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C76

no . 1-4

v.85

c.l

ROBARTS

.1 1'i-nnl NXvVc/i nf Thni-ki-rnu by Count tTOrsaii. From the original in the Collection of
' Major William '//. Lambert. H

Frontispiece

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CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

£i V« 85" T.Q: \- ^ }

JANUARY 1902. ~

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES.*
BY GENERAL JAMES GRANT WILSON.

II.

THE SECOND VISIT (OCTOBEE 1855 — APRIL 1856).

If Truth were again a goddess, I would make Thackeray her High Priest.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE.

IN October 1855 Thackeray departed on his second lecture tour
in the United States, from which he returned to England in
April 1856. The subject of the uncompleted lectures on ' The
Four Georges' — for he finished the last one in America — seems
first to have occurred to him several years previous, while travel-
ling on the Continent. In 1852 he wrote : ' I had a notion of
lectures on the Four Georges, and going to Hanover to look at
the place whence that race came ; but if I hope for preferment
hereafter, I mean Police-magistrateship or what not, I had best
keep a civil tongue in my head : and I should be sure to say
something impudent if I got upon that subject : and as I have no
Heaven-sent mission to do this job, why, perhaps I had best look
for another. And the malheur is, that because it is a needless
job, and because I might just as well leave it alone, it is most
likely I shall be at it.' In August 1855 Thackeray wrote : ' I am
going to try in the next six weeks to write four lectures for the
great North American Eepublic, and deliver them after they are
tired of the stale old humourists.'

Two days before sailing, some threescore friends and admirers

1 Copyright, 1901, in the United States of America, by the Century Company.
VOL. XII. — NO. 67, N.S. 1

2 THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES.

entertained him at the London Tavern, Charles Dickens presiding
at the dinner, and proposing the toast of the evening. Thackeray
delivered a carefully-prepared reply, which was followed by some
complimentary verses by another guest, ' a friend of the O'Mul-
ligan,' recited with great success.

In the course of an after-dinner address delivered in London
in 1857, Thackeray said: 'The last time I visited America, two
years ago, I sailed on board the Africa, Captain Harrison. As
she was steaming out of Liverpool one fine blowy October day,
and was hardly over the bar, when, animated by those peculiar
sensations not uncommon to landsmen at the commencement of a
sea-voyage, I was holding on amidships, up comes a quick-eyed,
shrewd-looking little man, who holds on to the rope next to me,
and says : " Mr. Thackeray, I am the representative of the house
of D. Appleton & Co., of Broadway, New York — a most liberal
and enterprising firm, who will be most happy to do business with
you." I don't know that we then did any business in the line
thus delicately hinted at, because at that particular juncture we
were both of us called, by a heavy lurch of the ship, to a casting-
up of accounts of a far less agreeable character.'

As on his previous visit, Thackeray landed in Boston, where
he was most cordially welcomed, and where his lectures on ' The
Four Greorges ' were highly commended by the critics. He
renewed intimacies made there years earlier, and formed many
new friendships, seeing much of Ticknor, ' Tom ' Appleton,
Longfellow, Lowell, Dana, and Prescott, whose histories, he said,
afforded him more pleasure than Macaulay's ; and he added :
' When we make a little fortune it will be pleasant some day to
write a nice little history book. But where is the memory of
the astonishing Macaulay ? '

Who that saw Thackeray in the United States in the 'fifties
will ever forget that giant form, crowned by a stately and massive
head, covered with almost snow-white hair ? Said Fitz-Greene
Halleck, who was five feet seven, to a young friend as they
approached the English humourist and Bayard Taylor in Broad-
way : ' Behold those two Brobdingnags coming this way. Toge-
ther they measure twelve feet and several inches in their stock-
ings.' The youth was presented, a few words of cordial greetings
were exchanged, and the giant litterateurs passed on. Halleck
called his companion's attention to the fact that Thackeray had a
particularly small hand, half inherited, his friend Fitz Gerald

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES. 3

suggested, from the Hindu people among whom he was horn. A
few days later Bayard Taylor received the following note from

Thackeray :

' Wednesday, Clarendon [1855].

' MY DEAR MR. TAYLOR A card has just been given to me
which you must have written without having received my note
written and promised to be sent from the Albion to the Tribune
yesterday. Young has arranged the Press Club dinner should
take place on Saturday 17th instead of 24th and we shall meet
there I hope.

' And don't, don't give a dinner at Delmonico's please. I
did yesterday and it's a sin to spend so much money on the
belly. Let us have content and mutton chops and I shall be a
great deal better pleased than with that godless disbursement of
dollars. . . .'

Notwithstanding Thackeray's protest, he was bidden to a
Delmonico Sunday breakfast a few days later, and of all the
eighteen choice spirits who were present at the delightful enter-
tainment, when the chief guest gave ' Dr. Martin Luther,' and
Curtis and Wallack sang the duet ' Drink to me only with thine
eyes,' Richard Henry Stoddard remembers that he is the only
survivor. It may be mentioned here that the two ' big fellows '
became great friends. With three possible exceptions, Thackeray
admired Bayard Taylor more than any other American that he
had met, and a few years later presented to him Schiller's sword,
perhaps his most valued possession ; for Fields relates that on one
occasion, when Thackeray desired a little service done for a friend,
he remarked with a quizzical expression, ' Please say the favour
will greatly oblige a man of the name of Thackeray, whose only
recommendation is that he has seen Napoleon ' and Groethe, and
is the owner of Schiller's sword.' Taylor bequeathed the sword to
the museum of Weimar, where it may now be seen among many
relics of Groethe and Schiller. Thackeray purchased it in Weimar,
using it as a part of his court costume when, as a student there,
he was invited to the Grand Duke's ball and other entertainments.

1 Thackeray as a youth, while on a voyage from India to England, saw at
St. Helena a short, fat man in white clothes, wearing a large straw hat. It was
the hero whose meteor-like career was closed by Wellington at Waterloo, and
whose funeral Thackeray witnessed in Paris. He afterwards described it in
the paper entitled ' The Second Funeral of Napoleon.'

1—2

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES.

In January 1856 Thackeray was again in Philadelphia, where
large audiences listened to his lectures on ' The Four Georges,'
and where he renewed his agreeable intimacies with William B.

lolvJjLM^^
I?

From the original in the collection of Major William H. Lambert.

Reed, Morton McMichael, William D. Lewis, president of the
G-irard Bank, Thomas J. Wharton, and many others, of whom
perhaps the only survivor is Mrs. Caspar Wister.

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES. 5

Thackeray had a particular delight in schoolboys, and an ex-
cellent way with them, as several American lads of New York
and Philadelphia who experienced his liberality still remember.
After his death two of the Philadelphians published apprecia-
tive notices of the great author with the titles of ' A Friend of my
Childhood,' and ' A Child's Glimpse of Thackeray.' The mother
of one of these schoolboys objected to his pocketing the sovereign,
or five-dollar gold piece, presented to him by Thackeray, who
vainly endeavoured to convince her that this specimen of bene-
ficence was a thing of course in England. The result was that the
coin was returned, but three months later the lad was made happy
by the receipt of copies of ' Vanity Fair ' and ' Pendennis,' across
the title-pages of which he saw written, in a curiously small and
delicate hand, his name, ' Henry Reed,3 with W. M. Thackeray's
kind regards, April 1856.' A passage in Dickens's brief tribute
to his brother novelist will be recalled : ' I remember his once
asking me with fantastic gravity, when he had been to Eton, where
my eldest son then was, whether I felt as he did in regard to never
seeing a boy without wanting instantly to give him a sovereign.
I thought of this when I looked down into his grave, after he was
laid there, for I looked down into it over the shoulder of a boy to
whom he had been kind.' Another English lad to whom that
' big mass of soul,' as Carlyle described Thackeray, ' with its beauti-
ful vein of genius,' gave a golden guinea, still treasures it among
his most valued possessions. He is now known as one of the fore-
most heroes of the South African War — General Baden-Powell.

At Baltimore, where Thackeray was the guest of John P.
Kennedy, he repeated his lectures ; also in Richmond, Charleston,
Savannah, Macon, Mobile — which city he greatly admired, ' though
we did not make a mint of money there ' — and New Orleans,
where he records : ' The papers here are very civil except one a
Hirish paper, which I am told whips me severely : but I don't
read it and don't mind it or any abuse from dear old Ireland.'
When, during his Southern tour, a Virginia friend inquired of
Thackeray if he purposed to give his impressions of America to
the public as his predecessor Charles Dickens had done, he promptly
replied, ' I shall record my opinions on the Americans in the book
that I do not intend to write.' In St. Louis the lectures were well
received, and the lecturer met two interesting characters — Captain

1 The late Judge Reed of Philadelphia, son of Professor Henry Reed, lost on
the steamer Arctic.

6 THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES.

Bonneville, immortalised by Irving, and Pierre Choteau, the
famous fur-trader, a son of one of the brothers who founded the
Western city in 1764. It was at the Planters' House that
Thackeray overheard his waiter say to an associate, ' That's the
great Thacker.' ' Well, what's to be done ? ' said the other.
' D d if I know,' was the response. As indicated in the follow-
ing letter to William Duer Robinson, Thackeray delivered his
lectures on the Georges in Cincinnati, and then set out for New
York, sending a few lines en route to his family, in which he says :
' How sparkling Lake Erie looked, how pretty the country was,
albeit still wintry. But Europe is a prettier country still for me,

and I still long for it.'

'St. Louis. Mo. 26 March [1856].

' MY DEAR ROBINSON. I think and hope and trust to be at
New York next week. Is the Bower of Virtue vacant ? 0 how
glad I shall be to occupy it ! — Is there a bed for Charles my man ?

' Yours always

' W. M. THACKERAY.

' address care Mercantile Library Cincinnati.'

The Bower of Virtue was No. 604 Houston Street, near
Broadway, between Green and Mercer. Its site is now occupied
by a warehouse, but on the north side of the street are still to be
seen several old-fashioned two-storied brick houses of the same
style as the one that sheltered Thackeray for several weeks during
his second visit to the United States. At that time Mr. Robinson,
J. C. B. Davis, and Samuel E. Lyons occupied what the humourist
styles ' the Bower of Virtue.' Mr. Davis, one of the few survivors
among Thackeray's intimate American friends, says, in letters to
the writer :

' My acquaintance with Thackeray began in a very pleasant
way. In the summer of 1849 I went to London, with a letter to
Mr. Thomas Baring, the head of the house of Baring Bros., and
commonly known as Tom Baring. This brought me the usual
invitation to dinner, but as the cholera was then prevalent in
London, I found only two other guests. No presentations were
made, and I finished my dinner and the cigars which followed it
without knowing the names of my fellow-guests. When we came
to leave, one of them, finding that I was going past Hyde Park
Corner, said that he was going the same way, and we walked along
together. When we reached the corner, as I was crossing Piccadilly,

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t'ortiftn of a Letter from Thackeray to Lady Molesworlh.

To face page 6.

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES. 7

he said he was to have an early dinner the next day, and after-
wards take his guests to Vauxhall : would I come ? I answered
that I should be glad to come, and was about to add that I had
not the slightest idea what his name was, when he handed me his
card, told me the hour for dinner, and we bade each other good
night. When I got to a street light I saw that I had been spend-
ing the evening with Thackeray. " Vanity Fair " was the only novel
which he had then published in full, and we were not as familiar
with his appearance then as we afterwards became.

' The next day I went to the dinner, and found as companions
most of the men who figure on the platform with him in the
second number of the twelfth volume of " Punch " : Doyle,
Tom Taylor, Lemon, Leech, Douglas Jerrold, &c. We went to
Yauxhall after dinner, and spent a pleasant evening there. A
.little later, when Pendennis went to the same place, I understood
why we had been there. With the acquaintances I made then
I had most friendly relations afterwards. They made my stay of
three years in England a most happy one.

' In 1852 Thackeray made his first visit to the United States.
I followed about a month later, reaching New York on New Year's
day, 1853. I had hardly got into the hotel on Broadway, nearly
opposite Grace Church, when he appeared and said he had an in-
vitation for me to a reception party to be given that evening at a
villa in the country, and would call for me. He came in a sleigh
at the appointed hour, and took me to the out-of-town villa on the
west side of Fifth Avenue, between 37th and 38th streets.

' You ask me about our lower floor in Houston Street. Like
all New York houses of that day, it contained two rooms (with
closets). The front was our dining-room. The closets between
were our pantry ; and the rear room was occupied as a bedroom
by Samuel E. Lyon, Esq., whose family lived in Westchester
County. He practised law in New York, where he was in partner-
ship with Alexander Hamilton, grandson of the Alexander Hamil-
ton. They had a large business, and often he had to stay over in
town. When he did he made his home with us. . . .'

To the Bower of Virtue Thackeray was again heartily welcomed
on his arrival in New York, and a corner was found for Charles,
who was an excellent specimen of the good English valet. After
his departure from New York, Mr. Robinson received a note from
the novelist, saying : ' By the time you receive this, dear William,
I shall be almost out of the harbour. Let me ask you to accept

8 THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES.

this little gift, as a remembrance of the many, many pleasant days
and nights we have passed together.' The present was a beautiful
silver tankard, simply inscribed, ' W. D. Eobinson from W. M.
Thackeray, April 26, 1856,' which is still in the possession of Mr.
Robinson's family. Another equally prized treasure is a copy of
'The Virginians,' presented by the author, with the following
daintily-written inscription :

In the U. States and in the Queen's dominions

All people have a right to their opinions,

And many people don't much relish ' The Virginians.'

Peruse my book, dear R., and if you find it

A little to your taste, I hope you'll bind it.

In addition to George Bancroft, who knew Byron, Thackeray
became well acquainted with Charles King, president of Columbia
College, who, with his elder brother John, was at school at Harrow
with Byron and Peel, their father, Rufus King, being then
American Minister to the Court of St. James. This fine type of
gentleman of the old school expressed to the English author his
admiration for Byron's pluck. Once, when Harrow challenged
Eton to a match at cricket, Eton refused, saying, ' Eton only plays
with schools of royal foundation.' Mr. King remembered Byron
saying, ' I am not good at cricket ' — alluding to his foot — ' but if
you get up an eleven to fight an Eton eleven, I should like to be
one of yours.' x James G. King, a younger brother of John and
Charles, was Thackeray's New York banker.

Before sailing for Liverpool, Thackeray gave a farewell dinner
at Delmonico's, then on the corner of Broadway and Chambers
Street, opposite A. T. Stewart & Co.'s. Thirty-two guests sat
down with him, including Keed and several other Philadelphia
friends, who came to New York to attend the entertainment.
The last survivor said, ' We had a glorious night of it,' and he
remembered that the party included Cozzens, Cranch, Curtis,
Daly, Dana, Charles A. Davis, Duer, Hackett, Halleck, Hicks,
Charles King, Robinson, Taylor, the two Wallacks, Ward, and
Young. Alas !

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

' Thackeray was in fine spirits,' writes George William Curtis,
' and when the cigars were lighted he said that there should be

1 Byron played for Harrow against Eton in 1805, scoring 7 and 2 in his two
innings. The name of King does not figure among the players in that year. — ED.

CORNHILL.

.1 \\'/iti-r-('ulii///- llruwing of Himself, bit Thackrruy in 11 Li'lti-r to Lmly Mnlesuorth.

Tofacepatjei

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES. 9

no speech-making, but that everybody, according to the old rule
of festivity, should sing a song or tell a story. James Wallack
was one of the guests, and with a kind of shyness which was un-
expected but very agreeable in a veteran actor, he pleaded very
earnestly that he could not sing and knew no story. But with
friendly persistence, which yet was not immoderate, Thackeray
declared that no excuse could be allowed, because it would be a
manifest injustice to every other modest man at table and put a
summary end to the hilarity. " Now, Wallack," he continued,
" we all know you to be a truthful man. You can, since you say
so, neither sing a song or tell a story. But I tell you what you
can do better than any living man — you can give us the great
scene from ' The Rent Day.' " There was a burst of enthusiastic
agreement, and old Wallack, smiling and yielding, still sitting at
the table in his evening dress, proceeded in a most effective and
touching recitation from one of his most famous parts. No
enjoyment of it was greater and no applause sincerer than those
of Thackeray, who presently sang his " Little Billee," with infinite
gusto.' As a pendant to the above, Judge Daly, the last of the
party, after more than twoscore years, remembered two additional
incidents of the evening : that the poet Halleck, remaining in his
seat — for, as he said, he could not speak standing — made a
remarkably bright little speech, and that Curtis and Lester
Wallack sang several duets.

Two days before his departure on the American steamer
Baltic, which sailed for Liverpool April 24, Thackeray dined
with Charles Augustus Davis, meeting, among others, ' lovely
Sally Baxter ' and the poet Halleck. At that pleasant dinner-
party he expressed great regret that he came to the United States
too late to meet Cooper, for whose writings he entertained the
highest admiration, and referred to the affecting final scene in
' The Prairie ' when the dying Leatherstocking said, ' Here ! ' as
surpassing anything that he had met with in English literature.

A few days after Thackeray sailed, Halleck was speaking to a
young friend of tae exquisite scene in ' The Newcomes ' when the
dying Colonel drew himself up, exclaiming, ' Adsum ! ' and he re-
marked that the similarity between this and the Cooper scene, to
which attention had been called at the Davis dinner, was certainly
a singular literary coincidence, but undoubtedly undesigned,
adding, ' I know of nothing in nineteenth-century fiction likely to
outlive them.'

10 THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES.

The first message received from Thackeray after his departure
from the United States was addressed to Mr. William Duer

Robinson.

' On board last day. May 7, 1856.

'MY DEAR OLD ROBINSON I tell you that writing is just as
dismal and disgusting as saying good bye. I hate it and but for
a sense of duty I wouldn't write at all — confound me if I would.
But you know after a fellow has been so uncommonly hospitable
and kind and that sort of thing — a fellow ought you see to write
and tell a fellow that a fellow's very much obliged and — in a word
you understand. Sir you made me happy when I was with you,
you made me sorry to come away and you make me happy now
when I think what a kind generous friendly W D R you are.
You have Davis back in the Bower of Virtue — you'll fill that jug
one day and drink to my health won't you ? and when you come
to Europe you '11 come to me & my girls mind, and we'll see if
there is not some good claret at 36 Onslow Square. . . .'

1 Home, (wiz 36 Onslow Square,
Brompton London) May 9.

' We did pass the bar, and didn't I have a good dinner at the
Adelphi, and wasn't I glad to get back to town yesterday, and
wasn't there a great dinner at the Grarrick Club (the Annual
Shakspeare dinner wh ought to have come off on the 23d. ult.
but was put off on ace* of a naval review) and didn't I make a
Yankee speech, and oh lor' Robinson ! haven't I got a headache
this morning ? I'm ashamed to ask for a sober-water that's the
fact. — And so here's the old house, the old room, the old teapot
by my bedside, the old trees nodding in at the window — it looks
as if I'd never been away — and that it is a dream I have been
making. Well, in my dream I dreamt there was an uncommonly
good fellow by name W D R. and I dreamed that he treated me
with all sorts of kindness, and I send him and J C B D.1 and D D 2
(and what's L's name downstairs ? 3) my heartiest regards ; and
when my young women come home I shall tell them what a deal
of kindness their Papa had across the water. So good bye, my
dear Robinson & believe me always gratefully yours

'WMT.

' Tell Jim Wallack that we hadn't a single actor at the Shak-
speare dinner and that F. Fladgate and C Dance send their best

1 J. C. Bancroft Davis. * Denning Duer. * Samuel E. Lyons.

,1 riiin-l-rray Steteh, from Hie original in the Collection of Major William If. Lambert.

To fact' page 10.

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'Vowi ^^e original in the collection of Major William H. Lambert.
A THACKERAY AUTOGRAPH.

12 THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES.

remembrances to him. How did that Sunday dinner go off?
Was it as bad as the dreary Friday ? '

The following letter is addressed to his friend Frederick S.
Cozzens, whom he had visited at his Yonkers cottage, described so
humorously in the ' Sparrowgrass Papers.'

' 36 Onslow Sq : London.

' Feb. 8 [1857]. (It's a Sunday evening) and I'm waiting
for dinner, & that's how you come by an answer.

' MY DEAR COZZENS : Thank you for a sight of your hand-
writing, and the kindly reminiscences of those jolly
Centurions whose hospitality and affectionateness this
never intends to forget. What pleased me most in your
letter is to have it under your own hand & seal that you are
well. I should like to see those pretty little chicks again — that
snug cottage — those rosy-tinted palisades — that dining-room cup-
board up wh victuals came with clangor — that snug bedroom
where the celebrated Thacker left the razor strap and could hear
for hours Judge Daly talking talking into midnight. My dear
old Judge — I haven't forgot what I owe him. . . . Where Bayard
may be now the Loramussy only knows — We liked his pretty
sisters, we had brief glimpses of a jolly time together — we hope
to meet in April or May when I bragged about taking him into
the fashionable world. But I hear that I am in disgrace with
the fashionable world for speaking disrespectfully of the Greorgy
porgies — and am not to be invited myself, much more to be
allowed to take others into polight society. I writhe at the
exclusion. The Georges are so astoundingly popular here that
I go on month after month hauling in fresh bags of sovereigns,
wondering that the people are not tired & that the lecturer is not
found out. To-morrow I am away for 2 months to the North —
have found a Barnum who pays me an awful sum for April &
May, and let us hope June — shall make £10,000 by my beloved
monarchs one way or the other — and then and then then — well
I don't know what is going to happen. If I had not to write 20
letters a day on business I would have written to Greorge Curtis,
and given him an old man's blessing on his marriage. But I
can't write — no, only for business or for money can this pen bite
this paper. As I am talking nonsense to you, all the fellows
are present in my mind, I hear their laughter & talk,
and taste that 44 Chateau Margaux, and that Champagne
do you remember ? — And I say again I would like to

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES.

see those pretty little chicks. So the Athenaeum assaulted you —
lo you now ! I never heard of the circumstance — the shot is
fired, the report is over, the man not killed — the critic pop-
gunning away at some other mark by this time — and you I hope
you are writing some more of those papers. Your book & Bayard
Taylor's helped me over the voyage — How curious it is writing !
I feel as if I was back again in New York and shaking hands with
100 of you — the heart becomes warm — (rod bless all good fellows
say I. Shall I ever see you all again? Providebit Dominus —

From the original in the collection of Major William H. Lambert.
A THACKEKAY SKETCH.

I forget whether you know Bancroft Davis — The folks here are
hospitable to him. He has a pleasant time. Yesterday we elected
him into the GTarrick — and on the mantelpiece in my dining-
room is a bottle of madeira wh he gave it me and wh I am going
to hand out to some worthies who are coming to dine. They
have never tasted anything like it — that's the fact. As I go
on twaddling I feel I MUST come back & see you all. I praise
Mr. Washington five times more here than I did in the States —
our people cheer — the fine folks look a little glum but the cele-
brated Thacker does not care for their natural ill-temper. Only

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES.

2 newspapers here have abused me — & I have been quite on their
side.

' April 5. To think this was written on Feb. 8 and left in
my portfolio ! I went out of town the next day only returned
April 3 — have been killing & eating the Georges ever since.
I do not know what this letter is about — I am not going to read
so much M.S. if I can help it, but I remember, when I wrote it,
how I had a great desire to commune with my old chums at New

From the original in the collection of Major William H. Lambert.
ANOTHER THACKERAY SKETCH.

York and hereby renew the kindest greetings to them. Tell me,
Judge Daly, are you married & ahappy ? If so I will send you
those books I owe you. Poor Kane ! I grieved to think of that
hero carried so soon out of our world. There — I can no more —
good bye my dear Cozzens — I salute you my excellent Century —
Gr. Curtis & Young ! & Daly I am yours always

' W. M. THACKERAY.'

The cordial note which follows was written to Bayard Taylor,
mentioned in the above letter, who was then in London, receiving

1 William Young, editor of the ' Albion.'

-L * <,

6y Thackeray, from the original in the Collection of Major William II. Lambert.

To face page 14.

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES. 15

many kindly attentions from Thackeray, including, a little later,
a portrait of Tennyson, with the message accompanying it, to
which were added a few lines. Taylor appended his initials and
the date, June 1857, so that, as may be seen in the facsimile
given on the next page, the same sheet contains the handwriting
of the three T's — Tennyson, Thackeray, and Taylor. The original
is framed with the portrait, and belongs to Mrs. Bayard Taylor.
In his ' At Home and Abroad,' Taylor describes a pleasant annual
dinner given by Thackeray in July 1857, to the writers for
' Punch,' at which he and three other Americans were present.
The others he describes as ' a noted sculptor, the architect-in-
chief of the Central Park, and an ex-editor of the New York
" Times." '

' 36 Onslow Square 29 May [1857].

. ' MY DEAR BAYARD I have written a letter to Tennyson con-
taining comments upon your character, which I couldn't safely
trust to your own hand — and so, you'll go to Freshwater in the
Isle of Wight and he'll be prepared to receive you. The girls are
sorry not to see the sisters who must have had a famous time and
we here shall be delighted to shake hands with you — A month
sooner we would not have let you camp out elsewhere, but I have
just pulled part of my house down and have only one bed-chamber
where there were to be two. But live as close as you can to us
and eat drink smoke come in and out as you please, and you'll
be sure to please

' W. M. T.'

Some faint colour is given to the claim made by many Mary-
landers that John P. Kennedy wrote a portion, if not an entire
chapter, of ' The Virginians ' by Thackeray's frequent appeals
to American friends for aid. These occur in several commu-
nications of this period, including the following addressed to
William D. Eobinson, ' Cashier of the Customs, New York,' which
Mrs. Eitchie describes as ' a delightful letter,' adding : ' I think
it can be scarcely necessary to contradict the assertion that Mr.
Kennedy wrote a chapter1 in " The Virginians," which is entirely
in my father's handwriting. No doubt Mr. Kennedy gave him
the facts about the scenery, but I am sure that my father wrote
his own books, for no one could have written them for him.'

Mr. Dandridge Kennedy writes from Warrenton, Virginia :

1 The chapter referred to is that headed ' Intentique ora tenebant.'

16 THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES.

X*>«. £/vvvr<4L . /w

fa ^

v i^t^iAU- *

<T»VCJC «-/

lthe original vn'tTie collection of Mrs. Bayard Taylor.

A LETTER FROM TENNYSON, WITH A NOTE TO BAYARD TAYLOR
ADDED BY THACKERAY.

(The words ' June,' 1857,' and initials, are Bayard Taylor's.)

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES. 17

' While in this country, Thackeray was, for a time, the guest of
my uncle, John P. Kennedy, and during that period my uncle
took him on a visit to his brother, Mr. Andrew Kennedy, in

\iu\ \MM»,

0
Uvu&l

^Vowi ^/te original in the collection of Major William, H. Lambert.
LETTER FROM THACKERAY TO LADY LONDONDERRY.

Virginia. I believe that many of the family have credited the

chapter you speak of to my uncle, but I cannot positively assert

it. Mr. Latrobe was very intimate with my uncle, and, I think,

VOL. xn. — NO. 67, N.s. 2

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES.

knew much of his literary and other work, and would be careful
in any statement he made. I saw Mr. Thackeray while he was
staying with my uncle, and knew that the latter gave him much
information as to the Virginia people and country, and that he

*l \Kt***

\\sru+t, tuf iulit .

uL v^

<Ae original in the collection of Major William H. Lambert.
LETTER FROM THACKERAY TO LADY LONDONDERRY.

took him on the visit to Virginia that he might see it for himself.
I am not sure that they visited the exact spot of Virginia that
Thackeray describes, and about which my uncle had written a
great deal.'

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES. 19

« Saturday. Jan. 23. 1858. 36 Onslow Sq.

' A sudden gust of friendship blows from this boosom in the
direction of Houston Street and my Wobinson. The fact is, Sir.
I was in the drawing room just now, and out of a portfolio on one
of the elegant rosewood tables, there peeped a photograph, wh
represented the honest old mug of W. D. E. How is he ? Can
he afford to drink claret still ? are there any cocktails about 604 ?
I would give a guinea to be there — and now and then get quite
a bust of feeling towards folks on your side. Davis's marriage
came upon me quite inopportunely ; I have had to give presents
to no less than 4 brides this year and I can't positively stand no
more. The last was Libbie Strong, whose votive teapot is at this-
present moment in my house, waiting for an opportunity to X
the water. What can I tell you about myself? nothing very
good, new, or funny. . . . Virginians are doing pretty well thank
you, but not so very well as we expected so that I only draw
250£ per month instead of 30(XD as the agreement is. But I like
every body who deal with me to make money by me so I cede
those 50£ you see until better times. I have just paid the last
of the Oxford Election bills, and got how much do you think out
of 900£? — 13£ is the modest figure returned. Then you know
J. Gr King's Sons have somehow forgotten to send me any divi-
dends upon Michigan Centrals & N Y Centrals. So I am not
much richer in Jan 58 than I was in Jan 57. that's the fact.
But then in compensation I live very much more expensively.
Charles, much injured by going to America, has been ruined by
the company he keeps next door. Next door has a butler and a
footman in livery. Charles found it was impossible to carry on
without a footman in livery ; so when the girls dine off 2 mutton
chops they have the pleasure of being waited on by 2 menials
who walk round & round them. We give very good dinners,
our house is full of pretty little things, our cellar is not badly off.
Sir I am going in a few days to pay 100£ for 18 dozen of '48
claret that is not to be drunk for 4 years. That is the price
Wine has got to now. 'Tis as dear as at New York. No wonder
a fellow can't afford to send a marriage token to his friend when
he lives in this here extravagant way. I fondly talk of going to
America in the autumn and finishing my story sur lea lieux.
I want to know what was the colour of Washington's livery —
Where the deuce was George Warrington carried after he was
knocked down at Braddock's defeat ? Was he taken by Indians

2-2

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES.

into a French fort ? I want him to be away for a year and a half,
or until the siege of Quebec. If you see Fred. Cozzens or George
Curtis, ask them to manage this job for me, and send me a little
line stating what really has happened to the eldest of the 2
Virginians (This is genteeler paper than the other, \vh I use for
my " copy" paper.) I only got my number done last night, and
am getting more disgustingly lazy every day. I can't do the
work until it's wanted. . . . Sir I came up stairs now to do a
little work before dinner ; only I thought how much pleasanter it
would be to have a chat with old Robinson ! Do you see in the
Times this morning the death of Beverley Eobinson late a Captain
of the R. Artillery ? He must be one of you. And now it is 5
minutes to 7 : and it is time to go dress for dinner. Hark at
the Brougham-horse snorting in the frost ! '
Then follows this sketch :

From the original lent by Robert Emmet Robinson.

And the letter runs on :

4 This is Wednesday 27. What do you think I did yesterday ?
gave one of the old '51 lectures in a suburb of London. It was
quite refreshing. Went there with my doctor who attended me
all last year without a fee — gave him the 25£ cheque wh they gave
me for the lecture. It was easily earned money wasn't it ?
How shall I fill up the rest of this thin paper ? Ever since the
Georges I have been in disgrace with the Bo Monde. My former

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES. 21

entertainers the Earls and Marquises having fought very shy of
me. This year they're beginning to come back.

' Thursday 25th. Yes, but the 25th February. What a time
this letter has been a-composing ! I have written a number, two
numbers, since it began have spent ever so much money grown
ever so much older and not a bit wiser — am just at my desk
again. ... If I don't write this letter off now I shall never send
it that's flat. It must go, Eobinson, and I want you to ask Duer
THIS IS THE ONLY IMPORTANT PART of the letter whether
(I cannot spoil my own mug on the other side) the Michigan
Centrals and New York Centrals are ever going to pay, and what
becomes of the absent dividend of last year? What are my
Michigan Bonds worth now? Will you get me a philosophic
answer to these questions please ? What more ? I often look at
your beauteous image. Next week I am going to Macready in
the country to read one of those demd old Georges . He offers
me 5Q£ to read in 2 little towns close by and I won't. Why do
for nothing what I won't do for 5Q£ ? because I am sick of letting
myself out for hire — I have just bought a famous little cob that
carries me to perfection. Adieu Robinson, Davis, Duer.

' W M T [signed in monogram].'

As the story of ' Hemy Esmond ' was the fruit of Thackeray's
researches for the preparation of his lectures on the 'English
Humourists,' so ' The Virginians ' originated in his studies for
' The Four Georges ' and his second visit to the United States.
The first number appeared in November 1857. The reader will
recall the opening lines :

On the library wall of one of the most famous writers of America there hang
two crossed swords, which his relatives wore in the great War of Independence.
The one sword was gallantly drawn in the service of the King, the other was the
weapon of a brave and honoured republican soldier. The possessor of the harm-
less trophy has earned for himself a name alike honoured in his ancestor's country
and his own, where genius such as his has always a peaceful welcome.

Concerning this Mr. Prescott wrote :

' Boston, November 30, 1857.

' MY DEAR THACKERAY : I was much pleased on seeing you
opened your new novel with a compliment to my two swords of
Bunker Hill memory and their unworthy proprietor. It was
prettily done, and I take it very kind of you. I could not have

wished anything better, nor certainly have preferred any other
pen to write it among all the golden pens of history and romance.
I am sure you will believe me. . . .

•WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT.'

From the original in the collection of Major Willia/ni H. Lambert.
A THACKERAY SKETCH (POSSIBLY A CARICATURE OF HIMSELF).

Among Thackeray's many American correspondents was George
William Curtis, who in ' Harper's Magazine,' immediately after
the great author's death, published a touching tribute to his
memory. Unfortunately he seems not to have preserved any of
the numerous notes and letters received from his gifted friend,

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES. 23

but fortunately we find one written to Thackeray containing
pleasant references to ' The Virginians ' :

' North Shore, Staten Island, June 17, 1858.
(This day eighty-three years ago, we had a tussle on Bunker Hill.)

' MY DEAR THACKERAY — I have received all your kind messages,
and we have a hundred times conceived a round robin to you
which flew away before we caught it — and oh ! there's no end of
reasons why I haven't written to a man I love dearly. Then I've
been fighting for you in papers, &c., for of course you know how
you've been abused by us for " The Virginians " and especially the
Washington. It is curious that I have seen a copy of a MS.
letter from Edward Mason to Routledge (I think) after the Lee
difficulty at the battle of Monmouth, out of which, it was thought
by the indiscreet, personal difficulty might grow, in which Mason
says, " Have no fear, for I have known W. from boyhood, and he
never had but one opinion of the duels, &c." It has been the
most tempestuous teapot you ever heard. Meanwhile I have been
as happy as a king, with my queen and prince imperial under the
trees here on the island. We are all well, and you would not
think it was all vanity, this writing, if you could see the eager
circle of children and old men and maidens to whom I read the
monthly " Virginians," with shouts of merriment and sometimes
even a tear. We wonder if you will ever come back again, or if
we are henceforth to shake hands with you at this long stretch ;
but your kindest memory does not go away. I am a sinner never
to have sent you a solitary line before now. I give it an edge by
two extracts — the one from Philadelphia, the other from New
Orleans. — Good-bye. Think of us sometimes who think of you.

' Yours affectionately

' GEORGE W. CURTIS.'

In the following letter Thackeray introduces a young friend
to William Duer Eobinson, and in the succeeding one refers to
his unfortunate quarrel with Edmund Yates, which led to an
estrangement with Dickens, who took sides with Yates in the
unhappy affair.

'36 Onslow Sqr. S.W. July 11. 1860

' MY DEAR W. D. This will be handed to you by my young
friend Mr. Gore, son of Mrs. Gore, who is going to Bluenosia to look
after property left by his loyalist ancestors — this will be a recom-
mendation to him with somebody whose name I shall write pre-

24 THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES.

sently on an envelope. Gore has been in India with his regiment
and served there like a man. He is also as you will see one of
the Cremornaments of our young society. Please show him what
you think pretty and profitable for him at New York, of wh I never
think without a wish to see my trusty kind old W. D. Think of
a letter to You ! going to N. York & coming back to me ! Wasn't
it too bad ? It was a stupid letter, but dull or lively, I am always
W D's W T.'

' XXXVI Onslow Sq. S.W. 26 Sep*. 1860

' MY DEAR OLD W D R. I fancy you write anything against
me ? what next ? The culprit was my old friend Mr. Yates who
was turned out of the Grarrick because after agreeing to submit
the difference between us to the Club, he would not consent to the
apology wh they ordered him to make. And in consequence of
this last business even Dickens has cut him. We don't like men
writing about our privacies on this side of the water.

' And what the dickens has happened to Davis ? I found on my
return home a notekin beginning " dear Sir " and enclosing yours.
He was here for some time, and never told me he had come — As
soon as I heard it, I went to look for him. He never came to look
for me. I thought nothing of it, but that he was busy engaged
in some tremendous railroad transaction some one told me — too
busy to come after me — and went away out of town with my young
folks, and my parents, and my magazine on my back, ... in
dreary health, spirits, condition. We had a little trip to Holland
from wh I have just returned and find your note. Well, surely,
I've written since my last letter was sent back. I know I have —
but that I have sent the letter is another paire de bottes — I find
letters lying about weeks & months after and be hanged to me —
I not only am lazy in writing 'em, but incorrigibly irregular in
sending 'em. I have done those things wh I ought not to have
done I have left undone those things wh I ought to have done,
and there is little health in me.

'But if I don't write to my friends they'll remember what
heaps of letters I have to write and forgive me, won't they ? I have
a magazine once a month, a fever attack once a month, — the charge
of old folks and young folks whom I have to take to the country
or arrange for at home — a great deal of business, & bad health,
and very little order. 7 offended with my friends ? I have been
looking out for my dear good Baxters, who wrote in the Spring,
and here's winter almost and no sign of 'em.

Thackeray's Sketch of Titters, from the original in the Colleilion of Major Willu,nt II. Lumltrt.

To face page 24.

THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES. 25

' What news for you ? I am making and spending a deal of
money, have outlived my health, popularity, and inventive faculties
as I rather suspect — am building a fine house and wonder whether
I shall ever be able to live in it, and am yours my dear Eobinson
as always

' W. M. T.'

In February 1861, Thackeray sends to Eobinson, from the
Orarrick Club, a laconic introduction of Mr. — now Sir W. H. —
Russell, the well-known war correspondent, accompanied by some
minute drawings on the envelope of a pair of spectacles. Except
the date, it consists only of these words : ' My dear old W. D.,
Russell is going to you with this, and I wish I was a going too,'
followed by his monogram. It was received by Mr. Robinson
enclosed in the following note :

' MY DEAR SIR : Here is that great big binocled man's envelope
which is supposed to contain a favouring word on behalf of your
humble servant. I am sorry I had not got it to recommend myself
to you last night.

' Yours very faithfully,

' W. H. RUSSELL.'

Many of Thackeray's manuscripts are owned in America.
The venerable Ferdinand J. Dreer of Philadelphia purchased for
his friend, Gfeorge W. Childs, at a cost of twenty-five hundred
dollars, the original manuscript of the lectures on ' The Four
Georges,' and he presented it to the Drexel Institute of that city.
Mrs. Ritchie and her brother-in-law, Mr. Leslie Stephen, gave to
the library of Harvard University the manuscript of the ' Round-
about Papers,' and among the treasures of Evert A. Duyckinck's
collection, bequeathed to the Lenox Library, as already mentioned,
is the original of Thackeray's preface to the Appletons' American
edition of his writings, containing much matter that had not
before appeared in book form, and edited with rare discrimination.
New York city possesses the Morgan, Reed, and Trowbridge col-
lections of Thackeray, and Philadelphia those of Frederick S.
Dickson and Major William H. Lambert, the latter believed by
Mr. Dickson to be the completest in the world, and including the
finest and fullest set of first editions known ; also a complete file
of the ' Constitutional,' the short-lived English journal that ruined
Thackeray in early life. Among Major Lambert's Thackeray

26 THACKERAY IN THE UNITED STATES.

manuscripts is ' The Eose and the Ring,' with the original draw-
ings begun in Rome in 1854, and issued in England for the fol-
lowing Christmas season ; ' The Adventures of Philip ' ; lecture on
' Swift ' ; ' Charity and Humour ' an address, written in New York ;
' Our Street,' about one half; speech at the Commercial Travellers'
dinner ; notebook of ' The Virginians ' ; and fragments of manu-
scripts from most of Thackeray's other books. The manuscript of
' The Rose and the Ring ' being shown to Sir Theodore Martin by
Mrs. Ritchie, he took it away, returning it mounted and superbly
bound in red morocco, additionally protected by double cases of
morocco and sole-leather. ' If this work shall escape the wrecks
of time,' said Sir Theodore, ' it will tell of such a combined power
of pen and pencil as the world has not hitherto known.' The
Thackeray autograph letters include the series sent to William
B. Reed ; above thirty written to Mrs. Brookfield, not included in
the two Brookfield volumes purchased by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan
at the Augustin Daly sale for sixteen thousand two hundred dollars,
for which there was much spirited bidding ; many letters to
Macready, to his early publishers, Chapman & Hall, and to his
artist friend Richard Doyle.

Major Lambert's original drawings by Thackeray include twelve
from ' Vanity Fair ' ; three from ' Pendennis ' ; two from ' The
Newcomes,' not included in that work, but copied by Doyle, who
illustrated it ; five from ' The Great Hoggarty Diamond ' ; twelve
from the ' Adventures of M. Boudin ' ; five from ' The Count and
Countess des Dragies ' ; and about two hundred and fifty others,
together with an ' Original Sketch-Book,' containing many examples
of Thackeray's skill as an artist.

The bust of the novelist by his friend and neighbour Baron
Marochetti was unveiled in Westminster Abbey on October 25,
1865. Thirty-six years later, through the liberality of Major
Lambert, the marble bust was vastly improved, under Mrs. Ritchie's
supervision, by the removal of the long, pendent whiskers which
Thackeray never wore.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.
BY ANTHONY HOPE.

CHAPTER I.

LIFE IS RECOMMENDED.

THE changeful April morning that she watched from the window
of her flat looking over the river began a day of significance in
the career of Trix Trevalla — of feminine significance, almost
milliner's perhaps, but of significance all the same. She had put
off her widow's weeds, and for the first time these three years
back was dressed in a soft shade of blue ; the harmony of her
eyes and the gleams of her brown hair welcomed the colour
with the cordiality of an old friendship happily renewed. Mrs.
Trevalla's maid had been all in a flutter over the momentous
transformation ; in her mistress it bred a quietly retrospective
mood. As she lay in an armchair watching the water and the
clouds, she turned back on the course of her life, remembering
many things. The beginning of a new era brought the old
before her eyes in a protesting flash of vividness. She abandoned
herself to recollections — an insidious form of dissipating the
mind, which goes well with a relaxed ease of the body.

Not that Mrs. Trevalla's recollections were calculated to
promote a sense of luxury, unless indeed they were to act as a
provocative contrast.

There was childhood, spent in a whirling succession of lodging-
houses. They had little individuality and retained hardly any
separate identity ; each had consisted of two rooms with folding
doors between, and somewhere, at the back or on the floor above,
a cupboard for her to sleep in. There was the first baby, her
brother, who died when she was six ; he had been a helpless,
clinging child, incapable of living without far more sympathy
and encouragement than he had ever got. Luckily she had been
of hardier stuff. There was her mother, a bridling, blushing,
weak-kneed woman (Trix's memory was candid) ; kind save when
her nerves were bad, and when they were, unkind in a weak and

28 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

desultory fashion that did not deserve the name of cruelty.
Trix had always felt less anger than contempt for her half-
hysterical outbursts, and bore no malice on their account. This
pale visitor soon faded — as indeed Mrs. Trevalla herself had —
into non-existence, and a different picture took its place. Here
was the Keverend Algernon, her father, explaining that he found
himself unsuited to pastoral work and indisposed to adopt any
other active calling, that inadequate means were a misfortune, not
a fault, that a man must follow his temperament, and that he
asked only to be allowed to go his own way — he did not add to
pay it — in peace and quiet. His utterances came back with the
old distinction of manner and the distant politeness with which
Mr. Trevalla bore himself towards all disagreeable incidents of
life — under which head there was much reason to surmise that
he ranked his daughter.

Was he unjust in that ? Trix was puzzled. She recalled a
sturdy, stubborn, rather self-assertive child ; the freshness of deli-
cacy is rubbed off, the appeal of shyness silenced, by a hand-to-
mouth existence, by a habit of regarding the leavings of the first-
floor lodger in the light of windfalls, by constant Sittings unmarked
by the discharge of obligations incurred in the abandoned locality,
by a practical outlawry from the class to which we should in the
ordinary course belong. Trix decided that she must have been
an unattractive girl, rather hard, too much awake to the ways of
the world, readily retorting its chilliness towards her. All this
was natural enough, since neither death nor poverty nor lack of
love was strange to her. Natural, yes ; pleasant, no, Trix con-
cluded, and with that she extended a degree of pardon to Mr.
Trevalla. He had something to say for himself. With a smile
she recalled what he always did say for himself, if anyone seemed
to challenge the spotlessness of his character. On such painful
occasions he would mention that he was, and had been for twenty
years, a teetotaller. There were reasons in the Trevalla family
history which made the fact remarkable ; in its owner's eyes the
virtue was so striking and enormous that it had exhausted the
moral possibilities of his being, condemned other excellencies to
atrophy, and left him, in the flower-show of graces, the self-
complacent exhibitor of a single bloom.

Yet he had become a party to the great conspiracy ; it was
no less, however much motives of love, and hopes ever sanguine,
might excuse it in one of the parties to it — not the Keverend

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 29

Algernon. They had all been involved in it — her father, old
Lady Trevalla (her husband had been a soldier and K.C.B.),
Vesey Trevalla himself. Vesey loved Trix, Lady Trevalla loved
Vesey in a mother's conscienceless way ; the mother persuaded
herself that the experiment would work, the son would not stop
to ask. The Eeverend Algernon presumably persuaded himself
too — and money was very scarce. So Trix was bidden to notice —
when those days at Bournemouth came back to mind her brows
contracted into a frown as though from a quick spasm of pain —
how Vesey loved her, what a good steady fellow he was, how
safely she might trust herself to him. Why, he was a teetotaller
too ! ' Yes, though his gay friends do laugh at him ! ' exclaimed
Lady Trevalla admiringly. They were actually staying at a
Temperance Hotel ! The stress laid on these facts did not
seem strange to an ignorant girl of seventeen, accustomed to
Mr. Tre valla's solitary but eloquent virtue. Bather weary of the
trait, she pouted a little over it, and then forgot it as a matter of
small moment one way or the other. So the conspiracy throve,
and ended in the good marriage with the well-to-do cousin,
in being Mrs. Trevalla of Trevalla Haven, married to a big,
handsome, ruddy fellow who loved her. The wedding day stood
out in memory ; clearest of all now was what had been no more
than a faint and elusive but ever-present sense that for some
reason the guests, Vesey's neighbours, looked on her with pity —
the men who pressed her hand and the women who kissed her
cheek. And at the last old Lady Trevalla had burst suddenly
into unrestrained sobbing. Why ? Vesey looked very uncom-
fortable, and even the Reverend Algernon was rather upset.
However consciences do no harm if they do not get the upper
hand till the work is done ; Trix was already Vesey's wife.

He was something of a man, this Vesey Trevalla; he was
large-built in mind, equitable, kind, shrewd, of a clear vision.
To the end he was a good friend and a worthy companion in his
hours of reason. Trix's thoughts of him were free from bitter-
ness. Her early life had given her a tolerance that stood her in
stead, a touch of callousness which enabled her to endure. As a
child she had shrugged thin shoulders under her shabby frock ;
she shrugged her shoulders at the tragedy now ; her heart did
not break, but hardened a little more. She made some ineffectual
efforts to reclaim him ; their hopelessness was absurdly plain ;
after a few months Vesey laughed at them, she almost laughed

30 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

herself. She settled down into the impossible life, reproaching
nobody. When her husband was sober, she never referred to
what had happened when he was drunk ; if he threw a plate at
her then, she dodged the plate : she seemed in a sense to have
been dodging plates and suchlike missiles all her life. Some-
times he had suspicions of himself, and conjured up recollections
of what he had done. ' Oh, what does last night matter ? ' she
would ask in a friendly if rather contemptuous tone. Once she
lifted the veil for a moment. He found her standing by the
body of her baby ; it had died while he was unfit to be told, or at
any rate unable to understand.

' So the poor little chap's gone,' he said softly, laying his
hand on her shoulder.

' Yes, Vesey, he's gone, thank Grod ! ' she said, looking him
full in the eyes.

He turned away without a word, and went out with a heavy
tread. Trix felt that she had been cruel, but she did not
apologise ; and Vesey showed no grudge.

The odd thing about the four years her married life lasted
was that they now seemed so short. Even before old Lady
Trevalla's death (which happened a year after the wedding)
Trix had accommodated herself to her position. From that time
all was monotony — the kind of monotony which might well kill,
but, failing that, left little to mark out one day from another.
She did not remember even that she had been acutely miserable
either for her husband or for herself; rather she had come to
disbelieve in acute feelings. She had grown deadened to sorrow
as to joy, and to love, the great parent of both ; the hardening
process of her youth had been carried further. When Vesey
caught a chill and crumpled up under it as sodden men do, and
died with a thankfulness he did not conceal, she was unmoved.
She was not grateful for the deliverance, nor yet grieved for the
loss of a friend. She shrugged her shoulders again, asking what
the world was going to do with her next.

Mr. Trevalla took a view more hopeful than his daughter's,
concluding that there was cause for feeling considerable satis-
faction both on moral and on worldly grounds. From the higher
standpoint Trix (under his guidance) had made a noble although
unsuccessful effort, and had shown the fortitude to be expected
from his daughter ; while Vesey, poor fellow, had been well
looked after to the end, and was now beyond the reach of tempta-

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 31

tion. From the lower — Mr. Tre valla glanced for a moment round
the cosy apartment he now occupied at Brighton, where he was
beginning to get a nice little library round him — yes, from the
lower, while it was regrettable that the estate had passed to a
distant cousin, Trix was left with twenty thousand pounds (in
free cash, for Vesey had refused to make a settlement, since he
did not know what money he would want — that is, how long he
would last) and an ascertained social position. She was only
twenty-two when left a widow, and better-looking than she had
ever been in her life. On the whole, were the four years mis-
spent ? Had anybody very much to grumble at ? Certainly
nobody had any reason to reproach himself. And he wondered
why Trix had not sent for him to console her in her affliction.
He was glad she had not, but he thought that the invitation
would have been natural and becoming.

' But I never pretended to understand women,' he murmured,
with his gentle smile.

Women would have declared that they did not understand
him either, using the phrase with a bitter intention foreign to the
Keverend Algernon's lips and temper. His good points were so
purely intellectual — lucidity of thought, temperance of opinion,
tolerance, humour, appreciation of things which deserved it.
These gifts would, with women, have pleaded their rarity in vain
against the more ordinary endowments of willingness to work and
a capacity for thinking, even occasionally, about other people.
Men liked him — so long as they had no business relations with
him. But women are moralists, from the best to the worst of
them. If he had lived, Trix would probably have scorned to
avail herself of his counsels. Yet they might well have been
useful to her in after days ; he was a good taster of men. As it
was, he died soon after Vesey, having caught a chill and refused
to drink hot grog. That was his doctor's explanation. Mr.
Trevalla's dying smile accused the man of cloaking his own
ignorance by such an excuse ; he prized his virtue too much to
charge it with his death. He was sorry to leave his rooms at
Brighton ; other very strong feeling about his departure he had
none. Certainly his daughter did not come between him and his
preparations for hereafter, nor the thought of her solitude distract
his fleeting soul.

In the general result life seemed ended for Trix Trevalla at
twenty-two, and. pending release from it in the ordinary course,

32 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

she contemplated an impatient and provisional existence in Con-
tinental pensions — establishments where a young and pretty
woman could not be suspected of wishing to reap any advantage
from prettiness or youth. Hundreds of estimable ladies guarantee
this security, and thereby obtain a genteel and sufficient company
round their modest and inexpensive tables. It was what Trix
asked for, and for two years she got it. During this period she
sometimes regretted Vesey Trevalla, and sometimes asked whether
vacancy were not worse than misery, or on what grounds limbo
was to be preferred to hell. She could not make up her mind on
this question — nor is it proposed to settle it here. Probably most
people have tried both on their own account.

One evening she arrived at Paris rather late, and the isolation
ward (metaphors will not be denied sometimes) to which she had
been recommended was found to be full. Somewhat apprehensive,
she was driven to an hotel of respectability, and, rushing to catch
the flying coat-tails of table d'hote, found herself seated beside a
man who was apparently not much above thirty. This unwonted
propinquity set her doing what she had not done for years in
public, though she had never altogether abandoned the practice
as a private solace : as she drank her cold soup, she laughed.
Her neighbour, a shabby man with a rather shaggy beard, turned
benevolently inquiring eyes on her. A moment's glance made
him start a little and say, ' Surely it's Mrs. Trevalla ? '

' That's my name,' answered Trix, wondering greatly, but
thanking heaven for a soul who knew her. In the pensions they
never knew who you were, but were always trying to find out, and
generally succeeded the day after you went away.

' That's very curious,' he went on. ' I daresay you'll be sur-
prised, but your photograph stands on my bedroom mantelpiece.
I knew you directly from it. It was sent to me.'

' When was it sent you ? ' she asked.

' At the time of your marriage.' He grew grave as he spoke.

' You were his friend ? '

' I called myself so.' Conversation was busy round them, yet
he lowered his voice to add, ' I don't know now whether I had any
right.'

1 Why not ? '

' I gave up very soon.'

Trix's eyes shot a quick glance at him and she frowned a
little.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 33

' Well, I ought to have been more than a friend, and so did I,'
she said.

' It would have been utterly useless, of course. Reason recog-
nises that, but then conscience isn't always reasonable.'

She agreed with a nod as she galloped through her fish, eager
to overtake the menu.

1 Besides, I have ' He hesitated a moment, smiling

apologetically and playing nervously with a knife. ' I have a
propensity myself, and that makes me judge him more easily —
and myself not so lightly.'

She looked at his pint of ordinaire with eyebrows raised.

' Oh, no, quite another,' he assured her, smiling. ' But it's
enough to teach me what propensities are.'

' What is it ? Tell me.' She caught eagerly at the strange
luxury of intimate talk.

' Never ! But, as I say, I've learnt from it. Are you alone
here, Mrs. Trevalla ? '

' Here and everywhere,' said Trix, with a sigh and a smile.

' Come for a stroll after dinner. I'm an old friend of Vesey's,
you know.' The last remark was evidently thrown in as a con-
cession to rules not held in much honour by the speaker. Trix
said that she would come ; the outing seemed a treat to her after
the pensions.

They drank beer together on the boulevards ; he heard her
story, and he said many things to her, waving (as the evening
wore on) a pipe to and fro from his mouth to the length of his
arm. It was entirely owing to the things which he said that
evening on the boulevards that she sat now in the flat over the
river, her mourning doffed, her guaranteed pensions forsaken,
London before her, an unknown alluring sea.

' WThat you want,' he told her with smiling vehemence, ' is a
revenge. Hitherto you've done nothing ; you've only had things
done to you. You've made nothing ; you've only been made into
things yourself. Life has played with you ; go and play with it.'

Trix listened, sitting very still, with eager eyes. There was
a life, then — a life still open to her ; the door was not shut, nor
her story of necessity ended.

' I daresay you'll scorch your fingers ; for the fire burns. But
it's better to die of heat than of cold. And if trouble comes, call
at 6 A Danes Inn.'

' Where in the world is Danes Inn ? ' she asked, laughing.

VOL. XII. — NO. 67, N.S. 3

34 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

' Between New and Clement's, of course.' He looked at her
in momentary surprise, and then laughed. ' Oh, well, not above
a mile from civilisation — and a shilling cab from aristocracy. I
happen to lodge there.'

She looked at him curiously. He was shabby yet rather dis-
tinguished, shaggy but clean. He advised life, and he lived in
Danes Inn, where an instinct told her that life would not be
a very maddening or riotous thing.

' Come, you must live again, Mrs. Trevalla,' he urged.

' Do you live, as you call it ? ' she asked, half in mocker}',
half in a genuine curiosity.

A shade of doubt, perhaps of distress, spread over his face.
He knocked out his pipe deliberately before answering.

' Well, hardly, perhaps.' Then he added eagerly, ' I work,
though.'

' Does that do instead ? ' To Triz's new-born mood the substi-
tute seemed a poor one.

' Yes — if you have a propensity.'

What was his tone ? Sad or humorous, serious or mocking ?
It sounded all.

' Oh, work's your propensity, is it ? ' she cried gaily and scorn-
fully, as she rose to her feet. ' I don't think it's mine, you know.'

He made no reply, but turned away to pay for the beer. It
was a trifling circumstance, but she noticed that at first he put
down three sous for the waiter, and then returned to the table in
order to make the tip six. He looked as if he had done his duty
when he had made it six.

They walked back to the hotel together and shook hands in
the hall.

' GA Danes Inn ? ' she asked merrily.

' GA Danes Inn, Mrs. Trevalla. Is it possible that my advice
is working ? '

' It's working very hard indeed — as hard as you work. But
Danes Inn is only a refuge, isn't it ? '

' It's not fit for much more, I fear.'

' I shall remember it. And now, as a formality — and perhaps
as a concession to the postman — who are you ? '

' My name is Airey Newton.'

' I never heard Vesey mention you.'

' No, I expect not. But I knew him very well. I'm not an
impostor, Mrs. Trevalla.'

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 35

' Why didn't he mention you ? ' asked Trix. Vesey had been,
on the whole, a communicative man.

He hesitated a moment before he answered.

' Well, I wrote to him on the subject of his marriage,' he
confessed at last.

She needed no more.

' I see,' she said, with an understanding nod. ' Well, that
was — honest of you. Good night, Mr. Newton.'

This meeting — all their conversation — was fresh and speaking
in her brain as she sat looking over the river in her recovered
gown of blue. But for the meeting, but for the shabby man
and what he had said, there would have been no blue gown, she
would not have been in London nor in the flat. He had brought
her there, to do something, to make something, to play with life
as life had played with her, to have a revenge, to die, if die she
must, of heat rather than of cold.

Well, she would follow his advice — would accept and fulfil it
amply. ' At the worst there are the pensions again — and there's
Danes Inn ! '

She laughed at that idea, but her laugh was rather hard, her
mouth a little grim, her eyes mischievous. These were the marks
youth and the four years had left. Besides, she cared for not a
soul on earth.

CHAPTEE II.

COMING NEAR THE FIRE.

AT the age of forty (a point now passed by some half-dozen years)
Mrs. Bonfill had become motherly. The change was sudden,
complete, and eminently wise. It was accomplished during a
summer's retirement ; she disappeared a queen regnant, she re-
appeared a dowager— all by her own act, for none had yet
ventured to call her passee. But she was a big woman, and she
recognised facts. She had her reward. She gained power
instead of losing it; she had always loved power, and had the
shrewdness to discern that there was more than one form of it.
The obvious form she had never, as a young and handsome
woman, misused or over-used ; she had no temptations that way,
or, as her friend Lady Blixworth preferred to put it, 'In that
respect dearest Sarah was always bourgeoise to the core.' The

3—2

36 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

new form she now attained — influence — was more to her taste.
She liked to shape people's lives ; if they were submissive and
obedient she would make their fortunes. She needed some
natural capacities in her proteges, of course ; but, since she chose
cleverly, these were seldom lacking. Mrs. Bonfill did the rest.
She could open doors that obeyed no common key; she could
smooth difficulties ; she had in two or three cases blotted out a
past, and once had reformed a gambler. But she liked best to
make marriages and Ministers. Her own daughter, of course,
she married immediately — that was nothing. She had married
Nellie Towler to Sir James Quinby-Lee — the betting had been
ten to one against it — and Lady Mildred Haughton to Frank
Cleveland — flat in the face of both the families. As for Ministers,
she stood well with Lord Farringham, was an old friend of Lord
Grlentorly, and, to put it unkindly, had Constantine Blair fairly
in her pocket. It does not do to exaggerate drawing-room
influence, but when Beaufort Chance became a Whip, and young
Lord Mervyn was appointed Grlentorly's Under-Secretary at the
War Office, and everybody knew that they were Mrs. Bonfill's
last and prime favourites — well, the coincidence was remarkable.
And never a breath of scandal with it all ! It was no small
achievement for a woman born in, bred at, and married from an
unpretentious villa at Streatham. La carrier e ouverte — but
perhaps that is doing some injustice to Mr. Bonfill. After all,
he and the big house in Grosvenor Square had made everything
possible. Mrs. Bonfill loved her husband, and she never tried
to make him a Minister ; it was a well-balanced mind, save for
that foible of power. He was very proud of her, though he
rather wondered why she took so much trouble about other
people's affairs. He owned a brewery, and was Chairman of a
railway company.

Trix Trevalla had been no more than a month in London
when she had the great good fortune to be taken up by Mrs.
Bonfill. It was not everybody's luck. Mrs. Bonfill was par-
ticular; she refused hundreds, some for her own reasons, some
because of the things Viola Blixworth might say. The Frickers,
for example, failed in their assault on Mrs. Bonfill — or had up to
now. Yet Mrs. Bonfill herself would have been good-natured to
the Frickers.

' I can't expose myself to Viola by taking up the Frickers,'
she explained to her husband, who had been not indisposed, for

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 37

business reasons, to do Fricker a good turn. For Lady Blixworth,
with no other qualities very striking to a casual observer, and
with an appearance that the term ' elegant ' did ample justice to,
possessed a knack of describing people whom she did not like in
a way that they did not like — a gift which made her respected
and, on the whole, popular.

' The woman's like a bolster grown fat ; the daughter's like a
sausage rilled unevenly ; and the man — well, I wouldn't have him
to a political party ! '

Thus had Lady Blixworth dealt with the Frickers, and even
Mrs. Bonfill quailed.

It was very different with Trix Tre valla. Pretty, presentable,
pleasant, even witty in an unsubtle sort of fashion, she made an
immediate success. She was understood to be well-off too ; the
flat was not a cheap one ; she began to entertain a good deal in
a quiet way ; she drove a remarkably neat brougham. These
things are not done for nothing — nor even on the interest of
twenty thousand pounds. Yet Trix did them, and nobody asked
any questions except Mrs. Bonfill, and she was assured that Trix
was living well within her means. May not 'means' denote
capital as well as income ? The distinction was in itself rather
obscure to Trix, and, Vesey Trevalla having made no settlement,
there was nothing to drive it home. Lastly, Trix was most
prettily docile and submissive to Mrs. Bonfill — grateful, attentive,
and obedient. She earned a reward. Any woman with half an
eye could see what that reward should be.

But for once Mrs. Bonfill vacillated. After knowing Trix a
fortnight she destined her for Beaufort Chance, who had a fair
income, ambition at least equal to his talents, and a chance of
the House of Lords some day. Before she had known Trix a
month — so engaging and docile was Trix — Mrs. Bonfill began to
wonder whether Beaufort Chance were good enough. Certainly
Trix was making a very great success. What then ? Should it
be Mervyn, Mrs. BonfilPs prime card, her chosen disciple ? A
man destined, as she believed, to go very high — starting pretty
high anyhow, and starts in the handicap are not to be dis-
regarded. Mrs. Bonfill doubted seriously whether, in that mental
book she kept, she should not transfer Trix to Mervyn. If Trix

went on behaving well But the truth is that Mrs. Bonfill

herself was captured by Trix. Yet Trix feared Mrs. Bonfill, even
while she liked and to some extent managed her. After favouring

38 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

Chance, Mrs. Bonfill began to put forward Mervyn. Whether
Trix's management had anything to do with this result it is hard
to say.

Practical statesmen are not generally blamed for such changes
of purpose. They may hold out hopes of, say, a reduction of
taxation to one class or interest, and ultimately award the boon
to another. Nobody is very severe on them. But it comes
rather hard on the disappointed interest, which, in revenge, may
show what teeth it has.

Trix and Mervyn were waltzing together at Mrs. Bonfill's
dance. Lady Blixworth sat on a sofa with Beaufort Chance and
looked on — at the dance and at her companion.

' She's rather remarkable,' she was saying in her idle languid
voice. ' She was meant to be vulgar, I'm sure, but she contrives
to avoid it. I rather admire her.'

' A dangerous shade of feeling to excite in you, it seems,' he
remarked sourly.

The lady imparted an artificial alarm to her countenance.

' I'm so sorry if I said anything wrong ; but, oh, surely, there's

no truth in the report that you're ? ' A motion of her fan

towards Trix ended the sentence.

' Not the least,' he answered gruffly.

Sympathy succeeded alarm. With people not too clever Lady
Blixworth allowed herself a liberal display of sympathy. It may
have been all right to make Beaufort a Whip (though that
question arose afterwards in an acute form), but he was no genius
in a drawing-room.

'Dear Sarah talks so at random sometimes,' drawled she.
' Well-meant, I know, Beaufort, but it does put people in awkward
positions, doesn't it ? '

He was a conceited man, and a pink-and-white one. He
flushed visibly and angrily.

' What has Mrs. Bonfill been saying about me ? '

' Oh, nothing much ; it's just her way. And you mustn't resent
it — you owe so much to her.' Lady Blixworth was enjoying
herself; she had a natural delight in mischief, especially when
ahe could direct it against her beloved and dreaded Sarah with
fair security.

' What did she say ? '

' Say ! Nothing, you foolish man ! She diffused an im-
pression.'

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 39

That I-

' That you liked Mrs. Trevalla ! She was wrong, I suppose.
Voila tout, and, above all, don't look hot and furious ; the room's
stifling as it is.'

Beaufort Chance was furious. We forgive much ill-treatment
so it is secret, we accept many benefits on the same under-
standing. To parade the benefit and to let the injustice leak
out are the things that make us smart. Lady Blixworth had by
dexterous implication accused Mrs. Bonfill of both offences.
Beaufort had not the self-control to seem less angry than he was.
' Surely,' thought Lady Blixworth, watching him, ' he's too stupid
even for politics ! '

' You may take it from me,' he said pompously, ' that I have,
and have had, no more than the most ordinary acquaintance with
Mrs. Trevalla.'

She nodded her head in satisfied assent. ' No, he's just stupid
enough,' she concluded, smiling and yawning behind her fan.
She had no compunctions — she had told nearly half the truth.
Mrs. Bonfill never gossiped about her Ministers — it would have
been fatal — but she was sometimes rather expansive on the sub-
ject of her marriages ; she was tempted to collect opinions on
them ; she had, no doubt, (before she began to vacillate) collected
two or three opinions about Beaufort Chance and Trix Trevalla.

Trix's brain was whirling far quicker than her body turned in
the easy swing of the waltz. It had been whirling this month
back, ever since the prospect began to open, the triumphs to
dawn, ambition to grow, a sense of her attraction and power to
come home to her. The pensioTis were gone ; she had plunged
into life. She was delighted and dazzled. Herself, her time, her
feelings, and her money, she flung into the stream with a lavish
recklessness. Yet behind the gay intoxication of the transformed
woman she was conscious still of the old self, the wide-awake,
rather hard girl, that product of the lodging-houses and the four
years with Vesey Trevalla. Amid the excitement, the success,
the folly, the old voice spoke, cautioning, advising, never allowing
her to forget that there was a purpose and an end in it all, a
career to make and to make speedily. Her eyes might wander to
every alluring object ; they returned to the main chance. Where-
fore Mrs. Bonfill had no serious uneasiness about dear Trix ; when
the time came she would be sensible ; people fare, she reflected,
none the worse" for being a bit hard at the core.

40 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

' I like sitting here,' said Trix to Mervyn after the dance,
' and seeing everybody one's read about or seen pictures of. Of
course I don't really belong to it, but it makes me feel as if I did.'

' You'd like to ? ' he asked.

' Well, I suppose so,' she laughed as her eyes rambled over the
room again.

Lord Mervyn was conscious of his responsibilities. He had a
future ; he was often told so in public and in private, though it
is fair to add that he would have believed it unsolicited. That
future, together with the man who was to have it, he took
seriously. And, though of rank unimpeachable, he was not quite
rich enough for that future ; it could be done on what he had, but
it could be done better with some more. Evidently Mrs. Bonfill
had been captured by Trix ; as a rule she would not have
neglected the consideration that his future could be done better
with some more. He had not forgotten it ; so he did not imme-
diately offer to make Trix really belong to the brilliant world she
saw. She. was very attractive, and well-off, as he understood, but
she was not, from a material point of view, by any means what he
had a right to claim. Besides she was a widow, and he would
have preferred that not to be the case.

' Prime Ministers and things walking about like flies ! ' sighed
Trix, venting satisfaction in a pardonable exaggeration. It was
true, however, that Lord Farringham had looked in for half an
hour, talked to Mrs. Bonfill for ten minutes, and made a tour
round, displaying a lofty cordiality which admirably concealed
his desire to be elsewhere.

' You'll soon get used to it all,' Mervyn assured her with a
rather superior air. ' It's a bore, but it has to be done. The
social side can't be neglected, you see.'

' If I neglected anything, it would be the other, I think.'

He smiled tolerantly and quite believed her. Trix was most
butterfly-like to-night ; there was no hardness in her laugh, not a
hint of grimness in her smile. ' You would never think,' Mrs.
Bonfill used to whisper, ' what the poor child has been through.'

Beaufort Chance passed by, casting a scowling glance at them.

' I haven't seen you dancing with Chance — or perhaps you
sat out ? He's not much of a performer.'

' I gave him a dance, but I forgot.'

'Which dance, Mrs. Trevalla?' Her glance had prompted
the question.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 41

' Ours,' said Trix. ' You came so late — I had none left.'

' I very seldom dance, but you tempted me.' He was not
underrating his compliment. For a moment Trix was sorely
inclined to snub him ; but policy forbade. When he left her, to
seek Lady Blixworth, she felt rather relieved.

Beaufort Chance had watched his opportunity, and came by
again with an accidental air. She called to him and was all
graciousness and apologies ; she had every wish to keep the second
string in working order. Beaufort had not sat there ten minutes
before he was in his haste accusing Lady Blixworth of false in-
sinuations— unless, indeed, Trix were an innocent instrument in
Mrs. Bonfill's hands. Trix was looking the part very well.

' I wish you'd do me a great kindness,' he said presently.
' Come to dinner some day.'

' Oh, that's a very tolerable form of benevolence. Of course
I will.'

' Wait a bit. I mean — to meet the Flickers.'

' Oh ! ' Meeting the Frickers seemed hardly an inducement.

But Beaufort Chance explained. On the one side Fricker
was a very useful man to stand well with ; he could put you into
things — and take you out at the right time. Trix nodded sagely,
though she knew nothing about such matters. On the other
hand — Beaufort grew both diplomatic and confidential in manner
— Fricker had little ambition outside his business, but Mrs. and
Miss Fricker had enough and to spare — ambitions social for them-
selves, and, subsidiary thereunto, political for Fricker.

' Viola Blixworth has frightened Mrs. Bonfill,' he complained.
' Lady Grlentorly talks about drawing the line, and all the rest of
them are just as bad. Now if you'd come '

' Me ? What good should I do ? The Frickers won't care
about me.'

' Oh, yes, they will ! ' He did not lack adroitness in baiting
the hook for her. ' They know you can do anything with Mrs.
Bonfill ; they know you're going to be very much in it. You
won't be afraid of Viola Blixworth in a month or two ! I shall
please Fricker — you'll please the women. Now do come.'

Trix's vanity was flattered. Was she already a woman of
influence ? Beaufort Chance had the other lure ready too.

' And I daresay you don't mind hearing of a good thing if it
comes in your way ? ' he suggested carelessly. ' People with
money to spare find Fricker worth knowing, and he's absolutely
square.'

42 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

' Do you mean he'd make money for me ? ' asked Trix, trying
to keep any note of eagerness out of her voice.

' He'd show you how to make it for yourself, anyhow.'

Trix sat in meditative silence for a few moments. Presently
she turned to him with a bright friendly smile.

' Oh, never mind all that ! I'll come for your sake — to please
you,' she said.

Beaufort Chance was not quite sure that he believed her this
time, but he looked as if he did — which serves just as well in social
relations. He named a day, and Trix gaily accepted the appoint-
ment. There were few adventures, not many new things, that
she was not ready for just now. The love of the world had laid
hold of her.

And here at Mrs. BonfilPs she seemed to be in the world up
to her eyes. People had come on from big parties as the evening
waned, and the last hour dotted the ball-room with celebrities.
Politicians in crowds, leaders of fashion, an actress or two, an
Indian prince, a great explorer — they made groups which seemed
to express the many-sidedness of London, to be the thousand
tributaries that swell the great stream of its society. There was
a little unusual stir to-night. A foreign complication had arisen,
or was supposed to have arisen. People were asking what the
Tsar was going to do; and, when one considers the reputation
for secrecy enjoyed by Eussian diplomacy, quite a surprising
number of them seemed to know, and told one another with an
authority only matched by the discrepancy between their versions.
When they saw a man who possibly might know — Lord Glentorly
— they crowded round him eagerly, regardless of the implied
aspersion on their own knowledge. G-lentorly had been sitting in
a corner with Mrs. Bonfill, and she shared in his glory, perhaps
in his private knowledge. But both Glentorly and Mrs. Bonfill
professed to know no more than there was in the papers, and
insinuated that they did not believe that. Everybody at once
declared that they had never believed that, and had said so at
dinner, and the very wise added that it was evidently inspired by
the Stock Exchange. A remark to this effect had just fallen
on Trix's ears when a second observation from behind reached her.

' Not one of them knows a thing about it,' said a calm, cool,
youthful voice.

' I can't think why they want to,' came as an answer in rich
pleasant tones.

Trix glanced round and saw a smart trim young man, and by

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 43

his side a girl with beautiful hair. She had only a glimpse of
them, for in an instant they disentangled themselves from the
gossipers and joined the few couples who were keeping it up to
the last dance.

It will be seen that Beaufort Chance had not given up the
game ; Lady Blixworth's pin-pricks had done the work which they
were probably intended to do : they had incited him to defy Mrs.
Bonfill, to try to win off his own bat. She might discard him in
favour of Mervyn, but he would fight for himself. The dinner to
which he bade Trix would at once assert and favour intimacy ; if
he could put her under an obligation it would be all to the good ;
flattering her vanity was already a valuable expedient. That
stupidity of his, which struck Viola Blixworth with such a sense of
its density, lay not in misunderstanding or misraluing the com-
mon motives of humanity, but in considering that all humanity
was common : he did not allow for the shades, the variations,
the degrees. Nor did he appreciate in the least the mood that
governed or the temper that swayed Trix Trevalla. He thought
that she preferred him as a man, Mervyn as a match. Both of
them were, in fact, at this time no more than figures in the great
ballet at which she now looked on, in which she meant soon to mix.

Mrs. Bonfill caught Trix as she went to her carriage — that smart
brougham was in waiting — and patted her cheek more materno.

' I saw you were enjoying yourself, child,' she said. ' What
was all that Beaufort had to say to you ? '

' Oh, just nonsense,' answered Trix lightly.

Mrs. Bonfill smiled amiably.

'He's not considered to talk nonsense generally,' she said;
' but perhaps there was someone you wanted to talk to more !
You won't say anything, I see, but — Mortimer stayed late !
He's coming to luncheon to-morrow. Won't you come too ? '

' I shall be delighted,' said Trix. Her eyes were sparkling.
She had possessed wit enough to see the vacillation of Mrs
Bonfill. Did this mean that it was ended ? The invitation to
lunch looked like it. Mrs. Bonfill believed in lunch for such
purposes. In view of the invitation to lunch, Trix said nothing
about the invitation to dinner.

As she was driven from Grosvenor Square to the flat by the
river, she was marvellously content — enjoying still, not thinking,
wondering, not feeling, making in her soul material and sport of
others, herself seeming not subject to design or accident. The
change was great to her ; the ordinary mood of youth that ha«

44 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

known only good fortune seemed to her the most wonderful of
transformations, almost incredible. She exulted in it and gloated
over the brightness of her days. What of others ? Well, what of
the players in the pantomime ? Do they not play for us ? What
more do we ask of or about them? Trix was not in the least
inclined to be busy with more fortunes than her own. For this
was the thing — this was what she had desired.

How had she come to desire it so urgently and to take it
with such recklessness ? The words of the shabby man on the
boulevards came back to her. ' Life has played with you ; go
and play with it. You may scorch your fingers, for the fire
burns ; but it's better to die of heat than of cold.'

' Yes, better of heat than of cold,' laughed Trix Trevalla
triumphantly, and she added, ' If there's anything wrong, why,
he's responsible ! ' She was amused both at the idea of anything
being wrong, and at the notion of holding the quiet shabby man
responsible. There could be no link between his life and the
world she had lived in that night. Yet, if he held these views
about the way to treat life, why did he not live ? He had said
he hardly lived, he only worked. Trix was in an amused puzzle
about the shabby man as she got into bed ; he actually put the
party and its great ballet out of her head.

CHAPTER III.

IN DANES INN.

SOME men maintained that it was not the quantity, nor the
quality, nor the colour of Peggy Ryle's hair that did the mischief,
but simply and solely the way it grew. Perhaps (for the opinion
of men in such matters is eminently and consciously fallible) it
did not grow that way at all, but was arranged. The result to
the eye was the same, a peculiar harmony between the waves
of the hair, the turn of the neck, and the set of the head. So
notable and individual a thing was this agreement that Arthur
Kane and Miles Childwick, poet and critic, were substantially at
one about it. Kane described it as ' the artistry of accident,'
Childwick lauded its ' meditated spontaneity.' Neither gentle-
man was ill-pleased with his phrase, and each professed a polite
admiration of the other's effort — these civilities are necessary in
literary circles. Other young men painted or drew the hair, and
the neck, and the head, till Peggy complained that her other

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 45

features were neglected most disdainfully. Other young men
again, not endowed with the gift of expression by tongue or by
hand, contented themselves with swelling Peggy's court. She-
did not mind how much they swelled it. She had a fine versa-
tility, and could be flirted with in rhyme, in polished periods, in
modern slang, or in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet ; the heart is, of
course, the thing in such a matter, various forms of expression no
more than its interpreters. Meanwhile Peggy learnt men and
their manners, caused a good deal of picturesque misery — published
and unpublished — and immensely increased the amenity of life
wherever she went. And she went everywhere, when she could
pay a cab fare and contrive a frock, or borrow one or both of these
commodities. (Elfreda Flood, for instance, often had a frock.
She generally returned the cab fare, and you could usually regain
the frock by personal exertions ; it was not considered the correct
thing to ask her directly for either. She had an income of forty
pounds a year, and professed to be about to learn to paint in real
earnest. There was also an uncle in Berlin who sent cheques at
rare and irregular intervals. When a cheque came, Peggy gave a
dinner-party ; when there had been no cheque for a long while,
Peggy accepted a dinner. That was all the difference it made.
And anyhow there was always bread-and-butter to be had at
Airey Newton's. Airey appeared not to dine, but there was tea
and there was bread-and-butter — a thing worth knowing now and
then to Peggy Eyle.

She had been acquainted with Airey Newton for two years —
almost since her first coming to London. Theirs was a real and
intimate friendship, and her figure was familiar to the dingy
house whose soft-stone front had crumbled into a premature old
age. Airey was on the third floor, front and back ; two very
large windows adorned his sitting-room — it was necessary to give
all encouragement and opportunity to any light that found its way
into the gloomy cul-de-sac. Many an afternoon Peggy sat by one
of these windows in a dilapidated wicker arm-chair, watching the
typewriting clerk visible through the corresponding big window
opposite. Sometimes Airey talked, oftener he went on with his
work as though she were not there ; she liked this inattention as
a change. But she was a little puzzled over that work of his.
He had told her that he was an inventor. So far she was content,
and when she saw him busy with models or working out sums
she concluded that he was-et his trade. It did not appear to be
a good trade, for he was shabby, the room was shabbier, and (as

46 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

has been mentioned) he did not, so far at her observation went,
dine. But probably it kept him happy ; she had always pictured
.inventors as blissful although poverty-stricken persons. The
work-table then, a big deal one which blocked the other window,
was intelligible enough. The mystery lay in the small table on
the right hand of the fireplace ; under it stood a Chubb' s safe,
and on it reposed a large book covered in red leather and fastened
with a padlock. She had never seen either book or safe open,
and when she had asked what was in them, Airey told her a little
story about a Spartan who was carrying something under his
cloak — a mode of retort which rather annoyed her. So she
inquired no more. But she was sure that the locks were un-
fastened when she was gone. What was there ? Was he writing
a great book ? Or did he own ancestral plate ? Or precious —
and perhaps scandalous — documents ? Something precious there
must be ; the handsomeness of the book, the high polish by
which the metal of the safe shamed the surrounding dustiness,
stood out sure signs and proofs of that.

Peggy had just bought a new frock — and paid for it under
some pressure — and a cheque had not come for ever so long ; so
she ate bread-and-butter steadily and happily, interrupting herself
only to pour out more tea. At last Airey pushed away his papers
and models, saying, ' That's done, thank heaven ! ' and got up to
light his pipe. Peggy poured out a cup of tea for him, and he
came across the room for it. He looked much as when he had
met Trix Trevalla in Paris, but his hair was shorter and his beard
trimmed close and cut to a point ; these improvements were due
to Peggy's reiterated entreaties.

' Well ? ' he asked, standing before her, his eyes twinkling
kindly.

' Times are hard, but the heart is light, Airey. I've been
immortalised in a sonnet '

' Dissected in an essay too ? ' he suggested with ironical
admiration.

' I don't recognise myself there. And I've had an offer —

' Another ? '

' Not that sort — an offer of a riding-horse. But I haven't got
a habit.'

' Nor a stable perhaps ? '

' No, nor a stable. I didn't think of that. And you, Airey ? '

' Barring the horse, and the sonnei, and the essay, I'm much
as you are, Peggy.'

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 47

She threw her head back a little and looked at him ; her tone,
while curious, was also slightly compassionate.

' I suppose you get some money for your things sometimes ? '
she asked. ' I mean, when you invent a — a — -well, say a cork-
screw, they give you something ? '

' Of course. I make my living that way/ He smiled faintly
at the involuntary glance from Peggy's eyes that played round
the room. ' Yesterday's again ! ' he exclaimed suddenly, taking
up the loaf. ' I told Mrs. Stryver I wouldn't have a yesterday's ! '
His tone was indignant ; he seemed anxious to vindicate himself.

' It won't be to-morrow's, anyhow,' laughed Peggy, regarding
the remaining and much diminished fragment in his hand. ' It
wasn't badly stale.'

Airey took his pipe out of his mouth and spoke with the
abruptness of a man who has just made up his mind to speak.

' Do you know a Mrs. Tre valla ? ' he asked.

' Oh, yes ; by sight very well.'

' How does she strike you ? '

' Well — certainly pretty ; probably clever ; perhaps Is

she a friend of yours ? '

' I've known about her a long while and met her once.'

' Once ! Well, then, perhaps unscrupulous.'

' Why do you think she's unscrupulous ? '

' Why do you ask me about her ? ' retorted Peggy.

' She's written to me, proposing to come and see me.'

' Have you asked her ? I can't have you having a lot of
visitors, you know. I come here for quiet.'

Airey looked a little embarrassed. ' Well, I did give her a
sort of general invitation,' he murmured, fingering his beard.
' That is, I told her to come if — if she was in any difficulty.' He
turned an appealing glance towards Peggy's amused face. ' Have
you heard of her being in any difficulty ? '

' No, but I should think it's not at all unlikely.'

' Why ? '

' Have you ever had two people in love with you at the same
time ? '

' Never, on my honour/ said Airey with obvious sincerity.

' If you had, and if you were as pleasant as you could be to
both of them, and kept them going by turns, and got all you
could out of both of them, and kept on like that for about two
months '

' Oh, that's how the land lies, is it ? '

48 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

' Don't you think it possible you might be in a difficulty some
day?'

' But, good heavens, that's not the sort of thing to bring to me.'

' Apparently Mrs. Trevalla thinks differently,' laughed Peggy.
' At least I can't think of any other difficulty she's likely to be in.'

Airey was obviously disturbed and displeased.

' If what you say is true,' he observed, ' she can't be a good
sort of woman.'

' I suppose not.' Peggy's admission sounded rather reluctant.

' Who are the two men ? '

' Lord Mervyn and Beaufort Chance.'

' M.P.'s, aren't they ? '

' Among other things, Airey. Well, you can't tell her not to
come, can you ? After that sort of general invitation, you know.'
Peggy's tone was satirical ; she had rather strong views as to the
way in which men made fools of themselves over women — or
sometimes said she had.

' I was an old friend of her husband's.'

' Oh, you've nothing to apologise for. When does she want
to come ? '

' To-morrow. I say, oughtn't I to offer to go and call on her?'

' She'd think that very dull in comparison,' Peggy assured
him. ' Let her come and sob out her trouble here.'

' You appear to be taking the matter in a flippant spirit,
Peggy.'

' I don't think I'm going to be particularly sorry if Mrs.
Trevalla is in a bit of a scrape.'

' You young women are so moral.'

' I don't care,' said Peggy defiantly.

' Women have an extraordinary gift for disliking one another
on sight,' mused Airey in an injured voice.

' You seem to have liked Mrs. Trevalla a good deal on sight.'

' She looked so sad, so solitary, a mere girl in her widow's
weeds.' His tone grew compassionate, almost tender, as he recalled
the forlorn figure which had timidly stolen into the dining-room
of the Paris hotel.

' You'll find her a little bit changed perhaps,' Peggy sug-
gested with a suppressed malice that found pleasure in anticipating
his feelings.

' Oh, well, she must come anyhow, I suppose.'

' Yes, let her come, Airey. It does these people good to see
how the poor live.'

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 49

Airey laughed, but not very heartily. However it was well
understood that everybody in their circle was very poor, and
Peggy felt no qualms about referring to the fact.

' I shall come the next day and hear all about the interview.
Fancy these interesting things happening to you ! Because, you
know, she's rather famous. Mrs. Bonfill has taken her up, and
the G-lentorlys are devoted to her, and Lady Blixworth has said
some of her best things about her. She'll bring you into touch
with fashion.'

' Hang fashion ! ' said Airey. ' I wonder what her difficulty
is.' He seemed quite preoccupied with the idea of Mrs. Tre-
valla's difficulty.

• I see you're going to be very romantic indeed,' laughed
Peggy Kyle.

His eyes dwelt on her for a moment, and a very friendly
expression filled them.

' Don't you get into any difficulties ? ' he said.

' There's never but one with me,' she laughed ; ' and that
doesn't hurt, Airey.'

There was a loud and cheerful knock on the door.

' Visitors ! When people come, how do you account for
me?'

' I say nothing. I believe you're taken for my daughter.'

' Not since you trimmed your beard ! Well, it doesn't matter,
does it ? Let him in.'

The visitor proved to be nobody to whom Peggy needed to be
accounted for ; he was Tommy Trent, the smart trim young man
who had danced with her at Mrs. Bonfill's party.

' You here again ! ' he exclaimed in tones of grave censure, as
he laid down his hat on the top of the red-leather book on the
little table. He blew on the book first, to make sure it was not
dusty.

Peggy smiled, and Airey relit his pipe. Tommy walked across
and looked at the d&yris of the loaf. He shook his head when
Peggy offered him tea.

A sudden idea seemed to occur to him.

1 I'm awfully glad to find you here,' he remarked to her. ' It
saves me going up to your place, as I meant. I've got some
people dining to-night, and one of them's failed. I wonder if
you'd come ? I know it's a bore coming again so soon, but '

' I haven't been since Saturday.'

VOL. XII. — NO. 67, N.S. 4

50 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

' But it would get me out of a hole.' He spoke in humble
entreaty.

' I'd come directly, but I'm engaged.'

Tommy looked at her sorrowfully, and, it must be added,
sceptically.

' Engaged to dinner and supper,' averred Peggy with emphasis
as she pulled her hat straight and put on her gloves.

' You wouldn't even look in between the two and — and have
an ice with us ?'

' I really can't eat three meals in one evening, Tommy.'

' Oh, chuck one of them. You might, for once ! '

' Impossible ! I'm dining with my oldest friend,' smiled Peggy.
' I simply can't.' She turned to Airey, giving him her hand with
a laugh. ' I like you best, because you just let me '

Both words and laughter died away; she stopped abruptly,
looking from one man to the other. There was something in
their faces that arrested her words and her merriment. She
could not analyse what it was, but she saw that she had made
both of them uncomfortable. They had guessed what she was
going to say ; it would have been painful to one of them, and the
other knew it. But whom had she wounded — Tommy by imply-
ing that his hospitality was importunate and his kindness clumsy,
or Airey by a renewed reference to his poverty as shown in the
absence of pressing invitations from him ? She could not tell ;
but a constraint had fallen on them both. She cut her farewell
short and went away, vaguely vexed and penitent for an offence
which she perceived but did not understand.

The two men stood listening a moment to her light footfall on
the stairs.

' It's all a lie, you know,' said Tommy. ' She isn't engaged
to dinner or to supper either. It's beastly, that's what it is.'

' Yours was all a lie too, I suppose ? ' Airey spoke in a dull
hard voice.

' Of course it was, but I could have beaten somebody up in
time, or said they'd caught influenza, or been given a box at the
opera, or something.'

Airey sat down by the fireplace, his chin sunk on his necktie.
He seemed unhappy and rather ashamed. Tommy glanced at
him with a puzzled look, shook his head, and then broke into a
smile — as though, in the end, the only thing for it was to be
amused. Then he drew a long envelope from his pocket.

' I've brought the certificates along,' he said. ' Here they are.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 51

Two thousand. Just look at them. It's a good thing; and if you
sit on it for a bit, it'll pay for keeping.' He laid the envelope on
the small table by Airey's side, took up his hat, put it on, and lit
a cigarette as he repeated, ' Just see they're all right, old chap.'

' They're sure to be right.' Airey shifted uncomfortably in
his chair and pulled at his empty pipe.

Tommy tilted his hat far back on his head, turned a chair
back foremost, and sat down on it, facing his friend.

' I'm your business man,' he remarked. ' I do your business
and I hold my tongue about it. Don't I ? '

' Like the tomb,' Airey acknowledged.

' And Well, at any rate let me congratulate you on

the bread-and-butter. Only — only, I say, she'd have dined with
you, if you'd asked her, Airey.'

His usually composed and unemotional voice shook for an
almost imperceptible moment.

' I know,' said Airey Newton, He rose, unlocked the safe,
and threw the long envelope in. Then he unlocked the red-
leather book, took a pen, made a careful entry in it, re-locked it,
and returned to his chair. He said nothing more, but he glanced
once at Tommy Trent in a timid way. Tommy smiled back in
recovered placidity. Then they began to talk of inventions,
patents, processes, companies, stocks, shares, and all manner of
things that produce or have to do with money.

' So far, so good,' ended Tommy. ' And if the oxygen process
proves commercially practicable — it's all right in theory, I know —
I fancy you may look for something big.' He threw away his
cigarette and stood up, as if to go. But he lingered a moment,
and a touch of embarrassment affected his manner. Airey had
quite recovered his confidence and happiness during the talk on
money matters.

' She didn't tell you any news, I suppose ? ' Tommy asked.

' What, Peggy ? No, I don't think so. Well, nothing about
herself, anyhow.'

' It's uncommonly wearing for me,' Tommy complained with
a pathetic look on his clear-cut healthy countenance. ' I know
I must play a waiting game; if I said anything to her now I
shouldn't have a chance. So I have to stand by and see the other
fellows make the running. By Jove, I lie awake at nights — some

nights, anyhow — imagining infernally handsome poets Old

Arty Kane isn't handsome, though ! I say, Airey, don't you think

4—2

52 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

she's got too much sense to marry a poet ? You told me 1
must touch her imagination. Do I look like touching anybody's
imagination ? I'm about as likely to do it as — as you are.' His
attitude towards the suggested achievement wavered between envy
and scorn.

Airey endured this outburst — and its concluding insinuation
— with unruffled patience. He was at his pipe again, and puffed
out wisdom securely vague.

' You can't tell with a girl. It takes them all at once some-
times. Up to now I think it's all right.'

'Not Arty Kane?'

' Lord, no ! '

' Nor Childwick ? He's a clever chap, Childwick. Not got a
sou, of course ; she'd starve just the same.'

' She'd have done it before if i^had been going to be Miles
Childwick.'

' She'll meet some devilish fascinating chap some day, I know
she will.'

1 He'll ill-use her perhaps,' Airey suggested hopefully.

' Then I shall nip in, you mean ? Have you been treating
yourself to Drury Lane ? '

Airey laughed openly, and presently Tommy himself joined in,
though in a rather rueful fashion.

' Why the deuce can't we just like 'em ? ' he asked.

' That would be all right on the pessimistic theory of the
world.'

' Oh, hang the world ! Well, good-bye, old chap. I'm glad
you approve of what I've done about the business.'

His reference to the business seemed to renew Airey Newton's
discomfort. He looked at his friend, and after a long pause said
solemnly :

' Tommy Trent ! '

' Yes, Airey Newton ! '

' Would you mind telling me — man to man — how you contrive
to be my friend ? '

'What?'

' You're the only man who knows — and you're my only real
friend.'

' I regard it as just like drinking,' Tommy explained, after a
minute's thought. ' You're the deuce of a good fellow in every
other way. I hope you'll be cured some day too. I may live to
see you bankrupt yet.'

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 53

' I work for it. I work hard and usefully.'

' And even brilliantly,' added Tommy.

' It's mine. I haven't robbed anybody. And nobody has any
claim on me.'

' I didn't introduce this discussion.' Tommy was evidently
pained. He held out his hand to take leave.

' It's an extraordinary thing, but there it is,' mused Airey.
He took Tommy's hand and said, ' On my honour I'll ask her to
dinner.'

' Where ? ' inquired Tommy, in a suspicious tone.

Airey hesitated.

' Magnifique ! ' said Tommy firmly and relentlessly.

' Yes, the — the Magnifique,' agreed Airey, after another pause.

' Delighted, old man ! ' He waited a moment longer, but
Airey Newton did not fix a date.

Airey was left sorrowful, for he loved Tommy Trent. Though
Tommy knew his secret, still he loved him — a fact that may go
to the credit of both men. Many a man in Airey 's place would
have hated Tommy, even while he used and relied on him ; for
Tommy's knowledge put Airey to shame — a shame he could not
stifle any more than he could master the thing that gave it birth.

Certainly Tommy deserved not to be hated, for he was very
loyal. He showed that only two days later, and at a cost to him-
self. He was dining with Peggy Ryle — not she with him ; for a
cheque had arrived, and they celebrated its coming. Tommy, in
noble spirits (the coming of a cheque was as great an event to him
as to Peggy herself), told her how he had elicited the offer of a
dinner from Airey Newton ; he chuckled in pride over it.

How men misjudge things ! Peggy sat up straight in her
chair and flushed up to the outward curve of her hair.

' How dare you ? ' she cried. ' As if he hadn't done enough
for me already ! I must have eaten pounds of butter — of mere
butter alone ! You know he can't afford to give dinners.'

Besides anger, there was a hint of pride in her emphasis on
' dinners.'

' I believe he can,' said Tommy, with the air of offering a
hardy conjecture.

' I know he can't, or of course he would. Do you intend to
tell me that Airey — Airey of all men — is mean ? '

' Oh, no, I — I don't say '

' It's you that's mean ! I never knew you do such a thing
before. You've quite spoilt my pleasure this evening.' She

54 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

looked at him sternly. ' I don't like you at all to-night. I'm
very grievously disappointed in you.'

Temptation raged in Tommy Trent ; he held it down manfully.

' Well, I don't suppose he'll give the dinner, anyhow,' he
remarked morosely.

' No, because he can't ; but you'll have made him feel miser-
able about it. What time is it ? I think I shall go home.'

' Look here, Peggy, you aren't doing me justice.'

' Well, what have you got to say ? '

Tommy, smoking for a moment or two, looked across at her
and answered, ' Nothing.'

She rose and handed him her purse.

' Pay the bill, please, and mind you give the waiter half-a-
crown. And ask him to call me a cab, please.'

' It's only half a mile, and it's quite fine.'

' A rubber-tired hansom, please, with a good horse.'

Tommy put her into the cab and looked as if he would like to
get in too. The cabman, generalising from observed cases, held
the reins out of the way, that Tommy's tall hat might mount in
safety.

' Tell him where to go, please. Good-night,' said Peggy.

Tommy was left on the pavement. He walked slowly along
to his club, too upset to think of having a cigar.

' Very well,' he remarked, as he reached his destination. ' I
played fair, but old Airey shall give that dinner — I'm hanged if
he shan't ! — and do it as if he liked it too ! '

A vicious chuckle surprised the hall-porter as Tommy passed
within the precincts.

Peggy drove home, determined to speak plainly to Airey him-
self; that was the only way to put it right.

'He shall know that I do him justice, anyhow,' said she.
Thanks to the cheque, she was feeling as the rich feel, or should
feel, towards those who have helped them in early days of
struggle ; she experienced a generous glow and meditated delicate
benevolence. At least the bread-and-butter must be recouped an
hundredfold.

So great is the virtue of twenty pounds, if only they happen
to be sent to the right address. Most money, however, seems to
go astray.

(To be continued.)

AT THE JUSTICE'S WINDOW.
BY MRS. WOODS.

THE window looks on a narrow shelf of grass and a hedge of
poinsettias. Beyond, the ground drops steeply towards the
pastures. At this season the poinsettias have grown tall and
ragged and hold their burning scarlet blossoms up singly to the
sun. Through their straggling stems the trees show : a cloud of
pale pink marenga blossom, the heavy greens and browns of the
palm, the dull foliage of the mango. Away to the right, beyond
the verandah, there is the barbecue, looking like a small asphalte
tennis-court set in the grass. On the edge of the little plateau a
few palm-trees, with the bold pattern of their leaning stems and
large fronds, put an accent on the wide distance ; where in green
pastures of tufted guinea-grass the red Herefords and the humped
Indian cattle are feeding, under giant plumes of bamboos and
in the elm-like shade of the broad-leaf. Spire-high the cotton-
trees tower over all, stretching out gaunt white arms, half hidden
by the growth of magenta orchids, wild pines, and parasite figs.
And about the flat pastures stand forest-clothed mountains,
beautiful with the beauty of mountains in all places of the earth.
Here and there white wisps of vapour still trail across them, for
it is early morning although there is no dewy dimness in the air.
Rather the sun smites with such a brilliancy of light, such a
crispness of shadow on the dozen or more black men and women
waiting upon the barbecue, that it makes a picture of them in
spite of themselves — they truly having put on the whole armour
of civilisation, called Sunday clothes : except such of them as
have no Sunday clothes. The ebon youth — they mostly are or
look young — wear serge coats and light trousers of the last mode,
the stiffest of shirt-collars and the smartest of ties. One hat
alone, a felt, orange in the sunlight, strikes a note of colour, of
pleasant savagery. The white sailor-hat, that pitiless uniform of
the she Briton, perches whiter, harder than ever on the short
wool, above the flat noses of three particularly black young
negresses. Their waists are pinched in British shirt-blouses,
their feet are pinched in yellow British shoes. On the stone edge
of the barbecue a woman, worn and emaciated as one seldom sees

56 AT THE JUSTICE'S WINDOW.

them here, sits nursing a baby, and a bright-eyed little girl
stands beside her. This woman does not wear Sunday clothes.
A crimson handkerchief, knotted at the four corners, covers her
head and forehead squarely. Not far from her stands a much
older woman, grim and silent, she also kerchiefed and clothed in
a loose garment of a shade which our ancestors used to call
Isabel — that is, the colour of Queen Isabel's linen when a rash
vow compelled her still to go on wearing it. I mention the
colour because it is the one which seems most generally worn in
this neighbourhood, when Sunday clothes do not prevail. But
just in time to save me from the sin of wishing all negresses,
especially them of the sailor-hats, to go for ever clad in Isabel,
up past the blowing bushes of red hibiscus, comes a fine robust
black woman, clothed in a loose-girt garment of shining white,
and wearing a snowy kerchief knotted four-square upon her well-
held head. She also is seeking the magistrate, whom here they
call the Justice, as our ancestors called him in Shakespeare's
time ; or the Squire, as fifty years since the rural Englishman
called the landowner of his parish. And the Squire there in his
study is to all appearance just such a big loose-coated Briton as
might have tramped with dog and gun across his acres when
there were still squires in England and such things were still
done. Yet, of all living creatures astir this morning, none has a
better and few as good a claim to be called a native; if one
excepts the humming-birds and the small green lizard that flits
about in the sun, waving its beautiful orange frill in hopes of
touching the aesthetic sense of the flies. For in Jamaica every-
thing which is most characteristic of the country is exotic ; trees,
fruit, animals, and, above all, men. The very grandfathers of
some of these waiting negroes led the hunting and hunted life of
the African forest less than a hundred years ago. Small wonder
that the African type, the savage in his childishness, not in his
ferocity, survives here, decked in tailoring instead of beads.
Much more surprising to find how frequently the type of the
energetic ruling race has survived generations of tropic life, life
of the old kind, with its fever and pestilence, its luxury and its
slave-owning. Yet so it is, and here sits the Squire according to
the custom of that race, to do as a matter of course, without
payment or reward, his share of the government of the community.
This means, in truth, no great quantity of strictly legal business,
but rather the listening to long stories — for the negro must be let

AT THE JUSTICE'S WINDOW. 57

tell his tale in his own way — about larceny and suspected larceny,
about difficulties between husbands and wives, and, above all,
about abusive quarrels fain to transform themselves into cases of
assault and libel. Truly to dissuade these law-abiding but law-
loving people from indulging their passion for litigation is,
perhaps, the most valuable, as it is certainly the lengthiest part
of the Justice's business. And in these trivial stories, these
childish individualities, Black Jamaica, with all its problems, is
continually passing along that narrow shelf of grass before his
window. The tenant who has now so long occupied it is telling,
in the sweet inexpressibly plaintive negro voice, an interminable
story concerning the mysterious disappearance of his yams.
' Tiefing,' he calls it. The Government calls it ' praedial larceny,'
and is preparing a cat-o'-nine-tails for the thief; but whether
either he or the Government will catch that elusive individual is
another matter. As he draws to an end a well-dressed negro,
with the air of youth bestowed by plump and shiny blackness,
steps jauntily into his place. There is even something exag-
gerated about the easy nonchalance of his pose, the beatific
nature of his smile. He coughs insinuatingly, and the Justice, who
has been noting something in a book, looks up, stares, and then :

' Why, it's you, Dixon ! I never expected to see you again.'

With innocent wonder Dixon interrogates : ' Not see me,
'quire ? Why not see me ? '

' Because I haven't seen you for ten years, and then you owed
me a pound.'

Oh the world of gentle pained astonishment in that ebon face !
The depths of mild yet shocked reproach in the mellifluous voice,
' Me go 'way and owe you a pound, 'quire ? Oh no, Su', you make
great mistake. I not owe no man anyting.'

But something — perhaps a distant glimpse of a certain big
book which has a way of recording trifles otherwise un considered
— suddenly galvanises Dixon's memory into unnatural activity.
He not only recollects owing that pound, but he recollects repay-
ing it at least seven times, if not unto seventy times seven.
Doesn't Squire remember how he paid it in cleaning the pasture,
how he paid it in corn, how he paid it in driving the wagon, how
he paid it, in short, at various times in all the various fruits of
the earth and by all the various labours of man ? — how finally he,
Dixon, paid that pound — of which, oh, shocking to relate, the
Squire has heard nothing — in cash, into the hands of the Squire's

58 AT THE JUSTICE'S WINDOW.

own trusted Mr. Brown ? The debt of one pound has multiplied
— on the wrong side — in a manner to put to shame the loaves
and fishes, till the brain whirls in a vain attempt to catch up
with it and calculate for how many pounds the Squire is by this
time indebted to Dixon. But the Squire recks not of this.
What pains that British magistrate is, that his voluble ex-tenant
has surprised him into the discussion of private affairs, when
public business is to the fore. Has Dixon no magisterial busi-
ness ? He has. Alas, that he should not have a monopoly of
dishonesty ! Some very bad fellow has been ' tiefing ' his bananas.
Prsedial larceny, or the ' tiefing ' of bananas and other fruits
of the earth, is the one criminal offence really common in
Jamaica; which does not prove the negro to be exceptionally
thievish. ' When black man tief, he tief yam ; when white man
tief he tief whole estate,' says his own self-justificatory proverb.
But if money lay scattered on the hill-sides the white man would
1 tief ' that ; and the crop of his provision ground means the same
thing to the black man. Any day in March or April you will see
here and there as you look along the mountain ridges, blue
columns of smoke rising up from the forest, and at night glow
upon glow, as of dim beacon-fires. Each patch of light signifies
that a negro is preparing a new provision ground after his
wasteful primitive fashion. Sometimes, when the fire has licked
up the trees and undergrowth, this ground will seem little more
than a steep slope of limestone rock, coated with ashes. But out
of this sprang the forest, and out of this too the kindly sun will
bring forth, with no great toil on his part, his subsistence for the
year and something to spare, which he can sell in the nearest
market. This will give him a little money to spend at the store
and — if he does not own his land — to pay his rent or such part
of his rent as he does not prefer to pay in labour or produce. His
shanty, built of laths and mud, is seldom near his provision
ground. Possibly this is because his improvident system of
culture makes a constant change of land necessary. He exhausts
it so rapidly that in some parts of the island only ten per cent,
of the land can be kept under cultivation at the same time. The
rest, having been cropped two years, must lie fallow for eight or
ten. Thus remote, usually separated by a mere boundary line
from his neighbour's patch, the negro's provision ground is at
the mercy of the thief; and if his own crop fail, he himself is apt
to be at the mercy of that bunch of ripe bananas which hangs so

AT THE JUSTICE'S WINDOW. 59

temptingly just on the wrong side of his boundary. They mean
subsistence or wealth to him, and it is so easy to take them with-
out discovery.

The local policeman is not here this morning, from which it
must not be inferred he has nothing to do. To keep his clothes
and his helmet at that dazzling and becoming pitch of whiteness
must in itself be a care to him. Then there is the police-station,
a substantial stone building, very different from the lath and
plaster shanties of the neighbours, to be kept clean and tidy, and
the wall round the yard to be whitewashed. The last policeman
ignominiously failed in these duties and was dismissed in conse-
quence ; wherefore the present man is zealous in their perform-
ance. Having brought the uniform, the house, and the yard-wall
up to the ideal standard, he has gone further, and is now engaged
in reducing the surrounding trees to symmetry and order by
whitewashing them all up to a certain height. It is, however,
but a few days since he appeared at the Justice's window dragging
with him a wretched delinquent. ' Please, sir,' says he, sternly
triumphant, putting forward his living and quite unimpaired
prey, ' Please, sir, I brought de suicide.' But what of that ?
Suicide is certainly rare, but I have seen many a murdered man
stand here and tell — with dramatic illustrations — the horrid tale
of his own murder. Only the word after all is more often
' Murderation ' ; and experience shows that a charge of murdera-
tion may be whittled down to one of ' using some scrampy words.'

The negro, in spite of the big knife he carries to cut his
yams with, is seldom guilty of real violence. The countless
victims of "buse and 'ssault,' who fly to the Justice, thirsting
for legal vengeance, have whole skins, however much their
feelings may be abraded. Yet I can never withhold my sympathy
from them when they rehearse the little scene of their wrongs
before the window, their wonderful voices now waxing deep with
manly indignation, now softening in the sad appeal of helpless
and oppressed innocence. Having expressed at length all the
grief and rage that is in their souls, these children of Nature—
step-children of Civilisation — will most likely listen to the words
of wisdom and kindliness, humorous or grave, which flow from
the lips of the Justice. They will recognise that the distant
chance of punishing a neighbour for ' scrampy words ' is hardly
worth the trouble and the money it will cost them, although a
negro who can find money for nothing else can find it for a law-

60 AT THE JUSTICE'S WINDOW.

suit, and some are very persistent. Look at the youth with the
orange felt hat, the particularly high shirt-collar and jaunty tie.
With much dignity and careful attention to his diction, he ex-
presses his desire to have ' process issued ' against ' some persons '
for ' 'ssault, 'buse, and damage to property.' He gave a tea-party,
it appears, last Friday in the evening. Now, giving a tea-party
in Jamaica is a matter of business as well as of pleasure. Ad-
mittance to a tea-party is a question of payment. There is a
professional chairman who is paid for his speech. This may be
entirely burlesque, or it may soar to heights in which a Latin
word or so is necessary to support it ; in which case he will have
to apply to someone else for the Latin, and pay at least a
macaroni (or shilling) for it. Burlesque speeches and songs will
also be provided by the company. The show-cake is the most
lucrative part of the affair to the organiser of the tea-party. It
is a special, a superior cake, which cannot even be seen under one
shilling, and one shilling must the man pay who would offer a
slice to his fair. Then follows dancing, perhaps ' ketch dances,'
negro dances, which are danced all together, hand in hand. That
there are objections to these dances carried on late into the
night, whether at a tea-party or a Revivalist meeting, it is easy
to understand ; but I suspect it is only the Nonconformist Con-
science which impels ministers of religion to try and make their
flocks ashamed of the harmless, light-hearted nonsense of the
tea-party itself. Not that I have attended one. I have only
played the Peri at the gate ; and a very pretty gate it was. Long
branches of bamboo and palm formed the arch, in the centre of
which hung a coloured lamp, but this lamp was not yet lighted
because the low sun still whitened the steep mountain road, and
threw frail shadows of palm and mango across it. Beside the
gate the Wandering Jew clothed the roadside bank with red-wine
colour, and below, among the greyish-green of mango foliage,
wild oranges hung out their globes of gold. Down the turn of
the road, where the palm-trees feather against the sky, and up
from the cane-fields and the bamboo-thickets of the plain, came
trooping to that tea-party a joyous company of sweetly-laughing,
ivory-smiling, jet-black beaux and belles. And I trust that the
entertainment ended as joyously as it began, under the auspices
of some more experienced manager than the boy of seventeen
who told the story of his tea-party at the Justice's window.
' Fust I mek de tickets fippence (threepence), den dey not satis-

AT THE JUSTICE'S WINDOW. 61

fied, and I mek dem a quarty (a penny-halfpenny) so dey all
come. And I mek show-cake vairy nice, bread and butter vairy
nice, but when I hand round bread and butter dey ' — tears in the
voice — ' dey say it no ketch (go round). Dey fro de slices at
me ' — he suits the action to the word — ' dey 'ssault me, 'quire,
also dey say — ahem — dey say some several words — Yas, Su', some
several words. Dey cut de show-cake and eat it, and dey not pay
one shilling, no, dey not pay one gill ' (three-farthings). His voice
deepens to the tragic close, and he stares into vacancy sombrely.

The Justice, after a paternal admonition on the folly of his
youth in undertaking so serious a matter as a tea-party, asked him
how many persons he wishes to summons.

' All, Su', I want process 'gainst dem all.'

' How many ? '

The youth does some mental arithmetic.

' Twenty-nine, 'quire.'

' Twenty-nine ! Why, the Court-house would not hold them
all. Name three or four.'

' No, Su',' obstinately, ' I waant you issue process 'gainst dem
all:

The Justice smiles a subtle smile, and there is a touch of the
vernacular in his next question. ' Why you want process 'gainst
them all ? You think they give evidence ? '

' Yes, Su',' the youth replies with ready candour, ' if I not get
process 'gainst dem all, some of dem come give evidence 'gainst me.'

The Justice had already guessed his plan of campaign.

' If you want process against twenty-nine persons,' he says
drily, ' you must go to someone else.'

' Going to someone else ' means walking twenty-five miles,
besides expense. The Justice is immovable, but the youth
remains. He hangs round silently, like a child refused its way,
but unable to abandon the hope of getting it eventually. That
dodge for keeping the witness-box reserved for self and friends was
not new certainly, but then how good it was !

Meantime the old woman in the. Isabel clothes is at the
window. She has two complaints to lay before the Justice.
Firstly : her daughter, and the young man who should be her
son-in-law — but there are reasons why lawful marriage is un-
popular in Jamaica — have left their child upon her hands and
contribute nothing to its support. Can the Justice compel them
to do so ? No, neither the Justice nor anyone else. Like three-

62 AT THE JUSTICE'S WINDOW.

fifths of the children born in the island, this child has no legal
claim on its parents. Secondly : there is a young man who fre-
quently passes through her yard and jeers and 'buses her because
she is a Sixty, and the Sixties meet there. Who are the Sixties ?
They are a Kevivalist sect, so obscure that even the Squire has
never heard of them. ' Are the Sixties noisy ? ' he asks with
meaning. The Isabel woman repudiates the suggestion with due
horror, ' Noisy, 'quire ? De Sixties ? No-o — no-o. De Sixties
vairy quiet. Dey revive in dem beds.' She rocks herself and
groans piously ; also noisily. ' De Sixties waant Peace, Peace ! '
But what does this particular Sixty want ? The suppression of
the young man — peacefully. No; she does not want process
issued against him. No ; she will not go to the court-house on
Wednesday, when the Justice and the stipendiary magistrate will
be there. Apparently Sixties are above such proceedings. Then
what does she want ? ' Peace, Peace ! ' and the extermination of
that young man. ' Peace, Peace ! ' in a crescendo yell. If it is
thus that the Sixties ' revive in dem beds ' they may be trying
neighbours, even to youth. Eevivalism in Jamaica has its trage-
dies and its comedies, but under no circumstances its advantages.
The excitability of the black man is animal, it leads him back-
wards towards the jungle, towards Obeahism. The noisy Ee-
vivalistic meeting is a more serious scandal than a tea-party.
A doctor told us that not long since he was called in to a
meeting, where he saw a woman lying on the ground, while
her co-religionists danced a ketch-dance in frantic circle round
her, proclaiming her to be ' in de spirit.' He found she was
dead from a fit caused by excitement. But the consequences of
these ' pious orgies ' may be merely inconvenient ; as in the case
of the black lady, who, when ' in de spirit,' climbed upon her
neighbour's roof and sat there for two days. The neighbour
found this inconvenient, to judge from the piteous accents in
which he implored relief at the hands of the Justice.

The best, the most civilising form of religion for the black
man is the one which is most successful in training him to think
and to exercise self-control. In these respects Presbyterianism
is considered by unprejudiced persons to stand first, partly owing
to its inherent qualities and partly to the qualities of the
Ministers the Scotch Church sends out to Jamaica.

It is now the turn of the woman with the little girl and the
baby ; a small drooping baby, which with its closed eyes and the

AT THE JUSTICE'S WINDOW. 63

sores on its woolly head, painfully resembles a little sick mother-
deserted black kitten. The poor tiny creature has plainly not
long to live. There is here nothing misleading in the penetra-
ting pathos of the negro voice, the supplicatory slave-tone ; it
accords well with the woman's melancholy story. She was left a
widow with nine children whom one way and another she has
managed to keep. But then her sister died, leaving this baby
and two other children, and there was no one except herself to
take charge of them. In this case it happens that she does not
know who the father was, but if she did, these starving children,
supported by a woman evidently half-starved herself, have no
claim upon him. He is free to continue increasing the popula-
tion with children for other people to support, since the law will
do nothing to develop in him a sense of parental responsibility
which one need not call human, since the birds possess it. The
Justice can only advise her to apply for Parochial Eelief on
the first opportunity. Meantime, he sends round the starving
woman, the dying baby, and the bright-eyed little girl to that
much better Relieving Officer of his own — ' the Missus.'

These are the evil results of the rudimentary negro social
system. But as regards women only, there more frequently pass
before this window examples of the disadvantages of importing
an alien marriage system, which has grown up under social and
above all economical conditions not prevailing among the black
people. ' Trute is, 'quire, me and my husband is a bit disagree-
able,' begins the handsome woman in white, confidentially. This
time it is an ordinary matrimonial quarrel ; but even this would
probably not have occurred if the woman had been a partner
instead of a legal wife. No other legal and aggrieved wife comes
to the window to-day, but yesterday while we sat at tea on the
balcony, a wild figure came rushing up the slope calling on the
Squire for justice. Her brownish clothes were girt classically
round her hips, an immense hat framed her black face and
glittering eyes. She stood below swaying like a Maenad with
whirling words and gestures. Her story was long, all about her •
husband's quarrel with his brother, and about a donkey belonging
to herself which lodged in the brother's stable, and about the
sundry occasions on which her husband had maltreated her on
the score of this donkey. At last to-day, when she came back
from feeding it, he had caught her by the throat and cried out
he would murder her. ' Yas, he ketch me by de trote and choke
me,' she cries, seizing herself by the throat with violent hands,

64 AT THE JUSTICE'S WINDOW.

' I ketch de door-posts but he fro me down — ' her arms are out-
stretched, her draperies flying — ' he fro me out and trample on
me — he say be kill me, he trample on me till I smell de fresh
blood in my 'tomach.' The expression is crude but veridic, for
a taste as of iron or blood in the mouth has been noted as a
physiological symptom of extreme fear. ' I tell him I go to the
Justice, but my husband tell me, " Boccra (white) law say no
beat picc'ny, boccra law no say no beat wife." ' Here lies the
crux of the matter. To the letter the husband's statement is
untrue, practically it is true. The only idea of marriage that
the African brought with him was that of domestic slavery with
himself for master. Unfortunately, in spite of all the modifica-
tions which civilisation has effected in it, our own marriage
system is originally rooted in the same idea ; moreover, its
development has been conditioned by the economic dependence
of European women. Now the antecedents of her race give the
black woman an intense horror of slavery of any kind. She is
not immoral, she is usually faithful to her own customary
partnerships, but marriage according to boccra law takes away
from her too much and offers her too little. For she is in a
position of vantage as compared with a typical European or African
woman. Her physical strength, a tropical climate, and the
simplicity of social conditions, make her able to keep herself
almost as well as a man. White civilisation protects her from
enslavement and robbery of every sort — so long as she remains
unmarried. If her partner over-works or beats her she has the
remedy in her hands : consequently he seldom does it. Here are
the reasons why so large a majority of the children born in
Jamaica are illegitimate. It must be added that an undue
proportion of the illegitimate children die, and it was for the
benefit of this majority of children, and also as I conceive for the
real benefit of the majority of parents, especially the fathers,
that the Jamaicans lately passed an affiliation law. The Home
Government quashed it.

All this time the Sunday clothes young ladies are waiting
near the window with an admirable patience. Up trips one,
resplendent in her white sailor hat and yellow shoes. She
' wants process ' against the other two young ladies and against
several more for ' 'ssault and 'buse.' She tells the usual lengthy
tale with even more than the usual amount of pathos and meek,
injured innocence thrown in. The lady with the jaunty hat is
not exactly a widow, nor yet an orphan, but she would gladly for

AT THE JUSTICE'S WINDOW. 65

the moment be both these and anything else that is forlorn,
helpless, appealing, if she could be them with the faintest
appearance of probability. Unluckily the two other ladies are
what is called ' watching the case.' But she and her husband
are all alone, they not belong to this parish (county), they come
0 from a long way off, they have no family, no friends to stand
by them and defend them from wrong and insult. She knows
not what she can have done to offend the local ladies, but she
cannot even pass them in the road without they jeer and call her
very bad names. Finally they box her. ' I 'tand de box,' says
this virtuous one, ' but I no 'tand de bad words dem.' She does
not, like the tea-party youth, confine herself to a euphemism,
' dey say some several words ' — she distinctly states that she
heard the words ' ineffectual biped.' The defendants vehemently
deny having used so dreadful an expression. They say, what
they really said, ' Ineffective rubbish ! '

The Justice smoking his pipe listens with great gravity and
attention. Probably he has heard about this quarrel before, for
he is in the confidence of most of the neighbouring ministers.
' I believe you are all members of the same chapel ? ' he says.
They admit it.

' Then you know you ought to lay your quarrel before your
minister and let him settle it instead of bringing it to me.'

They accept this verdict meekly and depart without any of
the usual silent sulky lingering of the rejected applicant. For
the power of the Church — the paradox of the word is only
apparent — is great, well earned and on the whole well used,
although a certain unavoidable limitation of view in the wielders
of it must always keep this kind of government something short
of the best. The barbecue is deserted, the sun is high and hot.
Surely by this time the Justice has earned his breakfast. In
parenthesis, a true Jamaican breakfast is a dejeuner a la fourchette,
and may take place at any hour from half-past ten to twelve.
But no ! Just as he is leaving his study another black head
bounds into view at the window: a large, black, breathless,
particularly ugly head

' 'Quire, 'quire, I want process 'gainst Thomas Jones ! '
Thomas Jones is a black man.
' What for, Edwards ? '

'Libel, Su', libel! He call me ugly black nigger. Yas -
ugly, black, niggah ! '

VOL. XII. — NO. 67, N.S. 5

VICTOR?
BY A. T. QUILLER-COUCH.

' You will ruin his life,' said one of the two women. As the phrase
escaped her she remembered, or seemed to remember, having met
with it in half a dozen novels. She had nerved herself for the
interview which up to this moment had been desperately real ;
but now she felt herself losing grip. It had all happened before —
somewhere ; she was reacting an old scene, going through a past ;
the four or five second-hand words gave her this sensation. Then
she reflected that the other woman, too, had perhaps met them
before in some cheap novelette, and, being an uneducated person,
would probably find them the more impressive for that.

The other woman had, in fact, met them before, in the pages
of ' Bow Bells,' and been impressed by them. But since then
love had found her ignorant and left her wise, wiser than in her
humiliation she dared to guess, and yet the wiser for being
humiliated. She answered in a curiously dispassionate voice :
' I think, miss,his life is ruined already ; that is, if he sent you to
say all this to me.'

' He did not.' Miss Bracy lifted the nose and chin which she
inherited from several highly distinguished Crusaders, and gave
the denial sharply and promptly, looking her ex-maid straight in
the face. She had never — to use her own words — stood any non-
sense from Bassett.

But Bassett, formerly so docile (though, as it now turned out,
so deceitful), who had always known her place and never answered
her mistress but with respect, was to-day an unrecognisable
Bassett — not in the least impudent, but as certainly not to be awed
or browbeaten. Standing in the glare of discovered misconduct,
under the scourge of her shame, the poor girl had grasped some
secret strength which made her invincible.

' But I think, miss,' she answered, ' Mr. Frank must have
known you was coming.'

And this Miss Bracy could not deny. She had never told a lie
in her life.

1 Copyright, 1901, by A. T. Quiller-Couch in the United States of America.

VICTOR. 67

'It is very likely — no, it is certain — that he guessed,' she
admitted.

' And if so, it comes to the same thing,' Bassett persisted with
a shade of weariness in her voice.

' You ungrateful girl ! You ungrateful and quite extraordinary
girl ! First you inveigle that poor boy at the very outset of his
career, and then, when upon a supposed point of honour he offers
to marry you '

' A supposed point, miss ? Do you say " supposed " ? '

' Not one in a thousand would offer such a redemption. And
even he cannot know what it will mean to his life — what it will
cost him.'

' I shall tell him, miss,' said Bassett quietly.

' And his parents — what do you suppose they would say, were
they alive ? His poor mother, for instance ? '

Bassett dismissed this point silently. To Miss Bracy, the
queerest thing about the girl was the quiet, practical manner she
had put on so suddenly.

' You said, miss, that Mr. Frank wants to make amends on a
" supposed " point of honour. Don't you think it a real one ? '

Miss Bracy's somewhat high cheek bones showed two red spots.
' Because he offers it, it doesn't follow that you ought to accept.
And that's the whole point,' she wound up viciously.

Bassett sighed that she could not get her question answered.
' You will excuse me, miss, but I never " inveigled " him as you
say. That I deny, and if you ask Mr. Frank he will bear me out
— not that it's any use trying to make you believe,' she added
with a drop back to her old level tone, as she saw the other's eye-
brow go up. It was indeed hopeless, Miss Bracy being one of
those women who take it for granted that a man has been inveigled
as soon as his love affairs run counter to their own wishes or taste,
and who thereby reveal an estimate of man for which in the end
they are pretty sure to pay heavily.

All her answer now was a frankly incredulous stare.

' You won't believe me, miss. It's not your fault, I know ;
you can't believe me. But I loved Mr. Frank.'

Miss Bracy made a funny little sound high up in her Crusader-
nose. That the passions of gentlemen were often ill regulated she
knew ; it disgusted her, but she recognised it as a real danger to
be watched by their anxious relatives. That love, however — what
she understood by love — could be felt by the lower orders, the

5—2

68 VICTOR.

people who ' walked together,' and kept company ' before mating,
was too incredible. Even if driven by evidence to admit the fact,
she would have set it down to the pernicious encroachment of
Board School education and remarked that a little knowledge is a
dangerous thing.

' " Love ! " My poor child, don't profane a word you cannot
possibly understand. A nice love, indeed, that shows itself by
ruining his life ! '

That second-hand phrase again ! As it slipped out the
indomitable Bassett dealt it another blow.

' I am not sure, miss, that I love him any longer — in the same
way, I mean. I should always have a regard for him — for many
reasons — and because he behaved honourably in a way. But I
couldn't quite believe as I did before he showed himself weak.'

' Well, of all the ' Miss Bracy's lips were open for a word

to fit this offence when Bassett followed it up with a worse one.

' I beg your pardon, miss, but you are so fond of Mr. Frank.
Supposing I refused his offer, would you marry him yourself ? '

The girl, too, meant it quite seriously. In her tone was no
trace of impudence. She had divined her adversary's secret, and
thrust home the question with a kind of anxious honesty. Miss
Bracy, red and gasping, tingling with shame, yet knew that she
was not being exulted over. She dropped the unequal fight
between conventional argument and naked insight, and stood up,
woman to woman. She neither denied nor exclaimed. She, too,
told the truth.

' Never ! ' She paused. ' After what has happened I would
never marry my cousin.'

' I thought that, miss. You mean it, I am sure, and it eases
my mind, because you have been a good mistress to me, and it
would always have been a sorry thought that I'd stood in your
way. Not that it would have prevented me.'

' Do you still stand there and tell me that you will hold this
unhappy boy to his word ? '

' He's twenty-two, miss, my own age. Yes, I shall hold him
to it.'

' To save yourself ? '

' No, miss.'

' For his own sake, then ? ' Miss Bracy's laugh was passing
bitter.

' No, miss — though there might be something in that.'

VICTOR 69

' For whose, then ? '

The girl did not answer. But in the silence her mistress
understood, and moved to the door. She was beaten, and she
knew it ; beaten and unforgiving. In the doorway she turned.

' It was not for your own sake that you persist ? It was not to
gratify yourself — to be made a lady — that you plotted this ?
Very well ; you shall be taken at your word. I cannot counsel
Frank against his honour ; if he insists and you still accept the
sacrifice, he shall marry you. But from that hour — you under-
stand ? — you have seen the last of him. I know Frank well
enough to promise it.'

She paused to let the words sink in and watch their effect.
This was not only cruel, but a mistake, for it gave Bassett — who
was past caring for it — the last word.

llf you do, miss,' she said drearily, yet with a mind made up,
' I dare say that will be best.'

II.

Long before I heard this story I knew three of the characters
in it. Just within the harbour beside which I am writing this —
on your left as you enter it from the sea — a little creek runs
up past Battery Point to a stout sea-wall with a turfed garden
behind it and a low cottage ; and behind that again a steep-sided
valley down which a stream tumbles to a granite conduit. It
chokes and overflows the conduit, is caught into a granite-covered
gutter by the door of the cottage, and emerges beyond it in a
small cascade upon the beach. At spring tides the sea climbs
half way up this cascade, and great then is the splashing. The
land birds, tits and warblers, come down to the very edge to
drink ; but none of them — unless it be the wagtail — will trespass
on the beach below. The rooks and gulls on their side never
forage above the cascade, but when the ploughing calls them
inland mount and cross the frontier line high overhead. All day
long in summer the windows of the cottage stand open and its
rooms are filled with song ; and night and day, summer and
winter, the inmates move and talk, wake and sleep, to the con-
tending music of the waters.

It had lain tenantless for two years when one spring morning
Miss Bracy and Mr. Frank Bracy arrived and took possession.
They came (for aught we knew) out of nowhere, but they brought
a good many boxes, six cats, and a complete set of new muslin

70 VICTOR.

blinds. On their way they purchased a quart of fresh milk, and
Mr. Frank fed the cats while Miss Bracy put up the blinds. In
the afternoon a long van arrived with a load of furniture, and we
children who had gathered to watch were rewarded by a sensation
when the van started by disgorging an artist's lay-figure, followed
by a suit of armour. From these to a mahogany chest of drawers
with brass handles was a sad drop, and we never regained the
high romance of those first few minutes ; but the furniture was
undeniably handsome, and when Miss Bracy stepped out and
offered us sixpence apiece to go and annoy somebody else we
came away convinced that our visitors were persons of exception-
ally high rank. It puzzled us afterwards that, though a bargain
is a bargain, not one of us had stayed to claim his sixpence.

The newcomers brought no servants, but after a week there
arrived (also out of nowhere) an elderly and taciturn cook. Also
Miss Bracy on the third morning walked up to the farm at the
head of the valley and hired down the hind's second daughter for
a ' help.' We knew this girl, Lizzie Truscott, and waylaid her on
her homeward road that evening, for information. She told us
that Miss Bracy's cats had a cradle apiece lined with muslin over
pink calico; that the window curtains inside reached from the
ceilings to the floors ; that the number of knives and forks was
something cruel — one kind for fish, another for meat, and a third
for fruit ; that in one of the looking-glasses a body could see her-
self at one time from head to foot, though why you should want
a looking-glass to see your feet in when you could see them
without was more than she knew ; and finally, that Miss Bracy
had strictly forbidden her to carry tales — a behest which, con-
vinced that Miss Bracy had dealings with the Evil One, she
meant to observe. The elderly cook when she arrived warned us
away from the door with a dialect we did not recognise. Her
name (Lizzie reported) was Deborah, and in our hearts we set her
down for a Jewess, but I seem to have detected her accent since,
and a few of her pet phrases, in the pages of Scottish fiction.

This is all I can tell — so fitful are childish memories — of the
coming of Miss Bracy and Mr. Frank. I cannot say, for instance,
what gossip it bred, or how soon they wore down the edge of it
and became, with their eccentricities, an accepted feature of the
spot they had made their home. They made no friends, no
acquaintances ; every one knew of Miss Bracy's cats, but few had
seen them. Miss Bracy herself was on view in church every

VICTOR. 71

Sunday morning, when Mr. Frank walked with her as far as
the porch. He never entered the building, but took a country
walk during service, returning in time to meet her at the porch
and escort her home. His other walks he took alone, and almost
always at night. The policeman tramping toward Four Turnings
after midnight to report to the country patrol would meet him
and pause for a minute's chat. Night-wandering beasts — foxes
and owls and hedgehogs — knew his footstep, and unlearned their
first fear of it. Sometimes, but not often, you might surprise
him of an afternoon seated before an easel in some out-of-the-way
corner of the cliffs ; but if you paused then to look he too paused
and seemed inclined to smudge out his work. The vicar put it
about that Mr. Frank had formerly been a painter of fame, and
(being an astute man) one day decoyed him into his library,
where hung an engraving of a picture, Amos Barton, by one
F. Bracy. It had made a small sensation at Burlington House
a dozen years before, and the vicar liked it for the pathos of its
subject — an elderly clergyman beside his wife's death-bed. To
him the picture itself could have told little more than this en-
graving, which utterly failed to suggest the wonderful colour and
careful work the artist (a young man with a theory and enthusiasm
to back it) had lavished on the worn carpet and valances of the
bed, as well as the chestnut hair of the dying woman glorified in
the red light of sunset.

Mr. Frank glanced up at the engraving and turned his face
away. It was the face of a man taken at unawares, embarrassed,
almost afraid. The vicar, who had been watching him, intending
some pleasant remark about the picture, saw at once that some-
thing was wrong, and with great tact kept the talk upon some
petty act of charity in which he sought to enlist his visitor's help.
Mr. Frank listened, and gave his promise hurriedly and made his
escape. He never entered the vicarage again.

III.

Eighteen years had passed since Miss Bracy's interview with
Bassett ; and now, late on a summer afternoon, she and Mr.
Frank were pacing the little waterside garden while they awaited
their first visitor.

Mr. Frank betrayed the greater emotion, or, at any rate, the
greater nervousness. Since breakfast he had been unable to sit

72 VICTOR.

still or to apply himself to any piece of work for ten minutes
together until Miss Bracy suggested the lawn-mower, and brought
purgatory upon herself. With that lawn-mower all the after-
noon he had been ' rattling her brain to fiddle-strings,' as she put
it, and working himself into a heat which obliged a change of
clothing. The tea stood ready now on a table which Deborah
had carried out into the garden — dainty linen and silver-ware and
flowered china dishes heaped with cakes of which only Scotch-
women know the secrets.

The sun dropping behind Battery Point slanted its rays down
through the pine-trunks and over the massed plumes of the
rhododendrons. Scents of jasmine and of shorn grass mingled
with the clear breath of the sea borne to the garden wall on a
high tide tranquil and clear — so clear that the eye, following for
a hundred yards the lines of the cove, could see the feet of the
cliffs where they rested, three fathoms down, on lily-white sand.
Miss Bracy adored these clear depths. She had missed much
that life could have given ; but at least she had found a life
comely and to her mind. She had sacrificed much ; but at times
she forgot how much in contemplating the modest elegance of
the altar.

She wore this evening a gown of purplish silk with a light
cashmere scarf about her shoulders. Nothing could make her a
tall woman ; but her grey hair dressed high a Vimperatrice gave
her dignity at least, and an air of old-fashioned distinction. And
she was one of those few and fortunate ladies who never used to
worry about the appearance of their cavaliers. Mr. Frank — six
feet of him, without reckoning a slight stoop — always satisfied
the eye ; his grey flannel suit fitted loosely, but fitted well ; his
wide-brimmed straw hat was as faultless as his linen ; his neck-
tie had a negligent neatness ; you felt sure alike and at once of
his bootmaker and his shirtmaker ; and his fresh complexion, his
prematurely white hair, his strong, well-kept hands completed
the impression of cleanliness for its own sake, of a careful physical
cult as far as possible removed from foppery.

This may have been in Miss Bracy's mind when she began :
' I dare say he will be fairly presentable to look at. That un-
fortunate woman had at least an art of dressing — a quiet taste,
too, quite extraordinary in one of her station. I often wondered
where she picked it up.'

Mr. Frank winced. Until the news of his wife's death came,

VICTOR. 73

a fortnight ago, her name had not been spoken between them for
years. That he and his cousin regarded her very differently, he
knew ; but, while silence was kept, it had been possible to ignore
the difference. Now it surprised him that speech should hurt so,
and at the same moment, that his cousin should not divine how
sorely it hurt. After all, he was the saddest evidence of poor
Bassett's ' lady-like ' tastes.

' I suppose you know nothing of the school she sent him to ? '
Miss Bracy went on. ' King William's, or whatever it is ? '

' King Edward's,' Mr. Frank corrected. ' Yes, I made
inquiries about it at the time — ten years ago. People spoke well
of it. Not a public school, of course — at least, not quite ; the
line isn't so easy to draw nowadays — but it turns out gentlemen.'

In her heart Miss Bracy thought him too hopeful. But she
said : ' He wrote a becoming letter — his hand, by the way,
curiously suggests yours. It was quite a nice letter, and agree-
ably surprised me. I shouldn't wonder if his headmaster had
helped him with it and cut out the boyish heroics, for of course
she must have taught him to hate us.'

' My dear Laura, why in the world ' began Mr. Frank testily.

' Oh, she had spirit ! ' The encounter of long ago rose up in
Miss Bracy's memory, and she nodded her head with conviction.
' Like most of the quiet ones, she had spirit. You don't suppose,
I imagine, that she forgave ? '

' No.' Mr. Frank came to a halt and dug with his heel at a
daisy-root in the turf. Then using his heel as a pivot, he swung
himself around in an awkward circle. The action was ludicrous
almost, but he faced his cousin again with serious eyes. ' But it
is not her heart that I doubt,' he added gently.

Miss Bracy stared up at him. ' My dear Frank, do you mean
to tell me that you regret ? '

Yes, as a fact, he did regret, and knew that he should never
cease to regret. He was not a man to nurse malice even for a
wrong done to him, still less to live carelessly conscious of having
wronged another. He was weak, but incurably just. And more,
though self entered last into his regret, he knew perfectly well
that the wrong had wrecked him too. His was a career manqu6 :
he had failed as a man, and it had broken his nerve as an artist.
He was a dabbler now, with — as Heine said of De Musset — a fine
future behind him, and none but an artist can tell the bitterness
of that self-knowledge. Had he kept his faith with Bassett in

74 VICTOR.

spirit as in letter he might have failed just as decidedly; her
daily companionship might have coarsened his inspiration, soured
him, driven him to work cheaply, recklessly; but at least he
could have accused fate, circumstance, a boyish error, whereas
now he and his own manhood shared the defeat and the responsi-
bility. Yes, he regretted ; but it would never do to let Laura
know his regret. That would be to play the double traitor. She
had saved him (she believed) from himself; with utterly wrong-
headed loyalty she had devoted her life to this. The other debt
was irredeemable ; but this, at any rate, could be paid.

He evaded her question. ' My dear,' he said, ' what was done
has been atoned for by her, and is being atoned for by — by us.
Let us think of her without bitterness.'

Miss Bracy shook her head. ' I am a poor sort of Christian,'
she confessed, ' and if she has taught this boy to hate us '

' Mr. Victor Bracy,' announced Deborah from the garden-
porch behind them, and a tall youth in black stepped past her
and came across the turf with a shy smile.

The pair turned with an odd sort of confusion, almost of
dismay. They were prepared for the ' Victor,' but somehow they
had not thought of him as bearing their own surname. Mr.
Frank had felt the shock once before, in addressing an envelope,
but to Miss Bracy it was quite new.

Yet she was the first to recover herself, and, while holding
out her hand, took quick note that the boy had Frank's stature
and eyes, carried his clothes well and himself, if shyly, without
clumsiness. She could find no fault with his manner of shaking
hands, and when he turned to his father, the boy's greeting was
the less embarrassed of the two. Mr. Frank indeed had suddenly
become conscious of his light suit and bird's-eye neckcloth.

' But how did you come ? ' asked Miss Bracy. ' We sent a
cart to meet you — I heard, no sound of wheels.'

' Yes, I saw it outside the station, but the man didn't
recognise me — quite a small crowd came by the train — and of
course I didn't recognise him. So I bribed a porter to put my
luggage on a barrow and come along with me. Half-way up the
hill the cart overtook us — the driver full of apologies. While
they transhipped my things I walked on ahead — yes, listen —
there it comes : and — oh, I say, what a lovely spot ! '

Miss Bracy was listening — not for the wheels, and not to the
story, but critically to every word as it came from his lips. ' The

VICTOR. 75

woman has certainly done wonders,' was her unspoken comment.
At Victor's frank outburst, however, she flushed with something
like real pleasure. She was proud of her cottage and garden, and
had even a sort of proprietary feeling about the view.

They sat down around the little tea-table, the boy first
apologising for his travel-stains (he was, in fact, as neat as a pin)
and afterward chatting gaily about his journey — not talking too
much, but appealing from one to another with a quick deferent
grace and allowing them always the lead.

' This is better and better,' thought Miss Bracy as she poured
out tea, and, after a while : ' But this is amazing ! ' He was a
thorough child, too, with all his unconscious tact. The scent of
lemon-verbena plant fetched him suddenly to his feet with his
eyes bright.

' Please let me ' He thrust his face into the bush. ' I

have never seen it growing like this.'

Miss Bracy looked at Mr. Frank. How utterly different it
was from their old-maidish expectations ! They had pictured the
scene a hundred times, and always it included some awkwardly
decorous reference to the dead woman. This had been their
terror — to do justice to the occasion without hurting the poor
boy's feelings — to meet his sullen shyness, perhaps antipathy,
with a welcome which somehow excused the past. Yes, the past
(they had felt) required excuse to him. And he had made no
allusion to his mother, and obviously wished for none. Miss
Bracy could not help smiling at the picture of their fears.

The boy had turned, caught her smiling, and broke into a
jolly laugh at his own absurdity. It echoed in the garden where
no one had laughed aloud for years. And with that laugh
Bassett's revenge began.

IV.

For with that laugh they began to love him. They did not —
or at any rate Miss Bracy did not — know it at the time. For
some days they watched him, and he, the unsuspicious one,
administered a score of shocks as again and again he took them
neatly and decisively at unawares. He had accepted them at
once and in entire good faith. They were (with just the right
recognition of their seniority) good comrades in this jolliest of
worlds. They were his holiday hosts, and it was not for the guest
to hint (just yet) at the end of the holiday.

76 VICTOR.

He surprised them at every turn. His father's canvases filled
him with admiring awe. ' Oh, but I say — however is it done ? '
As he stood before them with legs a trifle wide, he smoothed the
top of his head with a gesture of perplexity. And Mr. Frank,
standing at his shoulder with legs similarly spread, used the same
gesture — as Miss Bracy had seen him use it a thousand times.
Yet the boy had no artistic talent — not so much as a germ. For
beauty of line and beauty of colour he inherited an impeccable
eye ; indeed his young senses were alive to seize all innocent
delight — his quickness in scenting the lemon-verbena bush proved
but the first of many instances. But he began and ended with
enjoyment ; of the artist's impulse to reproduce and imitate
beauty he felt nothing. Mr. Frank recognised with a pang that
he had failed not only in keeping his torch bright, but in passing
it on, that the true self which he had missed expressing must
die with him barren and untransmitted. The closer he drew in
affection, the farther this son of his receded — receded in the
very act of acknowledging his sonship — with a gesture, smilingly
irreprehensible, with eyes which allured the yearning he baffled,
and tied it to the hopeless chase.

Mr. Frank, who worshipped flowers, was perhaps the most
ineffective gardener in England. With a trowel and the best
intentions he would do more damage in twenty minutes than Miss
Bracy could repair in a week. She had made a paradise in spite
of him, and he contented himself with assuring her that the next
tenant would dig it up and find it paved with good intentions.
The seeds he sowed — and he must have sown many pounds' worth
before she stopped the wild expense — never sprouted by any
chance. ' Dormant, my dear Laura — dormant ! ' he would ex-
claim in springtime, rubbing his head perplexedly as he studied
the empty borders. ' When I die and am buried here they will
all sprout together, and you will have to take a hook and cut
your way daily through the vegetation which hides my grave.'
But Victor, who approached them in the frankest ignorance,
seemed to divine the ways of flowers at once. In the autumn he
struck cuttings of Miss Bracy's rarest roses ; he removed a sickly
passion-flower from one corner of the cottage to another, and
restored it to health within a fortnight. Within a week after his
coming he and Miss Bracy were deep in cross-fertilising a border
full of carnations she had raised from seed. He carried the same
natural deftness into a score of small household repairs. He

VICTOR. 77

devised new cradles for Miss Bracy's cats, and those conservative
animals at once accepted the improvement ; he invented a cup-
board for his father's canvases ; he laid an electric bell from the
kitchen beneath the floor of the dining-room, so that Miss Bracy
could ring for Deborah by a mere pressure of the foot ; and the
well-rope which Deborah had been used to wind up patiently was
soon fitted with a wheel and balance- weight which saved four-
fifths of the labour.

' It beats me where you learned how to do these things,' his
father protested.

' But it doesn't want learning ; it's all so simple — not like
painting, you know.'

Mr. Frank had been corresponding with the boy's head-
master.

- ' Yes, he is a good fellow,' said one of the letters. ' Just a
gentle, clean-minded boy, with courage at call when he wants it,
and one really remarkable talent. You may not have discovered
it, but he is a mathematician, and as different from the ordinary
book-made mathematician — from the dozens of boys I send up
regularly to Cambridge — as cheese is from chalk. He has a sort of
passion for pure reasoning — for its processes. Of course he does
not know it, but from the first it has been a pleasure to me (an
old pupil of Routh's) to watch his work. " Style" is not a word
one associates as a rule with mathematics, but I can use no other
to express the quality which your boy brings to that study. . . . '

' (rood Lord ! ' groaned Mr. Frank, who had never been able
to add up his washing bills.

He read the letter to Miss Bracy, and the pair began to watch
Victor with a new wonder. They were confident that no Bracy
had ever been a mathematician ; for an uncle of theirs, now a
rector in Shropshire and once of Emmanuel College, Cambridge,
where, for reasons best known to himself, he had sought honours
in the mathematical tripos, and narrowly missed the Wooden
Spoon, had clearly no claim to the title. Whence in the world

did the boy derive this gift ? ' His mother ' Miss Bracy

began, and broke off as a puff of smoke shot out from the fire-
place. It was late September. Deborah had lit the fire that
morning for the first time since May, and the chimney never
drew well at starting. Miss Bracy took the tongs in hand, but
she was not thinking of the smoke ; neither was Mr. Frank, while
he watched her. They were both thinking of the dead woman.

78 VICTOR

The thought of her— the ghost of her — was always rising now
between them and her boy ; she was the impalpable screen they
tried daily and in vain to pierce ; to her they had come to refer
unconsciously all that was inexplicable in him. And so much
was inexplicable ! They loved him now ! they stretched out their
hands to him ; behind her he smiled at them, but through or
across her their hands could never reach.

As at first they had avoided all allusion to her and been
thankful that the boy's reticence made it easy, so now they grew
almost feverishly anxious to discover how he felt towards his
mother's memory. They detected each other laying small traps
for him, and were ashamed. They held their breath as with an
air of cheerful unconsciousness he walked past the traps, escaping
them one and all. At first in her irritation Miss Bracy accused
him of what she (of all women !) called false pride. ' He is
ashamed of her. He wishes to forget, and is only too glad that
we began by encouraging him.' On second thoughts she knew
the charge to be undeserved and odious. His obvious simplicity
gave it the lie. Besides she knew that a small water-colour
sketch of her in her youth — a drawing of Mr. Frank's — stood on
the table in the boy's bedroom. Miss Bracy often dusted that
room with her own hands.

' And, Frank,' she confessed one day, ' he kisses it ! I know
by the dulness on the glass when I rub it.' She did not add

that she rubbed it viciously. ' I tell you,' she insisted almost
with a groan, ' he lives with her. She is with him in this house
in spite of us ; she talks with him ; his real existence is with her.
He comes out of it to make himself pleasant to us, but he goes
back and tells her his secrets.'

' Nonsense, Laura,' Mr. Frank interrupted testily. ' For some
reason or other the boy is getting on your nerves. It is natural,
after all.'

' Natural ? Yes, I see ; you mean that I'm an old maid, and
it's a case of crabbed age and youth.'

' My dear Laura, I mean nothing so rude. But, after all, we
have been living here a great many years, and it is a, change.'

' Frank, you can be singularly dense at times. Must I tell
you in so many words that I am fond of the boy, and if he'd be
only as fond of me he might racket the house down and I'd only
like him the better for it ? '

Mr. Frank rubbed his head, and then with sudden resolution

VICTOR. 79

marched out of the house in search of Victor. He found the boy
on the roof removing a patent cowl which the local man had set
up a week before to cure the smoky chimney.

' My dear fellow,' the father cried up. ' You'll break your neck !
Come down at once — I have something particular to say to you.'

Victor descended with the cowl under his arm.

' Do be careful. Doesn't it make you giddy, clambering about
a place like that ? ' Mr. Frank had no head at all for a height.

' Not a bit. . . . Just look at this silly contrivance — choked
with soot in three days ! The fellow who invented it ought to
have his head examined.'

' It has made you in a horrible mess,' said his father, who took
no interest in cowls, but lost his temper in a smoky house.

' I'll run in and have a change and wash.'

' No, put the nasty thing down and come into the garden.'
He opened the gate and Victor followed after dipping his hands
in the waterfall.

' The fact is, my boy, I've come to a decision. This has been
a pleasant time — a very pleasant time — for all of us. We have
put off speaking to you about this, but I hope you understand
that this is to be your home henceforward ; that we wish it and
shall be the happier for having you. . . .'

Victor had been gazing out over the cove, but now turned and
met his father's eyes frankly.

' I have a little money,' he said. ' Mother managed to put by
a small sum from time to time — enough to start me in life. She
did not tell me until a few days before she died ; she knew I
wanted to be an engineer.'

He said this quite simply. It was the first time he had men-
tioned his mother. Mr. Frank felt his face flushing.

' But your head-master tells me it will be a thousand pities if
you don't go to Cambridge. I am proposing that you should go
there — should matriculate this term. My dear boy' — belaid a
hand on Victor's arm — ' don't refuse me this. I have no right,
perhaps, to insist ; but I dare say you can guess what your accept-
ance would mean to me. You can choose your own career when
the time comes. For your sake your mother would have liked
this ; ask yourself if she would not.'

Mr. Frank had not looked forward to pleading like this, yet
when it came to the point this seemed his only possible attitude.
Victor had removed his gaze, and his eyes were resting now on

80 VICTOR.

the green sunny waves rolling in at the harbour's mouth. For
about a minute he kept silence, then :

' Yes, she would advise it,' he said. It was as though he had
laid the case before an unseen adviser and waited submissively for
the answer. Mr. Frank had gained his end and without trouble,
yet he felt a disappointment he could not at once explain. He
was the last man in the world to expect a gratitude which he did
not deserve, but in the satisfaction of carrying his point he missed
something, and surmised what he missed. The boy had not
turned to him for the answer, but had turned away and brought
it to him. Father and son would never have the deeper joy of
taking counsel together — heart to heart.

So Victor went up to Trinity and returned for the Christmas
vacation on the heels of an announcement that he had won a
scholarship. He had grown more manly and serious, and he
smoked a tobacco which sorely tried Miss Bracy's distinguished
nose, but he kept the boyish laugh — the laugh which always
seemed to them to call invitingly from the door of his soul : ' Why
don't you enter and read me ? The house is clean and full of
good- will — come ! ' But though they never ceased trying, they
could never penetrate to those inner chambers. Sometimes —
though they might be talking of most trivial matters — the appeal
would suddenly grow pathetic, almost plangent : ' What is this
that shuts me off from you ? We sit together and love one
another ; why am I set apart ? ' Time was when he had seemed
to them consciously reticent, almost of set purpose, but now it
was they who, looking within the doorway, saw the dead woman
standing there with finger on lip.

He made no intimate friends at Cambridge, yet was popular,
and something of a figure in his college, which had marked him
down for high — perhaps the highest — university honours, and was
pleasantly astonished to find him also a good cricketer. His good
looks attracted men ; they asked his name, were told it, and ex-
claimed, ' Bracy ? Not the man Trinity is running for Senior
Wrangler?' With this double reputation he might have won a
host of friends, and his father and Miss Bracy would gladly have
welcomed one, in hope that such companionship might exorcise
the ghost ; but he kept his way, liking and liked by men, yet
aloof ; with many acquaintances, censorious of none ; influenced
by none ; avoiding where he disapproved, but not judging, and in

VICTOR. 81

no haste even to disapprove ; easy to approach and almost eager
for good will, yet in the end inaccessible.

His first Easter vacation he spent with a reading-party
in Cumberland. There he first tasted the ' sacred fury ' of the
mountains and mountain-climbing, and in Switzerland the next
August it grew to be a passion. He returned to it again and
again, in Cumberland playing at the game with half a dozen
fellow-undergraduates whom he had bitten with the mania, but in
Switzerland during the Long Va ations giving himself over to a
glut of it, with only a guide and porter for company — sometimes
alone, if he could ever be said to be alone. As in mathematics, so
in his sport, the cold heights were the mistresses he wooed ; the
peaks called to him, the rare atmosphere, the glittering wastes.
He neither scorned danger nor was daunted by it. Below in the
forests he would sing aloud, but the summits held him silent. As
an old pastor at Zermatt told Mr. Frank, he would come down
from a mountain ' like Moses, with his face illumined.'

He started on his third visit to Switzerland early in July ; in
the second week in August Miss Bracy and Mr. Frank were to
join him at Chamounix, and thence the three would make a tour
together. He started in the highest spirits, and halted at the
gate to wave his ice-axe defiantly.

VI.

The clergyman who ministered to the little tin English church
boarded at the big hotel, which kept a bedroom and a sitting-room
at his disposal. They faced north from the back of the building,
which stood against the mountain-side, but the sitting-room had
a second window at the corner of the block, and from this the eye
went up over a plantation of dark firs to the white snowfields of
the Col and the dark jagged wall of the Dent du Greant — distant,
yet as clear as if stencilled against the blue heaven. It was a
delectable vision, but the clergyman, being short-sighted as a
mole, had never seen it. He wore spectacles with a line running
horizontally across them, and through these he peered at Mr.
Frank and Miss Bracy as if uncertain of their distance.

Mr. Frank, in a suit of black, sat at the little round table in
the centre of the room, pressing his finger-tips into the soft nap
of gaudy French tablecloth. Miss Bracy stood by the window
with her back to the room, but she was listening. She, too, wore
black. The fourth person, at the little clergyman's elbow, was

VOL. XII. — NO. 67, N.S. 6

82 VICTOR.

Christian, the guide. It was he who spoke, while Mr. Frank dug his
fingers deeper, and the clergyman nodded at every pause sympa-
thetically, and both kept their eyes on the tablecloth, the pink and
crimson roses of which, on their background of buff and maroon,
were to one a blur only, to the other a pattern bitten on his brain.

' It must have been between noon and one o'clock,' the guide
was saying, ' when we crossed the Col and began on the rocks. I
was leading, of course ; the Herr next, and Michel ' — this was
their porter — ' behind. We had halted and lunched at the foot
of the rocks. They were nasty, with a coating, for the most part,
of thin ice which we must knock away ; but not really dangerous.
The Herr was silent, not singing — he had been singing and
laughing all through the morning — but in high spirits. He kept
his breath now for business. I never knew him fatigued, and
that day I had to beg him once or twice not to press the pace.
Michel was tired, I think, and the wine he had taken earlier had
upset his stomach ; also he had been earning wages all the winter
in England as a gentleman's valet, and this was his first ascent
for the year, so it may have been that his nerve was wrong.

' The first trouble we had with him was soon after starting on
the rocks. We were roped, and at the first awkward place he
said, "If one of us should slip now, we are all lost." The Herr
was annoyed as I have never seen him, and I, too, was angry, the
more because what he said had some truth, but it was not, you
understand, the moment to say it. After this we had no gieat
trouble until we had passed the place where Herr Mummery
turned back. About thirty metres from the summit we came to
a bit requiring caution, a small couLoi/r filled with good ice, but
at a slope — so ! ' Here Christian held his open hand aslant, but
Mr. Frank did not lift his eyes. ' They anchored themselves and
held me while I cut step* — large steps — across it. On the other
side there was no good foothold within length of the rope, so I
cast off, and the Herr came across in my steps with Michel well
anchored. It was now Michel's turn, and having now the extra
length of rope brought across by the Herr, I could go higher to a
rock and moor myself firmly. The Herr was right enough where
he stood, but not to bear any strain, so I told him to cast off that
I might look to Michel alone. While he unknotted his rope I
turned to examine the rock, and at that instant . . . Michel did
not understand, or was impatient to get it over ... at any rate,
he started to cross just as the Herr had both hands busy. He

VICTOR. 83

slipped at the third step ... I heard, and turned again in time
to see the jerk come. The Herr bent backward, but it was use-
less ; he was torn from his foothold '

The little clergyman nodded and broke in : ' They were found,
close together, on a ledge, two thousand feet below. Your son,
sir, was not much mutilated, though his limbs were broken —
and his spine and neck. The bodies were found the next day,
and brought down. We did all that was possible. Shall I take
you and madame to the grave ? '

But the guide had not finished. ' He fell almost on top of
Michel, and the two went spinning down the couloir out of sight.
I do not think that Michel uttered any cry, but the Herr as the
strain came and he went backward against it, seeking to get his
axe free and plant it ... though that would have been useless
. . . the Herr cried once and very loud . . . such a strange cry ! '

' Madame will be glad,' interrupted the clergyman again, who
had heard Christian's story at the inquest. ' Madame will be

glad ' He addressed Miss Bracy, who, as he was dimly aware,

had been standing throughout with face averted, staring up at
the far-away cliffs. ' The young's man's last thoughts '

But Christian was not to be denied. He had told the story a
score of times during the last three days, had assured himself by
every evidence that he could tell it effectively. He was something
of an egoist, too, and the climax- he had in mind was that of his
own emotions in recrossing the fatal couloir ropeless, with shaking
knees, haunted by the Englishman's last cry.

' Such a strange cry,' he persisted. ' His eyes were on mine
for a moment . . . then they turned from me to the couloir and
the great space below. It was then he uttered it, stretching out
his hands as the rope pulled him forward, yet not as one afraid.
" Mother ! " he cried ; just that, and only once— " Mother ! "

Mr. Frank looked up sharply and turned his head toward Miss
Bracy. The clergyman and the guide also had their eyes on her,
the latter waiting for the effect of his climax.

' It must be a consolation to you,' the clergyman began to
mumble.

But Miss Bracy did not hear. Mr. Frank withdrew his eyes
from her and fixed them again on the gaudy tablecloth. She
continued to stare up at the clean ice-fields, the pencilled cliffs.
She did not even move.

So Bassett was avenged.

6—2

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PLACE-HUNTER.
BY ALEXANDER INNES SHAND.

WHEN Disraeli very unfairly satirised Croker in ' Coningsby,'
the sharpest stroke was naming Lord Monmouth's parasite and
pander after the most notorious time-server of the previous
century. The real Rigby has had the honours of infamy ;
political moralists have taken him for the type of all that was
corrupt, scandalous, and shameless. Junius splashed him inci-
dentally with vitriol in the letters addressed to his Grace of
Graf ton, Macaulay branded him in the articles on Lord Chatham,
and Macaulay's nephew, in the ' Early History of Charles Fox,"
has laid on the lash with unsparing severity. He is not dismissed
with a few stinging cuts of the cat ; like the soldiers of our good
old regime, he is sentenced to innumerable lashes, and the punish-
ment is dealt out in generous instalments. Unrelenting severity
is apt to overreach itself, and excessive punishment awakens
sympathy with its victim. We ask if Rigby was really so vile
as he is represented, and whether there is any very exceptional
reason why he should be singled out as the scapegoat of a worth-
less generation. And the answer is not altogether unfavourable.
If Rigby was not a good man or a great man, he was undoubtedly
a strong man, and he made his mark by sterling qualities which
Englishmen hold in respect. His very vices were sometimes the
excess of popular virtues. He had the dogged and indomitable
pluck which asserted our ascendency in bloody sea-fights, for it
was sheer calumny that taxed him with showing the white feather ;
he was always ready to back his abuse with the pistol, and could
face a storm of obloquy as resolutely as a shower of brickbats.
In fact, he owed the constant patronage of the Duke of Bedford to
having saved him at no slight personal peril from a riotous mob.
He would never, like his ally Sandwich, have turned Jemmy
Twitcher and ' peeched upon an old pal ' ; though he could throw a
friend brutally over if their interests happened to clash. Honour
among thieves was his guiding maxim, and when he formed and
disciplined the Bloom-sbury Gang, bound to stick together through

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PLACE-HUNTER. 85

thick and thin in all contingencies, he promoted the political
company (limited) whose shares were always at a premium. He
was no hypocrite in that hypocritical age : he never professed the
lofty principles he ridiculed ; and thanks to the unimpeachable
honesty of his unblushing and audacious candour, enemies and
friends alike knew exactly ' where to have him.' He was not a
great man, but he was a very powerful man. He led his patron
the Duke of Bedford by the nose, a statesman with rectitude and
perhaps intellect far superior to his own, and so he wielded the
influence of the great House of Eussell. He set the exalted dis-
interestedness of Chatham down as sheer insanity ; that was a
nobility of soul of which he had no sort of comprehension ; but
to Chatham he dictated terms when the great war minister was
bargaining for allies. And not the least of his gifts was an extra-
ordinarily strong head. In that hard-drinking age, when manhood
was measured by the ' marines ' thrown aside at a drinking bout ;
when Carteret's ordinary allowance was half a gallon of Burgundy,
and when a leading divine in the strait-laced Scottish Church
was famous as a five-bottle man, Rigby was pi^imus inter pares.
Nowhere was so much liquor consumed as at his daily carouses at
the Pay Office. Ministers knew his cellar and liked his company,
and never refused his invitations. His guests might be slipping
under the table or loosening their starched neckties, but Rigby
was still cool and self-possessed. When he left the dinner-table for
the senate his coarse eloquence was only more animated ; he was
ever ready in debate and prompt in retort. His whole character
may be summed up as concentrated and cynical egotism : he set
himself to retrieve his shattered fortunes at the cost of the
country ; he pressed steadily forwards towards the cumulation of
lucrative preferments, and no place-hunter in English history ever
had more brilliant success. He embarked in politics when well-
nigh ruined ; he lived in luxury, regardless of expense, and he is
said to have died worth half a million.

Rigby, by general consent, like Richard III., and lago and
other historical scarecrows, has been blackened almost beyond
redemption, and gibbeted to point morals for posterity; yet
material for the whitewasher is not altogether wanting. Need-
less to say that his failings were regarded leniently by his friends
and contemporaries, who were pretty generally tarred with the
same brush, and rather inclined to envy than censure. But
Horace Walpole, who seldom took genial views of humanity,

86 THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PLACE-HUNTER.

is singularly charitable to the indefatigable place-hunter. He
magnifies his virtues and extenuates or explains his faults. From
the popular portraiture we are apt to figure to ourselves a bloated,
brazen-faced ruffian, with an overbearing swagger. Junius
speaks of his blushing for Grafton as an unprecedented and
almost miraculous sign of the times. But Walpole says he had
an advantageous and manly person, a spirited jollity that was
very pleasing, though sometimes roughened into brutality, and a
most insinuating good-breeding when he wished to be pleasing.
He admits that his passions were turbulent and his manner
dictatorial — as much might have been said of Chatham — but he
credits him with ' a bold courage, fond of exerting itself.' He
even adds that though in company, from gaiety of temper, he
indulged in profuse drinking, in private few men were so sober •
though G-arrick suggested that he loved to retire to his
sequestered seat of Mistley, in the marshlands, that he might
have an excuse for drinking brandy as other men drink small
beer. Quot homines, tot sententice I We should have said that
from Eigby's point of view he had made as few mistakes in life
as most men. But Walpole, assuming some errors, attributes
them to a mischievous political education. A pupil of Winning-
ton, he was the victim of Winnington's vicious maxims.
Winnington had lived when all virtue had been set up to sale,
and in ridicule of hypocritical pretences had affected an honesty
in avowing whatever was dishonourable. ' Rigby, whose heart
was naturally good, thought it sensible to laugh at the shackles
of morality, and having early encumbered his fortunes by gaming,
he found his patrons' maxims but too well adapted to retrieve
his desperate fortunes.' As to that, all that can be said is that
the times had not changed for the better with the passing of a
generation, and that Rigby was an apt pupil who improved on the
teaching of his master. There is truth as well as shrewdness in
Walpole's summing up. ' A man who seldom loved or hated
with moderation, yet he himself, though a violent opponent, was
never a bitter enemy. His amiable qualities were natural : his
faults were all acquired.' ' Shrewdness,' we say, because Rigby
was far too practical to care for hard hitting, whether fair or foul.
It was all in the rough and tumble game. And it clashed with
his principles to bear malice, when the foe of the day might be
the friend of the morrow, and when, in the incessant shuffling of
the cards, anything might turn up trumps.

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PLACE-HUNTER. 87

It is a common subject of lament with biographers that their
heroes were born too soon or too late. Rigby's good luck stood
by him from the cradle, and he came into the world at the very
time most favourable for the exercise of his peculiar abilities.
In his early manhood, when he set seriously to sowing his wild
oats, London was seething with political intrigue ; corruption
was rampant, and fashionable life was almost as loose as in the
reign of the second Charles. Though the grandson of a linen-
draper, he had inherited a handsome fortune, and the rich young
squire, with good manners and a hospitable country seat, had
money to throw away, which was his best recommendation.
Most doors in the Georgian period were unlocked by a golden
key, and a gambler who was a good loser had the entree almost
anywhere. At no time was high Cabinet office more jealously
monopolised by the great aristocracy. In the ministry which
came into power the year after Rigby attained his majority, with
the exception of the premier — the brother of a duke — all the
ministers were peers and eight of them had dukedoms. Yet, as
the peerage has always been recruited from the ranks, some of the
most aristocratic leaders of fashion have been men of the hum-
blest origin. Fifty years later, Brummel was the rival of the
Regent, and Brummel is said to have been son of a footman. So
Rigby, who was easy and genial when on his promotion, convivial,
free-handed, and a prince of good fellows, had naturally a fair
chance. Nor did he neglect the setting off of his personal
advantages. When he had grown gross and bloated, the bully of
the House of Commons was still severely correct in his attire,
and in earlier manhood he had been something of a fop. When
the custom dues on clothes imported from France were exorbitant,
the Right Hon. Richard Rigby might have been seen one stormy
day crossing the Channel in a court suit, richly embroidered with
gold lace and priceless ruffles of Flanders point.

As matter of course he made the Grand Tour, which was de
rigueur, and on his return was presented at Leicester House,
where the Prince gave him a gracious reception and soon admitted
him to something like intimacy. The youth had then the flexi-
bility of the courtier, and less intelligence than his would have
quickly hit the royal road to courtly favour. Flattery went far ,
no doubt, but the favoured parasites, when without political influ-
ence, had to pay their footing. Rigby dropped large sums at the
card-tables : his losses were so serious that his creditors became

88 THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PLACE-HUNTER.

troublesome. We know not what his original intentions were,
and very probably he would have let himself drift on the sea of
pleasure had all been smooth sailing. But adversity called all his
special energies into action, and he was the last man to let his
practical capacity run to waste. It was then he turned in earnest
to the business of place-hunting, and no profession was so lucra-
tive. The great nobles might monopolise power and high place,
but obsequious followers, who could make themselves useful, were
richly rewarded. Subordinate offices, largely salaried, with pickings
and stealings at the holder's indiscretion, sinecures, pensions on
the Irish Establishment, were to be had for the asking by politi-
cians who were either serviceable or feared. When a minister
took one of these jackals into his confidence, it was at the risk of
being remorselessly blackmailed. Rigby's first disappointment
proved another stroke of luck. Prince Frederick was always
lavish of promises, and he had pledged himself to make Rigby a
Lord of the Bedchamber. As Rigby's duns became pressing, in
turn he pressed the Prince, and then a vacancy occurred. The
spendthrift Frederick, though far deeper in debt than his peti-
tioner, was in some respects an excellent economist : nor was he
fool enough to fulfil his engagement to the friend whose pockets
he had emptied. Rigby shook the dust of Leicester Square off
his feet, and, trading on the gratitude of its noble owner, trans-
ferred his attendance to Bedford House, where he speedily rose
to the command of his Grace's Household brigade.

He assured his fortunes by the fortunate exchange, and it is
doubtful whether the Duke lost by the connection. Like many
another man, had he been other than he was, he might have
taken commanding rank among English statesmen. Disinterested
as Chatham, and lavish of his large revenues, he was a man of
no mean capacity, and honestly patriotic and conscientious. But
there was an unpractical side to his unstable character, and he was
born not to lead, but to be guided. Predestined to be the pawn
and tool of absolutely unscrupulous intriguers, Rigby was as
good as any for the purpose. Rigby was his will, his mind, his
memory, and his evil genius. It is true that it was the counsels
of his Mephistopheles which gave point to the satire of Junius.
It is true that it was the subtle temptation of Rigby which induced
the Viceroy of Ireland to abandon purity of principle for shameless
prostitution of patronage. But Sandwich, or Weymouth, or any
other adviser would have done the same, and Rigby had the iron

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PLACE-HUNTER. 89

concentration of purpose which in some measure communicated
itself to his nominal superior. Kigby's self-seeking was not alto-
gether devoid of patriotism, though patriotism was kept in the
second place and at a long distance. And there were lengths to
which Bedford would not be driven, and measures to which he
could not be induced to stoop. He stood aloof from parties ; his
following was a personal one ; his influence on State affairs, on the
whole, was good ; his letters to ministers abroad show sagacity and
political insight ; and if he exercised any influence at all, it was
because Rigby had drilled his compact battalion.

Rigby had entered Parliament when twenty-three, and in
Pelham's administration had voted with the Opposition as silent
member for Castle Rising and Sudbury. He had lost his seat for
the latter borough ; but in 1754 his new patron returned him for
Tavistock. Without intermission he represented that family seat
of the Bedfords for more than thirty years. It is a proof at once
of the constancy of the patron, who never forsook a friend, though
he had often to complain of ingratitude — witness Legge, who owed
everything to Bedford and turned Judas when Newcastle ousted
him from the ministry — and of the many-sided usefulness of
Rigby, who speedily made himself indispensable. His letters
to the Duke are amusingly autobiographical, abounding in frank
self-revelation. The first which appears in the published corre-
spondence was written in June 1751. Already he had established
a respectful familiarity. It is the letter of a favoured servant, on
the footing of a trusted friend, who knows how to take playful
liberties without offending the dignity he serves.

Rigby had won the Duke by the real service to which we
have alluded, and improved his opportunities as the best of boon
companions. The great man passed much of his time at
Woburn ; in fact, one of Newcastle's complaints when backbiting
him with the monarch was that he was always on the road and
seldom in his office. In his ample leisure he divided time and
tastes between his children, his plantations and private theatricals.
But he loved to keep himself informed of all that went on in the
gay world. Rigby constituted himself purveyor-in-ordinary of
rumours, gossip and scandal. He feels his way delicately in
these letters, making one pave the way for another, by protesting
that he would not write at all if his Grace thought it incumbent
to answer. He knew well that however averse to letter-writing
the Duke might be, it was a correspondence in which he must

90 THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PLACE-HUNTER.

inevitably be entangled. As well might Horace Mann have
refused to reply to Horace Walpole. Eigby's style is rough and
ready, as Walpole's is polished, but these letters of his are scarcely
less amusing. He moved in the highest society, where he knew
well how to keep his place in more senses than one : he would
buttonhole a duke in his regardful familiarity : he was in the
good graces of fair ladies of fashion : he was forward in getting
up parties at Greenwich or Kichmond : he supped and dropped
his money — by way of investment — at White's or Brooks' ; and in
those days conviviality levelled ranks and degrees, when the wine
was in and the wit was out. We may be sure, besides, that he
made the very most of his intimacy with Bedford, who with rank
and wealth and fair chances of political supremacy was a sort of
Mikado generally worshipped, but not to be lightly approached.

The intimacy ripened fast. In 1752 the Duke paid a visit
to the Squire of Mistley — no slight condescension, Rigby writes
with befitting gratitude. ' You must accept my thanks for the
great honour you have done me in this second-rate manner. I
must declare that though I cannot express either my obligations
or my attachment to you in so good oratorical language ' (as
Mr. Pitt's), ' I can keep my word better and be more faithful to
you in every respect. But not to read you a panegyric upon
myself, I will have done with egotism and assure you I am infinitely
obliged for the favour of your visit. It convinces the world of
what I am most desirous they should know — that I am extremely
well in your good graces, and it convinces me of what makes me
more happy (if, indeed, I could want conviction), that I am so
also in your friendship.' The last sentence might have been
addressed by Boswell to Johnson, and both were servile worship-
pers of their idol, though Bozzy's devotion was the more dis-
interested. For Rigby had made himself useful till he was
indispensable. The Duke invariably consulted him and was
guided by his advice. He was regarded by all intriguers as the
official representative and mayor of the palace of the man whom
Newcastle addressed in one of his flattering letters — for the most
part they were asking Bedford to aid in some job — as the first and
greatest of English subjects. In 1758, when Bedford consented
to go to Dublin as Lord Lieutenant, Rigby naturally accompanied
him as Irish Secretary. In some respects it was an excellent
•hoice. In that hard-drinking society the Secretary could hold
his own, and his bluff good-fellowship commended him to men

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PLACE-HUNTER. 91

who loved jests and light talk the better for strong seasoning.
He tells his patron complacently of a couple of clever character-
sketches by Lady Doneraile : ' His Grace was the honestest and
best man, but an ipse-dixit man ; and his Secretary was a good
four-bottle man.'

But rare convivial qualities are not everything, and Rigby
found that in the Protestant Parliament he had a difficult team
to drive. Irish politicians might be place-hunters like himself,
but patriotism was a strong card to play, and the mob was as
inflammable as the Parliament was venal. Bedford went to
Ireland with the fairest professions and probably with the best
intentions. He declared he would rise superior to faction, and
have nothing to do with jobbery. Nothing, indeed, could be
more firm than his respectful opposition to His Majesty's gracious
and modest proposal to saddle the Irish pension list with annuities
for life to the Princess of Hesse and her children, who had been
turned out of their hereditary principality. But purity was
opposed to Rigby's principles. Playing on his patron's family
affection, he persuaded him to pension his sister-in-law ; and the
barrier being once breached, the Bloomsburys came with a rush.
As was but right and just, Rigby came best off. First appointed
to the Board of Trade, a few months later he was Master of the
Rolls. As Walpole remarked, ' Though the office is no post of
business, the choice of a man so little grave is not decent.' Hs
might have added besides that a gentleman who had never passed
at the Bar was scarcely eligible for a nominally legal appoint-
ment. But the beauty of the sinecure system was that ineligi-
bility was no objection.

Irishmen in high places had no objection to financial abuses
in the abstract, but they naturally resented English intrusion.
The Lord Lieutenant and his Secretary became the more
unpopular, that they had raised national hopes which were
disappointed. Pensioners who were secured in their pensions
turned rusty in the House, and it became impossible to keep a
Government majority. Even Ponsonby, the Speaker, assumed a
virtue if he had it not — blocked the money Bills and brought the
Viceroy to his knees. Moreover, their emissaries spread the
report that Bedford was bent on bringing about a Union, and
that the Secretary was his zealous agent. They set Dublin in a
flame, and a furious mob besieged the doors of the House of
Commons. Ponsonby, alarmed at the storm, tried in vain to

92 THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PLACE-HUNTER.

pacify them. Rigby rose in his place to declare that if a Bill
of Union were brought in, he would be the first to oppose it.
Probably he spoke the truth, but unfortunately he was not
believed. His appointment as Master of the Rolls rekindled the
smouldering fire. Again there was serious rioting, and the
cavalry was called out. Undoubtedly he had a very narrow
escape, for the mob had raised a gallows and fully intended to hang
him. As it chanced, he had gone out that morning for a ride ;
he got warning of the fate intended for him, and did not come
back till the streets were cleared. Cowardice was none of his
failings, and the place-hunter becomes hardened to invective and
unpopularity. But Dublin thenceforth was no bed of roses, and
he could only congratulate himself when Bedford was relieved.
He had done an excellent stroke of business on his Irish trip,
and could spend the pay of his sinecures more pleasantly in
London.

When Fox was packing a Parliament for Bute, Rigby was in
his element. None was more active than he in hounding on the
able renegade, who had abandoned his friends and broken with
his associations. The group of the Bedfords was holding watch-
fully aloof, and Rigby's thoroughgoing counsel to Fox was to
make a clean sweep of the other Whig families. Great was the
fall of Fox in the following year, when, charged with peculation
and threatened with impeachment, he was execrated on all sides.
At least he might have counted on the support of Rigby, and he
confidently reckoned on his friendship. Unamiable as he was to
all beyond his family circle, to Rigby he seems to have been
strangely attracted and tenderly attached. He wrote to Selwyn
at the time, ' I thought this man's friendship had not been only
political.' Five years afterwards he wrote to Bedford, ' Mr.
Rigby (whose behaviour has cost me more than any other thing
that has ever yet happened) I loved as much as I did my brother.'
If he loved him, it is no marvel he was deeply wounded at the
manner in which his prompter and counsellor broke off the con-
nection. The disgraced minister met Rigby's chariot in St.
James's Street and stopped it. Leaning on the door he began to
abuse Lord Shelburne. ' You tell your story of Shelburne,' was
the harsh rejoinder. ' He has a damned one to tell of you, and I do
not trouble myself which is the truth,' and pushing Fox's elbow
aside, he bade the coachman drive on. There could hardly be a
coarser display of brutality, and no doubt it hit the sagacious

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PLACE-HUNTER. 93

Fox the harder that he appreciated his ' friend's ' shrewdness.
Kigby would never have trampled on him had there been any-
thing to hope from him in the future.

To Bedford, Rigby was what Thackeray calls ' a florid toady,'
and even when paying assiduous and humble court to his chief,
he always knew well how se faire valoir. But it must be
remembered that in that reflected light and with his own talents
for intrigue he was really an important personage. He had been
chosen to mediate between Fox and Pitt, when it was the desire
alike of the Crown and the country to have them working
amicably in the same Cabinet. His Majesty habitually admitted
him to private interviews, unbending so far as lay in his nature
to do. Most significant of all, Newcastle never kept him waiting
at the crowded levies, and always spoke of him behind his back
with extreme civility. When addressing himself to the great
jobber and giver of places on behalf of his patron, Rigby never
failed, when he saw the opportunity, of putting in a word for
himself. As Bedford's steady backing was essential, and as the
Duke knew him for a confirmed beggar, he always reported these
interviews frankly. One passage from the letters — one among
many — will show the manner of his proceedings. In 1761 he
had good cause of complaint, for nothing had been given since he
evacuated Ireland. He writes : — ' Your goodness in mentioning
my name to him ' (Newcastle) ' was the means of opening a con-
versation about myself and my situation. The chair which
your Grace has mentioned ' (at the Treasury Board), ' his Grace
thinks, as I do, would not suit me. . . . But he has been very
explicit and kind with respect to any other favour I might wish to
have and your Grace thinks I should deserve. I told him fairly
I should be very glad of a place, but that I could never take
one from any other recommendation but the Duke of Bedford's.'
After discussing various possible openings in which the minister
seems to have shuffled characteristically, and after encouraging
Rigby to look even higher than he had done, the crafty veteran
sent the petitioner away delighted. A clever piece of political leger-
demain it was, that throwing dust in the eyes of the keen-sighted
Rigby, for he was to get nothing more for several years to come.
' Upon my word,' he says, ' I could not desire more show of friend-
ship or regard from the nearest friend I have in the world, hardly
from your Grace yourself. He cast about for everything that is
or is likely to be vacant, and told me that my pretensions were

94 THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PLACE-HUNTER.

heightened by the great consequence of my patron, of which I
ought to avail myself, and in doing which I should have his whole
weight and support. ... I hope I have not said too much
about myself in this letter. The last thing I mean to do is to lay
your Grace under any difficulties about me. And if you don't
like to ask any favours from the Court, I am perfectly happy and
satisfied with those you were so good as to shower upon me out
of employment.'

In 1763 Bedford was persuaded to take office as President of
the Council, and Rigby was busier than ever at wire-pulling.
Bedford hated Bute and disliked Grenville for his pennywise
parsimony. There was a stormy passage of arms in the House,
when Rigby savagely attacked Lord Temple. Grenville, in a
tempest of unaccustomed passion, called Rigby a coward who had
fled from Ireland to escape the gallows. Rigby laughed pleasantly,
restored to good-humour, and readily consented to keep the
peace. Hard words break no bones ; he could not afford to make
an enemy of Grenville, and indeed not long afterwards he had
serious occasion to approach him with obsequious appeals.

In 1766, when Chatham's tottering administration was shaken
by the secession of those of the Rockinghams who had joined
him, he necessarily sought the support of the Bedfords. The
bargaining was closed in the following January, when G-rafton
surrendered at discretion. It was the triumph of Rigby's astute
strategy. The Bloomsbury company might have adopted the
device of the Swiss Confederation — Un pour tons et tons pour un.
Rigby bluntly told Chatham that he must take all or have none.
They sold themselves in a lot, and got their own terms. Lord
Gower was to be President of the Council, Sandwich had the
patronage of the Post Office, and the Duke was induced, after
long hesitation, to insist on the sacrifice of Conway. He had
held to the seals too long for his good fame, but now they were
handed over to Weymouth. Rigby, the soul of the venal league,
looked strictly, as usual, to the main chance. He had another
draft on the Irish Exchequer, in the shape of a vice-treasurership
with a salary of 3,500£., and he was assured of the reversion of
the Pay Office, the most lucrative place under Government. He
might have been contented, for the Pay Office fell vacant next
year, but humanity is never secure from trouble. The minister
was guilty of a piece of gross injustice. He actually brought in
a Bill to tax the incomes of non-resident Irish officials and pen-

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PLACE-HUNTER. 95

sioners. Rigby was in despair : he whined and he blustered ; he
made himself exceptionally offensive in the House by unmeasured
abuse ; and he addressed the most humble petitions to Grafton
and to Grenville. The misfortune was that all was in vain, and
he had a sad experience of ministerial ingratitude. However, he
was consoled in a measure by the vacancy at the Pay Office, and
he was never more in his element. All the business could be
done by deputy ; he drew an ample salary, and he had almost
limitless pickings and ' stealings,' which were sanctioned by use
and honoured precedent. At that time he had no sinister fore-
boding that a Burke was . to succeed him and call him over the
coals. And the genial side of his character came to the front,
when he made himself famous by his convivial entertainments.
He dined and got ' concerned in liquor,' in the best official com-
pany. With G-ower and Weymouth, his sworn allies, he had always
been hand in glove. Dundas kept him company as a many-bottle
man, and the sage and austere Thurlow graced the orgies with
his imposing presence.

In gratitude for favours, past, present and to come, he stood
loyally by the King and Court in the Wilkes affair. Indeed, he
went to no small expense in getting up ' a loyal address ' from his
county of Essex, and when arbitrary and unconstitutional action
was bringing the democracy to the verge of revolt, naturally
Rigby of the iron nerve was put forward to make the motion to
annul the election. Soon afterwards another blow was struck at
constitutional or traditional right, but on that occasion Rigby
was for once on the popular side. Grenville's Bribery Bill pro-
posed to limit freedom of corruption, and among other things to
forbid treating at elections. Rigby denounced it with all the
honest vehemence of the hard drinker who has sympathy with old
English virtues, and of the politician whose experience had taught
him the methods most persuasive with the uneducated.

That was the last of his prominent public performances,
though afterwards he was to oppose the motion for funeral
honours to Chatham — we may remember that no less a man
than Windham took the same line in the case of Chatham's
illustrious son ; and on another occasion, with all the fire of
strong fellow-feeling, he warmly defended some officials charged
with malversation. For the period of his public eminence was
drawing to a close. In 1771 died the Duke of Bedford, and Rigby
became simply the Right Hon. Richard when he ceased to be the

96 THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PLACE-HUNTER.

alter ego of the great Duke. His patron and staunch friend had
dealt with him liberally. He left him a legacy and the remission
of considerable debts, for his Grace had been consistently generous,
and Rigby had never scrupled to draw on his purse. That the
debts had never been repaid is significant of their relations,
for Rigby had repaired his fortunes many years before, and
when he went to the Pay Office he must have been rolling in
riches. He remained there till the fall of the Coalition Ministry
in 1784, when Burke was tardily rewarded with the profitable
place. Being turned out of the lucrative berth was hard enough
upon the old place-hunter, but it was far worse to be called to
account by the law-officers for heavy balances of public money in
his hands. Rigby was shocked by the indelicacy of the proceed-
ing, and seriously alarmed by the threats of an impeachment ; but
his astuteness was equal to the occasion, and he seems to have
scraped clear of the dilemma, with what might have been called
some sacrifice of character. But Rigby's character had been
established long before beyond possibility of damage.

He died at Bath in 1785, and was buried at his Essex seat,
bequeathing to a nephew the half million of money he had indus-
triously amassed in the public service. Satire itself must have
been silenced, had it been inscribed upon his tomb that he
turned his talents to excellent account.

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK.

XII.

OUR experiment of spending the autumn in London was not
altogether a success ; but the winter is passing very pleasantly.
The fogs which have so extensively prevailed have afforded Bertha
excellent opportunities of losing her way in returning from her
district, and it has become quite a recognised institution that
Bumpstead should see her home just about tea-time, when he does
extraordinary execution among Selina's buttered scones. His
performances in this field elicit no acrid criticisms, but my dear
wife banters him with a winsome playfulness which recalls the
days when I used to ride over from Proudflesh Park to The Saw-
pits, and decline old Mr. Topham-Sawyer's ' glass of sherry and a
biscuit ' in favour of the tea and muffins dispensed by the fascinat-
ing Miss Selina. That was more than twenty years ago, and if I
asked for muffins to-day the request would be received with some
painfully frank allusion to incipient obesity.

The Soulsbys are away. The exertions and emotions of the
Harvest Festival proved too much for the Vicar's highly-strung
organisation. He was overwrought already, and that Brown Paper
Service was what old Lady Farringdon, who is now a little dodder-
ing, called ' the last hair upon the camel's back.' Signs of brain-
fag and nerve-exhaustion made themselves apparent to Dr.
Snuffin's watchful eye, and Soulsby was recommended to take
three weeks at Torquay. ' No lark could pipe in skies so dull
and gray,' he quoted pathetically, as his excuse for deserting his
parish so soon after his autumn holiday ; and, turning his face
sunward, left his flock to the tender mercies of frost and fog.
During the Vicar's absence, Mr. Bumpstead became acting
editor of ' St. Ursula's Parish Magazine,' and his brief period of
responsibility was signalised by a remarkable occurrence. When
the December number appeared, it was found to contain an
anonymous set of verses, some of which I append : —

I am a loyal Anglican,

A Rural Dean and Rector ;
I keep a wife and pony-trap,

I wear a chest-protector.
VOL. XII. — NO. 67, N.S. 7

98 A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK.

I should not like my natne to be
Connected with a party ;

But still my type of service is
Extremely bright and hearty.

Of course, one has to keep abreast

Of changing times and manners ;
A Harvest Festival we keep,

With Special Psalms — and banners ;
A Flower-Service in July,

A Toy-Fund Intercession,
And, when the hens lay well, we hope

To start an Egg- Procession.

My wife and I composed a form

For dedicating hassocks,
Which (slightly changed) we also use

For surplices and cassocks ;
Our Bishop, when we sent it for

His Lordship's approbation,
Remarked : ' A very primitive

And pleasing compilation.'

To pick the best from every school

The object of my art is,
And steer a middle course between

The two contending parties.
My own opinions would no doubt

Be labelled ' High ' by many ;
But all know well I would not wish

To give offence to any.

When first I came I had to face

A certain opposition,
And several friends in town advised

A short Parochial Mission ;
I thought that quiet pastoral work

Would build foundations firmer.
It did. This year we started ' Lights,'

Without a single murmur.

One ought, I'm certain, to produce

By gradual education
A tone of deeper Churchmanship

Throughout the population.
There are, I doubt not, even here

Things to be done in plenty ;
But still — you know the ancient saw —

' Festina lent& — lenti.'

I humbly feel that my success,
My power of attraction,

Is mainly due to following
This golden rule of action :

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK. 98

' See all from all men's point of view,

Use all men's eyes to see with,
And never preach what anyone

Could ever disagree with.'

The appearance of these rather ribald rhymes occasioned
nothing less than a parochial storm. Loud was the outcry of the
Fishers in Deep Waters. ' It is too shameful,' they exclaimed, ' to
hold up the dear Vicar to ridicule in his own magazine ! Not, of
course, that it was the least bit like him ; but obviously it was
meant for him. How dreadfully pained he will be ! I shouldn't
wonder if he would resign the living. Who in the world could
have written the lines ? They are in the worst possible taste, and
not the least amusing. I am sure, if I knew who it was, I would
never ask him inside my house again. And how could Mr.
Bumpstead have printed them ? Well, for my own part, I always
thought him a very underbred young man. And he is com-
pletely uneducated, and not the least fitted to be Mr. Soulsby's
colleague. I do hope the Bishop of London will do something.
But the worst of it is that this new Bishop likes that sort of
young man, and calls them "old chap." I suppose they remind
him of the people he lived with in the East End.'

Oddly enough, my own modest roof remains unshaken by this
storm. A year ago it would have been a very different story.
Selina would have said, ' Well, I am not the least surprised. You
know what I always said about that man ; and you see it has come
true. If he put those horrid verses into the magazine in order to
make fun of the Vicar, it was most impertinent ; and as to saying
that he didn't see the point of them till he read them in print,
all I can say is that if that's the case he must be even stupider
than he looks.'

Such, I say, would have been the language of a year ago ;
but to-day Selina says the verses are really very funny, and
remind her of the things which Lord Curzon used to write in
visitors'-books when she used to meet him in country-houses.
And from certain mysterious signs of sympathy which I see
passing between Bumpstead and Bertha, I am inclined to believe
that my sister-in-law, who has come to think Mr. Soulsby ' an
absolute fraud,' must have handed the peccant poem to her
clerical admirer. I believe parochial rumour asserts that I wrote
it, but this I categorically deny ; and I should recommend the
Vicar, if he feels aggrieved, to make personal inquiries at

7—2

100 A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK.

St. Alban's Clergy-House, Holborn, where, unless my friend
Arthur Stanton has very much changed, the worthy Soulsby will
hear, as the advertisements say, something to his advantage.

But Christmas is upon us, and ' amicablenesses ' (as Miss
Miggs called them), rather than ' unpleasantnesses ' (as the Parish
calls them) should dominate the season. For my own part, I feel
no difficulty in being amiable when I contrast a Christmas in
Stuccovia with a Christmas in Loamshire. ' Christians, awake,'
with the thermometer below zero ; the arctic cold of the family
pew at Proudflesh Park or The Sawpits ; the faint odour of long-
descended ancestry wafted up from the vault beneath ; the con-
course of uncongenial cousins ; the masses of revengeful food ; the
servants' ball and the workhouse treat — all these ' Christmassy
sort of things,' as Byng in ' Happy Thoughts ' called them, belong
to a remote past. In London no one compels me to eat what
disagrees with me, or go to churches where I catch cold, or dine
with relations whom I don't like, or attend gatherings at which
I feel out of place. And then, again, we happy denizens of
Stuccovia are within half-an-hour by Underground Train of the
centre of life, civilisation, and commerce.

Ere yet my Selina had fallen like a star from its place — in
other words, before she had married me and settled down in
Stuccovia — one of her partners was the admirable Lord St. Alde-
gonde, who used to hunt in Loamshire. Mrs. Topham-Sawyer
fondly fancied that his reason for choosing our very undis-
tinguished country was his admiration for Selina, who certainly
looked her best on a horse ; but his real inducement — as with
generous outspokenness he did not scruple to tell us — was that,
though the hunting was infernally slow and the whole establish-
ment seemed to have come out of Noah's Ark, it was a good grass
country and lay within two hours' journey of London, whereas
his own ancestral castle frowned upon the Border. ' What I
want in December,' he used to say, ' is a slice of cod and a beef-
steak, and, by Jove ! I never could get them at home. Those
infernal cooks spoil everything. I was obliged to come to town.
It is no joke having to travel three hundred miles for a slice of
cod and a beefsteak.' I am entirely of one mind with St. Alde-
gonde. Whether the object of one's desires is a beefsteak or a
Christmas card, a slice of cod or a wedding present, it is no
joke having to travel three hundred miles to get it. We, who
are hampered by no Northern castles, have got through our

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK. 101

Christmas shopping this year very comfortably, and, on the
whole, inexpensively. For the barrel of oysters which we used
to send to The Sawpits we have substituted a box of chromatic
sweetmeats made by a lady in reduced circumstances. A photo-
graph-frame for Mrs. Topbam-Sawyer works out at considerably
less than the Grorgonzola cheese of more affluent days ; while
the Soulsbys, on their return from Torquay, will find our Christmas
gift awaiting them in the shape of a copy — already cut, but very
carefully handled so as to avoid thumb-marks — of ' Lady Mar-
guerite Manquee.'

This may fairly be said, by others than its publishers, to be
the Book of the Season . It has smashed ' The Eternal City,' and
obliterated the memory of ' Tristram of Blent.'

The Manques, Manquees, or De Manques, for so their name
was indifferently spelt in the earlier stages of our history, were
a family of Norman extraction. Some genealogists refer their
origin to a hardy Norseman who exercised regal rights in the Isle
of Man long before the Earls of Derby were heard of; but Mr.
J. Horace Eound dismisses this pedigree as legendary, and
represents the original De Manques as companions-in-arms of the
Conqueror. From successive kings they obtained grants of royal
land, stately castles, hereditary offices, and writs of summons.
They sedulously mixed their blood with all that was noblest in
European chivalry, and increased in splendour and opulence as
the centuries rolled on. Dynasties rose and fell, religions
changed, revolutions brought the proudest heads to the block,
and confiscation impoverished the wealthiest ; but no disaster
ever touched the fortunate De Manques. They seemed to be
in some mysterious way the spoilt children of fate ; and, as our
national history unrolled itself, a tradition gradually gained
ground in the highest circles of the social mysteries that the
prosperity of this favoured race depended on some talisman or
charm. 'The Luck of the Manques' became proverbial, though
nobody except the head of the family, the eldest son, and the
domestic chaplain knew what it was. There were romantic stories
of a secret chamber where it was death to penetrate unbidden.
The wife of one of the Lords De Manque had once peeped through
the keyhole, and had spent the rest of her days in a strait-waist-
coat. A chimney-sweeper who had climbed to the top of the
Donjon-Keep and peered down the chimney, exclaimed, ' Well, I
am damned,' and fell, a blackened corpse, into the moat. The

102 A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK.

intrusions of a profane curiosity being rebuked by these signal
catastrophes, ' the Luck of the Manques ' took its place among the
recognised mysteries of high life. Lord Houghton wrote a mono-
graph about it. The Psychical Society made it the subject of
some curious experiments. Mr. Augustus Hare (who was a
cousin of the Manques) gave several detailed, though inconsistent,
accounts of it in successive volumes of his Memoirs. But, in
spite of all struggles for the light, the secret remained involved
in Cimmerian darkness. Meanwhile the fortunes of the illustrious
line had come to centre in the person of an only girl. The last
Lord de Manque (they had been Barons since the Flood and
Earls since the Conquest) was a man of desperate adventures and
broke his neck in trying to ride an Irish hunter over the Grreat
Wall of China. Thus heroically cut off in his prime, he left an
infant daughter and heiress — Marguerite Manquee. She would
have been a peeress in her own right but for some tiresome
technicality about a wedding-ring. As an earl's daughter she
was styled by courtesy ' Lady,' although some purists might have
disputed even that modest claim ; and she inherited all her father's
estates, equal in size to a German Principality. Her mother had
died in giving birth to her, and the sole trustee and guardian
appointed by her father's will was the domestic chaplain. As
Marguerite was only a year old when she succeeded, she could not,
in spite of amazing precocity, be admitted to the Secret of the
Luck, of which the chaplain was now the sole depository. She
was brought up in her principal castle, under the careful super-
intendence of accomplished governesses, none of whom was below
the rank of a Baronet's daughter ; and she was sedulously with-
held from contact with the outer world. But the development
and characteristics of so great an heiress could not fail to evoke
the interest of a right-minded society.

People began to ask one another if they knew anything of
that Manquee child, who must really be a big girl by now ; and
in reply to these queries disquieting rumours began to circulate.
It was stated, with much show of certitude and circumstantiality,
that the Heiress of the De Manques had no hair and no teeth ;
while others went so far as to add that she had only one eye.
' Ah, poor child ! ' cried sympathetic friends, ' every situation
has its drawbacks, and all lots their crosses. But it is really too
bad to spread these stories about her, if they are not true. We
shall see when she comes out.'

A LONDONER'S LOG BOOK. 103

When Marguerite Manquee was presented, social curiosity
was keenly on the alert, and the verdict on her appearance was
highly favourable. She was tall and nobly made ; her bearing
was majestic. She wore a lifelike peruke of the richest auburn.
Her ratelier was the finest product of Parisian art. Her one eye
flashed with all the fire of her Crusading ancestry ; and the
other, fashioned out of a single opal, rather added to than
detracted from the impressiveness of her general appearance.

But how came a pretty girl of seventeen to be so strangely
defective in those appendages which nature, as a rule, bestows
impartially on the high-born and the lowly ? Society might
have asked the question in vain, only an Illustrious Personage,
who had danced with Lady Marguerite at the Court Ball, insisted
on knowing the truth. Then, all unexpectedly, the mystery of
the Luck of the De Manques was disclosed. The talisman which
from generation to generation had been so jealously guarded in
the secret chamber of Castle Manque had vanished out of
existence. It could never be recovered ; the secret was at an end,
and the story might be told.

And what a weird story it was ! Lionel Manque, tenth Baron
De Manque, who flourished A.D. 1000, had conceived an un-
hallowed passion for his grandmother. His ill-starred love is
commemorated for the warning of posterity in the Table of
Kindred and Affinity. Heaven had manifested its wrath by
saying (through the mouth of a Palmer), ' You shall have what you
desire. You have admired the toothless and the bald. Hence-
forward no child born to the Manques shall ever have a tooth
in its mouth or a hair on its head.'

The doom which fell upon the house in the person of the
guilty Lionel was reversed by the piety of his successor,
Bawdewyn. His exploits in the Crusades expiated his father's
sin, and an Eremite of Ascalon, to whom he had paid a hand-
some tribute of Turks' heads, gave him in return a mysterious
elixir, which could be warranted to stir into generative activity
the barest scalp or the deadest gum. This invaluable fluid the
triumphant Crusader brought home in a pocket-flask. A golden
pyx of cunning workmanship was fashioned to receive it, and a
secret chamber was hollowed in the thickness of the castle-wall to
enshrine the talisman.

For generation after generation this talisman, always safe-
guarded by the Lord, the Heir, and the Chaplain, went on doing

104 A LONDONER'S LOG BOOK.

its beneficent work. The Palmer's curse was frustrated, and each
child born to the De Manques was in time subjected to the healing
influence, and developed hair and teeth in the richest abundance.
But the story closed in gloom. When the last Lord De Manque
died, the Chaplain, finding himself in sole possession of the secret,
suddenly yielded to a diabolical impulse. A life-long dipsomaniac
(as subsequent investigation proved), the temptation to sample a
new liquor was too much for him. He drank the elixir, took the
next train for London, sold the gold pyx to coiners who melted it
into sovereigns, and, recovering from a paroxysm of inebriety, was
overcome by remorse and drowned himself in the Serpentine,
leaving a letter in his trousers-pocket to say what he had done.
The spell was broken, and henceforward the heiress of the De
Manques must dree her weird of toothlessness and alopecia.

This romantic tale, instinct with historical and supernatural
interest, spread like wildfire. At every ball where Lady Mar-
guerite appeared, young men of fashion were drawn to her by an
irresistible attraction. They longed to toy with those exuberant
tresses ; they hung in rapture on every word which issued from
those gleaming teeth. And a further zest was added to their
passion when it became known that the loss of Marguerite's eye
was due to the duenna-like zeal of her governess, who had inad-
vertently jobbed it out with a ruler when correcting her pupil for
winking at the schoolroom-footman. This last was a trait of
hereditary character not to be overlooked in a story of the
affections.

Among the band of ardent youths who worshipped at Lady
Marguerite's shrine, the most ardent and the most irresistible
was young Lancelot Smith, who inherited from his father (a friend
of Charles Kingsley's) a power of passion which carried all before
it. He loved with an uncalculating and self-abandoned ardour
which seemed to belong to a more strenuous age and a warmer
climate than our own. The crisis of his fate was reached when,
one day, slipping into Lady Marguerite's boudoir in order to lay
a billet-doux upon her blotting-book, he found her dozing on the
sofa. It was a scorching afternoon in July, and Marguerite was
fatigued by a long day's shopping. Her hair was thrown care-
lessly upon the piano. Her dachshund was playing with her
rdtelier on the velvet hearth-rug. It was too much. I^incelot
saw Marguerite as she really was. The rich, concrete fact
surpassed even his most ardent imaginations. His passion broke

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK. 105

the narrow bounds of convention, as an imprisoned ocean bursts
its dam. Flinging all restraint to the winds, he tickled the coral
gums with a peacock's feather torn from the hand-screen, and
rained kisses on the virginal, cold, white scalp.

Lancelot and Marguerite were married in Westminster Abbey.
When the Dean joined their hands the Home Secretary joined
their names. The Smith-Manques live splendidly in Lady Mar-
guerite's castle, now completely refurnished by Gillow ; and it is
understood that at the Coronation the barony of De Manque is
pretty sure to be revived.

106

THE GREAT DUCHESS.

WHENEVER, in my casual reading, I meet with even the slightest
mention of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, I pause to offer her
memory a silent salutation. I have just now read two rather
large volumes about her, and it becomes necessary to me to break
into articulate homage. It is an instinct with most of us to be
struck (whether we are catholic enough to admire or not) by the
spectacle of any person wholly and absolutely consistent with
himself and with some simple elemental law of his being. Now
I know of no man or woman in history who, on anything like a
large scale and with recognisable strength of will and action, is
at all comparable to Sarah Jennings for unity of life and feeling.
In her slightest aside and most vehement speech, in her least
and her greatest actions, the same spectacle is presented to my
admiring vision — a procession of strong, unfaltering, straight-
forward, frank, remorseless, heartless selfishness. She was a
perfect expression of egotism, without compromise or exception—
a type, an example for ever. The moralist may say this or that,
but the artist cannot choose but applaud.

It is not my purpose to ' review ' Mr. FitzGerald Molloy's Life of
her which I have just read. (He calls it ' The Queen's Comrade,'
in which title I doubt poor Queen Anne would have seen irony or
cynicism.) But it would be less than civil not to thank him for
much material new to me, and to compliment him on the pleasant
manner of its presentment. To people who have not made a
study of the sort of thing the book should be both illuminative
and interesting, and an excellent corrective, so far as it goes, in
regard to Eevolution times of that arch-manipulator of truth,
Lord Macaulay. To me, who knew something of the subject, it
was an increase of detailed knowledge and a confirmation of
opinion. The latter very decidedly, especially as regarded Sarah
Jennings. In every fresh detail she was the same as I had always
seen her, never swerving to the right or the left, grasping every-
thing with her strong hands, and striking hard with them if she
were thwarted — old friends, old benefactors, her own children :
it was all one to her. A perfectly consistent woman.

You can express her life with the simplicity and finality of a

THE GREAT DUCHESS. 107

problem in Euclid. The theory which guided her throughout,
and which I will not believe could have been less than half-
conscious, was clearly this : that the world was created for the
benefit of Sarah Jennings ; that those who aided this wise design
of Providence by advancing her fortunes, heaping money and titles
on her, and so forth, were simply doing their duty, and deserved
neither return nor any feeling of gratitude on her part ; that those
who ceased so to do, or who were indifferent, or who did the
opposite, were wretches for whom no punishment could be too
severe : they were thwarting the nature of things. There is
something almost impersonal in the even, unhesitating retribution
with which she pursued any one who had crossed or offended her
in the slightest degree ; such a person was an undoubted reptile,
and when it raised its head — whenever or wherever — Sarah
Jennings hit at it. And, mark, there was very little cant of self-
righteousness about all this. She was not like Queen Mary II., who,
whenever her treachery to her father had been brought home to
her, went and congratulated Heaven on her virtues in her diary.

No misconduct, you may be sure, was ever brought home to the
mind of the Duchess of Marlborough. When Queen Anne finally
dismissed her, the Duchess simply excused herself for ever having
put up with the society of such a creature as her Sovereign. ' I
am afraid,' she wrote to Sir David Hamilton, ' you will have a very
ill opinion of one that could pass so many hours with one I have
just given such a character of ; but though it was extremely tedious
to pass so many hours where there could be no conversation, I
knew she loved me.' You see, the kindness had been all on the
Duchess's part, not on the Queen's, who had endured all kinds of
affronts in the last reign, because she would not part with her
favourite, and since her accession had heaped every benefit she
could on the Duchess. Of course Sarah had given her Sovereign
a direct piece of her mind before her dismissal, in terms even
then, when English people were far less obsequious to Eoyalty
than they are now, very much out of the way, but not as one
defending herself, rather as one painfully pointing out a child's
naughtiness. To say that she did not blame herself for the
rupture is to understate the truth ; in her mind no conduct of
hers, whatever it was, could justify a revolt against her. With
the same beautiful and, I do not doubt, sincere simplicity, when
she had to leave England, she bewailed the necessary ruin of a
country which had ceased to pay the Duke and her ninety thou-

108 THE GREAT DUCHESS.

sand a year. There was no cant in this ; it flowed inevitably
from her theory of life.

For the expression of this theory — and it was surely a fine
theory to live with — Nature had been kind to Sarah Jennings and
us. It had given her every quality necessary to make it clear to
our edification. To begin with, she was only passionate when her
interests were concerned, not otherwise. People who are passionate
in their love affairs may be selfish, but their selfishness is super-
ficially obscured now and then by an apparent regard for the other
person. Sarah Jennings escaped that obscuration. Moreover
her coldness of blood, in that regard, probably ministered to the
extreme uxoriousness of the Duke, lasting from young man-
hood to old age. Wherever he was, campaigning or not, he
sent her constant letters of devotion, and was lucky, it seemed,
if he escaped a douche of criticism in return. He mentions a
' kind ' letter of hers as something extraordinary. No one could
throw stones at the Duchess on the score of her morals, in the
usual sense of the term, so that she was invulnerable to the gene-
ral criticism of English moralists ; in fact, I venture to think they
ought to acclaim her as a ' good woman.' But her husband could
not stand against her theory ; she could not curb her indignation
with Anne for taking a new favourite, and so give him a chance
of keeping his places. It is not an extended selfishness that we
contemplate in Sarah Jennings ; it is the real thing ; self with her
meant self.

Again, she had a splendid constitution, a strong will, and a
good head ; necessary qualities, because if she had been ailing,
weak, or a fool, her selfishness might have been just as complete,
but it would not have been so fine a spectacle for us. Also she
was naturally frank and straightforward. Had she been more
inclined to subterfuge and double-dealing she might, it is true,
have had even greater success in life, but her memory would not
be so finely simple to appreciate. She was not an intriguer. She
felt it due to her theory of life to march straight to her goal and
seize on what she wanted in the eye of the world. Of course she
dropped people who had ceased to be useful to her, but openly and
as a natural consequence. When James's cause was hopeless she
dropped him ; it was his fault that he could no longer promote
and enrich her husband, and so he forfeited her patronage. It is
really misleading to call such plain-dealing as that treachery.
The great successes in her life were due to her influence over Anne,

THE GREAT DUCHESS. 109

and that was gained by no flattery or intrigue, but by the frank
imposition of a strong will on a weak one. Anne became her
creature and took her orders. When Anne had revolted and that
source of power was gone, even then she did not intrigue. She
made one straightforward threat, to publish the letters of ' Mrs.
Morley ' to ' Mrs. Freeman.' It was rather like blackmailing, to
be sure, and no doubt the Duchess thought it hard that Providence
should drive her to such means to her just ends, but it was not
intriguing. Nor, in the absence of direct evidence, do I believe
that she coquetted between St. Germain and Hanover as her
husband did. He was a born intriguer, a man natively underhand,
but it was not her way at all. She did not plot to bring people
into power; when they were in power she went to them and
demanded everything they had to give. Moreover, she honestly
disliked St. Germain, and was true to her dislikes. Fairly con-
sistent in an age of turncoats, fairly truthful in an age of liars,
and very strong in an age of weaklings — her good qualities in this
kind all minister to the supreme effect of her life.

Accident and circumstance as well as natural qualities conspired
to bring her theory into relief. If she had been successful without
interruption, had never met with a rebuff, we should have missed
the sublime spectacle of her indignation, of her wrath with those
who had defied the right order of the universe. The first rebuff
came with William and Mary. Mary hated Lady Churchill, a fact
which Lady Churchill was very slow to grasp. But when she did
grasp it, and the fact that she and Lord Churchill had little to
hope for from the new Court, she said very forcible things. Other
people were disappointed as well. It is, indeed, rather refreshing
to observe the indignation of the patriots who had brought in
William of Orange when they perceived that he preferred his
Dutch minions, the Bentincks and the Keppels, to his English
traitors, driving the latter from his presence that he might get
drunk in peace with the former. The Princess Anne said things
about him which we may fairly trace to the more trenchant style
of her favourite — ' Caliban ' and ' the Dutch monster ' I am sure
were phrases of Sarah Jennings. But Sarah was generous ; those
who sinned against her had to be punished all their lives, but her
just wrath stopped short at the grave. ' When the King came to
die,' she beautifully wrote, ' I felt nothing of that satisfaction
which I once thought I should have had upon this occasion . . .
so little is it in my nature to retain resentment against any

110 THE GREAT DUCHESS.

mortal (however unjust he may have been) in whom the will to
injure is no more.' Surely a grand passage ! But familiarity
with the injustice of kings did not prevent this great woman from
taking infinite pains to punish humble people. When Sir John
Vanbrugh had the temerity to criticise her she ' was very sorry I
had fouled my fingers in writing to such a fellow ' ; but, mindful
of her duty to the world, she took the trouble to fill thirty sheets
of paper with charges against Sir John.

In her old age, indeed, she found time to do a good deal of
polemical writing against her enemies. Among other such
efforts she wrote an elaborate account of her daughters' miscon-
duct towards her, and sent the agreeable brochure to various
friends and relations. ' Having boare what I have done for so
many years, rather than hurt my children, I hope nobody will
blame me now/ &c., &c. Also she dictated to Hooke her famous
'Account of her Conduct,' and composed with Henry Fielding
her ' Vindication.' (What would one not give to have heard these
two geniuses in consultation !) Her vindication, it need hardly
be said, took the form of exposing the wickedness of other people
rather than of defending herself. . . . But I protest that as I
think of this splendid old woman, bed-ridden at last and so near
her end, still indomitable, still strong in thought, and still keenly
humorous, I feel sympathy for her human qualities rather than
admiration for her superhuman perfection. But that is a senti-
mental weakness and must be suppressed. An artistic wonder
and joy in the contemplation of life and character absolutely
thorough, absolutely true to itself — that must be one's emotion
when one reads of Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough.

Gr. S. STREET.

Ill

A FORGOTTEN POET.

THE Cotswolds, I have often been tempted to say, have no poet.
I have been often contradicted ; and, indeed, I am not eager to
defend myself. There have been many since Robert of Gloucester
looked on the battle of Evesham and saw the storm — ' grisly,' as
he calls it — sweep over the hills, who have set down their thoughts
in verse. I certainly do not forget some charming lines of Mr.
Norman Gale. But now I am inclined to think rather of one who
is forgotten — William Shenstone, who sought some of his first
subjects among the Cotswolds.

Though his chief fame circles round his own house of the
Leasowes, near Halesowen, he belongs not a little to the country
which lies between Stratford and Campden and Cheltenham, as
pretty a wooded hilly land as you may see. It is near here that
William Morris thought of settling before he went to Merton.
Broadway, the too hackneyed resort of artists and Americans, a
place far inferior in picturesqueness to Campden, or to Willersey,
its nearer neighbour, is hard by. Shenstone himself knew all the
attractions of the district, and he did not forget that it was
Shakespeare who had given immortality to them all. Indeed, he
was almost at his happiest when he wrote those quaint lines that he
called ' Slender's Ghost.' They begin :

Beneath a churchyard yew,

Decay'd and worn with age,
At dusk of eve methought I spy'd
Poor Slender's ghost, that whimp'ring cry'd,

' 0 sweet, 0 sweet Anne Page.'

Certainly we none of us doubt that Slender walked the streets of
Stratford, and he may well have stepped out a few miles to where
the yews grow round a church that Shenstone knew well,

Where Avon rolls her winding stream,

Avon, the Muse's fav'rite theme !

Avon, that fills the farmers' purses,

And decks with flow'rs both farms and verses.

So Shenstone wrote when he told a scandalous tale that hap-
pened 'in Evesham Vale or near it.' It was from Mickleton, where
his close friend Graves (best remembered as the author of ' The
Spiritual Quixote ') lived, that he chiefly saw the Cotswolds.

112 A FORGOTTEN POET.

At Mickleton there is still the manor-house of Graves, built
perhaps by the Porters and lived in by that peerless Endymion,
the associate of all the Jacobean wits — a fine Elizabethan ' mansion/
as they call it. The church has the more abiding memorial of
Shenstone. It is a fine Decorated building with some earlier
work about it, a priest's chamber over the north porch, a large
south aisle, and a fine spire. It is filled with monuments — of
the Graves family and of earlier folk — but its most interesting
memorial is that which Shenstone's friend put up ' in memory of
an extraordinary young woman, Utrecia Smith, the daughter of a
worthy and learned clergyman who, on a small living of about
fifty pounds a year, a curacy of thirty pounds, and a lifehold estate
of about the same value, bred up two sons and two daughters in
a genteel manner, and died at the age of ninety, without any
other preferment. This daughter, Utrecia,' says Mr. Graves,
' at a time when the ladies did not so generally rival our sex in
learning and ingenuity, from the books with which her father
supplied her had formed to herself so good a taste of polite
literature, and wrote so well in prose (and sometimes in verse),
that a very ingenious clergyman, bred at a public school and
a Master of Arts in the University, often said he was afraid to
declare his opinion of any author till he previously knew hers.'
The inscription runs thus :

UTRECIAE SMITH
Puellae simplici, innocuae, elegant! ;

R. G.

Una actae memor pueritiae

Moerens posuit.

MDCCXLIV.

It is on this that Shenstone wrote his first elegy, which he
called « Ophelia's Urn.'

Sure nought unhallow'd shall presume to stray
Where sleep the reliques of that virtuous maid ;

Nor aught unlovely bend its devious way
Where soft Ophelia's dear remains are laid.

He was himself, so a manuscript note of an ancestor of mine
tells me, an elegant writer of epitaphs. ' Shenstone's epitaph on
his amiable Relation,' wrote my great-uncle in his copy of
Johnson's ' Lives,' ' Miss Doleman, who died of the small-pox at
the age of 21, is one of the very rare modern Productions,

A FORGOTTEN POET. 113

that not only resembles, but rivals, the dignified and affecting
conciseness of the Ancients in their sepulchral Inscriptions. It is
worth volumes of his pastorals :

Peramabili suae consobrinae

M. D.

Ah 1 Maria,

Puellarum elegantissima,
Ah ! flore venustatis abrepta,

Vale!

Heu quanto minus est
Cum reliquis versari,
Quam tui
Meminisse.'

But to return. As it was the memory of Utrecia Smith that
gave a subject for his first elegy, so it was in this neighbourhood
that Shenstone was inspired by the mild passion of his life, the
delight in the artifices of a garden maker. Mickleton, wrote the
owner of its manor house, ' though in an indifferent country ' — a
statement which it is hard to forgive — ' has many natural beauties ;
of surrounding hills, and hanging woods ; a spacious lawn, and one
natural cascade : capable of great improvement, though, from
various circumstances, the place is to this day in a very unfinished
state.' It was his friend's design that set Shenstone to work at
the Leasowes, and there he wrought the mimic wonders which
brought him so much fame and the tepid eulogy of Johnson —
' that to embellish the form of Nature is an innocent form of
amusement ; and some praise must be allowed by the most
supercilious observer to him who does best what such multitudes
are contending to do well.'

Johnson's inimitable description of the foibles of this ingenious
gentleman — ' nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if
there were any fishes in his water,' and ' in time his expenses
brought clamours about him that overpowered the lamb's bleat
and the linnet's song ; and his groves were haunted by beings
very different from fauns and fairies ' l — concerns us as little as
Mr. Grraves's serious defence. Shenstone has the artificiality of
his age most of all when he strives to be natural, and we care
but very tepidly for his waterfalls and groves, and not at all,
when they are described in verse, for his hermitages and statues

1 There is a quaint little poem in the first volume of Shenstone's works
(ed. 1765), pp. 217-18, called The Poet and the Dun,

VOL. XII. — NO. 67, N.S. 8

114 A FORGOTTEN POET.

and urns. It is as a poet and a lover of country life that we
think of him when we wander over the Cotswolds, for they were
his first inspiration.

It was at Mickleton, where it would seem that he was first
brought into a society above that in which he had been born, that
he formed that delightful idea of the rich man's country paradise
which is so characteristic of the ideals of the century and of the
man:

' Had I a fortune of about eight or ten thousand pounds a
year, I would, methinks, make myself a neighbourhood. I would
first build a village with a church, and people it with inhabitants
of some branch of trade that was suitable to the country round.
I would then, at proper distances, erect a number of genteel
boxes of about a thousand pounds apiece, and amuse myself with
giving them all the advantages they could receive from taste.
These would I people with a select number of well-chosen friends,
assigning to each annually the sum of two hundred pounds for
life. The salary would be irrevocable, in order to give them in-
dependency. The house, of a more precarious tenure, that, in
cases of ingratitude, I might introduce another inhabitant.'

The picture needs no emphasis. Genteel boxes, at proper
distances, would make an eighteenth-century Elysium ; and
indeed the millionaires of the twentieth are likely to make a
worse use of their money. But Shenstone adds, ' How plausible
however this may appear in speculation, perhaps a very natural
and lively novel might be founded upon the inconvenient conse-
quences of it, when put in execution.'

He himself had certainly no chance to carry out such a
design : he was obliged to be content with ' the peace of solitude,
the innocence of inactivity, and the unenvied security of an
humble station,' which, however they may have satisfied his
modest ambition — and they hardly seem to have done so — can
fill, as Johnson says, but a few pages of poetry. A few pages,
and those perhaps artificial in every line. Yet the inspiration was
natural, and it was only the trammels which convention placed
upon a mind most submissive to such a despotism which prevented
the heart of Shenstone from speaking freely. He is hampered
by the absurdities of his day. The shepherdesses are too dainty
for life. There is an air of Watteau in the background. And yet
Shenstone is not nearly delicate enough for the style of the prince
of Court painters, though he is not ready to advance to the robust

A FORGOTTEN POET. 115

naturalism of Crabbe. Here are some lines from one of his
Cotswold elegies. Collin is ' a discerning shepherd,' and he
laments the state of the woollen manufacture :

Near Avon's bank, on Arden's flow'ry plain,

A tuneful shepherd charm'd the list'ning wave ;

And sunny Cotsol' fondly lov'd the strain.

Yet not a garland crowns the shepherd's grave.

The shepherd, and indeed he was but Mr. Somerville in
disguise, must needs die, and as he departs he advises his brother-
shepherds to arouse the British statesman to arrest the craft of
Gallia, and again procure for Britain the markets of the world.

Then

Britons for Britain shall the crook employ ;
Britons for Britain's glory sheer the fold.

It was a plaint that he learnt on the hills beside Mickleton :
Where the wild thyme perfumes the purpled heath.

And as he walked through those pleasant lanes that run by Weston-
sub-Edge he may well have written the lines

And you, ye shepherds I lead my gentle sheep ;

To breezy hills, or leafy shelters lead ;
But if the sky with show'rs incessant weep,

Avoid the putrid moisture of the mead.

The neighbourhood of Mickleton remained for many years
full of attraction for Shenstone. It was there, says his friend
Graves, that ' he seems to have felt the first symptoms of that
tender passion, which appears so conspicuous and predominant in
most of his lyrics, and at length produced his much-admired
"Pastoral Ballad " ' ; and in 1 743 he paid a long visit to Cheltenham,
where he became attached to Miss C., of whom the biographer
'can hardly believe, as her sister was married to a baronet of
considerable fortune, that ' she, ' in her bloom, would have con-
descended to marry a man, however deserving, of so small a
fortune as Mr. Shenstone.' On his way to Cheltenham once he
' missed the road, and wandered till ten o'clock at night on the
Cotswold Hills.' It was this which brought out his seventh
elegy, which comes as near perhaps to a description of the Cots-
wolds as anything else he ever wrote :

On distant heaths, beneath autumnal skies,

Pensive I saw the circling shades descend;
Weary and faint I heard the storm arise,

While the sun vanish'd like a faithless friend.

8—2

116 A FORGOTTEN POET.

No kind companion led my steps aright ;

No friendly planet lent its glim'ring ray
Ev'n the lone cot refus'd its wonted light,

Where toil in peaceful slumber clos'd the day.

Then the dale bell had giv'n a pleasing sound ;

The village cur 'twere transport then to hear ;
In dreadful silence all was hush'd around,

While the rude storm alone distress'd mine ear.

There is not much description here, certainly; but he has
caught and conveyed the chill that is felt so keenly on these high
downs, and one may imagine him then writing the reflection
that he afterwards set down : ' How melancholy it is to travel
late, upon any ambitious project, on a winter's night, and observe
the light of cottages, where all the unambitious people are warm
and happy, or at rest in their beds ! Some of them (says Whistler')
as wretched as princes, for what we know to the contrary.' But
there is more perhaps of the Cotswold air in the ' Irregular Ode
after Sickness, 1749,' in which he sings his return to 'catch the
verdure of the trees ' :

Come, gentle air I and, while the thickets bloom,

Convey the jasmin's breath divine,
Convey the woodbine's rich perfume,

Nor spare the sweet-leaft eglantine.
And may'st thou share the rugged storm

Till health her wonted charms explain,

With rural pleasure in her train,
To greet me in her fairest form ;

While from this lofty mount I view

The sons of earth, the vulgar crew,
Anxious for futile gains, beneath me stray,
And seek with erring step contentment's obvious way.

These pictures that came to him as he stood on the Cotswold
slopes prepared at least, it may be thought, the sensitive delicate
touch which shows itself in the best poem he ever wrote, the
charming ' Hope,' the second part of his ' Pastoral Ballad,' which
came, Mr. Graves tells, from the inspiration he gained at Chelten-
ham, and is set in scenery that may be the happiest Cotswold :

My banks they are furnish'd with bees,

Whose murmur invites one to sleep ;
My grottoes are shaded with trees,

And my hills are white over with sheep.
I seldom have met with a loss,

Such health do my fountains bestow
My fountains all border'd with moss,

Where the hare-bells and violets grow.

A FORGOTTEN POET. 117

Charming though that is, it is hardly the best stanza. It
sounds easy enough, but really the tunefulness of it is inimitable.
And it comes, like so many other sweet things, from the Cotswolds.

But though a lover of this ' sea of rolling hills and dancing
air ' may try to claim Shenstone as a Cotswold worthy, it were
idle to deny that his fame, such as it is, belongs to the land
of Hagley and Halesowen. How changed it is now ! Hagley is
still beautiful, and Halesowen has her fine church unspoiled ; but
all else is altered. Pits everywhere, and slag hills and rows of
grimy cottages replace the ' glass-house not ill-resembling a
distant pyramid ' in the ' romantic well-variegated country ' which
enchanted the sober mind of Mr. Richard Dodsley, the publisher
and the poet's friend. Yet the memory of Shenstone still lingers,
though the memory is akin to neglect. A plain tomb, worse than
that of many a yeoman of his day, still stands in the churchyard,
near his brother's (as Graves tells us), but touched by another
tomb still meaner than his own. The plain inscription is repeated
on an urn inside the church, and below the urn are the lines
Graves wrote for memorial. Thus they end :

Reader ! if genius, taste refin'd,

A native elegance of mind ;

If virtue, science, manly sense ;

If wit, that never gave offence ;

The clearest head, the tenderest heart,

In thy esteem e'er claimed a part ;

Ah ! smite thy breast, and drop a tear,

For know, thy Shenstone's dust lies here.

Near it is the magnificent monument which Lady Jane Halli-
day erected to the memory of her husband, who bought the
Leasowes after Shenstone's death, and who seems to have made
his chief and modest approach to fame in the boast that he was
the poet's successor :

What tho' no more (alas !) allow'd to rove,
With learned ease, thro' Shenstone's classic grove ;
Tho' spar'd no longer to protect that ground,
Which the lov'd Poet's genius hovers round ;
Tho' the fine form by a too early doom
Be left to moulder in this votive tomb,
Th' unfettered Spirit sooner wins her way
To higher joys in scenes of endless day.

Halliday preserved the ' delightful scenes which persons of
taste in the present age are desirous to see ' — the walks and grots
and rivulets ; but the house he replaced by a larger one. Shen-

118 A FORGOTTEN POET.

stone had ' a mere farmhouse of modest dimensions,' in which the
utmost he could do was to give ' his hall some air of magnificence,
by sinking the floor an altitude of ten feet instead of seven.' The
house that Mr. Halliday built still stands. He had the good
taste not to attempt to replace the ferme ornee by any ex-
travagant mansion. The gardens remained the attraction of the
l^easowes, and so they remain to-day.

Mr. Dodsley wrote a description ' intended to give a friend
some idea of the Leasowes,' and the description is still useful to the
visitor. Mr. Dodsley himself was for a time celebrated there, ' in
a natural bower of almost circular oaks, inscribed in the following
manner ' :

Come then, my friend, thy sylvan taste display ;

Come, hear thy Faunus tune his rustic lay ;

Ah, rather come, and in these dells disown

The care of other strains, and tune thine own.

Whether the kindly publisher accepted the invitation and dis-
owned the care of Mr. Shen stone's strains he does not inform us.
Certainly he published them in a very friendly fashion after the
author's death. And, for his own, he tuned them in prose quite
prettily when he told of the happy valleys so cleverly planned to
afford a visto again and again, and here and there some openings
' to the more pleasing parts of this grotesque and hilly country.'

The Leasowes is approached now, as in 1763, by a green lane,
' descending in a winding manner to the bottom of a deep valley
finely shaded.' It was there that the worthy Mr. Wildgoose, the
spiritual Quixote, discovered his old college friend, ' a gentleman
in his own hair, giving directions to some labourers, who were
working beyond the usual hour in order to finish a receptacle for a
cataract of water, a glimpse of which appeared through the trees on
the side of the road.' With Mr. Dodsley's description in your hand
you identify the ' ruinated wall,' you walk on by the slopes of a
narrow dingle, past the Priory — a delightful piece of eighteenth-
century Gothic, which seemed to be a hermitage, but really
sheltered a labourer and his family — to the little lake at the bottom
of the hill. Alas ! the visto hence is now closed by a slag hill, so
you gladly turn away to seek by the ' pleasing serpentine walk ' a
' common bench, which affords a retiring place secluded from
every eye, and a short respite, during which the eye reposes on a
fine amphitheatre of wood and thicket.' The common bench is
gone, and the fine canopy of spreading oak has followed it, and

A FORGOTTEN POET. 119

there is no cast of the piping Faunus or urn to William Somer-
ville. Yet still through the glade you may trace, as you ascend,
where once the ' irregular and romantic fall of water ' rushed ' very
irregular one hundred and fifty yards in continuity.' It was only
upon reflection that Mr. Dodsley found that the stream was 'not a
Niagara, but rather a waterfall in miniature.' The language need
not excite any tremendous emotion to-day. A toy Niagara
indeed it must have been at best ; but now it has ceased even
to flow, choked, like so many of these pretty fantasies of the
gardener, by the leaves and saplings that time has strewn over
the glade. The trees of Shenstone's time, except here and there
a group of firs or elms or beeches, have perished, and are replaced by
thin straggling shoots. The urns have long been destroyed, and
no inscription survives to illustrate the poet's piety or friendship.
Yet still you can follow the path as he made it, with the plan
that Mr. Dodsley drew for your guide, by thickets, across broken
rustic bridges, past sloping lawns, on the verge of ' wild shaggy
precipices.' From the higher ground the distant views may still
be seen — the Hagley obelisk and the hill of Clent. ' Virgil's
Grove ' is still ' a beautiful gloomy scene,' with an ' ingenious suc-
cession of cascades ' and ' a dripping fountain, where a small rill
trickles down a rude nich of rock-work, through fern, liverwort
and aquatic weeds.'

A pathetic sight, neglected, overgrown, despoiled, is the
scene to whose beauties ' it was Mr. Shenstone's only study to give
their full effect.' But even now it shows, as do few other places
in England, how in the beginnings of the art the principles of
landscape gardening were developed. It was Shenstone's idea
' that a landscape-painter would be the best English gardener,'
and Mr. Graves, in his charming ' Eecollections of Some Particulars
in the Life of the Late William Shenstone, Esq.,' makes comparison
between the work of his friend and that of Gainsborough. The
poet himself very pleasantly expounded his system in prose, and
indeed he has some claim to be regarded as one of the earliest
masters of that craft. He had no sympathy, it is clear, with some
of the later affectations, such as those which Thomas Love Peacock
makes mock at. He endeavoured always to minister to Nature,
not to thwart her. Yet his statues and urns were little better than
an intrusion, though he could defend them thus : ' Art should
never be allowed to set a foot in the province of Nature other-
wise than clandestinely and by night. Whenever she is allowed

120 A FORGOTTEN POET.

to appear there, and men begin to compromise the difference,
night, Gothicism, confusion and absolute chaos are come again.'
Artifice must have been, if not obvious, yet easy to expose, if we
may believe Johnson's suggestion that the Lytteltons, when they
became jealous of their neighbour's success, delighted to take their
visitors to the points of view from which the disguises were patent,
and maliciously to destroy all the deceptive steps of gradual
allurement designed by the poor owner of the Leasowes. It
seems as if he found no great comfort in his art, or his simple
country life, at the best. Winter seemed to him an intolerable
season. ' To see one's urns, obelisks and waterfalls laid open ; the
nakedness of our beloved mistresses, the Naiads and the Dryads,
exposed by that ruffian Winter to universal observation ; is a
severity scarcely to be supported by the help of blazing hearths,
cheerful companions, and a bottle of the most grateful Burgundy.'
All did not, indeed, go well with him. His aphorisms, often
witty, have a tinge of unhappy bitterness about them. ' His
whole philosophy,' said Gray a little unkindly of him, ' consisted
in living against his will in retirement, and in a place which his
taste had adorned, but which he only enjoyed when people of
note came to see and commend it.' A letter of his which was for
sale in London the other day seems to make only a show of
contentment. It was written to his friend Graves ; and it is worth
quoting as it stands, for it does not seem to have been printed till
now. There is no date to it, but evidently it was written while he
was not at enmity with his other friend, Mr. Whistler, with whom
he had the silly quarrel Graves tells us of. Thus it runs :

MR. GRAVES.

DEAR SIR, — I did indeed give you up for lost, as a correspondent, and find by
your letter y* I am to expect but very few future ones. I will endeavour all I
can to avoid any suspicion of your Indifference for my own satisfaction. But
I don't know for certain y' I shall be able, unless you assist my Endeavours, like
my good Genius, by a course of suitable Epistles at certain distances. I myself
correspond but very little now, so you will meet with the more Indulgence.
I don't find by your Letter y' you have much more Philosophy yn me. I can't
tell indeed what y situation of yr House is. I own mine gives me offence on
no other consideration y" that it does not receive a sufficient Number of polite
Friends, or y1 it is not fit to receive 'em, were they so dispos'd. I wou'd else
cultivate an Acquaintance with about Three or Four in my Neighbourhood, y1 are
of a Degree of Elegance, and station superior to ye common Run. But I make it
a certain Rule Arcere prof anil vidgus. Persons of vulgar minds, who will despise
you for y« want of a good set of Chairs, or an uncouth Fire-shovel at ye same
Time y1 they can't taste any Excellence in a mind that overlooks those things ;
or, (to make a conceit of this sentiment) with whom 'tis in vain that yr mind is

A FORGOTTEN POET. 121

furnish'd if yr walls are naked. Indeed one loses much of one's Acquisitions in
virtue by an Hour's converse with such as Judge of merit by Money, &c. Yet
I am now and then impell'd by y" social Passion to sit half an Hour in my
Kitchen. I was all along an Admirer of Sr. Thomas Head's Humour and Wit,
And I beg you wou'd represent me in y' light if occasion happens. Tis not
impossible y* I may penetrate this winter as far as yr neighbourhood, connecting
a set of visits which I have in my Eye. Tell Mr Whistler when you see him that
if he must have some Distemper, I cannot but be pleas'd yl it is one which is a
Forerunner of Longevity. Don't tell him so neither, for y" compliment is trite.
From ye ' Birmingham Gazette ' : ' We hear that on Thursday last was married at
Halesowen, in Shropshire, Mr Jorden, an eminent Gunsmith of this Town, to a
sister of y* R' Honble Ferdinando Ld Dudley.' I was yesterday at ye Grange,
where his old Father (wth a number of People) was celebrating ye Nuptials of his
Son ; when in the midst of his Feasting, high Jollity, and grand Alliance, the
old Fellow bethought him of a Piece of Timber in ye neighbourhood y* was
convertible into good Gunsticks, and had some of it sent for into ye Room by way
of Specimen ! Animcenil magntB lavdis egentis! Pray, is yr Sister at Smethwick ?
For I have not heard. You said you wou'd give me yr Picture, which I long
earnestly for. Cou'dn't you contrive to have it sent me directly ? I am quite in
yr debt with regard to downright goods and moveables, and what is ye proper
subject of an Inventory — neque tu pessima mnneru ferres divite me scilicet artium
qi/as aut Parrhasius protulit aut Scopas — sed non Jiceo mihi vis ! I will, however,
endeavour to be more upon a Par with you wth regard to presents, tho' I never
can with regard to ye Pleasures I have receiv'd fro yr conversation. I make
People wonder at my Exploits in pulling down walls, Hovels, cow-houses, &c. ;
and my Place is not ye same. I am, that is, wth Regard to you a Faithfull Friend,
and hble serv', W. S.

Mr Whistler and you and I and Sr T. Head (who I shoud name first, speaking
after ye mariner of men) have just variety enough, and not too much, in our
Charct. to make an Interview, whenever it happens, Entertaining — I mean, tho'
we were not old Friends and Acquaintance.

It is the letter of a good-humoured, if a disappointed man.
And disappointed Shenstone certainly was. ' The Schoolmistress '
should have won him more fame than it did. He had few friends.
Percy, the Lytteltons, Pitt, Lady Luxborough (Bolingbroke's
charming sister), and Spence were only acquaintances for whom he
had a tepid liking ; and after his brother's death he lived a lonely
life. Horace Walpole seems never to have heard of him till he
was dead, and in his pretty little essay on ' Modern Gardening,'
printed so daintily at the Strawberry Hill Press, with a translation
into French by the Due de Nivernois, in 1785, studiously ignores
his existence. Of his poetry all the exquisite could find to say
was that he was ' a water-gruel bard ' ; and unkindness could go
no further than the cruel words in which he summed up his aims :
' Poor man ! he wanted to have all the world talk of him for
the pretty place he had made, and which he seems to have made
only that it might be talked of.'

122 A FORGOTTEN POET.

Talked of, the Leasowes and its ' landskips ' are no longer ; but
those who visit them can still trace the ingenuity in their ordering
which friends called genius. Long enough ago Mr. Graves un-
kindly observed that the place was called ' Shenstone's Folly ' ;
and he added, ' this is a name which, with some sort of propriety,
the common people give to any work of taste, the utility of which
exceeds the level of their comprehension.' Those who turn over
the pages of prose and verse that Dodsley collected and eulogised
may raise even now a kindly affection for their author. Shenstone
has some of the marks of the true poet, and certainly not a few of
the kindly and amiable man.

W. H. HUTTON.

123

THE FOUR FEATHERS.1
BY A. E. W. MASON.

CHAPTEE I.

A CRIMEAN NIGHT.

LIEUTENANT SUTCH was the first of General Feversham's guests
to reach Broad Place. He arrived about five o'clock on an after-
noon of sunshine in mid June, and the old red-brick house, lodged
on a southern slope of the Surrey hills, was glowing from a dark
forest depth of pines with the warmth of a rare jewel. Lieu-
tenant Sutch limped across the hall, where the portraits of the
Fevershams rose one above the other to the ceiling, and out on
to the stone-flagged terrace at the back. There he found his
host sitting erect like a boy, and gazing southwards towards
the Sussex Downs.

' How's the leg ? ' asked General Feversham, as he rose
briskly from his chair. He was a small wiry man, and, in spite
of his white hairs, alert. But the alertness was of the body. A
bony face with a high narrow forehead and steel-blue inex-
pressive eyes suggested a barrenness of mind.

' It gave me trouble during the winter,' replied Sutch. ' But
that was to be expected.' General Feversham nodded, and for
a little while both men were silent. From the terrace the ground
fell steeply to a wide level plain of brown earth and emerald
fields and dark clumps of trees. From this plain voices rose
through the sunshine, small but very clear. Far away towards
Horsham a coil of white smoke from a train snaked rapidly in and
out amongst the trees ; and on the horizon, patched with white
chalk, rose the Downs.

' I thought that I should find you here,' said Sutch.

' It was my wife's favourite corner,' answered Feversham in a
quite emotionless voice. ' She would sit here by the hour. She
had a queer liking for wide and empty spaces.'

1 Copyright, 1901, by A. E. W. Mason in the United States of America.
The character of Harry Feversham is developed from a short story by the
author, originally printed in the Illustrated London Nems, and since republished.

124 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

' Yes,' said Sutch. ' She had imagination. Her thoughts
could people them.'

General Feversham glanced at his companion as though he
hardly understood. But he asked no questions. What he did
not understand he habitually let slip from his mind as not worth
comprehension. He spoke at once upon a different topic.

' There will be a leaf out of our table to-night.'

' Yes. Collins, Barberton, and Vaughan went this winter.
Well, we are all permanently shelved upon the world's half-pay
list as it is. The obituary column is just the last formality
which gazettes us out of the Service altogether,' and Sutch
stretched out and eased his crippled leg, which fourteen years
ago that day had been crushed and twisted in the fall of a
scaling-ladder.

' I am glad that you came before the others,' continued
Feversham. ' I would like to take your opinion. This day is
more to me than the anniversary of our attack upon the Eedan.
At the very moment when we were standing under arms in the
dark '

' To the west of the quarries, I remember,' interrupted Sutch
with a deep breath. ' How should one forget ? '

'At that very moment Harry was born in this house. I
thought, therefore, that if you did not object he might join us
to-night. He happens to be at home. He will, of course, enter
the service, and he might learn something, perhaps, which after-
wards will be of use — one never knows.'

' By all means,' said Sutch with alacrity. For since his
visits to G-eneral Feversham were limited to the occasion of these
anniversary dinners, he had never yet seen Harry Feversham.

Sutch had for many years been puzzled as to the qualities
in General Feversham which had attracted Muriel Graham, a
woman as remarkable for the refinement of her intellect as for
the beauty of her person ; and he could never find an explanation.
He had to be content with his knowledge that for some mysterious
reason she had married this man so much older than herself,
and so unlike to her in character. Personal courage and an
indomitable self-confidence were the chief, indeed the only
qualities which sprang to light in him. Lieutenant Sutch went
back in thought over twenty years as he sat on his garden-chair
to a time before he had taken part, as an officer of the Naval
Brigade, in that unsuccessful onslaught on the Kedan. He re-

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 125

membered a season in London to which he had come fresh from
the China Station ; and he was curious to see Harry Feversham.
He did not admit that it was more than the natural curiosity
of a man who, disabled in comparative youth, had made a
hobby out of the study of human nature. He was interested
to see whether the lad took after his mother or his father — that
was all.

So that night Harry Feversham took a place at the dinner-
table and listened to the stories which his elders told, while
Lieutenant Sutch watched him. The stories were all of that
dark winter in the Crimea, and a fresh story was always in the
telling before its predecessor was ended. They were stories of
death, of hazardous exploits ; of the pinch of famine and the
chill of snow. But they were told in clipped words and with a
matter-of-fact tone, as though the men who related them were
only conscious of them as far-off things ; and there was seldom
a comment more pronounced than a mere ' that's curious,' or an
exclamation more significant than a laugh.

But Harry Feversham sat listening as though the incidents
thus carelessly narrated were happening actually at that moment
and within the walls of that room. His dark eyes — the eyes of
his mother — turned with each story from speaker to speaker, and
waited wide-open and fixed until the last word was spoken. He
listened fascinated and enthralled. And so vividly did the
changes of expression shoot and quiver across his face, that it
seemed to Sutch the lad must actually hear the drone of bullets
in the air, actually resist the stunning shock of a charge, actually
ride down in the thick of a squadron to where guns screeched
out a tongue of flame from a fog. Once a major of artillery spoke
of the suspense of the hours between the parading of the troops
before a battle and the first command to advance ; and Harry's
shoulders worked under the intolerable strain of those lagging
minutes.

But he did more than work his shoulders. He threw a single
furtive, wavering glance backwards ; and Lieutenant Sutch was
startled, and indeed more than startled, he was pained. For this
after all was Muriel Graham's boy.

The look was too familiar a one to Sutch. He had seen it
on the faces of recruits during their first experience of a battle
too often for him to misunderstand it. And one picture in par-
ticular rose before his mind. An advancing square at Inkermann,

126 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

and a tall big soldier rushing forward from the line in the eager-
ness of his attack, and then stopping suddenly as though he
suddenly understood that he was alone, and had to meet alone
the charge of a mounted Cossack. Sutch remembered very
clearly the fatal wavering glance which the big soldier had
thrown backwards towards his companions, a glance accompanied
by a queer sickly smile. He remembered too, with equal vivid-
ness, its consequence. For though the soldier carried a loaded
musket and a bayonet locked to the muzzle, he had without an
effort of self-defence received the Cossack's lance-thrust in his
throat.

Sutch glanced hurriedly about the table, afraid that General
Feversham, or that some one of his guests, should have remarked
the same look and the same smile upon Harry's face. But no
one had eyes for the lad ; each visitor was waiting too eagerly for
an opportunity to tell a story of his own. Sutch drew a breath
of relief and turned to Harry. But the boy was sitting with his
elbows on the cloth and his head propped between his hands, lost
to the glare of the room and its glitter of silver, constructing
again out of the swift succession of anecdotes a world of cries
and wounds, and maddened riderless chargers and men writhing
in a fog of cannon-smoke. The curtest, least graphic descrip-
tion of the biting days and nights in the trenches set the lad
shivering. Even his face grew pinched, as though the iron frost
of that winter was actually eating into his bones. Sutch touched
him lightly on the elbow.

' You renew those days for me,' said he. ' Though the
heat is dripping down the windows, I feel the chill of the
Crimea.'

Harry roused himself from his absorption.

' The stories renew them,' said he.

' No. It is you listening to the stories.'

And before Harry could reply, General Feversham's voice
broke sharply in from the head of the table :

' Harry, look at the clock ! '

At once all eyes were turned upon the lad. The hands of
the clock made the acutest of angles. It was close upon midnight,
and from eight, without so much as a word or a question, he had
sat at the dinner-table listening. Yet even now he rose with
reluctance.

' Must I go, father ? ' be asked, and the General's guests

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 127

intervened in a chorus. The conversation was clear gain to
the lad, a first taste of powder which might stand him in good
stead afterwards.

' Besides, it's the boy's birthday,' added the major of artillery.
' He wants to stay, that's plain. You wouldn't find a youngster
of fourteen sit all these hours without a kick of the foot against
the table-leg unless the conversation entertained him. Let him
stay, Feversham ! '

For once General Feversham relaxed the iron discipline under
which the boy lived.

' Very well,' said he. ' Harry shall have an hour's furlough
from his bed. A single hour won't make much difference.'

Harry's eyes turned towards his father, and just for a moment
rested upon his face with a curious steady gaze. It seemed to
Sutch that they uttered a question, and, rightly or wrongly, he
interpreted the question into words :

' Are you blind ? '

But General Feversham was already talking to his neigh-
bours, and Harry quietly sat down, and again propping his chin
upon his hands, listened with all his soul. Yet he was not
entertained; rather he was enthralled, he sat quiet under the
compulsion of a spell. His face became unnaturally white,
his eyes unnaturally large, while the flames of the candles
shone even redder and more blurred through a blue haze of
tobacco-smoke, and the level of the wine grew steadily lower in
the decanters.

Thus half of that one hour's furlough was passed ; and then
General Feversham, himself jogged by the unlucky mention of a
name, suddenly blurted out in his jerky fashion :

' Lord Wilmington. One of the best names in England if you
please. Did you ever see his house in Warwickshire ? Every
inch of the ground you would think would have a voice to bid
him play the man, if only in remembrance of his fathers. ....
It seemed incredible and mere camp rumour, but the rumour
grew. If it was whispered at the Alma, it was spoken aloud at
Inkermann, it was shouted at Balaclava. Before Sebastopol the
hideous thing was proved. Wilmington was acting as galloper to
his General. I believe upon my soul the General chose him for
the duty, so that the fellow might set himself right. There were
three hundred yards of bullet-swept flat ground, and a message to
be carried'across them. Had Wilmington toppled off his horse

128 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

on the way, why, there were the whispers silenced for ever. Had
he ridden through alive he earned distinction besides. But he
didn't dare, he refused ! Imagine it if you can ! He sat shaking
on his horse and declined. You should have seen the General.
His face turned the colour of that Burgundy. " No doubt you
have a previous engagement," he said, in the politest voice you
ever heard — just that, not a word of abuse. A previous engage-
ment on the battle-field ! For the life of me I could hardly help
laughing. But it was a tragic business for Wilmington. He was
broken of course, and slunk back to London. Every house was
closed to him, he dropped out of his circle like a lead bullet you
let slip out of your hand into the sea. The very women in
Piccadilly spat if he spoke to them ; and he blew his brains out
in a back bedroom off the Haymarket. Curious that, eh ? He
hadn't the pluck to face the bullets when his name was at stake,
yet he could blow his own brains out afterwards.'

Lieutenant Sutch chanced to look at the clock as the story
came to an end. It was now a quarter to one. Harry Feversham
had still a quarter of an hour's furlough, and that quarter of an
hour was occupied by a retired surgeon-general with a great
wagging beard, who sat nearly opposite to the boy.

' I can tell you an incident still more curious,' he said. ' The
man in this case had never been under fire before, but he was of
my own profession. Life and death were part of his business.
Nor was he really in any particular danger. The affair happened
during a hill campaign in India. We were encamped in a valley,,
and a few Pathans used to lie out on the hillside at night and
take long shots into the camp. A bullet ripped through the
canvas of the hospital tent — that was all. The surgeon crept out
to his own quarters, and his orderly discovered him half-an-hour
afterwards lying in his blood stone dead.'

' Hit ? ' exclaimed the Major.

' Not a bit of it,' said the surgeon. ' He had quietly opened
his instrument-case in the dark, taken out a lancet and severed
his femoral artery. Sheer panic, do you see, at the whistle of a
bullet.'

Even upon these men, case-hardened to horrors, the incident
related in its bald simplicity wrought its effect. From some
there broke a half-uttered exclamation of disbelief ; others moved
restlessly in their chairs with a sort of physical discomfort, be-
cause a man had sunk so far below humanity. Here an officer

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 129

gulped his wine, there a second shook his shoulders as though to
shake the knowledge off as a dog shakes water. There was only
one in all that company who sat perfectly still in the silence
which followed upon the story. That one was the boy Harry
Feversham.

He sat with his hands now clenched upon his knees and
leaning forward a little across the table towards the surgeon ;
his cheeks white as paper, his eyes burning and burning with
ferocity. He had the look of a dangerous animal in the trap.
His body was gathered, his muscles taut. Sutch had a fear that
the lad meant to leap across the table and strike with all his
strength in the savagery of despair. He had indeed reached out
a restraining hand when General Feversham's matter-of-fact voice
intervened, and the boy's attitude suddenly relaxed.

' Queer incomprehensible things happen. Here are two
of them. You can only say they are the truth and pray God you
may forget 'em. But you can't explain. For you can't under-
stand.'

Sutch was moved to lay his hand upon Harry's shoulder.

' Can you ? ' he asked, and regretted the question almost
before it was spoken. But it was spoken, and Harry's eyes turned
swiftly towards Sutch, and rested upon his face, not, however,
with any betrayal of guilt, but quietly, inscrutably. Nor did he
answer the question, although it was answered in a fashion by
General Feversham.

' Harry understand ! ' exclaimed the General with a snort of
indignation. ' How should he ? He's a Feversham.'

The question, which Harry's glance had mutely put before,
Sutch in the same mute way repeated. ' Are you blind ? ' his
eyes asked of General Feversham. Never had he heard an
untruth so demonstrably untrue. A mere look at the father
and the son proved it so. Harry Feversham wore his father's
name, but he had his mother's dark and haunted eyes, his
mother's breadth of forehead, his mother's delicacy of profile, his
mother's imagination. 1 needed perhaps a stranger to recognise
the truth. The father had been so long familiar with his son's
aspect that it had no significance to his mind.

' Look at the clock, Harry.'

The hour's furlough had run out. Harry rose from his chair,
and drew a breath.

' Good-night, sir,' he said, and walked to the door.

VOL. XII. — NO. 67, N.S. y

130 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

The servants had long since gone to bed ; and, as Harry
opened the door, the hall gaped black like the mouth of night.
For a second or two the boy hesitated upon the threshold, and
seemed almost to shrink back into the lighted room as though
in that dark void peril awaited him. And peril did — the peril of
his thoughts.

He stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.
The decanter was sent again upon its rounds, there was a popping
of soda-water bottles, the talk revolved again in its accustomed
groove. Harry was in an instant forgotten by all but Sutch.
The Lieutenant, although he prided himself upon his impartial
and disinterested study of human nature, was the kindliest of men.
He had more kindliness than observation by a great deal. More-
over, there were special reasons which caused him to take an interest
in Harry Fever sham. He sat for a little while with the air of
a man profoundly disturbed. Then, acting upon an impulse, he
went to the door, opened it noiselessly, as noiselessly passed out,
and, without so much as a click of the latch, closed the door
behind him.

And this is what he saw : Harry Feversham holding in the
centre of the hall a lighted candle high above his head and look-
ing up towards the portraits of the Fevershams as they mounted
the walls and were lost in the darkness of the roof. A muffled
sound of voices came from the other side of the door-panels. But
the hall itself was silent. Harry stood remarkably still, and the
only thing which moved at all was the yellow flame of the candle
as it flickered apparently in some faint draught. The light
wavered across the portraits, glowing here upon a red coat, glitter-
ing there upon a corselet of steel. For there was not one man's
portrait upon the walls which did not glisten with the colours of
a uniform, and there were the portraits of many men. Father
and son, the Fevershams had been soldiers from the very birth of
the family. Father and son, in lace collars and bucket boots, in
Ramillies wigs and steel breastplates, in velvet coats with powder
on their hair, in shakos and swallow-tails, in high stocks and
frogged coats, they looked down upon this last Feversham,
summoning him to the like service. They were men of one
stamp; no distinction of uniform could obscure their relation-
ship— lean-faced men, hard as iron, rugged in feature, thin-lipped,
with firm chins and straight level mouths, narrow foreheads, and
the steel-blue inexpressive eyes ; men of courage and resolution,

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 131

no doubt, but without subtleties, or nerves, or that burdensome
gift of imagination ; sturdy men, a little wanting in delicacy,
hardly conspicuous for intellect ; to put it frankly, men rather
stupid — all of them, in a word, first-class fighting men, but not
one of them a first-class soldier.

But Harry Feversham plainly saw none of their defects. To
him they were one and all portentous and terrible. He stood
before them in the attitude of a criminal before his judges, reading
his condemnation in their cold unchanging eyes. Lieutenant
Sutch understood more clearly why the flame of the candle
flickered. There was no draught in the hall, but the boy's hand
shook. And finally, as though he had heard the mute voices of
his judges delivering sentence and admitted its justice, he actually
bowed to the portraits on the wall. As he raised his head, he saw
Lieutenant Sutch in the embrasure of the doorway.

He did not start, he uttered no word ; he let his eyes quietly
rest upon Sutch and waited. Of the two it was the man who was
embarrassed.

' Harry/ he said, and in spite of his embarrassment he had the
tact to use the tone and the language of one addressing not a boy,
but a comrade equal in years, ' we meet for the first time to-
night. But I knew your mother a long time ago. I like to think
that I have the right to call her by that much misused word —
friend. Have you anything to tell me ? '

' Nothing,' said Harry.

' The mere telling sometimes lightens a trouble.'

' It is kind of you. There is nothing.'

Lieutenant Sutch was rather at a loss. The lad's loneliness
made a strong appeal to him. For lonely the boy could not but be,
set apart as he was no less unmistakably in mind as in feature from
his father and his father's fathers. Yet what more could he do ?
His tact again came to his aid. He took his card-case from his
pocket.

' You will find my address upon this card. Perhaps some day
you will give me a few days of your company. I can offer you on
my side a day or two's hunting.'

A spasm of pain shook for a fleeting moment the boy's
steady inscrutable face. It passed, however, swiftly as it had
come.

' Thank you, sir,' Harry monotonously repeated. ' You are
very kind.'

9—2

132 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

' And if ever you want to talk over a difficult question with an
older man, I am at your service.'

He spoke purposely in a formal voice lest Harry with a boy's
sensitiveness should think he laughed. Harry took the card and
repeated his thanks. Then he went upstairs to bed.

Lieutenant Sutch waited uncomfortably in the hall until the
light of the candle had diminished and disappeared. Something
was amiss, he was very sure. There were words which he should
have spoken to the boy, but he had not known how to set about
the task. He returned to the dining-room, and with a feeling
that he was almost repairing his omissions, he filled his glass and
called for silence.

' Grentlemen,' he said, 'this is June 15th,' and there was
great applause and much rapping on the table. ' It is the anni-
versary of our attack upon the Eedan. It is also Harry Fever-
sham's birthday. For us, our work is done. I ask you to drink
the health of one of the youngsters who are ousting us. His work
lies before him. The traditions of the Feversham family are
very well known to us. May Harry Feversham carry them on !
May he. add distinction to a distinguished name ! '

At once all that company was on its feet.

' Harry Feversham ! '

The name was shouted with so hearty a goodwill that the
glasses on the table rang. ' Harry Feversham, Harry Feversham,'
the cry was repeated and repeated, while old General Feversham
sat in his chair, with a face aflush with pride. And a boy a
minute afterwards in a room high up in the house heard the
muffled words of a chorus :

For he's a jolly good fellow,
For he's a jolly good fellow,
For he's a jolly good fellow,
And so say all of us,

and believed the guests upon this Crimean night were drinking
his father's health. He turned over in his bed and lay shivering.
He saw in his mind a broken officer slinking at night in the
shadows of the London streets. He pushed back the flap of a
tent and stooped over a man lying stone-dead in his blood, with an )
open lancet clenched in his right hand. And he saw that the
face of the broken officer and the face of the dead surgeon were
one ; and that one face, the face of Harry Feversham.

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 138

CHAPTER II.

CAPTAIN TRENCH AND A TELEGRAM.

THIRTEEN years later, and in the same month of June, Harry
Feversham's health was drunk again, but after a quieter fashion
and in a smaller company. The company was gathered in a room
high up in a shapeless block of buildings which frowns like a
fortress over Westminster. A stranger crossing St. James's Park
southwards, over the suspension bridge, at night, who chanced to
lift his eyes and see suddenly the tiers of lighted windows towering
above him to so precipitous a height, might be brought to a stop
with the fancy that here in the heart of London was a mountain
and the gnomes at work. Upon the tenth floor of this building
Harry had taken a flat during his year's furlough from his regi-
ment in India ; and it was in the dining-room of this flat that
the simple ceremony took place. The room was furnished in
a dark and restful fashion, and since the chill of the weather
belied the calendar, a comfortable fire blazed in the hearth. A
bay window over which the blinds had not been lowered com-
manded London.

There were four men smoking about the dinner-table. Harry
Feversham was unchanged except for a fair moustache which con-
trasted with his dark hair, and the natural consequences of growth.
He was now a man of middle height, long-limbed and well-knit
like an athlete, but his features had not altered since that night
when they had been so closely scrutinised by Lieutenant Sutch.
Of his companions two were brother-officers on leave in England,
like himself, whom he had that afternoon picked up at his club.
Captain Trench, a small man, growing bald, with a small, sharp,
resourceful face and black eyes of a remarkable activity, and
Lieutenant Willoughby, an officer of quite a different stamp. A
round forehead, a thick snub nose, and a pair of vacant and pro-
truding eyes gave to him an aspect of invincible stupidity. He
spoke but seldom, and never to the point, but rather to some point
long forgotten which he had since been laboriously revolving in
his mind ; and he continually twisted a moustache, of which the
ends curled up towards his eyes with a ridiculous ferocity. A
man whom one would dismiss from mind as of no consequence
upon a first thought, and take again into one's consideration upon

134 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

a second. For he was born stubborn as well as stupid ; and the
harm which his stupidity might do, his stubbornness would hinder
him from admitting. He was not a man to be persuaded ; having
few ideas he clung to them ; it was no use to argue with him, for
he did not hear the argument, but behind his vacant eyes all the
while he turned over his crippled thoughts and was satisfied. The
fourth at the table was Durrance, a lieutenant of the East Surrey
Kegiment, and Feversham's friend, who had come in answer to a
telegram.

This was June of the year 1882, and the thoughts of civilians
turned towards Egypt with anxiety, those of soldiers with an eager
anticipation. Arabi Pasha, in spite of threats, was steadily
strengthening the fortifications of Alexandria, and already a long
way to the south, the other, the great danger, was swelling like a
thunder-cloud. A year had passed since a young, slight, and tall
Dongolawi, Mohammed Ahmed, had marched through the villages
of the White Nile, preaching with the fire of a Wesley the coming
of a Saviour. The passionate victims of the Turkish tax-gatherer
had listened, had heard the promise repeated in the whispers of the
wind in the withered grass, had found the holy names imprinted
even upon the eggs they gathered up. In 1882 Mohammed had
declared himself that Saviour, and had won his first battles
against the Turks.

'There will be trouble/ said Trench, and the sentence was
the text on which three of the four men talked. In a rare
interval, however, the fourth, Harry Feversham, spoke upon a
different subject.

' I am very glad you were all able to dine with me to-night.
I telegraphed to Castleton as well, an officer of ours,' he explained
to Durrance, ' but he was dining with a big man from the War
Office, and leaves for Scotland afterwards, so that he could not
come. I have news of a sort.'

The three men leaned forward, their minds still full of the
dominant subject. But it was not about the prospect of war that
Harry Feversham had to speak.

' I only reached London this morning from Dublin,' he said
with a shade of embarrassment. ' I have been some weeks in
Dublin.'

Durrance lifted his eyes from the tablecloth and looked
quietly at his friend.

' Yes ? ' he asked steadily.

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 135

' I have come back engaged to be married.'

Durrance lifted his glass to his lips.

' Well, here's luck to you, Harry,' he said, and that was all.
The wish, indeed, was almost curtly expressed, but there was
nothing wanting in it to Feversham's ears. The friendship
between these two men was not one in which affectionate phrases
had any part. There was, in truth, no need of such. Both
men were securely conscious of it ; they estimated it at its true
strong value ; it was a helpful instrument which would not wear
out, put into their hands for a hard, lifelong use ; but it was not,
and never had been, spoken of between them. Both men were
grateful for it, as for a rare and undeserved gift ; yet both knew
that it might entail an obligation of sacrifice. But the sacrifices,
were they needful, would be made, and they would not be
mentioned. It may be, indeed, that the very knowledge of its
strength constrained them to a particular reticence in their words
to one another.

' Thank you, Jack ! ' said Feversham. ' I am glad of your
good wishes. It was you who introduced me to Ethne. I cannot
forget it.'

Durrance set his glass down without any haste. There followed
a moment of silence, during which he sat with his eyes upon the
tablecloth, and his hands resting on the table-edge.

' Yes,' he said in a level voice. ' I did you a good turn
then.'

He seemed on the point of saying more, and doubtful how to
say it. But Captain Trench's sharp, quick, practical voice, a
voice which fitted the man who spoke, saved him his pains.

' Will this make any difference ? ' asked Trench.

Feversham replaced his cigar between his lips,

' You mean, shall I leave the service ? ' he asked slowly. ' I
don't know ; ' and Durrance seized the opportunity to rise from
the table and cross to the window, where he stood with his back
to his companions. Feversham took the abrupt movement for a
reproach, and spoke to Durrance's back, not to Trench.

' I don't know,' he repeated. ' It will need thought. There is
much to be said. On the one side, of course, there's my father,
my career, such as it is. On the other hand, there is her father,
Dermod Eustace.'

' He wishes you to chuck your commission ?' asked Willoughby.

' He has no doubt the Irishman's objection to constituted

136 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

authority,' said Trench with a laugh. ' But need you subscribe
to it, Feversham?'

' It is not merely that.' It was still to Durrance's back that he
addressed his excuses. ' Dermod is old, his estates going to ruin,
and there are other things. You know, Jack ? ' The direct appeal
he had to repeat, and even then Durrance answered it absently :

' Yes, I know,' and he added like one quoting a catch-word,
" If you want any whisky, rap twice on the floor with your foot.
The servants understand." '

' Precisely,' said Feversham. He continued, carefully weighing
his words, and still intently looking across the shoulders of his
companions to his friend.

' Besides, there is Ethne herself. Dermod for once did an
appropriate thing when he gave her that name. For she is of her
country, and more of her county. She has the love of it in her
bones. I do not think that she could be quite happy in India,
or indeed in any place which was not within reach of Donegal,
the smell of its peat, its streams, and the brown friendliness of
its hills. One has to consider that.'

He waited for an answer, and getting none went on again.
Durrance, however, had no thought of reproach in his mind. He
knew that Feversham was speaking — he wished very much that
he would continue to speak for a little while — but he paid no
heed to what was said. He stood looking steadfastly out of the
windows. Over against him was the glare from Pall Mall striking
upwards to the sky, and the chains of lights banked one above
the other as the town rose northwards, and a rumble as of a
million carriages was in his ears. At his feet, very far below, lay
St. James's Park silent and black, a quiet pool of darkness in the
midst of glitter and noise. Durrance had a great desire to escape
out of this room into its secrecy. But that he could not do
without remark. Therefore he kept his back turned to his
companion and leaned his forehead against the window, and hoped
his friend would continue to talk. For he was face to face with
one of the sacrifices which must not be mentioned, and which no
sign must betray.

Feversham did continue, and if Durrance did not listen, on
the other hand Captain Trench gave to him his closest attention.
But it was evident that Harry Feversham was giving reasons
seriously considered. He was not making excuses, and in the end
Captain Trench was satisfied.

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 137

' Well, I drink to you, Feversham,' he said, ' with all the proper
sentiments.'

' I too, old man,' said Willoughby, obediently following his
senior's lead.

Thus they drank their comrade's health, and as their empty
glasses rattled on the table, their came a knock upon the door.

The two officers looked up. Durrance turned about from the
window. Feversham said, ' Come in ' ; and his servant brought
in to him a telegram.

Feversham tore open the envelope carelessly, as carelessly read
through the telegram, and then sat very still with his eyes upon
the slip of pink paper, and his face grown at once extremely grave.
Thus he sat for an appreciable time, not so much stunned as
thoughtful. And in the room there was a complete silence.
Feversham's three guests averted their eyes. Durrance turned
again to his window ; Willoughby twisted his moustache and gazed
intently upwards at the ceiling ; Captain Trench shifted his chair
round and stared into the glowing fire, and each man's attitude
expressed a certain suspense. It seemed that sharp upon the heels
of Feversham's good news calamity had come knocking at the
door.

' There is no answer,' said Harry, and fell to silence again.
Once he raised his head and looked at Trench as though he had a
mind to speak. But he thought the better of it, and so dropped
again to the consideration of this message. And in a moment or
two the silence was sharply interrupted, but not by any one of the
expectant motionless three men seated in the room. The inter-
ruption came from without.

From the parade ground of Wellington Barracks the drums
and fifes sounding the tattoo shrilled through the open window
with a startling clearness like a sharp summons, and diminished
as the band marched away across the gravel and again grew loud.
Feversham did not change his attitude, but the look upon his
face was now that of a man listening, and listening thoughtfully,
just as he had read thoughtfully. In the years which followed
that moment was to recur again and again to the recollection of
each of Harry's three guests. The lighted room with the bright
homely fire, the open window overlooking the myriad lamps of
London, Harry Feversham seated with the telegram spread before
him, the drums and fifes calling loudly, and then dwindling to a
music very small and pretty — music which beckoned, where a

138 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

moment ago it had commanded : all these details made up a
picture of which the colours were not to fade by any lapse of time,
although its significance was not apprehended now.

It was remembered that Feversham rose abruptly from his
chair, just before the tattoo ceased. He crumpled the telegram
loosely in his hands, tossed it into the fire, and then, leaning his
back against the chimney-piece and upon one side of the fireplace,
said again :

' I don't know ' ; as though he had thrust that message, what-
ever it might be, from his mind, and was summing up in this
indefinite way the argument which had gone before. Thus that
long silence was broken, and a spell was lifted. But the fire took
hold upon the telegram and shook it, so that it moved like a thing
alive and in pain. It twisted, and part of it unrolled, and for a
second lay open and smooth of creases, lit up by the flame and
as yet untouched ; so that two or three words sprang, as it were,
out of a yellow glare of fire and were legible. Then the flame
seized upon that smooth part too, and in a moment it shrivelled
into black tatters. But Captain Trench was all this while staring
into the fire.

' You return to Dublin, I suppose ? ' said Durrance. He had
moved back again into the room. Like his companions, he was
conscious of an unexplained relief.

' To Dublin, no. I go to Donegal in three weeks' time. There
is to be a dance. It is hoped you will come.'

' I am not sure that I can manage it. There is just a chance,
I believe, should trouble come in the East, that I may go out on
the Staff.' The talk thus came round again to the chances of peace
and war, and held in that quarter till the boom of the Westminster
clock told that the hour was eleven. Captain Trench rose from
his seat on the last stroke ; Willoughby and Durrance followed his
example.

' I shall see you to-morrow,' said Durrance to Feversham.

' As usual,' replied Harry ; and his three guests descended from
his rooms and walked across the Park together. At the corner of
Pall Mall, however, they parted company, Durrance mounting
St. James's Street, while Trench and Willoughby crossed the road
into St. James's Square. There Trench slipped his arm through
Willoughby's, to Willoughby's surprise for Trench was an un-
demonstrative man.

' You know Castleton's address ? ' he asked.

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 139

' Albemarle Street,' Willoughby answered and added the number.

' He leaves Euston at twelve o'clock. It is now ten minutes
past eleven. Are you curious, Willoughby ? I confess to curiosity.
I am an inquisitive methodical person, and when a man gets a
telegram bidding him tell Trench something and he tells Trench
nothing, I am curious as a philosopher to know what that some-
thing is ! Castleton is the only other officer of our regiment in
London. Castleton, too, was dining with a big man from the War
Office. I think that if we take a hansom to Albemarle Street we
shall just catch Castleton upon his doorstep.'

Mr. Willoughby, who understood very little of Trench's
meaning, nevertheless cordially agreed to the proposal.

' I think it would be prudent,' said he, and he hailed a passing
cab. A moment later the two men were driving to Albemarle
Street.

CHAPTER III.

THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER.

DURRANCE, meanwhile, walked to his lodging alone, remembering
a day, now two years since, when by a curious whim of old Dermod
Eustace he had been fetched against his will to the house by the
Lennon river in Donegal, and there, to his surprise, had been
made acquainted with Dermod's daughter Ethne. For she sur-
prised all who had first held speech with the father. Durrance
had stayed for a night in the house, and through that evening
she had played upon her violin, seated with her back towards her
audience, as was her custom when she played, lest a look or a
gesture should interrupt the concentration of her thoughts. The
melodies which she had played rang in his ears now. For the
girl possessed the gift of music, and the strings of her violin
spoke to the questions of her bow. There was in particular an
overture — the Melusine overture — which had the very sob of the
waves. Durrance had listened wondering, for the violin had
spoken to him of many things of which the girl who played it
could know nothing. It had spoken of long perilous journeys
and the faces of strange countries ; of the silver way across
moonlit seas ; of the beckoning voices from the under edges of the
desert.. It had taken a deeper, a more mysterious tone. It had

HO THE FOUR FEATHERS.

told of great joys, quite unattainable, and of great griefs too,
eternal, and with a sort of nobility by reason of their greatness ;
and of many unformulated longings beyond the reach of words ;
but with never a single note of mere complaint. So it had
seemed to Durrance that night as he had sat listening while
Ethne's face was turned away. So it seemed to him now when
he knew that her face was still to be turned away for all his days.
He had drawn a thought from her playing which he was at
some pains to keep definite in his mind. The true music cannot
complain.

Therefore it was that as he rode the next morning into the
Row his blue eyes looked out upon the world from his bronzed
face with not a jot less of his usual friendliness. He waited at
half-past nine by the clump of lilacs and laburnums at the end of
the sand, but Harry Feversham did not join him that morning,
nor indeed for the next three weeks. Ever since the two men
had graduated from Oxford it had been their custom to meet
at this spot and hour, when both chanced to be in town, and
Durrance was puzzled. It seemed to him that he had lost his
friend as well.

Meanwhile, however, the rumours of war grew to a certainty,
and when at last Feversham kept the tryst, Durrance had news.

' I told you luck might look my way. Well, she has. I go
out to Egypt on General Graham's Staff. There's talk we may run
dow the Red Sea to Suakim afterwards.'

The exhilaration of his voice brought an unmistakable envy
into Feversham's eyes. It seemed strange to Durrance even at
that moment of his good luck, that Harry Feversham should envy
him — strange and rather pleasant. But he interpreted the envy
in the light of his own ambitions.

' It is rough on you,' he said sympathetically, ' that your
regiment has to stay behind.'

Feversham rode by his friend's side in silence. Then, as they
came to the chairs beneath the trees, he said :

' That was expected. The day you dined with me I sent in
my papers.'

' That night ? ' said Durrance, turning in his saddle. ' After
we had gone ?

' Yes,' said Feversham, accepting the correction. He wondered
whether it had been intended. But Durrance rode silently
forward. Again Harry Feversham was conscious of a reproach

THE FOUR FEATHERS. HI

in his friend's silence, and again he was wrong. For Durrance
suddenly spoke heartily, and with a laugh.

' I remember. You gave us your reasons that night. But
for the life of me I can't help wishing that we had been going out-
together. When do you leave for Ireland ? '

' To-night.'

* So soon ? '

They turned their horses and rode westwards again down the
alley of trees. The morning was still fresh. The limes and
chestnuts had tost nothing of their early green, and since the
May was late that year, its blossoms still hung delicately white
like snow upon the branches and shone red against the dark
rhododendrons. The Park shimmered in a haze of sunlight, and
the distant roar of the streets was as the tumbling of river
water.

' It is a long time since we bathed in Sandford Lasher,' said
Durrance.

' Or froze in the Easter vacations in the big snow-gully on
Great End,' returned Feversham. Both men had the feeling that
on this morning a volume in their book of life was ended, and
since the volume had been a pleasant one to read, and they did
not know whether its successors would sustain its promise, they
were looking backwards through the leaves before they put it
finally away.

' You must stay with us, Jack, when you come back,' said
Feversham.

Durrance had schooled himself not to wince, and he did not
even at that anticipatory ' us.' If his left hand tightened upon
the thongs of his reins, the sign could not be detected by his
friend.

' If I come back,' said Durrance. ' You know my creed. I
could never pity a man who died on active service. I would very
much like to come by that end myself.'

It was a quite simple creed, consistent with the simplicity of
the man who uttered it. It amounted to no more than this : that
to die decently was worth a good many years of life. So that he
uttered it without melancholy or any sign of foreboding. Even
so, however, he had a fear that perhaps his friend might place
another interpretation upon the words, and he looked quickly into
his face. He only saw again, however, that puzzling look of envy
in Feversham's eyes.

142 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

' You see there are worse things which can happen,' he con-
tinued. ' Disablement, for instance. Clever men could make a
shift perhaps to put up with it. But what in the world should I
do if I had to sit in a chair all my days ? It makes me shiver to
think of it,' and he shook his broad shoulders to unsaddle that
fear. ' Well, this is the last ride. Let us gallop,' and he let
out his horse.

Feversham followed his example, and side by side they went
racing down the sand. At the bottom of the Row they stopped,
shook hands, and with the curtest of nods parted. Feversham
rode out of the Park, Durrance turned back and walked his horse
up towards the seats beneath the trees.

Even as a boy in his home in Devonshire upon a wooded creek
of the Salcombe estuary, he had always been conscious of a certain
restlessness, a desire to sail down that creek and out over the
levels of the sea, a dream of queer outlandish countries and
peoples beyond the dark familiar woods. And the restlessness
had grown upon him, so that ' Ohiessens,' even when he had
inherited it with its farms and lands, had remained always in his
thoughts as a place to come home to rather than an estate to
occupy a life. He purposely exaggerated that restlessness now,
and purposely set against it words which Feversham had spoken
and which he knew to be true. Ethne Eustace would hardly be
happy outside her county of Donegal. Therefore, even had things
fallen out differently, as he phrased it, there might have been a
clash. Perhaps it was as well that Harry Feversham was to
marry Ethne — and not another than Feversham.

Thus at all events he argued as he rode, until the riders
vanished from before his eyes, and the ladies in their coloured
frocks beneath the cool of the trees. The trees themselves
dwindled to ragged mimosas, the brown sand at his feet spread
out in a widening circumference and took the bright colour of
honey; and upon the empty sand black stones began to heap
themselves shapelessly like coal, and to flash in the sun like
mirrors. He was deep in his anticipations of the Soudan, when
he heard his name called out softly in a woman's voice, and,
looking up, found himself close by the rails.

' How do you do, Mrs. Adair ? ' said he, and he stopped his horse.
Mrs. Adair gave him her hand across the rails. She was Durrance's
neighbour at Southpool, and by a year or two his elder — a tall
woman remarkable for the many shades of her thick brown hair

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 143

and the peculiar pallor on her face. But at this moment the face
had brightened, there was a hint of colour in the cheeks.

' I have news for you,' said Durrance. ' Two special items.
One, Harry Feversharn is to be married.'

' To whom ? ' asked the lady eagerly.

' You should know. It was in your house in Hill Street that
Harry first met her. And I introduced him. He has been im-
proving the acquaintance in Dublin.'

But Mrs. Adair already understood ; and it was plain that the
news was welcome.

' Ethne Eustace,' she cried. ' They will be married soon ? '

' There is nothing to prevent it.'

* I am glad,' and the lady sighed as though with relief.
' What is your second item ? '

' As good as the first. I go out on General Graham's Staff.'

Mrs. Adair was silent. There came a look of anxiety into her
eyes, and the colour died out of her face.

' You are very glad, I suppose,' she said slowly.

Durrance's voice left her in no doubt.

' I should think I was. I go soon, too, and the sooner the
better. I will come and dine some night, if I may, before I go.'

'My husband will be pleased to see you,' said Mrs. Adair
rather coldly. Durrance did not notice the coldness, however.
He had his own reasons for making the most of the opportunity
which had come his way ; and he urged his enthusiasm, and laid
it bare in words more for his own benefit than with any thought of
Mrs. Adair. Indeed, he had always rather a vague impression of
the lady. She was handsome in a queer, foreign way, not so un-
common along the coasts of Devonshire and Cornwall, and she had
good hair, and was always well dressed. Moreover, she was
friendly. And at that point, Durrance's knowledge of her came
to an end. Perhaps her chief merit in his eyes was that she
had made friends with Ethne Eustace. But he was to become
better acquainted with Mrs. Adair. He rode away from the Park
with the old regret in his mind that the fortunes of himself and
his friend were this morning finally severed. As a fact he had that
morning set the strands of a new rope a-weaving which was to
bring them together again in a strange and terrible relationship.
Mrs. Adair followed him out of the Park, and walked home very
thoughtfully.

Durrance had just one week wherein to provide his equipment,

144 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

and arrange his estate in Devonshire. It passed in a continuous
hurry of preparation, so that his newspaper lay each day unfolded
in his rooms. The General was to travel overland to Brindisi, and
so on an evening of wind and rain towards the end of July Dur-
rance stepped from the Dover Pier into the mail boat for Calais.
In spite of the rain and the gloomy night, a small crowd had
gathered to give the General a send-off. As the ropes were cast
off a feeble cheer was raised, and before the cheer had ended,
Durrance found himself beset by a strange illusion. He was
leaning upon the bulwarks idly wondering whether this was his
last view of England, and with a wish that some one of his friends
had come down to see him go, when it seemed to him suddenly
that his wish was answered. For he caught a glimpse of a man
standing beneath a gas-lamp, and that man was of the stature and
wore the likeness of Harry Feversham. Durrance rubbed his
eyes and looked again. But the wind made the tongue of light
flicker uncertainly within the glass, the rain too blurred the quay.
He could only be certain that a man was standing there, he could
only vaguely distinguish beneath the lamp the whiteness of a face.
It was an illusion, he said to himself. Harry Feversham was at
that moment most likely listening to a girl playing the violin
under a clear sky in a high garden of Donegal. But even as he
was turning from the bulwarks, there came a lull of the wind, the
lights burned bright and steady on the pier, and the face leaped
from the shadows distinct in feature and expression. Durrance
leaned out over the side of the boat.

"' Harry ! ' he shouted at the top of a wondering voice.

But the figure beneath the lamp never stirred. The wind
blew the lights again this way and that, the paddles churned the
water, the mail-boat passed beyond the pier. It was an illusion, he
repeated, it was a coincidence. It was the face of a stranger very
like to Harry Feversham. It could not be Feversham's, because
the face which Durrance had seen so distinctly for a moment
was a haggard wistful face, a face stamped with an extraordinary
misery, the face of a man cast out from among his fellows.

Durrance had been very busy all that week. He had clean
forgotten the arrival of that telegram and the suspense which the
long perusal of it had caused. Moreover, his newspaper had lain
unfolded in his rooms. But his friend Harry Feversham had
come to see him off.

{To le continued.)

THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE

FEBRUABY 1902.

BROWNING IN VENICE.

BEING RECOLLECTIONS BY THE LATE KATHARINE DE KAY BRONSON,
WITH A PREFATORY NOTE BY HENRY JAMES.

* *

I HAVE read the following pages of cordial and faithful reminis-
cence, in which a frank, predominant presence seems to live
again, with an interest inevitably somewhat sad — so past and
gone to-day is so much of the life suggested. Those who fortu-
nately knew Mrs. Bronson will read into her notes still more of
it — more of her subject, more of herself too, and of many things
— than she gives, and some may well even feel tempted to do for
her what she has done here for her distinguished friend. In
Venice, during a long period, for many pilgrims, Mrs. Arthur
Bronson, originally of New York, was, so far as ' society,' hospi-
tality, a charming personal welcome were concerned, almost in sole
possession ; she had become there, with time, quite the prime
representative of those private amenities which the Anglo-Saxon
abroad is apt to miss just in proportion as the place visited is
publicly wonderful, and in which he therefore finds a value twice
as great as at home. Mrs. Bronson really earned in this way
the gratitude of mingled generations and races. She sat for twenty
years at the wide mouth, as it were, of the Grand Canal, holding
out her hand, with endless good-nature, patience, charity, to
all decently-accredited petitioners, the incessant troop of those
either bewilderedly making or fondly renewing acquaintance with
the dazzling city.

Casa Alvisi is directly opposite the high, broad-based florid
church of S. Maria della Salute — so directly that from the balcony

VOL. XII. — NO. 68, N.S. 10

146 BROWNING IN VENICE.

over the water-entrance your eye, crossing the canal, seems to
find the key-hole of the great door right in a line with it ; and
there was something in this position that, for the time, made all
Venice-lovers think of the genial padrona as thus levying in the
most convenient way the toll of curiosity and sympathy. Every-
one passed, everyone was seen to pass, and few were those not
seen to stop and to return. The most generous of hostesses died
a year ago at Florence ; her house knows her no more — it had
ceased to do so for some time before her death ; and the long,
pleased procession — the charmed arrivals, the happy sojourns at
anchor, the reluctant departures that made Ca' Alvisi, as was
currently said, a social porto di mare — is, for remembrance and
regret, already a procession of ghosts ; so that, on the spot, at
present, the attention ruefully averts itself from the dear little
old faded but once familiarly bright facade, overtaken at last by
the comparatively vulgar uses that are doing their best to ' paint
out' in Venice, right and left, by staring signs and other
vulgarities, the immemorial note of distinction. The house, in
a city of palaces, was small, but the tenant clung to her perfect, her
inclusive position — the one right place that gave her a better
command, as it were, than a better house obtained by a harder
compromise; not being fond, moreover, of spacious halls and
massive treasures, but of compact and familiar rooms, in which
her remarkable accumulation of minute and delicate Venetian
objects could show. She adored — in the way of the Venetian,
to which all her taste addressed itself — the small, the domestic
and the exquisite ; so that she would have given a Tintoretto or
two, I think, without difficulty, for a cabinet of tiny gilded
glasses or a dinner-service of the right old silver.

The general receptacle of these multiplied treasures played at
any rate, through the years, the part of a friendly private box at the
constant operatic show, a box at the best point of the best tier,
with the cushioned ledge of its front raking the whole scene and
with its withdrawing-rooms behind for more detached con-
versation ; for easy — when not indeed slightly difficult — polyglot
talk, artful bibite, artful cigarettes too, straight from the hand of
the hostess, who could do all that belonged to a hostess, place
people in relation, and keep them so, take up and put down the
topic, cause delicate tobacco and little gilded glasses to circulate,
without ever leaving her sofa-cushions or intermitting her good-
nature. She exercised in these conditions, with never a block, as

BROWNING IN VENICE. 147

we say in London, in the traffic, with never an admission, an
acceptance of the least social complication, her positive genius
for easy interest, easy sympathy, easy friendship. It was as if,
at last, she had taken the human race at large, quite irrespective
of geography, for her neighbours, with neighbourly relations as
a matter of course. These things, on her part, had at all events
the greater appearance of ease from their having found to their
purpose — and as if the very air of Venice produced them — a
cluster of forms so light and immediate, so pre-established by
picturesque custom. The old bright tradition, the wonderful
Venetian legend, had appealed to her from the first, closing
round her house and her well-plashed water-steps, where the
waiting gondolas were thick ; quite as if, actually, the ghost of
the defunct Carnival — since I have spoken of ghosts — still played
some haunting part.

Let me add, at the same time, that Mrs. Bronson's social
facility, which was really her great refuge from importunity, a
defence with serious thought and serious feeling quietly cherished
behind it, had its discriminations as well as its inveteracies, and
that the most marked of all these, perhaps, was her attachment
to Eobert Browning. Nothing in all her beneficent life had pro-
bably made her happier than to have found herself able to minister,
each year, with the returning autumn, to his pleasure and comfort.
Attached to Ca' Alvisi, on the land side, is a somewhat melancholy
old section of a Griustiniani palace, which she had annexed to her
own premises mainly for the purpose of placing it, in comfortable
guise, at the service of her friends. She liked, as she professed,,
when they were the real thing, to have them under her hand ;
and here succeeded each other, through the years, the company
of the privileged and the more closely domesticated, who liked,
harmlessly, to distinguish between themselves and outsiders.
Among visitors partaking of this pleasant provision Mr. Browning
was of course easily first. But I must leave her own pen to show
him as her best years knew him. The point was, meanwhile,
that if her charity was great even for the outsider, this was by
reason of the inner essence of it — her perfect tenderness for
Venice, which she always recognised as a link. That was the
true principle of fusion, the key to communication. She com-
municated in proportion — little or much, measuring it as she felt
people more responsive or less so ; and she expressed herself — in
other words her full affection for the place — only to those who had

10—2

148 BROWNING IN VENICE.

most of the same sentiment. The rich and interesting form in
which she found it in Browning may well be imagined — together
with the quite independent quantity of the genial at large that
she also found ; but I am not sure that his favour was not
primarily based on his paid tribute of such things as ' Two in a
Gondola,' and ' A Toccata of Galuppi.' He had more ineffaceably
than anyone recorded his initiation from of old.

She was thus, all round, supremely faithful ; yet it was per-
haps after all with the very small folk, those to the manner born,
that she made the easiest terms. She loved, she had from the first
enthusiastically adopted, the engaging Venetian people, whose
virtues she found touching, and their infirmities but such as appeal
mainly to the sense of humour and the love of anecdote ; and she
befriended and admired, she studied and spoiled them. There must
have been a multitude of whom it would scarce be too much to
say that her long residence among them was their settled golden
age. When I consider that they have lost her now I fairly wonder
to what shifts they have been put and how long they may not
have to wait for such another messenger of Providence. She
cultivated their dialect, she renewed their boats, she piously
relighted — at the top of the tide-washed pali of traghetto or
lagoon — the neglected lamp of the tutelary Madonetta ; she took
cognisance of the wives, the children, the accidents, the troubles,
as to which she became, perceptibly, the most prompt, the estab-
lished remedy. On lines where the amusement was happily less
one-sided she put together in dialect many short comedies,
dramatic proverbs, which, with one of her drawing-rooms perma-
nently arranged as a charming diminutive theatre, she caused
to be performed by the young persons of her circle — often, when
the case lent itself, by the wonderful small offspring of humbler
friends, children of the Venetian lower class, whose aptitude,
teachability, drollery, were her constant delight. It was certainly
true that an impression of Venice as humanly sweet might easily
found itself on the frankness and quickness and amiability of these
little people. They were at least so much to the good ; for the
philosophy of their patroness was as Venetian as everything else ;
helping her to accept experience without bitterness and to remain
fresh, even in the fatigue which finally overtook her, for pleasant
surprises and proved sincerities. She was herself sincere to the last
for the place of her predilection ; inasmuch as though she had
arranged herself, in the later time — and largely for the love of

BROWNING IN VENICE. 149

' Pippa Passes ' — an alternative refuge at Asolo, she absented
herself from Venice with continuity only under coercion of illness.
At Asolo, periodically, the link with Browning was more
confirmed than weakened, and there, in old Venetian territory,
and with the invasion of visitors comparatively checked, her
preferentially small house became again a setting for the pleasure
of talk and the sense of Italy. It contained again its own small
treasures, all in the pleasant key of the homelier Venetian spirit.
The plain beneath it stretched away like a purple sea from
the lower cliffs of the hills, and the white campanili of the
villages, as one was perpetually saying, showed on the expanse
like scattered sails of ships. The rumbling carriage, the old-
time, rattling, red-velveted carriage of provincial, rural Italy,
delightful and quaint, did the office of the gondola ; to Bassano,
to Treviso, to high-walled Castelfranco, all pink and gold, the
home of the great OKorgione. Here also memories cluster ; but
it is in Venice again that her vanished presence is most felt,
for there, in the real, or certainly the finer, the more sifted
Cosmopolis, it falls into its place among the others evoked, those
of the past seekers of poetry and dispensers of romance. It is
a fact that almost everyone interesting, appealing, melancholy,
memorable, odd, seems at one time or another, after many days
and much life, to have gravitated to Venice by a happy instinct,
settling in it and treating it, cherishing it, as a sort of repository
of consolations ; all of which to-day, for the conscious mind, is
mixed with its air and constitutes its unwritten history. The
deposed, the defeated, the disenchanted, the wounded, or even
only the bored, have seemed to find there something that no
other place could give. But such people came for themselves, as
we seem to see them — only with the egotism of their grievances
and the vanity of their hopes. Mrs. Bronson's case was beautifully
different — she had come altogether for others.

HENRY JAMES.

* *

1 In a letter from Browning dated in London, speaking of a pleasant
experience in Venice, he says : ' It has given an association which
will live in my mind with every delight of that dearest place in
the world.' Again, in allusion to an album of carefully chosen

1 Copyright, 1902, in the United States of America by the Century Co.

150 BROWNING IN VENICE.

Venetian photographs received as a Christmas gift, he says : ' What
a book of memories, and instigations to yet still more memories,
does that most beautiful book prove to me ! I never supposed that
photographers would have the good sense to use their art on so
many out-of-the-way scenes and sights, just those I love most.'

Nevertheless, he did not acquiesce when people suggested that
he should leave England and take up his permanent abode in
Venice. His answer was : ' Impossible ! I have too many friends
in London. I would never forsake them. Still, I admit that for
three or four months in the year I should like nothing half so well
as Venice.'

To this end he once made all arrangements for the purchase
of an ancient Venetian palace. Everything seemed propitious.
He was charmed with the early fifteenth-century construction,
with the arched windows and exquisite facade covered with
medallions of many-coloured marbles, and pleased himself with
plans and fancies of how, with certain alterations, it could easily
be made a perfect summer and autumn residence. All was decided,
the law formalities were nearly complete, and the purchase-money
was ready, when, at the last hour, a flaw in the title became
apparent, partly owing to the fact that the property belonged to
absentees. So, to the poet's intense chagrin, he was obliged to
give up his darling scheme. Perhaps he had never, in his long
lifetime, been so thoroughly annoyed by a thwarted project as by
the failure of this one. There came a day, some years later, when
he saw that al< had been ordained for his good. As a matter of
fact, the foundations of the palace were as insecure as the title,
there were many sunless rooms, some of the floors were sunken
badly, and an enormous outlay of money would have been required
to make the place habitable.

These drawbacks the poet at first refused to consider. He thought
only of the beauty and the archaeological interest ; he doubted
that the facade was in a perilous condition ; pleased himself by
fancying how many windows he could open to the morning sun on
the garden, how many balconies could be added towards the south ;
in fact, he may be said to have passed a month, not in building
but in restoring a ' castle in the air ' hanging over the waters of
the Grand Canal. Even when he became convinced that Fate
had kept a kindly hand over him, and that the purchase, had it
been concluded, would have proved a source of endless trouble and
perhaps regret, he still remained offended with the unseen and

BROWNING IN VENICE. 151

unknown owners of the palazzo. It was only after his son had
bought the Palazzo Kezzonico l that the father was really re-
conciled to the loss of the Manzoni.

The poet's nature was so essentially joyous that one was at a
loss to decide where he took the keenest pleasure, whether in his
daily walks or his afternoon rows in the gondola. He seemed
never to weary of either, but my personal experience of his delight
was in the latter, when we floated over the still lagoons. The view
of the rose-coloured city rising from the pale-green waters, of the
golden light of sunset on the distant Alps, of the day as it turned
to evening behind the Euganean Hills, never seemed to pall upon
his sense.

' Only Shelley has given us an idea of this,' he would say, and
quote lines from ' Julian and Maddalo.' ' Never say Euganean,'
he corrected me ; ' many people make that mistake, but if you
keep in mind that the poet makes the word rhyme to ' psean,' you
will remember to pronoun it Eugane-an.'

His memory for the poems he had read in his youth was ex-
traordinary. If one quoted a line from Byron, who, he said, was
the singer of his first enthusiasm, he would continue the quotation,
never hesitating for a word, and then interrupt himself, saying
' I think you have had enough of this,' to which his dear sister
and I would give silent consent, lest the effort of memory should
tire him. He was very proud of his retentive memory and of his
well-preserved sight ; the latter he attributed to his practice of
bathing his eyes in cold water every morning. He was proud,
too, of his strength, of his power of walking for hours without
fatigue, of the few requirements of his Spartan-like daily life, and
above all he was proud of his son, who was his idol.

Yes, that was his vulnerable point, the heel of Achilles.
People who praised or loved or noticed his only child found the

1 It is on the left side of the palace, at the corner above the little canal, that
one may see the memorial tablet erected by the municipality of Venice :

ROBERTO BROWNING

MORTO IN QUESTO PALAZZO

IL 12 DICEMBRB 1889

VENEZIA

POSE

' Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, " Italy." '

152 BROWNING IN VENICE.

direct road to his heart. Even those who only spoke with him of
' Pen ' were at once his friends and worthy of attention and interest.
He said to me many years ago, while awaiting anxiously the result
of his son's earnest art studies :

' Do you know, dear friend, if the thing were possible, I would
renounce all personal ambition and would destroy every line I ever
wrote, if by so doing I could see fame and honour heaped on my
Kobert's head.'

What a proof are these words of an intense nature devoid of
all egotism ! In his boy he saw the image of the wife whom he
adored, literally adored ; for, as I felt, the thbught of her, as an
angel in heaven, was never out of his mind. He wore a small
gold ring on his watch-chain. ' This was hers,' he said. ' Can
you fancy that tiny finger ? Can you believe that a woman could
wear such a circlet as this ? It is a child's.'

The only other souvenir on his chain was a coin placed there
years ago, the date 1848, a piece of the first money struck by
Manin in Venice to record the freedom from Austrian dominion.
' I love this coin.' he said, ' as she would have loved it. You know
what she felt and wrote about United Italy.'

He had no personal vanity : it never occurred to him to admire
himself in any way, to call attention to the beauty of his hand,
which in old age was the hand of youth, nor did he seem to be
aware of the perfect outline of his head, the colour and brightness
of his eyes, or the fairness of his skin, which, with his snow-
white hair, made him look as if carved in old Greek marble.

After his disappointment with regard to the Palazzo Manzoni
he cherished a momentary — idea, may I call it ? — perhaps fancy
is the better word — of buying an unfinished villa on the Lido, the
sand-strip towards the Adriatic, begun in years gone by for Victor
Emmanuel. He would talk of this with great zest, saying,
' Thence one could see every day the divine sunsets,' and continue
with a list of the charms and advantages of the really beautiful place,
then pause and wait for the assent and approbation of his sister or
some listening friend. He seemed annoyed when no such word
was spoken. He could not bring those who loved him quite to
agree with so unpractical a scheme, yet all contrary arguments of
distance from town and markets, exposure to storms, and so on,
seemed to annoy him, until at last everyone ended by listening
to his enthusiastic plans, while offering no direct opposition to
them. After a time, finding that in this case silence meant the

BROWNING IN VENICE. 153

reverse of consent, he ceased to talk and dream of a ' villa on the
Lido.'

He expressed one day a wish to go to the Church of San
Niccolo to find the tomb of his hero Salinguerra. On the way
he talked of the character and deeds of this soldier prince, who
plays so important a part in the poem of ' Sordello ' ; how he was
taken by the Venetians at Ferrara, and kept for years an honoured
prisoner by the republic, and how he died in Casa Bosco at San
Toma, and was buried with great pomp at San Niccolo al Lido.
After searching vainly for some time through the lonely church,
where no sacristan was to be found, he discovered or rediscovered
the memorial tablet in a sort of corridor attached to the east side
of the church. It bears in Grothic characters the name and date
of death of the renowned Salinguerra, which being translated
signifies ' leap to war.'

The poet looked at the ancient stone with great interest and
attention, and on the way back to Venice he seemed lost in
thought. Though he said but little, I could follow through that
the current of his thought. He was repassing in his mind that
complicated bit of mediaeval Italian histoiy so strongly treated
in his own great poem. While he took a vivid and ever-present
interest in all he had written, he very rarely spoke on the
subject, even to his most intimate friends. In a letter of thanks
for a manuscript collection of dramatic episodes taken from
Venetian archives, he said :

' The extracts are all very characteristic and valuable. If I
do not immediately turn them to use, it is because of an old
peculiarity in my mental digestion — a long and obscure process.
There comes up unexpectedly some subject for poetry, which has
been dormant, and apparently dead, for perhaps dozens of years.
A month since I wrote a poem of some two hundred lines about a
story I heard more than forty years ago, and never dreamed of
trying to repeat, wondering how it had so long escaped me ; and
so it has been with my best things. These petits fails vrais are
precious.'

The poem he spoke of is ' Donald.' I always fancied that in
Venice the poet was more ready to be pleased than elsewhere ;
everything charmed him. He found grace and beauty in the
popolo, whom he paints so well in the Groldoni sonnet. The
poorest street children were pretty in his eyes. He would admire
a carpenter or a painter who chanced to be at work in the house,

154 BROWNING IN VENICE.

and say to me : ' See the fine poise of the head, the movement of
the torso, those well-cut features. You might fancy that man in
the crimson robe of a senator, as you see them on Tintoret's
canvas.'

I would occasionally translate his compliment to the man in
question, in milder terms : ' The signore says you look like the
people in the old pictures ' ; and it amused him to see the work-
man change colour at words of praise from the one he well knew
as the sommo poeta. Professor Molmenti wrote to him one day
with the request that he would write something for a pamphlet
published at the time of the unveiling of Goldoni's statue in
Venice. He acquiesced without hesitation, and the very next
day the sonnet was ready for print. It was written very rapidly ;
probably it was thought out carefully before he put pen to paper,
as I observed there were but two or three trifling alterations in the
original copy. He seemed pleased that the committee should
have asked him to write, and pleased to accede to the wish. The
subject appealed to his taste, and he seemed most happy to show
his sympathy with Venice and Venetians.

The saying that ' no man is a hero to his valet de chambre '
was disproved in the case of Kobert Browning. He was so
gracious and yet so dignified with servants that he was as
profoundly revered by them as he was beloved. An exact account
of his gentle geniality in this regard might read like exaggera-
tion. He appeared to dread giving his inferiors trouble ; it was
as though he would fain spare them the sense of servitude, which
his own independent spirit caused him to imagine a painful
burden. It seemed as if he were ever striving to place a cushion
under a galling yoke, and in vain one sought to convince him
that service rendered to such as he could only be a source of
pride and pleasure to the server. He would always resist the
hand of a friend or menial that tried to assist him, even in so
small a matter as the adjustment or removal of his great-coat or
his hat.

' Nothing that I can do for myself should be done for me,'
he would say, and brave was the servant who dared hold an
umbrella over his head as he stepped into or out of the gondola.
' What do you take me for,' he would exclaim — ' an infant or
a man ? '

In Venice his memory will live in many a humble heart until
its pulse has ceased to beat. ' There'll never be another like

BROWNING IN VENICE. 155

him,' is still the common saying whenever his name is mentioned
to those who served him.

In his immense humanity he refused to make distinctions of
manner among those of his own class of life who approached him,
always excepting the rare cases where base qualities had been
proved beyond a doubt to his min4. The thing he most abhorred
was untruthfulness ; even insincerity in its most conventional
form was detestable to an upright mind which loved and sought
for truth in all its phases. His first impulse was to think well of
people, to like them, to respect them ; they were human souls,
and therefore to him of the greatest earthly interest. He con-
versed affably with all. Lover of beauty as he was, he would talk
as pleasantly with dull old ladies as with young and pretty ones.
He made himself delightful at a dinner-party; whether the
guests chanced to be of mediocre intelligence or of superior brains,
his fund of sparkling anecdote for all was never exhausted. In
this, as in many other ways, one learned from him the lesson of
self-forgetfulness. He never asked, ' Do these people amuse me ?
Do I find them agreeable ? ' His only thought was, ' Let me try
to make their time pass pleasantly.'

He wrote a few words some years ago in .the album of Lia, a
daughter of Princess Melanie Metternich, a lovely little creature,
just ten years of age, who died some months later of scarlet fever.
Among her books the mother found one containing original
verses, some most pathetic lines, bidding her brother farewell, and
prophetic of her approaching death. The child had never shown
them to anyone, not even to her governess. I copied and sent
them to Mr. Browning, and he thus wrote in answer :

' I want to say how much touched I was by those dear
innocencies of the poor sweet child a week before the end. The
mother's discovery of that book, those unsuspected yearnings in
verse, one cannot venture to try and realise that. I like to
think that when the kind little creature asked me so prettily to
write my name in her birthday book there went some sort of true
sympathy (in the asking) with a person she had heard was a
" poet," not merely a stranger with a name other people told her
they had heard of. Perhaps she was meaning to be herself a
"poet." Well, she is passed into poetry, for all who knew her
even so slightly as I.'

Some years ago an overflow of rivers, and consequent inunda-
tion of a part of the Venetian territory, interrupted for a time all

156 BROWNING IN VENICE.

communication between Venice and northern Italy. In a letter
written at this fateful time, soon after his return to London, he
said:

' As for the failure to get to Venice, we, my sister and I, have
only regretted it once, that is, uninterruptedly ever since. You
must know that, beside the adverse floods and bridge-breakings,
I was, for the first time in my life, literally lamed by what I
took for an attack of rheumatism, which I caught just before
leaving St. Pierre de Chartreuse, through my stupid inadvertence
in sitting with a window open at my back — reading the Iliad, all
my excuse ! — while clad in a thin summer suit, and snow on the
hills and bitterness everywhere ; . . . but this was no such slight
matter at Bologna, and I fancied I might be absolutely crippled
at Venice if I even managed to overcome all obstacles and get
there. Of course now that what is done is done, I am tantalised
with fancies of what might have been done otherwise. But, if I
live and do well, be sure that I will go as early to Venice next
year, and stay as late, as circumstances will allow.'

A gifted friend of mine, who met Mr. Browning in my house,
thus writes of him :

' It was evident to me that he always strove to excuse the
faults of others and overlook their weaknesses, gathering all, with
his large charity, into the great brotherhood of humanity. But
his indignation at anything low, base, or untrue was like a flash of
fire. His whole face would change and glow as he denounced
those who used their talents to corrupt the world, as he thought
some of the modern French novelists do. No word was too scathing,
no scorn too intense, for that great sin consciously committed.'

In this connection I recollect that a certain lady, whom he had
known slightly years ago in Rome, met him one day in the street
and greeted him with, ' Oh, Mr. Browning, you are the very
person I wished to see ! ' This was somewhat embarrassing, as he
did not recognise his former acquaintance in the least ; so she
hurriedly explained to him who she once had been — the wife of
an English banker in Rome — and who she then was — the wife of
an Italian councillor of prefecture.

' And what, pray, can I do for you ? ' asked Mr. Browning.

' I have written a poem,' was her answer, ' and I want you to
read it and tell me what you think of it ; ' so there and then she
brought forth a manuscript from her pocket, and was about to
read it aloud in the street when he stopped her, saying :

BROWNING IN VENICE, 157

' Not here, not here ! Had we not better go into a shop ? '

So, as they chanced to be near the library on the Piazza, they
stepped into a book-shop, and the title and dedication of the poem
were read. It was addressed to a French novelist, whom the
author called ' the Jenner of literature.' Mr. Browning was dis-
pleased, but, as he said, he managed to conceal his real sentiments,
only saying :

' I think I should be an unfair critic on such a subject. I
would rather not hear the poem.'

Surprised, the lady asked his reason. ' Do you not think,' she
inquired, ' that the portrayal of the evil existing in the world has
the effect of making people fear and avoid it ? '

' Not in the very least,' he explained ; ' the exact contrary is
the case. It tends to make people who sin occasionally consider
themselves admirably virtuous as compared with those who
commit sins every day and hour.' So saying, he took leave of the
poetess.

One of his great pleasures was to walk with my daughter
through the little Venetian calli. He liked to find himself
suddenly in one so narrow as to force him to close his umbrella,
whether in sun or rain.

' Edith is the best cicerone in the world,' he said ; ' she knows
everything and teaches me all she knows. There never was such
a guide.'

In past years he had known little of the tortuous inner streets
of Venice, so all was new to him. He sometimes fancied that he
and his young companion had discovered a hitherto unknown bit
of stone carving or bas-relief. I remember hearing him give a
description of the tablet which . marks the visit of Pope Alexander
to Venice, which the two explorers had found in a dim, out-of-
the-way corner, and he seemed so pleased that I dared not
disappoint him by saying that its existence is mentioned in
various guide-books. One of his favourite walks was to SS.
Giovanni e Paolo to see the Colleoni, which he considered the
finest equestrian statue in the world. He remarked that the
artist was well named Verocchio, or ' true eye,' and related to us
one day, in his own inimitable terse manner, the story of the
checkered life of the great condottiere, and why his statue had
been erected in Venice. He never passed a day without taking one
or more long walks ; indeed, his panacea for most ills was exercise,
and the exercise he chiefly advocated was walking. He wrote :

158 BROWNING IN VENICE.

' I get as nearly angry as it is in me to become with people I
love when they trifle with their health, — that is, with their life, —
like children playing with jewels over a bridge-side, jewels which,
once in the water, how can we, the poor lookers-on, hope to
recover ? You don't know how absolutely well I am after my
walking, not on the mountains merely, but on the beloved Lido.
Gro there, if only to stand and be blown about by the sea-wind.'

His long walks on the Lido were among his greatest pleasures.
At one time he went there daily with his congenial friends Mr.
and Mrs. Sargent Curtis. He would return full of colour and
health, talk of the light and life and fresh air with enthusiasm,
combined with a sort of pity for those who had remained at home.
' It is like coming into a room from the outer air,' he said, ' to
re-enter Venice after walking on the sea-shore.'

When storms kept him by force in the house all day, he never
complained ; but one could see that it troubled him to find
himself a prisoner. He would stand at the window and watch the
sea-gulls as they sailed to and fro, their presence a sure sign of
heavy storms in the Adriatic. He remarked upon their strength
of wing and grace of flight, as they swept down to the wreaths
and long lines of dark-green seaweed floating on the surface of
the canal between the house and the Church of the Salute. One
day he observed : ' I do not know why I never see in descriptions
of Venice any mention of the sea-gulls ; to me they are even more
interesting than the doves of St. Mark.'

Indeed, the white-winged creatures so charmed him that I
often thought the world would see a poem from his pen to
immortalise the birds. He admired the Salute, the sometimes
adversely criticised Church of Our Lady of Health.

' Is it possible,' he said, ' that wise men disapprove of those
quaint buttresses ? To me they rise out of the sea like gigantic
shells ; but then I am not an architect, and only know what is
beautiful to my own eyes.'

' One of his most charming traits was the readiness with which
he always acquiesced when asked to read aloud his own poems.
He accepted no thanks, saying in a genial manner : ' It is very
kind of you to wish to hear them ; when shall it be ? '

He liked especially to read for his friends the Curtises at the
Palazzo Barbaro, where he felt at home, feeling certain that hosts
and guests were sympathetic. The day and hour fixed, he allowed
nothing to interfere with his intention. The sense of honour

BROWNING IN VENICE. 159

which showed itself in the smallest matters made it impossible for
him to frame even a conventional excuse when his absence might
disappoint others. Rather than b^sak a promise he would brave
a storm, or force himself to keep his word even when he justly
complained that his throat was not quite as it should be. That
word, once given, must be held to, despite all obstacles. Let me
quote again from my friend's letter :

' His reading of his own poems was a never-to-be-forgotten
delight — simple, direct, and virile as was the nature of the man.
The graver portions he read in a quiet, almost introspective way,
as if he were thinking it all out again. I remember once that in
finishing the grand profession of faith at the end of " Saul " his
voice failed him a very little, and when it was ended he turned
his back to us, who were gathered about him in reverent silence,
and laying the book quietly on the table, stood so for a moment.
. . . He seemed as full of dramatic interest in reading " In a
Balcony " as if he had just written it for our benefit. One who
sat near him said that it was a natural sequence that the step of
the guard should be heard coming to take Norbert to his doom,
as, with a nature like the queen's, who had known only one hour
of joy in her sterile life, vengeance swift and terrible would follow
on the sudden destruction of her happiness.

' " Now, I don't quite think that," answered Browning, as if
he were following out the play as a spectator. '• The queen had
a large and passionate temperament, which had only once been
touched and brought into intense life. She would have died, as
by a knife in her heart. The guard would have come to carry
away her dead body."

' " But I imagine that most people interpret it as I do," was
the reply. » %

' " Then," said Browning, with quick interest, " don't you
think it would be well to put it in the stage directions, and have
it seen that they were carrying her across the back of the stage ? "

' Whether this was ever done I do not know ; but it was
wonderful to me, as showing the personal interest he took in his
own creations.'

He had a fund of simple playfulness which often comes with
genius. One evening, after dinner at the Casa Alvisi, he was
talking on the subject of certain music with the lady whose letter
I have quoted, when he said suddenly :

' Come, I will play to you on the spinet in the anteroom.'

160 BROWNING IN VENICE.

So they went together, and found the place but partly lighted
by one dim lamp. The spinet had no chair, so he knelt on the
carpet before it, the light falling on his bent head, its snow-white
hair, and on his small, eloquent hands. He played a little fugue
of Bach, and finding that one or two of the ancient keys refused
to do their work, — for the spinet was a curiosity, and not meant
for use, — he said :

' Raise the wooden bar over the hammers ; let us see if it will
do better.'

The lady obeyed, and all going well, he was threading some
of the intricacies of the great maestro, when she, thinking still to
improve the tone, lifted the bar higher, then all at once the little
hammers, tipped with bits of crow-quill, freed from captivity,
leaped into the air and fell lifeless on the strings. Then all was
lost, and in the midst of suppressed laughter he said :

' Now you have ruined the instrument ! Let us cover it
quickly and go back.'

So they covered over the destruction, and, like naughty
children, lifted the portiere and went back demurely to the
drawing-room, making no confession of the crime. He would
refer to this escapade with boyish amusement.

He was on friendly terms with one of the foreign residents in
Venice, an old Russian prince, a man of intelligence and varied
experience. Born in Rome in the beginning of the nineteenth
century and educated in Russia, he afterwards represented his
country at the courts of Athens, Constantinople, and Turin. At
the latter place he was the friend of Cavour and of good service in
maintaining friendly diplomatic relations between St. Petersburg
and newly formed United Italy. Between him and Browning,
therefore, numerous subjects of common interest existed, and their
long conversations were enjoyed equally on both sides.

' I like Gagarin, with his crusty old port flavour,' the poet says
in one of his letters.

On one never-to-be-forgotten evening the subject of music
took the place of old-time politics. To the great surprise of the
prince, the poet recalled to his memory, and sang in a low, sweet
voice, a number of folk-songs and national airs he had caught by
ear during his short stay in Russia, more than fifty years before.
First one would sing and then the other ; if one hesitated for a
note or phrase, the other could generally supply the deficiency,
and with great spirit and mutual delight they continued the

BROWNING IN VENICE. 161

curious tournament for quite an hour. It was evident that the
old music took them both back to the days of their youth. The
Kussian expressed himself amazed at the poet's musical memory.
' It is better than my own, on which I have hitherto piqued
myself not a little,' he said at the time, and he often referred to
the experience of that evening as the most remarkable proof of
memory he ever met with.

Browning never failed to read the London daily papers, but
seldom found time to look at those published in Venice. When
he did take up one of the latter he would smile and say :

' Now listen to the iniquities committed in this wicked city
yesterday ! '

Then he would read aloud the police reports, which never
recorded anything more serious than a petty theft of oars or
forcole, cavalli di gondola, or, at the worst, some household linen
— by a bold thief abstracted from its drying place — to the value
of five francs. Comparison of these delinquencies with those
of similar columns in other lands was really a source of delight to
the poet.

' How pleasant it is to be in the midst of so guileless a com-
munity ! ' he would say, with a genial laugh. On reading the
necrologies, which often recorded the demise of someone ' morto
nella ancora fresca eta di sessanta-cinque anni ' (dead at the still
youthful age of sixty-five), „ They consider sixty-five an early
death apparently,' he said, with a smile.

A modern book was brought to his notice during his last
sojourn (but one) in Venice. It is Tassini's ' CuriositaVeneziane,'
which gives a history in brief of the old palaces, together with
their divers le~gends ; also the origin of the names of the streets
and bridges. He was interested in this, and even mentions the
book in a letter written after his return to London : ' Tassini
tempts me to dip into him whenever I pass the book-case.'

He was impressed by a story in this volume, which he after-
wards told in verse. It is published in ' Asolando,' and is entitled
' Ponte dell' Angelo.' Not content with Tassini's version of the
legend, the poet looked it up in the ' Annals of the Cappucini,' by
Father Boverio. He said nothing of this to anyone until a certain
day, when, to the question, ' Where would you like to go ? ' he
answered promptly :

' To see the house of the Devil and the Advocate.'

We rowed quickly to the place where three waterways meet,

VOL. XII.— NO. 68, N.S. 11

162 BROWNING IN VENICE.

and where the Ponte dell' Angelo spans one of the narrow canals.
Opposite stands the old Soranzo palace, with an angel carved in
stone on the facade.

' Stop,' he said to the gondolier, ' broad-backed Luigi,' as he
always called him. ' Do you know the story of that angel ? '

'Si, signore.'

< Then relate it.'

The boatman at once proceeded to repeat most volubly in the
Venetian dialect the tale, familiar to him from childhood.

' Do you think it is true, Luigi ? ' said the poet.

' Yes, sir, it is really true ; it has been printed.' The man's
faith in the veracity of print amused the poet immensely.

He was much pleased on one occasion when Professor Nencioni
came from Home expressly to see him. Nencioni is perhaps the
only Italian who has thoroughly mastered the difficulties of
Browning's poetry, certainly the only one who has translated and
written essays upon it, and one need hardly say that he is an en-
thusiastic admirer. Browning was already aware of this through
a series of articles in the ' Fanfulla della Domenica,' published at
Kome. Italian recognition of his work was especially gratifying
to him for various reasons, and he welcomed this distinguished
exponent of it with genuine gratitude and pleasure. ' I subscribed
to the paper at once,' he said, with his usual frank geniality, ' after
reading your first kind notice of me.'

Together with his clever young friend and ' fellow-pilgrim '
Carlo Placci, the professor dined with the poet at Casa Alvisi.
Everyone was in the best of spirits, but to recall such conversa-
tion is beyond my power. I only remember that in the evening
Nencioni, speaking to me in an aside, said : ' I have studied
Browning since my early youth, when first I saw him in Siena.
I consider that his work has qualities not to be found even in
Shakespeare ; in fact, in some respects I regard him as the
superior of the two.'

After the Professor had gone I said to the poet, ' Do you know
what your admirer says of you ? '

'No; what?'

So I made myself a base tattler and repeated his words. The
poet frowned and shook his head impatiently.

'No, no, no; I won't hear that. No one in the world will
ever approach Shakespeare — never ! '

So I repented my boldness, but fancied, nevertheless, he must

BROWNING IN VENICE. 163

have been somewhat pleased by what, in his modesty, he found
an exaggerated expression of admiration. Indeed, this was but
one of many instances which went to prove that, although he had
a sincere consciousness of his own merit as a poet, he placed
others far above himself. Nothing annoyed him more than com-
parisons so often made between himself and Tennyson, for whom
he had a heartfelt appreciation. The slightest word of dispraise
or faint praise of his friend and brother poet roused him to
positive anger. His admirers frequently displeased him in this
way, thinking to flatter him by some such expression of opinion,
and his sharp quick answer always punished their want of tact and
discrimination.

In one of his later letters he says :

' Did you get a little book by Michael Field, " Long Ago," a
number of poems written to innestare what fragmentary lines and
words we have left of Sappho's poetry ? . . . The author is a
great genius, a friend we know. Do you like it ? '

In speaking afterwards to me on the subject of this work, his
praise was enthusiastic, and he added to his expressions of
admiration for the author's genius his sorrow for the trouble and
anxiety she had been lately called upon to bear.

In Venice, as elsewhere, Browning rose early, and after a light
breakfast went with his sister to the Public Gardens. They never
failed to carry with them a store of cakes and fruits for the
prisoned elephant, whose lonely fate was often pityingly alluded
to by the poet, in whom a love of animals amounted to a passion.
A large baboon, confined in what had once been a greenhouse,
was also an object of special interest to him. This beast
fortunately excited no commiseration, being healthy and content,
and taking equal pleasure with the givers in his daily present of
dainty food. After saying ' Good morning ' and ' Good appetite '
to these animals, he gave a passing salutation to a pair of beauti-
ful gazelles, presented to the gardens by one of his friends ; then
a word of greeting to two merry marmosets, the gift of another
friend ; then a glance at the pelicans, the ostriches, and the
quaint kangaroos ; he had a word and a look for each, seeming to
study them and almost to guess their thoughts. After this he
made the tour of the gardens, three times round the inclosure
with great exactness, and then returned to his temporary home in
the Palazzo Giustiniani-Recanati.

On a certain day he met one of the servants, whose joy it was

11—2

164 BROWNING IN VENICE.

to wait upon him, carrying a rather heavy basket of grapes and
other fruits on her arm.

' Oh. Griuseppina,' he cried, ' let me help you ! ' and seized the
basket suddenly from her hand.

The woman, overwhelmed by such condescension, protested,
' Troppo onore, signore.'

' Nonsense ! ' said the poet. ' You are always helping me ;
won't you allow me for once to help you ? '

Still the woman resisted, saying, ' It is not for such as you,
0 signore ! '

This was more than he could bear.

' We are all made of the same clay, Griuseppina ' ; and gaining
his point — for who could withstand his will ? — he held one handle
of the basket until they reached the palace door.

This same worthy woman is fond of relating a story of her
master which illustrates another side of his character. He had
paid her weekly account, and there remained one centesimo as
change. The woman showed the little coin, saying shyly, ' I
cannot offer this trifle to the signore.'

' Yes, my good Griuseppina,' he said, taking it from her hand ;
' it is one thing to be just and another to be generous ; you do
right to return it to me.'

' And not long after this,' continues the woman, ' he made me
such a grand present ! '

The Griustiniani-Kecanati palace was in some respects worthy
of a poet's sojourn. It is one of the oldest in Venice, built in the
fifteenth century, and has a fine facade, with Gothic windows
looking out upon a court and garden, and a southern exposure.
It belongs to a lineal descendant of one of the most ancient and
historically interesting families in Italy, the one in which the
well-known circumstance of the marriage of a monk, by order of
the Pope, occurred many centuries ago. The aroma of antiquity
— and we may add sanctity, since many members of the family
lived and died in the odour thereof — was a source of pleasure to the
poet. He said once, ' I am glad to have written some of my
verses in the house of the Griustiniani,' for his soul rejoiced in the
heroic deeds and romantic records of bygone days.

It was curious to see that, on each one of his arrivals in Venice,
he took up his life precisely as he had left it. On Sunday morning
he always went with his sister to the same Waldensian chapel, in
which they seemed to take great interest, especially enjoying the

BROWNING IN VENICE. 165

preaching of a certain eloquent pastor, whose name, I regret to
say, I have forgotten. On the return from the brisk morning
walk he read his newspapers and letters, answering each day a
few among the many received from friends and admirers. He was
amused, but never impatient, with the innumerable requests for
autographs, some of which were written in illiterate and inelegant
handwriting, many of them from the Western States and far
California. When his instinct told him these were genuinely
asked for, and not from the idly curious, he would answer them,
unless, indeed, the number of important private letters took up
too much of his precious time. When people asked him viva
voce for an autograph, he looked puzzled, and said :

' I don't like to write always the same verse, yet I can remem-
ber only one.'

Of course the person addressed replied : ' I am grateful for
anything whatever that comes to your mind.' Then he would take
up his pen at once and write :

All that I know of a certain star, etc.

Sometimes, when in a merry mood, he wrote .this verse in so fine
a handwriting that only such extraordinary eyesight as his own
could decipher it, and on one occasion, in the same microscopic
calligraphy, he wrote Mrs. Barbauld's lines,

Life ! we've been long together, &c.

saying, after he had read it aloud, ' If she had never written aught
but that one verse she would deserve to be for ever remembered.'

I recollect an amusing incident a propos of autographs. A
Venetian banker had asked, through me, an autograph for his
daughter's album. Browning said, ' I really cannot write always
the same thing ; ' then, after a pause, he exclaimed, ' Ah, now I
have it,' and, seating himself at a table, he quickly wrote a verse
which I had often heard him quote and laugh at, about pence and
pounds, a variety of the well-known proverb. Edith said timidly :

' But will they not find that rather personal ? '

The poet thought a moment, and, laughing heartily, said, ' I
believe you are right, my dear ; here, keep this for yourself, and
I will write something else for the banker's daughter.'

He could not possibly have managed to keep pace with his
large correspondence but for the aid of his sister, his guardian
angel, who helped him in this as in many other ways — not obtru-
sively, for she knew his strong spirit of independence, but with

166 BROWNING IN VENICE.

the fine tact that can be inspired by intense affection only, com-
bined with a high order of intelligence. The most perfect under-
standing existed between the two, and the devotion of the sister
to the supremely endowed brother was appreciated and admired
by all who were privileged to observe it. At midday these two
dear friends took their second breakfast together, ordering by
preference Italian dishes, such as risotto, macaroni, and all fruits
in their reason, especially grapes and figs. They enjoyed their
novel menus and tete-a-tete repasts, talking and laughing the
while, and approving especially of the cook's manner of treating
ortolans, of which ' mouthfuls for cardinals ' the poet writes so
amusingly in the prologue to ' Ferishtah's Fancies.' About three
o'clock they went out in a gondola. To the question, 'Where
shall we go ? ' the answer was :

' Anywhere. All is beautiful, but let it be toward the Lido.'
They seldom wished to make formal visits, though they were
scrupulously exact in returning those which, as he always said,
people were ' kind enough to make him.'

Sometimes, though rarely, they wandered through the antiquity
shops. The poet had a keen flair for good bric-a-brac, and had
an especial liking for tapestry and old carved furniture. He
seldom sought for them, but his eye seized quickly upon an object
of interest or value. He never hesitated or changed his mind ;
his intuition was always correct. A purchase once made, he was
as thoroughly delighted as if the particular object were the first
bibelot he had ever had the good luck to acquire. Like a child
with a new toy, he would carry it himself (size and weight per-
mitting) into the gondola, rejoice over his chance in finding it,
and descant eloquently upon its intrinsic merits. In this, as in
every other phase of his character, he was entirely unspoiled.
Then he would explain minutely where the object should be placed
in the London house, and add significantly, ' I never buy anything
without knowing exactly what I wish to do with it,' which was
quite true, as his mind was unfailingly clear from great things to
trifles. ' You might take this lesson from me, if none other,' he
said to me playfully ; for he disapproved of the habit of buying
useless things in a vague manner only because they were old and
pretty.

He never expressed a wish to ' see sights ' in the tourist manner,
but would occasionally visit such churches as SS. Giovanni e
Paolo or the Fran, and study the monuments with close attention.

BROWNING IN VENICE. 167

These seemed to interest him more than old pictures, and he
examined carefully, on one occasion, the marble carvings within
and without of the Miracoli, which he called a ' jewel of a church.'
The ancient palaces with their strangely varied facades were always
interesting and suggestive to him ; we see how suggestive in that
wonderful short poem called ' In a Gondola,' in which he pictures
Venice, it seems to me, as no one else in prose or verse has ever
depicted the sea-city.

About five o'clock, when we returned to the Alvisi for tea, the
poet would sometimes say, ' Excuse me for to-day,' and retire to
his own apartments in the Gfiustiniani. He never gave nor was
asked his reason for doing so ; it was enough that he wished it.
At other times he would join us at the tea-table and talk with
equal facility in English, French, or Italian with visitors who
chanced to be present. Occasionally, to our great delight, he
would say, ' Edith dear, you may give me a cup of tea to-day ; '
but, as a rule, he abstained from what he considered a somewhat
unhygienic beverage if taken before dinner. When it so pleased
them the brother and sister went together to their own rooms, and
punctually at half-past seven returned to dine at Casa Alvisi.
The poet, unlike many men of letters, was always scrupulously
careful in his dress, especially in his dinner-hour toilet. His
sister wore beautiful gowns of rich and sombre tints, and appeared
each day in a different and most dainty French cap and quaint
antique jewels. They were both so genial and content that, puzzle
the brain as one might, it was impossible to know whether the
quiet family dinner or the presence of guests was the more agree-
able to them. In face of the doubt we decided on the latter ; it
seemed selfish to do otherwise, and we were rarely without common
friends to share the pleasure of the poet's conversation. If the
direct question were asked on this subject, the invariable answer
was, ' Do as you please ; you know we are always perfectly happy.'

Browning's strong dramatic instinct made him take intense
pleasure in plays, whether written or acted. Though he was
rarely seen at the theatre in London, he greatly enjoyed a ' short
season' at the Goldoni, where he went every night to see G-allina's
clever Venetian comedies. He had two boxes thrown into one, and,
seated in an armchair quite at his ease, he followed each play with
the deepest interest, never taking his eyes off the stage until the
fall of the curtain. Gallina was invited during an entr'acte to
come into the box to be presented to the poet and hear from his

168 BROWNING IN VENICE.

own lips an expression of genuine admiration for his work. The
Italian was pleased and flattered, as may be easily imagined, for
Browning's art of praise was as distinguishing a characteristic as
was his art of dedication, which caused someone to style him
the ' Prince of Dedicators.' It was a combination of judgment
and enthusiasm, so turned that each word should have its due
' specific gravity,' and of which there should be neither too many
nor too few.

Each night after the play Gallina waited at the door of the
theatre to see the poet pass, and the latter invariably turned a few
steps out of his way to exchange a hearty hand-shake with his
' brother dramatist,' as he liked to call him. Browning's large
and genial nature made him always wish to express his thanks,
either for favours received, the occasion for which happened rarely
in his independent mode of life, or for pleasures procured him by
anyone ; author or actor, whoever it might be, he always longed
to say the words, ' I thank you.' The following extract from one
of his letters, written at Primiero, is an illustration of this :

' The little train from Montebelluna to Feltre was crowded ;
we could find no room except in a smoking-carriage, wherein I
observed a good-natured elderly gentleman — an Italian, I took
for granted. Presently he said, " Can I offer you an English
paper ? "

' " What, are you English ? "

' " Oh, yes, and I know that you are going to see your son
at Primiero."

' " Why, who can you be ? "

' " One who has seen you often."

' " Not surely Mr. Malcolm ? "

' " Well, nobody else."

' So ensued an affectionate greeting, he having been the
guardian angel of Pen in all his chafferings about the purchase of
the palazzo. He gave me abundance of information, and satisfied
me on many points.'

The time of year which Browning always gave to his sojourns
in Venice was one which all the great Venetian families pass
in their country homes, so that compai-atively few among them
had the pleasure of the illustrious stranger's acquaintance.
Among these few the Countess Marcel lo was a favourite of his,
and he accepted, for himself and his sister, her invitation to pass
a day at her villa at Mogliano. The day was bright and beautiful,

BROWNING IN VENICE. 169

and he seemed to enjoy the short hour's journey by rail, and
to admire the smiling country about him. The countess, with
several of her children, met us at the little station, and we were
quickly whirled away, the younger people with their ponies, the
elders in a comfortable landau, through the country road and
pretty park to a villa of simple yet imposing architecture. On
one side of the house is a sun-dial with the familiar motto (in
Latin), ' I count only the hours of sunshine,' and the lawns near
the house bear English mottoes in flowers and coloured plants,
together with the device of the countess, a trefoil joined by
letters to form her name, Andriana. After luncheon we all
repaired to the tennis-ground, past the deer-houses and through
a stately avenue of ancient beech-trees whose great branches met
and interlaced far above our heads, making a gigantic arbour.
The young people gave up their usual games and seated them-
selves on rustic benches, listening attentively to every word from
the poet's lips. A Venetian sculptor, who chanced to be one of
the guests, hid himself behind a group of trees, and, peeping
through their trunks from his coign of vantage, drew in his album
a fairly good portrait of Browning. The countess, who was
Queen Margherita's favourite lady of honour, showed the poet a
specimen of the handwriting of her royal mistress, which he
greatly admired, as being at once forcible and graceful.

Before the hour of departure, the daughter of the house,
a young and very lovely creature, asked the favour that Mr.
Browning should write in her album.

' With the greatest pleasure,' he said, ' but I am ashamed to
say I remember only one verse.'

Everyone smiled at this, and the poet, as usual, wrote 'My
star.' When the contessina looked at it. she exclaimed : ' This
is one of my favourites. See, I have copied it in my book of
verses' ; and turning over the pages, she showed the poem, neatly
written out by her own hand, among many others by the same
author. Browning was surprised to find his writings understood
and admired by this fair young foreigner, and complimented her
on her proficiency in so difficult a language, adding, with a smile :
' Even English girls do not find my poems easy to read, you
know.' Then he said : ' Let us compare the verses, the one you
have copied and the one I have written ; I am sure we shall find
some mistake.'

There were indeed a few errors, and as he corrected them

170 BROWNING IN VENICE.

he said : ' See what a service you have rendered me. I should
have left the verse full of faults if you had not been able to
correct me.'

The girl flushed with pleasure, which made her beauty still
more apparent. In speaking afterwards of this most agreeable
visit, Browning gave a glowing description of the beautiful
mother and her children. ' It is like an English family,' he said,
which was the highest praise he could bestow.

At the railway-station, while we were awaiting the arrival of
the train, a young Italian litterateur asked to be presented to
Browning. The countess introduced him as 'one who has
already distinguished himself in the world of letters,' which was
of course a passport to the poet's interest. They talked together
until forced to part by the shrill whistle of warning, and then
came cordial farewells to all who had accompanied us to the
station.

' He seems a youth of promise,' said Browning, as we sped
Venice-ward ; ' I liked him. I hope he will do well and that I
shall hear of him again.'

Unluckily, when next his name was mentioned, it was in
connection with a series of lectures announced in the papers as
' twelve lectures on Zola,' which, as may be supposed, the poet
expressed no desire to attend.

All who strove to attain success in art or literature interested
him. Each one struck, with more or less force, his most responsive
chord. He was pleased, on the occasion of one of his readings
at the Palazzo Barbaro, to meet the novelist Castelnuovo, and
mentioned an incident which had long before made the writer's
name familiar to his ear. He related how, on his second visit to
Asolo, whither he had taken his sister to bear witness to the
wisdom of his early admiration for the place, they found them-
selves without a book of any sort, an unusual position for book-
lovers such as they. The poet went out in search of something
or anything readable in the little town, where book-shops are
even now unknown. He found one volume only, in a paper-shop
I think it was, containing a series of short stories by Castelnuovo,
entitled ' Alia Finestra.' The brother and sister were both
delighted with the book, and ever after procured for themselves
each work by the same author as soon as it was given to the
public.

Browning's memory is still green in Asolo, where many of the

BROWNING IN VENICE. 171

citizens remember him well, where his son owns not only Pippa's
Tower, erected after his father's death, but other houses with fine
outlooks over the Venetian plain. The small museum in the
town hall has his bust in plaster by a local artist, and other
relics of the poet who so doted on Asolo. These rambling
reminiscences of hours spent with him in Asolo and Venice may
have the good fortune to bring him in spirit nearer to his admirers,
for I have striven to give an exact report of the man and his cha-
racter as they appeared to me during an unbroken friendship of
many years.

172

THE CONSOLATION OF MEDIOCRITY.

THOSE persons happiest I deem

Who learn the valuable lesson
How better is than each extreme

What Aristotle calls the Meson :

Who sit secure upon a fence,

Nor are by passing crazes bitten,
But with judicial sentiments

Review the feuds of Boer and Briton, —

Nor prophesy an instant storm

Though Germans growl and Frenchmen vapour,
Nor straightway don their uniform

Whene'er they read a foreign paper :

Who hope not much the truth to find

In statements of demented dailies,
But with a philosophic mind

Accept them all cum grano salis:

Who know the worth of party names,
Nor much revere those titles hoary,

When Tories strive for Liberal aims
And Liberal apes the ways of Tory : —

Who, — when some bard of new renown
Provides a theme that critics rave on,

And Eobinson asserts that Brown
Is equal to the Swan of Avon, —

THE CONSOLATION OF MEDIOCRITY.

Their mental equilibrium

By judgment rational controlling

Amid the loud diurnal hum
Of logs reciprocally rolling,

Calmly such ecstasies survey,

Nor blame the age with useless sorrow :
Because they know the boom to-day

Is followed by a slump to-morrow.

ill.

This is the reasonable man

Who cultivates content and patience,
And does not spend his vital span

In looking out for new sensations :

Who covets not with effort vain

The mind of Mill, the strength of Sandow,
But sees his limitations plain,

And what he can't, and what he can do :

Nor murmurs much nor makes a fuss
About the marks which fates assign us

(Though Delta mayn't be Alpha Plus
'Tis better far than Lambda Minus),

And when of life's supreme rewards
He sees that he can ne'er be winner,

Yet with a solid joy regards

The daily prospect of his dinner.

IV.

Such are the good and truly great,

And attributes like these will show them :

But hitherto, I grieve to state,

I've not been privileged to know them.

A. D. GrODLEY.

174

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.1
BY ANTHONY HOPE.

CHAPTER IV.

FROM THE MIDST OF THE WHIRL.

' REALLY I must congratulate you on your latest, Sarah,' remarked
Lady Blixworth, who was taking tea with Mrs. Bonfill. ' Trix
Trevalla is carrying everything before her. The Grlentorlys have
had her to meet Lord Farringham, and he was delighted. The
men adore her, and they do say women like her. All done in six
weeks ! You're a genius ! '

Mrs. Bonfill made a deprecatory gesture of a Non nobis order.
'Her friend insisted amiably :

' Oh, yes, you are. You choose so well. You never make a
mistake. Now do tell me what's going to happen. Does Mortimer
Mervyn mean it ? Of course she wouldn't hesitate.'

Mrs. Bonfill looked at her volatile friend with a good-humoured
distrust.

' When you congratulate me, Viola,' she said, ' I generally
expect to hear that something has gone wrong.'

' Oh, you believe what you're told about me,' the accused lady
murmured plaintively.

' It's experience,' persisted Mrs. Bonfill. ' Have you anything
that you think I sha'n't like to tell me about Trix Trevalla ? '

' I don't suppose you'll dislike it, but I should. Need she
drive in the park with Mrs. Fricker ? ' Her smile contradicted
the regret of her tone, as she spread her hands out in affected
surprise and appeal.

' Mrs. Fricker's a very decent sort of woman, Viola. You have
a prejudice against her.'

'Yes, thank heaven! We all want money nowadays, but for
my part I'd starve sooner than get it from the Frickers.'

' Oh, that's what you want me to believe?'

' Dearest Sarah, no ! That's what I'm afraid her enemies and
yours will say.'

1 Copyright, 1902, by A. H. Hawkins, in the United States of America.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 175

' I see,' smiled Mrs. Bonfill indulgently. She always acknow-
ledged that Viola was neat — as a siege-gun might admit it of the
field artillery.

' Couldn't you give her a hint ? The gossip about Beaufort

Chance doesn't so much matter, but ' Lady Blixworth looked

as if she expected to be interrupted, even pausing an instant to
allow the opportunity. Mrs. Bonfill obliged her.

' There's gossip about Beaufort, is there ? '

' Oh, there is, of course ; that can't be denied ; but it really
doesn't matter as long as Mortimer doesn't hear about it.'

' Was there never more than one aspirant at a time when you
were young ? '

' As long as you're content, I am,' Lady Blixworth declared in
an injured manner. 'It's not my business what Mrs. Tre valla
does.'

' Don't be huffy,' was Mrs. Bonfill's maternal advice. ' As far
as I can see, everything is going splendidly.'

' It is to be Mortimer ? '

' How can I tell, my dear ? If Mortimer Mervyn should ask
my advice, which really isn't likely, what could I say except
that Trix is a charming woman, and that I know of nothing
against it ? '

' She must be very well off, by the way she does things.'
There was an inflection of question in her voice, but no direct
interrogatory.

' Doubtless,' gaid Mrs. Bonfill. Often the craftiest suggestions
failed in face of her broad imperturbability.

Lady Blixworth smiled at her. Mrs. Bonfill shook her head
in benign rebuke. The two understood one another, and on the
whole liked one another very well.

' All right, Sarah,' said Lady Blixworth, ' but if you want my
opinion, it is that she's out-running the constable, unless '

' Well, go on.'

'You give me leave? You won't order me out? Well,

unless Well, as I said, why drive Mrs. Fricker round

the Park? Why take Connie Fricker to the Quinby-Lees's
dance ? '

' Oh, everybody goes to the Quinby-Lees's. She's never offered
to bring them here or anywhere that matters.'

' You know the difference ; perhaps the Frickers don't.'

' That's downright malicious, Viola. And of course they do j

176 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

at least they live to find it out. No, you can't put me out of
conceit with Trix Trevalla.'

' You're so loyal,' murmured Lady Blixworth in admiration.
' Really Sarah's as blind as a bat sometimes,' she reflected as she
got into her carriage.

A world of people at once inquisitive and clear-sighted would
render necessary either moral perfection or reckless defiance ; in-
difference and obtuseness preserve a place for that mediocrity of
conduct which characterises the majority. Society at large had
hitherto found small fault with Trix Trevalla, and what it
said, when passed through Lady Blixworth's resourceful intellect,
gained greatly both in volume and in point. No doubt she had
very many gowns, no doubt she spent money, certainly she flirted,
possibly she was, for so young and pretty a woman, a trifle indis-
creet. But she gave the impression of being able to take care
of herself, and her attractions, combined with Mrs. Bonfill's
unwavering patronage, would have sufficed to excuse more errors
than she had been found guilty of. It was actually true that,
while men admired, women liked her. There was hardly a
discordant voice to break in harshly on her triumph.

There is no place like the top — especially when it is narrow,
and will not hold many at a time. The natives of it have their
peculiar joy, those who have painfully climbed theirs. Trix
Trevalla seemed, to herself at least, very near the top ; if she were
not quite on it, she could put her head up over the last ledge and
see it, and feel that with one more hoist she would be able to
land herself there. It is unnecessary to recite the houses she
went to, and would be (save for the utter lack of authority such a
list would have) invidious; it would be tiresome to retail compli-
ments and conquests. But the smallest choicest gatherings
began to know her, and houses which were not fashionable but
something much beyond — eternal pillars supporting London
society — welcomed her. This was no success of curiosity, of
whim, of a season ; it was the establishment of a position for
life. From the purely social point of view, even a match with
Mervyn could do little more. So Trix was tempted to declare in
her pride.

But the case had other aspects, of course. It was all some-
thing of a struggle, however victorious ; it may be supposed that
generally it is. Security is hard to believe in, and there is
always a craving to make the strong position impregnable.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 177

Life alone at twenty-six is — lonely. These things were in her
mind, as they might have been in the thoughts of any woman
so placed. There was another consideration, more special to her-
self, which could not be excluded from view : she had begun to
realise what her manner of life cost. Behold her sitting before
books and bills that revealed the truth beyond possibility of
error or of gloss ! Lady Blixworth's instinct had not been at
fault. Trix's mouth grew rather hard again, and her eyes coldly
resolute, as she studied these disagreeable documents.

From such studies she had arisen to go to dinner with Beau-
fort Chance and to meet the Frickers. She sat next Fricker, and
talked to him most of the time, while Beaufort was very attentive
to Mrs. Fricker, and the young man who had been procured for
Connie Fricker fulfilled his appointed function. Fricker was not
a bad-looking man, and was better bred and less aggressive than
his wife or daughter. Trix found him not so disagreeable as she
had expected ; she encouraged him to talk on his own subjects,
and began to find him interesting ; by the end of dinner she had
discovered that he, or at least his conversation, was engrossing.
The old theme of making money without working for it, by
gaming or betting, by chance or speculation, by black magic or
white, is ever attractive to the children of men. Fricker could
talk very well about it ; he produced the impression that it was
exceedingly easy to be rich ; it seemed to be anybody's own fault
if he were poor. Only at the end did he throw in any qualifica-
tion of this broad position.

'Of course you must know the ropes, or find somebody who
does.'

' There's the rub, Mr. Fricker. Don't people who know them
generally keep their knowledge to themselves ? '

' They've a bit to spare for their friends sometimes.' His
smile was quietly reflective.

Beaufort Chance had hinted that some such benevolent senti-
ments might be found to animate Mr. Fricker. He had even
used the idea as a bait to lure Trix to the dinner. Do what she
would, she could not help giving Fricker a glance, half-grateful,
half-provocative. Vanity — new-born of her great triumph — made
her feel that her presence there was really a thing to be repaid.
Her study of those documents tempted her to listen when the
suggestion of repayment came. In the drawing-room Trix found
herself inviting Mrs. Fricker to call. Youthful experiences made

VOL. XII. — NO. 68, N.S. 12

178 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

Trix socially tolerant in one direction if she were socially ambi-
tious in another. She had none of Lady Blixworth's shudders,
and was ready to be nice to Mrs. Fricker. Still her laugh was
conscious and she blushed a little when Beaufort Chance thanked
her for making herself so pleasant.

All through the month there were renewed and continual
rumours of what the Tsar meant to do. A speech by Lord Far-
ringham might seem to dispose of them, but there were people
who did not trust Lord Farringham — who, in fact, knew better.
There were telegrams from abroad, there were mysterious para-
graphs claiming an authority too high to be disclosed to the
vulgar, there were leaders asking whether it were actually the
fact that nothing was going to be done ; there was an agitation
about the Navy, another final exposure of the methods of the War
Office, and philosophic attacks on the system of party government.
Churchmen began to say that they were also patriots, and dons
to remind the country that they were citizens. And — in the
end — what did the Tsar mean to do ? That Potentate gave no
sign. What of that ? Had not generals uttered speeches and
worked out professional problems ? Lord Glentorly ordered
extensive mancEuvres, and bade the country rely on him. The
country seemed a little doubtful ; or, anyhow, the Press told it
that it was. ' The atmosphere is electric,' declared Mr. LifFey in
an article in the ' Sentinel ' : thousands read it in railway
carriages and looked grave ; they had not seen Mr. Liffey's
smile.

Things were in this condition, and the broadsheets blazing in
big letters, when one afternoon a hansom whisked along Wych
Street and set down a lady in a very neat grey frock at the
entrance of Danes Inn. Trix trod the pavement of that secluded
spot and ascended the stairs of GA with an amusement and ex-
citement far different from Peggy Kyle's matter-of-fact familiarity.
She had known lodging-houses ; they were as dirty as this, but
there the likeness ended. They had been new, flimsy, confined ;
this looked old, was very solid and relatively spacious ; they had
been noisy, it was very quiet ; they had swarmed with children,
here were none ; the whole place seemed to her quasi-monastic ;
she blushed for herself as she passed through. Her knock on
Airey Newton's door was timid.

Airey's amazement at the sight of her was unmistakable. He
drew back saying :

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 179

' Mrs. Trevalla ! Is it really you ? '

The picture he had in his mind was so different. Where was
the forlorn girl in the widow's weeds? This brilliant creature
surely was not the same !

But Trix laughed and chattered, insisting that she was herself.

' I couldn't wear mourning all my life, could I ? ' she asked.
' You didn't mean me to, when we had our talk in Paris ? '

' I'm not blaming, only wondering.' For a moment she almost
robbed him of speech ; he busied himself with the tea (there was
a cake to-day) while she flitted about the room, not omitting to
include Airey himself in her rapid scrutiny. She marked the
shortness of his hair, the trimness of his beard, and approved
Peggy's work, little thinking it was Peggy's.

' It's delightful to be here,' she exclaimed as she sat down to
tea.

' I took your coming as a bad omen,' said Airey, smiling, ' but
I hope there's nothing very wrong ? '

' I'm an impostor. Everything is just splendidly right, and
I came to tell you.'

' It was very kind.' He had not quite recovered from his
surprise yet.

' I thought you had a right to know. I owe it all to your
advice, you see. You told me to come back to life. Well, I've
come.'

She was alive enough, certainly ; she breathed animation and
seemed to diffuse vitality ; she was positively eager in her living.

' You told me to have my revenge, to play with life. Don't
you remember ? Fancy your forgetting, when I've remembered
so well ! To die of heat rather than of cold — surely you
remember, Mr. Newton ? '

' Every word, now you say it,' he nodded. ' And you're acting
on that ? '

' For all I'm worth,' laughed Trix.

He sat down opposite her, looking at her with a grave but
still rather bewildered attention.

' And it works well ? ' he asked after a pause, and, as it seemed,
a conscientious examination of her.

' Superb ! ' She could not resist adding, ' Haven't you heard
anything about me ? '

' In here ? ' asked Airey, waving his arm round the room, and
smiling.

12—2

180 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

' No, I suppose you wouldn't,' she laughed ; ' but I'm rather
famous, you know. That's why I felt bound to come and tell you
— to let you see what great things you've done. Yes, it's quite
true, you gave me the impulse.' She set down her cup and leant
back in her chair, smiling brightly at him. ' Are you afraid of
the responsibility ? '

' Everything seems so prosperous,' said Airey. ' I forgot, but
I have heard one person speak of you. Do you know Peggy
Ryle ? '

' I know her by sight. Is she a friend of yours ? '

' Yes, and she told me of some of your triumphs.'

' Oh, not half so well as I shall tell you myself ! ' Trix was
evidently little interested in Peggy Ryle. To Airey himself
Peggy's doubts and criticism seemed now rather absurd ; this
bright vision threw them into the shade of neglect.

Trix launched out. It was the first chance she had enjoyed
of telling to somebody who belonged to the old life the wonderful
things about the new. Indeed who else of the old life was left ?
Graves, material or metaphorical, covered all that had belonged
to it. Mrs. Bonfill was always kind, but with her there was
not the delicious sense of the contrast that must rise before
the eyes of the listener. Airey gave her that ; he had heard of
the lodging-houses, he knew about the four years with Vesey
Trevalla; it was evident he had not forgotten the forlornness
and the widow's weeds of Paris. He then could appreciate the
change, the great change, that still amazed and dazzled Trix
herself. It was not in ostentation, but in the pure joy of victory,
that she flung great names at him, would have him know that
the highest of them were familiar to her, and that the woman
who now sat talking to him, friend to friend, amidst the dinginess
of Danes Inn, was a sought-after, valued, honoured guest in all
these houses. Peggy Ryle went to some of the houses also, but
she had never considered that talk about them would interest
Airey Newton. She might be right or wrong. Trix Trevalla
was certainly right in guessing that talk about herself in the
houses would.

'You seem to be going it, Mrs. Trevalla,' he said at last,
unconsciously reaching out for his pipe.

' I am,' said Trix. ' Yes, do smoke. So will I.' She pro-
duced her cigarette-case. ' Well, I've arrears to make up,
haven't I ? ' She glanced round. ' And you live here ? ' she asked.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 181

'Always. I know nothing of all you've been talking
about.'

' You wouldn't care about it anyhow, would you ? ' Her tones
were gentle and consolatory. She accepted the fact that it was
all impossible to him, that the door was shut, and comforted him
in his exclusion.

' I don't suppose I should, and at all events ' He

shrugged his shoulders. If her impression had needed con-
firmation, here it was. ' And what's to be the end of it with
you ? ' he asked.

' End ? Why should there be an end ? It's only just begun,'
cried Trix.

' Well, there are ends that are beginnings of other things/ he
suggested. What Peggy had told him recurred to his mind,
though certainly there was no sign of Mrs. Trevalla being in
trouble on that or any other score.

Yet his words brought a shadow to Trix's face, a touch of
irritation into her manner.

' Oh, some day, I daresay,' she said. ' Yes, I suppose so.
I'm not thinking about that either just now. I'm just thinking
about myself. That's what you meant me to do ? '

' It seems to me that my responsibility is growing, Mrs.
Trevalla.'

' Yes, that's it, it is ! ' Trix was delighted with the whimsi-
cality of the idea. ' You're responsible for it all, though you
sit quietly here and nobody knows anything about you. I shall
come and report myself from time to time. I'm obedient up
to now ? '

' Well, I'm not quite sure. Did I tell you to ? '

' Yes, yes, to take my revenge, you know. Oh, you remember,
and you can't shirk it now.' She began to laugh at the half-
humorous gravity of Airey's face, as she insisted on his responsi-
bility. This talk with him, the sort of relations that she was
establishing with him, promised to give a new zest to her life, a
pleasant diversion for her thoughts. He would make a splendid
onlooker, and she would select all the pleasant things for him to
see. Of course there was nothing really unpleasant, but there
were a few things that it would not interest him to hear. There
were things that even Mrs. Bonfill did not hear, although
she would have been able to understand them much better
than he.

182 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

Trix found her host again looking at her with an amused and
admiring scrutiny. She was well prepared for it ; the most select
of parties had elicited no greater care in the choice of her dress
than this visit to Danes Inn. Was not the contrast to be made
as wonderful and striking as possible ?

' Shall I do you credit ? ' she asked in gay mockery.

' You're really rather marvellous,' laughed Airey. ' And I
suppose you'll come out all right.'

A hint of doubt crept into his voice. Trix glanced at him
quickly.

' If I don't, you'll have to look after me,' she warned him.

He was grave now, not solemn, but, as it seemed, meditative.

' What if I think only of myself too ? ' he asked.

Trix laughed at the idea. ' There'd be no sort of excuse for
you,' she reminded him.

' I suppose not,' he admitted, rather ruefully.

' But I'm going to come out most splendidly all right, so we
won't worry about that.' As she spoke she had been putting on
her gloves, and now she rose from her chair. ' I must go ; got an
early dinner and a theatre.' She looked round the room, and
then back to Airey ; her lips parted in an appealing confidential
smile that drew an answer from him, and made him feel what her
power was. ' Do you know, I don't want — I positively don't
want — to go, Mr. Newton.'

' The attractions are so numerous, so unrivalled ? '

' It's so quiet, so peaceful, so out of it all.'

' That a recommendation to you ? ' He raised his brows.

' Well, it's all a bit of a rush and a fight, and — and so on.
I love it all, but just now and then ' — she came to him and laid
her hand lightly on his arm — ' just now and then may I come
again ? ' she implored. ' I shall like to think that I've got it to
come to.'

' It's always here, Mrs. Trevalla, and, except for me, generally
empty.'

' Generally ? ' Her mocking tone hid a real curiosity ; but
Airey's manner was matter-of-fact.

' Oh, Peggy Ryle comes, and one or two of her friends, now
and then. But I could send them away. Any time's the same
to them.'

' Miss Eyle comes ? She's beautiful, I think ; don't you ? '

' Now am I a judge ? Well, yes, I think Peggy's attractive.'

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 183

'Oh, you're all hypocrites! Well, you must think me
attractive too, or I won't come.'

It was a long while since Airey Newton had been flirted with.
He recognised the process, however, and did not object to it ; it
also appeared to him that Trix did it very well.

' If you come, I shall think you most attractive.'
Trix relapsed into sincerity and heartiness. ' I've enjoyed
coming awfully,' she said. Airey found the sincerity no less
attractive. ' I shall think about you.'
' From the midst of the whirl ? '
' Yes, from the midst of the whirl ! (rood-bye.'
She left behind her a twofold and puzzling impression. There
was the woman of the world, with airs and graces a trifle elaborate,
perhaps, in their prettiness, the woman steeped in society, en-
grossed with its triumphs, fired with its ambitions. But there
had been visible from time to time, or had seemed to peep out,
another woman, the one who had come to see her friend, had felt
the need of talking it all over with him, of sharing it and getting
sympathy in it, and who had in the end dropped her graces and
declared with a frank heartiness that she had enjoyed coming
'awfully.' Airey Newton pulled his beard and smoked a pipe
over these two women, as he sat alone. With some regret he
came to the conclusion that as a permanent factor, as an influence
in guiding and shaping Trix Trevalla's life, the second woman
would not have much chance against the first. Everything
was adverse to the second woman in the world in which Trix
lived.

And he had sent her to that world ? So she declared, partly
in mockery perhaps, enjoying the incongruity of the idea with
his dull life, his dingy room, his shabby coat. Yet he traced in
the persistence with which she had recurred to the notion some-
thing more than mere chaff. The idea might be fanciful or
whimsical, but there it was in her mind, dating from their talk at
Paris. Unquestionably it clung to her, and in some vague way
she based on it an obligation on his part, and thought it raised a
claim on hers, a claim that he should not judge her severely or
condemn the way she lived ; perhaps, more vaguely still, a claim
that he should help her if ever she needed help.

184 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

CHAPTER V.

THE WORLD RECALCITRANT.

BEAUFORT Chance was no genius in a drawing-room — that may
be accepted on Lady Blixworth's authority. In concluding that
he was a fool in the general affairs of life she went beyond her
premises and her knowledge. Mrs. Bonfill, out of a larger
experience, had considered that he would do more than usually
well ; he was ingenious, hard-working, and conciliatory, of affable
address and sufficient tact ; Mrs. Bonfill seemed to have placed
him with judgment, and Mr. Dickinson (who led the House) was
content with his performances. Yet perhaps after all he was, in
the finest sense of the term, a fool. He could not see how things
would look to other people, if other people came to know them ;
he hardly perceived when he was sailing very near the wind ; the
probability of an upset did not occur to him. He saw with his
own eyes only ; their view was short, and perhaps awry.

Fricker was his friend ; he had bestowed favours on Fricker, or
at least on Fricker's belongings, for whose debts Fricker assumed
liability. If Fricker were minded to repay the obligation, wras
there any particular harm in that? Beaufort could not see
it. If, again, the account being a little more than squared, he
in his turn equalised it, leaving Fricker's kindness to set him at
a debit again, and again await his balancing, what harm? It
seemed only the natural way of things when business and friend-
ship went hand in hand. The Flickers wanted one thing, he
wanted another. If each could help the other to the desired
object, good was done to both, hurt to nobody. Many things are
private which are not wrong ; delicacy is different from shame,
reticence from concealment. These relations between himself
and Fricker were not fit subjects for gossip, but Beaufort saw no
sin in them. Fricker, it need not be added, was clearly, and even
scornfully, of the same opinion.

But Fricker's business affairs were influenced, indeed most
materially affected, by what the Tsar meant to do, and by one or
two kindred problems then greatly exercising the world of politics,
society, and finance. Beaufort Chance was not only in the
House, he was in the Government. Humbly in, it is true, but
actually. Still, what then ? He was not in the Cabinet. Did
he know secrets ? He knew none ; of course he would never

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 185

have used secrets or divulged them. Things told to him, or
picked up by him, were ex hypothesi not secrets, or he would
never have come to know them. Fricker had represented all
this to him, and, after some consideration and hesitation, Fricker's
argument had seemed very sound.

Must a man be tempted to argue thus or to accept such
arguments ? Beaufort scorned the idea, but, lest he should have
been in error on this point, it may be said that there was much
to tempt him. He was an extravagant man ; he sat for an
expensive constituency ; he knew (his place taught him still better)
the value of riches — of real wealth, not of a beggarly competence.
He wanted wealth and he wanted Trix Trevalla. He seemed to
see how he could work towards the satisfaction of both desires at
the same time and along the same lines. Mervyn was his rival
with Trix — every day made that plain. He had believed himself
on the way to win till Mervyn was brought on the scene — by
Mrs. Bonfill, whom he now began to hate. Mervyn had rank and
many other advantages. To fight Mervyn every reinforcement
was needed. As wealth tempted himself, so he knew it would
and must tempt Trix ; he was better informed as to her affairs
than Mrs. Bonfill, and shared Lady Blixworth's opinion about
them.

Having this opinion, and a lively wish to ingratiate himself
with Trix, he allowed her to share in some of the benefits which
his own information and Fricker's manipulation of the markets
brought to their partnership. Trix, conscious of money slipping
away, very ready to put it back, reckless and ignorant, was only
too happy in the opportunity. She seemed also very grateful,
and Beaufort was encouraged to persevere. For a little while his
kindness to Trix escaped Fricker's notice, but not for long. As
soon as Fricker discovered it, his attitude was perfectly clear and,
to himself, no more than reasonable.

'You've every motive for standing well with Mrs. Trevalla,
I know, my dear fellow,' said he, licking his big cigar and placing
his well-groomed hat on Beaufort's table. ' But what motive have
I ? Everybody we let in means one more to share the — the profit
— perhaps, one might add, to increase the risk. Now why should
I let Mrs. Trevalla in ? Any more than, for instance, I should
let — shall we say Mrs. Bonfill — in ? ' Fricker did not like Mrs.
Bonfill since she had quailed before Viola Blixworth.

' Oh, if you take it like that ! ' muttered Beaufort crossly.

186 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

1 1 don't take it any way. I put the case. It would be
different if Mrs. Trevalla were a friend of mine or of my family.'

That was pretty plain for Fricker. As a rule Mrs. Fricker
put the things plainly to him, and he transmitted them consider-
ably disguised and carefully wrapped in his dry humour. On this
occasion he allowed his hint to be fairly obvious ; he knew
Beaufort intimately by now.

Beaufort looked at him, feeling rather uncomfortable.

' Friends do one another good turns ; I don't go about doing
them to anybody I meet, just for fun,' continued Fricker.

Beaufort nodded a slow assent.

'Of course we don't bargain with a lady,' smiled Fricker,
thoughtfully flicking off his ash. ' But, on the other hand, ladies
are very quick to understand. Eh, Beaufort? I daresay you
could convey ? ' He stuck the cigar back into his mouth.

This was the conversation that led to the little dinner-party
hereinbefore recorded ; Fricker had gone to it lot doubting that
Trix Trevalla understood ; Mrs. Fricker did not doubt it either
when Trix had been so civil in the drawing-room. Trix herself
had thought she ought to be civil, as has been seen ; it may,
however, be doubted whether Beaufort Chance had made her
understand quite how much a matter of business the whole thing
was. She did not realise that she, now or about to be a social
power, was to do what Lady Blixworth would not and Mrs. Bonfill
dared not — was to push the Frickers, to make her cause theirs, to
open doors for them, and in return was to be told when to put
money in this stock or that, and when to take it out again. She
was told when to do these things, and did them. The money
rolled in, and she was wonderfully pleased. If it would go on
rolling in like this, its rolling out again (as it did) was of no
consequence ; her one pressing difficulty seemed in a fair way to
be removed. Something she did for the Frickers ; she got them
some minor invitations, and asked them to meet some minor folk,
and thought herself very kind. Now and then they seemed to
hint at more, just as now and then Beaufort Chance's attentions
became inconveniently urgent. On such occasions Trix laughed
and joked and evaded, and for the moment wriggled out of any
pledge. As regards the seemliness of the position, her state of
mind was very much Beaufort's own ; she saw no harm in it, but
she did not talk about it ; some people were stupid, others
malicious. It was, after all, a private concern. So she said

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 187

nothing to anybody — not even to Mrs. Bonfill. There was little
sign of Airey Newton's ' second woman ' in her treatment of this
matter ; the first held undivided sway.

If what the Tsar meant to do and the kindred problems
occupied Fricker in one way, they made no less claim on Mervyn's
time in another. He was very busy in his office and in the
House ; he had to help Lord Grlentorly to persuade the nation to
rely on him. Still he made some opportunities for meeting Trix
Trevalla ; she was always very ready to meet him when Beaufort
Chance and Fricker were not to the fore. He was a man of
methodical mind, which he made up slowly. He took things in
their order, and gave them their proper proportion of time. He
was making his career. It could hardly be doubted that he was
also paying attentions, and it was probable that he meant to pay
his addresses, to Trix Trevalla. But his progress was leisurely ;
the disadvantages attaching to her perhaps made him slower, even
though in the end he would disregard them. In Trix's eyes he
was one or two things worse than leisurely. He was very con-
fident and rather condescending. On this point she did speak
to Mrs. Bonfill, expressing some impatience. Mrs. Bonfill was
sympathetic as always, but also, as always, wise.

' Well, and if he is, my dear ? ' Her smile appealed to Trix
to admit that everything which she had been objecting to and
rebelling against was no more than what any woman of the world
would expect and allow for.

Trix's expression was still mutinous. Mrs. Bonfill proceeded
with judicial weightiness.

' Now look at Audrey Pollington — you know that big niece of
Viola's? Do you suppose that, if Mortimer paid her attentions,
she'd complain of him for being condescending ? She'd just
thank her stars, and take what she could get.' (These very frank
expressions are recorded with an apology.)

'I'm not Audrey Pollington,' muttered Trix, using a weak
though common argument.

There are moments when youth is the better for a judicious
dose of truth.

' My dear,' remarked Mrs. Bonfill, ' most people would say
that what Audrey Pollington didn't mind, you needn't.' Miss
Pollington was grand-daughter to a duke (female line), and had a
pretty little fortune of her own. Mrs. Bonfill could not be held
wrong for seeking to temper her young friend's arrogance.

188 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

'It's not my idea of making love, that's all,' said Trix
obstinately.

' We live and learn.' Mrs. Bonfill implied that Trix had much
to learn. ' Don't lose your head, child,' she added warningly.
' You've made plenty of people envious. Don't give them any
chance.' She paused before she asked, ' Do you see much of
Beaufort now ? '

' A certain amount.' Trix did not wish to be drawn on this
point.

'Well, Trix?'

' We keep friends,' smiled Trix.

' Yes, that's right. I wouldn't see too much of him, though.'

' Till my lord has made up his mind ? '

' Silly ! ' That one word seemed to Mrs. Bonfill sufficient
answer. She had, however, more confidence in Trix than the one
word implied. Young women must be allowed their moods, but
most of them acted sensibly in the end ; that was Mrs. Bonfill's
experience.

Trix came and kissed her affectionately ; she was fond of Mrs.
Bonfill and really grateful to her ; it is possible, besides, that she
had twinges of conscience; her conversations with Mrs. Bonfill
were marked by a good deal of reserve. It was all very well to
say that the matters reserved did not concern Mrs. Bonfill, but
even Trix in her most independent mood could not feel quite con-
vinced of this. She knew — though she tried not to think of it —
that she was playing a double game ; in one side of it Mrs. Bonfill
was with her and she accepted that lady's help ; the other side was
sedulously hidden. It was not playing fair. Trix might set her
teeth sometimes and declare she would do it, unfair though it was ;
or more often she would banish thought altogether by a plunge into
amusement ; but the thought and the consciousness were there.
Well, she was not treating anybody half as badly as most people
had treated her. She hardened her heart and went forward on
her dangerous path, confident that she could keep clear of pitfalls.
Only — yes, it was all rather a fight ; once or twice she thought of
Danes Inn with a half-serious yearning for its quiet and repose.

Some of what Mrs. Bonfill did not see Lady Blixworth did
— distantly, of course, and mainly by putting an observed two
together with some other observed but superficially unrelated two
— a task eminently congenial to her mind. Natural inclination was
quickened by family duty. ' I wish,' Lady Blixworth said, ' that

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 189

Sarah would have undertaken dear Audrey ; but since she won't,
I must do the best I can for her myself.' It was largely with a
view to doing the best she could for Audrey that Lady Blixworth
kept her eye on Trix Trevalla — a thing of which Trix was quite
unconscious. Lady Blixworth's motives command respect, and it
must be admitted that Miss Pollington did not render her relative's
dutiful assistance superfluous. She was a tall handsome girl,
rather inert, not very ready in conversation. Lady Blixworth,
who was never absurd even in praise, pitched on the epithet
' statuesque ' as peculiarly suitable. Society acquiesced. ' How
statuesque Miss Pollington is ! ' became the thing to say to one's
neighbour or partner. Lady Blixworth herself said it with a smile
sometimes ; most people, content as ever to accept what is given
to them, were grave enough.

Audrey herself was extremely pleased with the epithet, so
delighted, indeed, that her aunt thought it necessary to administer
a caution.

' When people praise you or your appearance for a certain
quality, Audrey dear,' she observed sweetly, ' it generally means
that you've got that quality in a marked degree.'

' Yes, of course, Aunt Viola,' said Audrey, rather surprised but
quite understanding.

' And so,' pursued Aunt Viola in yet more gentle tones, ' it
isn't necessary for you to cultivate it consciously.' She stroked
Audrey's hand with much affection. ' Because they tell you
you're statuesque, for instance, don't try to go about looking like
the Venus of Milo in a pair of stays.'

' I'm sure I don't, Auntie,' cried poor Audrey, blushing
piteously. She was conscious of having posed a little bit as Mr.
Cruise, the eminent sculptor, passed by.

' On the contrary, it does no harm to remember that one has
a tendency in a certain direction ; then one is careful to keep a
watch on oneself and not overdo it. I don't want you to skip
about, my dear, but you know what I mean.'

Audrey nodded rather ruefully. What is the good of being
statuesque if you may not live up to it ?

' You aren't hurt with me, darling ? ' cooed Aunt Viola.

Audrey declared she was not hurt, but she felt rather be-
wildered.

With the coming of June, affairs of the heart and affairs of
the purse became lamentably and unpoetically confounded in Trix

190 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

Trevalla's life and thoughts. Mrs. Bonfill was hinting prodi-
giously about Audrey Pollington ; Lady Blixworth was working
creditably hard, and danger undoubtedly threatened from that
quarter. Trix must exert herself if Mervyn were not to slip
through the meshes. On the other hand, the problems were rather
acute. Lord Farringham had been decidedly pessimistic in a
speech in the House of Lords, Fricker was hinting at a great
coup, Beaufort Chance was reminding her in a disagreeably press-
ing fashion of how much he had done for her and of how much
he still could do. Trix had tried one or two little gambles on her
own account and met with serious disaster ; current expenses rose
rather than fell. In the midst of all her gaiety Trix grew a little
careworn and irritable ; a line or two showed on her face ; critics
said that Mrs. Trevalla was doing too much, and must be more
careful of her looks. Mrs. Bonfill began to be vaguely uncom-
fortable about her favourite. But still Trix held on her way, her
courage commanding more admiration than any other quality she
manifested at this time. Indeed she had moments of clear sight
about herself, but her shibboleth of ' revenge ' still sufficed to
stiffen, if not to comfort her.

Some said that Lord Farringham' s pessimistic speech was
meant only for home consumption, the objects being to induce
the country to spend money freely and also to feel that it was no
moment for seeking to change the Crown's responsible advisers.
Others said that it was intended solely for abroad, either as a
warning or, more probably, as an excuse to enable a foreign nation
to retire with good grace from an untenable position. A minority
considered that the Prime Minister had perhaps said what he
thought. On the whole there was considerable uneasiness.

' What does it all mean, Mr. Fricker ? ' asked Trix, when that
gentleman called on her, cool, alert, and apparently in very good
spirits.

' It means that fools are making things smooth for wise men,
as usual,' he answered, and looked at her with a keen glance.

' If you will only make them plain to one fool ! ' she suggested
with a laugh.

' I presume you aren't interested in international politics as
such ? '

' Not a bit,' said Trix heartily.

' But if there's any little venture going ' He smiled as

he tempted her, knowing that she would yield.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 191

'You've been very kind to me,' murmured Trix.

' It's a big thing this time — and a good thing. You've heard
Beaufort mention the Dramoffsky Concessions, I daresay ? '

Trix nodded.

' He'd only mention them casually, of course,' Fricker con-
tinued with a passing smile. ' Well, if there's trouble, or serious
apprehension of it, the Dramoffsky Concessions would be blown
sky-high — because it's all English capital and labour, and for a
long time anyhow the whole thing would be brought to a stand-
still, and the machinery all go to the deuce, and so on.'

Again Trix nodded wisely.

' Whereas, if everything's all right, the Concessions are pretty
well all right too. Have you noticed that they've been falling a
good deal lately ? No, I suppose not. Most papers don't quote
them.'

' I haven't looked for them. I've had my eye on the Grl owing
Star.' Trix was anxious to give an impression of being business-
like in one matter anyhow.

' Oh, that's good for a few hundreds, but don't you worry about
it. I'll look after that for you. As I say, if there's serious appre-
hension, Dramoffskys go down. Well, there will be — more serious
than there is now. And after that '

' War ? ' asked Trix in some excitement.

' We imagine not. I'd say we know, only one never really
knows anything. No, there will be a revival of confidence. And
then Dramoffskys — well, you see what follows. Now it's a little
risky — not very — and it's a big thing if it comes off, and what
I'm telling you is worth a considerable sum as a marketable com-
modity. Are you inclined to come in ? '

To Trix there could be but one answer. Coming in with Mr.
Fricker had always meant coming out better for the process. She
thanked him enthusiastically.

' All right. Lodge five thousand at your bankers' as soon as
you can, and let me have it.'

' Five thousand ! ' Trix gasped a little. She had not done the
thing on such a scale as this before.

' It's always seemed to me waste of time to fish for herrings
with a rod and line,' observed Fricker ; ' but just as you like, of
course.'

' Does Beaufort think well of it ? '

' Do you generally find us differing ? ' Fricker smiled ironically.

192 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

' I'll go in,' said Trix. ' I shall make a lot, sha'n't I ? '
' I think so. Hold your tongue, and stay in till I tell you to
come out. You can rely on me.'

Nothing more passed between them then. Trix was left to
consider the plunge that she had made. Could it possibly go
wrong ? If it did — she reckoned up her position. If it went
wrong — if the five thousand or the bulk of it were lost, what
was left to her ? After payment of all liabilities, she would have
about ten thousand pounds. That she had determined to keep
intact. On the interest of that — at last the distinction was
beginning to thrust itself on her mind with a new and odious
sharpness — she would have to live. To live — not to have that
flat, or those gowns, or that brougham, or this position ; not to
have anything that she wanted and loved, but just to live.
Pensions again ! It would come to going back to pensions.

No, would it? There was another resource. Trix, rather
anxious, a little fretful and uneasy, was sanguine and resolute
still. She wrote to Beaufort Chance, telling him what she had
done, thanking him, bidding him thank Fricker, expressing the
amplest gratitude to both gentlemen. Then she sat down and
invited Mervyn to come and see her ; he had not been for some
days, and, busy as he was, Trix thought it was time to see him,
and to blot out, for a season at least, all idea of Audrey Pollington.
She reckoned that an interview with her, properly managed, would
put Audrey and her ally out of action for some little while to
come.

Mervyn obeyed her summons, but not in a very cheerful
mood. Trix's efforts to pump him about the problems and the
complications were signally unsuccessful. He snubbed her, giving
her to understand that he was amazed at being asked such
questions. What then was Beaufort Chance doing, she asked
in her heart. She passed rapidly from the dangerous ground,
declaring with a pout that she thought he might have told her
some gossip, to equip her for her next dinner party. He responded
to her lighter mood with hardly more cordiality. Evidently there
was something wrong with him, something which prevented her
spell from working on him as it was wont. Trix was dismayed.
Was her power gone? It could not be that statuesque Miss
Pollington had triumphed, or was even imminently dangerous ?

At last Mervyn broke out with what he had to say. He
looked, she thought, like a husband (not like Vesey Trevalla, but

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 193

like the abstract conception), and a rather imperious one, as he
took his stand on her hearthrug and frowned down at her.

' You might know — no, you do know — the best people in
London,' he said, ' and yet I hear of your going about with the
Frickers ! I should think Fricker's a rogue, and I know he's
a cad. And the women ! ' Aristocratic scorn embittered his
tongue.

' Who have you heard it from ? '

' Lots of people. Among others, Viola Blixworth.'

' Oh, Lady Blixworth ! Of course you'd hear it from her ! '

' It doesn't matter who tells me, if it's true.'

That was an annoying line to take. It was easy to show
Lady Blixworth's motive, but it was impossible to deny the accu-
racy of what she said. A hundred safe witnesses would have
confounded Trix had she denied.

' What in the world do you do it for ? ' he asked angrily
and impatiently. ' What can Fricker do for you ? Don't you
see how you lower yourself ? They'll be saying he's bought you
next!'

Trix did not start, but a spot of colour came on her cheeks ;
her eyes were hard and wary as they watched Mervyn covertly.
He came towards her, and, with a sudden softening of manner,
laid his hand on hers.

' Drop them,' he urged. ' Don't have anything more to do
with such a lot.'

Trix looked up at him • there were doubt and distress in her
eyes. He was affectionate now, but also very firm.

' For my sake, drop them,' he said. ' You know people can't
come where they may meet the Frickers.'

Trix was never slow of understanding ; she saw very well what
Mervyn meant. His words might be smooth, his manner might
be kind, and, if she wished it at the moment, ready to grow more
than kind. With all this he was asking, nay, he was demand-
ing, that she should drop the Frickers. How difficult the path
had suddenly grown ; how hard it was to work her complicated
plan !

' A good many people know them. There's Mr. Chance '

she began timidly.

' Beaufort Chance ! Yes, better if he didn't ! ' His lips,
grimly closing again, were a strong condemnation of his colleague.

' They're kind people, really.'

VOL. XII. — NO. 68, N.S. 13

194 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

' They're entirely beneath you — and beneath your friends.'

There was no mistaking the position. Mervyn was delivering
an ultimatum. It was little use to say that he had no right
because he had made her no offer. He had the power, which, it
is to be feared, is generally more the question. And at what a
moment the ultimatum came ! Must Trix relinquish that golden
dream of the Dramoffsky Concessions, and give up those hundreds
— welcome if few — from the Glowing Star ? Or was she to defy
Mervyn and cast in her lot with the Frickers — and with Beaufort
Chance ?

' Promise me,' he said softly, with as near an approach to a
lover's entreaty as his grave and condescending manner allowed.
' I never thought you'd make any difficulty. Do you really
hesitate between doing what pleases me and what pleases Chance
or the Frickers ? '

Trix would have dearly liked to cry ' Yes, yes, yes ! ' Such a
reply would, she considered, have been wholesome for Mortimer
Mervyn, and it would have been most gratifying to herself. She
dared not give it ; it would mean far too much.

' I can't be actually rude,' she pleaded. ' I must do it gradu-
ally. But since you ask me, I will break with them as much and
as soon as I can.'

' That's all I ask of you,' said Mervyn. He bent and kissed
her hand with a reassuring air of homage and devotion. But
evidently homage and devotion must be paid for. They bore a
resemblance to financial assistance in that respect. Trix was
becoming disagreeably conscious that people expected to be paid,
in one way or another, for most things that they gave. Chance
and Fricker wanted payment. Mervyn claimed it too. And to
pay both as they asked seemed now impossible.

Somehow life appeared to have an objection to being played
with, the world to be rather unmalleable as material, the revenge
not to be the simple and triumphant progress that it had looked.

Trix Trevalla, under pressure of circumstances, got thus far on
the way towards a judgment of herself and a knowledge of the
world ; the two things are closely interdependent.

{To be continued.}

195

THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD.

BENEVOLENCE, said Hobbes, is a love of power and delight in the
exercise of it. Strange that so trenchant a definition never pro-
voked from a somewhat self-righteous mankind such protest as was
raised by La Rochefoucauld when he laid it down that virtue is
for the most part only self-love in disguise. Perhaps mankind
felt instinctively that the Frenchman had overstated his case, but
had an equally instinctive disinclination to adventure in the
defence of disinterested virtue against the position taken up by
Hobbes. For, although there exist men and women with whom
an actual, positive affection for self is the predominant motive,
realised and not merely unconsciously present — men and women
who, in whatever they say or do, think not simply of what they
are saying or doing, but of the way in which their sensations will
be affected by it — yet these persons are rare and exceptional ; just
as are those others who regulate all their words and works by a
kindly thought of some fellow-creature. Action in itself is
pleasant ; inaction, except by contrast, destitute of pain ; and most
acts of the ordinary mortal are performed for the perfectly natural
satisfaction which attends the accomplishing of any end.

Very low down in the scale of evolution men are impelled to
act by the pains and pleasures attending hunger and thirst. Yet
even here it is pretty certain that if one savage sees another
whittling incompetently at a stick in the endeavour to make a
bow, he will take the tool and go to work himself sooner than
watch the job bungled. He will not be deterred by the notion
that in equipping a rival he sacrifices something of his own superi-
ority, for the excellent reason that the idea will not occur to him.
He will want to do the thing just for the sake of doing it right,
desiring, so far as he consciously has a desire in the matter, the glow
of gratification that attends any successful exhibition of power just
as surely as pleasure accompanies the filling of a stomach. In the
sphere of life that most of us think about, hunger and thirst have
only a theoretical existence. We work, no doubt, in order to get
more of the good things of existence, but we work also very largely
to let off steam.

13— 2

196 THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD.

It is an axiom of conduct that if you want a thing done you
should go to the busiest man of your acquaintance ; and we all act
upon this maxim without reflecting that it concedes the theory of
benevolence put forward by Hobbes. How else should one account
for this practical paradox ? Is it to be supposed that busy men
are more sympathetic than idle ones? Hardly. If you want
sympathy, someone to be sorry for you or glad with you, an idle
person is the best recipient of your confidence. You will occupy
a larger and a more enduring place in his mind. But two things
go to make up benevolence — sympathy and energy — and for
practical purposes the latter is the more important. It may seem
that sympathy lies nearer to the fount of action, and is, therefore,
to be ranked as a cause, whereas energy is merely a condition.
And this is true in a sense. Stupidity and indolence are the two
hindrances to benevolence, and of the two, stupidity — that is,
dulness of perception — is the more potent obstacle ; for the stupid
man will never realise in sympathy the need of help, nor leap to a
sight of the means to supply it ; whereas the indolent man may be
moved by sympathy to shake off his indolence.

But my argument is that most acts of practical benevolence are
traceable not to the desire to help, but to the instinct to do. Every
energetic man is a reservoir of unexhausted force, for hardly anyone
is employed up to the limit of his capacity. No salary will buy
the monopoly of a man's power, and very few have so much work
to do for themselves that there is no energy left over. Certain
pursuits, such as the passionate study of an art, or the business of
money-making, when the object is not what money will buy but
simply the acquisition of wealth, have power to engross the faculties
so far that no object unconnected with the one main purpose will
tempt the man to exertion. But these cases are abnormal ; and
if you go to the ordinary successful busy man with a request for
help in a difficulty, you propound to him a practical problem :
What is to be done ? If he likes you, it will of course give him
pleasure to gratify you, but the exertion by which he does so will
be pleasant for its own sake. And even if you are perfectly
indifferent to him, you will still have propounded a problem to
one who has the habit of doing things and the instinct for getting
them done. His mind by its very nature and training instantly
turns to think of an expedient. He sees something that can be
done, and in nine cases out of ten cannot resist what is really an
appetite to do it. The surplus energy flows as naturally as water

THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD. 197

when you turn a tap. Moreover, it is a positive pain to a capable
man to see labour misapplied, capacity going to waste, or a life
bungled ; and if he interposes, it is often from just the same
motive as the savage with the bow ; he helps because he cannot
endure to see the work being done badly.

It is worth while to emphasise this aspect of benevolence,
because so many people, especially in England, dislike the idea of
' giving trouble,' as they call it — but in reality the idea of laying
themselves under an obligation. Yet, if they would realise how
they themselves would probably welcome the chance of doing a
good turn to some acquaintance, there would surely be less ol
this ungenerous reluctance. It is the sense of obligation which
breeds ingratitude ; for ingratitude is not merely indifference,
but an ill-suppressed malignity. ' I owe him one ' is the thought
of the ungrateful, and it bears a sinister meaning. The cheerful
and natural philosophy of Hobbes would tell us that we have
afforded to another human being the delight of exercising the
power which he loves, and if we are the gainers by the transaction,
why, so is our friend. The other view of the relation degrades
benevolence almost to the level of the charity which confers an
official merit on the giver and an official stigma on the recipient.
Yet the Charity Organisation Society would, I am sure, disclaim all
pretension to benevolence, and I am sure that whatever unfortunate
person has gone to them for help would amply bear them out in
the disclaimer. No right-minded person can feel a pleasure in
giving what cannot be accepted without a sense of humiliation,
whereas the essence of benevolence lies in giving help which is
both given and received with pleasure. The Society I speak of,
which stands, on the whole, rightly for the perfected type of
scientific almsgiving, concerns itself with strict justice — the
administration of the indispensable aid. Benevolence does not
look so closely into the title of the person to be helped, does not
ask whether he or she has failed to save money, but helps simply
for the sake of helping. In this way benevolence is often first-
cousin to jobbery ; and for jobbery also there is a good word to be
said.

Most of the help which is worth giving or getting takes the
shape of assisting another person to find work. And that help
comes to us chiefly (we are taught to believe) from our connec-
tions, but in my own experience of life much more often from our
competitors — that is, from those in our own profession. One hears

198 THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD.

a great deal of professional jealousies, and very little of professional
good-fellowship, yet the latter is in reality a much more potent
factor, and for very good reasons. To begin with, of course, every
man knows the ropes more or less in his own trade ; professional
knowledge suggests means to help which would be less evident to
an outsider. But this does not account for the willingness to put
those means into operation — a willingness which is, nevertheless,
quite natural.

The career of each of us is to himself or herself a matter
of the most vivid interest ; every colour, every shade, every
turn in a life is acutely realised by the person who lives it. Yet
to the rest of the world, as Mr. Hardy has remarked in more
than one page of melancholy comment, each of us is only -a
passing thought — at best, to our nearest and dearest only a
thought of frequent recurrence. The points at which our
fortunes are least inadequately realised by our neighbours, at
which they assume to others something of the importance that
they wear to ourselves, are the points of community. The
ambitions, the hopes and fears, of a son who is a barrister must
be always somewhat vague to his father, the doctor ; but every
other barrister is interested by them almost as keenly as a
mother by all that relates to her daughter's marriage. That is
the cause of professional sympathy — a feeling so strong that for
one man who stops to reflect that the profession is already over-
crowded, and competition increasing in severity, you shall find
twenty who gladly give a hand to the man on a lower rung of
the ladder, regardless of the fact that he may one day be jostling
them off it. They will remember to put in a word where a
word is useful, when another friend with equal opportunities
would forget, just because the young man's fortunes resemble
their own as one woman's love affairs resemble another's. Pro-
fessional benevolence is, in short, very nearly allied to matchmaking,
and, like nearly all the most lovable traits in human nature, has
no claim to be regarded as a disinterested virtue, The healthy-
minded energetic man does not stop to consider whether the man
he backs is the ideal person for a given employment — he simply
desires to get the job for the man whom he is backing ; and I
have no doubt that the trouble which he will take for almost an
absolute stranger is unconsciously prompted by the desire to
effectuate his own personality, to utilise some of his spare energy
in accomplishing an end with which he has identified himself.

THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD. 199

Perhaps it is wrong to deny that this natural propensity of a
strong physical and mental constitution ranks or ought to rank
as a virtue when it is exercised on behalf of mere friends or
acquaintances. But if so, I am sure it should not be condemned
as nepotism or jobbery when allowed free play on behalf of kins-
folk. We praise the Scotch for the clannish tendency which they
seldom fail to manifest when a Scot is among the candidates for
an employment (the Irish, I am glad to say, exhibit something
of the same characteristic), yet what is this but the most ex-
tended nepotism ? Even if we grant that the ideally benevolent
man will be too delicate to make interest for himself or his
nearest kin, but will wear himself out in the endeavour to serve
seme stray aspirant who, either by promise of merit or need of
help, has excited his sympathy (and I have known such a cha-
racter), yet it must be urged that the men who go far out of
their way to secure good things for their relatives are as a rule
the industrious, active men who do service to the world, and are
also men who, in default of a relation, will be exceedingly prone
to serve a stranger sooner than leave undone a good turn which
they see their way to doing. Of course, like all other creditable
and harmless propensities, this may be exaggerated into a defect,
just as every truth may be pushed into a heresy ; but upon the
whole nepotism lies nearer to virtue than to vice, and a race or
family in whom the instinct of racial benevolence has died out is
in extreme danger of dying out itself. But it is superfluous to
labour a defence of jobbery. The virtue of nepotism is com-
mended to us by the highest examples — the State and the law
lend it illustrious sanction.

On the other hand, there is a kind of benevolence which runs
very easily into an odious failing ; but it is the sort which popu-
larly figures as an accredited virtue. This is the benevolence
which seeks to substitute its own goodwill for its neighbour's
possibly very inferior inclination ; which is always willing, and
even anxious, to help its neighbour, but not as the neighbour
desires to be helped. There is no need nowadays — or there should
not be — to condemn the other-worldliness which sees in the
human beings placed at a disadvantage the occasion for a profit-
able investment of good works. And yet there are still those
who argue that Socialism is impious because it seeks to abolish
poverty, whereas we are promised that the poor shall be always
with us, to afford stepping-stones to celestial preferment. This,

200 THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD.

however, is plainly not benevolence. The benevolence of which I
speak is the benevolence of a benevolent despotism — the love of
power passing into a tyranny. The respectable Christian who
knows a young man bent upon becoming an actor or a journalist,
or upon devoting himself to the study of physical science or
any other of the pursuits habitually disapproved by respectable
Christians, and who offers that young man a stool in his counting-
house, may be doing a wise thing, but is not really benevolent.
And yet in many cases he talks of black ingratitude because the
would-be author or scientist does not thank him for the offer, and
perhaps rejects it with contumely. Such, says the respectable
Christian, is the reward of benevolence. But benevolence con-
sists in helping your neighbour to attain an end which he
desires, not in substituting an end which you would be glad to see
him attain by your assistance. Much of the assistance offered
with the keenest sense of merit in the offering is about as
valuable or appropriate as the ugly sack stitched at a working-
party is to the South Sea islander whose harmonious proportions
it is designed to conceal. Sometimes the offer is accepted, and,
whether it be the sack or the high stool, it seldom does much
good to the person who accepts what is foreign to his or her whole
nature and desires.

Yet suppose it accepted, and suppose everything turns out
well, who is to be grateful ? I who accepted, let us say, or you
who volunteered the help ? I may be grateful for assistance
that I sought or desired, but this was none of my seeking.
The convention demands that I should feel gratitude, but the
morality of the case is very different. To interpolate our per-
sonality into the life of another human being is always a
liberty, it may be an impertinence ; and if the act, however
kindly meant, be taken in a friendly spirit, we should be amply
contented. We have had the satisfaction of doing what we
designed to do ; we have probably been thanked for it. But the
gratitude that endures should be on our side, for there is no truer
truth than that we love those whom we have benefited — another
person being converted into a monument of our good deed. But
to be angry because someone else will not efface his will to let
us have this satisfaction is really iniquitous. Benevolence is not
often self-sacrifice — it is always self-realisation ; and to attempt
to realise ourselves at someone else's expense, to express our
own personality by sacrificing our neighbour's, is one of the

THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD. 201

wickednesses which not only escape the social stigma, but con-
tinually masquerade as virtues.

In short, the luxury of doing good is a luxury, and like all
luxuries carries with it a temptation. We cannot do too much good ;
but we can easily administer to ourselves too often the pleasant
sensation of having done it, neglecting to establish thoroughly the
necessary premise that we have administered a pleasurable sensa-
tion to others — whether in the present or the future. How often
does the sense that we have done good to some other person arise
out of a conviction that we have administered to him or to her a
sensation the reverse of pleasurable !

STEPHEN G-WYNN.

202

THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE.

NEAR the extreme south-east corner of the island of Jamaica,
washed by the Caribbean rollers and hemmed in between the sea
and the Blue Mountains, lies Morant Bay, a little West Indian
township with its houses half-hidden amid cane-fields and cocoa-
nut groves. Not far from the shelving beach, its back to the
water, stands the Court-house. Adjoining it are a group of build-
ings, and the square or parade before the steps forms a spacious
frontage, upon which several streets converge. Here, on the
afternoon of October 11, 1865, an anxious group of British subjects
were collected together face to face with one of those crises which
from time to time try the mettle of men whose lot is cast among
an alien people.

The history of Jamaica needs no telling here. Won from the
Spaniards by Cromwell's fleet, governed and enriched by Morgan
and his buccaneers, it has shared in the prosperity and decay of
the West Indies. The slave trade and the sugar-cane made it,
during the eighteenth century, the most flourishing of the King's
possessions over-sea, and Eodney, after his great victory had saved
it from the French, described it as the first gem in the diadem of
England. Emancipation and the equalisation of the sugar duties
brought down the planters from wealth to penury. A vast negro
population was suddenly, without any preparation or restraint,
invested with the full civil rights of English citizens. When a
period of prolonged and apparently hopeless industrial depression
accompanies such a social upheaval, only a match is needed to
kindle the flame of revolution.

All through the early months of 1865 trouble had been brew-
ing in Jamaica. A certain Dr. Underbill, the secretary of the
Baptist Missionary Society, had seized the opportunity of a long
drought, with its consequent distress, to lay before Mr. Cardwell,
the Secretary for the Colonies, a highly coloured memorandum as
to the poverty and political grievances of the negroes. This
document was sent back from England to the Governor of Jamaica
with directions for an inquiry, and its contents were not long in
finding their way into the colonial papers. An agitation was set on
foot, largely supported by the ministers of the native Baptist con-

THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE. 203

nection, meetings were held at which inflammatory speeches were
delivered by orators of colour, and appeals to united action were
widely circulated. It was notorious that much excitement pre-
vailed among the negroes, but the months passed on and there
seemed good reason to hope that the storm would blow over.

On Saturday, October 7, the ordinary court of petty sessions
for the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-East was held at Morant Bay.
Eeaders of last month's CORNHILL will not need to be reminded
that in Jamaica justice is still administered, as in the rural dis-
tricts of England, by the local gentry, among whom the ' squire '
and the clergyman loom large. On that day the business was
mostly of an ordinary description, ' consisting principally of charges
of assault and of the use of abusive language,' but the court was
unusually crowded and there was much disturbance, culminating
in something very like a riot and in the rescue from the police of
a negro whose arrest had been ordered by the magistrates.

On the following Monday warrants were issued for the arrest
of, amongst others, a certain Paul Bogle, who had taken a leading
part in the disturbance and was a man of importance among the
negroes of the parish. They were placed in the hands of a black
policeman, who started early on the morning of Tuesday, the 10th,
with five of his comrades and two rural constables, for Stony Gut,
a negro settlement about five miles from Morant Bay, where Paul
Bogle's habitation was situated. The warrants were not destined
to be executed. Arrived at Stony Gut, the officers of the law were
surrounded by a mob of some hundreds of negroes armed with
cutlasses, sticks, and pikes. Bogle called on them for help;
the police were overpowered, beaten, and only released after a
detention of some hours upon taking an oath that from henceforth
they would 'join their colour' and 'cleave to the black'; while
Bogle openly expressed the intention of leading his men down to
Morant Bay on the morrow, and threats were uttered of ' killing
all the white men and all the black men that would not join them.'

The news of this outrage and of the threat to march on Morant
Bay was not long in reaching Baron von Ketelhodt, a naturalised
German who filled the position of Gustos of the parish of St.
Thomas-in-the-East, an office combining some of the functions of
the Lord-Lieutenant of an English county with those of a chair-
man of quarter sessions. The Baron had incurred some unpopu-
larity among the negroes, and had been stigmatised in an anony-
mous placard some months previously as ' an unscrupulous and

204 THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE.

oppressive foreigner.' He now lost no time, but despatched a letter
to Spanish Town begging the Governor for military aid, and as
there were no troops in the parish he summoned the Volunteers
of the neighbouring district of Bath to assemble early the next
morning at Morant Bay. Accordingly, by 8 A.M. on Wednesday,
the llth, the St. Thomas-in-the-East Volunteers, No. 1 company,
drawn from the scanty white population, and mustering about
twenty strong, were in full march under Captain Kitchens. For
all practical purposes they were untrained men ; they knew little
drill, were barely acquainted with their manual and firing exer-
cises, and were restricted to ten rounds of ball ammunition apiece.
When they reached Morant Bay they were joined by nine or ten
of the Volunteers of that locality, and finding everything quiet
there were allowed by the Gustos, after a few preliminary evolu-
tions, to fall out and obtain refreshment.

Meanwhile the vestry, which consisted of certain elected
members, coloured as well as white, and of the magistrates who
sat ex officio, were transacting their routine business, and up
till four o'clock in the afternoon it looked as if, after all, there
would be no disturbance. Suddenly one of the rector's sons was
seen galloping at full speed across the parade, and a cry was
raised ' They are coming, they are coming ! ' The Volunteers had
scarcely time to load their muskets and form up in front of the
Court-house when the whole open space was filled with a surging
mob of negroes armed with cutlasses, sticks, and firearms. The
Gustos came out on to the steps with the magistrates and vestry-
men. His cries of ' Keep peace, go back, keep peace ! ' were
drowned with yells of ' War, war ! ' Stones were flung from the
crowd, Captain Hitchens was struck on the head, an ineffectual
effort was made to read the Riot Act, and the order was given to
the Volunteers to fire. Some of the rioters fell, but the mob were
too close to be checked ; the Volunteers were overwhelmed in a
moment, some were mortally wounded, others disarmed, and the
rest were compelled either to flee or to take refuge in the Court-
house with the Gustos and the magistrates. Here for a time
resistance was maintained, the mob returning the fire with the
weapons they had captured, and with showers of stones. One
by one the defenders sank down wounded. After a time a
cry was heard of ' Burn the brutes out ! ' The school-house,
which adjoined the Court-house, was seen to be on fire, the flames
spread to the latter building, and as the roof was beginning to

THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE. 205

fall in, the surviving occupants made their way out of the build-
ing, hoping, by the aid of the darkness — for it was now night — to
conceal themselves in the vicinity. Some few were successful
and remained undiscovered till morning, but others were dragged
from their hiding-places and beaten to death, or left for dead on
the ground. Among those who perished in this miserable fashion
were the Gustos, Mr. Herschell the curate of the parish, and several
of the magistrates and Volunteer officers, together with some of the
coloured vestrymen. Altogether eighteen lives were taken and
thirty more of the party were wounded, some of them very
severely. The town remained in the hands of the rioters, the
gaol was broken into and the prisoners released, several stores were
attacked, and a considerable quantity of gunpowder was taken.

Later on in the evening, when all was over, Bogle, who
throughout the assault had acted as the ringleader, returned to
Stony Grut, and there, in the chapel in which he was in the
habit of conducting service, returned thanks to (rod that he
' went to this work and that God had succeeded him in his
work.' Early the next morning a party of 200 negroes armed
with guns and pikes, and with shells blowing to summon their
comrades, proceeded to Coley, a few miles to the north-west of
Stony Grut, obtaining fresh adherents as they went, and compel-
ling all they met, under the threat of immediate death, to swear
that they would henceforth join the blacks. ' Colour for colour ! '
was the cry everywhere. Bath was entered by a large party
marching in military order, with flags flying and drums beating.
The stores in the town were pillaged, and property to a large
amount was taken or destroyed, while the few white inhabitants
took refuge in the bush. In the course of the next three days
the insurgents spread over a tract of country extending from
White Horses, a few miles to the west of Morant Bay, to Elmwood,
a distance of upwards of thirty miles to the north-east, burning
and plundering the houses and estates.

In one or two instances the owners or the managers were
murdered, in others they were severely wounded, but in most
cases timely warning was given, and the persons who were sought
for were able to escape, frequently by the connivance and
assistance of faithful black servants. At Blue Mountains, a
valuable estate belonging to Sir William Fitzherbert, the white
bookkeeper was done to death with cutlasses, but Mr. Beresford
Fitzherbert, a young man just arrived from England, was spared,

206 THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE.

on the intercession of a coloured overseer, and catching a bare-
backed mule, he rode, without saddle or bridle, some thirty
miles across the mountains into safety. Meanwhile women and
children were cowering in hiding-places in the woods, exposed to
hourly apprehensions of a fate worse than death,1 many of them
having already suffered bereavement, and more still in a state of
sickening uncertainty as to the safety of those who were dearest
to them.

Fortunately, the agony was not of long duration. It will be
remembered that on the afternoon of the 10th the ill-fated Baron
von Ketelhodt had despatched a letter asking for military aid. On
the morning of the 12th, H.M.S. Wolveri/ne, under the command
of Captain Algernon de Horsey, and with a company of the West
India Eegiment on board, steamed into Morant Bay. The soldiers
were landed and marched through the square, still strewn with
maimed and disfigured corpses,2 and during the course of that
day and the next the fugitives, men, women and children, were
placed on board the vessel and conveyed to Kingston.

His Excellency John Edward Eyre, the Governor of Jamaica,
was a man in the prime of life, and with a prolonged and varied
experience in dealing with subject races. Born in August 1815,
the son of a Yorkshire clergyman, and the descendant of that
gallant Sir Gervase Eyre who held Newark for King Charles against
the armies of Meldrum and Willoughby , he owed nothing to fortune
or connection. Emigrating to Australia at the age of eighteen,
he had thriven and prospered, and was appointed a resident magis-
trate and Protector of the Aborigines, in which capacity he became
known as the consistent and unflinching champion of the natives
against the settlers. ' He was too big a dog,' wrote Henry Kingsley,
' to be bayed down by any small bush clique.' He won fame as an
explorer by his memorable and fearless journey with a single black
companion across the terrible desert from Sydney to Swan Kiver,and
in 1846 he was made Lieutenant-Governor of New Zealand under
Sir George Grey. Thence he was transferred as Governor to St.
Vincent in 1854, and to Antigua in 1859, in each position winning

1 In or two cases insult was offered, but there is no authenticated case of
outrage, though the rioters made no secret as to what the fate of the women
would be when their protectors were slain.

2 Blood-curdling stories were in circulation, and ultimately transmitted to
England, of atrocities committed on the bodies of the fallen before life was
extinct, but they appear to have had little or no foundation.

THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE. 207

golden opinions and maintaining his former reputation for even-
handed justice between black man and white. In 1862 he was
sent to Jamaica as acting Grovernor during the absence of Sir
Charles Darling, and on the latter's retirement, in 1864, he suc-
ceeded him as Grovernor-in-Chief.

There from the very beginning he found himself at variance with
the turbulent and ill-regulated local Legislature, in which the
negro element was largely represented. The year 1865 had been
calamitous in many ways. Dr. Underbill's lucubrations had
added fuel to the flame, and as far back as July the Grovernor had
received warning of an intended negro rising on August 4, and
had taken his measures accordingly. Now he was confronted
with that most awful of scourges — a Servile war in which colour
is pitted against colour. None knew better than he that, though
the negro brain is utterly wanting in that power of combination
which alone can give reality to what we understand by conspiracy,
yet a common grievance and a common end will suddenly trans-
mute themselves into concerted action with appalling rapidity.
Where distress and disaffection undoubtedly existed, the least
encouragement or show of weakness was certain to be fatal, and
it should be borne in mind that in the hundred years immediately
preceding the Emancipation Act of 1834 there had been in Jamaica
some half-dozen formidable negro risings, in the course of which
plantations had been fired and proprietors killed by the score.

On the morning of Wednesday, the llth, immediately on
the receipt of Baron von Ketelhodt's letter, Grovernor Eyre
communicated its purport to the officer commanding the forces in
Jamaica, Major-General O'Connor, and requested him to despatch
troops to Morant Bay. In the course of the morrow came the
news of the rising and massacre. The Grovernor rode straight
into Kingston, and, after hurriedly concerting measures of
repression with the military and naval authorities, he summoned
his Executive Committee and Privy Council. There was no
divergence of opinion as to the necessity for the immediate
proclamation of martial law, but under the island constitution it
was necessary to obtain the advice and sanction of a so-called
' Council of War.' The next morning, the 13th, that body
assembled, comprising the senior naval and military officers, the
Grovernor, and the members of the two branches of the Legislature.
A proclamation, drawn up by the Attorn ey-Greneral, was approved,
and it was announced in the Queen's name,

208 THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE.

to all whom it may concern, that martial law shall prevail throughout the said
county of Surrey, except in the city and parish of Kingston, and that our military
forces shall have all power of exercising the rights of belligerents against such
of the inhabitants of the said county, except as aforesaid, as our said military
forces may consider opposed to our Government and the well-being of our beloved
subjects.

The force at the disposal of Major-General O'Connor was cer-
tainly not excessive. Rather more than 500 regular soldiers drawn
from the 1st West India Regiment and the 2nd battalion of the
6th Foot, together with one or two field guns under the care of
an artillery subaltern, represented all that was available for the
repression of the rebellion, leaving another 500 for the protection
of an island with an area of 4,193 square miles, much of which con-
sisted of mountain fastnesses or dense jungles with few facilities for
intercommunication, and with a population in the ratio of 350,000
blacks to 13,000 whites. Besides this, however, were the officers
and bluejackets of the Wolverine, the Onyx, and the Aurora,
some hastily-enrolled Volunteers and the town pensioners, while as
a last resort were the Maroons, a strange wild race, the descendants
of the slaves held in bondage by the Spaniards when the island
was taken from them in 1658. The Maroons had retreated to the
mountains, they had never been reduced to slavery by the English,
they had warred against them and made peace with them time out of
mind, and they had never intermarried or mingled with the negro
population, by whom they were held in great awe. To call out,
arm, and enroll these men was a desperate experiment, but it has
had many parallels in our history, and on this occasion it was
completely successful. It is not too much to say that the fate
of Jamaica rested for the moment on the loyalty of the Maroons.

The object of the Governor was to hem in the insurgents
between the mountains and the eastern coast, and thus prevent
them from effecting raids in the central, western, and northern dis-
tricts of the island. Ably carried out by the military and naval
authorities, his plans were completely successful. The area of
disturbance was strictly confined to the seat of the original out-
break, the refugees were promptly extricated from their
perilous position, and the insurgent negroes, equally surprised
and cowed by the arrival of the troops, slunk away without
offering more than the shadow of an armed resistance. Paul
Bogle, on whose head had been set a reward of four thousand
dollars, was captured by the Maroons, handed over to the military,
and promptly hanged. On October 30 it was formally announced

THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE. !i09

by the Governor that the rebellion had been subdued, and that
the chief instigators and actors therein had been visited with
condign punishment.

As to the severity of the punishment, indeed, there could be
no two opinions. During the thirty days for which martial law
extended over the county of Surrey, 439 negroes were either shot
down or executed, sometimes with, sometimes without the
formality of a trial, and over 600, amongst whom were included
a number of women, were flogged, in some cases with revolting
cruelty. Due allowance must be made for the soldiers, few in
number amidst an overwhelming population, acting in small
detachments where it was difficult to keep prisoners, and with
the memories of the Indian Mutiny still fresh in their minds.
For the first two or three days after the murders at the Court-
house the fate of Jamaica was trembling in the balance, and it
was idle to expect any great self-restraint on the part of those
engaged in repressing the insurrection. But it is impossible to
resist the conclusion that the reign of terror was continued long
after it had ceased to have any justification, that proper dis-
crimination was not always used in sifting the innocent from the
guilty, that many perished who had no connection with the
rising, and that the number of hangings and floggings was grossly
in excess of the requirements of the emergency. The youth and
inexperience of the ensigns and naval lieutenants who sat on
many of the courts-martial that dealt out such heavy measure
with so free a hand were unfortunate circumstances, though it was
afterwards held by the Royal Commission ' that in the great
majority of cases the evidence seems to have been unobjection-
able in character and quite sufficient to justify the finding of the
Court,' and justice was done to the manner and deportment of the
officers themselves. On the other hand, unfortunately several of
them, and those not the youngest, placed on record their own
condemnation by the reckless levity and brutality in which by
speech and on paper they described their actions towards the
negroes. The British fighting man is not always a felicitous
letter writer, nor does he always measure his words with accuracy
or calculate their effect upon the public ; but it is extraordinary
that the military authorities on the island should not only have
passed these deplorable documents without censure, but should
actually have transmitted them home.

In the suppression of the rebellion and in these wholesale

VOL. XII. — NO. 68, N.S. 14

210 THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE.

measures of retribution the Governor took no share, though he
fully accepted the responsibility for the acts of his subordinates.
Having once placed the safety of the white inhabitants in the
hands of the military, he refrained from interference. But in one
conspicuous case he played a part which was destined to embitter
his whole future life. George William Gordon was a coloured
man of education and intelligence, owning considerable landed
property in the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-East, which he repre-
sented in the House of Assembly, as well as at Kingston and in
other parts of the island. He was a member of the ' Native
Baptists,' and had recently ordained as a deacon in that com-
munity Paul Bogle, who was his intimate correspondent or friend.
He had taken great interest in the parochial affairs of St. Thomas,
and had been at one time appointed churchwarden, but his
adhesion to the Baptists was held to disqualify him for that
office. He had been removed from the vestry by Baron von
Ketelhodt, the Gustos, had subsequently brought an unsuccessful
action against him, and was known to cherish bitter resentment
against the Baron, against Mr. Herschell, and the local magistracy
generally. It should be added that his estates were heavily
mortgaged, and his financial affairs deeply involved.

All through the spring and summer of 1865 Gordon had
taken a leading part in the agitation which followed upon
the publication of Dr. Underbill's memorandum, and he had used
language of a highly inflammatory and vindictive nature both
towards the Government and the Governor. On October 11
Gordon was far away from the scene of the massacre, being on his
property at Cherry Garden, a place near Kingston, where Mr.
Froude afterwards stayed on his visit to the West Indies; but
when the news of the outbreak and its attendant horrors reached
the latter place his name was at once associated in popular speech
with the authors of the disturbances, and he was regarded both by
friends and foes as being undoubtedly a party to it. He seems
to have had news of the massacre at a period which, considering
the distance between Morant Bay and Kingston, is difficult to
reconcile with entire ignorance of what was in contemplation.
Flight was suggested, but he disregarded the advice, adding that
if he went to St. Thomas-in-the-East he would be the first man
hanged, and on the 14th came into Kingston, which, it will be
remembered, was excepted from the proclamation of martial law.
On the 17th, while the police were searching unsuccessfully for

THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE. 211

him, he went to the house of Major-General O'Connor and gave
himself up. The general declined jurisdiction, but at that
moment Governor Eyre arrived on the scene, and informed Gordon
that he must accompany him on board the Wolverine, which was
then about to start on a second trip for Morant Bay.

Arrived there, he was put on shore as a prisoner, and on
October 21 he was sent by Lieutenant-Colonel Nelson, an officer
of considerable service and experience and in command of the
troops on the spot, before a court-martial consisting of Lieu-
tenant Brand, K.N., who acted as President, Lieutenant Errington,
K.N., and Ensign Kelly, of the 4th West India Eegiment. He
was charged with furthering the massacre at Morant Bay, ' inciting
and advising with certain insurgents, and thereby by his influence
tending to cause the riot.' After a six hours' trial he was found
guilty and sentenced to death. The finding was confirmed by
Colonel Nelson, and forwarded through General O'Connor to
Governor Eyre, who replied in writing that he quite concurred
in the justice of the sentence and the necessity of carrying it
into effect. Gordon was hanged on the morning of October 23
from the centre arch of the ruined Court-house.

The first news of the outbreak reached England on November 3,
and caused a thrill of horror. The apprehension and concern were
not lessened when fuller particulars of the outrages and excesses
of the negroes were furnished by mail on the 13th. On the 17th,
however, came the news of the complete suppression of the rising
and the execution of Gordon, who was described as the ringleader
in the insurrection. It was clear from the first that the re-
pression had been ruthless, and the ' Times ' on the following day
anticipated that there would be an outcry, and expressed regret
that the tone of the officers' letters had not been more guarded.
There succeeded a feeling of wonder that an outbreak which had
caused such widespread alarm could have been quenched with
such ease and rapidity. Then came the tale of the floggings
and hangings and burnings of cottages, embellished with all the
luxuriance of a tropical imagination, and multiplied far beyond
the truth, which, indeed, scarcely needed exaggeration. On the
top of all came the violation of the liberty of the subject involved
in the removal of Gordon from civil jurisdiction and his trial by
court-martial. There was a burst of indignation throughout the
land. In a very short time a 'Jamaica Committee' was formed,
and meetings were held in London and throughout the provinces,

14—2

•2\-2 THE CASE OF GOVERNOR FA'RK.

at which Governor Eyre and his subordinates were denounced
in the most unmeasured terms. Speaking at Blackburn on
November 30, John Bright did not hesitate to say that if murder
had not changed its name and ceased to be a crime, he hoped to
see the Governor of Jamaica and his accomplices standing at the
Bar for the murder of Gordon.

Associated with the great tribune were Mr. ' Tom ' Hughes,
then member for Lambeth ; Mr. Peter Taylor, member for
Leicester, a veteran of the Anti-Corn Law League and an eminent
opponent of vaccination ; Mr. Frederic Harrison, and Mr. John
Stuart Mill, M.P. A large section of the Press took the same line :
there was little or no restraint in what the ' Pall Mall Gazette '
called ' the brutal and senseless outcry,' and anonymous letters
and telegrams of a disgraceful nature were directed to Miss Eyre,
who had the temerity to beg, in print, that her brother might
not be condemned unheard.

This aspect of the case had few sympathisers among the
white population of Jamaica. The Governor's ' prompt forethought,
vigorous action, and generous courage ' were in the mouths of all.
Addresses of gratitude and of confidence poured in from every corner
of the island — from every class of society, from the Legislative
Council, from the House of Assembly, from the magistracy, and
inhabitants of every parish, from grand juries and custodes, from
the clergy, from the heads of private families, and from the women,
who felt that they owed the Governor an especial debt. Mrs.
Stewart, the wife of the Archdeacon, and 2,809 other ladies pre-
sented a memorial in which their fervent and heartfelt thankful-
ness was expressed to his Excellency for saving them, ' their
families and their homes, from outrage, desolation, and ruin.'

Our gratitude is enhanced by the sad and solemn recollection, no less of the
miseries over which widows, orphans, and other victims of wrong have now to
mourn, than of the horrors to which we ourselves had been doomed.

The inhabitants of Jamaica had ever at their door the example
of the black republic of Haiti, and the memory of the awful scenes
of bloodshed and lust and agony in which the French planters and
their families had been exterminated by the negroes in 1793. At
the meetings which preceded the Morant Bay rising there had
been ominous references to Haiti ; and the white population, scat-
tered in isolated and unprotected positions and widely separated
from each other, had passed through all the anguish of anticipation.
To the planters the trend of feeling at home was equally incom-

THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE. 213

prehensible and repellent, just as those excellent and humane
people to whom ' massacre, torture, and black despair ' are mere
idle words can little appreciate the sort of temperament which is
engendered where a native rising is an ever-present possibility.

On December 30, 1865, a Royal Commission was issued to
inquire into the origin, nature, and circumstances of the ' dis-
turbances ' in Jamaica, and ' with respect to the measures adopted
in the course of their suppression,' wherein ' it is alleged that
excessive and unlawful severity had been used.' The Commis-
sioners appointed were Major-General Sir Henry Storks, a soldier
of long military service and considerable experience in civil
administration, together with Mr. Eussell Gurney, the Recorder of
London, and Mr. John Blossett Maule, Recorder of Leeds, both of
them barristers of high standing and accustomed to the exercise of
judicial functions. The secretary, Mr. C. S. Roundell, also a
barrister, and for many years a member of the House of Commons,
still survives. It was impossible to disguise the fact that Eyre
was practically on his trial before the Commission, and with such
a cloud hanging over him his retention of the office of Governor
was hardly practicable. He was superseded pendente lite, and the
senior Commissioner, Sir Henry Storks, took his place.

The labours of the Commission were thorough and exhaustive ;
730 witnesses were examined and sixty separate sittings were held
between January 25 and March 21, 1866. Governor Eyre gave
evidence at great length, besides furnishing an enormous mass of
documentary evidence to the Commissioners. It is, I think, im-
possible to read his examination, whatever view one takes of his
actions, without feeling that he bore himself with dignity in a
very trying situation, and that he had conducted himself in
what he felt to be a great emergency with a single eye to the
safety of the people committed to his charge.

The report was despatched from Jamaica on April 9, re-
ceived in London on the 30th ; and five out of its seven clauses
contained a complete vindication of the Governor. The Commis-
sioners found :

(1) That the disturbances in St. Thomas-in-the-East had their immediate
origin in a planned resistance to lawful authority.

(2) That while the obtaining of land free from rent and a want of confidence
in the local tribunals were among the predisposing motives of the rioters, ' not a
few contemplated the attainment of their ends by the death or expulsion of the
white inhabitants of the island.'

(3) That though the original design was confined to a small portion of the

214 THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE.

parish of St. Thonias-iu-the-East, the disorder spread with singular rapidity over
an extensive tract of country, ' and that such was the state of excitement pre-
vailing in other parts of the island that, had more than a momentary success
been obtained by the insurgents, their ultimate overthrow would have been
attended with a still more fearful loss of life and property.'

(4) That praise is due to Governor Eyre for the skill, promptitude, and vigour
which he manifested during the early stages of the insurrection, to the exercise
of which qualities its speedy termination is in a great degree to be attributed.

(5) That the military and naval operations appear to us to have been prompt
and judicious.

On the other hand :

(6) That by the continuance of martial law in its full force to the extreme limit
of its statutory operation the people were deprived for longer than the neces-
sary period of the great constitutional privileges by which the security of life and
property is provided for.

(7) That the punishments inflicted were excessive : (a) that the punishment
of death was unnecessarily frequent ; (>) that the floggings were reckless, and at
Bath positively barbarous ; (c) that the burning of 1,000 houses was wanton and
cruel.

The responsibility for the amount and kind of the punish-
ments thus stigmatised clearly rests with the military authorities,
to whom the execution of martial law was delegated. It is equally
clear that the responsibility for what the Commissioners regarded
as the unnecessary prolongation of martial law, with its con-
sequent severities, lay with the Governor.

To the case of Gordon the Commissioners devoted a separate
section of their report. After a careful review of the evidence,
they found that though by his words and writings Gordon had
probably produced a material effect upon the minds of Bogle
and his followers, and did much to produce that excitement
and discontent throughout the island which rendered the spread
of the insurrection exceedingly probable, yet they could see
no sufficient proof either of his complicity in the outbreak at
Morant Bay, or of his having been a party to a general conspiracy
against the Government. They added their opinion ' that the true
explanation of Mr. Gordon's conduct is to be found in the account
which he has given of himself : " I have gone as far as I can go,
but no further," ' and that though this educated member of the
Legislature might know well the distinction between (to use his
own words) a " rebellion " and a " demonstration," it would not be
so easy to his ignorant and fanatical followers. When we are told
that as recently as September 4 he had used the words at a meeting,
" We must do as Haiti does," it is difficult to feel any very profound
sympathy with him, and the cry of one of the blacks who was being

THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE. 215

led to execution, " See what Massa Gordon bring me to," is a melan-
choly commentary on whatever good intentions Mr. Gordon may
have been endowed with.' Yet a case of such gravity demanded a
more responsible tribunal than a court-martial consisting of two
naval lieutenants and an ensign in a West India regiment.

The publication of the report and the evidence in the form of
an enormously bulky Blue-book produced a profound effect, and
rekindled the flame of agitation, which had somewhat died down.
Whether a strong Ministry could have reinstated Eyre in his post
as Governor, and whether after a verdict in which praise and
censure were so closely blended they would have been justified, may
be doubted. But Lord KusselPs Administration was notoriously
weak, and the outcry against Eyre raged fiercest among those with
whom he could least afford to quarrel. Governor Eyre was recalled.
His fall was made as gentle for him as possible by the terms in
which the decision was communicated to him ; but the blunt fact
remained that he was a ruined man, and that his career was over.
In May 1866 he quitted the island which, in the opinion of nine-
tenths of the white population, he had saved from the horrors
of Haiti and St. Domingo, carrying away with him such a tribute
of gratitude, regard, and affection as falls to the lot of few colonial
Governors.1

The Jamaica Committee at home were scarcely more satisfied
with what they called the feeble and timid report. As far back
as January they had consulted Mr. (afterwards Sir) James Fitz-
james Stephen as to the proper steps to take for invoking the law,
and they now prepared to act on his opinion. A serious differ-
ence, however, soon made itself manifest in their ranks. The
majority of the Committee and their supporters were for the
immediate prosecution of the ex-Governor and his subordinates on
the charge of murdering Gordon. The Government, when inter-
rogated in Parliament, declined to undertake any such proceeding,
on the ground that Eyre had been fully convinced of Gordon's
guilt and had acted without legal ' malice.' Not deterred by this,
the Committee resolved to prosecute, either by themselves or
through Mrs. Gordon, and fresh funds were collected and the

1 It may be added that several months after the Commissioners had come
home, and when Eyre's successor, Sir Peter Grant, was firmly in the saddle, a
number of trials before the regular civil tribunals proved much more premeditation
in the outbreak than had come out before the Commissioners, and sentences of
great severity were awarded by the Courts.

216 THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE.

meetings renewed through the country. Their chairman, how-
ever, Mr. Buxton, M.P. for East Surrey, resigned his position and
seceded from the Committee, followed by several others who held
with him that criminal proceedings were bound to fail and would
result in a triumph to the accused, and that they might rest
content with the recall and disgrace of the Governor.

A final effort, however, was made to induce the Government
to follow the wishes of the Jamaica Committee, and on July 31
Mr. Buxton moved a series of resolutions deploring the excessive
punishments that had been inflicted during the late disturbances,
approving the dismissal of Governor Eyre, calling for compensa-
tion to the families of the black victims, and for a remission of
sentences for all those still undergoing punishments. Lord
Eussell's Administration had been overthrown on June 18, and
Lord Derby reigned in his stead, the Colonial Office being repre-
sented in the Commons by Sir Charles Adderley (now Lord
Norton), the Under Secretary.

Mr. Buxton's speech was free from the intemperances of the
platform, but it contained a powerful and moving recital of the
floggings and burnings, a fierce attack on the youngsters who
comprised the courts-martial, on the senior officers who approved
and confirmed their sentences, and on the ' cold indifference to
the anguish of the people exhibited by the Governor.' He made
light of the supposed danger to the island, laughed at the idea of
conspiracy, and represented the tumult and massacre at Port
Morant as an agrarian riot badly handled by the authorities. As
was said by Sir Charles Adderley, he picked out of the report of
the Commissioners all that censured the Jamaica authorities, and
omitted all that praised or excused them. Mr. John Stuart Mill
followed with a cold logical argument, in which he expressed his
intention of prosecuting Eyre and of establishing ' the great
principle of the responsibility to the law of all agents of the
Executive for taking human life without justification.'

The burden of opposition fell upon Mr. Card well and Mr.
\V. E. Forster, who had been respectively Secretary and Under
Secretary for the Colonies during the period when Eyre's conduct
was under investigation. Mr. Forster held that the Governor
deserved the censure of the House of Commons, but deprecated
the idea of prosecution ; and while crediting Eyre with being a
humane and conscientious man, said that there were particular
circumstances connected with the Jamaica Act which practically

THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE. 217

left the Governor no option in declaring martial law. Mr.
Card well went further, and expressed strong concurrence with all
the language used by the Commissioners in Eyre's favour, and
pointed to him as a man who, amid universal anxiety and alarm,
had retained some portion, at any rate, of his self-possession.
The fatal mistake had been, he said, the continuance of martial
law for the full period of thirty days. Mr. Eussell Gurney rose
to asseverate his opinion that while the evidence on which Gordon
was condemned might have possibly subjected him to an indict-
ment for sedition, it was totally insufficient to justify a conviction
for murder. At the same time he indignantly traversed Mr.
Buxton's description of the original outbreak, both as to its origin
and gravity, and pointed out how completely the latter had
ignored the planned risings, the drillings, the war-cry of ' Colour
for colour ! ' and the significant fact that ' the trash-houses ' for
crushing the sugar were invariably left standing on the ruined
plantations for the use of their future masters.

Mr. Baillie Cochrane (afterwards Lord Lamington) and Colonel
North (not the nitrate king, but the member for Oxfordshire) spoke
out for Eyre. Mr. Hughes, on the other hand, thought he ought
to welcome the opportunity of clearing his character in the dock,
and Mr. Ayrton, afterwards famous as Mr. Gladstone's First Com-
missioner of Works, advocated impeachment, a course which was
not likely to commend itself to those who remembered the dreary
farce into which the proceedings against Warren Hastings had de-
generated. Finally, after Sir Charles Adderley had intimated that
both compensation and a revision of sentences were in contempla-
tion, the House passed, without a division, the resolution deploring
the excessive punishments, and allowed the others to be withdrawn.

The Jamaica Committee had received somewhat cold en-
couragement, but it now set to work, under the chairmanship of
Mr. Mill, to bring the man whom they regarded as ' the splendid
delinquent ' to justice. There were many who hoped to see him
hang as high as Governor Wall, whom tardy justice had overtaken
in 1802 for acts of cruelty committed twenty years before. The
recently published letters of John Eichard Green record Lady
Salisbury's epigram, ' Here is the Eyre, come, let us kill him.'

Meanwhile Eyre's friends had not been idle. When the first
mutterings of the storm had become audible, Henry Kingsley,
the brilliant writer whose novels have been somewhat eclipsed
by a brother's fame, had dwelt on his splendid Australian

218 THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE.

record, and described him as a man eminently ' kind, generous,
and just.' The author of ' Geoffrey Hamlyn ' could speak with
some authority, both as to his championship of the natives and
his work as an explorer. Sir Koderick Murchison, as the President
of the Eoyal Geographical Society, was no less warm in his praises.
And in the ' Daily Telegraph ' of December 19, 1865, appeared a
letter signed John Kuskin, which, amid much charming irre-
levance, protested that the writer had thought better of Mr. Mill
and Mr. Hughes ' than that they would countenance this fatuous
outcry against Governor Eyre.' ' Let the men,' he added, ' who
would now deserve well of England, reserve their impeachments,
or turn them from those among us who have saved colonies to
those who have destroyed nations.'

But a fiercer fighter than Ruskin was to come on the scene.
Brooding in his lonely room at Cheyne Row, the Sage of Chelsea
was stirred into a white heat of fury at what he considered the
base and ungenerous treatment of Governor Eyre. In charac-
teristic language he branded his recall and prosecution as the
' reward for saving the West Indies and hanging one incendiary
mulatto, well worth the hanging if I can judge.' To quote the
words of Mr. Froude :

Beaten as he himself was to the ground, he took weapon in hand again, and
stood forward with such feeble support as he could find for an unpopular cause
in defence of a grossly injured man.

An ' Eyre Defence Committee ' was formed in the course of
the autumn, and an appeal to the public was made for funds,
which was liberally responded to. Carlyle was voted into the
chair at the first meeting, and became, with Sir Roderick Mur-
chison, its vice-president. Ruskin and Charles Kingsley were
among its leading spirits, and on December 15, 1866, Carlyle
sent to Miss Bromley a copy of a speech by the former, and wrote :

While all the world stands tremulous, shilly-shallying from the gutter,
impetuous Ruskin plunges his rapier up to the very hilt in the abominable belly
of the vast blockheadism, and leaves it staring very considerably.

Carlyle's own metaphor has been often quoted : the captain of
a burning ship, by immediate and bold exertion, had put the fire
out, and had been called to account for having flung a bucket or
two of water into the hold beyond what was necessary. He had
damaged some of the cargo, perhaps, but he had saved the ship.

All through the year meetings and counter-meetings were
held up and down the country side, and the Press teemed with

THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE. 219

letters, argumentative and vituperative. Society was rent asunder
much as the French nation over the Dreyfus case, and many of
the ' demonstrations ' were of a stormy character. There are
survivors who remember when a ' knuckle-duster ' was part of the
equipment of those who held strong views, and were prone to express
them to an adverse audience. Governor Eyre himself arrived in
England on August 12, and was greeted with a complimentary
banquet at Southampton, at which Charles Kingsley was reported
to have described his actions in Jamaica as a display of modern
chivalry, words which prompted Sir George Trevelyan to write :

Let's rather speak of what was felt by us who value ' Yeast '
On learning who had led the chair at that triumphal feast,
Where Hampshire's town and county joined a civic wreath to fling
O'er him, the great pro-consul, whose renown through time shall ring.
.... That he who gave our ancient creeds their first and rudest shock,
Till half the lads for pattern took his Chartist Alton Locke,
.... Should teach that ' modern chivalry ' has found its noblest egress
In burning Baptist villages, and stringing up a negress.

On January 6, 1867, Mr. Stephen applied at Bow Street
before Sir Thomas Henry, on behalf of Mr. Mill and Mr.
Peter Taylor (the widowed Mrs. Gordon having declined to
prosecute), for a warrant against Colonel Nelson and Lieutenant
Brand on the charge of having wilfully murdered George William
Gordon, and after a good deal of evidence and a learned legal argu-
ment, the accused were committed for trial at the Central Criminal
Court. Mr. Stephen was less successful in his application for a
warrant against Eyre himself. The latter was residing in Shrop-
shire, at Adderley Hall, and on March 25 Mr. Stephen appeared
before a full bench of magistrates at Market Dray ton, presided
over by Sir Baldwin Leighton, Chairman of Quarter Sessions for
the County. The ex-Governor was charged with having been an
accessory before the fact to the murder of Gordon ; he was
represented by the present Lord Chancellor, then Mr. Giffard,
and after a prolonged hearing the application was refused, the
magistrates being unanimously of opinion that the evidence did
not raise a strong or probable presumption of guilt.

At the Old Bailey, on April 10, an indictment for murder was
duly preferred against Nelson and Brand. Sir Alexander Cockburn,
Lord Chief Justice, himself charged the grand jury in an address
which lasted six hours, and is looked upon as the classic judicial
utterance on the history, existence, and nature of martial law in
England. The points to which he asked the jury to direct their

220 THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE

mind were, whether the accused had jurisdiction to try Gordon,
and, if so, was the jurisdiction exercised honestly, or corruptly for
the purpose of getting rid of a political opponent. If the jury
had any opinion that the jurisdiction to exercise martial law was
not satisfactorily made out, or had any doubt whether the accused
had acted honestly and faithfully in the discharge of their duties,
then the Chief Justice thought it would be the safer course for the
jury to ' let the matter go forward.'

The jury ignored the bill, making, however, a formal present-
ment that it was highly desirable that martial law should be more
clearly defined — a recommendation which has gone the way of
most presentments.

After this rebuff it was thought by many sympathisers with
the Jamaica Committee that enough had been done, and that the
wisdom of Mr. Buxton's advice had been justified. Amongst
these was Mr. Stephen, who felt, according to his brother and
biographer, that to proceed further would look like a vindictive
prosecution, and he ceased for the future to act as their counsel,
to the no small dudgeon of Mill, who chafed at such want of zeal
in the matter.

Nothing daunted, the Committee persisted on their course.
and on June 2, 1868, an indictment was brought before a
grand jury of Middlesex, in the Court of Queen's Bench,
charging Mr. Eyre, in twenty-one counts, with various mis-
demeanours in connection with the Jamaica rising. They
included the maintenance of martial law after the necessity for it
had ceased, the removal of Gordon from Kingston, and the causing
him to be tried by a court which had no jurisdiction over him,
together with the flogging of certain negroes, for which it was
alleged he was directly responsible.

Mr. Justice Blackburn, on whom, as senior puisne judge, it
devolved to charge the grand jury, put the hypotheses in a some-
what more favourable light to the accused than is to be found
in the charge of his chief in the case of Nelson and Brand.

' If the jury thought that Eyre sent Gordon to Morant Bay to hang him be-
cause he would be acquitted under the common law and ordinary tribunals,' then
it was an act of grave and lawless oppression, and a bill ought to be found at
once. But if they should hold, putting themselves as much as possible in the
Governor's position, ' that he thought there was a dangerous insurrection and
conspiracy spreading throughout the island, and that it was necessary for sup-
pressing it that Gordon should be summarily tried, because there was no time to
wait,' then Eyre would be excused, however mistaken, in acting under the powers
conferred upon him by the Colonial Legislature for that purpose, and there

THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE. 221

should be no bill. Secondly, Was Eyre guilty of that degree of want of care and
reasonable calmness and moderation which a man in his position was bound to
exercise as to render him criminally responsible ?

The jury found for Eyre on both points by ignoring the bill.

This was the last criminal proceeding to which the ex-
Grovernor was subjected, though he was harassed by a series of
civil suits for assault, false imprisonment, &c., the last of which,
by a negro named Phillipps, was dismissed in January 1869, the
indemnity of the Colonial Legislature being deemed a sufficient
estoppel. The Jamaica Committee had ceased to exist by that time,
having failed, as Mr. Peter Taylor admitted, in its main object,
but ' having procured an authoritative declaration that the law
was what they maintained it to be.' And as John Stuart Mill puts
it in his ' Autobiography ' :

We had given an emphatic warning to those who might be tempted to
similar guilt thereafter, that though they might escape the actual sentence of a
criminal tribunal, they were not safe against being put to some trouble and ex-
pense in order to avoid it.

Of that there can be no doubt, for on July 8, 1872, Parlia-
ment voted 4,133£. to defray the costs incurred by Mr. Eyre in
the various criminal prosecutions instituted against him. The
vote, in spite of the fact that the Government were pledged to it
by a promise made by their predecessors, was bitterly opposed,
and eventually carried by 243 to 130, after a debate in which the
whole story of the rising and its suppression was thrashed out again.

With that vote Governor Eyre disappears from history, and
his death at Walreddon Manor, near Tavistock, on November 30
last was only a surprise because few imagined him to be still
living. In his long retirement he maintained dignified silence
on the events which had once convulsed England, and he
left his case to the verdict of posterity. As to what that verdict
should be men will always differ, as was said by his biographer
in the ' Times,' so long as the types of mind represented by
Kuskin, Froude, and Carlyle on the one hand, are matched by
those of Bright and Mill and Buxton on the other. Whatever
his errors of judgment may have been — and they were un-
doubtedly grave — it seems to me that he saved Jamaica from
a terrible civil war, and that he met with but a scant measure of
that tolerance and consideration which is the meed of all men
who are called upon to act promptly in a moment of great peril.

J. B. ATLAY.

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK.

XIII.

ALTHOUGH at the time of writing it is only mid-January, there
is a feeling of spring in the air. Our letters from Loamshire
report the first crocus of the season in the south garden at Proud-
flesh Park; and Tom Topham-Sawyer, sending us a brace of
pheasants, remarked with characteristic grace that in this muggy
weather nothing would keep, and so he was obliged to clear out his
larder. But, though the physical season is thus abnormally mild,
there is a certain rigour in the religious atmosphere of Stuccovia,
and for its cause we must look back a little. The vicar returned
from Torquay just at the end of Advent ; but the accumulation
of Christmas Trees, social gatherings, and Plum-Pudding Services
has proved a little too much for even his renovated strength. On
the last night of the old year he conducted a novel devotion in
church. It was announced as ' voices of eminent preachers,
heard through the phonograph, with illustrative comments • ' and
was so timed that, just as the clock struck twelve, Dr. Liddon was
heard saying, in the tone of a half-stifled Punch, ' We stand at a
division of time : we look backward and we look onwards.' The
effect, as the Parish Magazine said, was supernaturally solemn,
but the reaction was too much for Soulsby. The pew-opener
tells Bertha that he swooned in the vestry, and that, when she
pressed a glass of water to his lips and the curate told him to buck
up, he only murmured with half-closed eyes —

0, 'tis a burthen, Bumpstead, 'tis a burthen
Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven.

When Bertha reported this collapse, Selina observed with acrimony
that if Mr. Soulsby would only take Pulsatilla before preaching
and Grape-nuts afterwards, perhaps he wouldn't have to desert his
parish for six months every year. But Dr. Snuffin, who has in
high perfection that faculty of sympathy which is so invaluable
in a family physician, likened his patient to a high-bred racer
which will go till it drops ; and recommended him to lie in bed
till ten every morning and to drink a pint of dry champagne
with his luncheon and dinner. The churchwardens, the district-

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK. 223

visitors, and the Fishers in Deep Waters, joined in a chorus of
warning against ' overdoing it,' and the vicar so far yielded as to
call in a good deal of clerical assistance. Father Adderley has
more than once swooped down from his high perch in the Maryle-
bone Eoad ; and the Cowley Fathers from Dartmouth Street have
been unremitting in their attentions. Hence arises that rigour of
which I spoke before as marring the mildness of our religious
atmosphere. I have observed that, whether on grounds of reason
or of mere prejudice, English people dislike a man in a petticoat
— ' a woman with a great peard under her muffler ' — and though
Father Black and Father Waggett have given us the most
excellent sermons, their appearance in Stucco Koad, which is the
part of our parish least touched by ecclesiastical influences, has
given rise to unfavourable comment. The minister of the Wesleyan
Chapel has preached a discourse on the ' Vestments of Baal,'
which has been reported in the local press ; and Miss Scrimgeour, a
member of the ' Presbyterian Church of England,' whatever that
may be, has been distributing from door to door a warning poem
(printed at Chelmsford), which lamentably fails to distinguish
between our truly Anglican organisations and those of an alien type.

THE COMING OF THE MONKS.

Wnerefore should they come to England,

Companies of banded foes : —
Come to England in the open,

While their tactics England knows —
If their influence is evil

Where the legislature ties,
What their mischief where their system

Legislative law defies ?

Freedom ! 1 Ay«, aye, give them freedom

Such as we and ours may claim,
In the ranks of social labour

To uphold an honest name
But I know not, oh, I know not

Where is England's common sense,
That she lets her halls to traitors

And ignores her own defence.

Is it not enough that lately

Up and down the land has sprung
Locked and barred and bolted buildings

For the hiding of our young 1
Many a father would have sooner

Parted with his household stuff ;
Many a mother's heart is broken —

Tell me, is it not enough ?

m A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOR

Do we want our boys to wither

'Neath a monasteric blight ;
With the priestly bands around them

And the Bible out of sight ?
Should we swell the list of voters,

Who at touch of foreign spring,
Through the ballot could endanger

The position of our king ?

Wherefore should they come to England ?

Wherefore should their haunts be free
From the government inspector,

In this land of liberty ?
And since nuns are noted beggars,

How does English law avail,
While these bold bag-carrying spinsters

All escape the common gaol 1

An alarmist 1 aye, I know it,

My opponents know it too ;
Know the danger and the duty

Of the Protestants they woo :
It might rouse us could we witness

How they grin behind their cowl,
At our ineffectual clearing

Of the nest they come to foul.

O, the sorrow would be lessened

If old England did not Itnom ;
But she has the lights of ages

Falling on her welcomed foe :
God sends night to those who love it,

And our warnings men will note,
When the papacy in England

Takes her hostess by the throat.

' This is eloquence,' said Queen Caroline, when Jeanie Deans
had made an end of pleading for her sister. ' This is eloquence '
cried many a Stuccovian Protestant, when he pictured the British
father ' parting with his household stuff' to save his son. The
scene of the Papacy taking her hostess by the throat seemed to
suggest a woodcut for the 'Police News.' The thought of our
monastic preachers ' grinning ' at us ' behind their cowl ' was
excessively annoying ; and, as an excuse for not giving is always
welcome, our front doors have been rudely banged in the face of
the ' bold bag-carrying spinsters ' from the convent in Stucco
Vale.

To what lengths this religious rigour would have gone, and
how far it would have frozen the stream of neighbourly goodwill,
it skills not now to inquire ; for, before a parochial crisis had

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK. 225

time to arise, a sudden scare of smallpox has recalled our atten-
tion to the secular sphere. As long as the disease confined its
ravages to Camberwell and Poplar we regarded it with philosophic

calm.

We bore their sufferings with such equanimity
That everyone exclaimed, ' What magnanimity 1 '

We agreed that sanitation was everything — that if people would
live in filth they must expect disease ; and as Stuccovia is a
remarkably clean and airy district we felt that virtue was its own
reward. But one fine day a case was reported from Stucco
Gardens Mews, and in an instant the whole spirit of the place
was changed. How the disease had made its way into so well-
regulated a parish we shall never know ; and indeed the sceptical
are inclined to believe that it has never been within five
miles of our sacred precincts. But undoubtedly one of the
district visitors found a child with a rash, and insisted on calling
in Dr. Snuffin, who, with disinterested zeal for the public health,
told all his patients that they must at once be re vaccinated.
Marvellous was the result of this ukase. Selina, who, since she
took to unauthorised systems of medicine, has poured scorn on
vaccination as a disgusting and archaic superstition, not only was
vaccinated herself, but caused a domestic revolution by insisting
that all the servants should follow suit. Muggins, the dingy
retainer, had been deeply pitted with the disease in infancy, but
this availed him nothing against Selina's sanitary zeal ; and the
cook, who will never see sixty again, pleaded in vain the case,
well known to her, of a young person at Friller's, the great dress-
maker's, who ' 'ad such a harm through bein' done that it 'ad to
be cut hoff above the elber.'

Mr. Soulsby preached a mystical sermon on the Golden Calf,
interpreting it as prophetic of that most beneficent boon of
science which will be immortally associated with the name
of Jenner ; and fainted three times when subjected to the process.
Mr. Barrington-Bounderley, laudably anxious to set a good
example to his constituents, goes about with a red ribbon tied
round the arm of his astrachan coat. Dr. Snuffin, whose horses
have hitherto been a little touched in the wind or else afflicted
with string-halt, and were presumably bought cheap in considera-
tion of those infirmities, has now broken out into a pair of
steppers ; and a grand piano has been seen going in at his
drawing-room window,

VOL. XII. —NO. 68, N.Sf. 15

226 A LONDONER'S LOCI- BOOK.

Young Bumpstead ' took ' rather badly, and carries his left
arm in a sling. Having been recommended by Snuffin to take it
easy for a day or two, he spends most of his time in our dining-
room, where his contests with Bertha at Ping- Pong are Homeric,
and have led to betting. Bertha is a capital hand at all athletic
exercises. She rides, rows, skates, swims, and cycles, has won the
Ivoamshire Annual Prize for lawn-tennis, and captains a girls' golf
club. When she is staying in Stuccovia she rather misses these
accustomed exercises, and Ping-Pong is the only substitute which
our resources provide. Selina, indeed, has a certain contempt for
bodily prowess. She likes games which, as she says, ' involve a
little mind,' and when I seek to renew my youth by playing
croquet she professes that she can see nothing to admire in a fat
man trying to squeeze a big ball through a narrow hoop, though,
to be sure, it is better than bowls. ' My dear Robert, if you
were such a goose as to stoop double directly after dinner you
would die no other death.' That a bosom which harbours these
sentiments should have melted towards Ping-Pong is, I am con-
vinced, partly due to the influence of fashion. My Selina loves
to keep abreast with what Soulsby calls ' the great mundane
movement.' She has heard that Lord Salisbury and the Bishop
of London played Ping-Pong when they met at Sandringham the
other day, and (though she expressed a high-sniffing contempt for
such nonsense when she first read it) I am persuaded that this
paragraph from ' Classy Cuttings ' was not without its effect upon
her mind. It has been suggested by unfriendly critics of the
game that the language is ironical ; but Selina, who has all the
admirable gravity of her sex, takes it ' at the foot of the letter.'

Conferences about political party matters, about the settlement of the Boer
War, about education, and the housing of the working classes are no doubt all
very well in their way. They may be useful, of course, and for those who are
interested in such matters they may have their importance. But the really
momentous question of the day is, How can we best promote the interests of the
great Ping-Pong movement ? How can the game be most widely popularised ?
What can be done to add interest to it, and to bring the rules by which it is
governed into closer harmony with the eternal principles of right and justice ?
Some of the greatest of living authorities, and many of the most gifted and
accomplished players in the British Empire, have, I understand, been sitting in
solemn conclave for the discussion of imperatively needed changes in the laws
of the game, and anxiously debating proposals for some sort of national federa-
tion. It seems probable therefore that Ping-Pong is about to enter on a new
phase of interest and importance, and that upper and middle-class society will
have less time and attention to bestow on such troublesome and unpleasant
matters as the South African War and the evils of the drink-trade.

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK. 227

Selina does not herself play Ping-Pong, though she is all in
favour of it for the young and thoughtless. Her own brow wears
a preoccupied air, and there is that in her manner and bearing
which assures me that her mind is big with solemn purposes.

Lord Beaconsfield, when he depicted the high-born damsels
of Muriel Towers brushing their hair at night, broke off with the
quaint aposiopesis, — ' But we must not profane the mysteries of
Bona Dea.' I am much too cautious to commit myself to any
original observations about woman's dress ; but I am conscious of
an impalpable feeling in the air which portends some startling
development. Just a year ago, a loyal population was plunged
into mourning ; and, though Selina really looks her best in black,
and was once told with amiable frankness by dear old Lady
Farringford, that she ' was a fright in yaller,' I have for some
time been aware that she was growing restive under the dis-
cipline of twelve months' sombreness. Bertha frankly revels in
bright colours, and, if left to her own devices, would bedizen her-
self like a macaw. For my own part, these concerns do not
touch me, as long as my women-kind confine their operations to
Stuccovia ; but occasionally our old friends of the County or the
world remember us, and then I have to escort my wife and
sister-in-law into a more formidable society. I confess to anxious
moments when I see the lost companions of my youth gazing
critically at Selina's gown, or hear them whispering that Bertha
isn't a bad-looking girl, but her clothes look as if they had come
out of a rag-bag. Splendour we cannot attain ; but a chaste
sobriety of apparel is within our compass, and I dread experi-
ments in millinery. Judge, therefore, of my consternation when
I lately picked up a notice of Friller's winter sales, and found
the following items marked with Selina's violet ink :

Navy Blue Serge Bolero, trimmed blue and white velvet, with large ermine
sailor collar, skirt with box-pleated flounce, and strapped blue and white velvet.

Red Faced Cloth Zouave, fancy strapping of own material, white embroidered
cloth collar, facings and cuffs studded with quaint buttons, skirt strapped and
studded to match coat.

Mauve Shag Cloth Russian Blouse, collar and facings and cuffs of white cloth,
with fancy braid box-pleated skirt.

Ducks-egg Green Coat, faced velvet, and trimmed white braid, slightly soiled.

Mauve Hopsac, strapped faced cloth, bolero and skirt stitched and tucked,
lined through silk, slightly soiled ; suitable for short stout figure.

Well indeed is it for ardent youth that it cannot foresee its
future. ' Seek not to proticipate,' is the wisest of warnings. On

15—2

228 A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK.

that long-distant night at the Loamshire Hunt Ball, when I first
learned that I had proposed to Selina and had been accepted by
her, I little thought that I should some day have to lead about
a wife in a Navy Blue Bolero or a Shag Cloth Blouse ; but even
less that the developments of time would link me to a ' short
stout figure,' in a ' Mauve Hopsac,' or a ' Ducks-egg Green Coat,
slightly soiled.'

But, if these things are to be done — as I understand they
are — in the light of day, far worse are the deeds of darkness.
Under the heading of ' Evening Dresses,' I find that the violet
ink has been alarmingly busy. Sympathetic crosses of appro-
bation are prefixed to the succeeding items, while marks of
interrogation against the annexed prices indicate a characteristic
determination to drive a bargain :

Pink Chiffon Princess Gown, bodice embroidered corals and pearls, hand-
somely trimmed lace, flowing overtrain. 20 gns.

Black Point d'Esprit gown, baby bodice, trimmed jet and silver sequins, em-
broidered on cream panne, skirt with 18 net frills in front and wider at back,
niched at waist. 18 gns.

Pink Kilted Chiffon Princess Dress, with insertion of ecru lace, black lace
applique, pin-boxed velvet poppies. 12 gns.

White soft satin, with lace embroidered violets in baskets and pearls, embroi-
dered sequins, straps of velvet, applique lace and velvet flowers, baby bodice em-
broidered jet and steel, with primula garniture. 25 gns.

Now if, as I surmise, some at least of these garments are in-
tended for Bertha's wearing, I confess that I deplore the prospect.
I cannot believe that the dear girl will look her best in ' Pink
Kilted Chiffon,' even though it be enlivened by ' pin-boxed velvet
poppies.' The object of dress, I take it, is marriage ; and that
supreme end of woman will, I believe, be more readily attained
by simpler methods. Bertha Topham-Sawyer in a well-cut habit,
popping over the Loamshire fences, or tittupping along Rotten
Row, is a spectacle as attractive as Die Vernon on her black hunter
or Mary of Scotland on ' Rosabelle.' In a home-spun skirt and a
red jacket, wielding a golf-club or driving the ' bung ' at hockey,
she is a figure that might inspire heroes, and is absolutely fatal
to susceptible curates. But in a ' baby bodice ' and ' flowing over-
train,' ' niched ' at the waist, and garnished with primulas, she
will, I fear, create a less felicitous impression.

It used, I believe, to be held by that section of English society
to which Selina and I by birth belonged that ' frippery was the
ambition of a huckster's daughter ; ' but one cannot live twenty

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK. 229

years in Stuccovia without imbibing something of its spirit. Evil
communications with the Cashingtons and the Barrington-
Bounderleys corrupt good manners ; and for my own part I fancy
that, in our narrow sphere, we are experiencing that ' Americani-
sation of the World' on which Mr. Stead has just expended 164
pages of luscious rhetoric. The American invasion has reached us
through Lady Farringford ; and here I must be understood as in-
dicating the wife of the present peer. The dear old dowager
remains unshaken in the convictions of her youth. To her,
Americans are a set of people who talk through their noses, dine
with their ' helps,' and drape the legs of their pianos ; nor would
either argument or eloquence move her from that sure anchorage.
But, in spite of these prepossessions, her son, the present Lord
Farringford, having partly ruined himself at Newmarket and com-
pleted the process at Monte Carlo, has repaired his shattered for-
tunes by marrying Miss Van Oof of New York, whose father made
his millions by the famous ' corner ' in canvas-backed ducks.
And the new Lady Farringford, being young, pretty, rich, and
outspoken, has had a deserved success in London. Her intimacy
in the highest quarters, reported in the society journals of New
York, provoked from a friend of her youth the sarcastic exclama-
tion, ' What ! Sally Van Oof sporting in the lap of Eoyalty ?
You bet your last biscuit she'll roll off ! ' But the prophecy is not
yet fulfilled. The dowager, who knows the market value of social
commodities as well as most of us, has conveniently forgotten her
former sarcasms against Vanderbilts and Astors, and has given
tea-parties in honour of her daughter-in-law. Contrary to
my expectations, Selina has ' taken immensely ' to young Lady
Farringford. Even Bertha thinks she is ' rather a dear'; and she
has conciliated parochial sympathy by pronouncing Mr. Soulsby
' a lovely man.' But she brings with her an atmosphere of
worldliness which I perceive and deplore. Her taste in dress
is flamboyant. Her habits of expenditure are difficult to keep
pace with. She defies all the social proprieties in which Selina
and I were nurtured. And yet she confidently reckons on being
invited to the ' courts ' which the King and Queen are to hold ;
and she has just carried off Bertha to Norfolk House to inspect
the model of the robes in which she will flaunt at the Coronation.

230

THE GIFTS.

WHENAS my child was ten days old.

Beside his tiny cot I laid
My slender wedding ring of gold

Upon a table white arrayed ;
Cakes and fruits moreover,

And a piece of silver money,

And a pot of mountain honey,
Smelling of thyme and clover,

And three new almonds therewithin,

The Fairy Ladies' grace to win.

•

So when I knew he soundly slept,
As any blossom pink and small,

Behind the curtain-fold I crept,

And watched to see what should befall ;

And presently a brightness
About the doorway kindled,
So that the firelight dwindled —

Then came, all clad in whiteness,

The Ladies Three, and stood and smiled,
Looking upon my little child.

Then said the first, ' This fruit and cake
I claim — that he may hunger sore.'

The second said, ' This coin I take —
Poverty he shall know therefore.'

The third one, reaching over,
Took the ring, laughing lightly,
' New sorrows daily and nightly

Shall pierce the hapless lover.

Now have we left him void and bare
Unto the bitter world's cold air ! '

Then was I torn 'twixt grief and rage,
Whether to curse them there and die,

Who robbed my dear's poor heritage,
And bid him cold and hungry lie,

THE GIFTS. 231

Or to kneel down before them,

And pray them for repentance

Of this their cruel sentence,
And with wild words implore them,

And with a mother's anguish plead,

To change the doom they had decreed.

But suddenly there seemed to wake

A music like a silver bell ;
And if they sang, or if they spake,

Or if I dreamed, I cannot tell.
A singing and a ringing,

Like rivers murmuring lowly,

Like wind-rocked pine trees slowly
Their woven branches swinging,

Filled all the room : and one did stand

With the honey-jar in her right hand.

Then said the first, ' This child I dower

With fragrance of the mountain thyme,
And sweetness of the clover-flower,

Set in imperishable rhyme.'
The next, ' And in his hearing

Shall bees be ever humming,

In filmy flight still coming
With drowsy sounds endearing.'

The third, ' I give the glory and glow

Of yon great sea that rolls below.'

' Sleep soft,' they sang ; ' thy little lips

Not yet in deathless song shall stir,
Not yet thy rosy finger-tips

Shall touch or lute or dulcimer :
Weaned from the world's gross pleasure,

By pain and fast made worthy,

Eternal fame waits for thee,
And everlasting treasure.

Then shalt thou greet us where we dwell

On our clear heights — till then, farewell.'

MAY BYRON.

•232

LA DOCTORESSE MA LORE ELLE.

WHEN the doctors advised us to go and settle in the mountains,
for the sake of our baby-boy who was just recovering from a long
and serious illness, we were delighted. As we had always lived
in towns, we longed for the open fields, exclaiming with Horace :
' 0 rua, quando ego te aspiciam ? '

My husband at once looked out for a country church. The
parish of B., over three thousand feet high, in the Cevennes
mountains, was in want of a pastor, so he went and reconnoitred.
He found it was just what we were seeking, and the inhabitants,
descendants of the old Huguenots, welcomed him enthusiastically.

When we arrived at B., in the month of June, the country
was at its best. The meadows were covered with a profusion of
wild flowers, the green corn was waving in the fields, the brooks
babbling gaily as they skirted the edges of the pine forests.
Wherever we turned picturesque views met our charmed gaze,
and we congratulated one another on having found a home in
such exquisite scenery.

What was our surprise to find that these beauties of Nature
were unappreciated by the peasants !

When we admired the many-hued sweet-scented flowers we
were told they spoilt the hay ; the bold rocky mountains were
bad pasture-land, and the lovely ferns only good for fodder. Once
I made a nosegay of large wild pansies that spread like a fragrant
carpet at our feet. Next morning a girl called at the Manse with
a basket full of them, wanting to sell them at twopence the
pound ! I lifted the lid, and there were hundreds of the lovely
blooms — crushed and stalkless. She had seen me gathering them
.and thought I wanted them for herb-tea.

The longer we stayed at B. the more we were struck by the
contrast between its romantic surroundings and its unpoetic in-
habitants. They did not even use the produce of their country
for themselves, and instead of thriving on creamy milk, golden
butter, and new-laid eggs, as we had imagined, they carried all
these to market to be turned into ready money, and lived on
prosy fat bacon, cabbages, and potatoes in the form of soup. So
attached were they to this diet that I once heard a young fellow

LA DOCTORESSE MALGRE ELLE. 233

grumble to his mother, who had cooked some barley for supper,
' Well, mother, if a fellow can't have his cabbage soup every meal,
life isn't wortn living.'

The limpid water of the brooks they used internally, it is
true, but externally it was applied on Sundays only in many
cases. One fresh-looking woman was a constant scandal to her
neighbours. She washed her face and hands several times a day,
and was even suspected of taking baths ; they insinuated that she
must have very little to do to have so much time to waste on her
ablutions.

Before we had discovered these manners and customs, we were
surprised to find that in spite of the pure mountain air there was
a good deal of sickness in B. We soon saw that it could not be
otherwise with people living on such poor fare and having so
complete a disregard of the aphorism that ' cleanliness is next
to godliness.' Many of the complaints they suffered from were
chronic, and they treated them with home-made remedies, such
as tisanes (herb-tea), in the use of which the simplest French
housewife is very skilful. But we were astonished to see that,
even in acute cases of serious illness, a medical man was rarely
sent for. This was due, first, to the high fees the doctors charged
on account of the distance, the nearest living over two hours'
drive from B., then to the fatalism of the peasants, whose
habitual remark by the bedside of a sick friend was, ' If his hour
has come, what is the use of sending for the doctor ? ' in which
sentiment the patient fully acquiesced. Their economy was some-
times productive of very serious consequences, as in the following
case.

My husband was called every autumn of our stay in B. to a
peasant's house to bury a newborn babe. The mother would
send for neither doctor nor nurse, with the result that each infant
in turn died at the birth. He told the parents such parsimony
was criminal and they promised to do differently, but they
never did.

When a doctor was summoned they had no scruple in beating
down his fees. I saw this done once myself. After he had pre-
scribed, the patient's wife asked :

' How much is it ? '

' Let me see, how far is it ? Twenty kilometres or there-
abouts. Then it is twenty francs ; I will say eighteen.'

' Oh, perhaps not as much as that ! We are poor people.'

234 I A DOCTORESSE MALGRE ELLE.

Here the neighbours chimed in : ' Oh, yes, they are poor people.
I wished myself miles away, I felt so uncomfortable for that
doctor. But he was evidently an old hand. After a little more
haggling, the woman put fifteen francs in his hand, saying : ' We
shall not quarrel over three paltry francs ! ' He pocketed the
money without further comment.

As a rule the doctor was sent for too late, and the patient
would die just before his arrival. In the midst of their grief,
the nearest relatives (who would have to pay) never failed to
exclaim : ' Send somebody to stop the doctor, quick ! '

So after a long drive the latter would be told, as he came in
sight of the house, that all was over and he could go home again
— fee-less.

They never dreamed of asking him to see the body to make
sure that life was extinct.

Such things were done in a free-and-easy style at B. Ked-
tape existed but to a limited extent. For instance, no pastor
could legally conduct a funeral before receiving the official
document stating that the death of the person concerned had
been verified by the mayor's clerk. And this paper always was
handed in duly signed and stamped. But the clerk had not been
near the deceased's house. A relative informed him that So-and-
So was dead, and he delivered the ' permission to bury ' at once
without any formalities.

My husband feared that this casual way of interring people
might lead to gruesome results, so he always ascertained the exact
hour of the decease in order that the legal minimum delay of
twenty-four hours should be observed. The peasants were in
great haste to be rid of their dead. So many had but one room
to live — and die in.

A neighbouring pastor told us he felt convinced he had buried
a man alive. The person in question had been a hard drinker, a
rarity in the mountains, and he expired, or appeared to do so, at
the end of a drinking bout. A few days after the funeral, the
pastor heard rumours which led him to investigate the matter.
The responsible parties, on being pressed, admitted that when the
body was put into the coffin it was still warm. Asked why they
did not say so at the time, they replied :

' We thought the brandy had preserved him, perhaps,' adding
by way of explanation :

' You see, everything was ready and we were not sure.'

LA DOCTORESSR MALGRE ELLE. 235

Then, to console the horror-struck pastor, they said cheerfully

' He'll be dead by now, at any rate.'

My husband was within a hair's-breadth of doing the same
thing.

A peasant called to ask him to conduct the funeral of a
Monsieur Verne the next day.

1 When did he die ? '

' To-day.'

' Yes, but at what time ? '

The messenger replied calmly :

' He must be dead by now, I should think.'

' What ! do you mean to say he is still alive and you ask me
to bury him ? '

'Well, you see, it's far from here and, as I happened to be
coming this way, the family asked me to tell you. I am now
going to the town hall to make the declaration of his death, to
save sending a messenger on purpose. It's all right, there was
scarcely any breath in him when I started ; he's dead now, for
sure.'

My husband pointed out the heartlessness of such a proceed-
ing, and prevented his making the declaration.

Eeceiving no further intimation from the family, my husband
took occasion to go to their house a few weeks later ; the first
person he saw was Monsieur Verne tying up cabbages in his
garden. Knowing the peasants were not sensitive on such points,
he told him how near he came to burying him. The good man
was quite flattered, and ever after enjoyed a little local celebrity
as the man whose funeral was ordered before he was dead.

He was more fortunate than most men of his age (he was over
forty), for as a rule their constitutions were so worn out with poor
food and hard work that they rarely recovered from any disease
that overtook them.

Infants, too, were handicapped by the want of suitable
nourishment. The mothers fed them on cabbage soup before
they cut their teeth. An epidemic of whooping cough was at its
height when we arrived at B., and the sufferings of the poor
babies, greatly increased by the indigestible food, so touched my
heart that I prescribed for two or three of them, little thinking
with what consequences this action was fraught.

I had the little mites' chests and backs rubbed night and
morning with acetic acid, which had proved very useful in our

'236 LA DOCTORESSE MALGRE* ELLE.

baby-boy's illness, and gave them some homoeopathic medicines
internally. They were well in a fortnight.

The news of these cures spread like wild-fire through the
parish, as we learned by subsequent events ; the first of which
was the arrival of a peasant with her baby, saying she had
heard Madame was a doctor and she had brought her child to be
cured. My astonished maid replied :

' Madame is not a doctor, you must mean somebody else.'

But the woman insisted on seeing me. She told me she
knew I cured babies, so had brought hers. Would I make him
well ? And she lifted pleading eyes to mine. I gave her the
same simple remedies and thought no more about it, for we were
far from surmising that she was the first of hundreds who would
come to see la doctoresse malgre elle.

Yet so it was. Next day the bell rang constantly, and by
night over twenty mothers had called for medicines. I supposed
the rush was over, but I was mistaken, for during the following
weeks our hall and dining-room were constantly filled with
women and children, and now the former wanted remedies for
themselves too.

' But I am not a doctor,' I explained to the first woman who
urged me to prescribe for her.

' Madame could cure me if she liked,' was her reply.

' I have never studied medicine ; all I know I have learned
just by nursing my own family/

' Madame could cure me if she liked,' persisted the woman,
and seeing she meant it, what was there for it but to give her
the most suitable medicines I could think of?

The climax arrived a week later. My maid came to me, her
eyes sparkling with mischief.

' Please, Madame, there's a man downstairs asking for you,
and (here she giggled) I think he is ill.'

1 111 ! ' I cried, ' but I do not see sick mm. Find out if he is
ill, and tell him to go to a doctor.'

Down she went, but soon re-appeared.

'He says he must see you, Madame, but he will not say what for.'

I went to my visitor and found a middle-aged peasant.

' You wanted to speak to me ? '

' Yes, Madame.' A pause. ' It's my throat.'

' So you are ill. You must consult a medical man. I only
treat women and children.'

LA DOCTORESSE MALGRE ELLE. 237

' Won't your " stuff" do men good ? ' he asked with surprise.

' I dare say it might.'

' Then why won't you give me some ? I don't mind taking
the same stuff as the babies.'

I was perplexed ; he was incapable of understanding my
difficulty, for those simple-minded peasants had very primitive
ideas on the subject of proprieties. After a minute's reflection,
T said :

' Open your mouth and let me see your throat.'

He did so, and I gave him his medicines, which he carried off
triumphantly.

Now the number of patients increased, for the men came too.
One of the quaintest of them was the Mayor of Chabroulles. He
was a wizened old man, wearing a coat cut very short in front,
with little tails behind that terminated abruptly a foot below the
waist. His high, unstarched collar was held erect by a volumi-
nous neckcloth. His sockless feet were encased in huge black
sabots, and he had a broad-brimmed felt hat on. His son, in
more modern attire, signed to him to take his hat off. He did
so, but replaced it by a black nightcap, which stood straight up
like a sugar-loaf, surmounted by a tassel. It was the finishing
touch !

' What are you suffering from ? ' I asked.

He referred me by a sign to his son, who explained that the
Mayor only spoke patois, so he had come to translate. After the
consultation the son wrote down name and address ; the old man,
thinking doubtless it was a document that needed signing, added
a large cross, saying in patois, ' That's my mark.'

At last I was so overdone with constant doctoring that I fixed
three mornings a week for sick visitors. But this did not deter
some from coming at all hours of the day or night.

One woman on being told she could not see Madame, for she
was lying down tired out, exclaimed : ' I don't mind going to her
room,' and, suiting the action to the word, made for the staircase.

One Saturday the bell rang soon after midnight. I found a
peasant with an infant in her arms.

' Not very good for baby to come out at this time of night,'
I remarked.

' It won't hurt her, she has been ill over five months.'

' Over five months ! Then why did you not bring her this
morning ? '

238 LA DOCTORESSE MALGRE ELLE.

' I was at the fair at Chabroulles all day, and when I re-
turned I felt, all of a sudden, that I would bring her.'

I inwardly hoped that the rest of the parishioners would not
feel ' all of a sudden ' that they would pay me nocturnal visits,
but said nothing and gave the necessary remedies.

The people eventually were not satisfied with coining to see
me, they wanted me to visit them, and this is how that began.

A peasant woman arrived one day accompanied by a village
shopkeeper as spokeswoman. The latter informed me that the
woman's husband was dangerously ill and wanted Monsieur le
pasteur to go and administer the Communion. I promised to tell
him at once, and expressed my sympathy. The women still
lingered, the peasant signing to her friend to speak.

' She wants you to go too, Madame.'

' Indeed, and why ? '

' To give Monsieur Croche some medicine.'

' She shall have some to take home, but she must fetch a
doctor. I am told they may complain if I go to patients' houses.'

Here Madame Croche burst into tears, and went down on her
knees to me crying :

' Oh, Madame, save my husband ! Pour I'amour de Dieu,
save my husband ! '

I was moved ; no wife can hear that cry untouched. Her
companion whispered to me :

' They won't send for a doctor; they are poor, and it would
cost them twenty-five francs and over. Madame will harm nobody
by going.'

So I agreed to go. We started off and reached Eette, the
nearest village to the sick man's house, within an hour. There
they told us to go down — a road they called it — a rough track full
of rocks. Half an hour's scramble brought us to our destination.
Madame Croche, who had gone home on horseback by a short
cut then unknown to us, come out to meet us. We followed her
indoors and found her husband in bed in a cupboard, as was
customary in those parts. These cupboards had doors, which the
peasants shut on cold nights to keep the warmth in. He was
suffering from an ulcerated throat. He listened to my husband
with great attention and took the Communion. I prescribed some
remedies (he was well again in ten days), and we left to visit
some parishioners close by.

These offered to send us home in their cart ; in a rash moment

LA DOCTORESSE MALGRE ELLE. 239

I accepted. I have been in springless wood carts in Switzerland,
I have driven over rough American roads in a broken-down buggy,
but none' of these experiences, though they are still green (and
blue) in my memory, came anywhere near that drive to Rette.
It was like a sea-voyage, for now we were on the crest of a rock,
then down in the hollow of a rut, with the difference that the
sea lets you down gently and that road did not. At first I felt
like pointing out the boulders to the driver, that he might avoid
the largest of them, but I soon saw he had a soul above such
trifles ; he drove stolidly over whatever lay in his path. Sud-
denly a sharper jerk than usual sent me flying to the bottom of
the cart. I picked myself up ruefully, explaining to my con-
ductor, who seemed surprised at my behaviour, that it was the
first time I had the privilege of driving over such a road in such
a conveyance. ' It is a little rough ' was all he would admit.

At last we arrived at Rette, and as we drew up in the little
market-place, where my husband was to rejoin us, we were sur-
rounded by people clamouring for medicine. My first male
patient was among them. He told me his throat was quite well ;
to prove his statement he advanced to the side of the vehicle,
and when my husband came upon the scene this is what met his
astonished gaze. A man with hat off and head thrown well back
opening a large pair of jaws, his wife looking down from the
cart into the man's throat, and a group of peasants watching the
proceedings in spell-bound admiration.

Now I was looked upon as the doctor of the parish, and was
sent for from far and near. I went in cases of sudden emer-
gencies, or when the sick person was really too poor to pay the
doctor's fee.

Once I was called to a year-old baby ; noticing the irritated
state of the skin, I asked the mother if she ever washed him.

; Washed him ? ' she replied indignantly, ' no, indeed,
Madame ! What makes you think I would do such a thing ?
He has always been delicate, but it is not my fault, for I can
truthfully say I have never touched him with water, hot or cold.'

That the preceding generation had an equal antipathy to
performing their ablutions I discovered one day when letting my
baby-boy paddle in the brook. A dear old lady over seventy, the
nurse of the village, watched him with great interest ; then she
turned to me and said :

' There, now ! and to think you are not afraid of the little dear

240 LA DOCTORESSE MALGRE ELLE.

wetting his pretty feet ! Why, I have never put mine in water
since I was born ! '

I was consulted for a girl who had taken a chill. I ordered a
hot bath. The messenger assured me no one would take the
responsibility of administering so heroic a remedy. Would I
come and superintend ? I agreed to do so, and gave directions
to have everything ready by the time I arrived.

I found the mother and sisters assembled at the patient's
bedside, looking like people prepared for the worst. I coaxed
the girl into the bath, and, tucking up my sleeves, took advantage
of the chance of soaping her well. When she had sat a few
minutes in the tub, she exclaimed, ' Why, it's quite nice ! '

After she was snug in bed again, a knock was heard, and a
neighbour put her head in, her face full of the deepest concern.
She said :

' I heard your poor Vasti was to have a bath. I have come to
see if she is still alive ! '

Luckily the girl recovered in a few days.

Epidemics were rare in B., but we had some cases of infectious
diseases. Many of the peasants had relatives working in the
nearest city. These would catch some complaint, and then come
home to recruit, bringing the germs with them.

One day a peasant begged me to come and see her husband.
Knowing she was well off, I replied that she must fetch a doctor.
Later on she re-appeared, and so implored me to come that I went.
I found him in a high fever. Not knowing the nature of the
illness, I ordered wet packs wrung out of acetic acid and water.
This relieved him greatly.

In the middle of the , night, they sent word that he was all
over spots ; would we come and see ? When I examined the
rash, being a perfect novice (as I constantly assured them), I still
failed to see what it was. My husband felt the spots, and he
too did not know what it could be. He read and prayed with
him, and we left telling them to report what the doctor said. I
never knew if they failed to send for him, at any rate he did not
put in an appearance that day.

The following afternoon, as I approached the house, I heard
Monsieur Charlier, the schoolmaster, holding forth. He was
much looked up to by the villagers, and now a dozen of them were
listening open-mouthed while he explained matters to them.

' This, my friends, is a case of fever.' His audience exchanged

LA DOCTOR ESSE MALGRE ELLE. 241

admiring glances, as much as to say, ' How clever of him to find
that out ! '

' As it is a fever complicated with a rash, we may go further
and call it a case of eruptive fever.'

Here, unfortunately, he caught sight of me, which cut his
eloquence short. His hearers afterwards informed their friends
that ' poor Pierre Borel has the fever,' then, shaking their heads
significantly, ' and Monsieur Charlier says it is the " ruptive "
fever, just think of that ! '

The patient was getting weaker ; I was getting anxious about
him, and still the doctor did not arrive. We continued the wet
packs, as he kept asking for them. Next day the doctor
appeared. He looked at the sick man, then said sharply to
Madame Borel :

' (rive me a spoon ! '

He glanced at the throat, then, flinging the spoon across the
room into the fire, he shouted :

' Grood heavens ! He has the small-pox of the worst kind !
It's black small-pox, and he'll be dead to-morrow ! '

And taking up his hat he made for the door.

This is a fair specimen of the frank way in which the faculty
expressed their view of the situation when visiting patients in
those regions.

He called Madame Borel to him and said :

' Send for this at once,' writing down a prescription in pencil.

' What's the use,' replied the thrifty housewife, ' if he will be
dead to-morrow ? '

' Tut ! tut ! my good woman ; you can't let a man die without
trying to save him. Send for this immediately.'

I learned all this a few hours later, when they brought the
doctor's report and asked me to go and sit up with the sick man
for a while. I found them depressed and not a neighbour near
(the village was panic-stricken), but very brave as far as fear of
infection was concerned. The patient, one of the elders of the
church, seemed quite resigned. I left them towards morning, and
soon after daybreak he died.

I was sitting in the dining-room a few hours after his death
when the gate opened and the senior elder came in. Our baby-
boy was in the garden ; his nurse had orders to run off with him
directly anyone called, for fear of contagion. She happened not
to be there, and before I could get to him the old man had bent

VOL. XII. — NO. 68, N.S. 16

242 LA DOCTORESSE MALGRE ELLE.

over him saying, ' Bonjour, Monsieur Bebe.' Then he said to me :
'Very sad about Pierre Borel, isn't it ? Poor fellow, I have just
been putting him in his coffin ' !

He had no more sense than to stand over a baby in the same
clothes. Having had the small-pox himself, he ran no risk, but
none of us at the Manse had ever seen the disease before.

Monsieur Borel was buried under the pine tree a stone's-throw
from his dwelling. This was usual in B., only those who owned
no land being carried to the cemetery.

We had a few more cases of small-pox. We look back upon
that time as a very trying one. The peasants had such confidence
in me, and yet I could do so little to check the loathsome disease,
that my nights were sleepless from anxiety.

What were the results of my medical labours ? Seeing that
by calling in aid immediately further illness might be averted, the
peasants, who never scrupled to send for me at any hour (as it
cost them nothing), became less convinced that because a person
fell ill ' his hour had come.' As, too, I urged them in serious
cases to send for a doctor, the local physicians were more often
called in during our stay in B. than ever before. One with whom
we were very friendly told me so and thanked me for it. This
result was indirect, but none the less useful.

The direct results were also satisfactory, for many sufferers were
cured.

It is true that the carelessness of the more ignorant peasants
was a great hindrance to the recovery of their friends. They
would persist in rubbing them with the medicines and giving
them the lotions to drink !

A woman applied the homeopathic potion to her mother's
spine, and gave her the pure acetic acid to drink, and then said
that my ' stuff ' made her mother cry.

A man sponged his father's sore leg with undiluted acid ; the
result was vociferous.

And all this in spite of minute written directions and verbal
warnings.

Happily I used no poisonous liniments, or there would have
been some terrible catastrophes.

The effect of the treatment was often neutralised by the diet.
Some mothers insisted on giving their sick babies cabbage soup
instead of the milk I advised. Adults fared no better. I admit
that in extreme cases the oldest fowl on the farm was sometimes

LA DOCTORESSE MALGRE ELLE. 243

reluctantly sacrificed and converted into weak broth, but the par-
taker might be sure then that his friends felt ' his hour had come '
indeed.

Still, my presence in the parish of B. was a source of untold
comfort to the inhabitants, and never have I felt to be of so much
use to the community as I did there. It moves me now as I re-
member how the troubled faces brightened when I appeared, and
how completely anxious relatives transferred their burden of re-
sponsibility to me ; the words, ' Here's Madame ! ' did the patient
more good than a dose of medicine.

Whenever I think of my doctoring days, my heart goes out in
pity to those poor helpless peasants, and I long to hear they have
found another ' doctoresse malgrg die'

ZELIA DE LADEVEZE.

16—2

244

THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE.1
BY THE BEV. PEOF. H. C. BEECHING.

THE value of Shakespeare's sonnets lies, of course, in their
supreme beauty, and is altogether independent of the critical
and historical problems that cluster about them. These problems
have, nevertheless, a perennial interest, even a fascination of their
own ; witness the large and ever-increasing number of volumes
devoted to their investigation. Within the last few years three
elaborate studies have been added to the pile, two of which, at
any rate, cannot be disregarded by anyone who wishes to form
a competent judgment upon the points at issue. Mr. Sidney
Lee, in his monumental Life of Shakespeare, published in 1898,
devoted four chapters and eight appendices to an examination of
the general character of sonneteering in the sixteenth century, and
a reinforcement of the claim of the Earl of Southampton, Shake-
speare's early patron, to be the person to whom the sonnets are
addressed. Of the learning displayed in that examination and
the skill with which the arguments are marshalled there cannot
be two opinions. I do not myself think, however, that the
Southampton theory can be maintained, for reasons which will be
advanced presently ; and Mr. Lee's general view, which aims at
formulating a scientific law of sonnet-writing, seems to me to
disregard the instances — those of men of genius — which alone
have any value and interest. To argue away the special charac-
teristics of Shakespeare's sonnets on the ground that twenty con-
temporary sonnet-sequences do not possess them seems as illogical
a course as the common habit, against which Mr. Lee protests, of
ignoring the fact that Shakespeare's sonnets have literary
parallels ; but the new abstraction, Shakespeare being what he
was, is likely to lead farther from the truth than the old. In
the same year as Mr. Lee's book Mr. George Wyndham pro-
duced a handsome and scholarly edition of Shakespeare's poems,
and collected into his introduction most of the historical material
with which the criticism of the sonnets must deal ; but the main
purpose of his book, and a most praiseworthy one, was to rivet

1 Copyright, 1902, in the United States of America by the Rev. Professor
H. C. Beeching.

THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 245

attention on the poems themselves. In the year following
Mr. Samuel Butler, the author of ' Erewhon,' brought out an
edition of the sonnets with prolegomena ; which are sufficiently
good reading when they handle the absurdities and inconsistencies
of his predecessors, but are negligible in their own proposals. The
purpose of the present paper is not to attempt any final pronounce-
ment on a cause which will surely go from court to court and be
judged and rejudged many times yet ; but simply to investigate
the present position of the problem as Mr. Lee has left it, to see
if any points may be taken as finally concluded, and to expose
the questions remaining upon which more light is still required.

Readers of the sonnets who have no theories to defend would
probably agree that the friendship which the sonnets describe is
an affection between an elder and a younger man, wherewith there
mingles not a little admiration for his grace and charm, which,
indeed, occasionally seem to get on the poet's nerves. If I may
put in one word what I conceive to be the peculiar type of this
affection, I should say it was a type not uncommonly found in
imaginative natures. A poet, whatever else he is, is a man with
keener senses and stronger emotions than other men ; he is more
sensitive to beauty, especially the beauty of youth ; and, as the
poetry of the whole world may convince us, he is especially
sensitive to that beauty's decay. Hence it is not uncommon to
find in poets of mature years a strong disposition to consort
with young people, and a keen pleasure in their society, as though
to atone for the slow sapping of youthful strength and ardour in
themselves. It is well that the majority of us should stifle our
dissatisfaction at the inevitable oncoming of age by doing the
tasks which age lays upon us and for which youth is incompetent.
The middle-aged youth or maiden is a fair theme for satire. But
poets cannot be blamed if, feeling what we feel more keenly, they
give to the sentiment an occasional expression ; nor if they seek
to keep fresh their own youthful enthusiasm by associating with
younger people. There is an interesting passage in Browning's
poem of ' Cleon,' where Cleon, who is a poet, writing to King
Protus on the subject of joy in life, contrasts his own supposed joy
in the wide outlook of age with the actual joy of living ; and
Browning seems there, through the mouth of Cleon, to be utter-

246 THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE.

ing a sentiment that many poets have felt, and which, as I
believe, accounts for much in Shakespeare's sonnets : —

The last point now : thou dost except a case,

Holding joy not impossible to one

With artist-gifts — to such a man as I,

Who leave behind me living works indeed ;

For such a poem, such a painting, lives.

What ? dost thou verily trip upon a word,

Confound the accurate view of what joy is

(Caught somewhat clearer by my eyes than thine)

With feeling joy ? Confound the knowing, how

And showing how to live (my faculty)

With actually living ? Otherwise,

Where is the artist's 'vantage o'er the king ?

Because in my great epos I display

How divers men young, strong, fair, wise can act —

Is this as though I acted ? if I paint,

Carve the young Phoebus, am I therefore young ?

Methinks I'm older that I bowed myself

The many years of pain that taught me art !

Indeed, to know is something, and to prove

How all this beauty might be enjoyed is more :

But knowing nought, to enjoy, is something too.

Yon rower with the moulded muscles there,

Lowering the sail, is nearer it than I.

I can write love-odes : thy fair slave's an ode.

I get to sing of love, when grown too grey

For being beloved : she turns to that young man,

The muscles all a-ripple on his back.

I know the joy of kingship — well, thou art king !

That passage goes far to explain the attraction which many
poets have found in the society of young people distinguished in
some special degree for beauty, or grace, or vivacity. And, of
course, there must not be forgotten another element in the
problem, the peculiar sweetness of admiration and praise coming
from the young. Theocritus desired to sing songs that should
win the young ; and the sentiment has been echoed by the most
austere of our own living poets : —

'Twere something yet to live again among
The gentle youth beloved, and where I learned
My art, be there remembered for my song.

The nearest parallel I can suggest to the case of Shakespeare
and his young friend is the friendship between the poet Gray
and Bonstetten. Bonstetten was a Swiss youth of quality, who
went to Cambridge with an introduction to Gray from his friend
Norton Nicholls ; and the havoc he wrought in that poet's

THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 247

domestic affections is visible in his correspondence. He wrote to
Norton Nicholls (April 4, 1770):—

At length, my dear sir, we have lost our poor de Bonstetten. I packed him
up with my own hands in the Dover machine at four o'clock in the morning on
Friday, 23rd March ; the next day at seven he sailed, and reached Calais by
noon, and Boulogne at night ; the next night he reached Abbeville. From thence
he wrote to me ; and here am I again to pass my solitary evenings, which hung
much lighter on my hands before I knew him. This is your fault 1 Pray, let
the next you send me be halt and blind, dull, unapprehensive, and wrong-
headed. For this (as Lady Constance says) Was never such a gracious creature
born ! and yet

Among Gray's letters are three to Bonstetten himself; it will be
sufficient to quote the shortest of them : —

I am returned, my dear Bonstetten, from the little journey I made into
Suffolk, without answering the end proposed. The thought that you might
have been with me there has embittered all my hours. Your letter has made me
happy — as happy as so gloomy, so solitary a being as I am is capable of being
made. I know, and have too often felt the disadvantages I lay myself under,
how much I hurt the little interest I have in you, by this air of sadness,
so contrary to your nature and present enjoyments ; but sure you will forgive,
though you cannot sympathise with me. It is impossible with me to dissemble
with you ; such as I am I expose my heart to your view, nor wish to conceal a
single thought from your penetrating eyes. All that you say to me, especially
on the subject of Switzerland, is infinitely acceptable. It feels too pleasing ever
to be fulfilled, and as often as I read over your truly kind letter, written long
since from London, I stop at these words : ' la mort qui peut glacer nos bras
avant qu'ils soient entrelaces.'

It seems to me that in these letters we have, beneath many
superficial dissimilarities, a very close parallel to Shakespeare's
own case as it lies before us in the sonnets. We have a com-
panionship marked by respectful admiration and affection on the
one side, on the other by a more tender sentiment. And the other
letters draw the parallel closer, for one describes the pangs of
absence —

Alas I how do I every moment feel the truth of what I have somewhere read :
' Ce n'est pas le voir, que de s'en souvenir ; ' and yet that remembrance is the
only satisfaction I have left. My life now is but a conversation with your
shadow, &c.

and another warns the youth against the vices to which his
youth and good looks and the example of his own class leave
him peculiarly exposed. With such an actual experience to call
in evidence, I do not see why we should reject as inconceivable
the obvious interpretation that the sonnets put upon themselves :
that Shakespeare at a certain period found the loneliness of his life
in London filled up by a friendship which, not being ' equal poised,'

248 THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE.

could not last, but which was in no sense unworthy. If that
were allowed, it would not, of course, follow that the sonnets
could he treated as one side of an ordinary correspondence, and
every statement they contain be transferred to Shakespeare's
biography as literal fact. The truth at which poetry aims is a
truth of feeling, not of incident. And the fact, often enough
implied in the sonnets, that they were intended for publication
some day (though that day was anticipated by a piratical pub-
lisher), as well as the still more cogent fact that Shakespeare was
a poet, should prepare us to recognise that situations would be
generalised and reduced to their common human measure.

II.

Such being, in my judgment, the view of the sonnets that
will commend itself to a reader who interprets them in the
light of general experience, we must see how far such a view is
affected by Mr. Lee's investigation into the special conditions
of Elizabethan sonnet-writing. Mr. Lee's theory is that what
the ordinary reader takes for friendship in Shakespeare's sonnets
is merely the conventional adulation common at the time between
client and patron. ' There is nothing,' he says, ' in the vocabu-
lary of affection which Shakespeare employed in his sonnets of
friendship to conflict with the theory that they were inscribed
to a literary patron, with whom the intimacy was of the kind
normally subsisting at the time between literary clients and their
patrons ' (p. 141). A new theory of this sort must, of course,
stand or fall by the evidence that can be produced for it ; and
accordingly Mr. Lee proceeds to supply parallels. ' The tone of
yearning,' he tells us, ' for a man's affection is sounded by Donne
and Campion almost as plaintively in their sonnets to patrons
as it was sounded by Shakespeare ' (•&&.). In support of this state-
ment Mr. Lee refers to two poems (which we must presume to be
the strongest instances he can find), one a verse-letter by Donne
to a certain T. W., and the other a poem by Campion addressed
to the young Lord Walden. The letter of Donne's must be ruled
out, because it is not written to a patron at all, but to a friend.
We do not know who T. W. was, but we know the names of
Donne's patrons, and the initials fit none of them. In the four
stanzas to Lord Walden which are prefixed, among various
dedications, to one of Campion's masques, I cannot detect the

THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 249

least tone of yearning, or even of plaintiveness. The word ' love '
certainly occurs twice, but the love meant is the general love of
all the world for the young gentleman's admired virtues. As
Campion's poems are not accessible except in a privately printed
edition, it may be well to quote the material verses : —
If to be sprung of high and princely blood,

If to inherit virtue, honour, grace,
If to be great in all things, and yet good,
If to be facile, yet t' have power and place,
If to be just, and bountiful, may get
The love of men, your right may challenge it.

But if th' admired virtues of your youth

Breed such despairing to my daunted Muse
That it can scarcely utter naked truth,
How shall it mount as ravished spirits use
Under the burden of your riper days,
Or hope to reach the so far distant bays 1

My slender Muse shall yet my love express,

And by the fair Thames' side of you she'll sing ;
The double streams shall bear her willing verse
Far hence with murmur of their ebb and spring.
But if you favour her light tunes, ere long
She'll strive to raise you with a loftier song.

I do not think that the ordinary reader unbiassed by a theory
would hear in these conventional lines any tone of yearning for
affection ; what is too clearly audible in them is a bid for ' favour '
in some more tangible shape. If Mr. Lee is to convince the world
that there is nothing in Shakespeare's sonnets beyond the normal
Elizabethan note of patron-worship, he must adduce by way of
parallel a poem with some passion in it. Did any Elizabethan
client, for example, speak of his love for his patron as keeping
him awake at night, as Shakespeare says in the sixty-first sonnet
that his love for his friend kept him awake ?

A more specious argument is that which Mr. Lee bases on the
very mysterious section of the sonnets concerned with rival poets
(Ixxvii.-lxxxvL), which he interprets as an attempt on Shake-
speare's part to monopolise patronage. In the sonnets Shake-
speare certainly reveals some jealousy. He charges his friend
with being attracted by the flattery of some other writer of verses.
But it is evident that the poems in question are not dedicated to
the friend, but written about him ; 1 the friend is not the patron,
but the subject of the rival's song; so that it is not merely

1 They may, of course, have included dedicatory poems, printed or unprinted,
as the 82nd sonnet seems to imply.

250 THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE.

patronage that Shakespeare deprecate*. Indeed, how could he
have done so, considering the custom of the age, with any reason-
able prospect of success ? I would have said, how could he have
done so with decency ? only Mr. Lee denies him decency. He
says : ' The sole biographical inference deducible from the sonnets
is that at one time in his career Shakespeare disdained no weapon
of flattery in an endeavour to monopolise the bountiful patronage
of a young man of rank' (p. 159). The sonnets themselves,
happily, lend no support to this view. It is one thing to say
' X. has begun to ask your patronage for his books. I hope you
will have nothing to do with him ; ' and quite another thing to
say, as Shakespeare says, ' X. has been writing verses about you
in which he flatters you extravagantly. Of course you like it.
And I am quite willing to own that as poetry his verses are better
than mine. But for all that, mine express real affection ; so don't
desert me for him/ It is difficult to bring this matter to a more
decisive test, because it is impossible to determine how far the
complaint was serious and who this rival was ; and no verses of
the sort are extant. The praise of the poet's learning and the
reference to the ' proud full sail of his great verse ' have been
thought by Professor Minto to indicate Chapman. (Those who
take this view may thank me for a further argument. It is hinted
in the eighty-sixth sonnet that the rival dabbled, as many Eliza-
bethans did, in necromancy ; for the reference to the familiar ghost

That nightly guilt him with intelligence

is not a compliment, and cannot be whittled down to a recognition
of ' a touch of magic' in the poet's writing. Now we find Chap-
man dedicating a poem in 1598 to that celebrated Doctor Harriot
of whom Marlowe had said, in his ' atheistical ' way, that he could
juggle better than Moses.) But can we conceive of Chapman
writing sentimental sonnets about any young man ? With his
sonnet-cycle on Philosophy before me I find it impossible to do
so. A less incredible suggestion would be Ben Jonson, who was
becoming known in 1597, and in that or the next year took the
town by storm with ' Every Man in his Humour ; ' and 1597-8, as I
hope to show, is probably the date of a large number of the sonnets.
Mr. Lee enumerates (p. 175) twenty sonnets which he calls
' dedicatory ' sonnets, in which he claims that the friend is
' declared without paraphrase and without disguise to be a patron
of the poet's verse.' If so, Mr. Lee uses the word ' patron '

THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 251

in an esoteric sense. Shakespeare says again and again that
his friend's beauty and constancy give his pen 'both skill and

argument ' : —

How can my Muse want subject to invent
While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse

Thine own sweet argument, too excellent
For every vulgar paper to rehearse ?

Surely there is all the difference in the world between the
subject and argument of a book and its patron ! I do not think,
then, that Mr. Lee's new and ingenious theory, that the relations
of the poet and his friend were simply those of client and patron,
will bear the test of examination, and as the theory seriously
impugns the character of Shakespeare, I for one cannot be sorry
that the facts are against it.

ILL.

The next problem that presents itself concerns the approxi-
mate date of the sonnet-cycle. This problem is usually discussed
in relation to the question whether Lord Southampton or Lord
Pembroke is the friend to whom the sonnets are addressed,
because a late date makes the former an impossible candidate,
and an early date disposes of the latter. But it has also a bear-
ing upon the previous question, whether we are justified in looking
in the sonnets for any genuine sentiment at all. Mr. Lee in his
Life of Shakespeare has restated with new emphasis the fact
that the sonnet was a fashionable literary form in the last decade
of the sixteenth century ; and he has further shown, for the first
time, that a large stock of ideas and images was common to the
whole tribe of sonneteers. Of course it by no means follows
because a poet uses a fashionable and artificial form of verse, that
the emotion he puts into it is merely fashionable and artificial.
It may be or it may not be. We must not forget that, although
the sonnet was fashionable at this epoch, the passion of love had
perhaps as great a vogue as the sonnet.1 If, however, Shake-

1 Perhaps Mr. Lee a little overstates the case, strong as it is, for the arti-
ficiality of the emotion displayed in Elizabethan sonnets. Drayton, by calling
his lady Idea, did not imply (p. 105 n.~) that she was merely an abstraction, but
that she was his ideal. He himself identifies her with Anne Goodere. Nor does
he tell his readers (ib.) ' that if any sought genuine passion in them they had
better go elsewhere.' His words are : ' Into these loves who but for passion
looks, At this first sight here let him lay them by ' ; and he goes on to explain
passion by ' far-fetched sighs,' ' ah, me's,' and ' whining.' The point of the sonnet,
which is a prefatory advertisement, is that the reader may expect variety and

252 THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE.

speare wrote a sequence of sonnets simply, as Mr. Lee thinks, to
be in the mode and to please his patron, we should expect to find
him turning them out as soon as he had finished ' Lucrece ' in
1594; for even as early as that date Sidney, Daniel, Constable,
Barnes, Watson, Lodge, and Drayton — to mention only consider-
able people — were in the field before him. And in pursuance of
his theory Mr. Lee places the bulk of Shakespeare's sonnets in
1594. But all the evidence there is points to a date considerably
later. No reference to the sonnets has been traced in con-
temporary literature before 1598. It was not till 1599 that any
of them found their way into print. And the only sonnet that
can be dated with absolute certainty from internal evidence (cvii.)
belongs to 1603. The evidence from style points also, for the
most part, to a late date ; but of that it is of no use to speak,
because it convinces no one who has other reasons for not being
convinced. There is, however, a line of argument hitherto
neglected which, in competent hands, might yield material re-
sults— the argument from parallel passages. Every writer knows
the perverse facility with which a phrase once used presents itself
again ; and Shakespeare seems to have been not a little liable to
this human infirmity. It is not uncommon for him to use a
word or a phrase twice in a single play, and never afterwards.1
There is a strong probability, therefore, if a remarkable phrase or
figure of speech occurs both in a sonnet and in a play, that the
play and the sonnet belong to the same period. Now the greater
number of the parallel passages hitherto recognised are to be
found in ' Henry IV.,' in ' Love's Labour's Lost,' and in ' Hamlet ;'
and it is certain that ' Henry IV.' was written in 1597, that
' Love's Labour's Lost ' was revised in that same year, and that
' Hamlet ' is later still.2 To take an example : the phrase ' world-
without-end ' makes a sufficiently remarkable epithet ; but it is
so used only in the fifty-seventh sonnet and in ' Love's Labour's
Lost' (v. 2, 799). But as it is open to anyone to reply that this
and other phrases may have occurred in the original draft of that

will not be bored. The Doctor of Divinity whom Mr. Lee quotes as warning his
readers that ' a man may write of love, and not be in love,' was probably in fear
of his archdeacon.

1 Examples are disoandy (A. <md C. iii. 13, 165 ; iv. 12, 22) ; chare (A. and C.
iv. 15, 75 ; v. 2, 231) ; bear me hard (J. C. i. 3, 311 ; ii. 1, 215) ; handsome about
him (Much Ado, iv. 2, 88 ; v. 4, 105).

* Professor Bradley calls my attention to the series 71-74, which has not only
the tone of ' Hamlet ' but parallelisms of phrase, especially in 74 to v. 2, 350 and
i. 4, 66.

THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 253

play, written several years earlier, it will be best to confine the
parallels to ' Henry IV.,' the date of which is beyond dispute.
Compare, then, Sonnet 33 —

Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face

with ' 1 Henry IV.' i. 2, 221—

The sun,

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world.

Again, compare the 52nd sonnet —

Therefore are feasts so seldom and so rare,
Since, seldom coming, in the long year set

So is the time that keeps you as my chest,
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
To make some special instant special blest

with ' 1 Henry IV.' iii. 2, 55—

My presence like a robe pontifical,
Ne'er seen, but wonder'd at ; and so my state
Seldom but sumptuous, showed like & feast,
And won by rareness such solemnity,

where the concurrence of the images of a feast and a robe is very
noticeable. Compare also the 64th sonnet with ' 2 Henry IV.' iii.
1, 45, where the revolution of states is compared with the sea
gaining on the land, and the land on the sea — an idea not found
in the famous description of the works of Time in 'Lucrece.'
Compare also the epithet sullen, applied to a bell in Sonnet 71,
and '2 Henry IV.' i. 1, 102, and the phrase ' compounded with
clay,' or ' dust,' found in the same sonnet and ' 2 Henry IV.' iv.
5, 116. I do not wish to press this argument further than it
will go, but it must be allowed that its force accumulates with
every instance adduced ; and, in my opinion, it is strong enough
to dispose of the hypothesis that the main body of the sonnets
was written in 1593 or 1594, especially as not a single argument
has been brought forward for assigning them to so early a date,1

1 Mr. Lee yields a doubtful assent to the idea that Henry Willobie, in his
Avisa (1594), refers to Shakespeare, under the initials W. S., as having escaped
heart-whole from a passion in which he found himself involved. The sole
ground for the conjecture is that W. S. is referred to as the ' old player.' But
the love affair had been previously spoken of as 'a comedy like to end in a tragedy,'
and Willobie himself is called the 'new actor.' There is, therefore, not the
slightest reason for taking the one expression more literally than the other.
And where, it may be asked, is there anything in the sonnets that could be

254 THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE.

and every indication of both internal and external evidence
suggests that they were written later. One conclusion from these
premisses seems to be that Shakespeare did not write his sonnets
merely in pursuit of the fashion, though he recognised the fashion
by introducing a sonnet occasionally into an early play, and by
representing his lovers — Beatrice and Benedick, the lovesick Thurio
in the 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' and the nobles in 'Love's
Labour's Lost ' — as turning to the sonnet as the proper form in
which to ease their over-burdened hearts. It may have been
that the impulse to write sonnets came to Shakespeare himself
from a like natural cause.

IV.

Who was Shakespeare's friend ? Mr. Butler, in his edition
of the sonnets referred to above, makes very merry over the
popular notion that the friend must have been a peer ; and to a
reader who comes to the sonnets without prejudice there are a
few striking passages that make the current hypothesis a little
hard to believe. 'Farewell,' says the poet in the 87th sonnet;
'thou art too dear for my possessing, and like enough thou
know'st thy estimate.' Now it is generally given to peers to know
their estimate very exactly. Again, in 84 the poet says :

You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,

Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse

and in 69 he says, still more rudely :

But why thy odour matcheth not thy show

The soil [solution] is this — that thou dost common grow.

To a mere patron such lines could never have been addressed ;
and hardly to an Elizabethan peer at all, unless he were very young
and the friendship very intimate. But that may be the true
explanation of such passages. That the friend was a person of
high birth and great fortune is put beyond reasonable doubt by

referred to as a recovery from love ? Another point which would be an argument
for the early date of the sonnets, if it could be supported, may be referred to
here. Mr. Lee thinks Sir John Davies, in a 'gulling sonnet,' was parodying
Shakespeare's legal phraseology in Sonnet 26. It is possible, though, consider-
ing the excesses in this respect of ' Zepheria,' to which Davies refers by name,
it is uncertain. Mr. Lee dates Davies' sonnets in 1595 (p. 436) ; but they are
dedicated to Sir Anthony Cooke, who, according to Grosart, was knighted at the
sack of Cadiz, September 15, 1596. They must, therefore, be subsequent to that
date and they may belong to any year between 1597 and 1603, when Davies
himself was knighted, for in the MSS. they are attributed to ' Mr. Davyes.'

THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 255

the 37th sonnet. Mr. Butler attempts to get over the evidence
of this sonnet by pointing to its hypothetical construction ; but
the whole point of the sonnet is that the friend had advantages
of fortune which were denied to the poet.

As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth ;

where ' worth ' must be construed in terms of what follows. And
if it be replied that a private gentleman might claim ' beauty,
birth, and wealth and wit ' as well as a peer, the rejoinder might
be that 'glory' in the twelfth line is a very strong word
indeed, especially to a youth, being equivalent to ' splendour ' or

4 magnificence ' :

I in thy abundance am suffic'd,
And by a part of all thy glory live.

I admit, however, that this is the only evidence for the friend's
nobility, and it is not quite convincing.

The further question, Which of the young gentlemen of the
day had the honour of being Shakespeare's admired friend, is one
that divides the commentators into two hostile factions — the
advocates of Southampton and of Pembroke ; and as I have already
said that I believe the sonnets to have been written from 1597
onwards, I have implicitly given a vote against Southampton's
claim ; for that nobleman was born as early as 1573, and in 1597
was engaged with Essex in an expedition to the Azores. The
Southampton theory has received a new lease of life from Mr.
Lee's recent advocacy ; but I am bold enough to think that, even
on Mr. Lee's own data, Southampton's claim can be disposed of.
Mr. Lee, although he dates most of the sonnets in 1593-4.
assigns the 107th sonnet to the year 1603 l ; it follows that the
date of the Envoy (cxxvi), a poem obviously, from its exceptional
form, written to conclude the series, must be at least not earlier
than 1603, in which year Southampton was thirty years old.

1 It may be well to state shortly the argument for this date. The palmary
line is ' The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured.' The parallel in Antony cmd
Cleopatra (iii. 13, 153), 'Our terrene moon is now eclipsed,' which is applied to
Cleopatra, shows that 'mortal moon' must refer to a person (and it is not easy
to see what other meaning it could have), and that to ' endure an eclipse ' means
to 'suffer it,' not 'to go through it and emerge.' There is no instance in
Shakespeare of ' eclipse ' being used with the implied notion of recovery.
Mr. Lee (p. 148 ff.) adds other arguments from contemporary sources.

256 THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE.

Now is it credible that anyone, even if he were the greatest peer
of the realm and the most bountiful patron conceivable, should
have been addressed by Shakespeare as a 'lovely boy' when thirty
years of age ; especially considering the fact that in the sixteenth
century life began earlier than now, and ended earlier ? Mr. Lee
surmounts this difficulty by a theory that the Envoy is addressed
not to Southampton, but to Cupid ; but this does not seem to
me possible. Cupid is immortal or he is nothing ; and the point
of the Envoy is that mortal beauty must fade at last. Nature
may hold back some favourite for a while from the clutches of
Time, to whom all things are due, but she must at last come to
the audit, and cannot secure her acquittance without surrendering
her favourite :

If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,

As thou goest onward, still will pluck thee back,

She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill

May Time disgrace, and envious minutes kill.

Yet fear her, 0 thou minion of her pleasure 1

She may detain, but not still [always] keep, her treasure :

Her audit, though delayed, answered must be,

And her quietus is to render thee.

Mr. Lee has advanced one new argument for the Southampton
theory which, if it could be maintained, would place it for ever
beyond cavil. Southampton was released from prison on James's
accession in 1603, and ' it is impossible,' says Mr. Lee, ' to resist the
inference that Shakespeare [in the 107th sonnet] saluted his patron
on the close of his days of tribulation.' The inference seems to
me far from irresistible. Indeed, if this sonnet were really an ode
of congratulation under such circumstances, Southampton in turn
could hardly have congratulated the poet on the fervour of his
feelings. For there is no reference in the sonnet to any release
from prison, and its crowning thought is that Shakespeare himself,
not his friend, has overcome death— a curiously awkward compli-
ment on such a remarkable occasion. Mr. Lee suggests a para-
phrase of the opening quatrain which it will not bear.

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.

The words ' my true love ' might certainly by themselves be
taken, as Mr. Lee takes them, to mean ' my true friend,' but ' the
lease of my true love ' can only mean the ' lease of my true

THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 257

affection for my friend.' All leases are for a term of years ; each
has a limit or ' confine ' assigned to it, on which day of doom it
expires. Shakespeare says that neither his own fears nor the
world's prophecies of disastrous changes have justified themselves,
for in the year of grace 1 603 he finds his affection fresher than
ever. But to the friends of Southampton the death of Elizabeth
would not have been an occasion of foreboding, but of hope.

But perhaps the most emphatic argument against the identifi-
cation of Shakespeare's friend with the Earl of Southampton is
the non-natural interpretation of certain words and phrases to
which it compels its adherents. The publisher, Thomas Thorpe,
inscribed his book to ' the only begetter of these insuing sonnets,
Mr. W. H.' — a phrase that ninety-nine persons out of every hundred,
even of those familiar with Elizabethan literature, would un-
hesitatingly understand to mean their inspirer. But Southamp-
ton's initials were H. W. Either, therefore, it must be assumed
that the publisher inverted their order as a blind, or else some
new sense must be found for ' begetter.' Boswell, the editor of
the Variorum Shakespeare, who wished to relieve the poet from
the imputation of having written the sonnets to any particular
person, or as anything but a play of fancy, suggested for the word
the sense of ' getter ' (which had not occurred to either Steevens
or Malone), meaning by that the person who procured the manu-
script, and this interpretation has been adopted by Mr. Lee.
Such a use of the word is acknowledged to be extremely rare, and
the cases alleged are dubious, but it is not impossible. However,
against understanding such a sense here there are several strong
reasons. In the first place, it takes all meaning from the word
only. Allowing it to be conceivable that a piratical publisher
should inscribe a book of sonnets to the thief who brought him
the manuscript, why should he lay stress on the fact that ' alone
he did it ' ? Was it an enterprise of such great peril ? Mr. Lee
attempts to meet this and similar difficulties by depreciating
Thorpe's skill in the use of language ; but the examples he quotes
in his interesting Appendix do not support his theory. Thorpe's
words are accurately used, even to nicety, and, indeed, Mr. Lee
himself owns that in another matter Thorpe showed a ' literary
sense ' and ' a good deal of dry humour.' I venture to affirm that
this dedication also shows a fairly well-developed literary sense.
In the next place, this theory of the ' procurer ' obliges us to
believe that Thorpe wished Mr. W. H. that eternity which the

VOL. XII. — NO. 68, N.S. 17

258 THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE.

poet had promised not to him, nor to men in general, but to some
undesignated third party. Mr. Lee calls the words 'promised by
our ever-living poet ' ' a decorative and supererogatory phrase.'
That is a very mild qualification of them under the circumstances.
But an examination of Thorpe's other dedications shows that his
style was rather sententious than ' supererogatory.' Then, again,
on this theory the epithet well-wishing also becomes ' superero-
gatory.' For what it implies is that the adventurous publisher's
motive in giving the sonnets to the world without their author's
consent was a good one. The person to whom they were written
might reasonably expect, though he would not necessarily credit,
an assurance on this head ; but what would one literary jackal
care for another's good intentions ? There are other points that
might be urged, but these are sufficient. Only, I would add that
the whole tone of the dedication, which is respectful, and the
unusual absence of a qualifying -phrase, such as ' his esteemed
friend,' before the initials are against the theory that Mr. W. H.
was on the same social level as the publisher.

There is one other point of interpretation upon which the
Southampton faction are compelled by their theory to go against
probabilities. There are two places in which a play is made upon
the name Will, the paronomasia being indicated in the editio
princeps by italic type, in which that edition, as Mr. Wyndham
has shown at length, is very far from being lavish. In one of
these places (cxliii), if the pun be allowed at all, it cannot refer
to the poet's own name, but must refer to the name of his friend.
In this sonnet the ' dark lady,' pursuing the poet's friend while
the poet pursues her, is compared to a housewife chasing a
chicken and followed by her own crying child. It concludes :

So runn'st them after that which flies from thee,

Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind ;

But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,

And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind :

So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,
If thou turn back, and my loud crying still.

The word Will is printed here in the original text in italics, and
the pun is in Shakespeare's manner. The 135th sonnet opens :

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus ;
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.

THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 259

The third Will here must be Shakespeare, because ' Will in
overplus ' corresponds to ' more than enough am /' ; and few critics
with the 143rd sonnet also in mind would hesitate to refer the
second Will to Shakespeare's friend, for whom the ' dark lady '
had been laying snares. But the Southamptonites, who cannot
allow that the friend's name was Will, are constrained to deny
that there is any pun at all in 143, and to refer that in 135 to
the distinction between ' will ' in its ordinary sense and ' will ' in
the sense of ' desire.' But the balance of the line makes it almost
necessary that, as 'Will in overplus' must be a proper name,
' Will to boot ' should be a proper name also. And that there are
more Wills than one concerned in the matter is made more
evident still by other passages, where the poet jocosely limits his
claim to the lady's favour to the fact that his Christian name is
Will, acknowledging that not a few other people have as good a

claim as he :

Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine ?
and again :

Let no unkind ' no ' fair beseechers kill
Think all but one, and me in that one, Will.

To attempt, then, in the face of these multiplied improbabilities
to maintain that Shakespeare's friend was Lord Southampton is
a task worthy of a great advocate, and Mr. Lee's brilliant effort
would suggest that the Bar has lost an ornament in his devotion
to historical research. I own, nevertheless, that I should prefer
to hear him argue the other side.

The theory that the friend addressed in the sonnets was
William Herbert, afterwards third Earl of Pembroke, arose
inevitably from the letters W. H. of the dedication, as soon as
the sonnets themselves began to be studied; and although it
cannot be said to have established itself, there are not a few
arguments that may be urged in its favour. Herbert was born
in 1580, so that he was sixteen years younger than Shakespeare;
and he seems to have been of an intellectual temper, likely both
to attract and be attracted by the poet. He wrote verses himself,
and was inclined, we are told, to melancholy. Dr. Gardiner calls
him the Hamlet of James's Court, and there may be more in the
phrase than he intended. At any rate, the date of ' Hamlet ' is
1602. Pembroke's personal handsomeness is dwelt upon in a
sonnet by Francis Davison, the son of Secretary Davison, who,
being a gentleman, was less likely than a literary hack to say

17—2

260 THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE.

the thing that was not. In inscribing to him the ' Poetical
Rhapsody ' in 1602 he prefixed a sonnet which opens thus :

Great earl, whose high and noble mind is higher
And nobler than thy noble high desire ;
Whose outward shape, though it most lovely be,
Doth in fair robes a fairer soul attire. . . .

Considering that the occasion did not call for any reference to
the Earl's personal appearance, Davison's statement must be
received with attention. Mr. Lee denies that there is any
evidence for Pembroke's beauty, and calls this sentence of
Davison's ' a cautiously qualified reference ' ; while, on the other
hand, he holds that the Virgilian tag, 'quo non formosior alter
Affuit,' which an Oxford wit applied to Southampton, is a satis-
factory proof that he came up to Shakespeare's ideal. Surely
one passage is as good evidence as the other ; and perhaps the
fact that both young noblemen were admitted to Elizabeth's
favour is better evidence than either. It is perhaps lucky that
we have no portrait of Pembroke in youth, for the portrait that
Mr. Lee prints of Southampton certainly supports his theory
that Shakespeare's praises, supposing them addressed to him, were
mere professional flattery. It is interesting that we should have
a testimony to Pembroke's 'loveliness ' as late as 1602, when he
was two-and-twenty, for the use of that epithet — not, surely, a
' cautiously qualified ' but a very strong one considering his age —
is some argument that he is the person to whom the same
epithet is applied in the 126th sonnet, and who is there stated
to have retained his youthful looks beyond the usual term.
Enthusiasts for the Pembroke theory, like Mr. Tyler and the
Rev. W. A. Harrison, have collected from the Sidney Papers all
the references they contain to the young lord, and one or two of
these lend a certain additional plausibility to the theory. It is
discovered, for example, that in 1597 negotiations were on foot
to marry Herbert to a daughter of the Earl of Oxford, which
came to nothing; and the suggestion has been made that
Shakespeare was prompted to help in overcoming the youth's
reluctance. It cannot be denied that the opening set of sonnets,
while they are in keeping with the age, demand some such
background of historical fact ; though the situation is one that
might have presented itself in any dozen great houses in any
one year. Such a theory requires us to assume that Shakespeare
was familiar at Wilton, and knew Herbert at home before he

THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 261

came up to London in the following spring. I do not think this
so improbable as it appears to Mr. Lee, for Shakespeare had
become famous three years earlier, and Lady Pembroke (Sidney's
sister) was renowned for her patronage of poets ; moreover
Samuel Daniel, who speaks of Wilton as ' that arbour of the
Muses,' was himself there at this period as tutor to the young
lord ; so that Shakespeare's fame is not likely to have been un-
sounded. As to the probability, we may ask, If Ben Jonson was
welcomed at Penshurst, why should not Shakespeare have been
received at Wilton ? If this were allowed, it might be urged
that a friendship begun at Wilton in the boy's impressionable
youth was in a natural way continued in London. Of course all
this is merely conjecture ; but in the extreme paucity of the
records I do not think that an argument from silence is conclu-
sive against it. A friendship is an intangible thing, and would
make no stir so as to be talked about. It would be absurd to
have to conclude that neither Shakespeare nor Pembroke had any
friends in London because we cannot give their names. At the
same time, it must not be ignored that one weak place in the
Pembroke theory is the fact that some of the sonnets were
certainly written before 1598, and that the young gentleman did
not come to London till that year.

Another weak place in the theory is the mis-description, that
it implies, of Lord Pembroke as Mr. W. H. It has often been
alleged that a parallel case is that of the poet Lord Buckhurst,
who is described on title-pages as Mr. Sackville; but Mr. Lee
has disposed of the parallel by showing that while Lord Buck-
hurst was a commoner when he wrote his poems, Lord Pembroke
had by courtesy always been a peer, and was known to con-
temporaries in his minority as Lord Herbert. It is perhaps going
too far to say that this difficulty renders the Pembroke hypothesis
altogether untenable ; for there remain two alternative possi-
bilities. It is possible that Thorpe found his manuscript of the
Sonnets headed ' To W. H.,' and, being ignorant who W. H. was,
supplied the ordinary title of respect. This would be a perfectly
fair argument ; though I should say that it does not answer to the
impression that the terms of the dedication leave on one's mind.
(The further question whether the young nobleman would have
answered to the name of Will instead of to his family title I will not
attempt to argue ; to friendship all things are possible.) The
alternative to Thorpe's ignorance would be that he suppressed his

262 THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE.

lordship's title by way of disguise. This also is a fairly legitimate
supposition under the circumstances. Mr. Lee argues that for a
publisher to have addressed any peer as plain Mister would have
been defamation and a Star Chamber matter, as it well might if
the publisher intended an insult. But in any case the peer would
have to set the Star Chamber in motion ; and there might be
good reasons for not doing so. The terms of the dedication seem
to imply that the publisher was not conscious of taking any
great liberty. Hence if W. H. is to be interpreted of Pembroke,
we shall have to assume that Thorpe had satisfied himself that
the dedication would not be resented ; for if Thorpe knew the
secret, it must have been a fairly open one. If Thorpe had
obtained permission to dedicate the Sonnets to Pembroke on con-
dition that his incognito was respected — a somewhat difficult
supposition — then it is hard to say that 'Mr. W. H.' was an
impossible way of referring to him ; because, though by courtesy
a peer, Herbert was legally a commoner until he succeeded to the
earldom in 1601. Those who on the ground of this derogation
from Herbert's dignity have denied the possibility of his being the
1 begetter ' of the Sonnets have perhaps not always given weight
enough to the impossibility of dedicating them 'To the Eight
Honourable William, Earle of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlaine to
His Majestie, one of his most honourable Privie Counsell, and
Knight of the most noble order of the Garter.' Had Thorpe
ventured upon such a dedication as that, I can almost conceive
the Star Chamber taking action of its own accord. Still, when
special pleading has done its utmost, I am bound to confess that
I am not convinced. There is a smug tone about the dedica-
tion which suggests that while Mr. W. H. was far above Thorpe's
own social position, he was yet something less than so magnificent
a personage as the Earl of Pembroke.

The Pembroke party, however, not content with identifying
the poet's friend, are determined to find a counterpart in real life
to the ' dark lady ' who figures so ominously in the sonnets. The
number of ' dark ladies ' in the capital at any time is legion, and
the sonnets supply no possible clue by which the particular
person can be identified. The attempt, therefore, to fix upon
someone with whom Pembroke is known to have had relations
is merely gratuitous ; and it rejoices the heart of any sane
spectator to learn that this supposed ' dark lady ' turns out, when
her portraits are examined, to have been conspicuously fair.

THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 263

Probably, as the portraits seem of unimpeachable pedigree, we
shall next be told that the sonnets themselves imply that the
lady dyed her hair before sitting for the portrait.

To sum up, then, the results at which the most recent
Shakespearean scholarship has arrived. No new light has been
gained upon the identity of the rival poet, or the friend to whom
the sonnets were addressed. These mysteries remain as dark as
ever. The only certain results are negative results. The poet is
almost certainly not Chapman, and the friend is quite certainly
not Southampton. If the friend were a peer, he must have been
Herbert ; if he were a commoner, he may have been any young
gentleman of good family and large fortune with a taste for the
theatre and the flattery of men of genius.1 It is more important
to remember that, whoever he was, we are not yet debarred by
Mr. Lee's researches from regarding the sonnets as expressions of
real feeling, though, in deference to his proof of the fashion-
ableness of superlatives under Elizabeth, we may be wise to-day
in transposing their key a tone lower. If superlatives trouble us,
we may recollect that a sonnet, by its very nature, is a ' descant '
upon a more simple ' ground.' More important still is it to re-
member that these sonnets contain some of the finest poetry in
the world. Of that nothing has been said in this paper, because
it is admitted by all critics ; indeed, if it were not for their supreme
beauty no one would think them worth disputing over.

1 Tyrwhitt used to think his name was Hughes because in the 20th sonnet
the word Hems is printed in italics for no obvious reason. As the line stands in
the original edition,

' A man in hew all Hewt in his controwling,'

it looks momentous ; and there is no other word in italics between the 5th sonnet
and the 53rd. But on the other hand it must be noted that what chiefly im-
presses us is the capital letter, and this is found with every word printed in
italics throughout the sonnets, so that it is not in itself evidence of a proper
name. Further, there is no pun as there is in the sonnets which contain the
name ' Will.' Probably the italic is accidental. Mr. Wyndham says of fftms,
' if its capital and italics be a freak of the printer, they constitute the only freaks
of that kind in the whole edition of 1609 ' (p. 261). But there is another in the
104th sonnet, where ' autumn ' is in italic type and both ' spring ' and ' winter ' in
roman.

264

THE FOUR FEATHERS.1
BY A. E. W. MASON.

CHAPTER IV.
THE BALL AT LENNON HOUSE.

YET Feversham had travelled to Dublin by the night mail after
his ride with Durrance in the Row. He crossed Lough Swilly on
the following forenoon by a little cargo steamer, which once a
week steamed up the Lennon river as far as Ramelton. On the
quayside Ethne was waiting for him in her dog-cart ; she gave
him the hand and the smile of a comrade.

' You are surprised to see me,' said she, noting the look upon
his face.

' I always am,' he replied. ' By so much you exceed my
thoughts of you ; ' and the smile changed upon her face — it
became something more than the smile of a comrade.

' I shall drive slowly,' she said as soon as his traps had been
packed into the cart ; ' I brought no groom on purpose. There
will be guests coming to-morrow. We have only to-day.'

She drove along the wide causeway by the river-side, and
turned up the steep, narrow street. Feversham sat silently by
her side. It was his first visit to Ramelton, and he gazed about
him, noting the dark thicket of tall trees which climbed on the
far side of the river, the old grey bridge, the noise of the water
above it as it sang over shallows, and the drowsy quiet of the
town, with a great curiosity and almost a pride of ownership,
since it was here that Ethne lived, and all these things were
part and parcel of her life.

She was at that time a girl of twenty-one, tall, strong, and
supple of limb, and with a squareness of shoulder proportionate
to her height. She had none of that exaggerated slope which
our grandmothers esteemed, yet she lacked no grace of woman-
hood on that account, and in her walk she was light-footed as a
deer. Her hair was dark brown, and she wore it coiled upon the
nape of her neck ; a bright colour burned in her cheeks, and her

1 Copyright, 1901, by A. E. W. Mason in the United States of America,

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 265

eyes, of a very clear grey, met the eyes of those to whom she
talked with a most engaging frankness. And in character she
was the counterpart of her looks. She was honest, she had a
certain simplicity, the straightforward simplicity of strength
which comprises much gentleness and excludes violence. Of her
courage there is a story still told in Kamelton, which Feversham
could never remember without a thrill of wonder. She had
stopped at a door on that steep hill leading down to the river,
and the horse which she was driving took fright at the mere
clatter of a pail and bolted. The reins were lying loose at the
moment ; they fell on the ground before Ethne could seize them.
She was thus seated helpless in the dog-cart, and the horse was
tearing down to where the road curves sharply over the bridge.
The thing which she did, she did quite coolly. She climbed over
the front of the dog-cart as it pitched and raced down the hill,
and balancing herself along the shafts, reached the reins at the
horse's neck, and brought the horse to a stop ten yards from
the curve. But she had, too, the defects of her qualities, although
Feversham was not yet aware of them.

Ethne during the first part of this drive was almost as silent
as her companion, and when she spoke it was with an absent air,
as though she had something of more importance in her thoughts.
It was not until she had left the town and was out upon the
straight undulating road to Letterkenny that she turned quickly
to Feversham and uttered it.

' I saw this morning that your regiment was ordered from
India to Egypt. You could have gone with it had I not come
in your way. There would have been chances of distinction. I
have hindered you, and I am very sorry. Of course, you could
not know that there was any possibility of your regiment going,
but I can understand it is very hard for you to be left behind. I
blame myself.'

Feversham sat staring in front of him for a moment. Then
he said in a voice suddenly grown hoarse :

' You need not.'

' How can I help it ? I blame myself the more,' she continued,
' because I do not see things quite like other women. For
instance, supposing that you had gone out, and that the worst
had happened, I should have felt very lonely, of course, all my
days, but I should have known quite surely that when those days
were over, you and I would see much of one another.'

266 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

She spoke without any impressive lowering of the voice, but
in the steady level tone of one stating the simplest imaginable
fact. Feversham caught his breath like a man in pain. But
the girl's eyes were upon his face, and he sat still, staring in front
of him without so much as a contraction of the forehead. But it
seemed that he could not trust himself to answer. He kept his
lips closed, and Ethne continued :

' You see I can put up with the absence of the people I care
about a little better perhaps than most people. I do not feel
that I have lost them at all,' and she cast about for a while as if
her thought was difficult to express. 'You know how things
happen,' she resumed. ' One toddles along in a dull sort of way,
and then suddenly a face springs out from the crowd of one's
acquaintances, and you know it at once and certainly for the
face of a friend, or rather you recognise it, though you have
never seen it before. It is almost as though you had come upon
someone long looked for and now gladly recovered. Well, such
friends — they are few, no doubt, but after all only the few really
count — such friends one does not lose, whether they are absent,
or even — dead.'

' Unless,' said Feversham slowly, ' one has made a mistake.
Suppose the face in the crowd is a mask, what then ? One may
make mistakes.'

Ethne shook her head decidedly.

' Of that kind, no. One may seem to have made mistakes,
and perhaps for a long while. But in the end one would be
proved not to have made them.'

And the girl's implicit faith took hold upon the man and
tortured him, so that he could no longer keep silence.

' Ethne,' he cried, ' you don't know ' But at that moment

Ethne reined in her horse, laughed, and pointed with her whip.

They had come to the top of a hill a couple of miles from
Eamelton. The road ran between stone walls enclosing open
fields upon the left, and a wood of oaks and beeches on the right.
A scarlet letter-box was built into the left-hand wall, and at that
Ethne's whip was pointed.

' I wanted to show you that,' she interrupted. ' It was there
I used to post my letters to you during the anxious times.' And
so Feversham let slip his opportunity of speech. He looked at
the wonderful letter-box, which had once received missives of so
high an importance.

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 267

' The house is behind the trees to the right,' she said.

' The letter-box is very convenient,' said Feversham.

' Yes. I suppose that you and I are the only two people in
the British Isles who are satisfied with the Postmaster-General,'
said Ethne, and she drove on and stopped again where the park
wall had crumbled.

' That's where I used to climb over to post the letters. There's
a tree on the other side of the wall as convenient as the letter-
box. I used to run down the half-mile of avenue at night.'

' There might have been thieves,' exclaimed Feversham.

' There were thorns,' said Ethne, and turning through the
gates she drove up to the porch of the long, irregular grey house.
' Well, we have still a day before the dance.'

' I suppose the whole countryside is coming,' said Feversham.

' It daren't do anything else,' said Ethne with a laugh. ' My
father would send the police to fetch them if they stayed away,
just as he fetched your friend Mr. Durrance here. By the way,
Mr. Durrance has sent me a present — a Gruarnerius violin.'

The door opened, and a thin, lank old man with a fierce
peaked face like a bird of prey came out upon the steps. His
face softened, however, into friendliness when he saw Feversham,
and a smile played upon his lips. A stranger might have thought
that he winked. But his left eyelid continually drooped over
the eye.

' How do you do ? ' he said. ' G-lad to see you. Must make
yourself at home. If you want any whisky, stamp twice on the
floor with your foot. The servants understand,' and with that he
went straightway back into the house.

The biographer of Dermod Eustace would need to bring a
wary mind to his work. For though the old master of Lennon
House has not lain twenty years in his grave, he is already
swollen into a legendary character. Anecdotes have grown upon
his memory like barnacles, and any man in those parts with a
knack of invention has only to foist his stories upon Dermod to
ensure a ready credence. There are, however, definite facts. He
practised an ancient and tyrannous hospitality, keeping open
house upon the road to Letterkenny, and forcing bed and board
even upon strangers, as Durrance had once discovered. He was
a man of another century, who looked out with a glowering, angry
eye upon a topsy-turvy world with which he would not be re-

268 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

conciled except after much alcohol. He was a sort of intoxicated
Coriolaims, believing that the people should be shepherded with
a stick, yet always mindful of his manners even to the lowliest
of women. It was always said of him with pride by the townsfolk
of Ramelton that even at his worst, when he came galloping
down the steep cobbled streets, mounted on a big white mare of
seventeen hands, with his inseparable collie-dog for his companion
— a gaunt, grey-faced, grey-haired man with a drooping eye,
swaying with drink, yet by a miracle keeping his saddle — he had
never ridden down anyone except a man. There are two points
to be added. He was rather afraid of his daughter, who wisely
kept him doubtful whether she was displeased with him or not,
and he had conceived a great liking for Harry Fever sham.

Harry saw little of him that day, however. Dermod retired
into the room which he was pleased to call his office, while
Feversham and Ethne spent the afternoon fishing for salmon in
the Lennon river. It was an afternoon restful as a Sabbath, and
the very birds were still. From the house the lawns fell steeply,
shaded by trees and dappled by the sunlight, to a valley, at the
bottom of which flowed the river swift and black under overarching
boughs. There was a fall, where the water slid over rocks with a
smoothness so unbroken that it looked solid except just at one
point. There a spur stood sharply up and the river broke back
upon itself in an amber wave through which the sun shone.
Opposite this spur they sat for a long while, talking at times, but
for the most part listening to the roar of the water, and watching
its perpetual flow. And at last the sunset came, and the long
shadows. They stood up, looked at each other with a smile, and
so walked slowly back to the house. It was an afternoon which
Feversham was long to remember. For the next night was the
night of the dance, and as the band struck up the opening bars of
the fourth waltz, Ethne left her position at the drawing-room
door, and taking Feversham's arm passed out into the hall.

The hall was empty and the front door stood open to the cool
of the summer night. From the ballroom came the swaying lilt
of the music and the beat of the dancers' feet. Ethne drew a
breath of relief at her reprieve from her duties, and then, dropping
her partner's arm, crossed to a side table.

' The post is in,' she said. ' There are letters, one, two, three
for you, and a little box.'

She held the box out to him as she spoke, a little white

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 269

jeweller's cardboard box, and was at once struck by its absence of
weight.

' It must be empty,' she said.

Yet it was most carefully sealed and tied. Feversham broke
the seals and unfastened the string. He looked at the address.
The box had been forwarded from his lodgings and he was not
familiar with the handwriting.

' There is some mistake,' he said as he shook the lid open, and
then he stopped abruptly. Three white feathers fluttered out of
the box, swayed and rocked for a moment in the air, and then, one
after another, settled gently down upon the floor. They lay like
flakes of snow upon the dark polished boards. But they were not
whiter than Harry Feversham's cheeks. He stood and stared at
the feathers until he felt a light touch upon his arm. He looked
and saw Ethne's gloved hand upon his sleeve.

' What does it mean ? ' she asked. There was some perplexity
in her voice, but nothing more than perplexity. The smile upon
her face and the loyal confidence of her eyes showed she had never
a doubt that his first word would lift it from her. 'What does it
mean ? '

' That there are things which cannot be hid, I suppose,' said
Feversham.

For a little while Ethne did not speak. The languorous
music floated into the hall, and the trees whispered from the
garden through the open door. Then she shook his arm gently,
uttered a breathless little laugh, and spoke as though she were
pleading with a child.

' I don't think you understand, Harry. Here are three white
feathers. They were sent to you in jest ? Oh, of course in jest.
But it is a cruel kind of jest '

' They were sent in deadly earnest.'

He spoke now, looking her straight in the eyes. Ethne
dropped her hand from his sleeve.

' Who sent them ? ' she asked.

Feversham had not given a thought to that matter. The
message was all in all, the men who had sent it so unimportant.
But Ethne reached out her hand and took the box from him.
There were three visiting cards lying at the bottom, and she took
them out and read them aloud.

' Captain Trench, Mr. Castleton, Mr. Willoughby. Do you
know these men ? '

270 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

' All three are officers of my old regiment.'
The girl was dazed. She knelt down upon the floor and
gathered the feathers into her hand with a vague thought that
merely to touch them would help her to comprehension. They
lay upon the palm of her white glove, and she blew gently upon
them and they swam up into the air and hung fluttering and
rocking. As they floated downwards she caught them again, and
so she slowly felt her way to another question.
' Were they justly sent ? ' she asked.
' Yes,' said Harry Feversham.

He had no thought of denial or evasion. He was only aware
that the dreadful thing for so many years dreadfully anticipated
had at last befallen him. He was known for a coward. The word
which had long blazed upon the wall of his thoughts in letters of
fire was now written large in the public places. He stood as ' he
had once stood before the portraits of his fathers, mutely accepting
condemnation. It was the girl who denied, as she still kneeled
upon the floor.

' I do not believe that is true,' she said. ' You could not look
me in the face so steadily were it true. Your eyes would seek the
floor, not mine.'
' Yet it is true.'

' Three little white feathers,' she said slowly, and then with a
sob in her throat. ' This afternoon we were under the elms down by
the Lennon river — do you remember, Harry ? — just you and I. And
then come three little white feathers ; and the world's at an end.'
' Oh don't ! ' cried Harry, and his voice broke upon the word.
Up till now he had spoken with a steadiness matching the steadi-
ness of his eyes. But these last words of hers, the picture which
they evoked in his memories, the pathetic simplicity of her utter-
ance caught him by the heart. But Ethne seemed not to hear
the appeal. She was listening with her face turned towards the
ball-room. The chatter and laughter of the voices there grew
louder and nearer. She understood that the music had ceased.
She rose quickly to her feet, clenching the feathers in her hand,
and opened a door. It was the door of her sitting-room.
' Come,' she said.

Harry followed her into the room, and she closed the door,
shutting out the noise.

' Now,' she said, ' will you tell me. if you please, why the
feathers have been sent ? '

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 271

She stood quietly before him ; her face was pale, but Feversham
could not gather from her expression any feeling which she might
have beyond a desire and a determination to get at the truth.
She spoke, too, with the same quietude. He answered, as he had
answered before, directly, and to the point, without any attempt
at mitigation.

' A telegram came. It was sent by Castleton. It reached me
when Captain Trench and Mr. Willoughby were dining with me.
It told me that my regiment would be ordered on active service in
Egypt. Castleton was dining with a man likely to know, and I
did not question the accuracy of his message. He told me to tell
Trench. I did not. I thought the matter over with the telegram
in front of me. Castleton was leaving that night for Scotland, and
he would go straight from Scotland to rejoin the regiment. He
would not, therefore, see Trench for some weeks at the earliest,
and by that time the telegram would very likely be forgotten, or
its date confused. I did not tell Trench. I threw the telegram
into the fire, and that night sent in my papers. But Trench found
out somehow. Durrance was at dinner, too — good (rod, Durrance !
He suddenly broke out. ' Most likely he knows like the rest.'

It came upon him as something shocking and strangely new
that his friend Durrance, who, as he knew very well, had been
wont rather to look up to him, in all likelihood counted him a
thing of scorn. But he heard Ethne speaking. After all, what
did it matter whether Durrance knew, whether every man knew
from the South Pole to the North, since she, Ethne, knew.

1 And is this all ? ' she asked.

' Surely it is enough,' said he.

' I think not,' she answered, and she lowered her voice a little
as she went on. ' We agreed, didn't we, that no foolish mis-
understandings should ever come between us. We were to be
frank, and to take frankness each from the other without offence.
So be frank with me ! Please ! ' and she pleaded. ' I could, I
think, claim it as a right. At all events I ask for it as I shall
never ask for anything else in all my life.'

There was a sort of explanation of his act, Harry Feversham
remembered. But it was so futile when compared with the over-
whelming consequence. Ethne had unclenched her hands, the
three feathers lay before his eyes upon the table. They could
not be explained away ; he wore ' coward ' like a blind man's
label ; besides, he could never make her understand. However,

272 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

she wished for the explanation, and had a right to it ; she had been
generous in asking for it, with a generosity not very common
amongst women. So Feversham gathered his wits and ex-
plained :

' All my life I have been afraid that some day I should play
the coward, and from the very first I knew that I was destined
for the army. I kept my fear to myself. There was no one to

whom I could tell it. My mother was dead, and my father '

he stopped for a moment with a deep intake of the breath. He
could see his father, that lonely iron man, sitting at this very
moment in his mother's favourite seat upon the terrace, and
looking over the moonlit fields towards the Sussex Downs ; he could
imagine him dreaming of honours and distinctions worthy of the
Fevershams to be gained immediately by his son in the Egyptian
campaign. Surely that old man's stern heart would break
beneath this blow ! The magnitude of the bad thing which he
had done, the misery which it would spread, were becoming very
clear to Harry Feversham. He dropped his head between his
hands and groaned aloud.

' My father,' he resumed, ' would, nay, could never have under-
stood. I know him. When danger came his way it found him
ready, but he did not foresee. That was my trouble always. I
foresaw. Any peril to be encountered, any risk to be run — I fore-
saw them. I foresaw something else besides. My father would
talk in his matter-of-fact way of the hours of waiting before the
actual commencement of a battle, after the troops had been
paraded. The mere anticipation of the suspense and the strain
of those hours was a torture to me. I foresaw the possibility of
cowardice. Then one evening, when my father had his old
friends about him on one of his Crimean nights, two dreadful
stories were told — one of an officer, the other of a surgeon, who
had both shirked. I was now confronted with the fact of
cowardice. I took those stories up to bed with me. They never
left my memory; they became a part of me. I saw myself
behaving now as one, now as the other of those two men had
behaved, perhaps in the crisis of a battle bringing ruin upon my
country, certainly dishonouring my father and all the dead men
whose portraits hung ranged in the hall. I tried to get the best
of my fears. I hunted, but with a map of the countryside in my
mind. I foresaw every hedge, every pit, every treacherous
bank.'

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 273

' Yet you rode straight,' interrupted Ethne. ' Mr. Durrance
told me so.'

' Did I ? ' said Feversham vaguely. ' Well, perhaps I did,
once the hounds were off". Durrance never knew what the
moments of waiting before the covers were drawn meant to me !
So when this telegram came I took the chance it seemed to offer
and resigned.'

So he ended his explanation. He had spoken warily, having
something to conceal. However earnestly she might ask for
frankness, he must at all costs, for her sake, hide something from
her. But at once she suspected it.

' Were you afraid too of disgracing me ? Was I in any way
the cause that you resigned ? '

Feversham looked her in the eyes and lied :

'No.'

' If you had not been engaged to me you would still have sent
in your papers ? '

' Yes.'

Ethne slowly stripped a glove off her hand. Feversham
turned away.

' I think that I am rather like your father,' she said. ' I
don't understand ' ; and in the silence which followed upon her
words Feversham heard something whirr and rattle upon the table.
He looked and saw that she had slipped her engagement ring
off her finger. It lay upon the table, the stones winking at him.

' And all this — all that you have told to me,' she exclaimed
suddenly, with her face very stern, ' you would have hidden from
me. You would have married me and hidden it had not these
three feathers come ? '

The words had been on her lips from the beginning, but she
had not uttered them lest by a miracle he should after all have
some unimagined explanation which would re-establish him in
her thoughts. She had given him every chance. Now, however,
she struck and laid bare the worst of his disloyalty. Feversham
flinched, and he did not answer, but allowed his silence to con-
sent. Ethne, however, was just ; she was in a way curious too :
she wished to know the very bottom of the matter before she
thrust it into the back of her mind.

' But yesterday,' she said, ' you were going to tell me some-
thing. I stopped you to point out the letter-box,' and she laughed
in a queer empty way. ' Was it about the feathers ? '

""OL. XIT. — NO. 68, N.S. 18

274 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

'Yes,' answered Feversham wearily. What did these per-
sistent questions matter, since the feathers had come, since her
ring lay flickering and winking on the table. ' Yes, I think what
you were saying rather compelled me.'

' I remember,' said Ethne, interrupting him rather hastily,
' about seeing much of one another — afterwards. We will not
speak of such things again,' and Feversham swayed upon his feet
as though he would fall. ' I remember, too, you said one could
make mistakes. You were right, I was wrong. One can do more
than seem to make them. Will you, if you please, take back
your ring ? '

Feversham picked up the ring and held it in the palm of his
hand, standing very still. He had never cared for her so much,
he had never recognised her value so thoroughly as at this
moment when he lost her. She gleamed in the quiet room,
wonderful, most wonderful, from the bright flowers in her hair to
the white slipper on her foot. It was incredible to him that he
should ever have won her. Yet he had, and disloyally had lost
her. Then her voice broke in again upon his reflections.

' These, too, are yours. Will you take them please ? '

She was pointing with her fan to the feathers upon the table.
Feversham obediently reached out his hand, and then drew it
back in surprise.

' There are four,' he said.

Ethne did not reply, and looking at her fan Feversham
understood. It was a fan of ivory and white feathers. She had
broken off one of those feathers and added it on her own account
to the three.

The thing which she had done was cruel, no doubt. But she
wished to make an end — a complete, irrevocable end ; though her
voice was steady, and her face, despite its pallor, calm, she was
really tortured with humiliation and pain. All the details of
Harry Feversham's courtship, the interchange of looks, the letters
she had written and received, the words which had been spoken,
tingled and smarted unbearably in her recollections. Their lips
had touched — she recalled it with horror. She desired never to
see Harry Feversham after this night. Therefore she added her
fourth feather to the three.

Harry Feversham took the feathers as she bade him, without
a word of remonstrance, and indeed with a sort of dignity which
even at that moment surprised her. All the time, too, he had

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 275

kept his eyes steadily upon hers, he had answered her questions
simply, there had been nothing abject in his manner ; so that
Ethne already almost began to regret this last thing which she
had done. However, it was done. Feversham had taken the
four feathers.

He held them in his fingers as though he was about to tear
them across. But he checked the action. He looked suddenly
towards her, and kept his eyes upon her face for some little while.
Then very carefully he put the feathers into his breast pocket.
Ethne at this time did not consider why. She only thought that
here was the irrevocable end.

' We should be going back, I think,' she said. ' We have
been some time away. Will you give me your arm ? ' In the
hall she looked at the clock. ' Only eleven o'clock,' she said,
wearily. 'When we dance here, we dance till daylight. We
must show brave faces until daylight.'

And, with her hand resting upon his arm, they passed into
the ball-room.

CHAPTEE V.

THE TARIAH.

HABIT assisted them ; the irresponsible chatter of the ball-room
sprang automatically to their lips ; the appearance of enjoyment
never failed from off their faces ; so that no one at Lennon House
that night suspected that any swift cause of severance had come
between them. Harry Feversham watched Ethne laugh and talk
as though she had never a care, and was perpetually surprised,
taking no thought that he wore the like mask of gaiety himself.
When she swung past him the light rhythm of her feet almost
persuaded him that her heart was in the dance. It seemed that
she could even command the colour upon her cheeks. Thus they
both wore brave faces as she had bidden. They even danced
together. But all the while Ethne was conscious that she was
holding up a great load of pain and humiliation which would
presently crush her, and Feversham felt those four feathers
burning at his breast. It was wonderful to him that the whole
company did not know of them. He never approached a partner
without the notion that she would turn upon him with the con-
temptuous name which was his upon her tongue. Yet he felt no

8—2

276 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

fear on that account. He would not indeed have cared had it
happened, had the word been spoken. He had lost Ethne. He
watched her and looked in vain amongst her guests, as indeed
he surely knew he would, for a fit comparison. There were
women, pretty, graceful, even beautiful, but Ethne stood apart
by the particular character of her beauty. The broad forehead,
the perfect curve of the eyebrows ; the great steady, clear, grey
eyes, the full red lips which could dimple into tenderness and
shut level with resolution, and the royal grace of her carriage,
marked her out to Feversham's thinking, and would do so in any
company. He watched her in a despairing amazement that he
had ever had a chance of owning her.

Only once did her endurance fail her and then only for a
second. She was dancing with Feversham and as she looked
towards the windows she saw that the daylight was beginning
to show very pale and cold upon the other side of the blinds.

' Look ! ' she said, and Feversham suddenly felt all her weight
upon his arms. Her face lost its colour and grew tired and very
grey. Her eyes shut tightly and then opened again. He thought
that she would faint. ' The morning at last ! ' she exclaimed, and
then in a voice as weary as her face, ' I wonder whether it is right
that one should suffer so much pain.'

' Hush ! ' whispered Feversham, ' Courage ! A few minutes
more — only a very few ! ' He stopped and stood in front of her
until her strength returned.

' Thank you ! ' she said gratefully and the bright wheel of the
dance caught them again.

It was strange that he should be exhorting her to courage,
she thanking him for help, but the irony of this queer momentary
reversal of their position occurred to neither of them. Ethne
was too tried by the strain of those last hours, and Feversham had
learned from that one failure of her endurance, from the drawn
aspect of her face and the depths of pain in her eyes, how deeply
he had wounded her. He no longer said, ' I have lost her,' he no
longer thought of his loss at all. He heard her words : ' I wonder
whether it is right that one should suffer so much pain.' He felt
that they would go ringing down the world with him, persistent
in his ears, spoken upon the very accent of her voice. He was
sure that he would hear them at the end above the voices of any
who should stand about him when he died, and hear in them his
condemnation. For it was not right.

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 277

The ball finished shortly afterwards. The last carriage drove
away and those who were staying in the house sought the
smoking-room or went upstairs to bed according to their sex.
Feversham, however, lingered in the hall with Ethne. She
understood why.

' There is no need/ she said, standing with her back to him
as she lighted a candle, ' I have told my father. I told him
everything.'

Feversham bowed his head in acquiescence.

' Still, I must wait and see him,' he said.

Ethne did not object, but she turned and looked at him
quickly with her brows drawn in a frown of perplexity. To wait
for her father under such circumstances seemed to argue a certain
courage. Indeed, she herself felt some apprehension as she
heard the door of the study open and Dermod's footsteps on the
floor. Dermod walked straight up to Harry Feversham, looking
for once in a way what he was, a very old man, and stood there
staring into Feversham's face with a muddled and bewildered ex-
pression. Twice he opened his mouth to speak, but no words
came. In the end he turned to the table and lit his candle
and Harry Feversham's. Then he turned back towards Fever-
sham, and rather quickly, so that Ethne took a step forward as if
to get between them. But he did nothing more than stare at
Feversham again and for a long time. Finally, he took up his
candle.

' Well ' he said and stopped. He snuffed the wick with

the scissors and began again. ' Well ' he said and stopped

again. Apparently his candle had not helped him to any suitable
expressions. He stared into the flame now instead of into Fever-
sham's face and for an equal length of time. He could think of
nothing whatever to say, and yet he was conscious that something
must be said. In the end he said in a lame way :

' If you want any whisky stamp twice on the floor with your
foot. The servants understand.'

Thereupon he walked heavily up the stairs. The old man's
forbearance was perhaps not the least part of Harry Feversham's
punishment.

It was broad daylight when Ethne was at last alone within
her room. She drew up the blinds and opened the windows wide.
The cool fresh air of the morning was as a draught of spring water

278 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

to her. She looked out upon a world as yet unillumined by
colours and found therein an image of her days to come. The
dark, tall trees looked black ; the winding paths a singular dead
white ; the very lawns were dull and grey, though the dew lay
upon them like a network of frost. It was a noisy world, how-
ever, for all its aspect of quiet. For the blackbirds were calling
from the branches and the grass, and down beneath the overhang-
ing trees the Lennon flowed in music between its banks. Ethne
drew back from the window. She had much to do that morning
before she slept. For she designed with her natural thoroughness
to make an end at once of all her associations with Harry Fever-
sham. She wished that from the moment when next she waked
she might never come across a single thing which could recall
him to her memory. And with a sort of stubborn persistence
she went about the work.

But she changed her mind. In the very process of collecting
together the gifts which he had made to her she changed her
mind. For each gift that she looked upon had its history, and
the days before this miserable night had darkened on her happi-
ness came one by one slowly back to her as she looked. She
determined to keep one thing which had belonged to Harry
Feversham, a small thing, a thing of no value. At first she
chose a penknife, which he had once lent to her and she had
forgotten to return. But the next instant she dropped it and
rather hurriedly. For she was after all an Irish girl, and though
she did not believe in superstitions, where superstitions were
concerned she preferred to be on the safe side. She selected
his likeness in the end and locked it away in a drawer.

The rest of his presents she gathered together, packed them
carefully in a box, fastened the box, addressed it and carried it
down to the hall, that the servants might despatch it in the
morning. Then coming back to her room she took his letters,
made a little pile of them on the hearth and set them alight.
They took some while to consume, but she waited, sitting upright
in her armchair while the flame crept from sheet to sheet, dis-
colouring the paper, blackening the writing like a stream of ink,
and leaving in the end only flakes of ashes like feathers, and
white flakes like white feathers. The last sparks were barely
extinguished when she heard a cautious step on the gravel
beneath her window.

It was broad daylight, but her candle was still burning on

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 279

tlie table at her side, and with a quick instinctive movement she
reached out her arm and put the light out. Then she sat very
still and rigid, listening. For awhile she heard only the black-
birds calling from the trees in the garden and the throbbing
music of the river. Afterwards she heard the footsteps again,
cautiously retreating ; and in spite of her will, in spite of her
formal disposal of the letters and the presents, she was mastered
all at once, not by pain or humiliation, but by an overpowering
sense of loneliness. She seemed to be seated high on an empty
world of ruins. She rose quickly from her chair, and her eyes
fell upon a violin case. With a sigh of relief she opened it, and
a little while after one or two of the guests who were sleeping
in the house chanced to wake up and heard floating down the
corridors the music of a violin played very lovingly and low.
Ethne was not aware that the violin which she held was the
Guarnerius violin which Durrance had sent to her. She only
understood that she had a companion to share her loneliness.

CHAPTER VI.
HARRY FEVERSHAM'S PLAN.

IT was the night of August 30. A month had passed since the
ball at Lennon House, but the uneventful country side of
Donegal was still busy with the stimulating topic of Harry
Feversham's disappearance. The townsmen in the climbing street
and the gentry at their dinner-tables gossiped to their hearts'
contentment. It was asserted that Harry Feversham had been
seen on the very morning after the dance, and at five minutes to
six — though according to Mrs. Brien O'Brien it was ten minutes
past the hour — still in his dress clothes and with a white suicide's
face, hurrying along the causeway by the Lennon Bridge. It was
suggested that a drag-net would be the only way to solve the
mystery. Mr. Dennis Eafferty, who lived on the road to Eatli-
mullen, indeed, went so far as to refuse salmon on the plea that
he was not a cannibal, and the saying had a general vogue.
Their conjectures as to the cause of the disappearance were no
nearer to the truth. For there were only two who knew, and
those two went steadily about the business of living as though no
catastrophe had befallen them. They held their heads a trifle

280 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

more proudly perhaps. Ethne might have become a little more
gentle, Dermod a little more irascible, but these were the only
changes. So gossip had the field to itself.

But Harry Feversham was in London, as Lieutenant Sutch
discovered on the night of the 30th. All that day the town had
been perturbed by rumours of a great battle fought at Kassassin
in the desert east of Ismailia. Messengers had raced ceaselessly
through the streets, shouting tidings of victory and tidings of
disaster. There had been a charge by moonlight of Greneral
Drury-Lowe's Cavalry Brigade, which had rolled up Arabi's left
flank and captured his guns. It was rumoured that an English
general had been killed, that the York and Lancaster Regiment
had been cut up. London was uneasy, and at eleven o'clock at
night a great crowd of people had gathered in Pall Mall, watching
with pale upturned faces the lighted blinds of the War Office.
The crowd was silent and impressively still. Only if a figure
moved for an instant across the blinds a thrill of expectation
passed from man to man, and the crowd swayed in a continuous
movement from edge to edge. Lieutenant Sutch, careful of his
wounded leg, was standing on the outskirts with his back to the
parapet of the Junior Carlton Club, when he felt himself touched
upon the arm. He saw Harry Feversham at his side. Fever-
sham's face was working and extraordinarily white, his eyes were
bright like the eyes of a man in a fever, and Sutch at the first
was not sure that he knew or cared who it was to whom he
talked.

' I might have been out there in Egypt to-night,' said Harry
in a quick troubled voice. ' Think of it ! I might have been
out there, sitting by a camp-fire in the desert, talking over the
battle with Jack Durrance ; or dead perhaps. What would it
have mattered ? I might have been in Egypt to-night ! '

Feversham's unexpected appearance, no less than his wander-
ing tongue, told Sutch that somehow his fortunes had gone
seriously wrong. He had many questions in his mind, but he
did not ask a single one of them. He took Feversham's arm and
led him straight out of the throng.

' I saw you in the crowd,' continued Feversham. ' I thought
that I would speak to you, because — do you remember, a long
time ago you gave me your card ? I have always kept it because
I have always feared that I would have reason to use it. You said
that if one was in trouble, the telling might help.'

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 281

Sutch. stopped his companion.

' We will go in here. We can find a quiet corner in the
upper smoking-room ;' and Harry looking up, saw that he was
standing by the steps of the Army and Navy Club.

' (rood (rod, not there ! ' he cried in a sharp low voice, and
moved quickly into the roadway, where no light fell directly on
his face. Sutch limped after him. ' Nor to-night. It is late.
To-morrow if you will, in some quiet place, and after nightfall.
I do not go out in the daylight.'

Again Lieutenant Sutch asked no questions.

' I know a quiet restaurant,' he said. ' If we dine there at
nine we shall meet no one whom we know. I will meet you just
before nine to-morrow night at the corner of Swallow Street.'

They dined together accordingly on the following evening at
a table in the corner of the Criterion grill-room. Feversham
looked quickly about him as he entered the room.

' I dine here often when I am in town,' said Sutch. ' Listen ! '
The throbbing of the engines working the electric light could be
distinctly heard, their vibrations could be felt.

' It reminds me of a ship,' said Sutch with a smile. ' I can
almost fancy myself in the gunroom again. We will have dinner.
Then you shall tell me your story.'

' You have heard nothing of it ? ' asked Feversham sus-
piciously.

' Not a word,' and Feversham drew a breath of relief. It had
seemed to him that everyone must know. He imagined con-
tempt on every face which passed him in the street.

Lieutenant Sutch was even more concerned this evening than
he had been the night before. He saw Harry Feversham clearly
now in a full light. Harry's face was thin and haggard with lack of
sleep, there were black hollows beneath his eyes ; he drew his breath
and made his movements in a restless feverish fashion, his nerves
seemed strung to breaking point. Once or twice between the
courses he began his story, but Sutch would not listen until the
cloth was cleared.

' Now,' said he, holding out his cigar-case. ' Take your time,
Harry.'

Thereupon Feversham told him the whole truth, without
exaggeration or omission, forcing himself to a slow, careful,
matter-of-fact speech, so that in the end Sutch almost fell into the
illusion that it was just the story of a stranger which Feversham

282 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

was recounting merely to pass the time. He began with the
Crimean night at Broad Place, and ended with the ball at Lennon
House.

' I came back across Lough Swilly early that morning,' he
said in conclusion, ' and travelled at once to London. Since then
I have stayed in my rooms all day, listening to the bugles calling
in the barrack-yard beneath my windows. At night I prowl
about the streets or lie in bed waiting for the Westminster clock
to tell each new quarter of an hour. On foggy nights, too, I can
hear steam-sirens on the river. Do you know when the ducks
start quacking in St. James's Park ? ' he asked with a laugh. ' At
two o'clock to the minute.'

Sutch listened to the story without an interruption. But
half way through its narrative he changed his attitude, and in
a significant way. Up to the moment when Harry told of his
concealment of the telegram, Sutch had sat with his arms upon
the table in front of him, and his eyes upon his companion.
Thereafter he raised a hand to his forehead, and so remained
with his face screened while the rest was told. Feversham had
no doubt of the reason. Lieutenant Sutch wished to conceal the
scorn he felt, and could not trust the muscles of his face.
Feversham, however, mitigated nothing, but continued steadily
and truthfully to the end. But even after the end was reached
Sutch did not remove his hand, nor for some little while did he
speak. When he did speak, his words came upon Feversham's
ears with a shock of surprise. There was no contempt in them,
and though his voice shook, it shook with a great contrition.

' I am much to blame,' he said. ' I should have spoken that
night at Broad Place, and I held my tongue. I shall hardly
forgive myself.' The knowledge that it was Muriel Graham's
son who had thus brought ruin and disgrace upon himself was
uppermost in the lieutenant's mind. He felt that he had failed
in the discharge of an obligation, self-imposed no doubt, but a
very real obligation none the less. ' You see, I understood,' he
continued remorsefully. ' Your father, I am afraid, never would.'

' He never will,' interrupted Harry.

' No,' Sutch agreed. ' Your mother, of course, had she lived
would have seen clearly, but few women, I think, except your
mother. Brute courage ! Women make a god of it. That girl,
for instance ' and again Harry Feversham interrupted.

' You must not blame her. I was defrauding her into marriage.'

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 283

Sutch took his hand suddenly from his forehead.

' Suppose that you had never met her, would you still have
sent in your papers ? '

' I think not,' said Harry slowly. ' I want to be fair. Dis-
gracing my name and those dead men in the hall I think I would
have risked. I could not risk disgracing her.'

And Lieutenant Sutch thumped his fist despairingly upon the
table. ' If only I had spoken at Broad Place. Harry, why didn't
you let me speak ? I might have saved you many unnecessary
years of torture. Good heavens ! what a childhood you must
have spent with that fear all alone with you. It makes me shiver
to think of it. I might even have saved you from this last
catastrophe. For I understood. I understood.'

Lieutenant Sutch saw more clearly into the dark places of
Harry Feversham's mind than Harry Feversham did himself; and
because he saw so clearly, he could feel no contempt. The long
years of childhood, and boyhood, and youth, lived apart in Broad
Place in the presence of the uncomprehending father and the
relentless dead men on the walls had done the harm. There
had been no one in whom the boy could confide. The fear of
cowardice had sapped incessantly at his heart. He had wralked
about with it; he had taken it with him to his bed. It had
haunted his dreams. It had been his perpetual menacing com-
panion. It had kept him from intimacy with his friends lest an
impulsive word should betray him. Lieutenant Sutch did not
wonder that in the end it had brought about this irretrievable
mistake. For Lieutenant Sutch understood.

' Did you ever read " Hamlet ? " ' he asked.

' Of course,' said Harry in reply.

' Ah, but did you consider it ? The same disability is clear in
that character. The thing which he foresaw, which he thought
over, which he imagined in the act and in the consequence —
that he shrank from, upbraiding himself even as you have done.
Yet when the moment of action comes, sharp and immediate,
does he fail? No, he excels, and just by reason of that foresight.
I have seen men in the Crimea, tortured by their imaginations
before the fight — once the fight had begun you must search
amongst the Oriental fanatics for their match, " Am I a coward ? "

Do you remember the lines ?

Am I a coward ?

Who calls me villain ? Breaks my pate across 1
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face 1

284 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

There's the case in a nutshell. If only I had spoken on that
night ! '

One or two people passed the table on the way out. Sutch
stopped and looked round the room. It was nearly empty. He
glanced at his watch and saw that the hour was eleven. Some
plan of action must be decided upon that night. It was not
enough to hear Harry Feversham's story. There still remained
the question, what was Harry Feversham, disgraced and ruined,
now to do ? How was he to recreate his life ? How was the secret
of his disgrace to be most easily concealed ?

' You cannot stay in London, hiding by day, slinking about

by night,' he said with a shiver. ' That's too like ' and he

checked himself. Feversham, however, completed the sentence.

' That's too like Wilmington,' said he quietly, recalling the
story which his father had told so many years ago, and which he
had never forgotten even for a single day. ' But Wilmington's
end will not be mine. Of that I can assure you. I shall not stay
in London.'

He spoke with an air of decision. He had indeed mapped out
already the plan of action concerning which Lieutenant Sutch was
so disturbed. Sutch, however, was occupied with his own thoughts.

' Who know of the feathers ? How many people ? ' he asked.
' Give me their names.'

' Trench, Castleton, Willoughby,' began Feversham.

' All three are in Egypt. Besides, for the credit of their
regiment they are likely to hold their tongues when they return.
Who else ? '

' Dermod Eustace and — and — Ethne.'

' They will not speak.'

' You, Durrance perhaps, and my father.'

Sutch leaned back in his chair and stared.

' Your father ! You wrote to him ? '

* No. I went into Surrey and told him.'

Again remorse for that occasion, recognised and not used,
seized upon Lieutenant Sutch.

• Why didn't I speak that night ? ' he said impotently. ' A
coward, and you go quietly down to Surrey and confront your
father with that story to tell to him ! You do not even write !
You stand up and tell it to him face to face. Harry, I reckon
myself as good as another when it comes to bravery, but for the
life of me I could not have done that.'

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 285

'It was rot — pleasant,' said Feversham simply; and this was
the only description of the interview between father and son
which was vouchsafed to anyone. But Lieutenant Sutch knew
the father and knew the son. He could guess at all which that
one aujective implied. Harry Feversham told the results of his
journey into Surrey.

' My father continues my allowance. I shall need it, every
penny of it — otherwise, I should have taken nothing. But I am
not to go home again. I did not mean to go home for a long
while in any case, if at all.'

He drew his pocket-book from his breast, and took from
it the four white feathers. These he laid before him on the
table.

' You have kept them ? ' exclaimed Sutch.

' Indeed I treasure them,' said Harry quietly. ' That seems
strange to you. To you they are the symbols of my disgrace.
To me they are much more. They are my opportunities of
retrieving it.' He looked about the room, separated three of
the feathers, pushed them forward a little on the table-cloth, and
then leaned across towards Sutch.

' What if I could compel Trench, Castleton, and Willoughby
to take back from me, each one of them, the feather he sent ?
I do not say that it is likely. I do not say even that it is
possible. But there is a chance that it may be possible, and I
must wait upon that chance. There will be few men leading
active lives as these three do who do not at some moment stand
in great peril and great need. To be in readiness for that
moment is from now my career. All three are in Egypt. I leave
for Egypt to-morrow.'

Upon the face of Lieutenant Sutch there came a look of great
and unexpected happiness. Here was an issue of which he had
never thought, and it was the only issue, as he knew for certain,
once he was aware of it. This student of human nature dis-
regarded without a scruple the prudence and the calculation
proper to the character which he assumed. The obstacles in
Harry Feversham's way, the possibility that at the last moment
he might shrink again, the improbability that three such oppor-
tunities would occur — these matters he overlooked. His eyes
already shone with pride, the three feathers for him were already
taken back. The prudence was on Harry Feversham's side.

'There are endless difficulties,' he said. 'Just to cite one.

286 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

I am a civilian, these three are soldiers, surrounded by soldiers ;
so much the less opportunity therefore for a civilian.'

' But it is not necessary that the three men should be them-
selves in peril,' objected Sutch, ' for you to convince them that
the fault is retrieved.'

' Oh no. There may be other ways,' agreed Feversham. ' The
plan came suddenly into my mind, indeed at the moment when
Ethne bade me take up the feathers, and added the fourth. I was
on the point of tearing them across when this way out of it sprang
clearly up in my mind. But I have thought it over since during
these last weeks while I sat listening to the bugles in the barrack
yard. And I am sure there is no other way. But it is well worth
trying. You see, if the three take back their feathers ' — he drew
a deep breath, and in a very low voice, with his eyes upon the
table so that his face was hidden from Sutch, he added — ' why,
then she perhaps might take hers back too.'

' Will she wait, do you think ? ' asked Sutch ; and Harry raised
his head quickly.

' Oh no,' he exclaimed, ' I had no thought of that. She has
not even a suspicion of what I intend to do. Nor do I wish her
to have one until the intention is fulfilled. My thought was
different ' — and he began to speak with hesitation for the first
time in the course of that evening. ' I find it difficult to tell
you — Ethne said something to me the day before the feathers
came — something rather sacred. I think that I will tell you,
because what she said is just what sends me out upon this errand.
But for her words, I would very likely never have thought of
it. I find in them my motive and a great hope. They may
seem strange to you, Lieutenant Sutch. But I ask you to believe
that they are very real to me. She said — it was when she knew
no more than that my regiment was ordered to Egypt ; she was
blaming herself because I had resigned my commission, for which
there was no need, because — and these were her words — because
had I fallen, although she would have felt lonely all her life, she
would none the less have surely known that she and I would see
much of one another — afterwards.'

Feversham had spoken his words with difficulty, not looking
at his companion, and he continued with his eyes still averted :

' Do you understand ? I have a hope that if — this can be set
right ' — and he pointed to the feathers — ' we might still, perhaps,
see something of one another — afterwards.'

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 287

It was a strange proposition, no doubt, to be debated across
the soiled table-cloth of a public restaurant, but neither of them
felt it strange or even fanciful. They were dealing with the
simple serious issues, and they had reached a point where they
could not be affected by any incongruity in their surroundings.
Lieutenant Sutch did not speak for some while after Harry
Feversham had done, and in the end Harry looked up at his
companion, prepared for almost a word of ridicule. But he saw
Sutch's right hand outstretched towards him.

' When I come back,' said Feversham, and he rose from his
chair. He gathered the feathers together and replaced them in
his pocket-book.

' I have told you everything,' he said. ' You see, I wait
upon chance opportunities ; the three may not come in Egypt.
They may never come at all, and in that case I shall not come
back at all. Or they may come only at the very end and after
many years. Therefore I thought that I would like just one
person to know the truth thoroughly in case I do not come back.
If you hear definitely that I never can come back, I would be
glad if you would tell my father.'

' I understand,' said Sutch.

' But donrt tell him everything — I mean not the last part —
not what I have just said about Ethne and my chief motive. For
I do not think that he would understand. Otherwise you will
keep silence altogether. Promise ! '

Lieutenant Sutch promised, but with an absent face, and
Feversham consequently insisted.

' You will breathe no word of this, to man or woman, however
hard you may be pressed, except to my father under the circum-
stances which I have explained,' said Feversham.

Lieutenant Sutch promised a second time and without an
instant's hesitation. It was quite natural that Harry should lay
some stress upon the pledge, since any disclosure of his purpose
might very well wear the appearance of a foolish boast, and Sutch
himself saw no reason why he should refuse it. So he gave the
promise and fettered his hands. His thoughts, indeed, were
occupied with the limit Harry had set upon the knowledge which
was to be imparted to General Feversham. Even if he died with
his mission unfulfilled, Sutch was to hide from the father that
which was best in the son, at the son's request. And the saddest
part of it, to Sutch's thinking, was that the son was right in so

288 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

requesting. For what he had said was true : the father could not
understand. Lieutenant Sutch was brought back to the causes of
the whole miserable business : the premature death of the mother,
who could have understood ; the want of comprehension in the
father, who was left ; and his own silence on the Crimean night at
Broad Place.

' If only I had spoken,' he said sadly. He dropped the end of
his cigar into his coffee-cup, and standing up, reached for his hat.
' Many things are irrevocable, Harry,' he said, ' but one never
knows whether they are irrevocable or not until one has found
out. It is always worth while finding out.'

The next evening Feversham crossed to Calais. It was a night
as wild as that on which Durrance had left England ; and, like
Durrance, Feversham had a friend to see him off. For the last
thing which his eyes beheld as the packet swung away from the
pier was the face of Lieutenant Sutch beneath a gas lamp. The
Lieutenant maintained his position after the boat had passed into
the darkness and until the throb of its paddles could no longer be
heard. Then he limped through the rain to his hotel, aware, and
regretfully aware, that he was growing old. It was long since he
had felt regret on that account, and the feeling was very strange
to him. Ever since the Crimea he had been upon the world's
half-pay list, as he had once said to General Feversham, and what
with that and the recollection of a certain magical season before
the Crimea, he had looked forward to old age as an approaching
friend. To-night, however, he prayed that he might live just long
enough to welcome back Muriel Graham's son with his honour
redeemed and his great fault atoned.

(To be continued.*)

THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

MARCH 1902.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY1
BY ANTHONY HOPE.

CHAPTER VI.

CHILDREN OF SHADOW.

' A POLITICIAN ! I'd as soon be a policeman,' remarked Miles
Childwick, with delicate scorn. ' I don't dispute the necessity of
either — I never dispute the necessity of things — but it would not
occur to me to become either.'

' You're not tall enough for a policeman, anyhow,' said Elfreda
Flood.

' Not if it became necessary to take you in charge, I admit '
(Elfreda used to be called ' queenly ' and had played Hippolyta),
' but your remark is impertinent in every sense of the term.
Politicians and policemen are essentially the same.'

Everybody looked at the clock. They were waiting for supper
at the Magnifique ; it was Tommy Trent's party, and the early
comers sat in a group in the luxurious outer room.

' From what I know of policemen in the witness-box, I incline
to agree,' said Manson Smith.

' The salaries, however, are different,' yawned Tommy, without
removing his eyes from the clock.

' I'm most infernally hungry,' announced Arty Kane, a robust-
looking youth, somewhat famous as a tragic poet. ' Myra Lacri-
mans ' was perhaps his best-known work.

Mrs. John Maturin smiled; she was not great at repartee
outside her writings. ' It is late,' she observed.

1 Copyright, 1902, by A. H. Hawkins, in the United-States of America.
VOL. XH, — NO. 69, N.S, J9

290 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

' But while policemen,' pursued Miles Childwick, sublimely
careless of interruption, ' while policemen make things endurable
by a decent neglect of their duties (or how do we get home at
night ?), politicians are constantly raising the income tax. I
speak with no personal bitterness, since to me it happens to be a
small matter, but I observe a laceration of the feelings of my
wealthy friends.'

' He'd go on all night, whether we listened or not,' said
Horace Harnack, half in despair, half in admiration. ' I suppose
it wouldn't do to have a song, Tommy ? '

His suggestion met with no attention, for at the moment
Tommy sprang to his feet, exclaiming, ' Here's Peggy at last ! '

The big glass doors were swung open and Peggy came in.
The five men advanced to meet her ; Mrs. John Maturin smiled
in a rather pitying way at Elfreda, but Elfreda took this rush
quite as a matter of course and looked at the clock again.

' Is Airey here ? ' asked Peggy.

' Not yet,' replied Tommy. ' I hope he's coming, though.'

'He said something about being afraid he might be kept,'
said Peggy ; then she drew Tommy aside and whispered, ' Had to
get his coat mended, you know.'

Tommy nodded cautiously.

' And she hasn't come either ? ' Peggy went on.

' No ; and whoever she is, I hate her,' remarked Arty Kane.
' But who is she ? We're all here.' He waved his arm round the
assembly.

' Groing to introduce you to society to-night, Arty,1 his host
promised. ' Mrs. Trevalla's coming.'

' Duchesses I know, and countesses I know,' said Childwick ;
' but who '

' Oh, nobody expected you to know,' interrupted Peggy. She
came up to Elfreda and made a rapid scrutiny. ' New frock ? '

Elfreda nodded with an assumption of indifference.

' How lucky ! ' said Peggy, who was evidently rather excited.
You're always smart,' she assured Mrs. John Maturin.

Mrs. John smiled.

Timidly and with unfamiliar step Airey Newton entered the
gorgeous apartment. Eelief was dominant on his face when he
saw the group of friends, and he made a hasty dart towards them,
giving on the way a nervous glance at his shoes, which showed
two or three spots of mud — the pavements were wet outside. He

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 291

hastened to hide himself behind Elfreda Flood, and, thus sheltered,
surveyed the scene.

' I was just saying, Airey, that politicians '

Arty Kane stopped further progress by the hasty suggestion
of a glass of sherry, and the two went off together to the side
room, v/here supper was laid, leaving the rest again regarding the
clock — except Peggy, who had put a half-crown in her glove, or
her purse, or her pocket, and could not find it, and declared that
she could not get home unless she did ; she created no sympathy
and (were such degrees possible) less surprise, when at last she
distinctly recollected having left it on the piano.

'Whose half-crown on whose piano?' asked Manson Smith
with a forensic frown.

When the sherry-bibbers returned with the surreptitious air
usual in such cases, the group had undergone a marked change ;
it was clustered round a very brilliant person in a gown of
resplendent blue, with a flash of jewels about her, a hint of
perfume, a generally dazzling effect. Miles Childwick came up
to Manson Smith.

' This,' said Childwick, ' we must presume to be Mrs. Trevalla.
Let me be introduced, Manson, before my eyes are blinded by
the blaze.'

' Is she a new flame of Tommy's ? ' asked Manson in a whisper.

The question showed great ignorance ; but Manson was com-
paratively an outsider, and Miles Childwick let it pass with a
scornful smile.

' What a pity we're not supping in the public room ! ' said
peggy.

' We might trot Mrs. Trevalla through first, in procession, you
know,' suggested Tommy. ' It's awfully good of you to come. I
hardly dared ask you,' he added to Trix.

' I was just as afraid, but Miss Ryle encouraged me. I met
her two or three nights ago at Mrs. Bonfill's.'

They went in to supper. Trix was placed between Tommy
and Airey Newton, Peggy was at the other end, supported by
Childwick and Arty Kane. The rest disposed themselves, if not
according to taste yet with apparent harmony ; there was, how-
ever, a momentary hesitation about sitting by Mrs. John. ' Mrs.
John means just one glass more champagne than is good for one,'
Childwick had once said, and the remark was felt to be just.

' No, politicians are essentially concerned with the things that

19—3

292 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

perish,' resumed Miles Childwick ; he addressed Peggy — Mrs.
John was on his other side.

' Everything perishes,' observed Arty Kane, putting down his
empty soup-cup with a refreshed and cheerful air.

' Do learn the use of language. I said " essentially concerned."
Now we are essentially concerned with '

Trix Tre valla heard the conversation in fragments. She did
not observe that Peggy took much part in it, but every now and
then she laughed in a rich gurgle, as though things and people
in general were very amusing. Whenever she did this, all the
young men looked at her and smiled, or themselves laughed too,
and Peggy laughed more and, perhaps, blushed a little. Trix
turned to Tommy and whispered, ' I like her.'

' Rather ! ' said Tommy. ' Here, waiter, bring some ice.'

Most of the conversation was far less formidable than Miles
Childwick's. It was for the most part frank and very keen dis-
cussion of a number of things and persons entirely, or almost
entirely, unfamiliar to Trix Tre valla. On the other hand, not one
of the problems with which she, as a citizen and as a woman, had
been so occupied was mentioned, and the people who filled her
sky did not seem to have risen above the horizon here. Some-
body did mention Russia once, and Horace Harnack expressed a
desire to have ' a slap ' at that great nation ; but politics were
evidently an alien plant, and soon died out of the conversation.
The last play or the last novel, the most recent success on the
stage, the newest paradox of criticism, were the topics when
gossip was ousted for a few moments from its habitual and
evidently welcome sway. People's gossip, however, shows their
tastes and habits better than anything else, and in this case Trix
was not too dull to learn from it ; it reproduced another atmo-
sphere and told her that there was another world than hers. She
turned suddenly to Airey Newton.

' We talk of living in London, but it's a most inadequate
description. There must be ten Londons to live in ! '

' Quite — without counting the slums.'

'We ought to say London A, or London B, or London C.
Social districts, like the postal ones ; only far more of them. I
suppose some people can live in more than one ? '

' Yes, a few ; and a good many people pay visits.'

' Are you Bohemian ? ' she asked, indicating the company
with a little movement of her hand.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 293

' Look at them ! ' he answered. ' They are smart and spotless.
I'm the only one who looks the part in the least. And, behold,
I am frugal, temperate, a hard worker, and a scientific man ! '

' There are believed to be Bohemians still in Kensington and
Chelsea,' observed Tommy Trent. 'They will think anything
you please, but they won't dine out without their husbands.'

' If that's the criterion, we can manage it nearer than Chelsea,'
said Trix. ' This side of Park Lane, I think.'

'You've got to have the thinking too, though,' smiled Airey.

Miles Childwick had apparently been listening ; he raised his
voice a little and remarked : ' The divorce between the theoretical
bases of immorality '

' Falsely so called,' murmured Manson Smith.

' And its practical development is one of the most '

It was no use ; Peggy gurgled helplessly, and hid her face in
her napkin. Childwick scowled for an instant, then leant back in
his chair, smiling pathetically.

' She is the living negation of serious thought,' he complained,
regarding her affectionately.

Peggy, emerging, darted him a glance as she returned to her
chicken.

' When I published " Myra Lacrimans" ' began Arty Kane.

In an instant everybody was silent. They leant forward
towards him with a grave and eager attention, signing to one
another to keep still. Tommy whispered : ' Don't move for a
moment, waiter ! '

' Oh, confound you all ! ' exclaimed poor Arty Kane, as he
joined in the general outburst of laughter.

Trix found herself swelling it light-heartedly.

' We've found by experience that that's the only way to stop
him,' Tommy explained, as with a gesture he released the grin-
ning waiter. 'He'll talk about " Myra " through any conversa-
tion, but absolute silence makes him shy. Peggy found it out.
It's most valuable. Isn't it, Mrs. John ? '

' Most valuable,' agreed Mrs. John. She made no other con-
tribution to the conversation for some time.

' All the same,' Childwick resumed, in a more conversational
tone but with unabated perseverance, ' what I was going to say is

true. In nine cases out of ten the people who are ' He

paused a moment.

' Irregular,' suggested Manson Smith.

294 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

' Thank you, Manson. The people who are irregular think
they ought to be regular, and the people who are regular have
established their right to be irregular. There's a reason for it, of
course '

' It seems rather more interesting without one,' remarked
Elfreda Flood.

' No reason, I think ? ' asked Horace Harnack, gathering the
suffrages of the table.

' Certainly not,' agreed the table as a whole.

' To give reasons is a slur on our intellects and a waste of our
time,' pronounced Manson Smith.

' It's such a terribly long while since I heard anybody talk
nonsense on purpose,' Trix said to Airey, with a sigh of enjoy-
ment.

' They do it all the time ; and, yes, it's rather refreshing.'

' Does Mr. Childwick mind ? '

' Mind ? ' interposed Tommy. ' Gracious, no ! He's playing
the game too ; he knows all about it. He won't let on that he
does, of course, but he does all the same.'

' The reason is,' said Childwick, speaking with lightning speed,
'that the intellect merely disestablishes morality, while the
emotions disregard it. Thank you for having heard me with such
patience, ladies and gentlemen.' He finished his champagne
with a triumphant air.

' You beat us that time,' said Peggy with a smile of congratu-
lation.

Elfreda Flood addressed Harnack, apparently resuming an
interrupted conversation.

' If I wear green I look horrid, and if she wears blue she
looks horrid, and if we don't wear either green or blue, the scene
looks horrid. I'm sure I don't know what to do.'

' It'll end in your having to wear green,' prophesied Harnack.

' I suppose it will,' Elfreda moaned disconsolately. ' She
always gets her way.'

' I happen to know he reviewed it,' declared Arty Kane with
some warmth, 'because he spelt "dreamed" with a"t." He
always does. And he'd dined with me only two nights before ! '

' Where ? ' asked Manson Smith.

' At my own rooms.'

' Then he certainly wrote it. I've dined with you there myself.'

Trix had fallen into silence, and Airey Newton seemed content

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 295

not to disturb her. The snatches of varied talk fell on her ears,
each with its implication of a different interest and a different
life, all foreign to her. The very frivolity, the sort of schoolboy
and chaffy friendliness of everybody's tone, was new in her expe-
rience, when it was united, as here it seemed to be, with a live-
liness of wits and a nimble play of thought. The effect, so far as
she could sum it up, was of carelessness combined with interest,
independence without indifference, an alertness of mind which
laughter softened. These people, she thought, were all poor (she
did not include Tommy Trent, who was more of her own world),
they were none of them well known, they did not particularly
care to be, they aspired to no great position. No doubt they had
to fight for themselves sometimes — witness Elfreda and her battle
of the colours — but they fought as little as they could, and laughed
while they fought, if fight they must. But they all thought and
felt, they had emotions and brains. She knew, looking at Mrs.
John's delicate fine face, that she too had brains, though she did
not talk.

' I don't say,' began Childwick once more, ' that when Mrs.
John puts us in a book, as she does once a year, she fails to do
justice to our conversation, but she lamentably neglects and
misrepresents her own.'

Trix had been momentarily uneasy, but Mrs. John was smiling
merrily.

' I miss her pregnant assents, her brief but weighty disagree-
ments, the rich background of silence which she imparts to the
entertainment.'

Yes, Mrs. John had brains too, and evidently Miles Childwick
and the rest knew it.

' When Arty wrote a sonnet on Mrs. John,' remarked Manson
Smith, ' he made it only twelve lines long. The outside world
jeered, declaring that such a thing was unusual, if not ignorant.
But we of the elect traced the spiritual significance.'

' Are you enjoying yourself, Airey ? ' called Peggy Kyle.

He nodded to her cordially.

' What a comfort ! ' sighed Peggy. She looked round the
table, laughed, and cried ' Hurrah ! ' for no obvious reason.

Trix whispered to Airey, ' She nearly makes me cry when she
does that.'

' You can feel it ?' he asked in a quick low question, looking
at her curiously.

296 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

' Oh, yes, I don't know why,' she answered, glancing again at
the girl whose mirth and exultation stirred her to so strange a mood.

Her eyes turned back to Airey Newton, and found a strong
attraction in his face too. The strength and kindness of it,
coming home to her with a keener realisation, were refined by
the ever-present shadow of sorrow or self-discontent. This hint of
melancholy persisted even while he took his share in the gaiety
of the evening ; he was cheerful, but he had not the exuberance
of most of them ; he was far from bubbling over in sheer joyous-
ness like Peggy; he could not achieve even the unruffled and
pain-proof placidity of Tommy Trent. Like herself then — in
spite of a superficial remoteness from her, and an obviously nearer
kinship with the company in life and circumstances — he was in
spirit something of a stranger there. In the end he, like herself,
must look on at the fun rather than share in it whole-heartedly.
There was a background for her and him, rather dark and sombre ;
for the rest there seemed to be none; their joy blazed unshadowed.
Whatever she had or had not attained in her attack on the world,
however well her critical and doubtful fortunes might in the end
turn out, she had not come near to reaching this ; indeed it had
never yet been set before her eyes as a thing within human
reach. But how naturally it belonged to Peggy and her friends !
There are children of the sunlight and children of the shadow.
Was it possible to pass from one to the other, to change your
origin and name ? It seemed to her that, if she had not been
born in the shadow, it had fallen on her full soon and heavily, and
had stayed very long. Had her life now, her new life with all its
brilliance, quite driven it away ? All the day it had been dark
and heavy on her ; not even now was it wholly banished.

When the party broke up — it was not an early hour — Peggy
came over to Airey Newton. Trix did not understand the
conversation.

' I got your letter, but I'm not coming,' she said. ' I told you
I wouldn't come, and I won't.' She was very reproachful, and
seemed to consider that she had been insulted somehow.

' Oh, I say now, Peggy ! ' urged Tommy Trent, looking very
miserable.

' It's your fault, and you know it,' she told him severely.

' Well, everybody else is coming,' declared Tommy. Airey
said nothing, but nodded assent in a manner half-rueful, half-
triumphant.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 297

' It's shameful,' Peggy persisted.

There was a moment's pause. Trix, feeling like an eaves-
dropper, looked the other way, but she could not avoid hearing.

' But I've had a windfall, Peggy,' said Airey Newton. ' On
my honour, I have.'

' Yes, on my honour, he has,' urged Tommy earnestly. ' A
good thumping one, isn't it, Airey ? '

' One of my things has been a success, you know.'

' Oh, he hits 'em in the eye sometimes, Peggy.'

' Are you two men telling anything like the truth ? '

' The absolute truth.'

' Bible truth ! ' declared Tommy Trent.

' Well, then, I'll come, but I don't think it makes what
Tommy did any better.'

' Who cares, if you'll come ? ' asked Tommy.

Suddenly Airey stepped forward to Trix Tre valla. His manner
was full of hesitation — he was, in fact, awkward ; but then he was
performing a most unusual function. Peggy and Tommy Trent
stood watching him, now and then exchanging a word.

' He's going to ask her,' whispered Peggy.

' Hanged if he isn't ! ' Tommy whispered back.

' Then he must have had it ! '

' I told you so,' replied Tommy in an extraordinarily trium-
phant, imperfectly lowered voice.

Yes, Airey Newton was asking Trix to join his dinner-party.

' It's — it's not much in my line,' he was heard explaining, ' but
Trent's promised to look after everything for me. It's a small
affair, of course, and — and just a small dinner.'

'Is it ? ' whispered Tommy with a wink, but Peggy did not
hear this time.

' If you'd come '

' Of course I will,' said Trix. ' Write and tell me the day, and
I shall be delighted.' She did not see why he should hesitate
quite so much, but a glance at Peggy and Tommy showed her
that something very unusual had happened.

' It'll be the first dinner-party he's ever given,' whispered
Peggy excitedly, and she added to Tommy, ' Are you going to
order it, Tommy ? '

' I've asked him to,' interposed Airey, still with an odd mixture
of pride and apprehension.

Peggy looked at Tommy suspiciously.

298 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

' If you don't behave well about it, I shall get up and go
away,' was her final remark.

Trix's brougham was at the door — she found it necessary now
to hire one for night-work, her own horse and man finding enough
to do in the daytime — and after a moment's hesitation she offered
to drive Airey Newton home, declaring that she would enjoy so
much of a digression from her way. He had been looking on
rather vaguely while the others were dividing themselves into
hansom-cab parties, and she received the impression that he
meant, when everybody was paired, to walk off quietly by himself.
Peggy overheard her invitation and said with a sort of relief : —

' That'll do splendidly, Airey ! '

Airey agreed, but it seemed with more embarrassment than
pleasure.

But Trix was pleased to prolong, even by so little, the atmo-
sphere and associations of the evening, to be able to talk about
it a little more, to question him while she questioned herself
also indirectly. She put him through a catechism about the
members of the party, delighted to elicit anything that confirmed
her notion of their independence, their carelessness, and their
comradeship. He answered what she asked, but in a rather
absent, melancholy fashion ; a pall seemed to have fallen on his
spirits again. She turned to him, attracted, not repelled, by his
relapse into sadness.

' We're not equal to it, you and I,' she said with a laugh.
' We don't live there ; we can only pay a visit, as you said.'

He nodded, leaning back against the well-padded cushions
with an air of finding unwonted ease. He looked tired and worn.

' Why ? We work too hard, I suppose. Yes, I work too, in
my way.'

' It's not work exactly,' he said. ' They work too, you know.'

' What is it then ? ' She bent forward to look at his face,
pale in the light of the small carriage lamp.

' It's the Devil,' he told her. Their eyes met in a long gaze.
Trix smiled appealingly. She had to go back to her difficult life
— to Mervyn, to the Chance and Flicker entanglement. She felt
alone and afraid.

'The Devil, is it? Have I raised him ?' she asked. 'Well,
you taught me how. If I — if I come to grief, you must help me.'

' You don't know in the least the sort of man you're talking
to,' he declared, almost roughly.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 299

' I know you're a good friend.'

' I am not,' said Airey Newton.

Again their eyes met, their hearts were like to open and tell
secrets that daylight hours would hold safely hidden. But it is
not far — save in the judgment of fashion — from the Magnifique
to Danes Inn, and the horse moved at a good trot. They came to
a stand before the gates.

' I don't take your word for that/ she declared, giving him her
hand. ' I sha'n't believe it without a test,' she went on in a
lighter tone. ' And at any rate I sha'n't fail at your dinner-party.'

' No, don't fail at my party — my only party.' His smile was
very bitter, as he relinquished her hand and opened the door of
the brougham. But she detained him a moment ; she was still
reluctant to lose him, to be left alone, to be driven back to her flat
and to her life.

' We're nice people ! We have a splendid evening, and we
end it up in the depths of woe! At least — you're in them too,
aren't you ? ' She glanced past him up the gloomy passage, and
gave a little shudder. ' How could you be anything else, living
here ? ' she cried in accents of pity.

' You don't live here, yet you don't seem much better,' he re-
torted. ' You are beautiful and beautifully turned out — gorgeous !
And your brougham is most comfortable. Yet you don't seem
much better.'

Trix was put on her defence ; she awoke suddenly to the fact
that she had been very near to a mood dangerously confidential.

1 I've a few worries,' she laughed, ' but I have my pleasures
too.'

' And I've my pleasures,' said Airey. ' And I suppose we both
find them in the end the best. Grood-night.'

Each had put out a hand towards the veil that was between
them; to each had come an impulse to pluck it away. But
courage failed, and it hung there still. Both went back to their
pleasures. In the ears of both Peggy Kyle's whole-hearted
laughter, her soft merry ' Hurrah ! ' that no obvious cause called
forth, echoed with the mockery of an unattainable delight. You
need clear soul-space for a laugh like that.

300 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

CHAPTER VII.
A DANGEROUS GAME.

THERE were whispers about Beaufort Chance, and nods and winks
such as a man in his position had better have given no occasion
for ; men told one another things in confidence at the club ;
they were quite sure of them, but at the same time very anxious
not to be vouched as authority. For there seemed no proof.
The list of shareholders of the Dramoffsky Concessions did not
display his name ; it did display, as owners of blocks of shares,
now larger, now smaller, a number of names unknown to fame,
social or financial ; even Fricker's interest was modest according
to the list, and Beaufort Chance's seemed absolutely nothing.
Yet still the whispers grew.

Beaufort knew it by the subtle sense that will tell men who
depend on what people say of them what people are saying. He
divined it with a politician's sensitiveness to opinion. He saw a
touch of embarrassment where he was accustomed to meet frank-
ness, he discerned constraint in quarters where everything had
been cordiality. He perceived the riskiness of the game he
played. He urged Fricker to secrecy and to speed ; they must
not be seen together so much, and the matter must be put
through quickly ; these were his two requirements. He was in
something of a terror ; his manner grew nervous and his face
careworn. He knew that he could look for little mercy if he
were discovered ; he had outraged the code. But he held on his
way. His own money was in the venture ; if it were lost he was
crippled in the race on which he had entered. Trix Trevalla's
money was in it too ; he wanted Trix Trevalla and he wanted
her rich. He was so hard-driven by anxiety that he no longer
scrupled to put these things plainly to himself. His available
capital had not sufficed for a big stroke ; hers and his, if he
could consider them as united, and if the big stroke succeeded,
meant a decent fortune ; it was a fine scheme to get her to make
him rich while at the same time he earned her gratitude. He
depended on Fricker to manage this ; he was, by himself, rather
a helpless man in such affairs. Mrs. Bonfill had never expected
that he would rise to the top, even while she was helping him to
rise as high as he could.

Fricker was not inclined to hurry himself, and he played

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 301

with the plea for secrecy in a way that showed a consciousness
of power over his associate. He had been in one or two scandals,
and to be in another would have interfered with his plans — or at
least with Mrs. Fricker's. Yet there is much difference between
a man who does not want any more scandals and him who, for
the sake of a great prize risking one, would be ruined if his
venture miscarried. Fricker's shrewd equable face displayed
none of the trouble which made Chance's heavy and careworn.

But there was hurry in Fricker's family, though not in
Fricker. The season was half-gone, little progress had been
made, effect from Trix Trevalla's patronage or favour was con-
spicuously lacking. Mrs. Fricker did not hesitate to impute
double-dealing to Trix, to declare that she meant to give nothing
and to take all she could. Fricker had a soul somewhat above
these small matters, but he observed honour with his wife — for
his oath's sake and a quiet life's. Moreover, be the affair what it
would, suggest to him that he was being ' bested ' in it, and he
became dangerous.

A word is necessary about the position of Dramoffskys. They
had collapsed badly on Lord Farringham's pessimistic speech.
Presently they began to revive on the strength of ' inside buying ; '
yet their rise was slow and languid, the Stock Exchange was
distrustful, the public would not come in. There was a nice
little profit (' Not a scoop at present,' observed Fricker) for those
who had bought at the lowest figure, but more rumours would
stop the rise and might send quotations tumbling again. It was
all-important to know, or to be informed by somebody who did,
just how long to hold on, just when to come out. Dramoffskys,
in fine, needed a great deal of watching ; the operator in them
required the earliest, best, and most confidential information that
he could get. Fricker was the operator. Beaufort Chance had
his sphere. Trix, it will be noticed, was inclined to behave
purely as a sleeping partner, which was all very well as regarded
Dramoffskys themselves, but very far from well as it touched her
relations towards her fellows in the game.

Trix was praying for speed and secrecy as urgently as
Beaufort Chance himself; for secrecy from Mrs. Bonfill, from
Mervyn, from all her eminent friends ; for speed that the enter-
prise might be prosperously accomplished, the money made, and
she be free again. No more ventures for her, if once she were
free, she declared. If once she were — free ! There she would

302 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

pause and insist with herself that she had given Beaufort Chance
no reason to expect more than the friendship which was all that
he had openly claimed, nor the Frickers any right to look for
greater countenance or aid than her own acquaintance and
hospitality ensured them. Had she ever promised to marry
Chance, or to take the Frickers to Mrs. Bonfill's or the Glen-
torlys' ? She defied them to prove any such thing — and looked
forward with terror to telling them so.

At this point Mr. Liffey made entry on the scene with an
article in ' The Sentinel.' Mr. Liffey had a terribly keen nose
for misdeeds of all sorts and for secrets most inconvenient if
disclosed. He was entirely merciless and inexhaustibly good-
natured. He never abused anybody ; he dealt with facts, leaving
each person to judge those facts by his own moral standard. He
had no moral standard of his own, or said so ; but he had every
idea of making the ' Sentinel ' a paying property. He came out
now with an article whose heading seemed to harm nobody —
since people with certain names must by now be hardened to
having their patronymics employed in a representative capacity.
' Who are Brown, Jones, and Robinson ? ' was the title of the
article in ' The Sentinel.' As the reader proceeded — and there
were many readers — he found no more about these names, and
gathered that Mr. Liffey employed them (with a touch of con-
tempt, maybe) to indicate those gentlemen who, themselves
unknown to fame, figured so largely in the share list of Dramoff-
skys. With a persistence worthy of some better end than that
of making fellow-creatures uncomfortable, or of protecting a
public that can hardly be said to deserve it, Mr. Liffey tracked
these unoffending gentlemen to the honourable, though modest,
suburban homes in which they dwelt, had the want of delicacy
to disclose their avocations and the amount of their salaries,
touched jestingly on the probable claims of their large families
(he had their children by name !), and ended by observing, with
an innocent surprise, that their holdings in Dramoffskys showed
them to possess either resources of which his staff had not been
able to inform him, or, on the other hand, a commercial enter-
prise which deserved higher remuneration than they appeared to
be enjoying. He then suggested that present shareholders and
intending investors in Dramoffskys might find the facts stated in
his article of some interest, and avowed his intention of pursuing
his researches into this apparent mystery. He ended by remark-

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 303

ing, ' Of course, should it turn out that these gentlemen, against
whom I have not a word to say, hold their shares in a fiduciary
capacity, I have no more to say — no more about them, at least.'
And he promised, with cheerful obligingness, to deal further with
this point in his next number.

Within an hour of the appearance of this article Beaufort
Chance entered Flicker's study in great perturbation. He found
that gentleman calm and composed.

' How much does Liffey know ? ' asked Chance, almost
trembling.

Fricker shrugged his shoulders. ' It doesn't much matter.'

' If he knows that I'm in it, that I've '

' He won't know you're in it, unless one of the fellows gives
us away. Clarkson knows about you, and Tyrrwhitt — none of
the rest. I think I can keep them quiet. And we'll get out
now. It's not as good as I hoped, but it's pretty good, and it's
time to go.' He looked up at Chance and licked his cigar.
' Now's the moment to settle matters with the widow,' he went
on. ' You go and tell her what I want and what you want. I
don't trust her, and I want to see ; and, Beaufort, don't tell her
about Dramoffskys till you find out what she means. If she's
playing square, all right. If not,' — he smiled pensively — ' she
may find out for herself the best time for selling Dramoffskys —
and Glowing Stars too.'

' Glowing Stars ? She's not deep in them, is she ? I know
nothing about them.'

' A little private flutter — just between her and me,' Fricker
assured him. 'Now there's no time to lose. Come back here
and tell me what happens. Make her understand — no nonsense !
No more shuffling ! Be quick. I shall hold up the market a
bit while our men get out, but I won't let you in for anything
more.' Fricker's morals may have been somewhat to seek, but
he was a fine study at critical moments.

' You don't think Liffey knows ' stammered Chance again.

' About those little hints of yours ? I hope not. But I know,
Beaufort, my boy. Do as well as you can for me with the widow.'

Beaufort Chance scowled as he poured himself out a whisky-
and-soda. But he was Fricker's man and he must obey. He
went out, the spectre of Mr. Liffey seeming to walk with him
and to tap him on the shoulder in a genial way.

At eleven o'clock Beaufort Chance arrived at Trix Trevalla's

304 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

and sent up his name. Mrs. Trevalla sent down to say that she
would be glad to see him at lunch. He returned that his busi-
ness was important and would not bear delay. In ten minutes
he found himself in her presence. She wore a loose morning-
gown, her hair was carefully dressed, she looked very pretty ;
there was an air of excitement about her ; fear and triumph
seemed to struggle for ascendancy in her manner. She laid a
letter down on the table by her as he entered. While they
talked she kept putting her hand on it and withdrawing it again,
pulling the letter towards her and pushing it away, fingering it
continually, while she kept a watchful eye on her companion.

' What's the hurry about ? ' she asked, with a languor that
was not very plausible. ' Dramoffskys ? '

' Dramoffskys are all right,' said he deliberately, as he sat
down opposite her. ' But I want a talk with you, Trix.'

' Did we settle that you were to call me Trix ? '

' I think of you as that.'

' Well, but that's much less compromising — and just as
complimentary.'

' Business ! business ! ' he smiled, giving her appearance an
approving glance. ' Fricker and I have been having a talk.
We're not satisfied with you, partner.' He had for the time
conquered his agitation, and was able to take a tone which he
hoped would persuade her, without any need of threats or of
disagreeable hints.

' Am I not most amiable to Mr. Fricker, and Mrs., and Miss ?'
Trix's face had clouded at the first mention of Fricker.

' You women are generally hopeless in business, but I expected
better things from you. Now let's come to the point. What
have you done for the Frickers ? '

Eeluctantly brought to the point, Trix recounted with all
possible amplitude what she considered she had done. Her hand
was often on the letter as she spoke. At the end, with a quick
glance at Beaufort, she said : —

' And really that's all I can do. They're too impossible,
you know.'

He rose and stood on the hearthrug.

' That's all you can do ? ' he asked in a level smooth voice.

' Yes. Oh, a few more big squashes, perhaps. But it's
nonsense talking of the Grlentorlys or of any of Mrs. Bonfill's
really nice evenings.'

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 305

' It's not nonsense. You could do it if you liked. You
know Mrs. Bonfill, anyhow, would do it to please you ; and I
believe the G-lentorlys would too.'

' Well, then, I don't like,' said Trix Trevalla.

He frowned heavily and seemed as if he were going to break
out violently. But he waited a moment and then spoke calmly
again. The truth is that Fricker's interests were nothing to him.
They might go, provided he could show that he had done his
best for them; but doing his best must not involve sacrificing
his own chances.

' So much for Fricker ! I must say you've a cool way with
you, Trix.'

' The way you speak annoys me very much sometimes,'
remarked Trix reflectively.

' Why do you suppose he interested himself in your affairs ? '

' I've done what I could.' Her lips shut obstinately. ' If
I try to do more I sha'n't help the Frickers and I shall hurt
myself.'

' That's candid, at all events.' He smiled a moment. ' Don't
be in a hurry to say it to Fricker, though.'

' It'll be best to let the truth dawn on him gradually,' smiled
Trix. ' Is that all you wanted to say ? Because I'm not dressed,
and I promised to be at the Grlentorlys' at half-past twelve.'

' No, it's not all I've got to say.'

' Oh, well, be quick then.'

Her indifference was overdone, and Beaufort saw it. A sus-
picion came into his mind. ' So much for Fricker ! ' he had
said. Did she dare to think of meting out the same cavalier
treatment to him ?

' I wish you'd attend to me and let that letter alone,' he said
in a sudden spasm of irritation.

' As soon as you begin, I'll attend,' retorted Trix ; ' but you're
not saying anything. You're only saying you're going to say
something.' Her manner was annoying ; perhaps she would have
welcomed the diversion of a little quarrel.

But Beaufort was not to be turned aside; he was bent on
business. Fricker, it seemed, was disposed of. He remained.
But before he could formulate a beginning to this subject, Trix
broke in : —

' I want to get out of these speculations as soon as I can,
she said. ' I don't mind about not making any more money

VOL. XII. — NO. 69, N.S. 20

306. THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

as long as I don't lose any. I'm tired of — of the suspense, and —
and so on. And, oh, I won't have anything more to do with the
Frickers ! '

He looked at her in quick distrust.

' Your views have undergone a considerable change,' he re-
marked. ' You don't want to speculate ! You don't mind about
not making any more money ! '

Trix looked down and would not meet his eyes.

' Groing to live on what you've got ? ' he asked mockingly.
' Or is it a case of cutting down expenses and retiring to the
country ? '

' I don't want to discuss my affairs. I've told you what I
wish.'

He took a turn across the room and came back. His voice
was s^ill calm, but the effort was obvious.

1 What's happened ? ' he asked.

' Nothing,' said Trix.

' That's not true.'

' Nothing that concerns you, I mean.'

' Am I to be treated like Fricker ? Do you want to have
nothing more to do with me ? '

' Nonsense ! I want us to be friends, of course.'

' You seem to think you can use men just as you please. As
long as they're useful you'll be pleasant — you'll promise any-
thing '

' I never promised anything.'

' Oh, women don't promise only in words. You'll promise
anything, hold out any hopes, let anything be understood ! No
promises, no ! You don't like actual lying, perhaps, but you'll
lie all the while in your actions and your looks.'

People not themselves impeccable sometimes enunciate moral
truths and let them lose little in the telling. Trix sat flushed,
miserable, and degraded as Beaufort Chance exhibited her ways
to her.

1 You hold them off, and draw them on, and twiddle them
about your finger, and get all you can out of them, and make
fools of them. Then — something happens ! Something that
doesn't concern them ! And, for all you care, they may go to
the devil ! They may ruin themselves for you. What of that ?
I daresay I've ruined myself for you. What of that ? '

Trix was certainly no more than partly responsible for any

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 307

trouble in which Mr. Chance's dealings might land him ; but we
cannot attend to our own faults in the very hour of preaching to
others. Chance seemed to himself a most ill-used man ; he had
no doubt that but for Trix Trevalla he would have followed an
undeviatingly straight path in public and private morality.

' Well, what have you got to say ? ' he demanded roughly,
almost brutally.

' I've nothing to say while you speak like that.'

' Didn't you lead me to suppose you liked me ? '

' I did like you.'

' Stuff ! You know what I mean. When I helped you — when
I introduced Fricker to you — was that only friendship? You
knew better. And at that time I was good enough for you. I'm
not good enough for you now. So I'm kicked out with Fricker !
It's a precious dangerous game you play, Trix.'

' Don't call me Trix ! '

' I might call you worse than that, and not do you any wrong.'

Among the temporal punishments of sin and folly there is
perhaps none harder to bear than the necessity of accepting
rebuke from unworthy lips, of feeling ourselves made inferior by
our own acts to those towards whom we really (of this we are
clear) stand in a position of natural superiority. Their fortuitous
advantage is the most unpleasant result of our little slips. Trix
realised the truth of these reflections as she listened to Beaufort
Chance. Once again the scheme of life with which she had
started in London seemed to have something very wrong with it.

' I — I'm sorry if I made you ' she began in a stammering

way.

' Don't lie. It was deliberate from beginning to end,' he
interrupted.

A silence followed. Trix fingered her letter. He stood there,
motionless but threatening. She was in simple bodily fear ; the
order not to lie seemed the precursor of a blow — just as it used to
be in early days when her mother's nerves were very bad ; but
then Mrs. Trevalla's blows had not been severe, and habit goes
for something. This recrudescence of the tone of the old life —
the oldest life of all — was horrible.

Of course Beaufort Chance struck no blow ; it would have been
ungentlemanly in the first place ; in the second it was unneces-
sary ; thirdly, useless. Among men of his class the distinction
lies, not in doing or not doing such things, but in wanting

20—2

308 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

or not wanting to do them. Beaufort Chance had the desire ;
his bearing conveyed it to Trix. But he spoke quietly enough
the next minute.

' You'll find you can't go on in this fashion/ he said. ' I don't
know what your plan is now, though perhaps I can guess. You
mean to start afresh, eh ? Not always so easy.' His look and
voice were full of a candid contempt ; he spoke to her as a criminal
might to his confederate who had ' rounded on ' him in considera-
tion of favours from the police.

He did not strike her, but in the end, suddenly and with a
coarse laugh, he stooped down and wrenched the letter from her
hand, not caring if he hurt her. She gave a little cry, but sat
there without a movement save to chafe her wrenched fingers
softly against the palm of the other hand. Beaufort Chance read
the letter ; it was very short : ' I knew you would do what I wish.
Expect me to-morrow. — M.'

Trix wanted to feel horrified at his conduct — at its brutality,
its licence, its absolute ignoring of all the canons of decent con-
duct. Look at him, as he stood there reading her letter, jeering
at it in a rancorous scorn and a derision charged with hatred !
She could not concentrate her indignation on her own wrong.
Suddenly she saw his too — his and Fricker's. She was outraged ;
but the outrage persisted in having a flavour of deserved punish-
ment. It was brutal ; was it unjust ? On that question she
stuck fast as she looked up and saw him reading her letter.
The next instant he tore it across and flung it into the grate
behind him.

' You'll do as he wishes ! ' he sneered. ' He knows you will !
Yes, he knows you're for sale, I suppose, just as I know it, and as
Fricker knows it. He can bid higher, eh ? Well, I hope he'll
get delivery of the goods he buys. We haven't.'

He buttoned his frock-coat and looked round for his hat.

' Well, I've got a lot to do. I must go,' he said, with a
curious unconscious return to the ordinary tone and manner of
society. ' Good-bye ! '

' Grood-bye, Mr." Chance,' said Trix, stretching out her hand
towards the bell.

' I'll let myself out,' he interposed hastily.

Trix rose slowly to her feet ; she was rather pale and had some
trouble to keep her lips from twitching. Speak she could not ;
her brain would do nothing but repeat his words ; it would not

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 309

denounce him for them, nor impugn their truth ; it would only
repeat them. Whether they were just or not was a question that
seemed to fall into the background ; it was enough that anybody
should be able to use them, and find her without a reply.

Yet when he was gone her feeling was one of great relief.
The thing had been as bad as it could be, but it was done. It was
over and finished. The worst had come — was known, measured,
and endured. At that price she was free. She was degraded,
bruised, beaten, but free. Chastened enough to perceive the
truths with which Beaufort Chance had assailed her so un-
sparingly, she was not so changed in heart but that she still
rejoiced to think that the object towards which she worked, in
whose interest she had exposed herself to such a lashing, was still
possible, really unprejudiced, in fact hers if she would have it.
The letter was gone ; but the promise of the letter lived.

Suddenly another thing occurred to her. What about Dra-
moffskys ? What about her precious money ? There she was,
in the hands of these men whom she had flouted and enraged, so
ignorant that she could do nothing for herself, absolutely at their
mercy. What would they do? Would they wash their hands
of her ?

' Well, if they do — and I suppose they will — I must sell every-
thing directly, even if I lose by it,' she thought. 'That's the
only thing, and I sha'n't be quite ruined, I hope.'

Alas, how we misjudge our fellow-creatures ! This trite
reflection, always useful as a corrective either to cynicism or to
enthusiasm, was to recur to Trix before the close of the day and
to add one more to its already long list of emotions. Wash their
hands of her ? Concern themselves no more with her ? That was
not, it seemed, Mr. Fricker's intention anyhow. The evening
post brought her a letter from him ; she opened it with shrinking,
fearing fresh denunciations, feeling herself little able to bear any
more flagellation. Yet she opened it on the spot ; she was un-
avoidably anxious about Dramoffskys.

Threats ! Flagellation ! Nothing of the sort. Fricker wrote
in the friendliest mood ; he was almost playful : —

'My dear Mrs. Trevalla, — I understand from our friend
Beaufort Chance that he had an interview with you to-day. I
have nothing to do with what concerns you and him only, and no
desire to meddle. But as regards myself I fear that his friendly

310 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

zeal may have given you rather a mistaken impression. I am
grateful for your kindness, which is, I know, limited only by your
ability to serve me, and I shall think it a privilege to look after
your interests as long as you leave them in my charge. I gather
from Chance that you are anxious to sell your Dramoffskys at the
first favourable moment. I will bear this in mind. Let me,
however, take the liberty of advising you to think twice before
you part with your Glowing Stars. I hear good reports, and even
a moderate rise would give you a very nice little profit on the
small sum which you entrusted to me for investment in G-. S.'s.
Of course you must use your own judgment, and I can guarantee
nothing ; but you will not have found my advice often wrong. I
may sell some of your Dramoffskys and put the proceeds in G. S.'s.
' I am, dear Mrs. Trevalla,

' With every good wish,

' Very faithfully yours,

'SYDNEY FRICKER.'

There was nothing wherewith to meet this letter save a fit of
remorse, a very kindly note to Mr. Fricker, and a regret that it
was really impossible to do much for the Frickers. These
emotions and actions duly occurred ; and Trix Trevalla went to
bed in a more tolerable frame of mind than had at one time
seemed probable.

The gentlemen unknown to fame sold Dramoffskys largely
that day, and at last, in spite of Mr. Fricker, the price fell and
fell. Fricker, however, professed himself sanguine. He bought
a few more ; then he sold a few for Trix Trevalla ; then he bought
for her a few Glowing Stars, knowing that his friendly note would
gain him a free hand in his dealings. But his smile had been
rather mysterious as he booked his purchases, and also while he
wrote the note ; and —

' It's all right, my dear,' he said to Mrs. Fricker, in reply to
certain observations which she made. ' Leave it to me, my dear,
and wait a bit.'

He had not washed his hands of Trix Trevalla ; and Beaufort
Chance was ready to let him work his will. As a pure matter of
business Mr. Fricker had found that it did not pay to be forgiving ;
naturally he had discarded the practice.

(To

311

CALYPSO AND ULYSSES.
ODYSSEY, v. 148-224.

BY J. W. MACKAIL.

So saying, the mighty Shining One therefrom
Passed, and the nymph imperial from her home
Went forth to find Odysseus high of heart,
Heeding the message that from Zeus had come.

And him she found upon the ocean-brim,
Where evermore his eyes with tears were dim,
And with home-sickness all the joy of life
In lamentation wore away from him.

For now no more the nymph was his delight,
Though in the hollow caverns night by night
Perforce he needs must sleep beside her, yet
With no desire could her desire requite :

And day by day on cliff or beach apart,
Fretted with tears and sighs and bitter smart
He sate, and on the seas unharvested
Grazed with the tears down dropping, sick at heart.

Then standing by him spoke the Goddess fair :
' No more, unhappy man, sit mourning there,
Nor let your life be worn away ; for now
Myself unasked your journey will prepare.

' Up therefore, hew long beams, and skilfully
Fit them with tools a broad-floored raft to be ;
And build aloft a spar-deck thereupon
To carry you across the misty sea.

312 CALYPSO AND ULYSSES

' But water I will store on it, and bread,
And the red wine wherewith is comforted
Man's heart, that you be stayed from famishing ;
And lend you raiment ; and your sail to spread

' Will send a following wind, that free from ill
Home you may win, if such indeed the will
Be of the Gods, who hold wide heaven, and are
Greater than I to purpose and fulfil.'

She spoke : but toilworn bright Odysseus heard

Aghast, and answering said a winged word :

' Ah Goddess, surely not my home-going,

But some strange purpose in your heart is stirred ;

' On a frail raft the mighty gulfs of sea
Bidding me cross, that fierce and dreadful be,
So that not even a swift well-balanced ship
Before Gfod's wind may cross them running free.

' And on a raft my foot I will not set,
Goddess, unless your full consent I get,
And you take oath and swear, against my life
Not to devise some other practice yet.'

So spake he : but the Groddess bright and bland
Calypso, smiling, stroked him with her hand,
And spoke a word and answered : ' Verily
A witch you are, and quick to understand,

' Such words are these you have devised to say !
Now Earth I take to record here to-day,
And the wide Heaven above our head, and that
Water Abhorred that trickles down alway

' (Which is the mightiest and most dread to break
Of all the oaths the blessed Gods may take),
No practice for your hurt will I devise,
But take such thought and counsel for your sake

CALYPSO AND ULYSSES. 313

' As for mine own self I would reckon good,
If in the like extremity I stood.
For my own mind is righteous, nor my heart
Iron within me, but of piteous mood.'

Uttering these words the shining Groddess fair
Led swiftly on, and he behind her there
Followed her footsteps ; to the hollow cave,
A man beside a goddess, came the pair ;

And to the seat whence Hermes forth was gone
Divine Odysseus went, and sat thereon.
Beside him then, that he might eat and drink,
All kinds of food that mortals feed upon

The nymph began to lay, and took her seat
Over against him ; while, that she might eat,
The thralls her handmaidens set forth for her
The deathless drink and the immortal meat.

So to the ready food before them spread
They reached their hands out : and when they had fed
To quench their thirst and hunger, then began
Calypso, bright of Goddesses, and said :

' Son of Laertes, high-born, subtle-soul ed,
Odysseus, may your longing naught withhold
To your own land so straightway to be gone ?
Then fare you well ; but had your heart foretold

' How many woes the fates for you decree
Before you reach your country, here with me
You had abode, and in this house had kept,
And been immortal, howso fain to see

' That wife for whom through all your days you pine —
Yet deem I not her beauty more than mine.
Since hardly may a mortal woman vie
In shape and beauty with my race divine,'

314 CALYPSO AND ULYSSES.

Then in his wisdom spoke and answered he :
' Groddess and mistress, be not wroth with me
Herein : for very well myself I know
That, set beside you, sage Penelope

' Were far less stately and less fair to view,
Being but mortal woman, nor like you
Ageless and deathless : yet even so I yearn
With longing sore to see my home anew ;

' And through all days I see that one day shine :
But if amid the ocean bright as wine
Once more some (rod shall break me, then once more
With steadfast purpose would my heart incline

' Still to endurance, and would suffer still,
As ofttimes I have suffered, many an ill
And many a woe in wave or war ; and now
Let this too follow after, if it will.'

315

THE NEW BOHEMIA.
BY AN OLD FOGEY.

SOMETHING more than a quarter of a century ago, before I went
out to help my uncle Benjamin as a tea-planter in Assam, I used
to know a little about the Bohemian circles of the town. It was
rather a fashion among young fellows from Oxford and Cambridge
in those days. The Thackeray tradition was still with us, and at
that time we used to read ' Pendennis ' and ' The Newcomes ' and
' The Adventures of Philip.' I am told people do not read them
any longer, preferring the polished compositions and chaste fancies
of certain later novelists. It may be so. We are apt to fall a
little behind the current of popular literature in the remoter East.
At any rate, we youngsters in the seventies knew our Thackeray,
with our Dickens, our Clough, our Tennyson, and other now
perhaps obsolete writers, and came up to London emulous of the
brave life which those gallant heroes, Warrington and Pen and
Clive Newcome, led so dashingly among the taverns and the
theatres, the men of the quill, and the brothers of the brush and
palette-knife. Like most other things, the reality proved hardly
equal to the illusion. We had hummed over the famous lines —

Though its longitude 's rather uncertain,
And its latitude 's doubtful and vague,

That person I pity who knows not the city,
The beautiful city of Prague.

So we young fellows went for it ' bald-headed ' — to use the
elegant expression which I cull from the pages of one of the most
cultured American authors of the day — and were never so happy
as when we were spending an evening in the company of our
Bohemian friends, who, to do them justice, being a hospitable set,
were not averse to see us.

They were a jovial crew, who worked hard, and amused them-
selves in a roystering, companionable fashion. I am bound to
say that already, when I first came upon the town and took
chambers in Hare Court, Temple (dingy old Hare Court, whose
venerable buildings have now been pulled down and replaced

316 THE NEW BOHEMIA.

by structures which appear to have been designed in Chicago),
the glories of the older Bohemianism, as painted by our great
novelist, had somewhat waned. The singing and suppers of the
famous Back Kitchen lived only in the regretful memories of the
elder men. You remember Thackeray's description : ' Squads
of young apprentices and assistants, the shutters being closed
over the scene of their labours, came hither, for fresh air, doubt-
less. Rakish young medical students — gallant, dashing, what is
called " loudly " dressed, and (must it be owned ?) somewhat dirty
— were here smoking and drinking and vociferously applauding
the songs. Young University bucks were to be found here, too,
with that indescribable genteel simper which is only learned at
the knees of Alma Mater ; and handsome young Guardsmen, and
florid bucks from the St. James's Street clubs — nay, senators,
English and Irish, and even members of the House of Peers.'

There were men, we knew, who had assisted at these revels —
men who numbered Mr. Hoolan and Mr. Doolan among their inti-
mates, who had written for the ' Dawn ' and the ' Day,' hobnobbed
with the original of Captain Shandon, and received guineas from
the firms of Bacon and of Bungay ; and, albeit we had fallen upon
somewhat soberer days, they did their best to maintain the Back
Kitchen precedent in certain resorts and ccenacula, to which they
were often good enough to give admission to us youngsters. Well
do I recollect one particular club to which I had the honour of
being elected a member, on the introduction of my journalistic
friend and patron of those days, poor Bob Ireson.

Everybody knew Bob at that time, and to be taken up by him
was an introduction to the more esoteric circles of Fleet Street and
the Strand. He was a gentleman and a scholar, was Bob — or, at
least, had been the former, and was still the latter, when sober.
He had been at St. Quentin's College, Oxford, took his ' first ' in
' Mods.' and ' Greats/ was proxime for the ' Hertford/ and would
almost certainly have got the ' Ireland/ but for the fact that he had
been seduced into a little game of cards and a late supper-party
the night before with young Lord Rupert Deloraine, who subse-
quently, as everybody knows, held one of the highest offices in
the councils of the Queen, but was at that time a somewhat too
convivial undergraduate at Quentin's. Owing to this festivity Bob
was by no moans in his best form at the Examination Schools,
and his Greek iambics were not up to their usual standard. A
similar accident deprived him of the Fellowship on which he had

THE NEW BOHEMIA. 317

reckoned ; and so Bob came to town and joined the Corporation
of the Groose-Quill. When I knew him he had been in it some
fifteen years, and was the most brilliant, unreliable, well-
informed, and erratic contributor who ever plagued or delighted
an editor. He had a wife and half a dozen neglected children
stowed away in a back street in Holloway, to which suburb he
occasionally retired when no other opportunity of spending an
evening presented itself. I have reason to believe that his
domestic life was not luxurious ; and Mrs. Bob, who was under-
stood to be distantly connected with his laundress at Oxford, did
not frequent literary or other society. Bob himself preferred
associating with his male companions in that congenial quarter
of the town in which he pursued his fitful avocations.

1 do not know where or when he wrote, but somehow or other he
contrived to cover an enormous quantity of copy-paper. He would
write leaders, reviews, dramatic criticisms, savage lampoons in prose
or verse (he was never happier than when he was reviling his old
college boon companion, Lord Eupert, who by this time had long
since ranged himself, married an American heiress, and lived in
great splendour at Eutland Grate), librettos for burlesques and
pantomimes, or, in fact, anything for which he was paid. He
earned a good deal of money, according to the comparatively
humble standard of those days, but I do not think that much of it
found its way out to Holloway. He had in him the root and
essential quality of Bohemianism. When he had done pretty
well and was flush he was ready to stand a bottle of champagne
and a dinner to any friend — or, for the matter of that, to any
enemy, for Bob was the most placable of men, and would eat and
drink with anybody. When he had a run of bad luck, he
consumed sausages and gin-and- water in those appalling dark
taverns and cook-shops, which have been replaced by the mam-
moth restaurants and garish cafes of a more civilised generation.

Sometimes he would vanish for a month or so, and nobody
knew what became of him ; but in due course he turned up
again at our club, jovial, impecunious, reckless as ever, equally
ready to play billiards with the racing tout of a sporting news-
paper or to discuss Aristophanes with a professor of Greek. At
length he disappeared definitely, and came back no more ; and
the rumour went about that he had been found in a condition of
utter destitution in poor lodgings at a minor seaside resort, and
had been taken to the local workhouse infirmary. So we made up

318 THE NEW BOHEMIA.

a little purse for him at the club, and sent him out on a sea
voyage to Australia, with strict injunctions to the steward of the
vessel that he was to be served with nothing stronger than soda-
water on the journey. But Bob never reached Melbourne. He
died at sea ; and his body rests quietly, deep down somewhere in
the Indian Ocean. When a few friends came to look into the
affairs of the establishment at Holloway they found that poor
Mrs. Bob was in a very bad way indeed; and so another sub-
scription had to be raised, and many good fellows who had known
Bob in his prime were willing enough to put their guineas to it.

A sad ending ; but many of our jolly Bohemians did finish
rather mournfully. Still they were uncommonly good company
while they lasted. Those evenings at our club were amusing
enough and something more. We used to meet in two or
three shabby rooms somewhere off the Strand. There were faded
carpets on the floor, threadbare curtains at the windows, battered,
old, comfortable leather-seated arm-chairs, and horsehair-covered
sofas of primeval antiquity. The fastidious appointments of
the modern club had not entered into the imagination of our
members. Sam, the butler, a very Ganymede in the bearing and
compounding of drinks, wore the same shirt for a week ; so by the
way did some of the members. There was a cupboard in which
you could wash your hands, but I do not think it was often used.

The menu was more satisfying than pretentious. You could
get an excellent steak, a sufficient chop, kidneys grilled to a nicety,
potatoes smoking hot in their jackets, kippers, bloaters, soft roes
on toast, devilled bones of a fiery potency ; and gin and whisky,
and brandy-and-water hot, and stout and bitter, flowed in a never
slackening stream. On occasions, too, there would be a vast bowl
of punch, brewed by Mulligan, the cunning of hand, who had a
skill in that decoction which was famous throughout Bohemia,
and had penetrated even to the United States. There was dinner,
cost you 2s., on the table at six o'clock every evening — Irish stew,
boiled mutton, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and other viands
of a simple and satisfying nature. If you dropped in to this
meal you would find some twenty men, more or less, gathered
round the board, prepared to do full justice to the provisions.
For our Bohemians, as I have said, were as a rule hard-working
folks, and they did little at luncheon, and would have scorned
afternoon tea and muffins if anybody had been prepared to supply
them with those delicacies.

THE NEW BOHEMIA. 319

The food eaten and the cloth cleared, clay pipes and briars
were produced — it was before the day of cigarettes, and many of
us could not afford cigars — a tumbler of spirits or perhaps a small
bottle of port or claret was before each man, and the company
settled itself down steadily for conversation. And how they
talked ! They were the last survivors, some of them, of a great
conversational age, a time when men met together, as they used
to do in the days of Addison and in the days of Johnson, as in
those of Scott and Hazlitt, for the purpose of exchanging ideas.
It is a custom that seems to have vanished while I have been
growing tea in Assam. Nowadays I am told there is no conver-
sation. It is r&ernel feminin which has destroyed the practice.
Women are everywhere, and you can't converse with women.
Besides, there is no time to talk. People are too busy in playing
games, or seeing plays, or performing them. But my elder
cronies of the old shabby club did not go into society, and would
no more have thought of putting on a dress coat, and listening
to music in a lady's drawing-room, than they would have played
battledore and shuttlecock with school-girls across a dining-room
table. In the intervals of their work, they liked to discuss matters
with one another, amid clouds of tobacco and the fragrance of
much alcohol.

I do not say the talk was always of the best kind. It was apt
to be too full-fleshed, too ribald, a little (shall we say ?) too virile.
There was old Ventregris, the doyen of the coterie, a prosperous
accountant, I believe, whom we all regarded with considerable
respect, because he was known to live in affluence somewhere in
the neighbourhood of Weybridge, with horses and carriages, and
gardens and many servants to wait upon him. He was the patron
and financial adviser of the club, and I believe its appointments
would have been even dingier than they were but for occasional
cheques from him. The hoary old reprobate preferred the gin-
sodden atmosphere of our pothouse to all his suburban splendours,
and was never so happy as when sitting there listening to the
most atrocious stories, invented for his delectation by some inge-
nious follower of the theatrical art. But the talk was not always,
or even usually, of that kind. Much of it, of course, was ' shop,'
and you were not long in that society before you knew exactly
how much or how little was to be acquired at the precarious trade
of letters, or the still more precarious pursuit of journalism. You
could learn what publisher was good for an advance on royalties,

320 THE NEW BOHEMIA.

and what editor could most safely be planted with copy. But often
we got far away from these subjects. Literature, art, politics,
philosophy, all these things would be discussed and considered
and debated by men who, if they were Bohemians, were also in
many cases students and thinkers and readers, with a knowledge
of the world and books ; and I can recall some midnight symposia
in those close and murky chambers in which mind had clashed
with mind, and perhaps even for a moment the deep places of the
soul had been unveiled.

So with these recollections upon me, grave and gay, I have
naturally not been averse, since my return to town, to seeing
something of the Bohemianism of the younger generation. I
find things have changed a good deal in the last quarter of a
century. The successors of the careless wits and jovial viveurs of
my earlier days are, I must admit, a much more decorous body
of persons. The other day, for instance, young Grubbins, the son
of my old friend, Joe Grubbins, whom you will recollect as one of
Bacon and Bun gay's favourite and most successful bookmakers,
came to make acquaintance with me.

Grubbins p&re was a very sedulous exponent of the literary art.
Every few months he was in the habit of publishing a substantial
volume, ' Half Hours with the Twelve Apostles,' ' The Homes of
Queen Elizabeth,' ' The Private Life of the Emperor Tiberius,'
' Ten Thousand Household Cookery Eecipes,' and so on. Nothing
human came amiss to him if he received a publisher's commission
to write about it. He had written a History of the World, illus-
trated, which was sold in sixpenny parts with woodcuts of a spirited
character, and he had written a treatise on Domestic Medicine.
Withal, he was a fellow of infinite resource and a mass of curious
information, and he worked ten hours a day, and lived in a small
house in Brixton with an excellent thrifty wife, who put the
antimacassars on the chairs in the little back drawing-room when
visitors were expected, and otherwise sat with Joe in the front
room, which was parlour, dining-room, and study all in one. Here
the talented author composed his valuable works and pursued his
researches when he was not at the British Museum Reading-room.

Young Joseph is a literary gentleman also, but he seems
to have hit upon an easier and more lucrative branch of the
profession than his father. I have not been able to discover the
names of any books that he has published. When I questioned
him on the subject he replied, ' Books, no fear, sir ! They don't

THE NEW BOHEMIA. 321

pay. The old dad had enough of that, and it don't suit me.'
Questioned more particularly as to the precise nature of his
compositions, I discovered that Mr. Grubbins devoted himself to
that department of journalism which used to be known as per-
sonal. An enterprising newspaper, .that has come into existence
since my migration to the East, is the favourite vehicle for what
he calls his pars, which are mainly concerned with the comings!
and goings, and the private affairs, of members of fashionable
society. On the strength of this pursuit Grrubbins junior is
apparently regarded as a member of quite elegant and exclusive
circles himself, has chambers in Jermyn Street, dines not infre-
quently in Piccadilly and Park Lane, and is on. familiar terms
with various personages, whose affluence and distinction have
penetrated to me even in the recesses of Asia. Invited by this
young gentleman to spend an evening with him at the Jolly
Beggars' Club, I accepted with avidity, a trifle surprised to find
that the entertainment was to take place, not as I might have
expected at a tavern in the Fleet Street region, but in the
' Byzantine Saloon ' of the Megatherium Hotel.

I was somewhat doubtful as to whether one ought to wear
evening dress or not, for in the old days these garments were little
in favour with our set ; but I concluded that as a stranger and a
visitor I should do no harm to err on the right side and array
myself in the usual dinner costume. It was well I did so. I drove
down to Piccadilly in a pleasantly anticipatory frame of mind.
The name of the club had an attractive sound about it. With the
Jolly Beggars methought I might count on a rollicking evening,
perhaps too rollicking for my sedate middle age, but full of mirth,
wit, and gay boon companionship. The reality was a little
different. When I arrived, somewhat late, in the radiant banquet-
ing-hall of the Megatherium, I found a great company assembled,
some three or four hundred of both sexes. The male guests were
to a man arrayed in what the novelists of the good old times used
to call faultless evening costume. The ladies, to my unaccus-
tomed eyes, seemed to be attired in all the luxury of the latest
fashion. The chairman of the Jolly Beggars was a severe gentle-
man of solemn aspect, who presided over the festive board with
magisterial dignity. The guests of the evening were that
eminent archaeologist, Professor Chumpchop, whose researches
into the dietetic peculiarities of the Marquesas Islanders have
gained deserved applause. Beside him sat a lady, decorated

VOL. XII. — NO. 69, N.S. 21

322 THE NEW BOHEMIA.

with many diamonds, whom I ascertained to be a popular
writer of current fiction.

The company as a whole was not unworthy of these dis-
tinguished personages. There were actors, journalists, men of
letters, who all behaved with the rigid and unbending gravity
so pleasantly characteristic of English society in its hours of re-
laxation. I found myself placed alongside of a severe person, a
contributor to some of the leading reviews of this capital, who
drank mineral water throughout the evening, and entertained me
with a serious discourse on the cost of living in the western
portions of the metropolis, and the incidence of parochial rates
in South Kensington. I found on subsequent inquiry that a
considerable number of the Jolly Beggars were resident in this
or similar eligible localities. Instead of the shabby establish-
ments in Holloway and Camden Town and those other quarters
in which my older Bohemian friends abode, I discovered that
these younger men lived in unimpeachable middle-class respecta-
bility at Bayswater or Earl's Court. Their wives were At Home
on the second and fourth Thursdays, and they themselves were
in the habit of giving dinner-parties, attended by colonels and
baronets. They take their families to the sea-side in August,
they play golf, they live in an atmosphere of Philistine calm.
They are churchwardens, guardians of the poor, some perhaps
have sunk to be county councillors.

I turned into our old club the other Saturday evening. It
has changed its location and many other things. Gone are the
shabby chairs and sofas, the threadbare carpets. The rooms looked
clean and prim under the shaded electric lights. The ' Times '
was on the table, servants in livery ministered to your wants,
blameless water-colours and photogravures on the walls had
replaced the furious caricatures and Rabelaisian sketches contri-
buted by some of our artistic members. It was supper-time, and
supper on Saturday night used to be a scene of riotous revelry, a
babel of unruly talk into the small hours. One veteran I recollect
was wont to say that he never left the club on a Sunday morning
till it was time to take in the milk. His successors keep better
hours. I found some dozen languid members about the table.
They were mostly in evening dress, and they ate their kippers,
and drank a modest quantity of whisky and water, to a subdued
hum of intermittent conversation in duets. There was no general
chatter, and if you did not ' know ' your neighbour he regarded

THE NEW BOHEMIA. 323

you with the frozen, suspicious glare of polite society. In the
old days we should no more have asked for an introduction than
for a certificate of baptism. However, I found a man with whom
I was slightly acquainted, and was permitted to take part in a
discussion on the Vaccination Acts. Then there was a frigid
interval of silence, and somebody began to talk in a broken
whisper of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. I paid my bill to
the butler — a dignified functionary no more like unto old Sam
' than I to Hercules ' — and left in good time to catch the last 'bus
westward.

I went to another Bohemian club the other day, which I am
assured is very much in the movement. It bears the name of a
mediaeval writer whose works, I understand, are chiefly devoted to
the glorification of self-indulgence. But there was nothing
riotous in our merrymaking. A gentleman from, I believe,
Mincing Lane was good enough to read us a paper about Mrs.
Hannah More. We discussed the personality and literary merits
of this author for three hours with suitable gravity. One
speaker, an eminent lawyer, made several jokes ; but his levity I
think rather jarred on the feelings of the assembly, which had
clearly met in a praiseworthy spirit of mutual improvement and
edification. The majority of the members seemed bored, and I
wondered why they came. But on opening my daily newspaper

the next morning I found it on record that ' The Club had

a meeting last evening at the Eestaurant, under the pre-
sidency of Mr. . Among those present were Messrs.

&c.' The old Bohemia seldom got ' into the papers.' The new
Bohemia appears to spend its life, not unsuccessfully, in being
paragraphed. It is much too busy in this way to have leisure for
enjoyment. Indeed it takes its pleasures rather sadly. On the
other hand, it is always interviewing itself and publishing its own
portrait in the illustrated newspapers, and giving descriptions
of its own wives and books and private pursuits.

I have lately made the acquaintance of a leading member
of the new school. He is a very active person, who has founded
a number of literary clubs. The attention of the world is not
infrequently invited to his doings. ' Mr. Vincent Eopemin will
preside at the monthly House Dinner of the Asterisk Club on
Thursday.' ' Mr. Vincent Eopemin will read a paper before the
Society of Typewriters on Literary Copyright in Venezuela, with
special reference to the rights of British authors.' ' Mr. and

21—2

324 THE NEW BOHEMIA.

Mrs. Vincent Kopemin gave a delightful reception at their
chaiining home in Brompton Crescent the other day. The
pretty rooms were crowded with literary and theatrical celebrities,
among whom I noticed, &c. The hostess looked lovely in pale
blue with sequin trimmings.' 'Mr. Kopemin informs us that
his latest journalistic venture, the " Ladies' Kattle," is proving
a phenomenal success.' 'Mr. Eopemin has gone to Constan-
tinople to work up the materials for his new novel on the sub-
ject of the Empress Theodora.' With all these pre-occupations,
Mr. Eopemin is not a vivacious companion. He is a wearied
gentleman, prematurely bald and grey, with anxious eyes, and
he presides at the sparkling entertainments just alluded to with
all the gaiety of a mute at a funeral. When I dine with him
in serious state in Brompton, with a grizzled bejewelled lady on
my right hand, and on my left the portly wife of Sir Haverstock
Hill, that noted City magnate, I realise that many things have
changed since I left England when Lord Beaconsfield was Consul.
Literary people, journalists, actors, are no longer declassed •
they are respectable, and often prosperous men of business, as
regular in their habits as if they bought shellac or sold indigo.
I suppose there are still unsuccessful out-at-elbow penmen, who
haunt low taverns, and borrow half-crowns, and pawn their clothes,
and enjoy themselves in low dissipation. But my friends of the
old Bohemia strain were not of that kind at all. They were for
the most part hard-working, and not always ill-paid, craftsmen in
the factory of letters ; only they had inherited a tradition of
dislike for the ways of the bourgeoisie. Their successors, being
wise men in their generation, have allowed themselves to be
quietly drafted into the great disciplined army of the ' professional '
classes, and order their lives like unto their fellows.

On the whole I suppose one ought not to regret the disappear-
ance of the old Bohemia. The modern variety is in many ways
the better of the two. The young fellows —I perceive that during
my absence everybody under threescore has grown young — are in
essential respects better than their fathers, at least in some of
those matters which make for happiness in private life and good
repute in public. They pay their way, they earn their living in
a steady fashion, they indulge themselves I dare say in a more
innocent manner, and they certainly cause a good deal less trouble
to their wives and other belongings. One recollects Captain
Shandon in the Fleet Prison, and the manner in which that

THE NEW BOHEMIA. 325

gentleman occupied himself when a casual stroke of work put a
few pounds in his way. ' Mrs. Shandon sadly went on with her
work at the window looking into the court. She saw Shandon
with a couple of men on his heels run rapidly in the direction of
the prison tavern. She had hoped to have had him at dinner
herself that day ; there was a piece of meat and some salad in a
basin on the ledge outside the window of their room, which she
had expected that she arid little Mary were to share with the
child's father. But there was no chance of that now. He would
be in that tavern until the hour for closing it ; then he would go
and play at cards or drink in some other man's room, and come
back silent, with glazed eyes, reeling a little in his walk, that his
wife might nurse him.' Yes, perhaps the new Bohemians are a
more reputable set than their predecessors ; but one cannot help
thinking that they are a great deal duller.

326

ARMS AND THE WOMAN.

THE tide was out and they were sitting on the sea wall that holds
up the end of the lawn at Drumcleugh, smoking and kicking their
heels absently against the smooth blocks of Portland cement — Jack
Oramore, occupant of Drumcleugh, and his brother-in-law, Dick
Keppel.

It was a perfectly peaceful Clyde Sabbath morning. There is
a special breadth and depth of serenity about a quiet Sabbath
morning on the Clyde, once you get below Grreenock, which is
almost unsurpassable. The air was so very still that the smoke
from the men's pipes wreathed their heads like a blue halo, and
the smoke from the breakfast chimney of Drumcleugh rose like a
tall grey feather against the wooded hill behind. The hills on the
opposite shore looked solemnly down at themselves in the loch as
in a mirror. Oramore's yacht, the Albatross, was joined at the
water-line to an inverted Albatross which floated half way up an
inverted hillside.

The two men had not spoken for many minutes. One might
almost have imagined that the peacefulness of the scene had
entered into their souls. That, however, would have implied a
very slight acquaintance with Master Richard Keppel. He
glanced now and again, without turning his head, at the moody
face of the other, and then, by way of breaking an irksome silence,
said cheerfully :

' Pretty picture, isn't it ? '

Oramore only grunted, and they smoked on in silence till Dick
broke out again, through his teeth :

' See here, old man, out with it, whatever it is. My brain's
getting muddled trying to think which of my sins has come home
to roost this time. There's such a lot of 'em it'll be a real relief
to know which one it is. Is it Cissie Travers ? '

Oramore shook his head and looked sombrely out over the
loch.

' Bolsover ? ' queried Dick, ' I did think Bolsover was a dead
cert, but anyhow Polyanthus will pull me round on the Derby.'

Oramore puffed viciously and lost the pleasure of his pipe.

ARMS AND THE WOMAN. 327

' Well,' continued Dick, in default of response, ' if it's neither
Cissie nor Bolsover, I'm hanged if I know what it can be. Not
that New York business again ? ' — with an anxious look at the
gloomy smoker.

' Nothing to do with you, Dick,' said Oramore at last. ' Don't
give yourself away any more than you need.'

'All right, old man, if it's nothing to do with me it's all
right.'

' I wish to heaven it was. It's all damned wrong.'

' And nothing to do with me ? Who's in the mud now ? '

' Me. I'm on the rocks.'

' The deuce ! What is it ? Bottom fallen out of market ? '

Oramore nodded gloomily.

'Thought you generally managed to stand from under and
catch some of the droppings as they fell ? '

' I had it straight from old Harris himself to put every penny
I had into Chartereds. I went a big plunge and look like coming
a big cropper. That's about the size of it, Dick.'

' Same with me and Bolsover. No Derby to look forward to ? '

' Yes, if I could hang on there's probably a fortune in them.
I've faith in Harris, and this is only a temporary set-back. But
settlement's next week, and I don't see my way to cover.'

' What does it run to ? '

' I've got 100,000. They're down four shillings.'

Dick whistled solemnly as he figured it out on the wall with a
bit of white stone.

'20,OOOL! That beats me and Bolsover all into fits. Say,
Jack, my boy, you ought to be more cautious. 20,000£. takes a
lot of covering.'

' I can manage about half in the time — at a sacrifice. But
half s no good. It looks like smash.'

' Bank no use ? '

' Not a cent. They look askance at this kind of thing.'

' Dolly know ? '

* No ; she'll know soon enough, poor girl. We'll have to sell up
and clear out.'

He smoked in gloomy silence for a few minutes, and then
slowly pulled out of his pocket a letter with a foreign stamp on,
and handed it over to Keppel. Dick opened it, and looked first
with wide round eyes at an enclosure, which proved to be a bank
draft for 10,OOOZ.

328 ARMS AND THE WOMAN.

' Heavens ! ' he said, and then read the letter, and then asked,
' And what are you going to do ? '
1 What would you do ? '

* How does it work out ? '

'Front on 10,000£. worth of arms and ammunition about
2,OOOZ.'

* Good enough, but doesn't help you much for next week.'
' I should get three months' credit on the goods.'

'I— see!'

'But it's risky business all round. I was half sorry when I got
the letter yesterday morning. I don't like to disappoint Sylvain,
and yet I don't much like the business. Someone else will do it,
of course, if I don't. You see he takes it for granted I'll make no
bones about it, and it would mean a delay to them which may be
of importance.'

' And you could have the use of that 10,OOOZ. for three months ? '

Oramore nodded, and the other pondered the situation, flipping
the draft for 10,000£. against his fingers.

' Well, what would you do ? ' asked Oramore.

' Could you meet the bills in three months' time in any case ?'

' Certainly, unless things go to the deuce altogether.'

* Very well, in that case I should take this chance and send
the stuff along. It's a risky business, I know, but when one's
back's to the wall one takes every chance, and I don't see that you
can afford to let this one slip.'

' Will you help ? If I buy the stuff will you take it out in the
Albatross?'

'Will I, my boy? Won't I? I'd take fifty Albatrosses into
Manzanillo or into Havana itself to help along. I've no great
liking personally for the Cubans, but I like 'em better than the
Spaniards, and they've been brutally treated, there's no doubt about
that.'

' Then we'll do it, and if you take 'em out you shall have the
profit on the run. Here come Dolly and Poppet. Keep mum
about all this, Dick. No need to worry the wife if there's no need
to. God ! ' he said, as the fair-haired girl and her two-year-old
daughter came down the lawn to call them in to breakfast, * I'd do
more than this to keep them all right.'

* Me, too ! ' said Keppel. ' Come along, Poppet, and I'll be your
donk-donk up to the house,' and off he went with the child on his
back.

ARMS AND THE WOMAN. 329

Just one week later the two men were leaning over the sea
wall again, under much the same conditions as to weather, but in
a very much more hopeful frame of mind.

Chartereds had picked up a trifle, and with the help of the
draft from Cuba Oramore had weathered the settlement and was
looking forward to a still more hopeful time when that eventful
day came round again. The arms and ammunition were bought,
and were being packed and despatched to Glasgow in as innocent-
looking packages as could be contrived, and within ten days or so
Keppel expected to start on his adventure.

Suddenly Oramore rose up from the wall.

' Here's old McKinnon coming ; I'm off. Don't let him pump
you, Dick. He knows I was hard hit, and he's on pins and needles
to find out how I pulled through.'

Their neighbour came slowly along the shore, picking his way
over the seaweed-covered stones : an elderly, grey, tight-lipped
man, his eyes fixed on the ground, his hands behind him. He
was thinking over his profits on the last settlement, which had
been a particularly fortunate one for him. He was therefore in a
peaceful and contented frame of mind.

It was not till he came opposite the place where Keppel leaned
over the wall smoking that he looked up with an air of surprise.

' Morning, Mr. McKinnon ! ' said Dick cheerfully.

* Oh, Mr. Dick, how are you this morning ? '
' Fine, thanks. You all right ? '

' I am well, I thank you.'

1 Miss Maggie none the worse for her soaking yesterday, I hope ? '

' I trust not. It was foolish, however, to go so far '

' But we didn't know it was going to come down like that, you
know. The morning was as fine as this one.'

* It is never wise to count too much on a continuance of fine
weather at this time of year. It is as undependable as '

' Stocks and shares,' said Dick.

' Ah ! ' said the old man. ' This is the Sabbath. Let us leave
stocks and shares alone for one day in the week. How is Mr.
Oramore ? '

' He's fine, too, thanks.'

'Ah!'

1 Groing to the kirk ? ' asked Dick, after a pause.

' No ; I'm just taking a dander round to get rid of the cobwebs.'

' Miss Maggie going ?— Hel-lo ! who's this ? '

330 ARMS AND THE WOMAN

Two gleaming spires of snowy canvas had crept round Lament
Point and were stealing noiselessly up the loch. The schooner
carried the breeze from the outer loch with her, and just managed
to reach anchorage near the Albatross when her sails drooped and
flapped like the wings of a wounded bird, and then in a trice they
disappeared — a splash — the ringing run of the chain, and she
swung round and fitted into the peace of her surroundings.

The similarity of the two yachts struck both men. From
knife-sharp forefoot to cream-painted funnel they were as like as
two peas and almost of a size — if anything the Albatross had the
advantage by some twenty tons.

' Might be sisters,' said Keppel.

' Ay,' said McKinnon. < Who is't at all ? '

As they watched, a boat dropped gently into the water and
presently came skimming over the mirror towards them, two men
pulling and a third steering. The steersman scrambled ashore
and came up over the rocks towards them ; the boat turned and
pulled back.

The newcomer wore the dress of a naval officer, and as he
drew near he sang out cheerily, ' Good morning, Mr. McKinnon !
Hoo's a' wi' ye the noo ? '

' Why, Eobert Ogilvie ! I thought you were in the Mediter-
ranean.'

' I'm in a much better place, Mr. McKinnon. How's Miss
Maggie ? '

' She is well, thank you. When did you get back ? Let me
introduce you to Mr. Eichard Keppel — Mr. Keppel, Lieutenant
Ogilvie.'

The two men nodded and eyed one another askance. Dick
Keppel disliked Ogilvie on sight, because he had just seen Miss
Maggie McKinnon turn out of the Dunglass grounds and come
along the shore towards them, and the Sunday morning stroll he
had hoped for was obviously out of the question. Ogilvie disliked
Dick on the general principle that a fellow doesn't, as a rule, like
another fellow — especially if he be an unusually good-looking fellow,
as Dick was — who has exceptional advantages in the enjoyment of
the society of a particular young lady, while he himself has to be
away on duty.

Miss Maggie McKinnon was a very charming young lady
indeed, so very charming that it was difficult to reconcile her
relationship with her own father, until one remembered that the

ARMS AND THE WOMAN. 331

wild rose blooms on a stem all unkindly and full of prickles. She
came picking her way over the slippery stones with a light sure
step, and with her eyes still seeking the best footing sang out,
' Well, good people, is this a prayer meeting ? Gfood morning,
Mr. Keppel ; none the worse for your wetting ? Why, Bob !
where on earth have you sprung from ? ' and a gladder light shone
in her eyes and a richer colour mantled her cheek, as she greeted
him with outstretched hand.

' Bob ! She calls him Bob ! ' said Dick to himself with an
internal groan.

' From going to and fro,' said Ogilvie, turning and greeting
her with a gladness which was reflected in her own eyes and
face, ' but last of all from the yacht there. Kibblewhite's ordered
up here on special duty, and I'm just taking a turn round
with him. I know this part of the world, you see, and he
doesn't.'

' And how long can you stop ? ' asked Maggie.

' That depends on circumstances,' and he had the appearance
of one who could say more an he would. ' Going to the kirk,
Miss Maggie ? '

' Yes, I'm going. Will you row me over ? '

'Will I? Won't I?'

' Anybody else coming ? ' asked Maggie over her shoulder in a
way that said as plainly as words, ' Please don't ; you really are
not wanted.'

4 Certainly, my dear, I am coming,' said Mr. McKinnon. ' And
you, Mr. Dick ? '

'No, thanks,' said Dick, grimly amused at the old man's
sudden change of front and at the disappointment expressed in the
backs of the other two. ' Three's bad, but four's worse.'

The others turned in the direction of the Dunglass boat, and
Dick Keppel lit another cigar and kicked his heels against the
sea wall and laughed quietly to himself. He knew perfectly well
that the old man disapproved of himself. It was distinctly con-
soling to know that he regarded Ogilvie with no greater favour.
But as to Maggie herself — * She calls him Bob ! ' he said again
with a sigh.

'Calls who Bob?'

Oramore had come over the lawn unobserved and stood behind
him watching the embarkation.

'Bob's the fool in the brass buttons. Though why a girl's

332 ARMS AND THE WOMAN.

eyes should dance like that just because a man wears brass but-
tons and a band round his hat is beyond me.'

' H'm ! ' said Oramore. ' Is it as bad as all that ? A very
nice little arrangement, indeed, if the old gentleman were not
there.'

' That's what those two are thinking, I guess.'

* Miss Maggie McKinnon with 20,000£. is one thing and an
exceedingly nice thing. But Mr. James McKinnon with 20,000£.
is quite a different story.'

' That's so,' sighed Dick, ' and she calls him Bob ! '
' What boat's that ? ' asked Oramore.

* Don't know, 'cept that Bob came in her. He's a navy man —
lieutenant.'

' What's the meaning of that, I wonder ? ' said Oramore.

* Imagine they've got wind of your rifles ? ' laughed Dick.

' Shouldn't be a bit surprised. We'll stroll over after tea and
find out all we can about Bob and his boat. She's just about the
same size as the Albatross and just about as fast, I should say.
Very much the same build of boat, don't you think ? '

' Like as two peas,' said Dick.

They strolled over to Dunglass after tea, as proposed, and
learned several things.

Item. — That a very good understanding existed between Miss
McKinnon and Lieutenant Ogilvie, and that old McKinnon eyed
the matter with distinct disfavour.

Item,. — That the Barracouta was on special duty under
a Government charter, and that she was posing as a private
yacht for special reasons. Lieutenant Bob was no diplomatist.
Moreover, in his friend's house he had every reason to ima-
gine that anything he said would be considered confidential.
Perhaps, however, he spoke more freely than was altogether
wise.

' You know every nook and corner of the Clyde, Mr. Keppel,
I suppose ? ' he said.

' Pretty well,' said Dick.

* Suppose you wanted to run a shipment of arms out of the
country, sub rosa you know, where would you take 'em aboard ? '

' Glasgow,' said Dick without turning a hair. * Who's gun-
running now ? '

' It's only rumour. The Spanish Government have asked for
a specially sharp look-out to be kept on certain ports, the Clyde

ARMS AND THE WOMAN. 333

among others, as they have information that shipments of arms
are being made to the insurgents in Cuba. So we're just nosing
round in the Barracouta, Kibby on duty, and I for the fun of the
thing.'

' And what happens if you come across them ? ' asked Dick.

1 The arms would be confiscated, of course, and those concerned
would get various pains and penalties. You see we don't recognise
the Cubans as belligerents at present.'

' I see,' said Dick. ' Well, so far as my own feelings go, I
would sooner be shipping arms to the Cubans than stopping them
for the Spaniards.'

'Personally, so would I, perhaps,' said Ogilvie; 'but all
the same it is our duty to stop 'em, and we've got to do our
best.'

' This complicates matters somewhat, old man,' said Oramore,
as they strolled home in the gloaming.

' Oh, I don't know. I guess we'll manage all right. Master
Bob's heart is busier at Dunglass than hunting gun-runners.'

They laid their heads together and settled their plans.

Dick was to start three days later, after coaling at Gourock, for
a cruise among the western islands. He was to return unex-
pectedly on the second day of his cruise with an alleged breakdown
of machinery. The following day he was nominally to take the
yacht under sail across to her builders, Thomson's, of Port Glasgow,
for repairs. The contrabrand had been coming direct from the
makers in small lots for several days past, packed as china, and
was being loaded into lighters, which, when the consignment was
complete, were to proceed to the Tail o' the Bank and transfer
their cargo to the good ship Reindeer, bound for Archangel, which
was supposed to be awaiting them there.

When the Albatross started on her western cruise the Barra-
couta took a sudden fancy to cruise in the same direction, but,
after seeing their friends well round the Mull of Cantire, the
Government boat returned and nosed inquisitively about the
coast, returning each night to Loch Grail, so that Lieutenant Bob
might enjoy, and otherwise, the society of Miss Maggie McKinnon
and her father.

He and the young lady were sitting in the heather above the
belt of trees behind Dunglass, when the Albatross crept up un-
expectedly to her moorings on the evening of the day after she
had started for her cruise among the western isles. They were

334 ARMS AND THE WOMAN.

talking very earnestly and very confidentially, but the sight of the
Albatross made Lieutenant Bob sit up.

* Hello ! ' he said, ' here's Oramore's yacht back. Now I
wonder what she's back for ? Well, Kibby must play his own
game now. I've got better work on hand,' at which Miss Maggie
laughed a low sweet laugh, which was very pleasant for anyone to
hear, and especially pleasant for Lieutenant Bob.

' I don't like leaving him in this way, Bob,' she said presently,
with a little sigh ; ' but if we wait for his consent we may wait
half our lives, and I know he'll forgive us when it's all over and
done with.'

' Why, of course he will, Meg. He's been a good old dad to
you, but he's hard as nails to me.'

' That is because he fears your intentions. You are quite sure
Miss Ogilvie won't be leaving London before '

' I have written to her that I'm coming to see her on Friday.
We shall arrive on Friday morning, and she will be just a wee bit
surprised when she sees you, but she's as good as gold and as full
of romance as a penny novelette, and she'll enjoy it all immensely,
and worship your very boots.'

' My dear,' she said gravely, ' I am putting myself into your
hands '

* And you are not afraid ? ' he said.
' No, I am not afraid.'

He kissed her very reverently, and said with all his heart in
his voice, ' You will never regret it, Meg ! '

* I shall never regret it,' she said quietly.

Before they reached the house the Albatross had hoisted her
sails again and crept quietly out of the loch, and later on they
heard that Keppel had only called in to inform his friends at
Drumcleugh of his breakdown, and was now on his way to
Thomson's yard at Port Glasgow to repair damages.

That Wednesday night several important things happened.

Lieutenant Sir John Kibblewhite, Bart., dined at Dunglass,
and, by previous arrangement with Lieutenant Bob, he so ingra-
tiated himself with Mr. McKinnon that he obtained permission
for Miss Maggie to accompany the Barracouta on her next day's
cruise, it being understood that she was to be returned safe and
sound in the evening.

The three men sat long over their cigars in the conservatory,
while Miss Maggie in the next room played and sang the plaintive

ARMS AND THE WOMAN. 335

old Scotch airs and ballads which her father and Lieutenant Bob
loved, and which appealed pleasantly even to Kibblewhite's
southern ear.

And while they were thus enjoying themselves at Dunglass
business of importance was transacting at the Tail o' the Bank.

The lighters laden with china for Archangel had been
anchored there since midday, and their skippers were greatly
perturbed at the non-appeaiance of their consignee, the Reindeer.
There were several large freighters about, but none of them was
the Reindeer.

Skipper No. I went the length of venting his mind on skipper
No. 2, to whose dilatoriness in coming down stream he ascribed
their present predicament. The Reindeer had evidently sailed
without this portion of her freight, and they would have to suffer
for it. Skipper No. 1's language was voluble and expressive ;
skipper No. 2 resented it.

Terms of endearment were still in the air when night fell and
put an end to the bombardment. About ten o'clock, as the
skippers were on the point of turning in, after seeing that their
lights were all right for the night, a sudden hail from the darkness
roused them to a fresh spell.

' Lighters ahoy ! are you for the Reindeer ? '
' Ay, ay,' sung out the skippers, greatly relieved.
' Right ! We had a hitch in the machinery and had to go
up to the yard for repairs.' A sharp-nosed vessel felt its way
cautiously in between them and dropped an anchor. It was not
the kind of vessel they had expected, but they had not much time
to think about it, for a sharp voice above them shouted, ' Now
then there, off hatches and let's get your stuff aboard. We ought
to have been away hours ago.'

The skippers, having got over their relief, growlingly set their
men to work, and the crew of the steamer tailed to briskly, and
the sharp- voiced man drove them all. With a lighter braced up
to either side of her, and her low deck which enabled the cases to
be easily handled, the work went on apace. By five o'clock the
cargo was all transferred, and with a full head of steam and a
crisp white curl at her forefoot, the Reindeer was swinging
merrily down stream bound for Archangel — or elsewhere.

Miss Maggie McKinnon stepped from the boat to the deck of
the Barracouta with very mixed feelings, and as the yacht ran
down the loch she looked back at Dunglass nestling among its

336 ARMS AND THE WOMAN.

trees, and her eyes were like the water that lies under the shadow
of the hills when the gloaming is darkening into night.

Little Sir John could not make enough of his charming visitor,
and in the fulness of her heart she was so graciously responsive
that his conscience began to prick him lest Ogilvie should fancy
he was trespassing on his friend's preserves.

Old McKinnon, as he stepped on board the morning boat for
Grreenock en route for Glasgow, was anything but happy in his
mind. He was quite aware that his daughter's heart was wrapped
up in Ogilvie, and knew well that the high spirit which had
also been her mother's grew only stronger under opposition.
Under the beguilement of the little baronet the night before, he
had foolishly consented to this cruise on the Barracouta.
Suppose it was all a put-up job on Lieutenant Bob's part, and
only the first step towards that greater one of which he lived in
perpetual dread. For, close and hard as he was in business
matters, he loved his daughter as the apple of his eye, only their
points of view as to what made most for her happiness differed
diametrically. Maggie would have 10,000£. a year when he died.
Lieutenant Bob possessed a few paltry hundreds. No doubt
Lieutenant Bob was a rising man, and might go far and high.
He had known him all his life, and his father before him. Indeed,
there had been a time when — but things went contrary, and
Janet Ogilvie was an old maid in London, and he was a widower
this" fifteen years. If it had even been little Sir John, now, he
would have been more satisfied. In time, if the girl had made
up her mind, he might have to come round to it ; but if Kobert
Ogilvie tried to steal a march on him before he had brought his
mind to it, let him look out for trouble.

He had half a mind to return direct to Dunglass from Grreenock.
He would feel easier in his mind if he was on the spot. Here
the Barracouta shot past, and his daughter waved a farewell
from the stern. He could do nothing by going back at present,
and there were several pressing business matters to attend to in
town. He would see to them, and get back as soon as he could.
He really would not feel easy in his mind till Maggie was safe
home again.

About midday, as the Barracouta was leisurely crossing the
Tail o' the Bank towards Helensburgh, she was hailed by a lighter,
whose skipper had just turned out after a stiff night's work and a
long lie.

ARMS AND THE WOMAN. 337

' Was you the boat 'at was speirin' efter anither boat ? '

' Ay, ay/ shouted Kibby eagerly. * What do you know about
her?'

' I'll come aboard and tell ye.' •

The discontented skipper came aboard, and as the result of
his communication the Barracouta headed for Helensburgh,
which was the nearest landing-place, put Miss McKinnon and
Lieutenant Ogilvie ashore there, and then set her nose to the
south, and went down the firth at the top of her speed.

Just off Dunoon she passed the Chancellor, on which Mr.
McKinnon was returning home for the alleviation of his anxiety
on his daughter's behalf. He gazed after the flying boat, and
metaphorically tore his hair and cursed his shortsightedness in
allowing Maggie ever to set foot on her. He spent a miserable
afternoon awaiting her return, and when evening came and no
Barracouta and no daughter, he could stand inaction no longer.
He borrowed the McColls' steam-launch — the McColls were
butchers in Glasgow, and ordinarily he had not much to say to
them ; but they had a launch, and he needed it, and in it he
chuffed away round to Helensburgh, and learned that the
Barracouta had hurriedly gone south soon after midday.

Without more ado he steamed across to Port Glasgow.
Thomson the boatbuilder was an old friend of his, and he was
so fortunate as to catch him still in the yard.

' Tarn,' he said, ' I want the fastest screw boat you have, now,
at once.'

'What for?' said Mr. Thomson.

Mr. McKinnon whispered in his ear, and Tarn Thomson looked
grave and said ' Nay ! ' and then issued rapid orders and turned
on so many men that by seven o'clock Mr. McKinnon was also
flying down the Clyde in pursuit of the Barracouta on Tarn
Thomson's own fast twin-screw yacht, the Clutha.

The night mail from Glasgow carried Miss Maggie McKinnon
and Lieutenant Robert Ogilvie to London, where they duly arrived
early on Friday morning, and proceeded at once to the house of
Miss Janet Ogilvie in Lansdowne Crescent, and were by her
received with all the surprise and delight which Bob had foretold.
Aunt Janet's own romance had never come to a head ; she had
accordingly spread her natural capacity for the enjoyment thereof
over half a lifetime, and vicariously suffered and endured and

VOL. XII. — NO. 69, N.S. 22

388 ARMS AND THE WOMAN.

triumphed in the sufferings and triumphs of her many friends both
inside books and outside them.

The Albatross, still disguised as the Reindeer, sped merrily
down the firth at her top speed, which ran to about fifteen knots.
She crossed to the shelter of the Irish coast, and never eased
her engines till she lay safe and snug alongside the coaling jetty
in Queenstown harbour. Keppel gave instructions to coal up as
rapidly as possible, and then went on to the post-office, where
Oramore had promised to wire him if he had any news. A
telegram awaited him, but it was six o'clock before he could get
it. It was short and to the point — two words only : ' Barracouta
follows,' but they sent him back to his ship hot foot.

' Get in all you can in an hour,' he said to his skipper ; ' then
we must be off.' And to the minute he broke off the work and
headed out to sea again.

He scanned the sea sharply for signs of the pursuit, but saw
nothing like her, so he laid his course straight for Cuba, and
pressed on.

As day after day passed and no sign of the Barracouta was
discoverable, he came to believe that he had shaken her off or
that she had given up the chase; and as he was bound to
economise fuel for the final risky run into the coast, he banked
his fires and hoisted his sails, which gave him a speed of about
eight knots, and so jogged contentedly along.

The Barracouta came down the Clyde at a good fourteen
knots, one knot worse than the Albatross. Kibblewhite felt
pretty certain the first stop the chase would make would be at
Queenstown, and he set off with the intention of getting there as
quickly as possible. Still, to make sure he was on the right
track, he stopped now and again at look-out stations to inquire
if the yacht had been sighted. He reached Queenstown just
eight hours after the Albatross steamed out, learned that she had
short coaled there, shot such a supply into his bunkers as he
could manage in an hour, and followed in the direction he learned
she had taken, being thus nine hours behind her.

The CLutha, with Mr. McKinnon on board, had no indication
what port the Barracouta would make for, and so had to depend
entirely on such information as was obtainable at the look-out
stations. She was a fairly fast boat, doing her fifteen knots in
the hour without undue pressure ; but the constant inquiries
necessary to keep on the right track handicapped her considerably.

ARMS AND THE WOMAN. 339

Between stations, however, they drove her hard, and she reached
Queenstown five hours after the Barracouta sailed. Her skipper
set her coaling at once, and meanwhile made his usual inquiries,
learned that the Barracouta had called, had coaled, and had left
hurriedly, steering west by south, and 'where in thunder they
can be going to beats me hollow,' said he, and followed on without
an instant's unnecessary delay.

The course the Barracouta was taking led to nowhere, he
told Mr. McKinnon, and might be just a blind, and they would
circle round and make for Southampton or London. The old
gentleman acknowledged that might be so, but had no sugges-
tions to offer, and bade him keep straight on. They hailed every
passing ship, and asked if they had sighted a schooner-rigged
steam-yacht with cream-coloured funnel, and how far she was
ahead, and they were much puzzled by the humorous character of
the replies they received, for each vessel had been subjected to
exactly the same queries by the Barracouta but a few hours before,
and the skippers in more than one case wound up by asking,
' How many more of you's coming ? '

On the fourth day out the Albatross took fright at sight of
smoke dead astern on the horizon, lit up her fires again, and
regardless of coal pressed on with all speed. Presently she sighted
smoke ahead, which rapidly developed into a West Indian cargo
steamer, and Keppel, with considerable foresight, made for her at
once. He said to himself, ' We're both wanting coal, or will be
before we're through. The one that gets it first will be the only
one that gets it,' and as soon as he was within hailing distance, he
lay to, jumped into his boat, and was pulled across to the row of
inquiring faces on the steamer.

' Captain,' he said, when greetings were over and he had dis-
covered by his speech that the other was a Scot, ' I've got Lord
Ullin's daughter aboard the yacht there, and Lord Ullin himself is
coming up astern. Can you spare us a few tons of coal — all you
can — at your own price ? '

The Captain grinned, and made a bargain in which sentiment
did not interfere with a very handsome profit. Keppel signalled
the yacht alongside, and the coal was shot rapidly aboard. Then,
with many thanks and hearty shake of the hand, and a cheer from
the tarry-breeks, Keppel got back into his ship and clapped on
full speed to make up for lost time.

An hour later the West Indiaman was hailed by the

22—2

340 ARMS AND THE WOMAN.

Barracouta, who asked for information respecting a schooner-
rigged yacht with cream-coloured funnel, and begged a supply of
coal on Government service. To which the captain replied that
he remembered passing such a yacht, and turned for information
as to an approximate date to the grinning Jacks alongside. One
suggested that it was last week, and another that it was ten days ago,
another with an air of extreme exactitude thought that it was last
Friday. ' Well, anyway,' said the captain, ' it's inside a week.'
Yes, they finally all agreed it might be inside a week. As for
coal, he had barely enough to carry him home and couldn't spare
half a shovel-full. About an hour later the West Indiaman was
greeted with identically the same requests by the Clutha, and
this time he met them with a hoarse guffaw.

' Haw,' said he, ' think I'm a travelling sign post and a
coaling station all in one ? Haven't set eyes on a ship since we
left Kingston, and haven't got any coal on board.'

And as the Clutha swung sulkily away and pressed on, with
the rakings of her bunkers blackening the sky and a determination
never to give in, the captain of the West Indiaman looked after
her and growled, ' Well, if you're short of coals you'll catch it
before morning.' For the barometer was falling rapidly, and the
western sky was full of storm and strife. It broke on them at
midnight, and before dawn the full fury of it was about them
— above, below, and all around them.

Keppel's skipper put the Albatross's nose right into it, and
steamed for dear life, and was slowly borne back.

Kibblewhite tried to do the same, but for lack of coal could
not make much of a fight of it, and the fight ended suddenly,
when, with a jerk and a shudder, the shaft of his propeller
snapped, the engines raced madly for a few seconds, and then the
Barracouta fell off into the trough of the sea, and the men set
their jaws tight and quietly prepared for the end. The great
white caps came roaring over them and into them, and it was only
a question of minutes with them, when, on top of a roller in front,
like a rearguard fighting strenuously as it falls back slowly with
its face to the enemy, they caught a glimpse of the gallant little
Albatross battling for dear life. The bluejackets raised a cheer.
Beaten themselves, it warmed their hearts to see another craft
making a brave fight. The Albatross caught sight of the
Barracouta, and Keppel, like a British gentleman, though in evil
enough case himself, set to work to do what he could. They

ARMS AND THE WOMAN. 341

were not quite in line with the disabled craft, but by skilful
manoeuvring the skipper managed so that the trend of their drift
was straight for her. It was impossible to launch a boat. They
tied ropes to every life-belt on board and hove them overboard,
then eased the engines slightly, and came down, stern on, straight
for the labouring schooner. She was wobbling under their feet
with a sickening tremor when the Albatross came down on them
with the life-belts streaming out from her like the filaments of a
jelly-fish. Then the Albatross's screw began to thrash round
faster and faster. She almost held her own and hung just ahead
of them, offering a bare chance of safety for the taking. Then
without further sign or warning the waterlogged schooner sank,
the Albatross eased her screw and was in among them, and
the bluejackets leaped for the life-buoys like sharks for baited
hooks.

It was gallantly done, and as the ropes were hauled slowly in
and the rescued men were dragged on board in ones and twos they
testified their thanks with deep and grateful oaths.

Little Sir John, when he was hove inboard by the neck of his
jacket, spat the salt out of his mouth, and, with the water still
running out of his sleeves, turned to Keppel, who was hanging on
to the mainmast, and gasped, ' Awfully obliged to you.'

' Pray don't mention it,' shouted Keppel. ' Couldn't see you
drown, you know.'

' Hel-lo ! ' he shouted again ; ' who's this ? ' For astern and
slightly to windward came the Clutha, actually making headway
against the hurricane.

The two men watched her breathlessly. So slim and frail a
thing she seemed in the riot of the storm.

' Grod ! ' said Kibblewhite, ' it's touch and go with her. If she
falls off half a point she's done for. Ach-h-h ! Gr-r-r-r ! She's
gone ! ' For that had happened which they had feared for her.
Either from a momentary default on the part of the steersman, or
from the sudden impact of a cross sea, the full blast of the gale
caught her starboard bow and she darted off sideways down the
side of a swelling green mountain and dived headlong into another,
and then lay rolling, helpless and waterlogged.

' Out with those belts again,' shouted Keppel, and repeating
their former tactics they drifted down to where they had last seen
the schooner. Half-a-dozen cork -jacketed figures were floating
about. They had anticipated the catastrophe and provided for it.

342 ARMS AND THE WOMAN.

One by one they grabbed the safety lines and were hauled aboard
the Albatross.

It was close quarters for them all, but, as the skipper of the
Clutha remarked, it was a fine sight, better than rolling about free
outside. Keppel did his best for his unexpected guests, and as
soon as the gale blew out, and they had time to think of anything
less pressing than life and death, he fed and clothed them to the
extent of his powers, and made them welcome.

The first meeting in the saloon of the Albatross had its points
of humour. Mr. McKinnon's wrath at the abduction of his
daughter had had opportunity of cooling, and besides he was in a
state of absolute mystification. He had been following the
Barracouta ; he found himself aboard the Albatross. He had ex-
pected to find Lieutenant Ogilvie ; he found instead Lieutenant
Kibblewhite and Mr. Kichard Keppel. He was eaten with
anxiety about his daughter, but he saw no signs of her. At last
he could wait no longer, and he asked abruptly :
' Where is my daughter, Mr. Keppel ? '

' I beg your pardon ? ' said Keppel, in great surprise. ' Miss
McKinnon ? '

' Yes ; where is she ? '

' My dear sir, I have not the remotest idea. Why do you ask me ? '
' Is she not on board this boat ? But it was on the Barra-
couta I expected to find her.'

'On the Barracouta ? ' said Kibblewhite. ' Why, good
heavens ! Mr. McKinnon, what do you mean ? I landed Miss
McKinnon and Ogilvie at Helensburgh before I started.'

'Before you started? Started for where, and where is the
Barracouta ? ' asked the bewildered old man.

4 The Barracouta went to the bottom about half an hour
before your boat,' said Kibblewhite.

' And my daughter ? Oh, you say she was not on board. I'm
afraid I'm getting a little bewildered.'

' Now, Mr. Keppel,' said Kibblewhite, ' let me ask a question
or two. Don't answer any you don't want to. Where are you
bound for ? '

' Cuba,' said Dick, ' with arms for my friend Sylvain, one of
the insurgent leaders.'

* I see. Then you're the Reindeer ? '

' Well, I was before the storm. I expect I'm the Albatross
again now. It was only a question of paste and paper. Do help

ARMS AND THE WOMAN. 343

yourself to another cigar, Lieutenant. Mr. McKinnon, take
some more whisky and pass the bottle.'

' Have you coal enough to make Cuba ? ' asked Kibblewhite.

' Well, this has taxed us a good, deal, but now we can take it
easy till the final run in. We may just about do it, but it'll be a
tight fit.'

Kibblewhite began to laugh. ' Nice situation for an officer in
Her Majesty's Service, running contraband for insurgents against
a friendly nation.'

' Ever been in Cuba ? ' asked Dick.

'No.'

' I have,' said Dick decisively. 'But, anyhow, you can't any of
you help yourselves. I didn't absolutely ask any of you to come
aboard.'

' I'm not so sure of that,' laughed Kibby. 'If those life-buoys
were not in the nature of an invitation, I never received one.
But, anyhow, Mr. Keppel, I'm very glad to be here under the
circumstances. We might all be in a very much worse place,
and, being here, if lean be of any service to you pray command me.'

The run was made without any further casualty, beyond the
fact that they had to burn all the cases in which the arms were
packed and every scrap of available woodwork on the yacht on the
last night.

They loaded up enough wood at Manzanillo to reach Kingston,
and there Mr. McKinnon was able to cable home the news that he
was still in the land of the living. He asked for news of his daughter,
but up to the time the Albatross sailed received no answer.

As Keppel was going straight back to the Clyde Mr. McKinnon
and Lieutenant Kibblewhite elected to go with him, and the
yacht crept up the loch to her moorings opposite Drumcleugh one
fine evening as quietly as though she had simply been for a spin
down the coast.

Among the letters awaiting Mr. McKinnon was one in his
daughter's handwriting. It contained her weddiog cards and a
fervent appeal for his forgiveness and the assurance that she was
very happy. It was dated a fortnight back. He put on his hat
and walked round the point to the telegraph office in the grocer's
shop, and wired to Janet Ogilvie, ' Send them home.'

No information has ever transpired as to how those arms
reached Cuba.

JOHN OXENHAM.

344

WHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'?1
BY W. B. YEATS.

I THINK it was a Young Ireland Society that set my mind running
on ' popular poetry.' We used to discuss everything that was
known to us about Ireland, and especially Irish literature and
Irish history. We had no Graelic, but paid great honour to the
Irish poets who wrote in English, and quoted them in our speeches.
I could have told you at that time the dates of the birth and death,
and quoted the chief poems, of men whose names you have not
heard, and perhaps of some whose names I have forgotten. I knew
in my heart that the most of them wrote badly, and yet such romance
clung about them, such a desire for Irish poetry was in all our
minds that I kept on saying, not only to others but to myself, that
most of them wrote well, or all but well. I had read Shelley and
Spenser and had tried to mix their styles together in a pastoral play
which I have not come to dislike much, and yet I do not think
Shelley or Spenser ever moved me as did these poets. I thought
one day — I can remember the very day when I thought it — ' If some-
body could make a style which would not be an English style and
yet would be musical and full of colour, many others would catch
fire from him, and we would have a really great school of ballad
poetry in Ireland. If these poets, who have never ceased to fill
the newspapers and the ballad-books with their verses, had a good
tradition they would write beautifully and move everybody as they
move me.' Then a little later on I thought, ' If they had some-
thing else to write about besides political opinions, if more of
them would write about the beliefs of the people like Allingham,
or about old legends like Ferguson, they would find it easier to
get a style.' Then, with a deliberateness that still surprises me,
for in my heart of hearts I have never been quite certain that
one should be more than an artist, that even patriotism is more
than an impure desire in an artist, I set to work to find a style
and things to write about that the ballad writers might be the
better. They are no better, I think, and my desire to make them
so was, it may be, one of the illusions Nature holds before one,
because she knows that the gifts she has to give are not worth

1 Copyright, 1902, by W. B. Yeats, in the United States of America.

WHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'? 345

troubling about. It is for her sake that we must stir ourselves,
but we would not trouble to get out of bed in the morning, or to
leave our chairs once we are in them, if she had not her conjuring
bag. She wanted a few verses from me — I hope she did at any
rate — and because it would not have seemed worth while taking so
much trouble to see my books lie on a few drawing-room tables,
she filled my head with thoughts of making a whole literature,
and plucked me out of the Dublin art schools where I should have
stayed drawing from the round, and sent me into a library to read
bad translations from the Irish, and at last down into Connaught
to sit by turf fires. I wanted to write ' popular poetry ' like those
Irish poets, for I believed that all good literatures were popular,
and even cherished the fancy that the Adelphi melodrama, which I
had never seen, might be good literature, and I hated what I called
the coteries. I thought that one must write without care, for that
was of the coteries, but with a gusty energy that would put all
straight if it came out of the right heart. I had a conviction,
which indeed I have still, that one's verses should hold, as in a
mirror, the colours of one's own climate and scenery in their right
proportion ; and, when I found my verses too full of the reds and
yellows Shelley gathered in Italy, I thought for two days of setting
things right, not as I should now by making my rhythms faint
and nervous and filling my images with a certain coldness, a cer-
tain wintry wildness, but by eating little and sleeping upon a
board. I felt indignant with Matthew Arnold because he com-
plained that somebody, who had translated Homer into a ballad
measure, had tried to write epic to the tune of ' Yankee Doodle.'
It seemed to me that it did not matter what tune one wrote to, so
long as that gusty energy came often enough and strongly enough.
And I delighted in Victor Hugo's book upon Shakespeare, because
he abused critics and coteries and thought that Shakespeare wrote
without care or premeditation and to please everybody. I would
indeed have had every illusion had I believed in that straightfor-
ward logic, as of newspaper articles, which so tickles the ears of
the shopkeepers ; but I always knew that the line of Nature is
crooked, that, though we dig the canal beds as straight as we can,
the rivers run hither and thither in their wildness.

From that day to this I have been busy among the verses and
stories that the people make for themselves, but I had been busy
a very little while before I knew that what we call popular poetry
never came from the people at all. Longfellow, and Campbell,

3<16 WHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'?

and Mrs. Hemans, and Macaulay in his Lays, and Scott in his
longer poems are the poets of the middle class, of people who have
unlearned the unwritten tradition which binds the unlettered, so
long as they are masters of themselves, to the beginning of time
and to the foundation of the world, and who have not learned the
written tradition which has been established upon the unwritten.
I became certain that Burns, whose greatness has been used to
justify the littleness of others, was in part a poet of the middle
class, because though the farmers he sprang from and lived among
had been able to create a little tradition of their own, less a tradi-
tion of ideas than of speech, they had been divided by religious
and political changes from the images and emotions which had once
carried their memories backward thousands of years. Despite his
expressive speech which sets him above all other popular poets,
he has the triviality of emotion, the poverty of ideas, the imper-
fect sense of beauty of a poetry whose most typical expression is
in Longfellow. Longfellow has his popularity, in the main, be-
cause he tells his story or his idea so that one needs nothing but
his verses to understand it. No words of his borrow their beauty
from them that used them before, and one can get all that there
is in story and idea without seeing them, as if moving, before a
half-faded curtain embroidered with kings and queens, their loves
and battles and their days out hunting, or else with holy letters and
images of so great antiquity that nobody can tell the god or goddess
they would commend to an unfading memory. Poetry that is not
popular poetry presupposes, indeed, more than it says, though we,
who cannot know what it is to be disinherited, only understand
how much more when we read it in its most typical expressions, in
the ' Epipsychidion ' of Shelley, or in Spenser's description of the
gardens of Adonis, or when we meet the misunderstandings of others.
Go down into the street and read to your baker or your candle-
stick-maker any poem which is not popular poetry. I have heard a
baker, who was clever enough with his oven, deny that Tennyson
could have known what he was writing when he wrote ' Warming
his five wits, the white owl in the belfry sits,' and once when I read
out Omar Khayyam to one of the best of candlestick-makers, he
said, ' What is the meaning of " we come like water and like wind
we go " ? ' Or go down into the street with some thought whose
bare meaning must be plain to everybody ; take with you Ben
Jonson's ' Beauty like sorrow dwelleth everywhere,' and find out
how utterly its enchantment depends on an association of beauty

WHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'? 347

with sorrow which written tradition has from the unwritten, which
had it in its turn from ancient religion ; or take with you these
lines in whose bare meaning also there is nothing to stumble over,
and find out what men lose who are* not in love with Helen.

Brightness falls from the air,
Queens have died young and fair,
Dust hath closed Helen's eye.

I pick my examples at random, for I am writing where I have
no books to turn the pages of, but one need not go east of the
sun or west of the moon in so simple a matter.

On the other hand, when a Walt Whitman writes in seeming
defiance of tradition, he needs tradition for his protection, for the
butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker grow merry
over him when they meet his work by chance. Nature, which
cannot endure emptiness, has made them gather conventions
which cannot disguise their low birth though they copy, as from
far off, the dress and manners of the well-bred and the well-born.
The gatherers mock all expression that is wholly unlike their
own, just as little boys in the street mock at strangely dressed
people and at old men who talk to themselves.

There is only one kind of good poetry, for the poetry of the
coteries, which presupposes the written tradition, does not differ
in kind from the true poetry of the people, which presupposes the
unwritten tradition. Both are alike strange and obscure, and
unreal to all who have not understanding, and both, instead of
that manifest logic, that clear rhetoric of the ' popular poetry,'
glimmer with thoughts and images whose ' ancestors were stout
and wise,' ' anigh to Paradise ' ' ere yet men knew the gift of
corn.' It may be that we know as little of their descent as men
knew of ' the man born to be king ' when they found him in that
cradle marked with the red lion crest, and yet we know somewhere
in the heart that they have been sung in temples, in ladies'
chambers, and our nerves quiver with a recognition they were
shaped to by a thousand emotions. If men did not remember or
half remember impossible things, and, it may be, if the worship of
sun and moon had not left faint reverence behind it, what Aran
fisher-girl would sing :

' It is late last night the dog was speaking of you ; the snipe
was speaking of you in her deep marsh. It is you are the lonely
bird throughout the woods ; and that you may be without a mate
until you find me.

348 WHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'?

' You promised me and you said a lie to me, that you would
be before me where the sheep are flocked. I gave a whistle and
three hundred cries to you ; and I found nothing there but a
bleating lamb.

' You promised me a thing that was hard for you, a ship of
gold under a silver mast ; twelve towns and a market in all of
them, and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

'You promised me a thing that is not possible; that you
would give me gloves of the skin of a fish ; that you would give
me shoes of the skin of a bird, and a suit of the dearest silk in
Ireland.

' My mother said to me not to be talking with you, to-day or
to-morrow or on Sunday. It was a bad time she took for telling
me that, it was shutting the door after the house was robbed. . . .

' You have taken the east from me, you have taken the west
from me, you have taken what is before me and what is behind
me ; you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me,
and my fear is great you have taken (rod from me.'

The Grael of the Scottish islands could not sing his beautiful
song over a bride had he not a memory of the belief that Christ
was the only man who measured six feet and not a little more
or less, and was perfectly shaped in all other ways, and if he
did not remember old symbolical observances :

I bathe thy palms

In showers of wine,

In the cleansing fire,

In the juice of raspberries,

In the milk of honey.

Thou art the joy of all joyous things,
Thou art the light of the beam of the sun,
Thou art the door of the chief of hospitality,
Thou art the surpassing pilot star,
Thou art the step of the deer of the hill,
Thou art the step of the horse of the plain,
Thou art the grace of the sun rising,
Thou art the loveliness of all lovely desires.

The lovely likeness of the Lord

Is in thy pure face,

The loveliest likeness that was upon earth.

I soon learned to cast away one other illusion of ' popular
poetry.' I learned from the people themselves, before I learned it
from any book, that they cannot separate the idea of an art or a

WHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'? 349

craft from the idea of a cult with ancient technicalities and
mysteries. They can hardly separate mere learning from witch-
craft, and are fond of words and verses that keep half their secret
to themselves. Indeed, it is certain that before the counting-
house had created a new class and a new art without breeding and
without ancestry, and set this art and this class between the hut
and the castle, and between the hut and the cloister, the art of
the people was as closely mingled with the art of the coteries as
was the speech of the people that delighted in rhythmical
animation, in idiom, in images, in words full of far-off suggestion,
with the unchanging speech of the poets.

Now I see a new generation in Ireland which discusses Irish
literature and history in ' Young Ireland Societies,' and societies
with newer names, and there are far more than when I was a boy
who would make verses for the people. They have the help, too,
of an awakening press, and this press sometimes urges them to
desire the direct logic, the clear rhetoric, of ' popular poetry.' It
sees that Ireland has no cultivated minority, and it does not see,
though it would cast out all English things, that its literary ideal
belongs more to England than to other countries. I have hope
that the new writers will not fall into illusion, for they write in
Irish, and for a people the counting-house has not made forgetful.
Among the seven or eight hundred thousand who have had Irish
from the cradle, there is, perhaps, nobody who has not enough of
the unwritten tradition to know good verses from bad ones, if he
have enough mother-wit. Among all that speak English in Australia,
in America, in Great Britain, are there many more than the ten
thousand the prophet saw, who have enough of the written
tradition education has set in room of the unwritten to know
good verses from bad ones, even though their mother-wit has
made them Ministers of the Crown or what you will ? Nor can
things be better till that ten thousand have gone hither and
thither to preach their faith that ' the imagination is the man
himself,' and that the world as imagination sees it is the durable
world, and have won men as did the disciples of Him who —

His seventy disciples sent
Against religion and government.

350

SOCIAL SOLECISMS.
BY LADY GROVE.

THERE appeared elsewhere an article by me on the subject of
mispronunciation and other peculiarities, intended to be mildly
diverting, but which roused a certain amount of antagonistic
criticism to which I certainly do not think it was entitled. If
everything in the article had been meant perfectly seriously I
admit that it might have given offence in certain quarters, but I
am happy to say that most of its readers saw its humorous side
without having had all the i's dotted and the t's crossed for them.
And indeed I do think that the very people who were offended
ought, on the contrary, to have been very grateful to me for
pointing out the microscopic difference between the ' Ins ' and the
' Outs,' and for exposing the slightness of the structure upon
which the extreme exclusiveness of a certain section of society
rests, and for throwing open the bridge thereto whereupon all who
read might run with the fullest confidence that they would not
trip up.

Nevertheless, my contention must distinctly be understood to
be that it is not the things people do and say that determine
to what ' sphere ' they belong, but that it is the people themselves
that build up and put their own unmistakeable mark upon what to
another ' sphere ' constitute solecisms. Given certain conditions,
an individual may do or say almost anything he pleases. The
only certainty is that there are things which under no circum-
stances would he take pleasure in doing. No proverb is more
irrefutably borne out by experience than the one that points
out how one man may steal a horse, and another not even be
allowed to look over the hedge.

It is also a fact that words, their pronunciation and use,
expressions, and even habits, transfer themselves from one grade
of society to another. What is perfectly correct in one genera-
tion becomes first old-fashioned, then affected, and finally either
obsolete or vulgar, according as to whether these discarded husks
of civilisation have been generally adopted by the ' lower orders '
or not. The pronunciation of the word Derby is an illustration
of this point : ' Darby ' has been comparatively recently adopted

SOCIAL SOLECISMS. 351

by the same grade of society as that which formerly pronounced
the word as the porters, cabmen, and others pronounce it now.

In the democratic ardour of my youth I did that which is now
a source of regret to me. I carefully modernised my pronuncia-
tion, and endeavoured to ' get away ' from what I considered the
unenlightened peculiarities of the generation above me. Alas ! I
can no longer say ' corfy ' naturally, so I resign myself to the less
distinguished and more general sound, except on the occasions
when, to my joy, I unconsciously revert to the pronunciation of
my early youth. A highly refined writer of fiction will, in depict-
ing his low-life scenes, make his barbarians say, ' I'm or/.' And
when one sees the word spelt like that as a sign of the coarseness
and ignorance of the character, the writer has betrayed his own
hideous, mincing mispronunciation of the word which the ruffian
has enunciated quite as it should be.

Mr. Kudyard Kipling is rather an offender in this respect. I
know a highly cultivated, ultra-refined person who always speaks
of a ' Grawd-mother,' not using the word in any ironical sense,
however, as indicating the only use that children as a rule can see
in Godmothers, but simply because she happens to pronounce
such words in the same way as Mr. Kipling's soldiers.

At the same time, there it is, and it is no use ignoring the
fact, and, without wishing to appear dictatorial or arrogant, I
must say it : there are certain things that must not be said. For
instance, if you have on your table no matter what specimen of
the genus hen, even should it be a very Methuselah amongst
them, and you know it, it must not be referred to as a ' fowl,' it
must always be spoken of as a ' chicken.' I cannot say why it is
so, but so it is. On the same principle, perhaps, that in any
well-conducted establishment the unmarried ladies of the house-
hold, if there happens to be a married one, are always called ' the
young ladies,' even should their ages be between sixty and
seventy. Anyhow, let no consideration for truth or honesty
persuade you to speak of your plat otherwise than as ' chicken.'

Some self-respecting pieces of furniture would, I am sure,
resent being called, and refuse to recognise themselves, under
certain names. It must, for instance, have been remarked by
every observant person the partiality that certain people have
for the word ' couch.' Does not ' couch ' raise up in the mind's
eye the horsehair atrocities of the lodging-house and the country
inn — in company with a ' chiffonnier,' a mysterious meuble I have

352 SOCIAL SOLECISMS.

never identified, but occasionally heard of — and seem utterly
inapplicable to one's own reposeful sofas ? Why, too, does the
word ' mirror ' sound so out of place, when the more cumbersome
double-barrelled ' looking-glass ' sounds quite appropriate ? An
' easy-chair ' is used by the same people who talk about a ' couch,'
and the room conjured up by anyone using the expression has
quite a different aspect from one containing ' arm-chairs.' Among
their household gods there will be knife-sharpeners ' for table use ; '
' rests ' for the carving knife and fork ; basket-mats under the
dishes, which will blossom out into d'oyleys underneath the cake
at tea, and everywhere when possible on smart occasions paper-
lace mats. Glass shades on every possible and impossible object,
coloured wine-glasses, ' jingles ' on the chimney-piece, plates hung
on the wall (an abomination), fans put to the same incongruous
use, basket cake-holders of course. Lamps with voluminous
shades, that are left in the room in the day-time, and in the
summer-time ' grate decorations.'

'Mantel-shelf for 'chimney-piece' is also quite a character-
istic insult to the noble and long-suffering ally of the hearth.
But it is possibly the word ' mantle ' which is disconcerting, a
word dear to the heart of the awe-inspiring ' saleswomen ' of
dignified presence, gracious manners, and wonderful figures, but
which one never dreams of using in talking of one's own garments
any more than one would talk of a ' wrap ' or an ' overcoat,' or of
' dress-clothes,' or, worse still, ' dress-suit ' for evening clothes.
Perhaps the word ' mantle ' is shunned on account of its sacred
reminiscences. Anyhow, we do know that they do not tolerate
such garments in heaven, and even Elijah had to drop his before
he was admitted.

Other words used in shops, and which one seldom hears out of
them, are purely technical, we suppose — ' hose,' for instance, and
' falls ' for veils.

Another good illustration of autre temps, autre moeurs, is
afforded in the matter of expletives. A dignified old friend of
mine of the old-fashioned type told me that he was walking one
day with the carefully brought-up daughter of a ducal household
when she dropped her umbrella. As she stooped quickly and
quietly to pick it up, a ' damn ' came as quickly and quietly to her
lips. Not with any anger or violence, but in the same manner
that an ' Oh dear ! ' would have come from her predecessors under
similar circumstances.

SOCIAL SOLECISMS. 353

Now I remember my first ' damn ' quite distinctly. I was
alone in the park of my girlhood's home, alone with Nature and
my dog ; I even forget what had annoyed me — I have often tried
to remember, in view of the vivid recollection I have of the sense
of awed emancipation which crept over me — my anger utterly
dispelled by that one vigorous exclamation. I looked up and
around, and I wondered if any other but myself had heard that
terrible word, then I whistled to the dog and walked soberly home.
Even to-day I confess that it sounds to me strangely ill-bred
when a man permits himself a ' damn ' in polite society. This
seems usurping the prerogatives of men with a vengeance — to
tolerate a ' swear- word ' in a woman and not in a man. But so
it is. Let them comfort themselves with the reflection that the
reason for this strange perversion lies in the inherent incon-
sequence of the female sex. When a man swears it is presumably
a serious matter ; when a woman swears it is often pour rire, as
are most of the other things she does, they will console themselves
— if consolation they need — by saying.

The decrees of fashion are very arbitrary. It is an unexplained
mystery why the courtesy title ' Honourable ' is not to be
mentioned in polite society, and why it should be excluded
from the visiting cards of the honourable possessors of such title.
A courageous youth once defied this decree and printed his
honourableship on his cards. It excited comment if nothing
more. But what is there from its intrinsic point of view that
should make this so grave a solecism ? Why should it be
the only title to be ignored in conversation? It is true, how-
ever, that of the peerage the dukes and duchesses are the only
ones whose exact rank it is permitted to mention in addressing
them. All other titles, from a baron's to a marquis's and their
ladies, have to be content with the generic prefix of Lord and
Lady.

Baron somehow always gives a foreign sound to any name, and
yet it is one of the earliest of our English honours. A loquacious
tradesman in the ' old furniture line ' in our neighbourhood always
spoke of all his customers by their correct rank. Thus he would
say ' I sold Baron S. a table just like the one I am offering to your
ladyship, only the other day ; and Viscount P. had a chair very
much after this pattern.' ' Baron S.' was frequently referred to
in future in the same way by others in consequence of this good
man's quaint example. In the same town I took a friend of mine

VOL XII. — NO. 69, N,S, 23

354 SOCIAL SOLECISMS.

to a toy-shop. After several purchases had been made, the lady
of the shop drew me aside and whispered, ' Am I right in sup-
posing the lady to be the Honourable ? ' On receiving my

answer in the affirmative, she exclaimed regretfully, ' I wish I'd 'a
known, I'd have put in a " My lady " occasionally to her too.' She
evidently deplored this tendency to ignore the least of the courtesy
titles.

But to put ' Hon.' on one's cards is not the only outrage that
can be committed on visiting cards. One card containing the
joint names of husband and wife is very shocking to one's
sense of decency. A lady I knew carried this reticence to an
extreme when she spent her time separating the works of male
and female authors on her bookshelves, but never tolerated their
proximity unless — then she was delighted — they happened to be
married. But in one of our neighbouring counties a worthy
baronet and his lady are in the habit of issuing invitations to their
garden parties in their joint names. Whether it is due to
modesty on the part of the lady who fears that, without the
assurance conveyed on the invitation cards that her lord will
also be at home on the day on which they are .invited, their
neighbours will not respond by their presence to the hospitable
call, or whether it is due to vanity on the part of the husband
who also, suffers from that delusion, I cannot say, but so the in-
vitation reaches and amuses us. That is, however, not nearly so
bad as a man alone having the impertinence to intimate that he
sits at home and receives the ladies to whom he has sent invita-
tions. Let me inform all those guilty of such a barbarism that
the proper way to solicit the presence of your friends if you are a
lone man is to request the honour of their company. I will say,
however, in excuse that men do not seem to know these things by
instinct. A woman brought up in a certain milieu knows the
' right thing ' to do quite instinctively. And as she rules the
social world — it is, so far, her only kingdom — that is quite as it
should be. It is, therefore, easier for a woman to lift a man than
for a man to give a social lift to a woman. Children, too, un-
consciously incorporate themselves more with the mother's family
than the father's. The relationships are more intimate on the
mother's side. And although a woman adapts herself much more
quickly to her surroundings, as the things that matter are inborn
and not acquired in woman, the man in the end is the more
pliant instrument, and unfortunately sinks to the level of the

SOCIAL SOLECISMS. 3fi5

woman as easily as with a more fortunate choice he would have
risen.

The same people who have their cards printed ' Mr. and Mrs.
So-and-so ' will also talk about ' paying calls ' without any idea
that they are not saying quite the right thing. They will also
inform you that they are ' going to the theatre ' instead of going
to ' the play ' ; say they have ' the toothache ' instead of ' a
toothache,' and will suggest the necessity of having the offending
tooth ' drawn,' when others would have theirs ' pulled out.' They
will talk about having caught ' the measles ' instead of measles
tout court.

There are expressions, however, that are very much used that
one deplores as being merely slovenly, but are becoming so
universal as to harden one into hearing them without wincing.
The bustle of the busy or the laziness of the idle is the cause
of abbreviations which one must accustom oneself to without, how-
ever, being reconciled to them. ' Lunch ' for luncheon is a very
common one, and is somehow much worse than ' 'bus.' But I
know people who cannot bring themselves to speak of the Eoyal
Academy as ' the Academy ' any more than they would talk about
' the Kow.'

If ' ain't I ? ' is objected to, surely ' aren't I ? ' is very much
worse, and which of us can always undertake to keep up to the
level of those who invariably say ' am I not ? ' or ' am not I ? '
Then, if bicycle must be shortened, I admit that I prefer the
American ' wheel ' to ' bike.' I have, too, often heard well-
educated people talk of a ' shut carriage ; ' but surely it is just as
easy and more correct to say a ' closed carriage.'

Not that severe correctness is not more trying sometimes than
the most slovenly and slangy expressions. It is very trying when
one is reading a really engrossing story that has been quite con-
vincing until some impossible expression jars upon one, and
awakens one to the fact that the writer is endeavouring to
deal with situations which he has never viewed except from the
outside, and of which he is attempting to portray an intimate
knowledge, which he obviously lacks. Thus, when the earl's
.son is made to call his father ' sir ' in all his moments of either
emotion or respect, it is impossible not to feel that the writer ' has
not passed that way.' For I never knew anyone who addressed
his father as ' sir,' and so why should a man be made to do so in
books ? It is equally unpleasant when people say ' uncle ' without

23—2

356 SOCIAL SOLECISMS.

any name, or ' aunt.' And what is more terrible than when
husbands call their wives 'mother,' or, worse still, oh, piteous
sound ! ' wife ' ! You might just as well say ' helpmeet ' or
' partner.' Now ' madam ' or ' my lady ' I don't object to at all ;
there is a certain stateliness about it altogether lacking in the
bald ' wife,' which must be a shocking reminder to have thrust
at one every minute. In fact, the repetition of any name, even
the most correct and the most legitimate, is a very tiresome habit
some people acquire, and it is certainly better to err on the other
extreme of never saying a name at all if it can possibly be
avoided. It always strikes me, too, as a little jarring when
people talk to one about ' your husband ' or ' your wife.' Was it
in Thackeray's ' Book of Snobs ' where Jones, having married
' Lady Dulcima Tomnoddy,' is greeted by Smith after the
marriage with the hearty inquiry, ' Well, Jones, and how's your
wife ? ' returns the cold response, ' Do you refer to Lady
Dulcima ? ' and is scored off, as the raconteur thinks, by the reply,
' Oh, I thought she was your wife ? ' But although Jones showed
questionable taste in his method of snubbing Smith, I can quite
understand Jones's feeling of annoyance. If a person has got a
name, it is just as well to use it when inquiring after him, and it
savours of the cottage, condescension, and the Lady Bountiful
when you insist upon the relationship of and to the person you
are addressing.

One learns many strange uses and misuses of things at
country inns, but let us hope that the following experience
related by a friend of mine as having happened to himself is a
rare one. He had gone to bed in an Irish inn, bidding the land-
lady to have him called at eight. At six, however, next morning,
she knocked at his door. ' Ye've to git up,' she said. ' What
o'clock is it ? ' ' Six, surr.' ' Go away, I am not going to get up
till eight.' At seven she reappeared. ' Indade and ye must git
up now, it's seven.' Finding him unmoved at her next return,
she said, ' Grit up, there's a sweet gintleman ; there's two com-
mercial gintlemen waiting for their breakfast, and I can't lay the
cloth till I have yer honour's top sheet.'

County balls, too, yield many and wonderful experiences.
And while it is permitted to talk about what is ' bad form,' let us
never indulge in the opinion that anybody or anything is ' good
form.' Likewise, a person may be dubbed second rate, third,
fourth, or even fifth, if the scale of condemnation is very heavily

SOCIAL SOLECISMS. 357

weighted ; but never in the same sense would anyone ' who knew '
dream of calling a person 'first rate,' which means something
quite different, and would be used only as referring to their
attainments and not to their qualities. At a county ball one can
hear the lady on guard referred to as ' my chapertme ' instead of
' chaperon.' You will see the dear debutantes holding up their
skirts with a small ribbon loop attached to the end of the
train, and, although I am told that this gruesome sight may be
now seen at balls in ' London Society,' I have up to now been
spared. I shall be told next that fans tied round the waist with
loops of ribbon are de rigueur ; that no one who respects him-
self fails to ' reverse ' in valsing, or ' waltzing,' as such offenders
would call it, which, however, is a better way of pronouncing it
than ' volsing,' which savours of the shopwoman's 'moddam.' We
shall be assured that to spread the right hand with fingers well
extended, in the middle of the lady's back, is the only correct
way to hold your partner, and that if the man sees her trying to
do something herself he should come forward and say, ' Can I
assist you ? '

We shall be asked to talk about ' going to Court,' or a ' Court
ball,' instead of the familiar ' Drawing-room,' and : Queen's ball.'
But I think that even in these demoralised days we may yet be
spared all these shocking sights and sounds where we have no
reason to expect them.

A somewhat annoying habit peculiar to one's maids consists
in calling the name of the country houses one has been staying
in by their post towns. In some cases they happen to be
identical ; then well and good. But I suffered when a child
from this peculiarity to the extent of being lost out for a walk
when quite small with a French maid, who had taken a wrong
turning, and thenceforward persistently asked for the post town
of the place we were staying at, which happened to be some
twelve miles off, imagining it to be the name of the house, and
thus getting farther and farther away until we were fortunately
rescued by a passing waggon.

And, after all, ignorance is the root of all evil, even in such
weighty matters as have been dealt with in this paper. No plant
flourishes without cultivation except where it is indigenous to the
soil, but care and cultivation will produce specimens which it will
need all the inherent advantages of time and place to rival even,
let alone excel.

358

REMINISCENCES OF THE PUNJAUB CAMPAIGN.
BY MAJOB-GENEEAL T. MAUNSELL, C.B.

THE ranks of those soldiers who fought in the Sikh War of
1848-49 are thinning fast, and there are but few now who can
speak of the events of that memorable campaign from personal
knowledge. Perhaps it is for this reason that I have been asked
to recall my own share in those stirring times, and after a lapse
of fifty-three years to jot down what I can remember of a famous
war, waged when conditions of warfare differed almost more com-
pletely from now than they then did from the days of the Peninsular
battles.

In the year 1848 my regiment, the 32nd, which I had joined
as ensign four years previously, was ordered with three other
infantry regiments to India, to reinforce the troops there
after the battles of Moodkee, Ferozesha, Aliwal and Sobraon.
The Sutlej campaign was still in progress when we left
England, and we fervently hoped that it might yet continue
to give us a chance of some fighting on our arrival. However,
the voyage to India in those days, round the Cape, was of a good
four months' duration, and though, to relieve the tedium and by
way of exercise, the men were meantime initiated into the
mysteries of seamanship, so that by the time we reached Calcutta
we were almost as good sailors as soldiers, yet this fact was small
compensation to young officers eager for the fray when we found
on arrival that hostilities were at an end and peace proclaimed.

But the peace was not to be of long duration. Our destination
was Meerut, where we marched from Chinsura, and as there were
no railways in India in those times it took us no less than three
long months to accomplish this journey, which now can be made
in three days. At Meerut we stayed about a year, and at the end
of that time rumours began reaching us of unsettled feeling
among the natives of the Punjaub, and all things pointed to a
renewal of disturbances. Nor had we long to wait. In April 1848
came the tidings of the murder of Mr. Vans Agnew and Lieutenant
Anderson at Mooltan, and the rising of the Sikhs under the
treacherous Rajah Moolraj. It was therefore determined to send

REMINISCENCES OF THE PUNJAUB CAMPAIGN. 359

a British force to Mooltan to restore order and bring the Kajah to
terms, and my regiment was ordered to form part of it.

To my vast disappointment I was first ordered, as one of the
senior subalterns, to take charge of the depot to be left at
Ferozepore, and had I done this I should have had the extreme
mortification of seeing my regiment march off without me.
Happily for me, however, there was another subaltern needed to
take charge of the regimental baggage, which was to be con-
veyed along the right bank of the Sutlej to a place near Mooltan
where it would meet the regiment, who were to be sent down the
river by boats. I was senior of the two subalterns ordered for
these commands, and as such I begged my colonel to allow me
to have my choice between them. To this he fortunately agreed,
and needless to say I instantly chose the charge of the baggage,
and was thus enabled to go on active duty with the regiment
instead of being left behind.

Accordingly I took command of the baggage, and with a troop
of cavalry and a native officer under me had it conveyed across
the river and to the appointed place, where we arrived a day
before the regiment. It was in the midst of the hot weather, and
the marches were long and trying, so that many camels died on
the way. But more hot marches were before us. On the arrival
of the regiment I handed over the command and joined my com-
pany, and the next day we moved off to Mooltan, distant about
four days' journey. The heat was terrific, so much so that no
fewer than 200 men went down with heat-apoplexy. At the end
of the day's march I would go round and find the hospital tents
crowded with stricken men, and others lying outside, for there
was not room for them all. A good many died, including one
officer, and we were not sorry to find ourselves at our destination
before Mooltan.

Our besieging force was under command of General Whish,
and consisted of two brigades of infantry, each formed of one
European and two native regiments. Edwards's force of irregular .
troops was with us, and there were also cavalry and horse and field
batteries of artillery. Part of Edwards's troops were a Sikh force
under Shere Singh, ostensibly loyal, but in reality disaffected to
the core, as we had reason to know later on. A few days after
our arrival a parade of the division was ordered, to read a
proclamation stating that if the fort and garrison were not
immediately surrendered by the Eajah the siege of the town

360 REMINISCENCES OF THE PUNJAUB CAMPAIGN.

would at once commence. A square of the troops was formed on
a spot which was plainly visible from the fort, and a special
messenger was sent to the Kajah to inform him of what was to
take place. The proclamation was duly read, but the reading
was scarcely finished when an enormous shell was fired from the
fort and dropped in the centre of the square. There was no
mistaking the meaning of this missive, which was clearly
intended both as a reply and a defiance. The preparations for
the siege of Mooltan therefore immediately commenced.

It was shortly after this that General Whish took out his first
reconnoitring party to examine the other side of the fort and
city. It consisted of two companies of infantry, a troop of
cavalry, and horse artillery. I did not belong to either of the
companies, as it happened, but another officer and myself accom-
panied the party as spectators merely, and to see what was to be
seen. Everything went quietly tp begin with ; our skirmishers
met with no enemy, and we reached the other side of the fort and
city without molestation. Arrived here the General and staff
climbed to the top of a minaret of a temple called the Eedgah to
reconnoitre. This temple, as it happened, was the scene of the
murder of Mr. Agnew and Lieutenant Anderson, and while the
General was making his sketch above, my friend and I entered
the building to look at the bullet marks which were still to be
seen on the walls. I well remember that as we entered an owl,
scared from its hiding-place, began to fly round and round the
circular dome above us, till at length it grew quite giddy and fell
to the ground. I was just stooping to pick it up when suddenly
we heard the guns of the fort open fire, and immediately a shot
came right through the temple, passed just over my head, and
buried itself in the floor at the foot of the opposite wall. The
enemy were aiming, of course, at the General on the minaret; but
by this time he had luckily finished his sketch, and ordered the
party to retire ; and though the enemy's guns continued to fire
upon us during the retirement, so that several of us had some
narrow escapes, we reached the camp without casualty. This was
the first time in my career that I had found myself under fire,
and for many years I preserved the skin of the owl I had picked
up in the temple as a memento of the occasion.

The work of commencing the siege and opening the trenches
now began in earnest, and just about this time occurred an
incident which may be worth relating. A strong position, con-

REMINISCENCES OF THE PUNJAUB CAMPAIGN. 361

sisting of a small village strengthened by trenches, was on our
right front, and was held by us with a picket, increased at night-
fall and relieved at midnight. One night it came to my turn to
be on duty there at sunset with my company, the rest of our
party consisting of another company of my regiment, two guns,
and the wing of a native infantry regiment. Our force was some-
what stronger than usual, for a report had got about that the
position was to be attacked that night, and we were all cautioned
to be on the alert. The trench on the left flank of the village,
where it was considered the attack was most likely to be made,
was strongly occupied. My own company was on the right of the
trench, the other company on the left, while the native infantry
was posted between us, in the centre, as being the strongest
point ; the men moreover being four deep to give them
confidence.

For some hours all went quietly. The night was very dark,
and the time was approaching when we should be relieved when
the silence was suddenly broken by rifle shots on the left. I was
with my company on the right, and anxious to learn what the
alarm was about, I hurried across in the rear of the trenches to
where the firing proceeded from. I had scarcely gone half-a-
dozen paces, however, when I was suddenly overwhelmed and
knocked off my feet by a body of men rushing furiously against
me in a mad charge to the rear. To my astonishment I found
they were our own native troops, who had been seized with sudden
panic, had sprung to their feet, fired wildly without aim into the
air, and then doubled backwards with their arms at the trail and
their bayonets fixed, in several cases injuring each other in their
terror-stricken retreat. As soon as I could struggle to my feet
I turned to the trench, expecting after all this to see the enemy
pouring over it in great force ; but there was no enemy or anyone
else in the trench, and, though I peered out into the night as far
as I could see, everything was quiet and still. I shouted to my
company to keep steady, which they certainly did, and then some
guns in the fort commenced firing and their shots came over and
into the village. Needless to say this night's incident sufficiently
impressed me with the mischief which this sort of panic may
cause, and with the difference between steady and unsteady
troops.

The siege operations, trenches and approaches were pushed
on apace, and a few small skirmishes took place, followed by a

362 REMINISCENCES OF THE PUNJAUB CAMPAIGN.

night attack, which, however, could scarcely be considered a
success ; while there were a good many casualties in the darkness.
In an attack of this kind the enemy, knowing their ground, may
generally be considered to have the advantage, and it was decided
to repeat the same attack by daylight in the hope of better
success. Two days later, the strength of the troops sent into the
trenches being increased, it was whispered that something was
going to be done. There were about six companies of my regi-
ment, including my own, present, and at about nine o'clock in the
morning we were all moved into position and deployed into the
lines required. As soon as the enemy saw the movements taking
place they immediately opened fire, and we were ordered to lie
down until all was ready for the advance. The colonel of my
regiment had the command, and as soon as possible he gave the
order for the advance ; but its commencement was marked by a
sad event.

Our colonel, as it happened, was in front of my company when
the advance first began, and with him was the little bugler. We
were at the moment under heavy fire, and the colonel, seeing the
boy turn pale, said, ' Don't be frightened, my lad ; this is soldiers'
music ! ' Almost immediately after he was himself shot dead, as
also his aide-de-camp, who was quartermaster of the regiment,
and had begged the colonel to allow him to act in that capacity.
Both were brave men and their loss was deeply felt. But to
return to the advance.

After we had proceeded a short distance we came to the deep
dry bed of a nullah running along our front. It was a difficult
place to cross, and we had, moreover, to drive back the enemy, who
were holding it in numbers. We were consequently ordered to
' Charge ! ' I was in front of my company, and therefore the first
to jump down into the nullah ; but so close were my men upon
me that, even as I jumped, one of them in his eagerness sprung
down on my left side, carrying clean away one of my pistols, as
also the scabbard, and leaving me only the belt round my waist
and the other pistol. In the excitement of the moment, however,
I was unaware of this, nor did I discover the loss till some time
after. We drove the enemy from the nullah, and also from the
buildings and position we were required to take, and in spite of
heavy losses our attack was very successful. I do not think that
in any of my later experiences, Alma and Inkerman included, I
have ever been under a heavier fire than on this occasion. That

REMINISCENCES OF THE PUNJAUB CAMPAIGN. 363

I had had some narrow escapes was fully evident when I had time
to examine my clothes and accoutrements. Besides my scabbard
and pistol I had also lost my sword-knot, which had clearly been cut
off by a bullet. But my narrowest escape of all was from another
bullet which went through my left sleeve above the elbow, inside,
grazing the arm, for an inch one way and the missile would have
broken the bone, or an inch the other way entered the heart.

Perhaps the most difficult work which fell to our lot in this
attack was the capture of a large building where the enemy were
assembled in great strength. They had removed the flight of
steps which led up to the entrance, which was some distance from
the ground, so that even if the place had been undefended we
should have found it no easy task to get in. As it was it proved
a hard nut to crack and cost us a good many lives. Arrived
inside a lucky bullet from one of my men just saved me from
what would have been an awkward personal encounter. In a
corner of a yard belonging to this building we came upon a
ghastly pile of some hundred or more of the dead bodies of the
enemy, which had for some reason been collected and thrown
together here. After the position had been taken we made arrange-
ments to be able to hold it in case of an attempt at re-capture
by the enemy, and while so engaged I remember that an officer
of another regiment came to me, asking if I could identify the
body of an English field-officer lying dead some short distance off.
I was shocked to find it was our own colonel, with a bullet wound
in his breast and one of his hands cut completely off. Other of
our officers had been terribly wounded. One captain of my regi-
ment had a sword-cut through his cap and nearly into his brain,
and another cutting off the side of his face and laying it upon his
shoulder. Poor man ! he was very short-sighted, and unable to
make any attempt to defend himself, and, I fancy, knew nothing
of fencing or singlestick. In this somewhat ghastly connection I
may mention a curious example of the stiffening in the same posi-
tion that sometimes follows instantaneous death which came under
my notice that day. We were in line on a ridge, holding a posi-
tion we had just taken, and I was aware that the man next me
had been hit by a bullet. I turned to see where he had been
wounded, and saw blood trickling from behind his right ear. He
had made no sound or movement to show he was struck ; neverthe-
less he was dead, shot through the brain, and had stiffened
instantaneously in the attitude in which he died, kneeling on one

3G4 REMINISCENCES OF THE PUNJAUB CAMPAIGN

knee. I saw many instances of the same thing when I went over
the field of Inkerman the day after the battle — soldiers struck
dead and stiffened in the attitude of loading, and so forth.

Our position once gained, we had to hold it. We spent the
rest of the day there, and at night were posted on the banks of the
nullah. There was every likelihood of an attack on the part of
the enemy, and such sleep as we could snatch after our hard day's
fight was with bayonets fixed, and the officers with their drawn
swords in their hands. Nevertheless, with the exception of a false
alarm, the night passed quietly. After this the trench-making
and advance were successfully carried on for some time, and we
were drawing close upon the town, preparatory to making breaches,
when, one day, Shere Singh and his 5,000 men (natives) suddenly
passed over to the enemy. This was a terrible blow to our small
force, already weakened by our many casualties, and as with our
remaining numbers it was considered impossible to remain where
we were and keep our communications open, our General decided
to withdraw us to a spot some four or five miles distant, and there
to wait for reinforcements. Needless to say it was with much
reluctance that we saw ourselves obliged to relinquish the positions
we had gained — and after such hard fighting too. But there was
small choice left us, and so we accordingly retired to our new
position, where we remained quietly for some two or three weeks.

At the end of that time came reports that Moolraj, who had
been reinforced and was grown aggressive, was about to turn the
tables on us by coming out to besiege his former besieging party ;
and shortly afterwards, indeed, he came, and took up a position a
short distance from our front. We were obliged to send out
stronger pickets both night and day, and strengthen our position
in front and flanks ; but presently the enemy's guns became so
annoying, and the picket duties so heavy and hard upon our small
force, that we determined on an attack to try and dislodge them.
Our force was accordingly paraded as strong as possible, leaving
only sufficient to hold the camp, and we were marched off to the
right, the infantry, in open order of companies, making a long
detour round the left flank and towards the rear of the enemy,
who meanwhile fired round shot at us, but without doing much
mischief. We marched in order of battle, and as soon as we were
in position to turn their flank the infantry was wheeled into line
and advanced. The enemy were taken by surprise, got into con-
fusion, made little resistance, and retired, while we captured seven

REMINISCENCES OF THE PUNJAUB CAMPAIGN. 365

of their guns. It was a brilliant action and a great success, for the
enemy troubled us no more.

In due course our much-desired reinforcements arrived from
Bombay, and we immediately advanced to Mooltan and began
operations for the second siege. The city was closely pressed and
the suburbs captured, though not without loss. Breaching
batteries were next constructed and armed. The firing from these
was incessant, and many sleepless nights did I spend with my
company, guarding the guns, which were firing salvoes as fast as
possible all the time. As long as the sentries were on the alert
the rest of the guard were permitted to drop off to sleep (if they
could find it possible to do so under the circumstances), but each
man slept with bayonet fixed and ready in his hand.

As soon as the breaches were reported practicable the grand
assault, for which we were so anxiously waiting, was ordered. It
proved successful, and my regiment, after the breach was taken,
were formed up inside and instructed to take possession of a
certain portion of the town. Opposition was of course expected,
as the enemy had only been driven from the breach, and would
evidently not yield possession of the town without stubborn resist-
ance. We were therefore marched off four deep, with bayonets
fixed, and arms, of course, loaded — the streets, as in other Indian
cities, being very narrow and not admitting of our marching with
a broader front.

We proceeded down a street parallel with the city wall, my
company leading. There was no opposition for two or three
hundred yards, when suddenly the column halted and the fours
began closing up. As lieutenant of the company I was marching
on the right flank of the rear section of fours, and I immediately
moved up to the front to see what was the matter. I found that
we were confronted by a strong body of the enemy, and the
colonel was ordering the captain of the company to charge ; but
some momentary panic seemed to have come over the men, and
though every exertion was made by the captain they did not
move.

It occurred to me at this juncture that wherever a British
soldier was led he would follow, and seeing the state of things,
and acting on the impulse of the moment, I rushed forward, but
halted at once, as a crowd of Sikh soldiers advancing at the charge
with their heads bare and their tulwars drawn and held aloft
were close upon me. It was an awkward situation in truth, and

366 REMINISCENCES OF THE PUNJAUB CAMPAIGN.

it behoved me to be wary if I wished to escape from it alive.
Being to the left of the street my left was guarded ; but my front
and right side were open to attack, and two of my enemy imme-
diately bore down on me together. One was a little in front of
the other, and as he appeared the more forward and dangerous,
I was obliged to pay my most particular attention to him. My
sword was longer than his, and in order to keep him from closing
in before I was ready for him I placed myself in position to meet
his attack, feinted with my sword, and succeeded in avoiding his
guards, while I cut him smartly with the point of my sword twice
on his left temple. This I did to judge distance and to prevent
his coming nearer till it suited me. He was, however, deter-
mined to get at me, for he went off his guard and prepared to
strike me with his tulwar. This gave me my opportunity, and
before he could strike I stepped in and cut him with my full
force on his bare head, and by so doing broke the blade of my
sword.

He fell on his side and right knee, but, partly recovering, still
flourished his tulwar backwards and forwards, and as I was now
about to be attacked by my second adversary, and had no weapon
left with which to defend myself, I perceived that my only
chance was to possess myself of this tulwar. Accordingly I
struck the man again on the head with the remaining portion of
my sword, when he at once dropped his tulwar, which I instantly
picked up. Then I turned on my other foe ; but he was lying on
his back, close to my right foot, quite dead, with a bullet wound
in his breast. One of my men, seeing the predicament I was in,
had evidently fired and shot him just in time to save my life.
I confess I was thankful enough to find him dead, as I could have
made but a poor hand with my tulwar against a Sikh who under-
stood the weapon perfectly. I understood fencing and single-
stick thoroughly, having been taught by the best masters since
I was a boy, but the tulwar is used in quite a different manner.1
The tulwar and the fragment of my own broken sword are in my
possession to this day, and I preserve them as mementos of
certainly the ' tightest corner ' that I was ever in.

The remainder of the enemy then retired, and we took posses-
sion of the town without further opposition. I was not to escape

1 I may perhaps mention that for my proceedings my Colonel — Colonel
Markham, afterwards General Sir Frederick Markham, K.C.B. — highly compli-
mented me in presence of the officers of my regiment.

REMINISCENCES OF THE PUNJAUB CAMPAIGN. 367

from the siege of Mooltan, however, wholly unscathed and without
one other little souvenir with which at the time I could well
have dispensed.

Although the town was ours the fort was still held by the
enemy, and remained to be captured. Our attack was accordingly
directed against it, and a breach shortly made in its walls. The
day before the intended storming I was on duty at the Dowlet
Grate — one of our most advanced positions. A messenger from
Moolraj had just come in under a flag of truce, and after he had
been blindfolded and sent off under escort to the General the
firing, which had been temporarily suspended, was recommenced.
Shortly after a shell burst just over me, and a splinter struck me
on the left shoulder with great force, striking me down insensible.
Luckily for me it hit me with its rounded side, and it fell upon
the shoulder-cord of the shell-jacket I was wearing at the time.
But for these two circumstances I should certainly not have
survived to tell the tale. I was speaking to an officer at the
moment I was hit, and he had me picked up and put into a
doolie. He also put the piece of shell I was wounded with into
the doolie with me, for he thought I might like to have it ; and
I must say when I was able to look at it I was astonished by its
size. It weighed seven pounds. I was taken up to my tent, and
lay like a log there for about a fortnight — black all over and
paralysed, as it were, not able to feed myself, and in the greatest
pain. The doctor thought my recovery almost a miracle. The
very day I was wounded the fort surrendered, so I cannot say I
lost any of the fighting ; but I was not able to see the inside of
the fort, as I should have liked to do.

Our presence was now much required by Lord (rough, whose
army had nearly been defeated at the battle of Chillian wallah,
and who was waiting till the siege of Mooltan was over and we
could join him, to engage the enemy, who were in great strength
before him. Accordingly, in about three weeks' time we were
ordered to march. It was with reluctance that the doctor gave
me leave to go, and as it was I had to be carried the whole three
weeks' march in a doolie, suffering a great deal of pain from the
motion. However, on joining Lord (rough's army I came off the
sick report, and the very next day the battle of Groojerat was
fought.

It was a very brilliant, pretty action, nor did we suffer much
loss. Just in front of our regiment, I remember, the enemy, who

368 REMINISCENCES OF THE PUNJAUB CAMPAIGN.

had been in line, fancying, I suppose, that cavalry were coming
upon them, formed a square. We could have broken them up
with our fire, but the General thought that artillery would do
more damage ; so guns were ordered to pass through our regiment
to fire canister or grape into them, and certainly no troops could
have dispersed much quicker than they did. There was a general
retreat, and our infantry followed for some miles ; but the cavalry
continued the pursuit until, some days after, the enemy sur-
rendered and laid down their arms. Thus ended the campaign
by which the Punjaub was annexed.

369

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK.

XIV.

THOSE who have followed the short and simple annals of Stuccovia
will perhaps remember the dexterous manoeuvres by which my
friend Barrington-Bounderley contrived to make himself M.P. for
our borough, and the assiduous pains which he and his energetic
wife took to retain the seat. At his original election he was opposed
by a Social Democrat, who was afterwards convicted of cheating
the Metropolitan Kailway Company out of a threepenny fare ; but
this crystal-souled politician polled a mere handful of votes — for
Stuccovian politics are eminently genteel — and since that contest
Bounderley has been returned unopposed. Perhaps this absence
of opposition has lulled our member into a false security, and has
relaxed the fibre of his interest in local affairs. Certainly he is less
often seen in the chair at smoking concerts, and when Bumpstead
asked him to kick off at the first football-match of the season
against the Benevolent Cabdrivers' Orphanage, he declined with an
abruptness which caused Bumpstead to ejaculate, ' All right, old
chap, keep your hair on.'

Mrs. Barrington-Bounderley has given up her creche, and
during 1901 attended only two committee-meetings of the local
Association for Reforming Workhouse Bonnets.

There is a rumour in the district that some Companies with
which our member is or has been connected have not been very
successful. Mrs. Bounder! ey's victoria seems to have gone into
dock ; and though Mrs. Soulsby received the kindest imaginable
letter in reply to her reminder about the parochial Christmas Tree,
it enclosed a postal order for ten shillings instead of, as on former
occasions, a cheque for two guineas.

Now it is not to be supposed that in a district like ours such
changes can pass without unfavourable comment. Lady Farring-
ford says, ' I always told you that the man was an impostor. No
living creature ever knew where he came from, and for my own
part I never believed in his wife's money. I'm convinced that
they've been living beyond their means for years, and before long
we shall see a crash.' The dear old lady's bitterness is partly due
to the fact that she lately went to call on Mrs. Bounderley, and

VOL. XII. — NO. 69, N.S. 24

370 A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK.

found a tea-party raging to which she had not been invited. ' Not
that I wanted to go to her shabby party, my dear,' she said to
Selina. ' But I have no notion of people giving themselves such
airs, and I was determined to let her know that I had found her
out. So the next time I met her at Mrs. Soulsby's I said, " I
came to call on you the other day, dear, but I saw by the look of
the women who were going in that you had got a Mothers' Meet-
ing or something of that kind going on. So, of course, I came
away." '

To be sure, Lady Farringford is incurably worldly, and would
be by nature disposed to renounce the friendship of people whom
she judged to be socially on the down grade. But I was surprised
to hear Soulsby, who has always been severe on Mammon-
worship and has habitually referred to money as ' dross,' insinuat-
ing mild depreciation of his friend and former churchwarden.
' I must confess that I am disappointed in Bounderley. I fear he
has missed his predestined perfection. His ideals seem to have
lowered since he has been in Parliament. I feel there was an
inconsistency in refusing to subscribe for the enlargement of the
vestry, and yet taking twenty tickets for the Licensed Victual-
lers' Fancy Dress Ball. I trust I am not censorious, but these
things jar.'

When voices of depreciation are in the air it were strange
if Selina did not join the chorus. ' As for people's money-
matters,' she exclaims, with a fine elevation of tone, 'I know
nothing, and care less. But I must say I always thought your
friend Mr. Bounderley one of the very vulgarest men I ever knew.
He puts his elbows on to the table, and roars as if one was deaf,
and is so odiously familiar. I should not be the least surprised
to hear that he had cheated everyone. As to his wife, she is not
a bad little creature, and I am sincerely sorry for her — though
certainly she once tried to patronise me, on the strength of her
husband being in Parliament, which was too absurd. No, Robert,
it's no good saying they used to be my greatest friends. It was
merely political. It's all very well for you to laugh at politics ;
but there is such a thing as principle. Please remember
that, though I am your wife, I am still a Topham-Sawyer, and
that Papa sat for Loamshire for thirty years. As long as Mr.
Bounderley is our Member I shall do my best to help him ;
but I confess I think it's high time we had a change, and if only
you had played your cards properly you might have succeeded

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK. 371

him. But it's so exactly like you — always throwing away every
chance you ever had.'

In the midst of these revilings it is a relief to hear Bertha
say that Mrs. Bounderley is a very nice little woman, and has
always been very kind to her ; while Bumpstead, loyally follow-
ing suit, protests that though old B.-B. cut up a bit rough about
the kick-off, still he's a good old sport at bottom, and his cigars
take a lot of beating.

This fidelity of youth to its early benefactors is always a
pretty sight ; but I cannot conceal from myself that Bertha and
Bumpstead are in a minority. Beyond doubt, Bounderley's
local popularity is waning. The ' trend ' is pointing in another
direction. It will be remembered that, just about the time
when I began these jottings, an opulent couple called Mr. and
Mrs. Cashington settled in Stuccovia. They bought a big corner
house in Stucco Gardens, enlarged the stables, and built a
billiard-room. They entertain hospitably and subscribe liberally.
Their cook is above praise and their wine above suspicion.

Bounderley's extremity is Cashington's opportunity. Local
sentiment is ripening for a change, and circumstances seem to
indicate that the Hour and the Man have arrived.

Liberalism is a plant of slow growth in a Stuccovian bosom,
and I am the sole representative in our district of the cause for
which Hampden died on the field and Sidney on the scaffold.
I am a Whig pur sang. My forefathers helped Henry VIII. to
rob the Church, and Edward VI. to despoil the grammar-schools.
They contrived to keep their possessions under Mary, and increased
them under Elizabeth. They obtained their baronetcy from
James L, deserted Charles I. at the psychological moment, lay low
under the Commonwealth, hastened to congratulate Charles II. on
his return to Whitehall, plotted against James II., held office
under William III., early discerned that the Stuarts had no
chance of a second Restoration, became staunch supporters of the
Hanoverian Succession, and, by judicious alliances with Levesons,
and Howards, and Russells, obtained a place in that ' Sacred circle
of the Great Grandmotherhood ' which acquired the title of the
Whig party, and did so uncommonly well for itself between 1830
and 1885.

Everyone who bears my name belongs to Brooks's and reads
the ' Edinburgh.' The head of my family, though of course he
deserted the Liberal party at the crisis of 1886, still describes

24—2

372 A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK.

himself as 'a Whig of 1688.' I was trained to believe in the
' glorious and immortal memory of Mr. Fox,' and at home on
January 30 we used to drink ' The Man in the Mask.' Selina
(who trudges through frost and snow to the Royal Martyr's
Memorial Service at St. Margaret Pattens) denounces this toast
as brutal and cowardly, and protests that ' The Man who would
have done it without a Mask ' was a much finer character, for he
at least had the courage of his convictions.

If I may for a moment speak egotistically, I believe that my
sentiments are truly liberal in the best sense of -the word ; and
when I settled in Stuccovia I willingly joined the local Liberal
Association. But the atmosphere of the pot-house is disagreeable
to me. I dissented from the philosophy of Mr. Bradlaugh. I had
only an imperfect sympathy with the repeal of the Blasphemy
Laws or the refusal of grants to the Eoyal Family, and when
the Chairman of the Association pronounced that ' now the Grand
Old Man is gone, our leader must be Lebowcher,' I felt it was
time to withdraw from an environment so eminently uncongenial
to Whiggery.

But still my name is on the list of the Association, and I
have lately been not a little gratified to find myself recognised
as in some sense a leader of local politics. This compliment I
have received from my neighbour Mr. Cashington. A few days
ago he sent me a brief but courteous note, requesting the favour
of a private conversation with me on a matter of urgent business.
This I graciously accorded, and my visitor came to the point with
commendable promptitude. He said, ' There's no good in beating
about the bush, and I may as well say plainly that I am thinking of
standing for this borough ; and I have come to you because I should
like to be supported by a gentleman. You may take it from me
that Bounderley won't stand next time — indeed, he may be off before
the General Election. He has got into some very queer things
in the City ; and even if he ventured to face the music he
wouldn't get in again. He can't afford to " part " as freely as he
used. Soulsby has quarrelled with him for voting for the Deceased
Wife's Sister the other day ; and the publicans have discovered
that he sent a donation on the sly to the Church of England
Temperance Society. In short, he's pretty well found out ; and
I have a great notion that a strong Liberal candidate could carry
the seat. Now, for my own part I am a Liberal Imperialist.
Rosebery is the man for my money. He is an old friend of mine.

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK. 373

I wasn't actually at Eton with him, because my governor changed
his mind at the last moment and sent me to Merchant Taylors' ;
but I came across him a good deal at Oxford. No, I wasn't at
Christ Church ; our family college was Queen's. But I've often
seen Eosebery — he was Dalmeny then — coming out of Tom
Grate ; and one Fifth of November I did him a good turn in a
row on Folly Bridge. By Jove ! he never forgot it. When I
went up to him at the City Liberal Club and said that my name
was Cashington, he remembered me at once. We got on to
politics directly. He said, " No man ever was in such a peculiar
position as I am. I wrote a letter to explain that I couldn't
speak, and now I must make a speech to explain what I meant
by my letter." I said, " You needn't explain yourself to me. I'm
with you, heart and soul. Salisbury is played out. Home Rule
is dead and buried. Those sneaking Armenians deserve all they
get ; and the war's just about the best biz. that has happened in
our time. Gro on with your furrow ; and, by jingo, you won't find
yourself alone when you reach the end." I saw at a glance that
he was impressed. It's wonderful how quick he is at picking up
a point.

' I dined in Berkeley Square three days afterwards. There
were a lot of pressmen at dinner, and it was simply a marvel to
see how Rosebery had the whole conversation to himself; the other
fellows never opened their mouths except to eat and drink. It is
glamour, that's what it is — glamour, and if we could only get
him to address the Liberal Association here we should win hands
down.

' Oh, yes, the Association is all right. It is run by the
Secretary, and an extra fiver to his salary will make everything
square. He doesn't get much as it is, poor beggar; and he's
quite sharp enough to know where the money-bags are.'

Thus Mr. Cashington ; and his discourse gave, as the French say,
furiously to think. Should I, having so long abandoned politics,
return to my earlier activities ? Should I unfurl the Whig
banner of buff and blue, and wave it over the head of Imperial
Cashington? If I undertook any responsibilities in connexion
with the contest, should I have to subscribe to the registration
expenses ? should I have to read the ' Daily Mail ' ? and, above
all, what would Selina say ? Chewing the food of these sweet
and bitter fancies, I declined to commit myself to Mr. Caehington's
cause ; but he shook hands with me effusively, and rushed off to

374 A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK.

keep an appointment with Sir Wemyss Reid at the chambers of
Dr. Heber Hart. Meanwhile, I laid the project, with an air of
easy indifference, before Selina, who, to my great astonishment,
did not instantly condemn it as at once unpatriotic and expensive.
She said that, for her own part, she did not care a jot for
Mr. Bounderley. She could see no difference between his Tory
Democratic opinions and the Liberal Imperialist creed of Mr.
Cashington. On social grounds there was not a pin to choose
between them ; and, although it was vulgarity itself to think of
money in connexion with politics, it certainly would be disagree-
able to find that the Member for whom one had slaved was a
bankrupt. On the whole, Selina thought she should drop political
work for a time. The subscriptions were endless, and she was
no longer equal to trapesing about in dog-days and blizzards,
trying to secure votes for a candidate who, when he was returned,
was barely civil.

In my private opinion, the fact that my family had always
been Whigs, and had sometimes contested Loamshire with bygone
Topham-Sawyers, was not without its effect on Selina. Though,
or because, she is a Conservative, she has a high respect for
hereditary principles, even though they be those of 1688 ; and
there was something agreeable to her territorial instincts in the
thought that the middle classes and the proletariat of Stuccovia
should look for guidance to her husband. ' At any rate, it shows
that they know who you are ; and, after all said and done, people
do like being led by a gentleman.'

So, after full consideration, I informed Mr. Cashington that I
would propose his adoption as Liberal candidate for the borough ;
and perhaps my readiness to do so coexisted with a strong con-
viction that he would not win. Of electioneering one may say,
as Napoleon said of war, ' Eh, bien ! C'est un grand jeu — belle
occupation.' Selina warned me emphatically against letting
myself be induced to give money to the cause. ' Your name is
quite as much as they have any right to ask, and people who are
as ostentatious as the Cashingtons ought to be able to pay their
own election expenses.' Bertha, always loyal to old friends, said
that I was treating Bounderley very shabbily. She would have
worked enthusiastically for a pro-Boer, and would have got Canon
Scott Holland down to speak for a member of the C.S.U. ; but
Mr. Cashington seemed every bit as much a Tory as Mr.
Bounderley, though certainly he used longer words. Thus led,

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK. 375

Bumpstead volunteered his opinion that Cashington was a wrong
'un ; that, even if he didn't bolt off the course, he would never
run straight ; and that, before the show was over, we should find
that we had been ' had.'

Undeterred by this warning, I plunged into the fray. The
first step was to call a meeting of the Liberal Association to hear
an address from Mr. Cashington, and, if his opinions proved
acceptable, to adopt him as our candidate at the next election.
We met in a small committee-room at the back of the Parochial
Hall, and I was voted into the chair. I presided over a meet-
ing composed of the Wesleyan, Baptist, and Congregationalist
ministers ; an exceedingly raw-boned Scotch youth from the
Presbyterian Church ; a milkman, a grocer, and a butcher who
had experienced some difficulty in getting their accounts settled
by Mr. Bounderley; a tipsy tailor, who was locally reputed to
beat his wife ; and a discharged schoolmaster with a grievance
against the Education Department. The Secretary, who wore
blue spectacles and a tweed cap, black trousers, and brown boots,
read a letter from the Liberal Headquarters, which I am not at
liberty to disclose ; and handed up the following Resolutions,
which, after an oration by Mr. Cashington, were moved, seconded,
and carried unanimously : (i.) That this meeting enthusiastically
recognises Lord Rosebery's condescension in returning to public
life ; endorses his repudiation of Mr. Gladstone's policy ; and
assures him that he is the inevitable Prime Minister of our
free, tolerant, and unaggressive Empire, (ii.) That this meeting,
having heard the address of Charles Cornelius Cashington, Esquire,
and having learnt with satisfaction that he approves of the South
African war, and is opposed to Local Option, Home Rule, Free
Trade, and Disestablishment, cordially adopts him as Liberal
candidate for this borough at the next election, and pledges
itself to use all legitimate means to secure his return.'

So far, all was well ; but, after all, it is only the first step, and
what is to come next I do not exactly see. The figures of the last
contest seem to show that the electorate of Stuccovia comprises
9,000 Tories and 1,000 Liberals, Radicals, and Socialists.
Whether, out of these discordant elements, Cashington can con-
struct a Third Party of Liberal Imperialists remains to be seen.
But he clings desperately to the idea that Lord Salisbury is to
resign immediately after the Coronation, and that, in the ensuing
confusion, the Ploughman of Berkeley Square will come by his own.

376

(ON SAFARI.'1

IN ki-Swahili, the coast language of East Africa, a ' safari ' is a
caravan ; to be ' on safari ' means to the ordinary Briton to be on
march, a state of life in which we spend a fair proportion of our
days in Eastern Equatorial Africa. In the outlying parts safari
may be expected to hold its own for the present, but on the
main route to Uganda it becomes more a thing of the past with
every yard of railway-line laid down. Not without something
akin to jealousy do the old pioneers watch the advancing line of
rails. A hideousness of galvanised iron springs up in its track,
earthworks and embankments scar the plains, hordes of coolies
jabber across happy hunting-grounds, and railway camps cumber
the ancient feeding-places of game. They who pitched their
tents of old foresee the banal day when they will have to book
for the coast in a ticket-office on the brink of the Victoria
Nyanza, and when personally-conducted trippers will frolic on
the lake in pleasure-boats and fire popguns at the hippopotami.
Therefore, ere these things come upon us, of the joys of safari
let us sing, of the breezy, comical, toilsome days of march, of the
hours of wind and sun and wide distances, of times when we
washed our shirts ourselves and hung them on our tent-ropes,
and when we ate hungrily what came before us — a life, this,
which is a grand corrective to super-refinement and luxury run
riot, an outdoor treatment which doctors should prescribe to
nervous patients as a regime unequalled for killing or curing.

What safari meant in more detail was practically this, that
the Uganda Eailway, by which we travelled from the coast,
became one day potential rather than actual,2 and that therefore
we had need to turn out and continue our journey afoot, or by
horse, mule or bicycle, while a convoy of mule-carts absorbed

1 The writer of this article is the wife of Dr, Robert Unwin Moffat, C.M.G.,
Principal Medical Officer in the Uganda Protectorate, and representative in the
third generation of that family of pioneers, who, since Dr. Robert Moffat, the
friend and father-in-law of David Livingstone, have laboured unceasingly in South
Africa in the cause of religion and civilisation. — ED. COHNHILL.

2 The laying of the rails of the Uganda Railway has now been completed up
to the Victoria Nyanza, the rail-head reaching the shore of the lake on
December 19, 1901.— ED. OOBNHILL.

'ON SAFARI.' 377

our kit. It was then that the humour of East African travel
began to reveal itself, though, be it said, the preliminary run on
the Uganda Eailway was a fitting hors d'ceuvre to the very lean
banquet of Uganda life. Every day we marched from four to six
hours, our camps being fixed by the contingencies of wood and
"water. "We probably arrived at these camping-places long before
our lumbering convoy, and casting ourselves in the shade of a
bush, we awaited its arrival with such patience as Heaven sent
us. The way was ever hot, we were tired, we were also dirty and
dusty beyond words, we wanted tubs, and cool drinks and ices,
and we had them not. Wherefore we sipped tepid pegs of
whisky out of hot metal cups, and strove to keep our thoughts
from wandering to the fleshpots of civilisation. Presently the
cook strolled up with a kettle negligently swinging, presently a
little fire began to flicker in the sunshine, and our tempers
moderated their prickliness at the thought of tea. Tender
thoughts always centred round the battered safari teapot, even
when condensed milk with flies in it was the accompaniment.
There was often good water, but it was generally on the thirstiest
days that we tapped a supply which would have put cocoa to the
blush in point of colour and substance. Once it broke our filter,
and it was in vain that we strained it through our handkerchiefs ;
no amount of straining seemed to abate its rich texture. Even
to the most parched there is a flavour about tea made with liquid
mud which leaves something unattained.

It might be one hour, it might be four hours later, that the
carts toiled up amid a pillar of cloud and volleys of yelling and
whip-cracking, and tents and baths and chop-boxes l were snatched
from the ensuing chaos. Some of the carts always managed to
stick on the road, and as a rule one turned over the first day and
smashed a hole in one's bath, so that for the rest of the journey
bathing had to be conducted with despatch. It was distressing
to an extremely grubby traveller to have his bath-water lapsing
with the seconds, like the sand in an hour-glass. The allowance
for bathing purposes was at times short enough anyhow, and
when that was much thickened with water-beetles, as sometimes
happened, the puzzle was to find anything liquid enough to wash
in. Safari meals are always wonderful repasts, and it takes a
safari appetite to encounter them successfully. At 4 P.M. our
chef used to catch one of the unfortunate fowls that had been

1 Provision-boxes.

378 'ON SAFARI.'

dragged along with us and cook it for dinner at seven. There
was always ' soupu,' swimming in grease and compounded,
according to popular theory, of a lump of fat, a gallon of water,
and one onion. If we except hospitable gifts from the ever-
hospitable forts, of fruit and vegetables there were none till we
reached the lands of sweet potatoes and bananas. These we at
first hailed with ecstasy, only to loathe the very sight of them
later. The tinned butter became a revolting oily deposit by
luncheon-time, and the milk of course lived in tins, unless we
were fortunate enough to include a cow and a oalf among our
smaller luggage. East African cows are so annoyingly primitive
in their habits that nothing but the sight of their calves will
induce them to give any milk, consequently on safari the cow-
herd frequently has to drive the cow and carry the calf, the latter
being too infantile to manage the daily march, though its pre-
sence is indispensable. Whenever our supply of tough mutton
and fowl gave out we stayed ourselves on army rations and
similar tinned delicacies which formed the bulk of our baggage.
There were sorrowful times, when the journey having been un-
duly prolonged, we saw the bottom of our chop-boxes all too
soon ; pathetic was the solicitude with which we then hoarded
our vanishing store. Once, after great consultations, someone's
birthday was celebrated in princely style by the opening of a tin
of sardines, that being the finest luxury that remained to us.

Things which at home are regarded with the eye of disdain
assumed a perfectly disproportionate value on safari. Thus it
never occurred to us in more civilised days that we should ever
be transported with delight at the gift of half a cabbage or a cup-
ful of milk, or that a luncheon of broad beans only would be
likely to induce in us a lively sense of gratitude. But after even
a week of tough meat and no vegetables, cabbages came not in
their wonted homeliness, but as ambrosial food, fit for the gods.
At most of the stations on the way there were Indian traders,
who claimed to supply the wants of wayfarers, but having once
asked whisky of one of these and been offered vinegar, we deemed
it wisdom not to lay ourselves open to further insult.

During the earlier stages of the journey eggs were unknown
luxuries, and even when a land of lean fowls was reached, the
eggs brought for sale by the natives were usually rotten. We
were, however, once blessed with a fowl of distinction, known to
fame as ' Mrs. Hen,' who had been given us originally for chicken-

'ON SAFARI.' 379

broth, but who, having somehow managed to evade the pot,
developed the exemplary habit of laying an egg for us every day
on march. The moment the tents were put up she would bustle
in and go clucking round in a state of deplorable indecision as to
an eligible site for that egg of hers. The half-hour that she
spent in going inquiringly over every inch of ground within the
canvas was completely wasted, for she always ended by depositing
her egg in the most unsuitable place possible. There was, in
fact, no irregular spot within the tents where we did not find that
daily egg, but our patience came near to giving way when it was
discovered in the bath. If she ever displayed a tendency to hunt
frivolously for grasshoppers instead of attending to her business,
we found it sufficient to talk to her of chicken-broth, and she
invariably reverted to duty the next day. Later, presuming upon
our weakness, she was wont at sunset to bring two or three
extremely select friends and introduce them to roosting-places
within the tents. We cavilled at this conduct, for we were not a
hen-house, and I, personally, considered that Mrs. Hen's hospi-
tality had gone too far when one morning as the first light came
creeping through the chinks in the canvas I was startled by an
outburst of stentorian crowing from a cock whom she had surrep-
titiously roosted beneath my bed. She died at headquarters, full
of years and honours. Peace be with thy bones, Mrs. Hen !

Towards evening, camp used to assume a somewhat pastoral
aspect. The carts were drawn up as a laager, the forlorn mules
were driven in from the plain to receive their rations, the sheep
and goats for our future meals were tethered, with other livestock,
near the tents to keep them from night attack. The sudden
darkness fell, fires shone out fitfully, and lit up the shaven heads
and grotesque features of our following, who jabbered lustily over
the preparation of weird foods. At dark an askari ' always went
on guard with some antiquated weapon. ' Haloocumdar ! ' we
heard him enunciating with much vigour, and as the guard
changed through the night we had variations of the cryptic
challenge. Passers-by were not frequent, but occasionally some-
one failed to answer the invocation, and in the morning we found
the askaris bursting with pride at having secured a prisoner.
Generally it was some harmless aborigine making a night-march,
too primitive to know the saving grace of the word 'Friend;'
or perhaps it was a strapping deserter from some previous

1 Native policeman ; soldier.

380 'ON SAFARI.'

caravan, who had skulked among the rocks till nightfall seemed
propitious for pilfering the camp.

Long after our tin dishes had clattered back into luncheon-
baskets, and the water-flasks and the lantern had been placed
handy, signifying the end of the day's service ; long after the
tents were closed and in darkness, the ' boys ' still squatted round
their fires, chattering and laughing till sleep blotted out their
voices, and the solitude of the great plains closed in upon the
lonely camp. Myriads of stars shone out over us, the air thrilled
with the chirp of innumerable crickets, the mules fidgeted at
their halters, or cropped the grass noisily, a breeze rose, flapped
the canvas, and fell again. Snores in all keys began to enliven
the night. From the bush rose the death-scream of some animal
in the grip of its pursuer, jackals yelped in the distance, or the
prolonged howl of a hyena broke out close at hand. A wakeful
' boy ' imitated it derisively, the snores gave place to a renewed
murmur of talk, the askari flung another log on the smouldering
fire. Not always did the land lie silent. I have known sleep
made difficult by the antics of hundreds of zebra, who thudded
hither and thither on the plain like diminutive cavalry, and cried
in a succession of little barks, worried perhaps by finding the
camp between them and their accustomed watering-place. In
some districts when on wet nights rain had swamped the fires, a
zoological garden of ' questing beasts ' was apt to foregather round
the tents. Thus hyenas, jackals, three lions, and a brace of
hippopotami contributed intimately to one seance that I wot of,
and as the darkness was too thick for vision, that night yielded
but scanty peace. Hippo are at all times awkward things to get
ravelled up in the tent-ropes.

In the earliest hours the camp lay silent, men and beasts
seemingly wrapped in a dead sleep ; but the hush was not for
long. Before it was light came sounds of awakening, and then
the voice of the head-boy raised persistently at the tent-doors.
Growls of protest within, some language to fit the occasion,
a groping for matches, a sketchy toilet by lantern-light, and we
dived out from the comparative warmth of the tents into the chill
of the African dawn. The grass was soaked with dew, a grey
opacity hung over everything, the moon was paling, but the
east brightened. Shivering ' boys ' dragged themselves about
wrapped in their blankets, mules were being inspanned, and
stood with drooping ears and the air of people who had had too

'ON SAFARI/ 381

short a night, dazed fowls were secured, and amidst much
yelling and reciprocal abuse the tent furniture resolved itself into
bundles. Meanwhile we sat at a table in the sopping grass,
consuming cocoa and anything tha^t came handy. There were
few who revelled in this stage of the day's march ; everything was
always at sixes and sevens. Someone's only shirt-stud had sprung
away into the grass, and remained lost to sight; someone else
had mislaid his pipe, and commented on the fact in terms which
ought to have warmed him. Tempers were naturally en
deshabille, the early morning's chill grasped at our very bones.
Yet the start at that raw hour was not without its advantages,
even such minor ones as the absence of flies in the milk, or the
notable stability of the butter. It was worth turning out at that
time to see the light creeping over the vast shadowy plains, to
note the fresh spoor of beasts across our track, to surprise herds
of antelope feeding within range, and, not least, to breathe the
magnificent air, pure as mornings upon clean Egyptian deserts,
not perfumed, as comes dawn in India. But chairs and tables
collapsed, and were loaded on the carts, tents disappeared into
bags of green canvas. Having nothing left to sit on, we must be
moving, and as we turned off across the dew to the track that
unrolled itself westward, the first rays of the low sun struck on
our backs. On the way up to Uganda, how brown the backs of
our necks grew, to be sure, and returning when our months of
exile had run, how our noses peeled from sunburn, marching
eastward to the coast !

Step for step behind us came the gunbearers, padding on
tireless brown feet, eyes searching from side to side in quest of
game, and behind them again our other henchmen. One very
small one in particular, I remember, whom we used to call the
'White Knight ' — he being a great deal blacker than our boots.
He always insisted upon having a rifle to carry, and with that
weight to his shoulder would trudge long miles radiantly, thinking
himself in very truth a mighty Bwana.1 In addition, he had all
manner of unconsidered trifles tied and slung and strapped about
his person — a stick of his master's, his lady's sun-umbrella and
warm coat, a water-bottle, field-glasses, a Kodak, a botanical
collecting-case, a stray tin of biscuits, a whisky-bottle half full of
milk, and a pair of the cook's boots, which he afterwards stole.
Thus trudged he, a universal provider ambulant.

1 Master ; white man.

382 'ON SAFARI.'

So, marching, resting, marching again, passed day after day,
and ever the brown track crept away from us in front, and ever
we were up at sunrise to follow it.

If circumstances forced us to choose the old caravan road to
the Uganda capital, there came a day when we left the bullock-
convoy which had brought us over the mighty Man Escarpment,
and diverging, skirted the north end of the Victoria Nyanza. Our
kit now travelled on the heads of Kavirondo porters, a wild,
yelling, irrepressible crowd, who could carry sixty pounds' weight
on their heads for six hours in the sun as though it were the
merest feather, and on arrival in camp were fain to dance pro-
longed hornpipes out of sheer gamesomeness and freshness of
limb. After this they still felt so redundantly fit that they were
wont to go off and visit friends in surrounding villages within a
ten-mile radius and forget to come back again, so that the next
morning the unhappy traveller commonly found himself with all
his possessions on the ground, ready packed, and not a creature
to carry them. In the course of some hours the truants probably
came trickling back by twos and threes, with an engaging air of
insouciance, and by midday the safari might be able to make a
start if it had luck. Next to this lamentable lack of punctuality,
a lack of clothing was — and probably still is — the most salient
characteristic of the Wa-Kavirondo. ' I am afraid you will find
them very naked ! ' said a missionary to me on the borders of their
country ; and so we did, nothing could have been nakeder. From
their walled villages they issued in swarms, and crowded round
the tents to gaze upon us, Monsieur, Madame, and Bebe,
without a rag to their names, nor a clout between them, unless
indeed a bead necklace, or a hippopotamus tooth stuck behind the
ear, could be accounted clothing. An airy, buoyant folk, verily,
and to missionary eyes a sad contrast to the semi-civilised
Waganda, with their greasy draperies of bark-cloth.

The joys of camp-life became greater as weneared the Victoria
Nyanza. Every day terrific storms rolled up from the lake, to
fall with fury upon hapless camps. The ' boys ' never could see
the desirability of trenching round the tents before a storm by
way of rough and ready drainage. Once only did they effect this
of their own bright wit, and that was when we were camped within
a fort on a piece of turf remotely resembling an English lawn,
which was the pride of the man in command. A storm breaking
while we were out, we returned to find that our ' boys,' with an

'ON SAFARI.' 383

unwonted outburst of zeal, had scraped ample trenches around the
tents, thus ruining the treasured grass-plot. The storms were
enough to drive anyone to good resolutions. They came on at
meal-times if they could, and by drenching the fires into darkness,
despoiled us of all hopes of cooked food. Hurricanes of wind
burst upon us, continuous thunder roared appallingly, the lightning
was blue and pink and altogether amazing, and amidst the swash-
ing of descending deluges we could not hear ourselves speak. In
the intervals of trying to eat our dinners philosophically, we had
to cling to the tent-poles to keep them upright. Sheets of water
rushed through the tents, and carried away portable articles.
Through the closed tent-door our saturated retainers handed in
first a dish of cold, drowned curry, then a derelict piece of soap,
or a tooth-brush ; we never knew what was coming next. As a
rule we were none the worse beyond a general wet muddle, but
sometimes the tents were mown down by the gale, and the
affronted inhabitants had to fight their way out from a grave of
canvas into a watery world, much under the impression that they
were living in the days of Noah.

Some of the diversions of the march to Uganda used to be
the crossing of papyrus swamps, of rivers without bridges, and
of rivers with bridges which only a trained acrobat could hope
to tackle successfully. The rivers still run, but the papyrus
swamps on the line of route have been filled up, so that
nowadays we can pass over dry shod. A swamp is seldom a
place in which to pass a happy day, unless it be for the purpose
of collecting the larvae of microbic mosquitos. When it con-
sisted of a forest of dense papyrus, twelve feet high, growing
in a channel of murky fluid, perhaps some hundreds of yards
wide, it was wont to afford pilgrims plenty of occupation. The
novice on horseback looked contemptuously at the puddle, and
started in. Two minutes later he found himself hoping for the
best. The bottom seemed to ooze away from his horse's feet, and
the animal freed itself from one hole only to sink struggling into
another. The rider was at last constrained to slip off upon a
tussock of papyrus, which at once sank down with him, and, forced
to abandon that, he subsided chest-high in the inky mud. Thus,
clutching with his feet at tussocks, with his hands at quivering
papyrus-stems, he floundered on, trusting that some day a kind
fate would place solid earth beneath his feet once more. In
course of time the kit and livestock came across somehow. Horses

384 'ON SAFARI.'

were wise, as usual, and made the best of these Sloughs of Despond.
If the calves were carried across, the cows plunged in and followed,
but donkeys were terrible stick-in-the-muds. They clave to dry
land with all their obstinate feet, and when forcibly launched, lost
their little asinine heads, and wallowed despondently to no good
purpose. The mosquitos near the swamps were of the most deter-
mined character ; in fact, he who goes on safari is all along much
chastened by insects and such small game. In the cattle districts
ticks seized upon us unawares, swelled revoltingly into blue lumps,
and then dropped off after the manner of leeches ; or flies fell
upon us in marauding swarms till we had to fight with them for
our meat and drink. Able-bodied fleas living in the grass made
us their happy hunting-grounds, and as a harassed new-comer
once said, they were so large one was almost afraid to catch them.
Their cousins, the she-chiggers exhibited a reprehensible lack of
delicacy about burrowing into passing feet, and swelling up into
bags of eggs which had to be excavated at the needle's point, and
at the cost of much anguish. Within the tents centipedes and
fabulous-looking caterpillars strayed in the path of unwary feet,
and mantidae of all sizes drifted carelessly over the beds, pretend-
ing that they were bits of hay till surprised in the act of moving
a leg or an eye. To people with no theatres there was diversion
to be reaped at times from an obstacle-race of chameleons over a
coloured course of red blanket, blue shirt, and brown rug taste-
fully planned ; but the ' boys ' looked their disapprobation at this
pastime, for to their minds no good could come from playing
games with so ill-omened a beast as a chameleon. Along the
borders of the lake, midges became one of the plagues. Far
away over the water they could be seen hanging in low clouds
like the smoke-trail of a steamer, but less fleeting. It was when
these living clouds were blown ashore that we breathed midges
with our air, and ate them with our soup ; they penetrated down
our necks and into our eyes and up our sleeves, they put out our
candles, and covered our dinner-plates with their burnt bodies,
they silted up our ink-pots. The chief consolation for being
compelled to eat so many was that they were apparently good for
that purpose, though the analysis of their nutritive properties has
not as yet been scientifically set forth. On some of the islands
on the lake may be found native midge-fishers, evidently proto-
types of that gentleman in ' Alice in Wonderland ' who was in the
habit of making butterflies into mutton-pies, for with primitive

'ON SAFARI.' 385

butterfly-nets these men amass countless midges, and make them
into cakes for home consumption.

One of the saddest experiences on safari was having to pass
through a district where the rainfall had failed, and the curse of
famine hung heavy on all sides. A caravan heavily laden and
unable to find sufficient food even for its own men could do
grievously little to alleviate the horrors which it came across
in its line of march. Relief was being distributed, but the
natives in the outlying parts had probably not heard of it. The
land seemed to lie strangely silent ; at the camps no strings
of chattering natives brought in grain or bananas to the safari
as usual. There were white bones among the bushes, here and
there was a corpse fresh fallen by the wayside, holes in the
ground showed where the people had dug for roots in their
hunger. Now it was a little child, strengthless, nothing -but
bones and skin, crouched by the road with the flies already
clustering upon its dulled eyes. The caravan stopped to laugh
when we attempted to succour the mite, for natives are worse
than mere beasts in their heartlessness towards one another. One
of the askaris brought water; he had a youngster of his own
somewhere in the caravan. But we had to pass on ; we could not
carry all the human wreckage with us, and there was much of it.
The little black speck on the hillside faded out of sight. Evening
would bring the hyenas. That night we dragged into camp an
old woman dying of starvation, and the askaris made merry over
reviving her by the fire, and our dinner went down her throat.
Wherefore, when we shifted camp late the next morning, she was
strong enough to sit up and look around her, stretching out her
skinny hands to the blaze, though the sun shone hotly. She
made a ghastly picture, huddled there in the brightness of the
fresh morning, her sticks of arms and protruding ribs telling of
famine, her eyes, with the fear of death in them, following our
movements. The camp had emptied, the caravan gone on, soon
she would be the only occupant of the already silent place. The
' boys ' unwillingly made up the fire, and put wood near her, much
diverted at the Englishman who laid his bread-supply beside
her, and filled her gourd with water. Evening would bring the
hyenas whom we baulked last night. We passed on out of the
camp.

HILDA V. MOFFAT.

VOL. XII. — NO. 69, N.S. 26

386

SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO.

Close, Sarum.

MRS. VOYSEY, confcious of the va/t Importance of pt^operly
educating young LADIES, and feeling her f elf devoted to this
arduous, yet pleafing employ, is defurous that all who entruft
her with the care of their Children may be acquainted with the
rmode whereby fhe endeavours to render them lovely to Society,
and pleafing to themf elves.

PRESUMING, therefore, upon the goodnefs of her kind
FRIENDS and the PUBLIC, the following adopted Plan is,
with much refpect and grateful confederation, submitted to their
infpection :

VIZ:

Ift. As early rifing hath, in every age, been efteemed by
the moft able writers to be highly neceffary and conducive to
health, Mrs. V. induces her Pupils to experience the charming
effects thereof by being in School at Six o'clock in the Morning
during the Summer Months; and is extremely happy to add,
the refult has exceeded her moft f anguine expectation; Illnefs
being almoft a Stranger to the School.

2nd. As clofe Learning and Study ought ever to be accom-
panied with tfie alternate relief of innocent freedom, her Pupils
are daily refrefhed with intervals of cheerful recreation and
agreeable exercife, so as to caufe the ornamental acquirements
to be purfued with frefh avidity, whereby the tafk of Learning is
blended fweetly with real pleafure and delight.

3rd. As the whole welfare of the r if ing generation depends,
in a great degree, upon the Seeds of Morality and Virtue which
are fown in the tender Mind ere it expands to maturity, Mrs.
V's unremitting attention is continually fixed on this GRAND
POINT, fo that no Books which are of the leaft dij/lpating
tendency, are admitted in the School or fuffered to be read ;
nor fhall any be found there, but fuch as enlarge the Heart to
Virtue and excellency of Sentiment.

4th. As from the Moral fituation of this World, 'tis con-
genial to the human Mind to meet with a variety of His in its

SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO. 387

progrefs through it, to another, and as no adequate counter-
balance to TROUBLE can ever be found under the mere influence
of either Learning, or the fineft fyftem of ethics, however defervedly
admired, Mrs. V. is happy that no blufh reddens her Cheek
ivhile /he declares, that whenever fhe dif covers the fmalleft glim-
mering of holy religion within the bofom of any of her Pupils,
fhe carefully ftrives to nurfe it into an infant flame, that it
may arife and mingle with the SUPREME; not by necessitating
it to glow through fanaticifm or error, or any confined channel
of human invention, butfumply attracting it to the f acred Altar
of DIVINE REVELATION.

TAUGHT AT THE SCHOOL.

The French and Englifh Languages, Writing, Arithmetic,
Mufic, Dancing, Drawing, Geography, all kinds of Ufeful and
Ornamental Work, Plain Work, Embroidery, Tambour Cloth-
work, Filligree, Steel and Varnish Work, &c. &c.

Board and Inftruction . . 16 16 0 per ann.
Entrance . . . . 1 11 6

French, &c. &c., on the ufual Terms.

It came accidentally into my possession — this old prospectus
of a Girls' Boarding School in 1787, just one of those chance
lights which go to make up the pictures of history. Dry facts,
and dates, and prosaic narration the world's book of life must
have ; pictures without text would be worse than useless —
misleading. But who can deny the palm of interest to the
Illustrated Edition ?

For what after all is it that we really care most to know
about in the lives of our forefathers — we of the average, who live
out the daily round of working, loving, and suffering, recognising
what we owe to previous generations who have thought for us,
and passing on the debt, as best we may, to the next generation ?
Not in the least which king was contemporary with which Pope ;
whether Seebohm or Maine is right in his theory of the Teutcnic
land system ; or what was the origin of vestries. Scholars may
fight out these hattles for us in the seclusion of academic cloisters
— what we look for is the personal note of human nature. We
of the South and West counties remember our Armada by the
beacons marking each height from Dungeness and Beachy Head

25—2

388 SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO.

to Land's End. We light them up for Jubilees, but no one
asks now what had been Philip II.'s political schemes. Sir John
Hawkins's noble conduct, which saved the situation for England
in the teeth of a niggardly Grovernment and stingy Queen,
touches interest and sympathy far more nearly. The patriotism
which made him willingly dispense his private fortune in order
to feed and clothe and procure medical treatment for the seamen
to whom a wretched Government system denied pay, eatable
rations, and even medicine, finds a too ready parallel in the wars
of to-day within memory of living man ! We understand that.

Such side-lights upon the world's history bring before us Life
as it was actually lived through : humanity, strong, simple,
intrinsically always the same. We cannot do without the
pictures that give us this insight into bygone periods — the
intimate details of social and domestic life, of character, and
upbringing and circumstance — the way, in short, in which our
forefathers did the everyday things that we are doing now.

Now this need not necessarily be a typical school of the period ;
moreover, we get no notion from it of the food, clothing, or
accommodation provided. But girls' schools in those days were
only for the one section of society, and so must have been on very
much the same scale ; presumably, therefore, either those harrow-
ing accounts given us in contemporary novels — novels, that is,
which draw upon the first quarter, or thereabouts, of the nine-
teenth century for their material — are the result of peculiar experi-
ences, isolated and individual, as the experience of Grenius must
be; or we must take for granted that, under such pleasant
promises, there frequently existed in reality a seething hotbed of
all that was tyrannical and rigorous.

Sixteen guineas a year — less by four than the fees at Dothe-
boys Hall ! If Mrs. Voysey was sending out prospectuses in 1787,
or thereabouts, then granting her a term of thirty years or so,
hers would not be so very much earlier than that celebrated insti-
tution. Are we to believe there was less civilisation in the
nineteenth than in the eighteenth century ? Or that from the
very beginning of things the wants of girls were considered neces-
sarily less, their requirements fewer than those of their brothers,
and that so Mrs. Voysey and her kind were able to offer more for
sixteen guineas a year and yet draw her pupils from a higher
grade of society than Messrs. Squeers, Creakle, & Co. found it
possible to do ? Though, to be sure, the experience of IDavid

SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO. 389

Copperfield at school was a very different one from that of poor
Smike.

The fees, with the list of attainments, and the moral butter so
carefully spread, excite suspicion, yet Salisbury Close argues a
guarantee for some sort of outside coercion and moral ventilation.
It is the money that makes one dubious ; what could it be that
was attainable in board, lodging, plus education, at a maximum
cost of about one shilling per diem per child ? The yearly fees
at the Cowan Bridge School, including the cost of the uniform
and all personal expenses, came to 181. ; but that was an ostentati-
ously charitable system of education, and scarcely comes under
the category of ordinary boarding schools for the daughters of
gentlepeople. If boarding schools in those days had been for
girls of the upper classes, one might better understand one part
of it ! Their education cost little beyond an incompetent and
generally depraved French governess. Lady Wallace, in one of her
novels, puts her satire on this point aptly enough into the mouth
of the governess herself; it is a terrible revelation. 'Indeed,
Monsieur, she be de foolish baby : I do all I can to teach her de
grace, and how she should behave ; but she be so very shy, so
modest, she can never be de least a Ton lady. I tell her de Ton
lady be all small talk, all maniere. I teach her to practise de
grace ; de saucy look for de inferior, de inviting look for de man,
de sneer for de unfortunate, and de cringe for de leader of
de Ton.'

Any girl of the upper classes who in those days went to a
boarding school did so under exceptional circumstances. She
might almost safely be considered as having been either too hope-
lessly intractable in temper to be kept at home ; imbecile ; or
somehow a burden to her family, with the alternative possibility
that she was dependent upon rich relations who took this readiest
means of conveniently forgetting while they provided for the
existence of an indigent member of the family. Otherwise, the
delightful ease with which all idea of any real imparting of know-
ledge is swamped in the ' relief of innocent freedom ' is only too
characteristic of what was the prevailing sentiment respecting the
education of girls of good family then, as indeed it too frequently
is now, and the line of demarcation in those days was drawn hard
and fast.

Nobody belonging to the privileged rank of society need ever
have feared for the health of their daughters from overstudy.

390 SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO.

Gone was the Elizabethan ideal of the cultured gentlewoman ; the
eighteenth century had no Lady Jane Greys to set the fashion.
Far removed even was the English from the French model of
La Grande Dame, who must hold her own in her salons by culture
pretended or real.

' Though thought is my foe, and the pen my aversion,' naively
wrote a ' fine lady ' of Dublin to her husband — the poetical effusion
is published in the ' Gentleman's Magazine ' for 1797 — giving him
the account of a masquerade. The sentiment merely gave expres-
sion to that of the majority of her sex.

Mrs. Voysey's seems a candid and simple schedule. But,
granted that, like Mr. Squeers and Mr. Brocklehurst of evil fame
('twould be unfair to quote the ingenuous Misses Pinkerton, or the
inimitable Madame Beck, in this connection), her ethical out-
pourings were not genuine, still other contemporary literature on
the subject of the education of children is to be trusted if only
as showing there was an attempt at theory in the minds of some,
even though purely unpractical philosophers, which compares
quite favourably with our own ideas and practice. In a little
pamphlet, published in 1762, on the 'Education of Children,'
this is the opening paragraph :

' In order to be happy in the world we should endeavour to
preserve a sound mind in a sound body.' Cold water ablutions,
daily and regular exercise are then recommended, with plenty of
sleep and no physic ! Then follows a carefully planned regimen
laid down under headings of thirdly, fourthly, and lastly. It is
meant pre-eminently, so it would seem, for boys — not boys of the
Dotheboys stamp, presumably — but the theories are worth a
moment's consideration, partly because they are really singularly
' advanced ' ; partly because they foreshadow the dawn of that
broadening influence which the French Revolution was in a few
years to exercise upon English insularity.

With that wave of turbulent upheaval stirring every pulse to
activity, crystallising every dormant theory into imperative need
for instant realisation, everywhere and in all departments of
thought breaking down old-rooted prejudices between class and
class, nation and nation, race and race before its own imperious
torrent of expanding sympathies, sympathies that must spring up
with knowledge, prejudices that must melt as ignorance lessens,
there came in as a lever to education in England the element that
had hitherto been wanting to it. Not only was there desire, but

SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO. 391

a field opened out for ambition. The notion of a career was now
deliberately set before the eyes of young men. They must needs
be educated, even though only to become proficient as those pro-
fessional idlers whom Beau Brummell headed, and who are so tersely
described by ' Punch's ' American Girl as the ; leisured class whom
we call tramps ' !

Dancing was to be learnt — so we read in this pamphlet — as
imparting ' manly thoughts and carriage.' Writing, when the
child could read ; reading, by the way, so soon as he could talk !
Drawing and shorthand are to come next. Then French, and
then Latin — this latter as ' essential for a gentleman as well as
for a scholar,' after which he might begin Greek. He was then
to try a little arithmetic, as ' an easy science, without which no
business can be done,' and so pass on to geography — ancient
geography being ' enough for schoolboys.' It is worth noting
that the reading of a good weekly newspaper was considered
absolutely necessary, and then comes a long list of ' ologies '
which would make one have a great respect for the boys of that
day, if it were not for the recollection of that easy dismissal of
the usual bugbear to youth — arithmetic. Probably with no
terrors of coming competitive examinations to spoil the trowel-
ling, these subjects were one and all merely smeared in upon the
brain. Logic, ethics, mathematics, physics, and metaphysics
are the finishing items of necessity ; while painting, architecture,
music, and heraldry are to be added as ' amusements to a scholar,
and a part of a gentleman's conversation.'

Gardening was to be considered as a ' healthy provision for
old age,' to which proposition Fox in his historic green baize
apron enjoying the rural delights of Strawberry Hill would
certainly have given a hearty assent.

Fencing — necessary in those days of duelling — and riding ' the
Great Horse ' (whatever that may be !) finish the school curriculum.

After school was to come travel, and here rings out that
special note of enlightenment which brings the author into
sympathy with us to-day. ' He should endeavour,' says he, ' to
learn something of everyone he converses with ; and this is best
done by hearing men talk of their own professions.'

' Yes, I despise the man to books confin'd,' as Pope, who
hardly stirred beyond his own four walls, is so emphatic in telling
us. However, doubtless he was resting upon Lady Mary Wbrtley's
adventures at second hand.

3S2 SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO.

A quaint book bearing the title of ' The New London Spelling
Book,' published in 1806, gives us a curious insight into the
practical bringing-up of English boys and girls of that period.
It throws too, incidentally, a painful light, even allowing for the
exaggerated phraseology of the times, upon the lax state of society
towards the close of the eighteenth century. When we find in
a book of rules of conduct for little children such maxims as
these : ' Squander not thy money at the gaming-table, nor hazard
thy fortune on a card ' ; ' Drown not thy senses in wine, nor
intoxicate thyself with the juice of the grape,' it gives us a shock
to have to remember that such unbridled warnings were only in
keeping with the object-lessons their seniors so often were in
conduct and person to the children of that day.

One catches the Calvinistic note of pessimism in the opening
exhortation : ' It behoveth thee, 0 child of calamity, early to
fortify thy mind with courage and patience, that thou mayest
support with a becoming resolution thy allotted portion of
human evil.' And the query ' What is man ? ' with its answer,
' Originally dust, engendered in sin, helpless in his infancy,
extravagantly wild in his youth, mad in his manhood, decrepit
in his age,' strikes a chord of gloomy unrest in the contemplation
of human nature and the course of things, only to be explained
perhaps by the actual strenuous times Europe generally was then
passing through. With the century behind him which had seen
Marlborough's wars and the Jacobean insurrections of 1715 and
1745, the Thirty Years' War and the American struggle for
independence, the French Eevolution and the rise of Napoleon,
with all the attendant circumstances of disruption in politics,
churchmanship, and society, the writer was not likely perhaps to
have had an optimistic and serene temper of mind.

The rules of ' polite usages ' laid down illustrate very
amusingly the attitude of children towards their elders, com-
bining worldly wisdom and ethical teaching in a manner worthy
of Solomon : ' The first rule of wisdom is to know yourself, and
in order to do this you are to consider your station and rank.'
' You are placed above vulgar children (who run wild in the
street) by being brought up at school ; but be not proud because
you are above the vulgar, for there are others above you.'

Towards his superiors the boy was to show humility void of
meanness, and ' to inferiors, an affable behaviour, avoiding
familiarity.'

SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO. 393

A profound obeisance opened the day on entering the school-
house, which had been ' attained by decently advancing ' — not
running. Bows were to preface all speech. In church, after
having repeated a short prayer, the boy was to rise and bow to all
in order of precedence, and this was to be repeated before leaving
' softly and discreetly ' and returning home. There he was to
' knock once, and not too loud,' and was to bow on entering a
room, and never sit till told to do so, even then only after accept-
ing the favour with a deep obeisance. He was never to ' slip
private ' from the room, that being ' mean and unhandsome,' and
was to sit in a genteel and easy position — putting one hand in
the bosom of his waistcoat, and letting the other fall easily on his
knee. If he wished to laugh, he was to turn his face from the
company, and not to yawn if tired, ' as it looks as if you were tired
of being with them.' ' If you cannot conquer it, turn aside and
hide it as much as possible.'

To come back to feminine education, there is an amusing play,
published in 1785, called 'The Boarding-School Dissected,' which
is satirically instructive.

The mistress, Mrs. Teachwell, is a type of what we hope Mrs.
Voysey may have been. Her idea of her duties (and her material)
is ably portrayed in her opening speech :

' How few do we find of our sex, whose education surpasses a
minuet, cotillon, talking a little French, playing a few airs on the
harpsichord, and an easy deportment. Mental knowledge and
fashioning the soul are esteemed as trivial and unnecessary. Do
but speak of a young lady at school, the reply is, Oh ! how well
she dances ; how she excels in all sorts of needlework, and I'm
sure you would be charmed to see how gracefully she enters a
room and retires. As if forms and ceremonies, needlework and a
genteel carriage, added to gross and barbarous corruption in their
own language, as well as in others, incapable to write two lines
correct in either, was, as is now called, a finished education.'

The names of the dramatis personce are all bestowed to
denote the peculiar dominant moral quality of each individual —
a survival perhaps of the Elizabethan simplicity in scene-making :
' This is a Wood ; ' ' This is a Palace ' ; and which found its
fullest development perhaps as a completed scheme of nomen-
clature in the ' Pilgrim's Progress.' It is a scheme which shows
with delightful naivete the exact nature of the satire intended.

go we have a set of young ladies — Miss Dullbright, Miss

394 SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO.

Skilful, Witty, Friendly, Fiere, Maligne, Fullgold, Captious,
Simple, Avide, and so on, whose conversation corresponds exactly
and sadly to their labels, and emphasises very painfully just what
the author describes as the ' Errors in the present mode of Female
Education.'

Miss Fullgold indeed, who bears a strong resemblance to the
family type of Thackeray's ' Osbornes,' expresses the sentiment of
a whole class in her one speech :

' What has a person of two thousand a year to do with wit
and judgment ? They can have them for pay. Why, there are
many poor wits who will exhaust themselves for a good dinner
in a great family ; and, as for manners, people of rank and for-
tune may assume what manners they please.'

Does it not seem by the way that such words as modern and
fin-de-siecle are unnecessary to our vocabulary after all ? Or, is
it that every phase of human nature is perennial, always in touch
somewhere throughout every succeeding century ?

It is interesting to note here a French definition of education
of about the same date — partly by way of contrast, partly because
it is good to realise that the same ideas and ideals were then in
the minds of the noble-hearted which in our English system of
education to-day are actually being put into daily practice.

' Donner a I'homme une existence digne de son etre, etendre,
agrandir et perfectionner ses facultes physiques, morales, et intel-
lectuelles — tel est le but de 1'education.' We who have actually
in our own lives experienced and felt the forces of that noble and
high ideal of education — education in its true, its rightful sense —
which is upheld by those in our universities who have thought it
good and right to admit girls to share in their privileges, gladly
bear witness to the realisation to-day of what is the only right
way of regarding the attainment of every sort of knowledge. It
is not learning, not pedantry, not the mere acquisition of facts,
certainly not a feeling of self-aggrandisement and congratulation
that a share in university privileges should give, is meant to give
— but that higher moulding of character and taste, and the
uplifting of every innate power which shall tend to make the
individual more conscious of her responsibility towards life, herself
and her fellow-creatures, and more capable of supporting it : a
being stronger than before in moral worth.

The mind is its own place, and of itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO. 395

But whether French youth was really trained in this ideal
system of ethics is difficult to say. It is worth while as a mere
comparison quoting in this connection from an amusing little
book, a sort of ' grown-up ' ' Child's Guide/ published in Paris
about 1770, and calling itself a 'Dialogue de Morale a 1'usage
de la Jeune Noblesse,' and which begins : —

' Qu'est-ce la Vertu ?

Ansiver. — ' C'est une heureuse disposition de 1'esprit qui nous
porte a remplir les devoirs de la Societe pour noire propre
avantage ' !

The last phrase is irresistible (the italics are mine), and quite
Chesterfieldian. But one wonders as one reads. Surely it is
legitimate to look to fiction for contemporary manners, yet how
do our most celebrated descriptions of school-life — at first hand
too — tally with the exalted sentiments actually, as we have seen,
professed by the educators of youth themselves ? The later
eighteenth and early nineteenth century were not specially given
to moralising in England : want of sentiment marks that period
rather. The first volume of the least sentimental book of genius
ever written, its author the least sentimental of men, saw the
light in 1777 — Gibbon's ' Eoman Empire.' Wars and rumours
of wars filled the air rather — the ' Practic part of life Mistress to
the Theoric.'

Certainly, one might say, such novels as ' Jane Eyre,' ' Villette,'
or ' David Copperfield ' portray life twenty or forty years later.
But was life physically harder or easier then for children?
The golden age had not begun for them before the middle of the
century at least.

Charlotte Bronte was at Cowan Bridge in 1824, and ' Jane
Eyre's ' school-life would be fairly contemporaneous with that
date. I myself have had the pleasure and interest of being
personally acquainted with a lady, now of course far advanced in
years, who had actually been at Cowan Bridge with all three
Brontes, and is probably now the last living contemporary of that
period of their lives. Mrs. Routh — Miss Whaley as she then was,
though it is under her married name only that I have known her
— was kind enough to try and recall all that she could of her
school-life and the sisters. Her impressions were that the treat-
ment was Spartan certainly, but neither cruel nor peculiarly
harsh, and that the teaching was very sound. I may say at
once that I understood from her that she was not a delicate

396 SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO.

child, and already accustomed at home to a very frugal regime,
besides being naturally so docile and studious that school-life in
any case must have been as easy for her as it could be for any girl.
She went at the age of nine and outstayed Miss Evans. Charlotte
Bronte was there all the time that she was, but she only re-
collected her as a small and not particularly pretty or noticeable
child one way or another. Neither could she remember that her
cleverness was in any way remarkable. Mrs Routh allowed that
the premises were badly warmed, and colds and chills frequent,
while she herself often went to bed feeling very hungry, but she
almost indignantly repudiated the idea of the girls ever having
had anything uneatable put before them. She never remembered
the porridge being burnt, or the meat sent from table as
bad ; if plain, everything was quite wholesome. For breakfast,
by the way, she distinctly remembered that for those who did not
like porridge an alternative of bread-and-milk was always pro-
vided. She described something of the curriculum of the school-
hours, and it seems that French, music, and water-colour
sketching were all included and not at all badly taught. Needle-
work was the invariable employment for all spare time — not
charity work however, but the making and mending of their own
clothes — though, as Mrs. Routh remarked, the girls always brought
so many with them that it was not much that was needed to
be done during term. She laughed and seemed amused, by
the way, at the notion of the needles provided being otherwise
than always perfectly good and suitable for what was required.
Mrs. Routh said they all loved Miss Evans (Miss Temple)
dearly, but that Miss Andrews (Miss Scatcherd) was hated,
describing this latter as a handsome-looking, rather tall woman,
who she could quite believe might have been cruel to any
weak or dull girl, though she had never herself seen her do any-
thing specially harsh. For Mr. Carus Wilson Mrs. Routh had
nothing but praise, remembering him as a big handsome man,
kind and gentle, but not often at the school. On the whole,
she had been contented and happy there, though, like most
school-girls after all, utterly loathing the return after holidays.
However, the best proof of what she felt she did owe to the
institution lies in the fact that for years after her marriage she
continued her subscriptions to its support. That the life there
was very hard no one could deny, and undoubtedly it was one
only fitted for strong children. But no trace of bitterness about

SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO. 397

it remained in any of Mrs. Eouth's reminiscences, and one is rather
driven to ask whether ' Jane Eyre's ' experience may not have
been at least an exceptional one. Or may we not rather believe
that it was written as the result of hardships which might have
been and were forgotten with years by the average girl, but
which were bitten in upon the supersensitive soul of genius ?

Perhaps genius, when drawing pre-eminently upon its own
experiences, must needs become caricature — tragedy if bitter,
something of parody when it is a Dickensonian humour that
colours the brush. For observe, the school of Thackeray's Miss
Pinkerton, both as regards date and general tone, might almost
be that of Mrs. Voysey or Teachwell. And the account of it is
the result of dispassionate survey, not memory. Thackeray drew
as a spectator. His genius was that, mainly, of observation.
Again, the inimitable Mr. Collins, limned in from the quiet
chimney-corner by that shrewdness of instinct in genius which
needs but one letter to make an alphabet — the portrait untinged
by personal resentment — is a type for all time. While, on the
other hand, ' Shirley's ' curates, whose prototypes had pestered
the poor authoress with unwelcome attentions, are merely caustic
absurdities. Or is it that genius in character-portraying is most
out of proportion to truth and reality when most inspired ? We
know that a roman a clef is the most misleading of directories.
Skimpole was a Leigh Hunt out of all perspective. Macaulay, as
a comparative stranger to Leigh Hunt, might comment in con-
temptuous surprise, writing to Macvey Napier, the then editor of
the ' Edinburgh Review,' upon 'two guineas borrowed and lent' ; but
Dickens had seen the seamy side of life, and himself knew both
poor Leigh Hunt's necessities and happier qualities. It was not
fair to label him as Skimpole ; he was not Skimpole ; but as
Skimpole he will probably go down to generations.

It is not quite fair nor is it easy to disprove fiction, but here
is a chance at least for Madame Beck. Read this prospectus of a
Parisian school in 1802 or thereabouts, considering not only the
moral sentiments, but the practical arrangements, and then ask
yourself if ' Villette ' rings quite true. The whole scheme does
credit to heart and common-sense alike. The date is about the
opening of the nineteenth century. A lease of life extending
only through the working powers of one Madame Bourdouy would
make it fairly contemporaneous with Charlotte Bronte's remini-
scences, since it must be remembered that the date of the

398 SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO.

published novel by no means tallies with the memories it calls up
again into existence. Charlotte was in Brussels about the year
1840.

' Education de Jeunes Personnes.

1 Get etablissement, particulierement destine aux etrangeres,
a tous les soins de sante, d'interet et d'agrement que peuvent
desirer pour leurs enfans des parens eloignes, reunit un choix de
ces artistes les plus estimes.

' Je suis seule, tous les momens de ma vie sont a moi. Ces
momens appartiendront a mes jeunes amies : je trouverai mon
bonheur en m'occupant sans cesse des moyens d'assurer le leur.

' . . . Le local que j'ai choisi est vaste, sain et commode, tout
est neuf, simple et propre.

' Deux grands salons sont destines pour les etudes, un autre
pour la musique : il y a aussi une bibliotheque qui ne sera com-
posee que de livres analogues au but que je me propose.

' L' etablissement fournit les lits, pour qu'ils soient uniformes.
Les parens ne recevront aucuns memoires, les livres, cartes,
musiques, papiers, crayons, couleurs, cadres, pupitres, modeles,
plumes, accord et entretien des instruments : comme aussi les
gants, chapeaux, rubans, blanchissage et petits ustensiles neces-
saires seront aux frais de la maison, ainsi que les maladies. . . .'

The choice of doctors in individual cases of illness was,
however, we learn, to be left to the parents — ' je ne m'exposerai
point aux reproches ' — but a doctor and a dentist were attached
to the school. One cannot but notice the motherly and con-
scientious common-sense revealed in this.

'Les eleves recevront ici le pren ier jour de chaque mois 6
francs jusqu'a douze ans, et 12 francs ensuite pour leurs menues
depenses. Elles auront toutes un livret pour en ecrire 1'emploi.
Ce moyen servira a connoitre leur penchant soit a la bienfaisance,
a 1'economie, a 1'avarice ou a la coquetterie : il faut que de
jeunes personnes aient un peu d'argent a leur disposition pour en
apprendre la valeur, contracter 1'habitude de 1'ordre et connoitre
le plaisir de donner a propos. . . .' Very sensibly Madame
protests against too generous parents giving their children a
larger allowance, since it would introduce an element of in-
equality— ' Et trop au-dessus de la portee des enfans, ils etonnent
leur imagination, leur donnent de fausses idees du monde, qu'ils
ne jugent que de la, et leur rendent maussade et insipide tout ce

SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO. 399

qui n'est pas aussi piquant a leurs yeux.' For the same reason
Madame protests against her pupils accepting outside social
engagements. ' Elles trouveront ici des amusemens conformes a
leur age, et qui leur suffiront, tant qu'elles n'auront pas connu
les autres. Jeux de toute espece,- assemblies, danses, concerts,
declamations, petites pieces, voila de quoi remplir 1'intervalle
des etudes. ... On verra broder, faire de la tapisserie, des
nattes, des decoupures. L'instant du travail est aussi celui des
lectures d'agrement ; le developpement des idees, les reflexions
morales : je crois qu'il est aise, quand on raisonne les enfans avec
amitie, de les porter au bien : le plus sur moyen c'est de gagner
leur confiance, en leur montrant cet interet qui attire a tout age :
c'est de se preter aux confidences comme amie, afin d'etudier
leur caractere, c'est de faire parler la raison, et jamais 1'humeur,
mais c'est aussi de tenir strictement aux choses convenues dans
le principe. . . .

' J'ai repu dans le monde et dans les couvents, j'ai etudie les
jeunes personnes dans les differentes situations ou je les ai vues,
et j'ai remarque que la trop grande severite en perdoit autant
pour les moeurs, que la trop grande liberte et le desoeuvrement
pour le bonheur domestique. Du premier de ces inconvenies
nalt la dissimulation, de 1'autre les mauvaises habitudes. Si 1'on
veut appro fondir mes reflexions, j'ose croire qu'on les trouvera
justes. J'en conclus qu'il faut eviier les extremes . . . je
chercherai a leur applanir les dimcultes de la vie si je puis
m'exprimer ainsi. . . .'

The description of the practical arrangement of the establish-
ment follows.

' Chaque eleve apportera avec son trousseau 1'instrument dont
elle aura fait choix. Elles auront toutes leur linge en compte et
sous leur clef pour s'habituer a le soigner. Les femmes de
service recevront d'elles chaque jour ce qui aura besoin de
reparations, et s'en occuperont de suite pour le leur rendre apres.
La regie prescrit de ne jamais porter de vetement dechire, ni qui
sente le desordre. Elles auront toutes des tabliers de taffetas
noir a poches.

' II y a une grande piece destinee a la toilette commune, dans
laquelle se trouvera tout ce qui est necessaire a son usage : des
femmes sures veilleront a tous les soins qu'elle exige : de plus
une salle de bains et une infirmerie separees. Je mangerai tou-
jours avec les jeunes personnes : les ainees feront habituellement

400 SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO.

avec moi les honneurs de la table : et quand elles auront quinze
ans, elles auront chacune a leur tour, pendant une decade,
1'inspection de la maison, aim de ne pas se trouver etrangeres a
la leur quand elles se marieront.'

The last sentence gives the keynote to what was, and
perhaps still is, the only practical ultimatum from the French
point of view of all feminine education. And in sympathy with
it so far indeed is our English ideal, in that we do recognise
and believe that the highest calling of all for a good and well-
brought up woman is that of the Wife and Mother. Only we
would aim, in our ideal of education, at making first and
foremost the Good Woman, loyal from her own nature to her
principles, responsibilities, and duties ; sure that, whatever be
her path in life, happiness can only result in her obedience and
acquiescence therein. »

The regime for the day was as follows : —

' A 7. Le Lever, premier Devoir, toilette, arrangemens, &c.
8.30. Dejeuner, avec the, lait, beurre, ou fruits.
9. Entree au salon d'etudes jusqu'a midi.
12. Une heure de repos, on mangera si Ton en a besoin.
1. Etude jusqu'a trois.
3. Le Diner, jeux et promenades jusqu'a cinq heures.'

Then follow the subjects to be studied — a truly formidable
array, but the hours of study being what they were, one must
conclude that the pupils learnt only from merest textbooks.

' Objds des itudes.

Religion; histoires ancienne et moderne ; litterature, geo-
graphic, mythologie.

L'arithmetique et les elemens de la geometric.
La langue Franpaise.

„ Anglaise.
„ ,, Allemande.
,, „ Italienne.
La lecture de la prose et de la poesie.
L'ecriture.

Le dessin, la peinture (figure, paysage ou fleurs), nuits,
mignature, gouache.

La musique, vocale, composition et gout de chant.

SCHOOL LIFE A CENTURY AGO. 4C1

Le forte piano.

La harpe, la guitar e.

La danse. graces et maintien.

Et tous les ouvrages dont une femme peut s'occuper.

On fera ecrire les jeunes personnes regulierernent a leur famille.
Leur correspondance avec pere et mere, ouceux qui en tiennent lieu,
sera parfaitement libre, des qu'elles seront en etat d'ecrire seules.

EOSALIE BOURDOUY.
Rue de 1'universite, Maison Mailley,
No. 279, f. B. Saint- Germois.'

Certainly if kindly discipline, surveillance, and thoughtful
observation of character could produce a perfect type of Une
Demoiselle, Madame Bourdouy seems to have known the secret.

If carried out with fidelity, this prospect of school days would
certainly be not only alluring, but would oblige us to give to the
French system of education in those days the first place. It is
at any rate comforting to remember that it was not a ' School of
Fiction.'

VIOLET A. SIMPSON.

VOL. XII. — NO. 6fl, N.S. 26

402

A FREE-TRADER IN LETTERS.

BEING no more than a modest man of commerce, I suppose I take
the E.G. view of the glorious profession ; but I find my excuse in
the irreverent view of his toil taken by a young scribbler for
whom I entertain a sincere affection and regard. It was the eve
of a new year of toil and moil, a strained moment of weird
analyses and introspection of work done, illusions destroyed, hopes
clung to, by the individual, the nation, humanity at large ; and
he had been depressed by the reading of some reminiscences in
which a veteran publisher told of how that unconventional editor,
Thackeray, had been offered thousands on a slip of paper, and how
Trollope had been offered the chance of tossing for a thousand
under the chaste cegis of the Reform Club. Such readings of the
successful pilgrims on the literary highway had sent my young
friend, whimsically enough, to his pass-book (showing a defiant end-
year's overdraft) ; and to him, thus absorbed, I entered last Xew
Year's Eve at his seaside house, he in dressing-gown and slippers,
the green light from his reading-lamp falling on little heaps of
tobacco ash, and on slips of paper bearing quaint, untidy and
inconclusive calculations, scrawled in characters that would have
assured summary notice to an office boy earning half a sovereign a
week.

' Come in ! ' he sings out; ' come in, and drink of Dundee milk,
and help me to bare some of the naked truths of that " fine
independent career " of mine that you laud so smugly from your
gold mills high up in Eastcheap ! And, first, lend me fifty
pounds to meet an overdraft, which the most useless of bankers
has just brought to my notice — I repay you before the end of
January — and run up those columns in your best three-rows-at-a
time style, while I mix your grog.'

I sank in the comfortable embrace of a deep easy-chair, lit one
of my friend's pungent cigarettes, gathered up his slips of rebel-
lious arithmetic, and even mentally wrote that 501. cheque; for I
liked this quaint young man, and was not in the least disturbed
by an unstudied abruptness of manner, acquired, as I knew,
under many skies and in pursuit of rough sport that lacked
the nicer etiquettes of moor or covert. The figures on the slips

A FREE-TRADER IN LETTERS. 403

related, as was soon clear, to his earnings with the pen over
a period embracing the last four preceding years, six months
out of which he had been away from Europe — or from Fleet
Street, as he preferred more narrowly to put it — on his travels.
In three and a half years, therefore, 'he appeared to have earned
precisely 2,567£. 5s. llcZ. ; and when I had reached this total — by
which time the glasses were sparkling, and he was buried in
another deep chair on the other side of the hearth — I tried to
cheer him from his low spirits with some commonplace epitaph of
the Grrub Street hack, long since, I protested, biologically extinct.
He glared. ' Many thanks,' he growled ; ' I work on an average
ten hours of the day, seven days of the week, and forty-eight
weeks of the year. I earn, as you have shown me, rather less
than eight hundred a year. What do you, who are but ten years
my senior, make ? '

As I did not satisfy this sudden curiosity, having the com-
mercial reticence on such subjects, but merely laid due stress on
this ten years' difference, as well as on the hitherto-ignored capital
already sunk in my father's business when I succeeded to it, he
resumed :

' But stay; you will find on that other sheet there five columns,
in which I was trying to arrive at the amounts that I had made
in the period under notice from five very different sources of
literary income. The figures were getting a bore — I told you
that I once made 10 marks out of a possible 1,000 in the India
Civil Open Competition, didn't I ? — but, now that I have trapped
an arithmetician second only to Carl Meyer, I'll go through with
them.'

Of a truth his exercises in compound division and addition
were not appalling, with such poor little totals did they deal,
and I was in a few moments able to cast out for him these five
heads : —

1898-1901, less six months :

Daily Papers. Weekly Reviews. Magazines. Books. Editing.

£417 0*. U. £1804*. Id. £191 3s. Gd. £365 10s. Od. £1,413 It. Gd.

and further, for 1901 alone these respectively showed :

Daily Papers. Weekly Reviews. Magazines. Books. Editing.

£254 13s. 3d. £50 1*. Wd. £113 11*. Od. £100 0*. Od. £135 Os. Od.

' Good,' said the owner of all this wealth, silently admiring the
ease with which, having been bred to such work, I ran up his

26—2

404 A FREE-TRADER IN LETTERS.

columns without even putting pen to paper. ' I wanted those
totals made out, so that, on the basis of an average remuneration
— fee, honorarium, call it what you like ! — of two guineas a
thousand words from the magazines and reviews, and a guinea and
a half from the papers for every thousand words contributed, I
might calculate how many thousands of words of original matter
I had contributed in a twelvemonth. The reckoning would have
carried me an hour or two into the next century, but you will do
it in ten minutes.'

Ten seconds sufficed for this simple problem of mental
arithmetic, and I wrote down some 170,000 against the daily
papers, 25,000 against reviews, and rather over 50,000 against
the magazines, or not far short of a quarter of a million words
in all.

' You see,' he went on, in the bitter tone of one who has to
prove a case against himself ; ' you see what my work has been.
And let me tell you that the mere clicking out of those words on
a typewriter does not represent the half of even the mechanical
work of the year. What of all the correspondence and interview-
ing that goes to the placing of those words, the mechanical
reading of proof and writing of letters to unknown correspondents,
to disoblige whom is to entail trouble with one's editor ! What,
too, of the not inconsiderable number of letters to the Press that
must be written in the course of a year by any knight of the pen
who, while eschewing any Quixotic tilting at windmills, should be
sufficiently jealous of his good name to be ready at a moment's
notice to engage, like the good Sir Nigel Loring, in such
encounters as offer goodly thrusts, with perchance some knightly
advancement ! '

All this, he went on to say, was more or less mechanical work,
carrying with it no great exercise of the brain. But what of the
thought and reading, the study of the ancients, and the wide-
awakeness to everything of modern interest, that went to the
writing of those quarter of a million words ! The works in two
volumes that had to be read ere he could write a review of at most
a thousand words ! The racking of weary brains for new subjects
or for new readings of old cnes ! The correspondence and research,
and even travel, that sometimes went to verifying a point
seemingly trivial ! Yes, he concluded, if one allowed on an
average two hours of reading for every hour of actual production,
a kind of mental ploughing and sowing, in fact, of two acres for

A FREE-TRADER IN LETTERS 405

every acre ever reaped, a continuous exploiting of lands never
allowed to lie fallow, that would be, if anything, to understate the
work involved.

I was saddened. For there slept at that moment in his
little cot at Streatham a small heir, for whom I had dreamed
of a career of letters, far removed from the dens of clamorous
bulls and bears and squealing guinea-pigs, among whom I have
scored a few notable successes.

I argued the point with my Scribbler, and he, dear soul ! went
round from his sombre deprecation of his vocation (which, for all
his pose, he would not have exchanged, emoluments and all, for
that of the Lord Chancellor or Commander-in-Chief !) to an
equally immoderate condemnation of every other calling in life !

Incidentally we had discussed the relations between authors
and the publisher on the basis not alone of the aforementioned
retrospect of Thackeray, but also of the recent attempts by a
union of idealists to eliminate the personal element and place
every literary transaction on a cut-and-dried basis, with a ren-
dering of vouchers and accounts as precise as we should exact
between Temple Bar and the Tower.

' See here/ says Scribbler ; ' that is all rot ! ' He has never
embroidered his friendly intercourse with the more elaborate
periphrasis reserved for his work. ' Just listen to this.' And
he took from his table a recently published collection of
essays on ' The Struggle for Existence,' that had come to him for
review.

' Stodart Walker is talking of the relative mortality of different
occupations, and he says, " Amongst those of low mortality we
find publishers and booksellers. They are generally masters, in
better circumstances than their confederates." So far, so good.
I, you see, am one of the " confederates " ! Yet I do not feel any
predisposition to an early decease. Of course, publishers last
longer. They eat more and drink less, and generally lead a far
more regular life than we could — even,' he added, with his usual
honesty, ' if we wanted to. But no one who attempts to encourage
suspicion between author and publisher can have the faintest
notion of the needs of either. He must be independent or a fool.
As long as publishers hold the capital, as long as the best writers
cannot often come in touch with the best readers unless they risk
that capital, so long, in a measure, is the " Grub Street hack "of
your earlier imaginings extinct only in name and appearance.

406 A FREE-TRADER IN LETTERS.

This, to a certain extent, is fair. I have never kicked against it.
For every publisher who takes advantage of the position — not, as
he fondly imagines, without my plainly seeing that which I feel
in no position to check — I find quite half a dozen who treat me
as one gentleman has a right to expect of another.'

I always liked his somewhat cynical justice towards the
publishers, for the morbid recriminations that sometimes rage in
the daily papers between the two branches of the service of letters
have often seemed to me despicable. And I knew that he had,
in the course of his work, had one or two keen disappointments
that would have affected one of less buoyant temperament. On
one occasion he had been duped out of his American rights and
some not inconsiderable Australian sales by the apparently un-
intentional omission of a semicolon in his contract. On another
— and this he admitted to be, as indeed it was, entirely his own
fault — he had spent many weeks over a record of his own travels,
had succeeded in placing it with a firm in whose list it greatly
pleased him, all question of remuneration apart, to figure, and
had not only completed the book, but had even corrected several
revises of proof, before he discovered that he could not publish the
work without gravely offending one for whom he entertained the
deepest affection. So hopefully had he built on the appearance
of the book to bring him some measure of fame, that he assured
me that the sacrifice of a month's income, the price of suppressing
the book from the public eye, was quite the least factor in his
discomfiture. In a third case he had proposed a magazine to a
publisher, who thought very highly of it, but was taken ill while
still considering the proposal. My young friend felt himself
morally bound to give him the chance of taking it up on recovery—
a scruple that did neither of them any good, for another firm had,
before the publisher returned convalescent from a trip in Southern
France, announced a monthly production with an almost identical
programme. Yet these and many other disappointments left him
without a grudge, and I always set that down not a little to his
credit. Much of his hardest work, too, was, I knew from his own
admissions, unremunerative, undertaken solely in order to keep
himself sufficiently before his public. One or two seasons he
lectured all over the country, and he frankly owned that the ten-
guinea fee commonly given barely covered his travelling expenses.
Then, too, he had a fancy for embellishing some of his articles
with the most remarkable photographs he could get, and for these

A FREE-TRADER IN LETTERS. 407

he often paid two or three times the fee that he received for them
from his editors. Columns of obiter dicta, too, news and theories
on every conceivable subject of peace or war, written by the man
in the crowd for the man in the crowd, would often cost him, in
his endeavour to keep them bright and interesting, fully as much
as he got for them, so that he had the mental and mechanical
work of writing them out for nothing.

I was recalled from these reminiscences of his past confessions
by the droning of one of those endless monologues that one ought
always to forgive in men who work out most of their life alone.
He was saying that the editor of a magazine would always treat
you decently if you were not a ' perfect rotter ' — which elegant
term he explained by pointing out that many fools think to trick
experienced editors with furbished-up articles that other men had,
to all intents and purposes, already written for other magazines,
doing a kind of unconfessed brokerage in the brains of others,
since they had none of their own; yet, not contented with
brokerage commission, they must needs lay fraudulent claim to
the profits of merchants. This commercial parallel was so
evidently drawn for my special benefit that I had not the heart to
point out its more than slight discrepancies. And then there
came the optimistic conclusion to his meanderings which, while
making me rejoice that I had come upon him this last evening of
the dying year to turn his musings into channels of brighter hope,
was not soothing to my dormant and not unwarranted pride in a
commercial escutcheon that had been kept free from stain.

' You may laugh at the earnings of these three and a half
years,' he wound up, utterly forgetting, in his altered mood, that
the laugh had been his own ; ' but the consolations of the literary
life, even where literature and pot-boiling are of dire necessity
often synonymous, are not all written on cheque forms. Think
of the mysterious joy of correcting your first proof ! True, it
doesn't last long,' he added regretfully, with a wave of his hand
in the direction of some festoons of proof-slips pinned on the wall
above his typewriter ; ' but the first is just immense ! Then,
again, there is the equally transient pleasure of seeing yourselves
on the bookstalls, in the shop-windows, even in people's hands.'

I sighed, and was again lost in reverie over the little vanities
of some of his class. I had even on one occasion seen a third-
rate (if, as in railway carriages, there is no fourth !) novelist
reading his own rubbish in all the tremor of the ' Tube.' I knew

408 A FREE-TRADER IN LETTERS.

tbe fellow, having once sat opposite him at a Livery dinner, at
which he bravely vindicated the catholic tastes to which, I believe,
he laid claim in his stories. He reminded me on the occasion of
our meeting in the ' Tube ' of a very dirty crossing-sweeper who
had once fascinated me as a boy at Piccadilly Circus, as I watched
him licking his fearful ringers and marvelled how he was not taken
sick ! I pondered, too, on other literary vanities : on ladies who
ignored reviews and reviewers (except when they could make copy
out of reviling them), and of men who had a weakness for long
hair and long nails and the cloaks of Pyrenean bandits. And
here I became aware of a shock, as my friend was deliberately
saying :

' . . . and the clean way in which one makes it. You don't
mind, old man, I know, but it is impossible, isn't it [this,
naively], unless you are a clerk or a peer, to make a shilling in
the City nowadays without soiling your hands a bit ? '

And now, at last, I had something to say. I have since had a
horrible suspicion that an editor who had employed him in such
work once praised loudly his tact in interviewing difficile subjects ;
but had he plotted to elicit by indirect challenge the answer to his
straight and unappreciated question touching my income, that
had earlier failed to draw me, he could not have gone to work
better.

True, I told him in my heat, I made perhaps ten, perhaps
eleven, times his income ; and true, also, I had my evenings and
my Sundays to myself. True, lastly, a brief telegram to my stock-
broker despatched only a few days before, while the ' Times ' and a
private cablegram that threw such singular and precious light on
one of its political messages from the beleaguered capital of a South
American State yet lay on my breakfast-table, would enable me
on settling day to pay into my bank a difference representing his
earnings for about seven years. All this I granted. But where
was the soiling ? Very special information and knowledge went
to the sending of that innocent-looking wire, and the private
message on my table would have cost me more than ever he got
for a book, even had the deal gone against me. Over and above
all this special knowledge a cool calculation and a passionless
facing of great risks, of all of which this dreamy weaver of words
could know nothing ! All this I told him, and more : of the
capital sunk in our firm, a family affair covering three genera-
tions, as generations count in this age of hurry ; of the risks and

A FREE-TRADER IN LETTERS. 409

disappointments, of which he seemed to take no account. He, as
1 showed him, ran no risks, embarked no capital, and encountered
disappointments that were for the most part, however he might
choose to regard them, purely affairs of sentiment. And as for
' smart practice,' that moral borderland between the straight and
crooked — was there nothing of the kind in his world ? Might I
not quite fairly avail myself of knowledge imparted on other
occasions by himself : little tricks of advertising, suppression of
the adverse comments in reviews liberally, but discriminatingly,
quoted ; phenomenal sales of six editions (of how many copies
each ? ) ; omissions to state on the title-page the fact of a
previous appearance in serial form, an innocent oversight by
which, even where not strengthened by the yet more questionable
expedient of a change in title, the public was sometimes induced
to buy in cloth covers that which it had already read unbound ?

Of course he did not lend himself to practices worthy only of
very successful novelists ; yet why, on the same principle, tar all
commercial men with one brush ?

Here, just as the temperature of our discussion promised to
rise in the neighbourhood of boiling-point, the crisp pealing of
the New-Year bells came to us through the salt air, and we both
sprang to the window and forgot our slight differences in a
parting glass, as the inrush of cold breeze made strange wreaths
of the tobacco smoke. And we agreed that the literary life had
its consolations, and that the literal*}' income cannot, even though
its purchasing power be no greater, be measured by quite the
same standards as those that rule the returns on other forms of
labour. For man, we are told, values money by the difficulty
with which he acquires it ; and, if this be the truth, those who
live by spreading gallons of ink over acres of paper, or punching
holes in miles of typed ribbon — the statistical form of reasoning
seemed best suited to the last minutes of the old year — must find
satisfaction in a far more modest income than would content him
whose wealth was already amassed for him by those who bore his
name before he carried a cheque-book. Consolations, however, or
no consolations, those who would lightly put to sea in the
literary ship, with the futile idea that success may be commanded
by a little impudence and a little more log-rolling, may certainly
take warning by the figures given here. They show, at any rate,
that the literary life is about the last resource for those without
very special qualifications and some sort of private stand-by.

410 A FREE-TRADER IN LETTERS.

It has from time to time been the fashion for successful and
altruistic writers to invite all and sundry to join the ranks and
partake of the good things of the literary career. The latest
example of this fine fooling takes the form of a practical manual
hy an author who professes to make an income of six hundred a
year from the magazines. I do not, as did my young friend, question
the writer's probable claim to his modest pen-name. But, if we
eliminate some useful hints that any working writer can pick up
for himself by the time he is making fifty pounds a year, what,
after all, does this mysterious writer tell us beyond the somewhat
patent fact that anyone having something to say and knowing
how to say it can command the attention of an editor ? Even we
in the City know that, though we find, as a rule, a better way of
investing our special information than in the columns of the
Press.

And as I buttoned up my ulster and took leave of my young
friend on the doorstep, we wished each other all manner of luck
in the second year of the century, which was to see him editor of
the ' Times,' and myself (Goodness forbid !) Lord Mayor of
London ! This year was to bring him its own particular chances,
for the Coronation would, apart from the creation of a demand
for special literature of fact and fancy, prose and poetry, bearing
on that great event, give a general fillip to the making of books
all round. And I went out of the gate and towards my hotel,
leaving my young squire of the pen not ill-pleased with his own
work in life, and already dreaming, as he bolted his front door,
of his coming knighthood, when he would vanquish many a famous
jouster in the world's arena. May luck attend him !

S. DE J.

411

THE FOUR FEATHERS}
BY A. E. W. MASON.

CHAPTER VII.
THE LAST RECONNAISSANCE.

' No one,' said Durrance, and he strapped his glasses into the
leather case at his side.

' No one, sir,' Captain Mather agreed.

' We will move forward.'

The scouts went on ahead, the troops resumed their formation,
the two seven-pounder mountain guns closed up behind, and
Durrance's detachment of the Camel Corps moved down from the
gloomy ridge of Khor Grwob, thirty-five miles south-west of Suakin,
into the plateau of Sinkat. It was the last reconnaissance in
strength before the evacuation of the Eastern Soudan.

All through that morning the camels had jolted slowly up the
gulley of shale between red precipitous rocks, and when the rocks
fell back between red mountain-heaps all crumbled into a desola-
tion of stones. Hardly a patch of grass or the ragged branches
of a mimosa had broken the monotony of ruin. And after that
arid journey the green bushes of Sinkat in the valley below com-
forted the eye with the pleasing aspect of a park. The troopers
sat their saddles with a greater alertness.

They moved in a diagonal line across the plateau towards the
mountains of Erkoweet, a silent company on a plain still more
silent. It was eleven o'clock. The sun rose towards the centre
of a colourless, cloudless sky, the sliadows of the camels shortened
upon the sand, and the sand itself glistened white as a beach of
the Scilly Islands. There was no draught of air that morning to
whisper amongst the rich foliage, and the shadows of the branches
lay so distinct and motionless upon the ground that they might
themselves have been branches strewn there on some past day by
a storm. The only sounds that were audible were the sharp clank
of weapons, the soft ceaseless padding of the camels' feet, and at
times the whirr of a flight of pigeons disturbed by the approaching

412 THE FOUR FEATHERS

cavalcade. Yet there was life on the plateau, though of a
noiseless kind. For as the leaders rode along the curves of sand,
trim and smooth between the shrubs like carriage drives, they
would see from time to time, far ahead of them, a herd of gazelle
start up from the ground and race silently, a flash of dappled
brown and white, to the enclosing hills. It seemed that here was
a country during this last hour created.

' Yet this way the caravans passed southwards to Erkoweet and
the Khor Baraka. Here the Suakis built their summer-houses,'
said Durrance, answering the thought in his mind.

'And there Tewfik fought, and died with his four hundred
men,' said Mather, pointing forwards.

For three hours the troops marched across the plateau. It
was the month of May, and the sun blazed upon them with an
intolerable heat. They had long since lost their alertness. They
rode rocking drowsily in their saddles and prayed for the evening
and the silver shine of stars. For three hours the camels went
mincing on with the queer smirking motions of their heads, and
then quite suddenly a hundred yards ahead Durrance saw a
broken wall with window-spaces which let the sky through.

' The fort,' said he.

Three years had passed since Osman Digna had captured and
destroyed it, but during these three years its roofless ruins had
sustained another siege, and one no less persistent. The quick-
growing trees had so closely girt and encroached upon it to the
rear and to the right and to the left, that the traveller came upon
it unexpectedly, as Childe Roland upon the Dark Tower in the
plain. In the front, however, the sand still stretched open to the
wells, where three great Gemeiza trees of dark and spreading
foliage stood spaced liked sentinels.

In the shadow to the right front of the fort, where the bushes
fringed the open sand with the level regularity of a river bank, the
soldiers unsaddled their camels and prepared their food. Durrance
and Captain Mather walked round the fort, and as they came to
the southern corner, Durrance stopped.

' Hallo,' said he.

' Some Arab has camped here,' said Mather, stopping in his
turn. The grey ashes of a wood fire lay in a little heap upon a
blackened stone.

' And lately,' said Durrance.

Mather walked on, mounted a few rough steps to the crumbled

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 413

archway of the entrance, and passed into the unroofed corridors
and rooms. Durrance turned the ashes over with his boot. The
stump of a charred and whitened twig glowed red. Durrance set
his foot upon it and a tiny thread of smoke spurted into the air.

' Very lately,' he said to himself, and he followed Mather into
the fort. In the corners of the mud walls, in any fissure, in the
very floor, young trees were sprouting. Rearwards a steep glacis
and a deep fosse defended the works. Durrance sat himself down
upon the parapet of the wall above the glacis, while the pigeons
wheeled and circled overhead, thinking of the long months during
which Tewfik must daily have strained his eyes from this very
spot towards the pass over the hills from Suakin, looking as that
other general far to the south had done, for the sunlight flashing
on the weapons of the help which did not come. Mather sat by
his side and reflected in quite another spirit.

' Already the Guards are steaming out through the coral reefs
towards Suez. A week and our turn comes,' he said. ' What a
God-forsaken country ! '

' I come back to it,' said Durrance.

' Why ? '

' I like it. I like the people.'

Mather thought the taste unaccountable, but he knew never-
theless that, however unaccountable in itself, it accounted for his
companion's rapid promotion and success. Sympathy had stood
Durrance in the stead of much ability. Sympathy had given him
patience and the power to understand, so that during these three
years of campaign he had left far quicker and far abler men
behind him, in his knowledge of the sorely harassed tribes of the
eastern Soudan. He liked them ; he could enter into their
hatred of the old Turkish rule, he could understand their
fanaticism, and their pretence of fanaticism under the compulsion
of Osman Digna's hordes.

' Yes, I shall come back,' he said, ' and in three months' time.
For one thing, we know — every Englishman in Egypt too knows —
that this can't be the end. I want to be here when the work's
taken in hand again. I hate unfinished things.'

The sun beat relentlessly upon the plateau ; the men, stretched
in the shade, slept ; the afternoon was as noiseless as the morning ;
Durrance and Mather sat for some while compelled to silence by
the silence surrounding them. But Durrance's eyes turned at
last from the amphitheatre of hills, they lost their abstraction, they

414 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

became intently fixed upon the shrubbery beyond the glacis. He
was no longer recollecting Tewfik Bey and his heroic defence, or
speculating upon the work to be done in the years ahead. Without
turning his head, he saw that Mather was gazing in the same
direction as himself.

' What are you thinking about ? ' he asked suddenly of
Mather.

Mather laughed, and answered thoughtfully :
' I was drawing up the menu of the first dinner I will have
when I reach London. I will eat it alone, I think, quite alone,
and at Epitaux. It will begin with a water-melon. And you ? '

' I was wondering why, now that the pigeons have got used
to our presence, they should still be wheeling in and out of one
particular tree. Don't point to it please ! I mean the tree
beyond the ditch, and to the right of two small bushes.'

All about them they could see the pigeons quietly perched
upon the branches, spotting the foliage like a purple fruit.
Only above the one tree they circled and timorously called.

• We will draw that covert,' said Durrance. ' Take a dozen
men and surround it quietly.'

He himself remained on the glacis watching the tree and the
thick undergrowth. He saw six soldiers creep round the shrub-
bery from the left, six more from the right. But before they
could meet, and ring the tree in, he saw the branches violently
shaken, and an Arab with a roll of yellowish dammar wound
about his waist, and armed with a flat-headed spear and a shield
of hide, dash from the shelter and race out between the
soldiers into the open plain. He ran for a few yards only. For
Mather gave a sharp order to his men, and the Arab, as though
he understood that order, came to a sudden stop before a rifle
could be lifted to a shoulder. He walked quietly back to Mather.
He was brought up on to the glacis, where he stood before
Durrance without insolence or servility.

He explained in Arabic that he was a man of the Kababish
tribe named Abou Fatma. and friendly to the English. He was
on his way to Suakin.

' Why did you hide ? ' asked Durrance.

' It was safer. I knew you for my friends. But, my gentleman,
did you know me for yours ? '

Then Durrance said quickly, ' You speak English,' and
Durrance spoke in English.

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 415

The answer came without hesitation.

' I know a few words.'

' Where did you learn them ? '

' In Khartum.'

Thereafter he was left alone with Durrance on the glacis, and
the two men talked together for the best part of an hour. At
the end of that time the Arab was seen to descend the glacis,
cross the trench, and proceed towards the hills. Durrance gave
the order for the resumption of the march.

The water-tanks were filled, the men replenished their zam-
shyehs, knowing that of all thirsts in this world the afternoon
thirst is the very worst, saddled their camels, and mounted to the
usual groaning and snarling. The detachment moved north-
westwards from Sinkat, at an acute angle to its morning's march.
It skirted the hills opposite to the pass from which it had de-
scended in the morning. The bushes grew sparse. It came
into a black country of stones scantily relieved by yellow tas-
selled mimosas.

Durrance called Mather to his side.

' That Arab had a strange story to tell me. He was Gordon's
servant in Khartum. At the beginning of 1884, eighteen
months ago in fact, Gordon gave him a letter which he was to
take to Berber, whence the contents were to be telegraphed to
Cairo. But when the messenger arrived, Berber had just fallen.
He was seized upon and imprisoned the day after his arrival.
But during the one day which he had free he hid the letter
in the wall of a house, and so far as he knows it has not been
discovered.

' He would have been questioned if it had been,' said
Mather.

' Precisely, and he was riot questioned. He escaped from
Berber at night, three weeks ago. The story is curious, eh ? '

' And the letter still remains in the wall ? It is curious.
Perhaps the man was telling lies.'

' He had the chain mark on his ankles,' said Durrance.

' The cavalcade turned to the left into the hills on the northern
side of the plateau, and climbed again over shale.

' A letter from Gordon,' said Durrance in a musing voice,
' scribbled perhaps upon that rooftop of his palace, by the side of
his great telescope — a sentence written in haste, and his eye again
to the lens, searching over the palm trees for the smoke of the

416 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

steamers — and it comes down the Nile to be buried in a mud wall
in Berber. Yes, it's curious,' and he turned his face to the west
and the sinking sun. Even as he looked, the sun dipped behind
the hills. The sky above his head darkened rapidly to violet ; in
the west it flamed a glory of colours rich and iridescent. The
colours lost their violence and blended delicately into one rose
hue, the rose lingered for a little, and, fading in its turn, left a
sky of the purest emerald green transfused with light from
beneath the rim of the world.

' If only they had let us go last year westward 'to the Nile,' he
said with a sort of passion. ' Before Khartum had fallen, before
Berber had surrendered. But they would not.'

The magic of the sunset was not at all in Durrance's thoughts.
The story of the letter had struck upon a chord of reverence
within him. He was occupied with the history of that honest,
great, impracticable soldier, who, despised by officials and thwarted
by intrigues, a man of few ties and much loneliness, had gone
unflaggingly about his work, knowing the while that the moment
his back was turned the work was in an instant all undone.

Darkness came upon the troops, the camels quickened their
pace, the cicadas shrilled from every tuft of grass. The de-
tachment moved down towards the well of Disibil. Durrance lay
long awake that night on his camp bedstead spread out beneath
the stars. He forgot the letter in the mud wall. Southwards
the Southern Cross hung slanting in the sky, above him glittered
the curve of the Great Bear. In a week he would sail for
England ; he lay awake, counting up the years since the packet
cast off from Dover pier, and he found that the tale of them was
good. Kassassin, Tel-el -Kebir, the rush down the Red Sea,
Tokar, Tamai, Tamanib — the crowded moments came vividly to his
mind. He thrilled even now at the recollection of the Haden-
dowas leaping and stabbing through the breach of McNeil's zareba
six miles from Suakin ; he recalled the obdurate defence of the
Berkshires, the steadiness of the Marines, the rallying of the
broken troops. The years had been good years, years of plenty,
years which had advanced him to the brevet -rank of lieutenant-
colonel.

' A week more — only a week.' murmured Mather drowsily.
' I shall come back,' said Durrance with a laugh.
' Have you no friends ? '
And there wan a pause.

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 417

' Yes, I have friends. I shall have three months wherein to
see them.'

Durrance had written no word to Harry Feversham during
these years. Not to write letters was indeed a part of the man.
Correspondence was a difficulty to him. He was thinking now
that he would surprise his friends by a visit to Donegal, or he
might find them perhaps in London. He would ride once again
in the Kow. But in the end he would come back. For his
friend was married, and to Etbne Eustace, and as for himself his
life's work lay here in the Soudan. He would certainly come
back. And so, turning on his side, he slept dreamlessly while
the hosts of the stars trampled across the heavens above his head.

Now, at this moment Abou Fatma of the Kababish tribe was
sleeping under a boulder on the Khor Grwob. He rose early
and continued along the broad plains to the white city of Suakin.
There he told the same story which he had told Durrance to one
Captain Willoughby, who was acting for the time as deputy
governor. After he had come from the Palace he told his story
again, but this time in the native bazaar. He told it in Arabic,
and it happened that a Greek seated outside a cafe close at hand
overheard something of what was said. The Greek took Abou
Fatma aside, and with a promise of much merissa, wherewith to
intoxicate himself, induced him to tell it a fourth time and very
slowly.

' Could you find the house again ? ' asked the Greek.

Abou Fatma had no doubts upon that score. He proceeded
to draw diagrams in the dust, not knowing that during his im-
prisonment the town of Berber had been steadily pulled down
by the Mahdists and rebuilt to the north.

' It will be wise to speak of this to no one except me,' said
the Greek, jingling some significant dollars, and for a long while
the two men talked secretly together. The Greek happened to
be Harry Feversham, whom Durrance was proposing to visit in
Donegal. Captain Willoughby was Deputy-Governor of Suakin,
and after three years of waiting one of Harry Feversham's oppor-
tunities had come.

VOL. XII. — NO. 69, N.S. 27

418 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

CHAPTER VIII.

LIEUTENANT SUTCH IS TEMPTED TO LIE.

DURRANCE reached London one morning in June, and on that
afternoon took the first walk of the exile, into Hyde Park, where
he sat beneath the trees marvelling at the grace of his country-
women and the delicacy of their apparel, a solitary figure, sun-
burnt and stamped already with that indefinable expression of
the eyes and face which marks the men set apart in the distant
corners of the world. Amongst the people who strolled past
him, one, however, smiled, and, as he rose from his chair, Mrs.
Adair came to his side. She looked him over from head to foot
with a quick and almost furtive glance which might have told
even Durrance something of which he was not aware. She was
comparing him with the picture which she had of him now
three years old. She was looking for the small marks of change
which those three years might have brought about, and with
signs of apprehension. But Durrance only noticed that she was
dressed in black. She understood the question in his mind and
answered it.

' My husband died eighteen months ago,' she explained in
a quiet voice. ' He was thrown from his horse during a run with
the Pytchley. He was killed at once.'

' I had not heard,' Durrance answered awkwardly. ' I am
very sorry.'

Mrs. Adair took a chair beside him and did not reply. She
was a woman of perplexing silences; and her pale and placid
face with its cold correct outline gave no clue to the thoughts
with which she occupied them. She sat without stirring. Dur-
rance was embarrassed. He remembered Mr. Adair as a good-
humoured man, whose one chief quality was his evident affection
for his wife, but with what eyes the wife had looked upon him
he had never up till now considered. Mr. Adair indeed had
been at the best a shadowy figure in that small household, and
Durrance found it difficult even to draw upon his recollections
for any full expression of regret. He gave up the attempt and
asked:

' Are Harry Feversham and his wife in town ? '

Mrs. Adair was slow to reply.

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 419

' Not yet,' she said after a pause, but immediately she
corrected herself, and said a little hurriedly, ' I mean — the
marriage never took place.'

Durrance was not a man easily startled, and even when he
was, his surprise was not expressed in exclamations.

'I don't think that I understand. Why did it never take
place ?' he asked. Mrs. Adair looked sharply at him as though
inquiring for the reason of his deliberate tones.

' I don't know why,' she said. ' Ethne can keep a secret if
she wishes,' and Durrance nodded his assent. ' The marriage was
broken off on the night of a dance at Lennon House.'

Durrance turned at once to her.

' Just before I left England three years ago ? '

' Yes. Then you knew ? '

' No. Only you have explained to me something which
occurred on the very night that I left Dover. What has become
of Harry ? '

Mrs. Adair shrugged her shoulders.

' I do not know. I have met no one who does know. I do
not think that I have met anyone who has seen him since that
time. He must have left England.'

Durrance pondered on this mysterious disappearance. It was"
Harry Feversham then whom he had seen upon the pier as the
Channel boat cast off. The man with the troubled and despairing
face was after all his friend.

' And Miss Eustace ? ' he asked after a pause, with a queer
timidity. ' She has married since ? '

Again Mrs. Adair took her time to reply.

' No,' said she.

' Then she is still at Eamelton ? '

Mrs. Adair shook her head.

' There was a fire at Lennon House a year ago. Did you ever
hear of a constable called Bastable ? '

' Indeed, I did. He was the means of introducing me to Miss
Eustace and her father. I was travelling from Londonderry to
Letterkenny. I received a letter from Mr. Eustace, whom I did
not know, but who knew from my friends at Letterkenny that I
was coming past his house. He asked me to stay the night with
him. Naturally enough, I refused, with the result that Bastable
arrested me on a magistrate's warrant as soon as I landed from
the ferry.'

27-2

420 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

' That is the man,' said Mrs. Adair, and she told Durrance the
history of the fire. It appeared that Bastable's claim to Dermod's
friendship rested upon his skill in preparing a particular brew of
toddy, which needed a single oyster simmering in the saucepan to
give it its perfection of flavour. About two o'clock of a June
morning the spirit lamp on which the saucepan stewed had been
overset ; neither of the two confederates in drink had their
wits about them at the moment, and the house was half burnt
and the rest of it ruined by water before the fire could be got
under.

' There were consequences still more distressing than the
destruction of the house,' she continued. ' The fire was a beacon
warning to Dermod's creditors for one thing, and Dermod, already
overpowered with debts, fell in a day upon complete ruin. He
was drenched by the water hoses besides, and took a chill which
nearly killed him, from the effects of which he has never
recovered. You will find him a broken man. The estates are
let, and Ethne is now living with her father in a little mountain
village in Donegal.'

Mrs. Adair had not looked at Durrance while she spoke.
She kept her eyes fixed steadily in front of her, and indeed
she spoke without feeling on one side or the other, but rather
like a person constraining herself to speech because speech was
a necessity. Nor did she turn to look at Durrance when she
had done.

' So she has lost everything,' said Durrance.

' She still has a home in Donegal,' returned Mrs. Adair.

' And that means a great deal to her ? ' said Durrance slowly.
' Yes, I think you are right.'

' It means,' said Mrs. Adair, ' that Ethne with all her ill-luck
has reason to be envied by many other women.'

Durrance did not answer that suggestion directly. He watched
the carriages drive past, he listened to the chatter and the laughter
of the people about him, his eyes were refreshed by the women
in their light-coloured frocks ; and all the time his slow mind was
working towards the lame expression of his philosophy. Mrs.
Adair turned to him with a slight impatience in the end.

' Of what are you thinking ? ' she asked.

' That women suffer much more than men when the world
goes wrong with them,' he answered, and the answer was rather a
question than a definite assertion. ' I know very little, of course.

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 421

I can only guess. But I think women gather up into themselves
what they have been through much more than we do. To them,
what is past becomes a real part of them, as it were, as much a
part of them as a limb ; to us it's always something external , at
the best the rung of a ladder, at the worst a weight on the heel.
Don't you think so too ? I phrase the thought badly. But put
it this way : Women look backwards, we look ahead, so misfortune
hits them harder, eh ? '

Mrs. Adair answered in her own way. She did not ex-
pressly agree. But a certain humility became audible in her
voice.

' The mountain village at which Ethne is living,' she said in a
low voice, ' is called Glenalla. A track strikes up towards it from
the road halfway between Eathmullen and Ramelton.' She rose
as she finished the sentence and held out her hand. 'Shall
see you ? '

' You are still in Hill Street ? ' said Durrance. ' I shall be for
a time in London.'

Mrs. Adair raised her eyebrows. She looked always by nature
for the intricate and concealed motive, so that conduct which
sprang from a reason, obvious and simple, was likely to baffle her.
She was baffled now by Durrance's resolve to remain in town.
She heard of his continual presence at his Service Club, and could
not understand. She did not even have a suspicion of his motive
when he himself informed her that he had travelled into Surrey
and had spent a day with General Feversham.

It had been an ineffectual day for Durrance. The General
kept him steadily to the history of the campaign from which he
had just returned. Only once was he able to approach the topic
of Harry Feversham's disappearance, and at the mere mention of
his son's name the old General's face set like plaster. It became
void of expression and inattentive as a mask.

' We will talk of something else, if you please,' said he,
and Durrance returned to London, not an inch nearer to
Donegal.

Thereafter he sat under the great tree in the inner courtyard
of his club, talking to this man and to that, and still unsatisfied
with the conversation. All through that June the afternoons and
evenings found him at his post. Never a friend of Feversham's
passed by the tree but Durrance had a word for him, and the
word led always to a question. But the question elicited no

422 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

answer except a shrug of the shoulders, and a ' Hanged if I
know ! '

Harry Fever sham's place knew him no more ; he had dropped
even out of the speculations of his friends.

Towards the end of June, however, an old retired naval officer
limped into the courtyard, saw Durrance, hesitated, and began
with a remarkable alacrity to move away.

Durrance sprang up from his seat.

' Lieutenant Sutch,' said he. ' You have forgotten me ? '

' Colonel Durrance, to be sure,' said the embarrassed lieutenant.
' It is some while since we met, but I remember you very well
now. I think we met — let me see — where was it ? An old man's
memory, Colonel Durrance, is like a leaky ship. It comes to
harbour with its cargo of recollections swamped.'

Neither the Lieutenant's present embarrassment nor his pre-
vious hesitation escaped Durrance's notice.

' We met at Broad Place,' said he. ' I wish you to give me
news of my friend Feversham. Why was his engagement with
Miss Eustace broken off ? Where is he now ? '

The Lieutenant's eyes gleamed for a moment with satisfaction.
He had always been doubtful whether Durrance was aware of
Harry's fall into disgrace. Durrance plainly did not know.

' There is only one person in the world, I believe,' said Sutch,
' who can answer both your questions.'

Durrance was in no way disconcerted.

' Yes. I have waited here a month for you,' he replied.

Lieutenant Sutch pushed his fingers through his beard, and
stared down at his companion.

' Well, it is true,' he admitted. ' I can answer your questions,
but I will not.'

' Harry Feversham is my friend.'

' General Feversham is his father, yet he knows only half
the truth. Miss Eustace was betrothed to him, and she knows
no more. I pledged my word to Harry that I would keep
silence.'

' It is not curiosity which makes me ask.'

' I am sure that, on the contrary, it is friendship,' said the
Lieutenant cordially.

' Nor that entirely. There is another aspect of the matter.
I will not ask you to answer my questions, but I will put a third
one to you. It is one harder for me to ask than for you to answer.

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 423

Would a friend of Harry Feversham be at all disloyal to that
friendship, if ' — and Durrance flushed beneath his sunburn — ' if he
tried his luck with Miss Eustace ? '

The question startled Lieutenant Sutch.

' You ? ' he exclaimed, and he stood considering Durrance,
remembering the rapidity of his promotion, speculating upon his
likelihood to take a woman's fancy. Here was an aspect of the
case, indeed, to which he had not given a thought, and he was no
less troubled than startled. For there had grown up within him
a jealousy on behalf of Harry Feversham as strong as a mother's
for a favourite second son. He had nursed with a most pleasurable
anticipation a hope that, in the end, Harry would come back to
all that he once had owned, like a rethroned king. He stared at
Durrance and saw the hope stricken. Durrance looked the man
of courage which his record proved him to be, and Lieutenant
Sutch had his theory of women. ' Brute courage — they make a
god of it.'

' Well ? ' asked Durrance.

Lieutenant Sutch was aware that he must answer. He was
sorely tempted to lie. For he knew enough of the man who
questioned him to be certain that the lie would have its effect.
Durrance would go back to the Soudan, and leave his suit
unpressed.

' Well ? '

Sutch looked up at the sky and down upon the flags. Harry
had foreseen that this complication was likely to occur, he had
not wished that Ethne should wait. Sutch imagined him at this
very moment, lost somewhere under the burning sun, and com-
pared that picture with the one before his eyes — the successful
soldier taking his ease at his club. He felt inclined to break his
promise, to tell the whole truth, to answer both the questions
which Durrance had first asked. And again the pitiless mono-
syllable demanded his reply.

' Well ? '

' No,' said Sutch regretfully. ' There would be no disloyalty.'

And on that evening Durrance took the train for Holyhead.

424 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

CHAPTER IX.

AT GLENALLA.

TELE farm-house stood a mile above the village in a wild moorland
country. The heather encroached upon its garden, and the bridle-
path ended at its door. On three sides an amphitheatre of hills,
which changed so instantly to the season that it seemed one
could distinguish from day to day a new gradation in their colours,
harboured it like a ship. No trees grew upon those hills, the
granite cropped out amidst the moss and heather ; but they had
a friendly sheltering look, and Durrance came almost to believe
that they put on their different draperies of emerald green, and
purple, and russet brown consciously to delight the eyes of the
girl they sheltered. The house faced the long slope of country
to the inlet of the Lough. From the windows the eye reached
down over the sparse thickets, the few tilled fields, the white-
washed cottages, to the tall woods upon the bank, and caught a
glimpse of bright water and the gulls poising and dipping
above it. Durrance rode up the track upon an afternoon and
knew the house at once. For as he approached, the music of a
violin floated towards him from the windows like a welcome. His
hand was checked upon the reins, and a particular strong hope,
about which he had allowed his fancies to play, rose up within
him and suspended his breath.

He tied up his horse and entered in at the gate. A formless
barrack without, the house within was a place of comfort. The
room into which he was shown, with its brasses and its gleaming
oak and its wide prospect, was bright as the afternoon itself.
Durrance imagined it, too, with the blinds drawn upon a winter's
night, and the fire red on the hearth, and the wind skirling about
the hills and rapping on the panes.

Ethne greeted him without the least mark of surprise.

' I had a thought that you would come,' she said, and a smile
shone upon her face.

Durrance laughed suddenly with a great contentment as they
shook hands, and Ethne wondered why. She followed the direc-
tion of his eyes towards the violin which lay upon a table
at her side. It was pale in colour, there was a mark, too,
close to the bridge, where a morsel of worm-eaten wood had been
replaced.

THE FOUR FEATHERS 425

' It is yours,' she said. ' You were in Egypt. I could not
well send it back to you there.'

' I have hoped lately, since I knew,' returned Durrance, ' that,
nevertheless, you would accept it.' ,

' You see I have,' said Ethne, and looking straight into his
eyes she added : ' I accepted it some while ago. There was a
time when I needed to be assured that I had sure friends. And a
thing tangible helped. I was very glad to have it.'

Durrance took the instrument from the table, handling it
delicately like a sacred vessel.

' You have played upon it ? The Musoline overture perhaps,'
said he.

' Do you remember that ? ' she returned with a laugh. ' Yes,
I have played upon it, but only recently. For a long time I put
my violin away. It talked to me too intimately of many things
which I wished to forget,' and these words, like the rest, she
spoke without hesitation or any down-dropping of the eyes.

Durrance fetched up his luggage from Kathmullen the next
day, and stayed at the farm for a week. But up to the last hour
of his visit no further reference was made to Harry Feversham by
either Ethne or Durrance, although they were thrown much into
each other's company. For Dermod was even more broken than Mrs.
Adair's description had led Durrance to expect. His speech was
all dwindled to monosyllables ; his frame was shrunken, and his
clothes bagged upon his limbs ; his very stature seemed lessened ;
even the anger was clouded from his eye ; he was become a stay-
at-home, dozing for the most part of the day by a fire, even in
that July weather ; his longest walk was to the little grey church
which stood naked upon a mound some quarter of a mile away and
within view of the windows, and even that walk taxed his strength.
He was an old man fallen upon decrepitude, and almost out ot
recognition, so that his gestures and the rare tones of his voice
struck upon Durrance as something painful, like the mimicry of
a dead man. His old collie dog aged in company, and, to see them
side by side, one might have said, in sympathy.

Durrance and Ethne were thus thrown much together. By
day, in the wet weather or the fine, they tramped the hills, while
she, with the colour glowing in her face, and her eyes most
jealous and eager, showed him her country and exacted his admi-
ration. In the evenings she would take her violin, and sitting
as of old with an averted face, she would bid the strings speak of

426 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

the heights and depths. Durrance sat watching the sweep of her
arm, the absorption of her face, and counting up his chances.
He had not brought with him to OHenalla Lieutenant Sutch's
anticipations that he would succeed. The shadow of Harry
Feversham might well separate them. For another thing, he
knew very well that poverty would fall more lightly upon her
than upon most women. He had indeed had proofs of that.
Though the Lennon House was ruined altogether, and its
lands gone from her, Ethne was still amongst her own people.
They still looked eagerly for her visits ; she was still the princess
of that country side. On the other hand, she took a frank
pleasure in his company, and she led him to speak of his three
years' service in the East. No detail was too insignificant for
her inquiries, and while he spoke her eyes continually sounded
him, and the smile upon her lips continually approved. Durrance
did not understand what she was after. Possibly no one could
have understood unless he was aware of what had passed between
Harry Feversham and Ethne. Durrance wore the likeness of a
man, and she was well nigh sick with anxiety to know whether
the spirit of a man informed it. He was a dark lantern to her.
There might be a flame burning within, or there might be mere
vacancy and darkness. She was pushing back the slide so that
she might be sure.

She led him thus to speak of Egypt upon the last day of his
visit. They were seated upon the hillside, on the edge of a stream
which leaped from ledge to ledge down a miniature gorge of rock,
and flowed over deep pools between the ledges very swiftly, a
torrent of clear black water.

' I travelled once for four days amongst the mirages,' he said.
' Lagoons, still as a mirror and fringed with misty trees. You
could almost walk your camel up to the knees in them, before
the lagoon receded and the sand glared at you. And one cannot
imagine that glare. Every stone within view dances and shakes
like a heliograph ; you can see — yes, actually see — the heat flow
breast high across the desert swift as this stream here, only
pellucid. So till the sun sets ahead of you level with your eyes !
Imagine the nights which follow — nights of infinite silence with
a cool friendly wind blowing from horizon to horizon — and your
bed spread for you under the great dome of stars. Oh,' he cried,
drawing a deep breath. ' But that country grows on you. It's
like the Southern Cross — four over-rated stars when first you see

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 427

them, but in a week you begin to look for them, and you miss
them when you travel north again.' He raised himself upon his
elbow and turned suddenly towards her. ' Do you know — I can
only speak for myself — but I never feel alone in those empty
spaces. On the contrary, I always feel very close to the things
I care about and to the few people I care about too.'

Her eyes shone very brightly upon him, her lips parted in
a smile. He moved nearer to her upon the grass, and sat with
his feet gathered under him upon one side, and leaning upon
his arm.

' I used to imagine you out there,' he said. ' You would
have loved it — from the start before daybreak, in the dark, to
the camp-fire at night. You would have been at home. I used
to think so as I lay awake wondering how the world went with
my friends.'

Her bosom rose as she drew in a breath.

' And you go back there ? ' she said.

Durrance did not immediately answer. The roar of the torrent
throbbed about them. When he did speak, all the enthusiasm
had gone from his voice. He spoke gazing into the stream.

' To Wadi Haifa. For two years. I suppose so.'

Ethne kneeled up on the grass at his side.

' I shall miss you,' she said.

She was kneeling just behind him as he sat on the ground,
and again there fell a silence between them.

' Of what are you thinking ? ' she asked, and she bent forward
at the moment, so that all unawares her breast lightly touched
his shoulder. He was thinking indeed of the words which she had
spoken at their first meeting. There had been a time when she
had sorely needed her friends. Now she told him that she would
miss him. He put those sayings together.

' That you need not miss me,' he said, and he was aware that
she drew back and sank down upon her heels. ' My appointment
at Haifa — I might shorten its term. I might perhaps avoid it
altogether. I have still half my furlough.'

She did not answer nor did she change her attitude. She
remained very still, and Durrance was alarmed, and all his hopes
sank. For a stillness of attitude he knew to be with her as
definite an expression of distress as a cry of pain with another
woman. He turned about towards her. Her head was bent, but
she raised it as he turned, and though her lips smiled, there was

THE FOUR FEATHERS.

a look of great trouble in her eyes. Durrance was a man like
another. His first thought was whether there was not some
obstacle which would hinder her from compliance, even though
she herself were willing.

' There is your father,' he said.

' Yes,' she answered, ' there is my father too. I could not
leave him.'

' Nor need you,' said he quickly. ' That difficulty can be sur-
mounted. To tell the truth, I was not thinking of your father at
the moment.'

' Nor was I,' said she.

Durrance turned away and sat for a little while staring down the
rocks into a wrinkled pool of water just beneath. It was after all
the shadow of Feversham which stretched between himself and her.

' I know, of course,' he said, ' that you would never feel trouble,
as so many do, with half your heart. You would neither easily
care nor lightly forget.'

' I remember enough,' she returned in a low voice, ' to make
your words rather a pain to me. Some day perhaps I may bring
myself to tell everything which happened at that ball three years
ago, and then you will be better able to understand why I am a
little distressed. All that I can tell you now is this : I have a
great fear that I was in some way the cause of another man's ruin.
I do not mean that I was to blame for it. But if I had not been
known to him his career might perhaps never have come to so
abrupt an end. I am not sure, but I am afraid. I asked whether
it was so, and I was told " no," but I think very likely that
generosity dictated that answer. And the fear stays. I am much
distressed by it. I lie awake with it at night. And then you
come whom I greatly value, and you say quietly, " "Will you please
spoil my career too ? " ' And she struck one hand sharply into the
other and cried, ' But that I will not do.'

And again he answered :

' There is no need that you should. Wadi Haifa is not the
only place where a soldier can find work to his hand.'

His voice had taken a new hopefulness. For he had listened
intently to the words which she had spoken, and he had construed
them by the dictionary of his desires. She had not said that
friendship bounded all her thoughts of him. Therefore he need
not believe it. Women were given to a hinting modesty of speech,
at all events the best of them. A man might read a little more

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 429

emphasis into their tones, and underline their words and still be
short of their meaning, as he argued. A subtle delicacy graced
them in nature. Durrance was near to Benedick's mood. ' One
whom I value ' ; ' I shall miss you ' ; there might be a double
meaning in the phrases. When she- said that she needed to be
assured that she had sure friends, did she not mean that she
needed their companionship ? But the argument, had he been
acute enough to see it, proved how deep he was sunk in error.
For what this girl spoke, she habitually meant, and she habitually
meant no more. Moreover, upon this occasion she had particularly
weighed her words.

' No doubt,' she said, ' a soldier can. But can this soldier find
work so suitable ? Listen, please, till I have done. I was so very
glad to hear all that you have told me about your work and your
journeys. I was still more glad because of the satisfaction
with which you told it. For it seemed to me, as I listened and
as I watched, that you had found the one true straight channel
along which your life could run swift and smoothly and unharassed.
And so few do that — so very few ! ' And she wrung her hands
and cried, ' And now you spoil it all.'

Durrance suddenly faced her. He ceased from argument ; he
cried in a voice of passion :

' I am for you, Ethne ! There's the true straight channel,
and upon my word I believe you are for me. I thought — I admit
it — at one time I would spend my life out there in the East, and
the thought contented me. But I had schooled myself into con-
tentment, for I believed you married.' Ethne ever so slightly
flinched, and he himself recognised that he had spoken in a voice
overloud, so that it had something almost of brutality.

' Do I hurt you ? ' he continued. ' I am sorry. But let me
speak the whole truth out, I cannot afford reticence, I want you
to know the first and last of it. I say now that I love you. Yes,
but I could have said it with equal truth five years ago. It is five
years since your father arrested me at the ferry down there on
Lough Swilly, because I wished to press on to Letterkenny and
not delay a night by stopping with a stranger. Five years
since I first saw you, first heard the language of your violin. I
remember how you sat with your back towards me. The light
shone on your hair, I could just see your eyelashes and the colour
of your cheeks. I remember the sweep of your arm. . . . My
dear, you are for me ; I am for you.'

430 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

But she drew back from his outstretched hands.

' No,' she said very gently, but with a decision he could not
mistake. She saw more clearly into his mind than he did himself.
The restlessness of the born traveller, the craving for the large
and lonely spaces in the outlandish corners of the world, the in-
curable intermittent fever to be moving, ever moving amongst
strange peoples and under strange skies — these were deep-rooted
qualities of the man. Passion might obscure them for awhile,
but they would make their appeal in the end, and the appeal would
torture. The home would become a prison. Desires would so
clash within him, there could be no happiness. That was the man.
For herself, she looked down the slope of the hill across the brown
country. Away on the right waved the woods about Kamelton, at
her feet flashed a strip of the Lough ; and this was her country ;
she was its child and the sister of its people.

' No,' she repeated as she rose to her feet. Durrance rose
with her. He was still not so much disheartened as conscious of
a blunder. He had put his case badly, he should never have
given her the opportunity to think that marriage would be an
interruption of his career.

' We will say good-bye here,' she said, ' in the open. We
shall be none the less good friends because three thousand miles
hinder us from shaking hands.'

They shook hands as she spoke.

' I shall be in England again in a year's time,' said Durrance.
' May I come back ? '

Ethne's eyes and her smile consented.

' I should be sorry to lose you altogether,' she said, ' although
even if I did not see you I should know that I had not lost your
friendship.' She added, ' I should also be glad to hear news of
you and what you are doing, if ever you have the time to spare.'

' I may write ? ' he exclaimed eagerly.

' Yes,' she answered, and his eagerness made her linger a
little doubtfully upon the word. ' That is, if you think it fair.
I mean, it might be best for you, perhaps, to get rid of me
entirely from your thoughts,' and Durrance laughed and without
any bitterness, so that in a moment Ethne found herself laughing
too, though at what she laughed she would have discovered it
difficult to explain. ' Very well, write to me then.' And she
added drily, ' But it will be about — other things.'

And again Durrance read into her words the interpretation

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 431

he desired ; and again she meant just what she said, and not a
word more.

She stood where he left her, a tall, strong-limbed figure of
womanhood, until he was gone out of sight. Then she climbed down
to the house, and going into her room took one of her violins from
its case. But it was the violin which Durrance had given to
her, and before she had touched the strings with her bow she
recognised it and put it suddenly away from her in its case. She
snapped the case to. For a few moments she sat motionless in
her chair, then she quickly crossed the room, and, taking her
keys, unlocked a drawer. At the bottom of the drawer there lay
hidden a photograph, and at this she looked for a long while and
very wistfully.

Durrance meanwhile walked down to the trap which was
waiting for him at the gates of the house, and saw that Dermod
Eustace stood in the road with his hat upon his head.

' I will walk a few yards with you, Colonel Durrance,' said
Dermod. ' I have a word for your ear.'

Durrance suited his stride to the old man's faltering step, and
they walked behind the dogcart, and in silence. It was not the
mere personal disappointment which weighed upon Durrance' s
spirit. But he could not see with Ethne's eyes, and as his gaze
took in that quiet corner of Donegal, he was filled with a great
sadness lest all her life should be passed in this seclusion, her
grave dug in the end under the wall of the tiny church, and her
memory linger only in a few white cottages scattered over the
moorland, and for a very little while. He was recalled by the
pressure of Dermod's hand upon his elbow. There was a gleam
of inquiry in the old man's faded eyes, but it seemed that speech
itself was a difficulty.

'You have news for me?' he asked after some hesitation.
' News of Harry Feversham ? I thought that I would ask you
before you went away.'
' None,' said Durrance.

' I am sorry,' replied Dermod wistfully, ' though I have no
reason for sorrow. He struck us a cruel blow, Colonel Durrance.
I should have nothing but curses for him in my mouth and my
heart, a black-throated coward my reason calls him, and yet I
would be very glad to hear how the world goes with him. You
were his friend. But you do not know ? '

It was actually of Harry Feversham that Dermod Eustace

432 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

was speaking, and Durrance, as he remarked the old man's
wistfulness of voice and face, was seized with a certain remorse
that he had allowed Ethne so to thrust his friend out of his
thoughts. He speculated upon the mystery at times as he sat
in the evening upon his verandah above the Nile at Wadi Haifa,
piecing together the few hints which he had gathered. 'A black-
throated coward,' Dermod had called Harry Feversham, and Ethne
had said enough to assure him that something graver than any
dispute, something which had destroyed all her faith in the man,
had put an end to their betrothal. But he could not conjecture
at the particular cause, and the only consequence of his perplexed
imaginings was the growth of a very real anger within him against
the man who had been his friend. So the winter passed, and
summer came to the Soudan, and the month of May.

(70 be continued.)

THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE

APEIL 1902.

AT CASTERBRIDGE FAIR.

SING, Ballad-singer, raise a hearty tune !
Make me forget that there was ever a one
I walked with in the meek light of the moon
When the day's work was done.

Rhyme, Ballad-rhymer, start a country song !
Make me forget that she whom I loved well
Swore she would love me dearly, love me long ;
Then — what I cannot tell.

Sing, Ballad-singer, from your little book !

Make me forget those heartbreaks, achings, fears ;

Make me forget her name, her sweet, sweet look ;

Make me forget her tears.

• THOMAS HARDY.

1 Copyright, 1902, by Thomas Hardy in the United States of America.
VOL. XII. — NO. 70, N.S. 28

434

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.1
BY ANTHONY HOPE.

CHAPTER VIII.
USURPERS ON THE THRONE.

AIREY NEWTON was dressing for dinner, for that party of his
which Tommy Trent had brought about, and which was causing
endless excitement in the small circle. He arrayed himself slowly
and ruefully, choosing with care his least frayed shirt, glancing
ever and again at a parcel of five-pound notes which lay on the
table in front of him. There were more notes than the dinner
would demand, however lavish in his orders Tommy might have
been; Airey had determined to run no risks. He was trying
hard to persuade himself that he was going to have a pleasant
evening, and to enjoy dispensing to his friends a sumptuous
hospitality. The task was a difficult one. He could not help
thinking that those notes were not made to perish ; they were
created in order that they might live and breed ; he hated to fritter
them away. Yet he hated himself for hating it.

To this pass he had come gradually. First the money, which
began to roll in as his work prospered and his reputation grew,
had been precious as an evidence of success and a testimony of
power. He really wanted it for nothing else ; his tastes had
always been simple, he had no expensive recreations ; nobody (as
he told Tommy Trent) had any claim on him ; he was alone in
the world (except for the rest of mankind, of course). He saved
his money, and in that seemed to be doing the right and reason-
able thing. When the change began or how it worked he could
not now trace. Gradually his living had become more simple,
and passed from simple to sparing ; everything that threatened
expense was nipped in the bud. It began to be painful to spend
money, sweet only to make it, to invest it, and to watch its
doings. By an effort of will he forced himself to subscribe with
decent liberality to a fair number of public institutions — his
bankers paid the subscriptions for him. Nor did he fail if a

1 Copyright, 1902, by A. H, Hawkins, in the United States of America.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 435

direct appeal was made for an urgent case ; then he would give,
though not cheerfully. He could not be called a miser, but he had
let money get altogether out of its proper place in life. It had
become to him an end, and was no longer a means ; even while he
worked he thought of how much the work would bring. He
thought more about money than about anything else in the
world ; and he could not endure to waste it. By wasting it he
meant making his own and other people's lives pleasanter by the
use of it.

Nobody knew, save Tommy Trent. People who did business
with him might conjecture that Airey Newton must be doing
pretty well ; but such folk were not of his life, and what they
guessed signified nothing. Of his few friends none suspected,
least of all Peggy Eyle, who came and ate his bread-and-butter,
believing that she was demanding and receiving from a poor
comrade the utmost stretch of an unreserved hospitality. He
suffered to see her mistake, yet not without consolation. There
was a secret triumph ; he felt and hated it. That had been his
feeling when he asked Tommy Trent how he could continue to be
his friend. He began to live in an alternation of delight and
shame, of joy in having his money, of fear lest somebody should
discover that he had it. Yet he did not hate Tommy Trent, who
knew. He might well have hated Tommy in his heart. This
again was peculiar in his own eyes, and perhaps in fact. And his
friends loved him — not without cause either; he would have
given them anything except what to another would have been
easiest to give ; he would give them even time, for that was only
money still uncoined. Coin was the great usurper.

The dinner was a splendid affair. Airey had left all the
ordering to Tommy Trent, and Tommy had been imperial.
There were flowers without stint on the table ; there were bouquets
and button-holes ; there was a gorgeously emblazoned bill of
fare ; there were blocks of ice specially carved in fantastic forms ;
there were hand-painted cards with the names of the guests
curiously wrought thereon. Airey furtively fingered his packet
of bank-notes, but he could not help being rather pleased when
Tommy patted him on the back and said that it all looked
splendid. It did look splendid ; Airey stroked his beard with a
curious smile. He actually felt now as though he might enjoy
himself.

The guests began to arrive punctually. Efforts in raiment

28—2

436 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

had evidently been made. Mrs. John was in red, quite magnifi-
cent. Elfreda had a lace frock, on the subject of which she
could not be reduced to silence. Miles Childwick wore a white
waistcoat with pearl buttons, and tried to give the impress-ion
that wearing it was an ordinary occurrence. They were all doing
their best to honour the occasion and the host. A pang shot
through Airey Newton ; he might have done this for them so
often !

Trix came in splendour. She was very radiant, feeling sure
that her troubles were at an end, and her sins forgiven in the
popular and practical sense that she would suffer no more incon-
venience from them. Had not Beaufort Chance raved his worst ?
and was not Fricker — well, at heart a gentleman ? asked she with
a smile. There was more. Triumph was impending ; nay, it was
won ; it waited only to be declared. She smiled again to think
that she was going to dine with these dear people on the eve of
her greatness. How little they knew ! In this moment it is to
be feared that Trix was something of a snob. She made what
amends she could by feeling also that she was glad to have an
evening with them before her greatness settled on her.

Peggy was late ; this was nothing unusual, but the delay
seemed long to Tommy Trent, who awaited with apprehension her
attitude towards the lavishness of the banquet. Would she walk
out again ? He glanced at Airey. Airey appeared commendably
easy in his mind, and was talking to Trix Trevalla with reassuring
animation.

' Here she comes ! ' cried Horace Harnack.

' She's got a new frock too,' murmured Elfreda, regarding her
own complacently, and threatening to renew the subject on the
least provocation.

Peggy had a new frock. And it was black — plain black, quite
unrelieved. Now she never wore black, not because it was unbe-
coming, but just for a fad. A new black frock must surely portend
something. Peggy's manner enforced that impression. She did
indeed give one scandalised cry of ' Airey ! ' when she saw the pre-
parations, but evidently her mind was seriously preoccupied ; she
said she had been detained by business.

' Frock hadn't come home, I suppose ? ' suggested Miles
Childwick witheringly.

' It hadn't,' Peggy admitted, ' but I had most important
letters to write too.' She paused, and then added, ' I don't sup-

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 437

pose I ought to be here at all, but I had to come to Airey's party.
My uncle in Berlin is dead.'

She said this just as they sat down. It produced almost com-
plete silence. Trix indeed, with the habits of society, murmured
condolence, while she thought that Peggy might either have stayed
away or have said nothing about the uncle. Nobody else spoke ;
they knew that Peggy had not seen the uncle for years, and could
not be supposed to be suffering violent personal grief. But they
knew also the significance of the uncle ; he had been a real,
though distant, power to them ; the cheques had come from him.
Now he had died.

Their glances suggested to one another that somebody might
put a question — somebody who had tact, and could wrap it up
in a decorous shape. Peggy herself offered no more information,
but sat down by Tommy and began on her soup.

Conversation, reviving after the shock that Peggy had admi-
nistered, presently broke out again. Under coverof it Peggy turned
to Tommy and asked in a carefully subdued whisper : —

' How much is a mark ? '

' A mark ? ' repeated Tommy, who was tasting the champagne
critically.

'Yes. G-erman money, you know.'

' Oh, about a shilling.'

' A shilling ? ' Peggy pondered. ' I thought it was a franc ? '

' No, more than that. About a shilling.'

Peggy gave a sudden little laugh, and her eyes danced
gleefully.

' You mustn't look like that. It's not allowed,' said Tommy
firmly.

' Then twenty thousand marks ' whispered Peggy .

' Would be twenty thousand shillings — or twenty-five thousand
francs — or in the depreciated condition of Italian silver some
twenty-seven thousand lire. It would also be five thousand
dollars, more cowrie shells than I can easily reckon, and, finally,
it would amount to one thousand pounds sterling of this realm,
or thereabouts.'

Peggy laughed again.

' I'm sorry your uncle's dead,' pursued Tommy gravely.

' Oh, so am I ! He was always disagreeable, but he was kind
too. I'm really sorry. Oh, but, Tommy '

The effort was thoroughly well-meant, but sorrow had not

438 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

much of a chance. Peggy's sincerity was altogether too strong
and natural She was overwhelmed by the extraordinary effect of
the uncle's death.

' He's left me twenty thousand marks,' she gasped out at last.
' Don't tell anybody — not yet.'

' Well done him,' said Tommy Trent. ' I knew he was a good
sort — from those cheques, you know.'

' A thousand pounds ! ' mused Peggy Eyle. She looked down
at her garment. ' So I got a frock for him, you see,' she explained.
' I wish this was my dinner,' she added. Apparently the dinner
might have served as a mark of respect as well as the frock.

' Look here,' said Tommy. ' You've got to give me that
money, you know.'

Peggy turned astonished and outraged eyes on him.

' I'll invest it for you, and get you forty or fifty pounds a year
for it — regular — quarterly.'

' I'm going to spend it,' Peggy announced decisively. ' There
are a thousand things I want to do with it. It is good of uncle ! '

' No, no ! You give it to me. You must learn to value
money/

' To value money ! Why must I ? None of us do.' She
looked round the table. ' Certainly we've none of us got any.'

' It would be much better if they did value it,' said Tommy
with a politico-economical air.

'You say that when you've made poor Airey give us this
dinner ! ' she cried triumphantly.

With a wry smile Tommy Trent gave up the argument ; he
had no answer to that. Yet he was a little vexed. He was a
normal man about money ; his two greatest friends — Peggy and
Airey Newton — were at the extreme in different directions. What
did that signify? Well, after all, something. The attitude
people hold towards money is, in one way and another, a curiously
far-reaching thing, both in its expression of them and in its effect
on others. Just as there was always an awkwardness between
Tommy and Airey Newton because Airey would not spend as
much as he ought, there was now a hint of tension, of disapproval
on one side and of defiance on the other, because Peggy meant to
spend all that she had. There is no safety even in having
nothing ; the problems you escape for yourself you raise for your
friends.

Peggy, having sworn Tommy to secrecy, turned her head

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 439

round, saw Arty Kane, could by no means resist the temptation,
told him the news, and swore him to secrecy. He gave his word,
and remarked across the table to Miles Childwick : ' Peggy's been
left a thousand pounds.'

Then he turned to her, saying, ' I take it all on myself. It
was really the shortest way, you know.'

Indescribable commotion followed. Everybody had a plan for
spending the thousand pounds ; each of them appropriated and
spent it on the spot ; all agreed that Peggy was the wrong person
to have it, and that they were immensely glad that she had got
it. Suggestions poured in on her. It may be doubted whether
the deceased uncle had ever created so much excitement while he
lived.

' I propose to do no work for weeks,' said Miles Childwick.
' I shall just come and dine.'

' I think of an Edition de luxe,' murmured Arty Kane.

' I shall take nothing but leading business,' said Horace Harnack.

' We shall really have to make a great effort to avoid being
maintained,' murmured Mrs. John, surprised into a remark that
sounded almost as though it came from her books.

Trix Trevalla had listened to all the chatter with a renewal of
her previous pleasure, enjoying it yet the more because, thanks to
Fricker's gentlemanly conduct, to the worst of Beaufort Chance
being over, and to her imminent triumph, her soul was at peace
and her attention not preoccupied. She too found herself rejoicing
very heartily for Peggy's sake. She knew what pleasure Peggy
would get, what a royal time lay before her.

' She'll spend it all. How will she feel when it's finished ? '

The question came from Airey Newton, her neighbour. There
was no touch of malice about it ; it was put in a full-hearted
sympathy.

' What a funny way to look at it ! ' exclaimed Trix, laughing.

'Funny! Why? You know she'll spend it. Oh, perhaps
you don't ; we do. And when it's gone '

He shrugged his shoulders ; her last state would be worse
than her first, he meant to say.

Trix stopped laughing. She was touched ; it was pathetic to
see how the man who worked for a pittance felt a sort of pain at
the idea of squandering — an unselfish pain for the girl who would
choose a brief ecstasy of extravagance when she might ensure a
permanent increase of comfort. She could not herself feel like

440 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

that about such a trifle as a thousand pounds (all in, she was
wearing about a thousand pounds, and that not in full fig), but
she saw how the case must appear to Airey Newton ; the windfall
that had tumbled into Peggy's lap meant years of hard work and
of self-respecting economy to him.

' Yes, you're right,' she said. ' But she's too young for the
lesson. And I — well, I'm afraid I'm incurable. You don't set
us the best example either.' She smiled again as she indicated
the luxurious table.

; A very occasional extravagance,' he remarked, seeing her
misapprehension quite clearly, impelled to confirm it by his
unresting fear of discovery, fingering the packet of five-pound
notes in his pocket.

' I wish somebody could teach me to be prudent,' smiled Trix.

' Can one be taught to be different ? ' he asked rather
gloomily.

' Money doesn't really make one happy,' said Trix in the tone
of a disillusionised millionaire.

' I suppose not,' he agreed, but with all the scepticism of a
hopeless pauper.

They both acted their parts well ; each successfully imposed
on the other. But pretence on this one point did not hinder a
genuine sympathy nor a reciprocal attraction between them. He
seemed to her the haven that she might have loved, yet had
always scorned ; she was to him the type of that moving, many-
coloured, gay life which his allegiance to his jealous god forbade
him to follow or to know. And they were united again by a
sense common to them, apart from the rest of the company — the
sense of dissatisfaction ; it was a subtle bond ever felt between
them, and made them turn to one another with smiles half-
scornful, half-envious, when the merriment rose high.

' I'm glad to meet you to-night,' she said, ' because I think I
can tell you that your advice — your Paris advice — has been a
success.'

' You seemed rather doubtful about that when we met last.'

' Yes, I was.' She laughed a little. ' Oh, I've had some
troubles, but I think I'm in smooth water now.' She hardly
repressed the ring of triumph in her voice.

' Ah, then you won't come again to Danes Inn ! '

There was an unmistakable regret in his voice. Trix felt it
echoed in her heart. She met his glance for a moment; the

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 441

contact might have lasted longer, but he, less practised in such
encounters, turned hastily away. Enough had passed to tell her
that if she did not come she would be missed, enough to make
her feel that in not going she would lose something which
she had come to think of as pleasant in life. Was there
always a price to be paid ? Great or small perhaps, but a price
always ?

' You should come sometimes where you can be seen,' she
said lightly.

' A pretty figure I should cut ! ' was his good-humoured,
rather despairing comment.

Trix was surprised by a feeling stronger than she could have
anticipated ; she desired to escape from it ; it seemed as though
Airey Newton and his friends were laying too forcible a hold on
her. They had nothing to do with the life that was to be hers ;
they were utterly outside that, though they might help her to
laugh away an evening or amuse her with their comments on
human nature and its phases. To her his friends and he were
essentially a distraction ; they and he must be kept in the place
appropriate to distractions.

At the other end of the table an elementary form of joke was
achieving a great success. It lay in crediting Peggy with un-
measured wealth, in assigning her quarters in the most fashion-
able part of the town, in marrying her to the highest bigwig
whose title occurred to any one of the company. She was passed
from Park Lane to Grosvenor Square and assigned every rank in
the peerage. Schemes of benevolence were proposed to her,
having for their object the endowment of literature and art.

' You will not continue the exercise of your profession, I
presume ? ' asked Childwick, referring to Peggy's projected lessons
in the art of painting and a promise to buy her works which she
had wrung from a dealer notoriously devoted to her.

' She won't know us any more,' moaned Arty Kane.

' She'll glare at us from boxes — boxes paid for,' sighed Harnack.

' I shall never lose any more frocks,' said Elfreda with affected
ruefulness.

Trix smiled at all this — a trifle sadly. What was attributed
in burlesque to the newly enriched Peggy was really going to be
almost true of herself. Well, she had never belonged to them ;
she had been a visitor always.

The most terrible suggestion came from Mrs. John — rather

442 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

late, of course, and as if Mrs. John had taken some pains
with it.

' She'll have her hair done quite differently.'
The idea produced pandemonium.
' What of my essay ? ' demanded Child wick.
' What of my poem ? ' cried Arty Kane.

Everybody agreed that a stand must be made here. A formal
pledge was demanded from Peggy. When she gave it her health
was drunk with acclamation.

A lull came with the arrival of coffee. Perhaps they were
exhausted. At any rate when Miles Childwick began to talk
they did not stop him at once as their custom was, but let him
go on for a little while. He was a thin-faced man with a rather
sharp nose, prematurely bald, and bowed about the shoulders.
Trix Tre valla watched him with some interest.

' If there were such a thing as being poor and unsuccessful,'
he remarked with something that was almost a wink in his
eye (Trix took it to deprecate interruption), ' it would probably
be very unpleasant. Of course, however, it does not exist. The
impression to the contrary is an instance of what I will call the
Fallacy of Broad Views. We are always taking broad views of
our neighbours' lives ; then we call them names. Happily we
very seldom need to take them of our own.' He paused, looked
round the silent table, and observed gravely, ' This is very
unusual.'

Only a laugh from Peggy, who would have laughed at
anything, broke the stillness. He resumed : —

' You call a man poor, meaning thereby that he has little
money by the year. Ladies and gentlemen, we do not feel in
years, we are not hungry per annum. You call him unsuccess-
ful because a number of years leave him much where he was in
most things. It may well be a triumph ! ' He paused and asked,
' Shall I proceed ? '

' If you have another and quite different idea,' said Arty Kane.
' Well, then, that Homogeneity of Fortune is undesirable
among friends.'

'Trite and obvious,' said Manson Smith. 'It excludes the
opportunity of lending fivers.'

' I shall talk no more,' said Childwick. ' If we all spoke plain
English originality would become impossible.'

The end of the evening came earlier than usual. Peggy was

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 443

going to a party or two. She had her hansom waiting to convey
her. It had, it appeared, been waiting all through dinner.
With her departure the rest melted away. Trix Trevalla, again
reluctant to go, at last found herself alone with Airey Newton,
Tommy having gone out to look for her carriage. The waiter
brought the bill and laid it down beside Airey.

' Is it good luck or bad luck for Peggy ? ' she asked re-
flectively.

' For Peggy it is good luck ; she has instincts that save her.
But she'll be very poor again.' He came back to that idea
persistently.

' She'll marry somebody and be rich.' A sudden thought
came and made her ask Airey, ' Would you marry for money ? '

He thought long, taking no notice of the bill beside him.
' No,' he said at last, ' I shouldn't care about money I hadn't
made.'

' A funny reason for the orthodox conclusion ! ' she laughed.
' What does it matter who made it as long as you have it ? '

Airey shook his head in an obstinate way. Tommy Trent,
just entering the doorway, saw him lay down three or four notes ;
he did not look at the bill. The waiter with a smile gave him
back one, saying ' Pardon, monsieur ! ' and pointing to the
amount of the account. Tommy stood where he was, looking
on still.

'Well, I must go,' said Trix, rising. 'You've given us a
great deal of pleasure ; I hope you've enjoyed it yourself ! '

The waiter brought back the bill and the change. Airey
scooped up the change carelessly and gave back a sovereign.
Tommy could not see the coin, but he saw the waiter's low
and cordial bow. He was smiling broadly as he came up to
Airey.

' Business done, old fellow ? We must see Mrs. Trevalla into
her carriage.'

' (rood-bye to you both,' said Trix. ' Such an evening ! '
Her eyes were bright ; she seemed rather moved. There was in
Tommy's opinion nothing to account for any emotion, but Airey
Newton was watching her with a puzzled air.

' And I shall remember that there's no such thing as being
poor or unsuccessful,' she laughed. ' We must thank Mr. Child-
wick for that.'

' There's nothing of that sort for you anyhow, Mrs. Trevalla,'

444 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

said Tommy. He offered his arm, but withdrew it again, smiling.
' I forgot the host's privileges,' he said.

He followed them downstairs, and saw Airey put Trix in her
carriage.

' Good-bye,' she called wistfully, as she was driven away.

' Shall we stroll ? ' asked Tommy. The night was fine this time.

They walked along in silence for some little way. Then
Airey said : —

' Thank you, Tommy.'

' It was no trouble,' said Tommy generously, ' and you did it
really well.'

It was no use. Airey had struggled with the secret ; he had
determined not to tell anybody — not to think of it or to take
account of it even within himself. But it would out.

' It's all right. I happened to get a little payment to-day —
one that I'd quite given up hope of ever seeing.'

' How lucky, old chap ! ' Tommy was content to say.

It was evident that progress would be gradual. Airey was
comforting himself with the idea that he had given his dinner
without encroaching on his hoard.

Yet something had been done — more than Tommy knew of,
more than he could fairly have taken credit for. When Airey
reached Danes Inn he found it solitary, and he found it mean.
His safe and his red book were not able to comfort him. No
thought of change came to him ; he was far from that. He did
not even challenge his mode of life or quarrel with the motive
that inspired it. The usurper was still on the throne in his
heart, even as Trix's usurper sat still enthroned in hers. Airey
got no farther than to be sorry that the motive and the mode of
life necessitated certain things and excluded others. He was not
so deeply affected but that he put these repinings from him with
a strong hand. Yet they recurred obstinately, and pictures, long
foreign to him, rose before his eyes. He had a vision of a great
joy bought at an enormous price, purchased with a pang that he
at once declared would be unendurable. But the vision was
there, and seemed bright.

' What a comforting thing impossibility is sometimes ! ' His
reflections took that form as he smoked his last pipe. If all
things were possible, what struggles there would be ! He could
never be called upon to choose between the vision and the pang.
That would be spared him by the blessing of impossibility.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 445

Rare as the act was, it could hardly be the giving of a dinner
which had roused these new and strange thoughts in him. The
vision borrowed form and colour from the commonest mother of
visions — a woman's face.

Two or three days later Peggy Ryle brought him seven
hundred pounds — because he had a safe. He said the money
would be all right, and, when she had gone, stowed it away in the
appointed receptacle.

' I keep my own there,' he had explained with an ironical
smile, and had watched Peggy's carefully grave nod with an
inward groan.

CHAPTEE IX.

BRUISES AND BALM.

GOSSIP in clubs and whispers from more secret circles had a way
of reaching Mrs. Bonfill's ears. In the days that followed Mr.
Lifiey's public inquiry as to who Brown, Jones, and Robinson
might be, care sat on her broad brow, and she received several
important visitors. She was much troubled ; it was the first
time that there had been any unpleasantness with regard to one
of her piwttggs. She felt it a slur on herself, and at first there
was a hostility in her manner when Lord Glentorly spoke to her
solemnly and Constantine Blair came to see her in a great flutter.
But she was open to reason, a woman who would listen; she
listened to them. Glentorly said that only his regard for her
made him anxious to manage things quietly ; Blair insisted more
on the desirability of preventing anything like a scandal in the
interests of the Government. There were rumours of a question
in the House ; Mr. Liffey's next article might even now be going
to press. As to the fact there was little doubt, though the details
were rather obscure.

' We are willing to leave him a bridge to retreat by, but
retreat he must,' said Glentorly in a metaphor appropriate to his
office.

' You're the only person who can approach both Liffey and
Chance himself,' Constantine Blair represented to her.

' Does it mean his seat as well as his place ? ' she asked.

' If it's all kept quite quiet, we think nothing need be said
about his seat,' Blair told her.

446 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

There had been a difference of opinion on that question, but
the less stringent moralists — or the more compassionate men —
had carried their point.

' But once there's a question, or an exposure by Liffey — piff ! '
Blair blew Beaufort Chance to the relentless winds of heaven and
the popular press.

How did he come to be so foolish ? ' asked Mrs. Bonfill in
useless regretful wondering.

' You'll see Liffey ? Nobody else can do anything with him,
of course.'

Mrs. Bonfill was an old friend of Liffey's ; before she became
motherly, when Liffey was a young man and just establishing the
' Sentinel/ he had been an admirer of hers, and, in that blameless
fashion about which Lady Blixworth was so flippant, she had
reciprocated his liking ; he was a pleasant witty man, and they
had always stretched out friendly hands across the gulf of political
difference and social divergence. Liffey might do for Mrs. Bonfill
what he would not for all the Estates of the Realm put together.

' I don't know how much you know or mean to say,' she began
to Liffey, after cordial greetings.

' I know most of what there is to know, and I intend to say it
all,' was his reply.

' How did you find out ? '

' From Brown, a gentleman who lives at Clapham, and whose
other name is Clarkson. Flicker's weak spot is that he's a screw;
he never lets the subordinates stand in enough. So he gets
given away. I pointed that out to him over the Swallow Islands
business, but he won't learn from me.' Mr. Liffey spoke like an
unappreciated philanthropist. The Swallow Islands affair had
been what Fricker called a ' scoop ' — a very big thing ; but there
had been some trouble afterwards.

' Say all you like about Fricker '

' Oh, Fricker's really neither here nor there. The public are
such asses that I can't seriously injure Fricker, though I can
make an article out of him. But the other '

' Don't mention any public men,' implored Mrs. Bonfill, as
though she had the fair fame of the country much at heart.

' Any public men ? ' There was the hint of a sneer in Liffey's
voice.

' I suppose we needn't mention names. He's not a big fish,
of course, but still it would be unpleasant.'

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY 447

' I'm not here to make things pleasant for Farringham and
his friends.'

' I speak as one of your friends — and one of his.'

' This isn't quite fair, you know,' smiled Liffey. ' With the
article in type, too ! '

' We've all been in such a fidget about it.'

' I know ! ' he nodded. ' Glentorly like a hen under a cart, and
Constantine fussing in and out like a cuckoo on a clock ! Thank
God, I'm not a politician ! '

' You're only a censor,' she smiled with amiable irony. ' I'm
making a personal matter of it,' she went on with the diplomatic
candour that had often proved one of her best weapons.

' And the public interest ? The purity of politics ? Caesar's
wife ? ' Liffey, in his turn, allowed himself an ironical smile.

' He will resign his place — not his seat, but his place. Isn't
that enough ? It's the end of his chosen career.'

' Have you spoken to him ? '

' No. But of course I can make him. What choice has he ?
Is it true there's to be a question ? I heard that Alured Cummins
meant to ask one.'

' Between ourselves, it's a point that I had hardly made up
my mind on.'

' Ah, I knew you were behind it ! '

' It would have been just simultaneous with my second article.
Effective, eh ? '

' Have you anything quite definite — besides the speculation,
I mean ? '

' Yes. One clear case of — well, of Fricker's knowing some-
thing much too soon. I've got a copy of a letter our gentleman
wrote. Clarkson gave it me. It's dated the 24th, and it's
addressed to Fricker.'

' Good gracious ! May I tell him that ? '

' I proposed to te.ll him myself,' smiled Liffey, ' or to let
Cummins break the news.'

' If he knows that, he must consent to go.' She glanced at
Liffey. ' My credit's at stake too, you see.' It cost her some-
thing to say this.

' You went bail for him, did you ? ' Liffey was friendly, con-
temptuous, and even compassionate.

' I thought well of him, and said so to George Glentorly.
I ask it as a friend.'

448 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

'As a friend you must have it. But make it clear. He
resigns in three days — or article, letter, and Alured Cummins ! '

' I'll make it clear — and thank you,' said Mrs. Bonfill. ' I
know it's a sacrifice.'

' I'd have had no mercy on him,' laughed Liffey. ' As it is,
I must vamp up something dull and innocuous to get myself out
of my promise to the public.'

' I think he'll be punished enough.'

' Perhaps. But look how I suffer ! '

' There are sinners left, enough and to spare.'

' So many of them have charming women for their friends.'

' Oh, you don't often yield ! '

'No, not often, but — you were an early subscriber to the
" Sentinel." '

It would be untrue to say that the sort of negotiation on
which she was now engaged was altogether unpleasant to Mrs.
Bonfill. Let her not be called a busybody ; but she was a born
intermediary. A gratifying sense of power mingled with the
natural pain. She wired to Constantine Blair, ' All well if X. is
reasonable,' and sent a line asking Beaufort Chance to call.

Chance had got out of Dramoffskys prosperously. His profit
was good, though not what it had been going to reach but for
Liffey's article. Yet he was content ; the article and the whispers
had frightened him, but he hoped that he would now be safe. He
meant to run no more risks, to walk no more so near the line,
certainly never to cross it. A sinner who has reached this frame
of mind generally persuades himself that he can and ought to
escape punishment ; else where is the virtue — or where, anyhow,
the sweetness — that we find attributed to penitence ? And surely
he had been ill-used enough — thanks to Trix Trevalla !

In this mood he was all unprepared for the blow that his
friend Mrs. Bonfill dealt him. He began defiantly. What Liffey
threatened, what his colleagues suspected, he met by angry
assertions of innocence, by insisting that a plain statement would
put them all down, by indignation that she should believe such
things of him, and make herself the mouthpiece of such accusa-
tions. In fine, he blustered, while she sat in sad silence, waiting to
produce her last card. When she said, ' Mr. Fricker employed a
man named Clarkson ? ' he came to a sudden stop in his striding
about the room ; his face turned red, he looked at her with a
quick furtive air. ' Well, he's stolen a letter of yours.'

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 449

' What letter ? ' he burst out.

With pity Mrs. Bonfill saw how easily his cloak of unassailable
innocence fell away from him.

She knew nothing of the letter save what Lifley had told her.
' It's to Mr. Flicker, and it's dated the 24th,' said she.
Was that enough ? She watched his knitted brows ; he was
recalling the letter. He wasted no time in abusing the servant
who had betrayed him ; he had no preoccupation except to recol-
lect that letter. Mrs. Bonfill drank her tea while he stood motion-
less in the middle of the room.

When he spoke again his voice sounded rather hollow and
hoarse.

' Well, what do they want of me ? ' he asked.
Mrs. Bonfill knew that she saw before her a beaten man. All
pleasure had gone from her now ; the scene was purely painful ;
she had liked and helped the man. But she had her message to
deliver, even as it had come to her. He must resign in three
days — or article, letter, and Alured Cummins ! That was the
alternative she had to put before him.

' You've too many irons in the fire, Beaufort,' said she with a
shake of her head and a friendly smile. ' One thing clashes with
another.'

He dropped into a chair, and sat looking before him moodily.
' There'll be plenty left. You'll have your seat still ; and
you'll be free to give all your time to business and make a career
there.'

Still he said nothing. She forced herself to go on.
' It should be done at once. We all think so. Then it'll have
an entirely voluntary look.'
Still he was mute.

' It must be done in three days, Beaufort,' she half- whispered,
leaning across towards him. ' In three days, or — or no arrange-
ment can be made.' She waited a moment, then added, ' Gro and
write it this afternoon. And send a little paragraph round —
about pressure of private business, or something, you know. Then
I should take a rest somewhere, if I were you.'

He was to vanish — from official life for ever, from the haunts
of men till men had done talking about him. Mrs. BonfilFs
delicacy of expression was not guilty of obscuring her meaning in
the least. She knew that her terms were accepted when he took
his hat and bade her farewell with a dreary heavy awkwardness

VOL. XII. — NO. 70, N.S. 29

450 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

On his departure she heaved a sigh of complicated feelings : satis-
faction that the thing was done, sorrow that it had to be, wonder
at him, surprise at her own mistake about him. She had put
him in his place ; she had once thought him worthy of her
dearest Trix Trevalla. These latter reflections tempered her pride
in the achievements of her diplomacy, and moderated to a self-
depreciatory tone the reports which she proceeded to write to
Mr. LifTey and to Constantine Blair.

Hard is the case of a man fallen into misfortune who can find
nobody but himself to blame ; small, it may be added, is his
ingenuity. Beaufort Chance, while he wrote his bitter note, while
he walked the streets suspicious of the glances and fearful of the
whispers of those he met, had no difficulty in fixing on the real
culprit, on her to whom his fall and all that had led to it were
due. He lost sight of any fault of his own in a contemplation of
the enormity of Trix Trevalla's. To cast her down would be sweet ;
it would still be an incentive to exalt himself if thereby he could
make her feel more unhappy. If he still could grow rich and
important although his chosen path was forbidden him, if she
could become poor and despised, then he might cry quits. Behind
this simple malevolence was a feeling hardly more estimable,
though it derived its origin from better things ; it was to him
that he wanted her to come on her knees, begging his forgive-
ness, ready to be his slave and to take the crumbs he threw her.

These thoughts, no less than an instinctive desire to go
somewhere where he would not be looked at askance, where
he would still be a great man and still be admired, took him
to the Flickers' later in the afternoon. A man scorned of his
fellows is said to value the society of his dog ; if Fricker would
not have accepted the parallel, it might in Chance's mind be well
applied to Fricker's daughter Connie. Lady Blixworth had once
described this young lady unkindly ; but improvements had been
undertaken. She was much better dressed now, and her figure
responded to treatment, as the doctors say. Nature had given her
a fine poll of dark hair, and a pair of large black eyes, highly ex-
pressive, and never allowed to grow rusty for want of use. To her
Beaufort was a great man ; his manners smacked of the society
which was her goal ; the touch of vulgarity, from which good
birth and refined breeding do not always save a man vulgar in
soul, was either unperceived or, as is perhaps more likely, con-
sidered the hall-mark of ' smartness ' ; others than Connie Fricker

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 451

might perhaps be excused for some confusion on this point. Yet
beneath her ways and her notions Connie had a brain.

Nobody except Miss Fricker was at home, Beaufort was told ;
but he said he would wait for Mr. Fricker, and went into the
drawing-room. The Frickers lived in a fine, solid, spacious
house of respectable age. Its walls remained; they had gutted
the interior and had it refurnished and re-bedecked ; the effect
was that of a modern daub in a handsome antique frame. It is
unkind, but hardly untrue, to say that Connie Fricker did not
dispel this idea when she joined Beaufort Chance and said that
some whisky-and-soda was coming ; she led him into the smaller
drawing-room where smoking was allowed ; she said that she was
so glad that mamma was out.

' I don't often get a chance of talking to you, Mr. Chance.'

Probably every man likes a reception conceived in this spirit ;
how fastidious he may be as to the outward and visible form which
clothes the spirit depends partly on his nature, probably more on
his mood ; nobody is always particular, just as nobody is always
wise. The dog is fond and uncritical — let us pat the faithful
animal. Chance was much more responsive in his manner to
Connie than he had ever been before ; Connie mounted to heights
of delight as she ministered whisky-and-soda. He let her frisk
about him and lick his hand, and he conceived, by travelling
through a series of contrasts, a high opinion of canine fidelity
and admiration. Something he had read somewhere about the
relative advantage of reigning in hell also came into his mind,
and was dismissed again with a smile as he puffed and sipped.

' Seen anything of Mrs. Tre valla lately ? ' asked Connie
Fricker.

' Not for a week or two,' he answered carelessly.

'Neither have we.' She added, after a pause, and with a
laugh that did not sound very genuine, ' Mamma thinks she's
dropping us.'

' Does Mrs. Trevalla count much one way or the other ? ' he
asked.

But Connie had her wits about her, and saw no reason why she
should pretend to be a fool.

' I know more about it than you think, Mr. Chance,' she
assured him with a toss of her head, a glint of rather large white
teeth, and a motion of her full but (as improved) not ungraceful
figure.

29—2

452 THE INTRUSIONS OF; PEGGY.

' You do, by Jove, do you ?' asked Beaufort, half in mockery,
half in an admiration she suddenly wrung from him.

* Girls are supposed not to see anything, aren't they ? '

' Oh, I dare say you see a thing or two, Miss Connie ! '

His tone left nothing to be desired in her eyes ; she did not
know that he had not courted Trix Trevalla like that, that even
his brutality towards her had lacked the easy contempt of his
present manner. Why give people other than what they want,
better than they desire? The frank approval of his look left
Connie unreservedly pleased and not a little triumphant. He
had been stand-offish before ; well, mamma had never given her
a ' show ' — that was the word which her thoughts employed.
When she got one, it was not in Connie to waste it. She leant
her elbow on the mantelpiece, holding her cigarette in her hand,
one foot on the fender. The figure suffered nothing from this pose.

' I don't know whether you've heard that I'm going to cut
politics ? — at least office, I mean. I shall stay in the House, for
a bit anyhow.'

Connie did not hear the whispers of high circles ; she received
the news in unfeigned surprise.

' There's no money in it,' Beaufort pursued, knowing how to
make her appreciate his decision. ' I want more time for business.-

' You'd better come in with papa,' she suggested half-jokingly.

' There are worse ideas than that,' he said approvingly.

' I don't know anything about money, except that I like to
have a lot.' Her strong hearty laughter pealed out in the candid
confession.

' I expect you do ; lots of frocks, eh, and jewels, and so on ? '

' You may as well do the thing as well as you can, mayn't
you?'

Chance finished his tumbler, threw away his cigarette, got up,
and stood by her on the hearthrug. She did not shrink from his
approach, but maintained her ground with a jaunty impudence.

' And then you have plenty of fun ? ' he asked.

' Oh, of sorts,' admitted Connie Fricker. ' Mamma's a bit
down on me; she thinks I ought to be so awfully proper. I
don't know why. I'm sure the swells aren't.' Connie forgot that
there are parallels to the case of the Emperor being above grammar.

' Well, you needn't tell her everything, need you ? '

' There's no harm done by telling her— I take care of that ;
it's when she finds out ! ' laughed Connie.

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. -153

' You can take care of that too, can't you ? '

'Well, I try,' she declared, flashing her eyes full on him.

Beaufort Chance gave a laugh, bent swiftly, and kissed her.

' Take care you don't tell her that,' he said.

' Oh ! ' exclaimed Connie, darting away. She turned and
looked squarely at him, flushed but smiling. ' Well, you've

got ' she began. But the sentence never ended. She broke

off with a wary frightened ' Hush ! ' and a jerk of her hand
towards the door.

Mrs. Fricker came sailing in, ample and exceedingly cordial,
full of apologies, hoping that ' little Connie ' had not bored the
visitor. Beaufort assured her to the contrary, little Connie tele-
graphing her understanding of the humour of the situation over
her mother's shoulders, and laying a finger on her lips. Certainly
Connie, whatever she had been about to accuse him of, showed no
resentment now ; she was quite ready to enter into a conspiracy
of silence.

In a different way, but hardly less effectually, Mrs. Fricker
soothed Beaufort Chance's spirit. She too helped to restore him
to a good conceit of himself; she too took the lower place; it
was all very pleasant after the Bonfill interview and the hard
terms that his colleagues and Liffey offered him. He responded
liberally, half in a genuine if not exalted gratitude, half in the
shrewd consciousness that a man cannot stand too well with the
women of the family.

' And how's Mrs. Tre valla ? ' Evidently Trix occupied no small
place in the thoughts of the household ; evidently, also, Fricker
had not thought it well to divulge the whole truth about her
treachery.

' I haven't seen her lately,' he said again.

' They talk a lot about her and Lord Mervyn,' said Mrs.
Fricker, not without a sharp glance at Beaufort.

He betrayed nothing. ' Gossip, I daresay, but who knows ?
Mrs. Trevalla's an ambitious woman.'

' I see nothing in her,' said Connie scornfully.

' Happily all tastes don't agree, Miss Fricker.'

Connie smiled in mysterious triumph.

Presently he was told that Fricker awaited him in the study,
and he went down to join him. Fricker was not a hard man out
of hours or towards his friends ; he listened to Beaufort's story
with sympathy and with a good deal of heartfelt abuse of what

454 THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY.

he called the ' damned hypocrisy ' of Beaufort's colleagues and of
Mrs. Bonfill. He did not accuse Mr. Liffey of this failing ; he
had enough ' breadth of mind to recognise that with Mr. Liffey
it was all a matter of business.

' Well, you sha'n't come to any harm through me/ he promised.
' I'll take it on myself. My shoulders are broad. I've made
ten thousand or so, and every time I do that Liffey's welcome
to an article. I don't like it, you know, any more than I
like the price of my champagne ; but when I want a thing I
pay for it.'

' I've paid devilish high and got very little. Curse that
woman, Fricker ! '

' Oh, we'll look after little Mrs. Trevalla. Will you leave her
to me ? Look, I've written her this letter.' He handed Beau-
fort Chance a copy of it, and explained how matters were to be
managed. He laughed very much over his scheme. Beaufort
gave it no more explicit welcome than a grim smile and an ugly
look in his eyes ; but they meant emphatic approval.

' That's particularly neat about Glowing Stars,' mused Fricker
in great self-complacency. ' She doesn't know anything about
the trifling liability. Oh, I gave her every means of knowing —
sent her full details. She never read 'em, and told me she had !
She's a thorough woman. Well, I shall let her get out of Dra-
moffskys rather badly, but not too hopelessly badly. Then she'll
feel virtuous — but not quite so virtuous as to sell Glowing Stars.
She'll think she can get even on them.'

' You really are the deuce, Flicker.'

' Business, my boy. Once let 'em think they can play with
you, and it's all up. Besides, it'll please my womankind, when
they hear what she's done, to see her taken down a peg.' He
paused and grew serious. ' So you're out of work, eh ? But
you're an M.P. still. That's got some value, even nowadays.'

* I shouldn't mind a job — not this instant, though.'

' No, no ! That would be a little indiscreet. But presently ? '

They had some business talk and parted with the utmost
cordiality.

' I'll let myself out,' said Beaufort. He took one of Fricker's
excellent cigars, lit it, put on his hat, and strolled out.

As he walked through the hall he heard a cough from half-
way up the stairs. Turning round, he saw Connie Fricker ; her
finger was on her lips ; she pointed warily upwards towards the

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. 455

drawing-room door, showed her teeth in a knowing smile, and
blew him a kiss. He took off his hat with one hand, while the
other did double duty in holding his cigar and returning the
salute. She ran off with a stifled laugh.

Beaufort was smiling to himself as he walked down the street.
The visit had made him feel better. Both sentimentally and
from a material point of view it had been consoling. Let his
colleagues be self-righteous, Liffey a scoundrel, Mrs. Bonfill a
prudish woman who was growing old, still he was not done with
yet. There were people who valued him. There were prospects
which, if realised, might force others to revise their opinions of
him. Trix Trevalla, for instance — he fairly chuckled at the
thought of Glowing Stars. Then he remembered Mervyn, and
his face grew black again. It will be seen that misfortune had
not chastened him into an absolute righteousness.

As for the kiss that he had given Connie Fricker, he thought
very little about it. He knew just how it had happened, how
with that sort of girl that sort of thing did happen. The fine
eyes not shy, the challenging look, the suggestion of the jaunty
attitude — they were quite enough. Nor did he suppose that
Connie thought very much about the occurrence either. She was
evidently pleased, liked the compliment, appreciated what she
would call 'the lark,' and enjoyed not least the sense of hood-
winking Mrs. Fricker. Certainly he had done no harm with
Connie ; nor did he pretend that, so far as the thing went, he had
not liked it well enough.

He was right about all the feelings that he assigned to Connie
Fricker. But his analysis was not quite exhaustive. While all
the lighter shades of emotion which he attributed to her were in
fact hers, there was in her mind also an idea which showed the
business blood in her. Connie was of opinion that, to any girl
of good sense, having been kissed was an asset, and might be
one of great value. This idea is not refined, but no more are
many on which laws, customs, and human intercourse are based.
It was then somewhat doubtful whether Connie would be content
to let the matter rest and to rank his tribute merely as a pastime
or a compliment.

(To be continued.)

456

ALMS FOR OBLIVION.
BY RICHARD GARNETT, C.B., LL.D.

II.

TRAVELS OF A GERMAN PRINCE IN SPAIN AND ENGLAND IN THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Time hath, my Lord, a wallet on his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion.

Troilvs and Creitsida.

THERE can have been but few German princes who in the sixteenth
century thrice visited Spain. Nor, even in the age of Henry VIII.,
can it have been common for a prince to propose marriage succes-
sively to seven princesses, be rejected by six, and find his suit
frustrated in the seventh instance by parental opposition. Neither
can it often have happened that at the eighth attempt the prince
so little in Hymen's good graces should at the age of fifty-three
have won the hand of a princess of fifteen. All these circum-
stances, however, with many others of much singularity, concurred
in the eventful history of Frederick II., Elector Palatine. Our
present concern is solely with his adventures in Spain and his
brief visit to England — pilgrimages of which we should have
known nothing but for his factotum and historiographer Hubertus
Thomas, surnamed Leodius from his birth at Liege. Leodius's
account of the Prince's sayings and doings for seventy-three years,
though evidently leaving much untold, is a mine of interest and
information into which many shafts besides ours might be sunk,
and deserves to rank among the most conspicuous instances of a
valuable book becoming ' alms for oblivion.'

The adage ' Like master like man ' fails in the case of the
Elector and his retainer. The former (born December 9, 1482)
was a characteristic specimen of the young German bloods of his
day — handsome, thoughtless, extravagant, self-indulgent, devoted
to jousts and athletic exercises, of whose hardships and dangers
he was always ready to take his full share, and from which he did
not escape unscathed. Though careless and headstrong, he does
not seem to have wanted sense ; his deficiency in learning was
attributed by himself to the severity of his masters. Leodius

ALMS FOR OBLIVION. 457

concurs, and (with the unanimous assent of the learned world)
subjoins that it is no small part of the character of an erudite
prince to reward erudition in others, as Frederick would un-
doubtedly have done if he had not been so horribly in debt. And,
in fact, it is but just to record that in Frederick's latter years,
after he had become Elector, the University of Heidelberg was
much indebted to him. His biography, as narrated by Leodius,
falls into three portions, the pre-matrimonial period, while he is
pursuing princesses under ever-increasing embarrassments and
discouragements ; the days of marriage, while he is still the cadet
of an electoral house running to and fro in hopes of coaxing
something out of more opulent princes ; and his electoral period
(1544-1556), when he has to front grave questions of policy, and,
without serious conviction, to make up his mind whether he will
be Catholic or Protestant. On the whole, an unlucky, ineffectual
person, an example in his latter days of joviality stunted and
geniality turned sour, in framing whose destiny Nature and
Fortune had been sadly at odds. The biographer is quite another
kind of being — an old confidential servant, not too devoted to his
master to grumble at his infirmities and hint at his ingratitude,
but really loyal and faithful in his plodding way. Having been a
Kammevgerichtei*ath he is a thorough man of business, and his
racy Latinity attests literary power, if falling short of the standard
of accomplished scholarship.

The future Elector's first visit to Spain was made in 1502, in
the train of the Archduke Philip I., father of Charles V., bound
to the court of his formidable father-in-law Ferdinand the
Catholic. The account given of it by Leodius is so graphic and
circumstantial as evidently to proceed from an eye-witness, though,
as he was only seven years old at the time, it can at most have
been rewritten by the historian himself. The way lay through
France, where the travellers, looking in upon Louis XII., who,
though crippled with gout, entertained them at a ball, beheld his
Majesty playing for stakes of many thousand crowns at a game of
cards most popular in that day, says Leodius, writing fifty years
afterwards. He adds that it was still played, and known as fluere,
in the vernacular flux, a word surviving in English to this day as
a flush at cribbage. He also remarks upon the difference between
the methods of hunting in France and Germany, which may be
compendiously expressed by terming the former a chase and the
latter a drive. On entering Spain the august party was received

458 ALMS FOR OBLIVION.

with songs and dances by Basque girls, whose heads Leodius
positively asserts to have been shaved in defiance of Apuleius's
verdict that a bald Venus would not commend herself even to her
own Vulcan. The burden of their Euskarian ditties was to the
effect that all Biscayan damsels were fully as noble as Philip
himself, and that it consequently behoved him to give them some-
thing wherewith to spend a happy day. A curious parallel to the
Irish ballad of the wren caught on St. Stephen's day —

Although he is little, his family's great.
Ladies and gentlemen, give us a trate.

King Ferdinand was found at Madrid, amusing himself with
hawking at cranes, and giving proof of great temperance and
endurance in the pursuit of his favourite sport. From Madrid the
royal party proceeded to Barcelona, where they were received with
a display of fireworks, magnificent for that age. Leodius's descrip-
tion, and his very particular account of the ex papyro factce
machinuloe, known to us as rockets, should not be overlooked by
the historians of pyrotechnics. The fiery glories of Barcelona,
however, were outdone at Perpignan, which welcomed Philip on
his way home with a grand representation of various passages of
sacred history, and one which will not be found there — namely, the
storming of the infernal regions by an army of white-robed angels.
The demons' dresses were embroidered with gold and silver.
Most curiously anticipating Milton, the infernal hosts defended
themselves by artillery, indistinguishable from real cannon, but in
fact constructed ex papyro (which perhaps should here be under-
stood as pasteboard), and crammed to the muzzle with rockets.
These were discharged all together with such effect that earth,
air, and sky seemed to be in simultaneous conflagration, and
when the smoke had cleared away nothing could be more startling
than the utter disappearance of the gorgeous show, unsubstantial
as Prospero's.

There is no trace of any personal connection between Leodius
and Frederick for twenty-four years, until, in 1526, he tells us
that he was appointed the Prince's secretary upon his second
Spanish expedition, undertaken with the double object of vindi-
cating his brother the Elector from the imputation of having
conspired against the Emperor Charles V., then in Spain, and of
inducing his Imperial Majesty to pay his debts ; both, especially
the latter, commissions of delicacy and difficulty. Frederick was

ALMS FOR OBLIVION. 459

now to find the diffeience between travelling in Spain in the
retinue of the heir apparent to the kingdom and having to depend
upon his own resources. After passing the Pyrenees the journey
is the record of a constant struggle for the necessaries of life, as
soon, at least, as the party had finished the enormous carp they
had laid in at Bayonne, which Leodius protests weighed no less
than thirty-six pounds — a fish proper to be cooked in the wine-
jar they subsequently found at Ocana, wherein, for want of a tub
(quia Hispmiia tota fere ligno caret), seven of the Prince's suite
bathed together. On reading his account of the nakedness of
the land, the great emigration to America which at this time was
draining Spain of her life-blood appears no less intelligible than
similar phenomena in Scotland. It does not appear whether
the travellers enjoyed the consolation of Pascasius Justus, who
observes in his treatise ' De Alea ' (1560) that he had often found
a Spanish village without victual or drink, but never one without
a pack of cards.

The first of the Cosas de Espana which presented itself to
the attention of the travellers was a battle-field near Pampeluna,
white with the unburied bones of Frenchmen slain in the pre-
ceding year. At Cervera, where they halted a day, the magistracy
waited upon them to request them to move on before they should
have devoured everything in the town, and the public flocked in
to contemplate dining Germans as great natural curiosities. At
Matalebres the fields were traversed by rustics, men, women, and
children in a state of nudity, flagellating themselves in the hope
of extorting rain from the compassion of Heaven. At a town
which Leodius calls Gromorrah, probably meaning Gromara, his
confiding master despatched him with orders to buy ' a mule-load
of butter ' ; he might just as well, like the injured lady in ' The
Mysteries of London,' have ' sent out the servant for a pint of
prussic acid.' ' A mule-load of butter ! ' exclaimed the aroma-
tarius, ' there is not so much in all Castile ; how should there be,
when we have no grass ? If you want butter you must go to
Estremadura, whence we import as much as we require for
dressing sores, for which it is, indeed, a sovereign remedy.' And
in proof of the assertion he produced a goat's bladder filled with
a substance resembling waggon-grease. In the next town there
was provender but no fuel, and Leodius and the cook, sacrilegiously
trying to pull a beam out of the ceiling of the parish church,
nearly brought the entire roof upon their heads. A little farther

460 ALMS FOR OBLIVION.

on the party were honourably received by the local authorities,
who quartered them upon a wealthy inhabitant, who produced
a single silver cup for the whole company. Dinner over, the
host locked the cup up in a casket, and thinking that no one
had seen him, made a great clamour, affirming it to be lost.
When taken to task, he positively refused to open the casket,
declaring that he would submit to the loss a thousand times over
rather than put up with such an insult. An alguazil was
summoned, the cup was found in the coffer, and the host was
left studying to find something to say in his defence.

The goal of the Prince's journey was Granada, where the
Emperor Charles V. was then residing. To reach this city it was
necessary to penetrate the defiles of the Sierra Morena, where
occurred the adventures of the serpents and the Spanish venison,
which Leodius shall narrate in his own words.

' There are no villages hereabout,' he says, ' and no inns,
except those built by the Government to provide travellers with
shelter for the night. Sometimes there is a host inside these
caravanserais, and sometimes not. The Prince, therefore, sent
me on ahead to procure, if possible, necessaries against his arrival.
Passing through a vast desert, I arrive at an inn called Evolla, and
find the innkeeper within. He says he has room enough and food
enough for us all, and promises wine of surpassing coolness, and
salted and smoked venison. I taste and find the venison excel-
lent, and the wine colder than ice. I hasten back to the Prince
with the good news ; he comes on, and we have a capital supper.
By-and-by, however, the Prince learns that the coldness of the
wine is owing to the flagons being immersed in a lake full of
serpents. Upon this he resolves to put up with the calidity of
the wine he has brought with him, but orders the remainder of
the venison to be packed up, and resumes his march at midnight,
leaving me to pay the bill. The host brings it, and I read, " so
much for the donkey." " Donkey," I exclaim ; "what donkey?"
" The donkey your worships had for supper." " I thought it was
venison." " Venison ! and how should we have venison, seeing
that we have no deer ? " And opening the door of a cupboard, he
displayed an undeniable leg of a newly slaughtered donkey hang-
ing up. " We hunt them with dogs and think them very good." '
The bill was paid, but neither the Prince nor his suite partook
further of the cold donkey, which they had relished so highly
under another name. Leodius adds that the Spaniards of this

ALMS FOR OBLIVION. 461

region pursued game with poisoned arrows, probably a custom
adopted from the Moors.

The next day Leodius and the butler, being sent forward to
reconnoitre, found themselves without provisions under a blazing-
sun in a frightful desert without grass or tree. ' I shall die,'
quoth the butler, ' I am dying, I am dead. Leave me in the
middle of the road that the Prince may see me when he passes,
and give sepulture to my poor remains.' Leodius lifts up his
eyes and beholds an ancient ruin with a tree sprouting out of it.
The tree proves to be a mulberry tree, and the fruit brings the
fainting travellers back to life. ' Whence,' he says, ' I have ever
since had a special esteem for mulberries, and acknowledge that
I owe my life to them.' Like an Arctic voyager, he builds a
little cairn and leaves a notice of the existence of the mulberries
for the Prince, who takes full advantage of it. ' I cannot,' he
adds, ' omit another singularity of this part of our journey.
Before arriving at the banks of the Guadiana, we passed through
many brakes and thickets, among which grew shrubs bearing red
flowers. We hastened to put them into our hats in the German
fashion, when country people, seeing from a distance what we
were about, ran up crying to us to throw them away, saying that
they were aconite, and that we should all be poisoned if we did
not alight and rub our hands with earth, which we did right
vigorously. They say that this is the place where Hercules
dragged Cerberus to the upper world, and that the aconites were
engendered by the slaver of that infernal quadruped. They also
show the caves where he stalled the oxen he had taken from
Geryon, which fable I conceive to denote the great paucity of
cattle in Spain, Hercules having carried them all off to Italy.'

Notwithstanding Leodius's lamentations on this topic, bulls
must have existed in Spain after the days of Hercules (from which
circumstance the naturalist infers the existence of cows also),
inasmuch as when Rodrigo Borja was elected Pope, the inhabi-
tants of his native town celebrated the event by giving a bull-
fight on a Sunday. It is strange that Leodius only in one place
alludes to this national amusement. This notice of the tauro-
machic sport occurs in connection with the Prince's arrival at
Granada, just in time for the festivities with which the recovery
of the city from the Moors was annually celebrated. The bull-
fight, however, if such it may be called, appears not to have been
of the orthodox pattern, but rather of that represented in a

462 ALMS FOR OBLIVION.

humorous picture attributed to Velasquez, and recently shown
at the Spanish exhibition at the New Gallery, when, after the
regular sports were over, a bull was turned loose among the crowd.
On this occasion seven bulls were so treated and baited with dogs
into the bargain, the sport culminating in their destruction after
they had themselves occasioned the deaths of some few of the
Spanish public. All of which was considered exactly as it ought
to be. This humane entertainment was followed by one of more
refinement, in which the Emperor himself took part — the eques-
trian contest of the djerrid, borrowed by the Spaniards from the
Moors, and frequently described by Oriental travellers. Even
this spirited and graceful amusement was fatal to one of the
cavaliers engaged, upon which the Empress, who watched the
proceedings from a balcony, sent word to the Emperor that it
seemed time to leave off ; which suggestion, Leodius hints, was
by no means unwelcome to him. Quod Ule lubens annuit.

Leodius represents Granada as the largest and most populous
city in Spain, a credible statement, considering the extent of its
silk manufactures, until folly and bigotry destroyed them in the
following century. It must have worn a thoroughly Oriental
aspect with its Moresque palaces, its bazaars resembling Cairo and
Damascus, and its narrow streets obstructed with chains at night.
There was scarcely one house without a lemon-tree and a fountain,
although drinking-water was chiefly supplied by the river Darro,
whose salubrity was vaunted by the Spaniards and gravely ques-
tioned by Leodius, seeing that it killed the Prince's physician.
Leodius himself was grievously afflicted with some complaint of
the nature of colic, and, ungratefully deserted by his master on
his departure, might, he thinks, have died on the floor but for the
accidental return of the Prince's barber to look for something
forgotten. This illegitimate son of ^Esculapius afforded relief by
a dose of nescio quid de suis catapotiis (pills), and completed
the cure by the exhibition of roasted kid with oranges and vinegar,
washed down with generous wine. One is reminded of Peacock's
prescription for Shelley's ailments : ' Three mutton chops, well
peppered.'

Having failed to extract anything from the Emperor, the
Prince and his retinue returned by way of Toledo, encountering
at Almagro, it is interesting to learn, a branch of the great
Fugger bank, which supplied them with every necessary. At
Toledo the traveller notes the ruins of the aqueduct and amphi-

ALMS FOR OBLIVION. 463

theatre, the hundred and fifty towers, the seventeen markets, the
ancient school of magic, now shut up, the narrow streets, the
superiority of the private dwelling-houses, four thousand of which
possess inner courts, the use of vine-stalks for fuel for want of
wood, the ten thousand weavers of silk and wool, and the six
thousand who get their livelihood by vending water. With their
families these would represent nearly twenty thousand persons,
or about as much as the entire present population of Toledo.
This, contrasted with the desolate condition of the rural districts,
suggests that the aggregation of the population in towns is' not
entirely a modern phenomenon. If anything further of note
occurred during the return to France, Leodius omits to record it.
Frederick's next expedition to Spain was undertaken in 1538.
It was principally prompted by the desperate state of his pecuniary
affairs, and the hope that the Emperor would assist him in a claim
he had preferred to the Danish throne in right of his wife, or at
least quiet him with a Spanish viceroyalty. He had married a
daughter of the dethroned tyrant Christian, and his wife and his
wife's female jester were of the party. The season was winter,
and upon their arrival in Biscay the travellers found themselves
obliged to contend with a new description of hardships. Blinded
by snow, buffeted by tempests, now taking shelter in caverns, now
in woods, they made their way with the greatest difficulty through
the mountains, the faithful secretary pulling his master up the
steeps with a stick, and the Prince sliding down on the other side
with the staff between his legs. The Princess was continually
falling, but displayed a most courageous spirit. The voyagers
struggled through everything, and arrived at a town tarn debiles
quam virgmes, in British parlance, 'as weak as a cat.' A
characteristically Spanish scene occurred at this place, where the
Alcalde, being asked what he considered due to him for the enter-
tainment he had provided for the party, replied that he was as
noble as the Prince himself, and should consider it derogatory to
accept anything ; but, upon being taken at his word, straightway
presented a demand for seventy crowns, which the Prince had
to pay, impotently threatening vengeance on his arrival at court.
A pleasing contrast was presented by a grateful Spaniard to
whom Leodius had done some small kindness in Germany, who
insisted on carrying him off to his house, more below the ground
than above it, but containing a hare, a capon, and a brace of
partridges.

464 ALMS FOR OBLIVION.

Leodius's description of this amiable family is truly idyllic.
The Senora was pleased to say that all Germans were honourable
and high-minded men ; the son tramped home through the snow
laden with mala Arecontica (which we are unable to define, unless
there is some allusion to the story of Acontius and Cydippe), olives,
and capers ; the master of the house quoted Xenophon and gave
Leodius good advice. It seems surprising that a native of the
North should have needed to learn from a Spaniard to wear a veil
in a desert of snow, and not to go to bed in his boots, but such
appears to have been the case. This piece of wintry moun-
taineering cost the Prince altogether five hundred crowns, and
conveyed the painful impression that he was leaving more money
in Spain than he was ever likely to take out of it. Through the
favour of the Empress, nevertheless, he obtained a monthly allow-
ance from Charles V., for the support of his retinue at Toledo, and
when after a while the Imperial treasurer became unruly, and the
hopes of a Spanish viceroyalty dissolved into air, he received seven
thousand ducats to take him home : nearly all of which, however,
was spent in Spain to very little purpose. Leodius, importing
aesthetic enthusiasm into money matters, thought to please the
Prince by drawing his attention to the beauty of the broad pieces,
double ducats every one, and fresh, it may be, from some American
mine. The Prince answered that he could not comprehend how
anybody could care for money for its own sake, that his sole
concern with it was to spend it, and that he purposed to lay
this out upon a pilgrimage to Compostella. If he ever went
there, Leodius either did not accompany him or has suppressed
the particulars.

Such a peregrination might have been distasteful to the
secretary on other than financial grounds, for indications are not
wanting of his inclination to the Keformers' doctrines. This may
perhaps have led him to depict Spanish bigotry in too forbidding
hues ; yet, with every allowance, there is sufficient proof of its
hideousness. In one town the travellers lodged for some time at
the house of a widow whose husband had been lately burned on
an accusation of secret Judaism. If, says Leodius, the accused
person denies the charge, he is burned, but his family retain his
goods. If he confesses, he goes to the galleys, and his property
is confiscated. There is but one way of escape, if he should allege
that he has malicious enemies, and name the very persons who
have brought the accusation, he may be acquitted, but otherwise

ALMS FOR OBLIVION. 465

the accusers are for ever unknown to him. When, afterwards,
certain persons took umbrage at the attention paid to the Prince
and his suite at the Emperor's own court, their readiest weapon
was an imputation of heresy grounded on the most frivolous indi-
cations ; but to the Spanish mind 'German and Lutheran were
almost convertible terms. At one time the charge was that some
of them had gone out of church and come back. It was pointed
out that the Spaniards habitually did the same. ' Yes, but the
Spaniards are not Germans.' At another time a poor German
who had gone upon his knees at the passing of the Host was
collared by a sacrificulus, who denounced him as a heretic because
he had not laid down a parcel he was carrying. On appeal to the
Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, a liberal ecclesiastic, his Eminence
said that such things must needs be, and that the remedy was to
keep away from divine service altogether. But this advice must
on no account be revealed, or he himself might be accused of
heresy, as actually happened to the next but one of his successors
in the archbishopric. The Emperor said nearly the same thing,
but added that when he got more authority he hoped to rectify
this and some other matters. At present he must be upon his
guard ; certain of his subjects were wont to call him ' Plemish
swine.' In fact, observes Leodius, many of them disputed his
right to the throne during the life of his mother, the mad Juana.
This anecdote helps to explain how the unimpeachably orthodox
Philip II. was able to destroy the liberties of Spain, and why
Granada and Toledo are no longer great cities.

Before his return to Germany, the Prince was persuaded by
letters from Henry VIII. himself to visit England, where the
Germans were just then in high favour on account of the negotia-
tions for the King's marriage with Anne of Cleves. Leodius him-
self had previously visited England on an errand of his master's,
had been most kindly received by Cromwell, and had had long
conversations with Henry, who, in support of his proposition that
the English were no wise inferior to the Germans as topers,
emptied at one draught a flagon of beer for which the envoy,
' trying it in wine,' required four. From the references in the State
Papers calendared in the Eolls Series, the Prince's visit appears to
have been the subject of speculation for some time before it took
place. Foreign ambassadors were dying to find .out all about its
object, whether to recommend a bride to Henry VIII., or to seek
aid for his father-in-law, the deposed Christian, or to promote his

VOL. XII. — NO. 70, N.S. 30

i66 ALMS FOR OBLIVION.

nephew's marriage with the Princess Mary. The latter was all
but effected, but at a later period, and not by Frederick's instru-
mentality. It would have produced no political result, as the poor
young Prince, a mere bundle of diseases, died in 1548.

Giving the Spanish Viceroy of the Netherlands the slip, the
Prince and his suite, after a week's detention at Calais, ostensibly
for a fair wind, but really for the permission of the King of
France, one September day in 1539 entered the port of Dover,
and were received with such a salute ' that the coasts of England
were blotted out by smoke, and the flashes dazzled our eyes as
it were with lightning.' The party were taken charge of by Lord
and Lady Lisle, friendly and liberal hosts, until, arrived in London,
they were consigned to a wealthy merchant, whose especial care
it was to guard against their spending a penny, alleging that if
he suffered this the King would certainly behead him. Like
almost all other old travellers, Leodius tells us nothing of London
except its sights, the Tower and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey
tombs impressed him, but the Prince, an ardent sportsman, was
grievously disappointed at being unable to see a famous pair of
antlers of twenty-eight points, a trophy of victory over France,
and asserted to have belonged to a stag taken by King Dagobert,
which wore a golden collar engraved with an inscription testifying
that the noble animal had been captured and released by Julius
Caesar. The excuse was that the King had removed it, fearing
lest it should be stolen by the monks. Perhaps they had been
beforehand with him. Dean Stanley is silent on the subject.

Although King Dagobert is actually the hero of a memorable
legend about a stag,1 there seems no reason for connecting the
Westminster antlers with him. They more probably belonged,
or were supposed to have belonged, to the stag captured by
Charles VI. of France, equipped, as was gravely asserted, with a
collar and inscription emanating from Julius Caesar, according
to which the antlered patriarch would be in about the fifteen

1 His prowess as a sportsman, nevertheless, does not seem to be highly esti-
mated by the author of the ' Chanson du Koi Dagobert ' : —

King Dagobert went to the chase,
And far o'er hill and dale did race.
' Methinks, my liege,' a courtier saith,
' Your Majesty is out of breath.'
' No wonder,' says the King, says he
' A hare was running after me.'

ALMS FOR OBLIVION. 467

hundredth year of its age. The incident is attributed to a time
so near the English Conquest that the horns would be extremely
likely to cross the Channel as spoil of war. The idea of the
collared stag at large came down from antiquity, is recorded in
connection with Alexander the Great, and is found in Petrarch :

Libera farmi al mio Cesare parve.

Neither did the antlers turn up at Windsor, where the Prince
and his retinue were splendidly entertained in company with the
ambassadors who had come upon the inauspicious match with
Anne of Cleves. Carpets, though mentioned in a letter of Lady
Lisle's, were not yet in common use, and Leodius notes with amaze-
ment that not only the walls but the floors were covered with
embroidered tapestry. There was every imaginable dainty, and
every imaginable musical instrument. Some days later the Prince
and the ambassadors picnicked with the King ' in a most pleasant
valley by the Thames,' in huts constructed of green boughs,
especially laurel, which Leodius says was very abundant in
England. (It must be remembered that the laurel cannot be
reared in Middle Germany.) As the guests were at luncheon,
blasts upon the horn were heard, and deer appeared closely
pursued by hounds. Encountering another party of huntsmen,
who prevented their taking to the river, they were compelled to
enter a long narrow passage leading to an open space, where they
were either entangled in nets, or leaped the barriers, or were pulled
down by the dogs. The sport lasted three hours, and resulted in
the capture of thirty-four deer, which the King distributed among
his guests.

Fortunately for the Prince, Henry was not yet undeceived as
to the personal attractions of Anne of Cleves, and, in the mood
befitting an ardent though elderly bridegroom, gave Frederick a
viaticum of six thousand crowns. This is Leodius's statement.
Lord Lisle says in a letter to Lady Lisle, ' The Palsgrave has
received two thousand marks for his reward, no ill journey for
him.' Lady Lisle bestowed a token which a true knight ought to
have regarded as more precious. ' I send you,' she writes to her
husband, ' my tooth-picker, which I thought to have given to the
Palsgrave while he was here, but it was not then at my hand.
Please present it to him. I send it because when he was here I
did not see him wear a pen or call [quill ?] to pick his teeth with.
Tell him I have had it seven years.' An infinite quantity of silver

30—2

468 ALMS FOR OBLIVION.

plate was shown, but not presented ; and the Prince conjectured
that it was appropriated by Grunvallus (Cromwell). There is a
most interesting notice of this ill-starred and enigmatic man, a
figure less easy to realise than that of almost any other great
English statesman. ' Cromwell,' says Leodius, ' suspecting that
the King's favour towards him was too excessive to be durable,
meditated flight from the kingdom, and, as I believe, wished to
disclose his design to me, but Fate would not suffer him. For,
while we were in London, he sent for me, and, taking me by the
hand, led me up and down, now into halls and alleys, now into
groves and gardens. Ever absorbed in thought, and seeming to
have something upon his mind which he was desirous but afraid
to express, he stopped from time to time and uttered broken words,
and kept asking whether the Prince had any castles or districts
which he would sell or let. At last he vehemently urged me to
find some pretext for returning to England at Christmas, for my
Prince's advantage and my own, and gave me a silver goblet for
my wife, to bring him to my remembrance if he should ever come
to Grermany.' A graphic sketch, and historically important as
showing that Cromwell entertained well-grounded apprehensions
of his ruthless and capricious master even before the great mis-
adventure with Anne of Cleves.

Frederick succeeded his brother as Elector Palatine in 1544.
Always prone to visionary schemes, he vainly tried to obtain the
throne of Denmark. His domestic policy was one of opportunism ;
he favoured the Reformation without openly espousing it, took
arms against Charles V. and submitted to him, rejoiced in the
deliverance of Protestant Grermany by Maurice of Saxony without
in any way contributing to it, and, if performing nothing memor-
able, might at all events say with Sieyes, 'J'aivecu.' In 1555,
at the age of seventy-three, he celebrated his jubilee, and here
Leodius concludes his history with the wish that the Elector,
whom he describes as still robust, may live to keep many
more birthdays. This was not to be ; he died on February 26
following.

Leodius seems to have died about the same time. Notwith-
standing the liberties he has occasionally taken with his master, he
appears to have entrusted his history to the Elector himself, for
not only is it dedicated to him, but the MS. must have been
deposited in the Electoral Library at Heidelberg, the pillage of
which in the Thirty Years' War, fatal to so many books and

ALMS FOR OBLIVION. 469

manuscripts, released this from its seclusion, and sent it forth
upon the world. It fell into the hands of Joannes Ammonius,
publisher at Frankfort, by whom it was printed in 1624, with a
preface pointing out that Grermany had now no need to envy
France for her Comines. Partial as- we are to Leodius, we cannot
deem his work much more nearly on a par with Comines' in the
republic of letters than his master with Louis XI. in the republic
of Europe ; but if infinitely less important in the departments of
history and politics, he casts more light on the condition of
manners and culture.

470

IN PRAISE OF BIRDS.

THERE are not many lovers of beautiful things that are not made
continually to feel in their heart ' it is misery to love! ' I do not
mean the romance of love that belonged to our youth; that
remains the same as ever, divinely happy, imperishably beautiful.
But for such as know what it is to love and sympathise deeply
with the lower creation — as it is called — they recognise at every
turn the law, hard and fast like a law of Nature itself — causing
that which most they love to become a source of greater pain
than pleasure. Life would certainly be less hard for some of us
did we not care as we do for God's creatures of the animal world.
And this leads up to the love most fraught with pain — at least to
members of the Society for the Protection of Birds — the love
which is almost universal, the love of birds.

Much of our trouble must be thus explained : that while we
know Nature to be so careful of the type that scarcely ever is it
lost, the relentless persecution with which birds of all kinds are
pursued does threaten the loveliest of their race with extinc-
tion and the world with the loss of its best charm on land
and sea.

The love of birds is the earliest fancy of our childhood, the
love which grows with our growth, and grows still warmer as we
ourselves get older. And the older we are, the sorer the grief we
have with it.

There is something so engaging, so strange, so unknowable
about the birds. The attraction of them, I believe, is felt in
some ways even more generally now than formerly ; and it spreads
in these days in wider circles. An observation I remember
hearing from a friend one winter's day as we passed by a holly
tree all scarlet with its fruit — a redbreast sitting in the midst
and singing his little song — would scarcely be ventured now.
My friend said, ' Do you really care for birds ? They seem so
dull to me ! '

A dull world indeed it would be without them ! In ' L'Oiseau,'
by the French author Michelet, occurs a passage which might be
thus translated : ' Human life becomes commonplace as soon as

IN PRAISE OF BIRDS. 471

man is no longer surrounded by the great company of birds —
those innocent beings whose movement and whose voices and
playfulness are like the smile of Creation.' In the country the
wild birds are always about us, tame or shy, as the case may be.
They always look quite young and happy, taking the liveliest
interest in the grass and the flies, and in the labourer's work, or
whatever happens to be going on in field or garden. We do not
tire of admiring their grace and their quaint ways ; and it is only
when some blackbird uses ' the golden dagger of his bill ' to dig
out a poor worm from the lawn that — well, we look the other
way ! While free in the open air the birds seem never to be ill,
never to die unless by accident ; they are scarcely ever found
' self-dead ' — not even under the bushes, where one might think
they would often creep away to die. Only in the great frost
three or four winters back in many places some were said to be
starved to death, and lay dead upon the ground. In that year,
even in gardens where food was regularly put out for them and
their various tastes consulted, they starved in numbers. Grreen
plover would come close about the very doors and windows, and
yet refuse even the chopped meat and bread ; and I fear it was
a few thrushes and blackbirds who grew fat, and prevented the
many sharing their feast.

Birds are for ever flitting in and out of the trees, or singing
among the branches, or flying happily through the air — who
knows whither ? Once, for full seven years a black and white
blackbird lived in peace in our garden ; then suddenly the others
began to attack him and pull out his feathers. We saw him no
more ; and the body of even that remarkably piebald bird was
never found. The poet Burns may have had something of this
in mind when he wrote :

Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing
That i' the merry month o' spring
Delighted me to hear thee sing,

What comes o' thee ?
Where wilt thou cower thy cluttering wing,

And close thy e'e 1

The birds are ever round us, but we don't understand them
much ; and when kept prisoned for years in our cruel cages,
cheering us by their song and liveliness, how often do they at last
elude our best care, drop from the perch, and die, while we sadly
feel we have known nothing about them all the time.

472 IN PRAISE OF BIRDS.

Matthew Arnold, in his pathetic lines on a dead canary, says
— how truly too many of us might well confess —

Birds, companions all unknown,
Live beside us, but alone ;
Finding not, do all they can,
Passage from their soul to man 1
Kindness we bestow and praise,
Laud their plumage, greet their lays ;
Still beneath their feathered breast
Stirs a history unexpressed ;
What they want we cannot guess,
Fail to mark their deep distress,
Dull look on when death is nigh,
Note no change, and let them die.

Yet, little as we understand birds, they assuredly know pretty
well all about us; and they never mistake their friends. A
happy few there are, possessors of some kind of secret fascination,
whom the whole world of birds will follow and will trust. Of
this strange influence the naturalist Charles Waterton is known
to have been a memorable example. When he walked in the
woods the birds came out to meet him, settling on his shoulder,
and coming to his call from any distance. It is told in his
memoirs that when the good man died and his body was con-
veyed in a boat across the lake to the spot where his father was
buried, and where he himself desired he might be laid in a
sequestered nook of the park, a flight of birds suddenly appeared,
gathering as it went, and followed the boat to its destination.
The species to which these birds belonged is not recorded ; most
likely they were various. Many kinds of birds there are who
hook themselves on to us as it were, in some strange, slight way,
taking part as well as they can in the lives of their human
neighbours. There is the swallow, herald of spring, who builds
under our eaves or in corners of our windows and doorways. The
first swallow is hailed with joy, for does she not bring summer
from across the sea ? In the Roman calendar, I believe, the only
mention of natural history is that on February 24 swallows
appear. (In France she is called ' the messenger of life,' and in
Ireland 'the devil's bird.') Nightingales, who prefer the come
and go of busy life, and delight to nest within sound of a railroad.
Tomtits, whose pleasure it is to nest in our garden pumps or
convenient letter-boxes near our gates. Sparrows — of course,
they possess themselves of all. I know a first-rate gardener who,
strange to tell, has a liking for them. ' Sparrows,' he says, ' have

IN PRAISE OF BIRDS. 473

more sense than parrots, only they can't speak.' Above all other
birds, the robin, as all the world knows, shows most trust and
confidence in us.

The pious bird with the scarlet breast,

Our little English robin,

The bird that by some name or other

All men who know thee call thee brother,

The darling of children and men.

In winter, if allowed to enter at door or window, the robin
will come in, will warm itself on our hearthrug, and if permitted
will roost every night, for weeks perhaps, perched somewhere in
the room. It simply knows not what fear means in the garden
when at watch over a man with a spade.

Last winter a robin tapped at our dining-room window, and
insisted upon being let in. In the house it lodged and made itself
at home until the April following. Every night the bird roosted
in a different corner in a different room, upstairs or downstairs.
Every day at breakfast and luncheon it hopped on to the table
and feasted, helping itself largely to butter in the morning and
to cake at luncheon, &c. The confidence shown by such a little
thing in trusting itself among a household of large human people,
was indeed touching. In February, when the family went south,
the robin descended to the kitchen, living contentedly with the
servants until wide-opened doors and windows proclaimed the
spring.

But the most singular instance that I have known of a
robin's fearlessness was the kind of military instinct, which some
years ago led a pair to make their nest at the back of a target at
Aldershot ! It was in the shooting range of the 4th battalion of
the 60th Eifles ; and the Colonel of the regiment told me of it
at the time. The little pair paid not the least attention to the
shots thundering on the target just at the back of their nest. The
soldiers were careful not to meddle with them, and the young
brood hatched and were brought up in safety. (It may be hoped
that they did not all hatch out stone deaf !)

Of ill-omened birds, so called, we need not say much, for it
is only by the superstition of man that they are said to be so. It
has nothing to do with their feeling for us. The handsome black
and white magpie is nearly killed off from our woods and fields,
and the coming generation will probably know little about its
unlucky reputation, though they may chance to find in some
antiquated book of north-country folk-lore, that the magpie was

474 IN PRAISE OF BIRDS.

the only bird who did not go into the ark with Noah. It pre-
ferred to sit outside on the roof, jabbering over the drowned
world ; and so it has been unlucky ever since. ' The boding
raven,' however, still is likely to survive, since it has been pushed
back by civilisation into solitary places and inaccessible crags. In
one such haunt, the Haven's Craig, just above a wild lake in
Inverness-shire, I have seen them hovering like black blots on the
face of the cliff. I have not learning enough to know whether in
the earliest times ravens were accounted ' unlucky.' If so, why
were they chosen from among all the birds of the air for the
merciful errand of carrying bread to Elijah in the wilderness ?
(Did they steal it ? They are given to theft !) Also in the
Written Word we are assured that ' GTod heareth the young
ravens when they cry out unto Him.' And nothing of this is
said of doves, or of any other white or heavenly kind of bird. An
explanation is given in the Egyptian commentary on St. Luke, in
the Coptic script by Epiphanius, A.D. 368-402. The passage l
is certainly very curious, and I am permitted to transcribe it
here. ' Why then did the evangelist mention no name amongst
the birds except ravens only? Because the hen raven, having
laid her eggs and hatched her young, is wont to fly away and
leave them on account of the hue of their colour, for when
hatched they are red in appearance. Then the Nourisher of all
Creation sends to them a little swarm of insects, putting it by
their nest, and thus the little ravens are fed until the colour of
their body is, as it were, dyed and becomes black. But after
seven days the old ravens return, and, seeing that the bodies of
their young have become perfectly black like their own, hence-
forward they take to them and bring them food of their own
accord.' It is for naturalists to ascertain whether or no this
strange account of the young ravens holds good in our day.

It is a long step from the fourth century to the days of
Shakespeare and ' Macbeth.' Lady Macbeth says :

. . . . The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.

Farther yet to the ballad quoted by Sir Walter Scott :

And thrice the raven flapped its wing
Around the towers of Cumnor Hall.

Translated by the Rev. George Horner.

IN PRAISE OF BIRDS. 475

The appearance of solitary birds in the Forum at Kome was be-
lieved to presage the death of Caesar. Also ' the many-wintered
crow' shares fully in the un-luck of blackness. In Plutarch's
Lives it is told how Cicero went on shore, and entering his house,
lay down to repose himself, and how a number of crows settled in
the chamber window and croaked dismally in most doleful manner.
' One even entered in, and alighting on the bed, sought with its
beak to draw off the clothes with which he covered his face. On
sight of this the servants began to reproach themselves : " Shall
we remain spectators of our master's murder ? Shall we not pro-
tect him, so innocent and so great a sufferer, when the brute
creatures give him marks of their care and attention ? " They
carried him towards the sea,' &c.

The downy-feathered, silent-flying bird of wisdom, the owl, is
feared by many — ' the obscure bird that clamours the livelong

night.'

It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman
Which gives the stern'st good-night.

In India the white owl, however, always brings good luck. By
the Hindoos it is held sacred to the goddess of prosperity ; and
for luck's sake it is welcomed to nest and breed in their houses,
while the midnight cry of ' the Seven Sisters,' whoever those
strange birds may be, makes those who hear it tremble.

Greater in number, as one likes to believe, are on the other
hand the fortunate birds. There are few, let us hope, among our
friends who have not, at some time in their lives, known the
meaning of ' halcyon days.' The halcyon is thus described by
Pliny : ' This bird, so noticeable, is little bigger than a sparrow.
For the more part of her pennage, blew intermingled yet among
with white and purple feathers. . . . They laie and sit in mid-
winter when daies be shortest; and the times when they are
broodie is called halcyon daies ; for during that season the sea is
calm and navigable, especially on the coast of Sicilie.' What
visions of calm sea-born loveliness does the quaint old translation
call up for us ! And is there not a haunting music in these lines ?

Blow, but blow gently, oh fayre winde,
From the forsaken shore,
And be as to the halcyon kinde
Till we have ferried o'er.

The Swan, in legend, is fortunate. In a poetic dream of the
ancients it was the birds flying up and down the banks of the river

476 IN PRAISE OF BIRDS.

of Lethe that ' caught the names of the departed, and, carrying
them for a little while in their beaks, let them fall into the river,
where they would have been lost only that the swans watching
near caught a few names and carried them to temples, where they
were consecrate.' Amongst ' the fortunate birds,' the dove must
be counted as supreme in its peaceful prestige. It is the type of
gentleness and innocence, and of faithful, devoted love. And are
we not exhorted to be ' wise as serpents and harmless as doves ' ?
Every movement of the dove is full of grace. It is the emblem
of Peace. (Alas, that in fairness we have to own the amazing
fact of the parent doves' cruel and quarrelsome behaviour !) The
drying-up of the waters after the flood was signified to Noah when
the dove came to him in the evening, ' and, lo, in her mouth was an
olive leaf pluckt off.' To this day, year after year for love-seasons
immemorial, the dove, when nesting, has carried flowers and
leaves in her mouth. In gardens where these birds are allowed
their freedom, they will often fly through the windows into the
house, and carry off spoil from the flower-glasses. Pink is their
favourite colour. I have often seen a pink sweetpea laid by the
male dove tenderly across the neck of his mate as she sits on the
nest. It happened only last summer in London, that early one
morning a young lady, sleeping with the window open in an upper
room in Lowndes Street, awoke to find a stray dove sitting at the
foot of her bed — and the bird held a rose-leaf in its bill.

Instances of the old belief in birds and their human sympathies
might well be multiplied. Aldovrandi (1527) tells us of the
parakeet ' who so moved the heart of the Oriental emperor Basilius
— the bird repeating for his condemned and incarcerated son, Leo,
those lamentations it had heard from the sorrowing women — that
Basilius again took his son to his bosom, leaving him his empire
as an inheritance.' In more recent times there is the extraordi-
nary tale, to be taken for what it is worth, of a parrot who served
as chaplain in some ship, reciting prayers to the sailors, and
afterwards telling the rosary ! Then there is the legend of a white-
breasted bird that is said to appear invariably in the death-chamber,
when the death occurs of any member of the family it haunts.

In Dean Stanley's ' Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey,'
it is recorded, concerning the funeral of Queen Mary II. , 1695,
that ' a robin-redbreast, which had taken refuge in the Abbey, was
seen constantly on her hearse, and was looked upon with tender
affection for its seeming love to the lamented queen.' And I may

IN PRAISE OF BIRDS. 477

be pardoned for quoting from one of the morning papers an incident
which was remarked by many at Queen Victoria's funeral at
Windsor on February 4, 1901 : ' And then befell a thing so strange
and beautiful as to almost pass belief. Just as the jewelled crown
upon the coffin passed into the open air a dove flew out from over
the chapel door. There it circled for a moment, when its mate
flew out, and both together, those grey birds flew slowly side by
side, over the quarters of the Military Knights and on towards the
tomb at Frogmore.'

There is more to tell about birds than may be said in a
day. Volumes might be filled with the wonders of their life-
histories, with the endless story of their intelligence, their power
of affection to man, or of devotion to their offspring. I have
for long known the story of two incidents illustrating these two
qualities in birds. The first l is told by a relative of my own, and
happened many long years ago when she was a child. She writes :

' I was walking with my mother, when we were attracted to a
small cottage by the exquisite singing of a thrush, which hung in
a wicker cage outside the door. We stood listening, and then my
mother entered and made acquaintance with the old couple within,
asking would they be willing to part with the thrush to her ? At
first a blank look came over the old man's face ; but he was poor
and ailing, and at last a sum was named, the double of which was
paid by my mother, who sent a servant next morning for the bird.
Disappointment resulted. The cage was placed in our drawing-
room window, but not a sound, not a note came from the melan-
choly thrush, who drooped and hung his head as if moulting. We
fed it, we coaxed it; but it remained silent. My mother was
indignant. She had not pressed the old people ; she had but asked
were they willing to sell the bird ; she had given them double the
sum asked ; it looked as if another had been palmed off instead
of the magnificent songster.

' We gave the thrush several days' trial, but at length we sent
for its late owner. The door opened ; in he came, hat in hand.
My mother rose, armed with some mild rebuke. But neither could
speak, for no sooner did the old man appear than the bird leaped
down from its perch, spread its wings, and broke into so triumphant
a song of joy that the whole room vibrated. "What, pretty
Speckledy," said the old man approaching, " you know me, then,
do you ? " And the thrush kept flapping his wings, dancing with
From Mary Boyle's Autobiography.

478 IN PRAISE OF BIRDS.

joy. It was without a doubt the same bird, but, like the Hebrew
captives, it could not sing in a strange land. " Take it back," said
my mother ; " I would not part such friends for all the world." '

The other anecdote used to be told by the late Lady Elizabeth
Villiers, and occurred on her own property in Holland. On a tree
close to a house, within a short distance of the river or canal,
there was a storks' nest, with young ones. The roof of the house
caught fire one day ; and though the flames did not actually
reach the tree, the heat became scorching. So the mother stork
flew down to the water, got into it, and drenched her breast ;
then, returning to her young, she spread the mass of cool wet
feathers all over them. This she repeated over and over again,
flying to the river, going down into the water, and returning, her
plumage drenched with wet. And thus the nest was saved, and
the tender nestlings were preserved alive until the fire had been
got under and all was safe. The truth of this remarkable story
was vouched for by more than one eye-witness.

One need not, indeed, be surprised at anything a bird does,
when we consider the commoner everyday marvels of their
unerring instinct, the whole mystery of their lives.

The Greeks believed that birds were created first of all things
— ' an airy ante-mundane throng ' — and the Latin poet Lucretius
held that it was from birds men first learned music. Matthew

Arnold wrote :

Proof they give, too, primal powers
Of a prescience more than ours.
Teach us while they come and go
When to sail and when to sow.
Cuckoo calling from the wild,
Swallow trooping in the sedge,
Starling swirling from the hedge,
Map our seasons, make our year.

In all ages birds have been the poet's favourites. At the
dawn of English poetry, half a thousand years ago, Chaucer, with
his passionate love of Nature, says, in ' The Fowles' Assembly ' :

On every bough the birdes I heard sing
With voice of angel in their armonie,

and then he makes a list of about thirty-seven ' fowles,' with
their personal characteristics, sketched in one or two lines each —
done to the life, as none but a poet and acute observer of Nature
could do ; as, for instance, ' The false lapwing full of trecherie,'
' The cuckoo ever unkind,' ' The frostie feldefare,' and so on.

IN PRAISE OF BIRDS. 479

After Chaucer came other of our poets : a long procession
whose praise of birds, enshrined in lovely thoughts and undying
numbers, is left to us and to all time, a legacy of delight.

To name but a few amongst some of the best-known lines.
Who can forget Keats's Nightingale ? —

Light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green and shadows numberless

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Or Wordsworth to the same sylvan minstrel ? —

0 Nightingale, thou surely art

A creature of a fiery heart.

These notes of thine, they pierce and pierce,

Tumultuous harmony and fierce.

Thou sing'st as if the god of wine

Had helped thee to a valentine 1

And in another exquisite little poem of Wordsworth's the Lark is

Ethereal minstrel, pilgrim of the sky,
and

Type of the wise, who soar but never roam,
True to the kindred points of heaven and home.

Shelley, in his Ode to the Lark, addresses it as ' Thou scorner
of the ground.' And F. Tennyson :

How the blythe lark runs up the golden stair

That leans through cloudy gates from Heaven to earth.

Stray fragments these, from rich stores of song, by poets in-
spired with 'all that ever was of joyous, clear, and fresh,' — by the
music of those very skylarks that all the world orders without a
pang as a dainty dish for dinner, whose bodies the careless crowd
sees and passes by unmoved, lying heaped in every poulterer's
window or piled in open crates beside the door.

In an old bird-book of 1791 (in which, by the way, are
figured in colour two sorts of dodo) we find that ' in the neigh-
bourhood of Dunstable, 4,000 dozens of larks have been taken for
the London market, between September and February.' (A trifle
indeed, those 48,000, compared to the 116,000 humming-birds
that were sold in London wholesale shops only a year or two ago
for ornamenting ladies' attire !) If so many skylarks over a
hundred years ago were required for the table or for confinement
in cages, what must the consumption now be ! The old book
adds that 'in summer they fly and sing so much, and are so

480 IN PRAISE OF BIRDS.

much engaged in the care of their young, they are always lean.'
Poor devoted little songsters ! Nest and multiply as they may, a
check must come sooner or later if the ever-increasing population
of our cities persist in eating them ; and even the blue heavens
where they sing will at last be empty of their music. We are
often assured that the larks sold for cooking are mostly fieldfares.
This may be true, just in the same way that ' plovers' eggs are
oftener jackdaws' ' !

In Lockhart's life of Sir Walter Scott it is told how, at the
funeral of his daughter, the wild music of a lark singing in the
sky above the open grave mingled with the solemn service for
the dead, and how Scott's friend, Dean Milman, as he read the
service, heard the singing and was profoundly touched. One does
not read Milman much now, but he described the incident well in
the little poem he wrote afterwards :

I watch thee lessening, lessening to the sight,

Still faint and fainter winnowing

The sunshine with thy dwindling wing,

A speck, a movement in the ruffled light,

Till thou wert melted in the sky,

An undistinguished part of bright infinity.

Mrs. Browning has a lovely thought about England and her
migrant birds (I think it occurs in ' Aurora Leigh ') :

Islands so freshly fair

That never hath bird come nigh them,

But from his course in air

Hath been won downward by them.

The name of wellnigh every English bird, whether common
or unfamiliar, is found scattered throughout the best poetry of
our land — immortalised in song. Burns has here and there an
exquisite touch, such as :

Within the bush, her covert nest
A little linnet foiidly prest,
The dew all chilly on her breast,
Sae early in the morning. . . .

Tennyson knew well our birds, and loved them ; and he
watched them with the keenest observation. Browning also loved
them. Everyone knows his lines about the thrush :

That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice over,
Lest we should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture.

The least observing of us all knows the joy of listening in the
spring to these first delightful notes ; and often would we express

IN PRAISE OF BIRDS. 481

our pleasure, if we could, with something of the tender charm of
Mortimer Collins's lines to a thrush singing in the lime-trees —
often would we say with him :

God's poet hid in foliage green
Sings endless songs himself unseen ;
Eight seldom come his silent times.
Linger, ye summer hours serene 1
Sing on, dear thrush, amid the limes !

Thou mellow angel of the air !

Closer to God art thou than I ;

His minstrel thou, whose brown wings fly

Through silent aether's sunnier climes.

Ah, never may thy music die I

Sing on, dear thrush, amid the limes 1

That lover of the beautiful, Lord Leighton — himself an ardent
and accomplished musician — delighted in the music of birds.
I remember, years ago, at the time when people used to bore
their friends by inducing them to catalogue their likes and
dislikes in a tiresome drawing-room album, young Leighton
wrote down as his greatest pleasure, ' To walk in the garden and
listen to the birds singing.'

Amongst modern artists of fame, Landseer felt the joyous
beauty of their wings, and painted them to the life. In the
house where Landseer lived in St. John's Wood (since pulled
down) there was a fresco, painted by him on the wall in the
dining-room, of long-winged sea-gulls in undulating flight above
a breaking sea. After him, Stacy Marks distinguished himself by
his paintings of every species and kind of bird. Lear and others
devoted their art to portraiture of the many-coloured parrots.

After dwelling thus on the true appreciation of birds by some
of the first intellects of our time — and before — the contrast is
sharp indeed when we turn to consider the manner of appreciation
of them, common (especially with women) nowadays. For some
of us the love of birds is accompanied by the intense pain of
realising how their lives are everywhere wasted : a pain which
must surely be unknown to the thousands who, without the least
compunction, crown their heads with dead birds, and glory in that
badge of cruelty — an egret's plume. This particular plume — ' all
imitation now,' the milliners say ! — I never see, without thinking
of the African tribe who carry within their mat of hair a store
of some kind of feathers, and who, whenever they kill a man,
take out a feather, dip it in his blood, and stick it on their head.

VOL. XII. — NO. 70, N.S. 31

482 IN PRAISE OF BIRDS.

So the white egret plume, worn in hat or bonnet, is always to my
fancy dyed red by the sacrifice of unhappy birds, bleeding and
perishing near their desolated nests.

I was told a year ago by a London milliner, that ' ladies
now refused to wear " ospreys," ' as she called them ; ' so much
had been said. But they were insisting on whole birds in their
hats.' There will yet be enough for them — while they last-. An
estimate of the quantities still sold, I fear, in London alone, is
nothing less than appalling. Amongst a number of other birds,
11,352 ounces of egret, and 110,490 humming-birds. No market
in the world can long supply a demand so huge as this. Few need
now to be reminded that the foolish word osprey, used in rela-
tion to plumes, is purely shopkeeper's ornithology. They mean
egret — a name of most evil repute since the cruelties connected
with the killing of them have been made public. Yet so ignorant
is the world at large of the natural history of birds, that some
are still taken in by the name. A very charming lady, whose
hats are certainly guiltless of aught but ostrich feathers, stared
with surprise when I explained that the milliner's osprey is in
reality a small species of white stork, a native of Syria, Florida,
and other hot countries. ' Why,' said she, ' I've seen them alive !
and they are nothing of the sort. They are dark-coloured birds,
like hawks ; I saw them flying about a loch in Scotland ; the
gillie pointed them out to me, and he said they were ospreys ! '

In London, when one sees the fashionable world of women
driving about the streets or piously attending church service, in
hats crowned with egret, or with long bird-of-paradise plumes
bleached white and streaming in the wind, one marvels how it
should be possible that these distinguished dames can possess
minds so untrained — in a sense so uneducated — be so relentless,
so lost to pity, as not to know or care whether whole races of
birds, the loveliest and most innocent of created beings, be killed
off (and mostly under circumstances of great barbarity), simply in
order to make trimming for their hats !

I have wondered also if the ladies of ' London Society ' are
aware of the fact that they are by no means supreme in this
deplorable fashion ; if they really know that in the matter of
feathers they are far outdone by their suburban and country-
town imitators. Crossing a common near Windsor the other day,
a girl on a bicycle passed me, wearing on her head about half-a-
dozen long-winged kitty-wakes or sea-gulls. And I am haunted

IN PRAISE OF BIRDS. 483

still by the nightmare of a lady (a very short lady) I met one day
in Maidenhead, who wore two large pairs of broad white extended
wings in front of her hat, with a kind of breastwork between them
made of a large bunch of egret, mixed in with a bundle of non-
descript feathers and down in black. I believe such an erection
as this would be now (or at least not long ago) classed in a shop
as ' elegant,' or ' chaste ' ! Suburban railway platforms are gene-
rally crowded with this sort of hat, piled up in feathers. And the
fashion lasts till summer brings artificial roses to replace the bird-
skins. It seems a little singular that apparently the only class
who still habitually wear ostrich feathers — but never a bird-skin
— are, or until recently were, the flower-sellers of Oxford Street
and elsewhere. Their narrow means can scarcely account for it,
for the rarest kingfisher or most brilliant ruby-crested humming-
bird costs but fourpence ! Thus it is, however. For my own part,
I would a thousand times rather copy those poor drooping plumes
of the London flower-girls — if plumes must be worn — than flaunt
in the finest ' creation ' of dried birds and egrets that the most
fashionable of London shops could supply.

It is agreed by all, I believe, that any appeal to woman, as
woman, to give up for humanity's sake any practice however
cruel, if sanctioned by custom, is absolutely unavailing. As well
attempt to melt with tears the core of the living rock !

An example, however, has been set by men ; and in the army,
egret plumes are ordered to be no longer worn. Yet women, who
so readily emulate their brothers in sport or smoke, have failed to
follow, whole-hearted, a lead like this.

To an increasing scarcity in foreign hat-birds, rather than to
any appreciable decrease of demand, is due, one fears, the less
universal wear of egret. I was lately told that while two years
ago the going out after service at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, might
be compared to a tempest of egret, last year only three or four
were to be counted.

Could English women oftener seek to apply their hearts to the
wisdom of showing mercy to their helpless little brothers and
sisters the birds, or sometimes find a moment's time to think over
the thousands of beautiful lines, in which our greatest poet-
teachers have sung the praise of birds, could they less seldom
remember this, they would surely entirely cease to follow the sense-
less dictates of fashion in feminine attire, before it is Too Late.

E. V. B.

31—2

484

A LONDONER'S LOG-300K.

XV.

I AM having an unusually pleasant Lent. There is a perceptible
mitigation in that fury of church-going which in former years
has seized Selina at this season. We no longer have High Tea
on Wednesday and Friday, and I am not dragged off in a rickety
four-wheeler to abnormal devotions at St. Alban's or St. Barnabas'.
Selina, who thinks increasingly of her health, declares that for
her own part she believes that to keep well is the first duty of a
Christian, and that to have one's dinner in peace is really a much
more religious act than to ruin one's digestion and catch endless
colds by ' trampolining ' away to churches a hundred miles off.
In the substance, if not in the form, of this sentiment I seem to
recognise an echo from my former self; but Selina has worked
herself into believing that I and not she was responsible for those
Lenten irregularities.

Meanwhile the excellent Soulsby is putting forth unusual
exertions. On Ash Wednesday he announced to his congregation
that, rightly considered, Lent was not so much a Fast as a Feast —
yes, a Feast of Fat Things — oh, yes ! a Banquet of Spiritual
Delights. These delicacies are this year mainly provided by his
own skill. He finds (as he tells us, with a modest pride which is
peculiarly winning) that strangers, though incomparably greater
men than he — deeper theologians, more arousing orators — yet
cannot feel the pulse of the St. Ursula's congregation quite as
accurately as one who has lived and loved and laboured in our
midst for more than two long decades. Accordingly he is taking
all the Lent sermons himself, with only very occasional aid from
his old friend Jem Jawkins, whose chief delight is to escape from
Loamshire and wag his head in a metropolitan pulpit. On Sunday
mornings Soulsby is giving us a course of sermons on the Seven
Corporal Works of Mercy. Last Sunday he enforced the duty of
feeding the hungry with almost exaggerated earnestness. This
emphasis rather nettled Selina, who remarked as we were walking
home that if having Mr. Bumpstead to supper Sunday after Sunday
wasn't ' feeding the hungry ' she didn't know what was, and that

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK. 485

it would be more to the point if Mr. Soulsby would preach on
the Seven Deadly Sins, "and give his Curate a hint about gluttony.
I confess I thought this outburst a little unfair on Bumpstead,
who certainly works hard for his victuals, and is fully justified in
' doing himself honourably ' (the phrase is his own) when the
faithful entertain him. Nor do I think that Selina would have
expressed herself with quite so much vivacity if Bertha had been
with us ; but the dear girl had just popped in to see Mrs. Soulsby,
who is recovering from a domestic crisis. Well may poor Soulsby
say, with picturesque emotion, ' The blessings of the man who hath
his quiver full of them are mine in rich abundance.'

So marked is the abatement of Selina's zeal for the Church, its
ministers, and its ministrations, that, did I not know her principles
to be firmly grounded, I might begin to feel a little uneasiness.
Long experience has taught me to avoid unnecessary questions, but
I maintain my lifelong habit of observation and form my own con-
clusions. In the small ' third room ' on the drawing-room floor
which she uses as a boudoir — a snug apartment consisting of two
windows, a door, and a fire-place — I occasionally cast my eye on
the current literature which my womankind affect. There I find
the ' Queen,' the ' World,' ' Classy Cuttings,' and the ' St. Ursula's
Parish Magazine,' which are my Selina's oracles ; and the
' Table-Tennis and Pastimes Pioneer,' which Bertha takes in. This
journal announces as its aim ' to advance the best interests of a
popular game, and to secure for it its rightful place among those
international sports which have so great a bearing upon the
building up of Great Empires.' There I learn that at the Second
Ping-Pong Tournament at Queen's Hall ' long rallies in a spirited
encounter between Miss Florence Lacy and Mrs. Alfred drew loud
applause yesterday afternoon, while much enthusiasm was also
evoked by Miss Violet Fair's cruel smashes, Miss Lily Weisberg's
demon deliveries, and Miss Helena Maude Smith's back-hand
returns.' Such is the literature, ' lambent yet innocuous,' which
delights my wife and her sister ; but great was my consternation
when the other day I found added to the collection a pamphlet
entitled ' The Wonders of Thought-Force.' The title startled me.
Since she was vaccinated, Selina has lost all fear of small-pox,
declares that she was a goose for giving way to Dr. Snuffin's
nonsense, and affirms her belief that, if people would only set to
work the right way, they could be perfectly healthy without any
doctors' abominations. True it is that Grape-nuts have proved a

486 A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK.

failure, and the Salisbury Treatment has palled ; but I am not free
from apprehension that she is turning her mind in directions even
less compatible with orthodoxy. This I trace to the influence of
young Lady Farringford (nee Sally Van Oof), who, I feel certain,
has given her the pamphlet on ' Thought-Force,' setting forth the
miraculous cures of physical and mental ailments effected by
Helen Wilmans Post, Sea Breeze, Florida, U.S.A.

From that pamphlet I cull two or three quotations — ' racy,' as
Pennialinus would say, of the Great Republic — and of that ' high
faith' which Mr. Lowell commended.

John M. White, North Wales, Pa., S.S. — Mrs. Wilmans Post, — I most cheer-
fully give you my testimonial of the great good you have done me by your
absent treatment. Five years ago I was a physical wreck beyond the reach of
the best medical doctors, as five years of experience proved. I went to the best
doctors to be found here and in Philadelphia, and as a last resort I went before
a clinic of doctors and the late Prof. Pepper, at the University of Pennsylvania,
and they all pronounced my case incurable, as they said the stomach mas gone ;
therefore nothing to build on ; then I gave up in despair until I found one of
your circulars, and, like a drowning man, grasped it, and I bless the event ever
since, for you built me up beyond my hopes — yes, saved my life. To-day my
stomach can digest almost any kind of food, and I am in high hope of being a
stronger man than ever I was, As you know, my case was a desperate one, and
I had lost all interest in life.

Ermine J. King, 318 York Ave., Chicago, 111., S.S. — To whom it may
concern, — I have for the last five months been receiving absent treatments from
Helen Wilmans Post, for ailments which the medical profession could not reach,
and I have received great benefit from the same, and I believe that Mrs.
Wilmans Post is doing a great good through the power of her kindly, uplifting
thought. She is a true healer in every sense of the word, and the treatments
are well worth the modest sum which she accepts for them.

Mary C. Wiley, Columbia, S.C., S.S. — Mrs. Wilmans Post, — I am so glad
that I can say I am better of my nervousness and weakness. I think your treat-
ment the most wonderful thing I I study daily to learn more about it. I don't
think another dose of medicine will ever pass my lips. All your reasoning is so
natural and good. The truth proves as I never saw it before. How can anyone
doubt when you prove everything? I assure you I watch you with a jealous eye —
have seen nothing but your wonderful truth and love.

Mrs. B. C. Copeland, Evansville, Ind., S.S. — I can truly say that I have been
successfully treated and cured by you of diseases that the old-school doctors have
failed to cure, and even went so far as to say I could not be cured. I am now
almost 72 years of age and am feeling well, and can stand more work than the
generality of younger people, and people who do not know me take me to be
about fifty years of age. And in truth I must give the power of your mind the
honour and credit of all my good health and youthful appearance. Ten years ago
I was a perfect wreck — could not walk any distance without stopping for breath
and strength. I now can walk miles with comparative ease.

Mrs. Jane Walker, Petrolia, Cal. — Many disorders : Weak lungs, diseased

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK. 487

bronchial tubes. Has been benefited beyond any power of medical aid. Is still
improving. Thinks Mrs. Helen Wilmans Post stands first in the ranks of the
magnanimous, and ahead in the world of advanced thought.

On the attractions of this system it were superfluous to
enlarge. To have one's stomach restored to one after it was
' gone ' ; to be able to digest ' almost any kind of food ' ; never to
need another dose of medicine ; and to look fifty when one is
really seventy-two, these are boons not lightly to be esteemed.
But what most attracted the pensive taxpayer over whom an
impending War-Budget begins to cast its shadow is Helen Wilmans
Post's treatise on ' The Conquest of Poverty.' Of this its gifted
authoress boasts, and probably with justice, that it is ' the most
popular book in the range of mental science literature. It brings
freedom to the mind, and through the mind to the body.' With
a steadily decreasing income, and an expenditure pitched high
enough to satisfy the social demands of Stuccovia, that is, indeed,
a freedom devoutly to be wished, but not, I fear, to be attained.

As far as I can judge, none of these erroneous and strange
doctrines has produced the slightest effect on Bertha. Indeed,
that excellent girl has no inconsiderable share of the high and
spirited perverseness which characterises the whole house of
Topham-Sawyer. As Selina's zeal for Lenten church-going dimi-
nishes, Bertha's increases. As Selina hankers more and more
after new and heterodox teachings, Bertha develops her bump of
orthodoxy, and, encouraged by Bumpstead, wages remorseless war
against heresy and schism. The local papers have lately reported
a sermon preached at the ' Presbyterian Church of England ' in
Stucco Road by Mr. Ramshorn — the raw-boned young minister who
supported me at Cashington's meeting last month. This youth,
who was reared at North Berwick, thus effectively drew upon the
memories of his youth : ' I am sure if you have ever paid any atten-
tion to the game you will be struck by the way in which the game
of golf seems to reproduce the common scenes of life. Those of you
who don't play may know that the great object is to put the little
white ball into the little hole. And so long as you are short of
that, if you don't do it — well, the other man does it before you.
He has won the hole. And in doing this, when you come to what
is called the " putting green," and you take your putt — it may be
a beautiful putt, it may run straight for the hole, but if it stops
short you will say to yourself, and your partner will say to you,
' Never up ; never in. It is a beauty, but it wants legs." And

488 A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK.

that is just exactly the situation here — " not far from the King-
dom." You may be ''lying dead" as we say. The next shot is
sure to do it. " Never up ; never in." '

Bertha, herself no mean proficient with the club, stigmatised this
illustration from one of her favourite games as absolutely profane ;
and sarcastically supposed that Mr. Ramshorn would soon be
trying to get a spiritual meaning out of Ping-Pong. Bumpstead
chimed in, saying that that kind of thing was well enough for the
old Vicar, because he's a mystic and a thinker, and all that sort
of game ; but when that red-headed rotter from the Presbyterian
shop went in for it, it was getting a bit too thick, and next time
they met he'd give young Ramshorn a bit of his mind. The
mention of the Presbyterian Church in Stucco Road reminds me
of Miss Scrimgeour, the Scotch lady who a few months ago was
distributing rhymed leaflets against ' The Coming of the Monks.'
She has been on her rounds again quite lately, and created not a
little emotion at the vicarage by dropping into the letter-box the
following statement, which, being inscribed to ' H. H. H.,' ' in
grateful recognition of his brotherly advances,' would seem to
indicate some further development of anti-Sacerdotalism in our
beloved Establishment.

WHY I AM NOT A CHURCHMAN!

Because the Triple Ecclesiastical Apostasy, made up of the Roman, Greek and
Anglican hierarchies, though claiming to be the true church, is nothing better
than the manufacture of a man-made and self-styled priesthood, whose object is
by patronising the masses, and flattering the classes, to obtain political power,
personal advantage, social prestige, public money, and control of the human
conscience.

They, however, clearly prove the fraud and fallacy of their pretensions, by
reversing the order and use of the Old and New Testaments, assuming by
gorgeous ceremonial displays, in semi-pagan imitation of Jewish worship, to set
forth the glorious gospel. Thus do they endeavour to entangle us in a yoke of
bondage.

What would be thovght of a ma/ti rvlw, investigating the beauties of some price-
less gem, persisted in using a brick, or a frying-pan, for an eyeglass ? ' Surely he
would display the folly of a fool ! yet are the wise of this world, who judge by
the light of their own eyes, more foolish than he ; when they attempt to read the
Word of God, through the deceptive and obscuring optics of a formula of tradi-
tional canons, creeds, and catechisms, which have their origin in the corruptions
of the dark ages of mediaevalism, when —

Monks and Friars (rogues and liars)

Martyred faithful men,
And had they power, they'd light the fires,
And do the same again.

1 The italics are ours. — ED.

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK. 489

While my womankind are thus absorbed in the high things
of Science and Theology I have been taking a turn at Politics,
which Bacon pronounced to be ' of all pursuits the most immersed
in matter.' And if by ' matter ' Bacon meant that particular form
of matter which we call money, my experience quite tallies with
his. The Primrose League, once a flourishing feature in the life
of Stuccovia, has been voted a nuisance on account of the exactions
which it levies. Poor Bounderley can no longer send indis-
criminate cheques to all who apply, but has to pick and choose,
and thereby has made enemies and lost his popularity. A
temporary difficulty in getting their little accounts settled by the
Tory M.P. has kindled a flame of Liberalism among the local
tradesmen to whom Mr. Lloyd-George's most inflammatory rhetoric
would have appealed in vain. Cashington for the moment
carries all before him by dint of his brougham and his billiard-
room, his wife's sables and son's chargers. ' There's money in the
thing,' says the Liberal agent to his friend the Solicitor's clerk ;
' only work it properly, and we're on velvet. Start a branch of the
Liberal League. Make Rosebery President. Get Asquith down
to blackguard Home Eule, and Grey to show up Free Trade, and
the trick's done. Out goes Bounderley ; enter Cashington ; and,
if I know my man, he means winning the seat, and keeping it —
and that means spending money, my boy, or you and I don't
know our business.'

I had written so far when an event occurred which knocked
me, as the phrase is, all of a heap. I could not honestly affirm
that it was wholly unexpected, and yet, as people say when their
friends die of lingering illnesses, it was ' sudden at the last.'

Those who have the happiness to dwell in London will recollect
that the evening of Thursday, March 6, was signalised by a fog
which would have been thick for mid-winter.

Thursday is the evening when a social entertainment is always
given at the Parochial Club. This entertainment is not inter-
mitted in Lent, for Soulsby says that he would not impose on the
youth of his flock a yoke which he at their age would have found
grievous. ' Nay, my spiritual children shall not say in the dim
hereafter that St. Ursula was a hard task-mistress, or their religion
a thing of austerity and gloom.' So on Thursday evening the
Club always provides a Variety Entertainment. Soulsby recites,
Bumpstead boxes, Bertha sings, and Mrs. Soulsby (when she is

490 A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK.

strong enough) plays the concertina. Cashington, who has
suddenly developed a keen interest in our parochial life, has given
us two lectures on ' Imperial Expansion ' and ' A Protest against
Gladstonianism ' ; and Bounderley, not to be outdone by his rival,
has promised a Comic Sketch of the House of Commons, with
Imitations of Lord Percy and Lord Hugh Cecil obstructing the
Deceased Wife's Sister.

On the evening of March 6, Bertha was engaged to sing
' Drink, Puppy, drink/ and ' The Lost Chord.' She arrived under
Selina's wing just before the boxing was over ; and though, as a
rule, ' Blazer ' Bumpstead can take uncommonly good care of
himself in a physical encounter, he was at that instant levelled to
the earth by a converted coal-heaver, whose recent adhesion to
the Club had been regarded as a beautiful result of Soulsby's
Lenten eloquence. At the unexpected sight, Bertha grasped her
sister's arm, and exclaimed in a voice made tremulous by emotion,
' Oh, Selina ! dear Mr. Bumpstead will be killed ! ' It is true
that when, a few minutes afterwards, that hero came up grinning
and expressed himself as gratified by the epithet, Bertha altered
the punctuation of her sympathy, and declared that she had said,
' Oh, Selina dear ! Mr. Bumpstead will be killed ! ' But that
good young man had heard the original version, and governed
himself accordingly. On emerging from the Club at the con-
clusion of the entertainment, we found Stuccovia wrapped in a
thick blanket of yellow fog. Selina hung on to me like grim
death, and Bumpstead and Bertha disappeared together into the
surrounding gloom. They emerged from it engaged. Our
labours for our sister have not been in vain. Stuccovia has been
fruitful while Loamshire was barren. Dear old Mrs. Topham-
Sawyer will go down to her grave happy in the knowledge that
her youngest daughter will some day reign at The Foxholes.
Though Bertha is not marrying into the County, at least she is
marrying into a County. Selina is unexpectedly enthusiastic,
and Bumpstead keeps on murmuring, in a kind of rapturous
chuckle, ' Good Old Fog.'

491

MADAME DE MAINTENON.

BISHOP CREIGHTON used to say that, apart from the founder of
Christianity, no historical character gains on a nearer acquaint-
ance ; and certainly very small experience is needed to show how
ruthlessly macadamising is the progress of Eesearch, how the ' bad '
men of our childhood are crushed up, and the ' good ' men crushed
down, till they meet in one monotonous level of moral mediocrity.
But even Research has its compensations. What our heroes lose in
dim grandiosity will be more than repaid to them in vividness and
life, once the clear sunlight is let in ; and Madame de Maintenon
need not complain if more than one biographical Pygmalion had
recently arisen to transform her chilly statue into flesh and blood.

For a long while the bizarre uniqueness of her career stood in
the way of all attempt to see it in a rational light. Adventurers
and ruling royal mistresses were common enough in the seven-
teenth century ; but Madame de Maintenon was never a mistress,
and is unlike the common run of adventuresses in that she rose
by her virtues, not by her vices. And certainly virtue carried her
further than ever vice did them. At the moment when the
French Monarchy reached its zenith of splendour, she emerged
from the very dingiest surroundings to become Queen of France in
all but name — and that as wife of Louis XIV., the proudest and
most kingly prince who ever occupied a throne. In her own day
a triumph so amazing seemed to be due to more than natural
causes. She herself attributed her whole success to the guiding
Hand of God ; while her enemies spoke of her reign as ' a mystery
of iniquity,' and ' the most awful humiliation ever designed by
Fortune — not here to say Providence — for the most arrogant of
kings.' Even many latter-day historians have left her a figure
unnecessarily mysterious, still clad in the same great cloak of
sable draperies in which contemporaries describe her flitting
through the galleries of Versailles. And it still seems a little
sacrilegious to look at her as she really was — a woman of rather
noble, and rather morbid, but still quite ordinary character, borne
into greatness by the play of very extraordinary circumstances.

There was no particular reason why she should be otherwise.
Hereditary genius — that modern apology for the fairy godmother —

492 MADAME DE MAINTENON.

never stood by her cradle ; the family were wholly undistinguished
till her grandfather, Agrippa d'Aubigne, made a great name for
himself, righting by the side of Henry IV., in. the later Wars of
Religion. But he was a strange enough progenitor for a decorous
Catholic lady — this tough, hard-living, old Huguenot — and a still
stranger was her father ; vices, crimes, and imprisonments make
up the whole of Constant d'Aubigne's life. Even his marriage
bears the taint of the gaol. His wife was the daughter of his
keeper, and gave birth to their illustrious child in Niort prison
on November 27, 1635. Fortunately for herself, however, the
young Francoise had little to do with her parents ; though she saw
enough of her mother's misfortunes to convince her that marriage
proves a curse to three-quarters of the human race. She was
brought up by a Huguenot aunt, until a Catholic relative, one Mme.
de Neuillant, got possession of her, in virtue of an order from the
bitterly anti-Protestant Court, with a view to her conversion to the
Roman Church. This lady's proselytising methods, being chiefly
scanty fare and insufficient clothing, failed to impress a precocious
maiden of fourteen ; Franpoise thought it due alike to her
conscience and her sense of self-importance to hold out, Bible
in hand, until the priests had fairly worsted her in argument.

A couple of years later she was of marriageable age, and soon
the strangest of suitors presented himself. Paul Scarron was a
burlesque writer and coffee-house wit of great celebrity, but
elderly, and so crippled by rheumatism as to be ' more like the
letter Z than a man.' In such a marriage there could be no talk
of affection. Scarron pretended only to a friendly interest in the
handsome, clever, ill-used girl, and owned that his appearance
as a bridegroom was the greatest poetical licence he ever took in
his life. Franpoise repaid him by becoming an admirable nurse,
and equally admirable hostess to the miscellaneously polite
society that gathered round his mattress-grave ; more than once,
it is said, she managed to cover the absence of a joint from
dinner by her fascinating stories. But she was strict enough in
her behaviour ; and when Scarron died without a penny — ' having
sunk all his fortune in search of the philosopher's stone, or some-
thing else as practical ' — it was only fair that her ' glorious and
irreproachable poverty ' should be lightened by a small pension
from the Court.

Left a widow at twenty-five, she could for the first time taste
the sweets of independence. Her pension just allowed her to live

MADAME DE MAINTENON. 493

in modest comfort ; it is noticed, for instance, that she always
burned wax-candles in her rooms, instead of the more usual tallow
— no small consideration to a lady who hated the grime of shabby
gentility almost as much as running into debt. But her charms
could afford to be independent of wax-candles — while as to her
dresses, her ingenuous old confessor once said that, plain as they
were, there was somehow such bonne grace about them that he
felt attracted more than was right. For her social qualities
Madame de Sevigne" will answer; that incomparable judge of
breeding found her company ' delicious.'

Society, in fact, was now the one occupation of her life ; die
voyait furieusement du monde, says a contemporary gossip. To
the end of her days she was a votary of the art of conversation,
and held (as all good talkers should) that it can only be really
enjoyed among friends of the opposite sex. Without being learned
or very brilliant, she had a lively intellectual curiosity, and was
easily taken with new ideas. At this time she was much attracted
to the high-flown, romantic notions of the Precieuses, the aesthetes
of the age ; later on, she became enthusiastic for Racine's poetry
and Fenelon's mysticism. But her judgment always told her
when to stop. She threw over Eacine so soon as he was suspected
of Jansenist heresy, and Fenelon long before he was condemned
by the Church ; nor did her preciosite ever become ridiculous —
her language is always terse and graphic, if it smells a little of
the lamp. Judgment, too, gave her that placid sense of her own
deficiencies which goes to make the excellent listener ; she boasted
herself one of the few women left in France who dare confess that
there were limits to her knowledge. Added to this, hers was the
blessing of an equable temper, which never ' philosophised over an
air,' or took offence at accidental slights ; she was capricious
enough to be interesting, and sufficiently reserved to make her
friendship a distinction. But a stormy youth had left her with
too much cynical shrewdness and self-dependence to allow of her
ever being monopolised by any single person. ' I could not love
anyone I did not respect,' she says, ' and I know so much evil
about those around me that it is the rarest of pleasures to be able
even to praise them.' It was to an abstract idea that Mme.
Scarron's heart was really given — to a craving, passionate, almost
hysterical, for the world's honour and esteem. ' I never wished
to be loved by any particular person,' she wrote, late in life ;
' I wished to be thought well of by all. Honour was my folly,

494 MADAME DE MAINTENON.

honour was my idol, for which perhaps I am now punished by
excess of greatness. Would to God I had done as much for Him
as I have done for my reputation ! '

This longing is the basis of the proverbial philosophy she
afterwards condensed into copy-book headings for her girls.
'Discretion is the most hard-worked of the virtues.' 'Have
nothing to fear, nothing to hide, and nothing to regret.' ' There
is nothing so clever as never being in the wrong.' It explains her
rather cynical courtship of the respectable ; ' to a young woman in
my position,' she used to say, ' a respectable peeress cannot be
dull.' It was the secret of worthier social successes. No one steered
a more careful course than Madame Scarron between odious self-
assertiveness and self-effacement; no woman ever put greater
constraint on herself to become droite, douce, commode. Some-
times there was not even need for constraint, and the aesthetic
pleasure of the exercise became its own reward — as when she once
amused herself by nursing a casual acquaintance through the
small-pox, partly to test her own strength of purpose, partly to
impress the world.

But no one can live wholly on such flaccid diet as esteem ; and
Madame Scarron, having refused to love her neighbours, was fain at
times to win some human sympathy by serving them. Out of her
usual isolation she would suddenly plunge into ruthless self-
sacrifice — so ruthless, indeed, that some of her early performances
as a schoolgirl, and some of her later as the wife of Louis, recall
that ' sensual lust of self-abnegation,' over which the doctors are
wont to look grave. But in her best days this morbid element
was translated into a restless, superabundant energy, that threw
its whole forces into every trifle — just as other loveless women
have washed floors with their empty hearts. We hear only of
most practical services to deformed little children, like Madame de
Chevreuil's daughter (whose legs she often left a party to bandage,
because no one else could do it as well), or else to inexperienced
brides like Madame d'Heudicourt, to whom she acted as an amateur
housekeeper. * Six o'clock never found me in bed, though the
young mistress of the house seldom appeared before twelve. I
used to give all the orders of the day, and set the carpenters and
upholsterers to work, helping them with my own hands, whenever
necessary. ... I little thought that the first step towards my
present astonishing greatness had been taken, when Madame de
Montespan noticed my usefulness to our common friend.'

MADAME DE MAINTENON. 485

Such, however, was the case. A new and far vaster field was
opened for the display of Madame Scarron's virtues when the moral
frailties of Madame de Montespan led to her introduction to Louis
XIV. In 1668 that lady's intrigue with her Olympian paramour
began, and in due time a nurse was needed for the resulting
children. Madame de Montespan proposed Madame Scarron, and
Madame Scarron accepted a post then in no wise thought discredit-
able, least of all to ladies with a very narrow income. At first
the existence of the children was kept secret, and their governess,
with characteristic caution, had herself bled, so as not to blush at
inconvenient questions. But in 1673 they were legitimised, and
she appeared openly at Court. Next year the King's gratitude
bought her the small estate of Maintenon, which carried a title
with it. Henceforward she is Madame de Maintenon.

This present was Louis' first mark of favour to his future wife.
He had begun by disliking her as a literary prude, and Madame de
Montespan told him terrible stories of her temper — for contiguity
had wrought its usual effects on two ladies so clever and so deter-
mined. But he was touched by her devotion to his children,
especially, to the eldest boy, the Duke of Maine — that bastard,
says St. Simon, being the son of his loins, while the Dauphin was
only his heir — and a correspondence sprang up between them
during the summer of 1675, which she spent with the young
Duke in the Pyrenees. Very little was enough to show him that
he had cruelly misjudged her, and to incline his impressionable
heart to make amende honorable in the opposite direction ; that
winter Madame de Sevigne's letters are full of his sudden interest
in Madame de Maintenant. A twelvemonth later the interest had
deepened into passion ; she is pronounced his ' first or second
friend/ By 1680 she had become 'the soul of this Court,' recog-
nised as his ' chief confidante ' both by Madame de Montespan
and the Queen.

To this bare narrative of her triumphs contemporaries would
add many notes of exclamation ; to us it will seem less surprising
that she rose than that she did not rise before. Louis had out-
grown the sensualities of youth; in 1680 he was forty-two, she
three years older, Madame de Montespan thirty-nine. She had all
the qualities that suited him best, while only great beauty saved
her rival from being a continual irritation to his nerves. The
mistress possessed a brilliant intellect, but little sense; the
homelier talents of the ' confidante ' were built up on her tact and

496 MADAME DE MAINTENON.

self-control. Madame de Montespan had a bitter, caustic tongue,
and proved in a rage a very ' tigress in ringlets ' : Madame de
Maintenon was never out of temper, and only used her wit for
purposes of flattery. Madame de Montespan, when other means
of holding Louis failed, fled to love-philtres — some say even to
poisons. Madame de Maintenon ' guided him into an unknown
country, into an intercourse of friendship and conversation, where
there was no intriguing and no constraint.'

Lastly, it must be remembered that Louis' conscience, though
always tortuous and always torpid, was never wholly asleep ; and
it was to his conscience that Madame de Maintenon specially
appealed. ' I accepted his friendship,' she says, ' to give him
good counsels, break the chain of his mistresses, and lead him
back to the Queen.' Nor is there room to doubt her absolute
sincerity, though we might have wished her a little less self-
consciously unselfish, less pleased at her triumph over Madame de
Montespan. But neither Louis nor his wife was disposed to be
critical. The neglected Queen blessed her as an angel sent from
Heaven, and the King might have said to the second Esther what
Racine's Ahasuerus says to the first : —

Je ne trouve qu'en vous je ne sais quelle grace
Qui me charme ton jours, et jamais ne me lasse —
De 1'aimable vertu doux et puissants attraits . . .
Et crois que votre front pr§te & mon diademe
Un eclat ui le rend respectable aux dieux m6me.

The actual sharing of the diadem (in so far as Madame de
Maintenon can ever be said to have shared it) was due to the
very sudden death of the Queen in the summer of 1683. Louis
soon found his position as a widower 'repugnant both to his
inclinations and his habits,' and his passion for Madame de Main-
tenon had not had time to cool. So he decided on a secret
marriage, which took place in an improvised chapel at Versailles
in the dead of a January night of 1684.

Of the depth and endurance of his affection there can be no
doubt. Madame de Maintenon's bitterest enemy, the Duchess of
Orleans, declares again and again that he loved ' Old Madam
Wish-wash ' infinitely more than ever any of his mistresses.
With her the case was different. Her second marriage proved
the culmination of that crisis, so common in the characters of
women, when the habits and certainties of youth have passed
away, and life re-forms, with new necessities and fresh ideals.

MADAME DE MAINTENON. 497

Especially was this the case with her dominant passion for
' honour.' Ten years' experience of Versailles had lowered her
(never very high) opinion of her fellow-creatures, till she cared
no more for their esteem. What was the use of courting the
praises of the virtuous where there was scarcely a virtuous
tongue to praise ? On the other hand, she could not live without
appreciation ; so she drifted slowly towards religion, in the hope
of winning applause more worth the having from her Maker.
But first there was a period of doubt and despondency, where
she ' feared she was doing little credit either to herself or her
confessor.' Only when the friendship with Louis began did this
hesitation vanish ; thenceforward all anxiety about her own soul
was merged in the greater responsibility of his. The moral
enthusiasm, with which she began, steadily deepened in intensity
during the thirty-one years of their married life ; she was an
instrument of Providence for his regeneration — the keeper of
his conscience in a literal sense — charged to ' encourage and
console him, or, if it were God's pleasure, to grieve him with
reproaches that none but she dare utter.' And as she grew
older and feebler, she clung with more and more despairing
energy to her mission ; the one recurring burden of her letters is,
' II me prend des frayeurs extremes sur le salut du Roi.'

Yet it is difficult to believe that she ever governed the King,
except in so far as a wife better than himself becomes the
moral lode-stone of whatever good there is in a man — especially
if he be such a man as Louis, always unusually responsive to
the influence of women. To her fine-spun lectures on the Love
of Grod (inspired by Fenelon and St. Francis of Sales) he pre-
ferred the ' metallic beliefs and regimental devotions ' of his
Jesuit confessor, Father La Chaise, who also managed the Church
patronage — much to her disgust — on the truly Jesuit principle
that saintliness is the poorest of recommendations to a bishopric.
In secular matters she was still more helpless. Louis disliked
her knowing much about business, and on the two recorded
occasions when she ventured to remonstrate (once about bis
expenditure on building, once about his persecution of the
Protestants) cut her very short — the last time with a curt
reminder that she had begun life as a Protestant herself.
Yet it may be doubted whether France lost much by Louis'
inattention to his wife. When zealous young philanthropists
like Fenelon tried to make her ' a sentinel in the midst of Israel '

VOL. XII. — NO. 70, N.S. 32

498 MADAME DE MAINTENON.

and patroness of their schemes of social reform, she answered —
truly enough — that she had neither taste nor talent for public
affairs. The few political utterances in her letters are almost
childishly sentimental ; typical of them is her enthusiasm for the
restoration of the exiled Stuarts, due solely to the tearful and
incompetent piety of James the Second's Queen. The most that
can be claimed for her is a knowledge of the mollea aditus et
tempora, when the King would listen without disguise to things
which his ministers could not well say at the Council-board.
And perhaps, had a Walpole been forthcoming, she might have
made a humbler Caroline of Anspach.

As it was, there is something infinitely pathetic in the
contrast between her great aims and their petty realisation.
Instead of ministering to Louis' spiritual, she had to be content
with attending to his bodily health ; it was a triumph if she
could restrain his truly royal appetite for strawberries and
mushrooms, and ' teach him how to be ill.' It is true she had
her fill of adulation from Versailles, where the King was for ever
discovering little expedients for paying her semi-royal honours.
St. Simon and the Duchess of Orleans grow pale with anger as
they tell how — in a Court where spoons and cushions had a
mystic significance, where the stool of the mere Duchess was
carefully distinguished from the straight-backed chair of the
Princess, and an armchair was the sacramental symbol of a
reigning Sovereign — Madame de Maintenon's drawing-room was
furnished with only two of these last, one for the King and one
for herself. But both her enemies admit that she cared very
little for such distinctions, and that nothing could be more
modest than the place she took at the few State functions she
attended.

But these uncoveted honours were bought at a heavy price.
She herself said of her position that it had no neutral point, but
must either intoxicate or crush ; and her letters leave us little
doubt that the latter was its more usual effect. For this her
husband was chiefly to blame; autocratic inconsiderateness,
joined to fanatical love of etiquette and order, had made him the
most remorseless of domestic tyrants. At seventy-five, although
racked by rheumatism from head to foot, she must still go with
him to meets of the royal hounds ; for, as she says, ' no tastes are
allowed here but the master's, and I must confess that stag-
hunting was never one of mine.' At home she had to resign her-

MADAME DE MAINTENON. 499

self to ' die symmetrically of draughts,' since Louis' sense of the
fitness of things could not tolerate a screen in front of her big, ill-
fitting windows. He spent hours daily in the one large room that
served her both for sitting in and sleeping ; often he stayed there
working with his ministers till it was time for her to go to bed.
' I call in my maids to help me to undress,' she says, ' knowing all
the time that he is in a fever lest they should overhear something.
I have to hurry almost to the point of making myself ill — you
know how I have hated hurry all my life. Even when I have got
to bed, my troubles are not yet over. Often I should like a
warming-pan, but there is no maid within call, and the King never
suspects that I want anything. Being master everywhere, and
always doing what he likes, he has not the slightest notion how
much others have to put themselves out in his service. Sometimes,
during my heavy colds, I have choked down a cough until I was
almost suffocated, and the minister in attendance has had to call
his attention to it.'

If the King haunted her in the evenings, the minor royalties
never left her alone by day. ' They think,' she said, ' that Vision
of themselves is Beatific, and compensates for everything else.'
It was seldom enough she sat down to dinner without having that
elderly lout, the Dauphin, lolling speechless in a corner, or the
King's brother, the Duke of Orleans, fidgeting round her with a
shower of questions, as to why she took one dish and not another.
Or else the young Duchess of Burgundy, wife of the Dauphin's
eldest son, burst in with her ladies, and ' I am treated to an
account of somebody's jokes, and somebody else's satirical speeches,
and the good stories of a third, until I am ready to drop with
fatigue at never hearing a word of sense. ... At last they begin
to drift away, but one of them has always something special — sure
to be tiresome or unpleasant — to confide to me ; either she has
quarrelled with her husband, or been libelled, or else she wants
me to ask for something from the King. . . . The curse of my
life is that I have neither leisure nor occupation ; no monastic
Rule could be harder than Versailles.'

The one relief from this intolerable monotony was her great
girls' school of St. Cyr, established by Louis within an easy dis-
tance of Versailles, as a kind of wedding present to his wife. She
had always had a special taste for education, for which her leading
qualities well fitted her ; the old social elasticity and judgment,
the old desire at once to influence and to sacrifice herself for

32—2

500 MADAME DE MAINTENON.

others, all reappear in her little informal lectures to the mistresses.
All you have to teach your pupils,' she said to them, ' is Christi-
anity and reason ; but to do that you must use every means in
your power, excepting harshness, which never yet brought anyone
to Grod. . . . Try to be good mothers to good children, and dare to
order them to respect you. . . . Remember that, nuns as you are,
the girls have the first claim on you ; and let untiring devotion
to them take the place of ordinary convent austerities.'

And not only did old qualities come to light, but kept their
freshness untarnished by Versailles. There every year added to
her stiffness and reserve — she herself uses the expression, s^che
comme moi, as a kind of proverb. At St. Cyr she was at every-
one's service, and never happier than when ' teaching Mile, de la
Tour to read, or examining a Postulant on her vocation.' The
school represented a far sounder political idea than usually
emanated from her brain. It was established for the daughters
of impecunious nobles, but its benefits were also intended for their
future children and dependents ; returned to her home, each
pupil was to become a centre of provincial enlightenment, and do
her best towards giving France the two things France most needed
— ' broth and education.' The same spirit of ardent, yet sensible
and candid, patriotism inspired all the lessons of St. Cyr. Madame
de Maintenon brought the national triumphs vividly before her
girls by sketches of the great men she had known, such as Conde
and Turenne ; but she never allowed them to forget the national
disgraces — everyone was a Frenchwoman, and must learn to suffer
with the rest. During the disastrous War of the Spanish Succes-
sion each of Marlborough's victories meant a Day of Humiliation
to the school ; and even its dinner-table bore eloquent witness to
the universal misery and famine that followed in the train of the
war.

Lastly, St. Cyr shows Madame de Maintenon's religion in its
best and brightest form. At Court — what with the ennui of her
myriad petty duties, and her anxiety about Louis' soul — she sank
into something little better than a narrow, timorous devotee,
morbidly keen to shift whatever burdened her conscience on to
the shoulders of her priests. At St. Cyr the more objectionable
forms of clericalism were sternly repressed. There were no
agnuses or reliquaries or other ' trumpery convent amusements ' ;
the girls were taught that reason was the best auxiliary to piety.
Nothing angered Madame de Maintenon more than the fatuities

MADAME DE MAINTENON. 501

of ordinary convent schools — unless it was their prurient shame-
facedness. ' The pupils,' she wrote, ' learn by heart the First
Commandment, and adore the Virgin ; they say " Thou shalt not
steal," and see no harm in cheating the King out of his taxes.
One little girl was scandalised because her father spoke of his
breeches before her. Another, when I asked her to name the
Sacraments, would not mention marriage, and said, with a simper,
that it was not the custom to do so at the convent where she was
before. This is the sort of thing that makes conventual education
ridiculous. When these young ladies get husbands themselves,
they will find that marriage is no joke.'

To this moral training of her girls her later energies were all
directed. She drove over daily from Versailles ; at Louis XIV.'s
death (A.D. 1715), she retired altogether to St. Cyr; there she
died (April 15, 1719) and was buried in the chapel. Indeed,
the one reproach against her is that she made herself too indis-
pensable. During her lifetime she had been the one organic force
in the place ; once she was gone, petrifaction quickly set in.
Exactly half a century after her death, Horace Walpole visited the
school, to find the imprint of her dead hand everywhere — portraits
of her in all the rooms, her proverbs and maxims the chief
intellectual food of the girls. ' She was not only their foundress,
but their saint,' he says, ' and their adoration of her memory has
quite eclipsed the Virgin Mary.' None of her wishes was worse
fulfilled than the prayer that St. Cyr might be able to do without
her.

Still, in its own modest way, St. Cyr did France long and
valuable service. Before it was swept away by the Eevolution,
many hundreds of young ladies had learnt there how to be good
Christians and good Frenchwomen. And its foundress takes an
honourable place in history, as a woman who, in all the relations
of life, did her duty gallantly and uncomplainingly according to
her lights, narrow and ungracious as those lights might sometimes
be. Both as educationalist and wife of Louis XIV., she compels
our decent admiration ; while as a victim to the wear and tear of
Courts — to what her own letters call the unendurable ennui of
unimaginable greatness — she has claims upon our sympathy equal
to any modern Martyred Empress.

ST. GYRES.

502
MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI.1

A TALE OF MIND AND LONGITUDE.

WITHIN the strait walls of Herr Grravin's riding school at Bonn on
the Rhine I came across Yoshomai — came across him in more
ways than one ; for he having fallen off his horse when Fraulein
Grravin, cracking her whip, uttered the dread word ' Ofalopiren,'
and my careful steed checking her stride to avoid him, I dis-
mounted parabolically and he broke my fall. He received my
sulky apology silently, but with the sweetest smile, and was in
his saddle, and out of it again as before, while I was nervously
hopping to get into mine.

I was not a great horseman, but, while I smote the tan only at
intervals, Yoshomai hammered it incessantly; over and over
again he must have hurt himself, but always he sprang up as
smartly as he slammed down, and was running after his mount,
crying, ' Greht es besser, Fraulein ? ' And although she invariably
answered, ' Nein, mein Herr,' he still smiled, if sometimes a little
sadly. For a time I regarded this as the care-moulded simper of
the ballet girl, but in the end I found it the genuine product of
a quite limitless good nature.

We were both of an age, and not an old one — somewhere
under twenty ; but as I tumbled less frequently from my horse I
felt it within my rights to patronise Yoshomai, and now and then
I would give him little hints to which he listened with rapt
attention, although I do not remember that he ever adopted them.
Experience has taught me that he was right, but at the time I
took this somewhat amiss, and one day I ridiculed him to red-
haired, lean Miss Grravin, who startled me by answering that he
rode better than I.

Reflecting that it was useless to argue with a woman, particu-
larly if your knowledge of her language is limited to the idiomauby
but trite observations at the back of Otto's Grammar, and a con-
fused recollection of the weak and consequently facile verbs, I
confined my reply to the useful monosyllable ' So ! ' whereupon
she answered as laconically, ' Doch ! '

At last the time came when I was allowed to ride forth on the

1 Copyright, in the United States of America 1902, by F. Norreys Connell.

MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI 503

most sagacious and trustworthy animal in Mr. Gravin's establish-
ment, an old puce-coloured mare with legs as long as church
steeples, but less elastic. My vainglory prompted me to suggest
that Yoshomai should come too : I "never dreamt that he would
take up the challenge, but he did.

' I would not have you run any risk,' I pointed out as an after-
thought.

' It has been run,' he answered, and for the moment I did not
take his meaning, but when he pushed his parti-coloured gelding
into the street after me I perceived that he had been there before.
In fact, Yoshomai was a different man in the open air from what
he had been in the man&ge ; and if he still looked so ridiculous
that the street boys cackled at him, I could not help thinking
that even I would have lost some dignity astride of a circus horse.

My discreet courser was docile as a Lowther Arcade cow, but
her paces as we broke into a trot on the paved Coblentzer Strasse
brought back a vivid recollection of some less pleasant incidents
of my schooldays. Yet so long as friend Yoshomai went bobbety-
bob on his tricolour, I could not as a Briton relinquish the task of
beating the same measure on my puce. Ye gods, who for his
pleasure would be whipped with a blunt razor fixed in a frying pan ?
It was a level road to Godesberg, without a hill to break the stride,
and Yoshomai bobbed on and on every inch of the four miles.

I once bubbled out the deceitful plea, ' M — m — mein puff-puff
Pferd scheint miide,' but Yoshomai seemed deaf and I needs must
jiggety-jig in his wake until at last he drew rein at the Hotel
Adler. Even then he did not dismount, but waiting till I came
alongside said apologetically that he was conscious of fatigue and
would be glad if I could see my way to allow a short halt. I
answered as I clambered pitifully to earth, ' 0 certainly, since you
wish it,' and I reflected on the idleness of Browning's poem, ' How
We Brought the Good News,' reckoning the distance from Ghent
to Aix at not less than twenty times the journey we had made ;
but then the chaps had galloped, which is pleasanter than trotting,
provided you don't slip off.

Yoshomai and I were relieved of our steeds by a stable boy old
enough to have performed the same service for Frederick the
Great, and we sate ourselves at a garden table with a bottle of
Zeitlinger and two of Victoria water between us. Although we
had seen each other every other day for some weeks past, it was,
I think, the first time we had indulged in any social intercourse.

504 MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI.

He was frankly shy, and I was also, for I doubted he might
have caught a glimpse of my uncavalier-like performance on the
road. After a little while it dawned upon me that so far was he
rrom being conscious of my shortcomings that he awaited in dread
my criticisms of his own. I could not in the circumstances be
very severe, and I drew his gratitude by my praise and encourage-
ment, while adding a rider that by trotting for long at a time one
is prone to acquire ungraceful motions.

' It is true,' he answered eagerly. ' You are right, you are

always right ' : his opinion on this subject practically coincided

with my own, but I had the grace to say, ' Not always ; some-
times, perhaps often, but not always.'

' But,' he burst out, ' is it not good to ride in the fresh air ! I
do not love riding in Herr Gravin's manage. You remember what
Goethe says about riding indoors and out,' and here he rattled off
a long quotation, of which, although I nodded my head intelli-
gently at every pause, I scarcely understood a word. Later I
chanced on the passage in ' Wahrheit und Dichtung,' and luckily
found myself in agreement with it ; at the moment I thought it
good to ask him whether he spoke English as fluently as his
German.

' I can speak it a very little,' he modestly replied. ' I have no
practice with it.'

' If you would like to try it with me,' I cunningly suggested,
' I should be very pleased to help you with it.'

' 0, I thank you, sir,' returned Yoshomai, eagerly. ' If you
will please.'

After this the conversation, flowing easily, interested me more.

' If you hate Grravin's place so, why do you go there ? ' I asked.

' Because,' said he, ' I want to be able to ride anywhere, even
within horrible walls. Besides, Mr. and Miss Gravin, they learn
me technicalities.'

' Technicalities,' I corrected. ' They teach you technicalities.'

' Ah, thank you,' cried Yoshomai, as though I had given him
some gorgeous present. ' Technicalities, technicalities. Mr. and
Miss Gravin, they teach me technicalities. Goes it better ? '

' Much better,' I nodded, and Yoshomai thanked me again.

I took stock of his appearance as I had never done before : he
was far from tall, and what length he had was in the body, the
shortness of his stumpy legs accounting for his clumsiness on
horseback, which all his pluck and pertinacity could not diminish.

MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI. 505

His countenance might loosely be described as that of a low
comedian, were it not that vulgarity was supplanted by amiability,
and in contrast with the broad mouth and splayed nostrils beamed
Sphinx-like eyes, full of the material sensuality of the Orient.
The whole personality was absurdly fascinating, what little in it
was repellent serving only to heighten what was alluring by
making it illusive. His clothes lent no aid to his appearance :
the hat was an absurd German coalscuttle, on the rim of which a
regiment might have formed square ; his coat, though cut a
Vanglaise, made no pretence to fit, and his legs resembled twin
sponge bags. I wondered if he were made of iron that he could
straddle a horse in such a kit. His stitched bow tie was a mon-
strosity, but the collar and the shirt under it caught my eye and
puzzled me ; they were of an extremely fine linen and might
have come from the best Belfast loom, but the shape of the collar
as well as the shirt front and cuffs forbade the assumption. My
curiosity was pricked. ' Do you happen to know any shop here
in Bonn where I could get some decent linen underclothing ? '
I asked.

' Jaeger has a place near the town hall,' he answered. ' I
have not bought anything here.' Then, seeing that I awaited
further enlightenment, he added, ' What I wear I bought in
Holland.'

' So you have lived in Holland also ? ' I asked.

' Not lived, sir ; studied. I was at Leyden before I came here.'

Chiefly to kill the time we had to spend on horseback, but
also partly from interest in Yoshomai, I led him to talk on and
on about himself. It transpired that he had been reading law at
Leyden ; yet when I bantered him as a coming legal light he
shook his head. ' Oh, no,' he said ; ' oh, no.' I asked him why
he exchanged Leyden for Bonn.

' I do not belong to the university here,' he said. ' I study
with Colonel Menzel.'

Now Menzel was one of Von Bredow's squadron-leaders at
Eezonville, who eked out his pension by taking army pupils : and
a queer lot they were — Germans, English, Spanish, Italians, with
a sprinkling of Asiatics.

My interest in Yoshomai deepened, for his studies were
kindred to my own ; and I expressed my lack of comprehension
why a candidate for the military profession should commence his
studies by attending law lectures in a Dutch university.

506 MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI.

Yoshomai smiled. ' It was the idea of my father,' said he.
' My father is very liberal. He delights in modern things, but his
education is of the past. He has read very little, and travelled
less. In spite of himself, his ideas are old-fashioned. He still
thinks the modern officer has no more to learn than the ancient
Samurai, the leader of swordsmen. So when he sent me to
Europe he bade me, besides my military studies, acquire some
learned profession; as if my own profession were not to be a
learned one. Why, if I live to be a hundred, I shall never know
half enough about it.'

The severity of this view startled me. I could not claim to
be a hard worker, but I considered myself in a fair way to some
acquaintance with the contents of Clery's ' Minor Tactics ' within
a few years' time. And I was of opinion that beyond the covers
of that work military erudition could not go. How Yoshomai
purposed to spend his time I could not imagine.

'Well,' said I, trying to conceal my puzzlement ; ' and was it
also your father who selected Leyden for the venue of your studies ?'
' It was, sir,' Yoshomai answered. ' You see, Holland was, in
his youth, the European country best known in Japan. Indeed,
it was almost the only country, except China and Corea, known at
all until the American ships appeared off Yedo, 1853.'

' Did not the Portuguese have a settlement somewhere ? '
I hazarded. It was more than half a guess.

' Yes,' Yoshomai replied. ' And we had St. Francis Xavier
and the Jesuits ; but in the end we caught them intriguing in
our politics, and we cleared out all Europeans except the Dutch,
who kept strictly to business at Nagasaki and never interfered on
any pretence — not even during the Christian persecutions, except
to lend us guns to batter the Christian fortress.'

My religious feelings were shocked. ' That was a bit thick,'
I said.

' I think they were right,' he said thoughtfully. ' You sell
arms to the Turks and Chinese to use against Christians. They
lent theirs to save their factory. Besides, these same Christians
were Spanish and Portuguese converts who injured the Dutch
whenever they had a chance.' He had delivered this argument
very seriously, but the smile reappeared as he added, ' Besides,
the guns were no use.'

' I see you admire the Dutch,' I observed.

Again Yoshomai shook his head. ' No, I cannot admire. I

MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI. 507

like and respect, but I do not admire. I admire some episodes
in their history — some men who stand out from the crowd ; but
my admiration is with the past. Now the Dutch live in an
intellectual fool's paradise.'

Yoshomai's talk had gone over my head, and I did not pursue
the subject.

' Do you know England too ? ' I asked.

' I have not been there, but I have read enough to know that
she too lives in a fool's paradise, and not an intellectual fool's
paradise.'

This sounded to me sheer cheek, and a little warmly I begged
to be informed what country he considered did not live in a fool's
paradise, ironically suggesting China.

His smile broadened. ' China,' he declared, ' lives in what
you call a dam-fool's paradise. Three countries that do not
live in a fool's paradise are Prussia, Eussia, and Japan. And
Prussia shall acquire Holland's paradise, Kussia yours, and we
China's.'

I could scarcely control my temper at this prophetical re-
distribution of the earth. ' I do not think these interesting
events will take place in our time,' I suggested scathingly.

' Perhaps not,' Yoshomai admitted, without offence at my
tone. ' It depends whether " our time " ends in half an hour or
half a century.'

' Do you mean to tell me,' I cried, ' that half a century hence
England will be a Russian province ? '

' I am not brain-cracked,' Yoshomai said. ' I tell you that
half a century hence the Russian flag will fly in certain places
where the Union Jack flies now ; that Friesland, Grroningen and
Overyssel will belong to the Grerman Empire; and that my
country will possess Korea, Formosa, Shingking and Shantung.'

He was going on to tell me what would have come to pass in
a century and a half, when I, whose geographical knowledge was
insufficient to follow his argument, much less confute it, sug-
gested that it was time to be getting home.

He immediately dropped the contention, and made ready to
be gone. He insisted on paying for what we had drunk, and he
would likewise have insisted on trotting all the way home, only
that by good fortune his mount was discovered to have developed
sore-back. Grravin told me the next day that he had found mine
in the same condition ; but I was careful not to look for any sign

508 MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI.

of it while in Yoshomai's company, although he was very anxious
for me to do so, being, naturally, a shade put out by this evidence
of his clumsy equestrianism.

After leaving our horses at the riding school we adjourned to
the Cafe Tewele, and over a bottle of sparkling Moselle made
many plans in earnest of future good-fellowship.

A few days later he called on me at my rooms in Friedrich
Wilhelm Strasse, and we went together to the gardens of the
Hotel Kley to hear the band. Here occurred the incident which
set a seal upon our friendship.

I had observed that, notwithstanding his semi-barbarous
appearance, his outrageous costumes, and his ungainly seat,
Yoshomai had won some favour from Miss Gravin ; and now that
we were together I could see that she was not the only woman to
fall under the fascination of the Jap's eyes.

At a table near us sat three Corpsstudenten — ' Green Caps,'
if my memory serves me ; and with them was a fluffy, fair-haired,
plump, and pretty maiden, whose mother kept a fancy stationer's
shop under the shadow of the steeple of the Minister Kirche.

Now I had some trifling knowledge of this young lady, but my
acquaintance with student etiquette forbade my displaying it.
ifoshomai was less discreet. Seeing a pretty girl, he fixed his
eyes on her, and caught hers, which yielded at once. From that
time she lost touch with her own party, and whenever Yoshomai
troubled to turn to them her eyes were always ready to receive
him.

Yoshomai's misconduct did not amount to more than a display
of doubtful taste, but it was easy for me to see whither it would
lead him. Two of the Green Caps wore the ugly badges of the
Schwingsabd ; the third I judged to be a Freshman, yet un-
blooded. It would be the aim of his seniors to fix a quarrel on
him if they could.

'If you don't want a duel in the morning,' I said to
Yoshomai, ' you'd better take your eyes off that flaxy, waxy
doll over there.'

This warning did not produce the effect for which I looked.

' A duel,' Yoshomai echoed. ' A duel. Can I get a duel by
just looking at her like this ? Will you be my second ? '

' Can you handle the student's sword ? ' I asked.

Yoshomai's face fell. ' Oh, is it that sort of duel ? Blades
without points ; that is nonsense,'

MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI. 509

' It's not nonsense,' I observed ; ' if you have your nose
snipped off, as I saw happen three days ago, to Dulheuer, the jurist.'

' Ugh ! ' Yoshomai snorted, passing his fingers over his face.
' I heard nothing of his death.'

' Oh, he wasn't killed,' I answered. ' Only disfigured.'

Yoshomai stared at me, really horror-stricken. ' Do you
mean that he went on living without a nose ? '

' Certainly,' I answered. ' It's a bit inconvenient, and to my
mind, it's not pretty ; but I've no doubt you'll see him walking
about here as proud as Punch as soon as the doctor lets him out.'

' Oh,' Yoshomai cried, almost piteously. ' They are mad, these
students,' and mechanically repeated the statement in German :
' Sie sind verriickt. Die Studenten sind verriickt.'

This incautiously loud speech precipitated the catastrophe.

The words were barely said when I saw our neighbours busy
with their card cases, and while one of the elder students settled
up with the waiter, and went off with the girl, the other and the
Freshman came over to our table and asked our names, or rather
at first they asked only for Yoshomai's, and then requested, in a
somewhat supercilious tone, to be informed whether I considered
myself to be his friend. To which I answered, certainly that
I did.

The younger of the students, the actual challenger, was well-
mannered enough, and I recognised that the truculence of his air
was only to mask his nervousness ; but the other was a beer-
bloated swaggerer of the most offensive type.

I very much disliked the position in which I found myself,
for, my principal being undoubtedly in the wrong, I had not the
freedom of action which would have been mine if the quarrel had
been entirely unprovoked. Natheless, I kept my wits about me,
and, insisting on the choice of weapons, declined absolutely the
Schwingsabel. For this attitude the Green Caps were unpre-
pared, and as the incident had drawn too much attention for
them to let the matter drop without exposing themselves to ridi-
cule, the argument tended towards the personal.

I was accordingly relieved when my friend the Freiherr Von
Mondenstein, the adjutant of the local battalion of the Eegiment
von Goben, happening to pass, came to offer me his services.

His arrival put quite another complexion on the matter, and
the overbearing Green Cap stilling his voice I explained rapidly
to Von Mondenstein who Yoshomai was and what had happened.

510 MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI.

Von Mondenstein smiled and gave judgment in a moment.
' The Japanese gentleman is certainly seriously at fault,' said he.
' He must give the student gentleman satisfaction with pistols.
I hope that will satisfy you,' he said to the Freshman, who seemed
in doubt ; and as he did not answer the Freiherr added easily,
' If that does not satisfy you, I shall be very happy to serve you
with the Schwingsdbel.'

The Freshman hastily declared that he was satisfied ; and I
thought he was wise, for it was Von Mondenstein I had seen carve
Dulheuer the jurist.

I thoroughly enjoyed the turn things had taken, for the
students, who had counted on bleeding Yoshomai to make sport,
now found themselves saddled with a serious affair. To do the
blusterer justice, he tried to get his principal out of the scrape by
reminding Von Mondenstein that the pistol was not a student's
weapon, but the Baron was inexorable : ' You have challenged
this gentleman, sir,' said he. ' You must take the consequences.
For my part I do not think students should fight at all. They
should have nurses to keep them from quarrelling.'

' He insulted the lady who was with us,' said the student,
angrily.

The Baron grinned a deliciously provoking grin : ' What sort
of lady ? A student's lady ? '

The Freshman, evidently in his calf love, fired up at this :
' My card, sir,' said he, and thrust it into the Baron's hand.

' I thank you,' said Von Mondenstein, imperturbably. ' If
you are alive the day after to-morrow .' He paused.

' Well, sir ? ' snapped the student. ' If I am ? '

' You will not be the next day,' the Freiherr lisped, and,
turning his back on both, chatted with Yoshomai while I arranged
with the elder student the time and conditions of the duel.

That done the three of us left the gardens, Von Mondenstein
accompanying us as far as the Infantry Barracks. When we had
parted company with him I talked to Yoshomai as seriously as
I could.

' Are you anything of a pistol shot ? ' I asked.

' I can kill him at the distance,' he answered.

' And do you intend to do so ? ' I inquired.

Yoshomai did not miss the suggestion in my tone : ' Why
not ? He will try to kill me.'

I said at once that I did not believe for a moment he would.

MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI. 511

And that even if he wished to he could not for want both of skill
and of nerve.

Yoshomai walked a whole street in silence.

' Why, why, why did he challenge me ? ' he asked.

' He challenged you,' said I, endeavouring to find words for
the complicated train of ideas, ' firstly because he was egged on
to it by the other two.'

' Why did not either of them challenge me ? '

' Because they wanted him to fight. And they thought we
would be foolish enough to let them name their weapon.'

' Yes,' said Yoshomai, trembling with indignation. ' They
thought to cut off my nose. He thought to cut off my nose.'
He burst out laughing. ' Now I will cut off his life.'

' I should sleep on it/ said I, ' before you make up your
mind.'

' But if I do not kill him,' Yoshomai argued, ' the Freiherr
Von Mondenstein will.'

' I'm not so sure,' I said. ' Besides, Von Mondenstein, for all
his good points, is a bit of a swashbuckler, and in my country
anyway we do not think that good form.'

Yoshomai pricked his ears, much interested. ' Is that so ?
Shakespeare or Edmund Burke, or Nelson or Mr. G-ladstone, you
think, would not approve of my killing him ? '

I answered unhesitatingly that every one of the four would
cordially condemn such an act.

' Ah, then, I must reconsider the matter,' agreed Yoshomai, as
we parted for the night.

The next morning at five o'clock I called for him in a closed
carriage, and having picked up at the Caserne Von Mondenstein,
who had expressed a desire to be present, we drove to a certain
spot on the Ehine bank where a boat waited to ferry us across.
Near Buhl was the meeting place.

It was a fragrant, early summer morning, and although I did
not anticipate any very bloody ending to the foolish business,
untoward things will happen, and I was glad it was not I who had
to stand up and be shot at. The pleasures of sun and air and
water as we ripped across the current were mottled by the lugu-
brious humour which Von Mondenstein, after the manner of fire-
eaters, thought appropriate to the occasion.

Our opponents were waiting us : they had brought not only a
doctor but a clergyman, the sight of whom drove from my mind

512 MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI.

all thought of dangerous intent on the part of the young
student.

The preliminaries took a little time, the duel itself was over
in a second. When Von Mondenstein dropped his handkerchief
the Freshman shut his eyes and fired in the air; Yoshomai did
not fire at all, but, having stood steadily to receive the bullet if it
fell his way, handed his loaded pistol to me and stepped over to
his opponent.

' If I have given you offence, I did it without malice,' he
said. ' And I am very sorry.'

' Thank you, sir,' the student replied very readily, and offered
his hand.

Von Mondenstein shook his head gravely : ' This will never
do ; very irregular,' he said.

' 0 come,' I said, in a low voice. ' My man would have killed
him, and he's only a boy.'

' Boys should be boys, then,' snorted Von Mondenstein. ' But
of course it's not my business. Only please, my dear kind sir,
don't say I was present when this farce took place.' He went
over to the Freshman. ' I have chosen single sticks for our
meeting,' he said brutally.

The Freshman flushed to the temples. 'Do you object to
my using a whip ? ' he retorted.

Von Mondenstein was a gentleman under his swaggering
exterior, and did not resent the justifiable snub; indeed, he admired
the other's spirit.

'Sir, if you will allow it,' he said, 'we will postpone our
meeting until you are old enough to handle dangerous weapons.'

' I am quite old enough to receive your fire,' said the student
proudly.

' Thank you,' laughed Von Mondenstein. ' I am not a chicken
butcher.'

' You take advantage of your cloth, sir, to insult me,' cried
the student, meaning, of course, that he dared not sully the
Emperor's uniform with a blow. It was Von Mondenstein's turn
to redden now, and his truculent manner fell from him. ' That it
should be possible for you to say that,' he said courteously,
' proves me in the wrong. Your life is in my hands. I give it
to you with an apology.'

All things considered, this was handsome of him, and the
Freshman appreciated it. Five minutes later the whole party,

MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI. 513

including the doctor and clergyman, left the field and recrossed
the Rhine together as friendly as if nothing in the world could
lead us to disagree on any subject whatsoever. The Freshman
entertained us at breakfast, and the affair ended in all cosiness.

I should not have described the incident between Von
Mondenstein and the student so minutely only that Yoshomai
was much impressed by it.

The breakfast terminated hilariously past noon, and the
necessity of going to bed to digest it prevented all private discus-
sion between Yoshomai and myself that day, but the following
evening he came to see me and we talked things over.

' I do not understand you Europeans in the very least,' he
sighed, wringing his hands. 'It is incomprehensible. I have
thought, and thought, and thought, but I understand nothing.'

' I find these German students a bit ridiculous, too,' said I.
' But of course we all see things from different points of view.
Even, you observe, the Officer and the student affect different
standpoints ? '

' Yes, yes,' Yoshomai assented, ' but with us it is not so. In
my country, if a man put a quarrel on me, I should kill him or
he would kill me.'

' But not such a foolish quarrel ! ' I protested.
' If fools quarrel foolishly, fools are better dead,' Yoshomai
declared sententiously.

' Yes, fools are better dead,' I agreed. ' All the same, one
doesn't care to have the deading of them.'

' Why not ? ' quoth Yoshomai's inquiring spirit, ' as a soldier
you will have to kill fools and wise men too.'

' One never knows,' I said ; ' it may be that I shall never kill
as much as a West African nigger. And anyway there's no
personal animosity in it.'

' Personal animosity ! ' Yoshomai echoed. ' I never felt per-
sonal animosity in my life. I liked the young student. I could
love him as a brother, but I would have killed him had it not
been for you.'

' Let brotherly love continue,' said I, and tried to explain
things to him and to myself. ' The fact is,' said I, ' the
difference between East and West is that you hold life cheap.
We don't ; being a pious Christian people, with a firm belief in
Heaven, we try to keep out of it as long as we can. You are
brought up to regard death as an unavoidable incident of
VOL. xii. — NO. 70, N.S. 33

514 MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI.

secondary importance. We — I speak now for my own people —
think it rather morbid to make a will.'

' I think,' said Yoshomai, ' in this we are wiser than you.'

' I daresay you are,' I answered ; ' have a drink,' and I led him
to other subjects.

From that time Yoshomai and I spent a part of almost every
day in each other's society, and my affection for him grew, as
did also, I like to think, his for me. He was, however, an
exceedingly hard worker, and would shut himself up now and
then for a week on end. This was generally after I had tempted
him to waste a day with me in Cologne or up the river. ' I
cannot understand how you will pass your exams.,' he would
exclaim ; ' you are so very idle, my dear friend, you are so very
idle.'

' 0 come,' I returned, ' I work as much as is necessary ; I have
my studies well in hand.' Whereupon Yoshomai would say that
he would like to see me tackle a Japanese or even a German
examination paper. Once he was reduced to the depths of
despair because Menzel had discovered an error in his calculation
of the dimensions of a field work.

' After all,' I pointed out, ' it's the merest slip of the pen in
setting down the terms of the proposition.'

' That's not the point,' Yoshomai groaned : ' the point is that
men who make mistakes are not to be trusted with the honour
of their country.'

' We don't look at it that way,' I laughed. ' We regard a
man who never does anything foolish as a pretentious prig. In
fact, we employ fools for preference, in the hope of their having
good fortune.'

' 0, you are mad,' Yoshomai declared again, ' you are mad, and
the gods will destroy you.'

1 If the gods are set on our destruction,' I contended, ' what
availeth wisdom ? '

' To bother the gods,' was Yoshornai's prompt reply, and he
went off to take such precautions as might preclude further error
in the calculation of the dimensions of field works.

A few weeks later came the time when fate parted us — he
returning East to enter the military college at Tokyo, I a little
later coming back to England.

This was eleven years ago, when it was not quite so easy to
get into the army as it is now. I suppose I really had idled my

MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI. 515

time in Bonn, for to my surprise I was ploughed for Sandhurst,
and, trying the alternative door of the Militia, I only succeeded
at the third shot in qualifying for a cavalry commission. This
I was too poor to accept, and so I found myself at twenty-two
an aimless waif, with the unearned reputation of a good-for-
nothing.

They would not enlist me because of some defect in my
eyesight, the nature of which I have never been able to under-
stand, and which I have been credibly informed exists only in
the imagination of certain distinguished oculists of the Army
Medical Service, so, having no influence to procure me a colony
to govern, there was nothing left for me but to go on the stage.
Eighteen months of this brought me to India, where I disagreed
with my manageress and fell in with a newspaper editor whose
son had been in my militia. He sent me to write up a hill war,
and for once in my life someone was satisfied with me besides
myself. Another followed, and my success was not impaired, so
when the Chino- Japanese hostilities broke out in 1894 I was
emboldened to ask my chief whether he would risk a few hundred
to plant me in the thick of it. He rose like a bird : I packed
and sailed first steamer, feeling I had won my right to walk the
earth at last.

My chief was in favour of my seeing things from the Chinese
side, as he had some acquaintance with one of the military
Mandarins, and this influence, eked out by bribery, corruption,
and sheer bluff, carried me through Shingking to Korea — that is
to say, to the boundary of that unquiet empire of the Morning
Calm, for at the other side of the Yalu river we found the
Japanese, and after some desultory warfare the Chinese Com-
mander abandoned the contest and fell back.

I have always respected my personal safety as far as was
compatible with plying my trade, so I seized this opportunity to
shift my standpoint to the conquering side, surrendering to a
patrol of Japanese lancers and requesting to be favoured with
an interview by their Command er-in-Chief. This was Marshal
Yamagata, who received me kindly, although he could not resist
a sarcasm at the idea of anyone trying to describe what the
Chinese Generals were doing when they themselves had no
conception of it. And not only was Marshal Yamagata courteous,
but he was so unselfish as to advise me that his future operations
would be less worth following than those of Count Oyama, who

33—2

516 MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI.

by that time had landed in the Liao-Tung peninsula, on his way
to attack the northern defences of the Ohilf of Pechili. Accord-
ingly, I availed myself of his safe conduct to Ping Ying, where
the skipper of a Cardiff tramp, chartered as transport by the
Mikado's Government, stowed me away as a coolie and gave me
a passage to Hua-yuan-kon. I reached the front on the evening
of November 6, the day Kinchow had fallen ; and the following
morning was a spectator of the bloodless capture of Talienwan.
The succeeding days there was little doing, and I used them to
sleep away the fatigues of my journey, for I had not had a
decent night's rest since leaving the Indian mail boat. '

Eecognising that I knew something about soldiering, and had
not been sent to report the campaign as one reports a police case
or a charity dinner, the Japanese officers treated me with every
consideration, and vied with each other in supplying me with
information, though now and then it was saddled with a time
proviso. In return it was my custom to send no line to my paper
which I had not shown to some officer of field rank; and in
consequence my lot was as pleasant as could be.

Fresh troops arrived to share in the attack on Port Arthur,
and they had hardly taken their ground when a troop of their
horse was very roughly handled by the Chinese, and only escaped
disaster by the brilliant handling of half a company of infantry
by a young lieutenant, who, seeing their scrape, doubled out on
his own responsibility to their rescue.

I scribbled an account of the affair as well as I could piece it
together from the camp rumours, and was sending it off when
it occurred to me that I had not mentioned the name of the
officer, and I asked what it was. They told me, ' Yoshomai.'

Curiously enough, the sound did not at once strike me as
familiar, and it was not until I had asked the spelling and had
written it down that I remembered my Bonn acquaintance. My
first thought was the humiliating one that I who had been his
patron five years before should now find myself the mere
chronicler of his exploits ; and this, coupled with the reflection
that he had not answered the letter in which I told him of the
failure of my last exam., prompted me to avoid him. It was
decreed, however, that we should meet, for, business bringing me
into the neighbourhood of the headquarters tent, I encountered
him coming from it. The Count had sent for him to be con-
gratulated on his adventure.

MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI. 517

When he saw me he started violently, and the colour went
out of his face.

' What's the matter ? ' I asked. ' Don't you know me ? '

For an answer he dropped his- forefinger tentatively on my
shoulder. ' You are flesh and blood ? ' he queried.

' Of course,' I answered, a little tickled by the absurdity of his
doubt.

' I thought you were dead.'

' Who told you that ? '

' Didn't you fail in your exams., after all ? '

' Yes, but not in my heart,' I smirked.

' Oh, you Europeans ! ' cried Yoshomai, just like the old
Yoshomai of Bonn. ' I cannot, cannot understand you.'

' Did you think I was going to blow out my brains because of
a durned exam. ? ' I blurted.

' When I read your letter,' Yoshomai said, ' I weeped because
I could not make you the friendly office, being so far, far away.'

' And that was why you didn't write ? ' said I.

' You would not have me write to a defunct corpse ? ' said
Yoshomai. ' And I thought you would have been a defunct
corpse.'

I suggested that he might have given me the benefit of the
doubt, and then turned the talk into the channel of things of the
moment. First and foremost, I complimented him on his new-
won fame, and he swallowed the phrases with childish delight.
' You found it good ? ' he murmured. ' You found it good ?
I too find it not what you used to call half bad.'

' It was tremendous,' I reiterated. ' I have sent an account of
it to my paper.'

' To your paper. Have you a paper, a journal, a real journal ?
Shall my name appear in it — please mention Olonghi too.'
Yoshomai frothed with excitement.

' Who's Olonghi ? ' I asked.

' My orderly : he was killed. I was attacked by four Chinese ;
he came to help and was killed.'

' I never heard of him before,' I admitted. ' But if you tell
me all about it I'll try to work him in later.'

So our talk went on : Yoshomai was full of himself and the
glory of his country. ' What do you think of Japan now ? Goes
it best, eh ? Remember you what I prophesied that day at
Crodesberg ? We shall have Laotong too : you will see our flag

518 MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI.

over Pekin. I may not see it, but it will be there. Poor Olonghi
he said he would see it. Man knows what will be seen, but not
what he will see. Those days at Bonn, and the duel, and the
foolish student with his clergyman. And the pretty girl ; she was
a doll, as you said. I found that out afterwards. What you said
was always right. And yet you did not pass your exam. And
yet you are here alive. 0 my dear, dear friend, how strange are
Europeans. Poor Olonghi. Would you like to see his noble
head ? '

' Not particularly, thanks/ said I. ' Who cut it off ? '

' I did,' said Yoshomai. ' He was a Samurai, you know, and
when he was wounded he claimed the friendly office from me lest
he should fall into the hands of the enemy. I have his head in
my uniform case wrapped in a flag he captured. I will send it
to-morrow to his home in Kiu-shiu. You really would not wish
to see it ? It is no trouble.'

I felt that I dared not refuse a second time this honour to
Yoshomai's prot&g$, so I went and inspected the poor grisly relic of
a brave man, with the result that I was off ray feed and out of
temper for the rest of the day.

Yoshomai could not understand my moroseness : he told me
Olonghi's brother would avenge him in the next fight, and
chattered on and on until my head was splitting, and he was
recalled to duty by the announcement that on the morrow Port
Arthur should be assailed.

That morrow left a deep impression on my mind. To begin
with, to see troops moving to the attack at two o'clock in the
morning by the light of Chinese lanterns was in itself remarkable.
Moreover, I had never seen operations on such a large scale before ;
and, again, the peculiar conditions which allowed a huge fortress to
be stormed by a combined naval and military assault are of a
nature to strike the memory. I was standing near the heavy
battery in the Shui-shih-ying valley when, as dawn whitened the
sea at half-past six, they opened fire. This was not the best
standpoint to take up, for the earlier interest of the fight lay with
Nogi's and Nishi's brigades, sent far away on the right against the
forts on the great hill, supposed to be the key of the enemy's
position. My reason for choosing it was that Hosegawa's brigade,
to which Yoshomai's regiment, the 24th, belonged, would pass it
as they swept on to storm the Cock's Comb and Dragon works on
the eastern face of the town. It was past nine when this attack was

MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI. 519

developed, and Nishi and Nogi had already effected their lodgement
on the western heights, from which their guns took the other
defences in reverse ; yet this frontal attack of Hosegawa's was no
vain parade. I followed now the Brigadier's mountain battery
and could see the track of the three battalions of the 24th, covered
with casualties, as closing up their skirmishing lines they swarmed
up the steep ascent to the forts. Then a faint echo of voices
reached us as the gunfire stilled.

Spurring my thirteen-hand nag to his best speed, I rode
now straight to the road leading between the silenced defences
into the town. At a bridge there was a savage little fight between
the 2nd Japanese and some Chinese, who, dropping their arms
at last, were butchered to a man. I could not help a cry of re-
monstrance at this barbarity, whereupon the Japanese commander,
turning on me( in indignant surprise, said, ' Why, sir, it is what
you call tit-for-tat.'

This excuse was not without some colour, but the scene which
followed in the town was unspeakably horrid ; not soldiers, nor
even only male civilians, fell victims to the Japanese : men,
women, children, dogs, pigs — every living thing to be found in the
streets of Port Arthur was blasted by their fury. I had already seen
grim and ghastly episodes in our own Indian warfare, but there
useless slaughter was the exception, here it was the rule. And
the extraordinary thing was that the Japanese officers, those soft-
spoken, intellectual gentlemen with whom it was a pleasure to
mix and converse, seemed absolutely unconscious that there was
anything outrageous in the conduct of their men. They certainly
did not abet, but they made little or no effort to restrain.

It was not my business to get my throat cut in the effort to
teach the Japanese humanity ; but once, in spite of myself, I had
to interfere. A young woman with a babe at breast rushed past
me, pursued by a howling infantryman of Yoshomai's regiment
waving a Samurai's sword. The wretched creature gained the
shelter of a house and shut the door in the Jap's face, but it was
a feeble protection, and he would have had it down in a breath
only that I caught him from behind and flung him away.

Of course he turned his rage on me, and the next instant I
was running at top speed to the place I had left my horse,
with the swordsman at my heels and the swish of his blade in my
ears.

"With such a spur it is easy to run, but difficult to think

520 MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI.

where : I took the wrong turn, and instead of reaching the open
ground, where I had left my servant and horse, I plunged into a
labyrinth of lanes.

The chase must have lasted some minutes, when some one
stepped between me and my pursuer : there was a burst of voices
in contention ; but I ran on unheeding until I heard Yoshomai's
voice calling me to come back.

Slowly and cautiously I retraced my steps, revolver in hand,
ready for a renewed onslaught, but I found my assailant dead in
a puddle of blood which oozed from beneath his breastbone, and
Yoshomai standing over him with a frightened, pitiful look in his
eyes.

' Why did you provoke him ? ' Yoshomai asked.

' I didn't provoke him,' I answered. ' I only kept him back
from murdering a woman and child.'

' It was not your business,' Yoshomai murmured.

This answer seemed to me ridiculous, but I could hardly
squabble with the man who had just saved my life, so I told him
that, having seen the man belonged to his regiment, I thought
I would save him from a crime.

' Yes, he does belong to my regiment,' agreed Yoshomai
bitterly. ' It is the brother of Olonghi, and he is dead by my
hand.'

' Was it necessary to kill him ? ' I asked, a little startled.

Yoshomai bowed his head. ' He struck me, and so I had to
kill him. And so I must kill myself too.'

' What ! ' I cried dumbfounded.

' I must kill myself — do hari-kari,' reiterated Yoshomai
firmly. ' A Japanese officer cannot in honour be stricken by his
own man and live.'

' Come, my dear fellow,' I returned. ' That's all primeval
nonsense. Put the idea out of your head. Why, no one in the
world will ever know that he did strike you.'

Yoshomai did not argue, he merely asked whether I would do
him the friendly office, or in other words cut off his head after he
had opened his body with his sword.

' I'm hanged if I do,' I answered, almost laughing at the
craziness of the thought.

On this an extraordinary change came over Yoshomai's
face.

His eyes blazed as he waved his still dripping sword. ' Go,

MY FRIEND YOSHOMAI. 521

then, beloved but faithless friend,' he cried imperiously. ' Fool
that I was to give my life for yours.'

' Yoshomai, old chap ! ' I exclaimed entreatingly ; but there
was a look on his face which quenched my arguments in fear, and
I turned on my heel and fled as fast and faster than before.

The next day among the slain at the taking of Port Arthur I
read the name of Lieutenant Yoshomai. He and the brother of
Olonghi were said to have been murdered by the Chinese, and this
supposed crime was balanced in the official reports against the
atrocities committed by the troops.

F. NORREYS CONNELL.

522

THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD; COROLLARY.

[NOTE. — Readers of the CORNHILL will remember an article in the February
number by Mr. Stephen Gwynn on ' The Luxury of Doing Good,' in which, taking
for his text Hobbes' dictum that ' Benevolence is a love of power and delight in
the exercise of it,' he upholds the paradox that men do good not from pure and
disinterested kindness, but for the gratification of the pleasurable, and therefore
intrinsically selfish, instinct of action and self-expression. The essay has provoked
the following verses. — ED. CORNHILL.]

PHILOSOPHER.

SAY, whither with those bags of gold,

Proprietor of wealth untold ?

Tell one who knows of no such things

As Booms and Corners, Trusts and Kings,

What happy Kails, what lucky Mines,

What high capitalist's designs,

What province of finance or trade,

Expects your vivifying aid?

Oh, tell me, in what shy resort,

Victoria Street or Capel Court,

You go to buy th' augmenting share ?

Tell me, my multi-millionaire!

MILLIONAIRE.

Excuse me, Sir: you wrongly guess;

This gold is for the C.O.S.

Think you the rich no object know

Save that they still may richer grow ?

Nay, for myself — when shares are high

I hear the call of Charity;

And when I've given the humble poor

Some fraction of my golden store,

Full well I deem that fraction spent —

For I have been benevolent.

THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD: COROLLARY. 523

PHILOSOPHER.

Benevolent ! 'Tis quite absurd

How people use that stupid word !

Read, to correct your boastful mood,

'The Luxury of Doing Good,'

"Where Mr. Gwynn and Thomas Hobbes

Prove that the seeming-generous throbs

Which agitate at times your breast

Proceed from mere self-interest.

Learn that the man who helps his friends

Does it to serve his proper ends ;

What aid you give, in power or pelf,

Is simply given to please yourself.

It shows a kind of moral twist

To think that you're an altruist;

Let such ideas at once take wing —

Because, of course, there's no such thing !

MILLIONAIRE.

Forgive me, if perhaps I err —

I am not a philosopher —

The gentle art of splitting hairs

Is not for multi-millionaires.

Yet,, say, — if this your conduct guide,

Such rules, consistently applied,

Play, if conclusion right I draw,

The dickens with the Moral Law;

For how, on your peculiar plan,

Define the Bad or Virtuous man ?

PHILOSOPHER.

You touch the spot ; 'tis even so :
That's just the thing I meant to show
I hardly thought to find so swift
A readiness to take my drift.
Both Good and Bad are really based
On mere discrepancy of taste ;

-
524 THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD: COROLLARY.

That Virtue which your pulpits praise

Is simply a misleading phrase,

For so-called Vice is every bit

As justly laudable as it ;

And in a quite especial sense

This holds of your Benevolence.

MILLIONAIRE.

Dear me ! dear me ! You're right, no doubt . .

But leave the moral question out,

And think of my relations with

Impoverished Jones and blighted Smith,

Who, freed by me from misery's mesh,

Are started on their legs afresh :

Surely, it's reasonably plain

Some gratitude from them I gain ?

They'll bless the man qui cito dot —

There's something, after all, in that!

PHILOSOPHER.

Dismiss at once these notions crude :

This is no case for gratitude.

Here's Smith, or Jones (I care not which,

I mean the man who's far from rich), —

With his affairs ('tis kindness sheer)

He suffers you to interfere,

By loaves of bread and pounds of tea

To vex his love for liberty,

With bounty arrogantly doled

His personality to mould —

That you, my friend, may feel thereby

Your finger in an alien pie,

May find, forsooth ! an active sphere

By feeding him with beef and beer,

Which gratifies your selfish sense

Of Pride and Power and Influence : —

And is it then your curious view

That he should grateful be to you?

THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD: COROLLARY. 525

Let no such mists your brain bedim :
Tis you should render thanks to him!

MILLIONAIRE.

If this be so, I plainly see

Benevolence is not for me;

It is a thing which happy makes

Nor him that gives nor him that takes.

For if 'tis based on motives low,

Nor e'en affords a quid pro quo,

Why should I pay a longish price

For unremunerative Vice ?

Oh, no ! I'll do what's wiser far,

And buy another motor car.

In vain may paupers throng my door —

I've sinned enough, I'll sin no more ;

And when starvation makes them thin

Blame Thomas Hobbes and Mr. Gwynn !

A. D. GODLEY,

526

A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS.

IF it be true that the art of conversation is declining among us,
that it has become one of the old-fashioned things for which we
have ' no time ; ' if that intellectual enjoyment, perhaps one of
the greatest of which the mind is capable, has lost its place
in oui" esteem and pursuit, it is only natural that those who can
remember with an undying memory the talk of such men as
Browning, Leighton, Euskin, Monckton Milnes, Sir Alexander
Cockburn, Dr. Jowett, Thackeray, and Richard Doyle, should
regard that memory as a precious inheritance, and even regret-
fully wonder what may not be the result of the loss of con-
versation upon the future culture of society. Through these
men, and perhaps even more through the brilliant women
who adorned their society. — Lady Taylor, Mrs. Procter, Mrs.
Sartoris, Lady Dufferin, Mrs. Norton — we received the tradition
of the talk — perhaps more brilliant still — of Macaulay, Brougham,
Rogers, Sydney Smith and Lord and Lady Holland, Coleridge
and Charles Lamb. With but little effort we seemed to be carried
on that flowing stream to the days of Sir Joshua, Sheridan, Burke,
Grarrick, and Dr. Johnson, until we almost seemed to hear Fanny
Burney exclaim, after a party at Sir Joshua's with the Sheridans,
&c. : ' I have no time or room to go on, or I could write a folio of
the conversation at supper, when everybody was in spirits, and a
thousand good things were said.'

It is interesting to remember that the period when in England
conversation was at its best — between the middle of the eighteenth
and of the nineteenth centuries — was also the time when most
of the great libraries of the country were formed, proving the
intimate alliance between literature and conversation and forcibly
bringing to mind Addison's words : ' Conversation with men of a
polite genius is another method of improving our natural taste.
It is impossible for a man of the greatest parts to consider any-
thing in its whole extent and in all its variety of lights. Every
man, besides those general observations which are to be made
upon an author, forms several reflections that are peculiar to his
own manner of thinking; so that conversation will naturally
furnish us with hints which we did not attend to, and make us

A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS. 527

enjoy other men's parts and reflections as well as our own. This
is the best reason I can give for the observation which several
have made, that men of great genius in the same way of writing
seldom rise up singly, but at certain periods of time appear to-
gether, and in a body ; as they did at Rome in the reign of
Augustus, and in Greece about the age of Socrates. I cannot think
that Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Boileau, La Fontaine, Bruyere,
Bossu, or the Daciers, would have written so well as they have
done had they not been friends and contemporaries.'

Addison also gives us the number of jive as best fitted for the
enjoyment of good talk in the delightful 'Tatler' (April 1710),
comparing conversation to a concert of music. His favourite
talker is evidently he whom he compares to a lute : ' Its notes
are exquisitely sweet and very low, easily drowned in a multitude
of instruments and even lost among a few, unless you give a
particular attention to it. A lute is seldom heard in a company
of more than five. . . . The Lutanists therefore are men of
a fine genius, uncommon reflection, great affability, and esteemed
chiefly by persons of good taste, who are the only proper judges of
so delightful and soft a melody.'

The sense of leisure, without which conversation is well-nigh
impossible, strikes us again and again in the memoirs of the past
and in the recollections of our elders. Men still living can re-
member the long and uninterrupted hours spent in the libraries
of country houses, and tell us of the genial hours of talk after
dinner — eaten then at five o'clock — when in winter a narrow table,
semi-circular in shape,1 was placed before the hearth, snugly en-
closing the fire, and the gentlemen drew their chairs around and
placed their glasses on it, and conversed — ' and there would be
some very good talk,' with no interruption but that of the watch-
man as he went round the house calling the hours.

When Dr. Johnson said of Burke : ' If a man were to go by
chance at the same time with Burke under a shed, to shun a
shower, he would say : " This is an extraordinary man ; " ' and
again : ' If Burke should go into a stable to see his horse dressed,
the hostler would say : " We have had an extraordinary man
here," ' the compliment was not to the great statesman or orator,
but to Burke the conversationalist. ' That fellow calls forth all
my powers. Were I to see Burke now it would kill me,' he cries

1 Sir Algernon West tells us in his Memoirs that these tables were in use at
Latimer, Lord Chesham's charming place in Bucks, until 1864.

528 A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS.

when ill and unable to exert himself as usual. Another of
Burke's contemporaries paid him the compliment of addressing
Milton's words to him :

With thee conversing, I forget all time.

So highly did our ancestors rate the pleasure of conversation
that the difficulty of enjoying it was considered one of the
penalties of royalty. Queen Charlotte complains to her old friend
Mrs. Delany of the difficulty with which she can get any con-
versation, as she not only has to start the subjects, but commonly
to support them as well ; and she says there is nothing she so much
loves as conversation, and nothing she finds it so hard to get. So
Mrs. Delaney repeats this to Miss Burney, and adjures her to
speak freely with the Queen, not to draw back from her, nor to
stop conversation with only answering yes or no.

It is a noteworthy fact that in considering English conversa-
tionalists we find ourselves almost entirely among men. From
Dean Swift to Sydney Smith, Macaulay and Eogers, we move in a
masculine atmosphere — of snug coffee-houses and ordinaries in
the days of Swift and Steele and Addison, of the club of the
Johnsonian era, the tavern's best room its habitat, with rules which
now excite a smile : the twenty-four members of the Essex
Street Club, founded by Johnson shortly before his death, to
meet three times a week — ' he who misses forfeits twopence ' —
the library at Streatham, Coleridge's table, Eogers's breakfasts,
and, later still, those of Monckton Milnes. It is true that Swift
pays compliments to Stella on her conversational powers ; that
Dr. Johnson spoke highly of Mrs. Montagu's wit ; that, in his
day, the Duchess of Portland and Mrs. Delany went by the name
of the ' old wits ; ' that Mrs. Thrale's conversation was delightful,
and that Mrs. Chapone, in spite of her infirmities and uncommon
ugliness, charmed all who approached her with her silver speech.
At all times there have been women who have made their mark
among the conversationalists of their day, but their position was a
subordinate one, and it is evident that in that ' concert ' the part
they played was very generally that of the second violins. So
much is this the case that a writer of the present day, in a
chapter on Conversation, speaking of Bowood, Panshanger, and
Holland House, reminds us that ' the society of Lord Lansdowne,
Lord Holland, and Lord Melbourne was also the society of
Brougham and Mackintosh, Macaulay and Sydney Smith, Luttrell

A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS. 529

and Samuel Rogers,' but mentions none of the women who also
helped to compose it.

The moment we cross the Channel all is changed. From
Mesdames de Rambouillet and de Sevigne to Madame Mohl we
move in a womanly atmosphere, and have the impression that for
some two centuries all the good conversation of Paris took place
in some lady's salon ; that it was led, controlled, and directed by
her, while neither rank, wealth, nor beauty were indispensable
qualifications for admitting her into that magnificent sisterhood
which in an unbroken succession possessed the art of tenir un
salon.

All tbe most famous men made part of this brilliant company ;
but it would seem that, with the true French gallantry of other
days, they had effaced themselves before posterity, so as to leave
the undivided renown to the women. Those queens of conver-
sation sprang from so many different ranks and conditions of life !
Some, like the Marquises de Rambouillet and de Sevigne", the
Duchesse de Duras and Madame de Stael, born in the purple of
high rank and state, breathing the atmosphere of Court and
politics from their earliest years ; some, and they were not the
least powerful, attaining to sovereignty by their own talents.
Among these we count Madame Roland, Mademoiselle Lespinasse,
Sophie Arnould, and Madame Mohl. The holder of a salon might
be old and blind, rich and powerful, poor and risen from the
smallest bourgeoisie, a duchess or an opera singer ; she need not
even be very clever, but three qualities were indispensable — great
tact, a sincere desire to please, and, above all, that quality so
essentially French that there is no word for it in any other
Ian guage — esprit.

One of the most brilliant of all these queens of conversation
must have been Sophie Arnould ; and it is thanks to a happy
accident which placed her unfinished journal and a packet of her
letters into the hands of the brothers De Goncourt that they were
able to give to the world that short biography which ranks among
the most charming of their works. Not even the ' Arnouldiana,'
that collection of her bons-mots published in 1813 ; not even the
life-like portrait which forms its frontispiece, with its sparkling
eyes, brimming with mirth, and the parted lips, on which some
brilliant witticism or repartee seems trembling, gives us so real
an impression of what her genius must have been as that which
the intuition of these two brother men-of-letters was able to

VOL. XII. — NO. 70, N.S. 34

530 A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS.

seize and so happily to render. Our attention is held and fasci-
nated as they so rapidly bring before us, with the precision of a
well-cut gem, the rare native qualities and gifts, the educational
advantages, the fortunate circumstances of environment, that go
to make up the charm of a perfect mistress of the art of con-
versation.

Sophie Arnould was born February 14, 1740, in the Eue des
Fosses St. Grermain 1'Auxerrois, in the very room in which
Admiral Coligny had been killed, and which had long served
Vanloo as a studio, thus giving its four walls a threefold celebrity.
Her parents were well-to-do bourgeois, and her mother seems to
have been early bitten with the philosophical ideas of the day ;
Voltaire was among her friends, Diderot and D'Alembert were
received at her table, and old Fontenelle, a few days before his
death, brought her the MS. of a tragedy of Corneille's. From
this strong atmosphere, all impregnated with the Encyclopedic,
little Sophie, at the age of five, was suddenly transplanted into
that of a Court.

The Princess of Modena, the separated wife of the Prince of
Conti, begged the pretty, precocious child from her parents, to be
her plaything, and the distraction of her childless and monotonous
life. The talent for music, already strongly marked in the little
damsel, made her a source of amusement to the Princess and her
guests ; sometimes she would be set to the clavecin and made to
sing and play, sometimes for days she would be her patroness's
inseparable companion, delighting her with her gay babble and
pretty ways ; then suddenly thrust into the ante-room among the
servants, to await a fresh royal caprice of fondling and endear-
ments.

Happily, Madame Arnould was sensible of the disadvantages
of this system, and had the courage to withdraw her little daughter
gradually and tactfully from its influences. Nothing was neglected
for Sophie's education. At ten years of age she could speak —
she tells us in her journal — Latin, English, and Italian fluently,
and had learned to sing. When, the following year, she was sent
to the Ursuline Convent at St. Denis to prepare for her First
Communion, the fame of her lovely voice in the chapel choir soon
spread abroad, and on a certain Feast of St. Augustine the Court
and the town flocked to hear it, the echo reaching Voltaire in his
retreat of Ferney and drawing from him a letter of congratulation
to the little songstress.

A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS. 531

At last the day came when the Queen desired to hear her,
saying to the Duchesse de Conti : ' Je la veux pour moi, ma
cousine, vous me la donnerez.' So, with the pomp and circum-
stance befitting the occasion, the Princess took Sophie in her State
chariot to present her to Marie Leczinska, who received her with
gentle, stately kindness and commended her singing. But, as the
De Groncourts remark, there was another Queen in France —
Madame de Pompadour ; and the very next day she sent a letter
to the Duchesse de Conti, couched in terms of supplication, such
as she well knew how to use, pen in hand, entreating her to ' lend
her her young singer until the evening.' The request was em-
barrassing. The Princess could not without a breach of les
grandes convenances and a want of respect to the Queen take
Sophie to call upon the favourite, and at the same time she seems
to have had a salutary fear of offending the latter lady. The
upshot of the debate strikes us nowadays as strange — it was that
Madame Arnould should herself take her daughter to Madame de
Pompadour. The journal gives an interesting account of this
interview, which proved the turning-point in the young hour-
geoise's career. After hearing her, the Marquise strongly urged
her to make singing her profession, saying : ' Ma chere enfant, le
bon Dieu vous a faite pour le theatre ; vous etes nee deliberee
comme il faut y etre ; vous ne tremblerez pas devant le public.'
Sophie describes the room, draped with green, heavily fringed
with gold ; the balustrade of white marble and gold, the
Marquise's own desk, at which she was made to sit while singing ;
the conversation, which ran from subject to subject ; Madame de
Pompadour's tears as she interrogated her as to her singing-
masters and found they were the same as those of her own young
daughter, who had died a year before. Then several times such
words escaped her as : ' Au premier jour on dira de moi : " feu
madame de Pompadour," ou "la pauvre marquise ! " ' At one
moment she said in a hasty aside to Madame Arnould : ' Si la reine
vous demandait votre fille pour la musique de sa chambre, n'ayez
pas 1'imprudence d'y souscrire. Le roi vient de temps en temps a
ces petits concerts de famille ; et alors au lieu d'avoir donne cette
enfant a la reine, vous en auriez fait present au roi ! '

A few days later a missive from the gentilshommes de la
Chambre de la Rei/ne arrived and spread consternation in the
quiet household of Monsieur Arnould. It contained Sophie's
appointment to the Queen's Musique de Chambre. At first there

34—2

532 A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS.

were thoughts of flight, of hiding the young girl in a convent, for
the last wish of her parents was that she should encounter the
dangers of a Court or those of the theatre. After a time other
counsels prevailed ; the Duchesse de Conti and the other persons
consulted by the anxious parents seem at last to have persuaded
them that it is possible to ' faire son salut ' in any state of life,
that it would be dangerous to offend the Queen, and that Sophie's
talents were too great to remain for ever concealed.

On December 15, 1757, Sophie Arnould made her dtibut in
Grluck's opera Iphigenia in Aulis, and took the town by storm.
Shortly afterwards came the romantic episode of her first love
affair ; the young Comte de Brancas, hiding his title and quality
under the assumed name of Dorval, getting admission, under
some pretence of study, into the Arnould household, and finally
running away with the daughter. She seems to have returned
no more to the paternal roof, and before very long her own salon
became the rendezvous of the most brilliant society of Paris, over
which she reigned like a veritable queen. ' Elle regnait done,
et de toutes les fapons,' say the De Groncourts. ' Elle ordonnait de
la vogue et du gout. Elle semblait descendre a 1'amitie d'illustres
dames. Elle avait une cour, un petit coucher de son esprit, de
sa jeunesse, de sa grace.' There, Eousseau became tamed, and
reconciled to civilisation ; Grarrick, when in Paris, brought thither
all the hours he could spare ; her Tuesdays were the ' revue
merveilleuse des grands hommes, petits et grands ; ' the Prince
de Ligne, ' ce passant de tant d'esprit,' was a constant guest ;
Dorat (little Dorat, said Sophie, is like a marble column, he is
dry, cold and polished) ; D'Alembert, Duclos, and Diderot's best
eloquence resounded there ; Beaumarchais and Luignet, Sophie's
' fr&res d'esprit,' were her intimate friends and counsellors.

Some of her mote are current still. It was she who, in
answer to the saying, ' L'esprit court les rues,' first retorted :
' C'est un bruit que les sots font courir.' Her remark on poor
La Harpe's leprosy stings his literary memory still : ' ' C'est tout
ce qu'il a des anciens ; ' and when she was shown a snuff-box with
a portrait of Sully on the one side and Choiseul on the other :
4 Oui, c'est la recette et la defense.' More refined and delicate
was the irony of her answer to the poet Bernard, whom she one
day found writing his ' Art d' Aimer ' under the shade of an oak
tree. ' Je m'entretiens avec moi-meme,' says the poet. ' Prenez
garde, vous causez avec un flatteur.' Cheerier, the pamphleteer,

A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS. 533

who |had lampooned her unmercifully and written bitter satires
on the principal personages of the time, died in Holland in 1762,
not without suspicion of poison. ', Juste ciel!' cried Sophie
Arnould, on hearing the news, ' il aura suce sa plume.'

In one of the happiest pages that ever escaped from their pen,
her two biographers give us a wonderful little study of her mind
and her wit : ' Comment le saisir et le dire, cet esprit de Sophie
Arnould ? II etait un eblouissement, un prodige, une source
intarissable de tous les esprits de la France ! II etait impromptu,
courant, volant ; une envolee de guepes ! ... II etait une massue
et un poignard, une malice et un supplice. II enfermait une
larme dans un lazzi, une idee dans un calembour, un homme dans
un ridicule. Du sublime de la gaminerie il allait a 1'exquis du
gout, du gros sel a 1'ironie divine, de 1'Opera a Athenes. Jamais
au monde si merveilleuse machine a mots que cet Sophie ! et si
bien dotee et si bien armee ! Elle-meme comparait sa tete a un
miroir a facettes. Que d'etincelles et de flammes ! . . . Tant de
phrases, tant de mots bondis de sa bouche, gardes par 1'anecdote
comme la chanson, 1'echo et le testament libre du xviii6 siecle ! . . .
Une verve argent comptant, une vision instantanee de 1'intention,
du sens, et de 1'orthographe des paroles, des bonnes fortunes de
tennes, des manages d'inclination de mots, des saillies et des
epigrammes qui s'echappaient de ses levres, sur 1'aile de la plus
jolie voix du monde . . . des satires d'une ligne, des epitaphes
dont les vivants ne revenaient pas, des epithetes mortelles, des
riens qui sont devenus des proverbes ! . . . des paroles qui ont
fait 1'esprit de bien des sots et la fortune de bien des causeurs ;
des droleries a la pointe du mot, qui enlevaient le rire ; notre jolie
langue de finesses et de sous-entendus maniee dans le meilleur de
ses delicatesses ; un tribunal enfin, 1'esprit de Sophie ! '

Caught up in the whirlwind of the Revolution, her profession
saved her life ; but she was flung poor and destitute — robbed of
patrons, admirers, and almost all her friends by the cruel guillotine
—into the humble refuge of a country farm. But the finely-
tempered, indomitable spirit carried her bravely through, and
she could write in the fourth year of this seclusion and solitude,
in a letter to her old lover Bellanger, now married to Mademoiselle
Dervieux, the singer, that she had never felt one moment of
ennui. ' Everything that surrounds me is full of variety. I had
first to build ... I have planted, cleared, sown ; I have reaped,
and moreover I have a poultry yard ; my courtiers are numerous :

534 A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS.

cocks and hens, turkeys, pigs, sheep, rabbits ; I had some pigeons,
but the cost of their keep forced me to give them up.' The last
line indicates what some of her other letters sufficiently prove :
that the pinch of poverty was sometimes severe. Nothing could
be more charming than her letter to an ex-admirer, a member of
the new Government, seeking to obtain the payment of the pension
to which she was entitled as a societaire of the Opera. She treats
her penury almost as a joke, and there is a humorous pathos in
the way she says that ' it is hardly worth while dying of hunger —
if one can help it ! ' The Bellangers have discovered the greatness
of her need at a time of illness, and have, out of their own poverty,
sent her a gold piece. Her answer, accepting it ' as a souvenir,' is
a very model of frank grace and simple gratitude and affection.

Sophie's letters after the Revolution are indeed, as the De
Groncourts say, ' le mets des plus delicats ; ' her observations on
the stirring events of the time are often worthy of the keenest
politician and statesman. She was one of the very first to recog-
nise the genius of the youthful artillery officer, Napoleon. She
writes of him that he is not much to look at, and that everybody
is speaking ill of him. ' Mais, c'est un homme, si je m'y connais.'
And from her poor solitude she writes to Bellanger the often-
quoted lines accompanying a lock of her grey hair, ending :

Et Ton joint sous les cheveux blancs

Au charme de s'aimer le droit de se le dire.

Once, in mid-career, Sophie Arnould had made a sudden halt
in her life of sovereign triumph, pleasure, and disorder, and had
become pious. The phase was not long-lived, and, after one or
two changes of confessor, she dismissed it, as usual, with an epi-
gram to the effect that directors of consciences were as difficult
to please as directors of theatres. But with age, poverty, and
sorrow, the old faith returned with a sweet and invincible power.
She crept back to Paris, and to her old parish to die ; and there,
not far from the historical room in which she had first seen the
light, ministered to by the Cure of St. Germain 1'Auxerrois, she
breathed her last at the age of fifty-eight. We know little beyond
the bare facts of that closing scene, but she no doubt brought to
it those qualities of whole-heartedness and fine intelligence which
had always been hers. She was the epitome of her time, of its
dazzling brilliancy, its striking contradictions, and her memory as
a conversationalist deserves to outlast her tomb :
Embalmed for ever in its own perfume.

A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS. 535

It was a quaint freak of destiny which ordained that this
French sceptre should have last been held by a little ugly Irish-
woman, Madame Mohl, nfo Mary Clarke, and that since it fell from
her reluctant grasp there has been no one to take it up, for the
one or two political salons still existing in Paris do not come
within our category. Just as strange is it that the official
announcement, so to speak, of this lapse of the crown should have
been made by the Emperor of the country to a foreign Queen.
' Are there any salons left in Paris ? ' asked the then Queen of
Holland of Napoleon III. during her last visit at the Tuileries.
' Yes, there is one, Madame Mohl's, but she does not do me the
honour of inviting me.'

The name of Madame Mohl is the link between the conver-
sationalists of the second half of the eighteenth century and those
whom we of the present day have known and have admired.
From Chateaubriand to Browning, from Madame Eoland and
Humboldt to Huxley and Dean Stanley, who better than she could
have preserved for us the memory of their talk, had it not absorbed
her too intently to leave her time or liberty to record it !

For more than twenty years Browning was so prominent a
figure in English society that few of those who frequented it
between 1865 and 1889 can have helped preserving a vivid
recollection of that king of conversationalists. The sight of his
face upon entering a room, the sound of his strong and pleasant,
though not musical voice, were sufficient to arrest the most casual
attention, and were a sure promise of pleasure to those who knew
him.

No poet that ever lived can have been freer from the slightest
trace of what the French call pose ; strong common-sense, a real
intense interest in the subject he might be discussing, and — per-
haps here the poetic mind unobtrusively made itself felt — conveyed
in language which seemed to leave nothing unsaid that could make
his meaning clearer or more complete. No one better than he
could cleave at once to the heart of a question, blow away the
froth of passion from an argument, or explain the causes or the
consequences of some current of popular opinion or fanaticism.

Perhaps his power was the greater because it seemed so singu-
larly free from passion ; his mastery over no subject was greater
than his mastery over himself, for all his intense human sympathy
and vitality. Instinctively his hearers knew that the annihilated
antagonist had met his fate because his cause was bad, foolish, or

536 A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS.

otherwise unfit to live — never because it had had the ill-luck to
offend Robert Browning. Even when the onslaught was most
deadly, as in his attacks upon Spiritualism, that fine and ennobling
characteristic was never wanting.

The obscurity, the curious fantasy which sometimes led him
in his verse to discard the right word for one less apt never
appeared in his discourse. There was never any need to plead, as
his future wife pleads in one of the lately-published letters, for ' a
flash more light on the face of Domizia,' or begs him not to be too
disdainful to explain his meaning in the title of Pomegranates ;
adding, with graceful humility : ' Consider that Mr. Kenyon and
I may fairly represent the average intelligence of your readers,
and that he was altogether in the clouds as to your meaning . . .
had not the most distant notion of it, while I, taking hold of the
priest's garment, missed the Rabbins and the distinctive signifi-
cance as completely as he did.' Another time, she urges the
claim of the word ' spirits ' in lieu of ' sprites,' in one of his verses :
'Why not "spirits" instead of " sprites," which has a different
association by custom ? ' Spirits ' is quite short enough for a last
word ; it sounds like a monosyllable that trembles, or thrills, rather.'

In his talk there was nothing of this ; the spring gushed freely,
pure and strong, and there could never be a moment's doubt or
hesitation as to its course or limpidity.

One of Browning's recorded sayings is that he liked religious
questions treated seriously, and we know by his letters that his
own belief was sincere and strong. Some twenty years ago, he
told his neighbour at a dinner-party that on his way home to
dress he had stopped to hear an open-air preacher in Hyde Park.
The man was developing free-thinking theories, and at the
moment Browning arrived was emphatically inveighing against
the possible existence of (rod, and defying his hearers to disprove
his arguments. ' At last I could stand it no longer,' said Browning,
' so I asked him to get off his tub and to let me get up and try to
answer him. He did so, and I think,' he added modestly, ' that
I had the best of it.' Scraps of his conversation stand out like
charming pictures, defying the lapse of time. His fondness for
flowers was great, and he gleefully told — one evening — how a short
while before he had made the acquaintance of some charming
ladies who had spoken of a wildflower growing in their part of
the country, with which he was unacquainted. They had pro-
mised to send him a specimen, and duly fulfilled the promise ; it

A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS. 537

was no unimportant thing to introduce Ja new flower to a poet. In
writing to acknowledge the pretty gift, Browning asked them to
send him, as well as the botanical name they had already given,
the country-people's name for the little flower. ' It shows how
we should never inquire too closely into things. The ladies wrote,
quite in distress, to say they had purposely avoided giving me the
common name of the flowers, because the country-people called
them bloody noses. And the worst of it was,' he added with a
burst of his own hearty and infectious laughter, ' it was not at all
a bad name for them. The blossom was a little double valve, not
unlike a nostril in shape, and its edge was tinged with red.' But
the poetry of the thing was hopelessly destroyed.

Browning tells Miss Barrett in one of his earliest letters that
he ' hates dinner-parties.' His taste must have greatly changed in
later years, for there was no more inveterate diner-out than he in
London ; and it must, for many years, have been the rarest of
events for him to dine anywhere else than at a dinner-party. His
conversation was there at its best, and its echo must linger yet in
the ears of those who are happy enough to have known it. An
odd little human trait about him was his habit of putting his
m&)iu into his pocket at the end of the dinner. ' I collect them,'
he said simply, to a lady in answer to a somewhat amused smile
of inquiry.

It was not always a happy thing to have Browning and
Leighton at the same dinner, if the party was a small one. They
both answered too well to the description of the ' harpsichord ' in
that same ' Tatler ' of 1710 : ' The very few persons who are masters
in every kind of conversation and can talk on all subjects ' — com-
paring them, 'endowed with such extraordinary talents,' to
' harpsichords, a kind of music which everyone knows is a concert
by itself/

The striking characteristic of Leighton's conversation was its
cosmopolitanism. He was equally at home in the various subjects
which most interested the principal nationalities of Europe, and he
seemed literally to speak to every man in his own tongue as well
as or better than he could himself, and with a purity of accent
that often led to amusing mistakes. Italians took him for an
Italian until they heard his German or his French ; and the way
in which, when his studio was filled with a crowd of visitors from
all parts of the world, he darted from language to language in his
hospitable welcome and explanations of his pictures, was marvellous.

538 A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS.

He knew several dialects and patois as well, and for some years
had a servant, a Eoumanian or Hungarian, with whom he could
speak freely in his own patois.

If Browning's talk left behind it an impression of power and
strength and clear-mindedness which would make a man or woman
go to him most readily for counsel or advice, that of Leighton
made anyone ready to appeal to him for an act of kindness or
good-nature with the certainty that he would attempt the impos-
sible to accomplish it. He had the happy knack of always saying
the right thing, and a royal memory, not only of faces but of the
histories of even his more insignificant acquaintances. ' I had not
seen Leighton for years,' exclaimed a gratified little man, ' when
I met him in the street the other day, and he immediately
stopped and congratulated me on my appointment, saying I was
the right man in the right place,' &c. Such instances might be
multiplied indefinitely, and were the secret of his popularity.

His urbanity and tact as a host were exquisite, whether he
was receiving the whole world of fashion and art as President of
the Royal Academy, or at his musical parties in his studio, or,
again, at his dinners. On an occasion when a very awkward
social difficulty had arisen, sufficient to nonplus the most tactful,
a lady paid him the compliment of saying : ' Even Leighton's
savoir-faire was almost at fault — but it carried him through.' At
his dinners there was, perhaps, a trifle of what the French call
appret, his own seat raised a little higher than that of his guests,
his r6le of Amphitryon taken perhaps a thought too seriously,
raising a smile in the irreverent, as there was sometimes in his
Academy dinner speeches a lack of spontaneity and a certain
searching after effect, which ' Punch ' once caricatured by repre-
senting him seated in his study ' seeing how many beautiful new
words he could invent for his next speech.'

These were only the ' defects of his qualities ' as a speaker
and a converser, and all who knew him would endorse the exclama-
tion of a young girl many years ago, who, on hearing the descrip-
tion of a thoroughly kind-hearted and good-natured man read out
from a letter at a Scotch breakfast-table, cried out : ' That is why
everybody likes Fay ! ' the name he was known by among the
children of his acquaintance. The sunny, genial gladness in his
quiet ' That's very nice of you ! ' would have gone far to prove the
truth of her words, even without the murmur of acquiescence that
went round the table.

A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS. 539

The qualities of the late Lord Coleridge as an agreeable talker
have been widely and deservedly proclaimed. Those of his pre-
decessor in the high office of Chief Justice of England — Sir
Alexander Cockburn — were at least equal, if not superior. His
store of varied knowledge was as great, and dated back to a
remoter epoch, his voice and elocution were as perfect as Lord
Coleridge's, and he was more a man of the world, being, indeed,
one of the leaders of the society of his day. The soirees and
dinners at his house in Hertford Street were things to be remem-
bered by those who were privileged to be his guests, and to meet
at his table such people as Sir William and Lady Molesworth,
Bulwer Lytton, Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris, Lady Waldegrave, Chorley,
Eichard Doyle, Sir Charles Halle, leading statesmen, litterateurs,
and artists. He was a charming host, unsurpassed as a story-
teller. To hear him relate some humorous anecdote of the
lawyers of bygone days, 'when St. Martin's-in-the-Fields was
still surrounded with open ground,' was an incomparable treat.
His stories occasionally dated from a time when language was a
little more forcible and picturesque than at present, and he used
more action in speaking than is usual among Englishmen, though
his gestures were never more emphatic than the occasion required,
and always gave the completest point to his story. There was
one about a starched old lawyer and a street Arab, in which his
mimicry of both was equally perfect and finished.

His table was never too large to permit him to take part in
the conversation at any part of it, and he had the happiest faculty
of joining in at the right moment to add life and interest to a
subject. On one occasion his ear caught an exclamation of
regret from one of his guests that judges had not the prerogative
of mercy. The lady had seen a postman condemned to five
years' imprisonment for stealing a letter containing a few
shillings, and the man's evident remorse, his wife's scream
from the gallery, the scene of her being carried out fainting,
had made her feel that if mercy could have been extended to
the culprit he would have lived honestly ever after. Cockburn,
in a few feeling words, explained the extent and limitations of
human justice with so much humanity and insight into the
workings of the mind, that it seemed as if nothing further could
be said on the subject, and then turned easily and lightly to some
less serious topic.

A well-marked place among the conversationalists of his day

540 A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS.

was held by Henry Fothergill Chorley, the once formidable critic
of the ' Athenaeum.' His dinners at his tiny house in Eaton
Place West, all ' white and gold and crimson satin,' as Mrs.
Browning describes it in one of her letters, were famous.
Notabilities from every land met there, men and women belong-
ing to the three aristocracies of birth, talent, and wealth — that of
talent so often the link between the other two — and delightful
was the talk. So competent a judge as Sir Charles Halle, writing
of Chorley in his memoirs, describes him as ' a man of strong
views, fearless in his criticism, perfectly honest, although often
and unconsciously swayed by personal antipathies and sym-
pathies.'

Of his oddities, of the whimsical tone and gestures with
which his tart and often paradoxical little sentences were
delivered, it is almost hopeless to attempt to convey an idea.
In face, figure, manners, and voice he was quite unlike anybody
else. The meagre body always moved in jerks, or remained in
absolute immobility according to the mood of the moment, and
the head, small, red-haired, when to be red-haired was considered
almost a disgrace, with curiously-slit eyes and pointed ears, had
a brick-hued complexion, which, combined with his love for
gorgeous colour in his dress, gave rise to the saying that
' everything about Chorley was red but his books,' with reference
to the curious want of success of his not uninteresting works.

Perhaps the quaintness with which he loved to clothe his
sentiments was less successful in his writing than in his speech ;
and it says much for the genuine qualities and cleverness of his
talk that he should have held the place he did in society despite
such natural disadvantages. He bore the little rubs which they
unavoidably occasioned with absolute imperturbability. On one
occasion a little child, seeing him for the first time, after a few
minutes' fascinated contemplation, suddenly burst out with
' Why is you so like a monkey ? ' and when its agonised mother
tried to stop the question, turned to her with almost tearful
persistency : ' But, mamma, why is he so like a monkey ? '

His love of colour was, according to Eichard Doyle, the
natural consequence of his coming of a Quaker family; and Doyle
had a story of a brother of Chorley's who caused scandal among
the Society of Friends by wearing a red coat for fox-hunting.
When remonstrated with, he explained that his coat ' was only of
a fiery drab ! ' Chorley continued to wear velvet waistcoats of

A FEW CONVERSATIONALISTS. 541

gorgeous colour in the evening long after they had ceased to be
the fashion, and one night at some great party he was leaning
against-the wall of the staircase in an attitude of immobility,
when some young men began to whisper remarks to each other
on his appearance. His motionless impassiveness led them on,
and when one of them had suggested that ' he must be a
foreigner,' the tongues wagged more freely still. When they
had exhausted their remarks about himself, one cried : ' And just
look at his waistcoat. Was there ever such a waistcoat to be
seen ? ' At this, Chorley slowly detached himself from the wall,
stepped silently forward, and with his usual spasmodic waving of
his hand in front of his face, said in his high thin voice : ' Grentle-
men, say what you please of myself, but pray spare my waistcoat,'
and then returned to his place, while his young critics hastened
from the scene. He used to tell this story himself.

Even when illness and infirmity had clouded his closing years,
there were times when the old wit and eccentric pungent criticism
still flashed out, and made one apprehend something of their
former charm. The honesty and good faith of his most wayward
opinions were always indisputable.

The memory of so many eloquent voices that have passed
into the great silence, and of the kindly hearts which prompted
their best utterances, might lead one on indefinitely to recall the
scattered fragments of their talk, and to forget how hopeless is
the task of reproducing more than the very faintest echo of that
' Concert's music.'

PROVINCIAL LETTERS.

VII. — FROM BATH.

FROM early childhood Bath has been associated with some of my
happiest and some of my most disconcerting experiences. As far
back as I can remember there were buns and there were Bath
buns ; and the aunt who would offer a mere bun took a far lower
place in the hierarchy of relationship than the uncle who ad-
ministered the bun of Bath. Then again, by a trick of memory
for which I can find no sufficient reason, the sole remaining im-
pression of my first pantomime is the entry of Clown pushing
along Pantaloon in a Bath chair (which he soon took occasion to
upset), and shouting, ' Here's a Bath chap going to Bath in a
Bath chair.' It certainly was not the pun that took my fancy,
for I could not have known at that tender age what a Bath chap
was. Probably the dramatic peripeteia was carefully noted for
repetition at home with the perambulator, and the words were
retained as a necessary part of the piece. But, on the other hand,
how disagreeable it was at school to be told to go to Bath. From
the tone in which the words were said, it was certain that nothing
pleasant was meant ; and hence disagreeable associations gradually
superseded the more pleasant ones of earlier childhood. Bath
grew to be another Coventry : a place to which a person of honour
must not be sent ; and although in later years I came to under-
stand the phrase as a polite euphemism for Purgatory — no doubt
suggested by the hot springs — yet in the inscrutable working of
desire, that schoolboy saying has operated to prevent my visiting
Bath, until I am driven there by causes which I will not detail.
But now, having seen Bath, I am overcome with remorse at the
long delay. If only I had years ago taken my playmates at their
word instead of suffering myself to be deterred by their spiteful
tone, how different my life might have been ! Austin became a
saint through paying heed to a chance sentence overheard in a
children's game ; Whittington became Lord Mayor of London
through not despising the suggestion of Bow Bells. If I, in like
manner, had gone to Bath in boyhood, what might I not have
become ?

PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 543

Still, though late, I am here at last ; and already I am become
a devout Bathonian. It so happened that my course from the
railway station lay across Pulteney Bridge to the eastern side of
the town, and at once I acknowledged the superiority of the
architecture to anything I had seen in Bloomsbury. At first it
was Pulteney Street that captured my admiration. The fapades
were magnificent, but saved from being grandiose by the nice-
ness of their proportion and the delicacy of the ornament. Then,
on retracing my steps, I discovered Pulteney Bridge. On first
crossing I had not recognised it for a bridge at all because of the
houses on either side ; but on turning to the left I saw the river,
and, walking along the embankment for a hundred yards and
then turning, I was arrested by the beauty of what revealed itself
as a bridge. I have since learned that the architect was Adam,
and the design is indeed worthy of Paradise. The Pulteney
whose name is thus commemorated was an heiress of the house of
Bath, who, having a property on the east bank of the river,
resolved, like Dido, to build a city there that should preserve her
memory and augment the fortune of her descendants ; and to
that end she had the wisdom to employ the best architects of her
time. She threw this graceful street upon three piers across the
river, and continued it in a succession of palaces to the Sydney
gardens, which were the Vauxhall of Bath. After feasting my
eyes upon the fine proportions of the bridge, and endeavouring to
be blind to the presence of the modern spirit in three disfiguring
advertisements upon it, I turned away and saw upon the right
hand a mammoth building. If the bridge suggested Paradise,
here was undoubtedly the Tower of Babel. What did it mean ?
I searched my guide-book, but its date was 1762, while the
building in question was glistening with newness. I soon dis-
covered it to be an hotel, ' replete with every modern convenience,'
and a little later I discovered from an old print that it had taken
the place of a beautiful old mansion, called popularly the Prince
of Orange House, where a Prince of the House of Nassau was
reputed to have stayed while he took the waters. In memory of
his successful treatment an obelisk was reared in the centre
of what is still called Orange Grrove, though the grove has
vanished. In the print of which I speak, a party of delightful
children are being ferried across from the house to play and drink
tea in the meadows. Will anyone ever cross from the Tower of
Babel for so innocent a diversion ? 0 ! ghost of Frances Pulteney

544 PROVINCIAL LETTERS.

and ghost of Robert Adam, if any rumour of these things touch
your minds among the asphodels, can you not contrive some
significant omen that shall shake the knees of the Mayor and
Corporation and prevent their pursuing so vandal-like a policy of
destruction ? Turn the turtle-soup at their feasts to mock-turtle
before their eyes; send a frenzy of anti-vaccination upon the
Board of Gruardians, and frighten away all the visitors ; cry
' Eevenge ' in a hollow voice whenever a spinster of nervous com-
plexion enters the hotel. It is worth while adventuring some
notable step to persuade the authorities that they are on a wrong
tack. For the beauty of Bath is the beauty of an age when
architects had both taste and science, and nothing that can be
erected to-day is able to compensate for the loss of a single house
of the great period.

The name of the great builder of Bath, as we at present know
that ' pleasurable city,' has yet to be mentioned ; it was John
Wood. There were two John Woods, father and son ; but they
worked together, and the son in many cases finished what the
father planned. The elder Wood came to Bath in 1727 at a
time when the city was rapidly becoming a fashionable watering-
place, under the judicious management of Beau Nash and the
recommendation of Court physicians ; so that no fairer field could
have been open to his talents. The North and South Parades were
the first witnesses to his skill in designing streets which should
be something more than an agglomeration of houses. In contem-
porary prints we see the beaux and nymphs disporting themselves
on the flags and leaning upon the balustrades. Now the flags are
up and the balustrades are down, and a dead level of macadamised
road has turned the parades into commonplace streets. 0 miseras
homvnum mentes I 0 pectora cceca I Here, 0 ! town councillors,
is a riddle for you : When is a parade not a parade ? The answer
is, When it has been so improved that all its beauty is gone, and no
one cares to parade there any longer. Not the least of the beauties
of Bath are the streets and courts which still remain flagged, such
as Duke Street, which unites these two Parades and silently
testifies against the modern spirit that has destroyed them. But
to return to John Wood. His second enterprise was Queen Square,
and beyond that to the north he designed what is known as the
Circus, on the summit of the hill up which Gay Street climbs
from Queen Square. The Circus is an ellipse composed of thirty
houses, of three storeys. The windows are separated by double

PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 545

columns, those on the ground floor being Doric, on the first floor
Ionic, and on the second floor Corinthian, while round the top runs
a balustrade. The effect is singularly rich. John Wood, Junior,
completed the Circus after his father's death, but his own name is
best connected with the two vast crescents which crown the
heights and command the prospect of the city. There is no need
to enumerate here the other masterpieces of these men of worship.
The visitor to Bath has but to look around him, and the stranger
to Bath would gain no pleasure from a bare enumeration. The
two houses, nevertheless, must not be omitted which Wood built
for Ralph Allen, the ' man of Bath.' The one in Prior Park, with
its magnificent Corinthian columns, three feet in diameter, is
visible from the city except in a fog ; but where is the town-
house ? Here is another riddle which I respectfully offer to the
Mayor and Corporation.

So far nothing has been said in my letter about what is the
heart and soul of Bath, namely, its bathing. The story of King
Bladud of Britain, father of the better known King Lear, who
was driven from court for his leprosy, and, after turning swineherd
and infecting his master's pigs, was cured by following their
example and wallowing in the hot marsh, will be found in the
guide-books diversified with many picturesque details. King
Bladud, then, founded Bath ; but the Bath of King Bladud was
assuredly what Plato called ' a city of pigs.' The first city of men
here was built by the Eomans. It is only within the last twenty
years that the inhabitants have become aware to what admirable
use the Romans had put the Bath springs. In the middle of the
eighteenth century the Duke of Kingston, in digging the founda-
tions of a new building, found a Roman bath twenty feet under
ground, which was converted into the present Kingston Bath.
The more recent discoveries are exposed to view, and left in their
original state ; indeed, so keen has become the antiquarian frenzy
that what was long known as the Queen's Bath has been sacrificed
in order to uncover a circular Roman bath that lay beneath it.
As I have hinted above a certain dislike of the modern methods
of the Bath Corporation, it is but justice to give them credit for
their public spirit in laying bare these most interesting relics.
There stands the bath now, as it stood at the date of the Christian
era, in a hall 120 feet long and 70 feet wide. But even here the
fathers of the city have shown how little they are to be trusted
in matters of taste. All round the bath, at a great height, are

VOL. XII. — NO. 70, N.S. 35

546 PROVINCIAL LETTERS.

ranged upon pedestals the statues of distinguished \ Romans, as
though making up their minds to the plunge. Julius Caesar, for
some reason, looks especially reluctant.

The first person of quality of whom we are told as resorting
here for the benefit of the waters was Queen Anne, wife of James I.,
after whom the Queen's Bath was named ; and she was followed by
the consorts of the remaining Stuart kings. The historians of
Bath do not tell us whether the King's Bath was so called after
King Bladud ; but from his statue being erected there the
unlearned visitor is inclined to draw that inference. At any rate
there is no record of any British monarch since Bladud having
patronised the bath, though several have visited the city. The
aspect of the baths in the seventeenth century is admirably given
in a drawing preserved in the British Museum, dated 1675, and
reproduced in Major Davis's book on ' The Mineral Baths of
Bath.' All round the baths is a handsome balustrade upon which
people of fashion are leaning to watch the bathers. In the
Queen's Bath they are so close packed that there is little room for
the water ; but in the King's some persons are floating or
swimming, and boys are taking headers off the balustrade. The
baths are closely hemmed in by houses in which the bathers
lodged ; and most of the windows are occupied by interested
spectators. The scene, in fact, is pretty much what Pepys
described on his visit a few years previously :

June 13th, 1668. — Up at four o'clock, being by appointment called up to the
Cross Bath ; where we were carried after one another, myself and wife and Betty
Turner, Willet, and W. Hewer. And by and by, though we designed to have
done before company come, much company come ; very fine ladies ; and the
manner pretty enough, only methinks it cannot be clean to go so many bodies
together in the same water. Good conversation among them that are acquainted
here and stay together. Strange to see how hot the water is ; and in some places,
though this is the most temperate bath, the springs so hot as the feet not able to
endure. But strange to see, when women and men here, that live all the season
in these waters, cannot but be parboiled and look like the creatures of the bath !
Carried away wrapped in a sheet, and in a chair home ; and there one after
another thus carried (I staying above two hours in the water) home to bed,
sweating for an hour. And by and by comes musick to play to me, extraordinary
good as ever I heard at London almost anywhere : 5*.

15th. — Looked into the baths, and find the King and Queene's full of a mixed
sort of good and bad, and the Cross only almost for the gentry. So home with
my wife, and did pay my guides, two women 5*. ; one man 2s. 6d. ; poor 6d. ;
woman to lay my foot cloth, Is. Before I took coach I went to make a boy dive
in the King's bath, Is.

For the eighteenth century bathing the classical place is a

PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 547

once very popular but now little read poem by Christopher
Anstey, called ' The New Bath Gruide.' Considering its date, it is
singularly free from coarseness, and the rhymes canter along with
a good deal of humour. Its alternative title is ' Memoirs of the
B-r-d Family,' which a London bookseller once explained to me as
' Bernard ' ; but Anstey meant ' Blunderhead.' For a specimen we
may take the passage where Mr. Simkin Blunderhead writes home
to his mother an account of his commencing beau garpon.

So lively, so gay, my deax mother, I'm grown,

I long to do something to make myself known ;

For Persons of Taste and true Spirit, I find,

Are fond of attracting the Eyes of Mankind.

What numbers one sees who for that very reason

Come to make such a figure at Bath every season.

Thank Heaven ! of late, my dear Mother, my Face is

Not a little regarded at all public places ;

For I ride in a Chair with my Hands in a Muff,

And have bought a Silk Coat and embroidered the Cuff ;

And what can a man of true Fashion denote

Like an ell of good Ribbon ty'd under the throat ?

My Buckles and Box are in exquisite taste ;

The one is of Paper, the other of Paste ;

But sure no Camayeu was ever yet seen

Like that which I purchased at Wicksted's Machine :

So I'd have them to know when I go to the Ball,

I shall show as much Taste as the best of them all :

For a Man of great Fastiion was heard to declare

He never beheld so engaging an Air,

And swears all the World must my Judgment confess,

My Solidity, Sense, Understanding in Dress,

My manners so form'd. and my Wig so well curl'd,

I look like a Man of the very first World.

The literary associations of Bath are almost overwhelming.
Everybody who was anybody went to Bath in the eighteenth cen-
tury, and where people of leisure congregate there also will authors
be gathered together. Eoughly, the chief periods of literary
interest in Bath are those of Beau Nash, who, if not literary in
himself, was the cause of literature in others, of Dr. Johnson, of
Miss Austen, and of Dickens. Beau Nash, however, craves a
moment's attention on his own account. A recent authority upon
Bath, Mr. R. E. Peach, in whose ' Historic Houses ' the reader will
find a vast store of amusing information, loses no opportunity of
vilipending Nash, and will have it that his influence upon the
prosperity of Bath has been greatly overrated. But Gold smith's
charming Life was written the year after Nash's death, when the

35—2

548 PROVINCIAL LETTERS.

facts were readily ascertainable and when there was nothing to be
gained by exaggerating his importance. Moreover, the Bath
guide (1762) amply confirms Goldsmith. As this authority is less
easy to consult, and may be reckoned a more unprejudiced witness,
I shall take leave to extract a few sentences :

About the year 1703 the City of Bath became in some Measure frequented by
People of Distinction. The Company was numerous enough to f onn a Country-
Dance upon the Bowling-Green ; they were amused with the Violin and Hautboy,
and diverted with the romantic Walks around the City. Captain Webster was
the Predecessor of Mr. Nash. This Gentleman in the year 1704 carried the Balls
to the Town-Hall, each man paying half-a-guinea a Ball. The Amusements of
the Place were neither elegant, nor conducted with Delicacy. This was the
Situation of Things when Mr. Nash began to preside over the Amusements of the
Place. His first care was to promote a Music Subscription ; the Pump-room was
put under the Oare of a proper Officer ; large Sums were raised for repairing the
Roads about the City ; the Houses and Streets began to improve, and ornaments
were lavished upon them even to profusion.

He was born to govern. His Dominion was not like that of other Legislators
over the servility of the Vulgar, but over the Pride of the Noble and the Opulent.
By the force of Genius he erected the City of BATH into a Province of Pleasure,
and became by universal consent its Legislator and Ruler. He plann'd, improv'd,
and regulated all the Amusements of the Place ; his fundamental Law was that
of Good-Breeding ; hold sacred Decency and Decorum his constant Maxim ; no-
body, however exalted by Beauty, Blood, Titles, or Riches, could be guilty of a
Breach of it unpunished : The Penalty, His Disapprobation and Public Shame.
To maintain the Sovereignty he had established he published Rules of Behaviour,
which (from their Propriety) acquired the force of Laws ; and which the Highest
never infring'd, without immediately undergoing the Public Censure. He kept
the Men in Order ; by wisely prohibiting the wearing Swords in his Dominion :
by which Means he prevented sudden Passion from causing the Bitterness of un-
availing Repentance. He kept the Ladiet in Good Humour and Decorum ; by a
nice observance of the Rules of Place and Precedence ; by ordaining Scandal to
be the infallible Mark of a foolish Head and a malicious Heart ; always render-
ing more suspicious the Reputation of her who propagated it than that of the
Person abused. Of the young, the gay, the heedless Fair, just launching upon
the dangerous Sea of Pleasure, he was ever unsolicited (sometimes unregarded)
the kind Protector ; humanely correcting even the Mistakes in Dress, as well as
Improprieties in Conduct. Nay, often warning them, tho' at the Hazard of his
Life, against the artful snares of designing men. Thus did he establish his
Government on Pillars of Honour and Politeness, which could never be shaken.
And maintained it for full half a century with Reputation, Honour, and undis-
puted Authority, beloved, respected, and revered.

Goldsmith's Life contains many anecdotes which illustrate the
portrait here drawn, and show Nash to have been an ideal master
of ceremonies, not to be disobeyed by Princesses of the blood, or
brow-beaten by duchesses, or bullied by rakes, and always good-
natured. It is not affirmed that he was either a wise or a religious
man ; in an attempt to interfere with John Wesley he came badly

PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 549

off l ; and it is not denied that he depended for a living upon the
profits of the card-tables.

The literary world of Bath at this period found its Maecenas
in a very remarkable man, Ralph Allen, the son of a small Cornish
innkeeper, who as a postmaster of Bath devised and farmed a
system of cross-country posts by which he made an income of
12,0001. a year, which he spent generously. He owned also the
quarries from which the stone came for the improvements of Bath.
He is admitted to be the Squire Allworthy of ' Tom Jones ' ; and
Fielding dedicated to him his ' Amelia.' Pope made Allen's
acquaintance in 1736 and put him into his ' Satires of Horace ' :

Let low-born Allen, with an awkward shame,
Do good by stealth and blush to find it fame ;

subsequently amending the epithet to ' humble ' ; not, it is said, by
request. Of course, Pope quarrelled with him, but a quarrel with
Allen could not last long. Unfortunately, while it lasted Pope made
his will, by which he bequeathed to Allen 1501., ' being to the best
of my calculation the amount of what I have received from him,
partly for my own and partly for charitable uses.' Upon which
Allen is said to have remarked with a smile that Pope had for-
gotten the final ' 0.' While Pope was staying at Prior Park he
summoned Warburton to his side to aid in the annotation of his
' Moral Essays,' and this was the foundation of that divine's fortune.
For Allen induced Pitt to make him Bishop of Gloucester, and
he married Allen's favourite niece, and succeeded to Prior Park.
Allen died in 1764, so that Dr. Johnson, whose first visit to Bath was
in 1776, did not meet him. A link between the two eras is found
in the person of Richard Graves, the rector of Claverton, near
Bath, who was a literary person of enormous output, but is now
chiefly remembered as the friend and correspondent of Shenstone,
and the author of ' The Spiritual Quixote,' a skit upon Methodism.
He was a constant visitor at Prior Park, and numbered among his

1 Wesley's Journal, June 5, 1739 : ' There was great expectation at Bath of
what a noted man was to do to me there ; and I was much entreated not to
preach, because no one knew what might happen. . . . Many of them were
sinking apace into seriousness when their champion appeared, and, coming close
to me, asked by what authority I did these things. ..." Your preaching
frightens people out of their wits." " Sir, did you ever hear me preach ? "
" No." " How then can you judge of what you never heard ? " " Sir, by common
report." "Common report is not enough. Give me leave, sir, to ask: Is not
your name Nash ? " " My name is Nash." " Sir, I dare not judge of you by
common report." '

550 PROVINCIAL LETTERS.

many pupils the sons of both Allen and Warburton. On account
of the distance of Claverton from Bath, he was allowed the
privilege of dining in boots ; and, being an absent-minded person,
is reported on more than one occasion to have left the dining-
room with his napkin caught upon his spurs. I have, I confess,
a tenderness for Mr. Graves on more accounts than one. A print
after his picture by Gainsborough, himself a noted resident, hangs
among my worthies, and shews the high forehead and refined
features of the scholar and gentleman that he was, while his eye
and mouth testify to his kindly humour. His verses are no longer
read, being amateurish at best ; but one piece I know too well, as
it was the occasion of the first copy of Latin verses I ever per-
petrated. ' Again the balmy zephyr blows,' sang the poet ; ' lam
iterum Zephyrus,' began my version ; and my teacher was not
pleased. For the rest there are occasional verses on Bath and his
Bath acquaintance, interesting to those who know the set he lived
in, but caviare to the general reader. There are lines to Bull,
the bookseller, where the wits assembled, chief among them
Harington, the doctor and musician, who wrote Beau Nash's
epitaph l ; lines to Mr. W[alker] on his Roman medals ; to Mrs.
M[iller] on her bouts-rim&s at Bath-easton ; to Mrs. B[amfylde],
on her exquisite needlework ; to Mrs. W[arburto]n, as Venus ; to
Mrs. C. Macauly, on her scheme for popular government, not so
trenchant as Dr. Johnson's invitation to her to summon her foot-
man to join the party at dinner ; to Molly at Nando' s ; to ,

Esq., the quack doctor ; to the Bishop of Cloyne on his tar-water ;
to Mr. Gainsborough, equally excellent in landskip and portraits ;
and to many fair ladies half-revealed and half-concealed by initials
and asterisks.

Of Mrs., better known as Lady, Miller a word must be said.
Her husband, afterwards created a baronet, had purchased in Italy

1 Adeste 0 cives, adeste Lugentes 1
Hie silent Leges

RICARBI NASH, Armig.

Nihil amplius imperantis ;

Qui diu et utilissime

Assumptus Bathonise

Elegantise Arbiter

Eheu!

Morti (ultimo designator!)

Hand indecore succubuit

Ann. Dom. MDCCLXI, JStat. suse LXXXVII.

PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 551

an antique vase, and this being set up in the garden, it was the
fashion for the company at fortnightly parties to place therein
poetical effusions upon a suggested subject, or bouts-rimte, which
were then read in public and judged by a committee, the victor
being crowned with myrtle by her ladyship. Miss Burney tells us
in her diary that, although Bath-easton was laughed at in London,
nothing was more tonish at Bath than to visit Lady Miller. She
goes on to describe her with feminine unkindness as ' a round,
plump, coarse-looking dame of about forty' [in 1780], whose aim
was to appear an elegant woman of fashion, ' but all her success is
to seem an ordinary woman in very common life with fine clothes
on.' Perhaps, by the side of this description, it may be wise to
set Mr. Graves' poetical tribute and then strike a balance :

Myra, by ev'ry art refin'd,

That Science can dispense ;
Genius with various Learning join'd ;

Politeness with good sense.

What Dr. Johnson thought of these Olympic contests and
the share taken in them by her Grace of Northumberland, Boswell
has told us. ' Sir, I wonder how people were persuaded to write
in that manner for this lady. Sir, the Duchess of Northum-
berland may do what she pleases ; nobody will say anything to
a lady of her high rank. But I should be apt to throw . . . .'s
verses in his face.' This was in 1775; Horace Walpole in the
same year devotes a few biting sentences to Mrs. Calliope Miller
and the flux of quality at her Parnassus Fair. Of Johnson him-
self at Bath there is nothing especial to relate, but his friend
Mrs. Thrale was a personage there, and after her first husband's
death and her marriage with Piozzi lived there permanently. We
are allowed to see her attending the ministrations of the Rev. Dr.
Randolph, at Laura Chapel, where she occupied a ' recess ' — i.e. a
furnished apartment with fireplace, armchairs, and everything
handsome about her. One characteristic story is told of Gold-
smith at Bath, that while a visitor at Lord Clare's in the North
Parade he inadvertently entered the house of the Duke ot
Northumberland, who lived next door, and did not find his mistake
till the supposed guest whom he discovered in the room invited
him to stay breakfast.

It would be a labour of love to chronicle all the streets and
houses in Bath immortalised by the characters in Miss Austen's
novels ; for I agree with Miss Mitford that her ' celebrities ' are

552 PROVINCIAL LETTERS.

more real than those who actually lived. I visited all the historic
sites with emotion, 'and was seized with an impulse to reside myself
for the rest of my natural life at 4 Sydney Place, which happened to
be to let. But the task I speak of has been quite recently performed
by a more elegant pen than mine in Miss Constance Hill's admir-
able book, to which I refer the interested reader. Instead let
me spend a few moments in the Abbey Church. As a church it
has certain peculiarities which I prefer to describe in the phrases
of my guide-book. ' This church may be justly called the lanthorn
of England, for its lightsomeness, stateliness, and elegance of struc-
ture, and is reckoned by all Judges who have seen it, to yield the
curious Stranger as much Speculation as perhaps can be met with
in any Parochial Church of the same Standing in the World.' The
Abbey Church, that is to say, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, will not
compete with ' an old ' church ; for it is late perpendicular Grothic
of the most debased kind, and is undoubtedly the parent of both
Fonthill and Strawberry Hill. The walls are lined with eighteenth-
century monuments, and these yield the curious stranger a vast
amount of speculation. Here are to be found Grarrick's celebrated
lines on Quin, to whom many pages are devoted in any book of
Bath anecdotes ; here are Harington's lines on Beau Nash, already
quoted ; a long Latin epitaph on Dr. Harington himself, a longer
one still on Dr. Oliver, the father of the inventor of the biscuit ;
and there are innumerable other doctors immortalised among the
spinsters, relicts, and major-generals whose bathing they super-
intended ; but I found two small tablets which gave me peculiar
pleasure — one was to the memory of Mrs. Rebecca Cowper, widow
of the late Rev. Dr. John Cowper, rector of Great Berkhamsted in
Hertfordshire ; the other belonged to a certain Edward Jesup,
Esq., who amid columns of panegyric all about him is described
simply as ' a man of strict honour and probity.'

P.S. — I remarked in the Pump-room a ticket on an antique
' incised inscription/ that would have delighted Dickens. It was
as follows : ' Read by Prof. Sayce as a record of the cure of a
Roman lady by the Bath waters, attested by three witnesses ; read
by Prof. Zangermeister as a curse on a man for stealing a table-
cloth.'

URBANUS SYLVAN.

553

THE FOUR FEATHERS.1
BY A. E. W. MASON.

CHAPTER X.

THE WELLS OF OBAK.

IN that month of May Durrance lifted his eyes from Wadi Haifa
and began eagerly to look homewards. But in the contrary
direction, five hundred miles to the south of his frontier town, on
the other side of the great Nubian desert and the Belly of Stones,
the events of real importance to him were occurring without his
knowledge. On the deserted track between Berber and Suakin
the wells of Obak are sunk deep amongst mounds of shifting sand.
Eastwards a belt of trees divides the dunes from a hard stony
plain built upon with granite hills ; westwards the desert stretches
for fifty-eight waterless miles to Mahobey and Berber on the Nile,
a desert so flat that the merest tuft of grass knee-high seems at
the distance of a mile a tree promising shade for a noonday halt,
and a pile of stones no bigger than one might see by the side of
any roadway in repair achieves the stature of a considerable hill.
In this particular May there could be no spot more desolate
than the wells of Obak. The sun blazed upon it from six in the
morning with an intolerable heat, and all night the wind blew
across it piercingly cold, and played with the sand as it would,
building pyramids house-high and levelling them, tunnelling
valleys, silting up long slopes, so that the face of the country
was continually changed. The vultures and the sand-grouse held
it undisturbed in a perpetual tenancy. And to make the spot
yet more desolate there remained scattered here and there the
bleached bones and skeletons of camels to bear evidence that
about these wells once the caravans had crossed and halted ; and
the remnants of a house built of branches bent in hoops showed
that once Arabs had herded their goats and made their habitation
there. Now the sun rose and set and the hot sky pressed upon
an empty round of honey-coloured earth. Silence brooded there

1 Copyright, 1903, by A. E. W. Mason in the United States of America.

554 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

like night upon the waters ; and the absolute stillness made it a
place of mystery and expectation.

Yet in this month of May one man sojourned by the wells
and sojourned secretly. Every morning at sunrise he drove two
camels, swift riding mares of the pure Bisharin breed, from the
belt of trees, watered them, and sat by the well-mouth for the
space of three hours. Then he drove them back again into the
shelter of the trees, and fed them delicately with dhoura upon a
cloth ; and for the rest of the day he appeared no more. For five
mornings he thus came from his hiding-place and sat looking
towards the sand-dunes and Berber, and no one approached him.
But on the sixth, and as he was on the point of returning to his
shelter, he saw the figure of a man and a donkey suddenly out-
lined against the sky upon a crest of the sand. The Arab seated
by the well looked first at the donkey, and, remarking its grey
colour, half rose to his feet. But as he rose he looked at the man
who drove it, and saw that -while his jellab was drawn forward
over his face to protect it from the sun, his bare legs showed
of an ebony blackness against the sand. The donkey driver was
a negro. The Arab sat down again and waited with an air of the
most complete indifference for the stranger to descend to him.
He did not even move or turn when he heard the negro's feet
treading the sand close behind him.

' Salam aleikum,' said the negro as he stopped. He carried a
long spear and a short one, and a shield of hide. These he laid
upon the ground and sat by the Arab's side.

The Arab bowed his head and returned the salutation.

' Aleikum es salam,' said he, and he waited.

' It is Abou Fatma ? ' asked the negro.

The Arab nodded an assent.

' Two days ago,' the other continued, ' a man of the Bisharin,
Moussa Fedil, stopped me in the market-place of Berber, and
seeing that I was hungry gave me food. And when I had eaten
he charged me to drive this donkey to Abou Fatma at the wells
of Obak.'

Abou Fatma looked carelessly at the donkey as though now
for the first time be had remarked it.

' Tayeeb/ he said no less carelessly. ' The donkey is mine,'
and he sat inattentive and motionless as though the negro's
business were done and he might go.

The negro, however, held his ground.

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 555

' I am to meet Moussa Fedil again on the third morning from
now, in the market-place of Berber. Give me a token which I
may carry back, so that he may know I have fulfilled the charge
and reward me.'

Abou Fatma took his knife from the small of his back,
and picking up a stick from the ground, notched it thrice at
each end.

' This shall be a sign to Moussa Fedil ; ' and he handed the
stick to his companion. The negro tied it securely into a corner
of his wrap, loosed his water-skin from the donkey's back, filled
it at the well and slung it about his shoulders. Then he picked
up his spears and his shield. Abou Fatma watched him labour
up the slope of loose sand and disappear again on the further
incline of the crest. Then in his turn he rose and hastily. When
Harry Feversham had set out from Obak six days before to
traverse the fifty-eight miles of barren desert to the Nile, this
grey donkey had carried his water-skins and food.

Abou Fatma drove the donkey down amongst the trees, and
fastening it to a stem examined its shoulders. In the left shoulder
a tiny incision had been made and the skin neatly stitched up
again with fine thread. He cut the stitches, and pressing open
the two edges of the wound, forced out a tiny package little bigger
than a postage stamp. The package was a goat's bladder, and
enclosed within the bladder a note written in Arabic and folded
very small. Abou Fatma had not been Gordon's body servant for
nothing ; he had been taught during his service to read. He un-
folded the note, and this is what was written :

' The houses which were once Berber are destroyed and a new
town of wide streets is building. There is no longer any sign by
which I may know the ruins of Yusef 's house from the ruins of a
hundred houses ; nor does Yusef any longer sell rock-salt in the
bazaar. Yet wait for me another week.'

The Arab of the Bisharin who wrote the letter was Harry
Feversham. Wearing the patched jubbeh of the Dervishes over his
stained skin, his hair frizzed on the crown of his head and falling
upon the nape of his neck in locks matted and gummed into the
semblance of seaweed, he went about his search for Yusef through
the wide streets of New Berber with its gaping pits. To the
south, and separated by a mile or so of desert, lay the old town
where Abou Fatma had slept one night and hidden the letters,
a warren of ruined houses facing upon narrow alleys and winding

556 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

streets. The front walls had all been pulled down, the roofs
carried away, only the bare inner walls were left standing, so that
Feversham when he wandered amongst them vainly at night
seemed to have come into long lanes of fives courts, crumbling
into decay. And each court was only distinguishable from its
neighbour by a degree of ruin. Already the foxes made their
burrows beneath the walls.

He had calculated that one night would have been the term
of his stay in Berber. He was to have crept through the gate
in the dusk of the evening, and before the grey light had
quenched the stars his face should be set towards Obak. Now
he must go steadily forward amongst the crowds like a man that
has business of moment, dreading conversation lest his tongue
should betray him, listening ever for the name of Yusef to strike
upon his ears. Despair kept him company at times, and fear
always. But from the sharp pangs of these emotions a sort of
madness was begotten in him, a frenzy of obstinacy, a belief
fanatical as the dark religion of those amongst whom he moved,
that he could not now fail and the world go on, that there could
be no injustice in the whole scheme of the universe great enough
to lay this heavy burden upon the one man least fitted to bear it
and then callously to destroy him because he tried.

Fear had him in its grip on that morning three days after he
had left Abou Fatma at the wells, when coming over a slope he
first saw the sand stretched like a lagoon up to the dark brown
walls of the town, and the overshadowing foliage of the big date
palms rising on the Nile bank beyond. Within those walls were
the crowded Dervishes. It was surely the merest madness for a
man to imagine that he could escape detection there, even for an
hour. Was it right, he began to ask, that a man should even
try ? The longer he stood the more insistent did this question
grow. The low mud walls grew strangly sinister ; the welcome
green of the waving palms, after so many arid days of sun and
sand and stones, became an ironical invitation to death. He
began to wonder whether he had not already done enough for
honour in venturing so near.

The sun beat upon him; his strength ebbed from him as
though his veins were opened. If he were caught, he thought, as
surely he would be — oh, very surely ! He saw the fanatical faces
crowding fiercely about him . . . were not mutilations practised ?
. . . He looked about him, shivering even in that strong heat, and

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 557

the great loneliness of the place smote upon him, so that his
knees shook. He faced about and commenced to run, leaping in
a panic alone and unpursued across the naked desert under the
sun, while from his throat feeble cries broke inarticulately.

He ran, however, only for a few yards, and it was the very
violence of his flight which stopped him. These four years of
anticipation were as nothing then ? He had schooled himself in
the tongue, he had lived in the bazaars to no end ? He was still
the craven who had sent in his papers. The quiet confidence
with which he had revealed his plan to Lieutenant Sutch over
the table in the Criterion Grrill Room was the mere vainglory
of a man who continually deceived himself. And Ethne ? . . .

He dropped upon the ground, and drawing his coat over his
head lay, a brown spot indistinguishable from the sand about
him, an irregularity in the great waste surface of earth. He shut
the prospect from his eyes, and over the thousands of miles of
continent and sea he drew Ethne's face towards him. A little
while and he was back again in Donegal. The summer night
whispered through the open doorway in the hall ; in a room near
by people danced to music. He saw the three feathers fluttering
to the floor ; he read the growing trouble in Ethne's face. If he
could do this thing, and the still harder thing which now he
knew to lie beyond, he might perhaps some day see that face
cleared of its trouble. There were significant words too in his
ears : ' I should have no doubt that you and I would see much
of one another afterwards.' Towards the setting of the sun he
rose from the ground, and walking down towards Berber, passed
between the gates.

CHAPTER XI.

DURRANCE HEARS NEWS OF FEVERSHAM.

A MONTH later Durrance arrived in London and discovered a letter
from Ethne awaiting him at his club. It told him simply that
she was staying with Mrs. Adair, and would be glad if he would
find the time to call, but there was a black border to the paper
and the envelope. Durrance called at Hill Street the next after-
noon and found Ethne alone.

' I did not write to Wadi Haifa,' she explained at once, ' for I

558 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

thought that you would be on your way home before my letter
could arrive. My father died towards the end of May.'

' I was afraid when I got your letter that you would have
this to tell me,' he replied. ' I am very sorry. You will miss
him.'

' More than I can say,' said she with a quiet depth of feeling.
' He died one morning early — I think I will tell you if you
would care to hear,' and she related to him the manner of
Dermod's death, of which a chill was the occasion rather than the
cause ; for he died of a gradual dissolution rather than a definite
disease.

It was a curious story which Ethne had to tell, for it seemed
that just before his death Dermod recaptured something of his
old masterful spirit. ' We knew that he was dying,' Ethne said.

' He knew it too, and at seven o'clock of the afternoon after '

she hesitated for a moment and resumed : ' after he had spoken for
a little while to me, he called his dog by name. The dog sprang
at once on to the bed, though his voice had not risen above a
whisper, and crouching quite close, pushed its muzzle with a
whine under my father's hand. Then he told me to leave him
and the dog altogether alone. I was to shut the door upon him.
The dog would tell me when to open it again. I obeyed him and
waited outside the door until one o'clock. Then a loud sudden
howl moaned through the house.' She stopped for a while. This
pause was the only sign of distress which she gave, and in a few
moments she went on, speaking quite simply without any of the
affectations of grief. ' It was trying to wait outside that door
while the afternoon faded and the night came. It was night, of
course, long before the end. He would have no lamp left in his
room. One imagined him just the other side of that thin door-
panel, lying very still and silent in the great four-poster bed with
his face towards the hills, and the light falling. One imagined
the room slipping away into darkness, and the windows con-
tinually looming into a greater importance, and the dog by his
side and no one else right to the very end. He would have it
that way, but it was rather hard for me.'

Durrance said nothing in reply, but gave her in full measure
what she most needed, the sympathy of his silence. He imagined
those hours in the passage, six hours of twilight and darkness ; he
could picture her standing close by the door, with her ear perhaps
to the panel, and her hand upon her heart to check its loud beat-

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 559

ing. There was something rather cruel he thought in Dermod's
resolve to die alone. It was Ethne who broke the silence.

' I said that my father spoke to me just before he told me
to leave him. Of whom do you think 'he spoke ? '

She was looking directly at Durrance as she put the question.
From neither her eyes nor the level tone of her voice could he
gather anything of the answer, but a sudden throb of hope caught
away his breath.

' Tell me ! ' he said in a sort of suspense as he leaned forward
in his chair.

' Of Mr. Feversham,' she answered, and he drew back again,
and rather suddenly. It was evident that this was not the
name which he had expected. He took his eyes from hers and
stared downwards at the carpet, so that she might not see his
face.

' My father was always very fond of him,' she continued
gently, ' and I think that I would like to know if you have any
knowledge of what he is doing or where he is.'

Durrance did not answer nor did he raise his face. He
reflected upon the strange strong hold which Harry Feversham
kept upon the affections of those who had once known him well ;
so that even the man whom he had wronged, and upon whose
daughter he had brought much suffering, must remember him
with kindliness upon his death-bed. The reflection was not with-
out its bitterness to Durrance at this moment, and this bitterness
he was afraid that his face and voice might both betray. But
he was compelled to speak, for Ethne insisted.

' You have never come across him, I suppose ? ' she asked.

Durrance rose from his seat and walked to the window before
he answered. He spoke looking out into the street, but though
he thus concealed the expression of his face, a thrill of deep
anger sounded through his words, in spite of his efforts to subdue
his tones.

' No,' he said, ' I never have,' and suddenly his anger had its
way with him ; it chose as well as informed his words. ' And
I never wish to,' he cried. ' He was my friend, I know. But I
cannot remember that friendship now. I can only think that if
he had been the true man we took him for, you would not have
waited alone in that dark passage during those six hours.' He
turned again to the centre of the room and asked abruptly :
' You are going back to Grlenalla ? '

560 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

'Yes.'

' You will live there alone ? '

' Yes.'

For a little while there was silence between them. Then
Durrance walked round to the back of her chair.

'You once said that you would perhaps tell me why your
engagement was broken off.'

' But you know,' she said. ' What you said at the window
showed that you knew.'

' No, I do not. One or two words your father let drop. He
asked me for news of Feversham the last time that I spoke with
him. But I know nothing definite. I should like you to tell me.'

Ethne shook her head and leaned forward with her elbows on
her knees. ' Not now,' she said, and silence again followed her
words. Durrance broke it again.

' I have only one more year at Haifa. It would be wise to
leave Egypt then, I think. I do not expect much will be done
in the Soudan for some little while. I do not think that I will
stay there — in any case, I mean, even if you should decide to
remain alone at Grlenalla.'

Ethne made no pretence to ignore the suggestion of his words.
' We are neither of us children,' she said ; ' you have all your life
to think of. We should be prudent.'

' Yes,' said Durrance with a sudden exasperation, ' but the
right kind of prudence. The prudence which knows that it's
worth while to dare a good deal.'

Ethne did not move. She was leaning forward with her back
towards him, so that he could see nothing of her face, and for a
long while she remained in this attitude quite silent and very
still. She asked a question at the last, and in a very low and
gentle voice.

' Do you want me so very much ? ' And before he could answer
she turned quickly towards him. 'Try not to,' she exclaimed
earnestly. 'For this one year try not to. You have much to
occupy your thoughts. Try to forget me altogether ' ; and there
was just sufficient regret in her tone, the regret at tha prospect
of losing a valued friend, to take all the sting from her words, to
confirm Durrance in his delusion that but for her fear that she
would spoil his career, she would answer him in very different
words. Mrs. Adair came into the room before he could reply,
and thus he carried away with him his delusion.

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 561

He dined that evening at his club, and sat afterwards smoking
his cigar under the big tree where he had sat so persistently a
year before in his vain quest for news of Harry Feversham. It
was much the same sort of clear night as that on which he had
seen Lieutenant Sutch limp into the courtyard and hesitate at
the sight of him. The strip of sky was cloudless and starry
overhead ; the air had the pleasant languor of a summer night in
June ; the lights flashing from the windows and doorways gave
to the leaves of the trees the fresh green look of spring; and
outside in the roadway the carriages rolled with a thunderous
hum like the sound of the sea. And on this night, too, there
came a man into the courtyard who knew Durrance. But he did
not hesitate. He came straight up to Durrance and sat down
upon the seat at his side. Durrance dropped the paper at which
he was glancing and held out his hand.

' How do you do ? ' said he. This friend was Captain Mather.

' I was wondering whether I should meet you when I read
the evening paper. I knew that it was about the time one might
expect to find you in London. You have seen, I suppose ? '

' What ? ' asked Durrance.

' Then you haven't,' replied Mather. He picked up the news-
paper which Durrance had dropped and turned over the sheets,
searching for the piece of news which he required. ' You
remember that last reconnaissance we made from Suakin ? '

' Very well.'

'We halted by the Sinkat fort at mid-day. There was an
Arab hiding in the trees at the back of the glacis.'

'Yes.'

' Have you forgotten the yarn he told you ? '

'About Gordon's letters and the wall of a house in Berber.
No, I have not forgotten.'

' Then here's something which will interest you,' and Captain
Mather, having folded the paper to his satisfaction, handed it to
Durrance and pointed to a paragraph. It was a short paragraph ;
it gave no details; it was the merest summary, and Durrance
read it through between the puffs of his cigar.

' The fellow must have gone back to Berber after all,' said he.
' A risky business. Abou Fatma — that was the man's name.'

The paragraph made no mention of Abou Fatma, or indeed
of any man except Captain Willoughby, the Deputy-Orovernor of
Suakin. It merely announced that certain letters which the

VOL. XII. — NO. 70, N.S. 36

562 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

Mahdi had sent to Gordon summoning him to surrender Khartum,
and inviting him to become a convert to the Mahdist religion,
together with copies of Gordon's curt replies, had been recovered
from a wall in Berber and brought safely to Captain Willoughby
at Suakin.

' They were hardly worth risking a life for,' said Mather.

' Perhaps not,' replied Durrance a little doubtfully. ' But
after all, one is glad they have been recovered. Perhaps the
copies are in Gordon's own hand. They are, at all events, of an
historic interest.'

' In a way, no doubt,' said Mather. ' But even so, their
recovery throws no light upon the history of the siege. It can
make no real difference to anyone, not even to the historian.'

' That is true,' Durrance agreed, and there was nothing more
untrue. In the same spot where he had sought for news of
Feversham news had now come to him — only he did not know.
He was in the dark ; he could not appreciate that here was news
which, however little it might trouble the historian, touched his
life at the springs. He dismissed the paragraph from his mind,
and sat thinking over the conversation which had passed that
afternoon between Ethne and himself, and without discourage-
ment. Ethne had mentioned Harry Feversham, it was true —
had asked for news of him. But she might have been — nay, she
probably had been — moved to ask because her father's last words
had referred to him. She had spoken his name in a perfectly
steady voice, he remembered ; and, indeed, the mere fact that
she had spoken it at all might be taken as a sign that it had no
longer any power with her. There was something hopeful to his
mind in her very request that he should try during this one year
to omit her from his thoughts. For it seemed almost to imply
that if he could not, she might at the end of it, perhaps, give to
him the answer for which he longed. He allowed a few days to
pass, and then called again at Mrs. Adair's house. But he found
only Mrs. Adair. Ethne had left London and returned to Donegal.
She had left rather suddenly, Mrs. Adair told him, and Mrs.
Adair had no sure knowledge of the reason of her going.

Durrance, however, had no doubt as to the reason. Ethne
was putting into practice the policy which she had commended
to his thoughts. He was to try to forget her, and she would help
him to success so far as she could by her absence from his sight.
And in attributing this reason to her Durrance was right. But

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 568

one thing Etbne had forgotten. She had not asked him to cease
to write to her, and accordingly in the autumn of that year the
letters began again to come from the Soudan. She was frankly
glad to receive them, but at the same time she was troubled.
For in spite of their careful reticence, every now and then a
phrase leaped out — it might be merely the repetition of some
trivial sentence which she had spoken long ago and long ago
forgotten — and she could not but see that in spite of her prayer
she lived perpetually in his thoughts. There was a strain of
hopefulness too as though he moved in a world painted with new
colours and suddenly grown musical. Ethne had never freed
herself from the haunting fear that one man's life had been spoilt
because of her ; she had never faltered from her determination
that this should not happen with a second. Only with Durrance's
letters before her she could not evade a new and perplexing
question. By what means was that possibility to be avoided ?
There were two ways. By choosing which of them could she
fulfil her determination ? She was no longer so sure as she had
been the year before. The question recurred to her again and
again. She took it out with her on the hill-side with the letters,
and pondered and puzzled over it and got never an inch nearer
to a solution. Even her violin failed her in this strait.

CHAPTER XII.

DURRANCE SHARPENS HIS WITS.

IT was a night of May, and outside the mess-room at Wadi Haifa
three officers were smoking on a grass knoll above the Nile. The
moon was at its full and the strong light had robbed even the
planets of their lustre. The smaller stars were not visible at
all, and the sky, washed of its dark colour, curved overhead,
pearly-hued and luminous. The three officers sat in their lounge
chairs and smoked silently, while the bull-frogs croaked from an
island in mid-river. At the bottom of the small steep cliff on
which they sat the Nile, so sluggish was its flow, shone like a
burnished mirror, and from the opposite bank the desert stretched
away to infinite distances, a vast plain with scattered hummocks,
a plain white as a hoar frost on the surface of which the stones
sparkled like jewels. Behind the three officers of the garrison

36—2

564 THE FOUR FEATHERS

the roof of the mess-room verandah threw a shadow on the ground ;
it seemed a solid piece of blackness.

One of the three officers struck a match and held it to the
end of his cigar. The flame lit up a troubled and anxious
face.

' I hope that no harm has come to him,' he said as he threw
the match away. ' I wish that I could say I believed it.'

"The speaker was a man of middle age and the colonel of a
Soudanese battalion. He was answered by a man whose hair had
gone grey, it is true. But grey hair is frequent in the Soudan,
and his unlined face still showed that he was young. He was
Lieutenant Calder of the Engineers. Youth, however, in this
instance had no optimism wherewith to challenge Colonel Dawson.

' He left Haifa eight weeks ago, eh ? ' he said gloomily.

' Eight weeks to-day,' replied the Colonel.

It was the third officer, a tall, spare, long-necked major of the
Army Service Corps, who alone hazarded a cheerful prophecy.

' It's early days to conclude Durrance has got scuppered,'
said he. ' One knows Durrance. Give him a camp fire in the
desert, and a couple of sheiks to sit round it with him, and he'll
buck to them for a month and never feel bored at the end.
While here there are letters, and there's an office, and there's a
desk in the office and everything he loathes and can't do with.
You'll see Durrance will turn up right enough, though he won't
hurry about it.'

' He is three weeks overdue,' objected the Colonel, ' and he's
methodical after a fashion. I am afraid/

Major Walters pointed out his arm to the white empty desert
across the river.

' If he had travelled that way, westwards, I might agree,' he
said. ' But Durrance went east through the mountain country
towards Berenice and the Eed Sea. The tribes-he went to visit
were quiet even in the worst times when Osman Dignailay before
Suakin.'

The Colonel, however, took no comfort from % Walters' con-
fidence. He tugged at his moustache and repeated ' He is three
weeks overdue.'

Lieutenant Calder knocked the ashes from his pipe and re-
filled it. He leaned forward in his chair as he pressed [the tobacco
down with his thumb, and he said slowly :

' I wonder. It is just possible that some sort of trap was laid

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 565

for Durrance. I am not sure. I never mentioned before what
I knew, because until lately I did not suspect that it could have
anything to do with his delay. But now I begin to wonder.
You remember the night before he started ? '

' Yes,' said Dawson, and he hitched his chair a little nearer.
Calder was the one man in Wadi Haifa who could claim some-
thing like intimacy with Durrance. Despite their difference in
rank there was no great disparity in age between the two men,
and from the first when Calder had come inexperienced and fresh
from England, but with a great ardour to acquire a comprehensive
experience, Durrance in his reticent way had been at pains to
show the newcomer considerable friendship. Calder therefore
might be likely to know.

' I, too, remember that night,' said Walters. ' Durrance dined
at the mess and went away early to prepare for his journey.'

' His preparations were made already,' said Calder. ' He went
away early as you say. But he did not go to his quarters. He
walked along the river bank to Tewfikieh.'

Wadi Haifa was the military station, Tewfikieh a little frontier
town to the north separated from Haifa by a mile of river-bank.
A few Greeks kept stores there, a few bare and dirty cafes faced
the street between native cook-shops and tobacconists ; a noisy
little town where the negro from the Dinka country jostled the
fellah from the Delta and the air was torn with many dialects ; a
thronged little town which yet lacked to European ears one
distinctive element of a throng. There was no ring of footsteps.
The crowd walked on sand and for the most part with naked feet,
so that if for a rare moment the sharp high cries and the per-
petual voices ceased, the figures of men and women flitted by
noiseless as ghosts. And even at night, when the streets were
most crowded and the uproar loudest, it seemed that underneath
the noise, and almost appreciable to the ear, there lay a deep and
brooding silence, the silence of deserts and the East.

' Durrance went down to Tewfikieh at ten o'clock that night,'
said Calder. ' I went to his quarters at eleven. He had not
returned. He was starting eastwards at four in the morning, and
there was some detail of business on which I wished to speak to
him before he went. So I waited for his return. He came in
about a quarter of an hour afterwards and told me at once that
I must be quick since he was expecting a visitor. He spoke
quickly and rather restlessly. He seemed to be labouring under

566 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

some excitement. He barely listened to what I had to say, and
he answered me at random. It was quite evident that he was
moved, and rather deeply moved, by some unusual feeling, though
at the nature of the feeling I could not guess. For at one
moment it seemed certainly to be anger, and the next moment he
relaxed into a laugh, as though in spite of himself he was glad.
However, he bundled me out, and as I went I heard him telling
his servant to go to bed, because, though he expected a visitor, he
would admit the visitor himself.'

' Well ! ' said Dawson, ' and who was the visitor ? '

' I do not know,' answered Calder. ' The one thing I do
know is that when Durrance's servant went to call him at four
o'clock for his journey, he found Durrance still sitting on the
verandah outside his quarters, as though he still expected his
visitor. The visitor had not come.'

' And Durrance left no message ? '

' No. I was up myself before he started. I thought that he
was puzzled and worried. I thought, too, that he meant to tell
me what was the matter. I still think that he had that in his
mind, but that he could not decide. For even after he had taken
his seat upon his saddle and his camel had risen from the ground,
he turned and looked down towards me. But he thought better
of it, or worse, as the case may be. At all events, he did not
speak. He struck the camel on the flank with his stick, and
rode slowly past the post-office and out into the desert, with his
head sunk upon his breast. I wonder whether he rode into a
trap. Who could this visitor have been whom he meets in the
street of Tewfikieh, and who must come so secretly to Wadi
Haifa ? What can have been his business with Durrance ?
Important business, troublesome business — so much is evident.
And he did not come to transact it. Was the whole thing a lure
to which we have not the clue ? Like Colonel Dawson, I am
afraid.'

There was a silence after he had finished, which Major Walters
was the first to break. He offered no argument — he simply
expressed again his unalterable cheerfulness.

' I don't think Durrance has got scuppered,' said he as he rose
from his chair.

' I know what I shall do,' said the Colonel. ' I shall send out
a strong search party in the morning.'

And the next morning, as they sat at breakfast on the verandah,

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 567

he at once proceeded to describe the force which he meant to
despatch. Major Walters, too, it seemed, in spite of his hopeful
prophecies, had pondered during the night over Calder's story,
and he leaned across the table to Calder.

' Did you never inquire whom Durrance talked with at Tewfikieh
on that night ? ' he asked.

' I did, and there's a point that puzzles me,' said Calder. He
was sitting with his back to the Nile and his face towards the
glass doors of the mess-room, and he spoke to Walters, who was
directly opposite. ' I could not find that he talked to more than
one person, and that one person could not by any likelihood have
been the visitor he expected. Durrance stopped in front of a
cafe where some strolling musicians, who had somehow wandered
up to Tewfikieh, were playing and singing for their night's
lodging. One of them, a Greek, I was told, came outside into the
street and took his hat round. Durrance threw a sovereign into
the hat, the man turned to thank him, and they talked for a
little time together ' : — and as he came to this point he raised
his head. A look of recognition came into his face. He laid his
hands upon the table-edge, and leaned forward with his feet
drawn back beneath his chair as though he was on the point of
springing up. But he did not spring up. His look of recognition
became one of bewilderment. He glanced round the table and
saw that Colonel Dawson was helping himself to cocoa, while
Major Walters' eyes were on his plate. There were other officers
of the garrison present, but not one had remarked his move-
ment and its sudden arrest. Calder leaned back, and staring
curiously in front of him and over the Major's shoulder, continued
his story. ' But I could never hear that Durrance spoke to anyone
else. He seemed, except that one knows to the contrary, merely
to have strolled through the village and back again to Wadi
Haifa.

' That doesn't help us much,' said the Major.

' And it's all you know ? ' asked the Colonel.

'No, not quite all,' returned Calder slowly; 'I know, for
instance, that the man we are talking about is staring me straight
in the face.'

At once everybody at the table turned towards the mess-room.

' Durrance ! ' cried the Colonel, springing up.

' When did you get back ? ' said the Major.

Durrance, with the dust of his journey still powdered upon

568 THE FOUR FEATHERS

his clothes, and a face burnt to the colour of red brick, was
standing in the doorway, and listening with a remarkable intent-
ness to the voices of his fellow-officers. It was perhaps noticeable
that Calder, who was Durrance's friend, neither rose from his
chair nor offered any greeting. He still sat watching Durrance ;
he still remained curious and perplexed ; but as Durrance de-
scended the three steps into the verandah there came a quick
and troubled look of comprehension into his face.

' We expected you three weeks ago,' said Dawson, as he pulled
a chair away from an empty place at the table.

' The delay could not be helped,' replied Durrance. He took
the chair and drew it up.

' Does my story account for it ? ' asked Calder.

' Not a bit. It was the Greek musician I expected that night,'
he explained with a laugh. ' I was curious to know what stroke
of ill-luck had cast him out to play the zither for a night's
lodging in a cafe at Tewfikieh. That was all,' and he added
slowly in a softer voice, ' Yes, that was all.'

' Meanwhile you are forgetting your breakfast,' said Dawson
as he rose. ' What will you have ? '

Calder leaned ever so slightly forward with his eyes quietly
resting on Durrance. Durrance looked round the table, and then
called the mess-waiter. ' Moussa, get me something cold,' said
he, and the waiter went back into the mess-room. Calder nodded
his head with a faint smile, as though he understood that here
was a difficulty rather cleverly surmounted.

' There's tea, cocoa, and coffee,' he said. ' Help yourself,
Durrance.'

' Thanks,' said Durrance. ' I see, but I will get Moussa to
bring me a brandy-and-soda, I think,' and again Calder nodded
his head.

Durrance eat his breakfast and drank his brandy-and-soda,
and talked the while of his journey. He had travelled further
eastwards than he had intended. He had found the Ababdeh
Arabs quiet amongst their mountains. If they were not disposed
to acknowledge allegiance to Egypt, on the other hand, they paid
no tribute to Mahommed Achmet. The weather had been good,
ibex and antelope plentiful. Durrance on the whole had reason
to be content with his journey. And Calder sat and watched
him, and disbelieved every word that was said. The other officers
went about their duties; Calder remained behind, and waited

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 569

until Durrance should finish. But it seemed that Durrance never
would finish. He loitered over his breakfast, and when that
was done he pushed his plate away and sat talking. There was
no end to his questions as to what had passed at Wadi Haifa
during the last eight weeks, no limit to his enthusiasm over the
journey from which he had just returned. Finally, however, he
stopped with a remarkable abruptness, and said with some
suspicion to his companion :

' You are taking life easily this morning.'

' I have not eight weeks' arrears of letters to clear off, as you
have, Colonel,' Calder returned with a laugh ; and he saw
Durrance's face cloud and his forehead contract.

' True,' he said, after a pause. ' I had forgotten my letters.'
And he rose from his seat at the table, mounted the steps, and
passed into the mess-room.

Calder immediately sprang up, and with his eyes followed
Durrance's movements. Durrance went to a nail which was fixed
in the wall close to the glass doors and on a level with his head.
From that nail he took down the key of his office, crossed the
room, and went out through the further door. That door he left
open, and Calder could see him walk down the path between
the bushes through the tiny garden in front of the mess, unlatch
the gates, and cross the open space of sand towards his office. As
soon as Durrance had disappeared Calder sat down again, and,
resting his elbows on the table, propped his face between his
hands. Calder was troubled. He was a friend of Durrance's ; he
was the one man in Wadi Haifa who possessed something of
Durrance's confidence ; he knew that there were certain letters
in a woman's handwriting waiting for him in his office. He was
very deeply troubled. Durrance had aged during these eight
weeks. There were furrows about his mouth where only faint
lines had been visible when he had started out from Haifa ; and
it was not merely desert dust which had discoloured his hair.
His hilarity, too, had an artificial air. He had sat at the table
constraining himself to the semblance of high spirits. Calder lit
his pipe, and sat for a long while by the empty table.

Then he took his helmet and crossed the sand to Durrance's
office. He lifted the latch noiselessly ; as noiselessly he opened
the door, and he looked in. Durrance was sitting at his desk
with his head bowed upon his arms and all his letters unopened
at his side. Calder stepped into the room and closed the door

570 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

loudly behind him. At once Durrance turned his face to the
door.

' Well ? ' said he.

' I have a paper, Colonel, which requires your signature,' said
Calder. ' It's the authority for the alterations in C barracks.
You remember ? '

'Very well. I will look through it and return it to you,
signed, at lunch-time. Will you give it to me, please ? '

He held out his hand towards Calder. Calder took his pipe
from his mouth, and, standing thus in full view of Durrance,
slowly and deliberately placed it into Durrance's outstretched
palm. It was not until the hot bowl burnt his hand that
Durrance snatched his arm away. The pipe fell and broke upon
the floor. Neither of the two men spoke for a few moments, and
then Calder put his arm round Durrance's shoulders, and asked in
a voice gentle as a woman's :

' How did it happen ? '

Durrance buried his face in his hands. The great control
which he had exercised till now he was no longer able to sustain.
He did not answer, nor did he utter any sound, but he sat
shivering from head to foot.

' How did it happen ? ' Calder asked again, and in a whisper.

Durrance put another question :

' How did you find out ? '

'You stood in the mess-room doorway listening to discover
whose voice spoke from where. When I raised my head and saw
you, though your eyes rested on my face there was no recognition
in them. I suspected then. When you came down the steps
into the verandah I became almost certain. When you would not
help yourself to food, when you reached out your arm over your
shoulder so that Moussa had to put the brandy-and-soda safely
into your palm, I was sure.'

' I was a fool to try and hide it,' said Durrance. ' Of course
I knew all the time that I couldn't for more than a few hours.
But even those few hours somehow seemed a gain.'

' How did it happen ? '

' There was a high wind,' Durrance explained. ' It took my
helmet off. It was eight o'clock in the morning. I did not mean
to move my camp that day, and I was standing outside my tent
in my shirt-sleeves. So you see that I had not even the collar of
a coat to protect the nape of my neck. I was fool enough to run

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 571

after my helmet ; and — you must have seen the same thing
happen a hundred times — each time that I stooped to pick it up
it skipped away ; each time that I ran after it, it stopped and
waited for me to catch it up. And before one is aware what one
is doing one has run a quarter of a mile. I went down, I was
told, like a log just when I had it in my hand. How long ago it
happened I don't quite know, for I was ill for a time, and after-
wards it was difficult to keep count, since one couldn't tell the
difference between day and night.'

Durrance, in a word, had gone blind. He told the rest of his
story. He had bidden his followers carry him back to Berber,
and then, influenced by the natural wish to hide his calamity as
long as he could, he had enjoined upon them silence. Calder
heard the story through to the end, and then rose at once to his
feet.

' There's a doctor. He is clever, and, for a Syrian, knows a
good deal. I will fetch him here privately, and we will hear what
he says. Your blindness may be merely temporary.'

The Syrian doctor, however, pursed up his lips and shook his
head. He advised an immediate departure to Cairo. It was a
case for a specialist. He himself would hesitate to pronounce an
opinion, though, to be sure, there was always hope of a cure.

( Have you ever suffered an injury in the head ? ' he asked.
' Were you ever thrown from your horse ? Were you wounded ? '

' No,' said Durrance.

The Syrian did not disguise his conviction that the case was
grave ; and after he had departed both men were silent for some
time. Calder had a feeling that any attempt at consolation
would be futile in itself, and might, moreover, in betraying his
own fear that the hurt was irreparable, only discourage his
companion. He turned to the pile of letters and looked them
through.

' There are two letters here, Durrance,' he said gently, ' which
you might perhaps care to hear. They are written in a woman's
hand, and there is an Irish postmark. Shall I open them ? '

' No,' exclaimed Durrance suddenly ; and his hand dropped
quickly upon Calder's arm. ' By no means.'

Calder, however, did not put down the letters. He was
anxious, for private reasons of his own, to learn something more
of Ethne Eustace than the outside of her letters could reveal.
A few rare references made in unusual moments of confidence by

572 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

Durrance had only informed Calder of her name, and assured him
that his friend would be very glad to change it if he could. He
looked at Durrance — a man so trained to vigour and activity that
his very sunburn seemed an essential quality rather than an
accident of the country in which he lived ; a man, too, who came
to the wild, uncitied places of the world with the joy of one who
comes into an inheritance ; a man to whom these desolate tracts
were home, and the fireside and the hedged fields and made roads
merely the other places ; and he understood the magnitude of the
calamity which had befallen him. Therefore he was most anxious
to know more of this girl who wrote to Durrance from Donegal,
and to gather from her letters, as from a mirror in which her
image was reflected, some speculation as to her character. For
if she failed, what had this friend of his any longer left ?

' You would like to hear them, I expect,' he insisted. ' You
have been away eight weeks.' And he was interrupted by a harsh
laugh.

' Do you know what I was thinking when I stopped you ? '
said Durrance. ' Why, that I would read the letters after you
had gone. It takes time to get used to being blind after your
eyes have served you pretty well all your life.' And his voice
shook ever so little. ' You will have to answer them, Calder, for
me. So read them. Please read them.'

Calder tore open the envelopes and read the letters through
and was satisfied. They gave a record of the simple doings of her
mountain village in Donegal, and in the simplest terms. But the
girl's nature shone out in the telling. Her love of the countryside
and of the people who dwelt there was manifest. She could see
the humour and the tragedy of the small village troubles. There
was a warm friendliness for Durrance moreover expressed, not so
much in a sentence as in the whole spirit of the letters. It was
evident that she was most keenly interested in all that he did,
that, in a way, she looked upon his career as a thing in which she
had a share, even if it was only a friend's share. And when
Calder had ended he looked again at Durrance, but now with a
face of relief. It seemed, too, that Durrance was relieved.

' After all, one has something to be thankful for,' he cried.
' Think ! Suppose that I had been engaged to her ? She would
never have allowed me to break it off, once I had gone blind.
What an escape ! '

' An escape ? ' exclaimed Calder.

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 573

' You don't understand. But I knew a man who went blind,
a good fellow, too, before — mind that, before ! But a year after !
You couldn't have recognised him. He had narrowed down into
the most selfish, exacting, egotistical creature it is possible to
imagine. I don't wonder, I hardly see how he could help it,
I don't blame him. But it wouldn't make life easier for a wife,
would it ? A helpless husband who can't cross a road without his
wife at his elbow is bad enough. But make him a selfish beast
into the bargain, full of questions, jealous of her power to go where
she will, curious as to every person with whom she speaks — and
what then ? My God, I am glad that girl refused me. For that
I am most grateful.'

' She refused you ? ' asked Calder, and the relief passed from
his face and voice.

' Twice,' said Durrance. ' What an escape ! You see, Calder,
I shall be more trouble even than the man I told you of. I am
not clever. I can't sit in a chair and amuse myself by thinking,
not having any intellect to buck about. I have lived out of doors
and hard, and that's the only sort of life that suits me. I tell you,
Calder, you won't be very anxious for much of my society ifi a
year's time,' and he laughed again and with the same harshness.

' Oh, stop that,' said Calder ; ' I will read the rest of your letters
to you.'

He read them, however, without much attention to their
contents. His mind was occupied with the two letters from
Ethne Eustace, and he was wondering whether there was any
deeper emotion than mere friendship hidden beneath the words.
Girls refused men for all sorts of queer reasons which had no
sense in them, and very often they were sick and sorry about it
afterwards ; and very often they meant to accept the men all the
time.

' I must answer the letters from Ireland,' said Durrance, when
he had finished. ' The rest can wait.'

Calder held a sheet of paper upon the desk and told Durrance
when he was writing on a slant and when he was writing on the
blotting-pad ; and in this way Durrance wrote to tell Ethne that
a sunstroke had deprived him of his sight. Calder took that letter
away. But he took it to the hospital and asked for the Syrian
doctor. The doctor came out to him, and they walked together
under the trees in front of the building.

1 Tell me the truth,' said Calder.

574

THE FOUR FEATHERS.

The doctor blinked behind his spectacles.

' The optic nerve is, I think, destroyed,' he replied.

' Then there is no hope ? '

' None, if my diagnosis is correct.'

Calder turned the letter over and over, as though he could not
make up his mind what in the world to do with it.

' Can a sunstroke destroy the optic nerve ? ' he asked at
length.

' A mere sunstroke ? No,' replied the doctor. ' But it may be
the occasion. For the cause one must look deeper.'

Calder came to a stop, and there was a look of horror' in his
eyes. ' You mean — one must look to the brain? '

< Yes.'

They walked on for a few paces. A further question was in
Calder's mind, but he had some difficulty in speaking it, and
when he had spoken he waited for the answer in suspense.

' Then this calamity is not all. There will be more to follow

— death or ' but that other alternative he could not bring

himself to utter. Here, however, the doctor was able to reassure
him.

' No. That does not follow.'

Calder went back to the mess-room and called for a brandy-
and-soda. He was more disturbed by the blow which had fallen
upon Durrance than he would have cared to own ; and he put the
letter upon the table and thought of the message of renunciation
which it contained, and he could hardly restrain his fingers from
tearing it across. It must be sent, he knew, its destruction would
be of no more than a temporary avail. Yet he could hardly bring
himself to post it. With the passage of every minute he realised
more clearly what blindness meant to Durrance. A man not very
clever, as he himself was ever the first to acknowledge, and always
the inheritor of the other places — how much more it meant to him
than to the ordinary run of men ! Would the girl, he wondered,
understand as clearly ? It was very silent that morning on the
verandah at Wadi Haifa ; the sunlight blazed upon desert and
river; not a breath of wind stirred the foliage of any bush.
Calder drank his brandy-and-soda and slowly that question forced
itself more and more into the front of his mind. Would the
woman over in Ireland understand ? He rose from his chair as
he heard Colonel Dawson's voice in the mess-room, and taking up
his letter walked away to the post-office. Durrance's letter was

THE FOUR FEATHERS. 575

despatched, but somewhere in the Mediterranean it crossed a letter
from Ethne, which Durrance received a fortnight later at Cairo.
It was read out to him by Calder, who had obtained leave to come
down from Wadi Haifa with his friend. Ethne wrote that she
had, during the last months, considered all that he had said when
at Glenalla and in London ; she had read, too, his letters and
understood that in his thoughts of her there had been no change,
and that there would be none ; she therefore went back upon her
old argument that she would by marriage be doing him an injury,
and she would marry him upon his return to England.

' That's rough luck, isn't it ? ' said Durrance, when Calder had
read the letter through. ' For here's the one thing I have
always wished for, and it comes when I can no longer take it.'

' I think you will find it very difficult to refuse to take it,'
said Calder. ' I do not know Miss Eustace, but I can hazard a
guess from the letters of hers which I have read to you. I do not
think that she is a woman who will say " yes " one day, and then
because bad times come to you, say " no " the next, or allow you
to say " no "for her either. I have a sort of notion that since she
cares for you and you for her, you are doing little less than
insulting her if you imagine that she cannot marry you and still
be happy.'

Durrance thought over that aspect of the question, and began
to wonder. Calder might be right. Marriage with a blind man !
It might, perhaps, be possible if upon both sides there was love,
and the letter from Ethne proved — did it not ? — that on both
sides there was love. Besides there were some trivial compensa-
tions which might help to make her sacrifice less burdensome.
She could still live in her own country and move in her own
home. For the Lennon house could be rebuilt and the estates
cleared of their debt.

' Besides,' said Calder, ' there is always a possibility of a
cure.'

' There is no such possibility,' said Durrance with a decision
which quite startled his companion. ' You know that as well as
I do,' and he added with a laugh, ' you needn't start so guiltily.
I haven't overheard a word of any of your conversations about me.'

' Then what in the world makes you think that there's no
chance ? '

' The voice of every doctor who has encouraged me to hope.
Their words — yes — their words tell me to visit specialists in

576 THE FOUR FEATHERS.

Europe, and not lose heart, but their voices give the lie to their
words. If one cannot see, one can at all events hear.'

Calder looked thoughtfully at his friend. This was not the
only occasion on which of late Durrance had surprised his friends
by a certain unfamiliar acuteness. Calder glanced uncomfortably
at the letter which he was still holding in his hand.

' When was that letter written ? ' said Durrance suddenly, and
immediately upon the question he asked another. ' What makes
you jump ? '

Calder laughed and explained hastily. ' Why, I was looking
at the letter at the moment when you asked, and your question
came so pat that I could hardly believe you did not see what
I was doing. It was written on the fifteenth of May.'

' Ah,' said Durrance, ' the day I returned to Wadi Haifa blind.'

Calder sat in his chair without a movement. He gazed
anxiously at his companion, it seemed almost as though he was
afraid ; his attitude was one of suspense.

' That's a queer coincidence,' said Durrance with a careless
laugh ; and Calder had an intuition that he was listening with the
utmost intentness for some movement on his own part, perhaps,
a relaxation of his attitude, perhaps, perhaps a breath of relief.
Calder did not move, however ; and he drew no breath of relief.

(To be continued.)

AP The Cornhill magazine

C76

v.85
no. 1-4,

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

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