolen. For weeks⁠—and weeks that had seemed like years⁠—he had marked down Officer Keating for his prey. For weeks he had tortured a mind all unused to thinking into providing him with schemes for accomplishing his end. He had outraged his nature by being civil to a policeman. He had risked his life by incurring the suspicions of Sid Marks. He had bought a stick. And he had waited in the cold till his face was blue and his feet blocks of ice. And now⁠ ⁠… now⁠ ⁠… after all this⁠ ⁠… a crowd of irresponsible strangers, with no rights in the man whatsoever probably, if the truth were known, filled with mere ignoble desire for his small change, had dared to rush in and jump his claim before his very eyes.

With one passionate cry, Mr. Buffin, forgetting his frozen feet, lifted his stick, and galloped down the road to protect his property.⁠ ⁠…

“That’s the stuff,” said a voice. “Pour some more into him, Jerry.”

Mr. Buffin opened his eyes. A familiar taste was in his mouth. Somebody of liberal ideas seemed to be pouring whisky down his throat. Could this be Heaven? He raised his head, and a sharp pain shot through it. And with the pain came recollection. He remembered now, dimly, as if it had all happened in another life, the mad rush down the road, the momentary pause in the conflict, and then its noisy renewal on a more impressive scale. He remembered striking out left and right with his stick. He remembered the cries of the wounded, the pain of his frozen feet, and finally the crash of something hard and heavy on his head.

He sat up, and found himself the centre of a little crowd. There was Officer Keating, dishevelled but intact; three other policemen, one of whom was kneeling by his side with a small bottle in his hand; and, in the grip of the two were standing two youths.

One was Otto the Sausage; the other was Rabbit Butler.

The kneeling policeman was proffering the bottle once more. Mr. Buffin snatched at it. He felt that it was just what at that moment he needed most.

He did what he could. The magistrate asked for his evidence. He said he had none. He said he thought there must be some mistake. With a twisted smile in the direction of the prisoners, he said that he did not remember having seen either of them at the combat. He didn’t believe they were there at all. He didn’t believe they were capable of such a thing. If there was one man who was less likely to assault a policeman than Otto the Sausage, it was Rabbit Butler. The Bench reminded him that both these innocents had actually been discovered in Officer Keating’s grasp. Mr. Buffin smiled a harassed smile, and wiped a drop of perspiration from his brow.

Officer Keating was enthusiastic. He described the affair from start to finish. But for Mr. Buffin he would have been killed. But for Mr. Buffin there would have been no prisoners in court that day. The world was full of men with more or less golden hearts, but there was only one Mr. Buffin. Might he shake hands with Mr. Buffin?

The magistrate ruled that he might. More, he would shake hands with him himself. Summoning Mr. Buffin behind his desk, he proceeded to do so. If there were more men like Mr. Buffin, London would be a better place. It was the occasional discovery in our midst of ethereal natures like that of Mr. Buffin which made one so confident for the future of the race.

The paragon shuffled out. It was bright and sunny in the street, but in Mr. Buffin’s heart there was no sunlight. He was not a quick thinker, but he had come quite swiftly to the conclusion that London was no longer the place for him. Sid Marks had been in court chewing a straw and listening with grave attention to the evidence, and for one moment Mr. Buffin had happened to catch his eye. No medical testimony as to the unhealthiness of London could have moved him more.

Once round the corner, he ran. It hurt his head to run, but there were things behind him that could hurt his head more than running.

At the entrance to the Tube he stopped. To leave the locality he must have money. He felt in his pockets. Slowly, one by one, he pulled forth his little valuables. His knife⁠ ⁠… his revolver⁠ ⁠… the magistrate’s gold watch⁠ ⁠… He inspected them sadly. They must all go.

He went into a pawnbroker’s shop at the corner of the street. A few moments later, with money in his pockets, he dived into the Tube.

Rough-Hew Them How We Will

Paul Boielle was a waiter. The word “waiter” suggests a soft-voiced, deft-handed being, moving swiftly and without noise in an atmosphere of luxury and shaded lamps. At Bredin’s Parisian Café and Restaurant in Soho, where Paul worked, there were none of these things; and Paul himself, though he certainly moved swiftly, was by no means noiseless. His progress through the room resembled in almost equal proportions the finish of a Marathon race, the star-act of a professional juggler, and a monologue by an Earl’s Court side-showman. Constant acquaintance rendered regular habitués callous to the wonder, but to a stranger the sight of Paul tearing over the difficult between-tables course, his hands loaded with two vast pyramids of dishes, shouting as he went the mystic word, “Comingsarecominginamomentsaresteaksareyessarecomingsare!” was impressive to a degree. For doing far less exacting feats on the stage music-hall performers were being paid fifty pounds a week. Paul got eighteen shillings.

What a blessing is poverty, properly considered. If Paul had received more than eighteen shillings a week he would not have lived in an attic. He would have luxuriated in a bed-sitting-room on the second floor; and would consequently have missed what was practically a genuine north light. The skylight which went with the attic was so arranged that the room was a studio in miniature, and, as Paul was engaged in his spare moments in painting a great picture, nothing could have been more fortunate; for Paul, like so many of our public men, lived two lives. Off duty, the sprinting, barking juggler of Bredin’s Parisian Café became the quiet follower of Art. Ever since his childhood he had had a passion for drawing and painting. He regretted that Fate had allowed him so little time for such work; but after all, he reflected, all great artists had had their struggles⁠—so why not he? Moreover, they were now nearly at an end. An hour here, an hour there, and every Thursday a whole afternoon, and the great picture was within measurable distance of completion. He had won through. Without models, without leisure, hungry, tired, he had nevertheless triumphed. A few more touches, and the masterpiece would be ready for purchase. And after that all would be plain sailing. Paul could forecast the scene so exactly. The picture would be at the dealer’s, possibly⁠—one must not be too sanguine⁠—thrust away in some odd corner. The wealthy connoisseur would come in. At first he would not see the masterpiece; other more prominently displayed works would catch his eye. He would turn from them in weary scorn, and then!⁠ ⁠… Paul wondered how big the cheque would be.

There were reasons why he wanted the money. Looking at him as he cantered over the linoleum at Bredin’s, you would have said that his mind was on his work. But it was not so. He took and executed orders as automatically as the penny-in-the-slot musical-box in the corner took pennies and produced tunes. His thoughts were of Jeanne Le Brocq, his co-worker at Bredin’s, and a little cigar shop down Brixton way which he knew was in the market at a reasonable rate. To marry the former and own the latter was Paul’s idea of the earthly paradise, and it was the wealthy connoisseur, and he alone, who could open the gates.

Jeanne was a large, slow-moving Norman girl, stolidly handsome. One could picture her in a de Maupassant farmyard. In the clatter and bustle of Bredin’s Parisian Café she appeared out of place, like a cow in a boiler-factory. To Paul, who worshipped her with all the fervour of a little man for a large woman, her deliberate methods seemed all that was beautiful and dignified. To his mind she lent a tone to the vulgar whirlpool of gorging humanity, as if she had been some goddess mixing in a Homeric battle. The whirlpool had other views⁠—and expressed them. One coarse-fibred brute, indeed, once went so far as to address to her the frightful words, “ ’Urry up, there, Tottie! Look slippy.” It was wrong, of course, for Paul to slip and spill an order of scrambled eggs down the brute’s coat-sleeve, but who can blame him?

Among those who did not see eye to eye with Paul in his views on deportment in waitresses was M. Bredin himself, the owner of the Parisian Café; and it was this circumstance which first gave Paul the opportunity of declaring the passion which was gnawing him with the fierce fury of a Bredin customer gnawing a tough steak against time during the rush hour. He had long worshipped her from afar, but nothing more intimate than a “Good morning, Miss Jeanne,” had escaped him, till one day during a slack spell he came upon her in the little passage leading to the kitchen, her face hidden in her apron, her back jerking with sobs.

Business is business. Paul had a message to deliver to the cook respecting “two fried, coffee, and one stale.” He delivered it and returned. Jeanne was still sobbing.

“Ah, Miss Jeanne,” cried Paul, stricken, “what is the matter? What is it? Why do you weep?”

“The patron,” sobbed Jeanne. “He⁠—”

“My angel,” said Paul, “he is a pig.”

This was perfectly true. No conscientious judge of character could have denied that Paul had hit the bull’s eye. Bredin was a pig. He looked like a pig; he ate like a pig; he grunted like a pig. He had the lavish embonpoint of a pig. Also a porcine soul. If you had tied a bit of blue ribbon round his neck you could have won prizes with him at a show.

Paul’s eyes flashed with fury. “I will slap him in the eye,” he roared.

“He called me a tortoise.”

“And kick him in the stomach,” added Paul.

Jeanne’s sobs were running on second speed now. The anguish was diminishing. Paul took advantage of the improved conditions to slide an arm part of the way round her waist. In two minutes he had said as much as the ordinary man could have worked off in ten. All good stuff, too. No padding.

Jeanne’s face rose from her apron like a full moon. She was too astounded to be angry.

Paul continued to babble. Jeanne looked at him with growing wrath. That she, who received daily the affectionate badinage of gentlemen in bowler hats and check suits, who had once been invited to the White City by a solicitor’s clerk, should be addressed in this way by a waiter! It was too much. She threw off his hand.

“Wretched little man!” she cried, stamping angrily.

“My angel!” protested Paul.

Jeanne uttered a scornful laugh.

“You!” she said.

There are few more withering remarks than “You!” spoken in a certain way. Jeanne spoke it in just that way.

Paul wilted.

“On eighteen shillings a week,” went on Jeanne, satirically, “you would support a wife, yes? Why⁠—”

Paul recovered himself. He had an opening now, and proceeded to use it.

“Listen,” he said. “At present, yes, it is true, I earn but eighteen shillings a week, but it will not always be so, no. I am not only a waiter. I am also an artist. I have painted a great picture. For a whole year I have worked, and now it is ready. I will sell it, and then, my angel⁠—?”

Jeanne’s face had lost some of its scorn. She was listening with some respect. “A picture?” she said, thoughtfully. “There is money in pictures.”

For the first time Paul was glad that his arm was no longer round her waist. To do justice to the great work he needed both hands for purposes of gesticulation.

“There is money in this picture,” he said. “Oh, it is beautiful. I call it ‘The Awakening.’ It is a woodland scene. I come back from my work here, hot and tired, and a mere glance at that wood refreshes me. It is so cool, so green. The sun filters in golden splashes through the foliage. On a mossy bank, between two trees, lies a beautiful girl asleep. Above her, bending fondly over her, just about to kiss that flower-like face, is a young man in the dress of a shepherd. At the last moment he has looked over his shoulder to make sure that there is nobody near to see. He is wearing an expression so happy, so proud, that one’s heart goes out to him.”

“Yes, there might be money in that,” cried Jeanne.

“There is, there is!” cried Paul. “I shall sell it for many francs to a wealthy connoisseur. And then, my angel⁠—”

“You are a good little man,” said the angel, patronizingly. “Perhaps. We will see.”

Paul caught her hand and kissed it. She smiled indulgently. “Yes,” she said. “There might be money. These English pay much money for pictures.”

It is pretty generally admitted that Geoffrey Chaucer, the eminent poet of the fourteenth century, though obsessed with an almost Rooseveltian passion for the new spelling, was there with the goods when it came to profundity of thought. It was Chaucer who wrote the lines:

The lyfe so short, the craft so long to lerne,
Th’ assay so hard, so sharpe the conquering.

Which means, broadly, that it is difficult to paint a picture, but a great deal more difficult to sell it.

Across the centuries Paul Boielle shook hands with Geoffrey Chaucer. “So sharpe the conquering” put his case in a nutshell.

The full story of his wanderings with the masterpiece would read like an Odyssey and be about as long. It shall be condensed.

There was an artist who dined at intervals at Bredin’s Parisian Café, and, as the artistic temperament was too impatient to be suited by Jeanne’s leisurely methods, it had fallen to Paul to wait upon him. It was to this expert that Paul, emboldened by the geniality of the artist’s manner, went for information. How did monsieur sell his pictures? Monsieur said he didn’t, except once in a blue moon. But when he did? Oh, he took the thing to the dealers. Paul thanked him. A friend of him, he explained, had painted a picture and wished to sell it.

“Poor devil!” was the artist’s comment.

Next day, it happening to be a Thursday, Paul started on his travels. He started buoyantly, but by evening he was as a punctured balloon. Every dealer had the same remark to make⁠—to wit, no room.

“Have you yet sold the picture?” inquired Jeanne, when they met. “Not yet,” said Paul. “But they are delicate matters, these negotiations. I use finesse. I proceed with caution.”

He approached the artist again.

“With the dealers,” he said, “my friend has been a little unfortunate. They say they have no room.”

“I know,” said the artist, nodding.

“Is there, perhaps, another way?”

“What sort of a picture is it?” inquired the artist.

Paul became enthusiastic.

“Ah! monsieur, it is beautiful. It is a woodland scene. A beautiful girl⁠—”

“Oh! Then he had better try the magazines. They might use it for a cover.”

Paul thanked him effusively. On the following Thursday he visited divers art editors. The art editors seemed to be in the same unhappy condition as the dealers. “Overstocked!” was their cry.

“The picture?” said Jeanne, on the Friday morning. “Is it sold?”

“Not yet,” said Paul, “but⁠—”

“Always but!”

“My angel!”

“Bah!” said Jeanne, with a toss of her large but shapely head.

By the end of the month Paul was fighting in the last ditch, wandering disconsolately among those who dwell in outer darkness and have grimy thumbs. Seven of these in all he visited on that black Thursday, and each of the seven rubbed the surface of the painting with a grimy thumb, snorted, and dismissed him. Sick and beaten, Paul took the masterpiece back to his skylight room.

All that night he lay awake, thinking. It was a weary bundle of nerves that came to the Parisian Café next morning. He was late in arriving, which was good in that it delayed the inevitable question as to the fate of the picture, but bad in every other respect. M. Bredin, squatting behind the cash-desk, grunted fiercely at him; and, worse, Jeanne, who, owing to his absence, had had to be busier than suited her disposition, was distant and haughty. A murky gloom settled upon Paul.

Now it so happened that M. Bredin, when things went well with him, was wont to be filled with a ponderous amiability. It was not often that this took a practical form, though it is on record that in an exuberant moment he once gave a small boy a halfpenny. More frequently it merely led him to soften the porcine austerity of his demeanour. Today, business having been uncommonly good, he felt pleased with the world. He had left his cash-desk and was assailing a bowl of soup at one of the side-tables. Except for a belated luncher at the end of the room the place was empty. It was one of the hours when there was a lull in the proceedings at the Parisian Café. Paul was leaning, wrapped in the gloom, against the wall. Jeanne was waiting on the proprietor.

M. Bredin finished his meal and rose. He felt content. All was well with the world. As he lumbered to his desk he passed Jeanne. He stopped. He wheezed a compliment. Then another. Paul, from his place by the wall, watched with jealous fury.

M. Bredin chucked Jeanne under the chin.

As he did so, the belated luncher called “Waiter!” but Paul was otherwise engaged. His entire nervous system seemed to have been stirred up with a pole. With a hoarse cry he dashed forward. He would destroy this pig who chucked his Jeanne under the chin.

The first intimation M. Bredin had of the declaration of war was the impact of a French roll on his ear. It was one of those nobbly, chunky rolls with sharp corners, almost as deadly as a piece of shrapnel. M. Bredin was incapable of jumping, but he uttered a howl and his vast body quivered like a stricken jelly. A second roll, whizzing by, slapped against the wall. A moment later a cream-bun burst in sticky ruin on the proprietor’s left eye.

The belated luncher had been anxious to pay his bill and go, but he came swiftly to the conclusion that this was worth stopping on for. He leaned back in his chair and watched. M. Bredin had entrenched himself behind the cash-desk, peering nervously at Paul through the cream, and Paul, pouring forth abuse in his native tongue, was brandishing a chocolate eclair. The situation looked good to the spectator.

It was spoiled by Jeanne, who seized Paul by the arm and shook him, adding her own voice to the babel. It was enough. The eclair fell to the floor. Paul’s voice died away. His face took on again its crushed, hunted expression. The voice of M. Bredin, freed from competition, rose shrill and wrathful.

“The marksman is getting sacked,” mused the onlooker, diagnosing the situation.

He was right. The next moment Paul, limp and depressed, had retired to the kitchen passage, discharged. It was here, after a few minutes, that Jeanne found him.

“Fool! Idiot! Imbecile!” said Jeanne.

Paul stared at her without speaking.

“To throw rolls at the patron. Imbecile!”

“He⁠—” began Paul.

“Bah! And what if he did? Must you then attack him like a mad dog? What is it to you?”

Paul was conscious of a dull longing for sympathy, a monstrous sense of oppression. Everything was going wrong. Surely Jeanne must be touched by his heroism? But no. She was scolding furiously. Suppose Andromeda had turned and scolded Perseus after he had slain the sea-monster! Paul mopped his forehead with his napkin. The bottom had dropped out of his world.

“Jeanne!”

“Bah! Do not talk to me, idiot of a little man. Almost you lost me my place also. The patron was in two minds. But I coaxed him. A fine thing that would have been, to lose my good place through your foolishness. To throw rolls. My goodness!”

She swept back into the room again, leaving Paul still standing by the kitchen door. Something seemed to have snapped inside him. How long he stood there he did not know, but presently from the dining room came calls of “Waiter!” and automatically he fell once more into his work, as an actor takes up his part. A stranger would have noticed nothing remarkable in him. He bustled to and fro with undiminished energy.

At the end of the day M. Bredin paid him his eighteen shillings with a grunt, and Paul walked out of the restaurant a masterless man.

He went to his attic and sat down on the bed. Propped up against the wall was the picture. He looked at it with unseeing eyes. He stared dully before him.

Then thoughts came to him with a rush, leaping and dancing in his mind like imps in Hades. He had a curious sense of detachment. He seemed to be watching himself from a great distance.

This was the end. The little imps danced and leaped; and then one separated itself from the crowd, to grow bigger than, the rest, to pirouette more energetically. He rose. His mind was made up. He would kill himself.

He went downstairs and out into the street. He thought hard as he walked. He would kill himself, but how?

His preoccupation was so great that an automobile, rounding a corner, missed him by inches as he crossed the road. The chauffeur shouted angrily at him as he leapt back.

Paul shook his fist at the retreating lights.

“Pig!” he shouted. “Assassin! Scoundrel! Villain! Would you kill me? I will take your number, rascal. I will inform the police. Villain!”

A policeman had strolled up and was eyeing him curiously. Paul turned to him, full of his wrongs.

“Officer,” he cried, “I have a complaint. These pigs of chauffeurs! They are reckless. They drive so recklessly. Hence the great number of accidents.”

“Awful!” said the policeman. “Pass along, sonny.”

Paul walked on, fuming. It was abominable that these chauffeurs⁠—And then an idea came to him. He had found a way.

It was quiet in the Park. He had chosen the Park because it was dark and there would be none to see and interfere. He waited long in the shadow by the roadside. Presently from the darkness there came the distant drone of powerful engines. Lights appeared, like the blazing eyes of a dragon swooping down to devour its prey.

He ran out into the road with a shout.

It was an error, that shout. He had intended it for an inarticulate farewell to his picture, to Jeanne, to life. It was excusable to the driver of the motor that he misinterpreted it. It seemed to him a cry of warning. There was a great jarring of brakes, a scuttering of locked wheels on the dry road, and the car came to a standstill a full yard from where he stood.

“What the deuce⁠—” said a cool voice from behind the lights.

Paul struck his chest and folded his arms.

“I am here,” he cried. “Destroy me!”

“Let George do it,” said the voice, in a marked American accent. “I never murder on a Friday; it’s unlucky. If it’s not a rude question, which asylum are you from? Halloa!”

The exclamation was one of surprise, for Paul’s nerves had finally given way, and he was now in a heap on the road, sobbing.

The man climbed down and came into the light. He was a tall young man with a pleasant, clean-cut face. He stopped and shook Paul.

“Quit that,” he said. “Maybe it’s not true. And if it is, there’s always hope. Cut it out. What’s the matter? All in?”

Paul sat up, gulping convulsively. He was thoroughly unstrung. The cold, desperate mood had passed. In its place came the old feeling of desolation. He was a child, aching for sympathy. He wanted to tell his troubles. Punctuating his narrative with many gestures and an occasional gulp, he proceeded to do so. The American listened attentively.

“So you can’t sell your picture, and you’ve lost your job, and your girl has shaken you?” he said. “Pretty bad, but still you’ve no call to go mingling with automobile wheels. You come along with me to my hotel, and tomorrow we’ll see if we can’t fix up something.”

There was breakfast at the hotel next morning, a breakfast to put heart into a man. During the meal a messenger dispatched in a cab to Paul’s lodgings returned with the canvas. A deferential waiter informed the American that it had been taken with every possible care to his suite.

“Good,” said the young man. “If you’re through, we’ll go and have a look at it.”

They went upstairs. There was the picture resting against a chair.

“Why, I call that fine,” said the young man. “It’s a cracker jack.”

Paul’s heart gave a sudden leap. Could it be that here was the wealthy connoisseur? He was wealthy, for he drove an automobile and lived in an expensive hotel. He was a connoisseur, for he had said that the picture was a crackerjack.

“Monsieur is kind,” murmured Paul.

“It’s a bearcat,” said the young man, admiringly.

“Monsieur is flattering,” said Paul, dimly perceiving a compliment.

“I’ve been looking for a picture like that,” said the young man, “for months.”

Paul’s eyes rolled heavenwards.

“If you’ll make a few alterations, I’ll buy it and ask for more.”

“Alterations, monsieur?”

“One or two small ones.” He pointed to the stooping figure of the shepherd. “Now, you see this prominent citizen. What’s he doing!”

“He is stooping,” said Paul, fervently, “to bestow upon his loved one a kiss. And she, sleeping, all unconscious, dreaming of him⁠—”

“Never mind about her. Fix your mind on him. Willie is the ‘star’ in this show. You have summed him up accurately. He is stooping. Stooping good. Now, if that fellow was wearing braces and stooped like that, you’d say he’d burst those braces, wouldn’t you?”

With a somewhat dazed air Paul said that he thought he would. Till now he had not looked at the figure from just that viewpoint.

“You’d say he’d bust them?”

“Assuredly, monsieur.”

“No!” said the young man, solemnly, tapping him earnestly on the chest. “That’s where you’re wrong. Not if they were Galloway’s Tried and Proven. Galloway’s Tried and Proven will stand any old strain you care to put on them. See small bills. Wear Galloway’s Tried and Proven, and fate cannot touch you. You can take it from me. I’m the company’s general manager.”

“Indeed, monsieur!”

“And I’ll make a proposition to you. Cut out that mossy bank, and make the girl lying in a hammock. Put Willie in shirtsleeves instead of a bathrobe, and fix him up with a pair of the Tried and Proven, and I’ll give you three thousand dollars for that picture and a retaining fee of four thousand a year to work for us and nobody else for any number of years you care to mention. You’ve got the goods. You’ve got just the touch. That happy look on Willie’s face, for instance. You can see in a minute why he’s so happy. It’s because he’s wearing the Tried and Proven, and he knows that however far he stoops they won’t break. Is that a deal?”

Paul’s reply left no room for doubt. Seizing the young man firmly round the waist, he kissed him with extreme fervour on both cheeks.

“Here, break away!” cried the astonished general manager. “That’s no way to sign a business contract.”

It was at about five minutes after one that afternoon that Constable Thomas Parsons, patrolling his beat, was aware of a man motioning to him from the doorway of Bredin’s Parisian Café and Restaurant. The man looked like a pig. He grunted like a pig. He had the lavish embonpoint of a pig. Constable Parsons suspected that he had a porcine soul. Indeed, the thought flitted across Constable Parsons’ mind that, if he were to tie a bit of blue ribbon round his neck, he could win prizes with him at a show.

“What’s all this?” he inquired, halting.

The stout man talked volubly in French. Constable Parsons shook his head.

“Talk sense,” he advised.

“In dere,” cried the stout man, pointing behind him into the restaurant, “a man, a⁠—how you say?⁠—yes, sacked. An employee whom I yesterday sacked, today he returns. I say to him, ‘Cochon, va!’ ”

“What’s that?”

“I say, ‘Peeg, go!’ How you say? Yes, ‘pop off!’ I say, ‘Peeg, pop off!’ But he⁠—no, no; he sits and will not go. Come in, officer, and expel him.”

With massive dignity the policeman entered the restaurant. At one of the tables sat Paul, calm and distrait. From across the room Jeanne stared freezingly.

“What’s all this?” inquired Constable Parsons. Paul looked up.

“I too,” he admitted, “I cannot understand. Figure to yourself, monsieur. I enter this café to lunch, and this man here would expel me.”

“He is an employee whom I⁠—I myself⁠—have but yesterday dismissed,” vociferated M. Bredin. “He has no money to lunch at my restaurant.”

The policeman eyed Paul sternly.

“Eh?” he said. “That so? You’d better come along.”

Paul’s eyebrows rose.

Before the round eyes of M. Bredin he began to produce from his pockets and to lay upon the table banknotes and sovereigns. The cloth was covered with them.

He picked up a half-sovereign.

“If monsieur,” he said to the policeman, “would accept this as a slight consolation for the inconvenience which this foolish person here has caused him⁠—”

“Not half,” said Mr. Parsons, affably. “Look here”⁠—he turned to the gaping proprietor⁠—“if you go on like this you’ll be getting yourself into trouble. See? You take care another time.”

Paul called for the bill of fare.

It was the inferior person who had succeeded to his place as waiter who attended to his needs during the meal; but when he had lunched it was Jeanne who brought his coffee.

She bent over the table.

“You sold your picture, Paul⁠—yes?” she whispered. “For much money? How glad I am, dear Paul. Now we will⁠—”

Paul met her glance coolly.

“Will you be so kind,” he said, “as to bring me also a cigarette, my good girl?”

The Goalkeeper and the Plutocrat

The main difficulty in writing a story is to convey to the reader clearly yet tersely the natures and dispositions of one’s leading characters. Brevity, brevity⁠—that is the cry. Perhaps, after all, the playbill style is the best. In this drama of love, football (Association code), and politics, then, the principals are as follows, in their order of entry:

Isabel Rackstraw (an angel).

The Hon. Clarence Tresillian (a Greek god).

Lady Runnymede (a proud old aristocrat).

Mr. Rackstraw (a multimillionaire City man and Radical politician).

More about Clarence later. For the moment let him go as a Greek god. There were other sides, too, to Mr. Rackstraw’s character, but for the moment let him go as a multimillionaire City man and Radical politician. Not that it is satisfactory; it is too mild. The Radical politics of other Radical politicians were as skim milk to the Radical politics of Radical Politician Rackstraw. Where Mr. Lloyd George referred to the House of Lords as blithering backwoodsmen and asinine anachronisms, Mr. Rackstraw scorned to be so guarded in his speech. He did not mince his words. His attitude towards a member of the peerage was that of the terrier to the perambulating cat.

It was at a charity bazaar that Isabel and Clarence first met. Isabel was presiding over the Billiken, Teddy-bear, and Fancy Goods stall. There she stood, that slim, radiant girl, bouncing Ardent Youth out of its father’s hard-earned with a smile that alone was nearly worth the money, when she observed, approaching, the handsomest man she had ever seen. It was⁠—this is not one of those mystery stories⁠—it was Clarence Tresillian. Over the heads of the bevy of gilded youths who clustered round the stall their eyes met. A thrill ran through Isabel. She dropped her eyes. The next moment Clarence had made his spring; the gilded youths had shredded away like a mist, and he was leaning towards her, opening negotiations for the purchase of a yellow Teddy-bear at sixteen times its face value.

He returned at intervals during the afternoon. Over the second Teddy-bear they became friendly, over the third intimate. He proposed as she was wrapping up the fourth golliwog, and she gave him her heart and the parcel simultaneously. At six o’clock, carrying four Teddy-bears, seven photograph frames, five golliwogs, and a billiken, Clarence went home to tell the news to his parents.

Clarence, when not at the University, lived with his father and mother in Belgrave Square. His mother had been a Miss Trotter, of Chicago, and it was on her dowry that the Runnymedes contrived to make both ends meet. For a noble family they were in somewhat straitened circumstances financially. They lived, simply and without envy of their rich fellow-citizens, on their hundred thousand pounds a year. They asked no more. It enabled them to entertain on a modest scale. Clarence had been able to go to Oxford; his elder brother, Lord Staines, into the Guards. The girls could buy an occasional new frock. On the whole, they were a thoroughly happy, contented English family of the best sort. Mr. Trotter, it is true, was something of a drawback. He was a rugged old tainted millionaire of the old school, with a fondness for shirtsleeves and a tendency to give undue publicity to toothpicks. But he had been made to understand at an early date that the deadline for him was the farther shore of the Atlantic Ocean, and he now gave little trouble.

Having dressed for dinner, Clarence proceeded to the library, where he found his mother in hysterics and his father in a state of collapse on the sofa. Clarence was too well-bred to make any comment. A true Runnymede, he affected to notice nothing, and, picking up the evening paper, began to read. The announcement of his engagement could be postponed to a more suitable time.

“Clarence!” whispered a voice from the sofa.

“Yes, father?”

The silver-haired old man gasped for utterance.

“I’ve lost my little veto,” he said, brokenly, at length.

“Where did you see it last?” asked Clarence, ever practical.

“It’s that fellow Rackstraw!” cried the old man, in feeble rage. “That bounder Rackstraw! He’s the man behind it all. The robber!”

“Clarence!”

It was his mother who spoke. Her voice seemed to rip the air into a million shreds and stamp on them. There are few things more terrible than a Chicago voice raised in excitement or anguish.

“Mother?”

“Never mind your pop and his old veto. He didn’t know he had one till the paper said he’d lost it. You listen to me. Clarence, we are ruined.”

Clarence looked at her inquiringly.

“Ruined much?” he asked.

“Bedrock,” said his mother. “If we have sixty thousand dollars a year after this, it’s all we shall have.”

A low howl escaped from the stricken old man on the sofa.

Clarence betrayed no emotion.

“Ah,” he said, calmly. “How did it happen?”

“I’ve just had a cable from Chicago, from your grand-pop. He’s been trying to corner wheat. He always was an impulsive old gazook.”

“But surely,” said Clarence, a dim recollection of something he had heard or read somewhere coming to him, “isn’t cornering wheat a rather profitable process?”

“Sure,” said his mother. “Sure it is. I guess dad’s try at cornering wheat was about the most profitable thing that ever happened⁠—to the other fellows. It seems like they got busy and clubbed fifty-seven varieties of Hades out of your old grand-pop. He’s got to give up a lot of his expensive habits, and one of them is sending money to us. That’s how it is.”

“And on top of that, mind you,” moaned Lord Runnymede, “I lose my little veto. It’s bitter⁠—bitter.”

Clarence lit a cigarette and drew at it thoughtfully. “I don’t see how we’re going to manage on twelve thousand quid a year,” he said.

His mother crisply revised his pronouns.

“We aren’t,” she said. “You’ve got to get out and hustle.”

Clarence looked at her blankly.

“Me?”

“You.”

“Work?”

“Work.”

Clarence drew a deep breath.

“Work? Well, of course, mind you, fellows do work,” he went on, thoughtfully. “I was lunching with a man at the Bachelor’s only yesterday who swore he knew a fellow who had met a man whose cousin worked. But I don’t see what I could do, don’t you know.”

His father raised himself on the sofa.

“Haven’t I given you the education of an English gentleman?”

“That’s the difficulty,” said Clarence.

“Can’t you do anything?” asked his mother.

“Well, I can play footer. By Jove, I’ll sign on as a pro. I’ll take a new name. I’ll call myself Jones. I can get signed on in a minute. Any club will jump at me.”

This was no idle boast. Since early childhood Clarence had concentrated his energies on becoming a footballer, and was now an exceedingly fine goalkeeper. It was a pleasing sight to see him, poised on one foot in the attitude of a Salome dancer, with one eye on the man with the ball, the other gazing coldly on the rest of the opposition forward line, uncurl abruptly like the mainspring of a watch and stop a hot one. Clarence in goal was the nearest approach to an india-rubber acrobat and society contortionist to be seen off the music-hall stage. He was, in brief, hot stuff. He had the goods.

Scarcely had he uttered these momentous words when the butler entered with the announcement that he was wanted by a lady on the telephone.

It was Isabel, disturbed and fearful.

“Oh, Clarence,” she cried, “my precious angel wonder-child, I don’t know how to begin.”

“Begin just like that,” said Clarence, approvingly. “It’s topping. You can’t beat it.”

“Clarence, a terrible thing has happened. I told papa of our engagement, and he wouldn’t hear of it. He c-called you a p-p-p⁠—”

“A what?”

“A pr-pr-pr⁠—”

“He’s wrong. I’m nothing of the sort. He must be thinking of someone else.”

“A preposterous excrescence on the social cosmos. He doesn’t like your father being an earl.”

“A man may be an earl and still a gentleman,” said Clarence, not without a touch of coldness in his voice.

“I forgot to tell him that. But I don’t think it would make any difference. He says I shall only marry a man who works.”

“I am going to work, dearest,” said Clarence. “I am going to work like a horse. Something⁠—I know not what⁠—tells me I shall be rather good at work. And one day when I⁠—”

“Goodbye,” said Isabel, hastily. “I hear papa coming.”

Clarence, as he had predicted, found no difficulty in obtaining employment. He was signed on at once, under the name of Jones, by Houndsditch Wednesday, the premier metropolitan club, and embarked at once on his new career.

The season during which Clarence Tresillian kept goal for Houndsditch Wednesday is destined to live long in the memory of followers of professional football. Probably never in the history of the game has there been such persistent and widespread mortality among the more distant relatives of office-boys and junior clerks. Statisticians have estimated that if all the grandmothers alone who perished between the months of September and April that season could have been placed end to end, they would have reached from Hyde Park Corner to the outskirts of Manchester. And it was Clarence who was responsible for this holocaust. Previous to the opening of the season sceptics had shaken their heads over the Wednesday’s chances in the First League. Other clubs had bought up the best men in the market, leaving only a mixed assortment of inferior Scotsmen, Irishmen, and Northcountrymen to uphold the honour of the London club.

And then, like a meteor, Clarence Tresillian had flashed upon the world of football. In the opening game he had behaved in the goalmouth like a Chinese cracker, and exhibited an absolutely impassable defence; and from then onward, except for an occasional check, Houndsditch Wednesday had never looked back.

Among the spectators who flocked to the Houndsditch ground to watch Clarence perform there appeared week after week a little, grey, dried-up man, insignificant except for a certain happy choice of language in moments of emotion and an enthusiasm far surpassing that of the ordinary spectator. To the trained eye there are subtle distinctions between football enthusiasts. This man belonged to the comparatively small class of those who have football on the cerebrum.

Fate had made Daniel Rackstraw a millionaire and a Radical, but at heart he was a spectator of football. He never missed a match. His library of football literature was the finest in the country. His football museum had but one equal, that of Mr. Jacob Dodson, of Manchester. Between them the two had cornered, at enormous expense, the curio market of the game. It was Rackstraw who had secured the authentic pair of boots in which Bloomer had first played for England; but it was Dodson who possessed the painted india-rubber ball used by Meredith when a boy⁠—probably the first thing except a nurse ever kicked by that talented foot. The two men were friends, as far as rival connoisseurs can be friends; and Mr. Dodson, when at leisure, would frequently pay a visit to Mr. Rackstraw’s country house, where he would spend hours gazing wistfully at the Bloomer boots, buoyed up only by the thoughts of the Meredith ball at home.

Isabel saw little of Clarence during the winter months, except from a distance. She contented herself with clipping photographs of him from the sporting papers. Each was a little more unlike him than the last, and this lent variety to the collection. Her father marked her newborn enthusiasm for the game with approval. It had been secretly a great grief to the old gentleman that his only child did not know the difference between a linesman and an inside right, and, more, did not seem to care to know. He felt himself drawn closer to her. An understanding, as pleasant as it was new and strange, began to spring up between parent and child.

As for Clarence, how easy it would be to haul up one’s slacks to practically an unlimited extent on the subject of his emotions at this time. One can figure him, after the game is over and the gay throng has dispersed, creeping moodily⁠—but what’s the use? Brevity⁠—that is the cry. Brevity. Let us on.

The months sped by; the Cup-ties began, and soon it was evident that the Final must be fought out between Houndsditch Wednesday and Mr. Jacob Dodson’s pet team, Manchester United. With each match the Wednesday seemed to improve. Clarence was a Gibraltar among goalkeepers.

Those were delirious days for Daniel Rackstraw. Long before the fourth round his voice had dwindled to a husky whisper. Deep lines appeared on his forehead; for it is an awful thing for a football enthusiast to be compelled to applaud, in the very middle of the Cup-ties, purely by means of facial expression. In this time of affliction he found Isabel an ever-increasing comfort to him. Side by side they would sit, and the old man’s face would lose its drawn look, and light up, as her clear young soprano pealed out over the din, urging this player to shoot, that to kick some opponent in the face; or describing the referee in no uncertain terms as a reincarnation of the late Mr. Dick Turpin.

And now the day of the Final at the Crystal Palace approached, and all England was alert, confident of a record-breaking contest. But alas! How truly does Epictetus observe: “We know not what awaiteth us round the corner, and the hand that counteth its chickens ere they be hatched ofttimes doth but step on the banana-skin.” The prophets who anticipated a struggle keener than any in football history were destined to be proved false.

It was not that their judgement of form was at fault. On the run of the season’s play Houndsditch Wednesday v. Manchester United should have been the two most evenly-matched teams in the history of the game. Forward, the latter held a slight superiority; but this was balanced by the inspired goal-keeping of Clarence Tresillian. Even the keenest supporters of either side were not confident. They argued at length, figuring out the odds with the aid of stubs of pencils and the backs of envelopes, but they were not confident. Out of all those frenzied millions two men alone had no doubts. Mr. Daniel Rackstraw said that he did not desire to be unfair to Manchester United. He wished it to be clearly understood that in their own class Manchester United might quite possibly show to considerable advantage. In some rural league, for instance, he did not deny that they might sweep all before them. But when it came to competing with Houndsditch Wednesday⁠—here words failed Mr. Rackstraw.

Mr. Jacob Dodson, interviewed by the Manchester Weekly Football Boot, stated that his decision, arrived at after a close and careful study of the work of both teams, was that Houndsditch Wednesday had rather less chance in the forthcoming tourney than a stuffed rat in the Battersea Dogs’ Home. It was his carefully-considered opinion that in a contest with the second eleven of a village Church Lads’ Brigade, Houndsditch Wednesday might, with an effort (conceding them that slice of luck which so often turns the tide of a game), scrape home. But when it was a question of meeting a team like Manchester United⁠—here Mr. Dodson, shrugging his shoulders despairingly, sank back in his chair, and watchful secretaries brought him round with oxygen.

Throughout the whole country nothing but the approaching match was discussed. Wherever civilization reigned, and in portions of Liverpool, one question alone was on every lip: Who would win? Octogenarians mumbled it. Infants lisped it. Tired City men, trampled under foot in the rush for their tram, asked it of the ambulance attendants who carried them to the hospital.

And then, one bright, clear morning, when the birds sang and all Nature seemed fair and gay, Clarence Tresillian developed mumps.

London was in a ferment. I could have wished to go into details, to describe in crisp, burning sentences the panic that swept like a tornado through a million homes. A little encouragement, the slightest softening of the editorial austerity and the thing would have been done. But no. Brevity. That was the cry. Brevity. Let us on.

Houndsditch Wednesday met Manchester United at the Crystal Palace, and for nearly two hours the sweat of agony trickled unceasingly down the corrugated foreheads of the patriots in the stands. The men from Manchester, freed from the fear of Clarence, smiled grim smiles and proceeded to pile up points. It was in vain that the Houndsditch backs and halfbacks skimmed like swallows about the field. They could not keep the score down. From start to finish Houndsditch were a beaten side.

London during that black period was a desert. Gloom gripped the City. In distant Brixton red-eyed wives faced silently-scowling husbands at the evening meal, and the children were sent early to bed. Newsboys called the extras in a whisper.

Few took the tragedy more nearly to heart than Daniel Rackstraw. Leaving the ground with the air of a father mourning over some prodigal son, he encountered Mr. Jacob Dodson, of Manchester.

Now, Mr. Dodson was perhaps the slightest bit shy on the finer feelings. He should have respected the grief of a fallen foe. He should have abstained from exulting. But he was in too exhilarated a condition to be magnanimous. Sighting Mr. Rackstraw, he addressed himself joyously to the task of rubbing the thing in. Mr. Rackstraw listened in silent anguish.

“If we had had Jones⁠—” he said at length.

“That’s what they all say,” whooped Mr. Dodson, “Jones! Who’s Jones?”

“If we had had Jones, we should have⁠—” He paused. An idea had flashed upon his overwrought mind. “Dodson,” he said, “look here. Wait till Jones is well again, and let us play this thing off again for anything you like a side in my private park.”

Mr. Dodson reflected.

“You’re on,” he said. “What side bet? A million? Two million? Three?”

Mr. Rackstraw shook his head scornfully.

“A million? Who wants a million? I’ll put up my Bloomer boot against your Meredith ball. Does that go?”

“I should say it did,” said Mr. Dodson, joyfully. “I’ve been wanting that boot for years. It’s like finding it in one’s Christmas stocking.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Rackstraw. “Then let’s get it fixed up.”

Honestly, it is but a dog’s life, that of the short-story writer. I particularly wished at this point to introduce a description of Mr. Rackstraw’s country house and estate, featuring the private football ground with its fringe of noble trees. It would have served a double purpose, not only charming the lover of nature, but acting as a fine stimulus to the youth of the country, showing them the sort of home they would be able to buy some day if they worked hard and saved their money. But no. You shall have three guesses as to what was the cry. You give it up? It was Brevity⁠—brevity! Let us on.

The two teams arrived at Mr. Rackstraw’s house in time for lunch. Clarence, his features once more reduced to their customary finely-chiselled proportions, alighted from the automobile with a swelling heart. Presently he found an opportunity to slip away and meet Isabel. I will pass lightly over the meeting of the two lovers. I will not describe the dewy softness of their eyes, the catching of their breath, their murmured endearments. I could, mind you. It is at just such descriptions that I am particularly happy. But I have grown discouraged. My spirit is broken. It is enough to say that Clarence had reached a level of emotional eloquence rarely met with among goalkeepers of the First League, when Isabel broke from him with a startled exclamation, and vanished; and, looking over his shoulder, Clarence observed Mr. Daniel Rackstraw moving towards him.

It was evident from the millionaire’s demeanour that he had seen nothing. The look on his face was anxious, but not wrathful. He sighted Clarence, and hurried up to him.

“Jones,” he said, “I’ve been looking for you. I want a word with you.”

“A thousand, if you wish it,” said Clarence, courteously.

“Now, look here,” said Mr. Rackstraw. “I want to explain to you just what this game means to me. Don’t run away with the idea I’ve had you fellows down to play an exhibition game just to keep me merry and bright. If Houndsditch wins today, it means that I shall be able to hold up my head again and look my fellow-man in the face, instead of crawling round on my stomach and feeling like a black-beetle under a steamroller. Do you get that?”

“I do,” replied Clarence.

“And not only that,” went on the millionaire. “There’s more. I have put up my Bloomer boot against Mr. Dodson’s Meredith ball as a side bet. You understand what that means? It means that either you win or my life is soured forever. See?”

“I have got you,” said Clarence.

“Good. Then what I wanted to say was this. Today is your day for keeping goal as you’ve never kept goal before. Everything depends on you. With you keeping goal like mother used to make it, Houndsditch are safe. Otherwise they are completely in the bouillon. It’s one thing or the other. It’s all up to you. Win, and there’s four thousand pounds waiting for you above what you share with the others.”

Clarence waved his hand deprecatingly.

“Mr. Rackstraw,” he said, “keep your dross. I care nothing for money. All I ask of you,” proceeded Clarence, “is your consent to my engagement to your daughter.”

Mr. Rackstraw looked sharply at him.

“Repeat that,” he said. “I don’t think I quite got it.”

“All I ask is your consent to my engagement to your daughter.”

“Young man,” said Mr. Rackstraw, not without a touch of admiration, “I admire cheek. But there is a limit. That limit you have passed so far that you’d need to look for it with a telescope.”

“You refuse your consent?”

“I never said you weren’t a clever guesser.”

“Why?”

Mr. Rackstraw laughed. One of those nasty, sharp, metallic laughs that hit you like a bullet.

“How would you support my daughter?”

“I was thinking that you would help to some extent.”

“You were, were you?”

“I was.”

“Oh?”

Mr. Rackstraw emitted another of those laughs.

“Well,” he said, “it’s off. You can take that as coming from an authoritative source. No wedding bells for you.”

Clarence drew himself up, fire flashing from his eyes and a bitter smile curving his expressive lips.

“And no Meredith ball for you!” he cried.

Mr. Rackstraw started as if some strong hand had plunged an auger into him.

“What?” he shouted.

Clarence shrugged his superbly-modelled shoulders in silence.

“Come, come,” said Mr. Rackstraw, “you wouldn’t let a little private difference like that influence you in a really important thing like this football match, would you?”

“I would.”

“You would practically blackmail the father of the girl you love?”

“Every time.”

“Her white-haired old father?”

“The colour of his hair would not affect me.”

“Nothing would move you?”

“Nothing.”

“Then, by George, you’re just the son-in-law I want. You shall marry Isabel; and I’ll take you into partnership in my business this very day. I’ve been looking for a good able-bodied bandit like you for years. You make Captain Kidd look like a preliminary three-round bout. My boy, we’ll be the greatest combination, you and I, that the City has ever seen. Shake hands.”

For a moment Clarence hesitated. Then his better nature prevailed, and he spoke.

“Mr. Rackstraw,” he said, “I cannot deceive you.”

“That won’t matter,” said the enthusiastic old man. “I bet you’ll be able to deceive everybody else. I see it in your eye. My boy, we’ll be the greatest⁠—”

“My name is not Jones.”

“Nor is mine. What does that matter?”

“My name is Tresillian. The Hon. Tresillian. I am the younger son of the Earl of Runnymede. To a man of your political views⁠—”

“Nonsense, nonsense,” said Mr. Rackstraw. “What are political views compared with the chance of getting a goalkeeper like you into the family? I remember Isabel saying something to me about you, but I didn’t know who you were then.”

“I am a preposterous excrescence on the social cosmos,” said Clarence, eyeing him doubtfully.

“Then I’ll be one too,” cried Mr. Rackstraw. “I own I’ve set my face against it hitherto, but circumstances alter cases. I’ll ring up the Prime Minister on the phone tomorrow, and buy a title myself.”

Clarence’s last scruple was removed. Silently he gripped the old man’s hand, outstretched to meet his.

Little remains to be said, but I am going to say it, if it snows. I am at my best in these tender scenes of idyllic domesticity.

Four years have passed. Once more we are in the Rackstraw home. A lady is coming down the stairs, leading by the hand her little son. It is Isabel. The years have dealt lightly with her. She is still the same stately, beautiful creature whom I would have described in detail long ago if I had been given half a chance. At the foot of the stairs the child stops and points at a small, round object in a glass case.

“Wah?” he says.

“That?” said Isabel. “That is the ball Mr. Meredith used to play with when he was a little boy.”

She looks at a door on the left of the hall, and puts a finger to her lip.

“Hush!” she says. “We must be quiet. Daddy and grandpa are busy in there cornering wheat.”

And softly mother and child go out into the sunlit garden.

The Good Angel

Any man under thirty years of age who tells you he is not afraid of an English butler lies. He may not show his fear. Outwardly he may be brave⁠—aggressive even, perhaps to the extent of calling the great man “Here!” or “Hi!” But, in his heart, when he meets that cold, blue, introspective eye, he quakes.

The effect that Keggs, the butler at the Keiths’, had on Martin Rossiter was to make him feel as if he had been caught laughing in a cathedral. He fought against the feeling. He asked himself who Keggs was, anyway; and replied defiantly that Keggs was a Menial⁠—and an overfed Menial. But all the while he knew that logic was useless.

When the Keiths had invited him to their country home he had been delighted. They were among his oldest friends. He liked Mr. Keith. He liked Mrs. Keith. He loved Elsa Keith, and had done so from boyhood.

But things had gone wrong. As he leaned out of his bedroom window at the end of the first week, preparatory to dressing for dinner, he was more than half inclined to make some excuse and get right out of the place next day. The bland dignity of Keggs had taken all the heart out of him.

Nor was it Keggs alone who had driven his thoughts towards flight. Keggs was merely a passive evil, like toothache or a rainy day. What had begun actively to make the place impossible was a perfectly pestilential young man of the name of Barstowe.

The house-party at the Keiths had originally been, from Martin’s viewpoint, almost ideal. The rest of the men were of the speechless, moustache-tugging breed. They had come to shoot, and they shot. When they were not shooting they congregated in the billiard-room and devoted their powerful intellects exclusively to snooker-pool, leaving Martin free to talk undisturbed to Elsa. He had been doing this for five days with great contentment when Aubrey Barstowe arrived. Mrs. Keith had developed of late leanings towards culture. In her town house a charge of small-shot, fired in any direction on a Thursday afternoon, could not have failed to bring down a poet, a novelist, or a painter. Aubrey Barstowe, author of The Soul’s Eclipse and other poems, was a constant member of the crowd. A youth of insinuating manners, he had appealed to Mrs. Keith from the start; and unfortunately the virus had extended to Elsa. Many a pleasant, sunshiny Thursday afternoon had been poisoned for Martin by the sight of Aubrey and Elsa together on a distant settee, matching temperaments. The rest is too painful. It was a rout. The poet did not shoot, so that when Martin returned of an evening his rival was about five hours of soul-to-soul talk up and only two to play. And those two, the after-dinner hours, which had once been the hours for which Martin had lived, were pure torture.

So engrossed was he with his thoughts that the first intimation he had that he was not alone in the room was a genteel cough. Behind him, holding a small can, was Keggs.

“Your ’ot water, sir,” said the butler, austerely but not unkindly.

Keggs was a man⁠—one must use that word, though it seems grossly inadequate⁠—of medium height, pigeon-toed at the base, bulgy halfway up, and bald at the apex. His manner was restrained and dignified, his voice soft and grave.

But it was his eye that quelled Martin. That cold, blue, dukes-have-treated-me-as-an-elder-brother eye.

He fixed it upon him now, as he added, placing the can on the floor. “It is Frederick’s duty, but tonight I hundertook it.”

Martin had no answer. He was dazed. Keggs had spoken with the proud humility of an emperor compelled by misfortune to shine shoes.

“Might I have a word with you, sir?”

“Ye-e-ss, yes,” stammered Martin. “Won’t you take a⁠—I mean, yes, certainly.”

“It is perhaps a liberty,” began Keggs. He paused, and raked Martin with the eye that had rested on dining dukes.

“Not at all,” said Martin, hurriedly.

“I should like,” went on Keggs, bowing, “to speak to you on a somewhat intimate subject⁠—Miss Elsa.”

Martin’s eyes and mouth opened slowly.

“You are going the wrong way to work, if you will allow me to say so, sir.”

Martin’s jaw dropped another inch.

“Wha-a⁠—”

“Women, sir,” proceeded Keggs, “young ladies⁠—are peculiar. I have had, if I may say so, certain hopportunities of observing their ways. Miss Elsa reminds me in some respects of Lady Angelica Fendall, whom I had the honour of knowing when I was butler to her father, Lord Stockleigh. Her ladyship was hinclined to be romantic. She was fond of poetry, like Miss Elsa. She would sit by the hour, sir, listening to young Mr. Knox reading Tennyson, which was no part of his duties, he being employed by his lordship to teach Lord Bertie Latin and Greek and whatnot. You may have noticed, sir, that young ladies is often took by Tennyson, hespecially in the summertime. Mr. Barstowe was reading Tennyson to Miss Elsa in the ’all when I passed through just now. ‘The Princess,’ if I am not mistaken.”

“I don’t know what the thing was,” groaned Martin. “She seemed to be enjoying it.”

“Lady Angelica was greatly addicted to ‘The Princess.’ Young Mr. Knox was reading portions of that poem to her when his lordship come upon them. Most rashly his lordship made a public hexpose and packed Mr. Knox off next day. It was not my place to volunteer advice, but I could have told him what would happen. Two days later her ladyship slips away to London early in the morning, and they’re married at a registry-office. That is why I say that you are going the wrong way to work with Miss Elsa, sir. With certain types of ’igh spirited young lady hopposition is useless. Now, when Mr. Barstowe was reading to Miss Elsa on the occasion to which I ’ave alluded, you were sitting by, trying to engage her attention. It’s not the way, sir. You should leave them alone together. Let her see so much of him, and nobody else but him, that she will grow tired of him. Fondness for poetry, sir, is very much like the whisky ’abit. You can’t cure a man what has got that by hopposition. Now, if you will permit me to offer a word of advice, sir, I say, let Miss Elsa ’ave all the poetry she wants.”

Martin was conscious of one coherent feeling at the conclusion of this address, and that was one of amazed gratitude. A lesser man who had entered his room and begun to discuss his private affairs would have had reason to retire with some speed; but that Keggs should descend from his pedestal and interest himself in such lowly matters was a different thing altogether.

“I’m very much obliged⁠—” he was stammering, when the butler raised a deprecatory hand.

“My interest in the matter,” he said, smoothly, “is not entirely haltruistic. For some years back, in fact, since Miss Elsa came out, we have had a matrimonial sweepstake in the servants’ hall at each house-party. The names of the gentlemen in the party are placed in a hat and drawn in due course. Should Miss Elsa become engaged to any member of the party, the pool goes to the drawer of his name. Should no engagement occur, the money remains in my charge until the following year, when it is added to the new pool. Hitherto I have ’ad the misfortune to draw nothing but married gentlemen, but on this occasion I have secured you, sir. And I may tell you, sir,” he added, with stately courtesy, “that, in the opinion of the servants’ hall, your chances are ’ighly fancied⁠—very ’ighly. The pool has now reached considerable proportions, and, ’aving had certain losses on the Turf very recent, I am extremely anxious to win it. So I thought, if I might take the liberty, sir, I would place my knowledge of the sex at your disposal. You will find it sound in every respect. That is all. Thank you, sir.”

Martin’s feelings had undergone a complete revulsion. In the last few minutes the butler had shed his wings and grown horns, cloven feet, and a forked tail. His rage deprived him of words. He could only gurgle.

“Don’t thank me, sir,” said the butler, indulgently. “I ask no thanks. We are working together for a common hobject, and any little ’elp I can provide is given freely.”

“You old scoundrel!” shouted Martin, his wrath prevailing even against that blue eye. “You have the insolence to come to me and⁠—”

He stopped. The thought of these hounds, these demons, coolly gossiping and speculating below stairs about Elsa, making her the subject of little sporting flutters to relieve the monotony of country life, choked him.

“I shall tell Mr. Keith,” he said.

The butler shook his bald head gravely.

“I shouldn’t, sir. It is a ’ighly fantastic story, and I don’t think he would believe it.”

“Then I’ll⁠—Oh, get out!”

Keggs bowed deferentially.

“If you wish it, sir,” he said, “I will withdraw. If I may make the suggestion, sir, I think you should commence to dress. Dinner will be served in a few minutes. Thank you, sir.”

He passed softly out of the room.

It was more as a demonstration of defiance against Keggs than because he really hoped that anything would come of it that Martin approached Elsa next morning after breakfast. Elsa was strolling on the terrace in front of the house with the bard, but Martin broke in on the conference with the dogged determination of a steam-drill.

“Coming out with the guns today, Elsa?” he said.

She raised her eyes. There was an absent look in them.

“The guns?” she said. “Oh, no; I hate watching men shoot.”

“You used to like it.”

“I used to like dolls,” she said, impatiently.

Mr. Barstowe gave tongue. He was a slim, tall, sickeningly beautiful young man, with large, dark eyes, full of expression.

“We develop,” he said. “The years go by, and we develop. Our souls expand⁠—timidly at first, like little, half-fledged birds stealing out from the⁠—”

“I don’t know that I’m so set on shooting today, myself,” said Martin. “Will you come round the links?”

“I am going out in the motor with Mr. Barstowe,” said Elsa.

“The motor!” cried Mr. Barstowe. “Ah, Rossiter, that is the very poetry of motion. I never ride in a motorcar without those words of Shakespeare’s ringing in my mind: ‘I’ll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.’ ”

“I shouldn’t give way to that sort of thing if I were you,” said Martin. “The police are pretty down on road-hogging in these parts.”

“Mr. Barstowe was speaking figuratively,” said Elsa, with disdain.

“Was he?” grunted Martin, whose sorrows were tending to make him every day more like a sulky schoolboy. “I’m afraid I haven’t got a poetic soul.”

“I’m afraid you haven’t,” said Elsa.

There was a brief silence. A bird made itself heard in a neighbouring tree.

“ ‘The moan of doves in immemorial elms,’ ” quoted Mr. Barstowe, softly.

“Only it happens to be a crow in a beech,” said Martin, as the bird flew out.

Elsa’s chin tilted itself in scorn. Martin turned on his heel and walked away.

“It’s the wrong way, sir; it’s the wrong way,” said a voice. “I was hobserving you from a window, sir. It’s Lady Angelica over again. Hopposition is useless, believe me, sir.”

Martin faced round, flushed and wrathful. The butler went on unmoved: “Miss Elsa is going for a ride in the car today, sir.”

“I know that.”

“Uncommonly tricky things, these motorcars. I was saying so to Roberts, the chauffeur, just as soon as I ’eard Miss Elsa was going out with Mr. Barstowe. I said, ‘Roberts, these cars is tricky; break down when you’re twenty miles from hanywhere as soon as look at you. Roberts,’ I said, slipping him a sovereign, ‘ ’ow awful it would be if the car should break down twenty miles from hanywhere today!’ ”

Martin stared.

“You bribed Roberts to⁠—”

“Sir! I gave Roberts the sovereign because I am sorry for him. He is a poor man, and has a wife and family to support.”

“Very well,” said Martin, sternly; “I shall go and warn Miss Keith.”

“Warn her, sir!”

“I shall tell her that you have bribed Roberts to make the car break down so that⁠—”

Keggs shook his head.

“I fear she would hardly credit the statement, sir. She might even think that you was trying to keep her from going for your own pussonal ends.”

“I believe you are the devil,” said Martin.

“I ’ope you will come to look on me, sir,” said Keggs, unctuously, “as your good hangel.”

Martin shot abominably that day, and, coming home in the evening gloomy and savage, went straight to his room, and did not reappear till dinnertime. Elsa had been taken in by one of the moustache-tuggers. Martin found himself seated on her other side. It was so pleasant to be near her, and to feel that the bard was away at the other end of the table, that for the moment his spirits revived.

“Well, how did you like the ride?” he asked, with a smile. “Did you put that girdle round the world?”

She looked at him⁠—once. The next moment he had an uninterrupted view of her shoulder, and heard the sound of her voice as she prattled gaily to the man on her other side.

His heart gave a sudden bound. He understood now. The demon butler had had his wicked way. Good heavens! She had thought he was taunting her! He must explain at once. He⁠—

“Hock or sherry, sir?”

He looked up into Kegg’s expressionless eyes. The butler was wearing his on-duty mask. There was no sign of triumph in his face.

“Oh, sherry. I mean hock. No, sherry. Neither.”

This was awful. He must put this right.

“Elsa,” he said.

She was engrossed in her conversation with her neighbour.

From down the table in a sudden lull in the talk came the voice of Mr. Barstowe. He seemed to be in the middle of a narrative.

“Fortunately,” he was saying, “I had with me a volume of Shelley, and one of my own little efforts. I had read Miss Keith the whole of the latter and much of the former before the chauffeur announced that it was once more possible⁠—”

“Elsa,” said the wretched man, “I had no idea⁠—you don’t think⁠—”

She turned to him.

“I beg your pardon?” she said, very sweetly.

“I swear I didn’t know⁠—I mean, I’d forgotten⁠—I mean⁠—”

She wrinkled her forehead.

“I’m really afraid I don’t understand.”

“I mean, about the car breaking down.”

“The car? Oh, yes. Yes, it broke down. We were delayed quite a little while. Mr. Barstowe read me some of his poems. It was perfectly lovely. I was quite sorry when Roberts told us we could go on again. But do you really mean to tell me, Mr. Lambert, that you⁠—”

And once more the world became all shoulder.

When the men trailed into the presence of the ladies for that brief séance on which etiquette insisted before permitting the stampede to the billiard-room, Elsa was not to be seen.

“Elsa?” said Mrs. Keith in answer to Martin’s question. “She has gone to bed. The poor child has a headache. I am afraid she had a tiring day.”

There was an early start for the guns next morning, and as Elsa did not appear at breakfast Martin had to leave without seeing her. His shooting was even worse than it had been on the previous day.

It was not until late in the evening that the party returned to the house. Martin, on the way to his room, met Mrs. Keith on the stairs. She appeared somewhat agitated.

“Oh, Martin,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re back. Have you seen anything of Elsa?”

“Elsa?”

“Wasn’t she with the guns?”

“With the guns!” said Martin, puzzled. “No.”

“I have seen nothing of her all day. I’m getting worried. I can’t think what can have happened to her. Are you sure she wasn’t with the guns?”

“Absolutely certain. Didn’t she come in to lunch?”

“No. Tom,” she said, as Mr. Keith came up, “I’m so worried about Elsa. I haven’t seen her all day. I thought she must be out with the guns.”

Mr. Keith was a man who had built up a large fortune mainly by consistently refusing to allow anything to agitate him. He carried this policy into private life.

“Wasn’t she in at lunch?” he asked, placidly.

“I tell you I haven’t seen her all day. She breakfasted in her room⁠—”

“Late?”

“Yes. She was tired, poor girl.”

“If she breakfasted late,” said Mr. Keith, “she wouldn’t need any lunch. She’s gone for a stroll somewhere.”

“Would you put back dinner, do you think?” inquired Mrs. Keith, anxiously.

“I am not good at riddles,” said Mr. Keith, comfortably, “but I can answer that one. I would not put back dinner. I would not put back dinner for the King.”

Elsa did not come back for dinner. Nor was hers the only vacant place. Mr. Barstowe had also vanished. Even Mr. Keith’s calm was momentarily ruffled by this discovery. The poet was not a favourite of his⁠—it was only reluctantly that he had consented to his being invited at all; and the presumption being that when two members of a house-party disappear simultaneously they are likely to be spending the time in each other’s society, he was annoyed. Elsa was not the girl to make a fool of herself, of course, but⁠—He was unwontedly silent at dinner.

Mrs. Keith’s anxiety displayed itself differently. She was frankly worried, and mentioned it. By the time the fish had been reached conversation at the table had fixed itself definitely on the one topic.

“It isn’t the car this time, at any rate,” said Mr. Keith. “It hasn’t been out today.”

“I can’t understand it,” said Mrs. Keith for the twentieth time. And that was the farthest point reached in the investigation of the mystery.

By the time dinner was over a spirit of unrest was abroad. The company sat about in uneasy groups. Snooker-pool was, if not forgotten, at any rate shelved. Somebody suggested search-parties, and one or two of the moustache-tuggers wandered rather aimlessly out into the darkness.

Martin was standing in the porch with Mr. Keith when Keggs approached. As his eyes lit on him, Martin was conscious of a sudden solidifying of the vague suspicion which had been forming in his mind. And yet that suspicion seemed so wild. How could Keggs, with the worst intentions, have had anything to do with this? He could not forcibly have abducted the missing pair and kept them under lock and key. He could not have stunned them and left them in a ditch. Nevertheless, looking at him standing there in his attitude of deferential dignity, with the light from the open door shining on his bald head, Martin felt perfectly certain that he had in some mysterious fashion engineered the whole thing.

“Might I have a word, sir, if you are at leisure?”

“Well, Keggs?”

“Miss Elsa, sir.”

“Yes?”

Kegg’s voice took on a sympathetic softness.

“It was not my place, sir, to make any remark while in the dining room, but I could not ’elp but hoverhear the conversation. I gathered from remarks that was passed that you was somewhat hat a loss to account for Miss Elsa’s nonappearance, sir.”

Mr. Keith laughed shortly.

“You gathered that, eh?”

Keggs bowed.

“I think, sir, that possibly I may be hable to throw light on the matter.”

“What!” cried Mr. Keith. “Great Scott, man! then why didn’t you say so at the time? Where is she?”

“It was not my place, sir, to henter into the conversation of the dinner-table,” said the butler, with a touch of reproof. “If I might speak now, sir?”

Mr. Keith clutched at his forehead.

“Heavens above! Do you want a signed permit to tell me where my daughter is? Get on, man, get on!”

“I think it ’ighly possible, sir, that Miss Elsa and Mr. Barstowe may be on the hisland in the lake, sir.” About half a mile from the house was a picturesque strip of water, some fifteen hundred yards in width and a little less in length, in the centre of which stood a small and densely wooded island. It was a favourite haunt of visitors at the house when there was nothing else to engage their attention, but during the past week, with shooting to fill up the days, it had been neglected.

“On the island?” said Mr. Keith. “What put that idea into your head?”

“I ’appened to be rowing on the lake this morning, sir. I frequently row of a morning, sir, when there are no duties to detain me in the ’ouse. I find the hexercise hadmirable for the ’ealth. I walk briskly to the boat-’ouse, and⁠—”

“Yes, yes. I don’t want a schedule of your daily exercises. Cut out the athletic reminiscences and come to the point.”

“As I was rowing on the lake this morning, sir, I ’appened to see a boat ’itched up to a tree on the hisland. I think that possibly Miss Elsa and Mr. Barstowe might ’ave taken a row out there. Mr. Barstowe would wish to see the hisland, sir, bein’ romantic.”

“But you say you saw the boat there this morning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, it doesn’t take all day to explore a small island. What’s kept them all this while?”

“It is possible, sir, that the rope might not have ’eld. Mr. Barstowe, if I might say so, sir, is one of those himpetuous literary pussons, and possibly he homitted to see that the knot was hadequately tied. Or”⁠—his eye, grave and inscrutable, rested for a moment on Martin’s⁠—“some party might ’ave come along and huntied it a-puppus.”

“Untied it on purpose?” said Mr. Keith. “What on earth for?”

Keggs shook his head deprecatingly, as one who, realizing his limitations, declines to attempt to probe the hidden sources of human actions.

“I thought it right, sir, to let you know,” he said.

“Right? I should say so. If Elsa has been kept starving all day on that island by that long-haired⁠—Here, come along, Martin.”

He dashed off excitedly into the night. Martin remained for a moment gazing fixedly at the butler.

“I ’ope, sir,” said Keggs, cordially, “that my hinformation will prove of genuine hassistance.”

“Do you know what I should like to do to you?” said Martin slowly.

“I think I ’ear Mr. Keith calling you, sir.”

“I should like to take you by the scruff of your neck and⁠—”

“There, sir! Didn’t you ’ear ’im then? Quite distinct it was.”

Martin gave up the struggle with a sense of blank futility. What could you do with a man like this? It was like quarrelling with Westminster Abbey.

“I should ’urry, sir,” suggested Keggs, respectfully. “I think Mr. Keith must have met with some haccident.”

His surmise proved correct. When Martin came up he found his host seated on the ground in evident pain.

“Twisted my ankle in a hole,” he explained, briefly. “Give me an arm back to the house, there’s a good fellow, and then run on down to the lake and see if what Keggs said is true.”

Martin did as he was requested⁠—so far, that is to say, as the first half of the commission was concerned. As regarded the second, he took it upon himself to make certain changes. Having seen Mr. Keith to his room, he put the fitting-out of the relief ship into the good hands of a group of his fellow guests whom he discovered in the porch. Elsa’s feelings towards her rescuer might be one of unmixed gratitude; but it might, on the other hand, be one of resentment. He did not wish her to connect him in her mind with the episode in any way whatsoever. Martin had once released a dog from a trap, and the dog had bitten him. He had been on an errand of mercy, but the dog had connected him with his sufferings and acted accordingly. It occurred to Martin that Elsa’s frame of mind would be uncommonly like that dog’s.

The rescue party set off. Martin lit a cigarette, and waited in the porch.

It seemed a very long time before anything happened, but at last, as he was lighting his fifth cigarette, there came from the darkness the sound of voices. They drew nearer. Someone shouted:

“It’s all right. We’ve found them.”

Martin threw away his cigarette and went indoors.

Elsa Keith sat up as her mother came into the room. Two nights and a day had passed since she had taken to her bed.

“How are you feeling today, dear?”

“Has he gone, mother?”

“Who?”

“Mr. Barstowe?”

“Yes, dear. He left this morning. He said he had business with his publisher in London.”

“Then I can get up,” said Elsa, thankfully.

“I think you’re a little hard on poor Mr. Barstowe, Elsa. It was just an accident, you know. It was not his fault that the boat slipped away.”

“It was, it was, it was!” cried Elsa, thumping the pillow malignantly. “I believe he did it on purpose, so that he could read me his horrid poetry without my having a chance to escape. I believe that’s the only way he can get people to listen to it.”

“But you used to like it, darling. You said he had such a musical voice.”

“Musical voice!” The pillow became a shapeless heap. “Mother, it was like a nightmare! If I had seen him again I should have had hysterics. It was awful! If he had been even the least bit upset himself I think I could have borne up. But he enjoyed it! He revelled in it! He said it was like Omar Khayyam in the Wilderness and Shelley’s Epipsychidion, whatever that is; and he prattled on and on and read and read till my head began to split. Mother”⁠—her voice sank to a whisper⁠—“I hit him!”

“Elsa!”

“I did!” she went on, defiantly. “I hit him as hard as I could, and he⁠—he”⁠—she broke off into a little gurgle of laughter⁠—“he tripped over a bush and fell right down; and I wasn’t a bit ashamed. I didn’t think it unladylike or anything. I was just as proud as I could be. And it stopped him talking.”

“But, Elsa, dear! Why?”

“The sun had just gone down; and it was a lovely sunset, and the sky looked like a great, beautiful slice of underdone beef; and I said so to him, and he said, sniffily, that he was afraid he didn’t see the resemblance. And I asked him if he wasn’t starving. And he said no, because as a rule all that he needed was a little ripe fruit. And that was when I hit him.”

“Elsa!”

“Oh, I know it was awfully wrong, but I just had to. And now I’ll get up. It looks lovely out.”

Martin had not gone out with the guns that day. Mrs. Keith had assured him that there was nothing wrong with Elsa, that she was only tired, but he was anxious, and had remained at home, where bulletins could reach him. As he was returning from a stroll in the grounds he heard his name called, and saw Elsa lying in the hammock under the trees near the terrace.

“Why, Martin, why aren’t you out with the guns?” she said.

“I wanted to be on the spot so that I could hear how you were.”

“How nice of you! Why don’t you sit down?”

“May I?”

Elsa fluttered the pages of her magazine.

“You know, you’re a very restful person, Martin. You’re so big and outdoory. How would you like to read to me for a while? I feel so lazy.”

Martin took the magazine.

“What shall I read? Here’s a poem by⁠—”

Elsa shuddered.

“Oh, please, no,” she cried. “I couldn’t bear it. I’ll tell you what I should love⁠—the advertisements. There’s one about sardines. I started it, and it seemed splendid. It’s at the back somewhere.”

“Is this it⁠—Langley and Fielding’s sardines?”

“That’s it.”

Martin began to read.

“ ‘Langley and Fielding’s sardines. When you want the daintiest, most delicious sardines, go to your grocer and say, “Langley and Fielding’s, please!” You will then be sure of having the finest Norwegian smoked sardines, packed in the purest olive oil.’ ”

Elsa was sitting with her eyes closed and a soft smile of pleasure curving her mouth.

“Go on,” she said, dreamily.

“ ‘Nothing nicer.’ ” resumed Martin, with an added touch of eloquence as the theme began to develop, “ ‘for breakfast, lunch, or supper. Probably your grocer stocks them. Ask him. If he does not, write to us. Price fivepence per tin. The best sardines and the best oil!’ ”

“Isn’t it lovely?” she murmured.

Her hand, as it swung, touched his. He held it. She opened her eyes.

“Don’t stop reading,” she said. “I never heard anything so soothing.”

“Elsa!”

He bent towards her. She smiled at him. Her eyes were dancing.

“Elsa, I⁠—”

“Mr. Keith,” said a quiet voice, “desired me to say⁠—”

Martin started away. He glared up furiously. Gazing down upon them stood Keggs. The butler’s face was shining with a gentle benevolence.

“Mr. Keith desired me to say that he would be glad if Miss Elsa would come and sit with him for a while.”

“I’ll come at once,” said Elsa, stepping from the hammock.

The butler bowed respectfully and turned away. They stood watching him as he moved across the terrace.

“What a saintly old man Keggs looks,” said Elsa. “Don’t you think so? He looks as if he had never even thought of doing anything he shouldn’t. I wonder if he ever has?”

“I wonder!” said Martin.

“He looks like a stout angel. What were you saying, Martin, when he came up?”

The Man Upstairs

There were three distinct stages in the evolution of Annette Brougham’s attitude towards the knocking in the room above. In the beginning it had been merely a vague discomfort. Absorbed in the composition of her waltz, she had heard it almost subconsciously. The second stage set in when it became a physical pain like red-hot pincers wrenching her mind from her music. Finally, with a thrill in indignation, she knew it for what it was⁠—an insult. The unseen brute disliked her playing, and was intimating his views with a boot-heel.

Defiantly, with her foot on the loud pedal, she struck⁠—almost slapped⁠—the keys once more.

“Bang!” from the room above. “Bang! Bang!”

Annette rose. Her face was pink, her chin tilted. Her eyes sparkled with the light of battle. She left the room and started to mount the stairs. No spectator, however just, could have helped feeling a pang of pity for the wretched man who stood unconscious of imminent doom, possibly even triumphant, behind the door at which she was on the point of tapping.

“Come in!” cried the voice, rather a pleasant voice; but what is a pleasant voice if the soul be vile?

Annette went in. The room was a typical Chelsea studio, scantily furnished and lacking a carpet. In the centre was an easel, behind which were visible a pair of trousered legs. A cloud of grey smoke was curling up over the top of the easel.

“I beg your pardon,” began Annette.

“I don’t want any models at present,” said the Brute. “Leave your card on the table.”

“I am not a model,” said Annette, coldly. “I merely came⁠—”

At this the Brute emerged from his fortifications and, removing his pipe from his mouth, jerked his chair out into the open.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “Won’t you sit down?”

How reckless is Nature in the distribution of her gifts! Not only had this black-hearted knocker on floors a pleasant voice, but, in addition, a pleasing exterior. He was slightly dishevelled at the moment, and his hair stood up in a disordered mop; but in spite of these drawbacks, he was quite passably good-looking. Annette admitted this. Though wrathful, she was fair.

“I thought it was another model,” he explained. “They’ve been coming in at the rate of ten an hour ever since I settled here. I didn’t object at first, but after about the eightieth child of sunny Italy had shown up it began to get on my nerves.”

Annette waited coldly till he had finished.

“I am sorry,” she said, in a this-is-where-you-get-yours voice, “if my playing disturbed you.”

One would have thought nobody but an Eskimo wearing his furs and winter underclothing could have withstood the iciness of her manner; but the Brute did not freeze.

“I am sorry,” repeated Annette, well below zero, “if my playing disturbed you. I live in the room below, and I heard you knocking.”

“No, no,” protested the young man, affably; “I like it. Really I do.”

“Then why knock on the floor?” said Annette, turning to go. “It is so bad for my ceiling,” she said over shoulder. “I thought you would not mind my mentioning it. Good afternoon.”

“No; but one moment. Don’t go.”

She stopped. He was surveying her with a friendly smile. She noticed most reluctantly that he had a nice smile. His composure began to enrage her more and more. Long ere this he should have been writhing at her feet in the dust, crushed and abject.

“You see,” he said, “I’m awfully sorry, but it’s like this. I love music, but what I mean is, you weren’t playing a tune. It was just the same bit over and over again.”

“I was trying to get a phrase,” said Annette, with dignity, but less coldly. In spite of herself she was beginning to thaw. There was something singularly attractive about this shock-headed youth.

“A phrase?”

“Of music. For my waltz. I am composing a waltz.”

A look of such unqualified admiration overspread the young man’s face that the last remnants of the ice-pack melted. For the first time since they had met Annette found herself positively liking this blackguardly floor-smiter.

“Can you compose music?” he said, impressed.

“I have written one or two songs.”

“It must be great to be able to do things⁠—artistic things, I mean, like composing.”

“Well, you do, don’t you? You paint.”

The young man shook his head with a cheerful grin.

“I fancy,” he said, “I should make a pretty good house-painter. I want scope. Canvas seems to cramp me.”

It seemed to cause him no discomfort. He appeared rather amused than otherwise.

“Let me look.”

She crossed over to the easel.

“I shouldn’t,” he warned her. “You really want to? Is this not mere recklessness? Very well, then.”

To the eye of an experienced critic the picture would certainly have seemed crude. It was a study of a dark-eyed child holding a large black cat. Statisticians estimate that there is no moment during the day when one or more young artists somewhere on the face of the globe are not painting pictures of children holding cats.

“I call it ‘Child and Cat,’ ” said the young man. “Rather a neat title, don’t you think? Gives you the main idea of the thing right away. That,” he explained, pointing obligingly with the stem of his pipe, “is the cat.”

Annette belonged to that large section of the public which likes or dislikes a picture according to whether its subject happens to please or displease them. Probably there was not one of the million or so child-and-cat eyesores at present in existence which she would not have liked. Besides, he had been very nice about her music.

“I think it’s splendid,” she announced.

The young man’s face displayed almost more surprise than joy.

“Do you really?” he said. “Then I can die happy⁠—that is, if you’ll let me come down and listen to those songs of yours first.”

“You would only knock on the floor,” objected Annette.

“I’ll never knock on another floor as long as I live,” said the ex-brute, reassuringly. “I hate knocking on floors. I don’t see what people want to knock on floors for, anyway.”

Friendships ripen quickly in Chelsea. Within the space of an hour and a quarter Annette had learned that the young man’s name was Alan Beverley (for which Family Heraldic affliction she pitied rather than despised him), that he did not depend entirely on his work for a living, having a little money of his own, and that he considered this a fortunate thing. From the very beginning of their talk he pleased her. She found him an absolutely new and original variety of the unsuccessful painter. Unlike Reginald Sellers, who had a studio in the same building, and sometimes dropped in to drink her coffee and pour out his troubles, he did not attribute his non-success to any malice or stupidity on the part of the public. She was so used to hearing Sellers lash the Philistine and hold forth on unappreciated merit that she could hardly believe the miracle when, in answer to a sympathetic bromide on the popular lack of taste in Art, Beverley replied that, as far as he was concerned, the public showed strong good sense. If he had been striving with every nerve to win her esteem, he could not have done it more surely than with that one remark. Though she invariably listened with a sweet patience which encouraged them to continue long after the point at which she had begun in spirit to throw things at them, Annette had no sympathy with men who whined. She herself was a fighter. She hated as much as anyone the sickening blows which Fate hands out to the struggling and ambitious; but she never made them the basis of a monologue act. Often, after a dreary trip round the offices of the music-publishers, she would howl bitterly in secret, and even gnaw her pillow in the watches of the night; but in public her pride kept her unvaryingly bright and cheerful.

Today, for the first time, she revealed something of her woes. There was that about the mop-headed young man which invited confidences. She told him of the stony-heartedness of music-publishers, of the difficulty of getting songs printed unless you paid for them, of their wretched sales.

“But those songs you’ve been playing,” said Beverley, “they’ve been published?”

“Yes, those three. But they are the only ones.”

“And didn’t they sell?”

“Hardly at all. You see, a song doesn’t sell unless somebody well known sings it. And people promise to sing them, and then don’t keep their word. You can’t depend on what they say.”

“Give me their names,” said Beverley, “and I’ll go round tomorrow and shoot the whole lot. But can’t you do anything?”

“Only keep on keeping on.”

“I wish,” he said, “that any time you’re feeling blue about things you would come up and pour out the poison on me. It’s no good bottling it up. Come up and tell me about it, and you’ll feel ever so much better. Or let me come down. Any time things aren’t going right just knock on the ceiling.”

She laughed.

“Don’t rub it in,” pleaded Beverley. “It isn’t fair. There’s nobody so sensitive as a reformed floor-knocker. You will come up or let me come down, won’t you? Whenever I have that sad, depressed feeling, I go out and kill a policeman. But you wouldn’t care for that. So the only thing for you to do is to knock on the ceiling. Then I’ll come charging down and see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“You’ll be sorry you ever said this.”

“I won’t,” he said stoutly.

“If you really mean it, it would be a relief,” she admitted. “Sometimes I’d give all the money I’m ever likely to make for someone to shriek my grievances at. I always think it must have been so nice for the people in the old novels, when they used to say: ‘Sit down and I will tell you the story of my life.’ Mustn’t it have been heavenly?”

“Well,” said Beverley, rising, “you know where I am if I’m wanted. Right up there where the knocking came from.”

“Knocking?” said Annette. “I remember no knocking.”

“Would you mind shaking hands?” said Beverley.

A particularly maddening hour with one of her pupils drove her up the very next day. Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting. Some of them were learning the piano. Others thought they sang. All had solid ivory skulls. There was about a teaspoonful of grey matter distributed among the entire squad, and the pupil Annette had been teaching that afternoon had come in at the tail-end of the division.

In the studio with Beverley she found Reginald Sellers, standing in a critical attitude before the easel. She was not very fond of him. He was a long, offensive, patronizing person, with a moustache that looked like a smear of charcoal, and a habit of addressing her as “Ah, little one!”

Beverley looked up.

“Have you brought your hatchet, Miss Brougham? If you have, you’re just in time to join in the massacre of the innocents. Sellers has been smiting my child and cat hip and thigh. Look at his eye. There! Did you see it flash then? He’s on the warpath again.”

“My dear Beverley,” said Sellers, rather stiffly, “I am merely endeavouring to give you my idea of the picture’s defects. I am sorry if my criticism has to be a little harsh.”

“Go right on,” said Beverley, cordially. “Don’t mind me; it’s all for my good.”

“Well, in a word, then, it is lifeless. Neither the child nor the cat lives.”

He stepped back a pace and made a frame of his hands.

“The cat now,” he said. “It is⁠—how shall I put it? It has no⁠—no⁠—er⁠—”

“That kind of cat wouldn’t,” said Beverley. “It isn’t that breed.”

“I think it’s a dear cat,” said Annette. She felt her temper, always quick, getting the better of her. She knew just how incompetent Sellers was, and it irritated her beyond endurance to see Beverley’s good-humoured acceptance of his patronage.

“At any rate,” said Beverley, with a grin, “you both seem to recognize that it is a cat. You’re solid on that point, and that’s something, seeing I’m only a beginner.”

“I know, my dear fellow; I know,” said Sellers, graciously. “You mustn’t let my criticism discourage you. Don’t think that your work lacks promise. Far from it. I am sure that in time you will do very well indeed. Quite well.”

A cold glitter might have been observed in Annette’s eyes.

“Mr. Sellers,” she said, smoothly, “had to work very hard himself before he reached his present position. You know his work, of course?”

For the first time Beverley seemed somewhat confused.

“I⁠—er⁠—why⁠—” he began.

“Oh, but of course you do,” she went on, sweetly. “It’s in all the magazines.”

Beverley looked at the great man with admiration, and saw that he had flushed uncomfortably. He put this down to the modesty of genius.

“In the advertisement pages,” said Annette. “Mr. Sellers drew that picture of the Waukeesy Shoe and the Restawhile Settee and the tin of sardines in the Little Gem Sardine advertisement. He is very good at still life.”

There was a tense silence. Beverley could almost hear the voice of the referee uttering the count.

“Miss Brougham,” said Sellers at last, spitting out the words, “has confined herself to the purely commercial side of my work. There is another.”

“Why, of course there is. You sold a landscape for five pounds only eight months ago, didn’t you? And another three months before that.”

It was enough. Sellers bowed stiffly and stalked from the room.

Beverley picked up a duster and began slowly to sweep the floor with it.

“What are you doing?” demanded Annette, in a choking voice.

“The fragments of the wretched man,” whispered Beverley. “They must be swept up and decently interred. You certainly have got the punch, Miss Brougham.”

He dropped the duster with a startled exclamation, for Annette had suddenly burst into a flood of tears. With her face buried in her hands she sat in her chair and sobbed desperately.

“Good Lord!” said Beverley, blankly.

“I’m a cat! I’m a beast! I hate myself!”

“Good Lord!” said Beverley, blankly.

“I’m a pig! I’m a fiend!”

“Good Lord!” said Beverley, blankly.

“We’re all struggling and trying to get on and having hard luck, and instead of doing what I can to help, I go and t-t-taunt him with not being able to sell his pictures! I’m not fit to live! Oh!”

“Good Lord!” said Beverley, blankly.

A series of gulping sobs followed, diminishing by degrees into silence. Presently she looked up and smiled, a moist and pathetic smile.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “for being so stupid. But he was so horrid and patronizing to you, I couldn’t help scratching. I believe I’m the worst cat in London.”

“No, this is,” said Beverley, pointing to the canvas. “At least, according to the late Sellers. But, I say, tell me, isn’t the deceased a great artist, then? He came curveting in here with his chest out and started to slate my masterpiece, so I naturally said, ‘What-ho! ’Tis a genius!’ Isn’t he?”

“He can’t sell his pictures anywhere. He lives on the little he can get from illustrating advertisements. And I t-taunt⁠—”

“Please!” She recovered herself with a gulp.

“I can’t help it,” she said, miserably. “I rubbed it in. Oh, it was hateful of me! But I was all on edge from teaching one of my awful pupils, and when he started to patronize you⁠—”

She blinked.

“Poor devil!” said Beverley. “I never guessed. Good Lord!”

Annette rose.

“I must go and tell him I’m sorry,” she said. “He’ll snub me horribly, but I must.”

She went out. Beverley lit a pipe and stood at the window looking thoughtfully down into the street.

It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them. Sellers belonged to the latter class. When Annette, meek, penitent, with all her claws sheathed, came to him and grovelled, he forgave her with a repulsive magnanimity which in a less subdued mood would have stung her to renewed pugnacity. As it was, she allowed herself to be forgiven, and retired with a dismal conviction that from now on he would be more insufferable than ever.

Her surmise proved absolutely correct. His visits to the newcomer’s studio began again, and Beverley’s picture, now nearing completion, came in for criticism enough to have filled a volume. The good humour with which he received it amazed Annette. She had no proprietary interest in the painting beyond what she acquired from a growing regard for its parent (which disturbed her a good deal when she had time to think of it); but there were moments when only the recollection of her remorse for her previous outbreak kept her from rending the critic. Beverley, however, appeared to have no artistic sensitiveness whatsoever. When Sellers savaged the cat in a manner which should have brought the S.P.C.A. down upon him, Beverley merely beamed. His long-sufferingness was beyond Annette’s comprehension.

She began to admire him for it.

To make his position as critic still more impregnable, Sellers was now able to speak as one having authority. After years of floundering, his luck seemed at last to have turned. His pictures, which for months had lain at an agent’s, careened like crippled battleships, had at length begun to find a market. Within the past two weeks three landscapes and an allegorical painting had sold for good prices; and under the influence of success he expanded like an opening floweret. When Epstein, the agent, wrote to say that the allegory had been purchased by a Glasgow plutocrat of the name of Bates for one hundred and sixty guineas, Sellers’ views on Philistines and their crass materialism and lack of taste underwent a marked modification. He spoke with some friendliness of the man Bates.

“To me,” said Beverley, when informed of the event by Annette, “the matter has a deeper significance. It proves that Glasgow has at last produced a sober man. No drinker would have dared face that allegory. The whole business is very gratifying.”

Beverley himself was progressing slowly in the field of Art. He had finished the “Child and Cat,” and had taken it to Epstein together with a letter of introduction from Sellers. Sellers’ habitual attitude now was that of the kindly celebrity who has arrived and wishes to give the youngsters a chance.

Since its departure Beverley had not done much in the way of actual execution. Whenever Annette came to his studio he was either sitting in a chair with his feet on the windowsill, smoking, or in the same attitude listening to Sellers’ views on art. Sellers being on the upgrade, a man with many pounds to his credit in the bank, had more leisure now. He had given up his advertisement work, and was planning a great canvas⁠—another allegorical work. This left him free to devote a good deal of time to Beverley, and he did so. Beverley sat and smoked through his harangues. He may have been listening, or he may not. Annette listened once or twice, and the experience had the effect of sending her to Beverley, quivering with indignation.

“Why do you let him patronize you like that?” she demanded. “If anybody came and talked to me like that about my music, I’d⁠—I’d⁠—I don’t know what I’d do. Yes, even if he were really a great musician.”

“Don’t you consider Sellers a great artist, then, even now?”

“He seems to be able to sell his pictures, so I suppose they must be good; but nothing could give him the right to patronize you as he does.”

“ ‘My learned friend’s manner would be intolerable in an emperor to a black-beetle,’ ” quoted Beverley. “Well, what are we going to do about it?”

“If only you could sell a picture, too!”

“Ah! Well, I’ve done my part of the contract. I’ve delivered the goods. There the thing is at Epstein’s. The public can’t blame me if it doesn’t sell. All they’ve got to do is to waltz in in their thousands and fight for it. And, by the way, talking of waltzes⁠—”

“Oh, it’s finished,” said Annette, dispiritedly. “Published too, for that matter.”

“Published! What’s the matter, then? Why this drooping sadness? Why aren’t you running around the square, singing like a bird?”

“Because,” said Annette, “unfortunately, I had to pay the expenses of publication. It was only five pounds, but the sales haven’t caught up with that yet. If they ever do, perhaps there’ll be a new edition.”

“And will you have to pay for that?”

“No. The publishers would.”

“Who are they?”

“Grusczinsky and Buchterkirch.”

“Heavens, then what are you worrying about? The thing’s a cert. A man with a name like Grusczinsky could sell a dozen editions by himself. Helped and inspired by Buchterkirch, he will make the waltz the talk of the country. Infants will croon it in their cots.”

“He didn’t seem to think so when I saw him last.”

“Of course not. He doesn’t know his own power. Grusczinsky’s shrinking diffidence is a byword in musical circles. He is the genuine Human Violet. You must give him time.”

“I’ll give him anything if he’ll only sell an edition or two,” said Annette.

The outstanding thing was that he did. There seemed no particular reason why the sale of that waltz should not have been as small and as slow as that of any other waltz by an unknown composer. But almost without warning it expanded from a trickle into a flood. Grusczinsky, beaming paternally whenever Annette entered the shop⁠—which was often⁠—announced two new editions in a week. Beverley, his artistic growth still under a watchful eye of Sellers, said he had never had any doubts as to the success of the thing from the moment when a single phrase in it had so carried him away that he had been compelled to stamp his applause enthusiastically on the floor. Even Sellers forgot his own triumphs long enough to allow him to offer affable congratulations. And money came rolling in, smoothing the path of life.

Those were great days. There was a hat⁠ ⁠…

Life, in short, was very full and splendid. There was, indeed, but one thing which kept it from being perfect. The usual drawback to success is that it annoys one’s friends so; but in Annette’s case this drawback was absent. Sellers’ demeanour towards her was that of an old-established inmate welcoming a novice into the Hall of Fame. Her pupils⁠—worthy souls, though boneheaded⁠—fawned upon her. Beverley seemed more pleased than anyone. Yet it was Beverley who prevented her paradise from being complete. Successful herself, she wanted all her friends to be successful; but Beverley, to her discomfort, remained a cheery failure, and worse, absolutely refused to snub Sellers. It was not as if Sellers’ advice and comments were disinterested. Beverley was simply the instrument on which he played his songs of triumph. It distressed Annette to such an extent that now, if she went upstairs and heard Sellers’ voice in the studio, she came down again without knocking.

One afternoon, sitting in her room, she heard the telephone-bell ring.

The telephone was on the stairs, just outside her door. She went out and took up the receiver.

“Halloa!” said a querulous voice. “Is Mr. Beverley there?”

Annette remembered having heard him go out. She could always tell his footstep.

“He is out,” she said. “Is there any message?”

“Yes,” said the voice, emphatically. “Tell him that Rupert Morrison rang up to ask what he was to do with all this great stack of music that’s arrived. Does he want it forwarded on to him, or what?” The voice was growing high and excited. Evidently Mr. Morrison was in a state of nervous tension when a man does not care particularly who hears his troubles so long as he unburdens himself of them to someone.

“Music?” said Annette.

“Music!” shrilled Mr. Morrison. “Stacks and stacks and stacks of it. Is he playing a practical joke on me, or what?” he demanded, hysterically. Plainly he had now come to regard Annette as a legitimate confidante. She was listening. That was the main point. He wanted someone⁠—he did not care whom⁠—who would listen. “He lends me his rooms,” wailed Mr. Morrison, “so that I can be perfectly quiet and undisturbed while I write my novel, and, first thing I know, this music starts to arrive. How can I be quiet and undisturbed when the floor’s littered two yards high with great parcels of music, and more coming every day?”

Annette clung weakly to the telephone box. Her mind was in a whirl, but she was beginning to see many things.

“Are you there?” called Mr. Morrison.

“Yes. What⁠—what firm does the music come from?”

“What’s that?”

“Who are the publishers who send the music?”

“I can’t remember. Some long name. Yes, I’ve got it. Grusczinsky and someone.”

“I’ll tell Mr. Beverley,” said Annette, quietly. A great weight seemed to have settled on her head.

“Halloa! Halloa! Are you there?” came Mr. Morrison’s voice.

“Yes?”

“And tell him there are some pictures, too.”

“Pictures?”

“Four great beastly pictures. The size of elephants. I tell you, there isn’t room to move. And⁠—”

Annette hung up the receiver.

Mr. Beverley, returned from his walk, was racing up the stairs three at a time in his energetic way, when, as he arrived at Annette’s door, it opened.

“Have you a minute to spare?” said Annette.

“Of course. What’s the trouble? Have they sold another edition of the waltz?”

“I have not heard, Mr.⁠—Bates.”

For once she looked to see the cheerful composure of the man upstairs become ruffled; but he received the blow without agitation.

“You know my name?” he said.

“I know a good deal more than your name. You are a Glasgow millionaire.”

“It’s true,” he admitted, “but it’s hereditary. My father was one before me.”

“And you use your money,” said Annette, bitterly, “creating fools’ paradises for your friends, which last, I suppose, until you grow tired of the amusement and destroy them. Doesn’t it ever strike you, Mr. Bates, that it’s a little cruel? Do you think Mr. Sellers will settle down again cheerfully to hackwork when you stop buying his pictures, and he finds out that⁠—that⁠—”

“I shan’t stop,” said the young man. “If a Glasgow millionaire mayn’t buy Sellers’ allegorical pictures, whose allegorical pictures may he buy? Sellers will never find out. He’ll go on painting and I’ll go on buying, and all will be joy and peace.”

“Indeed! And what future have you arranged for me?”

“You?” he said, reflectively. “I want to marry you.”

Annette stiffened from head to foot. He met her blazing eyes with a look of quiet devotion.

“Marry me?”

“I know what you are thinking,” he said. “Your mind is dwelling on the prospect of living in a house decorated throughout with Sellers’ allegorical pictures. But it won’t be. We’ll store them in the attic.”

She began to speak, but he interrupted her.

“Listen!” he said. “Sit down and I will tell you the story of my life. We’ll skip the first twenty-eight years and three months, merely mentioning that for the greater part of that time I was looking for somebody just like you. A month and nine days ago I found you. You were crossing the Embankment. I was also on the Embankment. In a taxi. I stopped the taxi, got out, and observed you just stepping into the Charing Cross Underground. I sprang⁠—”

“This does not interest me,” said Annette.

“The plot thickens,” he assured her. “We left our hero springing, I think. Just so. Well, you took the West End train and got off at Sloane Square. So did I. You crossed Sloane Square, turned up King’s Road, and finally arrived here. I followed. I saw a notice up, ‘Studio to Let.’ I reflected that, having done a little painting in an amateur way, I could pose as an artist all right; so I took the studio. Also the name of Alan Beverley. My own is Bill Bates. I had often wondered what it would feel like to be called by some name like Alan Beverley or Cyril Trevelyan. It was simply the spin of the coin which decided me in favour of the former. Once in, the problem was how to get to know you. When I heard you playing I knew it was all right. I had only to keep knocking on the floor long enough⁠—”

“Do⁠—you⁠—mean⁠—to⁠—tell⁠—me⁠—” Annette’s voice trembled “do you mean to tell me that you knocked that time simply to make me come up?”

“That was it. Rather a scheme, don’t you think? And now, would you mind telling me how you found out that I had been buying your waltz? Those remarks of yours about fools’ paradises were not inspired solely by the affairs of Sellers. But it beats me how you did it. I swore Rozinsky, or whatever his name is, to secrecy.”

“A Mr. Morrison,” sad Annette, indifferently, “rang up on the telephone and asked me to tell you that he was greatly worried by the piles of music which were littering the rooms you lent him.”

The young man burst into a roar of laughter.

“Poor old Morrison! I forgot all about him. I lent him my rooms at the Albany. He’s writing a novel, and he can’t work if the slightest thing goes wrong. It just shows⁠—”

“Mr. Bates!”

“Yes?”

“Perhaps you didn’t intend to hurt me. I dare say you meant only to be kind. But⁠—but⁠—oh, can’t you see how you have humiliated me? You have treated me like a child, giving me a make-believe success just to⁠—just to keep me quiet, I suppose. You⁠—”

He was fumbling in his pocket.

“May I read you a letter?” he said.

“A letter?”

“Quite a short one. It is from Epstein, the picture-dealer. This is what he says. ‘Sir,’ meaning me, not ‘Dear Bill,’ mind you⁠—just ‘Sir.’ ‘I am glad to be able to inform you that I have this morning received an offer of ten guineas for your picture, “Child and Cat.” Kindly let me know if I am to dispose of it at this price.’ ”

“Well?” said Annette, in a small voice.

“I have just been to Epstein’s. It seems that the purchaser is a Miss Brown. She gave an address in Bayswater. I called at the address. No Miss Brown lives there, but one of your pupils does. I asked her if she was expecting a parcel for Miss Brown, and she said that she had had your letter and quite understood and would take it in when it arrived.”

Annette was hiding her face in her hands.

“Go away!” she said, faintly.

Mr. Bates moved a step nearer.

“Do you remember that story of the people on the island who eked out a precarious livelihood by taking in one another’s washing?” he asked, casually.

“Go away!” cried Annette.

“I’ve always thought,” he said, “that it must have drawn them very close together⁠—made them feel rather attached to each other. Don’t you?”

“Go away!”

“I don’t want to go away. I want to stay and hear you say you’ll marry me.”

“Please go away! I want to think.”

She heard him moving towards the door. He stopped, then went on again. The door closed quietly. Presently from the room above came the sound of footsteps⁠—footsteps pacing monotonously to and fro like those of an animal in a cage.

Annette sat listening. There was no break in the footsteps.

Suddenly she got up. In one corner of the room was a long pole used for raising and lowering the window-sash. She took it, and for a moment stood irresolute. Then with a quick movement, she lifted it and stabbed three times at the ceiling.

The Man, the Maid, and the Miasma

Although this story is concerned principally with the Man and the Maid, the Miasma pervades it to such an extent that I feel justified in putting his name on the bills. Webster’s Dictionary gives the meaning of the word “miasma” as “an infection floating in the air; a deadly exhalation”; and, in the opinion of Mr. Robert Ferguson, his late employer, that description, though perhaps a little too flattering, on the whole summed up Master Roland Bean pretty satisfactorily. Until the previous day he had served Mr. Ferguson in the capacity of office-boy; but there was that about Master Bean which made it practically impossible for anyone to employ him for long. A syndicate of Galahad, Parsifal, and Marcus Aurelius might have done it, but to an ordinary erring man, conscious of things done which should not have been done, and other things equally numerous left undone, he was too oppressive. One conscience is enough for any man. The employer of Master Bean had to cringe before two. Nobody can last long against an office-boy whose eyes shine with quiet, respectful reproof through gold-rimmed spectacles, whose manner is that of a middle-aged saint, and who obviously knows all the Plod and Punctuality books by heart and orders his life by their precepts. Master Bean was a walking edition of Stepping-Stones to Success, Millionaires Who Have Never Smoked, and Young Man, Get Up Early. Galahad, Parsifal, and Marcus Aurelius, as I say, might have remained tranquil in his presence, but Robert Ferguson found the contract too large. After one month he had braced himself up and sacked the Punctual Plodder.

Yet now he was sitting in his office, long after the last clerk had left, long after the hour at which he himself was wont to leave, his mind full of his late employee.

Was this remorse? Was he longing for the touch of the vanished hand, the gleam of the departed spectacles? He was not. His mind was full of Master Bean because Master Bean was waiting for him in the outer office; and he lingered on at his desk, after the day’s work was done, for the same reason. Word had been brought to him earlier in the evening, that Master Roland Bean would like to see him. The answer to that was easy: “Tell him I’m busy.” Master Bean’s admirably dignified reply was that he understood how great was the pressure of Mr. Ferguson’s work, and that he would wait till he was at liberty. Liberty! Talk of the liberty of the treed possum, but do not use the word in connection with a man bottled up in an office, with Roland Bean guarding the only exit.

Mr. Ferguson kicked the wastepaper basket savagely. The unfairness of the thing hurt him. A sacked office-boy ought to stay sacked. He had no business to come popping up again like Banquo’s ghost. It was not playing the game.

The reader may wonder what was the trouble⁠—why Mr. Ferguson could not stalk out and brusquely dispose of his foe; but then the reader has not employed Master Bean for a month. Mr. Ferguson had, and his nerve had broken.

A slight cough penetrated the door between the two offices. Mr. Ferguson rose and grabbed his hat. Perhaps a sudden rush⁠—he shot out with the tense concentration of one moving towards the refreshment-room at a station where the train stops three minutes.

“Good evening, sir!” was the watcher’s view-hallo.

“Ah, Bean,” said Mr. Ferguson, flitting rapidly, “you still here? I thought you had gone. I’m afraid I cannot stop now. Some other time⁠—”

He was almost through.

“I fear, sir, that you will be unable to get out,” said Master Bean, sympathetically. “The building is locked up.”

Men who have been hit by bullets say the first sensation is merely a sort of dull shock. So it was with Mr. Ferguson. He stopped in his tracks and stared.

“The porter closes the door at seven o’clock punctually, sir. It is now nearly twenty minutes after the hour.”

Mr. Ferguson’s brain was still in the numbed stage.

“Closes the door?” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then how are we to get out?”

“I fear we cannot get out, sir.”

Mr. Ferguson digested this.

“I am no longer in your employment, sir,” said Master Bean, respectfully, “but I hope that in the circumstances you will permit me to remain here during the night.”

“During the night!”

“It would enable me to sleep more comfortably than on the stairs.”

“But we can’t stop here all night,” said Mr. Ferguson, feebly.

He had anticipated an unpleasant five minutes in Master Bean’s company. Imagination boggled at the thought of an unpleasant thirteen hours.

He collapsed into a chair.

“I called,” said Master Bean, shelving the trivial subject of the prospective vigil, “in the hope that I might persuade you, sir, to reconsider your decision in regard to my dismissal. I can assure you, sir, that I am extremely anxious to give satisfaction. If you would take me back and inform me how I have fallen short, I would endeavour to improve, I⁠—”

“We can’t stop here all night,” interrupted Mr. Ferguson, bounding from his chair and beginning to pace the floor.

“Without presumption, sir, I feel that if you were to give me another chance I should work to your satisfaction. I should endeavour⁠—”

Mr. Ferguson stared at him in dumb horror. He had a momentary vision of a sleepless night spent in listening to a nicely-polished speech for the defence. He was seized with a mad desire for flight. He could not leave the building, but he must get away somewhere and think.

He dashed from the room and raced up the dark stairs. And as he arrived at the next floor his eye was caught by a thin pencil of light which proceeded from a door on the left.

No shipwrecked mariner on a desert island could have welcomed the appearance of a sail with greater enthusiasm. He bounded at the door. He knew to whom the room belonged. It was the office of one Blaythwayt; and Blaythwayt was not only an acquaintance, but a sportsman. Quite possibly there might be a pack of cards on Blaythwayt’s person to help pass the long hours. And if not, at least he would be company and his office a refuge. He flung open the door without going through the formality of knocking. Etiquette is not for the marooned.

“I say, Blaythwayt⁠—” he began, and stopped abruptly.

The only occupant of the room was a girl.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I thought⁠—”

He stopped again. His eyes, dazzled with the light, had not seen clearly. They did so now.

“You!” he cried.

The girl looked at him, first with surprise, then with a cool hostility. There was a long pause. Eighteen months had passed since they had parted, and conversation does not flow easily after eighteen months of silence, especially if the nature of the parting has been bitter and stormy.

He was the first to speak.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“I thought my doings had ceased to interest you,” she said. “I am Mr. Blaythwayt’s secretary. I have been here a fortnight. I have wondered if we should meet. I used to see you sometimes in the street.”

“I never saw you.”

“No?” she said indifferently.

He ran his hand through his hair in a dazed way.

“Do you know we are locked in?” he said.

He had expected wild surprise and dismay. She merely clicked her tongue in an annoyed manner.

“Again!” she said. “What a nuisance! I was locked in only a week ago.”

He looked at her with unwilling respect, the respect of the novice for the veteran. She was nothing to him now, of course. She had passed out of his life. But he could not help remembering that long ago⁠—eighteen months ago⁠—what he had admired most in her had been this same spirit, this game refusal to be disturbed by Fate’s blows. It braced him up.

He sat down and looked curiously at her.

“So you left the stage?” he said.

“I thought we agreed when we parted not to speak to one another,” said she, coldly.

“Did we? I thought it was only to meet as strangers.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“Is it? I often talk to strangers.”

“What a bore they must think you!” she said, hiding one-eighth of a yawn with the tips of two fingers. “I suppose,” she went on, with faint interest, “you talk to them in trains when they are trying to read their paper?”

“I don’t force my conversation on anyone.”

“Don’t you?” she said, raising her eyebrows in sweet surprise. “Only your company⁠—is that it?”

“Are you alluding to the present occasion?”

“Well, you have an office of your own in this building, I believe.”

“I have.”

“Then why⁠—”

“I am at perfect liberty,” he said, with dignity, “to sit in my friend Blaythwayt’s office if I choose. I wish to see Mr. Blaythwayt.”

“On business?”

He proved that she had established no corner in raised eyebrows.

“I fear,” he said, “that I cannot discuss my affairs with Mr. Blaythwayt’s employees. I must see him personally.”

“Mr. Blaythwayt is not here.”

“I will wait.”

“He will not be here for thirteen hours.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Very well,” she burst out; “you have brought it on yourself. You’ve only yourself to blame. If you had been good and had gone back to your office, I would have brought you down some cake and cocoa.”

“Cake and cocoa!” said he, superciliously.

“Yes, cake and cocoa,” she snapped. “It’s all very well for you to turn up your nose at them now, but wait. You’ve thirteen hours of this in front of you. I know what it is. Last time I had to spend the night here I couldn’t get to sleep for hours, and when I did I dreamed that I was chasing chocolate eclairs round and round Trafalgar Square. And I never caught them either. Long before the night was finished I would have given anything for even a dry biscuit. I made up my mind I’d always keep something here in case I ever got locked in again⁠—yes, smile. You’d better while you can.”

He was smiling, but wanly. Nobody but a professional fasting man could have looked unmoved into the Inferno she had pictured. Then he rallied.

“Cake!” he said, scornfully.

She nodded grimly.

“Cocoa!”

Again that nod, ineffably sinister.

“I’m afraid I don’t care for either,” he said.

“If you will excuse me,” she said, indifferently, “I have a little work that I must finish.”

She turned to her desk, leaving him to his thoughts. They were not exhilarating. He had maintained a brave front, but inwardly he quailed. Reared in the country, he had developed at an early age a fine, healthy appetite. Once, soon after his arrival in London, he had allowed a dangerous fanatic to persuade him that the secret of health was to go without breakfast.

His lunch that day had cost him eight shillings, and only decent shame had kept the figure as low as that. He knew perfectly well that long ere the dawn of day his whole soul would be crying out for cake, squealing frantically for cocoa. Would it not be better to⁠—no, a thousand times no! Death, but not surrender. His self-respect was at stake. Looking back, he saw that his entire relations with this girl had been a series of battles of will. So far, though he had certainly not won, he had not been defeated. He must not be defeated now.

He crossed his legs and sang a gay air under his breath.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” said the girl, looking up.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your groaning interrupts my work.”

“I was not groaning. I was singing.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!”

“Not at all.”

Eight bars rest.

Mr. Ferguson, deprived of the solace of song, filled in the time by gazing at the toiler’s back-hair. It set in motion a train of thought⁠—an express train bound for the Land of Yesterday. It recalled days in the woods, evenings on the lawn. It recalled sunshine⁠—storm. Plenty of storm. Minor tempests that burst from a clear sky, apparently without cause, and the great final tornado. There had been cause enough for that. Why was it, mused Mr. Ferguson, that every girl in every country town in every county of England who had ever recited “Curfew shall not ring tonight” well enough to escape lynching at the hands of a rustic audience was seized with the desire to come to London and go on the stage?

He sighed.

“Please don’t snort,” said a cold voice, from behind the back-hair.

There was a train-wreck in the Land of Yesterday. Mr. Ferguson, the only survivor, limped back into the Present.

The Present had little charm, but at least it was better than the cakeless Future. He fixed his thoughts on it. He wondered how Master Bean was passing the time. Probably doing deep-breathing exercises, or reading a pocket Aristotle. The girl pushed back her chair and rose.

She went to a small cupboard in the corner of the room, and from it produced in instalments all that goes to make cake and cocoa. She did not speak. Presently, filling Space, there sprang into being an Odour; and as it reached him Mr. Ferguson stiffened in his chair, bracing himself as for a fight to the death. It was more than an odour. It was the soul of the cocoa singing to him. His fingers gripped the arms of the chair. This was the test.

The girl separated a section of cake from the parent body. She caught his eye.

“You had better go,” she said. “If you go now it’s just possible that I may⁠—but I forgot, you don’t like cocoa.”

“No,” said he, resolutely, “I don’t.”

She seemed now in the mood for conversation.

“I wonder why you came up here at all,” she said.

“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t know. I came up here because my late office-boy is downstairs.”

“Why should that send you up?”

“You’ve never met him or you wouldn’t ask. Have you ever had to face someone who is simply incarnate Saintliness and Disapproval, who⁠—”

“Are you forgetting that I was engaged to you for several weeks?”

He was too startled to be hurt. The idea of himself as a Roland Bean was too new to be assimilated immediately. It called for meditation.

“Was I like that?” he said at last, almost humbly.

“You know you were. Oh, I’m not thinking only about your views on the stage! It was everything. Whatever I did you were there to disapprove like a⁠—like a⁠—like an aunt,” she concluded triumphantly. “You were too good for anything. If only you would, just once, have done something wrong. I think I’d have⁠—But you couldn’t. You’re simply perfect.”

A man will remain cool and composed under many charges. Hint that his tastes are criminal, and he will shrug his shoulders. But accuse him of goodness, and you rouse the lion.

Mr. Ferguson’s brow darkened.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, haughtily, “I was to have had supper with a chorus girl this very night.”

“How very appalling!” said she, languidly.

She sipped her cocoa.

“I suppose you consider that very terrible?” she said.

“For a beginner.”

She crumbled her cake. Suddenly she looked up.

“Who is she?” she demanded, fiercely.

“I beg your pardon?” he said, coming out of a pleasant reverie.

“Who is this girl?”

“She⁠—er⁠—her name⁠—her name is Marie⁠—Marie Templeton.”

She seemed to think for a moment.

“That dear old lady?” she said. “I know her quite well.”

“What!”

“ ‘Mother’ we used to call her. Have you met her son?”

“Her son?”

“A rather nice-looking man. He plays heavy parts on tour. He’s married and has two of the sweetest children. Their grandmother is devoted to them. Hasn’t she ever mentioned them to you?”

She poured herself out another cup of cocoa. Conversation again languished.

“I suppose you’re very fond of her?” she said at length.

“I’m devoted to her.” He paused. “Dear little thing!” he added.

She rose and moved to the door. There was a nasty gleam in her eyes.

“You aren’t going?” he said.

“I shall be back in a moment. I’m just going to bring your poor little office-boy up here. He must be missing you.”

He sprang up, but she had gone. Leaning over the banisters, he heard a door open below, then a short conversation, and finally footsteps climbing the stairs.

It was pitch dark on the landing. He stepped aside, and they passed without seeing him. Master Bean was discoursing easily on cocoa, the processes whereby it was manufactured, and the remarkable distances which natives of Mexico had covered with it as their only food. The door opened, flooding the landing with light, and Mr. Ferguson, stepping from ambush, began to descend the stairs.

The girl came to the banisters.

“Mr. Ferguson!”

He stopped.

“Did you want me?” he asked.

“Are you going back to your office?”

“I am. I hope you will enjoy Bean’s society. He has a fund of useful information on all subjects.”

He went on. After a while she returned to the room and closed the door.

Mr. Ferguson went into his office and sat down.

There was once a person of the name of Simeon Stylites, who took up a position on top of a pillar and stayed there, having no other engagements, for thirty years. Mr. Ferguson, who had read Tennyson’s poem on the subject, had until tonight looked upon this as a pretty good thing. Reading the lines:

… thrice ten years,
Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs,
In hunger and in thirsts, fevers and colds,
In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes, and cramps,⁠ ⁠…
Patient on this tall pillar I have borne.
Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow,

he had gathered roughly, as it were, that Simeon had not been comfortable. He had pitied him. But now, sitting in his office-chair, he began to wonder what the man had made such a fuss about. He suspected him of having had a touch of the white feather in him. It was not as if he had not had food. He talked about “hungers and thirsts,” but he must have had something to eat, or he could not have stayed the course. Very likely, if the truth were known, there was somebody below who passed him up regular supplies of cake and cocoa.

He began to look on Simeon as an overrated amateur.

Sleep refused to come to him. It got as far as his feet, but no farther. He rose and stamped to restore the circulation.

It was at this point that he definitely condemned Simeon Stylites as a sybaritic fraud.

If this were one of those realistic Zolaesque stories I would describe the crick in the back that⁠—but let us hurry on.

It was about six hours later⁠—he had no watch, but the numbers of aches, stitches, not to mention cramps, that he had experienced could not possibly have been condensed into a shorter period⁠—that his manly spirit snapped. Let us not judge him too harshly. The girl upstairs had broken his heart, ruined his life, and practically compared him to Roland Bean, and his pride should have built up an impassable wall between them, but⁠—she had cake and cocoa. In similar circumstances King Arthur would have grovelled before Guinevere.

He rushed to the door and tore it open. There was a startled exclamation from the darkness outside.

“I hope I didn’t disturb you,” said a meek voice.

Mr. Ferguson did not answer. His twitching nostrils were drinking in a familiar aroma.

“Were you asleep? May I come in? I’ve brought you some cake and cocoa.”

He took the rich gifts from her in silence. There are moments in a man’s life too sacred for words. The wonder of the thing had struck him dumb. An instant before and he had had but a desperate hope of winning these priceless things from her at the cost of all his dignity and self-respect. He had been prepared to secure them through a shower of biting taunts, a blizzard of razor-like “I told you so’s.” Yet here he was, draining the cup, and still able to hold his head up, look the world in the face, and call himself a man.

His keen eye detected a crumb on his coat-sleeve. This retrieved and consumed, he turned to her, seeking explanation.

She was changed. The battle-gleam had faded from her eyes. She seemed scared and subdued. Her manner was of one craving comfort and protection. “That awful boy!” she breathed.

“Bean?” said Mr. Ferguson, picking a crumb off the carpet.

“He’s frightful.”

“I thought you might get a little tired of him! What has he been doing?”

“Talking. I feel battered. He’s like one of those awful encyclopedias that give you a sort of dull leaden feeling in your head directly you open them. Do you know how many tons of water go over Niagara Falls every year?”

“No.”

“He does.”

“I told you he had a fund of useful information. The Purpose and Tenacity books insist on it. That’s how you Catch your Employer’s Eye. One morning the boss suddenly wants to know how many horsehair sofas there are in Brixton, the number of pins that would reach from London Bridge to Waterloo. You tell him, and he takes you into partnership. Later you become a millionaire. But I haven’t thanked you for the cocoa. It was fine.”

He waited for the retort, but it did not come. A pleased wonderment filled him. Could these things really be thus?

“And it isn’t only what he says,” she went on. “I know what you mean about him now. It’s his accusing manner.”

“I’ve tried to analyse that manner. I believe it’s the spectacles.”

“It’s frightful when he looks at you; you think of all the wrong things you have ever done or ever wanted to do.”

“Does he have that effect on you?” he said, excitedly. “Why, that exactly describes what I feel.”

The affinities looked at one another.

She was the first to speak.

“We always did think alike on most things, didn’t we?” she said.

“Of course we did.”

He shifted his chair forward.

“It was all my fault,” he said. “I mean, what happened.”

“It wasn’t. It⁠—”

“Yes, it was. I want to tell you something. I don’t know if it will make any difference now, but I should like you to know it. It’s this. I’ve altered a good deal since I came to London. For the better, I think. I’m a pretty poor sort of specimen still, but at least I don’t imagine I can measure life with a foot-rule. I don’t judge the world any longer by the standards of a country town. London has knocked some of the corners off me. I don’t think you would find me the Bean type any longer. I don’t disapprove of other people much now. Not as a habit. I find I have enough to do keeping myself up to the mark.”

“I want to tell you something, too,” she said. “I expect it’s too late, but never mind. I want you to hear it. I’ve altered, too, since I came to London. I used to think the Universe had been invented just to look on and wave its hat while I did great things. London has put a large piece of cold ice against my head, and the swelling has gone down. I’m not the girl with ambitions any longer. I just want to keep employed, and not have too bad a time when the day’s work is over.”

He came across to where she sat.

“We said we would meet as strangers, and we do. We never have known each other. Don’t you think we had better get acquainted?” he said.

There was a respectful tap at the door.

“Come in?” snapped Mr. Ferguson. “Well?” Behind the gold-rimmed spectacles of Master Bean there shone a softer look than usual, a look rather complacent than disapproving.

“I must apologize, sir, for intruding upon you. I am no longer in your employment, but I do hope that in the circumstances you will forgive my entering your private office. Thinking over our situation just now an idea came to me by means of which I fancy we might be enabled to leave the building.”

“What!”

“It occurred to me, sir, that by telephoning to the nearest police-station⁠—”

“Good heavens!” cried Mr. Ferguson.

Two minutes later he replaced the receiver.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve made them understand the trouble. They’re bringing a ladder. I wonder what the time is? It must be about four in the morning.”

Master Bean produced a Waterbury watch.

“The time, sir, is almost exactly half past ten.”

“Half past ten! We must have been here longer than three hours. Your watch is wrong.”

“No, sir, I am very careful to keep it exactly right. I do not wish to run any risk of being unpunctual.”

“Half past ten!” cried Mr. Ferguson. “Why, we’re in heaps of time to look in at the Savoy for supper. This is great. I’ll phone them to keep a table.”

“Supper! I thought⁠—”

She stopped.

“What’s that? Thought what?”

“Hadn’t you an engagement for supper?”

He stared at her.

“Whatever gave you that idea? Of course not.”

“I thought you said you were taking Miss Templeton⁠—”

“Miss Temp⁠—Oh!” His face cleared. “Oh, there isn’t such a person. I invented her. I had to when you accused me of being like our friend the Miasma. Legitimate self-defence.”

“I do not wish to interrupt you, sir, when you are busy,” said Master Bean, “but⁠—”

“Come and see me tomorrow morning,” said Mr. Ferguson.

“Bob,” said the girl, as the first threatening mutters from the orchestra heralded an imminent storm of melody, “when that boy comes tomorrow, what are going to do?”

“Call up the police.”

“No, but you must do something. We shouldn’t have been here if it hadn’t been for him.”

“That’s true!” He pondered. “I’ve got it; I’ll get him a job with Raikes and Courtenay.”

“Why Raikes and Courtenay?”

“Because I have a pull with them. But principally,” said Mr. Ferguson, with a devilish grin, “because they live in Edinburgh, which, as you are doubtless aware, is a long, long way from London.”

He bent across the table.

“Isn’t this like old times?” he said. “Do you remember the first time I ever ki⁠—”

Just then the orchestra broke out.

When Doctors Disagree

It is possible that, at about the time at which this story opens, you may have gone into the Hotel Belvoir for a haircut. Many people did; for the young man behind the scissors, though of a singularly gloomy countenance, was undoubtedly an artist in his line. He clipped judiciously. He left no ridges. He never talked about the weather. And he allowed you to go away unburdened by any bottle of hair-food.

It is possible, too, that, being there, you decided that you might as well go the whole hog and be manicured at the same time.

It is not unlikely, moreover, that when you had got over the first shock of finding your hands so unexpectedly large and red, you felt disposed to chat with the young lady who looked after that branch of the business. In your genial way you may have permitted a note of gay (but gentlemanly) badinage to creep into your end of the dialogue.

In which case, if you had raised your eyes to the mirror, you would certainly have observed a marked increase of gloom in the demeanour of the young man attending to your apex. He took no official notice of the matter. A quick frown. A tightening of the lips. Nothing more. Jealous as Arthur Welsh was of all who inflicted gay badinage, however gentlemanly, on Maud Peters, he never forgot that he was an artist. Never, even in his blackest moments, had he yielded to the temptation to dig the point of the scissors the merest fraction of an inch into a client’s skull.

But Maud, who saw, would understand. And, if the customer was an observant man, he would notice that her replies at that juncture became somewhat absent, her smile a little mechanical.

Jealousy, according to an eminent authority, is the “hydra of calamities, the sevenfold death.” Arthur Welsh’s was all that and a bit over. It was a constant shadow on Maud’s happiness. No fair-minded girl objects to a certain tinge of jealousy. Kept within proper bounds, it is a compliment; it makes for piquancy; it is the gin in the ginger-beer of devotion. But it should be a condiment, not a fluid.

It was the unfairness of the thing which hurt Maud. Her conscience was clear. She knew girls⁠—several girls⁠—who gave the young men with whom they walked out ample excuse for being perfect Othellos. If she had ever flirted on the open beach with the baritone of the troupe of pierrots, like Jane Oddy, she could have excused Arthur’s attitude. If, like Pauline Dicey, she had roller-skated for a solid hour with a black-moustached stranger while her fiancé floundered in Mug’s Alley she could have understood his frowning disapprovingly. But she was not like Pauline. She scorned the coquetries of Jane. Arthur was the centre of her world, and he knew it. Ever since the rainy evening when he had sheltered her under his umbrella to her Tube station, he had known perfectly well how things were with her. And yet just because, in a strictly businesslike way, she was civil to her customers, he must scowl and bite his lip and behave generally as if it had been brought to his notice that he had been nurturing a serpent in his bosom. It was worse than wicked⁠—it was unprofessional.

She remonstrated with him.

“It isn’t fair,” she said, one morning when the rush of customers had ceased and they had the shop to themselves.

Matters had been worse than usual that morning. After days of rain and greyness the weather had turned over a new leaf. The sun glinted among the bottles of Unfailing Lotion in the window, and everything in the world seemed to have relaxed and become cheerful. Unfortunately, everything had included the customers. During the last few days they had taken their seats in moist gloom, and, brooding over the prospect of coming colds in the head, had had little that was pleasant to say to the divinity who was shaping their ends. But today it had been different. Warm and happy, they had bubbled over with gay small-talk.

“It isn’t fair,” she repeated.

Arthur, who was stropping a razor and whistling tunelessly, raised his eyebrows. His manner was frosty.

“I fail to understand your meaning,” he said.

“You know what I mean. Do you think I didn’t see you frowning when I was doing that gentleman’s nails?”

The allusion was to the client who had just left⁠—a jovial individual with a red face, who certainly had made Maud giggle a good deal. And why not? If a gentleman tells really funny stories, what harm is there in giggling? You had to be pleasant to people. If you snubbed customers, what happened? Why, sooner or later, it got round to the boss, and then where were you? Besides, it was not as if the red-faced customer had been rude. Write down on paper what he had said to her, and nobody could object to it. Write down on paper what she had said to him, and you couldn’t object to that either. It was just Arthur’s silliness.

She tossed her head.

“I am gratified,” said Arthur, ponderously⁠—in happier moments Maud had admired his gift of language; he read a great deal: encyclopedias and papers and things⁠—“I am gratified to find that you had time to bestow a glance on me. You appeared absorbed.”

Maud sniffed unhappily. She had meant to be cold and dignified throughout the conversation, but the sense of her wrongs was beginning to be too much for her. A large tear splashed on to her tray of orange-sticks. She wiped it away with the chamois leather.

“It isn’t fair,” she sobbed. “It isn’t. You know I can’t help it if gentlemen talk and joke with me. You know it’s all in the day’s work. I’m expected to be civil to gentlemen who come in to have their hands done. Silly I should look sitting as if I’d swallowed a poker. I do think you might understand, Arthur, you being in the profession yourself.”

He coughed.

“It isn’t so much that you talk to them as that you seem to like⁠—”

He stopped. Maud’s dignity had melted completely. Her face was buried in her arms. She did not care if a million customers came in, all at the same time.

“Maud!”

She heard him moving towards her, but she did not look up. The next moment his arms were round her, and he was babbling.

And a customer, pushing open the door unnoticed two minutes later, retired hurriedly to get shaved elsewhere, doubting whether Arthur’s mind was on his job.

For a time this little thunderstorm undoubtedly cleared the air. For a day or two Maud was happier than she ever remembered to have been. Arthur’s behaviour was unexceptionable. He bought her a wristwatch⁠—light brown leather, very smart. He gave her some chocolates to eat in the Tube. He entertained her with amazing statistics, culled from the weekly paper which he bought on Tuesdays. He was, in short, the perfect lover. On the second day the red-faced man came in again. Arthur joined in the laughter at his stories. Everything seemed ideal.

It could not last. Gradually things slipped back into the old routine. Maud, looking up from her work, would see the frown and the bitten lip. She began again to feel uncomfortable and self-conscious as she worked. Sometimes their conversation on the way to the Tube was almost formal.

It was useless to say anything. She had a wholesome horror of being one of those women who nagged; and she felt that to complain again would amount to nagging. She tried to put the thing out of her mind, but it insisted on staying there. In a way she understood his feelings. He loved her so much, she supposed, that he hated the idea of her exchanging a single word with another man. This, in the abstract, was gratifying; but in practice it distressed her. She wished she were some sort of foreigner, so that nobody could talk to her. But then they would look at her, and that probably would produce much the same results. It was a hard world for a girl.

And then the strange thing happened. Arthur reformed. One might almost say that he reformed with a jerk. It was a parallel case to those sudden conversions at Welsh revival meetings. On Monday evening he had been at his worst. On the following morning he was a changed man. Not even after the original thunderstorm had he been more docile. Maud could not believe that first. The lip, once bitten, was stretched in a smile. She looked for the frown. It was not there.

Next day it was the same; and the day after that. When a week had gone by, and still the improvement was maintained, Maud felt that she might now look upon it as permanent. A great load seemed to have been taken off her mind. She revised her views on the world. It was a very good world, quite one of the best, with Arthur beaming upon it like a sun.

A number of eminent poets and essayists, in the course of the last few centuries, have recorded, in their several ways, their opinion that one can have too much of a good thing. The truth applies even to such a good thing as absence of jealousy. Little by little Maud began to grow uneasy. It began to come home to her that she preferred the old Arthur, of the scowl and the gnawed lip. Of him she had at least been sure. Whatever discomfort she may have suffered from his spirited imitations of Othello, at any rate they had proved that he loved her. She would have accepted gladly an equal amount of discomfort now in exchange for the same certainty. She could not read this new Arthur. His thoughts were a closed book. Superficially, he was all that she could have wished. He still continued to escort her to the Tube, to buy her occasional presents, to tap, when conversing, the pleasantly sentimental vein. But now these things were not enough. Her heart was troubled. Her thoughts frightened her. The little black imp at the back of her mind kept whispering and whispering, till at last she was forced to listen. “He’s tired of you. He doesn’t love you any more. He’s tired of you.”

It is not everybody who, in times of mental stress, can find ready to hand among his or her personal acquaintances an expert counsellor, prepared at a moment’s notice to listen with sympathy and advise with tact and skill. Everyone’s world is full of friends, relatives, and others, who will give advice on any subject that may be presented to them; but there are crises in life which cannot be left to the amateur. It is the aim of a certain widely read class of paper to fill this void.

Of this class Fireside Chat was one of the best-known representatives. In exchange for one penny its five hundred thousand readers received every week a serial story about life in highest circles, a short story packed with heart-interest, articles on the removal of stains and the best method of coping with the cold mutton, anecdotes of Royalty, photographs of peeresses, hints on dress, chats about baby, brief but pointed dialogues between Blogson and Snogson, poems, Great Thoughts from the Dead and Brainy, half-hours in the editor’s cosy sanctum, a slab of brown paper, and⁠—the journal’s leading feature⁠—Advice on Matters of the Heart. The weekly contribution of the advice specialist of Fireside Chat, entitled “In the Consulting Room, by Dr. Cupid,” was made up mainly of Answers to Correspondents. He affected the bedside manner of the kind, breezy old physician; and probably gave a good deal of comfort. At any rate, he always seemed to have plenty of cases on his hands.

It was to this expert that Maud took her trouble. She had been a regular reader of the paper for several years; and had, indeed, consulted the great man once before, when he had replied favourably to her query as to whether it would be right for her to accept caramels from Arthur, then almost a stranger. It was only natural that she should go to him now, in an even greater dilemma. The letter was not easy to write, but she finished it at last; and, after an anxious interval, judgement was delivered as follows:

“Well, well, well! Bless my soul, what is all this? M. P. writes me:

“I am a young lady, and until recently was very, very happy, except that my fiancé, though truly loving me, was of a very jealous disposition, though I am sure I gave him no cause. He would scowl when I spoke to any other man, and this used to make me unhappy. But for some time now he has quite changed, and does not seem to mind at all, and though at first this made me feel happy, to think that he had got over his jealousy, I now feel unhappy because I am beginning to be afraid that he no longer cares for me. Do you think this is so, and what ought I to do?”

“My dear young lady, I should like to be able to reassure you; but it is kindest sometimes, you know, to be candid, however it may hurt. It has been my experience that, when jealousy flies out of the window, indifference comes in at the door. In the old days a knight would joust for the love of a ladye, risking physical injury rather than permit others to rival him in her affections. I think, M. P., that you should endeavour to discover the true state of your fiancé’s feelings. I do not, of course, advocate anything in the shape of unwomanly behaviour, of which I am sure, my dear young lady, you are incapable; but I think that you should certainly try to pique your fiancé, to test him. At your next ball, for instance, refuse him a certain number of dances, on the plea that your programme is full. At garden-parties, at-homes, and so on, exhibit pleasure in the society and conversation of other gentlemen, and mark his demeanour as you do so. These little tests should serve either to relieve your apprehensions, provided they are groundless, or to show you the truth. And, after all, if it is the truth, it must be faced, must it not, M. P.?”

Before the end of the day Maud knew the whole passage by heart. The more her mind dwelt on it, the more clearly did it seem to express what she had felt but could not put into words. The point about jousting struck her as particularly well taken. She had looked up “joust” in the dictionary, and it seemed to her that in these few words was contained the kernel of her trouble. In the old days, if any man had attempted to rival him in her affections (outside business hours), Arthur would undoubtedly have jousted⁠—and jousted with the vigour of one who means to make his presence felt. Now, in similar circumstances, he would probably step aside politely, as who should say, “After you, my dear Alphonse.”

There was no time to lose. An hour after her first perusal of Dr. Cupid’s advice, Maud had begun to act upon it. By the time the first lull in the morning’s work had come, and there was a chance for private conversation, she had invented an imaginary young man, a shadowy Lothario, who, being introduced into her home on the previous Sunday by her brother Horace, had carried on in a way you wouldn’t believe, paying all manner of compliments.

“He said I had such white hands,” said Maud.

Arthur nodded, stropping a razor the while. He appeared to be bearing the revelations with complete fortitude. Yet, only a few weeks before, a customer’s comment on this same whiteness had stirred him to his depths.

“And this morning⁠—what do you think? Why, he meets me as bold as you please, and gives me a cake of toilet soap. Like his impudence!”

She paused, hopefully.

“Always useful, soap,” said Arthur, politely sententious.

“Lovely it was,” went on Maud, dully conscious of failure, but stippling in like an artist the little touches which give atmosphere and verisimilitude to a story. “All scented. Horace will tease me about it, I can tell you.”

She paused. Surely he must⁠—Why, a sea-anemone would be torn with jealousy at such a tale.

Arthur did not even wince. He was charming about it. Thought it very kind of the young fellow. Didn’t blame him for being struck by the whiteness of her hands. Touched on the history of soap, which he happened to have been reading up in the encyclopedia at the free library. And behaved altogether in such a thoroughly gentlemanly fashion that Maud stayed awake half the night, crying.

If Maud had waited another twenty-four hours there would have been no need for her to have taxed her powers of invention, for on the following day there entered the shop and her life a young man who was not imaginary⁠—a Lothario of flesh and blood. He made his entry with that air of having bought most of the neighbouring property which belongs exclusively to minor actors, men of weight on the Stock Exchange, and American professional pugilists.

Mr. “Skipper” Shute belonged to the last-named of the three classes. He had arrived in England two months previously for the purpose of holding a conference at eight-stone four with one Joseph Edwardes, to settle a question of superiority at that weight which had been vexing the sporting public of two countries for over a year. Having successfully out-argued Mr. Edwardes, mainly by means of strenuous work in the clinches, he was now on the eve of starting on a lucrative music-hall tour with his celebrated inaudible monologue. As a result of these things he was feeling very, very pleased with the world in general, and with Mr. Skipper Shute in particular. And when Mr. Shute was pleased with himself his manner was apt to be of the breeziest.

He breezed into the shop, took a seat, and, having cast an experienced eye at Maud, and found her pleasing, extended both hands, and observed, “Go the limit, kid.”

At any other time Maud might have resented being addressed as “kid” by a customer, but now she welcomed it. With the exception of a slight thickening of the lobe of one ear, Mr. Shute bore no outward signs of his profession. And being, to use his own phrase, a “swell dresser,” he was really a most presentable young man. Just, in fact, what Maud needed. She saw in him her last hope. If any faint spark of his ancient fire still lingered in Arthur, it was through Mr. Shute that it must be fanned.

She smiled upon Mr. Shute. She worked on his robust fingers as if it were an artistic treat to be permitted to handle them. So carefully did she toil that she was still busy when Arthur, taking off his apron and putting on his hat, went out for his twenty-minutes’ lunch, leaving them alone together.

The door had scarcely shut when Mr. Shute bent forward.

“Say!”

He sank his voice to a winning whisper.

“You look good to muh,” he said, gallantly.

“The idea!” said Maud, tossing her head.

“On the level,” Mr. Shute assured her.

Maud laid down her orange-sticks.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “There⁠—I’ve finished.”

“I’ve not,” said Mr. Shute. “Not by a mile. Say!”

“Well?”

“What do you do with your evenings?”

“I go home.”

“Sure. But when you don’t? It’s a poor heart that never rejoices. Don’t you ever whoop it up?”

“Whoop it up?”

“The mad whirl,” explained Mr. Shute. “Ice-cream soda and buckwheat cakes, and a happy evening at lovely Luna Park.”

“I don’t know where Luna Park is.”

“What did they teach you at school? It’s out in that direction,” said Mr. Shute, pointing over his shoulder. “You go straight on about three thousand miles till you hit little old New York; then you turn to the right. Say, don’t you ever get a little treat? Why not come along to the White City some old evening? This evening?”

“Mr. Welsh is taking me to the White City tonight.”

“And who is Mr. Welsh?”

“The gentleman who has just gone out.”

“Is that so? Well, he doesn’t look a live one, but maybe it’s just because he’s had bad news today. You never can tell.” He rose. “Farewell, Evelina, fairest of your sex. We shall meet again; so keep a stout heart.”

And, taking up his cane, straw hat, and yellow gloves, Mr. Shute departed, leaving Maud to her thoughts.

She was disappointed. She had expected better results. Mr. Shute had lowered with ease the record for gay badinage, hitherto held by the red-faced customer; yet to all appearances there had been no change in Arthur’s manner. But perhaps he had scowled (or bitten his lip), and she had not noticed it. Apparently he had struck Mr. Shute, an unbiased spectator, as gloomy. Perhaps at some moment when her eyes had been on her work⁠—She hoped for the best.

Whatever his feelings may have been during the afternoon, Arthur was undeniably cheerful that evening. He was in excellent spirits. His lighthearted abandon on the Wiggle-Woggle had been noted and commented upon by several lookers-on. Confronted with the Hairy Ainus, he had touched a high level of facetiousness. And now, as he sat with her listening to the band, he was crooning joyously to himself in accompaniment to the music, without, it would appear, a care in the world.

Maud was hurt and anxious. In a mere acquaintance this blithe attitude would have been welcome. It would have helped her to enjoy her evening. But from Arthur at that particular moment she looked for something else. Why was he cheerful? Only a few hours ago she had been⁠—yes, flirting with another man before his very eyes. What right had he to be cheerful? He ought to be heated, full of passionate demands for an explanation⁠—a flushed, throaty thing to be coaxed back into a good temper and then forgiven⁠—all this at great length⁠—for having been in a bad one. Yes, she told herself, she had wanted certainty one way or the other, and here it was. Now she knew. He no longer cared for her.

She trembled.

“Cold?” said Arthur. “Let’s walk. Evenings beginning to draw in now. Lum-da-diddley-ah. That’s what I call a good tune. Give me something lively and bright. Dumty-umpty-iddley-ah. Dum tum⁠—”

“Funny thing⁠—” said Maud, deliberately.

“What’s a funny thing?”

“The gentleman in the brown suit whose hands I did this afternoon⁠—”

“He was,” agreed Arthur, brightly. “A very funny thing.”

Maud frowned. Wit at the expense of Hairy Ainus was one thing⁠—at her own another.

“I was about to say,” she went on precisely, “that it was a funny thing, a coincidence, seeing that I was already engaged, that the gentleman in the brown suit whose hands I did this afternoon should have asked me to come here, to the White City, with him tonight.”

For a moment they walked on in silence. To Maud it seemed a hopeful silence. Surely it must be the prelude to an outburst.

“Oh!” he said, and stopped.

Maud’s heart gave a leap. Surely that was the old tone?

A couple of paces, and he spoke again.

“I didn’t hear him ask you.”

His voice was disappointingly level.

“He asked me after you had gone out to lunch.”

“It’s a nuisance,” said Arthur, cheerily, “when things clash like that. But perhaps he’ll ask you again. Nothing to prevent you coming here twice. Well repays a second visit, I always say. I think⁠—”

“You shouldn’t,” said a voice behind him. “It hurts the head. Well, kid, being shown a good time?”

The possibility of meeting Mr. Shute had not occurred to Maud. She had assumed that, being aware that she would be there with another, he would have stayed away. It may, however, be remarked that she did not know Mr. Shute. He was not one of your sensitive plants. He smiled pleasantly upon her, looking very dapper in evening dress and a silk hat that, though a size too small for him, shone like a mirror.

Maud hardly knew whether she was glad or sorry to see him. It did not seem to matter much now either way. Nothing seemed to matter much, in fact. Arthur’s cheery acceptance of the news that she received invitations from others had been like a blow, leaving her numb and listless.

She made the introductions. The two men eyed each other.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Mr. Shute.

“Weather keeps up,” said Arthur.

And from that point onward Mr. Shute took command.

It is to be assumed that this was not the first time that Mr. Shute had made one of a trio in these circumstances, for the swift dexterity with which he lost Arthur was certainly not that of a novice. So smoothly was it done that it was not until she emerged from the Witching Waves, guided by the pugilist’s slim but formidable right arm, that Maud realized that Arthur had gone.

She gave a little cry of dismay. Secretly she was beginning to be somewhat afraid of Mr. Shute. He was showing signs of being about to step out of the role she had assigned to him and attempt something on a larger scale. His manner had that extra touch of warmth which makes all the difference.

“Oh! He’s gone!” she cried.

“Sure,” said Mr. Shute. “He’s got a hurry-call from the Uji Village. The chief’s cousin wants a haircut.”

“We must find him. We must.”

“Surest thing you know,” said Mr. Shute. “Plenty of time.”

“We must find him.”

Mr. Shute regarded her with some displeasure.

“Seems to be ace-high with you, that dub,” he said.

“I don’t understand you.”

“My observation was,” explained Mr. Shute, coldly, “that, judging from appearances, that dough-faced lemon was Willie-boy, the first and only love.”

Maud turned on him with flaming cheeks.

“Mr. Welsh is nothing to me! Nothing! Nothing!” she cried.

She walked quickly on.

“Then, if there’s a vacancy, star-eyes,” said the pugilist at her side, holding on a hat which showed a tendency to wobble, “count me in. Directly I saw you⁠—see here, what’s the idea of this road-work? We aren’t racing⁠—”

Maud slowed down.

“That’s better. As I was saying, directly I saw you, I said to myself, ‘That’s the one you need. The original candy kid. The⁠—’ ”

His hat lurched drunkenly as he answered the girl’s increase of speed. He cursed it in a brief aside.

“That’s what I said. ‘The original candy kid.’ So⁠—”

He shot out a restraining hand. “Arthur!” cried Maud. “Arthur!”

“It’s not my name,” breathed Mr. Shute, tenderly. “Call me Clarence.”

Considered as an embrace, it was imperfect. At these moments a silk hat a size too small handicaps a man. The necessity of having to be careful about the nap prevented Mr. Shute from doing himself complete justice. But he did enough to induce Arthur Welsh, who, having sighted the missing ones from afar, had been approaching them at a walking pace, to substitute a run for the walk, and arrive just as Maud wrenched herself free.

Mr. Shute took off his hat, smoothed it, replaced it with extreme care, and turned his attention to the newcomer.

“Arthur!” said Maud.

Her heart gave a great leap. There was no mistaking the meaning in the eye that met hers. He cared! He cared!

“Arthur!”

He took no notice. His face was pale and working. He strode up to Mr. Shute.

“Well?” he said between his teeth.

An eight-stone-four champion of the world has many unusual experiences in his life, but he rarely encounters men who say “Well?” to him between their teeth. Mr. Shute eyed this freak with profound wonder.

“I’ll teach you to⁠—to kiss young ladies!”

Mr. Shute removed his hat again and gave it another brush. This gave him the necessary time for reflection.

“I don’t need it,” he said. “I’ve graduated.”

“Put them up!” hissed Arthur.

Almost a shocked look spread itself over the pugilist’s face. So might Raphael have looked if requested to draw a pavement-picture.

“You aren’t speaking to me?” he said, incredulously.

“Put them up!”

Maud, trembling from head to foot, was conscious of one overwhelming emotion. She was terrified⁠—yes. But stronger than the terror was the great wave of elation which swept over her. All her doubts had vanished. At last, after weary weeks of uncertainty, Arthur was about to give the supreme proof. He was going to joust for her.

A couple of passersby had paused, interested, to watch developments. You could never tell, of course. Many an apparently promising row never got any farther than words. But, glancing at Arthur’s face, they certainly felt justified in pausing. Mr. Shute spoke.

“If it wasn’t,” he said, carefully, “that I don’t want trouble with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, I’d⁠—”

He broke off, for, to the accompaniment of a shout of approval from the two spectators, Arthur had swung his right fist, and it had taken him smartly on the side of the head.

Compared with the blows Mr. Shute was wont to receive in the exercise of his profession, Arthur’s was a gentle tap. But there was one circumstance which gave it a deadliness all its own. Achilles had his heel. Mr. Shute’s vulnerable point was at the other extremity. Instead of countering, he uttered a cry of agony, and clutched wildly with both hands at his hat.

He was too late. It fell to the ground and bounded away, with its proprietor in passionate chase. Arthur snorted and gently chafed his knuckles.

There was a calm about Mr. Shute’s demeanour as, having given his treasure a final polish and laid it carefully down, he began to advance on his adversary, which was more than ominous. His lips were a thin line of steel. The muscles stood out over his jawbones. Crouching in his professional manner, he moved forward softly, like a cat.

And it was at this precise moment, just as the two spectators, reinforced now by eleven other men of sporting tastes, were congratulating themselves on their acumen in having stopped to watch, that Police-Constable Robert Bryce, intruding fourteen stones of bone and muscle between the combatants, addressed to Mr. Shute these memorable words: “ ’Ullo, ’ullo! ’Ullo, ’ullo, ’ul-lo!”

Mr. Shute appealed to his sense of justice.

“The mutt knocked me hat off.”

“And I’d do it again,” said Arthur, truculently.

“Not while I’m here you wouldn’t, young fellow,” said Mr. Bryce, with decision. “I’m surprised at you,” he went on, pained. “And you look a respectable young chap, too. You pop off.”

A shrill voice from the crowd at this point offered the constable all cinematograph rights if he would allow the contest to proceed.

“And you pop off, too, all of you,” continued Mr. Bryce. “Blest if I know what kids are coming to nowadays. And as for you,” he said, addressing Mr. Shute, “all you’ve got to do is to keep that face of yours closed. That’s what you’ve got to do. I’ve got my eye on you, mind, and if I catch you a-follerin’ of him”⁠—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Arthur’s departing figure⁠—“I’ll pinch you. Sure as you’re alive.” He paused. “I’d have done it already,” he added, pensively, “if it wasn’t me birthday.”

Arthur Welsh turned sharply. For some time he had been dimly aware that somebody was calling his name.

“Oh, Arthur!”

She was breathing quickly. He could see the tears in her eyes.

“I’ve been running. You walked so fast.”

He stared down at her gloomily.

“Go away,” he said. “I’ve done with you.”

She clutched at his coat.

“Arthur, listen⁠—listen! It’s all a mistake. I thought you⁠—you didn’t care for me any more, and I was miserable, and I wrote to the paper and asked what should I do, and they said I ought to test you and try and make you jealous, and that that would relieve my apprehensions. And I hated it, but I did it, and you didn’t seem to care till now. And you know that there’s nobody but you.”

“You⁠—The paper? What?” he stammered.

“Yes, yes, yes. I wrote to Fireside Chat, and Dr. Cupid said that when jealousy flew out of the window indifference came in at the door, and that I must exhibit pleasure in the society of other gentlemen and mark your demeanour. So I⁠—Oh!”

Arthur, luckier than Mr. Shute, was not hampered by a too small silk hat.

It was a few moments later, as they moved slowly towards the Flip-Flap⁠—which had seemed to both of them a fitting climax for the evening’s emotions⁠—that Arthur, fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, produced a small slip of paper.

“What’s that?” Maud asked.

“Read it,” said Arthur. “It’s from Home Moments, in answer to a letter I sent them. And,” he added with heat, “I’d like to have five minutes alone with the chap who wrote it.”

And under the electric light Maud read

Answers to Correspondents

By the Heart Specialist

Arthur W.⁠—Jealousy, Arthur W., is not only the most wicked, but the most foolish of passions. Shakespeare says:⁠—

It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.

You admit that you have frequently caused great distress to the young lady of your affections by your exhibition of this weakness. Exactly. There is nothing a girl dislikes or despises more than jealousy. Be a man, Arthur W. Fight against it. You may find it hard at first, but persevere. Keep a smiling face. If she seems to enjoy talking to other men, show no resentment. Be merry and bright. Believe me, it is the only way.

Pots O’Money

Owen Bentley was feeling embarrassed. He looked at Mr. Sheppherd, and with difficulty restrained himself from standing on one leg and twiddling his fingers. At one period of his career, before the influence of his uncle Henry had placed him in the London and Suburban Bank, Owen had been an actor. On the strength of a batting average of thirty-three point nought seven for Middlesex, he had been engaged by the astute musical-comedy impresario to whom the idea first occurred that, if you have got to have young men to chant “We are merry and gay, tra-la, for this is Bohemia,” in the Artists’ Ball scene, you might just as well have young men whose names are known to the public. He had not been an actor long, for loss of form had put him out of first-class cricket, and the impresario had given his place in the next piece to a googly bowler who had done well in the last Varsity match; but he had been one long enough to experience that sinking sensation which is known as stage-fright. And now, as he began to explain to Mr. Sheppherd that he wished for his consent to marry his daughter Audrey, he found himself suffering exactly the same symptoms.

From the very start, from the moment when he revealed the fact that his income, salary and private means included, amounted to less than two hundred pounds, he had realized that this was going to be one of his failures. It was the gruesome Early Victorianness of it all that took the heart out of him. Mr. Sheppherd had always reminded him of a heavy father out of a three-volume novel, but, compared with his demeanour as he listened now, his attitude hitherto had been light and whimsical. Until this moment Owen had not imagined that this sort of thing ever happened nowadays outside the comic papers. By the end of the second minute he would not have been surprised to find himself sailing through the air, urged by Mr. Sheppherd’s boot, his transit indicated by a dotted line and a few stars.

Mr. Sheppherd’s manner was inclined to bleakness.

“This is most unfortunate,” he said. “Most unfortunate. I have my daughter’s happiness to consider. It is my duty as a father.” He paused. “You say you have no prospects? I should have supposed that your uncle⁠—? Surely, with his influence⁠—?”

“My uncle shot his bolt when he got me into the bank. That finished him, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not his only nephew, you know. There are about a hundred others, all trailing him like bloodhounds.”

Mr. Sheppherd coughed the small cough of disapproval. He was feeling more than a little aggrieved.

He had met Owen for the first time at dinner at the house of his uncle Henry, a man of unquestioned substance, whose habit it was to invite each of his eleven nephews to dinner once a year. But Mr. Sheppherd did not know this. For all he knew, Owen was in the habit of hobnobbing with the great man every night. He could not say exactly that it was sharp practice on Owen’s part to accept his invitation to call, and, having called, to continue calling long enough to make the present deplorable situation possible; but he felt that it would have been in better taste for the young man to have effaced himself and behaved more like a bank-clerk and less like an heir.

“I am exceedingly sorry for this, Mr. Bentley,” he said, “but you will understand that I cannot⁠—It is, of course, out of the question. It would be best, in the circumstances, I think, if you did not see my daughter again⁠—”

“She’s waiting in the passage outside,” said Owen, simply.

“⁠—after today. Goodbye.”

Owen left the room. Audrey was hovering in the neighbourhood of the door. She came quickly up to him, and his spirits rose, as they always did, at the sight of her.

“Well?” she said.

He shook his head.

“No good,” he said.

Audrey considered the problem for a moment, and was rewarded with an idea.

“Shall I go in and cry?”

“It wouldn’t be of any use.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“He said I mustn’t see you again.”

“He didn’t mean it.”

“He thinks he did.”

Audrey reflected.

“We shall simply have to keep writing, then. And we can talk on the telephone. That isn’t seeing each other. Has your bank a telephone?”

“Yes. But⁠—”

“That’s all right, then. I’ll ring you up every day.”

“I wish I could make some money,” said Owen, thoughtfully. “But I seem to be one of those chaps who can’t. Nothing I try comes off. I’ve never drawn anything except a blank in a sweep. I spent about two pounds on sixpenny postal orders when the Limerick craze was on, and didn’t win a thing. Once when I was on tour I worked myself to a shadow, dramatizing a novel. Nothing came of that, either.”

“What novel?”

“A thing called White Roses, by a woman named Edith Butler.”

Audrey looked up quickly.

“I suppose you knew her very well? Were you great friends?”

“I didn’t know her at all. I’d never met her. I just happened to buy the thing at a bookstall, and thought it would make a good play. I expect it was pretty bad rot. Anyhow, she never took the trouble to send it back or even to acknowledge receipt.”

“Perhaps she never got it?”

“I registered it.”

“She was a cat,” said Audrey, decidedly. “I’m glad of it, though. If another woman had helped you make a lot of money, I should have died of jealousy.”

Routine is death to heroism. For the first few days after his parting with Mr. Sheppherd, Owen was in heroic mood, full of vaguely dashing schemes, regarding the world as his oyster, and burning to get at it, sword in hand. But routine, with its ledgers and its copying-ink and its customers, fell like a grey cloud athwart his horizon, blotting out rainbow visions of sudden wealth, dramatically won. Day by day the glow faded and hopelessness grew.

If the glow did not entirely fade it was due to Audrey, who more than fulfilled her promise of ringing him up on the telephone. She rang him up at least once, frequently several times, every day, a fact which was noted and commented upon in a harshly critical spirit by the head of his department, a man with no soul and a strong objection to doing his subordinates’ work for them.

As a rule, her conversation, though pleasing, was discursive and lacked central motive, but one morning she had genuine news to impart.

“Owen”⁠—her voice was excited⁠—“have you seen the paper today? Then listen. I’ll read it out. Are you listening? This is what it says: ‘The Piccadilly Theatre will reopen shortly with a dramatized version of Miss Edith Butler’s popular novel, White Roses, prepared by the authoress herself. A strong cast is being engaged, including⁠—’ And then a lot of names. What are you going to do about it, Owen?”

“What am I going to do?”

“Don’t you see what’s happened? That awful woman has stolen your play. She has waited all these years, hoping you would forget. What are you laughing at?”

“I wasn’t laughing.”

“Yes, you were. It tickled my ear. I’ll ring off if you do it again. You don’t believe me. Well, you wait and see if I’m not⁠—”

“Edith Butler’s incapable of such a thing.”

There was a slight pause at the other end of the wire.

“I thought you said you didn’t know her,” said Audrey, jealously.

“I don’t⁠—I don’t,” said Owen, hastily. “But I’ve read her books. They’re simply chunks of superfatted sentiment. She’s a sort of literary onion. She compels tears. A woman like that couldn’t steal a play if she tried.”

“You can’t judge authors from their books. You must go and see the play when it comes on. Then you’ll see I’m right. I’m absolutely certain that woman is trying to swindle you. Don’t laugh in that horrid way. Very well, I told you I should ring off, and now I’m going to.”

At the beginning of the next month Owen’s annual holiday arrived. The authorities of the London and Suburban Bank were no niggards. They recognized that a man is not a machine. They gave their employees ten days in the year in which to tone up their systems for another twelve months’ work.

Owen spent his boyhood in the Shropshire village of which his father had been rector, and thither he went when his holiday came round, to the farm of one Dorman. He was glad of the chance to get to Shropshire. There is something about the country there, with its green fields and miniature rivers, that soothes the wounded spirit and forms a pleasant background for sentimental musings.

It was comfortable at the farm. The household consisted of Mr. Dorman, an old acquaintance, his ten-year-old son George, and Mr. Dorman’s mother, an aged lady with a considerable local reputation as a wise woman. Rumour had it that the future held no mysteries for her, and it was known that she could cure warts, bruised fingers, and even the botts by means of spells.

Except for these, Owen had fancied that he was alone in the house. It seemed not, however. There was a primeval piano in his sitting-room, and on the second morning it suited his mood to sit down at this and sing “Asthore,” the fruity pathos of which ballad appealed to him strongly at this time, accompanying himself by an ingenious arrangement in three chords. He had hardly begun, however, when Mr. Dorman appeared, somewhat agitated.

“If you don’t mind, Mr. Owen,” he said. “I forgot to tell you. There’s a lit’ery gent boarding with me in the room above, and he can’t bear to be disturbed.”

A muffled stamping from the ceiling bore out his words.

“Writing a book he is,” continued Mr. Dorman. “He caught young George a clip over the ear-’ole yesterday for blowing his trumpet on the stairs. Gave him sixpence afterwards, and said he’d skin him if he ever did it again. So, if you don’t mind⁠—”

“Oh, all right,” said Owen. “Who is he?”

“Gentleman of the name of Prosser.”

Owen could not recollect having come across any work by anyone of that name; but he was not a wide reader; and, whether the man above was a celebrity or not, he was entitled to quiet.

“I never heard of him,” he said, “but that’s no reason why I should disturb him. Let him rip. I’ll cut out the musical effects in future.”

The days passed smoothly by. The literary man remained invisible, though occasionally audible, tramping the floor in the frenzy of composition. Nor, until the last day of his visit, did Owen see old Mrs. Dorman.

That she was not unaware of his presence in the house, however, was indicated on the last morning. He was smoking an after-breakfast pipe at the open window and waiting for the dogcart that was to take him to the station, when George, the son of the house, entered.

George stood in the doorway, grinned, and said:

“Farsezjerligranmatellyerforchbythecards?”

“Eh?” said Owen.

The youth repeated the word.

“Once again.”

On the second repetition light began to creep in. A boyhood spent in the place, added to this ten days’ stay, had made Owen something of a linguist.

“Father says would I like grandma to do what?”

“Tell yer forch’n by ther cards.”

“Where is she?”

“Backyarnder.”

Owen followed him into the kitchen, where he found Mr. Dorman, the farmer, and, seated at the table, fumbling with a pack of cards, an old woman, whom he remembered well.

“Mother wants to tell your fortune,” said Mr. Dorman, in a hoarse aside. “She always will tell visitors’ fortunes. She told Mr. Prosser’s, and he didn’t half like it, because she said he’d be engaged in two months and married inside the year. He said wild horses wouldn’t make him do it.”

“She can tell me that if she likes. I shan’t object.”

“Mother, here’s Mr. Owen.”

“I seed him fast enough,” said the old woman, briskly. “Shuffle, an’ cut three times.”

She then performed mysterious manoeuvres with the cards.

“I see pots o’ money,” announced the sibyl.

“If she says it, it’s there right enough,” said her son.

“She means my bonus,” said Owen. “But that’s only ten pounds. And I lose it if I’m late twice more before Christmas.”

“It’ll come sure enough.”

“Pots,” said the old woman, and she was still mumbling the encouraging word when Owen left the kitchen and returned to the sitting-room.

He laughed rather ruefully. At that moment he could have found a use for pots o’ money.

He walked to the window, and looked out. It was a glorious morning. The heat-mist was dancing over the meadow beyond the brook, and from the farmyard came the liquid charawks of carefree fowls. It seemed wicked to leave these haunts of peace for London on such a day.

An acute melancholy seized him. Absently, he sat down at the piano. The prejudices of literary Mr. Prosser had slipped from his mind. Softly at first, then gathering volume as the spirit of the song gripped him, he began to sing “Asthore.” He became absorbed.

He had just, for the sixth time, won through to “Iyam-ah waiting for-er theeee-yass-thorre,” and was doing some intricate three-chord work preparatory to starting over again, when a loaf of bread whizzed past his ear. It missed him by an inch, and crashed against a plaster statuette of the Infant Samuel on the top of the piano.

It was a standard loaf, containing eighty percent of semolina, and it practically wiped the Infant Samuel out of existence. At the same moment, at his back, there sounded a loud, wrathful snort.

He spun round. The door was open, and at the other side of the table was standing a large, black-bearded, shirt-sleeved man, in an attitude rather reminiscent of Ajax defying the lightning. His hands trembled. His beard bristled. His eyes gleamed ferociously beneath enormous eyebrows. As Owen turned, he gave tongue in a voice like the discharge of a broadside.

“Stop it!”

Owen’s mind, wrenched too suddenly from the dreamy future to the vivid present, was not yet completely under control. He gaped.

“Stop⁠—that⁠—infernal⁠—noise!” roared the man.

He shot through the door, banging it after him, and pounded up the stairs.

Owen was annoyed. The artistic temperament was all very well, but there were limits. It was absurd that obscure authors should behave in this way. Prosser! Who on earth was Prosser? Had anyone ever heard of him? No! Yet here he was going about the country clipping small boys over the ear-hole, and flinging loaves of bread at bank-clerks as if he were Henry James or Marie Corelli. Owen reproached himself bitterly for his momentary loss of presence of mind. If he had only kept his head, he could have taken a flying shot at the man with the marmalade-pot. It had been within easy reach. Instead of which, he had merely stood and gaped. Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, “It might have been.”

His manly regret was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Dorman with the information that the dogcart was at the door.

Audrey was out of town when Owen arrived in London, but she returned a week later. The sound of her voice through the telephone did much to cure the restlessness from which he had been suffering since the conclusion of his holiday. But the thought that she was so near yet so inaccessible produced in him a meditative melancholy which enveloped him like a cloud that would not lift. His manner became distrait. He lost weight.

If customers were not vaguely pained by his sad, pale face, it was only because the fierce rush of modern commercial life leaves your business man little leisure for observing pallor in bank-clerks. What did pain them was the gentle dreaminess with which he performed his duties. He was in the Inward Bills Department, one of the features of which was the sudden inrush, towards the end of each afternoon, of hatless, energetic young men with leather bags strapped to their left arms, clamouring for mysterious crackling documents, much fastened with pins. Owen had never quite understood what it was that these young men did want, and now his detached mind refused even more emphatically to grapple with the problem. He distributed the documents at random with the air of a preoccupied monarch scattering largess to the mob, and the subsequent chaos had to be handled by a wrathful head of the department in person.

Man’s power of endurance is limited. At the end of the second week the overwrought head appealed passionately for relief, and Owen was removed to the Postage Department, where, when he had leisure from answering Audrey’s telephone calls, he entered the addresses of letters in a large book and took them to the post. He was supposed also to stamp them, but a man in love cannot think of everything, and he was apt at times to overlook this formality.

One morning, receiving from one of the bank messengers the usual intimation that a lady wished to speak to him on the telephone, he went to the box and took up the receiver.

“Is that you, Owen? Owen, I went to White Roses last night. Have you been yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Then you must go tonight. Owen, I’m certain you wrote it. It’s perfectly lovely. I cried my eyes out. If you don’t go tonight, I’ll never speak to you again, even on the telephone. Promise.”

“Must I?”

“Yes, you must. Why, suppose it is yours! It may mean a fortune. The stalls were simply packed. I’m going to ring up the theatre now and engage a seat for you, and pay for it myself.”

“No⁠—I say⁠—” protested Owen.

“Yes, I shall. I can’t trust you to go if I don’t. And I’ll ring up early tomorrow to hear all about it. Goodbye.”

Owen left the box somewhat depressed. Life was quite gloomy enough as it was, without going out of one’s way to cry one’s eyes out over sentimental plays.

His depression was increased by the receipt, on his return to his department, of a message from the manager, stating that he would like to see Mr. Bentley in his private room for a moment. Owen never enjoyed these little chats with Authority. Out of office hours, in the circle of his friends, he had no doubt the manager was a delightful and entertaining companion; but in his private room his conversation was less enjoyable.

The manager was seated at his table, thoughtfully regarding the ceiling. His resemblance to a stuffed trout, always striking, was subtly accentuated, and Owen, an expert in these matters, felt that his fears had been well founded⁠—there was trouble in the air. Somebody had been complaining of him, and he was now about, as the phrase went, to be “run-in.”

A large man, seated with his back to the door, turned as he entered, and Owen recognized the well-remembered features of Mr. Prosser, the literary loaf-slinger.

Owen regarded him without resentment. Since returning to London he had taken the trouble of looking up his name in Who’s Who and had found that he was not so undistinguished as he had supposed. He was, it appeared, a Regius Professor and the author of some half-dozen works on sociology⁠—a record, Owen felt, that almost justified loaf-slinging and ear-hole clipping in moments of irritation.

The manager started to speak, but the man of letters anticipated him.

“Is this the fool?” he roared. “Young man, I have no wish to be hard on a congenital idiot who is not responsible for his actions, but I must insist on an explanation. I understand that you are in charge of the correspondence in this office. Well, during the last week you have three times sent unstamped letters to my fiancée, Miss Vera Delane, Woodlands, Southbourne, Hants. What’s the matter with you? Do you think she likes paying twopence a time, or what is it?”

Owen’s mind leaped back at the words. They recalled something to him. Then he remembered.

He was conscious of a not unpleasant thrill. He had not known that he was superstitious, but for some reason he had not been able to get those absurd words of Mr. Dorman’s mother out of his mind. And here was another prediction of hers, equally improbable, fulfilled to the letter.

“Great Scott!” he cried. “Are you going to be married?”

Mr. Prosser and the manager started simultaneously.

“Mrs. Dorman said you would be,” said Owen. “Don’t you remember?”

Mr. Prosser looked keenly at him.

“Why, I’ve seen you before,” he said. “You’re the young turnip-headed scallywag at the farm.”

“That’s right,” said Owen.

“I’ve been wanting to meet you again. I thought the whole thing over, and it struck me,” said Mr. Prosser, handsomely, “that I may have seemed a little abrupt at our last meeting.”

“No, no.”

“The fact is, I was in the middle of an infernally difficult passage of my book that morning, and when you began⁠—”

“It was my fault entirely. I quite understand.”

Mr. Prosser produced a card-case.

“We must see more of each other,” he said. “Come and have a bit of dinner some night. Come tonight.”

“I’m very sorry. I have to go to the theatre tonight.”

“Then come and have a bit of supper afterwards. Excellent. Meet me at the Savoy at eleven-fifteen. I’m glad I didn’t hit you with that loaf. Abruptness has been my failing through life. My father was just the same. Eleven-fifteen at the Savoy, then.”

The manager, who had been listening with some restlessness to the conversation, now intervened. He was a man with a sense of fitness of things, and he objected to having his private room made the scene of what appeared to be a reunion of old college chums. He hinted as much.

“Ha! Prrumph!” he observed, disapprovingly. “Er⁠—Mr. Bentley, that is all. You may return to your work⁠—ah’mmm! Kindly be more careful another time in stamping the letters.”

“Yes, by Jove,” said Mr. Prosser, suddenly reminded of his wrongs, “that’s right. Exercise a little ordinary care, you ivory-skulled young son of a gun. Do you think Miss Delane is made of twopences? Keep an eye on him,” he urged the manager. “These young fellows nowadays want someone standing over them with a knout all the time. Be more careful another time, young man. Eleven-fifteen, remember. Make a note of it, or you’ll go forgetting that.”

The seat Audrey had bought for him at the Piccadilly Theatre proved to be in the centre of the sixth row of stalls⁠—practically a deathtrap. Whatever his sufferings might be, escape was impossible. He was securely wedged in.

The cheaper parts of the house were sparsely occupied, but the stalls were full. Owen, disapproving of the whole business, refused to buy a programme, and settled himself in his seat prepared for the worst. He had a vivid recollection of White Roses, the novel, and he did not anticipate any keen enjoyment from it in its dramatized form. He had long ceased to be a member of that large public for which Miss Edith Butler catered. The sentimental adventures of governesses in ducal houses⁠—the heroine of White Roses was a governess⁠—no longer contented his soul.

There is always a curiously dreamlike atmosphere about a play founded on a book. One seems to have seen it all before. During the whole of the first act Owen attributed to this his feeling of familiarity with what was going on on the stage. At the beginning of the second act he found himself anticipating events. But it was not till the third act that the truth sank in.

The third was the only act in which, in his dramatization, he had taken any real liberties with the text of the novel. But in this act he had introduced a character who did not appear in the novel⁠—a creature of his own imagination. And now, with bulging eyes, he observed this creature emerge from the wings, and heard him utter lines which he now clearly remembered having written.

Audrey had been right! Serpent Edith Butler had stolen his play.

His mind, during the remainder of the play, was active. By the time the final curtain fell and he passed out into the open air he had perceived some of the difficulties of the case. To prove oneself the author of an original play is hard, but not impossible. Friends to whom one had sketched the plot may come forward as witnesses. One may have preserved rough notes. But a dramatization of a novel is another matter. All dramatizations of any given novel must necessarily be very much alike.

He started to walk along Piccadilly, and had reached Hyde Park Corner before he recollected that he had an engagement to take supper with Mr. Prosser at the Savoy Hotel. He hailed a cab.

“You’re late,” boomed the author of sociological treatises, as he appeared. “You’re infernally late. I suppose, in your woollen-headed way, you forgot all about it. Come along. We’ll just have time for an olive and a glass of something before they turn the lights out.”

Owen was still thinking deeply as he began his supper. Surely there was some way by which he could prove his claims. What had he done with the original manuscript? He remembered now. He had burnt it. It had seemed mere useless litter then. Probably, he felt bitterly, the woman Butler had counted on this.

Mr. Prosser concluded an animated conversation with a waiter on the subject of the wines of France, leaned forward, and, having helped himself briskly to anchovies, began to talk. He talked loudly and rapidly. Owen, his thoughts far away, hardly listened.

Presently the waiter returned with the selected brand. He filled Owen’s glass, and Owen drank, and felt better. Finding his glass magically full once more, he emptied it again. And then suddenly he found himself looking across the table at his Host, and feeling a sense of absolute conviction that this was the one man of all others whom he would have selected as a confidant. How kindly, though somewhat misty, his face was! How soothing, if a little indistinct, his voice!

“Prosser,” he said, “you are a man of the world, and I should like your advice. What would you do in a case like this? I go to a theatre to see a play, and what do I find?”

He paused, and eyed his host impressively.

“What’s that tune they’re playing?” said Mr. Prosser. “You hear it everywhere. One of these Viennese things, I suppose.”

Owen was annoyed. He began to doubt whether, after all, Mr. Prosser’s virtues as a confidant were not more apparent than real.

“I find, by Jove,” he continued, “that I wrote the thing myself.”

“It’s not a patch on The Merry Widow,” said Mr. Prosser.

Owen thumped the table.

“I tell you I find I wrote the thing myself.”

“What thing?”

“This play I’m telling you about. This White Roses thing.”

He found that he had at last got his host’s ear. Mr. Prosser seemed genuinely interested.

“What do you mean?”

Owen plunged on with his story. He started from its dim beginning, from the days when he had bought the novel on his journey from Bath to Cheltenham. He described his methods of work, his registering of the package, his suspense, his growing resignation. He sketched the progress of his life. He spoke of Audrey and gave a crisp character-sketch of Mr. Sheppherd. He took his hearer right up to the moment when the truth had come home to him.

Towards the end of his narrative the lights went out, and he finished his story in the hotel courtyard. In the cool air he felt revived. The outlines of Mr. Prosser became sharp and distinct again.

The sociologist listened admirably. He appeared absorbed, and did not interrupt once.

“What makes you so certain that this was your version?” he asked, as they passed into the Strand.

Owen told him of the creature of his imagination in Act III.

“But you have lost your manuscript?”

“Yes; I burnt it.”

“Just what one might have expected you to do,” said Mr. Prosser, unkindly. “Young man, I begin to believe that there may be something in this. You haven’t got a ghost of a proof that would hold water in a court of law, of course; but still, I’m inclined to believe you. For one thing, you haven’t the intelligence to invent such a story.”

Owen thanked him.

“In fact, if you can answer me one question I shall be satisfied.”

It seemed to Owen that Mr. Prosser was tending to get a little above himself. As an intelligent listener he had been of service, but that appeared to be no reason why he should constitute himself a sort of judge and master of the ceremonies.

“That’s very good of you,” he said; “but will Edith Butler be satisfied? That’s more to the point.”

“I am Edith Butler,” said Mr. Prosser.

Owen stopped. “You?”

“You need not babble it from the housetops. You are the only person besides my agent who knows it, and I wouldn’t have told you if I could have helped it. It isn’t a thing I want known. Great Scott, man, don’t goggle at me like a fish! Haven’t you heard of pseudonyms before?”

“Yes, but⁠—”

“Well, never mind. Take it from me that I am Edith Butler. Now listen to me. That manuscript reached me when I was in the country. There was no name on it. That in itself points strongly to the fact that you were its author. It was precisely the chuckle-headed sort of thing you would have done, to put no name on the thing.”

“I enclosed a letter, anyhow.”

“There was a letter enclosed. I opened the parcel out of doors. There was a fresh breeze blowing at the time. It caught the letter, and that was the last I saw of it. I had read as far as ‘Dear Madam.’ But one thing I do remember about it, and that was that it was sent from some hotel in Cheltenham, and I could remember it if I heard it. Now, then?”

“I can tell it you. It was Wilbraham’s. I was stopping there.”

“You pass,” said Mr. Prosser. “It was Wilbraham’s.”

Owen’s heart gave a jump. For a moment he walked on air.

“Then do you mean to say that it’s all right⁠—that you believe⁠—”

“I do,” said Mr. Prosser. “By the way,” he said, “the notice of White Roses went up last night.”

Owen’s heart turned to lead.

“But⁠—but⁠—” he stammered. “But tonight the house was packed.”

“It was. Packed with paper. All the merry deadheads in London were there. It has been the worst failure this season. And, by George,” he cried, with sudden vehemence, “serve ’em right. If I told them once it would fail in England, I told them a hundred times. The London public won’t stand that sort of blithering twaddle.”

Owen stopped and looked round. A cab was standing across the road. He signalled to it. He felt incapable of walking home. No physical blow could have unmanned him more completely than this hideous disappointment just when, by a miracle, everything seemed to be running his way.

“Sooner ride than walk,” said Mr. Prosser, pushing his head through the open window. “Laziness⁠—slackness⁠—that’s the curse of the modern young man. Where shall I tell him to drive to?”

Owen mentioned his address. It struck him that he had not thanked his host for his hospitality.

“It was awfully good of you to give me supper, Mr. Prosser,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed it tremendously.”

“Come again,” said Mr. Prosser. “I’m afraid you’re disappointed about the play?”

Owen forced a smile.

“Oh, no, that’s all right,” he said. “It can’t be helped.”

Mr. Prosser half turned, then thrust his head through the window again.

“I knew there was something I had forgotten to say,” he said. “I ought to have told you that the play was produced in America before it came to London. It ran two seasons in New York and one in Chicago, and there are three companies playing it still on the road. Here’s my card. Come round and see me tomorrow. I can’t tell you the actual figures offhand, but you’ll be all right. You’ll have pots o’ money.”

Absent Treatment

I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It’s a most interesting story. I can’t put in any literary style and all that; but I don’t have to, don’t you know, because it goes on its Moral Lesson. If you’re a man you mustn’t miss it, because it’ll be a warning to you; and if you’re a woman you won’t want to, because it’s all about how a girl made a man feel pretty well fed up with things.

If you’re a recent acquaintance of Bobbie’s, you’ll probably be surprised to hear that there was a time when he was more remarkable for the weakness of his memory than anything else. Dozens of fellows, who have only met Bobbie since the change took place, have been surprised when I told them that. Yet it’s true. Believe me.

In the days when I first knew him Bobbie Cardew was about the most pronounced young rotter inside the four-mile radius. People have called me a silly ass, but I was never in the same class with Bobbie. When it came to being a silly ass, he was a plus-four man, while my handicap was about six. Why, if I wanted him to dine with me, I used to post him a letter at the beginning of the week, and then the day before send him a telegram and a phone-call on the day itself, and⁠—half an hour before the time we’d fixed⁠—a messenger in a taxi, whose business it was to see that he got in and that the chauffeur had the address all correct. By doing this I generally managed to get him, unless he had left town before my messenger arrived.

The funny thing was that he wasn’t altogether a fool in other ways. Deep down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him, once or twice, show an almost human intelligence. But to reach that stratum, mind you, you needed dynamite.

At least, that’s what I thought. But there was another way which hadn’t occurred to me. Marriage, I mean. Marriage, the dynamite of the soul; that was what hit Bobbie. He married. Have you ever seen a bull-pup chasing a bee? The pup sees the bee. It looks good to him. But he still doesn’t know what’s at the end of it till he gets there. It was like that with Bobbie. He fell in love, got married⁠—with a sort of whoop, as if it were the greatest fun in the world⁠—and then began to find out things.

She wasn’t the sort of girl you would have expected Bobbie to rave about. And yet, I don’t know. What I mean is, she worked for her living; and to a fellow who has never done a hand’s turn in his life there’s undoubtedly a sort of fascination, a kind of romance, about a girl who works for her living.

Her name was Anthony. Mary Anthony. She was about five feet six; she had a ton and a half of red-gold hair, grey eyes, and one of those determined chins. She was a hospital nurse. When Bobbie smashed himself up at polo, she was told off by the authorities to smooth his brow and rally round with cooling unguents and all that; and the old boy hadn’t been up and about again for more than a week before they popped off to the registrar’s and fixed it up. Quite the romance.

Bobbie broke the news to me at the club one evening, and next day he introduced me to her. I admired her. I’ve never worked myself⁠—my name’s Pepper, by the way. Almost forgot to mention it. Reggie Pepper. My uncle Edward was Pepper, Wells, and Co., the Colliery people. He left me a sizable chunk of bullion⁠—I say I’ve never worked myself, but I admire anyone who earns a living under difficulties, especially a girl. And this girl had had a rather unusually tough time of it, being an orphan and all that, and having had to do everything off her own bat for years.

Mary and I got along together splendidly. We don’t now, but we’ll come to that later. I’m speaking of the past. She seemed to think Bobbie the greatest thing on earth, judging by the way she looked at him when she thought I wasn’t noticing. And Bobbie seemed to think the same about her. So that I came to the conclusion that, if only dear old Bobbie didn’t forget to go to the wedding, they had a sporting chance of being quite happy.

Well, let’s brisk up a bit here, and jump a year. The story doesn’t really start till then.

They took a flat and settled down. I was in and out of the place quite a good deal. I kept my eyes open, and everything seemed to me to be running along as smoothly as you could want. If this was marriage, I thought, I couldn’t see why fellows were so frightened of it. There were a lot of worse things that could happen to a man.

But we now come to the incident of the quiet Dinner, and it’s just here that love’s young dream hits a snag, and things begin to occur.

I happened to meet Bobbie in Piccadilly, and he asked me to come back to dinner at the flat. And, like a fool, instead of bolting and putting myself under police protection, I went.

When we got to the flat, there was Mrs. Bobbie looking⁠—well, I tell you, it staggered me. Her gold hair was all piled up in waves and crinkles and things, with a what-d’-you-call-it of diamonds in it. And she was wearing the most perfectly ripping dress. I couldn’t begin to describe it. I can only say it was the limit. It struck me that if this was how she was in the habit of looking every night when they were dining quietly at home together, it was no wonder that Bobbie liked domesticity.

“Here’s old Reggie, dear,” said Bobbie. “I’ve brought him home to have a bit of dinner. I’ll phone down to the kitchen and ask them to send it up now⁠—what?”

She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she turned scarlet. Then she turned as white as a sheet. Then she gave a little laugh. It was most interesting to watch. Made me wish I was up a tree about eight hundred miles away. Then she recovered herself.

“I am so glad you were able to come, Mr. Pepper,” she said, smiling at me.

And after that she was all right. At least, you would have said so. She talked a lot at dinner, and chaffed Bobbie, and played us ragtime on the piano afterwards, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Quite a jolly little party it was⁠—not. I’m no lynx-eyed sleuth, and all that sort of thing, but I had seen her face at the beginning, and I knew that she was working the whole time and working hard, to keep herself in hand, and that she would have given that diamond what’s-its-name in her hair and everything else she possessed to have one good scream⁠—just one. I’ve sat through some pretty thick evenings in my time, but that one had the rest beaten in a canter. At the very earliest moment I grabbed my hat and got away.

Having seen what I did, I wasn’t particularly surprised to meet Bobbie at the club next day looking about as merry and bright as a lonely gumdrop at an Eskimo tea-party.

He started in straightway. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to about it.

“Do you know how long I’ve been married?” he said.

I didn’t exactly.

“About a year, isn’t it?”

“Not about a year,” he said sadly. “Exactly a year⁠—yesterday!”

Then I understood. I saw light⁠—a regular flash of light.

“Yesterday was⁠—?”

“The anniversary of the wedding. I’d arranged to take Mary to the Savoy, and on to Covent Garden. She particularly wanted to hear Caruso. I had the ticket for the box in my pocket. Do you know, all through dinner I had a kind of rummy idea that there was something I’d forgotten, but I couldn’t think what?”

“Till your wife mentioned it?”

He nodded⁠—

“She⁠—mentioned it,” he said thoughtfully.

I didn’t ask for details. Women with hair and chins like Mary’s may be angels most of the time, but, when they take off their wings for a bit, they aren’t halfhearted about it.

“To be absolutely frank, old top,” said poor old Bobbie, in a broken sort of way, “my stock’s pretty low at home.”

There didn’t seem much to be done. I just lit a cigarette and sat there. He didn’t want to talk. Presently he went out. I stood at the window of our upper smoking-room, which looks out on to Piccadilly, and watched him. He walked slowly along for a few yards, stopped, then walked on again, and finally turned into a jeweller’s. Which was an instance of what I meant when I said that deep down in him there was a certain stratum of sense.

It was from now on that I began to be really interested in this problem of Bobbie’s married life. Of course, one’s always mildly interested in one’s friends’ marriages, hoping they’ll turn out well and all that; but this was different. The average man isn’t like Bobbie, and the average girl isn’t like Mary. It was that old business of the immovable mass and the irresistible force. There was Bobbie, ambling gently through life, a dear old chap in a hundred ways, but undoubtedly a chump of the first water.

And there was Mary, determined that he shouldn’t be a chump. And Nature, mind you, on Bobbie’s side. When Nature makes a chump like dear old Bobbie, she’s proud of him, and doesn’t want her handiwork disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armour to protect him against outside interference. And that armour is shortness of memory. Shortness of memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might cease to be one. Take my case, for instance. I’m a chump. Well, if I had remembered half the things people have tried to teach me during my life, my size in hats would be about number nine. But I didn’t. I forgot them. And it was just the same with Bobbie.

For about a week, perhaps a bit more, the recollection of that quiet little domestic evening bucked him up like a tonic. Elephants, I read somewhere, are champions at the memory business, but they were fools to Bobbie during that week. But, bless you, the shock wasn’t nearly big enough. It had dinted the armour, but it hadn’t made a hole in it. Pretty soon he was back at the old game.

It was pathetic, don’t you know. The poor girl loved him, and she was frightened. It was the thin edge of the wedge, you see, and she knew it. A man who forgets what day he was married, when he’s been married one year, will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he’s married at all. If she meant to get him in hand at all, she had got to do it now, before he began to drift away.

I saw that clearly enough, and I tried to make Bobbie see it, when he was by way of pouring out his troubles to me one afternoon. I can’t remember what it was that he had forgotten the day before, but it was something she had asked him to bring home for her⁠—it may have been a book.

“It’s such a little thing to make a fuss about,” said Bobbie. “And she knows that it’s simply because I’ve got such an infernal memory about everything. I can’t remember anything. Never could.”

He talked on for a while, and, just as he was going, he pulled out a couple of sovereigns.

“Oh, by the way,” he said.

“What’s this for?” I asked, though I knew.

“I owe it you.”

“How’s that?” I said.

“Why, that bet on Tuesday. In the billiard-room. Murray and Brown were playing a hundred up, and I gave you two to one that Brown would win, and Murray beat him by twenty odd.”

“So you do remember some things?” I said.

He got quite excited. Said that if I thought he was the sort of rotter who forgot to pay when he lost a bet, it was pretty rotten of me after knowing him all these years, and a lot more like that.

“Subside, laddie,” I said.

Then I spoke to him like a father.

“What you’ve got to do, my old college chum,” I said, “is to pull yourself together, and jolly quick, too. As things are shaping, you’re due for a nasty knock before you know what’s hit you. You’ve got to make an effort. Don’t say you can’t. This two quid business shows that, even if your memory is rocky, you can remember some things. What you’ve got to do is to see that wedding anniversaries and so on are included in the list. It may be a brainstrain, but you can’t get out of it.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Bobbie. “But it beats me why she thinks such a lot of these rotten little dates. What’s it matter if I forgot what day we were married on or what day she was born on or what day the cat had the measles? She knows I love her just as much as if I were a memorizing freak at the halls.”

“That’s not enough for a woman,” I said. “They want to be shown. Bear that in mind, and you’re all right. Forget it, and there’ll be trouble.”

He chewed the knob of his stick.

“Women are frightfully rummy,” he said gloomily.

“You should have thought of that before you married one,” I said.

I don’t see that I could have done any more. I had put the whole thing in a nutshell for him. You would have thought he’d have seen the point, and that it would have made him brace up and get a hold on himself. But no. Off he went again in the same old way. I gave up arguing with him. I had a good deal of time on my hands, but not enough to amount to anything when it was a question of reforming dear old Bobbie by argument. If you see a man asking for trouble, and insisting on getting it, the only thing to do is to stand by and wait till it comes to him. After that you may get a chance. But till then there’s nothing to be done. But I thought a lot about him.

Bobbie didn’t get into the soup all at once. Weeks went by, and months, and still nothing happened. Now and then he’d come into the club with a kind of cloud on his shining morning face, and I’d know that there had been doings in the home; but it wasn’t till well on in the spring that he got the thunderbolt just where he had been asking for it⁠—in the thorax.

I was smoking a quiet cigarette one morning in the window looking out over Piccadilly, and watching the buses and motors going up one way and down the other⁠—most interesting it is; I often do it⁠—when in rushed Bobbie, with his eyes bulging and his face the colour of an oyster, waving a piece of paper in his hand.

“Reggie,” he said. “Reggie, old top, she’s gone!”

“Gone!” I said. “Who?”

“Mary, of course! Gone! Left me! Gone!”

“Where?” I said.

Silly question? Perhaps you’re right. Anyhow, dear old Bobbie nearly foamed at the mouth.

“Where? How should I know where? Here, read this.”

He pushed the paper into my hand. It was a letter.

“Go on,” said Bobbie. “Read it.”

So I did. It certainly was quite a letter. There was not much of it, but it was all to the point. This is what it said:

“My dear Bobbie⁠—I am going away. When you care enough about me to remember to wish me many happy returns on my birthday, I will come back. My address will be Box 341, London Morning News.”

I read it twice, then I said, “Well, why don’t you?”

“Why don’t I what?”

“Why don’t you wish her many happy returns? It doesn’t seem much to ask.”

“But she says on her birthday.”

“Well, when is her birthday?”

“Can’t you understand?” said Bobbie. “I’ve forgotten.”

“Forgotten!” I said.

“Yes,” said Bobbie. “Forgotten.”

“How do you mean, forgotten?” I said. “Forgotten whether it’s the twentieth or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you get to it?”

“I know it came somewhere between the first of January and the thirty-first of December. That’s how near I get to it.”

“Think.”

“Think? What’s the use of saying ‘Think’? Think I haven’t thought? I’ve been knocking sparks out of my brain ever since I opened that letter.”

“And you can’t remember?”

“No.”

I rang the bell and ordered restoratives.

“Well, Bobbie,” I said, “it’s a pretty hard case to spring on an untrained amateur like me. Suppose someone had come to Sherlock Holmes and said, ‘Mr. Holmes, here’s a case for you. When is my wife’s birthday?’ Wouldn’t that have given Sherlock a jolt? However, I know enough about the game to understand that a fellow can’t shoot off his deductive theories unless you start him with a clue, so rouse yourself out of that pop-eyed trance and come across with two or three. For instance, can’t you remember the last time she had a birthday? What sort of weather was it? That might fix the month.”

Bobbie shook his head.

“It was just ordinary weather, as near as I can recollect.”

“Warm?”

“Warmish.”

“Or cold?”

“Well, fairly cold, perhaps. I can’t remember.”

I ordered two more of the same. They seemed indicated in the Young Detective’s Manual. “You’re a great help, Bobbie,” I said. “An invaluable assistant. One of those indispensable adjuncts without which no home is complete.”

Bobbie seemed to be thinking.

“I’ve got it,” he said suddenly. “Look here. I gave her a present on her last birthday. All we have to do is to go to the shop, hunt up the date when it was bought, and the thing’s done.”

“Absolutely. What did you give her?”

He sagged.

“I can’t remember,” he said.

Getting ideas is like golf. Some days you’re right off, others it’s as easy as falling off a log. I don’t suppose dear old Bobbie had ever had two ideas in the same morning before in his life; but now he did it without an effort. He just loosed another dry Martini into the undergrowth, and before you could turn round it had flushed quite a brainwave.

Do you know those little books called When Were You Born? There’s one for each month. They tell you your character, your talents, your strong points, and your weak points at fourpence halfpenny a go. Bobbie’s idea was to buy the whole twelve, and go through them till we found out which month hit off Mary’s character. That would give us the month, and narrow it down a whole lot.

A pretty hot idea for a non-thinker like dear old Bobbie. We sallied out at once. He took half and I took half, and we settled down to work. As I say, it sounded good. But when we came to go into the thing, we saw that there was a flaw. There was plenty of information all right, but there wasn’t a single month that didn’t have something that exactly hit off Mary. For instance, in the December book it said, “December people are apt to keep their own secrets. They are extensive travellers.” Well, Mary had certainly kept her secret, and she had travelled quite extensively enough for Bobbie’s needs. Then, October people were “born with original ideas” and “loved moving.” You couldn’t have summed up Mary’s little jaunt more neatly. February people had “wonderful memories”⁠—Mary’s speciality.

We took a bit of a rest, then had another go at the thing.

Bobbie was all for May, because the book said that women born in that month were “inclined to be capricious, which is always a barrier to a happy married life”; but I plumped for February, because February women “are unusually determined to have their own way, are very earnest, and expect a full return in their companion or mates.” Which he owned was about as like Mary as anything could be.

In the end he tore the books up, stamped on them, burnt them, and went home.

It was wonderful what a change the next few days made in dear old Bobbie. Have you ever seen that picture, “The Soul’s Awakening”? It represents a flapper of sorts gazing in a startled sort of way into the middle distance with a look in her eyes that seems to say, “Surely that is George’s step I hear on the mat! Can this be love?” Well, Bobbie had a soul’s awakening too. I don’t suppose he had ever troubled to think in his life before⁠—not really think. But now he was wearing his brain to the bone. It was painful in a way, of course, to see a fellow human being so thoroughly in the soup, but I felt strongly that it was all for the best. I could see as plainly as possible that all these brainstorms were improving Bobbie out of knowledge. When it was all over he might possibly become a rotter again of a sort, but it would only be a pale reflection of the rotter he had been. It bore out the idea I had always had that what he needed was a real good jolt.

I saw a great deal of him these days. I was his best friend, and he came to me for sympathy. I gave it him, too, with both hands, but I never failed to hand him the Moral Lesson when I had him weak.

One day he came to me as I was sitting in the club, and I could see that he had had an idea. He looked happier than he had done in weeks.

“Reggie,” he said, “I’m on the trail. This time I’m convinced that I shall pull it off. I’ve remembered something of vital importance.”

“Yes?” I said.

“I remember distinctly,” he said, “that on Mary’s last birthday we went together to the Coliseum. How does that hit you?”

“It’s a fine bit of memorizing,” I said; “but how does it help?”

“Why, they change the programme every week there.”

“Ah!” I said. “Now you are talking.”

“And the week we went one of the turns was Professor Some One’s Terpsichorean Cats. I recollect them distinctly. Now, are we narrowing it down, or aren’t we? Reggie, I’m going round to the Coliseum this minute, and I’m going to dig the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out of them, if I have to use a crowbar.”

So that got him within six days; for the management treated us like brothers; brought out the archives, and ran agile fingers over the pages till they treed the cats in the middle of May.

“I told you it was May,” said Bobbie. “Maybe you’ll listen to me another time.”

“If you’ve any sense,” I said, “there won’t be another time.”

And Bobbie said that there wouldn’t.

Once you get your memory on the run, it parts as if it enjoyed doing it. I had just got off to sleep that night when my telephone-bell rang. It was Bobbie, of course. He didn’t apologize.

“Reggie,” he said, “I’ve got it now for certain. It’s just come to me. We saw those Terpsichorean Cats at a matinee, old man.”

“Yes?” I said.

“Well, don’t you see that that brings it down to two days? It must have been either Wednesday the seventh or Saturday the tenth.”

“Yes,” I said, “if they didn’t have daily matinees at the Coliseum.”

I heard him give a sort of howl.

“Bobbie,” I said. My feet were freezing, but I was fond of him.

“Well?”

“I’ve remembered something too. It’s this. The day you went to the Coliseum I lunched with you both at the Ritz. You had forgotten to bring any money with you, so you wrote a cheque.”

“But I’m always writing cheques.”

“You are. But this was for a tenner, and made out to the hotel. Hunt up your chequebook and see how many cheques for ten pounds payable to the Ritz Hotel you wrote out between May the fifth and May the tenth.”

He gave a kind of gulp.

“Reggie,” he said, “you’re a genius. I’ve always said so. I believe you’ve got it. Hold the line.”

Presently he came back again.

“Halloa!” he said.

“I’m here,” I said.

“It was the eighth. Reggie, old man, I⁠—”

“Topping,” I said. “Good night.”

It was working along into the small hours now, but I thought I might as well make a night of it and finish the thing up, so I rang up an hotel near the Strand.

“Put me through to Mrs. Cardew,” I said.

“It’s late,” said the man at the other end.

“And getting later every minute,” I said. “Buck along, laddie.”

I waited patiently. I had missed my beauty-sleep, and my feet had frozen hard, but I was past regrets.

“What is the matter?” said Mary’s voice.

“My feet are cold,” I said. “But I didn’t call you up to tell you that particularly. I’ve just been chatting with Bobbie, Mrs. Cardew.”

“Oh! is that Mr. Pepper?”

“Yes. He’s remembered it, Mrs. Cardew.”

She gave a sort of scream. I’ve often thought how interesting it must be to be one of those Exchange girls. The things they must hear, don’t you know. Bobbie’s howl and gulp and Mrs. Bobbie’s scream and all about my feet and all that. Most interesting it must be.

“He’s remembered it!” she gasped. “Did you tell him?”

“No.”

Well, I hadn’t.

“Mr. Pepper.”

“Yes?”

“Was he⁠—has he been⁠—was he very worried?”

I chuckled. This was where I was billed to be the life and soul of the party.

“Worried! He was about the most worried man between here and Edinburgh. He has been worrying as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has started out to worry after breakfast, and⁠—”

Oh, well, you can never tell with women. My idea was that we should pass the rest of the night slapping each other on the back across the wire, and telling each other what bally brainy conspirators we were, don’t you know, and all that. But I’d got just as far as this, when she bit at me. Absolutely! I heard the snap. And then she said “Oh!” in that choked kind of way. And when a woman says “Oh!” like that, it means all the bad words she’d love to say if she only knew them.

And then she began.

“What brutes men are! What horrid brutes! How you could stand by and see poor dear Bobbie worrying himself into a fever, when a word from you would have put everything right, I can’t⁠—”

“But⁠—”

“And you call yourself his friend! His friend!” (Metallic laugh, most unpleasant.) “It shows how one can be deceived. I used to think you a kindhearted man.”

“But, I say, when I suggested the thing, you thought it perfectly⁠—”

“I thought it hateful, abominable.”

“But you said it was absolutely top⁠—”

“I said nothing of the kind. And if I did, I didn’t mean it. I don’t wish to be unjust, Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there seems to be something positively fiendish in a man who can go out of his way to separate a husband from his wife, simply in order to amuse himself by gloating over his agony⁠—”

“But⁠—!”

“When one single word would have⁠—”

“But you made me promise not to⁠—” I bleated.

“And if I did, do you suppose I didn’t expect you to have the sense to break your promise?”

I had finished. I had no further observations to make. I hung up the receiver, and crawled into bed.

I still see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit the old homestead. He is friendly, but he stops short of issuing invitations. I ran across Mary at the Academy last week, and her eyes went through me like a couple of bullets through a pat of butter. And as they came out the other side, and I limped off to piece myself together again, there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this: “He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.”

The Best Sauce

Eve Hendrie sat up in bed. For two hours she had been trying to get to sleep, but without success. Never in her life had she felt more wakeful.

There were two reasons for this. Her mind was disturbed, and she was very hungry. Neither sensation was novel to her. Since first she had become paid companion to Mrs. Rastall-Retford there had hardly been a moment when she had not been hungry. Some time before Mrs. Rastall-Retford’s doctor had recommended to that lady a Spartan diet, and in this Eve, as companion, had unwillingly to share. It was not pleasant for either of them, but at least Mrs. Rastall-Retford had the knowledge that she had earned it by years of honest self-indulgence. Eve had not that consolation.

Meagre fare, moreover, had the effect of accentuating Mrs. Rastall-Retford’s always rather pronounced irritability. She was a massive lady, with a prominent forehead, some half-dozen chins, and a manner towards those in her employment which would have been resented in a second mate by the crew of a Western ocean tramp. Even at her best she was no ray of sunshine about the house. And since the beginning of the self-denying ordinance she had been at her worst.

But it was not depression induced by her employer that was disturbing Eve. That was a permanent evil. What was agitating her so extremely tonight was the unexpected arrival of Peter Rayner.

It was Eve’s practice to tell herself several times a day that she had no sentiment for Peter Rayner but dislike. She did not attempt to defend her attitude logically, but nevertheless she clung to it, and tonight, when he entered the drawing-room, she had endeavoured to convey by her manner that it was only with the greatest difficulty that she remembered him at all, and that, having accomplished that feat, she now intended to forget him again immediately. And he had grinned a cheerful, affectionate grin, and beamed on her without a break till bedtime.

Before coming as companion to Mrs. Rastall-Retford Eve had been governess to Hildebrand, aged six, the son of a Mrs. Elphinstone. It had been, on the whole, a comfortable situation. She had not liked Mrs. Elphinstone, but Hildebrand had been docile, and altogether life was quite smooth and pleasant until Mrs. Elphinstone’s brother came for a visit. Peter Rayner was that brother.

There is a type of man who makes love with the secrecy and sheepish reserve of a cowboy shooting up a Wild West saloon. To this class Peter belonged. He fell in love with Eve at sight, and if, at the end of the first day, there was anyone in the house who was not aware of it, it was only Hildebrand, aged six. And even Hildebrand must have had his suspicions.

Mrs. Elphinstone was among the first to become aware of it. For two days, frostily silent and gimlet-like as to the eye, she observed Peter’s hurricane wooing from afar; then she acted. Peter she sent to London, pacifying him with an invitation to return to the house in the following week. This done, she proceeded to eliminate Eve. In the course of the parting interview she expressed herself perhaps a little less guardedly than was either just or considerate; and Eve, flushed and at war with the whole race of Rayners, departed that afternoon to seek a situation elsewhere. She had found it at the house of Mrs. Rastall-Retford.

And now this evening, as she sat in the drawing-room playing the piano to her employer, in had walked the latter’s son, a tall, nervous young man, perpetually clearing his throat and fiddling with a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, with the announcement that he had brought his friend, Mr. Rayner, to spend a few days in the old home.

Eve could still see the look on Peter’s face as, having shaken hands with his hostess, he turned to her. It was the look of the cowboy who, his weary ride over, sees through the dusk the friendly gleam of the saloon windows, and with a happy sigh reaches for his revolver. There could be no two meanings to that look. It said, as clearly as if he had shouted it, that this was no accidental meeting; that he had tracked her down and proposed to resume matters at the point where they had left off.

Eve was indignant. It was abominable that he should pursue her in this way. She sat thinking how abominable it was for five minutes; and then it suddenly struck her that she was hungrier than ever. She had forgotten her material troubles for the moment. It seemed to her now that she was quite faint with hunger.

A cuckoo clock outside the door struck one. And, as it did so, it came to Eve that on the sideboard in the dining room there were biscuits.

A moment later she was creeping softly down the stairs.

It was dark and ghostly on the stairs. The house was full of noises. She was glad when she reached the dining room. It would be pleasant to switch on the light. She pushed open the door, and uttered a cry. The light was already switched on, and at the table, his back to her, was a man.

There was no time for flight. He must have heard the door open. In another moment he would turn and spring.

She spoke tremulously.

“Don’t⁠—don’t move. I’m pointing a pistol at you.”

The man did not move.

“Foolish child!” he said, indulgently. “Suppose it went off!”

She uttered an exclamation of surprise.

“You! What are you doing here, Mr. Rayner?”

She moved into the room, and her relief changed swiftly into indignation. On the table were half a chicken, a loaf, some cold potatoes, and a bottle of beer.

“I’m eating, thank goodness!” said Peter, helping himself to a cold potato. “I had begun to think I never should again.”

“Eating!”

“Eating. I know a man of sensibility and refinement ought to shrink from raiding his hostess’s larder in the small hours, but hunger’s death to the finer feelings. It’s the solar plexus punch which puts one’s better self down and out for the count of ten. I am a large and healthy young man, and, believe me, I need this little snack. I need it badly. May I cut you a slice of chicken?”

She could hardly bear to look at it, but pride gave her strength.

“No,” she snapped.

“You’re sure? Poor little thing; I know you’re half starved.”

Eve stamped.

“How dare you speak to me like that, Mr. Rayner?”

He drank bottled beer thoughtfully.

“What made you come down? I suppose you heard a noise and thought it was burglars?” he said.

“Yes,” said Eve, thankfully accepting the idea. At all costs she must conceal the biscuit motive.

“That was very plucky of you. Won’t you sit down?”

“No, I’m going back to bed.”

“Not just yet. I’ve several things to talk to you about. Sit down. That’s right. Now cover up your poor little pink ankles, or you’ll be catching⁠—”

She started up.

“Mr. Rayner!”

“Sit down.”

She looked at him defiantly, then, wondering at herself for doing it, sat down.

“Now,” said Peter, “what do you mean by it? What do you mean by dashing off from my sister’s house without leaving a word for me as to where you were going? You knew I loved you.”

“Good night, Mr. Rayner.”

“Sit down. You’ve given me a great deal of trouble. Do you know it cost me a sovereign in tips to find out your address? I couldn’t get it out of my sister, and I had to apply to the butler. I’ve a good mind to knock it off your first week’s pin-money.”

“I shall not stay here listening⁠—”

“You knew perfectly well I wanted to marry you. But you fly off without a word and bury yourself in this benighted place with a gorgon who nags and bullies you⁠—”

“A nice way to speak of your hostess,” said Eve, scornfully.

“A very soothing way. I don’t think I ever took such a dislike to a woman at first sight before. And when she started to bullyrag you, it was all I could do⁠—But it won’t last long now. You must come away at once. We’ll be married after Christmas, and in the meantime you can go and live with my sister⁠—”

Eve listened speechlessly. She had so much to say that the difficulty of selection rendered her dumb.

“When can you start? I mean, do you have to give a month’s notice or anything?”

Eve got up with a short laugh.

“Good night, Mr. Rayner,” she said. “You have been very amusing, but I am getting tired.”

“I’m glad it’s all settled,” said Peter. “Good night.”

Eve stopped. She could not go tamely away without saying a single one of the things that crowded in her mind.

“Do you imagine,” she said, “that I intend to marry you? Do you suppose, for one moment⁠—”

“Rather!” said Peter. “You shall have a splendid time from now on, to make up for all you’ve gone through. I’m going to be awfully good to you, Eve. You shan’t ever have any more worries, poor old thing.” He looked at her affectionately. “I wonder why it is that large men always fall in love with little women. There are you, a fragile, fairy-like, ethereal wisp of a little creature; and here am I⁠—”

“A great, big, greedy pig!” burst out Eve, “who thinks about nothing but eating and drinking.”

“I wasn’t going to have put it quite like that,” said Peter, thoughtfully.

“I hate a greedy man,” said Eve, between her teeth.

“I have a healthy appetite,” protested Peter. “Nothing more. It runs in the family. At the time of the Civil War the Rayner of the period, who was King Charles’s right-hand man, would frequently eat despatches to prevent them falling into the hands of the enemy. He was noted for it.”

Eve reached the door and turned.

“I despise you,” she said.

“Good night,” said Peter, tenderly. “Tomorrow morning we’ll go for a walk.”

His prediction proved absolutely correct. He was smoking a cigarette after breakfast when Eve came to him. Her face was pink and mutinous, but there was a gleam in her eye.

“Are you ready to come out, Mr. Rayner?” she said. “Mrs. Rastall-Retford says I’m to take you to see the view from the golf links.”

“You’ll like that,” said Peter.

“I shall not like it,” snapped Eve. “But Mrs. Rastall-Retford is paying me a salary to do what she tells me, and I have to earn it.”

Conversation during the walk consisted mainly of a monologue on the part of Peter. It was a crisp and exhilarating morning, and he appeared to be feeling a universal benevolence towards all created things. He even softened slightly on the subject of Mrs. Rastall-Retford, and advanced the theory that her peculiar manner might be due to her having been ill-treated as a child.

Eve listened in silence. It was not till they were nearing home on their return journey that she spoke.

“Mr. Rayner,” she said.

“Yes?” said Peter.

“I was talking to Mrs. Rastall-Retford after breakfast,” said Eve, “and I told her something about you.”

“My conscience is clear.”

“Oh, nothing bad. Some people would say it was very much to your credit.” She looked away across the fields. “I told her you were a vegetarian,” she added, carelessly.

There was a long silence. Then Peter spoke three words, straight from the heart.

“You little devil!”

Eve turned and looked at him, her eyes sparkling wickedly.

“You see!” she said. “Now perhaps you will go.”

“Without you?” said Peter, stoutly. “Never!”

“In London you will be able to eat all day⁠—anything you like. You will be able to creep about your club gnawing cold chicken all night. But if you stay here⁠—”

“You have got a wrong idea of the London clubman’s life,” said Peter. “If I crept about my club gnawing cold chicken I should have the committee after me. No, I shall stay here and look after you. After all, what is food?”

“I’ll tell you what yours will be, if you like. Or would you rather wait and let it be a surprise? Well, for lunch you will have some boiled potatoes and cabbage and a sweet⁠—a sort of light soufflé thing. And for dinner⁠—”

“Yes, but one moment,” said Peter. “If I’m a vegetarian, how did you account for my taking all the chicken I could get at dinner last night, and looking as if I wanted more?”

“Oh, that was your considerateness. You didn’t want to give trouble, even if you had to sacrifice your principles. But it’s all right now. You are going to have your vegetables.”

Peter drew a deep breath⁠—the breath of the man who braces himself up and thanks whatever gods there be for his unconquerable soul.

“I don’t care,” he said. “ ‘A book of verses underneath the bough, a jug of wine, and thou⁠—’ ”

“Oh, and I forgot,” interrupted Eve. “I told her you were a teetotaller as well.”

There was another silence, longer than the first.

“The best train,” said Eve, at last, “is the ten-fifty.”

He looked at her inquiringly.

“The best train?”

“For London.”

“What makes you think that I am interested in trains to London?”

Eve bit her lip.

“Mr. Rayner,” she said, after a pause, “do you remember at lunch one day at Mrs. Elphinstone’s refusing parsnips? You said that, so far as you were concerned, parsnips were first by a mile, and that prussic acid and strychnine also ran.”

“Well?” said Peter.

“Oh, nothing,” said Eve. “Only I made a stupid mistake. I told the cook you were devoted to parsnips. I’m sorry.”

Peter looked at her gravely. “I’m putting up with a lot for your sake,” he said.

“You needn’t. Why don’t you go away?”

“And leave you chained to the rock, Andromeda? Not for Perseus! I’ve only been here one night, but I’ve seen enough to know that I’ve got to take you away from this place. Honestly, it’s killing you. I was watching you last night. You’re scared if that infernal old woman starts to open her mouth. She’s crushing the life out of you. I’m going to stay on here till you say you’ll marry me, or till they throw me out.”

“There are parsnips for dinner tonight,” said Eve, softly.

“I shall get to like them. They are an acquired taste, I expect. Perhaps I am, too. Perhaps I am the human parsnip, and you will have to learn to love me.”

“You are the human burr,” said Eve, shortly. “I shouldn’t have thought it possible for a man to behave as you are doing.”

In spite of herself, there were moments during the next few days when Eve felt twinges of remorse. It was only by telling herself that he had no right to have followed her to this house, and that he was at perfect liberty to leave whenever he wished, that she could harden her heart again. And even this reflection was not entirely satisfactory, for it made her feel how fond he must be of her to endure these evils for her sake.

And there was no doubt about there being evils. It was a dreary house in which to spend winter days. There were no books that one could possibly read. The nearest railway station was five miles away. There was not even a dog to talk to. Generally it rained. Though Eve saw little of Peter, except at meals and in the drawing-room after dinner⁠—for Mrs. Rastall-Retford spent most of the day in her own sitting-room and required Eve to be at her side⁠—she could picture his sufferings, and, try as she would, she could not keep herself from softening a little. Her pride was weakening. Constant attendance on her employer was beginning to have a bad effect on her nerves. Association in a subordinate capacity with Mrs. Rastall-Retford did not encourage a proud and spirited outlook on life.

Her imagination had not exaggerated Peter’s sufferings. Many people consider that Dante has spoken the last word on the postmortem housing of the criminal classes. Peter, after the first week of his visit, could have given him a few new ideas.

It is unpleasant to be half starved. It is unpleasant to be cooped up in a country-house in winter with nothing to do. It is unpleasant to have to sit at meals and listen to the only girl you have ever really loved being bullyragged by an old lady with six chins. And all these unpleasantnesses were occurring to Peter simultaneously. It is highly creditable to him that the last should completely have outweighed the others.

He was generally alone. Mr. Rastall-Retford, who would have been better than nothing as a companion, was a man who enjoyed solitude. He was a confirmed vanisher. He would be present at one moment, the next he would have glided silently away. And, even on the rare occasions when he decided not to vanish, he seldom did much more than clear his throat nervously and juggle with his pince-nez.

Peter, in his boyhood, had been thrilled once by a narrative of a man who got stuck in the Sargasso Sea. It seemed to him now that the monotony of the Sargasso Sea had been greatly exaggerated.

Nemesis was certainly giving Peter his due. He had wormed his way into the Rastall-Retford home-circle by grossly deceitful means. The moment he heard that Eve had gone to live with Mrs. Rastall-Retford, and had ascertained that the Rastall-Retford with whom he had been at Cambridge and whom he still met occasionally at his club when he did not see him first, was this lady’s son, he had set himself to court young Mr. Rastall-Retford. He had cornered him at the club and begun to talk about the dear old ’Varsity days, ignoring the embarrassment of the latter, whose only clear recollection of the dear old ’Varsity days as linking Peter and himself was of a certain bump-supper night, when sundry of the festive, led and inspired by Peter, had completely wrecked his rooms and shaved off half a growing moustache. He conveyed to young Mr. Rastall-Retford the impression that, in the dear old ’Varsity days, they had shared each other’s joys and sorrows, and, generally, had made Damon and Pythias look like a pair of crosstalk knockabouts at one of the rowdier music-halls. Not to invite so old a friend to stay at his home, if he ever happened to be down that way, would, he hinted, be grossly churlish. Mr. Rastall-Retford, impressed, issued the invitation. And now Peter was being punished for his deceit. Nemesis may not be an Alfred Shrubb, but give her time and she gets there.

It was towards the middle of the second week of his visit that Eve, coming into the drawing-room before dinner, found Peter standing in front of the fire. They had not been alone together for several days.

“Well?” said he.

Eve went to the fire and warmed her hands.

“Well?” she said, dispiritedly.

She was feeling nervous and ill. Mrs. Rastall-Retford had been in one of her more truculent moods all day, and for the first time Eve had the sensation of being thoroughly beaten. She dreaded the long hours to bedtime. The thought that there might be bridge after dinner made her feel physically ill. She felt she could not struggle through a bridge night.

On the occasions when she was in one of her dangerous moods, Mrs. Rastall-Retford sometimes chose rest as a cure, sometimes relaxation. Rest meant that she retired to her room immediately after dinner, and expended her venom on her maid; relaxation meant bridge, and bridge seemed to bring out all her worst points. They played the game for counters at her house, and there had been occasions in Eve’s experience when the loss of a hundred or so of these useful little adjuncts to Fun in the Home had lashed her almost into a frenzy. She was one of those bridge players who keep up a running quarrel with Fate during the game, and when she was not abusing Fate she was generally reproaching her partner. Eve was always her partner; and tonight she devoutly hoped that her employer would elect to rest. She always played badly with Mrs. Rastall-Retford, through sheer nervousness. Once she had revoked, and there had been a terrible moment and much subsequent recrimination.

Peter looked at her curiously.

“You’re pale tonight,” he said.

“I have a headache.”

“H’m! How is our hostess? Fair? Or stormy?”

“As I was passing her door I heard her bullying her maid, so I suppose stormy.”

“That means a bad time for you?” he said, sympathetically.

“I suppose so. If we play bridge. But she may go to bed directly after dinner.”

She tried to keep her voice level, but he detected the break.

“Eve,” he said, quickly, “won’t you let me take you away from here? You’ve no business in this sort of game. You’re not tough enough. You’ve got to be loved and made a fuss of and⁠—”

She laughed shakily.

“Perhaps you can give me the address of some lady who wants a companion to love and make a fuss of?”

“I can give you the address of a man.”

She rested an arm on the mantelpiece and stood looking into the blaze, without replying.

Before he could speak again there was a step outside the door, and Mrs. Rastall-Retford rustled into the room.

Eve had not misread the storm-signals. Her employer’s mood was still as it had been earlier in the day. Dinner passed in almost complete silence. Mrs. Rastall-Retford sat brooding dumbly. Her eye was cold and menacing, and Peter, working his way through his vegetables, shuddered for Eve. He had understood her allusion to bridge, having been privileged several times during his stay to see his hostess play that game, and he hoped that there would be no bridge tonight.

And this was unselfish of him, for bridge meant sandwiches. Punctually at nine o’clock on bridge nights the butler would deposit on a side-table a plate of chicken sandwiches and (in deference to Peter’s vegetarian views) a smaller plate of cheese sandwiches. At the close of play Mrs. Rastall-Retford would take one sandwich from each plate, drink a thimbleful of weak whisky and water, and retire.

Peter could always do with a sandwich or two these days. But he was prepared to abandon them joyfully if his hostess would waive bridge for this particular evening.

It was not to be. In the drawing-room Mrs. Rastall-Retford came out of her trance and called imperiously for the cards. Peter, when he saw his hand after the first deal, had a presentiment that if all his hands were to be as good as this, the evening was going to be a trying one. On the other occasions when they had played he had found it an extremely difficult task, even with moderate cards, to bring it about that his hostess should always win the odd rubber, for he was an excellent player, and, like most good players, had an artistic conscience which made it painful to him to play a deliberately bad game, even from the best motives. If all his hands were going to be as strong as this first one he saw that there was disaster ahead. He could not help winning.

Mrs. Rastall-Retford, who had dealt the first hand, made a most improper diamond declaration. Her son unfilially doubled, and, Eve having chicane⁠—a tragedy which her partner evidently seemed to consider could have been avoided by the exercise of ordinary common sense⁠—Peter and his partner, despite Peter’s best efforts, won the game handsomely.

The son of the house dealt the next hand. Eve sorted her cards listlessly. She was feeling curiously tired. Her brain seemed dulled.

This hand, as the first had done, went all in favour of the two men. Mr. Rastall-Retford won five tricks in succession, and, judging from the glitter in his mild eye, was evidently going to win as many more as he possibly could. Mrs. Rastall-Retford glowered silently. There was electricity in the air.

The son of the house led a club. Eve played a card mechanically.

“Have you no clubs, Miss Hendrie?”

Eve started, and looked at her hand.

“No,” she said.

Mrs. Rastall-Retford grunted suspiciously.

Not long ago, in Westport, Connecticut, U.S.A., a young man named Harold Sperry, a telephone worker, was boring a hole in the wall of a house with a view to passing a wire through it. He whistled joyously as he worked. He did not know that he had selected for purposes of perforation the exact spot where there lay, nestling in the brickwork, a large leaden water-pipe. The first intimation he had of that fact was when a jet of water suddenly knocked him fifteen feet into a rosebush.

As Harold felt then, so did Eve now, when, examining her hand once more to make certain that she had no clubs, she discovered the ace of that ilk peeping coyly out from behind the seven of spades.

Her face turned quite white. It is never pleasant to revoke at bridge, but to Eve just then it seemed a disaster beyond words. She looked across at her partner. Her imagination pictured the scene there would be ere long, unless⁠—

It happens every now and then that the human brain shows in a crisis an unwonted flash of speed. Eve’s did at this juncture. To her in her trouble there came a sudden idea.

She looked round the table. Mr. Rastall-Retford, having taken the last trick, had gathered it up in the introspective manner of one planning big coups, and was brooding tensely, with knit brows. His mother was frowning over her cards. She was unobserved.

She seized the opportunity. She rose from her seat, moved quickly to the side-table, and, turning her back, slipped the fatal card dexterously into the interior of a cheese sandwich.

Mrs. Rastall-Retford, absorbed, did not notice for an instant. Then she gave tongue.

“What are you doing, Miss Hendrie?”

Eve was breathing quickly.

“I⁠—I thought that Mr. Rayner might like a sandwich.”

She was at his elbow with the plate. It trembled in her hand.

“A sandwich! Kindly do not be so officious, Miss Hendrie. The idea⁠—in the middle of a hand⁠—” Her voice died away in a resentful mumble.

Peter started. He had been allowing his thoughts to wander. He looked from the sandwich to Eve and then at the sandwich again. He was puzzled. This had the aspect of being an olive-branch⁠—could it be? Could she be meaning⁠—? Or was it a subtle insult? Who could say? At any rate it was a sandwich, and he seized it, without prejudice.

“I hope at least you have had the sense to remember that Mr. Rayner is a vegetarian, Miss Hendrie,” said Mrs. Rastall-Retford. “That is not a chicken sandwich?”

“No,” said Eve; “it is not a chicken sandwich.”

Peter beamed gratefully. He raised the olive-branch, and bit into it with the energy of a starving man. And as he did so he caught Eve’s eye.

“Miss Hendrie!” cried Mrs. Rastall-Retford.

Eve started violently.

“Miss Hendrie, will you be good enough to play? The king of clubs to beat. I can’t think what’s the matter with you tonight.”

“I’m very sorry,” said Eve, and put down the nine of spades.

Mrs. Rastall-Retford glared.

“This is absurd,” she cried. “You must have the ace of clubs. If you have not got it, who has? Look through your hand again. Is it there?”

“No.”

“Then where can it be?”

“Where can it be?” echoed Peter, taking another bite.

“Why⁠—why,” said Eve, crimson, “I⁠—I⁠—have only five cards. I ought to have six.”

“Five?” said Mrs. Rastall-Retford “Nonsense! Count again. Have you dropped it on the floor?”

Mr. Rastall-Retford stooped and looked under the table.

“It is not on the floor,” he said. “I suppose it must have been missing from the pack before I dealt.”

Mrs. Rastall-Retford threw down her cards and rose ponderously. It offended her vaguely that there seemed to be nobody to blame. “I shall go to bed,” she said.

Peter stood before the fire and surveyed Eve as she sat on the sofa. They were alone in the room, Mr. Rastall-Retford having drifted silently away in the wake of his mother. Suddenly Eve began to laugh helplessly.

He shook his head at her.

“This is considerably sharper than a serpent’s tooth,” he said. “You should be fawning gratefully upon me, not laughing. Do you suppose King Charles laughed at my ancestor when he ate the despatches? However, for the first time since I have been in this house I feel as if I had had a square meal.”

Eve became suddenly serious. The smile left her face.

“Mr. Rayner, please don’t think I’m ungrateful. I couldn’t help laughing, but I can’t tell you how grateful I am. You don’t know what it would have been like if she had found out that I had revoked. I did it once before, and she kept on about it for days and days. It was awful.” She shivered. “I think you must be right, and my nerves are going.”

He nodded.

“So are you⁠—tomorrow, by the first train. I wonder how soon we can get married. Do you know anything about special licenses?”

She looked at him curiously.

“You’re very obstinate,” she said.

“Firm,” he corrected. “Firm. Could you pack tonight, do you think, and be ready for that ten-fifty tomorrow morning?”

She began to trace an intricate pattern on the floor with the point of her shoe.

“I can’t imagine why you are fond of me!” she said. “I’ve been very horrid to you.”

“Nonsense. You’ve been all that’s sweet and womanly.”

“And I want to tell you why,” she went on. “Your⁠—your sister⁠—”

“Ah, I thought as much!”

“She⁠—she saw that you seemed to be getting fond of me, and she⁠—”

“She would!”

“Said some rather horrid things that⁠—hurt,” said Eve, in a low voice.

Peter crossed over to where she sat and took her hand.

“Don’t you worry about her,” he said. “She’s not a bad sort really, but about once every six months she needs a brotherly talking-to, or she gets above herself. One is about due during the next few days.”

He stroke her hand.

“Fasting,” he said, thoughtfully, “clears and stimulates the brain. I fancy I shall be able to think out some rather special things to say to her this time.”

Disentangling Old Duggie

Doesn’t some poet or philosopher fellow say that it’s when our intentions are best that we always make the worst breaks? I can’t put my hand on the passage, but you’ll find it in Shakespeare or somewhere, I’m pretty certain.

At any rate, it’s always that way with me. And the affair of Douglas Craye is a case in point.

I had dined with Duggie (a dear old pal of mine) one night at his club, and as he was seeing me out he said: “Reggie, old top”⁠—my name’s Reggie Pepper⁠—“Reggie, old top, I’m rather worried.”

“Are you, Duggie, old pal?” I said.

“Yes, Reggie, old fellow,” he said, “I am. It’s like this. The Booles have asked me down to their place for the weekend, and I don’t know whether to go or not. You see, they have early breakfast, and besides that there’s a frightful risk of music after dinner. On the other hand, young Roderick Boole thinks he can play piquet.”

“I should go,” I said.

“But I’m not sure Roderick’s going to be there this time.”

It was a problem, and I didn’t wonder poor old Dug had looked pale and tired at dinner.

Then I had the idea which really started all the trouble.

“Why don’t you consult a palmist?” I said.

“That sounds a good idea,” said Duggie.

“Go and see Dorothea in Forty-second Street. She’s a wonder. She’ll settle it for you in a second. She’ll see from your lines that you are thinking of making a journey, and she’ll either tell you to get a move on, which will mean that Roderick will be there, or else to keep away because she sees disaster.”

“You seem to be next to the game all right.”

“I’ve been to a good many of them. You’ll like Dorothea.”

“What did you say her name was⁠—Dorothea? What do I do? Do I just walk in? Shan’t I feel a fearful chump? How much do I give her?”

“Five bucks. You’d better write and make a date.”

“All right,” said Duggie. “But I know I shall look a frightful fool.”

About a week later I ran into him between the acts at the Knickerbocker. The old boy was beaming.

“Reggie,” he said, “you did me the best turn anyone’s ever done me, sending me to Mrs. Darrell.”

“Mrs. Darrell?”

“You know. Dorothea. Her real name’s Darrell. She’s a widow. Her husband was in some regiment, and left her without a penny. It’s a frightfully pathetic story. Haven’t time to tell you now. My boy, she’s a marvel. She had hardly looked at my hand, when she said: ‘You will prosper in any venture you undertake.’ And next day, by George, I went down to the Booles’ and separated young Roderick from seventy dollars. She’s a wonderful woman. Did you ever see just that shade of hair?”

“I didn’t notice her hair.”

He gaped at me in a sort of petrified astonishment.

“You⁠—didn’t⁠—notice⁠—her⁠—hair!” he gasped.

I can’t fix the dates exactly, but it must have been about three weeks after this that I got a telegram:

“Call Madison Avenue immediately⁠—Florence Craye.”

She needn’t have signed her name. I should have known who it was from by the wording. Ever since I was a kid, Duggie’s sister Florence has oppressed me to the most fearful extent. Not that I’m the only one. Her brothers live in terror of her, I know. Especially Edwin. He’s never been able to get away from her and it’s absolutely broken his spirit. He’s a mild, hopeless sort of chump who spends all his time at home⁠—they live near Philadelphia⁠—and has never been known to come to New York. He’s writing a history of the family, or something, I believe.

You see, events have conspired, so to speak, to let Florence do pretty much as she likes with them. Originally there was old man Craye, Duggie’s father, who made a fortune out of the Soup Trust; Duggie’s elder brother Edwin; Florence; and Duggie. Mrs. Craye has been dead some years. Then came the smash. It happened through the old man. Most people, if you ask them, will tell you that he ought to be in Bloomingdale; and I’m not sure they’re not right. At any rate, one morning he came down to breakfast, lifted the first cover on the sideboard, said in a sort of despairing way, “Eggs! Eggs! Eggs! Curse all eggs!” and walked out of the room. Nobody thought much of it till about an hour afterward, when they found that he had packed a grip, left the house, and caught the train to New York. Next day they got a letter from him, saying that he was off to Europe, never to return, and that all communications were to be addressed to his lawyers. And from that day on none of them had seen him. He wrote occasionally, generally from Paris; and that was all.

Well, directly news of this got about, down swooped a series of aunts to grab the helm. They didn’t stay long. Florence had them out, one after the other, in no time. If any lingering doubt remained in their minds, don’t you know, as to who was going to be boss at home, it wasn’t her fault. Since then she has run the show.

I went to Madison Avenue. It was one of the aunts’ houses. There was no sign of the aunt when I called⁠—she had probably climbed a tree and pulled it up after her⁠—but Florence was there.

She is a tall woman with what, I believe, is called “a presence.” Her eyes are bright and black, and have a way of getting right inside you, don’t you know, and running up and down your spine. She has a deep voice. She is about ten years older than Duggie’s brother Edwin, who is six years older than Duggie.

“Good afternoon,” she said. “Sit down.”

I poured myself into a chair.

“Reginald,” she said, “what is this I hear about Douglas?”

I said I didn’t know.

“He says that you introduced him.”

“Eh?”

“To this woman⁠—this Mrs. Darrell.”

“Mrs. Darrell?”

My memory’s pretty rocky, and the name conveyed nothing to me.

She pulled out a letter.

“Yes,” she said, “Mrs. Dorothy Darrell.”

“Great Scott! Dorothea!”

Her eyes resumed their spine drill.

“Who is she?”

“Only a palmist.”

“Only a palmist!” Her voice absolutely boomed. “Well, my brother Douglas is engaged to be married to her.”

“Many happy returns of the day,” I said.

I don’t know why I said it. It wasn’t what I meant to say. I’m not sure I meant to say anything.

She glared at me. By this time I was pure jelly. I simply flowed about the chair.

“You are facetious, Reginald,” she said.

“No, no, no,” I shouted. “It slipped out. I wouldn’t be facetious for worlds.”

“I am glad. It is no laughing matter. Have you any suggestions?”

“Suggestions?”

“You don’t imagine it can be allowed to go on? The engagement must be broken, of course. But how?”

“Why don’t you tell him he mustn’t?”

“I shall naturally express my strong disapproval, but it may not be effective. When out of the reach of my personal influence, my wretched brother is self-willed to a degree.”

I saw what she meant. Good old Duggie wasn’t going to have those eyes patrolling his spine if he knew it. He meant to keep away and conduct this business by letter. There was going to be no personal interview with sister, if he had to dodge about America like a snipe.

We sat for a long time without speaking. Then I became rather subtle. I had a brainwave and saw my way to making things right for Dug and at the same time squaring myself with Florence. After all, I thought, the old boy couldn’t keep away from home for the rest of his life. He would have to go there sooner or later. And my scheme made it pleasant and easy for him.

“I’ll tell you what I should do if I were you,” I said. “I’m not sure I didn’t read some book or see some play somewhere or other where they tried it on, and it worked all right. Fellow got engaged to a girl, and the family didn’t like it, but, instead of kicking, they pretended to be tickled to pieces, and had the fellow and the girl down to visit them. And then, after the fellow had seen the girl with the home circle as a background, don’t you know, he came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t do, and broke off the engagement.”

It seemed to strike her.

“I hardly expected so sensible a suggestion from you, Reginald,” she said. “It is a very good plan. It shows that you really have a definite substratum of intelligence; and it is all the more deplorable that you should idle your way through the world as you do, when you might be performing some really useful work.”

That was Florence all over. Even when she patted you on the head, she had to do it with her knuckles.

“I will invite them down next week,” she went on. “You had better come, too.”

“It’s awfully kind of you, but the fact is⁠—”

“Next Wednesday. Take the three-forty-seven.”

I met Duggie next day. He was looking happy, but puzzled, like a man who has found a dime on the street and is wondering if there’s a string tied to it. I congratulated him on his engagement.

“Reggie,” he said, “a queer thing has happened. I feel as if I’d trodden on the last step when it wasn’t there. I’ve just had a letter from my sister Florence asking me to bring Dorothy home on Wednesday. Florence doesn’t seem to object to the idea of the engagement at all; and I’d expected that I’d have to call out the police reserves when she heard of it. I believe there’s a catch somewhere.”

I tapped him on the breastbone.

“There is, Dug,” I said, “and I’ll tell you what it is. I saw her yesterday, and I can put you next to the game. She thinks that if you see Mrs. Darrell mingling with the home circle, you’ll see flaws in her which you don’t see when you don’t see her mingling with the home circle, don’t you see? Do you see now?”

He laughed⁠—heroically, don’t you know.

“I’m afraid she’ll be disappointed. Love like mine is not dependent on environment.”

Which wasn’t bad, I thought, if it was his own.

I said goodbye to him, and toddled along rather pleased with myself. It seemed to me that I had handled his affairs in a pretty masterly manner for a chap who’s supposed to be one of the biggest chumps in New York.

Well, of course, the thing was an absolute fliver, as I ought to have guessed it would be. Whatever could have induced me to think that a fellow like poor old Dug stood a dog’s chance against a determined female like his sister Florence, I can’t imagine. It was like expecting a rabbit to put up a show with a python. From the very start there was only one possible end to the thing. To a woman like Florence, who had trained herself as tough as whalebone by years of scrapping with her father and occasional by-battles with aunts, it was as easy as killing rats with a stick.

I was sorry for Mrs. Darrell. She was a really good sort and, as a matter of fact, just the kind of wife who would have done old Duggie a bit of good. And on her own ground I shouldn’t wonder if she might not have made a fight for it. But now she hadn’t a chance. Poor old Duggie was just like so much putty in Florence’s hands when he couldn’t get away from her. You could see the sawdust trickling out of Love’s Young Dream in a steady flow.

I took Mrs. Darrell for a walk one afternoon, to see if I couldn’t cheer her up a bit, but it wasn’t much good. She hardly spoke a word till we were on our way home. Then she said with a sort of jerk: “I’m going back to New York tomorrow, Mr. Pepper.”

I suppose I ought to have pretended to be surprised, but I couldn’t work it.

“I’m afraid you’ve had a bad time,” I said. “I’m very sorry.”

She laughed.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s nice of you to be sympathetic instead of tactful. You’re rather a dear, Mr. Pepper.”

I hadn’t any remarks to make. I whacked at a nettle with my stick.

“I shall break off my engagement after dinner, so that Douglas can have a good night’s rest. I’m afraid he has been brooding on the future a good deal. It will be a great relief to him.”

“Oh, no,” I said.

“Oh, yes. I know exactly how he feels. He thought he could carry me off, but he finds he overestimated his powers. He has remembered that he is a Craye. I imagine that the fact has been pointed out to him.”

“If you ask my opinion,” I said⁠—I was feeling pretty sore about it⁠—“that woman Florence is an absolute cat.”

“My dear Mr. Pepper, I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking your opinion on such a delicate subject. But I’m glad to have it. Thank you very much. Do I strike you as a vindictive woman, Mr. Pepper?”

“I don’t think you do,” I said.

“By nature I don’t think I am. But I’m feeling a little vindictive just at present.”

She stopped suddenly.

“I don’t know why I’m boring you like this, Mr. Pepper,” she said. “For goodness’ sake let’s be cheerful. Say something bright.”

I was going to take a whirl at it, but she started in to talk, and talked all the rest of the way. She seemed to have cheered up a whole lot.

She left next day. I gather she fired Duggie as per schedule, for the old boy looked distinctly brighter, and Florence wore an off-duty expression and was quite decently civil. Mrs. Darrell bore up all right. She avoided Duggie, of course, and put in most of the time talking to Edwin. He evidently appreciated it, for I had never seen him look so nearly happy before.

I went back to New York directly afterward, and I hadn’t been there much more than a week when a most remarkably queer thing happened. Turning in at Hammerstein’s for half an hour one evening, whom should I meet but brother Edwin, quite fairly festive, with a fat cigar in his mouth. “Hello, Reggie,” he said.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“I had to come up to New York to look up a life of Hilary de Craye at the library. I believe Mister Man was a sort of ancestor.”

“This isn’t the library.”

“I was beginning to guess as much. The difference is subtle but well marked.”

It struck me that there was another difference that was subtle but well marked, and that was the difference between the Edwin I’d left messing about over his family history a week before and the jovial rounder who was blowing smoke in my face now.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “the library would be all the better for a little of this sort of thing. It’s too conservative. That’s what’s the trouble with the library. What’s the matter with having a crosstalk team and a few performing dogs there? It would brighten the place up and attract custom. Reggie, you’re looking fatigued. I’ve heard there’s a place somewhere in this city, if you can only find it, expressly designed for supplying first-aid to the fatigued. Let’s go and look for it.”

I’m not given to thinking much as a rule, but I couldn’t help pondering over this meeting with Edwin. It’s hard to make you see the remarkableness of the whole thing, for, of course, if you look at it, in one way, there’s nothing so record-breaking in smoking a cigar and drinking a highball. But then you have never seen Edwin. There are degrees in everything, don’t you know. For Edwin to behave as he did with me that night was simply nothing more nor less than a frightful outburst, and it disturbed me. Not that I cared what Edwin did, as a rule, but I couldn’t help feeling a sort of what-d’you-call-it⁠—a presentiment, that somehow, in some way I didn’t understand, I was mixed up in it, or was soon going to be. I think the whole fearful family had got on my nerves to such an extent that the mere sight of any of them made me jumpy.

And, by George, I was perfectly right, don’t you know. In a day or two along came the usual telegram from Florence, telling me to come to Madison Avenue.

The mere idea of Madison Avenue was beginning to give me that tired feeling, and I made up my mind I wouldn’t go near the place. But of course I did. When it came to the point, I simply hadn’t the common manly courage to keep away.

Florence was there as before.

“Reginald,” she said, “I think I shall go raving mad.”

This struck me as a mighty happy solution of everybody’s troubles, but I felt it was too good to be true.

“Over a week ago,” she went on, “my brother Edwin came up to New York to consult a book at the library. I anticipated that this would occupy perhaps an afternoon, and was expecting him back by an early train next day. He did not arrive. He sent an incoherent telegram. But even then I suspected nothing.” She paused. “Yesterday morning,” she said, “I had a letter from my aunt Augusta.”

She paused again. She seemed to think I ought to be impressed.

Her eyes tied a bowknot in my spine.

“Let me read you her letter. No, I will tell you its contents. Aunt Augusta had seen Edwin lunching at the Waldorf with a creature.”

“A what?”

“My aunt described her. Her hair was of a curious dull bronze tint.”

“Your aunt’s?”

“The woman’s. It was then that I began to suspect. How many women with dull bronze hair does Edwin know?”

“Great Scott! Why ask me?”

I had got used to being treated as a sort of “Hey, Bill!” by Florence, but I was darned if I was going to be expected to be an encyclopedia as well.

“One,” she said. “That appalling Darrell woman.”

She drew a deep breath.

“Yesterday evening,” she said, “I saw them together in a taximeter cab. They were obviously on their way to some theatre.”

She fixed me with her eye.

“Reginald,” she said, “you must go and see her the first thing tomorrow.”

“What!” I cried. “Me? Why? Why me?”

“Because you are responsible for the whole affair. You introduced Douglas to her. You suggested that he should bring her home. Go to her tomorrow and ascertain her intentions.”

“But⁠—”

“The very first thing.”

“But wouldn’t it be better to have a talk with Edwin?”

“I have made every endeavour to see Edwin, but he deliberately avoids me. His answers to my telegrams are willfully evasive.”

There was no doubt that Edwin had effected a thorough bolt. He was having quite a pleasant little vacation: Two Weeks in Sunny New York. And from what I’d seen of him, he seemed to be thriving on it. I didn’t wonder Florence had got rather anxious. She’d have been more anxious if she had seen him when I did. He’d got a sort of “New-York-is-so-bracing” look about him, which meant a whole heap of trouble before he trotted back to the fold.

Well, I started off to interview Mrs. Darrell, and, believe me, I didn’t like the prospect. I think they ought to train A.D.T. messengers to do this sort of thing. I found her alone. The rush hour of clients hadn’t begun.

“How do you do, Mr. Pepper?” she said. “How nice of you to call.”

Very friendly, and all that. It made the situation darned difficult for a fellow, if you see what I mean.

“Say,” I said. “What about it, don’t you know?”

“I certainly don’t,” she said. “What ought I to know about what?”

“Well, about Edwin⁠—Edwin Craye,” I said.

She smiled.

“Oh! So you’re an ambassador, Mr. Pepper?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I did come to see if I could find out how things were running. What’s going to happen?”

“Are you consulting me professionally? If so, you must show me your hand. Or perhaps you would rather I showed you mine?”

It was subtle, but I got on to it after a bit.

“Yes,” I said, “I wish you would.”

“Very well. Do you remember a conversation we had, Mr. Pepper, my last afternoon at the Crayes’? We came to the conclusion that I was rather a vindictive woman.”

“By George! You’re stringing old Edwin so as to put one over on Florence?”

She flushed a little.

“How very direct you are, Mr. Pepper! How do you know I’m not very fond of Mr. Craye? At any rate, I’m very sorry for him.”

“He’s such a chump.”

“But he’s improving every day. Have you seen him? You must notice the difference?”

“There is a difference.”

“He only wanted taking out of himself. I think he found his sister Florence’s influence a little oppressive sometimes.”

“No, but see here,” I said, “are you going to marry him?”

“I’m only a palmist. I don’t pretend to be a clairvoyant. A marriage may be indicated in Mr. Craye’s hand, but I couldn’t say without looking at it.”

“But I shall have to tell her something definite, or she won’t give me a moment’s peace.”

“Tell her her brother is of age. Surely that’s definite enough?”

And I couldn’t get any more out of her. I went back to Florence and reported. She got pretty excited about it.

“Oh, if I were a man!” she said.

I didn’t see how that would have helped. I said so.

“I’d go straight to Edwin and drag him away. He is staying at his club. If I were a man I could go in and find him⁠—”

“Not if you weren’t a member,” I said.

“⁠—And tell him what I thought of his conduct. As I’m only a woman, I have to wait in the hall while a deceitful small boy pretends to go and look for him.”

It had never struck me before what a splendid institution a club was. Only a few days back I’d been thinking that the subscription to mine was a bit steep. But now I saw that the place earned every cent of the money.

“Have you no influence with him, Reginald?”

I said I didn’t think I had. She called me something. Invertebrate, or something. I didn’t catch it.

“Then there’s only one thing to do. You must find my father and tell him all. Perhaps you may rouse him to a sense of what is right. You may make him remember that he has duties as a parent.”

I thought it far more likely that I should make him remember that he had a foot. I hadn’t a very vivid recollection of old man Craye. I was quite a kid when he made his great speech on the Egg Question and beat it for Europe⁠—but what I did recollect didn’t encourage me to go and chat with him about the duties of a parent.

As I remember him, he was a rather large man with elephantiasis of the temper. I distinctly recalled one occasion when I was spending a school vacation at his home, and he found me trying to shave old Duggie, then a kid of fourteen, with his razor.

“I shouldn’t be able to find him,” I said.

“You can get his address from his lawyers.”

“He may be at the North Pole.”

“Then you must go to the North Pole.”

“But say⁠—!”

“Reginald!”

“Oh, all right.”

I knew just what would happen. Parbury and Stevens, the lawyers, simply looked at me as if I had been caught snatching bags. At least, Stevens did. And Parbury would have done it, too, only he had been dead a good time. Finally, after drinking me in for about a quarter of an hour, Stevens said that if I desired to address a communication to his client, care of this office, it would be duly forwarded. Good morning. Good morning. Anything further? No, thanks. Good morning. Good morning.

I handed the glad news on to Florence and left her to do what she liked about it. She went down and interviewed Stevens. I suppose he’d had experience of her. At any rate, he didn’t argue. He yielded up the address in level time. Old man Craye was living in Paris, but was to arrive in New York that night, and would doubtless be at his club.

It was the same club where Edwin was hiding from Florence. I pointed this out to her.

“There’s no need for me to butt in after all,” I said. “He’ll meet Edwin there, and they can fight it out in the smoking room. You’ve only to drop him a line explaining the facts.”

“I shall certainly communicate with him in writing, but, nevertheless, you must see him. I cannot explain everything in a letter.”

“But doesn’t it strike you that he may think it pretty bad gall⁠—impertinence, don’t you know, for a comparative stranger like me to be tackling a delicate family affair like this?”

“You will explain that you are acting for me.”

“It wouldn’t be better if old Duggie went along instead?”

“I wish you to go, Reginald.”

Well, of course, it was all right, don’t you know, but I was losing several pounds a day over the business. I was getting so light that I felt that, when the old man kicked me, I should just soar up to the ceiling like an air balloon.

The club was one of those large clubs that look like prisons. I used to go there to lunch with my uncle, the one who left me his money, and I always hated the place. It was one of those clubs that are all red leather and hushed whispers.

I’m bound to say, though, there wasn’t much hushed whispering when I started my interview with old man Craye. His voice was one of my childhood’s recollections.

He was most extraordinarily like Florence. He had just the same eyes. I felt boneless from the start.

“Good morning,” I said.

“What?” he said. “Speak up. Don’t mumble.”

I hadn’t known he was deaf. The last time we’d had any conversation⁠—on the subject of razors⁠—he had done all the talking. This seemed to me to put the lid on it.

“I only said ‘Good morning,’ ” I shouted.

“Good what? Speak up. I believe you’re sucking candy. Oh, good morning? I remember you now. You’re the boy who spoiled my razor.”

I didn’t half like this reopening of old wounds. I hurried on.

“I came about Edwin,” I said.

“Who?”

“Edwin. Your son.”

“What about him?”

“Florence told me to see you.”

“Who?”

“Florence. Your daughter.”

“What about her?”

All this vaudeville team business, mind you, as if we were bellowing at each other across the street. All round the room you could see old gentlemen shooting out of their chairs like rockets and dashing off at a gallop to write to the governing board about it. Thousands of waiters had appeared from nowhere, and were hanging about, dusting table legs. If ever a business wanted to be discussed privately, this seemed to me to be it. And it was just about as private as a conversation through megaphones in Longacre Square.

“Didn’t she write to you?”

“I got a letter from her. I tore it up. I didn’t read it.”

Pleasant, was it not? It was not. I began to understand what a shipwrecked sailor must feel when he finds there’s something gone wrong with the life belt.

I thought I might as well get to the point and get it over.

“Edwin’s going to marry a palmist,” I said.

“Who the devil’s Harry?”

“Not Harry. Marry. He’s going to marry a palmist.”

About four hundred waiters noticed a speck of dust on an ash tray at the table next to ours, and swooped down on it.

“Edwin is going to marry a palmist?”

“Yes.”

“She must be mad. Hasn’t she seen Edwin?”

And just then who should stroll in but Edwin himself. I sighted him and gave him a hail.

He curveted up to us. It was amazing the way the fellow had altered. He looked like a two-year-old. Flower in his buttonhole and a six-inch grin, and all that. The old man seemed surprised, too. I didn’t wonder. The Edwin he remembered was a pretty different kind of a fellow.

“Hullo, dad,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here. Have a cigarette?”

He shoved out his case. Old man Craye helped himself in a sort of dazed way.

“You are Edwin?” he said slowly.

I began to sidle out. They didn’t notice me. They had moved to a settee, and Edwin seemed to be telling his father a funny story.

At least, he was talking and grinning, and the old man was making a noise like distant thunder, which I supposed was his way of chuckling. I slid out and left them.

Some days later Duggie called on me. The old boy was looking scared.

“Reggie,” he said, “what do doctors call it when you think you see things when you don’t? Hal-something. I’ve got it, whatever it is. It’s sometimes caused by overwork. But it can’t be that with me, because I’ve not been doing any work. You don’t think my brain’s going or anything like that, do you?”

“What do you mean? What’s been happening?”

“It’s like being haunted. I read a story somewhere of a fellow who kept thinking he saw a battleship bearing down on him. I’ve got it, too. Four times in the last three days I could have sworn I saw my father and Edwin. I saw them as plainly as I see you. And, of course, Edwin’s at home and father’s in Europe somewhere. Do you think it’s some sort of a warning? Do you think I’m going to die?”

“It’s all right, old top,” I said. “As a matter of fact, they are both in New York just now.”

“You don’t mean that? Great Scot, what a relief! But, Reggie, old fox, it couldn’t have been them really. The last time was at Louis Martin’s, and the fellow I mistook for Edwin was dancing all by himself in the middle of the floor.”

I admitted it was pretty queer.

I was away for a few days after that in the country. When I got back I found a pile of telegrams waiting for me. They were all from Florence, and they all wanted me to go to Madison Avenue. The last of the batch, which had arrived that morning, was so peremptory that I felt as if something had bitten me when I read it.

For a moment I admit I hung back. Then I rallied. There are times in a man’s life when he has got to show a flash of the old bulldog pluck, don’t you know, if he wants to preserve his self-respect. I did then. My grip was still unpacked. I told my man to put it on a cab. And in about two ticks I was bowling off to the club. I left for England next day by the Lusitania.

About three weeks later I fetched up at Nice. You can’t walk far at Nice without bumping into a casino. The one I hit my first evening was the Casino Municipale in the Place Massina. It looked more or less of a Home From Home, so I strolled in.

There was quite a crowd round the boule tables, and I squashed in. And when I’d worked through into the front rank I happened to look down the table, and there was Edwin, with a green Tyrolese hat hanging over one ear, clutching out for a lot of five-franc pieces which the croupier was steering toward him at the end of a rake.

I was feeling lonesome, for I knew no one in the place, so I edged round in his direction.

Halfway there I heard my name called, and there was Mrs. Darrell.

I saw the whole thing in a flash. Old man Craye hadn’t done a thing to prevent it⁠—apart from being eccentric, he was probably glad that Edwin had had the sense to pick out anybody half as good a sort⁠—and the marriage had taken place. And here they were on their honeymoon.

I wondered what Florence was thinking of it.

“Well, well, well, here we all are,” I said. “I’ve just seen Edwin. He seems to be winning.”

“Dear boy!” she said. “He does enjoy it so. I think he gets so much more out of life than he used to, don’t you?”

“Sure thing. May I wish you happiness? Why didn’t you let me know and collect the silver fish-slice?”

“Thank you so much, Mr. Pepper. I did write to you, but I suppose you never got the letter.”

“Mr. Craye didn’t make any objections, then?”

“On the contrary. He was more in favor of the marriage than anyone.”

“And I’ll tell you why,” I said. “I’m rather a chump, you know, but I observe things. I bet he was most frightfully grateful to you for taking Edwin in hand and making him human.”

“Why, you’re wonderful, Mr. Pepper. That is exactly what he said himself. It was that that first made us friends.”

“And⁠—er⁠—Florence?”

She sighed.

“I’m afraid Florence has taken the thing a little badly. But I hope to win her over in time. I want all my children to love me.”

“All your what?”

“I think of them as my children, you see, Mr. Pepper. I adopted them as my own when I married their father. Did you think I had married Edwin? What a funny mistake. I am very fond of Edwin, but not in that way. No, I married Mr. Craye. We left him at our villa tonight, as he had some letters to get off. You must come and see us, Mr. Pepper. I always feel that it was you who brought us together, you know. I wonder if you will be seeing Florence when you get back? Will you give her my very best love?”

Three from Dunsterville

Once upon a time there was erected in Longacre Square, New York, a large white statue, labelled “Our City,” the figure of a woman in Grecian robes holding aloft a shield. Critical citizens objected to it for various reasons, but its real fault was that its symbolism was faulty. The sculptor should have represented New York as a conjuror in evening dress, smiling blandly as he changed a rabbit into a bowl of goldfish. For that, above all else, is New York’s speciality. It changes.

Between 1 May, when she stepped off the train, and 16 May, when she received Eddy Moore’s letter containing the information that he had found her a post as stenographer in the office of Joe Rendal, it had changed Mary Hill quite remarkably.

Mary was from Dunsterville, which is in Canada. Emigrations from Dunsterville were rare. It is a somnolent town; and, as a rule, young men born there follow in their father’s footsteps, working on the paternal farm or helping in the paternal store. Occasionally a daring spirit will break away, but seldom farther than Montreal. Two only of the younger generation, Joe Rendal and Eddy Moore, had set out to make their fortunes in New York; and both, despite the gloomy prophecies of the village sages, had prospered.

Mary, third and last emigrant, did not aspire to such heights. All she demanded from New York for the present was that it should pay her a living wage, and to that end, having studied by stealth typewriting and shorthand, she had taken the plunge, thrilling with excitement and the romance of things; and New York had looked at her, raised its eyebrows, and looked away again. If every city has a voice, New York’s at that moment had said “Huh!” This had damped Mary. She saw that there were going to be obstacles. For one thing, she had depended so greatly on Eddy Moore, and he had failed her. Three years before, at a church festival, he had stated specifically that he would die for her. Perhaps he was still willing to do that⁠—she had not inquired⁠—but, at any rate, he did not see his way to employing her as a secretary. He had been very nice about it. He had smiled kindly, taken her address, and said he would do what he could, and had then hurried off to meet a man at lunch. But he had not given her a position. And as the days went by and she found no employment, and her little stock of money dwindled, and no word came from Eddy, New York got to work and changed her outlook on things wonderfully. What had seemed romantic became merely frightening. What had been exciting gave her a feeling of dazed helplessness.

But it was not until Eddy’s letter came that she realized the completeness of the change. On 1 May she would have thanked Eddy politely for his trouble, adding, however, that she would really prefer not to meet poor Joe again. On 16 May she welcomed him as something Heaven-sent. The fact that she was to be employed outweighed a thousandfold the fact that her employer was to be Joe.

It was not that she disliked Joe. She was sorry for him.

She remembered Joe, a silent, shambling youth, all hands, feet, and shyness, who had spent most of his spare time twisting his fingers and staring adoringly at her from afar. The opinion of those in the social whirl of Dunsterville had been that it was his hopeless passion for her that had made him fly to New York. It would be embarrassing meeting him again. It would require tact to discourage his silent worshipping without wounding him more deeply. She hated hurting people.

But, even at the cost of that, she must accept the post. To refuse meant ignominious retreat to Dunsterville, and from that her pride revolted. She must revisit Dunsterville in triumph or not at all.

Joe Rendal’s office was in the heart of the financial district, situated about halfway up a building that, to Mary, reared amidst the less impressive architecture of her hometown, seemed to reach nearly to the sky. A proud-looking office-boy, apparently baffled and mortified by the information that she had an appointment, took her name, and she sat down, filled with a fine mixed assortment of emotions, to wait.

For the first time since her arrival in New York she felt almost easy in her mind. New York, with its shoving, jostling, hurrying crowds; a giant fowl-run, full of human fowls scurrying to and fro; clucking, ever on the lookout for some desired morsel, and ever ready to swoop down and snatch it from its temporary possessor, had numbed her. But now she felt a slackening of the strain. New York might be too much for her, but she could cope with Joe.

The haughty boy returned. Mr. Rendal was disengaged. She rose and went into an inner room, where a big man was seated at a desk.

It was Joe. There was no doubt about that. But it was not the Joe she remembered, he of the twisted ringers and silent stare. In his case, New York had conjured effectively. He was better-looking, better-dressed, improved in every respect. In the old days one had noticed the hands and feet and deduced the presence of Joe somewhere in the background. Now they were merely adjuncts. It was with a rush of indignation that Mary found herself bucolic and awkward. Awkward with Joe! It was an outrage.

His manner heightened the feeling. If he had given the least sign of embarrassment she might have softened towards him. He showed no embarrassment whatever. He was very much at his ease. He was cheerful. He was even flippant.

“Welcome to our beautiful little city,” he said.

Mary was filled with a helpless anger. What right had he to ignore the past in this way, to behave as if her presence had never reduced him to pulp?

“Won’t you sit down?” he went on. “It’s splendid, seeing you again, Mary. You’re looking very well. How long have you been in New York? Eddy tells me you want to be taken on as a secretary. As it happens, there is a vacancy for just that in this office. A big, wide vacancy, left by a lady who departed yesterday in a shower of burning words and hairpins. She said she would never return, and between ourselves, that was the right guess. Would you mind letting me see what you can do? Will you take this letter down?”

Certainly there was something compelling about this new Joe. Mary took the pencil and pad which he offered⁠—and she took them meekly. Until this moment she had always been astonished by the reports which filtered through to Dunsterville of his success in the big city. Of course, nobody had ever doubted his perseverance; but it takes something more than perseverance to fight New York fairly and squarely, and win. And Joe had that something. He had force. He was sure of himself.

“Read it please,” he said, when he had finished dictating. “Yes, that’s all right. You’ll do.”

For a moment Mary was on the point of refusing. A mad desire gripped her to assert herself, to make plain her resentment at this revolt of the serf. Then she thought of those scuttling, clucking crowds, and her heart failed her.

“Thank you,” she said, in a small voice.

As she spoke the door opened.

“Well, well, well!” said Joe. “Here we all are! Come in, Eddy. Mary has just been showing me what she can do.”

If time had done much for Joe, it had done more for his fellow-emigrant, Eddy Moore. He had always been good-looking and⁠—according to local standards⁠—presentable. Tall, slim, with dark eyes that made you catch your breath when they looked into yours, and a ready flow of speech, he had been Dunsterville’s prize exhibit. And here he was with all his excellence heightened and accentuated by the polish of the city. He had filled out. His clothes were wonderful. And his voice, when he spoke, had just that same musical quality.

“So you and Joe have fixed it up? Capital! Shall we all go and lunch somewhere?”

“Got an appointment,” said Joe. “I’m late already. Be here at two sharp, Mary.” He took up his hat and went out.

The effect of Eddy’s suavity had been to make Mary forget the position in which she now stood to Joe. Eddy had created for the moment quite an old-time atmosphere of good fellowship. She hated Joe for shattering this and reminding her that she was his employee. Her quick flush was not lost on Eddy.

“Dear old Joe is a little abrupt sometimes,” he said. “But⁠—”

“He’s a pig!” said Mary, defiantly.

“But you mustn’t mind it. New York makes men like that.”

“It hasn’t made you⁠—not to me, at any rate. Oh, Eddy,” she cried, impulsively, “I’m frightened. I wish I had never come here. You’re the only thing in this whole city that isn’t hateful.”

“Poor little girl!” he said. “Never mind. Let me take you and give you some lunch. Come along.”

Eddy was soothing. There was no doubt of that. He stayed her with minced chicken and comforted her with soft shelled crab. His voice was a lullaby, lulling her Joe-harassed nerves to rest.

They discussed the dear old days. A carper might have said that Eddy was the least bit vague on the subject of the dear old days. A carper might have pointed out that the discussion of the dear old days, when you came to analyse it, was practically a monologue on Mary’s part, punctuated with musical “Yes, yes’s” from her companion. But who cares what carpers think? Mary herself had no fault to find. In the roar of New York Dunsterville had suddenly become very dear to her, and she found in Eddy a sympathetic soul to whom she could open her heart.

“Do you remember the old school, Eddy, and how you and I used to walk there together, you carrying my dinner-basket and helping me over the fences?”

“Yes, yes.”

“And we’d gather hickory-nuts and persimmons?”

“Persimmons, yes,” murmured Eddy.

“Do you remember the prizes the teacher gave the one who got best marks in the spelling class? And the treats at Christmas, when we all got twelve sticks of striped peppermint candy? And drawing the water out of the well in that old wooden bucket in the winter, and pouring it out in the playground and skating on it when it froze? And wasn’t it cold in the winter, too! Do you remember the stove in the schoolroom? How we used to crowd round it!”

“The stove, yes,” said Eddy, dreamily. “Ah, yes, the stove. Yes, yes. Those were the dear old days!” Mary leaned her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands, and looked across at him with sparkling eyes.

“Oh, Eddy,” she said, “you don’t know how nice it is to meet someone who remembers all about those old times! I felt a hundred million miles from Dunsterville before I saw you, and I was homesick. But now it’s all different.”

“Poor little Mary!”

“Do you remember⁠—?”

He glanced at his watch with some haste.

“It’s two o’clock,” he said. “I think we should be going.”

Mary’s face fell.

“Back to that pig, Joe! I hate him. And I’ll show him that I do!”

Eddy looked almost alarmed.

“I⁠—I shouldn’t do that,” he said. “I don’t think I should do that. It’s only his manner at first. You’ll get to like him better. He’s an awfully good fellow really, Joe. And if you⁠—er⁠—quarrelled with him you might find it hard⁠—what I mean is, it’s not so easy to pick up jobs in New York, I shouldn’t like to think of you, Mary,” he added, tenderly, “hunting for a job⁠—tired⁠—perhaps hungry⁠—”

Mary’s eyes filled with tears.

“How good you are, Eddy!” she said. “And I’m horrid, grumbling when I ought to be thanking you for getting me the place. I’ll be nice to him⁠—if I can⁠—as nice as I can.”

“That’s right. Do try. And we shall be seeing quite a lot of each other. We must often lunch together.”

Mary reentered the office not without some trepidation. Two hours ago it would have seemed absurd to be frightened of Joe, but Eddy had brought it home to her again how completely she was dependent on her former serf’s goodwill. And he had told her to be back at two sharp, and it was now nearly a quarter past.

The outer office was empty. She went on into the inner room.

She had speculated as she went on Joe’s probable attitude. She had pictured him as annoyed, even rude. What she was not prepared for was to find him on all fours, grunting and rooting about in a pile of papers. She stopped short.

“What are you doing?” she gasped.

“I can’t think what you meant,” he said. “There must be some mistake. I’m not even a passable pig. I couldn’t deceive a novice.”

He rose and dusted his knees.

“Yet you seemed absolutely certain in the restaurant just now. Did you notice that you were sitting near to a sort of jungle of potted palms? I was lunching immediately on the other side of the forest.”

Mary drew herself up and fixed him with an eye that shone with rage and scorn.

“Eavesdropper!” she cried.

“Not guilty,” he said, cheerfully. “I hadn’t a notion that you were there till you shouted, ‘That pig Joe, I hate him!’ and almost directly afterwards I left.”

“I did not shout.”

“My dear girl, you cracked a wineglass at my table. The man I was lunching with jumped clean out of his seat and swallowed his cigar. You ought to be more careful!”

Mary bit her lip.

“And now, I suppose, you are going to dismiss me?”

“Dismiss you? Not much. The thing has simply confirmed my high opinion of your qualifications. The ideal secretary must have two qualities: she must be able to sec. and she must think her employer a pig. You fill the bill. Would you mind taking down this letter?”

Life was very swift and stimulating for Mary during the early days of her professional career. The inner workings of a busy broker’s office are always interesting to the stranger. She had never understood how business men made their money, and she did not understand now; but it did not take her long to see that if they were all like Joe Rendal they earned it. There were days of comparative calm. There were days that were busy. And there were days that packed into the space of a few hours the concentrated essence of a music-hall knockabout sketch, an earthquake, a football scrummage, and the rush-hour on the Tube; when the office was full of shouting men, when strange figures dived in and out and banged doors like characters in an old farce, and Harold, the proud office-boy, lost his air of being on the point of lunching with a duke at the club and perspired like one of the proletariat. On these occasions you could not help admiring Joe, even if you hated him. When a man is doing his own job well, it is impossible not to admire him. And Joe did his job well, superlatively well. He was everywhere. Where others trotted, he sprang. Where others raised their voices, he yelled. Where others were in two places at once, he was in three and moving towards a fourth.

These upheavals had the effect on Mary of making her feel curiously linked to the firm. On ordinary days work was work, but on these occasions of storm and stress it was a fight, and she looked on every member of the little band grouped under the banner of J. Rendal as a brother-in-arms. For Joe, while the battle raged, she would have done anything. Her resentment at being under his orders vanished completely. He was her captain, and she a mere unit in the firing line. It was a privilege to do what she was told. And if the order came sharp and abrupt, that only meant that the fighting was fierce and that she was all the more fortunate in being in a position to be of service.

The reaction would come with the end of the fight. Her private hostilities began when the firm’s ceased. She became an ordinary individual again, and so did Joe. And to Joe, as an ordinary individual, she objected. There was an indefinable something in his manner which jarred on her. She came to the conclusion that it was principally his insufferable good-humour. If only he would lose his temper with her now and then, she felt he would be bearable. He lost it with others. Why not with her? Because, she told herself bitterly, he wanted to show her that she mattered so little to him that it was not worth while quarrelling with her; because he wanted to put her in the wrong, to be superior. She had a perfect right to hate a man who treated her in that way.

She compared him, to his disadvantage, with Eddy. Eddy, during these days, continued to be more and more of a comfort. It rather surprised her that he found so much time to devote to her. When she had first called on him, on her arrival in the city, he had given her the impression⁠—more, she admitted, by his manner than his words⁠—that she was not wanted. He had shown no disposition to seek her company. But now he seemed always to be on hand. To take her out to lunch appeared to be his chief hobby.

One afternoon Joe commented on it, with that air of suppressing an indulgent smile which Mary found so trying.

“I saw you and Eddy at Stephano’s just now,” he said, between sentences of a letter which he was dictating. “You’re seeing a great deal of Eddy, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Mary. “He’s very kind. He knows I’m lonely.” She paused. “He hasn’t forgotten the old days,” she said, defiantly.

Joe nodded.

“Good old Eddy!” he said.

There was nothing in the words to make Mary fire up, but much in the way they were spoken, and she fired up accordingly.

“What do you mean?” she cried.

“Mean?” queried Joe.

“You’re hinting at something. If you have anything to say against Eddy, why don’t you say it straight out?”

“It’s a good working rule in life never to say anything straight out. Speaking in parables, I will observe that, if America was a monarchy instead of a republic and people here had titles, Eddy would be a certainty for first Earl of Pearl Street.”

Dignity fought with curiosity in Mary for a moment. The latter won.

“I don’t know what you mean! Why Pearl Street?”

“Go and have a look at it.”

Dignity recovered its ground. Mary tossed her head.

“We are wasting a great deal of time,” she said, coldly. “Shall I take down the rest of this letter?”

“Great idea!” said Joe, indulgently. “Do.”

A policeman, brooding on life in the neighbourhood of City Hall Park and Broadway that evening, awoke with a start from his meditations to find himself being addressed by a young lady. The young lady had large grey eyes and a slim figure. She appealed to the aesthetic taste of the policeman.

“Hold to me, lady,” he said, with gallant alacrity. “I’ll see yez acrost.”

“Thank you, I don’t want to cross,” she said. “Officer!”

The policeman rather liked being called “Officer.”

“Ma’am?” he beamed.

“Officer, do you know a street called Pearl Street?”

“I do that, ma’am.”

She hesitated. “What sort of street is it?”

The policeman searched in his mind for a neat definition.

“Darned crooked, miss,” he said.

He then proceeded to point the way, but the lady had gone.

It was a bomb in a blue dress that Joe found waiting for him at the office next morning. He surveyed it in silence, then raised his hands over his head.

“Don’t shoot,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

“What right had you to say that about Eddy? You know what I mean⁠—about Pearl Street.”

Joe laughed.

“Did you take a look at Pearl Street?”

Mary’s anger blazed out.

“I didn’t think you could be so mean and cowardly,” she cried. “You ought to be ashamed to talk about people behind their backs, when⁠—when⁠—besides, if he’s what you say, how did it happen that you engaged me on his recommendation?”

He looked at her for an instant without replying. “I’d have engaged you,” he said, “on the recommendation of a syndicate of forgers and three-card-trick men.”

He stood fingering a pile of papers on the desk.

“Eddy isn’t the only person who remembers the old days, Mary,” he said slowly.

She looked at him, surprised. There was a note in his voice that she had not heard before. She was conscious of a curious embarrassment and a subtler feeling which she could not analyse. But before she could speak, Harold, the office-boy, entered the room with a card, and the conversation was swept away on a tidal wave of work.

Joe made no attempt to resume it. That morning happened to be one of the earthquake, knockabout-sketch mornings, and conversation, what there was of it, consisted of brief, strenuous remarks of a purely business nature.

But at intervals during the day Mary found herself returning to his words. Their effect on her mind puzzled her. It seemed to her that somehow they caused things to alter their perspective. In some way Joe had become more human. She still refused to believe that Eddy was not all that was chivalrous and noble, but her anger against Joe for his insinuations had given way to a feeling of regret that he should have made them. She ceased to look on him as something wantonly malevolent, a Thersites recklessly slandering his betters. She felt that there must have been a misunderstanding somewhere and was sorry for it.

Thinking it over, she made up her mind that it was for her to remove this misunderstanding. The days which followed strengthened the decision; for the improvement in Joe was steadily maintained. The indefinable something in his manner which had so irritated her had vanished. It had been, when it had existed, so nebulous that words were not needed to eliminate it. Indeed, even now she could not say exactly in what it had consisted. She only knew that the atmosphere had changed. Without a word spoken on either side it seemed that peace had been established between them, and it amazed her what a difference it made. She was soothed and happy, and kindly disposed to all men, and every day felt more strongly the necessity of convincing Joe and Eddy of each other’s merits, or, rather, of convincing Joe, for Eddy, she admitted, always spoke most generously of the other.

For a week Eddy did not appear at the office. On the eighth day, however, he rang her up on the telephone, and invited her to lunch.

Later in the morning Joe happened to ask her out to lunch.

“I’m so sorry,” said Mary; “I’ve just promised Eddy. He wants me to meet him at Stephano’s, but⁠—” She hesitated. “Why shouldn’t we all lunch together?” she went on, impulsively.

She hurried on. This was her opening, but she felt nervous. The subject of Eddy had not come up between them since that memorable conversation a week before, and she was uncertain of her ground.

“I wish you liked Eddy, Joe,” she said. “He’s very fond of you, and it seems such a shame that⁠—I mean⁠—we’re all from the same old town, and⁠—oh, I know I put it badly, but⁠—”

“I think you put it very well,” said Joe; “and if I could like a man to order I’d do it to oblige you. But⁠—well, I’m not going to keep harping on it. Perhaps you’ll see through Eddy yourself one of these days.”

A sense of the hopelessness of her task oppressed Mary. She put on her hat without replying, and turned to go.

At the door some impulse caused her to glance back, and as she did so she met his eye, and stood staring. He was looking at her as she had so often seen him look three years before in Dunsterville⁠—humbly, appealingly, hungrily.

He took a step forward. A sort of panic seized her. Her fingers were on the door-handle. She turned it, and the next moment was outside.

She walked slowly down the street. She felt shaken. She had believed so thoroughly that his love for her had vanished with his shyness and awkwardness in the struggle for success in New York. His words, his manner⁠—everything had pointed to that. And now⁠—it was as if those three years had not been. Nothing had altered, unless it were⁠—herself.

Had she altered? Her mind was in a whirl. This thing had affected her like some physical shock. The crowds and noises of the street bewildered her. If only she could get away from them and think quietly⁠—

And then she heard her name spoken, and looked round, to see Eddy.

“Glad you could come,” he said. “I’ve something I want to talk to you about. It’ll be quiet at Stephano’s.”

She noticed, almost unconsciously, that he seemed nervous. He was unwontedly silent. She was glad of it. It helped her to think.

He gave the waiter an order, and became silent again, drumming with his fingers on the cloth. He hardly spoke till the meal was over and the coffee was on the table. Then he leant forward.

“Mary,” he said, “we’ve always been pretty good friends, haven’t we?”

His dark eyes were looking into hers. There was an expression in them that was strange to her. He smiled, but it seemed to Mary that there was effort behind the smile.

“Of course we have, Eddy,” she said. He touched her hand.

“Dear little Mary!” he said, softly.

He paused for a moment.

“Mary,” he went on, “you would like to do me a good turn? You would, wouldn’t you, Mary?”

“Why, Eddy, of course!”

He touched her hand again. This time, somehow, the action grated on her. Before, it had seemed impulsive, a mere spontaneous evidence of friendship. Now there was a suggestion of artificiality⁠—of calculation. She drew back a little in her chair. Deep down in her some watchful instinct had sounded an alarm. She was on guard.

He drew in a quick breath.

“It’s nothing much. Nothing at all. It’s only this. I⁠—I⁠—Joe will be writing a letter to a man called Weston on Thursday⁠—Thursday remember. There won’t be anything in it⁠—nothing of importance⁠—nothing private⁠—but⁠—I⁠—I want you to mail me a copy of it, Mary. A⁠—a copy of⁠—”

She was looking at him open-eyed. Her face was white and shocked.

“For goodness’ sake,” he said, irritably, “don’t look like that. I’m not asking you to commit murder. What’s the matter with you? Look here, Mary; you’ll admit you owe me something, I suppose? I’m the only man in New York that’s ever done anything for you. Didn’t I get you your job? Well, then, it’s not as if I were asking you to do anything dangerous, or difficult, or⁠—”

She tried to speak, but could not. He went on rapidly. He did not look at her. His eyes wandered past her, shifting restlessly.

“Look here,” he said; “I’ll be square with you. You’re in New York to make money. Well, you aren’t going to make it hammering a typewriter. I’m giving you your chance. I’m going to be square with you. Let me see that letter, and⁠—”

His voice died away abruptly. The expression on his face changed. He smiled, and this time the effort was obvious.

“Halloa, Joe!” he said.

Mary turned. Joe was standing at her side. He looked very large and wholesome and restful.

“I don’t want to intrude,” he said; “but I wanted to see you, Eddy, and I thought I should catch you here. I wrote a letter to Jack Weston yesterday⁠—after I got home from the office⁠—and one to you; and somehow I managed to post them in the wrong envelopes. It doesn’t matter much, because they both said the same thing.”

“The same thing?”

“Yes; I told you I should be writing to you again on Thursday, to tip you something good that I was expecting from old Longwood. Jack Weston has just rung me up on the phone to say that he got a letter that doesn’t belong to him. I explained to him and thought I’d drop in here and explain to you. Why, what’s your hurry, Eddy?”

Eddy had risen from his seat.

“I’m due back at the office,” he said, hoarsely.

“Busy man! I’m having a slack day. Well, goodbye. I’ll see Mary back.”

Joe seated himself in the vacant chair.

“You’re looking tired,” he said. “Did Eddy talk too much?”

“Yes, he did⁠ ⁠… Joe, you were right.”

“Ah⁠—Mary!” Joe chuckled. “I’ll tell you something I didn’t tell Eddy. It wasn’t entirely through carelessness that I posted those letters in the wrong envelopes. In fact, to be absolutely frank, it wasn’t through carelessness at all. There’s an old gentleman in Pittsburgh by the name of John Longwood, who occasionally is good enough to inform me of some of his intended doings on the market a day or so before the rest of the world knows them, and Eddy has always shown a strong desire to get early information too. Do you remember my telling you that your predecessor at the office left a little abruptly? There was a reason. I engaged her as a confidential secretary, and she overdid it. She confided in Eddy. From the look on your face as I came in I gathered that he had just been proposing that you should perform a similar act of Christian charity. Had he?”

Mary clenched her hands.

“It’s this awful New York!” she cried. “Eddy was never like that in Dunsterville.”

“Dunsterville does not offer quite the same scope,” said Joe.

“New York changes everything,” Mary returned. “It has changed Eddy⁠—it has changed you.”

He bent towards her and lowered his voice.

“Not altogether,” he said. “I’m just the same in one way. I’ve tried to pretend I had altered, but it’s no use. I give it up. I’m still just the same poor fool who used to hang round staring at you in Dunsterville.”

A waiter was approaching the table with the air, which waiters cultivate, of just happening by chance to be going in that direction. Joe leaned farther forward, speaking quickly.

“And for whom,” he said, “you didn’t care a single, solitary snap of your fingers, Mary.”

She looked up at him. The waiter hovered, poising for his swoop. Suddenly she smiled.

“New York has changed me too, Joe,” she said.

“Mary!” he cried.

“Ze pill, sare,” observed the waiter.

Joe turned.

“Ze what!” he exclaimed. “Well, I’m hanged! Eddy’s gone off and left me to pay for his lunch! That man’s a wonder! When it comes to brain-work, he’s in a class by himself.” He paused. “But I have the luck,” he said.

Ruth in Exile

The clock struck five⁠—briskly, as if time were money. Ruth Warden got up from her desk and, having put on her hat, emerged into the outer office where M. Gandinot received visitors. M. Gandinot, the ugliest man in Roville-sur-Mer, presided over the local mont-de-piete, and Ruth served him, from ten to five, as a sort of secretary-clerk. Her duties, if monotonous, were simple. They consisted of sitting, detached and invisible, behind a ground-glass screen, and entering details of loans in a fat book. She was kept busy as a rule, for Roville possesses two casinos, each offering the attraction of petits chevaux, and just round the corner is Monte Carlo. Very brisk was the business done by M. Gandinot, the pawnbroker, and very frequent were the pitying shakes of the head and clicks of the tongue of M. Gandinot, the man; for in his unofficial capacity Ruth’s employer had a gentle soul, and winced at the evidences of tragedy which presented themselves before his official eyes.

He blinked up at Ruth as she appeared, and Ruth, as she looked at him, was conscious, as usual, of a lightening of the depression which, nowadays, seemed to have settled permanently upon her. The peculiar quality of M. Gandinot’s extraordinary countenance was that it induced mirth⁠—not mocking laughter, but a kind of smiling happiness. It possessed that indefinable quality which characterizes the Billiken, due, perhaps, to the unquenchable optimism which shone through the irregular features; for M. Gandinot, despite his calling, believed in his fellow-man.

“You are going, mademoiselle?”

As Ruth was wearing her hat and making for the door, and as she always left at this hour, a purist might have considered the question superfluous; but M. Gandinot was a man who seized every opportunity of practising his English.

“You will not wait for the good papa who calls so regularly for you?”

“I think I won’t today, M. Gandinot. I want to get out into the air. I have rather a headache. Will you tell my father I have gone to the Promenade?”

M. Gandinot sighed as the door closed behind her. Ruth’s depression had not escaped his notice. He was sorry for her. And not without cause, for Fate had not dealt too kindly with Ruth.

It would have amazed Mr. Eugene Warden, that genial old gentleman, if, on one of those occasions of manly emotion when he was in the habit of observing that he had been nobody’s enemy but his own, somebody had hinted that he had spoiled his daughter’s life. Such a thought had never entered his head. He was one of those delightful, irresponsible, erratic persons whose heads thoughts of this kind do not enter, and who are about as deadly to those whose lives are bound up with theirs as a Upas tree.

In the memory of his oldest acquaintance, Ruth’s father had never done anything but drift amiably through life. There had been a time when he had done his drifting in London, feeding cheerfully from the hand of a long-suffering brother-in-law. But though blood, as he was wont to remark while negotiating his periodical loans, is thicker than water, a brother-in-law’s affection has its limits. A day came when Mr. Warden observed with pain that his relative responded less nimbly to the touch. And a little while later the other delivered his ultimatum. Mr. Warden was to leave England, and to stay away from England, to behave as if England no longer existed on the map, and a small but sufficient allowance would be made to him. If he declined to do this, not another penny of the speaker’s money would he receive. He could choose.

He chose. He left England, Ruth with him. They settled in Roville, that haven of the exile who lives upon remittances.

Ruth’s connection with the mont-de-piete had come about almost automatically. Very soon after their arrival it became evident that, to a man of Mr. Warden’s nature, resident a stone’s-throw distant from two casinos, the small allowance was not likely to go very far. Even if Ruth had not wished to work, circumstances could have compelled her. As it was, she longed for something to occupy her, and, the vacancy at the mont-de-piete occurring, she had snatched at it. There was a certain fitness in her working there. Business transactions with that useful institution had always been conducted by her, it being Mr. Warden’s theory that Woman can extract in these crises just that extra franc or two which is denied to the mere male. Through constantly going round, running across, stepping over, and popping down to the mont-de-piete she had established almost a legal claim on any post that might be vacant there.

And under M. Gandinot’s banner she had served ever since.

Five minutes’ walk took her to the Promenade des Anglais, that apparently endless thoroughfare which is Roville’s pride. The evening was fine and warm. The sun shone gaily on the white-walled houses, the bright Gardens, and the two gleaming casinos. But Ruth walked listlessly, blind to the glitter of it all.

Visitors who go to Roville for a few weeks in the winter are apt to speak of the place, on their return, in a manner that conveys the impression that it is a Paradise on earth, with gambling facilities thrown in. But, then, they are visitors. Their sojourn comes to an end. Ruth’s did not.

A voice spoke her name. She turned, and saw her father, dapper as ever, standing beside her.

“What an evening, my dear!” said Mr. Warden. “What an evening! Smell the sea!”

Mr. Warden appeared to be in high spirits. He hummed a tune and twirled his cane. He chirruped frequently to Bill, the companion of his walks abroad, a wiry fox-terrier of a demeanour, like his master’s, both jaunty and slightly disreputable. An air of gaiety pervaded his bearing.

“I called in at the mont-de-piete but you had gone. Gandinot told me you had come here. What an ugly fellow that Gandinot is! But a good sort. I like him. I had a chat with him.”

The high spirits were explained. Ruth knew her father. She guessed, correctly, that M. Gandinot, kindest of pawnbrokers, had obliged, in his unofficial capacity, with a trifling loan.

“Gandinot ought to go on the stage,” went on Mr. Warden, pursuing his theme. “With that face he would make his fortune. You can’t help laughing when you see it. One of these days⁠—”

He broke off. Stirring things had begun to occur in the neighbourhood of his ankles, where Bill, the fox-terrier, had encountered an acquaintance, and, to the accompaniment of a loud, gargling noise, was endeavouring to bite his head off. The acquaintance, a gentleman of uncertain breed, equally willing, was chewing Bill’s paw with the gusto of a gourmet. An Irish terrier, with no personal bias towards either side, was dancing round and attacking each in turn as he came uppermost. And two poodles leaped madly in and out of the melee, barking encouragement.

It takes a better man than Mr. Warden to break up a gathering of this kind. The old gentleman was bewildered. He added his voice to the babel, and twice smote Bill grievously with his cane with blows intended for the acquaintance, but beyond that he effected nothing. It seemed probable that the engagement would last till the combatants had consumed each other, after the fashion of the Kilkenny cats, when there suddenly appeared from nowhere a young man in grey.

The world is divided into those who can stop dogfights and those who cannot. The young man in grey belonged to the former class. Within a minute from his entrance on the scene the poodles and the Irish terrier had vanished; the dog of doubtful breed was moving off up the hill, yelping, with the dispatch of one who remembers an important appointment, and Bill, miraculously calmed, was seated in the centre of the Promenade, licking honourable wounds.

Mr. Warden was disposed to effervesce with gratitude. The scene had shaken him, and there had been moments when he had given his ankles up for lost.

“Don’t mention it,” said the young man. “I enjoy arbitrating in these little disputes. Dogs seem to like me and trust my judgement. I consider myself as a sort of honorary dog.”

“Well, I am bound to say, Mr.⁠—?”

“Vince⁠—George Vince.”

“My name is Warden. My daughter.”

Ruth inclined her head, and was conscious of a pair of very penetrating brown eyes looking eagerly into hers in a manner which she thoroughly resented. She was not used to the other sex meeting her gaze and holding it as if confident of a friendly welcome. She made up her mind in that instant that this was a young man who required suppression.

“I’ve seen you several times out here since I arrived, Miss Warden,” said Mr. Vince. “Four in all,” he added, precisely.

“Really?” said Ruth.

She looked away. Her attitude seemed to suggest that she had finished with him, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up.

As they approached the casino restlessness crept into Mr. Warden’s manner. At the door he stopped and looked at Ruth.

“I think, my dear⁠—” he said.

“Going to have a dash at the petits chevaux?” inquired Mr. Vince. “I was there just now. I have an infallible system.”

Mr. Warden started like a warhorse at the sound of the trumpet.

“Only it’s infallible the wrong way,” went on the young man. “Well, I wish you luck. I’ll see Miss Warden home.”

“Please don’t trouble,” said Ruth, in the haughty manner which had frequently withered unfortunate fellow-exiles in their tracks.

It had no such effect on Mr. Vince.

“I shall like it,” he said.

Ruth set her teeth. She would see whether he would like it.

They left Mr. Warden, who shot in at the casino door like a homing rabbit, and walked on in silence, which lasted till Ruth, suddenly becoming aware that her companion’s eyes were fixed on her face, turned her head, to meet a gaze of complete, not to say loving, admiration. She flushed. She was accustomed to being looked at admiringly, but about this particular look there was a subtle quality that distinguished it from the ordinary⁠—something proprietorial.

Mr. Vince appeared to be a young man who wasted no time on conventional conversation-openings.

“Do you believe in affinities, Miss Warden?” he said,

“No,” said Ruth.

“You will before we’ve done,” said Mr. Vince, confidently. “Why did you try to snub me just now?”

“Did I?”

“You mustn’t again. It hurts me. I’m a sensitive man. Diffident. Shy. Miss Warden, will you marry me?”

Ruth had determined that nothing should shake her from her icy detachment, but this did. She stopped with a gasp, and stared at him.

Mr. Vince reassured her.

“I don’t expect you to say ‘Yes.’ That was just a beginning⁠—the shot fired across the bows by way of warning. In you, Miss Warden, I have found my affinity. Have you ever considered this matter of affinities? Affinities are the⁠—the⁠—Wait a moment.”

He paused, reflecting.

“I⁠—” began Ruth.

“Sh!” said the young man, holding up his hand.

Ruth’s eyes flashed. She was not used to having “Sh!” said to her by young men, and she resented it.

“I’ve got it,” he declared, with relief. “I knew I should, but these good things take time. Affinities are the zero on the roulette-board of life. Just as we select a number on which to stake our money, so do we select a type of girl whom we think we should like to marry. And just as zero pops up instead of the number, so does our affinity come along and upset all our preconceived notions of the type of girl we should like to marry.”

“I⁠—” began Ruth again.

“The analogy is in the rough at present. I haven’t had time to condense and polish it. But you see the idea. Take my case, for instance. When I saw you a couple of days ago I knew in an instant that you were my affinity. But for years I had been looking for a woman almost your exact opposite. You are dark. Three days ago I couldn’t have imagined myself marrying anyone who was not fair. Your eyes are grey. Three days ago my preference for blue eyes was a byword. You have a shocking temper. Three days ago⁠—”

“Mr. Vince!”

“There!” said that philosopher, complacently. “You stamped. The gentle, blue-eyed blonde whom I was looking for three days ago would have drooped timidly. Three days ago my passion for timid droopers amounted to an obsession.”

Ruth did not reply. It was useless to bandy words with one who gave such clear evidence of being something out of the common run of word-bandiers. No verbal attack could crush this extraordinary young man. She walked on, all silence and stony profile, uncomfortably conscious that her companion was in no way abashed by the former and was regarding the latter with that frank admiration which had made itself so obnoxious to her before, until they reached their destination. Mr. Vince, meanwhile, chatted cheerfully, and pointed out objects of interest by the wayside.

At the door Ruth permitted herself a word of farewell.

“Goodbye,” she said.

“Till tomorrow evening,” said Mr. Vince. “I shall be coming to dinner.”

Mr. Warden ambled home, very happy and contented, two hours later, with half a franc in his pocket, this comparative wealth being due to the fact that the minimum stake permitted by the Roville casino is just double that sum. He was sorry not to have won, but his mind was too full of rosy dreams to permit of remorse. It was the estimable old gentleman’s dearest wish that his daughter should marry some rich, openhanded man who would keep him in affluence for the remainder of his days, and to that end he was in the habit of introducing to her notice any such that came his way. There was no question of coercing Ruth. He was too tenderhearted for that. Besides he couldn’t. Ruth was not the sort of girl who is readily coerced. He contented himself with giving her the opportunity to inspect his exhibits. Roville is a sociable place, and it was not unusual for him to make friends at the casino and to bring them home, when made, for a cigar. Up to the present, he was bound to admit, his efforts had not been particularly successful. Ruth, he reflected sadly, was a curious girl. She did not show her best side to these visitors. There was no encouragement in her manner. She was apt to frighten the unfortunate exhibits. But of this young man Vince he had brighter hopes. He was rich. That was proved by the very handsome way in which he had behaved in the matter of a small loan when, looking in at the casino after parting from Ruth, he had found Mr. Warden in sore straits for want of a little capital to back a brand-new system which he had conceived through closely observing the run of the play. He was also obviously attracted by Ruth. And, as he was remarkably presentable⁠—indeed, quite an unusually good-looking young man⁠—there seemed no reason why Ruth should not be equally attracted by him. The world looked good to Mr. Warden as he fell asleep that night.

Ruth did not fall asleep so easily. The episode had disturbed her. A new element had entered her life, and one that gave promise of producing strange byproducts.

When, on the following evening, Ruth returned from the stroll on the Promenade which she always took after leaving the mont-de-piete, with a feeling of irritation towards things in general, this feeling was not diminished by the sight of Mr. Vince, very much at his ease, standing against the mantelpiece of the tiny parlour.

“How do you do?” he said. “By an extraordinary coincidence I happened to be hanging about outside this house just now, when your father came along and invited me in to dinner. Have you ever thought much about coincidences, Miss Warden? To my mind, they may be described as the zero on the roulette-board of life.”

He regarded her fondly.

“For a shy man, conscious that the girl he loves is inspecting him closely and making up her mind about him,” he proceeded, “these unexpected meetings are very trying ordeals. You must not form your judgement of me too hastily. You see me now, nervous, embarrassed, tongue-tied. But I am not always like this. Beneath this crust of diffidence there is sterling stuff, Miss Warden. People who know me have spoken of me as a little ray of sun⁠—But here is your father.”

Mr. Warden was more than usually disappointed with Ruth during dinner. It was the same old story. So far from making herself pleasant to this attractive stranger, she seemed positively to dislike him. She was barely civil to him. With a sigh Mr. Warden told himself that he did not understand Ruth, and the rosy dreams he had formed began to fade.

Ruth’s ideas on the subject of Mr. Vince as the days went by were chaotic. Though she told herself that she thoroughly objected to him, he had nevertheless begun to have an undeniable attraction for her. In what this attraction consisted she could not say. When she tried to analyse it, she came to the conclusion that it was due to the fact that he was the only element in her life that made for excitement. Since his advent the days had certainly passed more swiftly for her. The dead level of monotony had been broken. There was a certain fascination in exerting herself to suppress him, which increased daily as each attempt failed.

Mr. Vince put this feeling into words for her. He had a maddening habit of discussing the progress of his courtship in the manner of an impartial lecturer.

“I am making headway,” he observed. “The fact that we cannot meet without your endeavouring to plant a temperamental left jab on my spiritual solar plexus encourages me to think that you are beginning at last to understand that we are affinities. To persons of spirit like ourselves the only happy marriage is that which is based on a firm foundation of almost incessant quarrelling. The most beautiful line in English poetry, to my mind, is, ‘We fell out, my wife and I.’ You would be wretched with a husband who didn’t like you to quarrel with him. The position of affairs now is that I have become necessary to you. If I went out of your life now I should leave an aching void. You would still have that beautiful punch of yours, and there would be nobody to exercise it on. You would pine away. From now on matters should, I think, move rapidly. During the course of the next week I shall endeavour to propitiate you with gifts. Here is the first of them.”

He took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it her. It was a pencil-sketch, rough and unfinished, but wonderfully clever. Even Ruth could appreciate that⁠—and she was a prejudiced observer, for the sketch was a caricature of herself. It represented her, drawn up to her full height, with enormous, scornful eyes and curling lips, and the artist had managed to combine an excellent likeness while accentuating everything that was marked in what she knew had come to be her normal expression of scorn and discontent.

“I didn’t know you were an artist, Mr. Vince,” she said, handing it back.

“A poor amateur. Nothing more. You may keep it.”

“I have not the slightest wish to keep it.”

“You haven’t?”

“It is not in the least clever, and it is very impertinent of you to show it to me. The drawing is not funny. It is simply rude.”

“A little more,” said Mr. Vince, “and I shall begin to think you don’t like it. Are you fond of chocolates?”

Ruth did not answer.

“I am sending you some tomorrow.”

“I shall return them.”

“Then I shall send some more, and some fruit. Gifts!” soliloquized Mr. Vince. “Gifts! That is the secret. Keep sending gifts. If men would only stick to gifts and quarrelling, there would be fewer bachelors.”

On the morrow, as promised, the chocolates arrived, many pounds of them in a lordly box. The bludgeoning of fate had not wholly scotched in Ruth a human weakness for sweets, and it was with a distinct effort that she wrapped the box up again and returned it to the sender. She went off to her work at the mont-de-piete with a glow of satisfaction which comes to those who exhibit an iron will in trying circumstances.

And at the mont-de-piete there occurred a surprising incident.

Surprising incidents, as Mr. Vince would have said, are the zero on the roulette-board of life. They pop up disturbingly when least expected, confusing the mind and altering preconceived opinions. And this was a very surprising incident indeed.

Ruth, as has been stated, sat during her hours of work behind a ground-glass screen, unseen and unseeing. To her the patrons of the establishment were mere disembodied voices⁠—wheedling voices, pathetic voices, voices that protested, voices that hectored, voices that whined, moaned, broke, appealed to the saints, and in various other ways endeavoured to instil into M. Gandinot more spacious and princely views on the subject of advancing money on property pledged. She was sitting behind her screen this morning, scribbling idly on the blotting-pad, for there had been a lull in the business, when the door opened, and the polite, “Bonjour, monsieur,” of M. Gandinot announced the arrival of another unfortunate.

And then, shaking her like an electric shock, came a voice that she knew⁠—the pleasant voice of Mr. Vince.

The dialogues that took place on the other side of the screen were often protracted and always sordid, but none had seemed to Ruth so interminable, so hideously sordid, as this one.

Round and round its miserable centre⁠—a silver cigarette-case⁠—the dreary argument circled. The young man pleaded; M. Gandinot, adamant in his official role, was immovable.

Ruth could bear it no longer. She pressed her hands over her burning ears, and the voices ceased to trouble her.

And with the silence came thought, and a blaze of understanding that flashed upon her and made all things clear. She understood now why she had closed her ears.

Poverty is an acid which reacts differently on differing natures. It had reduced Mr. Eugene Warden’s self-respect to a minimum. Ruth’s it had reared up to an abnormal growth. Her pride had become a weed that ran riot in her soul, darkening it and choking finer emotions. Perhaps it was her father’s naive stratagems for the enmeshing of a wealthy husband that had produced in her at last a morbid antipathy to the idea of playing beggar-maid to any man’s King Cophetua. The state of mind is intelligible. The Cophetua legend never has been told from the beggar-maid’s point of view, and there must have been moments when, if a woman of spirit, she resented that monarch’s somewhat condescending attitude, and felt that, secure in his wealth and magnificence, he had taken her grateful acquiescence very much for granted.

This, she saw now, was what had prejudiced her against George Vince. She had assumed that he was rich. He had conveyed the impression of being rich. And she had been on the defensive against him accordingly. Now, for the first time, she seemed to know him. A barrier had been broken down. The royal robes had proved tinsel, and no longer disguised the man she loved.

A touch on her arm aroused her. M. Gandinot was standing by her side. Terms, apparently had been agreed upon and the interview concluded, for in his hand was a silver cigarette-case.

“Dreaming, mademoiselle? I could not make you hear. The more I call to you, the more you did not answer. It is necessary to enter this loan.”

He recited the details and Ruth entered them in her ledger. This done, M. Gandinot, doffing his official self, sighed.

“It is a place of much sorrow, mademoiselle, this office. How he would not take no for an answer, that young man, recently departed. A fellow-countryman of yours, mademoiselle. You would say, ‘What does this young man, so well-dressed, in a mont-de-piete?’ But I know better, I, Gandinot. You have an expression, you English⁠—I heard it in Paris in a café, and inquired its meaning⁠—when you say of a man that he swanks. How many young men have I seen here, admirably dressed⁠—rich, you would say. No, no. The mont-de-piete permits no secrets. To swank, mademoiselle, what is it? To deceive the world, yes. But not the mont-de-piete. Yesterday also, when you had departed, was he here, that young man. Yet here he is once more today. He spends his money quickly, alas! that poor young swanker.”

When Ruth returned home that evening she found her father in the sitting-room, smoking a cigarette. He greeted her with effusion, but with some uneasiness⁠—for the old gentleman had nerved himself to a delicate task. He had made up his mind tonight to speak seriously to Ruth on the subject of her unsatisfactory behaviour to Mr. Vince. The more he saw of that young man the more positive was he that this was the human goldmine for which he had been searching all these weary years. Accordingly, he threw away his cigarette, kissed Ruth on the forehead, and began to speak.

It had long been Mr. Warden’s opinion that, if his daughter had a fault, it was a tendency towards a quite unnecessary and highly inconvenient frankness. She had not that tact which he would have liked a daughter of his to possess. She would not evade, ignore, agree not to see. She was at times painfully blunt.

This happened now. He was warming to his subject when she interrupted him with a question.

“What makes you think Mr. Vince is rich, father?” she asked.

Mr. Warden was embarrassed. The subject of Mr. Vince’s opulence had not entered into his discourse. He had carefully avoided it. The fact that he was thinking of it and that Ruth knew that he was thinking of it, and that he knew that Ruth knew, had nothing to do with the case. The question was not in order, and it embarrassed him.

“I⁠—why⁠—I don’t⁠—I never said he was rich, my dear. I have no doubt that he has ample⁠—”

“He is quite poor.”

Mr. Warden’s jaw fell slightly.

“Poor? But, my dear, that’s absurd!” he cried. “Why, only this evening⁠—”

He broke off abruptly, but it was too late.

“Father, you’ve been borrowing money from him!”

Mr. Warden drew in his breath, preparatory to an indignant denial, but he altered his mind and remained silent. As a borrower of money he had every quality but one. He had come to look on her perspicacity in this matter as a sort of second sight. It had frequently gone far to spoiling for him the triumph of success.

“And he has to pawn things to live!” Her voice trembled. “He was at the mont-de-piete today. And yesterday too. I heard him. He was arguing with M. Gandinot⁠—haggling⁠—”

Her voice broke. She was sobbing helplessly. The memory of it was too raw and vivid.

Mr. Warden stood motionless. Many emotions raced through his mind, but chief among them the thought that this revelation had come at a very fortunate time. An exceedingly lucky escape, he felt. He was aware, also, of a certain measure of indignation against this deceitful young man who had fraudulently imitated a goldmine with what might have been disastrous results.

The door opened and Jeanne, the maid-of-all-work, announced Mr. Vince.

He entered the room briskly.

“Good evening!” he said. “I have brought you some more chocolates, Miss Warden, and some fruit. Great Scott! What’s the matter?”

He stopped, but only for an instant. The next he had darted across the room, and, before the horrified eyes of Mr. Warden, was holding Ruth in his arms. She clung to him.

Bill, the fox-terrier, over whom Mr. Vince had happened to stumble, was the first to speak. Almost simultaneously Mr. Warden joined in, and there was a striking similarity between the two voices, for Mr. Warden, searching for words, emitted as a preliminary to them a sort of passionate yelp.

Mr. Vince removed the hand that was patting Ruth’s shoulder and waved it reassuringly at him.

“It’s all right,” he said.

“All right! All right!”

“Affinities,” explained Mr. Vince over his shoulder. “Two hearts that beat as one. We’re going to be married. What’s the matter, dear? Don’t you worry; you’re all right.”

“I refuse!” shouted Mr. Warden. “I absolutely refuse.”

Mr. Vince lowered Ruth gently into a chair and, holding her hand, inspected the fermenting old gentleman gravely.

“You refuse?” he said. “Why, I thought you liked me.”

Mr. Warden’s frenzy had cooled. It had been something foreign to his nature. He regretted it. These things had to be managed with restraint.

“My personal likes and dislikes,” he said, “have nothing to do with the matter, Mr. Vince. They are beside the point. I have my daughter to consider. I cannot allow her to marry a man without a penny.”

“Quite right,” said Mr. Vince, approvingly. “Don’t have anything to do with the fellow. If he tries to butt in, send for the police.”

Mr. Warden hesitated. He had always been a little ashamed of Ruth’s occupation. But necessity compelled.

“Mr. Vince, my daughter is employed at the mont-de-piete, and was a witness to all that took place this afternoon.”

Mr. Vince was genuinely agitated. He looked at Ruth, his face full of concern.

“You don’t mean to say you have been slaving away in that stuffy⁠—Great Scott! I’ll have you out of that quick. You mustn’t go there again.”

He stooped and kissed her.

“Perhaps you had better let me explain,” he said. “Explanations, I always think, are the zero on the roulette-board of life. They’re always somewhere about, waiting to pop up. Have you ever heard of Vince’s Stores, Mr. Warden? Perhaps they are since your time. Well, my father is the proprietor. One of our specialities is children’s toys, but we haven’t picked a real winner for years, and my father when I last saw him seemed so distressed about it that I said I’d see if I couldn’t whack out an idea for something. Something on the lines of the Billiken, only better, was what he felt he needed. I’m not used to brain work, and after a spell of it I felt I wanted a rest. I came here to recuperate, and the very first morning I got an inspiration. You may have noticed that the manager of the mont-de-piete here isn’t strong on conventional good looks. I saw him at the casino, and the thing flashed on me. He thinks his name’s Gandinot, but it isn’t. It’s Uncle Zip, the Hump-Curer, the Man who Makes You Smile.”

He pressed Ruth’s hand affectionately.

“I lost track of him, and it was only the day before yesterday that I discovered who he was and where he was to be found. Well, you can’t go up to a man and ask him to pose as a model for Uncle Zip, the Hump-Curer. The only way to get sittings was to approach him in the way of business. So I collected what property I had and waded in. That’s the whole story. Do I pass?”

Mr. Warden’s frosty demeanour had gradually thawed during this recital, and now the sun of his smile shone out warmly. He gripped Mr. Vince’s hand with every evidence of esteem, and after that he did what was certainly the best thing, by passing gently from the room. On his face, as he went, was a look such as Moses might have worn on the summit of Pisgah.

It was some twenty minutes later that Ruth made a remark.

“I want you to promise me something,” she said. “Promise that you won’t go on with that Uncle Zip drawing. I know it means ever so much money, but it might hurt poor M. Gandinot’s feelings, and he has been very kind to me.”

“That settles it,” said Mr. Vince. “It’s hard on the children of Great Britain, but say no more. No Uncle Zip for them.”

Ruth looked at him, almost with awe.

“You really won’t go on with it? In spite of all the money you would make? Are you always going to do just what I ask you, no matter what it costs you?”

He nodded sadly.

“You have sketched out in a few words the whole policy of my married life. I feel an awful fraud. And I had encouraged you to look forward to years of incessant quarrelling. Do you think you can manage without it? I’m afraid it’s going to be shockingly dull for you,” said Mr. Vince, regretfully.

Sir Agravaine

A Tale of King Arthur’s Round Table

Some time ago, when spending a delightful weekend at the ancestral castle of my dear old friend, the Duke of Weatherstonhope (pronounced Wop), I came across an old black-letter MS. It is on this that the story which follows is based.

I have found it necessary to touch the thing up a little here and there, for writers in those days were weak in construction. Their idea of telling a story was to take a long breath and start droning away without any stops or dialogue till the thing was over.

I have also condensed the title. In the original it ran, “ ‘How it came about that ye good Knight Sir Agravaine ye Dolorous of ye Table Round did fare forth to succour a damsel in distress and after divers journeyings and perils by flood and by field did win her for his bride and right happily did they twain live ever afterwards,’ by Ambrose ye monk.”

It was a pretty snappy title for those days, but we have such a high standard in titles nowadays that I have felt compelled to omit a few yards of it.

We may now proceed to the story.

The great tournament was in full swing. All through the afternoon boiler-plated knights on mettlesome chargers had hurled themselves on each other’s spears, to the vast contentment of all. Bright eyes shone; handkerchiefs fluttered; musical voices urged chosen champions to knock the cover off their brawny adversaries. The cheap seats had long since become hoarse with emotion. All round the arena rose the cries of itinerant merchants: “Iced malvoisie,” “Scorecards; ye cannot tell the jousters without a scorecard.” All was revelry and excitement.

A hush fell on the throng. From either end of the arena a mounted knight in armour had entered.

The herald raised his hand.

“Ladeez’n gemmen! Battling Galahad and Agravaine the Dolorous. Galahad on my right, Agravaine on my left. Squires out of the ring. Time!”

A speculator among the crowd offered six to one on Galahad, but found no takers. Nor was the public’s caution without reason.

A moment later the two had met in a cloud of dust, and Agravaine, shooting over his horse’s crupper, had fallen with a metallic clang.

He picked himself up, and limped slowly from the arena. He was not unused to this sort of thing. Indeed, nothing else had happened to him in his whole jousting career.

The truth was that Sir Agravaine the Dolorous was out of his element at King Arthur’s court, and he knew it. It was this knowledge that had given him that settled air of melancholy from which he derived his title.

Until I came upon this black-letter MS. I had been under the impression, like, I presume, everybody else, that every Knight of the Round Table was a model of physical strength and beauty. Malory says nothing to suggest the contrary. Nor does Tennyson. But apparently there were exceptions, of whom Sir Agravaine the Dolorous must have been the chief.

There was, it seems, nothing to mitigate this unfortunate man’s physical deficiencies. There is a place in the world for the strong, ugly man, and there is a place for the weak, handsome man. But to fall short both in features and in muscle is to stake your all on brain. And in the days of King Arthur you did not find the populace turning out to do homage to brain. It was a drug on the market. Agravaine was a good deal better equipped than his contemporaries with grey matter, but his height in his socks was but five feet four; and his muscles, though he had taken three correspondence courses in physical culture, remained distressingly flaccid. His eyes were pale and mild, his nose snub, and his chin receded sharply from his lower lip, as if Nature, designing him, had had to leave off in a hurry and finish the job anyhow. The upper teeth, protruding, completed the resemblance to a nervous rabbit.

Handicapped in this manner, it is no wonder that he should feel sad and lonely in King Arthur’s court. At heart he ached for romance; but romance passed him by. The ladies of the court ignored his existence, while, as for those wandering damsels who came periodically to Camelot to complain of the behaviour of dragons, giants, and the like, and to ask permission of the king to take a knight back with them to fight their cause (just as, nowadays, one goes out and calls a policeman), he simply had no chance. The choice always fell on Lancelot or some other popular favourite.

The tournament was followed by a feast. In those brave days almost everything was followed by a feast. The scene was gay and animated. Fair ladies, brave knights, churls, varlets, squires, scurvy knaves, men-at-arms, malapert rogues⁠—all were merry. All save Agravaine. He sat silent and moody. To the jests of Dagonet he turned a deaf ear. And when his neighbour, Sir Kay, arguing with Sir Percivale on current form, appealed to him to back up his statement that Sir Gawain, though a workmanlike middleweight, lacked the punch, he did not answer, though the subject was one on which he held strong views. He sat on, brooding.

As he sat there, a man-at-arms entered the hall.

“Your majesty,” he cried, “a damsel in distress waits without.”

There was a murmur of excitement and interest.

“Show her in,” said the king, beaming.

The man-at-arms retired. Around the table the knights were struggling into an upright position in their seats and twirling their moustaches. Agravaine alone made no movement. He had been through this sort of thing so often. What were distressed damsels to him? His whole demeanour said, as plainly as if he had spoken the words, “What’s the use?”

The crowd at the door parted, and through the opening came a figure at the sight of whom the expectant faces of the knights turned pale with consternation. For the newcomer was quite the plainest girl those stately halls had ever seen. Possibly the only plain girl they had ever seen, for no instance is recorded in our authorities of the existence at that period of any such.

The knights gazed at her blankly. Those were the grand old days of chivalry, when a thousand swords would leap from their scabbards to protect defenceless woman, if she were beautiful. The present seemed something in the nature of a special case, and nobody was quite certain as to the correct procedure.

An awkward silence was broken by the king.

“Er⁠—yes?” he said.

The damsel halted.

“Your majesty,” she cried, “I am in distress. I crave help!”

“Just so,” said the king, uneasily, flashing an apprehensive glance at the rows of perturbed faces before him. “Just so. What⁠—er⁠—what is the exact nature of the⁠—ah⁠—trouble? Any assistance these gallant knights can render will, I am sure, be⁠—ah⁠—eagerly rendered.”

He looked imploringly at the silent warriors. As a rule, this speech was the signal for roars of applause. But now there was not even a murmur.

“I may say enthusiastically,” he added.

Not a sound.

“Precisely,” said the king, ever tactful. “And now⁠—you were saying?”

“I am Yvonne, the daughter of Earl Dorm of the Hills,” said the damsel, “and my father has sent me to ask protection from a gallant knight against a fiery dragon that ravages the countryside.”

“A dragon, gentlemen,” said the king, aside. It was usually a safe draw. Nothing pleased the knight of that time more than a brisk bout with a dragon. But now the tempting word was received in silence.

“Fiery,” said the king.

Some more silence.

The king had recourse to the direct appeal. “Sir Gawain, this Court would be greatly indebted to you if⁠—”

Sir Gawain said he had strained a muscle at the last tournament.

“Sir Pelleas.”

The king’s voice was growing flat with consternation. The situation was unprecedented.

Sir Pelleas said he had an ingrowing toenail.

The king’s eye rolled in anguish around the table. Suddenly it stopped. It brightened. His look of dismay changed to one of relief.

A knight had risen to his feet. It was Agravaine.

“Ah!” said the king, drawing a deep breath.

Sir Agravaine gulped. He was feeling more nervous than he had ever felt in his life. Never before had he risen to volunteer his services in a matter of this kind, and his state of mind was that of a small boy about to recite his first piece of poetry.

It was not only the consciousness that every eye, except one of Sir Balin’s which had been closed in the tournament that afternoon, was upon him. What made him feel like a mild gentleman in a post-office who has asked the lady assistant if she will have time to attend to him soon and has caught her eye, was the fact that he thought he had observed the damsel Yvonne frown as he rose. He groaned in spirit. This damsel, he felt, wanted the proper goods or none at all. She might not be able to get Sir Lancelot or Sir Galahad; but she was not going to be satisfied with a half-portion.

The fact was that Sir Agravaine had fallen in love at first sight. The moment he had caught a glimpse of the damsel Yvonne, he loved her devotedly. To others she seemed plain and unattractive. To him she was a Queen of Beauty. He was amazed at the inexplicable attitude of the knights around him. He had expected them to rise in a body to clamour for the chance of assisting this radiant vision. He could hardly believe, even now, that he was positively the only starter.

“This is Sir Agravaine the Dolorous,” said the king to the damsel. “Will you take him as your champion?”

Agravaine held his breath. But all was well. The damsel bowed.

“Then, Sir Agravaine,” said the king, “perhaps you had better have your charger sent round at once. I imagine that the matter is pressing⁠—time and⁠—er⁠—dragons wait for no man.”

Ten minutes later Agravaine, still dazed, was jogging along to the hills, with the damsel by his side.

It was some time before either of them spoke. The damsel seemed preoccupied, and Agravaine’s mind was a welter of confused thoughts, the most prominent of which and the one to which he kept returning being the startling reflection that he, who had pined for romance so long, had got it now in full measure.

A dragon! Fiery withal. Was he absolutely certain that he was capable of handling an argument with a fiery dragon? He would have given much for a little previous experience of this sort of thing. It was too late now, but he wished he had had the forethought to get Merlin to put up a magic prescription for him, rendering him immune to dragon-bites. But did dragons bite? Or did they whack at you with their tails? Or just blow fire?

There were a dozen such points that he would have liked to have settled before starting. It was silly to start out on a venture of this sort without special knowledge. He had half a mind to plead a forgotten engagement and go straight back.

Then he looked at the damsel, and his mind was made up. What did death matter if he could serve her?

He coughed. She came out of her reverie with a start.

“This dragon, now?” said Agravaine.

For a moment the damsel did not reply. “A fearsome worm, Sir Knight,” she said at length. “It raveneth by day and by night. It breathes fire from its nostrils.”

“Does it!” said Agravaine. “Does it! You couldn’t give some idea what it looks like, what kind of size it is?”

“Its body is as thick as ten stout trees, and its head touches the clouds.”

“Does it!” said Agravaine thoughtfully. “Does it!”

“Oh, Sir Knight, I pray you have a care.”

“I will,” said Agravaine. And he had seldom said anything more fervently. The future looked about as bad as it could be. Any hopes he may have entertained that this dragon might turn out to be comparatively small and inoffensive were dissipated. This was plainly no debilitated wreck of a dragon, its growth stunted by excessive-fire-breathing. A body as thick as ten stout trees! He would not even have the melancholy satisfaction of giving the creature indigestion. For all the impression he was likely to make on that vast interior, he might as well be a salted almond.

As they were speaking, a dim mass on the skyline began to take shape.

“Behold!” said the damsel. “My father’s castle.” And presently they were riding across the drawbridge and through the great gate, which shut behind them with a clang.

As they dismounted a man came out through a door at the farther end of the courtyard.

“Father,” said Yvonne, “this is the gallant knight Sir Agravaine, who has come to⁠—” It seemed to Agravaine that she hesitated for a moment.

“To tackle our dragon?” said the father. “Excellent. Come right in.”

Earl Dorm of the Hills was a small, elderly man, with what Agravaine considered a distinctly furtive air about him. His eyes were too close together, and he was over-lavish with a weak, cunning smile. Even Agravaine, who was in the mood to like the whole family, if possible, for Yvonne’s sake, could not help feeling that appearances were against this particular exhibit. He might have a heart of gold beneath the outward aspect of a confidence-trick expert whose hobby was dog-stealing, but there was no doubt that his exterior did not inspire a genial glow of confidence.

“Very good of you to come,” said the earl.

“It’s a pleasure,” said Agravaine. “I have been hearing all about the dragon.”

“A great scourge,” agreed his host. “We must have a long talk about it after dinner.”

It was the custom in those days in the stately homes of England for the whole strength of the company to take their meals together. The guests sat at the upper table, the ladies in a gallery above them, while the usual drove of men-at-arms, archers, malapert rogues, varlets, scurvy knaves, scullions, and plug-uglies attached to all medieval households, squashed in near the door, wherever they could find room.

The retinue of Earl Dorm was not strong numerically⁠—the household being, to judge from appearances, one that had seen better days; but it struck Agravaine that what it lacked in numbers it made up in toughness. Among all those at the bottom of the room there was not one whom it would have been agreeable to meet alone in a dark alley. Of all those foreheads not one achieved a height of more than one point nought four inches. A sinister collection, indeed, and one which, Agravaine felt, should have been capable of handling without his assistance any dragon that ever came into the world to stimulate the asbestos industry.

He was roused from his reflections by the voice of his host.

“I hope you are not tired after your journey, Sir Agravaine? My little girl did not bore you, I trust? We are very quiet folk here. Country mice. But we must try to make your visit interesting.”

Agravaine felt that the dragon might be counted upon to do that. He said as much.

“Ah, yes, the dragon,” said Earl Dorm, “I was forgetting the dragon. I want to have a long talk with you about that dragon. Not now. Later on.”

His eye caught Agravaine’s, and he smiled that weak, cunning smile of his. And for the first time the knight was conscious of a curious feeling that all was not square and aboveboard in this castle. A conviction began to steal over him that in some way he was being played with, that some game was afoot which he did not understand, that⁠—in a word⁠—there was dirty work at the crossroads.

There was a touch of mystery in the atmosphere which made him vaguely uneasy. When a fiery dragon is ravaging the countryside to such an extent that the SOS call has been sent out to the Round Table, a knight has a right to expect the monster to be the main theme of conversation. The tendency on his host’s part was apparently to avoid touching on the subject at all. He was vague and elusive; and the one topic on which an honest man is not vague and elusive is that of fiery dragons. It was not right. It was as if one should phone for the police and engage them, on arrival, in a discussion on the day’s football results.

A wave of distrust swept over Agravaine. He had heard stories of robber chiefs who lured strangers into their strongholds and then held them prisoners while the public nervously dodged their anxious friends who had formed subscription lists to make up the ransom. Could this be such a case? The man certainly had an evasive manner and a smile which would have justified any jury in returning a verdict without leaving the box. On the other hand, there was Yvonne. His reason revolted against the idea of that sweet girl being a party to any such conspiracy.

No, probably it was only the Earl’s unfortunate manner. Perhaps he suffered from some muscular weakness of the face which made him smile like that.

Nevertheless, he certainly wished that he had not allowed himself to be deprived of his sword and armour. At the time it had seemed to him that the Earl’s remark that the latter needed polishing and the former stropping betrayed only a kindly consideration for his guest’s well-being. Now, it had the aspect of being part of a carefully-constructed plot.

On the other hand⁠—here philosophy came to his rescue⁠—if anybody did mean to start anything, his sword and armour might just as well not be there. Any one of those mammoth lowbrows at the door could eat him, armour and all.

He resumed his meal, uneasy but resigned.

Dinner at Earl Dorm’s was no lunch-counter scuffle. It started early and finished late. It was not till an advanced hour that Agravaine was conducted to his room.

The room which had been allotted to him was high up in the eastern tower. It was a nice room, but to one in Agravaine’s state of suppressed suspicion a trifle too solidly upholstered. The door was of the thickest oak, studded with iron nails. Iron bars formed a neat pattern across the only window.

Hardly had Agravaine observed these things when the door opened, and before him stood the damsel Yvonne, pale of face and panting for breath.

She leaned against the doorpost and gulped.

“Fly!” she whispered.

Reader, if you had come to spend the night in the lonely castle of a perfect stranger with a shifty eye and a rogues’ gallery smile, and on retiring to your room had found the door kick-proof and the window barred, and if, immediately after your discovery of these phenomena, a white-faced young lady had plunged in upon you and urged you to immediate flight, wouldn’t that jar you?

It jarred Agravaine.

“Eh?” he cried.

“Fly! Fly, Sir Knight.”

Another footstep sounded in the passage. The damsel gave a startled look over her shoulder.

“And what’s all this?”

Earl Dorm appeared in the dim-lit corridor. His voice had a nasty tinkle in it.

“Your⁠—your daughter,” said Agravaine, hurriedly, “was just telling me that breakfast would⁠—”

The sentence remained unfinished. A sudden movement of the earl’s hand, and the great door banged in his face. There came the sound of a bolt shooting into its socket. A key turned in the lock. He was trapped.

Outside, the earl had seized his daughter by the wrist and was administering a paternal cross-examination.

“What were you saying to him?”

Yvonne did not flinch.

“I was bidding him fly.”

“If he wants to leave this castle,” said the earl, grimly, “he’ll have to.”

“Father,” said Yvonne, “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“I can’t.”

His grip on her wrist tightened. From the other side of the door came the muffled sound of blows on the solid oak. “Oh?” said Earl Dorm. “You can’t, eh? Well, listen to me. You’ve got to. Do you understand? I admit he might be better-looking, but⁠—”

“Father, I love him.”

He released her wrist, and stared at her in the uncertain light.

“You love him!”

“Yes.”

“Then what⁠—? Why? Well, I never did understand women,” he said at last, and stumped off down the passage.

While this cryptic conversation was in progress, Agravaine, his worst apprehensions realized, was trying to batter down the door. After a few moments, however, he realized the futility of his efforts, and sat down on the bed to think.

At the risk of forfeiting the reader’s respect, it must be admitted that his first emotion was one of profound relief. If he was locked up like this, it must mean that that dragon story was fictitious, and that all danger was at an end of having to pit his inexperience against a ravening monster who had spent a lifetime devouring knights. He had never liked the prospect, though he had been prepared to go through with it, and to feel that it was definitely cancelled made up for a good deal.

His mind next turned to his immediate future. What were they going to do with him? On this point he felt tolerably comfortable. This imprisonment could mean nothing more than that he would be compelled to disgorge a ransom. This did not trouble him. He was rich, and, now that the situation had been switched to a purely business basis, he felt that he could handle it.

In any case, there was nothing to be gained by sitting up, so he went to bed, like a good philosopher.

The sun was pouring through the barred window when he was awoken by the entrance of a gigantic figure bearing food and drink.

He recognized him as one of the scurvy knaves who had dined at the bottom of the room the night before⁠—a vast, beetle-browed fellow with a squint, a mop of red hair, and a genius for silence. To Agravaine’s attempts to engage him in conversation he replied only with grunts, and in a short time left the room, closing and locking the door behind him.

He was succeeded at dusk by another of about the same size and ugliness, and with even less conversational elan. This one did not even grunt.

Small-talk, it seemed, was not an art cultivated in any great measure by the lower orders in the employment of Earl Dorm.

The next day passed without incident. In the morning the strabismic plug-ugly with the red hair brought him food and drink, while in the evening the non-grunter did the honours. It was a peaceful life, but tending towards monotony, and Agravaine was soon in the frame of mind which welcomes any break in the daily round.

He was fortunate enough to get it.

He had composed himself for sleep that night, and was just dropping comfortably off, when from the other side of the door he heard the sound of angry voices.

It was enough to arouse him. On the previous night silence had reigned. Evidently something out of the ordinary was taking place.

He listened intently and distinguished words.

“Who was it I did see thee coming down the road with?”

“Who was it thou didst see me coming down the road with?”

“Aye, who was it I did see thee coming down the road with?”

“Who dost thou think thou art?”

“Who do I think that I am?”

“Aye, who dost thou think thou art?”

Agravaine could make nothing of it. As a matter of fact, he was hearing the first genuine crosstalk that had ever occurred in those dim, pre-music-hall days. In years to come dialogue on these lines was to be popular throughout the length and breadth of Great Britain. But till then it had been unknown.

The voices grew angrier. To an initiated listener it would have been plain that in a short while words would be found inadequate and the dagger, that medieval forerunner of the slapstick, brought into play. But to Agravaine, all inexperienced, it came as a surprise when suddenly with a muffled thud two bodies fell against the door. There was a scuffling noise, some groans, and then silence.

And then with amazement he heard the bolt shoot back and a key grate in the keyhole.

The door swung open. It was dark outside, but Agravaine could distinguish a female form, and, beyond, a shapeless mass which he took correctly to be the remains of the two plug-uglies.

“It is I, Yvonne,” said a voice.

“What is it? What has been happening?”

“It was I. I set them against each other. They both loved one of the kitchen-maids. I made them jealous. I told Walt privily that she had favoured Dickon, and Dickon privily that she loved Walt. And now⁠—”

She glanced at the shapeless heap, and shuddered. Agravaine nodded.

“No wedding bells for her,” he said, reverently.

“And I don’t care. I did it to save you. But come! We are wasting time. Come! I will help you to escape.”

A man who has been shut up for two days in a small room is seldom slow off the mark when a chance presents itself of taking exercise. Agravaine followed without a word, and together they crept down the dark staircase until they had reached the main hall. From somewhere in the distance came the rhythmic snores of scurvy knaves getting their eight hours.

Softly Yvonne unbolted a small door, and, passing through it, Agravaine found himself looking up at the stars, while the great walls of the castle towered above him.

“Goodbye,” said Yvonne.

There was a pause. For the first time Agravaine found himself examining the exact position of affairs. After his sojourn in the guarded room, freedom looked very good to him. But freedom meant parting from Yvonne.

He looked at the sky and he looked at the castle walls, and he took a step back towards the door.

“I’m not so sure I want to go,” he said.

“Oh, fly! Fly, Sir Knight!” she cried.

“You don’t understand,” said Agravaine. “I don’t want to seem to be saying anything that might be interpreted as in the least derogatory to your father in any way whatever, but without prejudice, surely he is just a plain, ordinary brigand? I mean it’s only a question of a ransom? And I don’t in the least object⁠—”

“No, no, no.” Her voice trembled. “He would ask no ransom.”

“Don’t tell me he kidnaps people just as a hobby!”

“You don’t understand. He⁠—No, I cannot tell you. Fly!”

“What don’t I understand?”

She was silent. Then she began to speak rapidly. “Very well. I will tell you. Listen. My father had six children, all daughters. We were poor. We had to stay buried in this out-of-the-way spot. We saw no one. It seemed impossible that any of us should ever marry. My father was in despair. Then he said, ‘If we cannot get to town, the town must come to us.’ So he sent my sister Yseult to Camelot to ask the king to let us have a knight to protect us against a giant with three heads. There was no giant, but she got the knight. It was Sir Sagramore. Perhaps you knew him?”

Agravaine nodded. He began to see daylight.

“My sister Yseult was very beautiful. After the first day Sir Sagramore forgot all about the giant, and seemed to want to do nothing else except have Yseult show him how to play cat’s cradle. They were married two months later, and my father sent my sister Elaine to Camelot to ask for a knight to protect us against a wild unicorn.”

“And who bit?” asked Agravaine, deeply interested.

“Sir Malibran of Devon. They were married within three weeks, and my father⁠—I can’t go on. You understand now.”

“I understand the main idea,” said Agravaine. “But in my case⁠—”

“You were to marry me,” said Yvonne. Her voice was quiet and cold, but she was quivering.

Agravaine was conscious of a dull, heavy weight pressing on his heart. He had known his love was hopeless, but even hopelessness is the better for being indefinite. He understood now.

“And you naturally want to get rid of me before it can happen,” he said. “I don’t wonder. I’m not vain⁠ ⁠… Well, I’ll go. I knew I had no chance. Goodbye.”

He turned. She stopped him with a sharp cry.

“What do you mean? You cannot wish to stay now? I am saving you.”

“Saving me! I have loved you since the moment you entered the Hall at Camelot,” said Agravaine.

She drew in her breath.

“You⁠—you love me!”

They looked at each other in the starlight. She held out her hands.

“Agravaine!”

She drooped towards him, and he gathered her into his arms. For a novice, he did it uncommonly well.

It was about six months later that Agravaine, having ridden into the forest, called upon a Wise Man at his cell.

In those days almost anyone who was not a perfect bonehead could set up as a Wise Man and get away with it. All you had to do was to live in a forest and grow a white beard. This particular Wise Man, for a wonder, had a certain amount of rude sagacity. He listened carefully to what the knight had to say.

“It has puzzled me to such an extent,” said Agravaine, “that I felt that I must consult a specialist. You see me. Take a good look at me. What do you think of my personal appearance? You needn’t hesitate. It’s worse than that. I am the ugliest man in England.”

“Would you go as far as that?” said the Wise Man, politely.

“Farther. And everybody else thinks so. Everybody except my wife. She tells me that I am a model of manly beauty. You know Lancelot? Well, she says I have Lancelot whipped to a custard. What do you make of that? And here’s another thing. It is perfectly obvious to me that my wife is one of the most beautiful creatures in existence. I have seen them all, and I tell you that she stands alone. She is literally marooned in Class A, all by herself. Yet she insists that she is plain. What do you make of it?”

The Wise Man stroked his beard.

“My son,” he said, “the matter is simple. True love takes no account of looks.”

“No?” said Agravaine.

“You two are affinities. Therefore, to you the outward aspect is nothing. Put it like this. Love is a thingummybob who what-d’you-call-its.”

“I’m beginning to see,” said Agravaine.

“What I meant was this. Love is a wizard greater than Merlin. He plays odd tricks with the eyesight.”

“Yes,” said Agravaine.

“Or, put it another way. Love is a sculptor greater than Praxiteles. He takes an unsightly piece of clay and moulds it into a thing divine.”

“I get you,” said Agravaine.

The Wise Man began to warm to his work.

“Or shall we say⁠—”

“I think I must be going,” said Agravaine. “I promised my wife I would be back early.”

“We might put it⁠—” began the Wise Man perseveringly.

“I understand,” said Agravaine, hurriedly. “I quite see now. Goodbye.”

The Wise Man sighed resignedly.

“Goodbye, Sir Knight,” he said. “Goodbye. Pay at ye desk.”

And Agravaine rode on his way marvelling.

The Man Who Disliked Cats

It was Harold who first made us acquainted, when I was dining one night at the Café Britannique, in Soho. It is a peculiarity of the Café Britannique that you will always find flies there, even in winter. Snow was falling that night as I turned in at the door, but, glancing about me, I noticed several of the old faces. My old acquaintance, Percy the bluebottle, looking wonderfully fit despite his years, was doing deep breathing exercises on a mutton cutlet, and was too busy to do more than pause for a moment to nod at me; but his cousin, Harold, always active, sighted me and bustled up to do the honours.

He had finished his game of touch-last with my right ear, and was circling slowly in the air while he thought out other ways of entertaining me, when there was a rush of air, a swish of napkin, and no more Harold.

I turned to thank my preserver, whose table adjoined mine. He was a Frenchman, a melancholy-looking man. He had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life’s gas-pipe with a lighted candle; of one whom the clenched fist of Fate has smitten beneath the temperamental third waistcoat-button.

He waved my thanks aside. “It was a bagatelle,” he said. We became friendly. He moved to my table, and we fraternized over our coffee.

Suddenly he became agitated. He kicked at something on the floor. His eyes gleamed angrily.

“Ps-s-st!” he hissed. “Va-t’en!”

I looked round the corner of the table, and perceived the restaurant cat in dignified retreat.

“You do not like cats?” I said.

“I ’ate all animals, monsieur. Cats especially.” He frowned. He seemed to hesitate.

“I will tell you my story,” he said. “You will sympathize. You have a sympathetic face. It is the story of a man’s tragedy. It is the story of a blighted life. It is the story of a woman who would not forgive. It is the story⁠—”

“I’ve got an appointment at eleven,” I said.

He nodded absently, drew at his cigarette, and began:

I have conceived my ’atred of animals, monsieur, many years ago in Paris. Animals are to me a symbol for the lost dreams of youth, for ambitions foiled, for artistic impulses cruelly stifled. You are astonished. You ask why I say these things. I shall tell you.

I am in Paris, young, ardent, artistic. I wish to paint pictures. I ’ave the genius, the ent’usiasm. I wish to be disciple of the great Bouguereau. But no. I am dependent for support upon an uncle. He is rich. He is proprietor of the great Hotel Jules Priaulx. My name is also Priaulx. He is not sympathetic. I say, “Uncle, I ’ave the genius, the ent’usiasm. Permit me to paint.” He shakes his head. He say, “I will give you position in my hotel, and you shall earn your living.” What choice? I weep, but I kill my dreams, and I become cashier at my uncle’s hotel at a salary of thirty-five francs a week. I, the artist, become a machine for the changing of money at dam bad salary. What would you? What choice? I am dependent. I go to the hotel, and there I learn to ’ate all animals. Cats especially.

I will tell you the reason. My uncle’s hotel is fashionable hotel. Rich Americans, rich Maharajahs, rich people of every nation come to my uncle’s hotel. They come, and with them they have brought their pets. Monsieur, it was the existence of a nightmare. Wherever I have looked there are animals. Listen. There is an Indian prince. He has with him two dromedaries. There is also one other Indian prince. With him is a giraffe. The giraffe drink every day one dozen best champagne to keep his coat good. I, the artist, have my bock, and my coat is not good. There is a guest with a young lion. There is a guest with an alligator. But especially there is a cat. He is fat. His name is Alexander. He belongs to an American woman. She is fat. She exhibits him to me. He is wrapped in a silk and fur creation like an opera cloak. Every day she exhibits him. It is “Alexander this” and “Alexander that,” till I ’ate Alexander very much. I ’ate all the animals, but especially Alexander.

And so, monsieur, it goes on, day by day, in this hotel that is a Zoological Garden. And every day I ’ate the animals the more. But especially Alexander.

We artists, monsieur, we are martyrs to our nerves. It became insupportable, this thing. Each day it became more insupportable. At night I dream of all the animals, one by one⁠—the giraffe, the two dromedaries, the young lion, the alligator, and Alexander. Especially Alexander. You have ’eard of men who cannot endure the society of a cat⁠—how they cry out and jump in the air if a cat is among those present. Hein? Your Lord Roberts? Precisely, monsieur. I have read so much. Listen, then. I am become by degrees almost like ’im. I do not cry out and jump in the air when I see the cat Alexander, but I grind my teeth and I ’ate ’im.

Yes, I am the sleeping volcano, and one morning, monsieur, I have suffered the eruption. It is like this. I shall tell you.

Not only at that time am I the martyr to nerves, but also to toothache. That morning I ’ave ’ad the toothache very bad. I ’ave been in pain the most terrible. I groan as I add up the figures in my book.

As I groan I ’ear a voice.

“Say good morning to M. Priaulx, Alexander.” Conceive my emotions, monsieur, when this fat, beastly cat is placed before me upon my desk!

It put the cover upon it. No, that is not the phrase. The lid. It put the lid upon it. All my smothered ’atred of the animal burst forth. I could no longer conceal my ’atred.

I rose. I was terrible. I seized ’im by the tail. I flung him⁠—I did not know where. I did not care. Not then. Afterwards, yes, but not then.

Your Longfellow has a poem. “I shot an arrow into the air. It fell to earth, I know not where.” And then he has found it. The arrow in the ’eart of a friend. Am I right? Also was that the tragedy with me. I flung the cat Alexander. My uncle, on whom I am dependent, is passing at the moment. He has received the cat in the middle of his face.

My companion, with the artist’s instinct for the “curtain,” paused. He looked round the brightly-lit restaurant. From every side arose the clatter of knife and fork, and the clear, sharp note of those who drank soup. In a distant corner a small waiter with a large voice was calling the cook names through the speaking-tube. It was a cheerful scene, but it brought no cheer to my companion. He sighed heavily and resumed:

I ’urry over that painful scene. There is blooming row. My uncle is ’ot-tempered man. The cat is ’eavy cat. I ’ave thrown ’im very hard, for my nerves and my toothache and my ’atred ’ave given me the giant’s strength. Alone is this enough to enrage my ’ot-tempered uncle. I am there in his hotel, you will understand, as cashier, not as cat-thrower. And now, besides all this, I have insulted valuable patron. She ’ave left the hotel that day.

There are no doubts in my mind as to the outcome. With certainty I await my congé. And after painful scene I get it. I am to go. At once. He ’ave assured the angry American woman that I go at once.

He has called me into his private office. “Jean,” he has said to me, at the end of other things, “you are a fool, dolt, no-good imbecile. I give you good place in my hotel, and you spend your time flinging cats. I will ’ave no more of you. But even now I cannot forget that you are my dear brother’s child. I will now give you one thousand francs and never see you again.”

I have thanked him, for to me it is wealth. Not before have I ever had one thousand francs of my own.

I go out of the hotel. I go to a café and order a bock. I smoke a cigarette. It is necessary that I think out plans. Shall I with my one thousand francs rent a studio in the Quarter and commence my life as artist? No. I have still the genius, the ent’usiasm, but I have not the training. To train myself to paint pictures I must study long, and even one thousand francs will not last forever. Then what shall I do? I do not know. I order one other bock, and smoke more cigarettes, but still I do not know.

And then I say to myself, “I will go back to my uncle, and plead with him. I will seize favourable opportunity. I will approach him after dinner when he is in good temper. But for that I must be close at hand. I must be⁠—what’s your expression?⁠—‘Johnny-on-the-spot.’ ”

My mind is made up. I have my plan.

I have gone back to my uncle’s hotel, and I have engaged not too expensive bedroom. My uncle does not know. He still is in his private office. I secure my room.

I dine cheaply that night, but I go to theatre and also to supper after the theatre, for have I not my thousand francs? It is late when I reach my bedroom.

I go to bed. I go to sleep.

But I do not sleep long. I am awakened by a voice.

It is a voice that says, “Move and I shoot! Move and I shoot!” I lie still. I do not move. I am courageous, but I am unarmed.

And the voice says again, “Move and I shoot!” Is it robbers? Is it some marauder who has made his way to my room to plunder me?

I do not know. Per’aps I think yes.

“Who are you?” I have asked.

There is no answer.

I take my courage in my ’ands. I leap from my bed. I dash for the door. No pistol has been fire. I have reached the passage, and have shouted for assistance.

Hotel officials run up. Doors open. “What is it?” voices cry.

“There is in my room an armed robber,” I assure them.

And then I have found⁠—no, I am mistaken. My door, you will understand, is open. And as I have said these words, a large green parrot comes ’opping out. My assassin is nothing but a green parrot.

“Move and I shoot!” it has said to those gathered in the corridor. It then has bitten me in the ’and and passed on.

I am chagrined, monsieur. But only for a moment. Then I forget my chagrin. For a voice from a door that ’as opened says with joy, “It is my Polly, which I ’ave this evening lost!”

I turn. I gasp for admiration. It is a beautiful lady in a pink dressing-gown which ’ave spoken these words.

She has looked at me. I ’ave looked at her. I forget everything but that she is adorable. I forget those who stand by. I forget that the parrot has bitten me in the ’and. I forget even that I am standing there in pyjamas, with on my feet nothing. I can only gaze at her and worship.

I have found words.

“Mademoiselle,” I have said, “I am rejoiced that I have been the means of restoring to you your bird.”

She has thanked me with her eyes, and then with words also. I am bewitched. She is divine. I care not that my feet are cold. I could wish to stand there talking all night.

She has given a cry of dismay.

“Your ’and! It is wounded!”

I look at my ’and. Yes, it is bleeding, where the bird ’ave bitten it.

“Tchut, mademoiselle,” I have said. “It is a bagatelle.”

But no. She is distressed. She is what your poet Scott ’ave said, a ministering angel thou. She ’ave torn her ’andkerchief and is binding up my wound. I am enchanted. Such beauty! Such kindness! ’Ardly can I resist to fall on my knees before ’er and declare my passion.

We are twin souls. She has thanked me again. She has scolded the parrot. She has smiled upon me as she retires to her room. It is enough. Nothing is said, but I am a man of sensibility and discernment, and I understand that she will not be offended if I seek to renew our friendship on a more suitable occasion.

The doors shut. The guests have returned to bed, the hotel servants to their duties. And I go back to my room. But not to sleep. It is very late, but I do not sleep. I lie awake and think of ’er.

You will conceive, Monsieur, with what mixed feelings I descend next morning. On the one ’and, I must keep the sharp lookout for my uncle, for ’im I must avoid till he shall have⁠—what do you say in your idiom? Yes, I have it⁠—simmered down and tucked in his shirt. On the other ’and, I must watch for my lady of the parrot. I count the minutes till we shall meet again.

I avoid my uncle with success, and I see ’er about the hour of déjeuner. She is talking to old gentleman. I have bowed. She have smiled and motioned me to approach.

“Father,” she has said, “this is the gentleman who caught Polly.”

We have shaken hands. He is indulgent papa. He has smiled and thanked me also. We have confided to each other our names. He is English. He owns much land in England. He has been staying in Paris. He is rich. His name is ’Enderson. He addresses his daughter, and call her Marion. In my ’eart I also call her Marion. You will perceive that I am, as you say, pretty far gone.

The hour of déjeuner has arrived. I entreat them to be my guests. I can run to it, you understand, for there are still in my pockets plenty of my uncle’s francs. They consent. I am in ’eaven.

All is well. Our friendship has progressed with marvellous speed. The old gentleman and I are swiftly the dear old pals. I ’ave confided to ’im my dreams of artistic fame, and he has told me ’ow much he dislikes your Lloyd George. He has mentioned that he and Miss Marion depart for London that day. I am desolate. My face tumbles. He has observed my despair. He has invited me to visit them in London.

Imagine my chagrin. To visit them in London is the one thing I desire to do. But how? I accept gratefully, but I ask myself how it is to be done? I am poor blighter with no profession and nine ’undred francs. He ’as taken it for granted that I am wealthy.

What shall I do? I spend the afternoon trying to form a plan. And then I am resolved. I will go to my uncle and say: “Uncle, I have the magnificent chance to marry the daughter of wealthy English landowner. Already I ’ave her gratitude. Soon⁠—for I am young, ’andsome, debonair⁠—I shall ’ave her love. Give me one more chance, uncle. Be decent old buck, and put up the money for this affair.”

These words I have resolved to say to my uncle.

I go back to the hotel. I enter his private office. I reveal no secret when I say that he is not cordial.

“Ten thousand devils!” he has cried. “What do you here?”

I ’asten to tell him all, and plead with him to be decent old buck. He does not believe.

Who is he? he asks. This English landowner? How did I meet him? And where?

I tell him. He is amazed.

“You ’ad the infernal impudence to take room in my hotel?” he has cried.

I am crafty. I am diplomat.

“Where else, dear uncle?” I say. “In all Paris there is no such ’ome from ’ome. The cuisine⁠—marvellous! The beds⁠—of rose-leaves! The attendance⁠—superb! If only for one night, I have said to myself, I must stay in this of all hotels.”

I ’ave⁠—what do you say?⁠—touched the spot.

“In what you say,” he has said, more calmly, “there is certainly something. It is a good hotel, this of mine!”

The only hotel, I have assured him. The Meurice? Chut! I snap my fingers. The Ritz? Bah! Once again I snap my fingers. “In all Paris there is no hotel like this.”

He ’as simmered down. His shirt is tucked in. “Tell me again this plan of yours, Jean.”

When I leave ’im we have come to an understanding. It is agreed between us that I am to ’ave one last chance. He will not spoil this promising ship for the ’a’porth of tar. He will give me money for my purpose. But he has said, as we part, if I fail, his ’ands shall be washed of me. He cannot now forget that I am his dear brother’s child; but if I fail to accomplish the conquest of the divine Miss Marion, he thinks he will be able to.

It is well. A week later I follow the ’Endersons to London.

For the next few days, monsieur, I am in Paradise. My ’ost has much nice ’ouse in Eaton Square. He is rich, popular. There is much society. And I⁠—I have the succes fou. I am young, ’andsome, debonair. I cannot speak the English very well⁠—not so well as I now speak ’im⁠—but I manage. I get along. I am intelligent, amiable. Everyone loves me.

No, not everyone. Captain Bassett, he does not love me. And why? Because he loves the charming Miss Marion, and observes that already I am succeeding with her like a ’ouse on fire. He is ami de famille. He is captain in your Garde Ecossais, and my ’ost told me ’e has distinguished himself as soldier pretty much. It may be so. As soldier, per’aps. But at conversation he is not so good. He is quite nice fellow, you understand⁠—’andsome, yes; distinguished, yes. But he does not sparkle. He has not my verve, my elan. I⁠—how do you say?⁠—I make the rings round him.

But, Chut! At that moment I would have made the rings round the ’ole British Army. Yes, and also the Corps Diplomatique. For I am inspired. Love ’as inspired me. I am conqueror.

But I will not weary you, monsieur, with the details of my wooing. You are sympathetic, but I must not weary you. Let us say that I ’ave in four days or five made progress the most remarkable, and proceed to the tragic end.

Almost could I tell it in four words. In them one would say that it is set forth. There was in London at that time popular a song, a comic, vulgar song of the ’Alls, “The Cat Came Back.” You ’ave ’eard it? Yes? I ’eard it myself, and without emotion. It had no sinister warning for me. It did not strike me as omen. Yet, in those four words, monsieur, is my tragedy.

How? I shall tell you. Every word is a sword twisted in my ’eart, but I shall tell you.

One afternoon we are at tea. All is well. I am vivacious, gay; Miss Marion, charming, gracious. There is present also an aunt, Mr. ’Enderson’s sister; but ’er I do not much notice. It is to Marion I speak⁠—both with my lips and also with my eyes.

As we sit, Captain Bassett is announced.

He has entered. We have greeted each other politely but coldly, for we are rivals. There is in his manner also a something which I do not much like⁠—a species of suppressed triumph, of elation.

I am uneasy⁠—but only yet vaguely, you will understand. I have not the foreboding that he is about to speak my death-sentence.

He addresses Miss Marion. There is joy in his voice. “Miss ’Enderson,” he has said, “I have for you the bally good news. You will remember, isn’t it, the cat belonging to the American woman in the hotel at Paris, of which you have spoken to me? Last night at dinner I have been seated beside her. At first I am not certain is it she. Then I say that there cannot be two Mrs. Balderstone Rockmettlers in Europe, so I mention to her the cat. And, to cut the long story short, I have ventured to purchase for you as a little present the cat Alexander.”

I have uttered a cry of horror, but it is not ’eard because of Miss Marion’s cry of joy.

“Oh, Captain Bassett,” she has said, “how very splendid of you! Ever since I first saw him have I loved Alexander. I cannot tell you how grateful I am. But it amazes me that you should have been able to induce her to part with ’im. In Paris she has refused all my offers.”

He has paused, embarrassed.

“The fact is,” he has said, “there is between her and Alexander a certain coolness. He ’as deceived ’er, and she loves him no more. Immediately upon arrival in London, he had the misfortune to ’ave six fine kittens. ’Owever, out of evil cometh good, and I have thus been able to secure ’im for you. ’E is downstairs in a basket!”

Miss Marion ’as rung the bell and commanded for him to be brought instantly.

I will not describe the meeting, monsieur. You are sympathetic. You will understand my feelings. Let us ’urry on.

Figure yourself, monsieur, to what extent I was now ’arassed. I am artist. I am a man of nerves. I cannot be gay, brilliant, debonair in the presence of a cat. Yet always the cat is there. It is terrible.

I feel that I am falling behind in the race. ’Er gratitude has made her the more gracious to Captain Bassett. She smiles upon him. And, like Chanticleer at the sight of the sun, he flaps his wings and crows. He is no longer the silent listener. It is I who have become the silent listener.

I have said to myself that something must be done.

Chance has shown me the way. One afternoon I am by fortune alone in the ’all. In his cage the parrot Polly is ’opping. I address him through the bars.

“Move and I shoot!” he has cried.

The tears have filled my eyes. ’Ow it has brought the ’ole scene back to me!

As I weep, I perceive the cat Alexander approaching.

I have formed a plan. I have opened the cage-door and released the parrot. The cat, I think, will attack the parrot of which Miss ’Enderson is so fond. She will love him no more. He will be expelled.

He paused. I suppose my face must have lost some of its alleged sympathy as he set forth this fiendish plot. Even Percy the bluebottle seemed shocked. He had settled on the sugar-bowl, but at these words he rose in a marked manner and left the table.

“You do not approve?” he said.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“It’s no business of mine,” I said. “But don’t you think yourself it was playing it a bit low down? Didn’t the thought present itself to you in a shadowy way that it was rather rough on the bird?”

“It did, monsieur. But what would you? It is necessary to break eggs in order to make an omelette. All is fair, you say, in love and war, and this was both. Moreover, you must understand, I do not dictate his movements to the parrot. He is free agent. I do but open the cage-door. Should he ’op out and proceed to the floor where is the cat, that is his affair. I shall continue, yes?”

Alors! I open the cage-door and disappear discreetly. It is not politic that I remain to witness what shall transpire. It is for me to establish an alibi. I go to the drawing-room, where I remain.

At dinner that night Mr. ’Enderson has laughed.

“In the ’all this afternoon,” he has said, “I have seen by chance the dickens of a funny occurrence. That parrot of yours, Marion, had escaped once again from its cage and was ’aving an argument with that cat which Captain Bassett has given to you.”

“Oh! I hope that Alexander ’as not hurt poor Polly, of whom I am very fond,” she has said.

“The affair did not come to blows,” has said Mr. ’Enderson. “You may trust that bird to take care of himself, my dear. When I came upon the scene the cat was crouching in a corner, with his fur bristling and his back up, while Polly, standing before ’im, was telling ’im not to move or he would shoot. Nor did he move, till I ’ad seized the parrot and replaced him in the cage, when he shot upstairs like a streak of lightning. By sheer force of character that excellent bird ’ad won the bloodless victory. I drink to ’im!”

You can conceive my emotion as I listen to this tale. I am like the poet’s mice and men whose best-laid schemes have gone away. I am baffled. I am discouraged. I do not know what I shall do. I must find another plan, but I do not know what.

How shall I remove the cat? Shall I kill ’im? No, for I might be suspect.

Shall I ’ire someone to steal ’im? No, for my accomplice might betray me.

Shall I myself steal ’im? Ah! that is better. That is a very good plan.

Soon I have it perfected, this plan. Listen, monsieur; it is as follows. It is simple, but it is good. I will await my opportunity. I will remove the cat secretly from the ’ouse. I will take him to an office of the District Messenger Boys. I will order a messenger to carry him at once to the Cats’ House, and to request M. le Directeur immediately to destroy him. It is a simple plan, but it is good.

I carry it through without a ’itch. It is not so difficult to secure the cat. ’E is asleep in the drawing-room. There is nobody at hand. I have in my bedroom a ’at-box which I have brought from Paris. I have brought it with me to the drawing-room. I have placed in it the cat. I have escaped from the ’ouse. The cat has uttered a cry, but none has ’eard. I have reached the office of the District Messenger Boys. I have ’anded over the cat in its box. The manager is courteous, sympathetic. A messenger has started in a cab for the Cats’ House. I have breathed a sigh of relief. I am saved.

That is what I say to myself as I return. My troubles are over, and once more I can be gay, debonair, vivacious with Miss Marion, for no longer will there be present the cat Alexander to ’arass me.

When I have returned there is commotion in the ’ouse. I pass on the stairs domestics calling “Puss, puss!” The butler is chirruping loudly and poking beneath the furniture with a umbrella. All is confusion and agitation.

In the drawing-room is Miss Marion. She is distressed.

“Nowhere,” she has said, “can there be found the cat Alexander of whom I am so fond. Nowhere in the ’ouse is he. Where can he be? He is lost.”

I am gentle, sympathetic. I endeavour to console her. I ’int to her that am I not sufficient substitute for a beastly cat? She is, however, inconsolable. I must be patient. I must wait my time.

Captain Bassett is announced. He is informed of what has ’appened. He is distressed. He has the air as if he, too, would endeavour to be gentle, sympathetic. But I am Johnny-on-the-spot. I stay till he ’as gone.

Next day again it is “Puss, puss!” Again the butler has explored under the furniture with the umbrella. Again Miss Marion is distressed. Again ’ave I endeavoured to console.

This time I think I am not so unsuccessful. I am, you understand, young, ’andsome, sympathetic. In another two ticks I am about to seize ’er ’and and declare my passion.

But, before I can do so, Captain Bassett is announced.

I gaze at him as at unsuccessful rival. I am confident. I am conqueror. Ah, I little know! It is in the moments of our highest ’ope, monsieur, that we are destroyed.

Captain Bassett, he, too, ’as the air of the conqueror.

He has begun to speak.

“Miss ’Enderson,” he has said, “I have once more the bally good news. I rather fancy that I ’ave tracked down the missing Alexander, do you not know?”

Miss Marion ’as cried out with joy. But I am calm, for is not Alexander already yesterday destroyed?

“It is like this,” he has resumed. “I have thought to myself where is lost cat most likely to be? And I have answered, ‘In the Cats’ House.’ I go this morning to the Cats’ House, and there I see a cat which is either lost Alexander or his living image. Exactly is he the same to all appearances as the lost Alexander. But there is, when I try to purchase ’im, some curious ’itch which they do not explain. They must ’ave time, they say, to consider. They cannot at once decide.”

“Why, what nonsense!” Miss Marion ’ave cried. “If the cat is my cat, surely then must they return ’im to me! Come,” she has said, “let us all three at once in a taxicab go to the Cats’ House. If the all three of us identify the lost Alexander, then must they return ’im.”

Monsieur, I am uneasy. I have foreboding. But I go. What choice? We go in a taxicab to the Cats’ House.

The directeur is courteous and sympathetic. He has introduced us to the cat, and my ’eart ’as turned to water, for it is Alexander. Why has he not been destroyed?

The directeur is speaking. I ’ear him in a dream.

“If you identify ’im as your cat, miss,” he has said, “the matter is ended. My ’esitation when you, sir, approached me this morning on the matter was due to the fact that a messenger was sent with instructions that he be destroyed at once.”

“Rather rough, wasn’t it, that, on the messenger, yes,” Captain Bassett has said. He is facetious, you understand, for he is conqueror.

I am silent. I am not facetious. For already I feel⁠—how do you say?⁠—my fowl is cooked.

“Not the messenger, sir,” the directeur has said. “You ’ave misunderstood me. It was the cat which was to be destroyed as per instructions of the anonymous sender.”

“Who could have played such a wicked trick?” Miss Marion has asked, indignant.

The directeur has stooped, and from behind a table he has brought a ’at-box.

“In this,” he has said, “the above animal was conveyed. But with it was no accompanying letter. The sender was anonymous.”

“Per’aps,” Captain Bassett has said⁠—and still more in a dream I ’ear him⁠—“per’aps on the ’at-box there is some bally name or other, do you not know⁠—what?”

I clutch at the table. The room is spinning round and round. I have no stomach⁠—only emptiness.

“Why, bless me,” the directeur has said, “you’re quite right, sir. So there is. Funny of me not to have before observed it. There is a name, and also an address. It is the name of Jean Priaulx, and the address is the Hotel Jules Priaulx, Paris.”

My companion stopped abruptly. He passed a handkerchief over his forehead. With a quick movement he reached for his glass of liqueur brandy and drained it at a gulp.

“Monsieur,” he said, “you will not wish me to describe the scene? There is no need for me⁠—hein?⁠—to be Zolaesque. You can imagine?”

“She chucked you?” In moments of emotion it is the simplest language that comes to the lips.

He nodded.

“And married Captain Bassett?”

He nodded again.

“And your uncle?” I said. “How did he take it?”

He sighed.

“There was once more,” he said, “blooming row, monsieur.”

“He washed his hands of you?”

“Not altogether. He was angry, but he gave me one more chance. I am still ’is dear brother’s child, and he cannot forget it. An acquaintance of his, a man of letters, a M. Paul Sartines, was in need of a secretary. The post was not well paid, but it was permanent. My uncle insist that I take it. What choice? I took it. It is the post which I still ’old.”

He ordered another liqueur brandy and gulped it down.

“The name is familiar to you, monsieur? You ’ave ’eard of M. Sartines?”

“I don’t think I have. Who is he?”

“He is a man of letters, a savant. For five years he has been occupied upon a great work. It is with that that I assist him by collecting facts for ’is use. I ’ave spent this afternoon in the British Museum collecting facts. Tomorrow I go again. And the next day. And again after that. The book will occupy yet another ten years before it is completed. It is his great work.”

“It sounds as if it was,” I said. “What’s it about?”

He signalled to the waiter.

“Garçon, one other liqueur brandy. The book, monsieur, is a ’Istory of the Cat in Ancient Egypt.”

The Tuppenny Millionaire

In the crowd that strolled on the Promenade des Etrangers, enjoying the morning sunshine, there were some who had come to Roville for their health, others who wished to avoid the rigours of the English spring, and many more who liked the place because it was cheap and close to Monte Carlo.

None of these motives had brought George Albert Balmer. He was there because, three weeks before, Harold Flower had called him a vegetable.

What is it that makes men do perilous deeds? Why does a man go over Niagara Falls in a barrel? Not for his health. Half an hour with a skipping-rope would be equally beneficial to his liver. No; in nine cases out of ten he does it to prove to his friends and relations that he is not the mild, steady-going person they have always thought him. Observe the music-hall acrobat as he prepares to swing from the roof by his eyelids. His gaze sweeps the house. “It isn’t true,” it seems to say. “I’m not a jellyfish.”

It was so with George Balmer.

In London at the present moment there exist some thousands of respectable, neatly-dressed, mechanical, unenterprising young men, employed at modest salaries by various banks, corporations, stores, shops, and business firms. They are put to work when young, and they stay put. They are mussels. Each has his special place on the rock, and remains glued to it all his life.

To these thousands George Albert Balmer belonged. He differed in no detail from the rest of the great army. He was as respectable, as neatly-dressed, as mechanical, and as unenterprising. His life was bounded, east, west, north, and south, by the Planet Insurance Company, which employed him; and that there were other ways in which a man might fulfil himself than by giving daily imitations behind a counter of a mechanical figure walking in its sleep had never seriously crossed his mind.

On George, at the age of twenty-four, there descended, out of a dear sky, a legacy of a thousand pounds.

Physically, he remained unchanged beneath the shock. No trace of hauteur crept into his bearing. When the head of his department, calling his attention to a technical flaw in his work of the previous afternoon, addressed him as “Here, you⁠—young what’s-your-confounded-name!” he did not point out that this was no way to speak to a gentleman of property. You would have said that the sudden smile of Fortune had failed to unsettle him.

But all the while his mind, knocked head over heels, was lying in a limp heap, wondering what had struck it.

To him, in his dazed state, came Harold Flower. Harold, messenger to the Planet Insurance Company and one of the most assiduous money-borrowers in London, had listened to the office gossip about the legacy as if to the strains of some grand, sweet anthem. He was a bibulous individual of uncertain age, who, in the intervals of creeping about his duties, kept an eye open for possible additions to his staff of creditors. Most of the clerks at the Planet had been laid under contribution by him in their time, for Harold had a way with him that was good for threepence any payday, and it seemed to him that things had come to a sorry pass if he could not extract something special from Plutocrat Balmer in his hour of rejoicing.

Throughout the day he shadowed George, and, shortly before closing-time, backed him into a corner, tapped him on the chest, and requested the temporary loan of a sovereign.

In the same breath he told him that he was a gentleman, that a messenger’s life was practically that of a blanky slave, and that a young man of spirit who wished to add to his already large fortune would have a bit on Giant Gooseberry for the City and Suburban. He then paused for a reply.

Now, all through the day George had been assailed by a steady stream of determined ear-biters. Again and again he had been staked out as an ore-producing claim by men whom it would have been impolitic to rebuff. He was tired of lending, and in a mood to resent unauthorized demands. Harold Flower’s struck him as particularly unauthorized. He said so.

It took some little time to convince Mr. Flower that he really meant it, but, realizing at last the grim truth, he drew a long breath and spoke.

“Ho!” he said. “Afraid you can’t spare it, can’t you? A gentleman comes and asks you with tack and civility for a temp’y loan of about ’arf nothing, and all you do is to curse and swear at him. Do you know what I call you⁠—you and your thousand quid? A tuppenny millionaire, that’s what I call you. Keep your blooming money. That’s all I ask. Keep it. Much good you’ll get out of it. I know your sort. You’ll never have any pleasure of it. Not you. You’re the careful sort. You’ll put it into Consols, you will, and draw your three-ha’pence a year. Money wasn’t meant for your kind. It don’t mean nothing to you. You ain’t got the go in you to appreciate it. A vegetable⁠—that’s all you are. A blanky little vegetable. A blanky little gor-blimey vegetable. I seen turnips with more spirit in ’em that what you’ve got. And Brussels sprouts. Yes, and parsnips.”

It is difficult to walk away with dignity when a man with a hoarse voice and a watery eye is comparing you to your disadvantage with a parsnip, and George did not come anywhere near achieving the feat. But he extricated himself somehow, and went home brooding.

Mr. Flower’s remarks rankled particularly because it so happened that Consols were the identical investment on which he had decided. His Uncle Robert, with whom he lived as a paying guest, had strongly advocated them. Also they had suggested themselves to him independently.

But Harold Flower’s words gave him pause. They made him think. For two weeks and some days he thought, flushing uncomfortably whenever he met that watery but contemptuous eye. And then came the day of his annual vacation, and with it inspiration. He sought out the messenger, whom till now he had carefully avoided.

“Er⁠—Flower,” he said.

“Me lord?”

“I am taking my holiday tomorrow. Will you forward my letters? I will wire you the address. I have not settled on my hotel yet. I am popping over”⁠—he paused⁠—“I am popping over,” he resumed, carelessly, “to Monte.”

“To who?” inquired Mr. Flower.

“To Monte. Monte Carlo, you know.”

Mr. Flower blinked twice rapidly, then pulled himself together.

“Yus, I don’t think!” he said.

And that settled it.

The George who strolled that pleasant morning on the Promenade des Strangers differed both externally and internally from the George who had fallen out with Harold Flower in the offices of the Planet Insurance Company. For a day after his arrival he had clung to the garb of middle-class England. On the second he had discovered that this was unpleasantly warm and, worse, conspicuous. At the Casino Municipale that evening he had observed a man wearing an arrangement in bright yellow velvet without attracting attention. The sight had impressed him. Next morning he had emerged from his hotel in a flannel suit so light that it had been unanimously condemned as impossible by his Uncle Robert, his Aunt Louisa, his Cousins Percy, Eva, and Geraldine, and his Aunt Louisa’s mother, and at a shop in the Rue Lasalle had spent twenty francs on a Homburg hat. And Roville had taken it without blinking.

Internally his alteration had been even more considerable. Roville was not Monte Carlo (in which gay spot he had remained only long enough to send a picture postcard to Harold Flower before retiring down the coast to find something cheaper), but it had been a revelation to him. For the first time in his life he was seeing colour, and it intoxicated him. The silky blueness of the sea was startling. The pure white of the great hotels along the promenade and the Casino Municipale fascinated him. He was dazzled. At the Casino the pillars were crimson and cream, the tables sky-blue and pink. Seated on a green-and-white striped chair he watched a revue, of which from start to finish he understood but one word⁠—“out,” to wit⁠—absorbed in the doings of a red-moustached gentleman in blue who wrangled in rapid French with a black-moustached gentleman in yellow, while a snow-white commere and a compere in a mauve flannel suit looked on at the brawl.

It was during that evening that there flitted across his mind the first suspicion he had ever had that his Uncle Robert’s mental outlook was a little limited.

And now, as he paced the promenade, watching the stir and bustle of the crowd, he definitely condemned his absent relative as a narrow-minded chump.

If the brown boots which he had polished so assiduously in his bedroom that morning with the inside of a banana-skin, and which now gleamed for the first time on his feet, had a fault, it was that they were a shade tight. To promenade with the gay crowd, therefore, for any length of time was injudicious; and George, warned by a red-hot shooting sensation that the moment had arrived for rest, sank down gracefully on a seat, to rise at once on discovering that between him and it was something oblong with sharp corners.

It was a book⁠—a fat new novel. George drew it out and inspected it. There was a name inside⁠—Julia Waveney.

George, from boyhood up, had been raised in that school of thought whose watchword is “Findings are keepings,” and, having ascertained that there was no address attached to the name, he was on the point, I regret to say, of pouching the volume, which already he looked upon as his own, when a figure detached itself from the crowd, and he found himself gazing into a pair of grey and, to his startled conscience, accusing eyes.

“Oh, thank you! I was afraid it was lost.”

She was breathing quickly, and there was a slight flush on her face. She took the book from George’s unresisting hand and rewarded him with a smile.

“I missed it, and I couldn’t think where I could have left it. Then I remembered that I had been sitting here. Thank you so much.”

She smiled again, turned, and walked away, leaving George to reckon up all the social solecisms he had contrived to commit in the space of a single moment. He had remained seated, he reminded himself, throughout the interview; one. He had not raised his hat, that fascinating Homburg simply made to be raised with a debonair swish under such conditions; two. Call it three, because he ought to have raised it twice. He had gaped like a fool; four. And, five, he had not uttered a single word of acknowledgement in reply to her thanks.

Five vast bloomers in under a minute! What could she have thought of him? The sun ceased to shine. What sort of an utter outsider could she have considered him? An east wind sprang up. What kind of a Cockney bounder and cad could she have taken him for? The sea turned to an oily grey; and George, rising, strode back in the direction of his hotel in a mood that made him forget that he had brown boots on at all.

His mind was active. Several times since he had come to Roville he had been conscious of a sensation which he could not understand, a vague, yearning sensation, a feeling that, splendid as everything was in this paradise of colour, there was nevertheless something lacking. Now he understood. You had to be in love to get the full flavour of these vivid whites and blues. He was getting it now. His mood of dejection had passed swiftly, to be succeeded by an exhilaration such as he had only felt once in his life before, about halfway through a dinner given to the Planet staff on a princely scale by a retiring general manager.

He was exalted. Nothing seemed impossible to him. He would meet the girl again on the promenade, he told himself, dashingly renew the acquaintance, show her that he was not the gaping idiot he had appeared. His imagination donned its seven-league boots. He saw himself proposing⁠—eloquently⁠—accepted, married, living happily ever after.

It occurred to him that an excellent first move would be to find out where she was staying. He bought a paper and turned to the list of visitors. Miss Waveney. Where was it. He ran his eye down the column.

And then, with a crash, down came his air-castles in hideous ruin.

“Hotel Cercle de la Mediterranee. Lord Frederick Weston. The Countess of Southborne and the Hon. Adelaide Liss. Lady Julia Waveney⁠—”

He dropped the paper and hobbled on to his hotel. His boots had begun to hurt him again, for he no longer walked on air.

At Roville there are several institutions provided by the municipality for the purpose of enabling visitors temporarily to kill thought. Chief among these is the Casino Municipale, where, for a price, the sorrowful may obtain oblivion by means of the ingenious game of boule. Disappointed lovers at Roville take to boule as in other places they might take to drink. It is a fascinating game. A wooden-faced high priest flicks a red india-rubber ball into a polished oaken bowl, at the bottom of which are holes, each bearing a number up to nine. The ball swings round and round like a planet, slows down, stumbles among the holes, rests for a moment in the one which you have backed, then hops into the next one, and you lose. If ever there was a pastime calculated to place young Adam Cupid in the background, this is it.

To the boule tables that night fled George with his hopeless passion. From the instant when he read the fatal words in the paper he had recognized its hopelessness. All other obstacles he had been prepared to overcome, but a title⁠—no. He had no illusions as to his place in the social scale. The Lady Julias of this world did not marry insurance clerks, even if their late mother’s cousin had left them a thousand pounds. That daydream was definitely ended. It was a thing of the past⁠—all over except the heartache.

By way of a preliminary sip of the waters of Lethe, before beginning the full draught, he placed a franc on number seven and lost. Another franc on six suffered the same fate. He threw a five-franc cartwheel recklessly on evens. It won.

It was enough. Thrusting his hat on the back of his head and wedging himself firmly against the table, he settled down to make a night of it.

There is nothing like boule for absorbing the mind. It was some time before George became aware that a hand was prodding him in the ribs. He turned, irritated. Immediately behind him, filling the landscape, were two stout Frenchmen. But, even as he searched his brain for words that would convey to them in their native tongue his disapproval of this jostling, he perceived that they, though stout and in a general way offensive, were in this particular respect guiltless. The prodding hand belonged to somebody invisible behind them. It was small and gloved, a woman’s hand. It held a five-franc piece.

Then in a gap, caused by a movement in the crowd, he saw the face of Lady Julia Waveney.

She smiled at him.

“On eight, please, would you mind?” he heard her say, and then the crowd shifted again and she disappeared, leaving him holding the coin, his mind in a whirl.

The game of boule demands undivided attention from its devotees. To play with a mind full of other matters is a mistake. This mistake George made. Hardly conscious of what he was doing, he flung the coin on the board. She had asked him to place it on eight, and he thought that he had placed it on eight. That, in reality, blinded by emotion, he had placed it on three was a fact which came home to him neither then nor later.

Consequently, when the ball ceased to roll and a sepulchral voice croaked the news that eight was the winning number, he fixed on the croupier a gaze that began by being joyful and expectant and ended, the croupier remaining entirely unresponsive, by being wrathful.

He leaned towards him.

“Monsieur,” he said. “Moi! J’ai jete cinq francs sur huit!”

The croupier was a man with a pointed moustache and an air of having seen all the sorrow and wickedness that there had ever been in the world. He twisted the former and permitted a faint smile to deepen the melancholy of the latter, but he did not speak.

George moved to his side. The two stout Frenchmen had strolled off, leaving elbow-room behind them.

He tapped the croupier on the shoulder.

“I say,” he said. “What’s the game? J’ai jete cinq francs sur huit, I tell you, moi!”

A forgotten idiom from the days of boyhood and French exercises came to him.

“Moi qui parle,” he added.

“Messieurs, faites vos jeux,” crooned the croupier, in a detached manner.

To the normal George, as to most Englishmen of his age, the one cardinal rule in life was at all costs to avoid rendering himself conspicuous in public. Than George, normal, no violet that ever hid itself in a mossy bank could have had a greater distaste for scenes. But tonight he was not normal. Roville and its colour had wrought a sort of fever in his brain. Boule had increased it. And love had caused it to rage. If this had been entirely his own affair it is probable that the croupier’s frigid calm would have quelled him and he would have retired, fermenting but baffled. But it was not his own affair. He was fighting the cause of the only girl in the world. She had trusted him. Could he fail her? No, he was dashed if he could. He would show her what he was made of. His heart swelled within him. A thrill permeated his entire being, starting at his head and running out at his heels. He felt tremendous⁠—a sort of blend of Oliver Cromwell, a Berserk warrior, and Sir Galahad.

“Monsieur,” he said again. “Hi! What about it?”

This time the croupier did speak.

“C’est fini,” he said; and print cannot convey the pensive scorn of his voice. It stung George, in his exalted mood, like a blow. Finished, was it? All right, now he would show them. They had asked for it, and now they should get it. How much did it come to? Five francs the stake had been, and you got seven times your stake. And you got your stake back. He was nearly forgetting that. Forty francs in all, then. Two of those gold what-d’you-call’ems, in fact. Very well, then.

He leaned forward quickly across the croupier, snatched the lid off the gold tray, and removed two louis.

It is a remarkable fact in life that the scenes which we have rehearsed in our minds never happen as we have pictured them happening. In the present case, for instance, it had been George’s intention to handle the subsequent stages of this little dispute with an easy dignity. He had proposed, the money obtained, to hand it over to its rightful owner, raise his hat, and retire with an air, a gallant champion of the oppressed. It was probably about one-sixteenth of a second after his hand had closed on the coins that he realized in the most vivid manner that these were not the lines on which the incident was to develop, and, with all his heart, he congratulated himself on having discarded those brown boots in favour of a worn but roomy pair of gent’s Oxfords.

For a moment there was a pause and a silence of utter astonishment, while the minds of those who had witnessed the affair adjusted themselves to the marvel, and then the world became full of starting eyes, yelling throats, and clutching hands. From all over the casino fresh units swarmed like bees to swell the crowd at the centre of things. Promenaders ceased to promenade, waiters to wait. Elderly gentlemen sprang on to tables.

But in that momentary pause George had got off the mark. The table at which he had been standing was the one nearest to the door, and he had been on the door side of it. As the first eyes began to start, the first throats to yell, and the first hands to clutch, he was passing the counter of the money-changer. He charged the swing-door at full speed, and, true to its mission, it swung. He had a vague glimpse from the corner of his eye of the hat-and-cloak counter, and then he was in the square with the cold night breeze blowing on his forehead and the stars winking down from the blue sky.

A paper-seller on the pavement, ever the man of business, stepped forward and offered him the Paris edition of the Daily Mail, and, being in the direct line of transit, shot swiftly into the road and fell into a heap, while George, shaken but going well, turned off to the left, where there seemed to be rather more darkness than anywhere else.

And then the casino disgorged the pursuers.

To George, looking hastily over his shoulder, there seemed a thousand of them. The square rang with their cries. He could not understand them, but gathered that they were uncomplimentary. At any rate, they stimulated a little man in evening dress strolling along the pavement towards him, to become suddenly animated and to leap from side to side with outstretched arms.

Panic makes Harlequin three-quarters of us all. For one who had never played Rugby football George handled the situation well. He drew the defence with a feint to the left, then, swerving to the right, shot past into the friendly darkness. From behind came the ringing of feet and an ever-growing din.

It is one of the few compensations a fugitive pursued by a crowd enjoys that, while he has space for his manoeuvres, those who pursue are hampered by their numbers. In the little regiment that pounded at his heels it is probable that there were many faster runners than George. On the other hand, there were many slower, and in the early stages of the chase these impeded their swifter brethren. At the end of the first half-minute, therefore, George, not sparing himself, had drawn well ahead, and for the first time found leisure for connected thought.

His brain became preternaturally alert, so that when, rounding a corner, he perceived entering the main road from a side-street in front of him a small knot of pedestrians, he did not waver, but was seized with a keen spasm of presence of mind. Without pausing in his stride, he pointed excitedly before him, and at the same moment shouted the words, “La! La! Vite! Vite!”

His stock of French was small, but it ran to that, and for his purpose it was ample. The French temperament is not stolid. When the French temperament sees a man running rapidly and pointing into the middle distance and hears him shouting, “La! La! Vite! Vite!” it does not stop to make formal inquiries. It sprints like a mustang. It did so now, with the happy result that a moment later George was racing down the road, the centre and recognized leader of an enthusiastic band of six, which, in the next twenty yards, swelled to eleven.

Five minutes later, in a wine-shop near the harbour, he was sipping the first glass of a bottle of cheap but comforting vin ordinaire while he explained to the interested proprietor, by means of a mixture of English, broken French, and gestures that he had been helping to chase a thief, but had been forced by fatigue to retire prematurely for refreshment. The proprietor gathered, however, that he had every confidence in the zeal of his still active colleagues.

It is convincing evidence of the extent to which love had triumphed over prudence in George’s soul that the advisability of lying hid in his hotel on the following day did not even cross his mind. Immediately after breakfast, or what passed for it at Roville, he set out for the Hotel Cercle de la Mediterranee to hand over the two louis to their owner.

Lady Julia, he was informed on arrival, was out. The porter, politely genial, advised monsieur to seek her on the Promenade des Etrangers.

She was there, on the same seat where she had left the book.

“Good morning,” he said.

She had not seen him coming, and she started at his voice. The flush was back on her face as she turned to him. There was a look of astonishment in the grey eyes.

He held out the two louis.

“I couldn’t give them to you last night,” he said.

A horrible idea seized him. It had not occurred to him before.

“I say,” he stammered⁠—“I say, I hope you don’t think I had run off with your winnings for good! The croupier wouldn’t give them up, you know, so I had to grab them and run. They came to exactly two louis. You put on five francs, you know, and you get seven times your stake. I⁠—”

An elderly lady seated on the bench, who had loomed from behind a parasol towards the middle of these remarks, broke abruptly into speech.

“Who is this young man?”

George looked at her, startled. He had hardly been aware of her presence till now. Rapidly he diagnosed her as a mother⁠—or aunt. She looked more like an aunt. Of course, it must seem odd to her, his charging in like this, a perfect stranger, and beginning to chat with her daughter, or niece, or whatever it was. He began to justify himself.

“I met your⁠—this young lady”⁠—something told him that was not the proper way to put it, but hang it, what else could he say?⁠—“at the casino last night.”

He stopped. The effect of his words on the elderly lady was remarkable. Her face seemed to turn to stone and become all sharp points. She stared at the girl.

“So you were gambling at the casino last night?” she said.

She rose from the seat, a frozen statue of displeasure.

“I shall return to the hotel. When you have arranged your financial transactions with your⁠—friend, I should like to speak to you. You will find me in my room.”

George looked after her dumbly.

The girl spoke, in a curiously strained voice, as if she were speaking to herself.

“I don’t care,” she said. “I’m glad.”

George was concerned.

“I’m afraid your mother is offended, Lady Julia.”

There was a puzzled look in her grey eyes as they met his. Then they lit up. She leaned back in the seat and began to laugh, softly at first, and then with a note that jarred on George. Whatever the humour of the situation⁠—and he had not detected it at present⁠—this mirth, he felt, was unnatural and excessive.

She checked herself at length, and a flush crept over her face.

“I don’t know why I did that,” she said, abruptly. “I’m sorry. There was nothing funny in what you said. But I’m not Lady Julia, and I have no mother. That was Lady Julia who has just gone, and I am nothing more important than her companion.”

“Her companion!”

“I had better say her late companion. It will soon be that. I had strict orders, you see, not to go near the casino without her⁠—and I went.”

“Then⁠—then I’ve lost you your job⁠—I mean, your position! If it hadn’t been for me she wouldn’t have known. I⁠—”

“You have done me a great service,” she said. “You have cut the painter for me when I have been trying for months to muster up the courage to cut it for myself. I don’t suppose you know what it is to get into a groove and long to get out of it and not have the pluck. My brother has been writing to me for a long time to join him in Canada. And I hadn’t the courage, or the energy, or whatever it is that takes people out of grooves. I knew I was wasting my life, but I was fairly happy⁠—at least, not unhappy; so⁠—well, there it was. I suppose women are like that.”

“And now⁠—?”

“And now you have jerked me out of the groove. I shall go out to Bob by the first boat.”

He scratched the concrete thoughtfully with his stick.

“It’s a hard life out there,” he said.

“But it is a life.”

He looked at the strollers on the promenade. They seemed very far away⁠—in another world.

“Look here,” he said, hoarsely, and stopped. “May I sit down?” he asked, abruptly. “I’ve got something to say, and I can’t say it when I’m looking at you.”

He sat down, and fastened his gaze on a yacht that swayed at anchor against the cloudless sky.

“Look here,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

He heard her turn quickly, and felt her eyes upon him. He went on doggedly.

“I know,” he said, “we only met yesterday. You probably think I’m mad.”

“I don’t think you’re mad,” she said, quietly. “I only think you’re too quixotic. You’re sorry for me and you are letting a kind impulse carry you away, as you did last night at the casino. It’s like you.”

For the first time he turned towards her.

“I don’t know what you suppose I am,” he said, “but I’ll tell you. I’m a clerk in an insurance office. I get a hundred a year and ten days’ holiday. Did you take me for a millionaire? If I am, I’m only a tuppenny one. Somebody left me a thousand pounds a few weeks ago. That’s how I come to be here. Now you know all about me. I don’t know anything about you except that I shall never love anybody else. Marry me, and we’ll go to Canada together. You say I’ve helped you out of your groove. Well, I’ve only one chance of getting out of mine, and that’s through you. If you won’t help me, I don’t care if I get out of it or not. Will you pull me out?”

She did not speak. She sat looking out to sea, past the many-coloured crowd.

He watched her face, but her hat shaded her eyes and he could read nothing in it.

And then, suddenly, without quite knowing how it had got there, he found that her hand was in his, and he was clutching it as a drowning man clutches a rope.

He could see her eyes now, and there was a message in them that set his heart racing. A great content filled him. She was so companionable, such a friend. It seemed incredible to him that it was only yesterday that they had met for the first time.

“And now,” she said, “would you mind telling me your name?”

The little waves murmured as they rolled lazily up the beach. Somewhere behind the trees in the gardens a band had begun to play. The breeze, blowing in from the blue Mediterranean, was charged with salt and happiness. And from a seat on the promenade, a young man swept the crowd with a defiant gaze.

“It isn’t true,” it seemed to say. “I’m not a jellyfish.”

Something to Worry About

A girl stood on the shingle that fringes Millbourne Bay, gazing at the red roofs of the little village across the water. She was a pretty girl, small and trim. Just now some secret sorrow seemed to be troubling her, for on her forehead were wrinkles and in her eyes a look of wistfulness. She had, in fact, all the distinguishing marks of one who is thinking of her sailor lover.

But she was not. She had no sailor lover. What she was thinking of was that at about this time they would be lighting up the shopwindows in London, and that of all the deadly, depressing spots she had ever visited this village of Millbourne was the deadliest.

The evening shadows deepened. The incoming tide glistened oilily as it rolled over the mud flats. She rose and shivered.

“Goo! What a hole!” she said, eyeing the unconscious village morosely. “What a hole!”

This was Sally Preston’s first evening in Millbourne. She had arrived by the afternoon train from London⁠—not of her own free will. Left to herself, she would not have come within sixty miles of the place. London supplied all that she demanded from life. She had been born in London; she had lived there ever since⁠—she hoped to die there. She liked fogs, motorbuses, noise, policemen, paperboys, shops, taxicabs, artificial light, stone pavements, houses in long, grey rows, mud, banana-skins, and moving-picture exhibitions. Especially moving-picture exhibitions. It was, indeed, her taste for these that had caused her banishment to Millbourne.

The great public is not yet unanimous on the subject of moving-picture exhibitions. Sally, as I have said, approved of them. Her father, on the other hand, did not. An austere ex-butler, who let lodgings in Ebury Street and preached on Sundays in Hyde Park, he looked askance at the “movies.” It was his boast that he had never been inside a theatre in his life, and he classed cinema palaces with theatres as wiles of the devil. Sally, suddenly unmasked as an habitual frequenter of these abandoned places, sprang with one bound into prominence as the Bad Girl of the Family. Instant removal from the range of temptation being the only possible plan, it seemed to Mr. Preston that a trip to the country was indicated.

He selected Millbourne because he had been butler at the Hall there, and because his sister Jane, who had been a parlourmaid at the Rectory, was now married and living in the village.

Certainly he could not have chosen a more promising reformatory for Sally. Here, if anywhere, might she forget the heady joys of the cinema. Tucked away in the corner of its little bay, which an accommodating island converts into a still lagoon, Millbourne lies dozing. In all sleepy Hampshire there is no sleepier spot. It is a place of calm-eyed men and drowsy dogs. Things crumble away and are not replaced. Tradesmen book orders, and then lose interest and forget to deliver the goods. Only centenarians die, and nobody worries about anything⁠—or did not until Sally came and gave them something to worry about.

Next door to Sally’s Aunt Jane, in a cosy little cottage with a wonderful little garden, lived Thomas Kitchener, a large, grave, self-sufficing young man, who, by sheer application to work, had become already, though only twenty-five, second gardener at the Hall. Gardening absorbed him. When he was not working at the Hall he was working at home. On the morning following Sally’s arrival, it being a Thursday and his day off, he was crouching in a constrained attitude in his garden, every fibre of his being concentrated on the interment of a plump young bulb. Consequently, when a chunk of mud came sailing over the fence, he did not notice it.

A second, however, compelled attention by bursting like a shell on the back of his neck. He looked up, startled. Nobody was in sight. He was puzzled. It could hardly be raining mud. Yet the alternative theory, that someone in the next garden was throwing it, was hardly less bizarre. The nature of his friendship with Sally’s Aunt Jane and old Mr. Williams, her husband, was comfortable rather than rollicking. It was inconceivable that they should be flinging clods at him.

As he stood wondering whether he should go to the fence and look over, or simply accept the phenomenon as one of those things which no fellow can understand, there popped up before him the head and shoulders of a girl. Poised in her right hand was a third clod, which, seeing that there was now no need for its services, she allowed to fall to the ground.

“Halloa!” she said. “Good morning.”

She was a pretty girl, small and trim. Tom was by way of being the strong, silent man with a career to think of and no time for bothering about girls, but he saw that. There was, moreover, a certain alertness in her expression rarely found in the feminine population of Millbourne, who were apt to be slightly bovine.

“What do you think you’re messing about at?” she said, affably.

Tom was a slow-minded young man, who liked to have his thoughts well under control before he spoke. He was not one of your gay rattlers. Besides, there was something about this girl which confused him to an extraordinary extent. He was conscious of new and strange emotions. He stood staring silently.

“What’s your name, anyway?”

He could answer that. He did so.

“Oh! Mine’s Sally Preston. Mrs. Williams is my aunt. I’ve come from London.”

Tom had no remarks to make about London.

“Have you lived here all your life?”

“Yes,” said Tom.

“My goodness! Don’t you ever feel fed up? Don’t you want a change?”

Tom considered the point.

“No,” he said.

“Well, I do. I want one now.”

“It’s a nice place,” hazarded Tom.

“It’s nothing of the sort. It’s the beastliest hole in existence. It’s absolutely chronic. Perhaps you wonder why I’m here. Don’t think I wanted to come here. Not me! I was sent. It was like this.” She gave him a rapid summary of her troubles. “There! Don’t you call it a bit thick?” she concluded.

Tom considered this point, too.

“You must make the best of it,” he said, at length.

“I won’t! I’ll make father take me back.”

Tom considered this point also. Rarely, if ever, had he been given so many things to think about in one morning.

“How?” he inquired, at length.

“I don’t know. I’ll find some way. You see if I don’t. I’ll get away from here jolly quick, I give you my word.”

Tom bent low over a rosebush. His face was hidden, but the brown of his neck seemed to take on a richer hue, and his ears were undeniably crimson. His feet moved restlessly, and from his unseen mouth there proceeded the first gallant speech his lips had ever framed. Merely considered as a speech, it was, perhaps, nothing wonderful; but from Tom it was a miracle of chivalry and polish.

What he said was: “I hope not.”

And instinct telling him that he had made his supreme effort, and that anything further must be bathos, he turned abruptly and stalked into his cottage, where he drank tea and ate bacon and thought chaotic thoughts. And when his appetite declined to carry him more than halfway through the third rasher, he understood. He was in love.

These strong, silent men who mean to be head-gardeners before they are thirty, and eliminate woman from their lives as a dangerous obstacle to the successful career, pay a heavy penalty when they do fall in love. The average irresponsible young man who has hung about North Street on Saturday nights, walked through the meadows and round by the mill and back home past the creek on Sunday afternoons, taken his seat in the brake for the annual outing, shuffled his way through the polka at the tradesmen’s ball, and generally seized all legitimate opportunities for sporting with Amaryllis in the shade, has a hundred advantages which your successful careerer lacks. There was hardly a moment during the days which followed when Tom did not regret his neglected education.

For he was not Sally’s only victim in Millbourne. That was the trouble. Her beauty was not of that elusive type which steals imperceptibly into the vision of the rare connoisseur. It was sudden and compelling. It hit you. Bright brown eyes beneath a mass of fair hair, a determined little chin, a slim figure⁠—these are disturbing things; and the youths of peaceful Millbourne sat up and took notice as one youth. Throw your mind back to the last musical comedy you saw. Recall the leading lady’s song with chorus of young men, all proffering devotion simultaneously in a neat row. Well, that was how the lads of the village comported themselves towards Sally.

Mr. and Mrs. Williams, till then a highly-esteemed but little-frequented couple, were astonished at the sudden influx of visitors. The cottage became practically a salon. There was not an evening when the little sitting-room looking out on the garden was not packed. It is true that the conversation lacked some of the sparkle generally found in the better class of salon. To be absolutely accurate, there was hardly any conversation. The youths of Melbourne were sturdy and honest. They were the backbone of England. England, in her hour of need, could have called upon them with the comfortable certainty that, unless they happened to be otherwise engaged, they would leap to her aid.

But they did not shine at small-talk. Conversationally they were a spent force after they had asked Mr. Williams how his rheumatism was. Thereafter they contented themselves with sitting massively about in corners, glowering at each other. Still, it was all very jolly and sociable, and helped to pass the long evenings. And, as Mrs. Williams pointed out, in reply to some rather strong remarks from Mr. Williams on the subject of packs of young fools who made it impossible for a man to get a quiet smoke in his own home, it kept them out of the public houses.

Tom Kitchener, meanwhile, observed the invasion with growing dismay. Shyness barred him from the evening gatherings, and what was going on in that house, with young bloods like Ted Pringle, Albert Parsons, Arthur Brown, and Joe Blossom (to name four of the most assiduous) exercising their fascinations at close range, he did not like to think. Again and again he strove to brace himself up to join the feasts of reason and flows of soul which he knew were taking place nightly around the object of his devotions, but every time he failed. Habit is a terrible thing; it shackles the strongest, and Tom had fallen into the habit of inquiring after Mr. Williams’ rheumatism over the garden fence first thing in the morning.

It was a civil, neighbourly thing to do, but it annihilated the only excuse he could think of for looking in at night. He could not help himself. It was like some frightful scourge⁠—the morphine habit, or something of that sort. Every morning he swore to himself that nothing would induce him to mention the subject of rheumatism, but no sooner had the stricken old gentleman’s head appeared above the fence than out it came.

“Morning, Mr. Williams.”

“Morning, Tom.”

Pause, indicative of a strong man struggling with himself; then:

“How’s the rheumatism, Mr. Williams?”

“Better, thank’ee, Tom.”

And there he was, with his guns spiked.

However, he did not give up. He brought to his wooing the same determination which had made him second gardener at the Hall at twenty-five. He was a novice at the game, but instinct told him that a good line of action was to shower gifts. He did so. All he had to shower was vegetables, and he showered them in a way that would have caused the goddess Ceres to be talked about. His garden became a perfect crater, erupting vegetables. Why vegetables? I think I hear some heckler cry. Why not flowers⁠—fresh, fair, fragrant flowers? You can do a lot with flowers. Girls love them. There is poetry in them. And, what is more, there is a recognized language of flowers. Shoot in a rose, or a calceolaria, or an herbaceous border, or something, I gather, and you have made a formal proposal of marriage without any of the trouble of rehearsing a long speech and practising appropriate gestures in front of your bedroom looking-glass. Why, then, did not Thomas Kitchener give Sally Preston flowers? Well, you see, unfortunately, it was now late autumn, and there were no flowers. Nature had temporarily exhausted her floral blessings, and was jogging along with potatoes and artichokes and things. Love is like that. It invariably comes just at the wrong time. A few months before there had been enough roses in Tom Kitchener’s garden to win the hearts of a dozen girls. Now there were only vegetables. ’Twas ever thus.

It was not to be expected that a devotion so practically displayed should escape comment. This was supplied by that shrewd observer, old Mr. Williams. He spoke seriously to Tom across the fence on the subject of his passion.

“Young Tom,” he said, “drop it.”

Tom muttered unintelligibly. Mr. Williams adjusted the top hat without which he never stirred abroad, even into his garden. He blinked benevolently at Tom.

“You’re making up to that young gal of Jane’s,” he proceeded. “You can’t deceive me. All these p’taties, and whatnot. I seen your game fast enough. Just you drop it, young Tom.”

“Why?” muttered Tom, rebelliously. A sudden distaste for old Mr. Williams blazed within him.

“Why? ’Cos you’ll only burn your fingers if you don’t, that’s why. I been watching this young gal of Jane’s, and I seen what sort of a young gal she be. She’s a flipperty piece, that’s what she be. You marry that young gal, Tom, and you’ll never have no more quiet and happiness. She’d just take and turn the place upsy-down on you. The man as marries that young gal has got to be master in his own home. He’s got to show her what’s what. Now, you ain’t got the devil in you to do that, Tom. You’re what I might call a sort of a sheep. I admires it in you, Tom. I like to see a young man steady and quiet, same as what you be. So that’s how it is, you see. Just you drop this foolishness, young Tom, and leave that young gal be, else you’ll burn your fingers, same as what I say.”

And, giving his top hat a rakish tilt, the old gentleman ambled indoors, satisfied that he had dropped a guarded hint in a pleasant and tactful manner.

It is to be supposed that this interview stung Tom to swift action. Otherwise, one cannot explain why he should not have been just as reticent on the subject nearest his heart when bestowing on Sally the twenty-seventh cabbage as he had been when administering the hundred and sixtieth potato. At any rate, the fact remains that, as that fateful vegetable changed hands across the fence, something resembling a proposal of marriage did actually proceed from him. As a sustained piece of emotional prose it fell short of the highest standard. Most of it was lost at the back of his throat, and what did emerge was mainly inaudible. However, as she distinctly caught the word “love” twice, and as Tom was shuffling his feet and streaming with perspiration, and looking everywhere at once except at her, Sally grasped the situation. Whereupon, without any visible emotion, she accepted him.

Tom had to ask her to repeat her remark. He could not believe his luck. It is singular how diffident a normally self-confident man can become, once he is in love. When Colonel Milvery, of the Hall, had informed him of his promotion to the post of second gardener, Tom had demanded no encore. He knew his worth. He was perfectly aware that he was a good gardener, and official recognition of the fact left him gratified, but unperturbed. But this affair of Sally was quite another matter. It had revolutionized his standards of value⁠—forced him to consider himself as a man, entirely apart from his skill as a gardener. And until this moment he had had grave doubt as to whether, apart from his skill as a gardener, he amounted to much.

He was overwhelmed. He kissed Sally across the fence humbly. Sally, for her part, seemed very unconcerned about it all. A more critical man than Thomas Kitchener might have said that, to all appearances, the thing rather bored Sally.

“Don’t tell anybody just yet,” she stipulated.

Tom would have given much to be allowed to announce his triumph defiantly to old Mr. Williams, to say nothing of making a considerable noise about it in the village; but her wish was law, and he reluctantly agreed.

There are moments in a man’s life when, however enthusiastic a gardener he may be, his soul soars above vegetables. Tom’s shot with a jerk into the animal kingdom. The first present he gave Sally in his capacity of fiancé was a dog.

It was a half-grown puppy with long legs and a long tail, belonging to no one species, but generously distributing itself among about six. Sally loved it, and took it with her wherever she went. And on one of these rambles down swooped Constable Cobb, the village policeman, pointing out that, contrary to regulations, the puppy had no collar.

It is possible that a judicious meekness on Sally’s part might have averted disaster. Mr. Cobb was human, and Sally was looking particularly attractive that morning. Meekness, however, did not come easily to Sally. In a speech which began as argument and ended (Mr. Cobb proving solid and unyielding) as pure cheek, she utterly routed the constable. But her victory was only a moral one, for as she turned to go Mr. Cobb, dull red and puffing slightly, was already entering particulars of the affair in his notebook, and Sally knew that the last word was with him.

On her way back she met Tom Kitchener. He was looking very tough and strong, and at the sight of him a half-formed idea, which she had regretfully dismissed as impracticable, of assaulting Constable Cobb, returned to her in an amended form. Tom did not know it, but the reason why she smiled so radiantly upon him at that moment was that she had just elected him to the post of hired assassin. While she did not want Constable Cobb actually assassinated, she earnestly desired him to have his helmet smashed down over his eyes; and it seemed to her that Tom was the man to do it.

She poured out her grievance to him and suggested her scheme. She even elaborated it.

“Why shouldn’t you wait for him one night and throw him into the creek? It isn’t deep, and it’s jolly muddy.”

“Um!” said Tom, doubtfully.

“It would just teach him,” she pointed out.

But the prospect of undertaking the higher education of the police did not seem to appeal to Tom. In his heart he rather sympathized with Constable Cobb. He saw the policeman’s point of view. It is all very well to talk, but when you are stationed in a sleepy village where no one ever murders, or robs, or commits arson, or even gets drunk and disorderly in the street, a puppy without a collar is simply a godsend. A man must look out for himself.

He tried to make this side of the question clear to Sally, but failed signally. She took a deplorable view of his attitude.

“I might have known you’d have been afraid,” she said, with a contemptuous jerk of her chin. “Good morning.”

Tom flushed. He knew he had never been afraid of anything in his life, except her; but nevertheless the accusation stung. And as he was still afraid of her he stammered as he began to deny the charge.

“Oh, leave off!” said Sally, irritably. “Suck a lozenge.”

“I’m not afraid,” said Tom, condensing his remarks to their minimum as his only chance of being intelligible.

“You are.”

“I’m not. It’s just that I⁠—”

A nasty gleam came into Sally’s eyes. Her manner was haughty.

“It doesn’t matter.” She paused. “I’ve no doubt Ted Pringle will do what I want.”

For all her contempt, she could not keep a touch of uneasiness from her eyes as she prepared to make her next remark. There was a look about Tom’s set jaw which made her hesitate. But her temper had run away with her, and she went on.

“I am sure he will,” she said. “When we became engaged he said that he would do anything for me.”

There are some speeches that are such conversational knockout blows that one can hardly believe that life will ever pick itself up and go on again after them. Yet it does. The dramatist brings down the curtain on such speeches. The novelist blocks his reader’s path with a zareba of stars. But in life there are no curtains, no stars, nothing final and definite⁠—only ragged pauses and discomfort. There was such a pause now.

“What do you mean?” said Tom at last. “You promised to marry me.”

“I know I did⁠—and I promised to marry Ted Pringle!”

That touch of panic which she could not wholly repress, the panic that comes to everyone when a situation has run away with them like a strange, unmanageable machine, infused a shade too much of the defiant into Sally’s manner. She had wished to be cool, even casual, but she was beginning to be afraid. Why, she could not have said. Certainly she did not anticipate violence on Tom’s part. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps it was just because he was so quiet that she was afraid. She had always looked on him contemptuously as an amiable, transparent lout, and now he was puzzling her. She got an impression of something formidable behind his stolidity, something that made her feel mean and insignificant.

She fought against the feeling, but it gripped her; and, in spite of herself, she found her voice growing shrill and out of control.

“I promised to marry Ted Pringle, and I promised to marry Joe Blossom, and I promised to marry Albert Parsons. And I was going to promise to marry Arthur Brown and anybody else who asked me. So now you know! I told you I’d make father take me back to London. Well, when he hears that I’ve promised to marry four different men, I bet he’ll have me home by the first train.”

She stopped. She had more to say, but she could not say it. She stood looking at him. And he looked at her. His face was grey and his mouth oddly twisted. Silence seemed to fall on the whole universe.

Sally was really afraid now, and she knew it. She was feeling very small and defenceless in an extremely alarming world. She could not have said what it was that had happened to her. She only knew that life had become of a sudden very vivid, and that her ideas as to what was amusing had undergone a striking change. A man’s development is a slow and steady process of the years⁠—a woman’s a thing of an instant. In the silence which followed her words Sally had grown up.

Tom broke the silence.

“Is that true?” he said.

His voice made her start. He had spoken quietly, but there was a new note in it, strange to her. Just as she could not have said what it was that had happened to her, so now she could not have said what had happened to Tom. He, too, had changed, but how she did not know. Yet the explanation was simple. He also had, in a sense, grown up. He was no longer afraid of her.

He stood thinking. Hours seemed to pass.

“Come along!” he said, at last, and he began to move off down the road.

Sally followed. The possibility of refusing did not enter her mind.

“Where are you going?” she asked. It was unbearable, this silence.

He did not answer.

In this fashion, he leading, she following, they went down the road into a lane, and through a gate into a field. They passed into a second field, and as they did so Sally’s heart gave a leap. Ted Pringle was there.

Ted Pringle was a big young man, bigger even than Tom Kitchener, and, like Tom, he was of silent habit. He eyed the little procession inquiringly, but spoke no word. There was a pause.

“Ted,” said Tom, “there’s been a mistake.”

He stepped quickly to Sally’s side, and the next moment he had swung her off her feet and kissed her.

To the type of mind that Millbourne breeds, actions speak louder than words, and Ted Pringle, who had gaped, gaped no more. He sprang forward, and Tom, pushing Sally aside, turned to meet him.

I cannot help feeling a little sorry for Ted Pringle. In the light of what happened, I could wish that it were possible to portray him as a hulking brute of evil appearance and worse morals⁠—the sort of person concerning whom one could reflect comfortably that he deserved all he got. I should like to make him an unsympathetic character, over whose downfall the reader would gloat. But honesty compels me to own that Ted was a thoroughly decent young man in every way. He was a good citizen, a dutiful son, and would certainly have made an excellent husband. Furthermore, in the dispute on hand he had right on his side fully as much as Tom. The whole affair was one of those elemental clashings of man and man where the historian cannot sympathize with either side at the expense of the other, but must confine himself to a mere statement of what occurred. And, briefly, what occurred was that Tom, bringing to the fray a pent-up fury which his adversary had had no time to generate, fought Ted to a complete standstill in the space of two minutes and a half.

Sally had watched the proceedings, sick and horrified. She had never seen men fight before, and the terror of it overwhelmed her. Her vanity received no pleasant stimulation from the thought that it was for her sake that this storm had been let loose. For the moment her vanity was dead, stunned by collision with the realities. She found herself watching in a dream. She saw Ted fall, rise, fall again, and lie where he had fallen; and then she was aware that Tom was speaking.

“Come along!”

She hung back. Ted was lying very still. Gruesome ideas presented themselves. She had just accepted them as truth when Ted wriggled. He wriggled again. Then he sat up suddenly, looked at her with unseeing eyes, and said something in a thick voice. She gave a little sob of relief. It was ghastly, but not so ghastly as what she had been imagining.

Somebody touched her arm. Tom was by her side, grim and formidable. He was wiping blood from his face.

“Come along!”

She followed him without a word. And presently, behold, in another field, whistling meditatively and regardless of impending ill, Albert Parsons.

In everything that he did Tom was a man of method. He did not depart from his chosen formula.

“Albert,” he said, “there’s been a mistake.”

And Albert gaped, as Ted had gaped.

Tom kissed Sally with the gravity of one performing a ritual.

The uglinesses of life, as we grow accustomed to them, lose their power to shock, and there is no doubt that Sally looked with a different eye upon this second struggle. She was conscious of a thrill of excitement, very different from the shrinking horror which had seized her before. Her stunned vanity began to tingle into life again. The fight was raging furiously over the trampled turf, and quite suddenly, as she watched, she was aware that her heart was with Tom.

It was no longer two strange brutes fighting in a field. It was her man battling for her sake.

She desired overwhelmingly that he should win, that he should not be hurt, that he should sweep triumphantly over Albert Parsons as he had swept over Ted Pringle.

Unfortunately, it was evident, even to her, that he was being hurt, and that he was very far from sweeping triumphantly over Albert Parsons. He had not allowed himself time to recover from his first battle, and his blows were slow and weary. Albert, moreover, was made of sterner stuff than Ted. Though now a peaceful tender of cows, there had been a time in his hot youth when, travelling with a circus, he had fought, week in, week out, relays of just such rustic warriors as Tom. He knew their methods⁠—their headlong rushes, their swinging blows. They were the merest commonplaces of life to him. He slipped Tom, he sidestepped Tom, he jabbed Tom; he did everything to Tom that a trained boxer can do to a reckless novice, except knock the fight out of him, until presently, through the sheer labour of hitting, he, too, grew weary.

Now, in the days when Albert Parsons had fought whole families of Toms in an evening, he had fought in rounds, with the boss holding the watch, and half-minute rests, and water to refresh him, and all orderly and proper. Today there were no rounds, no rests, no water, and the peaceful tending of cows had caused flesh to grow where there had been only muscle. Tom’s headlong rushes became less easy to sidestep, his swinging blows more difficult than the scientific counter that shot out to check them. As he tired Tom seemed to regain strength. The tide of the battle began to ebb. He clinched, and Tom threw him off. He feinted, and while he was feinting Tom was on him. It was the climax of the battle⁠—the last rally. Down went Albert, and stayed down. Physically, he was not finished; but in his mind a question had framed itself⁠—the question. “Was it worth it?”⁠—and he was answering, “No.” There were other girls in the world. No girl was worth all this trouble.

He did not rise.

“Come along!” said Tom.

He spoke thickly. His breath was coming in gasps. He was a terrible spectacle, but Sally was past the weaker emotions. She was back in the Stone Age, and her only feeling was one of passionate pride. She tried to speak. She struggled to put all she felt into words, but something kept her dumb, and she followed him in silence.

In the lane outside his cottage, down by the creek, Joe Blossom was clipping a hedge. The sound of footsteps made him turn.

He did not recognize Tom till he spoke.

“Joe, there’s been a mistake,” said Tom.

“Been a gunpowder explosion, more like,” said Joe, a simple, practical man. “What you been doin’ to your face?”

“She’s going to marry me, Joe.”

Joe eyed Sally inquiringly.

“Eh? You promised to marry me.”

“She promised to marry all of us. You, me, Ted Pringle, and Albert Parsons.”

“Promised⁠—to⁠—marry⁠—all⁠—of⁠—us!”

“That’s where the mistake was. She’s only going to marry me. I⁠—I’ve arranged it with Ted and Albert, and now I’ve come to explain to you, Joe.”

“You promised to marry⁠—!”

The colossal nature of Sally’s deceit was plainly troubling Joe Blossom. He expelled his breath in a long note of amazement. Then he summed up.

“Why you’re nothing more nor less than a Joshua!”

The years that had passed since Joe had attended the village Sunday school had weakened his once easy familiarity with the characters of the Old Testament. It is possible that he had somebody else in his mind.

Tom stuck doggedly to his point.

“You can’t marry her, Joe.”

Joe Blossom raised his shears and clipped a protruding branch. The point under discussion seemed to have ceased to interest him.

“Who wants to?” he said. “Good riddance!”

They went down the lane. Silence still brooded over them. The words she wanted continued to evade her.

They came to a grassy bank. Tom sat down. He was feeling unutterably tired.

“Tom!”

He looked up. His mind was working dizzily.

“You’re going to marry me,” he muttered.

She sat down beside him.

“I know,” she said. “Tom, dear, lay your head on my lap and go to sleep.”

If this story proves anything (beyond the advantage of being in good training when you fight), it proves that you cannot get away from the moving pictures even in a place like Millbourne; for as Sally sat there, nursing Tom, it suddenly struck her that this was the very situation with which that “Romance of the Middle Ages” film ended. You know the one I mean. Sir Percival Ye Something (which has slipped my memory for the moment) goes out after the Holy Grail; meets damsel in distress; overcomes her persecutors; rescues her; gets wounded, and is nursed back to life in her arms. Sally had seen it a dozen times. And every time she had reflected that the days of romance are dead, and that that sort of thing can’t happen nowadays.

Crowned Heads

Katie had never been more surprised in her life than when the serious young man with the brown eyes and the Charles Dana Gibson profile spirited her away from his friend and Genevieve. Till that moment she had looked on herself as playing a sort of “villager and retainer” part to the brown-eyed young man’s hero and Genevieve’s heroine. She knew she was not pretty, though somebody (unidentified) had once said that she had nice eyes; whereas Genevieve was notoriously a beauty, incessantly pestered, so report had it, by musical comedy managers to go on the stage.

Genevieve was tall and blonde, a destroyer of masculine peace of mind. She said “harf” and “rahther,” and might easily have been taken for an English duchess instead of a cloak-model at Macey’s. You would have said, in short, that, in the matter of personable young men, Genevieve would have swept the board. Yet, here was this one deliberately selecting her, Katie, for his companion. It was almost a miracle.

He had managed it with the utmost dexterity at the merry-go-round. With winning politeness he had assisted Genevieve on her wooden steed, and then, as the machinery began to work, had grasped Katie’s arm and led her at a rapid walk out into the sunlight. Katie’s last glimpse of Genevieve had been the sight of her amazed and offended face as it whizzed round the corner, while the steam melodeon drowned protests with a spirited plunge into “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”

Katie felt shy. This young man was a perfect stranger. It was true she had had a formal introduction to him, but only from Genevieve, who had scraped acquaintance with him exactly two minutes previously. It had happened on the ferryboat on the way to Palisades Park. Genevieve’s bright eye, roving among the throng on the lower deck, had singled out this young man and his companion as suitable cavaliers for the expedition. The young man pleased her, and his friend, with the broken nose and the face like a good-natured bulldog, was obviously suitable for Katie.

Etiquette is not rigid on New York ferryboats. Without fuss or delay she proceeded to make their acquaintance⁠—to Katie’s concern, for she could never get used to Genevieve’s short way with strangers. The quiet life she had led had made her almost prudish, and there were times when Genevieve’s conduct shocked her. Of course, she knew there was no harm in Genevieve. As the latter herself had once put it, “The feller that tries to get gay with me is going to get a call-down that’ll make him holler for his winter overcoat.” But all the same she could not approve. And the net result of her disapproval was to make her shy and silent as she walked by this young man’s side.

The young man seemed to divine her thoughts.

“Say, I’m on the level,” he observed. “You want to get that. Right on the square. See?”

“Oh, yes,” said Katie, relieved but yet embarrassed. It was awkward to have one’s thoughts read like this.

“You ain’t like your friend. Don’t think I don’t see that.”

“Genevieve’s a sweet girl,” said Katie, loyally.

“A darned sight too sweet. Somebody ought to tell her mother.”

“Why did you speak to her if you did not like her?”

“Wanted to get to know you,” said the young man simply.

They walked on in silence. Katie’s heart was beating with a rapidity that forbade speech. Nothing like this very direct young man had ever happened to her before. She had grown so accustomed to regarding herself as something too insignificant and unattractive for the notice of the lordly male that she was overwhelmed. She had a vague feeling that there was a mistake somewhere. It surely could not be she who was proving so alluring to this fairy prince. The novelty of the situation frightened her.

“Come here often?” asked her companion.

“I’ve never been here before.”

“Often go to Coney?”

“I’ve never been.”

He regarded her with astonishment.

“You’ve never been to Coney Island! Why, you don’t know what this sort of thing is till you’ve taken in Coney. This place isn’t on the map with Coney. Do you mean to say you’ve never seen Luna Park, or Dreamland, or Steeplechase, or the diving ducks? Haven’t you had a look at the Mardi Gras stunts? Why, Coney during Mardi Gras is the greatest thing on earth. It’s a knockout. Just about a million boys and girls having the best time that ever was. Say, I guess you don’t go out much, do you?”

“Not much.”

“If it’s not a rude question, what do you do? I been trying to place you all along. Now I reckon your friend works in a store, don’t she?”

“Yes. She’s a cloak-model. She has a lovely figure, hasn’t she?”

“Didn’t notice it. I guess so, if she’s what you say. It’s what they pay her for, ain’t it? Do you work in a store, too?”

“Not exactly. I keep a little shop.”

“All by yourself?”

“I do all the work now. It was my father’s shop, but he’s dead. It began by being my grandfather’s. He started it. But he’s so old now that, of course, he can’t work any longer, so I look after things.”

“Say, you’re a wonder! What sort of a shop?”

“It’s only a little secondhand bookshop. There really isn’t much to do.”

“Where is it?”

“Sixth Avenue. Near Washington Square.”

“What name?”

“Bennett.”

“That’s your name, then?”

“Yes.”

“Anything besides Bennett?”

“My name’s Kate.”

The young man nodded.

“I’d make a pretty good district attorney,” he said, disarming possible resentment at this cross-examination. “I guess you’re wondering if I’m ever going to stop asking you questions. Well, what would you like to do?”

“Don’t you think we ought to go back and find your friend and Genevieve? They will be wondering where we are.”

“Let ’em,” said the young man briefly. “I’ve had all I want of Jenny.”

“I can’t understand why you don’t like her.”

“I like you. Shall we have some ice-cream, or would you rather go on the Scenic Railway?”

Katie decided on the more peaceful pleasure. They resumed their walk, socially licking two cones. Out of the corner of her eyes Katie cast swift glances at her friend’s face. He was a very grave young man. There was something important as well as handsome about him. Once, as they made their way through the crowds, she saw a couple of boys look almost reverently at him. She wondered who he could be, but was too shy to inquire. She had got over her nervousness to a great extent, but there were still limits to what she felt herself equal to saying. It did not strike her that it was only fair that she should ask a few questions in return for those which he had put. She had always repressed herself, and she did so now. She was content to be with him without finding out his name and history.

He supplied the former just before he finally consented to let her go.

They were standing looking over the river. The sun had spent its force, and it was cool and pleasant in the breeze which was coming up the Hudson. Katie was conscious of a vague feeling that was almost melancholy. It had been a lovely afternoon, and she was sorry that it was over.

The young man shuffled his feet on the loose stones.

“I’m mighty glad I met you,” he said. “Say, I’m coming to see you. On Sixth Avenue. Don’t mind, do you?”

He did not wait for a reply.

“Brady’s my name. Ted Brady, Glencoe Athletic Club,” he paused. “I’m on the level,” he added, and paused again. “I like you a whole lot. There’s your friend, Genevieve. Better go after her, hadn’t you? Goodbye.” And he was gone, walking swiftly through the crowd about the bandstand.

Katie went back to Genevieve, and Genevieve was simply horrid. Cold and haughty, a beautiful iceberg of dudgeon, she refused to speak a single word during the whole long journey back to Sixth Avenue. And Katie, whose tender heart would at other times have been tortured by this hostility, leant back in her seat, and was happy. Her mind was far away from Genevieve’s frozen gloom, living over again the wonderful happenings of the afternoon.

Yes, it had been a wonderful afternoon, but trouble was waiting for her in Sixth Avenue. Trouble was never absent for very long from Katie’s unselfish life. Arriving at the little bookshop, she found Mr. Murdoch, the glazier, preparing for departure. Mr. Murdoch came in on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to play draughts with her grandfather, who was paralysed from the waist, and unable to leave the house except when Katie took him for his outing in Washington Square each morning in his bath-chair.

Mr. Murdoch welcomed Katie with joy.

“I was wondering whenever you would come back, Katie. I’m afraid the old man’s a little upset.”

“Not ill?”

“Not ill. Upset. And it was my fault, too. Thinking he’d be interested, I read him a piece from the paper where I seen about these English Suffragettes, and he just went up in the air. I guess he’ll be all right now you’ve come back. I was a fool to read it, I reckon. I kind of forgot for the moment.”

“Please don’t worry yourself about it, Mr. Murdoch. He’ll be all right soon. I’ll go to him.”

In the inner room the old man was sitting. His face was flushed, and he gesticulated from time to time.

“I won’t have it,” he cried as Katie entered. “I tell you I won’t have it. If Parliament can’t do anything, I’ll send Parliament about its business.”

“Here I am, grandpapa,” said Katie quickly. “I’ve had the greatest time. It was lovely up there. I⁠—”

“I tell you it’s got to stop. I’ve spoken about it before. I won’t have it.”

“I expect they’re doing their best. It’s your being so far away that makes it hard for them. But I do think you might write them a very sharp letter.”

“I will. I will. Get out the paper. Are you ready?” He stopped, and looked piteously at Katie. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to begin.”

Katie scribbled a few lines.

“How would this do? ‘His Majesty informs his Government that he is greatly surprised and indignant that no notice has been taken of his previous communications. If this goes on, he will be reluctantly compelled to put the matter in other hands.’ ”

She read it glibly as she had written it. The formula had been a favourite one of her late father, when roused to fall upon offending patrons of the bookshop.

The old man beamed. His resentment was gone. He was soothed and happy.

“That’ll wake ’em up,” he said. “I won’t have these goings on while I’m king, and if they don’t like it, they know what to do. You’re a good girl, Katie.”

He chuckled.

“I beat Lord Murdoch five games to nothing,” he said.

It was now nearly two years since the morning when old Matthew Bennett had announced to an audience consisting of Katie and a smoky blue cat, which had wandered in from Washington Square to take potluck, that he was the King of England.

This was a long time for any one delusion of the old man’s to last. Usually they came and went with a rapidity which made it hard for Katie, for all her tact, to keep abreast of them. She was not likely to forget the time when he went to bed President Roosevelt and woke up the Prophet Elijah. It was the only occasion in all the years they had passed together when she had felt like giving way and indulging in the fit of hysterics which most girls of her age would have had as a matter of course.

She had handled that crisis, and she handled the present one with equal smoothness. When her grandfather made his announcement, which he did rather as one stating a generally recognized fact than as if the information were in any way sensational, she neither screamed nor swooned, nor did she rush to the neighbours for advice. She merely gave the old man his breakfast, not forgetting to set aside a suitable portion for the smoky cat, and then went round to notify Mr. Murdoch of what had happened.

Mr. Murdoch, excellent man, received the news without any fuss or excitement at all, and promised to look in on Schwartz, the stout saloon-keeper, who was Mr. Bennett’s companion and antagonist at draughts on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and, as he expressed it, put him wise.

Life ran comfortably in the new groove. Old Mr. Bennett continued to play draughts and pore over his secondhand classics. Every morning he took his outing in Washington Square where, from his invalid’s chair, he surveyed somnolent Italians and roller-skating children with his old air of kindly approval. Katie, whom circumstances had taught to be thankful for small mercies, was perfectly happy in the shadow of the throne. She liked her work; she liked looking after her grandfather; and now that Ted Brady had come into her life, she really began to look on herself as an exceptionally lucky girl, a spoilt favourite of Fortune.

For Ted Brady had called, as he said he would, and from the very first he had made plain in his grave, direct way the objects of his visits. There was no subtlety about Ted, no finesse. He was as frank as a music-hall love song.

On his first visit, having handed Katie a large bunch of roses with the stolidity of a messenger boy handing over a parcel, he had proceeded, by way of establishing his bona fides, to tell her all about himself. He supplied the facts in no settled order, just as they happened to occur to him in the long silences with which his speech was punctuated. Small facts jostled large facts. He spoke of his morals and his fox-terrier in the same breath.

“I’m on the level. Ask anyone who knows me. They’ll tell you that. Say, I got the cutest little dog you ever seen. Do you like dogs? I’ve never been a fellow that’s got himself mixed up with girls. I don’t like ’em as a general thing. A fellow’s got too much to do keeping himself in training, if his club expects him to do things. I belong to the Glencoe Athletic. I ran the hundred yards dash in evens last sports there was. They expect me to do it at the Glencoe, so I’ve never got myself mixed up with girls. Till I seen you that afternoon I reckon I’d hardly looked at a girl, honest. They didn’t seem to kind of make any hit with me. And then I seen you, and I says to myself, ‘That’s the one.’ It sort of came over me in a flash. I fell for you directly I seen you. And I’m on the level. Don’t forget that.”

And more in the same strain, leaning on the counter and looking into Katie’s eyes with a devotion that added emphasis to his measured speech.

Next day he came again, and kissed her respectfully but firmly, making a sort of shuffling dive across the counter. Breaking away, he fumbled in his pocket and produced a ring, which he proceeded to place on her finger with the serious air which accompanied all his actions.

“That looks pretty good to me,” he said, as he stepped back and eyed it.

It struck Katie, when he had gone, how differently different men did things. Genevieve had often related stories of men who had proposed to her, and according to Genevieve, they always got excited and emotional, and sometimes cried. Ted Brady had fitted her with the ring more like a glover’s assistant than anything else, and he had hardly spoken a word from beginning to end. He had seemed to take her acquiescence for granted. And yet there had been nothing flat or disappointing about the proceedings. She had been thrilled throughout. It is to be supposed that Mr. Brady had the force of character which does not require the aid of speech.

It was not till she took the news of her engagement to old Mr. Bennett that it was borne in upon Katie that Fate did not intend to be so wholly benevolent to her as she supposed.

That her grandfather could offer any opposition had not occurred to her as a possibility. She took his approval for granted. Never, as long as she could remember, had he been anything but kind to her. And the only possible objections to marriage from a grandfather’s point of view⁠—badness of character, insufficient means, or inferiority of social position⁠—were in this case gloriously absent.

She could not see how anyone, however hypercritical, could find a flaw in Ted. His character was spotless. He was comfortably off. And so far from being in any way inferior socially, it was he who condescended. For Ted, she had discovered from conversation with Mr. Murdoch, the glazier, was no ordinary young man. He was a celebrity. So much so that for a moment, when told the news of the engagement, Mr. Murdoch, startled out of his usual tact, had exhibited frank surprise that the great Ted Brady should not have aimed higher.

“You’re sure you’ve got the name right, Katie?” he had said. “It’s really Ted Brady? No mistake about the first name? Well-built, good-looking young chap with brown eyes? Well, this beats me. Not,” he went on hurriedly, “that any young fellow mightn’t think himself lucky to get a wife like you, Katie, but Ted Brady! Why, there isn’t a girl in this part of the town, or in Harlem or the Bronx, for that matter, who wouldn’t give her eyes to be in your place. Why, Ted Brady is the big noise. He’s the star of the Glencoe.”

“He told me he belonged to the Glencoe Athletic.”

“Don’t you believe it. It belongs to him. Why, the way that boy runs and jumps is the real limit. There’s only Billy Burton, of the Irish-American, that can touch him. You’ve certainly got the pick of the bunch, Katie.”

He stared at her admiringly, as if for the first time realizing her true worth. For Mr. Murdoch was a great patron of sport.

With these facts in her possession Katie had approached the interview with her grandfather with a good deal of confidence.

The old man listened to her recital of Mr. Brady’s qualities in silence. Then he shook his head.

“It can’t be, Katie. I couldn’t have it.”

“Grandpapa!”

“You’re forgetting, my dear.”

“Forgetting?”

“Who ever heard of such a thing? The granddaughter of the King of England marrying a commoner! It wouldn’t do at all.”

Consternation, surprise, and misery kept Katie dumb. She had learned in a hard school to be prepared for sudden blows from the hand of fate, but this one was so entirely unforeseen that it found her unprepared, and she was crushed by it. She knew her grandfather’s obstinacy too well to argue against the decision.

“Oh, no, not at all,” he repeated. “Oh, no, it wouldn’t do.”

Katie said nothing; she was beyond speech. She stood there wide-eyed and silent among the ruins of her little air-castle. The old man patted her hand affectionately. He was pleased at her docility. It was the right attitude, becoming in one of her high rank.

“I am very sorry, my dear, but⁠—oh, no! oh, no! oh, no⁠—” His voice trailed away into an unintelligible mutter. He was a very old man, and he was not always able to concentrate his thoughts on a subject for any length of time.

So little did Ted Brady realize at first the true complexity of the situation that he was inclined, when he heard of the news, to treat the crisis in the jaunty, dashing, love-laughs-at-locksmith fashion so popular with young men of spirit when thwarted in their loves by the interference of parents and guardians.

It took Katie some time to convince him that, just because he had the licence in his pocket, he could not snatch her up on his saddlebow and carry her off to the nearest clergyman after the manner of young Lochinvar.

In the first flush of his resentment at restraint he saw no reason why he should differentiate between old Mr. Bennett and the conventional banns-forbidding father of the novelettes with which he was accustomed to sweeten his hours of idleness. To him, till Katie explained the intricacies of the position, Mr. Bennett was simply the proud millionaire who would not hear of his daughter marrying the artist.

“But, Ted, dear, you don’t understand,” Katie said. “We simply couldn’t do that. There’s no one but me to look after him, poor old man. How could I run away like that and get married? What would become of him?”

“You wouldn’t be away long,” urged Mr. Brady, a man of many parts, but not a rapid thinker. “The minister would have us fixed up inside of half an hour. Then we’d look in at Mouquin’s for a steak and fried, just to make a sort of wedding breakfast. And then back we’d come, hand-in-hand, and say, ‘Well, here we are. Now what?’ ”

“He would never forgive me.”

“That,” said Ted judicially, “would be up to him.”

“It would kill him. Don’t you see, we know that it’s all nonsense, this idea of his; but he really thinks he is the king, and he’s so old that the shock of my disobeying him would be too much. Honest, Ted, dear, I couldn’t.”

Gloom unutterable darkened Ted Brady’s always serious countenance. The difficulties of the situation were beginning to come home to him.

“Maybe if I went and saw him⁠—” he suggested at last.

“You could,” said Katie doubtfully.

Ted tightened his belt with an air of determination, and bit resolutely on the chewing-gum which was his inseparable companion.

“I will,” he said.

“You’ll be nice to him, Ted?”

He nodded. He was the man of action, not words.

It was perhaps ten minutes before he came out of the inner room in which Mr. Bennett passed his days. When he did, there was no light of jubilation on his face. His brow was darker than ever.

Katie looked at him anxiously. He returned the look with a sombre shake of the head.

“Nothing doing,” he said shortly. He paused. “Unless,” he added, “you count it anything that he’s made me an earl.”

In the next two weeks several brains busied themselves with the situation. Genevieve, reconciled to Katie after a decent interval of wounded dignity, said she supposed there was a way out, if one could only think of it, but it certainly got past her. The only approach to a plan of action was suggested by the broken-nosed individual who had been Ted’s companion that day at Palisades Park, a gentleman of some eminence in the boxing world, who rejoiced in the name of the Tennessee Bearcat.

What they ought to do, in the Bearcat’s opinion, was to get the old man out into Washington Square one morning. He of Tennessee would then sasshay up in a flip manner and make a break. Ted, waiting close by, would resent his insolence. There would be words, followed by blows.

“See what I mean?” pursued the Bearcat. “There’s you and me mixing it. I’ll square the cop on the beat to leave us be; he’s a friend of mine. Pretty soon you land me one on the plexus, and I take th’ count. Then there’s you hauling me up by th’ collar to the old gentleman, and me saying I quits and apologizing. See what I mean?”

The whole, presumably, to conclude with warm expressions of gratitude and esteem from Mr. Bennett, and an instant withdrawal of the veto.

Ted himself approved of the scheme. He said it was a cracker-jaw, and he wondered how one so notoriously ivory-skulled as the other could have had such an idea. The Bearcat said modestly that he had ’em sometimes. And it is probable that all would have been well, had it not been necessary to tell the plan to Katie, who was horrified at the very idea, spoke warmly of the danger to her grandfather’s nervous system, and said she did not think the Bearcat could be a nice friend for Ted. And matters relapsed into their old state of hopelessness.

And then, one day, Katie forced herself to tell Ted that she thought it would be better if they did not see each other for a time. She said that these meetings were only a source of pain to both of them. It would really be better if he did not come round for⁠—well, quite some time.

It had not been easy for her to say it. The decision was the outcome of many wakeful nights. She had asked herself the question whether it was fair for her to keep Ted chained to her in this hopeless fashion, when, left to himself and away from her, he might so easily find some other girl to make him happy.

So Ted went, reluctantly, and the little shop on Sixth Avenue knew him no more. And Katie spent her time looking after old Mr. Bennett (who had completely forgotten the affair by now, and sometimes wondered why Katie was not so cheerful as she had been), and⁠—for, though unselfish, she was human⁠—hating those unknown girls whom in her mind’s eye she could see clustering round Ted, smiling at him, making much of him, and driving the bare recollection of her out of his mind.

The summer passed. July came and went, making New York an oven. August followed, and one wondered why one had complained of July’s tepid advances.

It was on the evening of September the eleventh that Katie, having closed the little shop, sat in the dusk on the steps, as many thousands of her fellow-townsmen and townswomen were doing, turning her face to the first breeze which New York had known for two months. The hot spell had broken abruptly that afternoon, and the city was drinking in the coolness as a flower drinks water.

From round the corner, where the yellow cross of the Judson Hotel shone down on Washington Square, came the shouts of children, and the strains, mellowed by distance, of the indefatigable barrel-organ which had played the same tunes in the same place since the spring.

Katie closed her eyes, and listened. It was very peaceful this evening, so peaceful that for an instant she forgot even to think of Ted. And it was just during this instant that she heard his voice.

“That you, kid?”

He was standing before her, his hands in his pockets, one foot on the pavement, the other in the road; and if he was agitated, his voice did not show it.

“Ted!”

“That’s me. Can I see the old man for a minute, Katie?”

This time it did seem to her that she could detect a slight ring of excitement.

“It’s no use, Ted. Honest.”

“No harm in going in and passing the time of day, is there? I’ve got something I want to say to him.”

“What?”

“Tell you later, maybe. Is he in his room?”

He stepped past her, and went in. As he went, he caught her arm and pressed it, but he did not stop. She saw him go into the inner room and heard through the door as he closed it behind him, the murmur of voices. And almost immediately, it seemed to her, her name was called. It was her grandfather’s voice which called, high and excited. The door opened, and Ted appeared.

“Come here a minute, Katie, will you?” he said. “You’re wanted.”

The old man was leaning forward in his chair. He was in a state of extraordinary excitement. He quivered and jumped. Ted, standing by the wall, looked as stolid as ever; but his eyes glittered.

“Katie,” cried the old man, “this is a most remarkable piece of news. This gentleman has just been telling me⁠—extraordinary. He⁠—”

He broke off, and looked at Ted, as he had looked at Katie when he had tried to write the letter to the Parliament of England.

Ted’s eye, as it met Katie’s, was almost defiant.

“I want to marry you,” he said.

“Yes, yes,” broke in Mr. Bennett, impatiently, “but⁠—”

“And I’m a king.”

“Yes, yes, that’s it, that’s it, Katie. This gentleman is a king.”

Once more Ted’s eye met Katie’s, and this time there was an imploring look in it.

“That’s right,” he said, slowly. “I’ve just been telling your grandfather I’m the King of Coney Island.”

“That’s it. Of Coney Island.”

“So there’s no objection now to us getting married, kid⁠—Your Royal Highness. It’s a royal alliance, see?”

“A royal alliance,” echoed Mr. Bennett.

Out in the street, Ted held Katie’s hand, and grinned a little sheepishly.

“You’re mighty quiet, kid,” he said. “It looks as if it don’t make much of a hit with you, the notion of being married to me.”

“Oh, Ted! But⁠—”

He squeezed her hand.

“I know what you’re thinking. I guess it was raw work pulling a tale like that on the old man. I hated to do it, but gee! when a fellow’s up against it like I was, he’s apt to grab most any chance that comes along. Why, say, kid, it kind of looked to me as if it was sort of meant. Coming just now, like it did, just when it was wanted, and just when it didn’t seem possible it could happen. Why, a week ago I was nigh on two hundred votes behind Billy Burton. The Irish-American put him up, and everybody thought he’d be King at the Mardi Gras. And then suddenly they came pouring in for me, till at the finish I had Billy looking like a regular has-been.

“It’s funny the way the voting jumps about every year in this Coney election. It was just Providence, and it didn’t seem right to let it go by. So I went in to the old man, and told him. Say, I tell you I was just sweating when I got ready to hand it to him. It was an outside chance he’d remember all about what the Mardi Gras at Coney was, and just what being a king at it amounted to. Then I remembered you telling me you’d never been to Coney, so I figured your grandfather wouldn’t be what you’d call well fixed in his information about it, so I took the chance.

“I tried him out first. I tried him with Brooklyn. Why, say, from the way he took it, he’d either never heard of the place, or else he’d forgotten what it was. I guess he don’t remember much, poor old fellow. Then I mentioned Yonkers. He asked me what Yonkers were. Then I reckoned it was safe to bring on Coney, and he fell for it right away. I felt mean, but it had to be done.”

He caught her up, and swung her into the air with a perfectly impassive face. Then, having kissed her, he lowered her gently to the ground again. The action seemed to have relieved his feelings, for when he spoke again it was plain that his conscience no longer troubled him.

“And say,” he said, “come to think of it, I don’t see where there’s so much call for me to feel mean. I’m not so far short of being a regular king. Coney’s just as big as some of those kingdoms you read about on the other side; and, from what you see in the papers about the goings-on there, it looks to me that, having a whole week on the throne like I’m going to have, amounts to a pretty steady job as kings go.”

Death at the Excelsior

I

The room was the typical bedroom of the typical boardinghouse, furnished, insofar as it could be said to be furnished at all, with a severe simplicity. It contained two beds, a pine chest of drawers, a strip of faded carpet, and a wash basin. But there was that on the floor which set this room apart from a thousand rooms of the same kind. Flat on his back, with his hands tightly clenched and one leg twisted oddly under him and with his teeth gleaming through his grey beard in a horrible grin, Captain John Gunner stared up at the ceiling with eyes that saw nothing.

Until a moment before, he had had the little room all to himself. But now two people were standing just inside the door, looking down at him. One was a large policeman, who twisted his helmet nervously in his hands. The other was a tall, gaunt old woman in a rusty black dress, who gazed with pale eyes at the dead man. Her face was quite expressionless.

The woman was Mrs. Pickett, owner of the Excelsior Boardinghouse. The policeman’s name was Grogan. He was a genial giant, a terror to the riotous element of the waterfront, but obviously ill at ease in the presence of death. He drew in his breath, wiped his forehead, and whispered: “Look at his eyes, ma’am!”

Mrs. Pickett had not spoken a word since she had brought the policeman into the room, and she did not do so now. Constable Grogan looked at her quickly. He was afraid of Mother Pickett, as was everybody else along the waterfront. Her silence, her pale eyes, and the quiet decisiveness of her personality cowed even the tough old salts who patronized the Excelsior. She was a formidable influence in that little community of sailormen.

“That’s just how I found him,” said Mrs. Pickett. She did not speak loudly, but her voice made the policeman start.

He wiped his forehead again. “It might have been apoplexy,” he hazarded.

Mrs. Pickett said nothing. There was a sound of footsteps outside, and a young man entered, carrying a black bag.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pickett. I was told that⁠—Good Lord!” The young doctor dropped to his knees beside the body and raised one of the arms. After a moment he lowered it gently to the floor, and shook his head in grim resignation.

“He’s been dead for hours,” he announced. “When did you find him?”

“Twenty minutes back,” replied the old woman. “I guess he died last night. He never would be called in the morning. Said he liked to sleep on. Well, he’s got his wish.”

“What did he die of, sir?” asked the policeman.

“It’s impossible to say without an examination,” the doctor answered. “It looks like a stroke, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t. It might be a coronary attack, but I happen to know his blood pressure was normal, and his heart sound. He called in to see me only a week ago, and I examined him thoroughly. But sometimes you can be deceived. The inquest will tell us.” He eyed the body almost resentfully. “I can’t understand it. The man had no right to drop dead like this. He was a tough old sailor who ought to have been good for another twenty years. If you want my honest opinion⁠—though I can’t possibly be certain until after the inquest⁠—I should say he had been poisoned.”

“How would he be poisoned?” asked Mrs. Pickett quietly.

“That’s more than I can tell you. There’s no glass about that he could have drunk it from. He might have got it in capsule form. But why should he have done it? He was always a pretty cheerful sort of old man, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, sir,” said the Constable. “He had the name of being a joker in these parts. Kind of sarcastic, they tell me, though he never tried it on me.”

“He must have died quite early last night,” said the doctor. He turned to Mrs. Pickett. “What’s become of Captain Muller? If he shares this room he ought to be able to tell us something about it.”

“Captain Muller spent the night with some friends at Portsmouth,” said Mrs. Pickett. “He left right after supper, and hasn’t returned.”

The doctor stared thoughtfully about the room, frowning.

“I don’t like it. I can’t understand it. If this had happened in India I should have said the man had died from some form of snakebite. I was out there two years, and I’ve seen a hundred cases of it. The poor devils all looked just like this. But the thing’s ridiculous. How could a man be bitten by a snake in a Southampton waterfront boardinghouse? Was the door locked when you found him, Mrs. Pickett?”

Mrs. Pickett nodded. “I opened it with my own key. I had been calling to him and he didn’t answer, so I guessed something was wrong.”

The Constable spoke: “You ain’t touched anything, ma’am? They’re always very particular about that. If the doctor’s right, and there’s been anything up, that’s the first thing they’ll ask.”

“Everything’s just as I found it.”

“What’s that on the floor beside him?” the doctor asked.

“Only his harmonica. He liked to play it of an evening in his room. I’ve had some complaints about it from some of the gentlemen, but I never saw any harm, so long as he didn’t play it too late.”

“Seems as if he was playing it when⁠—it happened,” Constable Grogan said. “That don’t look much like suicide, sir.”

“I didn’t say it was suicide.”

Grogan whistled. “You don’t think⁠—”

“I’m not thinking anything⁠—until after the inquest. All I say is that it’s queer.”

Another aspect of the matter seemed to strike the policeman. “I guess this ain’t going to do the Excelsior any good, ma’am,” he said sympathetically.

Mrs. Pickett shrugged her shoulders.

“I suppose I had better go and notify the coroner,” said the doctor.

He went out, and after a momentary pause the policeman followed him. Constable Grogan was not greatly troubled with nerves, but he felt a decided desire to be somewhere where he could not see the dead man’s staring eyes.

Mrs. Pickett remained where she was, looking down at the still form on the floor. Her face was expressionless, but inwardly she was tormented and alarmed. It was the first time such a thing as this had happened at the Excelsior, and, as Constable Grogan had hinted, it was not likely to increase the attractiveness of the house in the eyes of possible boarders. It was not the threatened pecuniary loss which was troubling her. As far as money was concerned, she could have lived comfortably on her savings, for she was richer than most of her friends supposed. It was the blot on the escutcheon of the Excelsior⁠—the stain on its reputation⁠—which was tormenting her.

The Excelsior was her life. Starting many years before, beyond the memory of the oldest boarder, she had built up the model establishment, the fame of which had been carried to every corner of the world. Men spoke of it as a place where you were fed well, cleanly housed, and where petty robbery was unknown.

Such was the chorus of praise that it is not likely that much harm could come to the Excelsior from a single mysterious death but Mother Pickett was not consoling herself with such reflections.

She looked at the dead man with pale, grim eyes. Out in the hallway the doctor’s voice further increased her despair. He was talking to the police on the telephone, and she could distinctly hear his every word.

II

The offices of Mr. Paul Snyder’s Detective Agency in New Oxford Street had grown in the course of a dozen years from a single room to an impressive suite bright with polished wood, clicking typewriters, and other evidences of success. Where once Mr. Snyder had sat and waited for clients and attended to them himself, he now sat in his private office and directed eight assistants.

He had just accepted a case⁠—a case that might be nothing at all or something exceedingly big. It was on the latter possibility that he had gambled. The fee offered was, judged by his present standards of prosperity, small. But the bizarre facts, coupled with something in the personality of the client, had won him over. He briskly touched the bell and requested that Mr. Oakes should be sent in to him.

Elliot Oakes was a young man who both amused and interested Mr. Snyder, for though he had only recently joined the staff, he made no secret of his intention of revolutionizing the methods of the agency. Mr. Snyder himself, in common with most of his assistants, relied for results on hard work and plenty of common sense. He had never been a detective of the showy type. Results had justified his methods, but he was perfectly aware that young Mr. Oakes looked on him as a dull old man who had been miraculously favored by luck.

Mr. Snyder had selected Oakes for the case in hand principally because it was one where inexperience could do no harm, and where the brilliant guesswork which Oakes preferred to call his inductive reasoning might achieve an unexpected success.

Another motive actuated Mr. Snyder in his choice. He had a strong suspicion that the conduct of this case was going to have the beneficial result of lowering Oakes’ self-esteem. If failure achieved this end, Mr. Snyder felt that failure, though it would not help the Agency, would not be an unmixed ill.

The door opened and Oakes entered tensely. He did everything tensely, partly from a natural nervous energy, and partly as a pose. He was a lean young man, with dark eyes and a thin-lipped mouth, and he looked quite as much like a typical detective as Mr. Snyder looked like a comfortable and prosperous stock broker.

“Sit down, Oakes,” said Mr. Snyder. “I’ve got a job for you.”

Oakes sank into a chair like a crouching leopard, and placed the tips of his fingers together. He nodded curtly. It was part of his pose to be keen and silent.

“I want you to go to this address”⁠—Mr. Snyder handed him an envelope⁠—“and look around. The address on that envelope is of a sailors’ boardinghouse down in Southampton. You know the sort of place⁠—retired sea captains and so on live there. All most respectable. In all its history nothing more sensational has ever happened than a case of suspected cheating at halfpenny nap. Well, a man had died there.”

“Murdered?” Oakes asked.

“I don’t know. That’s for you to find out. The coroner left it open. ‘Death by Misadventure’ was the verdict, and I don’t blame him. I don’t see how it could have been murder. The door was locked on the inside, so nobody could have got in.”

“The window?”

“The window was open, granted. But the room is on the second floor. Anyway, you may dismiss the window. I remember the old lady saying there was a bar across it, and that nobody could have squeezed through.”

Oakes’ eyes glistened. He was interested. “What was the cause of death?” he asked.

Mr. Snyder coughed. “Snake bite,” he said.

Oakes’ careful calm deserted him. He uttered a cry of astonishment. “Why, that’s incredible!”

“It’s the literal truth. The medical examination proved that the fellow had been killed by snake poison⁠—cobra, to be exact, which is found principally in India.”

“Cobra!”

“Just so. In a Southampton boardinghouse, in a room with a locked door, this man was stung by a cobra. To add a little mystification to the limpid simplicity of the affair, when the door was opened there was no sign of any cobra. It couldn’t have got out through the door, because the door was locked. It couldn’t have got out of the window, because the window was too high up, and snakes can’t jump. And it couldn’t have gotten up the chimney, because there was no chimney. So there you have it.”

He looked at Oakes with a certain quiet satisfaction. It had come to his ears that Oakes had been heard to complain of the infantile nature and unworthiness of the last two cases to which he had been assigned. He had even said that he hoped some day to be given a problem which should be beyond the reasoning powers of a child of six. It seemed to Mr. Snyder that Oakes was about to get his wish.

“I should like further details,” said Oakes, a little breathlessly.

“You had better apply to Mrs. Pickett, who owns the boardinghouse,” Mr. Snyder said. “It was she who put the case in my hands. She is convinced that it is murder. But, if we exclude ghosts, I don’t see how any third party could have taken a hand in the thing at all. However, she wanted a man from this agency, and was prepared to pay for him, so I promised her I would send one. It is not our policy to turn business away.”

He smiled wryly. “In pursuance of that policy I want you to go and put up at Mrs. Pickett’s boardinghouse and do your best to enhance the reputation of our agency. I would suggest that you pose as a ship’s chandler or something of that sort. You will have to be something maritime or they’ll be suspicious of you. And if your visit produces no other results, it will, at least, enable you to make the acquaintance of a very remarkable woman. I commend Mrs. Pickett to your notice. By the way, she says she will help you in your investigations.”

Oakes laughed shortly. The idea amused him.

“It’s a mistake to scoff at amateur assistance, my boy,” said Mr. Snyder in the benevolently paternal manner which had made a score of criminals refuse to believe him a detective until the moment when the handcuffs snapped on their wrists. “Crime investigation isn’t an exact science. Success or failure depends in a large measure on applied common sense, and the possession of a great deal of special information. Mrs. Pickett knows certain things which neither you nor I know, and it’s just possible that she may have some stray piece of information which will provide the key to the entire mystery.”

Oakes laughed again. “It is very kind of Mrs. Pickett,” he said, “but I prefer to trust to my own methods.” Oakes rose, his face purposeful. “I’d better be starting at once,” he said. “I’ll send you reports from time to time.”

“Good. The more detailed the better,” said Mr. Snyder genially. “I hope your visit to the Excelsior will be pleasant. And cultivate Mrs. Pickett. She’s worth while.”

The door closed, and Mr. Snyder lighted a fresh cigar. “Dashed young fool,” he murmured, as he turned his mind to other matters.

III

A day later Mr. Snyder sat in his office reading a typewritten report. It appeared to be of a humorous nature, for, as he read, chuckles escaped him. Finishing the last sheet he threw his head back and laughed heartily. The manuscript had not been intended by its author for a humorous effort. What Mr. Snyder had been reading was the first of Elliott Oakes’ reports from the Excelsior. It read as follows:

I am sorry to be unable to report any real progress. I have formed several theories which I will put forward later, but at present I cannot say that I am hopeful.

Directly I arrived here I sought out Mrs. Pickett, explained who I was, and requested her to furnish me with any further information which might be of service to me. She is a strange, silent woman, who impressed me as having very little intelligence. Your suggestion that I should avail myself of her assistance seems more curious than ever, now that I have seen her.

The whole affair seems to me at the moment of writing quite inexplicable. Assuming that this Captain Gunner was murdered, there appears to have been no motive for the crime whatsoever. I have made careful inquiries about him, and find that he was a man of fifty-five; had spent nearly forty years of his life at sea, the last dozen in command of his own ship; was of a somewhat overbearing disposition, though with a fund of rough humour; had travelled all over the world, and had been an inmate of the Excelsior for about ten months. He had a small annuity, and no other money at all, which disposes of money as the motive for the crime.

In my character of James Burton, a retired ship’s chandler, I have mixed with the other boarders, and have heard all they have to say about the affair. I gather that the deceased was by no means popular. He appears to have had a bitter tongue, and I have not met one man who seems to regret his death. On the other hand, I have heard nothing which would suggest that he had any active and violent enemies. He was simply the unpopular boarder⁠—there is always one in every boardinghouse⁠—but nothing more.

I have seen a good deal of the man who shared his room⁠—another sea captain, named Muller. He is a big, silent person, and it is not easy to get him to talk. As regards the death of Captain Gunner he can tell me nothing. It seems that on the night of the tragedy he was away at Portsmouth with some friends. All I have got from him is some information as to Captain Gunner’s habits, which leads nowhere. The dead man seldom drank, except at night when he would take some whisky. His head was not strong, and a little of the spirit was enough to make him semi-intoxicated, when he would be hilarious and often insulting. I gather that Muller found him a difficult roommate, but he is one of those placid persons who can put up with anything. He and Gunner were in the habit of playing draughts together every night in their room, and Gunner had a harmonica which he played frequently. Apparently, he was playing it very soon before he died, which is significant, as seeming to dispose of the idea of suicide.

As I say, I have one or two theories, but they are in a very nebulous state. The most plausible is that on one of his visits to India⁠—I have ascertained that he made several voyages there⁠—Captain Gunner may in some way have fallen foul of the natives. The fact that he certainly died of the poison of an Indian snake supports this theory. I am making inquiries as to the movements of several Indian sailors who were here in their ships at the time of the tragedy.

I have another theory. Does Mrs. Pickett know more about this affair than she appears to? I may be wrong in my estimate of her mental qualities. Her apparent stupidity may be cunning. But here again, the absence of motive brings me up against a dead wall. I must confess that at present I do not see my way clearly. However, I will write again shortly.

Mr. Snyder derived the utmost enjoyment from the report. He liked the substance of it, and above all, he was tickled by the bitter tone of frustration which characterized it. Oakes was baffled, and his knowledge of Oakes told him that the sensation of being baffled was gall and wormwood to that high-spirited young man. Whatever might be the result of this investigation, it would teach him the virtue of patience.

He wrote his assistant a short note:

Dear Oakes,

Your report received. You certainly seem to have got the hard case which, I hear, you were pining for. Don’t build too much on plausible motives in a case of this sort. Fauntleroy, the London murderer, killed a woman for no other reason than that she had thick ankles. Many years ago, I myself was on a case where a man murdered an intimate friend because of a dispute about a bet. My experience is that five murderers out of ten act on the whim of the moment, without anything which, properly speaking, you could call a motive at all.

Yours very cordially,

Paul Snyder

P.S. I don’t think much of your Pickett theory. However, you’re in charge. I wish you luck.

IV

Young Mr. Oakes was not enjoying himself. For the first time in his life, the self-confidence which characterized all his actions seemed to be failing him. The change had taken place almost overnight. The fact that the case had the appearance of presenting the unusual had merely stimulated him at first. But then doubts had crept in and the problem had begun to appear insoluble.

True, he had only just taken it up, but something told him that, for all the progress he was likely to make, he might just as well have been working on it steadily for a month. He was completely baffled. And every moment which he spent in the Excelsior Boardinghouse made it clearer to him that that infernal old woman with the pale eyes thought him an incompetent fool. It was that, more than anything, which made him acutely conscious of his lack of success. His nerves were being sorely troubled by the quiet scorn of Mrs. Pickett’s gaze. He began to think that perhaps he had been a shade too self-confident and abrupt in the short interview which he had had with her on his arrival.

As might have been expected, his first act, after his brief interview with Mrs. Pickett, was to examine the room where the tragedy had taken place. The body was gone, but otherwise nothing had been moved.

Oakes belonged to the magnifying-glass school of detection. The first thing he did on entering the room was to make a careful examination of the floor, the walls, the furniture, and the windowsill. He would have hotly denied the assertion that he did this because it looked well, but he would have been hard put to it to advance any other reason.

If he discovered anything, his discoveries were entirely negative, and served only to deepen the mystery of the case. As Mr. Snyder had said, there was no chimney, and nobody could have entered through the locked door.

There remained the window. It was small, and apprehensiveness, perhaps, of the possibility of burglars, had caused the proprietress to make it doubly secure with an iron bar. No human being could have squeezed his way through it.

It was late that night that he wrote and dispatched to headquarters the report which had amused Mr. Snyder.

V

Two days later Mr. Snyder sat at his desk, staring with wide, unbelieving eyes at a telegram he had just received. It read as follows:

Have Solved Gunner Mystery. Returning.⁠ ⁠… Oakes.

Mr. Snyder narrowed his eyes and rang the bell. “Send Mr. Oakes to me directly he arrives,” he said.

He was pained to find that his chief emotion was one of bitter annoyance. The swift solution of such an apparently insoluble problem would reflect the highest credit on the Agency, and there were picturesque circumstances connected with the case which would make it popular with the newspapers and lead to its being given a great deal of publicity.

Yet, in spite of all this, Mr. Snyder was annoyed. He realized now how large a part the desire to reduce Oakes’ self-esteem had played with him. He further realized, looking at the thing honestly, that he had been firmly convinced that the young man would not come within a mile of a reasonable solution of the mystery. He had desired only that his failure would prove a valuable educational experience for him. For he believed that failure at this particular point in his career would make Oakes a more valuable asset to the Agency. But now here Oakes was, within a ridiculously short space of time, returning to the fold, not humble and defeated, but triumphant. Mr. Snyder looked forward with apprehension to the young man’s probable demeanor under the intoxicating influence of victory.

His apprehensions were well grounded. He had barely finished the third of the series of cigars, which, like milestones, marked the progress of his afternoon, when the door opened and young Oakes entered. Mr. Snyder could not repress a faint moan at the sight of him. One glance was enough to tell him that his worst fears were realised.

“I got your telegram,” said Mr. Snyder.

Oakes nodded. “It surprised you, eh?” he asked.

Mr. Snyder resented the patronizing tone of the question, but he had resigned himself to be patronized, and keep his anger in check.

“Yes,” he replied, “I must say it did surprise me. I didn’t gather from your report that you had even found a clue. Was it the Indian theory that turned the trick?”

Oakes laughed tolerantly. “Oh, I never really believed that preposterous theory for one moment. I just put it in to round out my report. I hadn’t begun to think about the case then⁠—not really think.”

Mr. Snyder, nearly exploding with wrath, extended his cigar-case. “Light up, and tell me all about it,” he said, controlling his anger.

“Well, I won’t say I haven’t earned this,” said Oakes, puffing away. He let the ash of his cigar fall delicately to the floor⁠—another action which seemed significant to his employer. As a rule, his assistants, unless particularly pleased with themselves, used the ashtray.

“My first act on arriving,” Oakes said, “was to have a talk with Mrs. Pickett. A very dull old woman.”

“Curious. She struck me as rather intelligent.”

“Not on your life. She gave me no assistance whatever. I then examined the room where the death had taken place. It was exactly as you described it. There was no chimney, the door had been locked on the inside, and the one window was very high up. At first sight, it looked extremely unpromising. Then I had a chat with some of the other boarders. They had nothing of any importance to contribute. Most of them simply gibbered. I then gave up trying to get help from the outside, and resolved to rely on my own intelligence.”

He smiled triumphantly. “It is a theory of mine, Mr. Snyder, which I have found valuable that, in nine cases out of ten, remarkable things don’t happen.”

“I don’t quite follow you there,” Mr. Snyder interrupted.

“I will put it another way, if you like. What I mean is that the simplest explanation is nearly always the right one. Consider this case. It seemed impossible that there should have been any reasonable explanation of the man’s death. Most men would have worn themselves out guessing at wild theories. If I had started to do that, I should have been guessing now. As it is⁠—here I am. I trusted to my belief that nothing remarkable ever happens, and I won out.”

Mr. Snyder sighed softly. Oakes was entitled to a certain amount of gloating, but there could be no doubt that his way of telling a story was downright infuriating.

“I believe in the logical sequence of events. I refuse to accept effects unless they are preceded by causes. In other words, with all due respect to your possibly contrary opinions, Mr. Snyder, I simply decline to believe in a murder unless there was a motive for it. The first thing I set myself to ascertain was⁠—what was the motive for the murder of Captain Gunner? And, after thinking it over and making every possible inquiry, I decided that there was no motive. Therefore, there was no murder.”

Mr. Snyder’s mouth opened, and he obviously was about to protest. But he appeared to think better of it and Oakes proceeded: “I then tested the suicide theory. What motive was there for suicide? There was no motive. Therefore, there was no suicide.”

This time Mr. Snyder spoke. “You haven’t been spending the last few days in the wrong house by any chance, have you? You will be telling me next that there wasn’t any dead man.”

Oakes smiled. “Not at all. Captain John Gunner was dead, all right. As the medical evidence proved, he died of the bite of a cobra. It was a small cobra which came from Java.”

Mr. Snyder stared at him. “How do you know?”

“I do know, beyond any possibility of doubt.”

“Did you see the snake?”

Oakes shook his head.

“Then, how in heaven’s name⁠—”

“I have enough evidence to make a jury convict Mr. Snake without leaving the box.”

“Then suppose you tell me this. How did your cobra from Java get out of the room?”

“By the window,” replied Oakes, impassively.

“How can you possibly explain that? You say yourself that the window was high up.”

“Nevertheless, it got out by the window. The logical sequence of events is proof enough that it was in the room. It killed Captain Gunner there, and left traces of its presence outside. Therefore, as the window was the only exit, it must have escaped by that route. It may have climbed or it may have jumped, but somehow it got out of that window.”

“What do you mean⁠—it left traces of its presence outside?”

“It killed a dog in the backyard behind the house,” Oakes said. “The window of Captain Gunner’s room projects out over it. It is full of boxes and litter and there are a few stunted shrubs scattered about. In fact, there is enough cover to hide any small object like the body of a dog. That’s why it was not discovered at first. The maid at the Excelsior came on it the morning after I sent you my report while she was emptying a box of ashes in the yard. It was just an ordinary stray dog without collar or license. The analyst examined the body, and found that the dog had died of the bite of a cobra.”

“But you didn’t find the snake?”

“No. We cleaned out that yard till you could have eaten your breakfast there, but the snake had gone. It must have escaped through the door of the yard, which was standing ajar. That was a couple of days ago, and there has been no further tragedy. In all likelihood it is dead. The nights are pretty cold now, and it would probably have died of exposure.”

“But, I just don’t understand how a cobra got to Southampton,” said the amazed Mr. Snyder.

“Can’t you guess it? I told you it came from Java.”

“How did you know it did?”

“Captain Muller told me. Not directly, but I pieced it together from what he said. It seems that an old shipmate of Captain Gunner’s was living in Java. They corresponded, and occasionally this man would send the captain a present as a mark of his esteem. The last present he sent was a crate of bananas. Unfortunately, the snake must have got in unnoticed. That’s why I told you the cobra was a small one. Well, that’s my case against Mr. Snake, and short of catching him with the goods, I don’t see how I could have made out a stronger one. Don’t you agree?”

It went against the grain for Mr. Snyder to acknowledge defeat, but he was a fair-minded man, and he was forced to admit that Oakes did certainly seem to have solved the impossible.

“I congratulate you, my boy,” he said as heartily as he could. “To be completely frank, when you started out, I didn’t think you could do it. By the way, I suppose Mrs. Pickett was pleased?”

“If she was, she didn’t show it. I’m pretty well convinced she hasn’t enough sense to be pleased at anything. However, she has invited me to dinner with her tonight. I imagine she’ll be as boring as usual, but she made such a point of it, I had to accept.”

VI

For some time after Oakes had gone, Mr. Snyder sat smoking and thinking, in embittered meditation. Suddenly there was brought the card of Mrs. Pickett, who would be grateful if he could spare her a few moments. Mr. Snyder was glad to see Mrs. Pickett. He was a student of character, and she had interested him at their first meeting. There was something about her which had seemed to him unique, and he welcomed this second chance of studying her at close range.

She came in and sat down stiffly, balancing herself on the extreme edge of the chair in which a short while before young Oakes had lounged so luxuriously.

“How are you, Mrs. Pickett?” said Mr. Snyder genially. “I’m very glad that you could find time to pay me a visit. Well, so it wasn’t murder after all.”

“Sir?”

“I’ve just been talking to Mr. Oakes, whom you met as James Burton,” said the detective. “He has told me all about it.”

“He told me all about it,” said Mrs. Pickett dryly.

Mr. Snyder looked at her inquiringly. Her manner seemed more suggestive than her words.

“A conceited, headstrong young fool,” said Mrs. Pickett.

It was no new picture of his assistant that she had drawn. Mr. Snyder had often drawn it himself, but at the present juncture it surprised him. Oakes, in his hour of triumph, surely did not deserve this sweeping condemnation.

“Did not Mr. Oakes’ solution of the mystery satisfy you, Mrs. Pickett?”

“No!”

“It struck me as logical and convincing,” Mr. Snyder said.

“You may call it all the fancy names you please, Mr. Snyder. But Mr. Oakes’ solution was not the right one.”

“Have you an alternative to offer?”

Mrs. Pickett tightened her lips.

“If you have, I should like to hear it.”

“You will⁠—at the proper time.”

“What makes you so certain that Mr. Oakes is wrong?”

“He starts out with an impossible explanation, and rests his whole case on it. There couldn’t have been a snake in that room because it couldn’t have gotten out. The window was too high.”

“But surely the evidence of the dead dog?”

Mrs. Pickett looked at him as if he had disappointed her. “I had always heard you spoken of as a man with common sense, Mr. Snyder.”

“I have always tried to use common sense.”

“Then why are you trying now to make yourself believe that something happened which could not possibly have happened just because it fits in with something which isn’t easy to explain?”

“You mean that there is another explanation of the dead dog?” Mr. Snyder asked.

“Not another. What Mr. Oakes takes for granted is not an explanation. But there is a commonsense explanation, and if he had not been so headstrong and conceited he might have found it.”

“You speak as if you had found it,” chided Mr. Snyder.

“I have.” Mrs. Pickett leaned forward as she spoke, and stared at him defiantly.

Mr. Snyder started. “You have?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“You will know before tomorrow. In the meantime try and think it out for yourself. A successful and prosperous detective agency like yours, Mr. Snyder, ought to do something in return for a fee.”

There was something in her manner so reminiscent of the school teacher reprimanding a recalcitrant pupil that Mr. Snyder’s sense of humor came to his rescue. “We do our best, Mrs. Pickett,” he said. “But you mustn’t forget that we are only human and cannot guarantee results.”

Mrs. Pickett did not pursue the subject. Instead, she proceeded to astonish Mr. Snyder by asking him to swear out a warrant for the arrest of a man known to them both on a charge of murder.

Mr. Snyder’s breath was not often taken away in his own office. As a rule, he received his clients’ communications calmly, strange as they often were. But at her words he gasped. The thought crossed his mind that Mrs. Pickett might well be mentally unbalanced. The details of the case were fresh in his memory, and he distinctly recollected that the person she mentioned had been away from the boardinghouse on the night of Captain Gunner’s death, and could, he imagined, produce witnesses to prove it.

Mrs. Pickett was regarding him with an unfaltering stare. To all outward appearances, she was the opposite of unbalanced.

“But you can’t swear out a warrant without evidence,” he told her.

“I have evidence,” she replied firmly.

“Precisely what kind of evidence?” he demanded.

“If I told you now you would think that I was out of my mind.”

“But, Mrs. Pickett, do you realize what you are asking me to do? I cannot make this agency responsible for the arbitrary arrest of a man on the strength of a single individual’s suspicions. It might ruin me. At the least it would make me a laughing stock.”

“Mr. Snyder, you may use your own judgment whether or not to make the arrest on that warrant. You will listen to what I have to say, and you will see for yourself how the crime was committed. If after that you feel that you cannot make the arrest I will accept your decision. I know who killed Captain Gunner,” she said. “I knew it from the beginning. It was like a vision. But I had no proof. Now things have come to light and everything is clear.”

Against his judgment, Mr. Snyder was impressed. This woman had the magnetism which makes for persuasiveness.

“It⁠—it sounds incredible.” Even as he spoke, he remembered that it had long been a professional maxim of his that nothing was incredible, and he weakened still further.

“Mr. Snyder, I ask you to swear out that warrant.”

The detective gave in. “Very well,” he said.

Mrs. Pickett rose. “If you will come and dine at my house tonight I think I can prove to you that it will be needed. Will you come?”

“I’ll come,” promised Mr. Snyder.

VII

When Mr. Snyder arrived at the Excelsior and shortly after he was shown into the little private sitting room where he found Oakes, the third guest of the evening unexpectedly arrived.

Mr. Snyder looked curiously at the newcomer. Captain Muller had a peculiar fascination for him. It was not Mr. Snyder’s habit to trust overmuch to appearances. But he could not help admitting that there was something about this man’s aspect which brought Mrs. Pickett’s charges out of the realm of the fantastic into that of the possible. There was something odd⁠—an unnatural aspect of gloom⁠—about the man. He bore himself like one carrying a heavy burden. His eyes were dull, his face haggard. The next moment the detective was reproaching himself with allowing his imagination to run away with his calmer judgment.

The door opened, and Mrs. Pickett came in. She made no apology for her lateness.

To Mr. Snyder one of the most remarkable points about the dinner was the peculiar metamorphosis of Mrs. Pickett from the brooding silent woman he had known to the gracious and considerate hostess.

Oakes appeared also to be overcome with surprise, so much so that he was unable to keep his astonishment to himself. He had come prepared to endure a dull evening absorbed in grim silence, and he found himself instead opposite a bottle of champagne of a brand and year which commanded his utmost respect. What was even more incredible, his hostess had transformed herself into a pleasant old lady whose only aim seemed to be to make him feel at home.

Beside each of the guests’ plates was a neat paper parcel. Oakes picked his up, and stared at it in wonderment. “Why, this is more than a party souvenir, Mrs. Pickett,” he said. “It’s the kind of mechanical marvel I’ve always wanted to have on my desk.”

“I’m glad you like it, Mr. Oakes,” Mrs. Pickett said, smiling. “You must not think of me simply as a tired old woman whom age has completely defeated. I am an ambitious hostess. When I give these little parties, I like to make them a success. I want each of you to remember this dinner.”

“I’m sure I will.”

Mrs. Pickett smiled again. “I think you all will. You, Mr. Snyder.” She paused. “And you, Captain Muller.”

To Mr. Snyder there was so much meaning in her voice as she said this that he was amazed that it conveyed no warning to Muller. Captain Muller, however, was already drinking heavily. He looked up when addressed and uttered a sound which might have been taken for an expression of polite acquiescence. Then he filled his glass again.

Mr. Snyder’s parcel revealed a watch-charm fashioned in the shape of a tiny, candid-eye camera. “That,” said Mrs. Pickett, “is a compliment to your profession.” She leaned toward the captain. “Mr. Snyder is a detective, Captain Muller.”

He looked up. It seemed to Mr. Snyder that a look of fear lit up his heavy eyes for an instant. It came and went, if indeed it came at all, so swiftly that he could not be certain.

“So?” said Captain Muller. He spoke quite evenly, with just the amount of interest which such an announcement would naturally produce.

“Now for yours, Captain,” said Oakes. “I guess it’s something special. It’s twice the size of mine, anyway.”

It may have been something in the old woman’s expression as she watched Captain Muller slowly tearing the paper that sent a thrill of excitement through Mr. Snyder. Something seemed to warn him of the approach of a psychological moment. He bent forward eagerly.

There was a strangled gasp, a thump, and onto the table from the captain’s hands there fell a little harmonica. There was no mistaking the look on Muller’s face now. His cheeks were like wax, and his eyes, so dull till then, blazed with a panic and horror which he could not repress. The glasses on the table rocked as he clutched at the cloth.

Mrs. Pickett spoke. “Why, Captain Muller, has it upset you? I thought that, as his best friend, the man who shared his room, you would value a memento of Captain Gunner. How fond you must have been of him for the sight of his harmonica to be such a shock.”

The captain did not speak. He was staring fascinated at the thing on the table. Mrs. Pickett turned to Mr. Snyder. Her eyes, as they met his, held him entranced.

“Mr. Snyder, as a detective, you will be interested in a curious and very tragic affair which happened in this house a few days ago. One of my boarders, Captain Gunner, was found dead in his room. It was the room which he shared with Captain Muller. I am very proud of the reputation of my house, Mr. Snyder, and it was a blow to me that this should have happened. I applied to an agency for a detective, and they sent me a stupid boy, with nothing to recommend him except his belief in himself. He said that Captain Gunner had died by accident, killed by a snake which had come out of a crate of bananas. I knew better. I knew that Captain Gunner had been murdered. Are you listening, Captain Muller? This will interest you, as you were such a friend of his.”

The captain did not answer. He was staring straight before him, as if he saw something invisible in eyes forever closed in death.

“Yesterday we found the body of a dog. It had been killed, as Captain Gunner had been, by the poison of a snake. The boy from the agency said that this was conclusive. He said that the snake had escaped from the room after killing Captain Gunner and had in turn killed the dog. I knew that to be impossible, for, if there had been a snake in that room it could not have made its escape.”

Her eyes flashed, and became remorselessly accusing. “It was not a snake that killed Captain Gunner. It was a cat. Captain Gunner had a friend who hated him. One day, in opening a crate of bananas, this friend found a snake. He killed it, and extracted the poison. He knew Captain Gunner’s habits. He knew that he played a harmonica. This man also had a cat. He knew that cats hated the sound of a harmonica. He had often seen this particular cat fly at Captain Gunner and scratch him when he played. He took the cat and covered its claws with the poison. And then he left it in the room with Captain Gunner. He knew what would happen.”

Oakes and Mr. Snyder were on their feet. Captain Muller had not moved. He sat there, his fingers gripping the cloth. Mrs. Pickett rose and went to a closet. She unlocked the door. “Kitty!” she called. “Kitty! Kitty!”

A black cat ran swiftly out into the room. With a clatter and a crash of crockery and a ringing of glass the table heaved, rocked and overturned as Muller staggered to his feet. He threw up his hands as if to ward something off. A choking cry came from his lips. “Gott! Gott!”

Mrs. Pickett’s voice rang through the room, cold and biting: “Captain Muller, you murdered Captain Gunner!”

The captain shuddered. Then mechanically he replied: “Gott! Yes, I killed him.”

“You heard, Mr. Snyder,” said Mrs. Pickett. “He has confessed before witnesses. Take him away.”

Muller allowed himself to be moved toward the door. His arm in Mr. Snyder’s grip felt limp. Mrs. Pickett stopped and took something from the debris on the floor. She rose, holding the harmonica.

“You are forgetting your souvenir, Captain Muller,” she said.

One Touch of Nature

The feelings of Mr. J. Wilmot Birdsey, as he stood wedged in the crowd that moved inch by inch towards the gates of the Chelsea Football Ground, rather resembled those of a starving man who has just been given a meal but realizes that he is not likely to get another for many days. He was full and happy. He bubbled over with the joy of living and a warm affection for his fellow-man. At the back of his mind there lurked the black shadow of future privations, but for the moment he did not allow it to disturb him. On this maddest, merriest day of all the glad New Year he was content to revel in the present and allow the future to take care of itself.

Mr. Birdsey had been doing something which he had not done since he left New York five years ago. He had been watching a game of baseball.

New York lost a great baseball fan when Hugo Percy de Wynter Framlinghame, sixth Earl of Carricksteed, married Mae Elinor, only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. Wilmot Birdsey of East Seventy-Third Street; for scarcely had that internationally important event taken place when Mrs. Birdsey, announcing that for the future the home would be in England as near as possible to dear Mae and dear Hugo, scooped J. Wilmot out of his comfortable morris chair as if he had been a clam, corked him up in a swift taxicab, and decanted him into a Deck B stateroom on the Olympic. And there he was, an exile.

Mr. Birdsey submitted to the worst bit of kidnapping since the days of the old press gang with that delightful amiability which made him so popular among his fellows and such a cipher in his home. At an early date in his married life his position had been clearly defined beyond possibility of mistake. It was his business to make money, and, when called upon, to jump through hoops and sham dead at the bidding of his wife and daughter Mae. These duties he had been performing conscientiously for a matter of twenty years.

It was only occasionally that his humble role jarred upon him, for he loved his wife and idolized his daughter. The international alliance had been one of these occasions. He had no objection to Hugo Percy, sixth Earl of Carricksteed. The crushing blow had been the sentence of exile. He loved baseball with a love passing the love of women, and the prospect of never seeing a game again in his life appalled him.

And then, one morning, like a voice from another world, had come the news that the White Sox and the Giants were to give an exhibition in London at the Chelsea Football Ground. He had counted the days like a child before Christmas.

There had been obstacles to overcome before he could attend the game, but he had overcome them, and had been seated in the front row when the two teams lined up before King George.

And now he was moving slowly from the ground with the rest of the spectators. Fate had been very good to him. It had given him a great game, even unto two home runs. But its crowning benevolence had been to allot the seats on either side of him to two men of his own mettle, two godlike beings who knew every move on the board, and howled like wolves when they did not see eye to eye with the umpire. Long before the ninth innings he was feeling towards them the affection of a shipwrecked mariner who meets a couple of boyhood’s chums on a desert island.

As he shouldered his way towards the gate he was aware of these two men, one on either side of him. He looked at them fondly, trying to make up his mind which of them he liked best. It was sad to think that they must soon go out of his life again forever.

He came to a sudden resolution. He would postpone the parting. He would ask them to dinner. Over the best that the Savoy Hotel could provide they would fight the afternoon’s battle over again. He did not know who they were or anything about them, but what did that matter? They were brother-fans. That was enough for him.

The man on his right was young, clean-shaven, and of a somewhat vulturine cast of countenance. His face was cold and impassive now, almost forbiddingly so; but only half an hour before it had been a battlefield of conflicting emotions, and his hat still showed the dent where he had banged it against the edge of his seat on the occasion of Mr. Daly’s home run. A worthy guest!

The man on Mr. Birdsey’s left belonged to another species of fan. Though there had been times during the game when he had howled, for the most part he had watched in silence so hungrily tense that a less experienced observer than Mr. Birdsey might have attributed his immobility to boredom. But one glance at his set jaw and gleaming eyes told him that here also was a man and a brother.

This man’s eyes were still gleaming, and under their curiously deep tan his bearded cheeks were pale. He was staring straight in front of him with an unseeing gaze.

Mr. Birdsey tapped the young man on the shoulder.

“Some game!” he said.

The young man looked at him and smiled.

“You bet,” he said.

“I haven’t seen a ballgame in five years.”

“The last one I saw was two years ago next June.”

“Come and have some dinner at my hotel and talk it over,” said Mr. Birdsey impulsively.

“Sure!” said the young man.

Mr. Birdsey turned and tapped the shoulder of the man on his left.

The result was a little unexpected. The man gave a start that was almost a leap, and the pallor of his face became a sickly white. His eyes, as he swung round, met Mr. Birdsey’s for an instant before they dropped, and there was panic fear in them. His breath whistled softly through clenched teeth.

Mr. Birdsey was taken aback. The cordiality of the clean-shaven young man had not prepared him for the possibility of such a reception. He felt chilled. He was on the point of apologizing with some murmur about a mistake, when the man reassured him by smiling. It was rather a painful smile, but it was enough for Mr. Birdsey. This man might be of a nervous temperament, but his heart was in the right place.

He, too, smiled. He was a small, stout, red-faced little man, and he possessed a smile that rarely failed to set strangers at their ease. Many strenuous years on the New York Stock Exchange had not destroyed a certain childlike amiability in Mr. Birdsey, and it shone out when he smiled at you.

“I’m afraid I startled you,” he said soothingly. “I wanted to ask you if you would let a perfect stranger, who also happens to be an exile, offer you dinner tonight.”

The man winced. “Exile?”

“An exiled fan. Don’t you feel that the Polo Grounds are a good long way away? This gentleman is joining me. I have a suite at the Savoy Hotel, and I thought we might all have a quiet little dinner there and talk about the game. I haven’t seen a ballgame in five years.”

“Nor have I.”

“Then you must come. You really must. We fans ought to stick to one another in a strange land. Do come.”

“Thank you,” said the bearded man; “I will.”

When three men, all strangers, sit down to dinner together, conversation, even if they happen to have a mutual passion for baseball, is apt to be for a while a little difficult. The first fine frenzy in which Mr. Birdsey had issued his invitations had begun to ebb by the time the soup was served, and he was conscious of a feeling of embarrassment.

There was some subtle hitch in the orderly progress of affairs. He sensed it in the air. Both of his guests were disposed to silence, and the clean-shaven young man had developed a trick of staring at the man with the beard, which was obviously distressing that sensitive person.

“Wine,” murmured Mr. Birdsey to the waiter. “Wine, wine!”

He spoke with the earnestness of a general calling up his reserves for the grand attack. The success of this little dinner mattered enormously to him. There were circumstances which were going to make it an oasis in his life. He wanted it to be an occasion to which, in grey days to come, he could look back and be consoled. He could not let it be a failure.

He was about to speak when the young man anticipated him. Leaning forward, he addressed the bearded man, who was crumbling bread with an absent look in his eyes.

“Surely we have met before?” he said. “I’m sure I remember your face.”

The effect of these words on the other was as curious as the effect of Mr. Birdsey’s tap on the shoulder had been. He looked up like a hunted animal.

He shook his head without speaking.

“Curious,” said the young man. “I could have sworn to it, and I am positive that it was somewhere in New York. Do you come from New York?”

“Yes.”

“It seems to me,” said Mr. Birdsey, “that we ought to introduce ourselves. Funny it didn’t strike any of us before. My name is Birdsey, J. Wilmot Birdsey. I come from New York.”

“My name is Waterall,” said the young man. “I come from New York.”

The bearded man hesitated.

“My name is Johnson. I⁠—used to live in New York.”

“Where do you live now, Mr. Johnson?” asked Waterall.

The bearded man hesitated again. “Algiers,” he said.

Mr. Birdsey was inspired to help matters along with small-talk.

“Algiers,” he said. “I have never been there, but I understand that it is quite a place. Are you in business there, Mr. Johnson?”

“I live there for my health.”

“Have you been there some time?” inquired Waterall.

“Five years.”

“Then it must have been in New York that I saw you, for I have never been to Algiers, and I’m certain I have seen you somewhere. I’m afraid you will think me a bore for sticking to the point like this, but the fact is, the one thing I pride myself on is my memory for faces. It’s a hobby of mine. If I think I remember a face, and can’t place it, I worry myself into insomnia. It’s partly sheer vanity, and partly because in my job a good memory for faces is a mighty fine asset. It has helped me a hundred times.”

Mr. Birdsey was an intelligent man, and he could see that Waterall’s table-talk was for some reason getting upon Johnson’s nerves. Like a good host, he endeavoured to cut in and make things smooth.

“I’ve heard great accounts of Algiers,” he said helpfully. “A friend of mine was there in his yacht last year. It must be a delightful spot.”

“It’s a hell on earth,” snapped Johnson, and slew the conversation on the spot.

Through a grim silence an angel in human form fluttered in⁠—a waiter bearing a bottle. The pop of the cork was more than music to Mr. Birdsey’s ears. It was the booming of the guns of the relieving army.

The first glass, as first glasses will, thawed the bearded man, to the extent of inducing him to try and pick up the fragments of the conversation which he had shattered.

“I am afraid you will have thought me abrupt, Mr. Birdsey,” he said awkwardly; “but then you haven’t lived in Algiers for five years, and I have.”

Mr. Birdsey chirruped sympathetically.

“I liked it at first. It looked mighty good to me. But five years of it, and nothing else to look forward to till you die.⁠ ⁠…”

He stopped, and emptied his glass. Mr. Birdsey was still perturbed. True, conversation was proceeding in a sort of way, but it had taken a distinctly gloomy turn. Slightly flushed with the excellent champagne which he had selected for this important dinner, he endeavoured to lighten it.

“I wonder,” he said, “which of us three fans had the greatest difficulty in getting to the bleachers today. I guess none of us found it too easy.”

The young man shook his head.

“Don’t count on me to contribute a romantic story to this Arabian Night’s Entertainment. My difficulty would have been to stop away. My name’s Waterall, and I’m the London correspondent of the New York Chronicle. I had to be there this afternoon in the way of business.”

Mr. Birdsey giggled self-consciously, but not without a certain impish pride.

“The laugh will be on me when you hear my confession. My daughter married an English earl, and my wife brought me over here to mix with his crowd. There was a big dinner-party tonight, at which the whole gang were to be present, and it was as much as my life was worth to sidestep it. But when you get the Giants and the White Sox playing ball within fifty miles of you⁠—Well, I packed a grip and sneaked out the back way, and got to the station and caught the fast train to London. And what is going on back there at this moment I don’t like to think. About now,” said Mr. Birdsey, looking at his watch, “I guess they’ll be pronging the hors d’oeuvres and gazing at the empty chair. It was a shame to do it, but, for the love of Mike, what else could I have done?”

He looked at the bearded man.

“Did you have any adventures, Mr. Johnson?”

“No. I⁠—I just came.”

The young man Waterall leaned forward. His manner was quiet, but his eyes were glittering.

“Wasn’t that enough of an adventure for you?” he said.

Their eyes met across the table. Seated between them, Mr. Birdsey looked from one to the other, vaguely disturbed. Something was happening, a drama was going on, and he had not the key to it.

Johnson’s face was pale, and the tablecloth crumpled into a crooked ridge under his fingers, but his voice was steady as he replied:

“I don’t understand.”

“Will you understand if I give you your right name, Mr. Benyon?”

“What’s all this?” said Mr. Birdsey feebly.

Waterall turned to him, the vulturine cast of his face more noticeable than ever. Mr. Birdsey was conscious of a sudden distaste for this young man.

“It’s quite simple, Mr. Birdsey. If you have not been entertaining angels unawares, you have at least been giving a dinner to a celebrity. I told you I was sure I had seen this gentleman before. I have just remembered where, and when. This is Mr. John Benyon, and I last saw him five years ago when I was a reporter in New York, and covered his trial.”

“His trial?”

“He robbed the New Asiatic Bank of a hundred thousand dollars, jumped his bail, and was never heard of again.”

“For the love of Mike!”

Mr. Birdsey stared at his guest with eyes that grew momently wider. He was amazed to find that deep down in him there was an unmistakable feeling of elation. He had made up his mind, when he left home that morning, that this was to be a day of days. Well, nobody could call this an anticlimax.

“So that’s why you have been living in Algiers?”

Benyon did not reply. Outside, the Strand traffic sent a faint murmur into the warm, comfortable room.

Waterall spoke. “What on earth induced you, Benyon, to run the risk of coming to London, where every second man you meet is a New Yorker, I can’t understand. The chances were two to one that you would be recognized. You made a pretty big splash with that little affair of yours five years ago.”

Benyon raised his head. His hands were trembling.

“I’ll tell you,” he said with a kind of savage force, which hurt kindly little Mr. Birdsey like a blow. “It was because I was a dead man, and saw a chance of coming to life for a day; because I was sick of the damned tomb I’ve been living in for five centuries; because I’ve been aching for New York ever since I’ve left it⁠—and here was a chance of being back there for a few hours. I knew there was a risk. I took a chance on it. Well?”

Mr. Birdsey’s heart was almost too full for words. He had found him at last, the Super-Fan, the man who would go through fire and water for a sight of a game of baseball. Till that moment he had been regarding himself as the nearest approach to that dizzy eminence. He had braved great perils to see this game. Even in this moment his mind would not wholly detach itself from speculation as to what his wife would say to him when he slunk back into the fold. But what had he risked compared with this man Benyon? Mr. Birdsey glowed. He could not restrain his sympathy and admiration. True, the man was a criminal. He had robbed a bank of a hundred thousand dollars. But, after all, what was that? They would probably have wasted the money in foolishness. And, anyway, a bank which couldn’t take care of its money deserved to lose it.

Mr. Birdsey felt almost a righteous glow of indignation against the New Asiatic Bank.

He broke the silence which had followed Benyon’s words with a peculiarly immoral remark:

“Well, it’s lucky it’s only us that’s recognized you,” he said.

Waterall stared. “Are you proposing that we should hush this thing up, Mr. Birdsey?” he said coldly.

“Oh, well⁠—”

Waterall rose and went to the telephone.

“What are you going to do?”

“Call up Scotland Yard, of course. What did you think?”

Undoubtedly the young man was doing his duty as a citizen, yet it is to be recorded that Mr. Birdsey eyed him with unmixed horror.

“You can’t! You mustn’t!” he cried.

“I certainly shall.”

“But⁠—but⁠—this fellow came all that way to see the ballgame.”

It seemed incredible to Mr. Birdsey that this aspect of the affair should not be the one to strike everybody to the exclusion of all other aspects.

“You can’t give him up. It’s too raw.”

“He’s a convicted criminal.”

“He’s a fan. Why, say, he’s the fan.”

Waterall shrugged his shoulders, and walked to the telephone. Benyon spoke.

“One moment.”

Waterall turned, and found himself looking into the muzzle of a small pistol. He laughed.

“I expected that. Wave it about all you want.”

Benyon rested his shaking hand on the edge of the table.

“I’ll shoot if you move.”

“You won’t. You haven’t the nerve. There’s nothing to you. You’re just a cheap crook, and that’s all. You wouldn’t find the nerve to pull that trigger in a million years.”

He took off the receiver.

“Give me Scotland Yard,” he said.

He had turned his back to Benyon. Benyon sat motionless. Then, with a thud, the pistol fell to the ground. The next moment Benyon had broken down. His face was buried in his arms, and he was a wreck of a man, sobbing like a hurt child.

Mr. Birdsey was profoundly distressed. He sat tingling and helpless. This was a nightmare.

Waterall’s level voice spoke at the telephone.

“Is this Scotland Yard? I am Waterall, of the New York Chronicle. Is Inspector Jarvis there? Ask him to come to the phone.⁠ ⁠… Is that you, Jarvis? This is Waterall. I’m speaking from the Savoy, Mr. Birdsey’s rooms. Birdsey. Listen, Jarvis. There’s a man here that’s wanted by the American police. Send someone here and get him. Benyon. Robbed the New Asiatic Bank in New York. Yes, you’ve a warrant out for him, five years old.⁠ ⁠… All right.”

He hung up the receiver. Benyon sprang to his feet. He stood, shaking, a pitiable sight. Mr. Birdsey had risen with him. They stood looking at Waterall.

“You⁠—skunk!” said Mr. Birdsey.

“I’m an American citizen,” said Waterall, “and I happen to have some idea of a citizen’s duties. What is more, I’m a newspaper man, and I have some idea of my duty to my paper. Call me what you like, you won’t alter that.”

Mr. Birdsey snorted.

“You’re suffering from ingrowing sentimentality, Mr. Birdsey. That’s what’s the matter with you. Just because this man has escaped justice for five years, you think he ought to be considered quit of the whole thing.”

“But⁠—but⁠—”

“I don’t.”

He took out his cigarette case. He was feeling a great deal more strung-up and nervous than he would have had the others suspect. He had had a moment of very swift thinking before he had decided to treat that ugly little pistol in a spirit of contempt. Its production had given him a decided shock, and now he was suffering from reaction. As a consequence, because his nerves were strained, he lit his cigarette very languidly, very carefully, and with an offensive superiority which was to Mr. Birdsey the last straw.

These things are matters of an instant. Only an infinitesimal fraction of time elapsed between the spectacle of Mr. Birdsey, indignant but inactive, and Mr. Birdsey berserk, seeing red, frankly and undisguisedly running amok. The transformation took place in the space of time required for the lighting of a match.

Even as the match gave out its flame, Mr. Birdsey sprang.

Aeons before, when the young blood ran swiftly in his veins and life was all before him, Mr. Birdsey had played football. Once a footballer, always a potential footballer, even to the grave. Time had removed the flying tackle as a factor in Mr. Birdsey’s life. Wrath brought it back. He dived at young Mr. Waterall’s neatly trousered legs as he had dived at other legs, less neatly trousered, thirty years ago. They crashed to the floor together; and with the crash came Mr. Birdsey’s shout:

“Run! Run, you fool! Run!”

And, even as he clung to his man, breathless, bruised, feeling as if all the world had dissolved in one vast explosion of dynamite, the door opened, banged to, and feet fled down the passage.

Mr. Birdsey disentangled himself, and rose painfully. The shock had brought him to himself. He was no longer berserk. He was a middle-aged gentleman of high respectability who had been behaving in a very peculiar way.

Waterall, flushed and dishevelled, glared at him speechlessly. He gulped. “Are you crazy?”

Mr. Birdsey tested gingerly the mechanism of a leg which lay under suspicion of being broken. Relieved, he put his foot to the ground again. He shook his head at Waterall. He was slightly crumpled, but he achieved a manner of dignified reproof.

“You shouldn’t have done it, young man. It was raw work. Oh, yes, I know all about that duty-of-a-citizen stuff. It doesn’t go. There are exceptions to every rule, and this was one of them. When a man risks his liberty to come and root at a ballgame, you’ve got to hand it to him. He isn’t a crook. He’s a fan. And we exiled fans have got to stick together.”

Waterall was quivering with fury, disappointment, and the peculiar unpleasantness of being treated by an elderly gentleman like a sack of coals. He stammered with rage.

“You damned old fool, do you realize what you’ve done? The police will be here in another minute.”

“Let them come.”

“But what am I to say to them? What explanation can I give? What story can I tell them? Can’t you see what a hole you’ve put me in?”

Something seemed to click inside Mr. Birdsey’s soul. It was the berserk mood vanishing and reason leaping back on to her throne. He was able now to think calmly, and what he thought about filled him with a sudden gloom.

“Young man,” he said, “don’t worry yourself. You’ve got a cinch. You’ve only got to hand a story to the police. Any old tale will do for them. I’m the man with the really difficult job⁠—I’ve got to square myself with my wife!”

At Geisenheimer’s

As I walked to Geisenheimer’s that night I was feeling blue and restless, tired of New York, tired of dancing, tired of everything. Broadway was full of people hurrying to the theatres. Cars rattled by. All the electric lights in the world were blazing down on the Great White Way. And it all seemed stale and dreary to me.

Geisenheimer’s was full as usual. All the tables were occupied, and there were several couples already on the dancing-floor in the centre. The band was playing “Michigan”:

I want to go back, I want to go back
To the place where I was born.
Far away from harm
With a milk-pail on my arm.

I suppose the fellow who wrote that would have called for the police if anyone had ever really tried to get him on to a farm, but he has certainly put something into the tune which makes you think he meant what he said. It’s a homesick tune, that.

I was just looking round for an empty table, when a man jumped up and came towards me, registering joy as if I had been his long-lost sister.

He was from the country. I could see that. It was written all over him, from his face to his shoes.

He came up with his hand out, beaming.

“Why, Miss Roxborough!”

“Why not?” I said.

“Don’t you remember me?”

I didn’t.

“My name is Ferris.”

“It’s a nice name, but it means nothing in my young life.”

“I was introduced to you last time I came here. We danced together.”

This seemed to bear the stamp of truth. If he was introduced to me, he probably danced with me. It’s what I’m at Geisenheimer’s for.

“When was it?”

“A year ago last April.”

You can’t beat these rural charmers. They think New York is folded up and put away in camphor when they leave, and only taken out again when they pay their next visit. The notion that anything could possibly have happened since he was last in our midst to blur the memory of that happy evening had not occurred to Mr. Ferris. I suppose he was so accustomed to dating things from “when I was in New York” that he thought everybody else must do the same.

“Why, sure, I remember you,” I said. “Algernon Clarence, isn’t it?”

“Not Algernon Clarence. My name’s Charlie.”

“My mistake. And what’s the great scheme, Mr. Ferris? Do you want to dance with me again?”

He did. So we started. Mine not to reason why, mine but to do and die, as the poem says. If an elephant had come into Geisenheimer’s and asked me to dance I’d have had to do it. And I’m not saying that Mr. Ferris wasn’t the next thing to it. He was one of those earnest, persevering dancers⁠—the kind that have taken twelve correspondence lessons.

I guess I was about due that night to meet someone from the country. There still come days in the spring when the country seems to get a stranglehold on me and start in pulling. This particular day had been one of them. I got up in the morning and looked out of the window, and the breeze just wrapped me round and began whispering about pigs and chickens. And when I went out on Fifth Avenue there seemed to be flowers everywhere. I headed for the Park, and there was the grass all green, and the trees coming out, and a sort of something in the air⁠—why, say, if there hadn’t have been a big policeman keeping an eye on me, I’d have flung myself down and bitten chunks out of the turf.

And as soon as I got to Geisenheimer’s they played that “Michigan” thing.

Why, Charlie from Squeedunk’s “entrance” couldn’t have been better worked up if he’d been a star in a Broadway show. The stage was just waiting for him.

But somebody’s always taking the joy out of life. I ought to have remembered that the most metropolitan thing in the metropolis is a rustic who’s putting in a week there. We weren’t thinking on the same plane, Charlie and me. The way I had been feeling all day, what I wanted to talk about was last season’s crops. The subject he fancied was this season’s chorus girls. Our souls didn’t touch by a mile and a half.

“This is the life!” he said.

There’s always a point when that sort of man says that.

“I suppose you come here quite a lot?” he said.

“Pretty often.”

I didn’t tell him that I came there every night, and that I came because I was paid for it. If you’re a professional dancer at Geisenheimer’s, you aren’t supposed to advertise the fact. The management thinks that if you did it might send the public away thinking too hard when they saw you win the Great Contest for the Love-r-ly Silver Cup which they offer later in the evening. Say, that Love-r-ly Cup’s a joke. I win it on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Mabel Francis wins it on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It’s all perfectly fair and square, of course. It’s purely a matter of merit who wins the Love-r-ly Cup. Anybody could win it. Only somehow they don’t. And the coincidence of the fact that Mabel and I always do has kind of got on the management’s nerves, and they don’t like us to tell people we’re employed there. They prefer us to blush unseen.

“It’s a great place,” said Mr. Ferris, “and New York’s a great place. I’d like to live in New York.”

“The loss is ours. Why don’t you?”

“Some city! But dad’s dead now, and I’ve got the drugstore, you know.”

He spoke as if I ought to remember reading about it in the papers.

“And I’m making good with it, what’s more. I’ve got push and ideas. Say, I got married since I saw you last.”

“You did, did you?” I said. “Then what are you doing, may I ask, dancing on Broadway like a gay bachelor? I suppose you have left your wife at Hicks’ Corners, singing ‘Where is my wandering boy tonight’?”

“Not Hicks’ Corners. Ashley, Maine. That’s where I live. My wife comes from Rodney.⁠ ⁠… Pardon me, I’m afraid I stepped on your foot.”

“My fault,” I said; “I lost step. Well, I wonder you aren’t ashamed even to think of your wife, when you’ve left her all alone out there while you come whooping it up in New York. Haven’t you got any conscience?”

“But I haven’t left her. She’s here.”

“In New York?”

“In this restaurant. That’s her up there.”

I looked up at the balcony. There was a face hanging over the red plush rail. It looked to me as if it had some hidden sorrow. I’d noticed it before, when we were dancing around, and I had wondered what the trouble was. Now I began to see.

“Why aren’t you dancing with her and giving her a good time, then?” I said.

“Oh, she’s having a good time.”

“She doesn’t look it. She looks as if she would like to be down here, treading the measure.”

“She doesn’t dance much.”

“Don’t you have dances at Ashley?”

“It’s different at home. She dances well enough for Ashley, but⁠—well, this isn’t Ashley.”

“I see. But you’re not like that?”

He gave a kind of smirk.

“Oh, I’ve been in New York before.”

I could have bitten him, the sawn-off little rube! It made me mad. He was ashamed to dance in public with his wife⁠—didn’t think her good enough for him. So he had dumped her in a chair, given her a lemonade, and told her to be good, and then gone off to have a good time. They could have had me arrested for what I was thinking just then.

The band began to play something else.

“This is the life!” said Mr. Ferris. “Let’s do it again.”

“Let somebody else do it,” I said. “I’m tired. I’ll introduce you to some friends of mine.”

So I took him off, and whisked him on to some girls I knew at one of the tables.

“Shake hands with my friend Mr. Ferris,” I said. “He wants to show you the latest steps. He does most of them on your feet.”

I could have betted on Charlie, the Debonair Pride of Ashley. Guess what he said? He said, “This is the life!”

And I left him, and went up to the balcony.

She was leaning with her elbows on the red plush, looking down on the dancing-floor. They had just started another tune, and hubby was moving around with one of the girls I’d introduced him to. She didn’t have to prove to me that she came from the country. I knew it. She was a little bit of a thing, old-fashioned looking. She was dressed in grey, with white muslin collar and cuffs, and her hair done simple. She had a black hat.

I kind of hovered for awhile. It isn’t the best thing I do, being shy; as a general thing I’m more or less there with the nerve; but somehow I sort of hesitated to charge in.

Then I braced up, and made for the vacant chair.

“I’ll sit here, if you don’t mind,” I said.

She turned in a startled way. I could see she was wondering who I was, and what right I had there, but wasn’t certain whether it might not be city etiquette for strangers to come and dump themselves down and start chatting. “I’ve just been dancing with your husband,” I said, to ease things along.

“I saw you.”

She fixed me with a pair of big brown eyes. I took one look at them, and then I had to tell myself that it might be pleasant, and a relief to my feelings, to take something solid and heavy and drop it over the rail on to hubby, but the management wouldn’t like it. That was how I felt about him just then. The poor kid was doing everything with those eyes except crying. She looked like a dog that’s been kicked.

She looked away, and fiddled with the string of the electric light. There was a hatpin lying on the table. She picked it up, and began to dig at the red plush.

“Ah, come on sis,” I said; “tell me all about it.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You can’t fool me. Tell me your troubles.”

“I don’t know you.”

“You don’t have to know a person to tell her your troubles. I sometimes tell mine to the cat that camps out on the wall opposite my room. What did you want to leave the country for, with summer coming on?”

She didn’t answer, but I could see it coming, so I sat still and waited. And presently she seemed to make up her mind that, even if it was no business of mine, it would be a relief to talk about it.

“We’re on our honeymoon. Charlie wanted to come to New York. I didn’t want to, but he was set on it. He’s been here before.”

“So he told me.”

“He’s wild about New York.”

“But you’re not.”

“I hate it.”

“Why?”

She dug away at the red plush with the hatpin, picking out little bits and dropping them over the edge. I could see she was bracing herself to put me wise to the whole trouble. There’s a time comes when things aren’t going right, and you’ve had all you can stand, when you have got to tell somebody about it, no matter who it is.

“I hate New York,” she said getting it out at last with a rush. “I’m scared of it. It⁠—it isn’t fair Charlie bringing me here. I didn’t want to come. I knew what would happen. I felt it all along.”

“What do you think will happen, then?”

She must have picked away at least an inch of the red plush before she answered. It’s lucky Jimmy, the balcony waiter, didn’t see her; it would have broken his heart; he’s as proud of that red plush as if he had paid for it himself.

“When I first went to live at Rodney,” she said, “two years ago⁠—we moved there from Illinois⁠—there was a man there named Tyson⁠—Jack Tyson. He lived all alone and didn’t seem to want to know anyone. I couldn’t understand it till somebody told me all about him. I can understand it now. Jack Tyson married a Rodney girl, and they came to New York for their honeymoon, just like us. And when they got there I guess she got to comparing him with the fellows she saw, and comparing the city with Rodney, and when she got home she just couldn’t settle down.”

“Well?”

“After they had been back in Rodney for a little while she ran away. Back to the city, I guess.”

“I suppose he got a divorce?”

“No, he didn’t. He still thinks she may come back to him.”

“He still thinks she will come back?” I said. “After she has been away three years!”

“Yes. He keeps her things just the same as she left them when she went away, everything just the same.”

“But isn’t he angry with her for what she did? If I was a man and a girl treated me that way, I’d be apt to murder her if she tried to show up again.”

“He wouldn’t. Nor would I, if⁠—if anything like that happened to me; I’d wait and wait, and go on hoping all the time. And I’d go down to the station to meet the train every afternoon, just like Jack Tyson.”

Something splashed on the tablecloth. It made me jump.

“For goodness’ sake,” I said, “what’s your trouble? Brace up. I know it’s a sad story, but it’s not your funeral.”

“It is. It is. The same thing’s going to happen to me.”

“Take a hold on yourself. Don’t cry like that.”

“I can’t help it. Oh! I knew it would happen. It’s happening right now. Look⁠—look at him.”

I glanced over the rail, and I saw what she meant. There was her Charlie, dancing about all over the floor as if he had just discovered that he hadn’t lived till then. I saw him say something to the girl he was dancing with. I wasn’t near enough to hear it, but I bet it was “This is the life!” If I had been his wife, in the same position as this kid, I guess I’d have felt as bad as she did, for if ever a man exhibited all the symptoms of incurable Newyorkitis, it was this Charlie Ferris.

“I’m not like these New York girls,” she choked. “I can’t be smart. I don’t want to be. I just want to live at home and be happy. I knew it would happen if we came to the city. He doesn’t think me good enough for him. He looks down on me.”

“Pull yourself together.”

“And I do love him so!”

Goodness knows what I should have said if I could have thought of anything to say. But just then the music stopped, and somebody on the floor below began to speak.

“Ladeez ’n’ gemmen,” he said, “there will now take place our great Numbah Contest. This ge-nu-ine sporting contest⁠—”

It was Izzy Baermann making his nightly speech, introducing the Love-r-ly Cup; and it meant that, for me, duty called. From where I sat I could see Izzy looking about the room, and I knew he was looking for me. It’s the management’s nightmare that one of these evenings Mabel or I won’t show up, and somebody else will get away with the Love-r-ly Cup.

“Sorry I’ve got to go,” I said. “I have to be in this.”

And then suddenly I had the great idea. It came to me like a flash, I looked at her, crying there, and I looked over the rail at Charlie the Boy Wonder, and I knew that this was where I got a stranglehold on my place in the Hall of Fame, along with the great thinkers of the age.

“Come on,” I said. “Come along. Stop crying and powder your nose and get a move on. You’re going to dance this.”

“But Charlie doesn’t want to dance with me.”

“It may have escaped your notice,” I said, “but your Charlie is not the only man in New York, or even in this restaurant. I’m going to dance with Charlie myself, and I’ll introduce you to someone who can go through the movements. Listen!”

“The lady of each couple”⁠—this was Izzy, getting it off his diaphragm⁠—“will receive a ticket containing a num-bah. The dance will then proceed, and the num-bahs will be eliminated one by one, those called out by the judge kindly returning to their seats as their num-bah is called. The num-bah finally remaining is the winning num-bah. The contest is a genuine sporting contest, decided purely by the skill of the holders of the various num-bahs.” (Izzy stopped blushing at the age of six.) “Will ladies now kindly step forward and receive their num-bahs. The winner, the holder of the num-bah left on the floor when the other num-bahs have been eliminated” (I could see Izzy getting more and more uneasy, wondering where on earth I’d got to), “will receive this Love-r-ly Silver Cup, presented by the management. Ladies will now kindly step forward and receive their num-bahs.”

I turned to Mrs. Charlie. “There,” I said, “don’t you want to win a Love-r-ly Silver Cup?”

“But I couldn’t.”

“You never know your luck.”

“But it isn’t luck. Didn’t you hear him say it’s a contest decided purely by skill?”

“Well, try your skill, then.” I felt as if I could have shaken her. “For goodness’ sake,” I said, “show a little grit. Aren’t you going to stir a finger to keep your Charlie? Suppose you win, think what it will mean. He will look up to you for the rest of your life. When he starts talking about New York, all you will have to say is, ‘New York? Ah, yes, that was the town I won that Love-r-ly Silver Cup in, was it not?’ and he’ll drop as if you had hit him behind the ear with a sandbag. Pull yourself together and try.”

I saw those brown eyes of hers flash, and she said, “I’ll try.”

“Good for you,” I said. “Now you get those tears dried, and fix yourself up, and I’ll go down and get the tickets.”

Izzy was mighty relieved when I bore down on him.

“Gee!” he said, “I thought you had run away, or was sick or something. Here’s your ticket.”

“I want two, Izzy. One’s for a friend of mine. And I say, Izzy, I’d take it as a personal favour if you would let her stop on the floor as one of the last two couples. There’s a reason. She’s a kid from the country, and she wants to make a hit.”

“Sure, that’ll be all right. Here are the tickets. Yours is thirty-six, hers is ten.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t go mixing them.”

I went back to the balcony. On the way I got hold of Charlie.

“We’re dancing this together,” I said.

He grinned all across his face.

I found Mrs. Charlie looking as if she had never shed a tear in her life. She certainly had pluck, that kid.

“Come on,” I said. “Stick to your ticket like wax and watch your step.”

I guess you’ve seen these sporting contests at Geisenheimer’s. Or, if you haven’t seen them at Geisenheimer’s, you’ve seen them somewhere else. They’re all the same.

When we began, the floor was so crowded that there was hardly elbow-room. Don’t tell me there aren’t any optimists nowadays. Everyone was looking as if they were wondering whether to have the Love-r-ly Cup in the sitting-room or the bedroom. You never saw such a hopeful gang in your life.

Presently Izzy gave tongue. The management expects him to be humorous on these occasions, so he did his best.

“Num-bahs, seven, eleven, and twenty-one will kindly rejoin their sorrowing friends.”

This gave us a little more elbow-room, and the band started again.

A few minutes later, Izzy once more: “Num-bahs thirteen, sixteen, and seventeen⁠—goodbye.”

Off we went again.

“Num-bah twelve, we hate to part with you, but⁠—back to your table!”

A plump girl in a red hat, who had been dancing with a kind smile, as if she were doing it to amuse the children, left the floor.

“Num-bahs six, fifteen, and twenty, thumbs down!”

And pretty soon the only couples left were Charlie and me, Mrs. Charlie and the fellow I’d introduced her to, and a bald-headed man and a girl in a white hat. He was one of your stick-at-it performers. He had been dancing all the evening. I had noticed him from the balcony. He looked like a hard-boiled egg from up there.

He was a trier all right, that fellow, and had things been otherwise, so to speak, I’d have been glad to see him win. But it was not to be. Ah, no!

“Num-bah nineteen, you’re getting all flushed. Take a rest.”

So there it was, a straight contest between me and Charlie and Mrs. Charlie and her man. Every nerve in my system was tingling with suspense and excitement, was it not? It was not.

Charlie, as I’ve already hinted, was not a dancer who took much of his attention off his feet while in action. He was there to do his durnedest, not to inspect objects of interest by the wayside. The correspondence college he’d attended doesn’t guarantee to teach you to do two things at once. It won’t bind itself to teach you to look round the room while you’re dancing. So Charlie hadn’t the least suspicion of the state of the drama. He was breathing heavily down my neck in a determined sort of way, with his eyes glued to the floor. All he knew was that the competition had thinned out a bit, and the honour of Ashley, Maine, was in his hands.

You know how the public begins to sit up and take notice when these dance-contests have been narrowed down to two couples. There are evenings when I quite forget myself, when I’m one of the last two left in, and get all excited. There’s a sort of hum in the air, and, as you go round the room, people at the tables start applauding. Why, if you didn’t know about the inner workings of the thing, you’d be all of a twitter.

It didn’t take my practised ear long to discover that it wasn’t me and Charlie that the great public was cheering for. We would go round the floor without getting a hand, and every time Mrs. Charlie and her guy got to a corner there was a noise like election night. She sure had made a hit.

I took a look at her across the floor, and I didn’t wonder. She was a different kid from what she’d been upstairs. I never saw anybody look so happy and pleased with herself. Her eyes were like lamps, and her cheeks all pink, and she was going at it like a champion. I knew what had made a hit with the people. It was the look of her. She made you think of fresh milk and new-laid eggs and birds singing. To see her was like getting away to the country in August. It’s funny about people who live in the city. They chuck out their chests, and talk about little old New York being good enough for them, and there’s a street in heaven they call Broadway, and all the rest of it; but it seems to me that what they really live for is that three weeks in the summer when they get away into the country. I knew exactly why they were cheering so hard for Mrs. Charlie. She made them think of their holidays which were coming along, when they would go and board at the farm and drink out of the old oaken bucket, and call the cows by their first names.

Gee! I felt just like that myself. All day the country had been tugging at me, and now it tugged worse than ever.

I could have smelled the new-mown hay if it wasn’t that when you’re in Geisenheimer’s you have to smell Geisenheimer’s, because it leaves no chance for competition.

“Keep working,” I said to Charlie. “It looks to me as if we are going back in the betting.”

“Uh, huh!” he says, too busy to blink.

“Do some of those fancy steps of yours. We need them in our business.”

And the way that boy worked⁠—it was astonishing!

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Izzy Baermann, and he wasn’t looking happy. He was nerving himself for one of those quick referee’s decisions⁠—the sort you make and then duck under the ropes, and run five miles, to avoid the incensed populace. It was this kind of thing happening every now and then that prevented his job being perfect. Mabel Francis told me that one night when Izzy declared her the winner of the great sporting contest, it was such raw work that she thought there’d have been a riot. It looked pretty much as if he was afraid the same thing was going to happen now. There wasn’t a doubt which of us two couples was the one that the customers wanted to see win that Love-r-ly Silver Cup. It was a walkover for Mrs. Charlie, and Charlie and I were simply among those present.

But Izzy had his duty to do, and drew a salary for doing it, so he moistened his lips, looked round to see that his strategic railways weren’t blocked, swallowed twice, and said in a husky voice:

“Num-bah ten, please re-tiah!”

I stopped at once.

“Come along,” said I to Charlie. “That’s our exit cue.”

And we walked off the floor amidst applause.

“Well,” says Charlie, taking out his handkerchief and attending to his brow, which was like the village blacksmith’s, “we didn’t do so bad, did we? We didn’t do so bad, I guess! We⁠—”

And he looked up at the balcony, expecting to see the dear little wife, draped over the rail, worshipping him; when, just as his eye is moving up, it gets caught by the sight of her a whole heap lower down than he had expected⁠—on the floor, in fact.

She wasn’t doing much in the worshipping line just at that moment. She was too busy.

It was a regular triumphal progress for the kid. She and her partner were doing one or two rounds now for exhibition purposes, like the winning couple always do at Geisenheimer’s, and the room was fairly rising at them. You’d have thought from the way they were clapping that they had been betting all their spare cash on her.

Charlie gets her well focused, then he lets his jaw drop, till he pretty near bumped it against the floor.

“But⁠—but⁠—but⁠—” he begins.

“I know,” I said. “It begins to look as if she could dance well enough for the city after all. It begins to look as if she had sort of put one over on somebody, don’t it? It begins to look as if it were a pity you didn’t think of dancing with her yourself.”

“I⁠—I⁠—I⁠—”

“You come along and have a nice cold drink,” I said, “and you’ll soon pick up.”

He tottered after me to a table, looking as if he had been hit by a streetcar. He had got his.

I was so busy looking after Charlie, flapping the towel and working on him with the oxygen, that, if you’ll believe me, it wasn’t for quite a time that I thought of glancing around to see how the thing had struck Izzy Baermann.

If you can imagine a fond father whose only son has hit him with a brick, jumped on his stomach, and then gone off with all his money, you have a pretty good notion of how poor old Izzy looked. He was staring at me across the room, and talking to himself and jerking his hands about. Whether he thought he was talking to me, or whether he was rehearsing the scene where he broke it to the boss that a mere stranger had got away with his Love-r-ly Silver Cup, I don’t know. Whichever it was, he was being mighty eloquent.

I gave him a nod, as much as to say that it would all come right in the future, and then I turned to Charlie again. He was beginning to pick up.

“She won the cup!” he said in a dazed voice, looking at me as if I could do something about it.

“You bet she did!”

“But⁠—well, what do you know about that?”

I saw that the moment had come to put it straight to him. “I’ll tell you what I know about it,” I said. “If you take my advice, you’ll hustle that kid straight back to Ashley⁠—or wherever it is that you said you poison the natives by making up the wrong prescriptions⁠—before she gets New York into her system. When I was talking to her upstairs, she was telling me about a fellow in her village who got it in the neck just the same as you’re apt to do.”

He started. “She was telling you about Jack Tyson?”

“That was his name⁠—Jack Tyson. He lost his wife through letting her have too much New York. Don’t you think it’s funny she should have mentioned him if she hadn’t had some idea that she might act just the same as his wife did?”

He turned quite green.

“You don’t think she would do that?”

“Well, if you’d heard her⁠—She couldn’t talk of anything except this Tyson, and what his wife did to him. She talked of it sort of sad, kind of regretful, as if she was sorry, but felt that it had to be. I could see she had been thinking about it a whole lot.”

Charlie stiffened in his seat, and then began to melt with pure fright. He took up his empty glass with a shaking hand and drank a long drink out of it. It didn’t take much observation to see that he had had the jolt he wanted, and was going to be a whole heap less jaunty and metropolitan from now on. In fact, the way he looked, I should say he had finished with metropolitan jauntiness for the rest of his life.

“I’ll take her home tomorrow,” he said. “But⁠—will she come?”

“That’s up to you. If you can persuade her⁠—Here she is now. I should start at once.”

Mrs. Charlie, carrying the cup, came to the table. I was wondering what would be the first thing she would say. If it had been Charlie, of course he’d have said, “This is the life!” but I looked for something snappier from her. If I had been in her place there were at least ten things I could have thought of to say, each nastier than the other.

She sat down and put the cup on the table. Then she gave the cup a long look. Then she drew a deep breath. Then she looked at Charlie.

“Oh, Charlie, dear,” she said, “I do wish I’d been dancing with you!”

Well, I’m not sure that that wasn’t just as good as anything I would have said. Charlie got right off the mark. After what I had told him, he wasn’t wasting any time.

“Darling,” he said, humbly, “you’re a wonder! What will they say about this at home?” He did pause here for a moment, for it took nerve to say it; but then he went right on. “Mary, how would it be if we went home right away⁠—first train tomorrow, and showed it to them?”

“Oh, Charlie!” she said.

His face lit up as if somebody had pulled a switch.

“You will? You don’t want to stop on? You aren’t wild about New York?”

“If there was a train,” she said, “I’d start tonight. But I thought you loved the city so, Charlie?”

He gave a kind of shiver. “I never want to see it again in my life!” he said.

“You’ll excuse me,” I said, getting up, “I think there’s a friend of mine wants to speak to me.”

And I crossed over to where Izzy had been standing for the last five minutes, making signals to me with his eyebrows.

You couldn’t have called Izzy coherent at first. He certainly had trouble with his vocal chords, poor fellow. There was one of those African explorer men used to come to Geisenheimer’s a lot when he was home from roaming the trackless desert, and he used to tell me about tribes he had met who didn’t use real words at all, but talked to one another in clicks and gurgles. He imitated some of their chatter one night to amuse me, and, believe me, Izzy Baermann started talking the same language now. Only he didn’t do it to amuse me.

He was like one of those gramophone records when it’s getting into its stride.

“Be calm, Isadore,” I said. “Something is troubling you. Tell me all about it.”

He clicked some more, and then he got it out.

“Say, are you crazy? What did you do it for? Didn’t I tell you as plain as I could; didn’t I say it twenty times, when you came for the tickets, that yours was thirty-six?”

“Didn’t you say my friend’s was thirty-six?”

“Are you deaf? I said hers was ten.”

“Then,” I said handsomely, “say no more. The mistake was mine. It begins to look as if I must have got them mixed.”

He did a few Swedish exercises.

“Say no more? That’s good! That’s great! You’ve got nerve. I’ll say that.”

“It was a lucky mistake, Izzy. It saved your life. The people would have lynched you if you had given me the cup. They were solid for her.”

“What’s the boss going to say when I tell him?”

“Never mind what the boss will say. Haven’t you any romance in your system, Izzy? Look at those two sitting there with their heads together. Isn’t it worth a silver cup to have made them happy for life? They are on their honeymoon, Isadore. Tell the boss exactly how it happened, and say that I thought it was up to Geisenheimer’s to give them a wedding-present.”

He clicked for a spell.

“Ah!” he said. “Ah! now you’ve done it! Now you’ve given yourself away! You did it on purpose. You mixed those tickets on purpose. I thought as much. Say, who do you think you are, doing this sort of thing? Don’t you know that professional dancers are three for ten cents? I could go out right now and whistle, and get a dozen girls for your job. The boss’ll sack you just one minute after I tell him.”

“No, he won’t, Izzy, because I’m going to resign.”

“You’d better!”

“That’s what I think. I’m sick of this place, Izzy. I’m sick of dancing. I’m sick of New York. I’m sick of everything. I’m going back to the country. I thought I had got the pigs and chickens clear out of my system, but I hadn’t. I’ve suspected it for a long, long time, and tonight I know it. Tell the boss, with my love, that I’m sorry, but it had to be done. And if he wants to talk back, he must do it by letter: Mrs. John Tyson, Rodney, Maine, is the address.”

Bill the Bloodhound

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends. Consider the case of Henry Pifield Rice, detective.

I must explain Henry early, to avoid disappointment. If I simply said he was a detective, and let it go at that, I should be obtaining the reader’s interest under false pretences. He was really only a sort of detective, a species of sleuth. At Stafford’s International Investigation Bureau, in the Strand, where he was employed, they did not require him to solve mysteries which had baffled the police. He had never measured a footprint in his life, and what he did not know about bloodstains would have filled a library. The sort of job they gave Henry was to stand outside a restaurant in the rain, and note what time someone inside left it. In short, it is not “Pifield Rice, Investigator. No. 1.⁠—The Adventure of the Maharajah’s Ruby” that I submit to your notice, but the unsensational doings of a quite commonplace young man, variously known to his comrades at the Bureau as “Fathead,” “That blighter what’s-his-name,” and “Here, you!”

Henry lived in a boardinghouse in Guildford Street. One day a new girl came to the boardinghouse, and sat next to Henry at meals. Her name was Alice Weston. She was small and quiet, and rather pretty. They got on splendidly. Their conversation, at first confined to the weather and the moving-pictures, rapidly became more intimate. Henry was surprised to find that she was on the stage, in the chorus. Previous chorus girls at the boardinghouse had been of a more pronounced type⁠—good girls, but noisy, and apt to wear beauty-spots. Alice Weston was different.

“I’m rehearsing at present,” she said. “I’m going out on tour next month in The Girl from Brighton. What do you do, Mr. Rice?”

Henry paused for a moment before replying. He knew how sensational he was going to be.

“I’m a detective.”

Usually, when he told girls his profession, squeaks of amazed admiration greeted him. Now he was chagrined to perceive in the brown eyes that met his distinct disapproval.

“What’s the matter?” he said, a little anxiously, for even at this early stage in their acquaintance he was conscious of a strong desire to win her approval. “Don’t you like detectives?”

“I don’t know. Somehow I shouldn’t have thought you were one.”

This restored Henry’s equanimity somewhat. Naturally a detective does not want to look like a detective and give the whole thing away right at the start.

“I think⁠—you won’t be offended?”

“Go on.”

“I’ve always looked on it as rather a sneaky job.”

“Sneaky!” moaned Henry.

“Well, creeping about, spying on people.”

Henry was appalled. She had defined his own trade to a nicety. There might be detectives whose work was above this reproach, but he was a confirmed creeper, and he knew it. It wasn’t his fault. The boss told him to creep, and he crept. If he declined to creep, he would be sacked instanter. It was hard, and yet he felt the sting of her words, and in his bosom the first seeds of dissatisfaction with his occupation took root.

You might have thought that this frankness on the girl’s part would have kept Henry from falling in love with her. Certainly the dignified thing would have been to change his seat at table, and take his meals next to someone who appreciated the romance of detective work a little more. But no, he remained where he was, and presently Cupid, who never shoots with a surer aim than through the steam of boardinghouse hash, sniped him where he sat.

He proposed to Alice Weston. She refused him.

“It’s not because I’m not fond of you. I think you’re the nicest man I ever met.” A good deal of assiduous attention had enabled Henry to win this place in her affections. He had worked patiently and well before actually putting his fortune to the test. “I’d marry you tomorrow if things were different. But I’m on the stage, and I mean to stick there. Most of the girls want to get off it, but not me. And one thing I’ll never do is marry someone who isn’t in the profession. My sister Genevieve did, and look what happened to her. She married a commercial traveller, and take it from me he travelled. She never saw him for more than five minutes in the year, except when he was selling gent’s hosiery in the same town where she was doing her refined speciality, and then he’d just wave his hand and whiz by, and start travelling again. My husband has got to be close by, where I can see him. I’m sorry, Henry, but I know I’m right.”

It seemed final, but Henry did not wholly despair. He was a resolute young man. You have to be to wait outside restaurants in the rain for any length of time.

He had an inspiration. He sought out a dramatic agent.

“I want to go on the stage, in musical comedy.”

“Let’s see you dance.”

“I can’t dance.”

“Sing,” said the agent. “Stop singing,” added the agent, hastily.

“You go away and have a nice cup of hot tea,” said the agent, soothingly, “and you’ll be as right as anything in the morning.”

Henry went away.

A few days later, at the Bureau, his fellow-detective Simmonds hailed him.

“Here, you! The boss wants you. Buck up!”

Mr. Stafford was talking into the telephone. He replaced the receiver as Henry entered.

“Oh, Rice, here’s a woman wants her husband shadowed while he’s on the road. He’s an actor. I’m sending you. Go to this address, and get photographs and all particulars. You’ll have to catch the eleven o’clock train on Friday.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’s in The Girl from Brighton company. They open at Bristol.”

It sometimes seemed to Henry as if Fate did it on purpose. If the commission had had to do with any other company, it would have been well enough, for, professionally speaking, it was the most important with which he had ever been entrusted. If he had never met Alice Weston, and heard her views upon detective work, he would have been pleased and flattered. Things being as they were, it was Henry’s considered opinion that Fate had slipped one over on him.

In the first place, what torture to be always near her, unable to reveal himself; to watch her while she disported herself in the company of other men. He would be disguised, and she would not recognize him; but he would recognize her, and his sufferings would be dreadful.

In the second place, to have to do his creeping about and spying practically in her presence⁠—

Still, business was business.

At five minutes to eleven on the morning named he was at the station, a false beard and spectacles shielding his identity from the public eye. If you had asked him he would have said that he was a Scotch business man. As a matter of fact, he looked far more like a motorcar coming through a haystack.

The platform was crowded. Friends of the company had come to see the company off. Henry looked on discreetly from behind a stout porter, whose bulk formed a capital screen. In spite of himself, he was impressed. The stage at close quarters always thrilled him. He recognized celebrities. The fat man in the brown suit was Walter Jelliffe, the comedian and star of the company. He stared keenly at him through the spectacles. Others of the famous were scattered about. He saw Alice. She was talking to a man with a face like a hatchet, and smiling, too, as if she enjoyed it. Behind the matted foliage which he had inflicted on his face, Henry’s teeth came together with a snap.

In the weeks that followed, as he dogged The Girl from Brighton company from town to town, it would be difficult to say whether Henry was happy or unhappy. On the one hand, to realize that Alice was so near and yet so inaccessible was a constant source of misery; yet, on the other, he could not but admit that he was having the very dickens of a time, loafing round the country like this.

He was made for this sort of life, he considered. Fate had placed him in a London office, but what he really enjoyed was this unfettered travel. Some gipsy strain in him rendered even the obvious discomforts of theatrical touring agreeable. He liked catching trains; he liked invading strange hotels; above all, he revelled in the artistic pleasure of watching unsuspecting fellow-men as if they were so many ants.

That was really the best part of the whole thing. It was all very well for Alice to talk about creeping and spying, but, if you considered it without bias, there was nothing degrading about it at all. It was an art. It took brains and a genius for disguise to make a man a successful creeper and spyer. You couldn’t simply say to yourself, “I will creep.” If you attempted to do it in your own person, you would be detected instantly. You had to be an adept at masking your personality. You had to be one man at Bristol and another quite different man at Hull⁠—especially if, like Henry, you were of a gregarious disposition, and liked the society of actors.

The stage had always fascinated Henry. To meet even minor members of the profession off the boards gave him a thrill. There was a resting juvenile, of fit-up calibre, at his boardinghouse who could always get a shilling out of him simply by talking about how he had jumped in and saved the show at the hamlets which he had visited in the course of his wanderings. And on this The Girl from Brighton tour he was in constant touch with men who really amounted to something. Walter Jelliffe had been a celebrity when Henry was going to school; and Sidney Crane, the baritone, and others of the lengthy cast, were all players not unknown in London. Henry courted them assiduously.

It had not been hard to scrape acquaintance with them. The principals of the company always put up at the best hotel, and⁠—his expenses being paid by his employer⁠—so did Henry. It was the easiest thing possible to bridge with a well-timed whisky-and-soda the gulf between non-acquaintance and warm friendship. Walter Jelliffe, in particular, was peculiarly accessible. Every time Henry accosted him⁠—as a different individual, of course⁠—and renewed in a fresh disguise the friendship which he had enjoyed at the last town, Walter Jelliffe met him more than halfway.

It was in the sixth week of the tour that the comedian, promoting him from mere casual acquaintanceship, invited him to come up to his room and smoke a cigar.

Henry was pleased and flattered. Jelliffe was a personage, always surrounded by admirers, and the compliment was consequently of a high order.

He lit his cigar. Among his friends at the Green-Room Club it was unanimously held that Walter Jelliffe’s cigars brought him within the scope of the law forbidding the carrying of concealed weapons; but Henry would have smoked the gift of such a man if it had been a cabbage-leaf. He puffed away contentedly. He was made up as an old Indian colonel that week, and he complimented his host on the aroma with a fine old-world courtesy.

Walter Jelliffe seemed gratified.

“Quite comfortable?” he asked.

“Quite, I thank you,” said Henry, fondling his silver moustache.

“That’s right. And now tell me, old man, which of us is it you’re trailing?”

Henry nearly swallowed his cigar.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, come,” protested Jelliffe; “there’s no need to keep it up with me. I know you’re a detective. The question is, Who’s the man you’re after? That’s what we’ve all been wondering all this time.”

All! They had all been wondering! It was worse than Henry could have imagined. Till now he had pictured his position with regard to The Girl from Brighton company rather as that of some scientist who, seeing but unseen, keeps a watchful eye on the denizens of a drop of water under his microscope. And they had all detected him⁠—every one of them.

It was a stunning blow. If there was one thing on which Henry prided himself it was the impenetrability of his disguises. He might be slow; he might be on the stupid side; but he could disguise himself. He had a variety of disguises, each designed to befog the public more hopelessly than the last.

Going down the street, you would meet a typical commercial traveller, dapper and alert. Anon, you encountered a heavily bearded Australian. Later, maybe, it was a courteous old retired colonel who stopped you and inquired the way to Trafalgar Square. Still later, a rather flashy individual of the sporting type asked you for a match for his cigar. Would you have suspected for one instant that each of these widely differing personalities was in reality one man?

Certainly you would.

Henry did not know it, but he had achieved in the eyes of the small servant who answered the front-door bell at his boardinghouse a well-established reputation as a humorist of the more practical kind. It was his habit to try his disguises on her. He would ring the bell, inquire for the landlady, and when Bella had gone, leap up the stairs to his room. Here he would remove the disguise, resume his normal appearance, and come downstairs again, humming a careless air. Bella, meanwhile, in the kitchen, would be confiding to her ally the cook that “Mr. Rice had jest come in, lookin’ sort o’ funny again.”

He sat and gaped at Walter Jelliffe. The comedian regarded him curiously.

“You look at least a hundred years old,” he said. “What are you made up as? A piece of Gorgonzola?”

Henry glanced hastily at the mirror. Yes, he did look rather old. He must have overdone some of the lines on his forehead. He looked something between a youngish centenarian and a nonagenarian who had seen a good deal of trouble.

“If you knew how you were demoralizing the company,” Jelliffe went on, “you would drop it. As steady and quiet a lot of boys as ever you met till you came along. Now they do nothing but bet on what disguise you’re going to choose for the next town. I don’t see why you need to change so often. You were all right as the Scotchman at Bristol. We were all saying how nice you looked. You should have stuck to that. But what do you do at Hull but roll in in a scrubby moustache and a tweed suit, looking rotten. However, all that is beside the point. It’s a free country. If you like to spoil your beauty, I suppose there’s no law against it. What I want to know is, who’s the man? Whose track are you sniffing on, Bill? You’ll pardon my calling you Bill. You’re known as Bill the Bloodhound in the company. Who’s the man?”

“Never mind,” said Henry.

He was aware, as he made it, that it was not a very able retort, but he was feeling too limp for satisfactory repartee. Criticisms in the Bureau, dealing with his alleged solidity of skull, he did not resent. He attributed them to man’s natural desire to chaff his fellow-man. But to be unmasked by the general public in this way was another matter. It struck at the root of all things.

“But I do mind,” objected Jelliffe. “It’s most important. A lot of money hangs on it. We’ve got a sweepstake on in the company, the holder of the winning name to take the entire receipts. Come on. Who is he?”

Henry rose and made for the door. His feelings were too deep for words. Even a minor detective has his professional pride; and the knowledge that his espionage is being made the basis of sweepstakes by his quarry cuts this to the quick.

“Here, don’t go! Where are you going?”

“Back to London,” said Henry, bitterly. “It’s a lot of good my staying here now, isn’t it?”

“I should say it was⁠—to me. Don’t be in a hurry. You’re thinking that, now we know all about you, your utility as a sleuth has waned to some extent. Is that it?”

“Well?”

“Well, why worry? What does it matter to you? You don’t get paid by results, do you? Your boss said ‘Trail along.’ Well, do it, then. I should hate to lose you. I don’t suppose you know it, but you’ve been the best mascot this tour that I’ve ever come across. Right from the start we’ve been playing to enormous business. I’d rather kill a black cat than lose you. Drop the disguises, and stay with us. Come behind all you want, and be sociable.”

A detective is only human. The less of a detective, the more human he is. Henry was not much of a detective, and his human traits were consequently highly developed. From a boy, he had never been able to resist curiosity. If a crowd collected in the street he always added himself to it, and he would have stopped to gape at a window with “Watch this window” written on it, if he had been running for his life from wild bulls. He was, and always had been, intensely desirous of some day penetrating behind the scenes of a theatre.

And there was another thing. At last, if he accepted this invitation, he would be able to see and speak to Alice Weston, and interfere with the manoeuvres of the hatchet-faced man, on whom he had brooded with suspicion and jealousy since that first morning at the station. To see Alice! Perhaps, with eloquence, to talk her out of that ridiculous resolve of hers!

“Why, there’s something in that,” he said.

“Rather! Well, that’s settled. And now, touching that sweep, who is it?”

“I can’t tell you that. You see, so far as that goes, I’m just where I was before. I can still watch⁠—whoever it is I’m watching.”

“Dash it, so you can. I didn’t think of that,” said Jelliffe, who possessed a sensitive conscience. “Purely between ourselves, it isn’t me, is it?”

Henry eyed him inscrutably. He could look inscrutable at times.

“Ah!” he said, and left quickly, with the feeling that, however poorly he had shown up during the actual interview, his exit had been good. He might have been a failure in the matter of disguise, but nobody could have put more quiet sinister-ness into that “Ah!” It did much to soothe him and ensure a peaceful night’s rest.

On the following night, for the first time in his life, Henry found himself behind the scenes of a theatre, and instantly began to experience all the complex emotions which come to the layman in that situation. That is to say, he felt like a cat which has strayed into a strange hostile backyard. He was in a new world, inhabited by weird creatures, who flitted about in an eerie semidarkness, like brightly coloured animals in a cavern.

The Girl from Brighton was one of those exotic productions specially designed for the Tired Business Man. It relied for a large measure of its success on the size and appearance of its chorus, and on their constant change of costume. Henry, as a consequence, was the centre of a kaleidoscopic whirl of feminine loveliness, dressed to represent such varying flora and fauna as rabbits, Parisian students, colleens, Dutch peasants, and daffodils. Musical comedy is the Irish stew of the drama. Anything may be put into it, with the certainty that it will improve the general effect.

He scanned the throng for a sight of Alice. Often as he had seen the piece in the course of its six weeks’ wandering in the wilderness he had never succeeded in recognizing her from the front of the house. Quite possibly, he thought, she might be on the stage already, hidden in a rose-tree or some other shrub, ready at the signal to burst forth upon the audience in short skirts; for in The Girl from Brighton almost anything could turn suddenly into a chorus girl.

Then he saw her, among the daffodils. She was not a particularly convincing daffodil, but she looked good to Henry. With wabbling knees he butted his way through the crowd and seized her hand enthusiastically.

“Why, Henry! Where did you come from?”

“I am glad to see you!”

“How did you get here?”

“I am glad to see you!”

At this point the stage manager, bellowing from the prompt-box, urged Henry to desist. It is one of the mysteries of behind-the-scenes acoustics that a whisper from any minor member of the company can be heard all over the house, while the stage manager can burst himself without annoying the audience.

Henry, awed by authority, relapsed into silence. From the unseen stage came the sound of someone singing a song about the moon. June was also mentioned. He recognized the song as one that had always bored him. He disliked the woman who was singing it⁠—a Miss Clarice Weaver, who played the heroine of the piece to Sidney Crane’s hero.

In his opinion he was not alone. Miss Weaver was not popular in the company. She had secured the role rather as a testimony of personal esteem from the management than because of any innate ability. She sang badly, acted indifferently, and was uncertain what to do with her hands. All these things might have been forgiven her, but she supplemented them by the crime known in stage circles as “throwing her weight about.” That is to say, she was hard to please, and, when not pleased, apt to say so in no uncertain voice. To his personal friends Walter Jelliffe had frequently confided that, though not a rich man, he was in the market with a substantial reward for anyone who was man enough to drop a ton of iron on Miss Weaver.

Tonight the song annoyed Henry more than usual, for he knew that very soon the daffodils were due on the stage to clinch the verisimilitude of the scene by dancing the tango with the rabbits. He endeavoured to make the most of the time at his disposal.

“I am glad to see you!” he said.

“Sh-h!” said the stage manager.

Henry was discouraged. Romeo could not have made love under these conditions. And then, just when he was pulling himself together to begin again, she was torn from him by the exigencies of the play.

He wandered moodily off into the dusty semidarkness. He avoided the prompt-box, whence he could have caught a glimpse of her, being loath to meet the stage manager just at present.

Walter Jelliffe came up to him, as he sat on a box and brooded on life.

“A little less of the double forte, old man,” he said. “Miss Weaver has been kicking about the noise on the side. She wanted you thrown out, but I said you were my mascot, and I would die sooner than part with you. But I should go easy on the chest-notes, I think, all the same.”

Henry nodded moodily. He was depressed. He had the feeling, which comes so easily to the intruder behind the scenes, that nobody loved him.

The piece proceeded. From the front of the house roars of laughter indicated the presence on the stage of Walter Jelliffe, while now and then a lethargic silence suggested that Miss Clarice Weaver was in action. From time to time the empty space about him filled with girls dressed in accordance with the exuberant fancy of the producer of the piece. When this happened, Henry would leap from his seat and endeavour to locate Alice; but always, just as he thought he had done so, the hidden orchestra would burst into melody and the chorus would be called to the front.

It was not till late in the second act that he found an opportunity for further speech.

The plot of The Girl from Brighton had by then reached a critical stage. The situation was as follows: The hero, having been disinherited by his wealthy and titled father for falling in love with the heroine, a poor shopgirl, has disguised himself (by wearing a different coloured necktie) and has come in pursuit of her to a well-known seaside resort, where, having disguised herself by changing her dress, she is serving as a waitress in the Rotunda, on the Esplanade. The family butler, disguised as a Bath-chair man, has followed the hero, and the wealthy and titled father, disguised as an Italian opera-singer, has come to the place for a reason which, though extremely sound, for the moment eludes the memory. Anyhow, he is there, and they all meet on the Esplanade. Each recognizes the other, but thinks he himself is unrecognized. Exeunt all, hurriedly, leaving the heroine alone on the stage.

It is a crisis in the heroine’s life. She meets it bravely. She sings a song entitled “My Honolulu Queen,” with chorus of Japanese girls and Bulgarian officers.

Alice was one of the Japanese girls.

She was standing a little apart from the other Japanese girls. Henry was on her with a bound. Now was his time. He felt keyed up, full of persuasive words. In the interval which had elapsed since their last conversation yeasty emotions had been playing the dickens with his self-control. It is practically impossible for a novice, suddenly introduced behind the scenes of a musical comedy, not to fall in love with somebody; and, if he is already in love, his fervour is increased to a dangerous point.

Henry felt that it was now or never. He forgot that it was perfectly possible⁠—indeed, the reasonable course⁠—to wait till the performance was over, and renew his appeal to Alice to marry him on the way back to her hotel. He had the feeling that he had got just about a quarter of a minute. Quick action! That was Henry’s slogan.

He seized her hand.

“Alice!”

“Sh-h!” hissed the stage manager.

“Listen! I love you. I’m crazy about you. What does it matter whether I’m on the stage or not? I love you.”

“Stop that row there!”

“Won’t you marry me?”

She looked at him. It seemed to him that she hesitated.

“Cut it out!” bellowed the stage manager, and Henry cut it out.

And at this moment, when his whole fate hung in the balance, there came from the stage that devastating high note which is the sign that the solo is over and that the chorus are now about to mobilize. As if drawn by some magnetic power, she suddenly receded from him, and went on to the stage.

A man in Henry’s position and frame of mind is not responsible for his actions. He saw nothing but her; he was blind to the fact that important manoeuvres were in progress. All he understood was that she was going from him, and that he must stop her and get this thing settled.

He clutched at her. She was out of range, and getting farther away every instant.

He sprang forward.

The advice that should be given to every young man starting life is⁠—if you happen to be behind the scenes at a theatre, never spring forward. The whole architecture of the place is designed to undo those who so spring. Hours before, the stage-carpenters have laid their traps, and in the semidarkness you cannot but fall into them.

The trap into which Henry fell was a raised board. It was not a very highly-raised board. It was not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door, but ’twas enough⁠—it served. Stubbing it squarely with his toe, Henry shot forward, all arms and legs.

It is the instinct of Man, in such a situation, to grab at the nearest support. Henry grabbed at the Hotel Superba, the pride of the Esplanade. It was a thin wooden edifice, and it supported him for perhaps a tenth of a second. Then he staggered with it into the limelight, tripped over a Bulgarian officer who was inflating himself for a deep note, and finally fell in a complicated heap as exactly in the centre of the stage as if he had been a star of years’ standing.

It went well; there was no question of that. Previous audiences had always been rather cold towards this particular song, but this one got on its feet and yelled for more. From all over the house came rapturous demands that Henry should go back and do it again.

But Henry was giving no encores. He rose to his feet, a little stunned, and automatically began to dust his clothes. The orchestra, unnerved by this unrehearsed infusion of new business, had stopped playing. Bulgarian officers and Japanese girls alike seemed unequal to the situation. They stood about, waiting for the next thing to break loose. From somewhere far away came faintly the voice of the stage manager inventing new words, new combinations of words, and new throat noises.

And then Henry, massaging a stricken elbow, was aware of Miss Weaver at his side. Looking up, he caught Miss Weaver’s eye.

A familiar stage-direction of melodrama reads, “Exit cautious through gap in hedge.” It was Henry’s first appearance on any stage, but he did it like a veteran.

“My dear fellow,” said Walter Jelliffe. The hour was midnight, and he was sitting in Henry’s bedroom at the hotel. Leaving the theatre, Henry had gone to bed almost instinctively. Bed seemed the only haven for him. “My dear fellow, don’t apologize. You have put me under lasting obligations. In the first place, with your unerring sense of the stage, you saw just the spot where the piece needed livening up, and you livened it up. That was good; but far better was it that you also sent our Miss Weaver into violent hysterics, from which she emerged to hand in her notice. She leaves us tomorrow.”

Henry was appalled at the extent of the disaster for which he was responsible.

“What will you do?”

“Do! Why, it’s what we have all been praying for⁠—a miracle which should eject Miss Weaver. It needed a genius like you to come to bring it off. Sidney Crane’s wife can play the part without rehearsal. She understudied it all last season in London. Crane has just been speaking to her on the phone, and she is catching the night express.”

Henry sat up in bed.

“What!”

“What’s the trouble now?”

“Sidney Crane’s wife?”

“What about her?”

A bleakness fell upon Henry’s soul.

“She was the woman who was employing me. Now I shall be taken off the job and have to go back to London.”

“You don’t mean that it was really Crane’s wife?”

Jelliffe was regarding him with a kind of awe.

“Laddie,” he said, in a hushed voice, “you almost scare me. There seems to be no limit to your powers as a mascot. You fill the house every night, you get rid of the Weaver woman, and now you tell me this. I drew Crane in the sweep, and I would have taken twopence for my chance of winning it.”

“I shall get a telegram from my boss tomorrow recalling me.”

“Don’t go. Stick with me. Join the troupe.”

Henry stared.

“What do you mean? I can’t sing or act.”

Jelliffe’s voice thrilled with earnestness.

“My boy, I can go down the Strand and pick up a hundred fellows who can sing and act. I don’t want them. I turn them away. But a seventh son of a seventh son like you, a human horseshoe like you, a king of mascots like you⁠—they don’t make them nowadays. They’ve lost the pattern. If you like to come with me I’ll give you a contract for any number of years you suggest. I need you in my business.” He rose. “Think it over, laddie, and let me know tomorrow. Look here upon this picture, and on that. As a sleuth you are poor. You couldn’t detect a bass-drum in a telephone-booth. You have no future. You are merely among those present. But as a mascot⁠—my boy, you’re the only thing in sight. You can’t help succeeding on the stage. You don’t have to know how to act. Look at the dozens of good actors who are out of jobs. Why? Unlucky. No other reason. With your luck and a little experience you’ll be a star before you know you’ve begun. Think it over, and let me know in the morning.”

Before Henry’s eyes there rose a sudden vision of Alice: Alice no longer unattainable; Alice walking on his arm down the aisle; Alice mending his socks; Alice with her heavenly hands fingering his salary envelope.

“Don’t go,” he said. “Don’t go. I’ll let you know now.”

The scene is the Strand, hard by Bedford Street; the time, that restful hour of the afternoon when they of the gnarled faces and the bright clothing gather together in groups to tell each other how good they are.

Hark! A voice.

“Rather! Courtneidge and the Guv’nor keep on trying to get me, but I turn them down every time. ‘No,’ I said to Malone only yesterday, ‘not for me! I’m going with old Wally Jelliffe, the same as usual, and there isn’t the money in the Mint that’ll get me away.’ Malone got all worked up. He⁠—”

It is the voice of Pifield Rice, actor.

Black for Luck

He was black, but comely. Obviously in reduced circumstances, he had nevertheless contrived to retain a certain smartness, a certain air⁠—what the French call the tournure. Nor had poverty killed in him the aristocrat’s instinct of personal cleanliness; for even as Elizabeth caught sight of him he began to wash himself.

At the sound of her step he looked up. He did not move, but there was suspicion in his attitude. The muscles of his back contracted, his eyes glowed like yellow lamps against black velvet, his tail switched a little, warningly.

Elizabeth looked at him. He looked at Elizabeth. There was a pause, while he summed her up. Then he stalked towards her, and, suddenly lowering his head, drove it vigorously against her dress. He permitted her to pick him up and carry him into the hallway, where Francis, the janitor, stood.

“Francis,” said Elizabeth, “does this cat belong to anyone here?”

“No, miss. That cat’s a stray, that cat is. I been trying to locate that cat’s owner for days.”

Francis spent his time trying to locate things. It was the one recreation of his eventless life. Sometimes it was a noise, sometimes a lost letter, sometimes a piece of ice which had gone astray in the dumbwaiter⁠—whatever it was, Francis tried to locate it.

“Has he been round here long, then?”

“I seen him snooping about a considerable time.”

“I shall keep him.”

“Black cats bring luck,” said Francis sententiously.

“I certainly shan’t object to that,” said Elizabeth. She was feeling that morning that a little luck would be a pleasing novelty. Things had not been going very well with her of late. It was not so much that the usual proportion of her manuscripts had come back with editorial compliments from the magazine to which they had been sent⁠—she accepted that as part of the game; what she did consider scurvy treatment at the hands of fate was the fact that her own pet magazine, the one to which she had been accustomed to fly for refuge, almost sure of a welcome⁠—when coldly treated by all the others⁠—had suddenly expired with a low gurgle for want of public support. It was like losing a kind and openhanded relative, and it made the addition of a black cat to the household almost a necessity.

In her flat, the door closed, she watched her new ally with some anxiety. He had behaved admirably on the journey upstairs, but she would not have been surprised, though it would have pained her, if he had now proceeded to try to escape through the ceiling. Cats were so emotional. However, he remained calm, and, after padding silently about the room for awhile, raised his head and uttered a crooning cry.

“That’s right,” said Elizabeth, cordially. “If you don’t see what you want, ask for it. The place is yours.”

She went to the icebox, and produced milk and sardines. There was nothing finicky or affected about her guest. He was a good trencherman, and he did not care who knew it. He concentrated himself on the restoration of his tissues with the purposeful air of one whose last meal is a dim memory. Elizabeth, brooding over him like a Providence, wrinkled her forehead in thought.

“Joseph,” she said at last, brightening; “that’s your name. Now settle down, and start being a mascot.”

Joseph settled down amazingly. By the end of the second day he was conveying the impression that he was the real owner of the apartment, and that it was due to his good nature that Elizabeth was allowed the run of the place. Like most of his species, he was an autocrat. He waited a day to ascertain which was Elizabeth’s favourite chair, then appropriated it for his own. If Elizabeth closed a door while he was in a room, he wanted it opened so that he might go out; if she closed it while he was outside, he wanted it opened so that he might come in; if she left it open, he fussed about the draught. But the best of us have our faults, and Elizabeth adored him in spite of his.

It was astonishing what a difference he made in her life. She was a friendly soul, and until Joseph’s arrival she had had to depend for company mainly on the footsteps of the man in the flat across the way. Moreover, the building was an old one, and it creaked at night. There was a loose board in the passage which made burglar noises in the dark behind you when you stepped on it on the way to bed; and there were funny scratching sounds which made you jump and hold your breath. Joseph soon put a stop to all that. With Joseph around, a loose board became a loose board, nothing more, and a scratching noise just a plain scratching noise.

And then one afternoon he disappeared.

Having searched the flat without finding him, Elizabeth went to the window, with the intention of making a bird’s-eye survey of the street. She was not hopeful, for she had just come from the street, and there had been no sign of him then.

Outside the window was a broad ledge, running the width of the building. It terminated on the left, in a shallow balcony belonging to the flat whose front door faced hers⁠—the flat of the young man whose footsteps she sometimes heard. She knew he was a young man, because Francis had told her so. His name, James Renshaw Boyd, she had learned from the same source.

On this shallow balcony, licking his fur with the tip of a crimson tongue and generally behaving as if he were in his own backyard, sat Joseph.

“Jo-seph!” cried Elizabeth⁠—surprise, joy, and reproach combining to give her voice an almost melodramatic quiver.

He looked at her coldly. Worse, he looked at her as if she had been an utter stranger. Bulging with her meat and drink, he cut her dead; and, having done so, turned and walked into the next flat.

Elizabeth was a girl of spirit. Joseph might look at her as if she were a saucerful of tainted milk, but he was her cat, and she meant to get him back. She went out and rang the bell of Mr. James Renshaw Boyd’s flat.

The door was opened by a shirt-sleeved young man. He was by no means an unsightly young man. Indeed, of his type⁠—the rough-haired, clean-shaven, square-jawed type⁠—he was a distinctly good-looking young man. Even though she was regarding him at the moment purely in the light of a machine for returning strayed cats, Elizabeth noticed that.

She smiled upon him. It was not the fault of this nice-looking young man that his sitting-room window was open; or that Joseph was an ungrateful little beast who should have no fish that night.

“Would you mind letting me have my cat, please?” she said pleasantly. “He has gone into your sitting-room through the window.”

He looked faintly surprised.

“Your cat?”

“My black cat, Joseph. He is in your sitting-room.”

“I’m afraid you have come to the wrong place. I’ve just left my sitting-room, and the only cat there is my black cat, Reginald.”

“But I saw Joseph go in only a minute ago.”

“That was Reginald.”

For the first time, as one who examining a fair shrub abruptly discovers that it is a stinging-nettle, Elizabeth realized the truth. This was no innocent young man who stood before her, but the blackest criminal known to criminologists⁠—a stealer of other people’s cats. Her manner shot down to zero.

“May I ask how long you have had your Reginald?”

“Since four o’clock this afternoon.”

“Did he come in through the window?”

“Why, yes. Now you mention it, he did.”

“I must ask you to be good enough to give me back my cat,” said Elizabeth, icily.

He regarded her defensively.

“Assuming,” he said, “purely for the purposes of academic argument, that your Joseph is my Reginald, couldn’t we come to an agreement of some sort? Let me buy you another cat. A dozen cats.”

“I don’t want a dozen cats. I want Joseph.”

“Fine, fat, soft cats,” he went on persuasively. “Lovely, affectionate Persians and Angoras, and⁠—”

“Of course, if you intend to steal Joseph⁠—”

“These are harsh words. Any lawyer will tell you that there are special statutes regarding cats. To retain a stray cat is not a tort or a misdemeanour. In the celebrated test-case of Wiggins v. Bluebody it was established⁠—”

“Will you please give me back my cat?”

She stood facing him, her chin in the air and her eyes shining, and the young man suddenly fell a victim to conscience.

“Look here,” he said, “I’ll throw myself on your mercy. I admit the cat is your cat, and that I have no right to it, and that I am just a common sneak-thief. But consider. I had just come back from the first rehearsal of my first play; and as I walked in at the door that cat walked in at the window. I’m as superstitious as a coon, and I felt that to give him up would be equivalent to killing the play before ever it was produced. I know it will sound absurd to you. You have no idiotic superstitions. You are sane and practical. But, in the circumstances, if you could see your way to waiving your rights⁠—”

Before the wistfulness of his eye Elizabeth capitulated. She felt quite overcome by the revulsion of feeling which swept through her. How she had misjudged him! She had taken him for an ordinary soulless purloiner of cats, a snapper-up of cats at random and without reason; and all the time he had been reluctantly compelled to the act by this deep and praiseworthy motive. All the unselfishness and love of sacrifice innate in good women stirred within her.

“Why, of course you mustn’t let him go! It would mean awful bad luck.”

“But how about you⁠—”

“Never mind about me. Think of all the people who are dependent on your play being a success.”

The young man blinked.

“This is overwhelming,” he said.

“I had no notion why you wanted him. He was nothing to me⁠—at least, nothing much⁠—that is to say⁠—well, I suppose I was rather fond of him⁠—but he was not⁠—not⁠—”

“Vital?”

“That’s just the word I wanted. He was just company, you know.”

“Haven’t you many friends?”

“I haven’t any friends.”

“You haven’t any friends! That settles it. You must take him back.”

“I couldn’t think of it.”

“Of course you must take him back at once.”

“I really couldn’t.”

“You must.”

“I won’t.”

“But, good gracious, how do you suppose I should feel, knowing that you were all alone and that I had sneaked your⁠—your ewe lamb, as it were?”

“And how do you suppose I should feel if your play failed simply for lack of a black cat?”

He started, and ran his fingers through his rough hair in an overwrought manner.

“Solomon couldn’t have solved this problem,” he said. “How would it be⁠—it seems the only possible way out⁠—if you were to retain a sort of managerial right in him? Couldn’t you sometimes step across and chat with him⁠—and me, incidentally⁠—over here? I’m very nearly as lonesome as you are. Chicago is my home. I hardly know a soul in New York.”

Her solitary life in the big city had forced upon Elizabeth the ability to form instantaneous judgements on the men she met. She flashed a glance at the young man and decided in his favour.

“It’s very kind of you,” she said. “I should love to. I want to hear all about your play. I write myself, you know, in a very small way, so a successful playwright is Someone to me.”

“I wish I were a successful playwright.”

“Well, you are having the first play you have ever written produced on Broadway. That’s pretty wonderful.”

“ ’M⁠—yes,” said the young man. It seemed to Elizabeth that he spoke doubtfully, and this modesty consolidated the favourable impression she had formed.

The gods are just. For every ill which they inflict they also supply a compensation. It seems good to them that individuals in big cities shall be lonely, but they have so arranged that, if one of these individuals does at last contrive to seek out and form a friendship with another, that friendship shall grow more swiftly than the tepid acquaintanceships of those on whom the icy touch of loneliness has never fallen. Within a week Elizabeth was feeling that she had known this James Renshaw Boyd all her life.

And yet there was a tantalizing incompleteness about his personal reminiscences. Elizabeth was one of those persons who like to begin a friendship with a full statement of their position, their previous life, and the causes which led up to their being in this particular spot at this particular time. At their next meeting, before he had had time to say much on his own account, she had told him of her life in the small Canadian town where she had passed the early part of her life; of the rich and unexpected aunt who had sent her to college for no particular reason that anyone could ascertain except that she enjoyed being unexpected; of the legacy from this same aunt, far smaller than might have been hoped for, but sufficient to send a grateful Elizabeth to New York, to try her luck there; of editors, magazines, manuscripts refused or accepted, plots for stories; of life in general, as lived down where the Arch spans Fifth Avenue and the lighted cross of the Judson shines by night on Washington Square.

Ceasing eventually, she waited for him to begin; and he did not begin⁠—not, that is to say, in the sense the word conveyed to Elizabeth. He spoke briefly of college, still more briefly of Chicago⁠—which city he appeared to regard with a distaste that made Lot’s attitude towards the Cities of the Plain almost kindly by comparison. Then, as if he had fulfilled the demands of the most exacting inquisitor in the matter of personal reminiscence, he began to speak of the play.

The only facts concerning him to which Elizabeth could really have sworn with a clear conscience at the end of the second week of their acquaintance were that he was very poor, and that this play meant everything to him.

The statement that it meant everything to him insinuated itself so frequently into his conversation that it weighed on Elizabeth’s mind like a burden, and by degrees she found herself giving the play place of honour in her thoughts over and above her own little ventures. With this stupendous thing hanging in the balance, it seemed almost wicked of her to devote a moment to wondering whether the editor of an evening paper, who had half promised to give her the entrancing post of Adviser to the Lovelorn on his journal, would fulfil that half-promise.

At an early stage in their friendship the young man had told her the plot of the piece; and if he had not unfortunately forgotten several important episodes and had to leap back to them across a gulf of one or two acts, and if he had referred to his characters by name instead of by such descriptions as “the fellow who’s in love with the girl⁠—not what’s-his-name but the other chap”⁠—she would no doubt have got that mental half-Nelson on it which is such a help towards the proper understanding of a four-act comedy. As it was, his précis had left her a little vague; but she said it was perfectly splendid, and he said did she really think so. And she said yes, she did, and they were both happy.

Rehearsals seemed to prey on his spirits a good deal. He attended them with the pathetic regularity of the young dramatist, but they appeared to bring him little balm. Elizabeth generally found him steeped in gloom, and then she would postpone the recital, to which she had been looking forward, of whatever little triumph she might have happened to win, and devote herself to the task of cheering him up. If women were wonderful in no other way, they would be wonderful for their genius for listening to shop instead of talking it.

Elizabeth was feeling more than a little proud of the way in which her judgement of this young man was being justified. Life in Bohemian New York had left her decidedly wary of strange young men, not formally introduced; her faith in human nature had had to undergo much straining. Wolves in sheep’s clothing were common objects of the wayside in her unprotected life; and perhaps her chief reason for appreciating this friendship was the feeling of safety which it gave her.

Their relations, she told herself, were so splendidly unsentimental. There was no need for that silent defensiveness which had come to seem almost an inevitable accompaniment to dealings with the opposite sex. James Boyd, she felt, she could trust; and it was wonderful how soothing the reflection was.

And that was why, when the thing happened, it so shocked and frightened her.

It had been one of their quiet evenings. Of late they had fallen into the habit of sitting for long periods together without speaking. But it had differed from other quiet evenings through the fact that Elizabeth’s silence hid a slight but well-defined feeling of injury. Usually she sat happy with her thoughts, but tonight she was ruffled. She had a grievance.

That afternoon the editor of the evening paper, whose angelic status not even a bald head and an absence of wings and harp could conceal, had definitely informed her that the man who had conducted the column hitherto having resigned, the post of Heloise Milton, official adviser to readers troubled with affairs of the heart, was hers; and he looked to her to justify the daring experiment of letting a woman handle so responsible a job. Imagine how Napoleon felt after Austerlitz, picture Colonel Goethale contemplating the last spadeful of dirt from the Panama Canal, try to visualize a suburban householder who sees a flower emerging from the soil in which he has inserted a packet of guaranteed seeds, and you will have some faint conception how Elizabeth felt as those golden words proceeded from that editor’s lips. For the moment Ambition was sated. The years, rolling by, might perchance open out other vistas; but for the moment she was content.

Into James Boyd’s apartment she had walked, stepping on fleecy clouds of rapture, to tell him the great news.

She told him the great news.

He said, “Ah!”

There are many ways of saying “Ah!” You can put joy, amazement, rapture into it; you can also make it sound as if it were a reply to a remark on the weather. James Boyd made it sound just like that. His hair was rumpled, his brow contracted, and his manner absent. The impression he gave Elizabeth was that he had barely heard her. The next moment he was deep in a recital of the misdemeanours of the actors now rehearsing for his four-act comedy. The star had done this, the leading woman that, the juvenile something else. For the first time Elizabeth listened unsympathetically.

The time came when speech failed James Boyd, and he sat back in his chair, brooding. Elizabeth, cross and wounded, sat in hers, nursing Joseph. And so, in a dim light, time flowed by.

Just how it happened she never knew. One moment, peace; the next chaos. One moment stillness; the next, Joseph hurtling through the air, all claws and expletives, and herself caught in a clasp which shook the breath from her.

One can dimly reconstruct James’s train of thought. He is in despair; things are going badly at the theatre, and life has lost its savour. His eye, as he sits, is caught by Elizabeth’s profile. It is a pretty⁠—above all, a soothing⁠—profile. An almost painful sentimentality sweeps over James Boyd. There she sits, his only friend in this cruel city. If you argue that there is no necessity to spring at your only friend and nearly choke her, you argue soundly; the point is well taken. But James Boyd was beyond the reach of sound argument. Much rehearsing had frayed his nerves to ribbons. One may say that he was not responsible for his actions.

That is the case for James. Elizabeth, naturally, was not in a position to take a wide and understanding view of it. All she knew was that James had played her false, abused her trust in him. For a moment, such was the shock of the surprise, she was not conscious of indignation⁠—or, indeed, of any sensation except the purely physical one of semi-strangulation. Then, flushed, and more bitterly angry than she could ever have imagined herself capable of being, she began to struggle. She tore herself away from him. Coming on top of her grievance, this thing filled her with a sudden, very vivid hatred of James. At the back of her anger, feeding it, was the humiliating thought that it was all her own fault, that by her presence there she had invited this.

She groped her way to the door. Something was writhing and struggling inside her, blinding her eyes, and robbing her of speech. She was only conscious of a desire to be alone, to be back and safe in her own home. She was aware that he was speaking, but the words did not reach her. She found the door, and pulled it open. She felt a hand on her arm, but she shook it off. And then she was back behind her own door, alone and at liberty to contemplate at leisure the ruins of that little temple of friendship which she had built up so carefully and in which she had been so happy.

The broad fact that she would never forgive him was for a while her only coherent thought. To this succeeded the determination that she would never forgive herself. And having thus placed beyond the pale the only two friends she had in New York, she was free to devote herself without hindrance to the task of feeling thoroughly lonely and wretched.

The shadows deepened. Across the street a sort of bubbling explosion, followed by a jerky glare that shot athwart the room, announced the lighting of the big arc-lamp on the opposite sidewalk. She resented it, being in the mood for undiluted gloom; but she had not the energy to pull down the shade and shut it out. She sat where she was, thinking thoughts that hurt.

The door of the apartment opposite opened. There was a single ring at her bell. She did not answer it. There came another. She sat where she was, motionless. The door closed again.

The days dragged by. Elizabeth lost count of time. Each day had its duties, which ended when you went to bed; that was all she knew⁠—except that life had become very grey and very lonely, far lonelier even than in the time when James Boyd was nothing to her but an occasional sound of footsteps.

Of James she saw nothing. It is not difficult to avoid anyone in New York, even when you live just across the way.

It was Elizabeth’s first act each morning, immediately on awaking, to open her front door and gather in whatever lay outside it. Sometimes there would be mail; and always, unless Francis, as he sometimes did, got mixed and absentminded, the morning milk and the morning paper.

One morning, some two weeks after that evening of which she tried not to think, Elizabeth, opening the door, found immediately outside it a folded scrap of paper. She unfolded it.

I am just off to the theatre. Won’t you wish me luck? I feel sure it is going to be a hit. Joseph is purring like a dynamo.—J. R. B.

In the early morning the brain works sluggishly. For an instant Elizabeth stood looking at the words uncomprehendingly; then, with a leaping of the heart, their meaning came home to her. He must have left this at her door on the previous night. The play had been produced! And somewhere in the folded interior of the morning paper at her feet must be the opinion of “One in Authority” concerning it!

Dramatic criticisms have this peculiarity, that if you are looking for them, they burrow and hide like rabbits. They dodge behind murders; they duck behind baseball scores; they lie up snugly behind the Wall Street news. It was a full minute before Elizabeth found what she sought, and the first words she read smote her like a blow.

In that vein of delightful facetiousness which so endears him to all followers and perpetrators of the drama, the “One in Authority” rent and tore James Boyd’s play. He knocked James Boyd’s play down, and kicked it; he jumped on it with large feet; he poured cold water on it, and chopped it into little bits. He merrily disembowelled James Boyd’s play.

Elizabeth quivered from head to foot. She caught at the doorpost to steady herself. In a flash all her resentment had gone, wiped away and annihilated like a mist before the sun. She loved him, and she knew now that she had always loved him.

It took her two seconds to realize that the “One in Authority” was a miserable incompetent, incapable of recognizing merit when it was displayed before him. It took her five minutes to dress. It took her a minute to run downstairs and out to the newsstand on the corner of the street. Here, with a lavishness which charmed and exhilarated the proprietor, she bought all the other papers which he could supply.

Moments of tragedy are best described briefly. Each of the papers noticed the play, and each of them damned it with uncompromising heartiness. The criticisms varied only in tone. One cursed with relish and gusto; another with a certain pity; a third with a kind of wounded superiority, as of one compelled against his will to speak of something unspeakable; but the meaning of all was the same. James Boyd’s play was a hideous failure.

Back to the house sped Elizabeth, leaving the organs of a free people to be gathered up, smoothed, and replaced on the stand by the now more than ever charmed proprietor. Up the stairs she sped, and arriving breathlessly at James’s door rang the bell.

Heavy footsteps came down the passage; crushed, disheartened footsteps; footsteps that sent a chill to Elizabeth’s heart. The door opened. James Boyd stood before her, heavy-eyed and haggard. In his eyes was despair, and on his chin the blue growth of beard of the man from whom the mailed fist of Fate has smitten the energy to perform his morning shave.

Behind him, littering the floor, were the morning papers; and at the sight of them Elizabeth broke down.

“Oh, Jimmy, darling!” she cried; and the next moment she was in his arms, and for a space time stood still.

How long afterwards it was she never knew; but eventually James Boyd spoke.

“If you’ll marry me,” he said hoarsely, “I don’t care a hang.”

“Jimmy, darling!” said Elizabeth, “of course I will.”

Past them, as they stood there, a black streak shot silently, and disappeared out of the door. Joseph was leaving the sinking ship.

“Let him go, the fraud,” said Elizabeth bitterly. “I shall never believe in black cats again.”

But James was not of this opinion.

“Joseph has brought me all the luck I need.”

“But the play meant everything to you.”

“It did then.”

Elizabeth hesitated.

“Jimmy, dear, it’s all right, you know. I know you will make a fortune out of your next play, and I’ve heaps for us both to live on till you make good. We can manage splendidly on my salary from the Evening Chronicle.”

“What! Have you got a job on a New York paper?”

“Yes, I told you about it. I am doing Heloise Milton. Why, what’s the matter?”

He groaned hollowly.

“And I was thinking that you would come back to Chicago with me!”

“But I will. Of course I will. What did you think I meant to do?”

“What! Give up a real job in New York!” He blinked. “This isn’t really happening. I’m dreaming.”

“But, Jimmy, are you sure you can get work in Chicago? Wouldn’t it be better to stay on here, where all the managers are, and⁠—”

He shook his head.

“I think it’s time I told you about myself,” he said. “Am I sure I can get work in Chicago? I am, worse luck. Darling, have you in your more material moments ever toyed with a Boyd’s Premier Breakfast-Sausage or kept body and soul together with a slice off a Boyd’s Excelsior Home-Cured Ham? My father makes them, and the tragedy of my life is that he wants me to help him at it. This was my position. I loathed the family business as much as dad loved it. I had a notion⁠—a fool notion, as it has turned out⁠—that I could make good in the literary line. I’ve scribbled in a sort of way ever since I was in college. When the time came for me to join the firm, I put it to dad straight. I said, ‘Give me a chance, one good, square chance, to see if the divine fire is really there, or if somebody has just turned on the alarm as a practical joke.’ And we made a bargain. I had written this play, and we made it a test-case. We fixed it up that dad should put up the money to give it a Broadway production. If it succeeded, all right; I’m the young Gus Thomas, and may go ahead in the literary game. If it’s a fizzle, off goes my coat, and I abandon pipe-dreams of literary triumphs and start in as the guy who put the Co. in Boyd & Co. Well, events have proved that I am the guy, and now I’m going to keep my part of the bargain just as squarely as dad kept his. I know quite well that if I refused to play fair and chose to stick on here in New York and try again, dad would go on staking me. That’s the sort of man he is. But I wouldn’t do it for a million Broadway successes. I’ve had my chance, and I’ve foozled; and now I’m going back to make him happy by being a real live member of the firm. And the queer thing about it is that last night I hated the idea, and this morning, now that I’ve got you, I almost look forward to it.”

He gave a little shiver.

“And yet⁠—I don’t know. There’s something rather gruesome still to my near-artist soul in living in luxury on murdered piggies. Have you ever seen them persuading a pig to play the stellar role in a Boyd Premier Breakfast-Sausage? It’s pretty ghastly. They string them up by their hind legs, and⁠—b-r-r-r-r!”

“Never mind,” said Elizabeth soothingly. “Perhaps they don’t mind it really.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said James Boyd, doubtfully. “I’ve watched them at it, and I’m bound to say they didn’t seem any too well pleased.”

“Try not to think of it.”

“Very well,” said James dutifully.

There came a sudden shout from the floor above, and on the heels of it a shock-haired youth in pyjamas burst into the apartment.

“Now what?” said James. “By the way, Miss Herrold, my fiancée; Mr. Briggs⁠—Paul Axworthy Briggs, sometimes known as the Boy Novelist. What’s troubling you, Paul?”

Mr. Briggs was stammering with excitement.

“Jimmy,” cried the Boy Novelist, “what do you think has happened! A black cat has just come into my apartment. I heard him mewing outside the door, and opened it, and he streaked in. And I started my new novel last night! Say, you do believe this thing of black cats bringing luck, don’t you?”

“Luck! My lad, grapple that cat to your soul with hoops of steel. He’s the greatest little luck-bringer in New York. He was boarding with me till this morning.”

“Then⁠—by Jove! I nearly forgot to ask⁠—your play was a hit? I haven’t seen the papers yet.”

“Well, when you see them, don’t read the notices. It was the worst frost Broadway has seen since Columbus’s time.”

“But⁠—I don’t understand.”

“Don’t worry. You don’t have to. Go back and fill that cat with fish, or she’ll be leaving you. I suppose you left the door open?”

“My God!” said the Boy Novelist, paling, and dashed for the door.

“Do you think Joseph will bring him luck?” said Elizabeth, thoughtfully.

“It depends what sort of luck you mean. Joseph seems to work in devious ways. If I know Joseph’s methods, Briggs’s new novel will be rejected by every publisher in the city; and then, when he is sitting in his apartment, wondering which of his razors to end himself with, there will be a ring at the bell, and in will come the most beautiful girl in the world, and then⁠—well, then, take it from me, he will be all right.”

“He won’t mind about the novel?”

“Not in the least.”

“Not even if it means that he will have to go away and kill pigs and things.”

“About the pig business, dear. I’ve noticed a slight tendency in you to let yourself get rather morbid about it. I know they string them up by the hind-legs, and all that sort of thing; but you must remember that a pig looks at these things from a different standpoint. My belief is that the pigs like it. Try not to think of it.”

“Very well,” said Elizabeth, dutifully.

Concealed Art

If a fellow has lots of money and lots of time and lots of curiosity about other fellows’ business, it is astonishing, don’t you know, what a lot of strange affairs he can get mixed up in. Now, I have money and curiosity and all the time there is. My name’s Pepper⁠—Reggie Pepper. My uncle was the colliery-owner chappie, and he left me the dickens of a pile. And ever since the lawyer slipped the stuff into my hand, whispering “It’s yours!” life seems to have been one thing after another.

For instance, the dashed rummy case of dear old Archie. I first ran into old Archie when he was studying in Paris, and when he came back to London he looked me up, and we celebrated. He always liked me because I didn’t mind listening to his theories of Art. For Archie, you must know, was an artist. Not an ordinary artist either, but one of those fellows you read about who are several years ahead of the times, and paint the sort of thing that people will be educated up to by about 1999 or thereabouts.

Well, one day as I was sitting in the club watching the traffic coming up one way and going down the other, and thinking nothing in particular, in blew the old boy. He was looking rather worried.

“Reggie, I want your advice.”

“You shall have it,” I said. “State your point, old top.”

“It’s like this⁠—I’m engaged to be married.”

“My dear old scout, a million con⁠—”

“Yes, I know. Thanks very much, and all that, but listen.”

“What’s the trouble? Don’t you like her?”

A kind of rapt expression came over his face.

“Like her! Why, she’s the only⁠—”

He gibbered for a spell. When he had calmed down, I said, “Well then, what’s your trouble?”

“Reggie,” he said, “do you think a man is bound to tell his wife all about his past life?”

“Oh, well,” I said, “of course, I suppose she’s prepared to find that a man has⁠—er⁠—sowed his wild oats, don’t you know, and all that sort of thing, and⁠—”

He seemed quite irritated.

“Don’t be a chump. It’s nothing like that. Listen. When I came back to London and started to try and make a living by painting, I found that people simply wouldn’t buy the sort of work I did at any price. Do you know, Reggie, I’ve been at it three years now, and I haven’t sold a single picture.”

I whooped in a sort of amazed way, but I should have been far more startled if he’d told me he had sold a picture. I’ve seen his pictures, and they are like nothing on earth. So far as I can make out what he says, they aren’t supposed to be. There’s one in particular, called “The Coming of Summer,” which I sometimes dream about when I’ve been hitting it up a shade too vigorously. It’s all dots and splashes, with a great eye staring out of the middle of the mess. It looks as if summer, just as it was on the way, had stubbed its toe on a bomb. He tells me it’s his masterpiece, and that he will never do anything like it again. I should like to have that in writing.

“Well, artists eat, just the same as other people,” he went on, “and personally I like mine often and well cooked. Besides which, my sojourn in Paris gave me a rather nice taste in light wines. The consequence was that I came to the conclusion, after I had been back a few months, that something had to be done. Reggie, do you by any remote chance read a paper called Funny Slices?”

“Every week.”

He gazed at me with a kind of wistful admiration.

“I envy you, Reggie. Fancy being able to make a statement like that openly and without fear. Then I take it you know the Doughnut family?”

“I should say I did.”

His voice sank almost to a whisper, and he looked over his shoulder nervously.

“Reggie, I do them.”

“You what?”

“I do them⁠—draw them⁠—paint them. I am the creator of the Doughnut family.”

I stared at him, absolutely astounded. I was simply dumb. It was the biggest surprise of my life. Why, dash it, the Doughnut family was the best thing in its line in London. There is Pa Doughnut, Ma Doughnut, Aunt Bella, Cousin Joe, and Mabel, the daughter, and they have all sorts of slapstick adventures. Pa, Ma and Aunt Bella are pure gargoyles; Cousin Joe is a little more nearly semi-human, and Mabel is a perfect darling. I had often wondered who did them, for they were unsigned, and I had often thought what a deuced brainy fellow the chap must be. And all the time it was old Archie. I stammered as I tried to congratulate him.

He winced.

“Don’t gargle, Reggie, there’s a good fellow,” he said. “My nerves are all on edge. Well, as I say, I do the Doughnuts. It was that or starvation. I got the idea one night when I had a toothache, and next day I took some specimens round to an editor. He rolled in his chair, and told me to start in and go on till further notice. Since then I have done them without a break. Well, there’s the position. I must go on drawing these infernal things, or I shall be penniless. The question is, am I to tell her?”

“Tell her? Of course you must tell her.”

“Ah, but you don’t know her, Reggie. Have you ever heard of Eunice Nugent?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“As she doesn’t sprint up and down the joyway at the Hippodrome, I didn’t suppose you would.”

I thought this rather uncalled-for, seeing that, as a matter of fact, I scarcely know a dozen of the Hippodrome chorus, but I made allowances for his state of mind.

“She’s a poetess,” he went on, “and her work has appeared in lots of good magazines. My idea is that she would be utterly horrified if she knew, and could never be quite the same to me again. But I want you to meet her and judge for yourself. It’s just possible that I am taking too morbid a view of the matter, and I want an unprejudiced outside opinion. Come and lunch with us at the Piccadilly tomorrow, will you?”

He was absolutely right. One glance at Miss Nugent told me that the poor old boy had got the correct idea. I hardly know how to describe the impression she made on me. On the way to the Pic, Archie had told me that what first attracted him to her was the fact that she was so utterly unlike Mabel Doughnut; but that had not prepared me for what she really was. She was kind of intense, if you know what I mean⁠—kind of spiritual. She was perfectly pleasant, and drew me out about golf and all that sort of thing; but all the time I felt that she considered me an earthy worm whose loftier soul-essence had been carelessly left out of his composition at birth. She made me wish that I had never seen a musical comedy or danced on a supper table on New Year’s Eve. And if that was the impression she made on me, you can understand why poor old Archie jibbed at the idea of bringing her Funny Slices, and pointing at the Doughnuts and saying, “Me⁠—I did it!” The notion was absolutely out of the question. The shot wasn’t on the board. I told Archie so directly we were alone.

“Old top,” I said, “you must keep it dark.”

“I’m afraid so. But I hate the thought of deceiving her.”

“You must get used to that now you’re going to be a married man,” I said.

“The trouble is, how am I going to account for the fact that I can do myself pretty well?”

“Why, tell her you have private means, of course. What’s your money invested in?”

“Practically all of it in B. and O. P. Rails. It is a devilish good thing. A pal of mine put me onto it.”

“Tell her that you have a pile of money in B. and O. P., then. She’ll take it for granted it’s a legacy. A spiritual girl like Miss Nugent isn’t likely to inquire further.”

“Reggie, I believe you’re right. It cuts both ways, that spiritual gag. I’ll do it.”

They were married quietly. I held the towel for Archie, and a spectacled girl with a mouth like a rattrap, who was something to do with the Woman’s Movement, saw fair play for Eunice. And then they went off to Scotland for their honeymoon. I wondered how the Doughnuts were going to get on in old Archie’s absence, but it seemed that he had buckled down to it and turned out three months’ supply in advance. He told me that long practice had enabled him to Doughnut almost without conscious effort. When he came back to London he would give an hour a week to them and do them on his head. Pretty soft! It seemed to me that the marriage was going to be a success.

One gets out of touch with people when they marry. I am not much on the social-call game, and for nearly six months I don’t suppose I saw Archie more than twice or three times. When I did, he appeared sound in wind and limb, and reported that married life was all to the velvet, and that he regarded bachelors like myself as so many excrescences on the social system. He compared me, if I remember rightly, to a wart, and advocated drastic treatment.

It was perhaps seven months after he had told Eunice that he endowed her with all his worldly goods⁠—she not suspecting what the parcel contained⁠—that he came to me unexpectedly one afternoon with a face so long and sick-looking that my finger was on the button and I was ordering brandy and soda before he had time to speak.

“Reggie,” he said, “an awful thing has happened. Have you seen the paper today?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Did you read the Stock Exchange news? Did you see that some lunatic has been jumping around with a club and hammering the stuffing out of B. and O. P.? This afternoon they are worth practically nothing.”

“By jove! And all your money was in it. What rotten luck!” Then I spotted the silver lining. “But, after all, it doesn’t matter so very much. What I mean is, bang go your little savings and all that sort of thing; but, after all, you’re making quite a good income, so why worry?”

“I might have known you would miss the point,” he said. “Can’t you understand the situation? This morning at breakfast Eunice got hold of the paper first. ‘Archie,’ she said, ‘didn’t you tell me all your money was in B. and O. P.?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Why?’ ‘Then we’re ruined.’ Now do you see? If I had had time to think, I could have said that I had another chunk in something else, but I had committed myself, I have either got to tell her about those infernal Doughnuts, or else conceal the fact that I had money coming in.”

“Great Scot! What on earth are you going to do?”

“I can’t think. We can struggle along in a sort of way, for it appears that she has small private means of her own. The idea at present is that we shall live on them. We’re selling the car, and trying to get out of the rest of our lease up at the flat, and then we’re going to look about for a cheaper place, probably down Chelsea way, so as to be near my studio. What was that stuff I’ve been drinking? Ring for another of the same, there’s a good fellow. In fact, I think you had better keep your finger permanently on the bell. I shall want all they’ve got.”

The spectacle of a fellow human being up to his neck in the consommé is painful, of course, but there’s certainly what the advertisements at the top of magazine stories call a “tense human interest” about it, and I’m bound to say that I saw as much as possible of poor old Archie from now on. His sad case fascinated me. It was rather thrilling to see him wrestling with New Zealand mutton-hash and draught beer down at his Chelsea flat, with all the suppressed anguish of a man who has let himself get accustomed to delicate food and vintage wines, and think that a word from him could send him whizzing back to the old life again whenever he wished. But at what a cost, as they say in the novels. That was the catch. He might hate this new order of things, but his lips were sealed.

I personally came in for a good deal of quiet esteem for the way in which I stuck to him in his adversity. I don’t think Eunice had thought much of me before, but now she seemed to feel that I had formed a corner in golden hearts. I took advantage of this to try and pave the way for a confession on poor old Archie’s part.

“I wonder, Archie, old top,” I said one evening after we had dined on mutton-hash and were sitting round trying to forget it, “I wonder you don’t try another line in painting. I’ve heard that some of these fellows who draw for the comic papers⁠—”

Mrs. Archie nipped me in the bud.

“How can you suggest such a thing, Mr. Pepper? A man with Archie’s genius! I know the public is not educated up to his work, but it is only a question of time. Archie suffers, like all pioneers, from being ahead of his generation. But, thank Heaven, he need not sully his genius by stooping⁠—”

“No, no,” I said. “Sorry. I only suggested it.”

After that I gave more time than ever to trying to think of a solution. Sometimes I would lie awake at night, and my manner towards Wilberforce, my man, became so distrait that it almost caused a rift. He asked me one morning which suit I would wear that day, and, by Jove, I said, “Oh, any of them. I don’t mind.” There was a most frightful silence, and I woke up to find him looking at me with such a dashed wounded expression in his eyes that I had to tip him a couple of quid to bring him round again.

Well, you can’t go on straining your brain like that forever without something breaking loose, and one night, just after I had gone to bed, I got it. Yes, by gad, absolutely got it. And I was so excited that I hopped out from under the blankets there and then, and rang up old Archie on the phone.

“Archie, old scout,” I said, “can the misses hear what I’m saying? Well then, don’t say anything to give the show away. Keep on saying, ‘Yes? Halloa?’ so that you can tell her it was someone on the wrong wire. I’ve got it, my boy. All you’ve got to do to solve the whole problem is to tell her you’ve sold one of your pictures. Make the price as big as you like. Come and lunch with me tomorrow at the club, and we’ll settle the details.”

There was a pause, and then Archie’s voice said, “Halloa, halloa?” It might have been a bit disappointing, only there was a tremble in it which made me understand how happy I had made the old boy. I went back to bed and slept like a king.

Next day we lunched together, and fixed the thing up. I have never seen anyone so supremely braced. We examined the scheme from every angle and there wasn’t a flaw in it. The only difficulty was to hit on a plausible purchaser. Archie suggested me, but I couldn’t see it. I said it would sound fishy. Eventually I had a brain wave, and suggested J. Bellingwood Brackett, the American millionaire. He lives in London, and you see his name in the papers everyday as having bought some painting or statue or something, so why shouldn’t he buy Archie’s “Coming of Summer?” And Archie said, “Exactly⁠—why shouldn’t he? And if he had had any sense in his fat head, he would have done it long ago, dash him!” Which shows you that dear old Archie was bracing up, for I’ve heard him use much the same language in happier days about a referee.

He went off, crammed to the eyebrows with good food and happiness, to tell Mrs. Archie that all was well, and that the old home was saved, and that Canterbury mutton might now be definitely considered as off the bill of fare.

He told me on the phone that night that he had made the price two thousand pounds, because he needed the money, and what was two thousand to a man who had been fleecing the widow and the orphan for forty odd years without a break? I thought the price was a bit high, but I agreed that J. Bellingwood could afford it. And happiness, you might say, reigned supreme.

I don’t know when I’ve had such a nasty jar as I got when Wilberforce brought me the paper in bed, and I languidly opened it and this jumped out and bit at me:

Bellingwood Brackett Discovers
English Genius

Pays Stupendous Price for Young Artist’s Picture

Hitherto Unknown Futurist Received £2,000

Underneath there was a column, some of it about Archie, the rest about the picture; and scattered over the page were two photographs of old Archie, looking more like Pa Doughnut than anything human, and a smudged reproduction of “The Coming of Summer”; and, believe me, frightful as the original of that weird exhibit looked, the reproduction had it licked to a whisper. It was one of the ghastliest things I have ever seen.

Well, after the first shock I recovered a bit. After all, it was fame for dear old Archie. As soon as I had had lunch I went down to the flat to congratulate him.

He was sitting there with Mrs. Archie. He was looking a bit dazed, but she was simmering with joy. She welcomed me as the faithful friend.

“Isn’t it perfectly splendid, Mr. Pepper, to think that Archie’s genius has at last been recognized? How quiet he kept it. I had no idea that Mr. Brackett was even interested in his work. I wonder how he heard of it?”

“Oh, these things get about,” I said. “You can’t keep a good man down.”

“Think of two thousand pounds for one picture⁠—and the first he has ever sold!”

“What beats me,” I said, “is how the papers got hold of it.”

“Oh, I sent it to the papers,” said Mrs. Archie, in an offhand way.

“I wonder who did the writing up,” I said.

“They would do that in the office, wouldn’t they?” said Mrs. Archie.

“I suppose they would,” I said. “They are wonders at that sort of thing.”

I couldn’t help wishing that Archie would enter into the spirit of the thing a little more and perk up, instead of sitting there looking like a codfish. The thing seemed to have stunned the poor chappie.

“After this, Archie,” I said, “all you have to do is to sit in your studio, while the police see that the waiting line of millionaires doesn’t straggle over the pavement. They’ll fight⁠—”

“What’s that?” said Archie, starting as if someone had dug a red-hot needle into his calf.

It was only a ring at the bell, followed by a voice asking if Mr. Ferguson was at home.

“Probably an interviewer,” said Mrs. Archie. “I suppose we shall get no peace for a long time to come.”

The door opened, and the cook came in with a card. “ ‘Renshaw Liggett,’ ” said Mrs. Archie “I don’t know him. Do you, Archie? It must be an interviewer. Ask him to come in, Julia.”

And in he came.

My knowledge of chappies in general, after a fairly wide experience, is that some chappies seem to kind of convey an atmosphere of unpleasantness the moment you come into contact with them. Renshaw Liggett gave me this feeling directly he came in; and when he fixed me with a sinister glance and said, “Mr. Ferguson?” I felt inclined to say “Not guilty.” I backed a step or two and jerked my head towards Archie, and Renshaw turned the searchlight off me and switched it onto him.

“You are Mr. Archibald Ferguson, the artist?”

Archie nodded pallidly, and Renshaw nodded, as much as to say that you couldn’t deceive him. He produced a sheet of paper. It was the middle page of the Mail.

“You authorized the publication of this?”

Archie nodded again.

“I represent Mr. Brackett. The publication of this most impudent fiction has caused Mr. Brackett extreme annoyance, and, as it might also lead to other and more serious consequences, I must insist that a full denial be published without a moment’s delay.”

“What do you mean?” cried Mrs. Archie. “Are you mad?”

She had been standing, listening to the conversation in a sort of trance. Now she jumped into the fight with a vim that turned Renshaw’s attention to her in a second.

“No, madam, I am not mad. Nor, despite the interested assertions of certain parties whom I need not specify by name, is Mr. Brackett. It may be news to you, Mrs. Ferguson, that an action is even now pending in New York, whereby certain parties are attempting to show that my client, Mr. Brackett, is non compos and should be legally restrained from exercising control over his property. Their case is extremely weak, for even if we admit their contention that our client did, on the eighteenth of June last, attempt to walk up Fifth Avenue in his pyjamas, we shall be able to show that his action was the result of an election bet. But as the parties to whom I have alluded will undoubtedly snatch at every straw in their efforts to prove that Mr. Brackett is mentally infirm, the prejudicial effect of this publication cannot be overestimated. Unless Mr. Brackett can clear himself of the stigma of having given two thousand pounds for this extraordinary production of an absolutely unknown artist, the strength of his case must be seriously shaken. I may add that my client’s lavish patronage of Art is already one of the main planks in the platform of the parties already referred to. They adduce his extremely generous expenditure in this direction as evidence that he is incapable of a proper handling of his money. I need scarcely point out with what sinister pleasure, therefore, they must have contemplated⁠—this.”

And he looked at “The Coming of Summer” as if it were a black beetle.

I must say, much as I disliked the blighter, I couldn’t help feeling that he had right on his side. It hadn’t occurred to me in quite that light before, but, considering it calmly now, I could see that a man who would disgorge two thousand of the best for Archie’s Futurist masterpiece might very well step straight into the nut factory, and no questions asked.

Mrs. Archie came right back at him, as game as you please.

“I am sorry for Mr. Brackett’s domestic troubles, but my husband can prove without difficulty that he did buy the picture. Can’t you, dear?”

Archie, extremely white about the gills, looked at the ceiling and at the floor and at me and Renshaw Liggett.

“No,” he said finally. “I can’t. Because he didn’t.”

“Exactly,” said Renshaw, “and I must ask you to publish that statement in tomorrow’s papers without fail.” He rose, and made for the door. “My client has no objection to young artists advertising themselves, realizing that this is an age of strenuous competition, but he firmly refuses to permit them to do it at his expense. Good afternoon.”

And he legged it, leaving behind him one of the most chunky silences I have ever been mixed up in. For the life of me, I couldn’t see who was to make the next remark. I was jolly certain that it wasn’t going to be me.

Eventually Mrs. Archie opened the proceedings.

“What does it mean?”

Archie turned to me with a sort of frozen calm.

“Reggie, would you mind stepping into the kitchen and asking Julia for this week’s Funny Slices? I know she has it.”

He was right. She unearthed it from a cupboard. I trotted back with it to the sitting room. Archie took the paper from me, and held it out to his wife, Doughnuts uppermost.

“Look!” he said.

She looked.

“I do them. I have done them every week for three years. No, don’t speak yet. Listen. This is where all my money came from, all the money I lost when B. and O. P. Rails went smash. And this is where the money came from to buy ‘The Coming of Summer.’ It wasn’t Brackett who bought it; it was myself.”

Mrs. Archie was devouring the Doughnuts with wide-open eyes. I caught a glimpse of them myself, and only just managed not to laugh, for it was the set of pictures where Pa Doughnut tries to fix the electric light, one of the very finest things dear old Archie had ever done.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“I draw these things. I have sold my soul.”

“Archie!”

He winced, but stuck to it bravely.

“Yes, I knew how you would feel about it, and that was why I didn’t dare to tell you, and why we fixed up this story about old Brackett. I couldn’t bear to live on you any longer, and to see you roughing it here, when we might be having all the money we wanted.”

Suddenly, like a boiler exploding, she began to laugh.

“They’re the funniest things I ever saw in my life,” she gurgled. “Mr. Pepper, do look! He’s trying to cut the electric wire with the scissors, and everything blazes up. And you’ve been hiding this from me all that time!”

Archie goggled dumbly. She dived at a table, and picked up a magazine, pointing to one of the advertisement pages.

“Read!” she cried. “Read it aloud.”

And in a shaking voice Archie read:

You think you are perfectly well, don’t you? You wake up in the morning and spring out of bed and say to yourself that you have never been better in your life. You’re wrong! Unless you are avoiding coffee as you would avoid the man who always tells you the smart things his little boy said yesterday, and drinking Safety First Molassine for breakfast, you cannot be Perfectly Well.

It is a physical impossibility. Coffee contains an appreciable quantity of the deadly drug caffeine, and therefore⁠—

“I wrote that,” she said. “And I wrote the advertisement of the Spiller Baby Food on page ninety-four, and the one about the Preeminent Breakfast Sausage on page eighty-six. Oh, Archie, dear, the torments I have been through, fearing that you would some day find me out and despise me. I couldn’t help it. I had no private means, and I didn’t make enough out of my poetry to keep me in hats. I learned to write advertisements four years ago at a correspondence school, and I’ve been doing them ever since. And now I don’t mind your knowing, now that you have told me this perfectly splendid news. Archie!”

She rushed into his arms like someone charging in for a bowl of soup at a railway station buffet. And I drifted out. It seemed to me that this was a scene in which I was not on. I sidled to the door, and slid forth. They didn’t notice me. My experience is that nobody ever does⁠—much.

The Making of Mac’s

Mac’s Restaurant⁠—nobody calls it MacFarland’s⁠—is a mystery. It is off the beaten track. It is not smart. It does not advertise. It provides nothing nearer to an orchestra than a solitary piano, yet, with all these things against it, it is a success. In theatrical circles especially it holds a position which might turn the white lights of many a supper-palace green with envy.

This is mysterious. You do not expect Soho to compete with and even eclipse Piccadilly in this way. And when Soho does so compete, there is generally romance of some kind somewhere in the background.

Somebody happened to mention to me casually that Henry, the old waiter, had been at Mac’s since its foundation.

“Me?” said Henry, questioned during a slack spell in the afternoon. “Rather!”

“Then can you tell me what it was that first gave the place the impetus which started it on its upward course? What causes should you say were responsible for its phenomenal prosperity? What⁠—”

“What gave it a leg-up? Is that what you’re trying to get at?”

“Exactly. What gave it a leg-up? Can you tell me?”

“Me?” said Henry. “Rather!”

And he told me this chapter from the unwritten history of the London whose day begins when Nature’s finishes.

Old Mr. MacFarland (said Henry) started the place fifteen years ago. He was a widower with one son and what you might call half a daughter. That’s to say, he had adopted her. Katie was her name, and she was the child of a dead friend of his. The son’s name was Andy. A little freckled nipper he was when I first knew him⁠—one of those silent kids that don’t say much and have as much obstinacy in them as if they were mules. Many’s the time, in them days, I’ve clumped him on the head and told him to do something; and he didn’t run yelling to his pa, same as most kids would have done, but just said nothing and went on not doing whatever it was I had told him to do. That was the sort of disposition Andy had, and it grew on him. Why, when he came back from Oxford College the time the old man sent for him⁠—what I’m going to tell you about soon⁠—he had a jaw on him like the ram of a battleship. Katie was the kid for my money. I liked Katie. We all liked Katie.

Old MacFarland started out with two big advantages. One was Jules, and the other was me. Jules came from Paris, and he was the greatest cook you ever seen. And me⁠—well, I was just come from ten years as waiter at the Guelph, and I won’t conceal it from you that I gave the place a tone. I gave Soho something to think about over its chop, believe me. It was a comedown in the world for me, maybe, after the Guelph, but what I said to myself was that, when you get a tip in Soho, it may be only tuppence, but you keep it; whereas at the Guelph about ninety-nine hundredths of it goes to helping to maintain some blooming head waiter in the style to which he has been accustomed. It was through my kind of harping on that fact that me and the Guelph parted company. The head waiter complained to the management the day I called him a fatheaded vampire.

Well, what with me and what with Jules, MacFarland’s⁠—it wasn’t Mac’s in them days⁠—began to get a move on. Old MacFarland, who knew a good man when he saw one and always treated me more like a brother than anything else, used to say to me, “Henry, if this keeps up, I’ll be able to send the boy to Oxford College”; until one day he changed it to, “Henry, I’m going to send the boy to Oxford College”; and next year, sure enough, off he went.

Katie was sixteen then, and she had just been given the cashier job, as a treat. She wanted to do something to help the old man, so he put her on a high chair behind a wire cage with a hole in it, and she gave the customers their change. And let me tell you, mister, that a man that wasn’t satisfied after he’d had me serve him a dinner cooked by Jules and then had a chat with Katie through the wire cage would have groused at Paradise. For she was pretty, was Katie, and getting prettier every day. I spoke to the boss about it. I said it was putting temptation in the girl’s way to set her up there right in the public eye, as it were. And he told me to hop it. So I hopped it.

Katie was wild about dancing. Nobody knew it till later, but all this while, it turned out, she was attending regular one of them schools. That was where she went to in the afternoons, when we all thought she was visiting girl friends. It all come out after, but she fooled us then. Girls are like monkeys when it comes to artfulness. She called me Uncle Bill, because she said the name Henry always reminded her of cold mutton. If it had been young Andy that had said it I’d have clumped him one; but he never said anything like that. Come to think of it, he never said anything much at all. He just thought a heap without opening his face.

So young Andy went off to college, and I said to him, “Now then, you young devil, you be a credit to us, or I’ll fetch you a clip when you come home.” And Katie said, “Oh, Andy, I shall miss you.” And Andy didn’t say nothing to me, and he didn’t say nothing to Katie, but he gave her a look, and later in the day I found her crying, and she said she’d got toothache, and I went round the corner to the chemist’s and brought her something for it.

It was in the middle of Andy’s second year at college that the old man had the stroke which put him out of business. He went down under it as if he’d been hit with an axe, and the doctor tells him he’ll never be able to leave his bed again.

So they sent for Andy, and he quit his college, and come back to London to look after the restaurant.

I was sorry for the kid. I told him so in a fatherly kind of way. And he just looked at me and says, “Thanks very much, Henry.”

“What must be must be,” I says. “Maybe, it’s all for the best. Maybe it’s better you’re here than in among all those young devils in your Oxford school what might be leading you astray.”

“If you would think less of me and more of your work, Henry,” he says, “perhaps that gentleman over there wouldn’t have to shout sixteen times for the waiter.”

Which, on looking into it, I found to be the case, and he went away without giving me no tip, which shows what you lose in a hard world by being sympathetic.

I’m bound to say that young Andy showed us all jolly quick that he hadn’t come home just to be an ornament about the place. There was exactly one boss in the restaurant, and it was him. It come a little hard at first to have to be respectful to a kid whose head you had spent many a happy hour clumping for his own good in the past; but he pretty soon showed me I could do it if I tried, and I done it. As for Jules and the two young fellers that had been taken on to help me owing to increase of business, they would jump through hoops and roll over if he just looked at them. He was a boy who liked his own way, was Andy, and, believe me, at MacFarland’s Restaurant he got it.

And then, when things had settled down into a steady jog, Katie took the bit in her teeth.

She done it quite quiet and unexpected one afternoon when there was only me and her and Andy in the place. And I don’t think either of them knew I was there, for I was taking an easy on a chair at the back, reading an evening paper.

She said, kind of quiet, “Oh, Andy.”

“Yes, darling,” he said.

And that was the first I knew that there was anything between them.

“Andy, I’ve something to tell you.”

“What is it?”

She kind of hesitated.

“Andy, dear, I shan’t be able to help any more in the restaurant.”

He looked at her, sort of surprised.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m⁠—I’m going on the stage.”

I put down my paper. What do you mean? Did I listen? Of course I listened. What do you take me for?

From where I sat I could see young Andy’s face, and I didn’t need any more to tell me there was going to be trouble. That jaw of his was right out. I forgot to tell you that the old man had died, poor old feller, maybe six months before, so that now Andy was the real boss instead of just acting boss; and what’s more, in the nature of things, he was, in a manner of speaking, Katie’s guardian, with power to tell her what she could do and what she couldn’t. And I felt that Katie wasn’t going to have any smooth passage with this stage business which she was giving him. Andy didn’t hold with the stage⁠—not with any girl he was fond of being on it anyway. And when Andy didn’t like a thing he said so.

He said so now.

“You aren’t going to do anything of the sort.”

“Don’t be horrid about it, Andy dear. I’ve got a big chance. Why should you be horrid about it?”

“I’m not going to argue about it. You don’t go.”

“But it’s such a big chance. And I’ve been working for it for years.”

“How do you mean working for it?”

And then it came out about this dancing-school she’d been attending regular.

When she’d finished telling him about it, he just shoved out his jaw another inch.

“You aren’t going on the stage.”

“But it’s such a chance. I saw Mr. Mandelbaum yesterday, and he saw me dance, and he was very pleased, and said he would give me a solo dance to do in this new piece he’s putting on.”

“You aren’t going on the stage.”

What I always say is, you can’t beat tact. If you’re smooth and tactful you can get folks to do anything you want; but if you just shove your jaw out at them, and order them about, why, then they get their backs up and sauce you. I knew Katie well enough to know that she would do anything for Andy, if he asked her properly; but she wasn’t going to stand this sort of thing. But you couldn’t drive that into the head of a feller like young Andy with a steam-hammer.

She flared up, quick, as if she couldn’t hold herself in no longer.

“I certainly am,” she said.

“You know what it means?”

“What does it mean?”

“The end of⁠—everything.”

She kind of blinked as if he’d hit her, then she chucks her chin up.

“Very well,” she says. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” says Andy, the pigheaded young mule; and she walks out one way and he walks out another.

I don’t follow the drama much as a general rule, but seeing that it was now, so to speak, in the family, I did keep an eye open for the newspaper notices of “The Rose Girl,” which was the name of the piece which Mr. Mandelbaum was letting Katie do a solo dance in; and while some of them cussed the play considerable, they all gave Katie a nice word. One feller said that she was like cold water on the morning after, which is high praise coming from a newspaper man.

There wasn’t a doubt about it. She was a success. You see, she was something new, and London always sits up and takes notice when you give it that.

There were pictures of her in the papers, and one evening paper had a piece about “How I Preserve My Youth” signed by her. I cut it out and showed it to Andy.

He gave it a look. Then he gave me a look, and I didn’t like his eye.

“Well?” he says.

“Pardon,” I says.

“What about it?” he says.

“I don’t know,” I says.

“Get back to your work,” he says.

So I got back.

It was that same night that the queer thing happened.

We didn’t do much in the supper line at MacFarland’s as a rule in them days, but we kept open, of course, in case Soho should take it into its head to treat itself to a Welsh rabbit before going to bed; so all hands was on deck, ready for the call if it should come, at half past eleven that night; but we weren’t what you might term sanguine.

Well, just on the half-hour, up drives a taxicab, and in comes a party of four. There was a nut, another nut, a girl, and another girl. And the second girl was Katie.

“Hallo, Uncle Bill!” she says.

“Good evening, madam,” I says dignified, being on duty.

“Oh, stop it, Uncle Bill,” she says. “Say ‘Hallo!’ to a pal, and smile prettily, or I’ll tell them about the time you went to the White City.”

Well, there’s some bygones that are best left bygones, and the night at the White City what she was alluding to was one of them. I still maintain, as I always shall maintain, that the constable had no right to⁠—but, there, it’s a story that wouldn’t interest you. And, anyway, I was glad to see Katie again, so I give her a smile.

“Not so much of it,” I says. “Not so much of it. I’m glad to see you, Katie.”

“Three cheers! Jimmy, I want to introduce you to my friend, Uncle Bill. Ted, this is Uncle Bill. Violet, this is Uncle Bill.”

It wasn’t my place to fetch her one on the side of the head, but I’d of liked to have; for she was acting like she’d never used to act when I knew her⁠—all tough and bold. Then it come to me that she was nervous. And natural, too, seeing young Andy might pop out any moment.

And sure enough out he popped from the back room at that very instant. Katie looked at him, and he looked at Katie, and I seen his face get kind of hard; but he didn’t say a word. And presently he went out again.

I heard Katie breathe sort of deep.

“He’s looking well, Uncle Bill, ain’t he?” she says to me, very soft.

“Pretty fair,” I says. “Well, kid, I been reading the pieces in the papers. You’ve knocked ’em.”

“Ah, don’t Bill,” she says, as if I’d hurt her. And me meaning only to say the civil thing. Girls are rum.

When the party had paid their bill and give me a tip which made me think I was back at the Guelph again⁠—only there weren’t any Dick Turpin of a head waiter standing by for his share⁠—they hopped it. But Katie hung back and had a word with me.

“He was looking well, wasn’t he, Uncle Bill?”

“Rather!”

“Does⁠—does he ever speak of me?”

“I ain’t heard him.”

“I suppose he’s still pretty angry with me, isn’t he, Uncle Bill? You’re sure you’ve never heard him speak of me?”

So, to cheer her up, I tells her about the piece in the paper I showed him; but it didn’t seem to cheer her up any. And she goes out.

The very next night in she come again for supper, but with different nuts and different girls. There was six of them this time, counting her. And they’d hardly sat down at their table, when in come the fellers she had called Jimmy and Ted with two girls. And they sat eating of their suppers and chaffing one another across the floor, all as pleasant and sociable as you please.

“I say, Katie,” I heard one of the nuts say, “you were right. He’s worth the price of admission.”

I don’t know who they meant, but they all laughed. And every now and again I’d hear them praising the food, which I don’t wonder at, for Jules had certainly done himself proud. All artistic temperament, these Frenchmen are. The moment I told him we had company, so to speak, he blossomed like a flower does when you put it in water.

“Ah, see, at last!” he says, trying to grab me and kiss me. “Our fame has gone abroad in the world which amuses himself, ain’t it? For a good supper connection I have always prayed, and he has arrived.”

Well, it did begin to look as if he was right. Ten high-class supper-folk in an evening was pretty hot stuff for MacFarland’s. I’m bound to say I got excited myself. I can’t deny that I missed the Guelph at times.

On the fifth night, when the place was fairly packed and looked for all the world like Oddy’s or Romano’s, and me and the two young fellers helping me was working double tides, I suddenly understood, and I went up to Katie and, bending over her very respectful with a bottle, I whispers, “Hot stuff, kid. This is a jolly fine boom you’re working for the old place.” And by the way she smiled back at me, I seen I had guessed right.

Andy was hanging round, keeping an eye on things, as he always done, and I says to him, when I was passing, “She’s doing us proud, bucking up the old place, ain’t she?” And he says, “Get on with your work.” And I got on.

Katie hung back at the door, when she was on her way out, and had a word with me.

“Has he said anything about me, Uncle Bill?”

“Not a word,” I says.

And she goes out.

You’ve probably noticed about London, mister, that a flock of sheep isn’t in it with the nuts, the way they all troop on each other’s heels to supper-places. One month they’re all going to one place, next month to another. Someone in the push starts the cry that he’s found a new place, and off they all go to try it. The trouble with most of the places is that once they’ve got the custom they think it’s going to keep on coming and all they’ve got to do is to lean back and watch it come. Popularity comes in at the door, and good food and good service flies out at the window. We wasn’t going to have any of that at MacFarland’s. Even if it hadn’t been that Andy would have come down like half a ton of bricks on the first sign of slackness, Jules and me both of us had our professional reputations to keep up. I didn’t give myself no airs when I seen things coming our way. I worked all the harder, and I seen to it that the four young fellers under me⁠—there was four now⁠—didn’t lose no time fetching of the orders.

The consequence was that the difference between us and most popular restaurants was that we kept our popularity. We fed them well, and we served them well; and once the thing had started rolling it didn’t stop. Soho isn’t so very far away from the centre of things, when you come to look at it, and they didn’t mind the extra step, seeing that there was something good at the end of it. So we got our popularity, and we kept our popularity; and we’ve got it to this day. That’s how MacFarland’s came to be what it is, mister.

With the air of one who has told a well-rounded tale, Henry ceased, and observed that it was wonderful the way Mr. Woodward, of Chelsea, preserved his skill in spite of his advanced years.

I stared at him.

“But, heavens, man!” I cried, “you surely don’t think you’ve finished? What about Katie and Andy? What happened to them? Did they ever come together again?”

“Oh, ah,” said Henry, “I was forgetting!”

And he resumed.

As time went on, I begin to get pretty fed up with young Andy. He was making a fortune as fast as any feller could out of the sudden boom in the supper-custom, and he knowing perfectly well that if it hadn’t of been for Katie there wouldn’t of been any supper-custom at all; and you’d of thought that anyone claiming to be a human being would have had the gratitood to forgive and forget and go over and say a civil word to Katie when she come in. But no, he just hung round looking black at all of them; and one night he goes and fairly does it.

The place was full that night, and Katie was there, and the piano going, and everybody enjoying themselves, when the young feller at the piano struck up the tune what Katie danced to in the show. Catchy tune it was. “Lum-tum-tum, tiddle-iddle-um.” Something like that it went. Well, the young feller struck up with it, and everybody begin clapping and hammering on the tables and hollering to Katie to get up and dance; which she done, in an open space in the middle, and she hadn’t hardly started when along come young Andy.

He goes up to her, all jaw, and I seen something that wanted dusting on the table next to ’em, so I went up and began dusting it, so by good luck I happened to hear the whole thing.

He says to her, very quiet, “You can’t do that here. What do you think this place is?”

And she says to him, “Oh, Andy!”

“I’m very much obliged to you,” he says, “for all the trouble you seem to be taking, but it isn’t necessary. MacFarland’s got on very well before your well-meant efforts to turn it into a bear-garden.”

And him coining the money from the supper-custom! Sometimes I think gratitood’s a thing of the past and this world not fit for a self-respecting rattlesnake to live in.

“Andy!” she says.

“That’s all. We needn’t argue about it. If you want to come here and have supper, I can’t stop you. But I’m not going to have the place turned into a nightclub.”

I don’t know when I’ve heard anything like it. If it hadn’t of been that I hadn’t of got the nerve, I’d have give him a look.

Katie didn’t say another word, but just went back to her table.

But the episode, as they say, wasn’t conclooded. As soon as the party she was with seen that she was through dancing, they begin to kick up a row; and one young nut with about an inch and a quarter of forehead and the same amount of chin kicked it up especial.

“No, I say! I say, you know!” he hollered. “That’s too bad, you know. Encore! Don’t stop. Encore!”

Andy goes up to him.

“I must ask you, please, not to make so much noise,” he says, quite respectful. “You are disturbing people.”

“Disturbing be damned! Why shouldn’t she⁠—”

“One moment. You can make all the noise you please out in the street, but as long as you stay in here you’ll be quiet. Do you understand?”

Up jumps the nut. He’d had quite enough to drink. I know, because I’d been serving him.

“Who the devil are you?” he says.

“Sit down,” says Andy.

And the young feller took a smack at him. And the next moment Andy had him by the collar and was chucking him out in a way that would have done credit to a real professional down Whitechapel way. He dumped him on the pavement as neat as you please.

That broke up the party.

You can never tell with restaurants. What kills one makes another. I’ve no doubt that if we had chucked out a good customer from the Guelph that would have been the end of the place. But it only seemed to do MacFarland’s good. I guess it gave just that touch to the place which made the nuts think that this was real Bohemia. Come to think of it, it does give a kind of charm to a place, if you feel that at any moment the feller at the next table to you may be gathered up by the slack of his trousers and slung into the street.

Anyhow, that’s the way our supper-custom seemed to look at it; and after that you had to book a table in advance if you wanted to eat with us. They fairly flocked to the place.

But Katie didn’t. She didn’t flock. She stayed away. And no wonder, after Andy behaving so bad. I’d of spoke to him about it, only he wasn’t the kind of feller you do speak to about things.

One day I says to him to cheer him up, “What price this restaurant now, Mr. Andy?”

“Curse the restaurant,” he says.

And him with all that supper-custom! It’s a rum world!

Mister, have you ever had a real shock⁠—something that came out of nowhere and just knocked you flat? I have, and I’m going to tell you about it.

When a man gets to be my age, and has a job of work which keeps him busy till it’s time for him to go to bed, he gets into the habit of not doing much worrying about anything that ain’t shoved right under his nose. That’s why, about now, Katie had kind of slipped my mind. It wasn’t that I wasn’t fond of the kid, but I’d got so much to think about, what with having four young fellers under me and things being in such a rush at the restaurant that, if I thought of her at all, I just took it for granted that she was getting along all right, and didn’t bother. To be sure we hadn’t seen nothing of her at MacFarland’s since the night when Andy bounced her pal with the small size in foreheads, but that didn’t worry me. If I’d been her, I’d have stopped away the same as she done, seeing that young Andy still had his hump. I took it for granted, as I’m telling you, that she was all right, and that the reason we didn’t see nothing of her was that she was taking her patronage elsewhere.

And then, one evening, which happened to be my evening off, I got a letter, and for ten minutes after I read it I was knocked flat.

You get to believe in fate when you get to be my age, and fate certainly had taken a hand in this game. If it hadn’t of been my evening off, don’t you see, I wouldn’t have got home till one o’clock or past that in the morning, being on duty. Whereas, seeing it was my evening off, I was back at half past eight.

I was living at the same boardinghouse in Bloomsbury what I’d lived at for the past ten years, and when I got there I find her letter shoved half under my door.

I can tell you every word of it. This is how it went:

Darling Uncle Bill,

Don’t be too sorry when you read this. It is nobody’s fault, but I am just tired of everything, and I want to end it all. You have been such a dear to me always that I want you to be good to me now. I should not like Andy to know the truth, so I want you to make it seem as if it had happened naturally. You will do this for me, won’t you? It will be quite easy. By the time you get this, it will be one, and it will all be over, and you can just come up and open the window and let the gas out and then everyone will think I just died naturally. It will be quite easy. I am leaving the door unlocked so that you can get in. I am in the room just above yours. I took it yesterday, so as to be near you. Goodbye, Uncle Bill. You will do it for me, won’t you? I don’t want Andy to know what it really was.

Katie

That was it, mister, and I tell you it floored me. And then it come to me, kind of as a new idea, that I’d best do something pretty soon, and up the stairs I went quick.

There she was, on the bed, with her eyes closed, and the gas just beginning to get bad.

As I come in, she jumped up, and stood staring at me. I went to the tap, and turned the flow off, and then I gives her a look.

“Now then,” I says.

“How did you get here?”

“Never mind how I got here. What have you got to say for yourself?”

She just began to cry, same as she used to when she was a kid and someone had hurt her.

“Here,” I says, “let’s get along out of here, and go where there’s some air to breathe. Don’t you take on so. You come along out and tell me all about it.”

She started to walk to where I was, and suddenly I seen she was limping. So I gave her a hand down to my room, and set her on a chair.

“Now then,” I says again.

“Don’t be angry with me, Uncle Bill,” she says.

And she looks at me so pitiful that I goes up to her and puts my arm round her and pats her on the back.

“Don’t you worry, dearie,” I says, “nobody ain’t going to be angry with you. But, for goodness’ sake,” I says, “tell a man why in the name of goodness you ever took and acted so foolish.”

“I wanted to end it all.”

“But why?”

She burst out a-crying again, like a kid.

“Didn’t you read about it in the paper, Uncle Bill?”

“Read about what in the paper?”

“My accident. I broke my ankle at rehearsal ever so long ago, practising my new dance. The doctors say it will never be right again. I shall never be able to dance any more. I shall always limp. I shan’t even be able to walk properly. And when I thought of that⁠ ⁠… and Andy⁠ ⁠… and everything⁠ ⁠… I.⁠ ⁠…”

I got on to my feet.

“Well, well, well,” I says. “Well, well, well! I don’t know as I blame you. But don’t you do it. It’s a mug’s game. Look here, if I leave you alone for half an hour, you won’t go trying it on again? Promise.”

“Very well, Uncle Bill. Where are you going?”

“Oh, just out. I’ll be back soon. You sit there and rest yourself.”

It didn’t take me ten minutes to get to the restaurant in a cab. I found Andy in the back room.

“What’s the matter, Henry?” he says.

“Take a look at this,” I says.

There’s always this risk, mister, in being the Andy type of feller what must have his own way and goes straight ahead and has it; and that is that when trouble does come to him, it comes with a rush. It sometimes seems to me that in this life we’ve all got to have trouble sooner or later, and some of us gets it bit by bit, spread out thin, so to speak, and a few of us gets it in a lump⁠—biff! And that was what happened to Andy, and what I knew was going to happen when I showed him that letter. I nearly says to him, “Brace up, young feller, because this is where you get it.”

I don’t often go to the theatre, but when I do I like one of those plays with some ginger in them which the papers generally cuss. The papers say that real human beings don’t carry on in that way. Take it from me, mister, they do. I seen a feller on the stage read a letter once which didn’t just suit him; and he gasped and rolled his eyes and tried to say something and couldn’t, and had to get a hold on a chair to keep him from falling. There was a piece in the paper saying that this was all wrong, and that he wouldn’t of done them things in real life. Believe me, the paper was wrong. There wasn’t a thing that feller did that Andy didn’t do when he read that letter.

“God!” he says. “Is she⁠ ⁠… She isn’t.⁠ ⁠… Were you in time?” he says.

And he looks at me, and I seen that he had got it in the neck, right enough.

“If you mean is she dead,” I says, “no, she ain’t dead.”

“Thank God!”

“Not yet,” I says.

And the next moment we was out of that room and in the cab and moving quick.

He was never much of a talker, wasn’t Andy, and he didn’t chat in that cab. He didn’t say a word till we was going up the stairs.

“Where?” he says.

“Here,” I says.

And I opens the door.

Katie was standing looking out of the window. She turned as the door opened, and then she saw Andy. Her lips parted, as if she was going to say something, but she didn’t say nothing. And Andy, he didn’t say nothing, neither. He just looked, and she just looked.

And then he sort of stumbles across the room, and goes down on his knees, and gets his arms around her.

“Oh, my kid,” he says.

And I seen I wasn’t wanted, so I shut the door, and I hopped it. I went and saw the last half of a music-hall. But, I don’t know, it didn’t kind of have no fascination for me. You’ve got to give your mind to it to appreciate good music-hall turns.

The Mixer

I

He Meets a Shy Gentleman

Looking back, I always consider that my career as a dog proper really started when I was bought for the sum of half a crown by the Shy Man. That event marked the end of my puppyhood. The knowledge that I was worth actual cash to somebody filled me with a sense of new responsibilities. It sobered me. Besides, it was only after that half-crown changed hands that I went out into the great world; and, however interesting life may be in an East End public house, it is only when you go out into the world that you really broaden your mind and begin to see things.

Within its limitations, my life had been singularly full and vivid. I was born, as I say, in a public house in the East End, and, however lacking a public house may be in refinement and the true culture, it certainly provides plenty of excitement. Before I was six weeks old I had upset three policemen by getting between their legs when they came round to the side-door, thinking they had heard suspicious noises; and I can still recall the interesting sensation of being chased seventeen times round the yard with a broom-handle after a well-planned and completely successful raid on the larder. These and other happenings of a like nature soothed for the moment but could not cure the restlessness which has always been so marked a trait in my character. I have always been restless, unable to settle down in one place and anxious to get on to the next thing. This may be due to a gipsy strain in my ancestry⁠—one of my uncles travelled with a circus⁠—or it may be the Artistic Temperament, acquired from a grandfather who, before dying of a surfeit of paste in the property-room of the Bristol Coliseum, which he was visiting in the course of a professional tour, had an established reputation on the music-hall stage as one of Professor Pond’s Performing Poodles.

I owe the fullness and variety of my life to this restlessness of mine, for I have repeatedly left comfortable homes in order to follow some perfect stranger who looked as if he were on his way to somewhere interesting. Sometimes I think I must have cat blood in me.

The Shy Man came into our yard one afternoon in April, while I was sleeping with mother in the sun on an old sweater which we had borrowed from Fred, one of the barmen. I heard mother growl, but I didn’t take any notice. Mother is what they call a good watchdog, and she growls at everybody except master. At first, when she used to do it, I would get up and bark my head off, but not now. Life’s too short to bark at everybody who comes into our yard. It is behind the public house, and they keep empty bottles and things there, so people are always coming and going.

Besides, I was tired. I had had a very busy morning, helping the men bring in a lot of cases of beer, and running into the saloon to talk to Fred and generally looking after things. So I was just dozing off again, when I heard a voice say, “Well, he’s ugly enough!” Then I knew that they were talking about me.

I have never disguised it from myself, and nobody has ever disguised it from me, that I am not a handsome dog. Even mother never thought me beautiful. She was no Gladys Cooper herself, but she never hesitated to criticize my appearance. In fact, I have yet to meet anyone who did. The first thing strangers say about me is, “What an ugly dog!”

I don’t know what I am. I have a bulldog kind of a face, but the rest of me is terrier. I have a long tail which sticks straight up in the air. My hair is wiry. My eyes are brown. I am jet black, with a white chest. I once overheard Fred saying that I was a Gorgonzola cheese-hound, and I have generally found Fred reliable in his statements.

When I found that I was under discussion, I opened my eyes. Master was standing there, looking down at me, and by his side the man who had just said I was ugly enough. The man was a thin man, about the age of a barman and smaller than a policeman. He had patched brown shoes and black trousers.

“But he’s got a sweet nature,” said master.

This was true, luckily for me. Mother always said, “A dog without influence or private means, if he is to make his way in the world, must have either good looks or amiability.” But, according to her, I overdid it. “A dog,” she used to say, “can have a good heart, without chumming with every Tom, Dick, and Harry he meets. Your behaviour is sometimes quite un-doglike.” Mother prided herself on being a one-man dog. She kept herself to herself, and wouldn’t kiss anybody except master⁠—not even Fred.

Now, I’m a mixer. I can’t help it. It’s my nature. I like men. I like the taste of their boots, the smell of their legs, and the sound of their voices. It may be weak of me, but a man has only to speak to me and a sort of thrill goes right down my spine and sets my tail wagging.

I wagged it now. The man looked at me rather distantly. He didn’t pat me. I suspected⁠—what I afterwards found to be the case⁠—that he was shy, so I jumped up at him to put him at his ease. Mother growled again. I felt that she did not approve.

“Why, he’s took quite a fancy to you already,” said master.

The man didn’t say a word. He seemed to be brooding on something. He was one of those silent men. He reminded me of Joe, the old dog down the street at the grocer’s shop, who lies at the door all day, blinking and not speaking to anybody.

Master began to talk about me. It surprised me, the way he praised me. I hadn’t a suspicion he admired me so much. From what he said you would have thought I had won prizes and ribbons at the Crystal Palace. But the man didn’t seem to be impressed. He kept on saying nothing.

When master had finished telling him what a wonderful dog I was till I blushed, the man spoke.

“Less of it,” he said. “Half a crown is my bid, and if he was an angel from on high you couldn’t get another ha’penny out of me. What about it?”

A thrill went down my spine and out at my tail, for of course I saw now what was happening. The man wanted to buy me and take me away. I looked at master hopefully.

“He’s more like a son to me than a dog,” said master, sort of wistful.

“It’s his face that makes you feel that way,” said the man, unsympathetically. “If you had a son that’s just how he would look. Half a crown is my offer, and I’m in a hurry.”

“All right,” said master, with a sigh, “though it’s giving him away, a valuable dog like that. Where’s your half-crown?”

The man got a bit of rope and tied it round my neck.

I could hear mother barking advice and telling me to be a credit to the family, but I was too excited to listen.

“Goodbye, mother,” I said. “Goodbye, master. Goodbye, Fred. Goodbye everybody. I’m off to see life. The Shy Man has bought me for half a crown. Wow!”

I kept running round in circles and shouting, till the man gave me a kick and told me to stop it.

So I did.

I don’t know where we went, but it was a long way. I had never been off our street before in my life and I didn’t know the whole world was half as big as that. We walked on and on, and the man jerked at my rope whenever I wanted to stop and look at anything. He wouldn’t even let me pass the time of the day with dogs we met.

When we had gone about a hundred miles and were just going to turn in at a dark doorway, a policeman suddenly stopped the man. I could feel by the way the man pulled at my rope and tried to hurry on that he didn’t want to speak to the policeman. The more I saw of the man the more I saw how shy he was.

“Hi!” said the policeman, and we had to stop.

“I’ve got a message for you, old pal,” said the policeman. “It’s from the Board of Health. They told me to tell you you needed a change of air. See?”

“All right!” said the man.

“And take it as soon as you like. Else you’ll find you’ll get it given you. See?”

I looked at the man with a good deal of respect. He was evidently someone very important, if they worried so about his health.

“I’m going down to the country tonight,” said the man.

The policeman seemed pleased.

“That’s a bit of luck for the country,” he said. “Don’t go changing your mind.”

And we walked on, and went in at the dark doorway, and climbed about a million stairs and went into a room that smelt of rats. The man sat down and swore a little, and I sat and looked at him.

Presently I couldn’t keep it in any longer.

“Do we live here?” I said. “Is it true we’re going to the country? Wasn’t that policeman a good sort? Don’t you like policemen? I knew lots of policemen at the public house. Are there any other dogs here? What is there for dinner? What’s in that cupboard? When are you going to take me out for another run? May I go out and see if I can find a cat?”

“Stop that yelping,” he said.

“When we go to the country, where shall we live? Are you going to be a caretaker at a house? Fred’s father is a caretaker at a big house in Kent. I’ve heard Fred talk about it. You didn’t meet Fred when you came to the public house, did you? You would like Fred. I like Fred. Mother likes Fred. We all like Fred.”

I was going on to tell him a lot more about Fred, who had always been one of my warmest friends, when he suddenly got hold of a stick and walloped me with it.

“You keep quiet when you’re told,” he said.

He really was the shyest man I had ever met. It seemed to hurt him to be spoken to. However, he was the boss, and I had to humour him, so I didn’t say any more.

We went down to the country that night, just as the man had told the policeman we would. I was all worked up, for I had heard so much about the country from Fred that I had always wanted to go there. Fred used to go off on a motor-bicycle sometimes to spend the night with his father in Kent, and once he brought back a squirrel with him, which I thought was for me to eat, but mother said no. “The first thing a dog has to learn,” mother used often to say, “is that the whole world wasn’t created for him to eat.”

It was quite dark when we got to the country, but the man seemed to know where to go. He pulled at my rope, and we began to walk along a road with no people in it at all. We walked on and on, but it was all so new to me that I forgot how tired I was. I could feel my mind broadening with every step I took.

Every now and then we would pass a very big house, which looked as if it was empty, but I knew that there was a caretaker inside, because of Fred’s father. These big houses belong to very rich people, but they don’t want to live in them till the summer, so they put in caretakers, and the caretakers have a dog to keep off burglars. I wondered if that was what I had been brought here for.

“Are you going to be a caretaker?” I asked the man.

“Shut up,” he said.

So I shut up.

After we had been walking a long time, we came to a cottage. A man came out. My man seemed to know him, for he called him Bill. I was quite surprised to see the man was not at all shy with Bill. They seemed very friendly.

“Is that him?” said Bill, looking at me.

“Bought him this afternoon,” said the man.

“Well,” said Bill, “he’s ugly enough. He looks fierce. If you want a dog, he’s the sort of dog you want. But what do you want one for? It seems to me it’s a lot of trouble to take, when there’s no need of any trouble at all. Why not do what I’ve always wanted to do? What’s wrong with just fixing the dog, same as it’s always done, and walking in and helping yourself?”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” said the man. “To start with, you can’t get at the dog to fix him except by day, when they let him out. At night he’s shut up inside the house. And suppose you do fix him during the day what happens then? Either the bloke gets another before night, or else he sits up all night with a gun. It isn’t like as if these blokes was ordinary blokes. They’re down here to look after the house. That’s their job, and they don’t take any chances.”

It was the longest speech I had ever heard the man make, and it seemed to impress Bill. He was quite humble.

“I didn’t think of that,” he said. “We’d best start in to train this tyke at once.”

Mother often used to say, when I went on about wanting to go out into the world and see life, “You’ll be sorry when you do. The world isn’t all bones and liver.” And I hadn’t been living with the man and Bill in their cottage long before I found out how right she was.

It was the man’s shyness that made all the trouble. It seemed as if he hated to be taken notice of.

It started on my very first night at the cottage. I had fallen asleep in the kitchen, tired out after all the excitement of the day and the long walks I had had, when something woke me with a start. It was somebody scratching at the window, trying to get in.

Well, I ask you, I ask any dog, what would you have done in my place? Ever since I was old enough to listen, mother had told me over and over again what I must do in a case like this. It is the A.B.C. of a dog’s education. “If you are in a room and you hear anyone trying to get in,” mother used to say, “bark. It may be someone who has business there, or it may not. Bark first, and inquire afterwards. Dogs were made to be heard and not seen.”

I lifted my head and yelled. I have a good, deep voice, due to a hound strain in my pedigree, and at the public house, when there was a full moon, I have often had people leaning out of the windows and saying things all down the street. I took a deep breath and let it go.

“Man!” I shouted. “Bill! Man! Come quick! Here’s a burglar getting in!”

Then somebody struck a light, and it was the man himself. He had come in through the window.

He picked up a stick, and he walloped me. I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t see where I had done the wrong thing. But he was the boss, so there was nothing to be said.

If you’ll believe me, that same thing happened every night. Every single night! And sometimes twice or three times before morning. And every time I would bark my loudest and the man would strike a light and wallop me. The thing was baffling. I couldn’t possibly have mistaken what mother had said to me. She said it too often for that. Bark! Bark! Bark! It was the main plank of her whole system of education. And yet, here I was, getting walloped every night for doing it.

I thought it out till my head ached, and finally I got it right. I began to see that mother’s outlook was narrow. No doubt, living with a man like master at the public house, a man without a trace of shyness in his composition, barking was all right. But circumstances alter cases. I belonged to a man who was a mass of nerves, who got the jumps if you spoke to him. What I had to do was to forget the training I had had from mother, sound as it no doubt was as a general thing, and to adapt myself to the needs of the particular man who had happened to buy me. I had tried mother’s way, and all it had brought me was walloping, so now I would think for myself.

So next night, when I heard the window go, I lay there without a word, though it went against all my better feelings. I didn’t even growl. Someone came in and moved about in the dark, with a lantern, but, though I smelt that it was the man, I didn’t ask him a single question. And presently the man lit a light and came over to me and gave me a pat, which was a thing he had never done before.

“Good dog!” he said. “Now you can have this.”

And he let me lick out the saucepan in which the dinner had been cooked.

After that, we got on fine. Whenever I heard anyone at the window I just kept curled up and took no notice, and every time I got a bone or something good. It was easy, once you had got the hang of things.

It was about a week after that the man took me out one morning, and we walked a long way till we turned in at some big gates and went along a very smooth road till we came to a great house, standing all by itself in the middle of a whole lot of country. There was a big lawn in front of it, and all round there were fields and trees, and at the back a great wood.

The man rang a bell, and the door opened, and an old man came out.

“Well?” he said, not very cordially.

“I thought you might want to buy a good watchdog,” said the man.

“Well, that’s queer, your saying that,” said the caretaker. “It’s a coincidence. That’s exactly what I do want to buy. I was just thinking of going along and trying to get one. My old dog picked up something this morning that he oughtn’t to have, and he’s dead, poor feller.”

“Poor feller,” said the man. “Found an old bone with phosphorus on it, I guess.”

“What do you want for this one?”

“Five shillings.”

“Is he a good watchdog?”

“He’s a grand watchdog.”

“He looks fierce enough.”

“Ah!”

So the caretaker gave the man his five shillings, and the man went off and left me.

At first the newness of everything and the unaccustomed smells and getting to know the caretaker, who was a nice old man, prevented my missing the man, but as the day went on and I began to realize that he had gone and would never come back, I got very depressed. I pattered all over the house, whining. It was a most interesting house, bigger than I thought a house could possibly be, but it couldn’t cheer me up. You may think it strange that I should pine for the man, after all the wallopings he had given me, and it is odd, when you come to think of it. But dogs are dogs, and they are built like that. By the time it was evening I was thoroughly miserable. I found a shoe and an old clothes-brush in one of the rooms, but could eat nothing. I just sat and moped.

It’s a funny thing, but it seems as if it always happened that just when you are feeling most miserable, something nice happens. As I sat there, there came from outside the sound of a motor-bicycle, and somebody shouted.

It was dear old Fred, my old pal Fred, the best old boy that ever stepped. I recognized his voice in a second, and I was scratching at the door before the old man had time to get up out of his chair.

Well, well, well! That was a pleasant surprise! I ran five times round the lawn without stopping, and then I came back and jumped up at him.

“What are you doing down here, Fred?” I said. “Is this caretaker your father? Have you seen the rabbits in the wood? How long are you going to stop? How’s mother? I like the country. Have you come all the way from the public house? I’m living here now. Your father gave five shillings for me. That’s twice as much as I was worth when I saw you last.”

“Why, it’s young Nigger!” That was what they called me at the saloon. “What are you doing here? Where did you get this dog, father?”

“A man sold him to me this morning. Poor old Bob got poisoned. This one ought to be just as good a watchdog. He barks loud enough.”

“He should be. His mother is the best watchdog in London. This cheese-hound used to belong to the boss. Funny him getting down here.”

We went into the house and had supper. And after supper we sat and talked. Fred was only down for the night, he said, because the boss wanted him back next day.

“And I’d sooner have my job, than yours, dad,” he said. “Of all the lonely places! I wonder you aren’t scared of burglars.”

“I’ve my shotgun, and there’s the dog. I might be scared if it wasn’t for him, but he kind of gives me confidence. Old Bob was the same. Dogs are a comfort in the country.”

“Get many tramps here?”

“I’ve only seen one in two months, and that’s the feller who sold me the dog here.”

As they were talking about the man, I asked Fred if he knew him. They might have met at the public house, when the man was buying me from the boss.

“You would like him,” I said. “I wish you could have met.”

They both looked at me.

“What’s he growling at?” asked Fred. “Think he heard something?”

The old man laughed.

“He wasn’t growling. He was talking in his sleep. You’re nervous, Fred. It comes of living in the city.”

“Well, I am. I like this place in the daytime, but it gives me the pip at night. It’s so quiet. How you can stand it here all the time, I can’t understand. Two nights of it would have me seeing things.”

His father laughed.

“If you feel like that, Fred, you had better take the gun to bed with you. I shall be quite happy without it.”

“I will,” said Fred. “I’ll take six if you’ve got them.”

And after that they went upstairs. I had a basket in the hall, which had belonged to Bob, the dog who had got poisoned. It was a comfortable basket, but I was so excited at having met Fred again that I couldn’t sleep. Besides, there was a smell of mice somewhere, and I had to move around, trying to place it.

I was just sniffing at a place in the wall, when I heard a scratching noise. At first I thought it was the mice working in a different place, but, when I listened, I found that the sound came from the window. Somebody was doing something to it from outside.

If it had been mother, she would have lifted the roof off right there, and so should I, if it hadn’t been for what the man had taught me. I didn’t think it possible that this could be the man come back, for he had gone away and said nothing about ever seeing me again. But I didn’t bark. I stopped where I was and listened. And presently the window came open, and somebody began to climb in.

I gave a good sniff, and I knew it was the man.

I was so delighted that for a moment I nearly forgot myself and shouted with joy, but I remembered in time how shy he was, and stopped myself. But I ran to him and jumped up quite quietly, and he told me to lie down. I was disappointed that he didn’t seem more pleased to see me. I lay down.

It was very dark, but he had brought a lantern with him, and I could see him moving about the room, picking things up and putting them in a bag which he had brought with him. Every now and then he would stop and listen, and then he would start moving round again. He was very quick about it, but very quiet. It was plain that he didn’t want Fred or his father to come down and find him.

I kept thinking about this peculiarity of his while I watched him. I suppose, being chummy myself, I find it hard to understand that everybody else in the world isn’t chummy too. Of course, my experience at the public house had taught me that men are just as different from each other as dogs. If I chewed master’s shoe, for instance, he used to kick me; but if I chewed Fred’s, Fred would tickle me under the ear. And, similarly, some men are shy and some men are mixers. I quite appreciated that, but I couldn’t help feeling that the man carried shyness to a point where it became morbid. And he didn’t give himself a chance to cure himself of it. That was the point. Imagine a man hating to meet people so much that he never visited their houses till the middle of the night, when they were in bed and asleep. It was silly. Shyness has always been something so outside my nature that I suppose I have never really been able to look at it sympathetically. I have always held the view that you can get over it if you make an effort. The trouble with the man was that he wouldn’t make an effort. He went out of his way to avoid meeting people.

I was fond of the man. He was the sort of person you never get to know very well, but we had been together for quite a while, and I wouldn’t have been a dog if I hadn’t got attached to him.

As I sat and watched him creep about the room, it suddenly came to me that here was a chance of doing him a real good turn in spite of himself. Fred was upstairs, and Fred, as I knew by experience, was the easiest man to get along with in the world. Nobody could be shy with Fred. I felt that if only I could bring him and the man together, they would get along splendidly, and it would teach the man not to be silly and avoid people. It would help to give him the confidence which he needed. I had seen him with Bill, and I knew that he could be perfectly natural and easy when he liked.

It was true that the man might object at first, but after a while he would see that I had acted simply for his good, and would be grateful.

The difficulty was, how to get Fred down without scaring the man. I knew that if I shouted he wouldn’t wait, but would be out of the window and away before Fred could get there. What I had to do was to go to Fred’s room, explain the whole situation quietly to him, and ask him to come down and make himself pleasant.

The man was far too busy to pay any attention to me. He was kneeling in a corner with his back to me, putting something in his bag. I seized the opportunity to steal softly from the room.

Fred’s door was shut, and I could hear him snoring. I scratched gently, and then harder, till I heard the snores stop. He got out of bed and opened the door.

“Don’t make a noise,” I whispered. “Come on downstairs. I want you to meet a friend of mine.”

At first he was quite peevish.

“What’s the idea,” he said, “coming and spoiling a man’s beauty-sleep? Get out.”

He actually started to go back into the room.

“No, honestly, Fred,” I said, “I’m not fooling you. There is a man downstairs. He got in through the window. I want you to meet him. He’s very shy, and I think it will do him good to have a chat with you.”

“What are you whining about?” Fred began, and then he broke off suddenly and listened. We could both hear the man’s footsteps as he moved about.

Fred jumped back into the room. He came out, carrying something. He didn’t say any more but started to go downstairs, very quiet, and I went after him.

There was the man, still putting things in his bag. I was just going to introduce Fred, when Fred, the silly ass, gave a great yell.

I could have bitten him.

“What did you want to do that for, you chump?” I said. “I told you he was shy. Now you’ve scared him.”

He certainly had. The man was out of the window quicker than you would have believed possible. He just flew out. I called after him that it was only Fred and me, but at that moment a gun went off with a tremendous bang, so he couldn’t have heard me.

I was pretty sick about it. The whole thing had gone wrong. Fred seemed to have lost his head entirely. He was behaving like a perfect ass. Naturally the man had been frightened with him carrying on in that way. I jumped out of the window to see if I could find the man and explain, but he was gone. Fred jumped out after me, and nearly squashed me.

It was pitch dark out there. I couldn’t see a thing. But I knew the man could not have gone far, or I should have heard him. I started to sniff round on the chance of picking up his trail. It wasn’t long before I struck it.

Fred’s father had come down now, and they were running about. The old man had a light. I followed the trail, and it ended at a large cedar-tree, not far from the house. I stood underneath it and looked up, but of course I could not see anything.

“Are you up there?” I shouted. “There’s nothing to be scared at. It was only Fred. He’s an old pal of mine. He works at the place where you bought me. His gun went off by accident. He won’t hurt you.”

There wasn’t a sound. I began to think I must have made a mistake.

“He’s got away,” I heard Fred say to his father, and just as he said it I caught a faint sound of someone moving in the branches above me.

“No he hasn’t!” I shouted. “He’s up this tree.”

“I believe the dog’s found him, dad!”

“Yes, he’s up here. Come along and meet him.”

Fred came to the foot of the tree.

“You up there,” he said, “come along down.”

Not a sound from the tree.

“It’s all right,” I explained, “he is up there, but he’s very shy. Ask him again.”

“All right,” said Fred. “Stay there if you want to. But I’m going to shoot off this gun into the branches just for fun.”

And then the man started to come down. As soon as he touched the ground I jumped up at him.

“This is fine!” I said. “Here’s my friend Fred. You’ll like him.”

But it wasn’t any good. They didn’t get along together at all. They hardly spoke. The man went into the house, and Fred went after him, carrying his gun. And when they got into the house it was just the same. The man sat in one chair, and Fred sat in another, and after a long time some men came in a motorcar, and the man went away with them. He didn’t say goodbye to me.

When he had gone, Fred and his father made a great fuss of me. I couldn’t understand it. Men are so odd. The man wasn’t a bit pleased that I had brought him and Fred together, but Fred seemed as if he couldn’t do enough for me for having introduced him to the man. However, Fred’s father produced some cold ham⁠—my favourite dish⁠—and gave me quite a lot of it, so I stopped worrying over the thing. As mother used to say, “Don’t bother your head about what doesn’t concern you. The only thing a dog need concern himself with is the bill-of-fare. Eat your bun, and don’t make yourself busy about other people’s affairs.” Mother’s was in some ways a narrow outlook, but she had a great fund of sterling common sense.

II

He Moves in Society

It was one of those things which are really nobody’s fault. It was not the chauffeur’s fault, and it was not mine. I was having a friendly turn-up with a pal of mine on the sidewalk; he ran across the road; I ran after him; and the car came round the corner and hit me. It must have been going pretty slow, or I should have been killed. As it was, I just had the breath knocked out of me. You know how you feel when the butcher catches you just as you are edging out of the shop with a bit of meat. It was like that.

I wasn’t taking much interest in things for awhile, but when I did I found that I was the centre of a group of three⁠—the chauffeur, a small boy, and the small boy’s nurse.

The small boy was very well-dressed, and looked delicate. He was crying.

“Poor doggie,” he said, “poor doggie.”

“It wasn’t my fault, Master Peter,” said the chauffeur respectfully. “He run out into the road before I seen him.”

“That’s right,” I put in, for I didn’t want to get the man into trouble.

“Oh, he’s not dead,” said the small boy. “He barked.”

“He growled,” said the nurse. “Come away, Master Peter. He might bite you.”

Women are trying sometimes. It is almost as if they deliberately misunderstood.

“I won’t come away. I’m going to take him home with me and send for the doctor to come and see him. He’s going to be my dog.”

This sounded all right. Goodness knows I am no snob, and can rough it when required, but I do like comfort when it comes my way, and it seemed to me that this was where I got it. And I liked the boy. He was the right sort.

The nurse, a very unpleasant woman, had to make objections.

“Master Peter! You can’t take him home, a great, rough, fierce, common dog! What would your mother say?”

“I’m going to take him home,” repeated the child, with a determination which I heartily admired, “and he’s going to be my dog. I shall call him Fido.”

There’s always a catch in these good things. Fido is a name I particularly detest. All dogs do. There was a dog called that that I knew once, and he used to get awfully sick when we shouted it out after him in the street. No doubt there have been respectable dogs called Fido, but to my mind it is a name like Aubrey or Clarence. You may be able to live it down, but you start handicapped. However, one must take the rough with the smooth, and I was prepared to yield the point.

“If you wait, Master Peter, your father will buy you a beautiful, lovely dog.⁠ ⁠…”

“I don’t want a beautiful, lovely dog. I want this dog.”

The slur did not wound me. I have no illusions about my looks. Mine is an honest, but not a beautiful, face.

“It’s no use talking,” said the chauffeur, grinning. “He means to have him. Shove him in, and let’s be getting back, or they’ll be thinking His Nibs has been kidnapped.”

So I was carried to the car. I could have walked, but I had an idea that I had better not. I had made my hit as a crippled dog, and a crippled dog I intended to remain till things got more settled down.

The chauffeur started the car off again. What with the shock I had had and the luxury of riding in a motorcar, I was a little distrait, and I could not say how far we went. But it must have been miles and miles, for it seemed a long time afterwards that we stopped at the biggest house I have ever seen. There were smooth lawns and flowerbeds, and men in overalls, and fountains and trees, and, away to the right, kennels with about a million dogs in them, all pushing their noses through the bars and shouting. They all wanted to know who I was and what prizes I had won, and then I realized that I was moving in high society.

I let the small boy pick me up and carry me into the house, though it was all he could do, poor kid, for I was some weight. He staggered up the steps and along a great hall, and then let me flop on the carpet of the most beautiful room you ever saw. The carpet was a yard thick.

There was a woman sitting in a chair, and as soon as she saw me she gave a shriek.

“I told Master Peter you would not be pleased, m’lady,” said the nurse, who seemed to have taken a positive dislike to me, “but he would bring the nasty brute home.”

“He’s not a nasty brute, mother. He’s my dog, and his name’s Fido. John ran over him in the car, and I brought him home to live with us. I love him.”

This seemed to make an impression. Peter’s mother looked as if she were weakening.

“But, Peter, dear, I don’t know what your father will say. He’s so particular about dogs. All his dogs are prize-winners, pedigree dogs. This is such a mongrel.”

“A nasty, rough, ugly, common dog, m’lady,” said the nurse, sticking her oar in in an absolutely uncalled-for way.

Just then a man came into the room.

“What on earth?” he said, catching sight of me.

“It’s a dog Peter has brought home. He says he wants to keep him.”

“I’m going to keep him,” corrected Peter firmly.

I do like a child that knows his own mind. I was getting fonder of Peter every minute. I reached up and licked his hand.

“See! He knows he’s my dog, don’t you, Fido? He licked me.”

“But, Peter, he looks so fierce.” This, unfortunately, is true. I do look fierce. It is rather a misfortune for a perfectly peaceful dog. “I’m sure it’s not safe your having him.”

“He’s my dog, and his name’s Fido. I am going to tell cook to give him a bone.”

His mother looked at his father, who gave rather a nasty laugh.

“My dear Helen,” he said, “ever since Peter was born, ten years ago, he has not asked for a single thing, to the best of my recollection, which he has not got. Let us be consistent. I don’t approve of this caricature of a dog, but if Peter wants him, I suppose he must have him.”

“Very well. But the first sign of viciousness he shows, he shall be shot. He makes me nervous.”

So they left it at that, and I went off with Peter to get my bone.

After lunch, he took me to the kennels to introduce me to the other dogs. I had to go, but I knew it would not be pleasant, and it wasn’t. Any dog will tell you what these prize-ribbon dogs are like. Their heads are so swelled they have to go into their kennels backwards.

It was just as I had expected. There were mastiffs, terriers, poodles, spaniels, bulldogs, sheepdogs, and every other kind of dog you can imagine, all prize-winners at a hundred shows, and every single dog in the place just shoved his head back and laughed himself sick. I never felt so small in my life, and I was glad when it was over and Peter took me off to the stables.

I was just feeling that I never wanted to see another dog in my life, when a terrier ran out, shouting. As soon as he saw me, he came up inquiringly, walking very stiff-legged, as terriers do when they see a stranger.

“Well,” I said, “and what particular sort of a prize-winner are you? Tell me all about the ribbons they gave you at the Crystal Palace, and let’s get it over.”

He laughed in a way that did me good.

“Guess again!” he said. “Did you take me for one of the nuts in the kennels? My name’s Jack, and I belong to one of the grooms.”

“What!” I cried. “You aren’t Champion Bowlegs Royal or anything of that sort! I’m glad to meet you.”

So we rubbed noses as friendly as you please. It was a treat meeting one of one’s own sort. I had had enough of those high-toned dogs who look at you as if you were something the garbageman had forgotten to take away.

“So you’ve been talking to the swells, have you?” said Jack.

“He would take me,” I said, pointing to Peter.

“Oh, you’re his latest, are you? Then you’re all right⁠—while it lasts.”

“How do you mean, while it lasts?”

“Well, I’ll tell you what happened to me. Young Peter took a great fancy to me once. Couldn’t do enough for me for a while. Then he got tired of me, and out I went. You see, the trouble is that while he’s a perfectly good kid, he has always had everything he wanted since he was born, and he gets tired of things pretty easy. It was a toy railway that finished me. Directly he got that, I might not have been on the earth. It was lucky for me that Dick, my present old man, happened to want a dog to keep down the rats, or goodness knows what might not have happened to me. They aren’t keen on dogs here unless they’ve pulled down enough blue ribbons to sink a ship, and mongrels like you and me⁠—no offence⁠—don’t last long. I expect you noticed that the grownups didn’t exactly cheer when you arrived?”

“They weren’t chummy.”

“Well take it from me, your only chance is to make them chummy. If you do something to please them, they might let you stay on, even though Peter was tired of you.”

“What sort of thing?”

“That’s for you to think out. I couldn’t find one. I might tell you to save Peter from drowning. You don’t need a pedigree to do that. But you can’t drag the kid to the lake and push him in. That’s the trouble. A dog gets so few opportunities. But, take it from me, if you don’t do something within two weeks to make yourself solid with the adults, you can make your will. In two weeks Peter will have forgotten all about you. It’s not his fault. It’s the way he has been brought up. His father has all the money on earth, and Peter’s the only child. You can’t blame him. All I say is, look out for yourself. Well, I’m glad to have met you. Drop in again when you can. I can give you some good ratting, and I have a bone or two put away. So long.”

It worried me badly what Jack had said. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. If it hadn’t been for that, I should have had a great time, for Peter certainly made a lot of fuss of me. He treated me as if I were the only friend he had.

And, in a way, I was. When you are the only son of a man who has all the money in the world, it seems that you aren’t allowed to be like an ordinary kid. They coop you up, as if you were something precious that would be contaminated by contact with other children. In all the time that I was at the house I never met another child. Peter had everything in the world, except someone of his own age to go round with; and that made him different from any of the kids I had known.

He liked talking to me. I was the only person round who really understood him. He would talk by the hour and I would listen with my tongue hanging out and nod now and then.

It was worth listening to, what he used to tell me. He told me the most surprising things. I didn’t know, for instance, that there were any Red Indians in England but he said there was a chief named Big Cloud who lived in the rhododendron bushes by the lake. I never found him, though I went carefully through them one day. He also said that there were pirates on the island in the lake. I never saw them either.

What he liked telling me about best was the city of gold and precious stones which you came to if you walked far enough through the woods at the back of the stables. He was always meaning to go off there some day, and, from the way he described it, I didn’t blame him. It was certainly a pretty good city. It was just right for dogs, too, he said, having bones and liver and sweet cakes there and everything else a dog could want. It used to make my mouth water to listen to him.

We were never apart. I was with him all day, and I slept on the mat in his room at night. But all the time I couldn’t get out of my mind what Jack had said. I nearly did once, for it seemed to me that I was so necessary to Peter that nothing could separate us; but just as I was feeling safe his father gave him a toy aeroplane, which flew when you wound it up. The day he got it, I might not have been on the earth. I trailed along, but he hadn’t a word to say to me.

Well, something went wrong with the aeroplane the second day, and it wouldn’t fly, and then I was in solid again; but I had done some hard thinking and I knew just where I stood. I was the newest toy, that’s what I was, and something newer might come along at any moment, and then it would be the finish for me. The only thing for me was to do something to impress the adults, just as Jack had said.

Goodness knows I tried. But everything I did turned out wrong. There seemed to be a fate about it. One morning, for example, I was trotting round the house early, and I met a fellow I could have sworn was a burglar. He wasn’t one of the family, and he wasn’t one of the servants, and he was hanging round the house in a most suspicious way. I chased him up a tree, and it wasn’t till the family came down to breakfast, two hours later, that I found that he was a guest who had arrived overnight, and had come out early to enjoy the freshness of the morning and the sun shining on the lake, he being that sort of man. That didn’t help me much.

Next, I got in wrong with the boss, Peter’s father. I don’t know why. I met him out in the park with another man, both carrying bundles of sticks and looking very serious and earnest. Just as I reached him, the boss lifted one of the sticks and hit a small white ball with it. He had never seemed to want to play with me before, and I took it as a great compliment. I raced after the ball, which he had hit quite a long way, picked it up in my mouth, and brought it back to him. I laid it at his feet, and smiled up at him.

“Hit it again,” I said.

He wasn’t pleased at all. He said all sorts of things and tried to kick me, and that night, when he thought I was not listening, I heard him telling his wife that I was a pest and would have to be got rid of. That made me think.

And then I put the lid on it. With the best intentions in the world I got myself into such a mess that I thought the end had come.

It happened one afternoon in the drawing-room. There were visitors that day⁠—women; and women seem fatal to me. I was in the background, trying not to be seen, for, though I had been brought in by Peter, the family never liked my coming into the drawing-room. I was hoping for a piece of cake and not paying much attention to the conversation, which was all about somebody called Toto, whom I had not met. Peter’s mother said Toto was a sweet little darling, he was; and one of the visitors said Toto had not been at all himself that day and she was quite worried. And a good lot more about how all that Toto would ever take for dinner was a little white meat of chicken, chopped up fine. It was not very interesting, and I had allowed my attention to wander.

And just then, peeping round the corner of my chair to see if there were any signs of cake, what should I see but a great beastly brute of a rat. It was standing right beside the visitor, drinking milk out of a saucer, if you please!

I may have my faults, but procrastination in the presence of rats is not one of them. I didn’t hesitate for a second. Here was my chance. If there is one thing women hate, it is a rat. Mother always used to say, “If you want to succeed in life, please the women. They are the real bosses. The men don’t count.” By eliminating this rodent I should earn the gratitude and esteem of Peter’s mother, and, if I did that, it did not matter what Peter’s father thought of me.

I sprang.

The rat hadn’t a chance to get away. I was right on to him. I got hold of his neck, gave him a couple of shakes, and chucked him across the room. Then I ran across to finish him off.

Just as I reached him, he sat up and barked at me. I was never so taken aback in my life. I pulled up short and stared at him.

“I’m sure I beg your pardon, sir,” I said apologetically. “I thought you were a rat.”

And then everything broke loose. Somebody got me by the collar, somebody else hit me on the head with a parasol, and somebody else kicked me in the ribs. Everybody talked and shouted at the same time.

“Poor darling Toto!” cried the visitor, snatching up the little animal. “Did the great savage brute try to murder you!”

“So absolutely unprovoked!”

“He just flew at the poor little thing!”

It was no good my trying to explain. Any dog in my place would have made the same mistake. The creature was a toy-dog of one of those extraordinary breeds⁠—a prize-winner and champion, and so on, of course, and worth his weight in gold. I would have done better to bite the visitor than Toto. That much I gathered from the general run of the conversation, and then, having discovered that the door was shut, I edged under the sofa. I was embarrassed.

“That settles it!” said Peter’s mother. “The dog is not safe. He must be shot.”

Peter gave a yell at this, but for once he didn’t swing the voting an inch.

“Be quiet, Peter,” said his mother. “It is not safe for you to have such a dog. He may be mad.”

Women are very unreasonable.

Toto, of course, wouldn’t say a word to explain how the mistake arose. He was sitting on the visitor’s lap, shrieking about what he would have done to me if they hadn’t separated us.

Somebody felt cautiously under the sofa. I recognized the shoes of Weeks, the butler. I suppose they had rung for him to come and take me, and I could see that he wasn’t half liking it. I was sorry for Weeks, who was a friend of mine, so I licked his hand, and that seemed to cheer him up a whole lot.

“I have him now, madam,” I heard him say.

“Take him to the stables and tie him up, Weeks, and tell one of the men to bring his gun and shoot him. He is not safe.”

A few minutes later I was in an empty stall, tied up to the manger.

It was all over. It had been pleasant while it lasted, but I had reached the end of my tether now. I don’t think I was frightened, but a sense of pathos stole over me. I had meant so well. It seemed as if good intentions went for nothing in this world. I had tried so hard to please everybody, and this was the result⁠—tied up in a dark stable, waiting for the end.

The shadows lengthened in the stable-yard, and still nobody came. I began to wonder if they had forgotten me, and presently, in spite of myself, a faint hope began to spring up inside me that this might mean that I was not to be shot after all. Perhaps Toto at the eleventh hour had explained everything.

And then footsteps sounded outside, and the hope died away. I shut my eyes.

Somebody put his arms round my neck, and my nose touched a warm cheek. I opened my eyes. It was not the man with the gun come to shoot me. It was Peter. He was breathing very hard, and he had been crying.

“Quiet!” he whispered.

He began to untie the rope.

“You must keep quite quiet, or they will hear us, and then we shall be stopped. I’m going to take you into the woods, and we’ll walk and walk until we come to the city I told you about that’s all gold and diamonds, and we’ll live there for the rest of our lives, and no one will be able to hurt us. But you must keep very quiet.”

He went to the stable-gate and looked out. Then he gave a little whistle to me to come after him. And we started out to find the city.

The woods were a long way away, down a hill of long grass and across a stream; and we went very carefully, keeping in the shadows and running across the open spaces. And every now and then we would stop and look back, but there was nobody to be seen. The sun was setting, and everything was very cool and quiet.

Presently we came to the stream and crossed it by a little wooden bridge, and then we were in the woods, where nobody could see us.

I had never been in the woods before, and everything was very new and exciting to me. There were squirrels and rabbits and birds, more than I had ever seen in my life, and little things that buzzed and flew and tickled my ears. I wanted to rush about and look at everything, but Peter called to me, and I came to heel. He knew where we were going, and I didn’t, so I let him lead.

We went very slowly. The wood got thicker and thicker the farther we got into it. There were bushes that were difficult to push through, and long branches, covered with thorns, that reached out at you and tore at you when you tried to get away. And soon it was quite dark, so dark that I could see nothing, not even Peter, though he was so close. We went slower and slower, and the darkness was full of queer noises. From time to time Peter would stop, and I would run to him and put my nose in his hand. At first he patted me, but after a while he did not pat me any more, but just gave me his hand to lick, as if it was too much for him to lift it. I think he was getting very tired. He was quite a small boy and not strong, and we had walked a long way.

It seemed to be getting darker and darker. I could hear the sound of Peter’s footsteps, and they seemed to drag as he forced his way through the bushes. And then, quite suddenly, he sat down without any warning, and when I ran up I heard him crying.

I suppose there are lots of dogs who would have known exactly the right thing to do, but I could not think of anything except to put my nose against his cheek and whine. He put his arm round my neck, and for a long time we stayed like that, saying nothing. It seemed to comfort him, for after a time he stopped crying.

I did not bother him by asking about the wonderful city where we were going, for he was so tired. But I could not help wondering if we were near it. There was not a sign of any city, nothing but darkness and odd noises and the wind singing in the trees. Curious little animals, such as I had never smelt before, came creeping out of the bushes to look at us. I would have chased them, but Peter’s arm was round my neck and I could not leave him. But when something that smelt like a rabbit came so near that I could have reached out a paw and touched it, I turned my head and snapped; and then they all scurried back into the bushes and there were no more noises.

There was a long silence. Then Peter gave a great gulp.

“I’m not frightened,” he said. “I’m not!”

I shoved my head closer against his chest. There was another silence for a long time.

“I’m going to pretend we have been captured by brigands,” said Peter at last. “Are you listening? There were three of them, great big men with beards, and they crept up behind me and snatched me up and took me out here to their lair. This is their lair. One was called Dick, the others’ names were Ted and Alfred. They took hold of me and brought me all the way through the wood till we got here, and then they went off, meaning to come back soon. And while they were away, you missed me and tracked me through the woods till you found me here. And then the brigands came back, and they didn’t know you were here, and you kept quite quiet till Dick was quite near, and then you jumped out and bit him and he ran away. And then you bit Ted and you bit Alfred, and they ran away too. And so we were left all alone, and I was quite safe because you were here to look after me. And then⁠—And then⁠—”

His voice died away, and the arm that was round my neck went limp, and I could hear by his breathing that he was asleep. His head was resting on my back, but I didn’t move. I wriggled a little closer to make him as comfortable as I could, and then I went to sleep myself.

I didn’t sleep very well. I had funny dreams all the time, thinking these little animals were creeping up close enough out of the bushes for me to get a snap at them without disturbing Peter.

If I woke once, I woke a dozen times, but there was never anything there. The wind sang in the trees and the bushes rustled, and far away in the distance the frogs were calling.

And then I woke once more with the feeling that this time something really was coming through the bushes. I lifted my head as far as I could, and listened. For a little while nothing happened, and then, straight in front of me, I saw lights. And there was a sound of trampling in the undergrowth.

It was no time to think about not waking Peter. This was something definite, something that had to be attended to quick. I was up with a jump, yelling. Peter rolled off my back and woke up, and he sat there listening, while I stood with my front paws on him and shouted at the men. I was bristling all over. I didn’t know who they were or what they wanted, but the way I looked at it was that anything could happen in those woods at that time of night, and, if anybody was coming along to start something, he had got to reckon with me.

Somebody called, “Peter! Are you there, Peter?”

There was a crashing in the bushes, the lights came nearer and nearer, and then somebody said “Here he is!” and there was a lot of shouting. I stood where I was, ready to spring if necessary, for I was taking no chances.

“Who are you?” I shouted. “What do you want?” A light flashed in my eyes.

“Why, it’s that dog!”

Somebody came into the light, and I saw it was the boss. He was looking very anxious and scared, and he scooped Peter up off the ground and hugged him tight.

Peter was only half awake. He looked up at the boss drowsily, and began to talk about brigands, and Dick and Ted and Alfred, the same as he had said to me. There wasn’t a sound till he had finished. Then the boss spoke.

“Kidnappers! I thought as much. And the dog drove them away!”

For the first time in our acquaintance he actually patted me.

“Good old man!” he said.

“He’s my dog,” said Peter sleepily, “and he isn’t to be shot.”

“He certainly isn’t, my boy,” said the boss. “From now on he’s the honoured guest. He shall wear a gold collar and order what he wants for dinner. And now let’s be getting home. It’s time you were in bed.”

Mother used to say, “If you’re a good dog, you will be happy. If you’re not, you won’t,” but it seems to me that in this world it is all a matter of luck. When I did everything I could to please people, they wanted to shoot me; and when I did nothing except run away, they brought me back and treated me better than the most valuable prize-winner in the kennels. It was puzzling at first, but one day I heard the boss talking to a friend who had come down from the city.

The friend looked at me and said, “What an ugly mongrel! Why on earth do you have him about? I thought you were so particular about your dogs?”

And the boss replied, “He may be a mongrel, but he can have anything he wants in this house. Didn’t you hear how he saved Peter from being kidnapped?”

And out it all came about the brigands.

“The kid called them brigands,” said the boss. “I suppose that’s how it would strike a child of that age. But he kept mentioning the name Dick, and that put the police on the scent. It seems there’s a kidnapper well known to the police all over the country as Dick the Snatcher. It was almost certainly that scoundrel and his gang. How they spirited the child away, goodness knows, but they managed it, and the dog tracked them and scared them off. We found him and Peter together in the woods. It was a narrow escape, and we have to thank this animal here for it.”

What could I say? It was no more use trying to put them right than it had been when I mistook Toto for a rat. Peter had gone to sleep that night pretending about the brigands to pass the time, and when he awoke he still believed in them. He was that sort of child. There was nothing that I could do about it.

Round the corner, as the boss was speaking, I saw the kennel-man coming with a plate in his hand. It smelt fine, and he was headed straight for me.

He put the plate down before me. It was liver, which I love.

“Yes,” went on the boss, “if it hadn’t been for him, Peter would have been kidnapped and scared half to death, and I should be poorer, I suppose, by whatever the scoundrels had chosen to hold me up for.”

I am an honest dog, and hate to obtain credit under false pretences, but⁠—liver is liver. I let it go at that.

The Romance of an Ugly Policeman

Crossing the Thames by Chelsea Bridge, the wanderer through London finds himself in pleasant Battersea. Rounding the Park, where the female of the species wanders with its young by the ornamental water where the wildfowl are, he comes upon a vast road. One side of this is given up to Nature, the other to Intellect. On the right, green trees stretch into the middle distance; on the left, endless blocks of residential flats. It is Battersea Park Road, the home of the cliff-dwellers.

Police-constable Plimmer’s beat embraced the first quarter of a mile of the cliffs. It was his duty to pace in the measured fashion of the London policeman along the front of them, turn to the right, turn to the left, and come back along the road which ran behind them. In this way he was enabled to keep the king’s peace over no fewer than four blocks of mansions.

It did not require a deal of keeping. Battersea may have its tough citizens, but they do not live in Battersea Park Road. Battersea Park Road’s speciality is Brain, not Crime. Authors, musicians, newspaper men, actors, and artists are the inhabitants of these mansions. A child could control them. They assault and batter nothing but pianos; they steal nothing but ideas; they murder nobody except Chopin and Beethoven. Not through these shall an ambitious young constable achieve promotion.

At this conclusion Edward Plimmer arrived within forty-eight hours of his installation. He recognized the flats for what they were⁠—just so many layers of big-brained blamelessness. And there was not even the chance of a burglary. No burglar wastes his time burgling authors. Constable Plimmer reconciled his mind to the fact that his term in Battersea must be looked on as something in the nature of a vacation.

He was not altogether sorry. At first, indeed, he found the new atmosphere soothing. His last beat had been in the heart of tempestuous Whitechapel, where his arms had ached from the incessant hauling of wiry inebriates to the station, and his shins had revolted at the kicks showered upon them by haughty spirits impatient of restraint. Also, one Saturday night, three friends of a gentleman whom he was trying to induce not to murder his wife had so wrought upon him that, when he came out of hospital, his already homely appearance was further marred by a nose which resembled the gnarled root of a tree. All these things had taken from the charm of Whitechapel, and the cloistral peace of Battersea Park Road was grateful and comforting.

And just when the unbroken calm had begun to lose its attraction and dreams of action were once more troubling him, a new interest entered his life; and with its coming he ceased to wish to be removed from Battersea. He fell in love.

It happened at the back of York Mansions. Anything that ever happened, happened there; for it is at the back of these blocks of flats that the real life is. At the front you never see anything, except an occasional tousle-headed young man smoking a pipe; but at the back, where the cooks come out to parley with the tradesmen, there is at certain hours of the day quite a respectable activity. Pointed dialogues about yesterday’s eggs and the toughness of Saturday’s meat are conducted fortissimo between cheerful youths in the road and satirical young women in print dresses, who come out of their kitchen doors on to little balconies. The whole thing has a pleasing Romeo and Juliet touch. Romeo rattles up in his cart. “Sixty-four!” he cries. “Sixty-fower, sixty-fower, sixty-fow⁠—” The kitchen door opens, and Juliet emerges. She eyes Romeo without any great show of affection. “Are you Perkins and Blissett?” she inquires coldly. Romeo admits it. “Two of them yesterday’s eggs was bad.” Romeo protests. He defends his eggs. They were fresh from the hen; he stood over her while she laid them. Juliet listens frigidly. “I don’t think,” she says. “Well, half of sugar, one marmalade, and two of breakfast bacon,” she adds, and ends the argument. There is a rattling as of a steamer weighing anchor; the goods go up in the tradesman’s lift; Juliet collects them, and exits, banging the door. The little drama is over.

Such is life at the back of York Mansions⁠—a busy, throbbing thing.

The peace of afternoon had fallen upon the world one day towards the end of Constable Plimmer’s second week of the simple life, when his attention was attracted by a whistle. It was followed by a musical “Hi!”

Constable Plimmer looked up. On the kitchen balcony of a second-floor flat a girl was standing. As he took her in with a slow and exhaustive gaze, he was aware of strange thrills. There was something about this girl which excited Constable Plimmer. I do not say that she was a beauty; I do not claim that you or I would have raved about her; I merely say that Constable Plimmer thought she was All Right.

“Miss?” he said.

“Got the time about you?” said the girl. “All the clocks have stopped.”

“The time,” said Constable Plimmer, consulting his watch, “wants exactly ten minutes to four.”

“Thanks.”

“Not at all, miss.”

The girl was inclined for conversation. It was that gracious hour of the day when you have cleared lunch and haven’t got to think of dinner yet, and have a bit of time to draw a breath or two. She leaned over the balcony and smiled pleasantly.

“If you want to know the time, ask a pleeceman,” she said. “You been on this beat long?”

“Just short of two weeks, miss.”

“I been here three days.”

“I hope you like it, miss.”

“So-so. The milkman’s a nice boy.”

Constable Plimmer did not reply. He was busy silently hating the milkman. He knew him⁠—one of those good-looking blighters; one of those oiled and curled perishers; one of those blooming fascinators who go about the world making things hard for ugly, honest men with loving hearts. Oh, yes, he knew the milkman.

“He’s a rare one with his jokes,” said the girl.

Constable Plimmer went on not replying. He was perfectly aware that the milkman was a rare one with his jokes. He had heard him. The way girls fell for anyone with the gift of the gab⁠—that was what embittered Constable Plimmer.

“He⁠—” she giggled. “He calls me Little Pansy-Face.”

“If you’ll excuse me, miss,” said Constable Plimmer coldly, “I’ll have to be getting along on my beat.”

Little Pansy-Face! And you couldn’t arrest him for it! What a world! Constable Plimmer paced upon his way, a blue-clad volcano.

It is a terrible thing to be obsessed by a milkman. To Constable Plimmer’s disordered imagination it seemed that, dating from this interview, the world became one solid milkman. Wherever he went, he seemed to run into this milkman. If he was in the front road, this milkman⁠—Alf Brooks, it appeared, was his loathsome name⁠—came rattling past with his jingling cans as if he were Apollo driving his chariot. If he was round at the back, there was Alf, his damned tenor doing duets with the balconies. And all this in defiance of the known law of natural history that milkmen do not come out after five in the morning. This irritated Constable Plimmer. You talk of a man “going home with the milk” when you mean that he sneaks in in the small hours of the morning. If all milkmen were like Alf Brooks the phrase was meaningless.

He brooded. The unfairness of Fate was souring him. A man expects trouble in his affairs of the heart from soldiers and sailors, and to be cut out by even a postman is to fall before a worthy foe; but milkmen⁠—no! Only grocers’ assistants and telegraph-boys were intended by Providence to fear milkmen.

Yet here was Alf Brooks, contrary to all rules, the established pet of the mansions. Bright eyes shone from balconies when his “Milk⁠—oo⁠—oo” sounded. Golden voices giggled delightedly at his bellowed chaff. And Ellen Brown, whom he called Little Pansy-Face, was definitely in love with him.

They were keeping company. They were walking out. This crushing truth Edward Plimmer learned from Ellen herself.

She had slipped out to mail a letter at the pillar-box on the corner, and she reached it just as the policeman arrived there in the course of his patrol.

Nervousness impelled Constable Plimmer to be arch.

“ ’Ullo, ’ullo, ’ullo,” he said. “Posting love-letters?”

“What, me? This is to the Police Commissioner, telling him you’re no good.”

“I’ll give it to him. Him and me are taking supper tonight.”

Nature had never intended Constable Plimmer to be playful. He was at his worst when he rollicked. He snatched at the letter with what was meant to be a debonair gaiety, and only succeeded in looking like an angry gorilla. The girl uttered a startled squeak.

The letter was addressed to Mr. A. Brooks.

Playfulness, after this, was at a discount. The girl was frightened and angry, and he was scowling with mingled jealousy and dismay.

“Ho!” he said. “Ho! Mr. A. Brooks!”

Ellen Brown was a nice girl, but she had a temper, and there were moments when her manners lacked rather noticeably the repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.

“Well, what about it?” she cried. “Can’t one write to the young gentleman one’s keeping company with, without having to get permission from every⁠—” She paused to marshal her forces from the assault. “Without having to get permission from every great, ugly, red-faced copper with big feet and a broken nose in London?”

Constable Plimmer’s wrath faded into a dull unhappiness. Yes, she was right. That was the correct description. That was how an impartial Scotland Yard would be compelled to describe him, if ever he got lost. “Missing. A great, ugly, red-faced copper with big feet and a broken nose.” They would never find him otherwise.

“Perhaps you object to my walking out with Alf? Perhaps you’ve got something against him? I suppose you’re jealous!”

She threw in the last suggestion entirely in a sporting spirit. She loved battle, and she had a feeling that this one was going to finish far too quickly. To prolong it, she gave him this opening. There were a dozen ways in which he might answer, each more insulting than the last; and then, when he had finished, she could begin again. These little encounters, she held, sharpened the wits, stimulated the circulation, and kept one out in the open air.

“Yes,” said Constable Plimmer.

It was the one reply she was not expecting. For direct abuse, for sarcasm, for dignity, for almost any speech beginning, “What! Jealous of you. Why⁠—” she was prepared. But this was incredible. It disabled her, as the wild thrust of an unskilled fencer will disable a master of the rapier. She searched in her mind and found that she had nothing to say.

There was a tense moment in which she found him, looking her in the eyes, strangely less ugly than she had supposed, and then he was gone, rolling along on his beat with that air which all policemen must achieve, of having no feelings at all, and⁠—as long as it behaves itself⁠—no interest in the human race.

Ellen posted her letter. She dropped it into the box thoughtfully, and thoughtfully returned to the flat. She looked over her shoulder, but Constable Plimmer was out of sight.

Peaceful Battersea began to vex Constable Plimmer. To a man crossed in love, action is the one anodyne; and Battersea gave no scope for action. He dreamed now of the old Whitechapel days as a man dreams of the joys of his childhood. He reflected bitterly that a fellow never knows when he is well off in this world. Any one of those myriad drunk and disorderlies would have been as balm to him now. He was like a man who has run through a fortune and in poverty eats the bread of regret. Amazedly he recollected that in those happy days he had grumbled at his lot. He remembered confiding to a friend in the station-house, as he rubbed with liniment the spot on his right shin where the well-shod foot of a joyous costermonger had got home, that this sort of thing⁠—meaning militant costermongers⁠—was “a bit too thick.” A bit too thick! Why, he would pay one to kick him now. And as for the three loyal friends of the would-be wife-murderer who had broken his nose, if he saw them coming round the corner he would welcome them as brothers.

And Battersea Park Road dozed on⁠—calm, intellectual, law-abiding.

A friend of his told him that there had once been a murder in one of these flats. He did not believe it. If any of these white-corpuscled clams ever swatted a fly, it was much as they could do. The thing was ridiculous on the face of it. If they were capable of murder, they would have murdered Alf Brooks.

He stood in the road, and looked up at the placid buildings resentfully.

“Grr-rr-rr!” he growled, and kicked the sidewalk.

And, even as he spoke, on the balcony of a second-floor flat there appeared a woman, an elderly, sharp-faced woman, who waved her arms and screamed, “Policeman! Officer! Come up here! Come up here at once!”

Up the stone stairs went Constable Plimmer at the run. His mind was alert and questioning. Murder? Hardly murder, perhaps. If it had been that, the woman would have said so. She did not look the sort of woman who would be reticent about a thing like that. Well, anyway, it was something; and Edward Plimmer had been long enough in Battersea to be thankful for small favours. An intoxicated husband would be better than nothing. At least he would be something that a fellow could get his hands on to and throw about a bit.

The sharp-faced woman was waiting for him at the door. He followed her into the flat.

“What is it, ma’am?”

“Theft! Our cook has been stealing!”

She seemed sufficiently excited about it, but Constable Plimmer felt only depression and disappointment. A stout admirer of the sex, he hated arresting women. Moreover, to a man in the mood to tackle anarchists with bombs, to be confronted with petty theft is galling. But duty was duty. He produced his notebook.

“She is in her room. I locked her in. I know she has taken my brooch. We have missed money. You must search her.”

“Can’t do that, ma’am. Female searcher at the station.”

“Well, you can search her box.”

A little, bald, nervous man in spectacles appeared as if out of a trap. As a matter of fact, he had been there all the time, standing by the bookcase; but he was one of those men you do not notice till they move and speak.

“Er⁠—Jane.”

“Well, Henry?”

The little man seemed to swallow something.

“I⁠—I think that you may possibly be wronging Ellen. It is just possible, as regards the money⁠—” He smiled in a ghastly manner and turned to the policeman. “Er⁠—officer, I ought to tell you that my wife⁠—ah⁠—holds the purse-strings of our little home; and it is just possible that in an absentminded moment I may have⁠—”

“Do you mean to tell me, Henry, that you have been taking my money?”

“My dear, it is just possible that in the abs⁠—”

“How often?”

He wavered perceptibly. Conscience was beginning to lose its grip.

“Oh, not often.”

“How often? More than once?”

Conscience had shot its bolt. The little man gave up the Struggle.

“No, no, not more than once. Certainly not more than once.”

“You ought not to have done it at all. We will talk about that later. It doesn’t alter the fact that Ellen is a thief. I have missed money half a dozen times. Besides that, there’s the brooch. Step this way, officer.”

Constable Plimmer stepped that way⁠—his face a mask. He knew who was waiting for them behind the locked door at the end of the passage. But it was his duty to look as if he were stuffed, and he did so.

She was sitting on her bed, dressed for the street. It was her afternoon out, the sharp-faced woman had informed Constable Plimmer, attributing the fact that she had discovered the loss of the brooch in time to stop her a direct interposition of Providence. She was pale, and there was a hunted look in her eyes.

“You wicked girl, where is my brooch?”

She held it out without a word. She had been holding it in her hand.

“You see, officer!”

“I wasn’t stealing of it. I ’adn’t but borrowed it. I was going to put it back.”

“Stuff and nonsense! Borrow it, indeed! What for?”

“I⁠—I wanted to look nice.”

The woman gave a short laugh. Constable Plimmer’s face was a mere block of wood, expressionless.

“And what about the money I’ve been missing? I suppose you’ll say you only borrowed that?”

“I never took no money.”

“Well, it’s gone, and money doesn’t go by itself. Take her to the police-station, officer.”

Constable Plimmer raised heavy eyes.

“You make a charge, ma’am?”

“Bless the man! Of course I make a charge. What did you think I asked you to step in for?”

“Will you come along, miss?” said Constable Plimmer.

Out in the street the sun shone gaily down on peaceful Battersea. It was the hour when children walk abroad with their nurses; and from the green depths of the Park came the sound of happy voices. A cat stretched itself in the sunshine and eyed the two as they passed with lazy content.

They walked in silence. Constable Plimmer was a man with a rigid sense of what was and what was not fitting behaviour in a policeman on duty: he aimed always at a machine-like impersonality. There were times when it came hard, but he did his best. He strode on, his chin up and his eyes averted. And beside him⁠—

Well, she was not crying. That was something.

Round the corner, beautiful in light flannel, gay at both ends with a new straw hat and the yellowest shoes in Southwest London, scented, curled, a prince among young men, stood Alf Brooks. He was feeling piqued. When he said three o’clock, he meant three o’clock. It was now three-fifteen, and she had not appeared. Alf Brooks swore an impatient oath, and the thought crossed his mind, as it had sometimes crossed it before, that Ellen Brown was not the only girl in the world.

“Give her another five min⁠—”

Ellen Brown, with escort, at that moment turned the corner.

Rage was the first emotion which the spectacle aroused in Alf Brooks. Girls who kept a fellow waiting about while they fooled around with policemen were no girls for him. They could understand once and for all that he was a man who could pick and choose.

And then an electric shock set the world dancing mistily before his eyes. This policeman was wearing his belt; he was on duty. And Ellen’s face was not the face of a girl strolling with the Force for pleasure.

His heart stopped, and then began to race. His cheeks flushed a dusky crimson. His jaw fell, and a prickly warmth glowed in the parts about his spine.

“Goo’!”

His fingers sought his collar.

“Crumbs!”

He was hot all over.

“Goo’ Lor’! She’s been pinched!”

He tugged at his collar. It was choking him.

Alf Brooks did not show up well in the first real crisis which life had forced upon him. That must be admitted. Later, when it was over, and he had leisure for self-examination, he admitted it to himself. But even then he excused himself by asking Space in a blustering manner what else he could ha’ done. And if the question did not bring much balm to his soul at the first time of asking, it proved wonderfully soothing on constant repetition. He repeated it at intervals for the next two days, and by the end of that time his cure was complete. On the third morning his “Milk⁠—oo⁠—oo” had regained its customary carefree ring, and he was feeling that he had acted in difficult circumstances in the only possible manner.

Consider. He was Alf Brooks, well known and respected in the neighbourhood; a singer in the choir on Sundays; owner of a milk-walk in the most fashionable part of Battersea; to all practical purposes a public man. Was he to recognize, in broad daylight and in open street, a girl who walked with a policeman because she had to, a malefactor, a girl who had been pinched?

Ellen, Constable Plimmer woodenly at her side, came towards him. She was ten yards off⁠—seven⁠—five⁠—three⁠—Alf Brooks tilted his hat over his eyes and walked past her, unseeing, a stranger.

He hurried on. He was conscious of a curious feeling that somebody was just going to kick him, but he dared not look round.

Constable Plimmer eyed the middle distance with an earnest gaze. His face was redder than ever. Beneath his blue tunic strange emotions were at work. Something seemed to be filling his throat. He tried to swallow it.

He stopped in his stride. The girl glanced up at him in a kind of dull, questioning way. Their eyes met for the first time that afternoon, and it seemed to Constable Plimmer that whatever it was that was interfering with the inside of his throat had grown larger, and more unmanageable.

There was the misery of the stricken animal in her gaze. He had seen women look like that in Whitechapel. The woman to whom, indirectly, he owed his broken nose had looked like that. As his hand had fallen on the collar of the man who was kicking her to death, he had seen her eyes. They were Ellen’s eyes, as she stood there now⁠—tortured, crushed, yet uncomplaining.

Constable Plimmer looked at Ellen, and Ellen looked at Constable Plimmer. Down the street some children were playing with a dog. In one of the flats a woman began to sing.

“Hop it,” said Constable Plimmer.

He spoke gruffly. He found speech difficult.

The girl started.

“What say?”

“Hop it. Get along. Run away.”

“What do you mean?”

Constable Plimmer scowled. His face was scarlet. His jaw protruded like a granite breakwater.

“Go on,” he growled. “Hop it. Tell him it was all a joke. I’ll explain at the station.”

Understanding seemed to come to her slowly.

“Do you mean I’m to go?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean? You aren’t going to take me to the station?”

“No.”

She stared at him. Then, suddenly, she broke down,

“He wouldn’t look at me. He was ashamed of me. He pretended not to see me.”

She leaned against the wall, her back shaking.

“Well, run after him, and tell him it was all⁠—”

“No, no, no.”

Constable Plimmer looked morosely at the sidewalk. He kicked it.

She turned. Her eyes were red, but she was no longer crying. Her chin had a brave tilt.

“I couldn’t⁠—not after what he did. Let’s go along. I⁠—I don’t care.”

She looked at him curiously.

“Were you really going to have let me go?”

Constable Plimmer nodded. He was aware of her eyes searching his face, but he did not meet them.

“Why?”

He did not answer.

“What would have happened to you, if you had have done?”

Constable Plimmer’s scowl was of the stuff of which nightmares are made. He kicked the unoffending sidewalk with an increased viciousness.

“Dismissed the Force,” he said curtly.

“And sent to prison, too, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Maybe.”

He heard her draw a deep breath, and silence fell upon them again. The dog down the road had stopped barking. The woman in the flat had stopped singing. They were curiously alone.

“Would you have done all that for me?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think you ever did it. Stole that money, I mean. Nor the brooch, neither.”

“Was that all?”

“What do you mean⁠—all?”

“Was that the only reason?”

He swung round on her, almost threateningly.

“No,” he said hoarsely. “No, it wasn’t, and you know it wasn’t. Well, if you want it, you can have it. It was because I love you. There! Now I’ve said it, and now you can go on and laugh at me as much as you want.”

“I’m not laughing,” she said soberly.

“You think I’m a fool!”

“No, I don’t.”

“I’m nothing to you. He’s the fellow you’re stuck on.”

She gave a little shudder.

“No.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve changed.” She paused. “I think I shall have changed more by the time I come out.”

“Come out?”

“Come out of prison.”

“You’re not going to prison.”

“Yes, I am.”

“I won’t take you.”

“Yes, you will. Think I’m going to let you get yourself in trouble like that, to get me out of a fix? Not much.”

“You hop it, like a good girl.”

“Not me.”

He stood looking at her like a puzzled bear.

“They can’t eat me.”

“They’ll cut off all of your hair.”

“D’you like my hair?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’ll grow again.”

“Don’t stand talking. Hop it.”

“I won’t. Where’s the station?”

“Next street.”

“Well, come along, then.”

The blue glass lamp of the police-station came into sight, and for an instant she stopped. Then she was walking on again, her chin tilted. But her voice shook a little as she spoke.

“Nearly there. Next stop, Battersea. All change! I say, mister⁠—I don’t know your name.”

“Plimmer’s my name, miss. Edward Plimmer.”

“I wonder if⁠—I mean it’ll be pretty lonely where I’m going⁠—I wonder if⁠—What I mean is, it would be rather a lark, when I come out, if I was to find a pal waiting for me to say ‘Hallo.’ ”

Constable Plimmer braced his ample feet against the stones, and turned purple.

“Miss,” he said, “I’ll be there, if I have to sit up all night. The first thing you’ll see when they open the doors is a great, ugly, red-faced copper with big feet and a broken nose. And if you’ll say ‘Hallo’ to him when he says ‘Hallo’ to you, he’ll be as pleased as Punch and as proud as a duke. And, miss”⁠—he clenched his hands till the nails hurt the leathern flesh⁠—“and, miss, there’s just one thing more I’d like to say. You’ll be having a good deal of time to yourself for awhile; you’ll be able to do a good bit of thinking without anyone to disturb you; and what I’d like you to give your mind to, if you don’t object, is just to think whether you can’t forget that narrow-chested, Godforsaken blighter who treated you so mean, and get halfway fond of someone who knows jolly well you’re the only girl there is.”

She looked past him at the lamp which hung, blue and forbidding, over the station door.

“How long’ll I get?” she said. “What will they give me? Thirty days?”

He nodded.

“It won’t take me as long as that,” she said. “I say, what do people call you?⁠—people who are fond of you, I mean?⁠—Eddie or Ted?”

The Test Case

Well-meaning chappies at the club sometimes amble up to me and tap me on the wishbone, and say “Reggie, old top,”⁠—my name’s Reggie Pepper⁠—“you ought to get married, old man.” Well, what I mean to say is, it’s all very well, and I see their point and all that sort of thing; but it takes two to make a marriage, and to date I haven’t met a girl who didn’t seem to think the contract was too big to be taken on.

Looking back, it seems to me that I came nearer to getting over the home-plate with Ann Selby than with most of the others. In fact, but for circumstances over which I had no dashed control, I am inclined to think that we should have brought it off. I’m bound to say that, now that what the poet chappie calls the first fine frenzy has been on the ice for awhile and I am able to consider the thing calmly, I am deuced glad we didn’t. She was one of those strong-minded girls, and I hate to think of what she would have done to me.

At the time, though, I was frightfully in love, and, for quite a while after she definitely gave me the mitten, I lost my stroke at golf so completely that a child could have given me a stroke a hole and got away with it. I was all broken up, and I contend to this day that I was dashed badly treated.

Let me give you what they call the data.

One day I was lunching with Ann, and was just proposing to her as usual, when, instead of simply refusing me, as she generally did, she fixed me with a thoughtful eye and kind of opened her heart.

“Do you know, Reggie, I am in doubt.”

“Give me the benefit of it,” I said. Which I maintain was pretty good on the spur of the moment, but didn’t get a hand. She simply ignored it, and went on.

“Sometimes,” she said, “you seem to me entirely vapid and brainless; at other times you say or do things which suggest that there are possibilities in you; that, properly stimulated and encouraged, you might overcome the handicap of large private means and do something worthwhile. I wonder if that is simply my imagination?” She watched me very closely as she spoke.

“Rather not. You’ve absolutely summed me up. With you beside me, stimulating and all that sort of rot, don’t you know, I should show a flash of speed which would astonish you.”

“I wish I could be certain.”

“Take a chance on it.”

She shook her head.

“I must be certain. Marriage is such a gamble. I have just been staying with my sister Hilda and her husband⁠—”

“Dear old Harold Bodkin. I know him well. In fact, I’ve a standing invitation to go down there and stay as long as I like. Harold is one of my best pals. Harold is a corker. Good old Harold is⁠—”

“I would rather you didn’t eulogize him, Reggie. I am extremely angry with Harold. He is making Hilda perfectly miserable.”

“What on earth do you mean? Harold wouldn’t dream of hurting a fly. He’s one of those dreamy, sentimental chumps who⁠—”

“It is precisely his sentimentality which is at the bottom of the whole trouble. You know, of course, that Hilda is not his first wife?”

“That’s right. His first wife died about five years ago.”

“He still cherishes her memory.”

“Very sporting of him.”

“Is it! If you were a girl, how would you like to be married to a man who was always making you bear in mind that you were only number two in his affections; a man whose idea of a pleasant conversation was a string of anecdotes illustrating what a dear woman his first wife was. A man who expected you to upset all your plans if they clashed with some anniversary connected with his other marriage?”

“That does sound pretty rotten. Does Harold do all that?”

“That’s only a small part of what he does. Why, if you will believe me, every evening at seven o’clock he goes and shuts himself up in a little room at the top of the house, and meditates.”

“What on earth does he do that for?”

“Apparently his first wife died at seven in the evening. There is a portrait of her in the room. I believe he lays flowers in front of it. And Hilda is expected to greet him on his return with a happy smile.”

“Why doesn’t she kick?”

“I have been trying to persuade her to, but she won’t. She just pretends she doesn’t mind. She has a nervous, sensitive temperament, and the thing is slowly crushing her. Don’t talk to me of Harold.”

Considering that she had started him as a topic, I thought this pretty unjust. I didn’t want to talk of Harold. I wanted to talk about myself.

“Well, what has all this got to do with your not wanting to marry me?” I said.

“Nothing, except that it is an illustration of the risks a woman runs when she marries a man of a certain type.”

“Great Scott! You surely don’t class me with Harold?”

“Yes, in a way you are very much alike. You have both always had large private means, and have never had the wholesome discipline of work.”

“But, dash it, Harold, on your showing, is an absolute nut. Why should you think that I would be anything like that?”

“There’s always the risk.”

A hot idea came to me.

“Look here, Ann,” I said. “Suppose I pull off some stunt which only a deuced brainy chappie could get away with? Would you marry me then?”

“Certainly. What do you propose to do?”

“Do! What do I propose to do! Well, er, to be absolutely frank, at the moment I don’t quite know.”

“You never will know, Reggie. You’re one of the idle rich, and your brain, if you ever had one, has atrophied.”

Well, that seemed to me to put the lid on it. I didn’t mind a heart-to-heart talk, but this was mere abuse. I changed the subject.

“What would you like after that fish?” I said coldly.

You know how it is when you get an idea. For awhile it sort of simmers inside you, and then suddenly it sizzles up like a rocket, and there you are, right up against it. That’s what happened now. I went away from that luncheon, vaguely determined to pull off some stunt which would prove that I was right there with the gray matter, but without any clear notion of what I was going to do. Side by side with this in my mind was the case of dear old Harold. When I wasn’t brooding on the stunt, I was brooding on Harold. I was fond of the good old lad, and I hated the idea of his slowly wrecking the home purely by being a chump. And all of a sudden the two things clicked together like a couple of chemicals, and there I was with a corking plan for killing two birds with one stone⁠—putting one across that would startle and impress Ann, and at the same time healing the breach between Harold and Hilda.

My idea was that, in a case like this, it’s no good trying opposition. What you want is to work it so that the chappie quits of his own accord. You want to egg him on to overdoing the thing till he gets so that he says to himself, “Enough! Never again!” That was what was going to happen to Harold.

When you’re going to do a thing, there’s nothing like making a quick start. I wrote to Harold straight away, proposing myself for a visit. And Harold wrote back telling me to come right along.

Harold and Hilda lived alone in a large house. I believe they did a good deal of entertaining at times, but on this occasion I was the only guest. The only other person of note in the place was Ponsonby, the butler.

Of course, if Harold had been an ordinary sort of chappie, what I had come to do would have been a pretty big order. I don’t mind many things, but I do hesitate to dig into my host’s intimate private affairs. But Harold was such a simple-minded Johnnie, so grateful for a little sympathy and advice, that my job wasn’t so very difficult.

It wasn’t as if he minded talking about Amelia, which was his first wife’s name. The difficulty was to get him to talk of anything else. I began to understand what Ann meant by saying it was tough on Hilda.

I’m bound to say the old boy was clay in my hands. People call me a chump, but Harold was a super-chump, and I did what I liked with him. The second morning of my visit, after breakfast, he grabbed me by the arm.

“This way, Reggie. I’m just going to show old Reggie Amelia’s portrait, dear.”

There was a little room all by itself on the top floor. He explained to me that it had been his studio. At one time Harold used to do a bit of painting in an amateur way.

“There!” he said, pointing at the portrait. “I did that myself, Reggie. It was away being cleaned when you were here last. It’s like dear Amelia, isn’t it?”

I suppose it was, in a way. At any rate, you could recognize the likeness when you were told who it was supposed to be.

He sat down in front of it, and gave it the thoughtful once-over.

“Do you know, Reggie, old top, sometimes when I sit here, I feel as if Amelia were back again.”

“It would be a bit awkward for you if she was.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, old lad, you happen to be married to someone else.”

A look of childlike enthusiasm came over his face.

“Reggie, I want to tell you how splendid Hilda is. Lots of other women might object to my still cherishing Amelia’s memory, but Hilda has been so nice about it from the beginning. She understands so thoroughly.”

I hadn’t much breath left after that, but I used what I had to say: “She doesn’t object?”

“Not a bit,” said Harold. “It makes everything so pleasant.”

When I had recovered a bit, I said, “What do you mean by everything?”

“Well,” he said, “for instance, I come up here every evening at seven and⁠—er⁠—think for a few minutes.”

“A few minutes?!”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, a few minutes isn’t long.”

“But I always have my cocktail at a quarter past.”

“You could postpone it.”

“And Ponsonby likes us to start dinner at seven-thirty.”

“What on earth has Ponsonby to do with it?”

“Well, he likes to get off by nine, you know. I think he goes off and plays bowls at the madhouse. You see, Reggie, old man, we have to study Ponsonby a little. He’s always on the verge of giving notice⁠—in fact, it was only by coaxing him on one or two occasions that we got him to stay on⁠—and he’s such a treasure that I don’t know what we should do if we lost him. But, if you think that I ought to stay longer⁠—?”

“Certainly I do. You ought to do a thing like this properly, or not at all.”

He sighed.

“It’s a frightful risk, but in future we’ll dine at eight.”

It seemed to me that there was a suspicion of a cloud on Ponsonby’s shining morning face, when the news was broken to him that for the future he couldn’t unleash himself on the local bowling talent as early as usual, but he made no kick, and the new order of things began.

My next offensive movement I attribute to a flash of absolute genius. I was glancing through a photograph album in the drawing-room before lunch, when I came upon a face which I vaguely remembered. It was one of those wide, flabby faces, with bulging eyes, and something about it struck me as familiar. I consulted Harold, who came in at that moment.

“That?” said Harold. “That’s Percy.” He gave a slight shudder. “Amelia’s brother, you know. An awful fellow. I haven’t seen him for years.”

Then I placed Percy. I had met him once or twice in the old days, and I had a brainwave. Percy was everything that poor old Harold disliked most. He was hearty at breakfast, a confirmed backslapper, and a man who prodded you in the chest when he spoke to you.

“You haven’t seen him for years!” I said in a shocked voice.

“Thank heaven!” said Harold devoutly.

I put down the photograph album, and looked at him in a deuced serious way. “Then it’s high time you asked him to come here.”

Harold blanched. “Reggie, old man, you don’t know what you are saying. You can’t remember Percy. I wish you wouldn’t say these things, even in fun.”

“I’m not saying it in fun. Of course, it’s none of my business, but you have paid me the compliment of confiding in me about Amelia, and I feel justified in speaking. All I can say is that, if you cherish her memory as you say you do, you show it in a very strange way. How you can square your neglect of Percy with your alleged devotion to Amelia’s memory, beats me. It seems to me that you have no choice. You must either drop the whole thing and admit that your love for her is dead, or else you must stop this infernal treatment of her favorite brother. You can’t have it both ways.”

He looked at me like a hunted stag. “But, Reggie, old man! Percy! He asks riddles at breakfast.”

“I don’t care.”

“Hilda can’t stand him.”

“It doesn’t matter. You must invite him. It’s not a case of what you like or don’t like. It’s your duty.”

He struggled with his feelings for a bit. “Very well,” he said in a crushed sort of voice.

At dinner that night he said to Hilda: “I’m going to ask Amelia’s brother down to spend a few days. It is so long since we have seen him.”

Hilda didn’t answer at once. She looked at him in rather a curious sort of way, I thought. “Very well, dear,” she said.

I was deuced sorry for the poor girl, but I felt like a surgeon. She would be glad later on, for I was convinced that in a very short while poor old Harold must crack under the strain, especially after I had put across the coup which I was meditating for the very next evening.

It was quite simple. Simple, that is to say, in its working, but a devilish brainy thing for a chappie to have thought out. If Ann had really meant what she had said at lunch that day, and was prepared to stick to her bargain and marry me as soon as I showed a burst of intelligence, she was mine.

What it came to was that, if dear old Harold enjoyed meditating in front of Amelia’s portrait, he was jolly well going to have all the meditating he wanted, and a bit over, for my simple scheme was to lurk outside till he had gone into the little room on the top floor, and then, with the aid of one of those jolly little wedges which you use to keep windows from rattling, see to it that the old boy remained there till they sent out search parties.

There wasn’t a flaw in my reasoning. When Harold didn’t roll in at the sound of the dinner gong, Hilda would take it for granted that he was doing an extra bit of meditating that night, and her pride would stop her sending out a hurry call for him. As for Harold, when he found that all was not well with the door, he would probably yell with considerable vim. But it was odds against anyone hearing him. As for me, you might think that I was going to suffer owing to the probable postponement of dinner. Not so, but far otherwise, for on the night I had selected for the coup I was dining out at the neighboring inn with my old college chum Freddie Meadowes. It is true that Freddie wasn’t going to be within fifty miles of the place on that particular night, but they weren’t to know that.

Did I describe the peculiar isolation of that room on the top floor, where the portrait was? I don’t think I did. It was, as a matter of fact, the only room in those parts, for, in the days when he did his amateur painting, old Harold was strong on the artistic seclusion business and hated noise, and his studio was the only room in use on that floor.

In short, to sum up, the thing was a cinch.

Punctually at ten minutes to seven, I was in readiness on the scene. There was a recess with a curtain in front of it a few yards from the door, and there I waited, fondling my little wedge, for Harold to walk up and allow the proceedings to start. It was almost pitch-dark, and that made the time of waiting seem longer. Presently⁠—I seemed to have been there longer than ten minutes⁠—I heard steps approaching. They came past where I stood, and went on into the room. The door closed, and I hopped out and sprinted up to it, and the next moment I had the good old wedge under the wood⁠—as neat a job as you could imagine. And then I strolled downstairs, and toddled off to the inn.

I didn’t hurry over my dinner, partly because the browsing and sluicing at the inn was really astonishingly good for a roadhouse and partly because I wanted to give Harold plenty of time for meditation. I suppose it must have been a couple of hours or more when I finally turned in at the front door. Somebody was playing the piano in the drawing room. It could only be Hilda who was playing, and I had doubts as to whether she wanted company just then⁠—mine, at any rate.

Eventually I decided to risk it, for I wanted to hear the latest about dear old Harold, so in I went, and it wasn’t Hilda at all; it was Ann Selby.

“Hello,” I said. “I didn’t know you were coming down here.” It seemed so odd, don’t you know, as it hadn’t been more than ten days or so since her last visit.

“Good evening, Reggie,” she said.

“What’s been happening?” I asked.

“How do you know anything has been happening?”

“I guessed it.”

“Well, you’re quite right, as it happens, Reggie. A good deal has been happening.” She went to the door, and looked out, listening. Then she shut it, and came back. “Hilda has revolted!”

“Revolted?”

“Yes, put her foot down⁠—made a stand⁠—refused to go on meekly putting up with Harold’s insane behavior.”

“I don’t understand.”

She gave me a look of pity. “You always were so dense, Reggie. I will tell you the whole thing from the beginning. You remember what I spoke to you about, one day when we were lunching together? Well, I don’t suppose you have noticed it⁠—I know what you are⁠—but things have been getting steadily worse. For one thing, Harold insisted on lengthening his visits to the top room, and naturally Ponsonby complained. Hilda tells me that she had to plead with him to induce him to stay on. Then the climax came. I don’t know if you recollect Amelia’s brother Percy? You must have met him when she was alive⁠—a perfectly unspeakable person with a loud voice and overpowering manners. Suddenly, out of a blue sky, Harold announced his intention of inviting him to stay. It was the last straw. This afternoon I received a telegram from poor Hilda, saying that she was leaving Harold and coming to stay with me, and a few hours later the poor child arrived at my apartment.”

You mustn’t suppose that I stood listening silently to this speech. Every time she seemed to be going to stop for breath I tried to horn in and tell her all these things which had been happening were not mere flukes, as she seemed to think, but parts of a deuced carefully planned scheme of my own. Every time I’d try to interrupt, Ann would wave me down, and carry on without so much as a semicolon.

But at this point I did manage a word in. “I know, I know, I know! I did it all. It was I who suggested to Harold that he should lengthen the meditations, and insisted on his inviting Percy to stay.”

I had hardly got the words out, when I saw that they were not making the hit I had anticipated. She looked at me with an expression of absolute scorn, don’t you know.

“Well, really, Reggie,” she said at last, “I never have had a very high opinion of your intelligence, as you know, but this is a revelation to me. What motive you can have had, unless you did it in a spirit of pure mischief⁠—” She stopped, and there was a glare of undiluted repulsion in her eyes. “Reggie! I can’t believe it! Of all the things I loathe most, a practical joker is the worst. Do you mean to tell me you did all this as a practical joke?”

“Great Scott, no! It was like this⁠—”

I paused for a bare second to collect my thoughts, so as to put the thing clearly to her. I might have known what would happen. She dashed right in and collared the conversation.

“Well, never mind. As it happens, there is no harm done. Quite the reverse, in fact. Hilda left a note for Harold telling him what she had done and where she had gone and why she had gone, and Harold found it. The result was that, after Hilda had been with me for some time, in he came in a panic and absolutely grovelled before the dear child. It seems incredible but he had apparently had no notion that his absurd behavior had met with anything but approval from Hilda. He went on as if he were mad. He was beside himself. He clutched his hair and stamped about the room, and then he jumped at the telephone and called this house and got Ponsonby and told him to go straight to the little room on the top floor and take Amelia’s portrait down. I thought that a little unnecessary myself, but he was in such a whirl of remorse that it was useless to try and get him to be rational. So Hilda was consoled, and he calmed down, and we all came down here in the automobile. So you see⁠—”

At this moment the door opened, and in came Harold.

“I say⁠—hello, Reggie, old man⁠—I say, it’s a funny thing, but we can’t find Ponsonby anywhere.”

There are moments in a chappie’s life, don’t you know, when Reason, so to speak, totters, as it were, on its bally throne. This was one of them. The situation seemed somehow to have got out of my grip. I suppose, strictly speaking, I ought, at this juncture, to have cleared my throat and said in an audible tone, “Harold, old top, I know where Ponsonby is.” But somehow I couldn’t. Something seemed to keep the words back. I just stood there and said nothing.

“Nobody seems to have seen anything of him,” said Harold. “I wonder where he can have got to.”

Hilda came in, looking so happy I hardly recognized her. I remember feeling how strange it was that anybody could be happy just then.

“I know,” she said. “Of course! Doesn’t he always go off to the inn and play bowls at this time?”

“Why, of course,” said Harold. “So he does.”

And he asked Ann to play something on the piano. And pretty soon we had settled down to a regular jolly musical evening. Ann must have played a matter of two or three thousand tunes, when Harold got up.

“By the way,” he said. “I suppose he did what I told him about the picture before he went out. Let’s go and see.”

“Oh, Harold, what does it matter?” asked Hilda.

“Don’t be silly, Harold,” said Ann.

I would have said the same thing, only I couldn’t say anything.

Harold wasn’t to be stopped. He led the way out of the room and upstairs, and we all trailed after him. We had just reached the top floor, when Hilda stopped, and said “Hark!”

It was a voice.

“Hi!” it said. “Hi!”

Harold legged it to the door of the studio. “Ponsonby?”

From within came the voice again, and I have never heard anything to touch the combined pathos, dignity and indignation it managed to condense into two words.

“Yes, sir?”

“What on earth are you doing in there?”

“I came here, sir, in accordance with your instructions on the telephone, and⁠—”

Harold rattled the door. “The darned thing’s stuck.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How on earth did that happen?”

“I could not say, sir.”

“How can the door have stuck like this?” said Ann.

Somebody⁠—I suppose it was me, though the voice didn’t sound familiar⁠—spoke. “Perhaps there’s a wedge under it,” said this chappie.

“A wedge? What do you mean?”

“One of those little wedges you use to keep windows from rattling, don’t you know.”

“But why⁠—? You’re absolutely right, Reggie, old man, there is!”

He yanked it out, and flung the door open, and out came Ponsonby, looking like Lady Macbeth.

“I wish to give notice, sir,” he said, “and I should esteem it a favor if I might go to the pantry and procure some food, as I am extremely hungry.”

And he passed from our midst, with Hilda after him, saying: “But, Ponsonby! Be reasonable, Ponsonby!”

Ann Selby turned on me with a swish. “Reggie,” she said, “did you shut Ponsonby in there?”

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I did.”

“But why?” asked Harold.

“Well, to be absolutely frank, old top, I thought it was you.”

“You thought it was me? But why⁠—what did you want to lock me in for?”

I hesitated. It was a delicate business telling him the idea. And while I was hesitating, Ann jumped in.

“I can tell you why, Harold. It was because Reggie belongs to that subspecies of humanity known as practical jokers. This sort of thing is his idea of humor.”

“Humor! Losing us a priceless butler,” said Harold. “If that’s your idea of⁠—”

Hilda came back, pale and anxious. “Harold, dear, do come and help me reason with Ponsonby. He is in the pantry gnawing a cold chicken, and he only stops to say ‘I give notice.’ ”

“Yes,” said Ann. “Go, both of you. I wish to speak to Reggie alone.”

That’s how I came to lose Ann. At intervals during her remarks I tried to put my side of the case, but it was no good. She wouldn’t listen. And presently something seemed to tell me that now was the time to go to my room and pack. Half an hour later I slid silently into the night.

Wasn’t it Shakespeare or somebody who said that the road to Hell⁠—or words to that effect⁠—was paved with good intentions? If it was Shakespeare, it just goes to prove what they are always saying about him⁠—that he knew a bit. Take it from one who knows, the old boy was absolutely right.

Wilton’s Holiday

When Jack Wilton first came to Marois Bay, none of us dreamed that he was a man with a hidden sorrow in his life. There was something about the man which made the idea absurd, or would have made it absurd if he himself had not been the authority for the story. He looked so thoroughly pleased with life and with himself. He was one of those men whom you instinctively label in your mind as “strong.” He was so healthy, so fit, and had such a confident, yet sympathetic, look about him that you felt directly you saw him that here was the one person you would have selected as the recipient of that hard-luck story of yours. You felt that his kindly strength would have been something to lean on.

As a matter of fact, it was by trying to lean on it that Spencer Clay got hold of the facts of the case; and when young Clay got hold of anything, Marois Bay at large had it hot and fresh a few hours later; for Spencer was one of those slack-jawed youths who are constitutionally incapable of preserving a secret.

Within two hours, then, of Clay’s chat with Wilton, everyone in the place knew that, jolly and hearty as the newcomer might seem, there was that gnawing at his heart which made his outward cheeriness simply heroic.

Clay, it seems, who is the worst specimen of self-pitier, had gone to Wilton, in whom, as a newcomer, he naturally saw a fine fresh repository for his tales of woe, and had opened with a long yarn of some misfortune or other. I forget which it was; it might have been any one of a dozen or so which he had constantly in stock, and it is immaterial which it was. The point is that, having heard him out very politely and patiently, Wilton came back at him with a story which silenced even Clay. Spencer was equal to most things, but even he could not go on whining about how he had foozled his putting and been snubbed at the bridge-table, or whatever it was that he was pitying himself about just then, when a man was telling him the story of a wrecked life.

“He told me not to let it go any further,” said Clay to everyone he met, “but of course it doesn’t matter telling you. It is a thing he doesn’t like to have known. He told me because he said there was something about me that seemed to extract confidences⁠—a kind of strength, he said. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but his life is an absolute blank. Absolutely ruined, don’t you know. He told me the whole thing so simply and frankly that it broke me all up. It seems that he was engaged to be married a few years ago, and on the wedding morning⁠—absolutely on the wedding morning⁠—the girl was taken suddenly ill, and⁠—”

“And died?”

“And died. Died in his arms. Absolutely in his arms, old top.”

“What a terrible thing!”

“Absolutely. He’s never got over it. You won’t let it go any further, will you old man?”

And off sped Spencer, to tell the tale to someone else.

Everyone was terribly sorry for Wilton. He was such a good fellow, such a sportsman, and, above all, so young, that one hated the thought that, laugh as he might, beneath his laughter there lay the pain of that awful memory. He seemed so happy, too. It was only in moments of confidence, in those heart-to-heart talks when men reveal their deeper feelings, that he ever gave a hint that all was not well with him. As, for example, when Ellerton, who is always in love with someone, backed him into a corner one evening and began to tell him the story of his latest affair, he had hardly begun when such a look of pain came over Wilton’s face that he ceased instantly. He said afterwards that the sudden realization of the horrible break he was making hit him like a bullet, and the manner in which he turned the conversation practically without pausing from love to a discussion of the best method of getting out of the bunker at the seventh hole was, in the circumstances, a triumph of tact.

Marois Bay is a quiet place even in the summer, and the Wilton tragedy was naturally the subject of much talk. It is a sobering thing to get a glimpse of the underlying sadness of life like that, and there was a disposition at first on the part of the community to behave in his presence in a manner reminiscent of pallbearers at a funeral. But things soon adjusted themselves. He was outwardly so cheerful that it seemed ridiculous for the rest of us to step softly and speak with hushed voices. After all, when you came to examine it, the thing was his affair, and it was for him to dictate the lines on which it should be treated. If he elected to hide his pain under a bright smile and a laugh like that of a hyena with a more than usually keen sense of humour, our line was obviously to follow his lead.

We did so; and by degrees the fact that his life was permanently blighted became almost a legend. At the back of our minds we were aware of it, but it did not obtrude itself into the affairs of every day. It was only when someone, forgetting, as Ellerton had done, tried to enlist his sympathy for some misfortune of his own that the look of pain in his eyes and the sudden tightening of his lips reminded us that he still remembered.

Matters had been at this stage for perhaps two weeks when Mary Campbell arrived.

Sex attraction is so purely a question of the taste of the individual that the wise man never argues about it. He accepts its vagaries as part of the human mystery, and leaves it at that. To me there was no charm whatever about Mary Campbell. It may have been that, at the moment, I was in love with Grace Bates, Heloise Miller, and Clarice Wembley⁠—for at Marois Bay, in the summer, a man who is worth his salt is more than equal to three love affairs simultaneously⁠—but anyway, she left me cold. Not one thrill could she awake in me. She was small and, to my mind, insignificant. Some men said that she had fine eyes. They seemed to me just ordinary eyes. And her hair was just ordinary hair. In fact, ordinary was the word that described her.

But from the first it was plain that she seemed wonderful with Wilton, which was all the more remarkable, seeing that he was the one man of us all who could have got any girl in Marois Bay that he wanted. When a man is six foot high, is a combination of Hercules and Apollo, and plays tennis, golf, and the banjo with almost superhuman vim, his path with the girls of a summer seaside resort is pretty smooth. But, when you add to all these things a tragedy like Wilton’s, he can only be described as having a walkover.

Girls love a tragedy. At least, most girls do. It makes a man interesting to them. Grace Bates was always going on about how interesting Wilton was. So was Heloise Miller. So was Clarice Wembley. But it was not until Mary Campbell came that he displayed any real enthusiasm at all for the feminine element of Marois Bay. We put it down to the fact that he could not forget, but the real reason, I now know, was that he considered that girls were a nuisance on the links and in the tennis-court. I suppose a plus two golfer and a Wildingesque tennis-player, such as Wilton was, does feel like that. Personally, I think that girls add to the fun of the thing. But then, my handicap is twelve, and, though I have been playing tennis for many years, I doubt if I have got my first serve⁠—the fast one⁠—over the net more than half a dozen times.

But Mary Campbell overcame Wilton’s prejudices in twenty-four hours. He seemed to feel lonely on the links without her, and he positively egged her to be his partner in the doubles. What Mary thought of him we did not know. She was one of those inscrutable girls.

And so things went on. If it had not been that I knew Wilton’s story, I should have classed the thing as one of those summer love-affairs to which the Marois Bay air is so peculiarly conducive. The only reason why anyone comes away from a summer at Marois Bay unbetrothed is because there are so many girls that he falls in love with that his holiday is up before he can, so to speak, concentrate.

But in Wilton’s case this was out of the question. A man does not get over the sort of blow he had had, not, at any rate, for many years: and we had gathered that his tragedy was comparatively recent.

I doubt if I was ever more astonished in my life than the night when he confided in me. Why he should have chosen me as a confidant I cannot say. I am inclined to think that I happened to be alone with him at the psychological moment when a man must confide in somebody or burst; and Wilton chose the lesser evil.

I was strolling along the shore after dinner, smoking a cigar and thinking of Grace Bates, Heloise Miller, and Clarice Wembley, when I happened upon him. It was a beautiful night, and we sat down and drank it in for a while. The first intimation I had that all was not well with him was when he suddenly emitted a hollow groan.

The next moment he had begun to confide.

“I’m in the deuce of a hole,” he said. “What would you do in my position?”

“Yes?” I said.

“I proposed to Mary Campbell this evening.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks. She refused me.”

“Refused you!”

“Yes⁠—because of Amy.”

It seemed to me that the narrative required footnotes.

“Who is Amy?” I said.

“Amy is the girl⁠—”

“Which girl?”

“The girl who died, you know. Mary had got hold of the whole story. In fact, it was the tremendous sympathy she showed that encouraged me to propose. If it hadn’t been for that, I shouldn’t have had the nerve. I’m not fit to black her shoes.”

Odd, the poor opinion a man always has⁠—when he is in love⁠—of his personal attractions. There were times when I thought of Grace Bates, Heloise Miller, and Clarice Wembley, when I felt like one of the beasts that perish. But then, I’m nothing to write home about, whereas the smallest gleam of intelligence should have told Wilton that he was a kind of Ouida guardsman.

“This evening I managed somehow to do it. She was tremendously nice about it⁠—said she was very fond of me and all that⁠—but it was quite out of the question because of Amy.”

“I don’t follow this. What did she mean?”

“It’s perfectly clear, if you bear in mind that Mary is the most sensitive, spiritual, highly strung girl that ever drew breath,” said Wilton, a little coldly. “Her position is this: she feels that, because of Amy, she can never have my love completely; between us there would always be Amy’s memory. It would be the same as if she married a widower.”

“Well, widowers marry.”

“They don’t marry girls like Mary.”

I couldn’t help feeling that this was a bit of luck for the widowers; but I didn’t say so. One has always got to remember that opinions differ about girls. One man’s peach, so to speak, is another man’s poison. I have met men who didn’t like Grace Bates, men who, if Heloise Miller or Clarice Wembley had given them their photographs, would have used them to cut the pages of a novel.

“Amy stands between us,” said Wilton.

I breathed a sympathetic snort. I couldn’t think of anything noticeably suitable to say.

“Stands between us,” repeated Wilton. “And the damn silly part of the whole thing is that there isn’t any Amy. I invented her.”

“You⁠—what!”

“Invented her. Made her up. No, I’m not mad. I had a reason. Let me see, you come from London, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you haven’t any friends. It’s different with me. I live in a small country town, and everyone’s my friend. I don’t know what it is about me, but for some reason, ever since I can remember, I’ve been looked on as the strong man of my town, the man who’s all right. Am I making myself clear?”

“Not quite.”

“Well, what I am trying to get at is this. Either because I’m a strong sort of fellow to look at, and have obviously never been sick in my life, or because I can’t help looking pretty cheerful, the whole of Bridley-in-the-Wold seems to take it for granted that I can’t possibly have any troubles of my own, and that I am consequently fair game for anyone who has any sort of worry. I have the sympathetic manner, and they come to me to be cheered up. If a fellow’s in love, he makes a beeline for me, and tells me all about it. If anyone has had a bereavement, I am the rock on which he leans for support. Well, I’m a patient sort of man, and, as far as Bridley-in-the-Wold is concerned, I am willing to play the part. But a strong man does need an occasional holiday, and I made up my mind that I would get it. Directly I got here I saw that the same old game was going to start. Spencer Clay swooped down on me at once. I’m as big a draw with the Spencer Clay type of maudlin idiot as catnip is with a cat. Well, I could stand it at home, but I was hanged if I was going to have my holiday spoiled. So I invented Amy. Now do you see?”

“Certainly I see. And I perceive something else which you appear to have overlooked. If Amy doesn’t exist⁠—or, rather, never did exist⁠—she cannot stand between you and Miss Campbell. Tell her what you have told me, and all will be well.”

He shook his head.

“You don’t know Mary. She would never forgive me. You don’t know what sympathy, what angelic sympathy, she has poured out on me about Amy. I can’t possibly tell her the whole thing was a fraud. It would make her feel so foolish.”

“You must risk it. At the worst, you lose nothing.”

He brightened a little.

“No, that’s true,” he said. “I’ve half a mind to do it.”

“Make it a whole mind,” I said, “and you win out.”

I was wrong. Sometimes I am. The trouble was, apparently, that I didn’t know Mary. I am sure Grace Bates, Heloise Miller, or Clarice Wembley would not have acted as she did. They might have been a trifle stunned at first, but they would soon have come round, and all would have been joy. But with Mary, no. What took place at the interview I do not know; but it was swiftly perceived by Marois Bay that the Wilton-Campbell alliance was off. They no longer walked together, golfed together, and played tennis on the same side of the net. They did not even speak to each other.

The rest of the story I can speak of only from hearsay. How it became public property, I do not know. But there was a confiding strain in Wilton, and I imagine he confided in someone, who confided in someone else. At any rate, it is recorded in Marois Bay’s unwritten archives, from which I now extract it.

For some days after the breaking-off of diplomatic relations, Wilton seemed too pulverized to resume the offensive. He mooned about the links by himself, playing a shocking game, and generally comported himself like a man who has looked for the escape of gas with a lighted candle. In affairs of love the strongest men generally behave with the most spineless lack of resolution. Wilton weighed thirteen stone, and his muscles were like steel cables; but he could not have shown less pluck in this crisis in his life if he had been a poached egg. It was pitiful to see him.

Mary, in these days, simply couldn’t see that he was on the earth. She looked round him, above him, and through him, but never at him; which was rotten from Wilton’s point of view, for he had developed a sort of wistful expression⁠—I am convinced that he practised it before the mirror after his bath⁠—which should have worked wonders, if only he could have got action with it. But she avoided his eye as if he had been a creditor whom she was trying to slide past on the street.

She irritated me. To let the breach widen in this way was absurd. Wilton, when I said as much to him, said that it was due to her wonderful sensitiveness and highly strungness, and that it was just one more proof to him of the loftiness of her soul and her shrinking horror of any form of deceit. In fact, he gave me the impression that, though the affair was rending his vitals, he took a mournful pleasure in contemplating her perfection.

Now one afternoon Wilton took his misery for a long walk along the seashore. He tramped over the sand for some considerable time, and finally pulled up in a little cove, backed by high cliffs and dotted with rocks. The shore around Marois Bay is full of them.

By this time the afternoon sun had begun to be too warm for comfort, and it struck Wilton that he could be a great deal more comfortable nursing his wounded heart with his back against one of the rocks than tramping any farther over the sand. Most of the Marois Bay scenery is simply made as a setting for the nursing of a wounded heart. The cliffs are a sombre indigo, sinister and forbidding; and even on the finest days the sea has a curious sullen look. You have only to get away from the crowd near the bathing-machines and reach one of these small coves and get your book against a rock and your pipe well alight, and you can simply wallow in misery. I have done it myself. The day when Heloise Miller went golfing with Teddy Bingley I spent the whole afternoon in one of these retreats. It is true that, after twenty minutes of contemplating the breakers, I fell asleep; but that is bound to happen.

It happened to Wilton. For perhaps half an hour he brooded, and then his pipe fell from his mouth and he dropped off into a peaceful slumber. And time went by.

It was a touch of cramp that finally woke him. He jumped up with a yell, and stood there massaging his calf. And he had hardly got rid of the pain, when a startled exclamation broke the primeval stillness; and there, on the other side of the rock, was Mary Campbell.

Now, if Wilton had had any inductive reasoning in his composition at all, he would have been tremendously elated. A girl does not creep out to a distant cove at Marois Bay unless she is unhappy; and if Mary Campbell was unhappy she must be unhappy about him; and if she was unhappy about him all he had to do was to show a bit of determination and get the whole thing straightened out. But Wilton, whom grief had reduced to the mental level of an oyster, did not reason this out; and the sight of her deprived him of practically all his faculties, including speech. He just stood there and yammered.

“Did you follow me here, Mr. Wilton?” said Mary, very coldly.

He shook his head. Eventually he managed to say that he had come there by chance, and had fallen asleep under the rock. As this was exactly what Mary had done, she could not reasonably complain. So that concluded the conversation for the time being. She walked away in the direction of Marois Bay without another word, and presently he lost sight of her round a bend in the cliffs.

His position now was exceedingly unpleasant. If she had such a distaste for his presence, common decency made it imperative that he should give her a good start on the homeward journey. He could not tramp along a couple of yards in the rear all the way. So he had to remain where he was till she had got well off the mark. And as he was wearing a thin flannel suit, and the sun had gone in, and a chilly breeze had sprung up, his mental troubles were practically swamped in physical discomfort.

Just as he had decided that he could now make a move, he was surprised to see her coming back.

Wilton really was elated at this. The construction he put on it was that she had relented and was coming back to fling her arms round his neck. He was just bracing himself for the clash, when he caught her eye, and it was as cold and unfriendly as the sea.

“I must go round the other way,” she said. “The water has come up too far on that side.”

And she walked past him to the other end of the cove.

The prospect of another wait chilled Wilton to the marrow. The wind had now grown simply freezing, and it came through his thin suit and roamed about all over him in a manner that caused him exquisite discomfort. He began to jump to keep himself warm.

He was leaping heavenwards for the hundredth time, when, chancing to glance to one side, he perceived Mary again returning. By this time his physical misery had so completely overcome the softer emotions in his bosom that his only feeling now was one of thorough irritation. It was not fair, he felt, that she should jockey at the start in this way and keep him hanging about here catching cold. He looked at her, when she came within range, quite balefully.

“It is impossible,” she said, “to get round that way either.”

One grows so accustomed in this world to everything going smoothly, that the idea of actual danger had not yet come home to her. From where she stood in the middle of the cove, the sea looked so distant that the fact that it had closed the only ways of getting out was at the moment merely annoying. She felt much the same as she would have felt if she had arrived at a station to catch a train and had been told that the train was not running.

She therefore seated herself on a rock, and contemplated the ocean. Wilton walked up and down. Neither showed any disposition to exercise that gift of speech which places Man in a class of his own, above the ox, the ass, the common warthog, and the rest of the lower animals. It was only when a wave swished over the base of her rock that Mary broke the silence.

“The tide is coming in,” she faltered.

She looked at the sea with such altered feelings that it seemed a different sea altogether.

There was plenty of it to look at. It filled the entire mouth of the little bay, swirling up the sand and lashing among the rocks in a fashion which made one thought stand out above all the others in her mind⁠—the recollection that she could not swim.

“Mr. Wilton!”

Wilton bowed coldly.

“Mr. Wilton, the tide. It’s coming in.”

Wilton glanced superciliously at the sea.

“So,” he said, “I perceive.”

“But what shall we do?”

Wilton shrugged his shoulders. He was feeling at war with Nature and Humanity combined. The wind had shifted a few points to the east, and was exploring his anatomy with the skill of a qualified surgeon.

“We shall drown,” cried Miss Campbell. “We shall drown. We shall drown. We shall drown.”

All Wilton’s resentment left him. Until he heard that pitiful wail his only thoughts had been for himself.

“Mary!” he said, with a wealth of tenderness in his voice.

She came to him as a little child comes to its mother, and he put his arm around her.

“Oh, Jack!”

“My darling!”

“I’m frightened!”

“My precious!”

It is in moments of peril, when the chill breath of fear blows upon our souls, clearing them of pettiness, that we find ourselves.

She looked about her wildly.

“Could we climb the cliffs?”

“I doubt it.”

“If we called for help⁠—”

“We could do that.”

They raised their voices, but the only answer was the crashing of the waves and the cry of the seabirds. The water was swirling at their feet, and they drew back to the shelter of the cliffs. There they stood in silence, watching.

“Mary,” said Wilton in a low voice, “tell me one thing.”

“Yes, Jack?”

“Have you forgiven me?”

“Forgiven you! How can you ask at a moment like this? I love you with all my heart and soul.”

He kissed her, and a strange look of peace came over his face.

“I am happy.”

“I, too.”

A fleck of foam touched her face, and she shivered.

“It was worth it,” he said quietly. “If all misunderstandings are cleared away and nothing can come between us again, it is a small price to pay⁠—unpleasant as it will be when it comes.”

“Perhaps⁠—perhaps it will not be very unpleasant. They say that drowning is an easy death.”

“I didn’t mean drowning, dearest. I meant a cold in the head.”

“A cold in the head!”

He nodded gravely.

“I don’t see how it can be avoided. You know how chilly it gets these late summer nights. It will be a long time before we can get away.”

She laughed a shrill, unnatural laugh.

“You are talking like this to keep my courage up. You know in your heart that there is no hope for us. Nothing can save us now. The water will come creeping⁠—creeping⁠—”

“Let it creep! It can’t get past that rock there.”

“What do you mean?”

“It can’t. The tide doesn’t come up any farther. I know, because I was caught here last week.”

For a moment she looked at him without speaking. Then she uttered a cry in which relief, surprise, and indignation were so nicely blended that it would have been impossible to say which predominated.

He was eyeing the approaching waters with an indulgent smile.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she cried.

“I did tell you.”

“You know what I mean. Why did you let me go on thinking we were in danger, when⁠—”

“We were in danger. We shall probably get pneumonia.”

“Isch!”

“There! You’re sneezing already.”

“I am not sneezing. That was an exclamation of disgust.”

“It sounded like a sneeze. It must have been, for you’ve every reason to sneeze, but why you should utter exclamations of disgust I cannot imagine.”

“I’m disgusted with you⁠—with your meanness. You deliberately tricked me into saying⁠—”

“Saying⁠—”

She was silent.

“What you said was that you loved me with all your heart and soul. You can’t get away from that, and it’s good enough for me.”

“Well, it’s not true any longer.”

“Yes, it is,” said Wilton, comfortably; “bless it.”

“It is not. I’m going right away now, and I shall never speak to you again.”

She moved away from him, and prepared to sit down.

“There’s a jellyfish just where you’re going to sit,” said Wilton.

“I don’t care.”

“It will. I speak from experience, as one on whom you have sat so often.”

“I’m not amused.”

“Have patience. I can be funnier than that.”

“Please don’t talk to me.”

“Very well.”

She seated herself with her back to him. Dignity demanded reprisals, so he seated himself with his back to her; and the futile ocean raged towards them, and the wind grew chillier every minute.

Time passed. Darkness fell. The little bay became a black cavern, dotted here and there with white, where the breeze whipped the surface of the water.

Wilton sighed. It was lonely sitting there all by himself. How much jollier it would have been if⁠—

A hand touched his shoulder, and a voice spoke⁠—meekly.

“Jack, dear, it⁠—it’s awfully cold. Don’t you think if we were to⁠—snuggle up⁠—”

He reached out and folded her in an embrace which would have aroused the professional enthusiasm of Hackenschmidt and drawn guttural congratulations from Zbysco. She creaked, but did not crack, beneath the strain.

“That’s much nicer,” she said, softly. “Jack, I don’t think the tide’s started even to think of going down yet.”

“I hope not,” said Wilton.

The Man with Two Left Feet

Students of the folklore of the United States of America are no doubt familiar with the quaint old story of Clarence MacFadden. Clarence MacFadden, it seems, was “wishful to dance, but his feet wasn’t gaited that way. So he sought a professor and asked him his price, and said he was willing to pay. The professor” (the legend goes on) “looked down with alarm at his feet and marked their enormous expanse; and he tacked on a five to his regular price for teaching MacFadden to dance.”

I have often been struck by the close similarity between the case of Clarence and that of Henry Wallace Mills. One difference alone presents itself. It would seem to have been mere vanity and ambition that stimulated the former; whereas the motive force which drove Henry Mills to defy Nature and attempt dancing was the purer one of love. He did it to please his wife. Had he never gone to Ye Bonnie Briar-Bush Farm, that popular holiday resort, and there met Minnie Hill, he would doubtless have continued to spend in peaceful reading the hours not given over to work at the New York bank at which he was employed as paying-cashier. For Henry was a voracious reader. His idea of a pleasant evening was to get back to his little flat, take off his coat, put on his slippers, light a pipe, and go on from the point where he had left off the night before in his perusal of the Bis⁠–⁠Cal volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica⁠—making notes as he read in a stout notebook. He read the Bis⁠–⁠Cal volume because, after many days, he had finished the A⁠–⁠And, And⁠–⁠Aus, and the Aus⁠–⁠Bis. There was something admirable⁠—and yet a little horrible⁠—about Henry’s method of study. He went after Learning with the cold and dispassionate relentlessness of a stoat pursuing a rabbit. The ordinary man who is paying instalments on the Encyclopaedia Britannica is apt to get overexcited and to skip impatiently to Volume XXVIII (Vet⁠–⁠Zym) to see how it all comes out in the end. Not so Henry. His was not a frivolous mind. He intended to read the Encyclopaedia through, and he was not going to spoil his pleasure by peeping ahead.

It would seem to be an inexorable law of Nature that no man shall shine at both ends. If he has a high forehead and a thirst for wisdom, his foxtrotting (if any) shall be as the staggerings of the drunken; while, if he is a good dancer, he is nearly always petrified from the ears upward. No better examples of this law could have been found than Henry Mills and his fellow-cashier, Sidney Mercer. In New York banks paying-cashiers, like bears, tigers, lions, and other fauna, are always shut up in a cage in pairs, and are consequently dependent on each other for entertainment and social intercourse when business is slack. Henry Mills and Sidney simply could not find a subject in common. Sidney knew absolutely nothing of even such elementary things as Abana, Aberration, Abraham, or Acrogenae; while Henry, on his side, was scarcely aware that there had been any developments in the dance since the polka. It was a relief to Henry when Sidney threw up his job to join the chorus of a musical comedy, and was succeeded by a man who, though full of limitations, could at least converse intelligently on Bowls.

Such, then, was Henry Wallace Mills. He was in the middle thirties, temperate, studious, a moderate smoker, and⁠—one would have said⁠—a bachelor of the bachelors, armour-plated against Cupid’s well-meant but obsolete artillery. Sometimes Sidney Mercer’s successor in the teller’s cage, a sentimental young man, would broach the topic of Woman and Marriage. He would ask Henry if he ever intended to get married. On such occasions Henry would look at him in a manner which was a blend of scorn, amusement, and indignation; and would reply with a single word:

“Me!”

It was the way he said it that impressed you.

But Henry had yet to experience the unmanning atmosphere of a lonely summer resort. He had only just reached the position in the bank where he was permitted to take his annual vacation in the summer. Hitherto he had always been released from his cage during the winter months, and had spent his ten days of freedom at his flat, with a book in his hand and his feet on the radiator. But the summer after Sidney Mercer’s departure they unleashed him in August.

It was meltingly warm in the city. Something in Henry cried out for the country. For a month before the beginning of his vacation he devoted much of the time that should have been given to the Encyclopaedia Britannica in reading summer-resort literature. He decided at length upon Ye Bonnie Briar-Bush Farm because the advertisements spoke so well of it.

Ye Bonnie Briar-Bush Farm was a rather battered frame building many miles from anywhere. Its attractions included a Lovers’ Leap, a Grotto, golf-links⁠—a five-hole course where the enthusiast found unusual hazards in the shape of a number of goats tethered at intervals between the holes⁠—and a silvery lake, only portions of which were used as a dumping-ground for tin cans and wooden boxes. It was all new and strange to Henry and caused him an odd exhilaration. Something of gaiety and reckless abandon began to creep into his veins. He had a curious feeling that in these romantic surroundings some adventure ought to happen to him.

At this juncture Minnie Hill arrived. She was a small, slim girl, thinner and paler than she should have been, with large eyes that seemed to Henry pathetic and stirred his chivalry. He began to think a good deal about Minnie Hill.

And then one evening he met her on the shores of the silvery lake. He was standing there, slapping at things that looked like mosquitoes, but could not have been, for the advertisements expressly stated that none were ever found in the neighbourhood of Ye Bonnie Briar-Bush Farm, when along she came. She walked slowly, as if she were tired. A strange thrill, half of pity, half of something else, ran through Henry. He looked at her. She looked at him.

“Good evening,” he said.

They were the first words he had spoken to her. She never contributed to the dialogue of the dining room, and he had been too shy to seek her out in the open.

She said “Good evening,” too, tying the score. And there was silence for a moment.

Commiseration overcame Henry’s shyness.

“You’re looking tired,” he said.

“I feel tired.” She paused. “I overdid it in the city.”

“It?”

“Dancing.”

“Oh, dancing. Did you dance much?”

“Yes; a great deal.”

“Ah!”

A promising, even a dashing start. But how to continue? For the first time Henry regretted the steady determination of his methods with the Encyclopaedia. How pleasant if he could have been in a position to talk easily of Dancing. Then memory reminded him that, though he had not yet got up to Dancing, it was only a few weeks before that he had been reading of the Ballet.

“I don’t dance myself,” he said, “but I am fond of reading about it. Did you know that the word ‘ballet’ incorporated three distinct modern words, ‘ballet,’ ‘ball,’ and ‘ballad,’ and that ballet-dancing was originally accompanied by singing?”

It hit her. It had her weak. She looked at him with awe in her eyes. One might almost say that she gaped at Henry.

“I hardly know anything,” she said.

“The first descriptive ballet seen in London, England,” said Henry, quietly, “was ‘The Tavern Bilkers,’ which was played at Drury Lane in⁠—in seventeen⁠—something.”

“Was it?”

“And the earliest modern ballet on record was that given by⁠—by someone to celebrate the marriage of the Duke of Milan in 1489.”

There was no doubt or hesitation about the date this time. It was grappled to his memory by hoops of steel owing to the singular coincidence of it being also his telephone number. He gave it out with a roll, and the girl’s eyes widened.

“What an awful lot you know!”

“Oh, no,” said Henry, modestly. “I read a great deal.”

“It must be splendid to know a lot,” she said, wistfully. “I’ve never had time for reading. I’ve always wanted to. I think you’re wonderful!”

Henry’s soul was expanding like a flower and purring like a well-tickled cat. Never in his life had he been admired by a woman. The sensation was intoxicating.

Silence fell upon them. They started to walk back to the farm, warned by the distant ringing of a bell that supper was about to materialize. It was not a musical bell, but distance and the magic of this unusual moment lent it charm. The sun was setting. It threw a crimson carpet across the silvery lake. The air was very still. The creatures, unclassified by science, who might have been mistaken for mosquitoes had their presence been possible at Ye Bonnie Briar-Bush Farm, were biting harder than ever. But Henry heeded them not. He did not even slap at them. They drank their fill of his blood and went away to put their friends on to this good thing; but for Henry they did not exist. Strange things were happening to him. And, lying awake that night in bed, he recognized the truth. He was in love.

After that, for the remainder of his stay, they were always together. They walked in the woods, they sat by the silvery lake. He poured out the treasures of his learning for her, and she looked at him with reverent eyes, uttering from time to time a soft “Yes” or a musical “Gee!”

In due season Henry went back to New York.

“You’re dead wrong about love, Mills,” said his sentimental fellow-cashier, shortly after his return. “You ought to get married.”

“I’m going to,” replied Henry, briskly. “Week tomorrow.”

Which stunned the other so thoroughly that he gave a customer who entered at that moment fifteen dollars for a ten-dollar cheque, and had to do some excited telephoning after the bank had closed.

Henry’s first year as a married man was the happiest of his life. He had always heard this period described as the most perilous of matrimony. He had braced himself for clashings of tastes, painful adjustments of character, sudden and unavoidable quarrels. Nothing of the kind happened. From the very beginning they settled down in perfect harmony. She merged with his life as smoothly as one river joins another. He did not even have to alter his habits. Every morning he had his breakfast at eight, smoked a cigarette, and walked to the Underground. At five he left the bank, and at six he arrived home, for it was his practice to walk the first two miles of the way, breathing deeply and regularly. Then dinner. Then the quiet evening. Sometimes the moving-pictures, but generally the quiet evening, he reading the Encyclopaedia⁠—aloud now⁠—Minnie darning his socks, but never ceasing to listen.

Each day brought the same sense of grateful amazement that he should be so wonderfully happy, so extraordinarily peaceful. Everything was as perfect as it could be. Minnie was looking a different girl. She had lost her drawn look. She was filling out.

Sometimes he would suspend his reading for a moment, and look across at her. At first he would see only her soft hair, as she bent over her sewing. Then, wondering at the silence, she would look up, and he would meet her big eyes. And then Henry would gurgle with happiness, and demand of himself, silently:

“Can you beat it!”

It was the anniversary of their wedding. They celebrated it in fitting style. They dined at a crowded and exhilarating Italian restaurant on a street off Seventh Avenue, where red wine was included in the bill, and excitable people, probably extremely clever, sat round at small tables and talked all together at the top of their voices. After dinner they saw a musical comedy. And then⁠—the great event of the night⁠—they went on to supper at a glittering restaurant near Times Square.

There was something about supper at an expensive restaurant which had always appealed to Henry’s imagination. Earnest devourer as he was of the solids of literature, he had tasted from time to time its lighter face⁠—those novels which begin with the hero supping in the midst of the glittering throng and having his attention attracted to a distinguished-looking elderly man with a grey imperial who is entering with a girl so strikingly beautiful that the revellers turn, as she passes, to look after her. And then, as he sits and smokes, a waiter comes up to the hero and, with a soft “Pardon, m’sieu!” hands him a note.

The atmosphere of Geisenheimer’s suggested all that sort of thing to Henry. They had finished supper, and he was smoking a cigar⁠—his second that day. He leaned back in his chair and surveyed the scene. He felt braced up, adventurous. He had that feeling, which comes to all quiet men who like to sit at home and read, that this was the sort of atmosphere in which he really belonged. The brightness of it all⁠—the dazzling lights, the music, the hubbub, in which the deep-throated gurgle of the wine-agent surprised while drinking soup blended with the shriller note of the chorus girl calling to her mate⁠—these things got Henry. He was thirty-six next birthday, but he felt a youngish twenty-one.

A voice spoke at his side. Henry looked up, to perceive Sidney Mercer.

The passage of a year, which had turned Henry into a married man, had turned Sidney Mercer into something so magnificent that the spectacle for a moment deprived Henry of speech. Faultless evening dress clung with loving closeness to Sidney’s lissom form. Gleaming shoes of perfect patent leather covered his feet. His light hair was brushed back into a smooth sleekness on which the electric lights shone like stars on some beautiful pool. His practically chinless face beamed amiably over a spotless collar.

Henry wore blue serge.

“What are you doing here, Henry, old top?” said the vision. “I didn’t know you ever came among the bright lights.”

His eyes wandered off to Minnie. There was admiration in them, for Minnie was looking her prettiest.

“Wife,” said Henry, recovering speech. And to Minnie: “Mr. Mercer. Old friend.”

“So you’re married? Wish you luck. How’s the bank?”

Henry said the bank was doing as well as could be expected.

“You still on the stage?”

Mr. Mercer shook his head importantly.

“Got better job. Professional dancer at this show. Rolling in money. Why aren’t you dancing?”

The words struck a jarring note. The lights and the music until that moment had had a subtle psychological effect on Henry, enabling him to hypnotize himself into a feeling that it was not inability to dance that kept him in his seat, but that he had had so much of that sort of thing that he really preferred to sit quietly and look on for a change. Sidney’s question changed all that. It made him face the truth.

“I don’t dance.”

“For the love of Mike! I bet Mrs. Mills does. Would you care for a turn, Mrs. Mills?”

“No, thank you, really.”

But remorse was now at work on Henry. He perceived that he had been standing in the way of Minnie’s pleasure. Of course she wanted to dance. All women did. She was only refusing for his sake.

“Nonsense, Min. Go to it.”

Minnie looked doubtful.

“Of course you must dance, Min. I shall be all right. I’ll sit here and smoke.”

The next moment Minnie and Sidney were treading the complicated measure; and simultaneously Henry ceased to be a youngish twenty-one and was even conscious of a fleeting doubt as to whether he was really only thirty-five.

Boil the whole question of old age down, and what it amounts to is that a man is young as long as he can dance without getting lumbago, and, if he cannot dance, he is never young at all. This was the truth that forced itself upon Henry Wallace Mills, as he sat watching his wife moving over the floor in the arms of Sidney Mercer. Even he could see that Minnie danced well. He thrilled at the sight of her gracefulness; and for the first time since his marriage he became introspective. It had never struck him before how much younger Minnie was than himself. When she had signed the paper at the City Hall on the occasion of the purchase of the marriage licence, she had given her age, he remembered now, as twenty-six. It had made no impression on him at the time. Now, however, he perceived clearly that between twenty-six and thirty-five there was a gap of nine years; and a chill sensation came upon him of being old and stodgy. How dull it must be for poor little Minnie to be cooped up night after night with such an old fogy? Other men took their wives out and gave them a good time, dancing half the night with them. All he could do was to sit at home and read Minnie dull stuff from the Encyclopaedia. What a life for the poor child! Suddenly, he felt acutely jealous of the rubber-jointed Sidney Mercer, a man whom hitherto he had always heartily despised.

The music stopped. They came back to the table, Minnie with a pink glow on her face that made her younger than ever; Sidney, the insufferable ass, grinning and smirking and pretending to be eighteen. They looked like a couple of children⁠—Henry, catching sight of himself in a mirror, was surprised to find that his hair was not white.

Half an hour later, in the cab going home, Minnie, half asleep, was aroused by a sudden stiffening of the arm that encircled her waist and a sudden snort close to her ear.

It was Henry Wallace Mills resolving that he would learn to dance.

Being of a literary turn of mind and also economical, Henry’s first step towards his new ambition was to buy a fifty-cent book entitled The A.B.C. of Modern Dancing, by “Tango.” It would, he felt⁠—not without reason⁠—be simpler and less expensive if he should learn the steps by the aid of this treatise than by the more customary method of taking lessons. But quite early in the proceedings he was faced by complications. In the first place, it was his intention to keep what he was doing a secret from Minnie, in order to be able to give her a pleasant surprise on her birthday, which would be coming round in a few weeks. In the second place, The A.B.C. of Modern Dancing proved on investigation far more complex than its title suggested.

These two facts were the ruin of the literary method, for, while it was possible to study the text and the plates at the bank, the home was the only place in which he could attempt to put the instructions into practice. You cannot move the right foot along dotted line A B and bring the left foot round curve C D in a paying-cashier’s cage in a bank, nor, if you are at all sensitive to public opinion, on the pavement going home. And while he was trying to do it in the parlour of the flat one night when he imagined that Minnie was in the kitchen cooking supper, she came in unexpectedly to ask how he wanted the steak cooked. He explained that he had had a sudden touch of cramp, but the incident shook his nerve.

After this he decided that he must have lessons.

Complications did not cease with this resolve. Indeed, they became more acute. It was not that there was any difficulty about finding an instructor. The papers were full of their advertisements. He selected a Mme. Gavarni because she lived in a convenient spot. Her house was in a side street, with a station within easy reach. The real problem was when to find time for the lessons. His life was run on such a regular schedule that he could hardly alter so important a moment in it as the hour of his arrival home without exciting comment. Only deceit could provide a solution.

“Min, dear,” he said at breakfast.

“Yes, Henry?”

Henry turned mauve. He had never lied to her before.

“I’m not getting enough exercise.”

“Why you look so well.”

“I get a kind of heavy feeling sometimes. I think I’ll put on another mile or so to my walk on my way home. So⁠—so I’ll be back a little later in future.”

“Very well, dear.”

It made him feel like a particularly low type of criminal, but, by abandoning his walk, he was now in a position to devote an hour a day to the lessons; and Mme. Gavarni had said that that would be ample.

“Sure, Bill,” she had said. She was a breezy old lady with a military moustache and an unconventional manner with her clientele. “You come to me an hour a day, and, if you haven’t two left feet, we’ll make you the pet of society in a month.”

“Is that so?”

“It sure is. I never had a failure yet with a pupe, except one. And that wasn’t my fault.”

“Had he two left feet?”

“Hadn’t any feet at all. Fell off of a roof after the second lesson, and had to have ’em cut off him. At that, I could have learned him to tango with wooden legs, only he got kind of discouraged. Well, see you Monday, Bill. Be good.”

And the kindly old soul, retrieving her chewing gum from the panel of the door where she had placed it to facilitate conversation, dismissed him.

And now began what, in later years, Henry unhesitatingly considered the most miserable period of his existence. There may be times when a man who is past his first youth feels more unhappy and ridiculous than when he is taking a course of lessons in the modern dance, but it is not easy to think of them. Physically, his new experience caused Henry acute pain. Muscles whose existence he had never suspected came into being for⁠—apparently⁠—the sole purpose of aching. Mentally he suffered even more.

This was partly due to the peculiar method of instruction in vogue at Mme. Gavarni’s, and partly to the fact that, when it came to the actual lessons, a sudden niece was produced from a back room to give them. She was a blonde young lady with laughing blue eyes, and Henry never clasped her trim waist without feeling a black-hearted traitor to his absent Minnie. Conscience racked him. Add to this the sensation of being a strange, jointless creature with abnormally large hands and feet, and the fact that it was Mme. Gavarni’s custom to stand in a corner of the room during the hour of tuition, chewing gum and making comments, and it is not surprising that Henry became wan and thin.

Mme. Gavarni had the trying habit of endeavouring to stimulate Henry by frequently comparing his performance and progress with that of a cripple whom she claimed to have taught at some previous time.

She and the niece would have spirited arguments in his presence as to whether or not the cripple had one-stepped better after his third lesson than Henry after his fifth. The niece said no. As well, perhaps, but not better. Mme. Gavarni said that the niece was forgetting the way the cripple had slid his feet. The niece said yes, that was so, maybe she was. Henry said nothing. He merely perspired.

He made progress slowly. This could not be blamed upon his instructress, however. She did all that one woman could to speed him up. Sometimes she would even pursue him into the street in order to show him on the sidewalk a means of doing away with some of his numerous errors of technique, the elimination of which would help to make him definitely the cripple’s superior. The misery of embracing her indoors was as nothing to the misery of embracing her on the sidewalk.

Nevertheless, having paid for his course of lessons in advance, and being a determined man, he did make progress. One day, to his surprise, he found his feet going through the motions without any definite exercise of willpower on his part⁠—almost as if they were endowed with an intelligence of their own. It was the turning-point. It filled him with a singular pride such as he had not felt since his first rise of salary at the bank.

Mme. Gavarni was moved to dignified praise.

“Some speed, kid!” she observed. “Some speed!”

Henry blushed modestly. It was the accolade.

Every day, as his skill at the dance became more manifest, Henry found occasion to bless the moment when he had decided to take lessons. He shuddered sometimes at the narrowness of his escape from disaster. Every day now it became more apparent to him, as he watched Minnie, that she was chafing at the monotony of her life. That fatal supper had wrecked the peace of their little home. Or perhaps it had merely precipitated the wreck. Sooner or later, he told himself, she was bound to have wearied of the dullness of her lot. At any rate, dating from shortly after that disturbing night, a lack of ease and spontaneity seemed to creep into their relations. A blight settled on the home.

Little by little Minnie and he were growing almost formal towards each other. She had lost her taste for being read to in the evenings and had developed a habit of pleading a headache and going early to bed. Sometimes, catching her eye when she was not expecting it, he surprised an enigmatic look in it. It was a look, however, which he was able to read. It meant that she was bored.

It might have been expected that this state of affairs would have distressed Henry. It gave him, on the contrary, a pleasurable thrill. It made him feel that it had been worth it, going through the torments of learning to dance. The more bored she was now the greater her delight when he revealed himself dramatically. If she had been contented with the life which he could offer her as a non-dancer, what was the sense of losing weight and money in order to learn the steps? He enjoyed the silent, uneasy evenings which had supplanted those cheery ones of the first year of their marriage. The more uncomfortable they were now, the more they would appreciate their happiness later on. Henry belonged to the large circle of human beings who consider that there is acuter pleasure in being suddenly cured of toothache than in never having toothache at all.

He merely chuckled inwardly, therefore, when, on the morning of her birthday, having presented her with a purse which he knew she had long coveted, he found himself thanked in a perfunctory and mechanical way.

“I’m glad you like it,” he said.

Minnie looked at the purse without enthusiasm.

“It’s just what I wanted,” she said, listlessly.

“Well, I must be going. I’ll get the tickets for the theatre while I’m in town.”

Minnie hesitated for a moment.

“I don’t believe I want to go to the theatre much tonight, Henry.”

“Nonsense. We must have a party on your birthday. We’ll go to the theatre and then we’ll have supper at Geisenheimer’s again. I may be working after hours at the bank today, so I guess I won’t come home. I’ll meet you at that Italian place at six.”

“Very well. You’ll miss your walk, then?”

“Yes. It doesn’t matter for once.”

“No. You’re still going on with your walks, then?”

“Oh, yes, yes.”

“Three miles every day?”

“Never miss it. It keeps me well.”

“Yes.”

“Goodbye, darling.”

“Goodbye.”

Yes, there was a distinct chill in the atmosphere. Thank goodness, thought Henry, as he walked to the station, it would be different tomorrow morning. He had rather the feeling of a young knight who has done perilous deeds in secret for his lady, and is about at last to receive credit for them.

Geisenheimer’s was as brilliant and noisy as it had been before when Henry reached it that night, escorting a reluctant Minnie. After a silent dinner and a theatrical performance during which neither had exchanged more than a word between the acts, she had wished to abandon the idea of supper and go home. But a squad of police could not have kept Henry from Geisenheimer’s. His hour had come. He had thought of this moment for weeks, and he visualized every detail of his big scene. At first they would sit at their table in silent discomfort. Then Sidney Mercer would come up, as before, to ask Minnie to dance. And then⁠—then⁠—Henry would rise and, abandoning all concealment, exclaim grandly: “No! I am going to dance with my wife!” Stunned amazement of Minnie, followed by wild joy. Utter rout and discomfiture of that pinhead, Mercer. And then, when they returned to their table, he breathing easily and regularly as a trained dancer in perfect condition should, she tottering a little with the sudden rapture of it all, they would sit with their heads close together and start a new life. That was the scenario which Henry had drafted.

It worked out⁠—up to a certain point⁠—as smoothly as ever it had done in his dreams. The only hitch which he had feared⁠—to wit, the nonappearance of Sidney Mercer, did not occur. It would spoil the scene a little, he had felt, if Sidney Mercer did not present himself to play the role of foil; but he need have had no fears on this point. Sidney had the gift, not uncommon in the chinless, smooth-baked type of man, of being able to see a pretty girl come into the restaurant even when his back was towards the door. They had hardly seated themselves when he was beside their table bleating greetings.

“Why, Henry! Always here!”

“Wife’s birthday.”

“Many happy returns of the day, Mrs. Mills. We’ve just time for one turn before the waiter comes with your order. Come along.”

The band was staggering into a fresh tune, a tune that Henry knew well. Many a time had Mme. Gavarni hammered it out of an aged and unwilling piano in order that he might dance with her blue-eyed niece. He rose.

“No!” he exclaimed grandly. “I am going to dance with my wife!”

He had not underestimated the sensation which he had looked forward to causing. Minnie looked at him with round eyes. Sidney Mercer was obviously startled.

“I thought you couldn’t dance.”

“You never can tell,” said Henry, lightly. “It looks easy enough. Anyway, I’ll try.”

“Henry!” cried Minnie, as he clasped her.

He had supposed that she would say something like that, but hardly in that kind of voice. There is a way of saying “Henry!” which conveys surprised admiration and remorseful devotion; but she had not said it in that way. There had been a note of horror in her voice. Henry’s was a simple mind, and the obvious solution, that Minnie thought that he had drunk too much red wine at the Italian restaurant, did not occur to him.

He was, indeed, at the moment too busy to analyse vocal inflections. They were on the floor now, and it was beginning to creep upon him like a chill wind that the scenario which he had mapped out was subject to unforeseen alterations.

At first all had been well. They had been almost alone on the floor, and he had begun moving his feet along dotted line A B with the smooth vim which had characterized the last few of his course of lessons. And then, as if by magic, he was in the midst of a crowd⁠—a mad, jigging crowd that seemed to have no sense of direction, no ability whatever to keep out of his way. For a moment the tuition of weeks stood by him. Then, a shock, a stifled cry from Minnie, and the first collision had occurred. And with that all the knowledge which he had so painfully acquired passed from Henry’s mind, leaving it an agitated blank. This was a situation for which his slidings round an empty room had not prepared him. Stage-fright at its worst came upon him. Somebody charged him in the back and asked querulously where he thought he was going. As he turned with a half-formed notion of apologizing, somebody else rammed him from the other side. He had a momentary feeling as if he were going down the Niagara Rapids in a barrel, and then he was lying on the floor with Minnie on top of him. Somebody tripped over his head.

He sat up. Somebody helped him to his feet. He was aware of Sidney Mercer at his side.

“Do it again,” said Sidney, all grin and sleek immaculateness. “It went down big, but lots of them didn’t see it.”

The place was full of demon laughter.

“Min!” said Henry.

They were in the parlour of their little flat. Her back was towards him, and he could not see her face. She did not answer. She preserved the silence which she had maintained since they had left the restaurant. Not once during the journey home had she spoken.

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked on. Outside an Elevated train rumbled by. Voices came from the street.

“Min, I’m sorry.”

Silence.

“I thought I could do it. Oh, Lord!” Misery was in every note of Henry’s voice. “I’ve been taking lessons every day since that night we went to that place first. It’s no good⁠—I guess it’s like the old woman said. I’ve got two left feet, and it’s no use my ever trying to do it. I kept it secret from you, what I was doing. I wanted it to be a wonderful surprise for you on your birthday. I knew how sick and tired you were getting of being married to a man who never took you out, because he couldn’t dance. I thought it was up to me to learn, and give you a good time, like other men’s wives. I⁠—”

“Henry!”

She had turned, and with a dull amazement he saw that her whole face had altered. Her eyes were shining with a radiant happiness.

“Henry! Was that why you went to that house⁠—to take dancing lessons?”

He stared at her without speaking. She came to him, laughing.

“So that was why you pretended you were still doing your walks?”

“You knew!”

“I saw you come out of that house. I was just going to the station at the end of the street, and I saw you. There was a girl with you, a girl with yellow hair. You hugged her!”

Henry licked his dry lips.

“Min,” he said huskily. “You won’t believe it, but she was trying to teach me the Jelly Roll.”

She held him by the lapels of his coat.

“Of course I believe it. I understand it all now. I thought at the time that you were just saying goodbye to her! Oh, Henry, why ever didn’t you tell me what you were doing? Oh, yes, I know you wanted it to be a surprise for me on my birthday, but you must have seen there was something wrong. You must have seen that I thought something. Surely you noticed how I’ve been these last weeks?”

“I thought it was just that you were finding it dull.”

“Dull! Here, with you!”

“It was after you danced that night with Sidney Mercer. I thought the whole thing out. You’re so much younger than I, Min. It didn’t seem right for you to have to spend your life being read to by a fellow like me.”

“But I loved it!”

“You had to dance. Every girl has to. Women can’t do without it.”

“This one can. Henry, listen! You remember how ill and worn out I was when you met me first at that farm? Do you know why it was? It was because I had been slaving away for years at one of those places where you go in and pay five cents to dance with the lady instructresses. I was a lady instructress. Henry! Just think what I went through! Every day having to drag a million heavy men with large feet round a big room. I tell you, you are a professional compared with some of them! They trod on my feet and leaned their two hundred pounds on me and nearly killed me. Now perhaps you can understand why I’m not crazy about dancing! Believe me, Henry, the kindest thing you can do to me is to tell me I must never dance again.”

“You⁠—you⁠—” he gulped. “Do you really mean that you can⁠—can stand the sort of life we’re living here? You really don’t find it dull?”

“Dull!”

She ran to the bookshelf, and came back with a large volume.

“Read to me, Henry, dear. Read me something now. It seems ages and ages since you used to. Read me something out of the Encyclopaedia!”

Henry was looking at the book in his hand. In the midst of a joy that almost overwhelmed him, his orderly mind was conscious of something wrong.

“But this is the Med⁠–⁠Mum volume, darling.”

“Is it? Well, that’ll be all right. Read me all about ‘Mum.’ ”

“But we’re only in the Cal⁠–⁠Cha⁠—” He wavered. “Oh, well⁠—I” he went on, recklessly. “I don’t care. Do you?”

“No. Sit down here, dear, and I’ll sit on the floor.”

Henry cleared his throat.

“ ‘Milicz, or Militsch (d. 1374), Bohemian divine, was the most influential among those preachers and writers in Moravia and Bohemia who, during the fourteenth century, in a certain sense paved the way for the reforming activity of Huss.’ ”

He looked down. Minnie’s soft hair was resting against his knee. He put out a hand and stroked it. She turned and looked up, and he met her big eyes.

“Can you beat it?” said Henry, silently, to himself.

A Sea of Troubles

Mr. Meggs’s mind was made up. He was going to commit suicide.

There had been moments, in the interval which had elapsed between the first inception of the idea and his present state of fixed determination, when he had wavered. In these moments he had debated, with Hamlet, the question whether it was nobler in the mind to suffer, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. But all that was over now. He was resolved.

Mr. Meggs’s point, the main plank, as it were, in his suicidal platform, was that with him it was beside the question whether or not it was nobler to suffer in the mind. The mind hardly entered into it at all. What he had to decide was whether it was worth while putting up any longer with the perfectly infernal pain in his stomach. For Mr. Meggs was a martyr to indigestion. As he was also devoted to the pleasures of the table, life had become for him one long battle, in which, whatever happened, he always got the worst of it.

He was sick of it. He looked back down the vista of the years, and found therein no hope for the future. One after the other all the patent medicines in creation had failed him. Smith’s Supreme Digestive Pellets⁠—he had given them a more than fair trial. Blenkinsop’s Liquid Life-Giver⁠—he had drunk enough of it to float a ship. Perkins’s Premier Pain-Preventer, strongly recommended by the sword-swallowing lady at Barnum and Bailey’s⁠—he had wallowed in it. And so on down the list. His interior organism had simply sneered at the lot of them.

“Death, where is thy sting?” thought Mr. Meggs, and forthwith began to make his preparations.

Those who have studied the matter say that the tendency to commit suicide is greatest among those who have passed their fifty-fifth year, and that the rate is twice as great for unoccupied males as for occupied males. Unhappy Mr. Meggs, accordingly, got it, so to speak, with both barrels. He was fifty-six, and he was perhaps the most unoccupied adult to be found in the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. He toiled not, neither did he spin. Twenty years before, an unexpected legacy had placed him in a position to indulge a natural taste for idleness to the utmost. He was at that time, as regards his professional life, a clerk in a rather obscure shipping firm. Out of office hours he had a mild fondness for letters, which took the form of meaning to read right through the hundred best books one day, but actually contenting himself with the daily paper and an occasional magazine.

Such was Mr. Meggs at thirty-six. The necessity for working for a living and a salary too small to permit of self-indulgence among the more expensive and deleterious dishes on the bill of fare had up to that time kept his digestion within reasonable bounds. Sometimes he had twinges; more often he had none.

Then came the legacy, and with it Mr. Meggs let himself go. He left London and retired to his native village, where, with a French cook and a series of secretaries to whom he dictated at long intervals occasional paragraphs of a book on British Butterflies on which he imagined himself to be at work, he passed the next twenty years. He could afford to do himself well, and he did himself extremely well. Nobody urged him to take exercise, so he took no exercise. Nobody warned him of the perils of lobster and welsh rabbits to a man of sedentary habits, for it was nobody’s business to warn him. On the contrary, people rather encouraged the lobster side of his character, for he was a hospitable soul and liked to have his friends dine with him. The result was that Nature, as is her wont, laid for him, and got him. It seemed to Mr. Meggs that he woke one morning to find himself a chronic dyspeptic. That was one of the hardships of his position, to his mind. The thing seemed to hit him suddenly out of a blue sky. One moment, all appeared to be peace and joy; the next, a lively and irritable wildcat with red-hot claws seemed somehow to have introduced itself into his interior.

So Mr. Meggs decided to end it.

In this crisis of his life the old methodical habits of his youth returned to him. A man cannot be a clerk in even an obscure firm of shippers for a great length of time without acquiring system, and Mr. Meggs made his preparations calmly and with a forethought worthy of a better cause.

And so we find him, one glorious June morning, seated at his desk, ready for the end.

Outside, the sun beat down upon the orderly streets of the village. Dogs dozed in the warm dust. Men who had to work went about their toil moistly, their minds far away in shady public houses.

But Mr. Meggs, in his study, was cool both in mind and body.

Before him, on the desk, lay six little slips of paper. They were banknotes, and they represented, with the exception of a few pounds, his entire worldly wealth. Beside them were six letters, six envelopes, and six postage stamps. Mr. Meggs surveyed them calmly.

He would not have admitted it, but he had had a lot of fun writing those letters. The deliberation as to who should be his heirs had occupied him pleasantly for several days, and, indeed, had taken his mind off his internal pains at times so thoroughly that he had frequently surprised himself in an almost cheerful mood. Yes, he would have denied it, but it had been great sport sitting in his armchair, thinking whom he should pick out from England’s teeming millions to make happy with his money. All sorts of schemes had passed through his mind. He had a sense of power which the mere possession of the money had never given him. He began to understand why millionaires make freak wills. At one time he had toyed with the idea of selecting someone at random from the London Directory and bestowing on him all he had to bequeath. He had only abandoned the scheme when it occurred to him that he himself would not be in a position to witness the recipient’s stunned delight. And what was the good of starting a thing like that, if you were not to be in at the finish?

Sentiment succeeded whimsicality. His old friends of the office⁠—those were the men to benefit. What good fellows they had been! Some were dead, but he still kept intermittently in touch with half a dozen of them. And⁠—an important point⁠—he knew their present addresses.

This point was important, because Mr. Meggs had decided not to leave a will, but to send the money direct to the beneficiaries. He knew what wills were. Even in quite straightforward circumstances they often made trouble. There had been some slight complication about his own legacy twenty years ago. Somebody had contested the will, and before the thing was satisfactorily settled the lawyers had got away with about twenty percent of the whole. No, no wills. If he made one, and then killed himself, it might be upset on a plea of insanity. He knew of no relative who might consider himself entitled to the money, but there was the chance that some remote cousin existed; and then the comrades of his youth might fail to collect after all.

He declined to run the risk. Quietly and by degrees he had sold out the stocks and shares in which his fortune was invested, and deposited the money in his London bank. Six piles of large notes, dividing the total into six equal parts; six letters couched in a strain of reminiscent pathos and manly resignation; six envelopes, legibly addressed; six postage-stamps; and that part of his preparations was complete. He licked the stamps and placed them on the envelopes; took the notes and inserted them in the letters; folded the letters and thrust them into the envelopes; sealed the envelopes; and unlocking the drawer of his desk produced a small, black, ugly-looking bottle.

He opened the bottle and poured the contents into a medicine-glass.

It had not been without considerable thought that Mr. Meggs had decided upon the method of his suicide. The knife, the pistol, the rope⁠—they had all presented their charms to him. He had further examined the merits of drowning and of leaping to destruction from a height.

There were flaws in each. Either they were painful, or else they were messy. Mr. Meggs had a tidy soul, and he revolted from the thought of spoiling his figure, as he would most certainly do if he drowned himself; or the carpet, as he would if he used the pistol; or the pavement⁠—and possibly some innocent pedestrian, as must infallibly occur should he leap off the Monument. The knife was out of the question. Instinct told him that it would hurt like the very dickens.

No; poison was the thing. Easy to take, quick to work, and on the whole rather agreeable than otherwise.

Mr. Meggs hid the glass behind the inkpot and rang the bell.

“Has Miss Pillenger arrived?” he inquired of the servant.

“She has just come, sir.”

“Tell her that I am waiting for her here.”

Jane Pillenger was an institution. Her official position was that of private secretary and typist to Mr. Meggs. That is to say, on the rare occasions when Mr. Meggs’s conscience overcame his indolence to the extent of forcing him to resume work on his British Butterflies, it was to Miss Pillenger that he addressed the few rambling and incoherent remarks which constituted his idea of a regular hard, slogging spell of literary composition. When he sank back in his chair, speechless and exhausted like a Marathon runner who has started his sprint a mile or two too soon, it was Miss Pillenger’s task to unscramble her shorthand notes, type them neatly, and place them in their special drawer in the desk.

Miss Pillenger was a wary spinster of austere views, uncertain age, and a deep-rooted suspicion of men⁠—a suspicion which, to do an abused sex justice, they had done nothing to foster. Men had always been almost coldly correct in their dealings with Miss Pillenger. In her twenty years of experience as a typist and secretary she had never had to refuse with scorn and indignation so much as a box of chocolates from any of her employers. Nevertheless, she continued to be icily on her guard. The clenched fist of her dignity was always drawn back, ready to swing on the first male who dared to step beyond the bounds of professional civility.

Such was Miss Pillenger. She was the last of a long line of unprotected English girlhood which had been compelled by straitened circumstances to listen for hire to the appallingly dreary nonsense which Mr. Meggs had to impart on the subject of British Butterflies. Girls had come, and girls had gone, blondes, ex-blondes, brunettes, ex-brunettes, near-blondes, near-brunettes; they had come buoyant, full of hope and life, tempted by the lavish salary which Mr. Meggs had found himself after a while compelled to pay; and they had dropped off, one after another, like exhausted bivalves, unable to endure the crushing boredom of life in the village which had given Mr. Meggs to the world. For Mr. Meggs’s hometown was no City of Pleasure. Remove the Vicar’s magic-lantern and the try-your-weight machine opposite the post office, and you practically eliminated the temptations to tread the primrose path. The only young men in the place were silent, gaping youths, at whom lunacy commissioners looked sharply and suspiciously when they met. The tango was unknown, and the one-step. The only form of dance extant⁠—and that only at the rarest intervals⁠—was a sort of polka not unlike the movements of a slightly inebriated boxing kangaroo. Mr. Meggs’s secretaries and typists gave the town one startled, horrified glance, and stampeded for London like frightened ponies.

Not so Miss Pillenger. She remained. She was a business woman, and it was enough for her that she received a good salary. For five pounds a week she would have undertaken a post as secretary and typist to a Polar Expedition. For six years she had been with Mr. Meggs, and doubtless she looked forward to being with him at least six years more.

Perhaps it was the pathos of this thought which touched Mr. Meggs, as she sailed, notebook in hand, through the doorway of the study. Here, he told himself, was a confiding girl, all unconscious of impending doom, relying on him as a daughter relies on her father. He was glad that he had not forgotten Miss Pillenger when he was making his preparations.

He had certainly not forgotten Miss Pillenger. On his desk beside the letters lay a little pile of notes, amounting in all to five hundred pounds⁠—her legacy.

Miss Pillenger was always businesslike. She sat down in her chair, opened her notebook, moistened her pencil, and waited expectantly for Mr. Meggs to clear his throat and begin work on the butterflies. She was surprised when, instead of frowning, as was his invariable practice when bracing himself for composition, he bestowed upon her a sweet, slow smile.

All that was maidenly and defensive in Miss Pillenger leaped to arms under that smile. It ran in and out among her nerve-centres. It had been long in arriving, this moment of crisis, but here it undoubtedly was at last. After twenty years an employer was going to court disaster by trying to flirt with her.

Mr. Meggs went on smiling. You cannot classify smiles. Nothing lends itself so much to a variety of interpretations as a smile. Mr. Meggs thought he was smiling the sad, tender smile of a man who, knowing himself to be on the brink of the tomb, bids farewell to a faithful employee. Miss Pillenger’s view was that he was smiling like an abandoned old rip who ought to have been ashamed of himself.

“No, Miss Pillenger,” said Mr. Meggs, “I shall not work this morning. I shall want you, if you will be so good, to post these six letters for me.”

Miss Pillenger took the letters. Mr. Meggs surveyed her tenderly.

“Miss Pillenger, you have been with me a long time now. Six years, is it not? Six years. Well, well. I don’t think I have ever made you a little present, have I?”

“You give me a good salary.”

“Yes, but I want to give you something more. Six years is a long time. I have come to regard you with a different feeling from that which the ordinary employer feels for his secretary. You and I have worked together for six long years. Surely I may be permitted to give you some token of my appreciation of your fidelity.” He took the pile of notes. “These are for you, Miss Pillenger.”

He rose and handed them to her. He eyed her for a moment with all the sentimentality of a man whose digestion has been out of order for over two decades. The pathos of the situation swept him away. He bent over Miss Pillenger, and kissed her on the forehead.

Smiles excepted, there is nothing so hard to classify as a kiss. Mr. Meggs’s notion was that he kissed Miss Pillenger much as some great general, wounded unto death, might have kissed his mother, his sister, or some particularly sympathetic aunt; Miss Pillenger’s view, differing substantially from this, may be outlined in her own words.

“Ah!” she cried, as, dealing Mr. Meggs’s conveniently placed jaw a blow which, had it landed an inch lower down, might have knocked him out, she sprang to her feet. “How dare you! I’ve been waiting for this Mr. Meggs. I have seen it in your eye. I have expected it. Let me tell you that I am not at all the sort of girl with whom it is safe to behave like that. I can protect myself. I am only a working-girl⁠—”

Mr. Meggs, who had fallen back against the desk as a stricken pugilist falls on the ropes, pulled himself together to protest.

“Miss Pillenger,” he cried, aghast, “you misunderstand me. I had no intention⁠—”

“Misunderstand you? Bah! I am only a working-girl⁠—”

“Nothing was farther from my mind⁠—”

“Indeed! Nothing was farther from your mind! You give me money, you shower your vile kisses on me, but nothing was farther from your mind than the obvious interpretation of such behaviour!” Before coming to Mr. Meggs, Miss Pillenger had been secretary to an Indiana novelist. She had learned style from the master. “Now that you have gone too far, you are frightened at what you have done. You well may be, Mr. Meggs. I am only a working-girl⁠—”

“Miss Pillenger, I implore you⁠—”

“Silence! I am only a working-girl⁠—”

A wave of mad fury swept over Mr. Meggs. The shock of the blow and still more of the frightful ingratitude of this horrible woman nearly made him foam at the mouth.

“Don’t keep on saying you’re only a working-girl,” he bellowed. “You’ll drive me mad. Go. Go away from me. Get out. Go anywhere, but leave me alone!”

Miss Pillenger was not entirely sorry to obey the request. Mr. Meggs’s sudden fury had startled and frightened her. So long as she could end the scene victorious, she was anxious to withdraw.

“Yes, I will go,” she said, with dignity, as she opened the door. “Now that you have revealed yourself in your true colours, Mr. Meggs, this house is no fit place for a wor⁠—”

She caught her employer’s eye, and vanished hastily.

Mr. Meggs paced the room in a ferment. He had been shaken to his core by the scene. He boiled with indignation. That his kind thoughts should have been so misinterpreted⁠—it was too much. Of all ungrateful worlds, this world was the most⁠—

He stopped suddenly in his stride, partly because his shin had struck a chair, partly because an idea had struck his mind.

Hopping madly, he added one more parallel between himself and Hamlet by soliloquizing aloud.

“I’ll be hanged if I commit suicide,” he yelled.

And as he spoke the words a curious peace fell on him, as on a man who has awakened from a nightmare. He sat down at the desk. What an idiot he had been ever to contemplate self-destruction. What could have induced him to do it? By his own hand to remove himself, merely in order that a pack of ungrateful brutes might wallow in his money⁠—it was the scheme of a perfect fool.

He wouldn’t commit suicide. Not if he knew it. He would stick on and laugh at them. And if he did have an occasional pain inside, what of that? Napoleon had them, and look at him. He would be blowed if he committed suicide.

With the fire of a new resolve lighting up his eyes, he turned to seize the six letters and rifle them of their contents.

They were gone.

It took Mr. Meggs perhaps thirty seconds to recollect where they had gone to, and then it all came back to him. He had given them to the demon Pillenger, and, if he did not overtake her and get them back, she would mail them.

Of all the mixed thoughts which seethed in Mr. Meggs’s mind at that moment, easily the most prominent was the reflection that from his front door to the post office was a walk of less than five minutes.

Miss Pillenger walked down the sleepy street in the June sunshine, boiling, as Mr. Meggs had done, with indignation. She, too, had been shaken to the core. It was her intention to fulfil her duty by posting the letters which had been entrusted to her, and then to quit forever the service of one who, for six years a model employer, had at last forgotten himself and showed his true nature.

Her meditations were interrupted by a hoarse shout in her rear; and, turning, she perceived the model employer running rapidly towards her. His face was scarlet, his eyes wild, and he wore no hat.

Miss Pillenger’s mind worked swiftly. She took in the situation in a flash. Unrequited, guilty love had sapped Mr. Meggs’s reason, and she was to be the victim of his fury. She had read of scores of similar cases in the newspapers. How little she had ever imagined that she would be the heroine of one of these dramas of passion.

She looked for one brief instant up and down the street. Nobody was in sight. With a loud cry she began to run.

“Stop!”

It was the fierce voice of her pursuer. Miss Pillenger increased to third speed. As she did so, she had a vision of headlines.

“Stop!” roared Mr. Meggs.

“Unrequited passion made this man murderer,” thought Miss Pillenger.

“Stop!”

“Crazed with love he slays beautiful blonde,” flashed out in letters of crimson on the back of Miss Pillenger’s mind.

“Stop!”

“Spurned, he stabs her thrice.”

To touch the ground at intervals of twenty yards or so⁠—that was the ideal she strove after. She addressed herself to it with all the strength of her powerful mind.

In London, New York, Paris, and other cities where life is brisk, the spectacle of a hatless gentleman with a purple face pursuing his secretary through the streets at a rapid gallop would, of course, have excited little, if any, remark. But in Mr. Meggs’s hometown events were of rarer occurrence. The last milestone in the history of his native place had been the visit, two years before, of Bingley’s Stupendous Circus, which had paraded along the main street on its way to the next town, while zealous members of its staff visited the back premises of the houses and removed all the washing from the lines. Since then deep peace had reigned.

Gradually, therefore, as the chase warmed up, citizens of all shapes and sizes began to assemble. Miss Pillenger’s screams and the general appearance of Mr. Meggs gave food for thought. Having brooded over the situation, they decided at length to take a hand, with the result that as Mr. Meggs’s grasp fell upon Miss Pillenger the grasp of several of his fellow-townsmen fell upon him.

“Save me!” said Miss Pillenger.

Mr. Meggs pointed speechlessly to the letters, which she still grasped in her right hand. He had taken practically no exercise for twenty years, and the pace had told upon him.

Constable Gooch, guardian of the town’s welfare, tightened his hold on Mr. Meggs’s arm, and desired explanations.

“He⁠—he was going to murder me,” said Miss Pillenger.

“Kill him,” advised an austere bystander.

“What do you mean you were going to murder the lady?” inquired Constable Gooch.

Mr. Meggs found speech.

“I⁠—I⁠—I⁠—I only wanted those letters.”

“What for?”

“They’re mine.”

“You charge her with stealing ’em?”

“He gave them me to post with his own hands,” cried Miss Pillenger.

“I know I did, but I want them back.”

By this time the constable, though age had to some extent dimmed his sight, had recognized beneath the perspiration, features which, though they were distorted, were nevertheless those of one whom he respected as a leading citizen.

“Why, Mr. Meggs!” he said.

This identification by one in authority calmed, if it a little disappointed, the crowd. What it was they did not know, but, it was apparently not a murder, and they began to drift off.

“Why don’t you give Mr. Meggs his letters when he asks you, ma’am?” said the constable.

Miss Pillenger drew herself up haughtily.

“Here are your letters, Mr. Meggs, I hope we shall never meet again.”

Mr. Meggs nodded. That was his view, too.

All things work together for good. The following morning Mr. Meggs awoke from a dreamless sleep with a feeling that some curious change had taken place in him. He was abominably stiff, and to move his limbs was pain, but down in the centre of his being there was a novel sensation of lightness. He could have declared that he was happy.

Wincing, he dragged himself out of bed and limped to the window. He threw it open. It was a perfect morning. A cool breeze smote his face, bringing with it pleasant scents and the soothing sound of God’s creatures beginning a new day.

An astounding thought struck him.

“Why, I feel well!”

Then another.

“It must be the exercise I took yesterday. By George, I’ll do it regularly.”

He drank in the air luxuriously. Inside him, the wildcat gave him a sudden claw, but it was a halfhearted effort, the effort of one who knows that he is beaten. Mr. Meggs was so absorbed in his thoughts that he did not even notice it.

“London,” he was saying to himself. “One of these physical culture places.⁠ ⁠… Comparatively young man.⁠ ⁠… Put myself in their hands.⁠ ⁠… Mild, regular exercise.⁠ ⁠…”

He limped to the bathroom.

Mister Potter Takes a Rest Cure

Mr. John Hamilton Potter, founder and proprietor of the well-known New York publishing house of J. H. Potter, Inc., laid down the typescript which had been engaging his leisurely attention, and from the depths of his basket-chair gazed dreamily across the green lawns and gleaming flowerbeds to where Skeldings Hall basked in the pleasant June sunshine. He was feeling quietly happy. The waters of the moat glittered like liquid silver; a gentle breeze brought to his nostrils the scent of newly-cut grass; the doves in the immemorial elms cooed with precisely the right gentlemanly intonation; and he had not seen Clifford Gandle since luncheon. God, it seemed to Mr. Potter, was in his heaven and all was right with the world.

And how near, he reflected, he had come to missing all this delightful old-world peace. When, shortly after his arrival in England, he had met Lady Wickham at a Pen and Ink Club dinner and she had invited him to pay a visit to Skeldings, his first impulse had been to decline. His hostess was a woman of rather markedly overwhelming personality; and, inasmuch as he had only recently recovered from a nervous breakdown and had been ordered by his doctor complete rest and tranquillity, it had seemed to him that at close range and over an extended period of time she might be a little too much for the old system. Furthermore, she wrote novels: and that instinct of self-preservation which lurks in every publisher had suggested to him that behind her invitation lay a sinister desire to read these to him one by one with a view to getting him to produce them in America. Only the fact that he was a lover of the old and picturesque, coupled with the fact that Skeldings Hall dated back to the time of the Tudors, had caused him to accept.

Not once, however⁠—not even when Clifford Gandle was expressing to him with a politician’s trained verbosity his views on Unemployment and other weighty matters⁠—had he regretted his decision. When he looked back on his life of the past eighteen months⁠—a life spent in an inferno of shrilling telephones and authors, many of them female, popping in to abuse him for not advertising their books better⁠—he could almost fancy that he had been translated to Paradise.

A Paradise, moreover, which was not without its Peri. For at this moment there approached Mr. Potter across the lawn, walking springily as if she were constructed of whalebone and indiarubber, a girl. She was a boyish-looking girl, slim and graceful, and the red hair on her bare head glowed pleasingly in the sun.

“Hullo, Mr. Potter!” she said.

The publisher beamed upon her. This was Roberta Wickham, his hostess’s daughter, who had returned to her ancestral home two days ago from a visit to friends in the North. A friendly young thing, she had appealed to Mr. Potter from the first.

“Well, well, well!” said Mr. Potter.

“Don’t get up. What are you reading?” Bobbie Wickham picked up the manuscript. “Ethics of Suicide,” she read. “Cheery!”

Mr. Potter laughed indulgently.

“No doubt it seems an odd thing to be reading on such a day and in such surroundings. But a publisher is never free. This was sent over for my decision from my New York office. They won’t leave me alone, you see, even when I am on vacation.”

Bobbie Wickham’s hazel eyes clouded pensively.

“There’s a lot to be said for suicide,” she murmured. “If I had to see much of Clifford Gandle, I’d commit suicide myself.”

Mr. Potter started. He had always liked this child, but he had never dreamed that she was such a completely kindred soul.

“Don’t you like Mr. Gandle?”

“No.”

“Nor do I.”

“Nor does anyone,” said Bobbie, “except mother.” Her eyes clouded again. “Mother thinks he’s wonderful.”

“She does?”

“Yes.”

“Well, well!” said Mr. Potter.

Bobbie brooded.

“He’s a member of Parliament, you know.”

“Yes.”

“And they say he may be in the Cabinet any day.”

“So he gave me to understand.”

“And all that sort of thing is very bad for a man, don’t you think? I mean, it seems to make him so starchy.”

“The very word.”

“And pompous.”

“The exact adjective I would have selected,” agreed Mr. Potter. “In our frequent conversations, before you arrived, he addressed me as if I were a half-witted deputation of his constituents.”

“Did you see much of him before I came?”

“A great deal, though I did my best to avoid him.”

“He’s a difficult man to avoid.”

“Yes.” Mr. Potter chuckled sheepishly. “Shall I tell you something that happened a day or two ago? You must not let it go any farther, of course. I was coming out of the smoking-room one morning and I saw him approaching me along the passage. So⁠—so I jumped back and⁠—ha, ha!⁠—hid in a small cupboard.”

“Jolly sensible.”

“Yes. But unfortunately he opened the cupboard door and discovered me. It was exceedingly embarrassing.”

“What did you say?”

“There was nothing much I could say. I’m afraid he must have thought me out of my senses.”

“Well, I⁠—All right, mother. Coming.”

The rich contralto of a female novelist calling to its young had broken the stillness of the summer afternoon. Mr. Potter looked up with a start. Lady Wickham was standing on the lawn. It seemed to Mr. Potter that, as his little friend moved towards her, something of the springiness had gone out of her walk. It was as if she moved reluctantly.

“Where have you been, Roberta?” asked Lady Wickham, as her daughter came within earshot of the normal tone of voice. “I have been looking everywhere for you.”

“Anything special, mother?”

“Mr. Gandle wants to go to Hertford. He has to get some books. I think you had better drive him in your car.”

“Oh, mother!”

Mr. Potter, watching from his chair, observed a peculiar expression flit into Lady Wickham’s face. Had he been her English publisher, instead of merely her prospective American publisher, he would have been familiar with that look. It meant that Lady Wickham was preparing to exercise her celebrated willpower.

“Roberta,” she said, with dangerous quiet, “I particularly wish you to drive Mr. Gandle to Hertford.”

“But I had promised to go over and play tennis at the Crufts’.”

“Mr. Gandle is a much better companion for you than a young waster like Algy Crufts. You must run over and tell him that you cannot play today.”

A few minutes later a natty two-seater drew up at the front door of the Crufts’ residence down the road; and Bobbie Wickham, seated at the wheel, gave tongue.

“Algy!”

The flannel-clad form of Mr. Algernon Crufts appeared at a window.

“Hullo! Down in a jiffy.”

There was an interval. Then Mr. Crufts joined her on the drive.

“Hullo! I say, you haven’t brought your racket, you poor chump,” he said.

“Tennis is off,” announced Bobbie, briefly. “I’ve got to drive Clifford Gandle in to Hertford.” She paused. “I say, Algy, shall I tell you something?”

“What?”

“Between ourselves.”

“Absolutely.”

“Mother wants me to marry Clifford Gandle.”

Algy Crufts uttered a strangled exclamation. Such was his emotion that he nearly swallowed the first eight inches of his cigarette-holder.

“Marry Clifford Gandle!”

“Yes. She’s all for it. She says he would have a steadying influence on me.”

“Ghastly! Take my advice and give the project the most absolute go-by. I was up at Oxford with the man. A blighter, if ever there was one. He was President of the Union and all sorts of frightful things.”

“It’s all very awkward. I don’t know what to do.”

“Kick him in the eye and tell him to go to blazes. That’s the procedure.”

“But it’s so hard not to do anything mother wants you to do. You know mother.”

“I do,” said Mr. Crufts, who did.

“Oh, well,” said Bobbie, “you never know. There’s always the chance that she may take a sudden dislike to him for some reason or other. She does take sudden dislikes to people.”

“She does,” said Mr. Crufts. Lady Wickham had disliked him at first sight.

“Well, let’s hope she will suddenly dislike Clifford Gandle. But I don’t mind telling you, Algy, that at the moment things are looking pretty black.”

“Keep smiling,” urged Mr. Crufts.

“What’s the good of smiling, you fathead?” said Bobbie, morosely.

Night had fallen on Skeldings Hall. Lady Wickham was in her study, thinking those great thoughts which would subsequently be copyrighted in all languages, including the Scandinavian. Bobbie was strolling somewhere in the grounds, having eluded Mr. Gandle after dinner. And Mr. Gandle, baffled but not defeated, had donned a light overcoat and gone out to try to find Bobbie.

As for Mr. Potter, he was luxuriating in restful solitude in a punt under a willow by the bank of the moat.

From the first moment he had set eyes on it, Hamilton Potter had loved the moat at Skeldings Hall. Here, by the willow, it broadened out almost into the dimensions of a lake; and there was in the glitter of stars on its surface and the sleepy rustling of birds in the trees along its bank something infinitely soothing. The healing darkness wrapped the publisher about like a blanket; the cool night-wind fanned caressingly a forehead a little heated by Lady Wickham’s fine old port; and gradually, lulled by the beauty of the scene, Mr. Potter allowed himself to float into one of those reveries which come to publishers at moments such as this.

He mused on “jackets” and remainders and modes of distribution; on royalties and advertisements and spring lists and booksellers’ discounts. And his random thoughts, like fleeting thistledown, had just drifted to the question of the growing price of pulp-paper, when from somewhere near by there came the sound of a voice, jerking him back to the world again.

“Oh, let the solid ground not fail beneath my feet before that I have found what some have found so sweet,” said the voice.

A moderate request, one would have supposed; and yet it irritated Mr. Potter like the bite of a mosquito. For the voice was the voice of Clifford Gandle.

“Robertah,” proceeded the voice, and Mr. Potter breathed again. He had taken it for granted that the man had perceived and was addressing himself. He gathered now that his presence had not been discovered.

“Robertah,” said Mr. Gandle, “surely you cannot have been blind to the na-chah of my feelings? Surely you must have guessed that it was love that⁠—”

Hamilton Potter congealed into a solid mass of frozen horror. He was listening-in on a proposal of marriage.

The emotions of any delicate-minded man who finds himself in such a position cannot fail to be uncomfortable; and the greater his delicacy of mind the more acute must the discomfort be. Mr. Potter, being, as are all publishers, more like a shrinking violet than anything else in the world, nearly swooned. His scalp tingled; his jaw fell; and his toes began to open and shut like poppet-valves.

“Heart of my heart⁠—” said Mr. Gandle.

Mr. Potter gave a convulsive shudder. And the punt-pole, which had been resting on the edge of the boat, clattered down with a noise like a machine-gun.

There was a throbbing silence. Then Mr. Gandle spoke sharply. “Is anybody they-ah?”

There are situations in which a publisher can do only one thing. Raising himself noiselessly, Mr. Potter wriggled to the side of the punt and lowered himself into the water.

“Who is they-ah?”

Mr. Potter with a strong effort shut his mouth, which was trying to emit a howl of anguish. He had never supposed that water could be so cold. Silently he waded out towards the opposite bank. The only thing that offered any balm in this black moment was the recollection that his hostess had informed him that the moat was not more than four feet deep. But what Lady Wickham had omitted to inform him was that in one or two places there were ten-foot holes. It came, therefore, as a surprise to Mr. Potter when, after he had travelled some six yards, there happened to him that precise disaster which Mr. Gandle, in his recent remarks, had expressed himself as so desirous of avoiding. As the publisher took his next step forward, the solid ground failed beneath his feet.

“Oosh!” ejaculated Mr. Potter.

Clifford Gandle was a man of swift intuition. Hearing the cry and becoming aware at the same time of loud splashing noises, he guessed in one masterly flash of inductive reasoning that someone had fallen in. He charged down the bank and perceived the punt. He got into the punt. Bobbie Wickham got into the punt. Mr. Gandle seized the pole and propelled the punt out into the waste of waters.

“Are you they-ah?” inquired Mr. Gandle.

“Glub!” exclaimed Mr. Potter.

“I see him,” said Bobbie. “More to the left.”

Clifford Gandle drove the rescuing craft more to the left, and was just digging the pole into the water when Mr. Potter, coming up for the third time, found it within his reach. The partiality of drowning men for straws is proverbial; but, as a class, they are broad-minded and will clutch at punt-poles with equal readiness. Mr. Potter seized the pole and pulled strongly; and Clifford Gandle, who happened to be leaning his whole weight on it at the moment, was not proof against what practically amounted to a formal invitation. A moment later he had joined Mr. Potter in the depths.

Bobbie Wickham rescued the punt-pole, which was floating away on the tide, and peered down through the darkness. Stirring things were happening below. Clifford Gandle had grasped Mr. Potter. Mr. Potter had grasped Clifford Gandle. And Bobbie, watching from above, was irresistibly reminded of a picture she had seen in her childhood of alligators fighting in the River Hoogly. She raised the pole, and, with the best intentions, prodded at the tangled mass.

The treatment proved effective. The pole, taking Clifford Gandle shrewdly in the stomach, caused him to release his grip on Mr. Potter; and Mr. Potter, suddenly discovering that he was in shallow water again, did not hesitate. By the time Clifford Gandle had scrambled into the punt he was on dry land, squelching rapidly towards the house.

A silence followed his departure. Then Mr. Gandle, expelling the last pint of water from his mouth, gave judgment.

“The man must be mad!”

He found some more water which he had overlooked, and replaced it.

“Stark, staring mad!” he repeated. “He must have deliberately flung himself in.”

Bobbie Wickham was gazing out into the night; and, had the visibility been better, her companion might have observed in her expression the raptness of inspiration.

“There is no other explanation. The punt was they-ah, by the bank, and he was hee-yah, right out in the middle of the moat. I’ve suspected for days that he was unbalanced. Once I found him hiding in a cupboard. Crouching there with a wild gleam in his eyes. And that brooding look of his. That strange brooding look. I’ve noticed it every time I’ve been talking to him.”

Bobbie broke the silence, speaking in a low, grave voice.

“Didn’t you know about poor Mr. Potter?”

“Eh?”

“That he has suicidal mania?”

Clifford Gandle drew in his breath sharply.

“You can’t blame him,” said Bobbie. “How would you feel if you came home one day and found your wife and your two brothers and a cousin sitting round the dinner table stone-dead?”

“What?”

“Poisoned. Something in the curry.” She shivered. “This morning I found him in the garden gloating over a book called Ethics of Suicide.”

Clifford Gandle ran his fingers through his dripping hair.

“Something ought to be done!”

“What can you do? The thing isn’t supposed to be known. If you mention it to him, he will simply go away; and then mother will be furious, because she wants him to publish her books in America.”

“I shall keep the closest watch on the man.”

“Yes, that’s the thing to do,” agreed Bobbie.

She pushed the punt to the shore. Mr. Gandle, who had begun to feel chilly, leaped out and sped to the house to change his clothes. Bobbie, following at a more leisurely pace, found her mother standing in the passage outside her study. Lady Wickham’s manner was perturbed.

“Roberta!”

“Yes, mother?”

“What in the world has been happening? A few moments ago Mr. Potter ran past my door, dripping wet. And now Clifford Gandle has just gone by, also soaked to the skin. What have they been doing?”

“Fighting in the moat, mother.”

“Fighting in the moat? What do you mean?”

“Mr. Potter jumped in to try and get away from Mr. Gandle, and then Mr. Gandle went in after him and seized him round the neck, and they grappled together for quite a long time, struggling furiously. I think they must have had a quarrel.”

“What on earth would they quarrel about?”

“Well, you know what a violent man Clifford Gandle is.” This was an aspect of Mr. Gandle’s character which Lady Wickham had not perceived. She opened her penetrating eyes.

“Clifford Gandle violent?”

“I think he’s the sort of man who takes sudden dislikes to people.”

“Nonsense!”

“Well, it all seems very queer to me,” said Bobbie. She passed on her way upstairs; and, reaching the first landing, turned down the corridor till she came to the principal guestroom. She knocked delicately. There were movements inside, and presently the door opened, revealing Hamilton Potter in a flowered dressing-gown.

“Thank Heaven you’re safe!” said Bobbie.

The fervour of her tone touched Mr. Potter. His heart warmed to the child.

“If I hadn’t been there when Mr. Gandle was trying to drown you⁠—”

Mr. Potter started violently.

“Trying to drown me?” he gasped.

Bobbie’s eyebrows rose.

“Hasn’t anybody told you about Mr. Gandle⁠—warned you? Didn’t you know he was one of the mad Gandles?”

“The⁠—the⁠—?”

“Mad Gandles. You know what some of these very old English families are like. All the Gandles have been mad for generations back.”

“You don’t mean⁠—you can’t mean⁠—” Mr. Potter gulped. “You can’t mean that Mr. Gandle is homicidal?”

“Not normally. But he takes sudden dislikes to people.”

“I think he likes me,” said Mr. Potter, with a certain nervous satisfaction. “He has made a point of seeking me out and giving me his views on⁠—er⁠—various matters.”

“Did you ever yawn while he was doing it?”

Mr. Potter blenched.

“Would⁠—would he mind that very much?”

“Mind it! You lock your door at night, don’t you, Mr. Potter?”

“But this is terrible.”

“He sleeps in this corridor.”

“But why is the man at large?”

“He hasn’t done anything yet. You can’t shut a man up till he has done something.”

“Does Lady Wickham know of this?”

“For goodness’ sake don’t say a word to mother. It would only make her nervous. Everything will be quite all right, if you’re only careful. You had better try not to let him get you alone.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Potter. It was an idea that had occurred to him independently.

The last of the mad Gandles, meanwhile, having peeled off the dress-clothes moistened during the recent water-carnival, had draped his bony form in a suit of orange-coloured pyjamas, and was now devoting the full force of a legislator’s mind to the situation which had arisen.

He was a long, thin young man with a curved nose which even in his lighter moments gave him the appearance of disapproving things in general; and there had been nothing in the events of the last hour to cause any diminution of this look of disapproval. For we cannot in fairness but admit that, if ever a mad Gandle had good reason to be mad, Clifford Gandle had at this juncture. He had been interrupted at the crucial point of a proposal of marriage. He had been plunged into water and prodded with a punt-pole. He had sown the seeds of a cold in the head. And he rather fancied that he had swallowed a newt. These things do not conduce to sunniness in a man.

Nor did an inspection of the future do anything to remove his gloom. He had come to Skeldings for rest and recuperation after the labours of an exhausting Session, and now it seemed that, instead of passing his time pleasantly in the society of Roberta Wickham, he would be compelled to devote himself to acting as a guardian to a misguided publisher.

It was not as if he liked publishers, either. His relations with Prodder and Wiggs, who had sold forty-three copies of his book of political essays⁠—Watchman, What of the Night?⁠—had not been agreeable.

Nevertheless, this last of the Gandles was a conscientious man. He had no intention of shirking the call of duty. The question of whether it was worth while preventing a publisher committing suicide did not present itself to him.

That was why Bobbie’s note, when he read it, produced such immediate results.

Exactly when the missive had been delivered, Clifford Gandle could not say. Much thought had rendered him distrait, and the rustle of the paper as it was thrust under his door did not reach his consciousness. It was only when, after a considerable time, he rose with the intention of going to bed that he perceived lying on the floor an envelope.

He stooped and picked it up. He examined it with a thoughtful stare. He opened it.

The letter was brief. It ran as follows:⁠—

“What about his razors?”

A thrill of dismay shot through him.

Razors!

He had forgotten them.

Clifford Gandle did not delay. Already it might be that he was too late. He hurried down the passage and tapped at Mr. Potter’s door.

“Who’s there?”

Clifford Gandle was relieved. He was in time.

“Can I come in?”

“Who is that?”

“Gandle.”

“What do you want?”

“Can you⁠—er⁠—lend me a razah?”

“A what!”

“A razah.”

There followed a complete silence from within. Mr. Gandle tapped again.

“Are you they-ah?”

The silence was broken by an odd rumbling sound. Something heavy knocked against the woodwork. But that the explanation seemed so improbable, Mr. Gandle would have said that this peculiar publisher had pushed a chest of drawers against the door.

“Mr. Pottah!”

More silence.

“Are you they-ah, Mr. Pottah?”

Additional stillness. Mr. Gandle, wearying of a profitless vigil, gave the thing up and returned to his room.

The task that lay before him, he now realized, was to wait awhile and then make his way along the balcony which joined the windows of the two rooms; enter while the other slept, and abstract his weapon or weapons.

He looked at his watch. The hour was close on midnight. He decided to give Mr. Potter till two o’clock.

Clifford Gandle sat down to wait.

Mr. Potter’s first action, after the retreating footsteps had told him that his visitor had gone, was to extract a couple of nerve pills from the box by his bed and swallow them. This was a rite which, by the orders of his medical adviser, he had performed thrice a day since leaving America⁠—once half an hour before breakfast, once an hour before luncheon, and again on retiring to rest.

In spite of the fact that he now consumed these pills, it seemed to Mr. Potter that he could scarcely be described as retiring to rest. After the recent ghastly proof of Clifford Gandle’s insane malevolence, he could not bring himself to hope that even the most fitful slumber would come to him this night. The horror of the thought of that awful man padding softly to his door and asking for razors chilled Hamilton Potter to the bone.

Nevertheless, he did his best. He switched off the light and, closing his eyes, began to repeat in a soft undertone a formula which he had often found efficacious.

“Day by day,” murmured Mr. Potter, “in every way, I am getting better and better. Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”

It would have astonished Clifford Gandle, yawning in his room down the corridor, if he could have heard such optimistic sentiments proceeding from those lips.

“Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”

Mr. Potter’s mind performed an unfortunate sideslip. He lay there tingling. Suppose he was getting better and better, what of it? What was the use of getting better and better if at any moment a mad Gandle might spring out with a razor and end it all?

He forced his thoughts away from these uncomfortable channels. He clenched his teeth and whispered through them with a touch of defiance.

“Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better. Day by day, in every way⁠—”

A pleasant drowsiness stole over Mr. Potter.

“Day by day, in every way,” he murmured, “I am getting better and better. Day by day, in every way, I am betting getter and getter. Bay by day, in every way, I am betting getter and wetter. Way by day⁠—”

Mr. Potter slept.

Over the stables the clock chimed the hour of two, and Clifford Gandle stepped out on to the balcony.

It has been well said by many thinkers that in human affairs you can never be certain that some little trifling obstacle will not undo the best-laid of schemes. It was the sunken road at Hougomont that undid the French cavalry at Waterloo, and it was something very similar that caused Clifford Gandle’s plan of action to go wrong now⁠—a jug of water, to wit, which the maid who had brought Mr. Potter’s hot-water can before dinner had placed immediately beneath the window.

Clifford Gandle, insinuating himself with the extreme of caution through the window and finding his foot resting on something hard, assumed that he was touching the floor, and permitted his full weight to rest upon that foot. Almost immediately afterwards the world collapsed with a crash and a deluge of water; and light, flooding the room, showed Mr. Potter sitting up in bed, blinking.

Mr. Potter stared at Clifford Gandle. Clifford Gandle stared at Mr. Potter.

“Er⁠—hullo!” said Clifford Gandle.

Mr. Potter uttered a low, curious sound like a cat with a fish-bone in its throat.

“I⁠—er⁠—just looked in,” said Clifford Gandle.

Mr. Potter made a noise like a second and slightly larger cat with another fish-bone in its throat.

“I’ve come for the razah,” said Clifford Gandle. “Ah, there it is,” he said, and, moving towards the dressing-table, secured it.

Mr. Potter leaped from his bed. He looked about him for a weapon. The only one in sight appeared to be the typescript of Ethics of Suicide, and that, while it would have made an admirable instrument for swatting flies, was far too flimsy for the present crisis. All in all, it began to look to Mr. Potter like a sticky evening.

“Good night,” said Clifford Gandle.

Mr. Potter was amazed to see that his visitor was withdrawing towards the window. It seemed incredible. For a moment he wondered whether Bobbie Wickham had not made some mistake about this man. Nothing could be more temperate than his behaviour at the moment.

And then, as he reached the window, Clifford Gandle smiled, and all Mr. Potter’s fears leaped into being again.

The opinion of Clifford Gandle regarding this smile was that it was one of those kindly, reassuring smiles⁠—the sort of smile to put the most nervous melancholiac at his ease. To Mr. Potter it seemed precisely the kind of maniac grin which he would have expected from such a source.

“Good night,” said Clifford Gandle.

He smiled again, and was gone. And Mr. Potter, having stood rooted to the spot for some minutes, crossed the floor and closed the window. He then bolted the window. He perceived a pair of shutters, and shut them. He moved the washhand-stand till it rested against the shutters. He placed two chairs and a small bookcase against the washhand-stand. Then he went to bed, leaving the light burning.

“Day by day, in every way,” said Mr. Potter, “I am getting better and better.”

But his voice lacked the ring of true conviction.

Sunshine filtering in through the shutters, and the song of birds busy in the ivy outside his window, woke Mr. Potter at an early hour next morning; but it was some time before he could bring himself to spring from his bed to greet another day. His disturbed night had left him heavy and lethargic. When finally he had summoned up the energy to rise and remove the zareba in front of the window and open the shutters, he became aware that a glorious morning was upon the world. The samples of sunlight that had crept into the room had indicated only feebly the golden wealth without.

But there was no corresponding sunshine in Mr. Potter’s heart. Spiritually as well as physically he was at a low ebb. The more he examined the position of affairs, the less he liked it. He went down to breakfast in pensive mood.

Breakfast at Skeldings was an informal meal, and visitors were expected to take it when they pleased, irrespective of the movements of their hostess, who was a late riser. In the dining-room, when Mr. Potter entered it, only the daughter of the house was present.

Bobbie was reading the morning paper. She nodded cheerfully to him over its top.

“Good morning, Mr. Potter. I hope you slept well.” Mr. Potter winced.

“Miss Wickham,” he said, “last night an appalling thing occurred.”

A startled look came into Bobbie’s eyes.

“You don’t mean⁠—Mr. Gandle?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Mr. Potter, what?”

“Just as I was going to bed, the man knocked at my door and asked if he could borrow my razah⁠—I mean my razor.”

“You didn’t lend it to him?”

“No, I did not,” replied Mr. Potter, with a touch of asperity. “I barricaded the door.”

“How wise of you!”

“And at two in the morning he came in through the window!”

“How horrible!”

“He took my razor. Why he did not attack me, I cannot say. But, having obtained it, he grinned at me in a ghastly way and went out.”

There was a silence.

“Have an egg or something,” said Bobbie, in a hushed voice.

“Thank you, I will take a little ham,” whispered Mr. Potter.

There was another silence.

“I’m afraid,” said Bobbie at length, “you will have to go.”

“That is what I think.”

“It is quite evident that Mr. Gandle has taken one of his uncontrollable dislikes to you.”

“Yes.”

“What I think you ought to do is to leave quite quietly, without saying goodbye or anything, so that he won’t know where you’ve gone and won’t be able to follow you. Then you could write mother a letter, saying that you had to go because of Mr. Gandle’s persecution.”

“Exactly.”

“You needn’t say anything about his being mad. She knows that. Just say that he ducked you in the moat and then came into your room at two in the morning and made faces at you. She will understand.”

“Yes. I⁠—”

“Hush!”

Clifford Gandle came into the room.

“Good morning,” said Bobbie.

“Good morning,” said Mr. Gandle.

He helped himself to a poached egg; and, glancing across the table at the publisher, was concerned to note how wan and sombre was his aspect. If ever a man looked as if he were on the verge of putting an end to everything, that man was John Hamilton Potter.

Clifford Gandle was not feeling particularly festive himself at the moment, for he was a man who depended greatly for his well-being on a placid eight hours of sleep; but he exerted himself to be bright and optimistic.

“What a lovely morning!” he trilled.

“Yes,” said Mr. Potter.

“Surely such weather is enough to make any man happy and satisfied with life.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Potter, doubtfully.

“Who, with all Na-chah smiling, could seriously contemplate removing himself from so bright a world?”

“George Philibert, of 32, Acacia Road, Cricklewood, did,” said Bobbie, who had resumed her study of the paper.

“Eh?” said Mr. Gandle.

“George Philibert, of 32, Acacia Road, Cricklewood, was had up before the beak yesterday, charged with attempted suicide. He stated that⁠—”

Mr. Gandle cast a reproachful look at her. He had always supposed Roberta Wickham to be a girl of fair intelligence, as women go; and it seemed to him that he had overestimated her good sense. He did his best to cover up her blunder.

“Possibly,” he said, “with some really definite and serious reason⁠—”

“I can never understand,” said Mr. Potter, coming out of what had all the outward appearance of a trance, “why the idea arose that suicide is wrong.”

He spoke with a curious intensity. The author of Ethics of Suicide had wielded a plausible pen, and the subject was one on which he now held strong views. And, even if he had not already held them, his mood this morning was of a kind to breed them in his bosom.

“The author of a very interesting book which I intend to publish shortly,” he said, “points out that none but the votaries of the monotheistic religions look upon suicide as a crime.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Gandle, “but⁠—”

“If, he goes on to say, the criminal law forbids suicide, that is not an argument valid in the Church. And, besides, the prohibition is ridiculous, for what penalty can frighten a man who is not afraid of death itself?”

“George Philibert got fourteen days,” said Bobbie.

“Yes, but⁠—” said Mr. Gandle.

“The ancients were very far from regarding the matter in the modern light. Indeed, in Massilia and on the island of Ceos, the man who could give valid reasons for relinquishing his life was handed the cup of hemlock by the magistrate, and that, too, in public.”

“Yes, but⁠—”

“And why,” said Mr. Potter, “suicide should be regarded as cowardly is beyond me. Surely no man who had not an iron nerve⁠—”

He broke off. The last two words had tapped a chord in his memory. Abruptly it occurred to him that here he was, halfway through breakfast, and he had not taken those iron nerve-pills which his doctor had so strictly ordered him to swallow thirty minutes before the morning meal.

“Yes,” said Mr. Gandle. He lowered his cup and looked across the table. “But⁠—”

His voice died away. He sat staring before him in horror-struck silence. Mr. Potter, with a strange, wild look in his eyes, was in the very act of raising to his lips a sinister-looking white pellet. And, even as Mr. Gandle gazed, the wretched man’s lips closed over the horrid thing and a movement of his Adam’s apple showed that the deed was done.

“Surely,” said Mr. Potter, “no man who⁠—”

It seemed that Fate was inflexibly bent on preventing him from finishing that particular sentence this morning. For he had got thus far when Clifford Gandle, seizing the mustard-pot, rose with a maniac screech and bounded, wild-eyed, round the table at him.

Lady Wickham came downstairs and made her way like a stately galleon under sail towards the dining-room. Unlike others of the household, she was feeling particularly cheerful this morning. She liked fine weather, and the day was unusually fine. Also, she had resolved that after breakfast she would take Mr. Potter aside and use the full force of her commanding personality to extract from him something in the nature of an informal contract.

She would not, she decided, demand too much at first. If he would consent to undertake the American publication of Agatha’s Vow, A Strong Man’s Love, and⁠—possibly⁠—A Man for A’ That, she would be willing to postpone discussion of Meadowsweet, Fetters of Fate, and the rest of her works. But if he thought he could eat her bread and salt and sidestep Agatha’s Vow he had grievously underestimated the power of her cold grey eye when it came to subduing such members of the animal kingdom as publishers.

There was a happy smile, therefore, on Lady Wickham’s face as she entered the room. She was not actually singing, but she stopped only just short of it.

She was surprised to find that, except for her daughter Roberta, the dining-room was empty.

“Good morning, mother,” said Bobbie.

“Good morning. Has Mr. Potter finished his breakfast?” Bobbie considered the question.

“I don’t know if he had actually finished,” she said. “But he didn’t seem to want any more.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know, mother.”

“When did he go?”

“He’s only just left.”

“I didn’t meet him.”

“He went out of the window.”

The sunshine faded from Lady Wickham’s face.

“Out of the window? Why?”

“I think it was because Clifford Gandle was between him and the door.”

“What do you mean? Where is Clifford Gandle?”

“I don’t know, mother. He went out of the window, too. They were both running down the drive when I last saw them.” Bobbie’s face grew pensive. “Mother, I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Are you really sure that Clifford Gandle would be such a steadying influence for me? He seems to me rather eccentric.”

“I cannot understand a word of what you are saying.”

“Well, he is eccentric. At two o’clock this morning, Mr. Potter told me, he climbed in through Mr. Potter’s window, made faces at him, and climbed out again. And just now⁠—”

“Made faces at Mr. Potter?”

“Yes, mother. And just now Mr. Potter was peacefully eating his breakfast, when Clifford Gandle suddenly uttered a loud cry and sprang at him. Mr. Potter jumped out of window and Clifford Gandle jumped out after him and chased him down the drive. I thought Mr. Potter ran awfully well for an elderly man, but that sort of thing can’t be good for him in the middle of breakfast.”

Lady Wickham subsided into a chair.

“Is everybody mad?”

“I think Clifford Gandle must be. You know, these men who do wonderful things at the ’Varsity often do crack up suddenly. I was reading a case only yesterday about a man in America. He took every possible prize at Harvard or wherever it was, and then, just as everybody was predicting the most splendid future for him, he bit his aunt in the leg. He⁠—”

“Go and find Mr. Potter,” cried Lady Wickham. “I must speak to him.”

“I’ll try. But I don’t believe it will be easy. I think he’s gone for good.”

Lady Wickham uttered a bereaved cry, such as a tigress might who sees its prey snatched from it.

“Gone!”

“He told me he was thinking of going. He said he couldn’t stand Clifford Gandle’s persecution any longer. And that was before breakfast, so I don’t suppose he has changed his mind. I think he means to go on running.”

A sigh like the whistling of the wind through the cracks in a broken heart escaped Lady Wickham.

“Mother,” said Bobbie, “I’ve something to tell you. Last night Clifford Gandle asked me to marry him. I hadn’t time to answer one way or the other, because just after he had proposed he jumped into the moat and tried to drown Mr. Potter; but if you really think he would be a steadying influence for me⁠—”

Lady Wickham uttered a snort of agony.

“I forbid you to dream of marrying this man!”

“Very well, mother,” said Bobbie, dutifully. She rose and moved to the sideboard. “Would you like an egg, mother?”

“No!”

“Some ham?”

“No!”

“Very well.” Bobbie paused at the door. “Don’t you think it would be a good idea,” she said, “if I were to go and find Clifford Gandle and tell him to pack up and go away? I’m sure you won’t like having him about after this.”

Lady Wickham’s eyes flashed fire.

“If that man dares to come back, I’ll⁠—I’ll⁠—Yes. Tell him to go. Tell him to go away and never let me set eyes on him again.”

“Very well, mother,” said Bobbie.

Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best

The housekeeper’s room at Blandings Castle, G.H.Q. of the domestic staff that ministered to the needs of that amiable but woollen-headed peer, the Earl of Emsworth, was in normal circumstances a pleasant and cheerful apartment. It caught the afternoon sun; and the paper which covered its walls had been conceived in a jovial spirit by someone who held that the human eye, resting on ninety-seven simultaneous pink birds perched upon ninety-seven blue rosebushes, could not but be agreeably stimulated and refreshed. Yet, with the entry of Beach, the butler, it was as though there had crept into its atmosphere a chill dreariness; and Mrs. Twemlow, the housekeeper, laying down her knitting, gazed at him in alarm.

“Whatever is the matter, Mr. Beach?”

The butler stared moodily out of the window. His face was drawn and he breathed heavily, as a man will who is suffering from a combination of strong emotion and adenoids. A ray of sunshine, which had been advancing jauntily along the carpet, caught sight of his face and slunk out, abashed.

“I have come to a decision, Mrs. Twemlow.”

“What about?”

“Ever since his lordship started to grow it I have seen the writing on the wall plainer and plainer, and now I have made up my mind. The moment his lordship returns from London, I tender my resignation. Eighteen years have I served in his lordship’s household, commencing as under-footman and rising to my present position, but now the end has come.”

“You don’t mean you’re going just because his lordship has grown a beard?”

“It is the only way, Mrs. Twemlow. That beard is weakening his lordship’s position throughout the entire countryside. Are you aware that at the recent Sunday-school treat I heard cries of ‘Beaver!’?”

“No!”

“Yes! And this spirit of mockery and disrespect will spread. And, what is more, that beard is alienating the best elements in the County. I saw Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe look very sharp at it when he dined with us last Friday.”

“It is not a handsome beard,” admitted the housekeeper.

“It is not. It looks like some sort of fungus. And his lordship must be informed. As long as I remain in his lordship’s service, it is impossible for me to speak. So I shall tender my resignation. Once that is done, my lips will no longer be sealed. Is that buttered toast under that dish, Mrs. Twemlow?”

“Yes, Mr. Beach. Take a slice. It will cheer you up.”

“Cheer me up!” said the butler, with a hollow laugh that sounded like a knell.

It was fortunate that Lord Emsworth, seated at the time of this conversation in the smoking-room of the Senior Conservative Club in London, had no suspicion of the supreme calamity that was about to fall upon him; for there was already much upon his mind.

In the last few days, indeed, everything seemed to have gone wrong. Angus McAllister, his head-gardener, had reported an alarming invasion of greenfly among the roses. A favourite and respected cow, strongly fancied for the Milk-Giving Jerseys event at the forthcoming Cattle Show, had contracted a mysterious ailment which was baffling the skill of the local vet. And on top of all this a telegram had arrived from his lordship’s younger son, the Hon. Frederick Threepwood, announcing that he was back in England and desirous of seeing his father immediately.

This, felt Lord Emsworth, as he stared bleakly before him at the little groups of happy Senior Conservatives, was the most unkindest cut of all. What on earth was Freddie doing in England? Eighteen months before he had married the only daughter of Donaldson’s Dog-Biscuits, of Long Island City, in the United States of America; and in Long Island City he ought now to have been, sedulously promoting the dog-biscuit industry’s best interests. Instead of which, here he was in London⁠—and, according to his telegram, in trouble.

Lord Emsworth passed a hand over his chin, to assist thought, and was vaguely annoyed by some obstacle that intruded itself in the path of his fingers. Concentrating his faculties, such as they were, on this obstacle, he discovered it to be his beard. It irritated him. Hitherto, in moments of stress, he had always derived comfort from the feel of a clean-shaven chin. He felt now as if he were rubbing his hand over seaweed; and most unjustly⁠—for it was certainly not that young man’s fault that he had decided to grow a beard⁠—he became aware of an added sense of grievance against the Hon. Freddie.

It was at this moment that he perceived his child approaching him across the smoking-room floor.

“Hullo, guv’nor!” said Freddie.

“Well, Frederick?” said Lord Emsworth.

There followed a silence. Freddie was remembering that he had not met his father since the day when he had slipped into the latter’s hand a note announcing his marriage to a girl whom Lord Emsworth had never seen⁠—except once, through a telescope, when he, Freddie, was kissing her in the grounds of Blandings Castle. Lord Emsworth, on his side, was brooding on that phrase “in trouble,” which had formed so significant a part of his son’s telegram. For twenty years he had been reluctantly helping Freddie out of trouble; and now, when it had seemed that he was off his hands forever, the thing had started all over again.

“Do sit down,” he said, testily.

Freddie had been standing on one leg, and his constrained attitude annoyed Lord Emsworth. It is a peculiarity of many fathers in the ranks of Britain’s aristocracy that practically every action on the part of their younger sons has the power to annoy them. Unlike the male codfish, which, suddenly becoming the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a jaundiced eye on its younger sons.

“Right-ho,” said Freddie, taking a chair. “I say, guv’nor, since when the foliage?”

“What?”

“The beard. I hardly recognized you.”

Another spasm of irritation shot through his lordship.

“Never mind my beard!”

“I don’t if you don’t,” said Freddie, agreeably. “It was dashed good of you, guv’nor, to come bounding up to town so promptly.”

“I came because your telegram said that you were in trouble.”

“British,” said Freddie, approvingly. “Very British.”

“Though what trouble you can be in I cannot imagine. It is surely not money again?”

“Oh, no. Not money. If that had been all, I would have applied to the good old pop-in-law. Old Donaldson’s an ace. He thinks the world of me.”

“Indeed? I met Mr. Donaldson only once, but he struck me as a man of sound judgment.”

“That’s what I say. He thinks I’m a wonder. If it were simply a question of needing a bit of the ready, I could touch him like a shot. But it isn’t money that’s the trouble. It’s Aggie. My wife, you know.”

“Well?”

“She’s left me.”

“Left you!”

“Absolutely flat. Buzzed off, and the note pinned to the pincushion. She’s now at the Savoy and won’t let me come near her; and I’m at a service-flat in King Street, eating my jolly old heart out, if you know what I mean.”

Lord Emsworth uttered a deep sigh. He gazed drearily at his son, marvelling that it should be in the power of any young man, even a specialist like Freddie, so consistently to make a mess of his affairs. By what amounted to a miracle this offspring of his had contrived to lure a millionaire’s daughter into marrying him; and now, it seemed, he had let her get away. Years before, when a boy, and romantic as most boys are, his lordship had sometimes regretted that the Emsworths, though an ancient clan, did not possess a Family Curse. How little he had suspected that he was shortly about to become the father of it!

“The fault,” he said, tonelessly, “was, I suppose, yours?”

“In a way, yes. But⁠—”

“What precisely occurred?”

“Well, it was like this, guv’nor. You know how keen I’ve always been on the movies. Going to every picture I could manage, and so forth. Well, one night, as I was lying awake, I suddenly got the idea for a scenario of my own. And dashed good it was, too. It was about a poor man who had an accident, and the coves at the hospital said that an operation was the only thing that could save his life. But they wouldn’t operate without five hundred dollars down in advance, and he hadn’t got five hundred dollars. So his wife got hold of a millionaire.”

“What,” inquired Lord Emsworth, “is all this drivel?”

“Drivel, guv’nor?” said Freddie, wounded. “I’m only telling you my scenario.”

“I have no wish to hear it. What I am anxious to learn from you⁠—in as few words as possible⁠—is the reason for the breach between your wife and yourself.”

“Well, I’m telling you. It all started with the scenario. When I’d written it, I naturally wanted to sell it to somebody; and just about then Pauline Petite came East and took a house at Great Neck, and a pal of mine introduced me to her.”

“Who is Pauline Petite?”

“Good heavens, guv’nor!” Freddie stared, amazed. “You don’t mean to sit there and tell me you’ve never heard of Pauline Petite! The movie star. Didn’t you see Passion’s Slaves?”

“I did not.”

“Nor Silken Fetters?”

“Never.”

“Nor Purple Passion? Nor Bonds of Gold? Nor Seduction? Great Scott, guv’nor, you haven’t lived!”

“What about this woman?”

“Well, a pal introduced me to her, you see, and I started to pave the way to getting her interested in this scenario of mine. Because, if she liked it, of course it meant everything. Well, this involved seeing a good deal of her, you understand, and one night Jane Yorke happened to come on us having a bite together at an inn.”

“Good God!”

“Oh, it was all perfectly respectable, guv’nor. All strictly on the up-and-up. Purely a business relationship. But the trouble was I had kept the thing from Aggie because I wanted to surprise her. I wanted to be able to come to her with the scenario accepted and tell her I wasn’t such a fool as I looked.”

“Any woman capable of believing that⁠—”

“And most unfortunately I had said that I had to go to Chicago that night on business. So, what with one thing and another⁠—Well, as I said just now, she’s at the Savoy and I’m⁠—”

“Who is Jane Yorke?”

A scowl marred Freddie’s smooth features.

“A pill, guv’nor. One of the worst. A Jebusite and Amalekite. If it hadn’t been for her, I believe I could have fixed the thing. But she got hold of Aggie and whisked her away and poisoned her mind. This woman, guv’nor, has got a brother in the background, and she wanted Aggie to marry the brother. And my belief is that she is trying to induce Aggie to pop over to Paris and get a divorce, so as to give the blighted brother another look in, dash him! So now, guv’nor, is the time for action. Now is the moment to rally round as never before. I rely on you.”

“Me? What on earth do you expect me to do?”

“Why, go to her and plead with her. They do it in the movies. I’ve seen thousands of pictures where the white-haired old father⁠—”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Lord Emsworth, stung to the quick⁠—for, like so many well-preserved men of ripe years, he was under the impression that he was merely slightly brindled. “You have made your bed, and you must stew in it.”

“Eh?”

“I mean, you must stew in your own juice. You have brought this trouble on yourself by your own idiotic behaviour, and you must bear the consequences.”

“You mean you won’t go and plead?”

“No.”

“You mean yes?”

“I mean no.”

“Not plead?” said Freddie, desiring to get this thing clear.

“I refuse to allow myself to be drawn into the matter.”

“You won’t even give her a ring on the telephone?”

“I will not.”

“Oh, come, guv’nor. Be a sport. Her suite’s Number Sixty-Seven. You can get her in a second and state my case, all for the cost of twopence. Have a pop at it.”

“No.”

Freddie rose with set face. He looked like a sheep that has had bad news.

“Very well,” he said, tensely. “Then I may as well tell you, guv’nor, that my life is as good as over. The future holds nothing for me. I am a spent egg. If Aggie goes to Paris and gets that divorce, I shall retire to some quiet spot and there pass the few remaining years of my existence, a blighted wreck. Goodbye, guv’nor.”

“Goodbye.”

“Honk-honk!” said Freddie, moodily.

As a general rule, Lord Emsworth was an early and a sound sleeper, one of the few qualities which he shared with Napoleon Bonaparte being the ability to slumber the moment his head touched the pillow. But that night, weighed down with his troubles, he sought unconsciousness in vain. And somewhere in the small hours of the morning he sat up in bed, quaking. A sudden grisly thought had occurred to him.

Freddie had stated that, in the event of his wife obtaining a divorce, he proposed to retire for the rest of his life to some quiet spot. Suppose by “quiet spot” he meant Blandings Castle! The possibility shook Lord Emsworth like an ague. Freddie had visited Blandings for extended periods before, and it was his lordship’s considered opinion that the boy was a worse menace to the happy life of rural England than botts, greenfly, or foot-and-mouth disease. The prospect of having him at Blandings indefinitely affected Lord Emsworth like a blow on the base of the skull.

An entirely new line of thought was now opened. Had he in the recent interview, he asked himself, been as kind as he should have been? Had he not been a little harsh? Had he been just a shade lacking in sympathy? Had he played quite the part a father ought to have played?

The answers to the questions, in the order stated, were as follows: No. Yes. Yes. And No.

Waking after a belated sleep and sipping his early tea, Lord Emsworth found himself full of a new resolve. He had changed his mind. It was his intention now to go to this daughter-in-law of his and plead with her as no father-in-law had ever pleaded yet.

A man who has had a disturbed night is not at his best on the following morning. Until after luncheon Lord Emsworth felt much too heavy-headed to do himself justice as a pleader. But a visit to the flowers at Kensington Gardens, followed by a capital chop and half a bottle of claret at the Regent Grill, put him into excellent shape. The heaviness had vanished, and he felt alert and quick-witted.

So much so that, on arriving at the Savoy Hotel, he behaved with a cunning of which he had never hitherto suspected himself capable. On the very verge of giving his name to the desk-clerk, he paused. It might well be, he reflected, that this daughter-in-law of his, including the entire Emsworth family in her feud, would, did she hear that he was waiting below, nip the whole programme in the bud by refusing to see him. Better, he decided, not to risk it. Moving away from the desk, he headed for the lift, and presently found himself outside the door of Suite Sixty-Seven.

He tapped on the door. There was no answer. He tapped again, and, once more receiving no reply, felt a little nonplussed. He was not a very farseeing man, and the possibility that his daughter-in-law might not be at home had not occurred to him. He was about to go away when, peering at the door, he perceived that it was ajar. He pushed it open; and, ambling in, found himself in a cosy sitting-room, crowded, as feminine sitting-rooms are apt to be, with flowers of every description.

Flowers were always a magnet to Lord Emsworth, and for some happy minutes he pottered from vase to vase, sniffing.

It was after he had sniffed for perhaps the twentieth time that the impression came to him that the room contained a curious echo. It was almost as though, each time he sniffed, some other person sniffed too. And yet the place was apparently empty. To submit the acoustics to a final test, his lordship sniffed once more. But this time the sound that followed was of a more sinister character. It sounded to Lord Emsworth exactly like a snarl.

It was a snarl. Chancing to glance floorwards, he became immediately aware, in close juxtaposition to his ankles, of what appeared at first sight to be a lady’s muff. But, this being one of his bright afternoons, he realized in the next instant that it was no muff, but a toy dog of the kind which women are only too prone to leave lying about their sitting-rooms.

“God bless my soul!” exclaimed Lord Emsworth, piously commending his safety to Heaven, as so many of his rugged ancestors had done in rather similar circumstances on the battlefields of the Middle Ages.

He backed uneasily. The dog followed him. It appeared to have no legs, but to move by faith alone.

“Go away, sir!” said Lord Emsworth.

He hated small dogs. They nipped you. Take your eye off them, and they had you by the ankle before you knew where you were. Discovering that his manoeuvres had brought him to a door, he decided to take cover. He opened the door and slipped through. Blood will tell. An Emsworth had taken cover at Agincourt.

He was now in a bedroom, and, judging by the look of things, likely to remain there for some time. The woolly dog, foiled by superior intelligence, was now making no attempt to conceal its chagrin. It had cast off all pretence of armed neutrality and was yapping with a hideous intensity and shrillness. And ever and anon it scratched with baffled fury at the lower panels.

“Go away, sir!” thundered his lordship.

“Who’s there?”

Lord Emsworth leaped like a jumping bean. So convinced had he been of the emptiness of this suite of rooms that the voice, speaking where no voice should have been, crashed into his nerve centres like a shell.

“Who is there?”

The mystery, which had begun to assume an aspect of the supernatural, was solved. On the other side of the room was a door, and it was from behind this that the voice had spoken. It occurred to Lord Emsworth that it was merely part of the general malignity of Fate that he should have selected for a formal father-in-lawful call the moment when his daughter-in-law was taking a bath.

He approached the door, and spoke soothingly.

“Pray do not be alarmed, my dear.”

“Who are you? What are you doing in my room?”

“There is no cause for alarm⁠—”

He broke off abruptly, for his words had suddenly been proved fundamentally untrue. There was very vital cause for alarm. The door of the bedroom had opened, and the muff-like dog, shrilling hate, was scuttling in its peculiar legless manner straight for his ankles.

Peril brings out unsuspected qualities in every man. Lord Emsworth was not a professional acrobat, but the leap he gave in this crisis would have justified his being mistaken for one. He floated through the air like a homing bird. From where he had been standing the bed was a considerable distance away, but he reached it with inches to spare, and stood there, quivering. Below him, the woolly dog raged like the ocean at the base of a cliff.

It was at this point that his lordship became aware of a young woman standing in the doorway through which he had just passed.

About this young woman there were many points which would have found little favour in the eyes of a critic of feminine charm. She was too short, too square, and too solid. She had a much too determined chin. And her hair was of an unpleasing gingery hue. But the thing Lord Emsworth liked least about her was the pistol she was pointing at his head.

A plaintive voice filtered through the bathroom door.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s a man,” said the girl behind the gun.

“I know it’s a man. He spoke to me. Who is he?”

“I don’t know. A nasty-looking fellow. I saw him hanging about the passage outside your door, and I got my gun and came along. Come on out.”

“I can’t. I’m all wet.”

It is not easy for a man who is standing on a bed with his hands up to achieve dignity, but Lord Emsworth did the best he could.

“My dear madam!”

“What are you doing here?”

“I found the door ajar⁠—”

“And walked in to see if there were any jewel-cases ajar, too. I think,” added the young woman, raising her voice so as to make herself audible to the unseen bather, “it’s Dopey Smith.”

“Who?”

“Dopey Smith. The fellow the cops said tried for your jewels in New York. He must have followed you over here.”

“I am not Dopey Smith, madam,” cried his lordship. “I am the Earl of Emsworth.”

“You are?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Yes, you are!”

“I came to see my daughter-in-law.”

“Well, here she is.”

The bathroom door opened, and there emerged a charming figure draped in a kimono. Even in that tense moment Lord Emsworth was conscious of a bewildered astonishment that such a girl could ever have stooped to mate with his son Frederick.

“Who did you say he was?” she asked, recommending herself still more strongly to his lordship’s esteem by scooping up the woolly dog and holding it securely in her arms.

“He says he’s the Earl of Emsworth.”

“I am the Earl of Emsworth.”

The girl in the kimono looked keenly at him as he descended from the bed.

“You know, Jane,” she said, a note of uncertainty in her voice, “it might be. He looks very like Freddie.”

The appalling slur on his personal appearance held Lord Emsworth dumb. Like other men, he had had black moments when his looks had not altogether satisfied him, but he had never supposed that he had a face like Freddie’s.

The girl with the pistol uttered a stupefying whoop.

“Jiminy Christmas!” she cried. “Don’t you see?”

“See what?”

“Why, it is Freddie. Disguised. Trying to get at you this way. It’s just the sort of movie stunt he would think clever. Take them off, Ralph Vandeleur⁠—I know you!”

She reached out a clutching hand, seized his lordship’s beard in a vice-like grip, and tugged with all the force of a modern girl, trained from infancy at hockey, tennis, and Swedish exercises.

It had not occurred to Lord Emsworth a moment before that anything could possibly tend to make his situation more uncomfortable than it already was. He saw now that he had been mistaken in this view. Agony beyond his liveliest dreams flamed through his shrinking frame.

The girl regarded him with a somewhat baffled look.

“H’m!” she said, disappointedly. “It seems to be real. Unless,” she continued, on a more optimistic note, “he’s fixed it on with specially strong fish-glue or something. I’d better try again.”

“No, don’t,” said his lordship’s daughter-in-law. “It isn’t Freddie. I would have recognized him at once.”

“Then he’s a crook after all. Kindly step into that cupboard, George, while I phone for the constabulary.”

Lord Emsworth danced a few steps.

“I will not step into cupboards. I insist on being heard. I don’t know who this woman is⁠—”

“My name’s Jane Yorke, if you’re curious.”

“Ah! The woman who poisons my son’s wife’s mind against him! I know all about you.” He turned to the girl in the kimono. “Yesterday my son Frederick implored me by telegram to come to London. I saw him at my club. Stop that dog barking!”

“Why shouldn’t he bark?” said Miss Yorke. “He’s in his own home.”

“He told me,” proceeded Lord Emsworth, raising his voice, “that there had been a little misunderstanding between you⁠—”

“Little misunderstanding is good,” said Miss Yorke.

“He dined with that woman for a purpose.”

“And directly I saw them,” said Miss Yorke, “I knew what the purpose was.”

The Hon. Mrs. Threepwood looked at her friend, wavering.

“I believe it’s true,” she said, “and he really is Lord Emsworth. He seems to know all that happened. How could he know if Freddie hadn’t told him?”

“If this fellow is a crook from the other side, of course he would know. The thing was in Broadway Whispers and Town Gossip, wasn’t it?”

“All the same⁠—”

The telephone-bell rang sharply.

“I assure you⁠—” began Lord Emsworth.

“Right!” said the unpleasant Miss Yorke, at the receiver. “Send him right up.” She regarded his lordship with a brightly triumphant eye. “You’re out of luck, my friend,” she said. “Lord Emsworth has just arrived, and he’s on his way up now.”

There are certain situations in which the human brain may be excused for reeling. Lord Emsworth’s did not so much reel as perform a kind of shimmy, as if it were in danger of coming unstuck. Always a dreamy and absentminded man, unequal to the rough hurly-burly of life, he had passed this afternoon through an ordeal which might well have unsettled the most practical. And this extraordinary announcement, coming on top of all he had been through, was too much for him. He tottered into the sitting-room and sank into a chair. It seemed to him that he was living in a nightmare.

And certainly in the figure that entered a few moments later there was nothing whatever to correct this impression. It might have stepped straight into anybody’s nightmare and felt perfectly at home right from the start.

The figure was that of a tall, thin man with white hair and a long and flowing beard of the same venerable hue. Strange as it seemed that a person of such appearance should not have been shot on sight early in his career, he had obviously reached an extremely advanced age. He was either a man of about a hundred and fifty who was rather young for his years or a man of about a hundred and ten who had been aged by trouble.

“My dear child!” piped the figure in a weak, quavering voice.

“Freddie!” cried the girl in the kimono.

“Oh, dash it!” said the figure.

There was a pause, broken by a sort of gasping moan from Lord Emsworth. More and more every minute his lordship was feeling the strain.

“Good God, guv’nor!” said the figure, sighting him. His wife pointed at Lord Emsworth.

“Freddie, is that your father?”

“Oh, yes. Rather! Of course. Absolutely. But he said he wasn’t coming.”

“I changed my mind,” said Lord Emsworth in a low, stricken voice.

“I told you so, Jane,” said the girl. “I thought he was Lord Emsworth all the time. Surely you can see the likeness now?”

A kind of wail escaped his lordship.

“Do I look like that?” he said brokenly. He gazed at his son once more and shut his eyes.

“Well,” said Miss Yorke, in her detestable managing way, turning her forceful personality on the newcomer, “now that you are here, Freddie Threepwood, looking like Father Christmas, what’s the idea? Aggie told you never to come near her again.”

A young man of his natural limpness of character might well have retired in disorder before this attack, but Love had apparently made Frederick Threepwood a man of steel. Removing his beard and eyebrows, he directed a withering glance at Miss Yorke.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” he said. “You’re a serpent in the bosom. I mean a snake in the grass.”

“Oh, am I?”

“Yes, you are. You poisoned Aggie’s jolly old mind against me. If it hadn’t been for you, I could have got her alone and told her my story as man to man.”

“Well, let’s hear it now. You’ve had plenty of time to rehearse it.”

Freddie turned to his wife with a sweeping gesture.

“I⁠—” He paused. “I say, Aggie, old thing, you look perfectly topping in that kimono.”

“Stick to the point,” said Miss Yorke.

“That is the point,” said Mrs. Freddie, not without a certain softness. “But if you think I look perfectly topping, why do you go running around with movie-actresses with carroty hair?”

“Red-gold,” suggested Freddie, deferentially.

“Carroty!”

“Carroty it is. You’re absolutely right. I never liked it all along.”

“Then why were you dining with it?”

“Yes, why?” inquired Miss Yorke.

“I wish you wouldn’t butt in,” said Freddie, petulantly. “I’m not talking to you.”

“You might just as well, for all the good it’s going to do you.”

“Be quiet, Jane. Well, Freddie?”

“Aggie,” said the Hon. Freddie, “it was this way.”

“Never believe a man who starts a story like that,” said Miss Yorke.

“Do please be quiet, Jane. Yes, Freddie?”

“I was trying to sell that carroty female a scenario, and I was keeping it from you because I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Freddie darling! Was that really it?”

“You don’t mean to say⁠—” began Miss Yorke, incredulously.

“Absolutely it. And, in order to keep in with the woman⁠—whom, I may as well tell you, I disliked rather heartily from the start⁠—I had to lush her up a trifle from time to time.”

“Of course.”

“You have to with these people.”

“Naturally.”

“Makes all the difference in the world if you push a bit of food into them preparatory to talking business.”

“All the difference in the world.”

Miss Yorke, who seemed temporarily to have lost her breath, recovered it.

“You don’t mean to tell me,” she cried, turning in a kind of wild despair to the injured wife, “that you really believe this apple sauce?”

“Of course she does,” said Freddie. “Don’t you, precious?”

“Of course I do, sweetie-pie.”

“And, what’s more,” said Freddie, pulling from his breast-pocket a buff-coloured slip of paper with the air of one who draws from his sleeve that extra ace which makes all the difference in a keenly-contested game, “I can prove it. Here’s a cable that came this morning from the Super-Ultra-Art Film Company, offering me a thousand merry dollars for the scenario. So another time, you, will you kindly refrain from judging your⁠—er⁠—fellows by the beastly light of your own⁠—ah⁠—foul imagination?”

“Yes,” said his wife, “I must say, Jane, that you have made as much mischief as anyone ever did. I wish in future you would stop interfering in other people’s concerns.”

“Spoken,” said Freddie, “with vim and not a little terse good sense. And I may add⁠—”

“If you ask me,” said Miss Yorke, “I think it’s a fake.”

“What’s a fake?”

“That cable.”

“What do you mean, a fake?” cried Freddie, indignantly. “Read it for yourself.”

“It’s quite easy to get cables cabled you by cabling a friend in New York to cable them.”

“I don’t get that,” said Freddie, puzzled.

“I do,” said his wife; and there shone in her eyes the light that shines only in the eyes of wives who, having swallowed their husband’s story, resent destructive criticism from outsiders. “And I never want to see you again, Jane Yorke.”

“Same here,” agreed Freddie. “In Turkey they’d have shoved a girl like that in a sack and dropped her in the Bosphorus.”

“I might as well go,” said Miss Yorke.

“And don’t come back,” said Freddie. “The door is behind you.”

The species of trance which had held Lord Emsworth in its grip during the preceding conversational exchanges was wearing off. And now, perceiving that Miss Yorke was apparently as unpopular with the rest of the company as with himself, he came gradually to life again. His recovery was hastened by the slamming of the door and the spectacle of his son Frederick clasping in his arms a wife who, his lordship had never forgotten, was the daughter of probably the only millionaire in existence who had that delightful willingness to take Freddie off his hands which was, in Lord Emsworth’s eyes, the noblest quality a millionaire could possess.

He sat up and blinked feebly. Though much better, he was still weak.

“What was your scenario about, sweetness?” asked Mrs. Freddie.

“I’ll tell you, angel-face. Or should we stir up the guv’nor? He seems a bit under the weather.”

“Better leave him to rest for awhile. That woman Jane Yorke upset him.”

“She would upset anybody. If there’s one person I bar, it’s the blister who comes between man and wife. Not right, I mean, coming between man and wife. My scenario’s about a man and wife. This fellow, you understand, is a poor cove⁠—no money, if you see what I mean⁠—and he has an accident, and the hospital coves say they won’t operate unless he can chip in with five hundred dollars down in advance. But where to get it? You see the situation?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Strong, what?”

“Awfully strong.”

“Well, it’s nothing to how strong it gets later on. The cove’s wife gets hold of a millionaire bloke and vamps him and lures him to the flat and gets him to promise he’ll cough up the cash. Meanwhile, cutbacks of the doctor at the hospital on the phone. Subtitle: Have you got the money? And she laughing merrily so as not to let the millionaire bloke guess that her heart is aching. I forgot to tell you the cove had to be operated on immediately or he would hand in his dinner-pail. Dramatic, eh?”

“Frightfully.”

“Well, then the millionaire bloke demands his price. I thought of calling it A Woman’s Price.”

“Splendid.”

“And now comes the blowout. They go into the bedroom and⁠—Oh, hullo, guv’nor! Feeling better?”

Lord Emsworth had risen. He was tottering a little as he approached them, but his mind was at rest.

“Much better, thank you.”

“You know my wife, what?”

“Oh, Lord Emsworth,” said Mrs. Freddie, “I’m so dreadfully sorry. I wouldn’t have had anything like this happen for the world. But⁠—”

Lord Emsworth patted her hand paternally. Once more he was overcome with astonishment that his son Frederick should have been able to win the heart of a girl so beautiful, so sympathetic, so extraordinarily rich.

“The fault was entirely mine, my dear child. But⁠—” He paused. Something was plainly troubling him. “Tell me, when Frederick was wearing that beard⁠—when Frederick was⁠—was⁠—when he was wearing that beard, did he really look like me?”

“Oh, yes. Very like.”

“Thank you, my dear. That was all I wanted to know. I will leave you now. You will want to be alone. You must come down to Blandings, my dear child, at the very earliest opportunity.”

He walked thoughtfully from the room.

“Does this hotel,” he inquired of the man who took him down in the lift, “contain a barber’s shop?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I wonder if you would direct me to it?” said his lordship.

Lord Emsworth sat in his library at Blandings Castle, drinking that last restful whisky-and-soda of the day. Through the open window came the scent of flowers and the little noises of the summer night.

He should have been completely at rest, for much had happened since his return to sweeten life for him. Angus McAllister had reported that the greenfly were yielding to treatment with whale-oil solution; and the stricken cow had taken a sudden turn for the better, and at last advices was sitting up and taking nourishment with something of the old appetite. Moreover, as he stroked his shaven chin, his lordship felt a better, lighter man, as if some burden had fallen from him.

And yet, as he sat there, a frown was on his forehead.

He rang the bell.

“Your lordship?”

Lord Emsworth looked at his faithful butler with appreciation. Deuce of a long time Beach had been at the Castle, and would, no doubt, be there for many a year to come. A good fellow. Lord Emsworth had liked the way the man’s eyes had lighted up on his return, as if the sight of his employer had removed a great weight from his mind.

“Oh, Beach,” said his lordship, “kindly put in a trunk-call to London on the telephone.”

“Very good, your lordship.”

“Get through to Suite Number Sixty-Seven at the Savoy Hotel, and speak to Mr. Frederick.”

“Yes, your lordship.”

“Say that I particularly wish to know how that scenario of his ended.”

“Scenario, your lordship?”

“Scenario.”

“Very good, your lordship.”

Lord Emsworth returned to his reverie. Time passed. The butler returned.

“I have spoken to Mr. Frederick, your lordship.”

“Yes?”

“He instructed me to give your lordship his best wishes, and to tell you that, when the millionaire and Mr. Cove’s wife entered the bedroom, there was a black jaguar tied to the foot of the bed.”

“A jaguar?”

“A jaguar, your lordship. Mrs. Cove stated that it was there to protect her honour, whereupon the millionaire, touched by this, gave her the money. Mr. Cove made a satisfactory recovery after his operation, your lordship.”

“Ah!” said Lord Emsworth, expelling a deep breath. “Thank you, Beach, that is all.”

Colophon

Short Fiction
was compiled from short stories published between 1901 and 1926 by
P. G. Wodehouse.

This ebook was produced for
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The cover page is adapted from
A Couple Walking Along the Basin,
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