“WITH THE BOUND OF A TIGER HOLMES WAS ON HIS BACK.”

(See page 492.)

The Strand Magazine.

Vol. xxvii. MAY, 1904. No. 161.

THE RETURN OF
SHERLOCK HOLMES.

By A. CONAN DOYLE.

Copyright, 1904, by A. Conan Doyle, in the United States of America.

VIII.—The Adventure of the Six Napoleons.

T was no very unusual thing
for Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland
Yard, to look in upon us of an
evening, and his visits were
welcome to Sherlock Holmes,
for they enabled him to keep
in touch with all that was going on at the
police head-quarters. In return for the news
which Lestrade would bring, Holmes was
always ready to listen with attention to the
details of any case upon which the detective
was engaged, and was able occasionally,
without any active interference, to give some
hint or suggestion drawn from his own vast
knowledge and experience.

On this particular evening Lestrade had
spoken of the weather and the newspapers.
Then he had fallen silent, puffing thoughtfully
at his cigar. Holmes looked keenly at
him.

“Anything remarkable on hand?” he
asked.

“Oh, no, Mr. Holmes, nothing very particular.”

“Then tell me about it.”

Lestrade laughed.

“Well, Mr. Holmes, there is no use denying
that there is something on my mind.
And yet it is such an absurd business that I
hesitated to bother you about it. On the
other hand, although it is trivial, it is undoubtedly
queer, and I know that you have
a taste for all that is out of the common.
But in my opinion it comes more in Dr.
Watson’s line than ours.”

“Disease?” said I.

“Madness, anyhow. And a queer madness
too! You wouldn’t think there was
anyone living at this time of day who had
such a hatred of Napoleon the First that he
would break any image of him that he
could see.”

Holmes sank back in his chair.

“That’s no business of mine,” said he.

“Exactly. That’s what I said. But then,
when the man commits burglary in order to
break images which are not his own, that
brings it away from the doctor and on to the
policeman.”

Holmes sat up again.

“Burglary! This is more interesting.
Let me hear the details.”

Lestrade took out his official note-book
and refreshed his memory from its pages.

“LESTRADE TOOK OUT HIS OFFICIAL NOTE-BOOK.”

“The first case reported was four days
ago,” said he. “It was at the shop of Morse
Hudson, who has a place for the sale of
pictures and statues in the Kennington Road.
The assistant had left the front shop for an
instant when he heard a crash, and hurrying
in he found a plaster bust of Napoleon,
which stood with several other works of art
upon the counter, lying shivered into fragments.
He rushed out into the road, but,
although several passers-by declared that
they had noticed a man run out of the shop,
he could neither see anyone nor could he
find any means of identifying the rascal. It
seemed to be one of those senseless acts of
Hooliganism which occur from time to time,
and it was reported to the constable on the
beat as such. The plaster cast was not
worth more than a few shillings, and the
whole affair appeared to be too childish for
any particular investigation.

“The second case, however, was more
[pg 484]
serious and also more singular. It occurred
only last night.

“In Kennington Road, and within a few
hundred yards of Morse Hudson’s shop,
there lives a well-known medical practitioner,
named Dr. Barnicot, who has one of the
largest practices upon the south side of the
Thames. His residence and principal consulting-room
is at Kennington Road, but he
has a branch surgery and dispensary at
Lower Brixton Road, two miles away. This
Dr. Barnicot is an enthusiastic admirer of
Napoleon, and his house is full of books,
pictures, and relics of the French Emperor.
Some little time ago he purchased from
Morse Hudson two duplicate plaster casts of
the famous head of Napoleon by the French
sculptor, Devine. One of these he placed in
his hall in the house at Kennington Road,
and the other on the mantelpiece of the
surgery at Lower Brixton. Well, when
Dr. Barnicot came down this morning he was
astonished to find that his house had been
burgled during the night, but that nothing
had been taken save the plaster head from
the hall. It had been carried out and had
been dashed savagely against the garden
wall, under which its splintered fragments
were discovered.”

Holmes rubbed his hands.

“This is certainly very novel,” said
he.

“I thought it would please you. But I
have not got to the end yet. Dr. Barnicot
was due at his surgery at twelve o’clock, and
you can imagine his amazement when, on
arriving there, he found that the window had
been opened in the night, and that the
broken pieces of his second bust were strewn
all over the room. It had been smashed to
atoms where it stood. In neither case were
there any signs which could give us a clue as
to the criminal or lunatic who had done the
mischief. Now, Mr. Holmes, you have got
the facts.”

“They are singular, not to say grotesque,”
said Holmes. “May I ask whether the two
busts smashed in Dr. Barnicot’s rooms were
[pg 485]
the exact duplicates of the one which was
destroyed in Morse Hudson’s shop?”

“They were taken from the same mould.”

“Such a fact must tell against the theory
that the man who breaks them is influenced
by any general hatred of Napoleon. Considering
how many hundreds of statues of
the great Emperor must exist in London, it is
too much to suppose such a coincidence as
that a promiscuous iconoclast should chance
to begin upon three specimens of the same
bust.”

“Well, I thought as you do,” said Lestrade.
“On the other hand, this Morse Hudson is
the purveyor of busts in that part of London,
and these three were the only ones which had
been in his shop for years. So, although, as
you say, there are many hundreds of statues
in London, it is very probable that these
three were the only ones in that district.
Therefore, a local fanatic would begin with
them. What do you think, Dr. Watson?”

“There are no limits to the possibilities of
monomania,” I answered. “There is the
condition which the modern French psychologists
have called the ‘idée fixe,’ which may
be trifling in character, and accompanied by
complete sanity in every other way. A man
who had read deeply about Napoleon, or who
had possibly received some hereditary family
injury through the great war, might conceivably
form such an ‘idée fixe’ and under
its influence be capable of any fantastic
outrage.”

“That won’t do, my dear Watson,” said
Holmes, shaking his head; “for no amount
of ‘idée fixe’ would enable your interesting
monomaniac to find out where these busts
were situated.”

“Well, how do you explain it?”

“I don’t attempt to do so. I would only
observe that there is a certain method in the
gentleman’s eccentric proceedings. For example,
in Dr. Barnicot’s hall, where a sound
might arouse the family, the bust was taken
outside before being broken, whereas in the
surgery, where there was less danger of an
alarm, it was smashed where it stood. The
affair seems absurdly trifling, and yet I dare
call nothing trivial when I reflect that some
of my most classic cases have had the least
promising commencement. You will remember,
Watson, how the dreadful business
of the Abernetty family was first brought to
my notice by the depth which the parsley
had sunk into the butter upon a hot day. I
can’t afford, therefore, to smile at your three
broken busts, Lestrade, and I shall be very
much obliged to you if you will let me hear
of any fresh developments of so singular a
chain of events.”

The development for which my friend had
asked came in a quicker and an infinitely
more tragic form than he could have imagined.
I was still dressing in my bedroom next
morning when there was a tap at the door
and Holmes entered, a telegram in his hand.
He read it aloud:—

“Come instantly, 131, Pitt Street, Kensington.—Lestrade.”

“What is it, then?” I asked.

“Don’t know—may be anything. But I
suspect it is the sequel of the story of the
statues. In that case our friend, the image-breaker,
has begun operations in another
quarter of London. There’s coffee on the
table, Watson, and I have a cab at the
door.”

In half an hour we had reached Pitt Street,
a quiet little backwater just beside one of
the briskest currents of London life. No. 131
was one of a row, all flat-chested, respectable,
and most unromantic dwellings. As we
drove up we found the railings in front of
the house lined by a curious crowd. Holmes
whistled.

“By George! it’s attempted murder at
the least. Nothing less will hold the London
message-boy. There’s a deed of violence
indicated in that fellow’s round shoulders
and outstretched neck. What’s this, Watson?
The top steps swilled down and the other
ones dry. Footsteps enough, anyhow! Well,
well, there’s Lestrade at the front window,
and we shall soon know all about it.”

The official received us with a very grave
face and showed us into a sitting-room, where
an exceedingly unkempt and agitated elderly
man, clad in a flannel dressing-gown, was
pacing up and down. He was introduced to
us as the owner of the house—Mr. Horace
Harker, of the Central Press Syndicate.

“HE WAS INTRODUCED TO US AS THE OWNER OF THE HOUSE—MR. HORACE HARKER.”

“It’s the Napoleon bust business again,”
said Lestrade. “You seemed interested last
night, Mr. Holmes, so I thought perhaps
you would be glad to be present now that the
affair has taken a very much graver turn.”

“What has it turned to, then?”

“To murder. Mr. Harker, will you tell
these gentlemen exactly what has occurred?”

The man in the dressing-gown turned upon
us with a most melancholy face.

“It’s an extraordinary thing,” said he,
“that all my life I have been collecting other
people’s news, and now that a real piece of
news has come my own way I am so confused
and bothered that I can’t put two
[pg 486]
words together. If I had come in here as a
journalist I should have interviewed myself
and had two columns in every evening paper.
As it is I am giving away valuable copy by
telling my story over and over to a string of
different people, and I can make no use of it
myself. However, I’ve heard your name,
Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and if you’ll only
explain this queer business I shall be paid for
my trouble in telling you the story.”

Holmes sat down and listened.

“It all seems to centre round that bust of
Napoleon which I bought for this very room
about four months ago. I picked it up cheap
from Harding Brothers, two doors from the
High Street Station. A great deal of my
journalistic work is done at night, and I often
write until the early morning. So it was to-day.
I was sitting in my den, which is at the
back of the top of the house, about three
o’clock, when I was convinced that I heard
some sounds downstairs. I listened, but they
were not repeated, and I concluded that they
came from outside. Then suddenly, about
five minutes later, there came a most horrible
yell—the most dreadful sound, Mr. Holmes,
that ever I heard. It will ring in my ears
as long as I live. I sat frozen with horror for
a minute or two. Then I seized the poker
and went downstairs. When I entered this
room I found the window wide open, and I
at once observed that the bust was gone from
the mantelpiece. Why any burglar should
take such a thing passes my understanding,
for it was only a plaster cast and of no real
value whatever.

“You can see for yourself that anyone
going out through that open window could
reach the front doorstep by taking a long
stride. This was clearly what the burglar
had done, so I went round and opened the
door. Stepping out into the dark I nearly
fell over a dead man who was lying there. I
ran back for a light, and there was the poor
fellow, a great gash in his throat and the
whole place swimming in blood. He lay on
[pg 487]
his back, his knees drawn up, and his mouth
horribly open. I shall see him in my dreams.
I had just time to blow on my police-whistle,
and then I must have fainted, for I knew
nothing more until I found the policeman
standing over me in the hall.”

“Well, who was the murdered man?”
asked Holmes.

“There’s nothing to show who he was,”
said Lestrade. “You shall see the body at
the mortuary, but we have made nothing of
it up to now. He is a tall man, sunburned,
very powerful, not more than thirty. He is
poorly dressed, and yet does not appear to
be a labourer. A horn-handled clasp knife
was lying in a pool of blood beside him.
Whether it was the weapon which did the
deed, or whether it belonged to the dead
man, I do not know. There was no name
on his clothing, and nothing in his pockets
save an apple, some string, a shilling map of
London, and a photograph. Here it is.”

It was evidently taken by a snap-shot from
a small camera. It represented an alert,
sharp-featured simian man with thick eyebrows,
and a very peculiar projection of the
lower part of the face like the muzzle of a
baboon.

“And what became of the bust?” asked
Holmes, after a careful study of this picture.

“We had news of it just before you came.
It has been found in the front garden of an
empty house in Campden House Road. It
was broken into fragments. I am going
round now to see it. Will you come?”

“Certainly. I must just take one look
round.” He examined the carpet and the
window. “The fellow had either very long
legs or was a most active man,” said he.
“With an area beneath, it was no mean feat
to reach that window-ledge and open that
window. Getting back was comparatively
simple. Are you coming with us to see the
remains of your bust, Mr. Harker?”

The disconsolate journalist had seated
himself at a writing-table.

“I must try and make something of it,”
said he, “though I have no doubt that the
first editions of the evening papers are out
already with full details. It’s like my luck!
You remember when the stand fell at
Doncaster? Well, I was the only journalist
in the stand, and my journal the only one
that had no account of it, for I was too
shaken to write it. And now I’ll be too late
with a murder done on my own doorstep.”

As we left the room we heard his pen
travelling shrilly over the foolscap.

The spot where the fragments of the bust
had been found was only a few hundred
yards away. For the first time our eyes
rested upon this presentment of the great
Emperor, which seemed to raise such frantic
and destructive hatred in the mind of the
unknown. It lay scattered in splintered
shards upon the grass. Holmes picked up
several of them and examined them carefully.
I was convinced from his intent face
and his purposeful manner that at last he
was upon a clue.

“Well?” asked Lestrade.

Holmes shrugged his shoulders.

“We have a long way to go yet,” said he.
“And yet—and yet—well, we have some
suggestive facts to act upon. The possession
of this trifling bust was worth more in the
eyes of this strange criminal than a human
life. That is one point. Then there is the
singular fact that he did not break it in the
house, or immediately outside the house, if
to break it was his sole object.”

“He was rattled and bustled by meeting
this other fellow. He hardly knew what he
was doing.”

“Well, that’s likely enough. But I wish
to call your attention very particularly to the
position of this house in the garden of which
the bust was destroyed.”

Lestrade looked about him.

“It was an empty house, and so he knew
that he would not be disturbed in the
garden.”

“Yes, but there is another empty house
farther up the street which he must have
passed before he came to this one. Why
did he not break it there, since it is evident
that every yard that he carried it increased
the risk of someone meeting him?”

“I give it up,” said Lestrade.

Holmes pointed to the street lamp above
our heads.

“HOLMES POINTED TO THE STREET LAMP ABOVE OUR HEADS.”

“He could see what he was doing here and
he could not there. That was his reason.”

“By Jove! that’s true,” said the detective.
“Now that I come to think of it, Dr.
Barnicot’s bust was broken not far from his
red lamp. Well, Mr. Holmes, what are we
to do with that fact?”

“To remember it—to docket it. We may
come on something later which will bear
upon it. What steps do you propose to take
now, Lestrade?”

“The most practical way of getting at it,
in my opinion, is to identify the dead man.
There should be no difficulty about that.
When we have found who he is and who his
associates are, we should have a good start
in learning what he was doing in Pitt Street
[pg 488]
last night, and who it was who met him and
killed him on the doorstep of Mr. Horace
Harker. Don’t you think so?”

“No doubt; and yet it is not quite the
way in which I should approach the case.”

“What would you do, then?”

“Oh, you must not let me influence you
in any way! I suggest that you go on your
line and I on mine. We can compare notes
afterwards, and each will supplement the
other.”

“Very good,” said Lestrade.

“If you are going back to Pitt Street you
might see Mr. Horace Harker. Tell him
from me that I have quite made up my
mind, and that it is certain that a dangerous
homicidal lunatic with Napoleonic delusions
was in his house last night. It will be useful
for his article.”

Lestrade stared.

“You don’t seriously believe
that?”

Holmes smiled.

“Don’t I? Well, perhaps
I don’t. But I am sure that
it will interest Mr. Horace
Harker and the subscribers of
the Central Press Syndicate.
Now, Watson, I think that we
shall find that we have a long
and rather complex day’s work
before us. I should be glad,
Lestrade, if you could make it
convenient to meet us at Baker
Street at six o’clock this evening.
Until then I should like to keep
this photograph found in the
dead man’s pocket. It is possible
that I may have to ask
your company and assistance
upon a small expedition which
will have to be undertaken to-night,
if my chain of reasoning
should prove to be correct.
Until then, good-bye and good
luck!”

Sherlock Holmes and I
walked together to the High
Street, where he stopped at the
shop of Harding Brothers,
whence the bust had been
purchased. A young assistant
informed us that Mr. Harding
would be absent until after noon,
and that he was himself a newcomer
who could give us no
information. Holmes’s face
showed his disappointment and
annoyance.

“Well, well, we can’t expect to have it all
our own way, Watson,” he said, at last.
“We must come back in the afternoon if
Mr. Harding will not be here until then. I
am, as you have no doubt surmised, endeavouring
to trace these busts to their
source, in order to find if there is not something
peculiar which may account for their
remarkable fate. Let us make for Mr. Morse
Hudson, of the Kennington Road, and see
if he can throw any light upon the problem.”

A drive of an hour brought us to the
picture-dealer’s establishment. He was a
small, stout man with a red face and a
peppery manner.

“Yes, sir. On my very counter, sir,” said
he. “What we pay rates and taxes for I
don’t know, when any ruffian can come in
and break one’s goods. Yes, sir, it was I
[pg 489]
who sold Dr. Barnicot his two statues. Disgraceful,
sir! A Nihilist plot, that’s what I
make it. No one but an Anarchist would
go about breaking statues. Red republicans,
that’s what I call ’em. Who did I get the
statues from? I don’t see what that has to
do with it. Well, if you really want to know,
I got them from Gelder and Co., in Church
Street, Stepney. They are a well-known
house in the trade, and have been this
twenty years. How many had I? Three—two
and one are three—two of Dr. Barnicot’s
and one smashed in broad daylight on my
own counter. Do I know that photograph?
No, I don’t. Yes, I do, though. Why, it’s
Beppo. He was a kind of Italian piece-work
man, who made himself useful in the shop.
He could carve a bit and gild and frame,
and do odd jobs. The fellow left me last
week, and I’ve heard nothing of him since.
No, I don’t know where he came from nor
where he went to. I have nothing against
him while he was here. He was gone two
days before the bust was smashed.”

“Well, that’s all we could reasonably
expect to get from Morse Hudson,” said
Holmes, as we emerged from the shop. “We
have this Beppo as a common factor, both in
Kennington and in Kensington, so that is
worth a ten-mile drive. Now, Watson, let us
make for Gelder and Co., of Stepney, the
source and origin of busts. I shall be surprised
if we don’t get some help down there.”

In rapid succession we passed through the
fringe of fashionable London, hotel London,
theatrical London, literary London, commercial
London, and, finally, maritime
London, till we came to a riverside city of a
hundred thousand souls, where the tenement
houses swelter and reek with the outcasts of
Europe. Here, in a broad thoroughfare,
once the abode of wealthy City merchants, we
found the sculpture works for which we
searched. Outside was a considerable yard
full of monumental masonry. Inside was a
large room in which fifty workers were carving
or moulding. The manager, a big blonde
German, received us civilly, and gave a clear
answer to all Holmes’s questions. A reference
to his books showed that hundreds of casts
had been taken from a marble copy of
Devine’s head of Napoleon, but that the three
which had been sent to Morse Hudson a
year or so before had been half of a batch of
six, the other three being sent to Harding
Brothers, of Kensington. There was no
reason why those six should be different to
any of the other casts. He could suggest
no possible cause why anyone should wish
to destroy them—in fact, he laughed at the
idea. Their wholesale price was six shillings,
but the retailer would get twelve or more.
The cast was taken in two moulds from each
side of the face, and then these two profiles
of plaster of Paris were joined together to
make the complete bust. The work was
usually done by Italians in the room we
were in. When finished the busts were put
on a table in the passage to dry, and afterwards
stored. That was all he could tell us.

But the production of the photograph had
a remarkable effect upon the manager. His
face flushed with anger, and his brows knotted
over his blue Teutonic eyes.

“AH, THE RASCAL! HE CRIED.”

“Ah, the rascal!” he cried. “Yes, indeed,
I know him very well. This has always
been a respectable establishment, and the
only time that we have ever had the police
in it was over this very fellow. It was more
than a year ago now. He knifed another
Italian in the street, and then he came to
the works with the police on his heels, and
he was taken here. Beppo was his name—his
second name I never knew. Serve me
right for engaging a man with such a face.
But he was a good workman, one of the
best.”

“What did he get?”

“The man lived and he got off with a
year. I have no doubt he is out now; but
he has not dared to show his nose here.
We have a cousin of his here, and I dare say
he could tell you where he is.”

“No, no,” cried Holmes, “not a word to
the cousin—not a word, I beg you. The
matter is very important, and the farther I
go with it the more important it seems to
grow. When you referred in your ledger to
the sale of those casts I observed that the
date was June 3rd of last year. Could you
give me the date when Beppo was arrested?”

“I could tell you roughly by the pay-list,”
the manager answered. “Yes,” he continued,
after some turning over of pages, “he
was paid last on May 20th.”

“Thank you,” said Holmes. “I don’t
think that I need intrude upon your time
and patience any more.” With a last word
of caution that he should say nothing as to
our researches we turned our faces westward
once more.

The afternoon was far advanced before we
were able to snatch a hasty luncheon at a
restaurant. A news-bill at the entrance
announced “Kensington Outrage. Murder
by a Madman,” and the contents of the paper
showed that Mr. Horace Harker had got his
account into print after all. Two columns
[pg 490]
were occupied with a highly sensational and
flowery rendering of the whole incident.
Holmes propped it against the cruet-stand
and read it while he ate. Once or twice he
chuckled.

“This is all right, Watson,” said he.
“Listen to this: ‘It is satisfactory to know
that there can be no difference of opinion
upon this case, since Mr. Lestrade, one of
the most experienced members of the official
force, and Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the well-known
consulting expert, have each come to
the conclusion that the grotesque series of
incidents, which have ended in so tragic a
fashion, arise from lunacy rather than from
deliberate crime. No explanation save mental
aberration can cover the facts.’ The Press,
Watson, is a most valuable institution if you
only know how to use it. And now, if you
have quite finished, we will hark back to
Kensington and see what the manager of
Harding Brothers has to say to the matter.”

The founder of that great emporium proved
to be a brisk, crisp little person, very dapper
and quick, with a clear head and a ready
tongue.

“Yes, sir, I have already read the account
in the evening papers. Mr. Horace Harker
is a customer of ours. We supplied him with
the bust some months ago. We ordered three
busts of that sort from Gelder and Co., of
Stepney. They are all sold now. To whom?
Oh, I dare say by consulting our sales book
we could very easily tell you. Yes, we have
the entries here. One to Mr. Harker, you
see, and one to Mr. Josiah Brown, of Laburnum
Lodge, Laburnum Vale, Chiswick, and
one to Mr. Sandeford, of Lower Grove Road,
Reading. No, I have never seen this face
which you show me in the photograph. You
would hardly forget it, would you, sir, for I’ve
seldom seen an uglier. Have we any Italians
on the staff? Yes, sir, we have several
among our workpeople and cleaners. I dare
say they might get a peep at that sales book
if they wanted to. There is no particular
reason for keeping a watch upon that book.
Well, well, it’s a very strange business, and
I hope that you’ll let me know if anything
comes of your inquiries.”

Holmes had taken several notes during
Mr. Harding’s evidence, and I could see that
[pg 491]
he was thoroughly satisfied by the turn which
affairs were taking. He made no remark,
however, save that, unless we hurried, we
should be late for our appointment with
Lestrade. Sure enough, when we reached Baker
Street the detective was already there, and we
found him pacing up and down in a fever of
impatience. His look of importance showed
that his day’s work had not been in vain.

“Well?” he asked. “What luck, Mr.
Holmes?”

“We have had a very busy day, and
not entirely a wasted one,” my friend
explained. “We have seen both the
retailers and also the wholesale manufacturers.
I can trace each of the busts now
from the beginning.”

“The busts!” cried Lestrade. “Well,
well, you have your own methods, Mr.
Sherlock Holmes, and it is not for me to say
a word against them, but I think I have done
a better day’s work than you. I have
identified the dead man.”

“You don’t say so?”

“And found a cause for the crime.”

“Splendid!”

“We have an inspector who makes a
speciality of Saffron Hill and the Italian
quarter. Well, this dead man had some
Catholic emblem round his neck, and that,
along with his colour, made me think he was
from the South. Inspector Hill knew him
the moment he caught sight of him. His
name is Pietro Venucci, from Naples, and
he is one of the greatest cut-throats in
London. He is connected with the Mafia,
which, as you know, is a secret political society,
enforcing its decrees by murder. Now you
see how the affair begins to clear up. The
other fellow is probably an Italian also, and
a member of the Mafia. He has broken the
rules in some fashion. Pietro is set upon
his track. Probably the photograph we
found in his pocket is the man himself, so
that he may not knife the wrong person.
He dogs the fellow, he sees him enter a
house, he waits outside for him, and in the
scuffle he receives his own death wound.
How is that, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”

Holmes clapped his hands approvingly.

“Excellent, Lestrade, excellent!” he cried.
“But I didn’t quite follow your explanation
of the destruction of the busts.”

“The busts! You never can get those
busts out of your head. After all, that is
nothing; petty larceny, six months at the
most. It is the murder that we are really
investigating, and I tell you that I am
gathering all the threads into my hands.”

“And the next stage?”

“Is a very simple one. I shall go down
with Hill to the Italian quarter, find the man
whose photograph we have got, and arrest
him on the charge of murder. Will you
come with us?”

“I think not. I fancy we can attain our
end in a simpler way. I can’t say for certain,
because it all depends—well, it all depends
upon a factor which is completely outside our
control. But I have great hopes—in fact,
the betting is exactly two to one—that if you
will come with us to-night I shall be able to
help you to lay him by the heels.”

“In the Italian quarter?”

“No; I fancy Chiswick is an address which
is more likely to find him. If you will come
with me to Chiswick to-night, Lestrade, I’ll
promise to go to the Italian quarter with
you to-morrow, and no harm will be done by
the delay. And now I think that a few
hours’ sleep would do us all good, for I do
not propose to leave before eleven o’clock,
and it is unlikely that we shall be back
before morning. You’ll dine with us, Lestrade,
and then you are welcome to the sofa until it
is time for us to start. In the meantime,
Watson, I should be glad if you would ring
for an express messenger, for I have a letter
to send, and it is important that it should go
at once.”

Holmes spent the evening in rummaging
among the files of the old daily papers with
which one of our lumber-rooms was packed.
When at last he descended it was with
triumph in his eyes, but he said nothing to
either of us as to the result of his researches.
For my own part, I had followed step by
step the methods by which he had traced the
various windings of this complex case, and,
though I could not yet perceive the goal
which we would reach, I understood clearly
that Holmes expected this grotesque criminal
to make an attempt upon the two remaining
busts, one of which, I remembered, was at
Chiswick. No doubt the object of our
journey was to catch him in the very act, and
I could not but admire the cunning with
which my friend had inserted a wrong clue
in the evening paper, so as to give the fellow
the idea that he could continue his scheme
with impunity. I was not surprised when
Holmes suggested that I should take my
revolver with me. He had himself picked
up the loaded hunting-crop which was his
favourite weapon.

A four-wheeler was at the door at eleven,
and in it we drove to a spot at the other side
of Hammersmith Bridge. Here the cabman
[pg 492]
was directed to wait. A short walk brought
us to a secluded road fringed with pleasant
houses, each standing in its own grounds.
In the light of a street lamp we read
“Laburnum Villa” upon the gate-post of
one of them. The occupants had evidently
retired to rest, for all was dark save for a
fanlight over the
hall door, which
shed a single blurred
circle on to the
garden path. The
wooden fence
which separated
the grounds from
the road threw a
dense black shadow
upon the inner side,
and here it was
that we crouched.

“I fear that you’ll
have a long wait,”
Holmes whispered.
“We may thank
our stars that it is
not raining. I don’t
think we can even
venture to smoke
to pass the time.
However, it’s a two
to one chance that
we get something
to pay us for our
trouble.”

It proved, however,
that our vigil
was not to be so
long as Holmes had
led us to fear, and
it ended in a very
sudden and singular
fashion. In an
instant, without the
least sound to warn
us of his coming,
the garden gate
swung open, and a
lithe, dark figure,
as swift and active
as an ape, rushed
up the garden path.
We saw it whisk
past the light thrown from over the door and
disappear against the black shadow of the
house. There was a long pause, during which
we held our breath, and then a very gentle
creaking sound came to our ears. The
window was being opened. The noise
ceased, and again there was a long silence.
The fellow was making his way into the
house. We saw the sudden flash of a dark
lantern inside the room. What he sought
was evidently not there, for again we saw the
flash through another blind, and then through
another.

“Let us get to the open window. We
will nab him as he
climbs out,” Lestrade
whispered.

But before we
could move the
man had emerged
again. As he came
out into the glimmering
patch of
light we saw that
he carried something
white under
his arm. He looked
stealthily all round
him. The silence
of the deserted
street reassured
him. Turning his
back upon us he
laid down his burden,
and the next
instant there was
the sound of a sharp
tap, followed by a
clatter and rattle.
The man was so intent
upon what he
was doing that he
never heard our
steps as we stole
across the grass
plot. With the
bound of a tiger
Holmes was on his
back, and an instant
later Lestrade and
I had him by either
wrist and the handcuffs
had been fastened.
As we turned
him over I saw a
hideous, sallow
face, with writhing,
furious features,
glaring up at us,
and I knew that it was indeed the man of the
photograph whom we had secured.

But it was not our prisoner to whom
Holmes was giving his attention. Squatted
on the doorstep, he was engaged in most
carefully examining that which the man had
brought from the house. It was a bust of
[pg 493]
Napoleon like the one which we had seen
that morning, and it had been broken into
similar fragments. Carefully Holmes held
each separate shard to the light, but in no
way did it differ from any other shattered
piece of plaster. He had just completed his
examination when the hall lights flew up, the
door opened, and the owner of the house, a
jovial, rotund figure in shirt and trousers,
presented himself.

“THE DOOR OPENED, AND THE OWNER OF THE HOUSE PRESENTED
HIMSELF.”

“Mr. Josiah Brown, I suppose?” said
Holmes.

“Yes, sir; and you, no doubt, are Mr.
Sherlock Holmes? I had the note which
you sent by the express messenger, and I did
exactly what you told me. We locked every
door on the inside and awaited developments.
Well, I’m very glad to see that you have got
the rascal. I hope, gentlemen, that you will
come in and have some refreshment.”

However, Lestrade was anxious to get his
man into safe quarters, so within a few
minutes our cab had been summoned and we
were all four upon our way to London. Not
a word would our captive say; but he glared
at us from the shadow of his matted hair, and
once, when my hand seemed within his reach,
he snapped at it like a hungry wolf. We
stayed long enough at the police-station to
learn that a search of his clothing revealed
nothing save a few shillings and a long
sheath knife, the handle of which bore
copious traces of recent blood.

“That’s all right,” said Lestrade, as we
parted. “Hill knows all these gentry, and he
will give a name to him. You’ll find that my
theory of the Mafia will work out all right.
But I’m sure I am exceedingly obliged to you,
Mr. Holmes, for the workmanlike way in
which you laid hands upon him. I don’t
quite understand it all yet.”

“I fear it is rather too late an hour for
explanations,” said Holmes. “Besides, there
are one or two details which are not finished
off, and it is one of those cases which are
worth working out to the very end. If you
will come round once more to my rooms at
six o’clock to-morrow I think I shall be able
to show you that even now you have not
grasped the entire meaning of this business,
which presents some features which make it
absolutely original in the history of crime.
If ever I permit you to chronicle any more of
my little problems, Watson, I foresee that you
will enliven your pages by an account of the
singular adventure of the Napoleonic busts.”

When we met again next evening Lestrade
was furnished with much information concerning
our prisoner. His name, it appeared,
was Beppo, second name unknown. He was
a well-known ne’er-do-well among the Italian
colony. He had once been a skilful sculptor
and had earned an honest living, but he
had taken to evil courses and had twice
already been in gaol—once for a petty theft
and once, as we had already heard, for stabbing
a fellow-countryman. He could talk
English perfectly well. His reasons for
destroying the busts were still unknown,
and he refused to answer any questions
upon the subject; but the police had discovered
that these same busts might very
well have been made by his own hands,
since he was engaged in this class of
work at the establishment of Gelder and
Co. To all this information, much of which
we already knew, Holmes listened with
polite attention; but I, who knew him so
well, could clearly see that his thoughts were
elsewhere, and I detected a mixture of
mingled uneasiness and expectation beneath
that mask which he was wont to assume.
At last he started in his chair and his eyes
brightened. There had been a ring at the
bell. A minute later we heard steps upon
the stairs, and an elderly, red-faced man with
grizzled side-whiskers was ushered in. In
his right hand he carried an old-fashioned
carpet-bag, which he placed upon the table.

“Is Mr. Sherlock Holmes here?”

My friend bowed and smiled. “Mr.
Sandeford, of Reading, I suppose?” said he.

“Yes, sir, I fear that I am a little late; but
the trains were awkward. You wrote to me
about a bust that is in my possession.”

“Exactly.”

“I have your letter here. You said, ‘I
desire to possess a copy of Devine’s Napoleon,
and am prepared to pay you ten
pounds for the one which is in your possession.’
Is that right?”

“Certainly.”

“I was very much surprised at your letter,
for I could not imagine how you knew that
I owned such a thing.”

“Of course you must have been surprised,
but the explanation is very simple. Mr.
Harding, of Harding Brothers, said that they
had sold you their last copy, and he gave me
your address.”

“Oh, that was it, was it? Did he tell you
what I paid for it?”

“No, he did not.”

“Well, I am an honest man, though not a
very rich one. I only gave fifteen shillings
for the bust, and I think you ought to know
that before I take ten pounds from you.”
[pg 494]

“I am sure the scruple does you honour,
Mr. Sandeford. But I have named that
price, so I intend to stick to it.”

“I BROUGHT THE BUST UP WITH ME, AS YOU ASKED ME TO DO.”

“Well, it is very handsome of you, Mr.
Holmes. I brought the bust up with me, as
you asked me to do. Here it is!” He
opened his bag, and at last we saw placed
upon our table a complete specimen of that
bust which we had already seen more than
once in fragments.

Holmes took a paper from his pocket and
laid a ten-pound note upon the table.

“You will kindly sign that paper, Mr.
Sandeford, in the presence of these witnesses.
It is simply to say that you transfer every
possible right that you ever had in the bust
to me. I am a methodical man, you see,
and you never know what turn events might
take afterwards. Thank you, Mr. Sandeford;
here is your money, and I wish you a very
good evening.”

When our visitor had disappeared Sherlock
Holmes’s movements were such as to rivet
our attention. He began by taking a clean
white cloth from a drawer and laying it
over the table. Then he placed his newly
acquired bust in the centre of the cloth.
Finally, he picked up his hunting crop and
struck Napoleon a sharp blow on the top
of the head. The figure broke into fragments,
and Holmes bent eagerly over the
shattered remains. Next instant, with a loud
shout of triumph, he held up one splinter, in
which a round, dark
object was fixed like
a plum in a pudding.

“Gentlemen,” he
cried, “let me introduce
you to the
famous black pearl of
the Borgias.”

Lestrade and I sat
silent for a moment,
and then, with a
spontaneous impulse,
we both broke out
clapping as at the
well-wrought crisis of
a play. A flush of
colour sprang to
Holmes’s pale cheeks,
and he bowed to us
like the master dramatist
who receives the
homage of his audience.
It was at such
moments that for an
instant he ceased to
be a reasoning
machine, and betrayed
his human love for
admiration and applause.
The same
singularly proud and
reserved nature which
turned away with disdain from popular
notoriety was capable of being moved to its
depths by spontaneous wonder and praise
from a friend.

“Yes, gentlemen,” said he, “it is the most
famous pearl now existing in the world, and
it has been my good fortune, by a connected
chain of inductive reasoning, to trace
it from the Prince of Colonna’s bedroom at
the Dacre Hotel, where it was lost, to the
interior of this, the last of the six busts of
Napoleon which were manufactured by
Gelder and Co., of Stepney. You will
remember, Lestrade, the sensation caused by
the disappearance of this valuable jewel, and
the vain efforts of the London police to
recover it. I was myself consulted upon
the case; but I was unable to throw any
light upon it. Suspicion fell upon the maid
of the Princess, who was an Italian, and it
was proved that she had a brother in London,
[pg 495]
but we failed to trace any connection between
them. The maid’s name was Lucretia
Venucci, and there is no doubt in my mind
that this Pietro who was murdered two nights
ago was the brother. I have been looking
up the dates in the old files of the paper,
and I find that the disappearance of the
pearl was exactly two days before the arrest
of Beppo for some crime of violence, an
event which took place in the factory of
Gelder and Co., at the very moment when
these busts were being made. Now you
clearly see the sequence of events, though
you see them, of course, in the inverse order
to the way in which they presented themselves
to me. Beppo had the pearl in his
possession. He may have stolen it from
Pietro, he may have been Pietro’s confederate,
he may have been the go-between
of Pietro and his sister. It is of no consequence
to us which is the correct solution.

“The main fact is that he had the
pearl, and at that moment, when it was
on his person, he was pursued by the
police. He made for the factory in which
he worked, and he knew that he had only a
few minutes in which to conceal this enormously
valuable prize, which would otherwise
be found on him when he was searched.
Six plaster casts of Napoleon were drying in
the passage. One of them was still soft. In
an instant Beppo, a skilful workman, made a
small hole in the wet plaster, dropped in the
pearl, and with a few touches covered over
the aperture once more. It was an admirable
hiding-place. No one could possibly find
it. But Beppo was condemned to a year’s
imprisonment, and in the meanwhile his six
busts were scattered over London. He
could not tell which contained his treasure.
Only by breaking them could he see. Even
shaking would tell him nothing, for as the
plaster was wet it was probable that the pearl
would adhere to it—as, in fact, it has done.
Beppo did not despair, and he conducted his
search with considerable ingenuity and perseverance.
Through a cousin who works
with Gelder he found out the retail firms
who had bought the busts. He managed to
find employment with Morse Hudson, and in
that way tracked down three of them. The
pearl was not there. Then, with the help of
some Italian employé, he succeeded in finding
out where the other three busts had gone.
The first was at Harker’s. There he was
dogged by his confederate, who held Beppo
responsible for the loss of the pearl, and he
stabbed him in the scuffle which followed.”

“If he was his confederate why should he
carry his photograph?” I asked.

“As a means of tracing him if he wished
to inquire about him from any third person.
That was the obvious reason. Well, after
the murder I calculated that Beppo would
probably hurry rather than delay his movements.
He would fear that the police would
read his secret, and so he hastened on before
they should get ahead of him. Of course, I
could not say that he had not found the
pearl in Harker’s bust. I had not even concluded
for certain that it was the pearl; but
it was evident to me that he was looking for
something, since he carried the bust past the
other houses in order to break it in the
garden which had a lamp overlooking it.
Since Harker’s bust was one in three the
chances were exactly as I told you, two to
one against the pearl being inside it. There
remained two busts, and it was obvious that
he would go for the London one first. I
warned the inmates of the house, so as to
avoid a second tragedy, and we went down
with the happiest results. By that time,
of course, I knew for certain that it was the
Borgia pearl that we were after. The name
of the murdered man linked the one event
with the other. There only remained a single
bust—the Reading one—and the pearl must
be there. I bought it in your presence from
the owner—and there it lies.”

We sat in silence for a moment.

“Well,” said Lestrade, “I’ve seen you
handle a good many cases, Mr, Holmes, but
I don’t know that I ever knew a more workmanlike
one than that. We’re not jealous
of you at Scotland Yard. No, sir, we are
very proud of you, and if you come down
to-morrow there’s not a man, from the oldest
inspector to the youngest constable, who
wouldn’t be glad to shake you by the hand.”

“Thank you!” said Holmes. “Thank
you!” and as he turned away it seemed to
me that he was more nearly moved by the
softer human emotions than I had ever seen
him. A moment later he was the cold and
practical thinker once more. “Put the pearl
in the safe, Watson,” said he, “and get out
the papers of the Conk-Singleton forgery
case. Good-bye, Lestrade. If any little
problem comes your way I shall be happy,
if I can, to give you a hint or two as to its
solution.”

The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt.

Copyright, 1904, by George Newnes, Limited.

[These Memoirs, written by the greatest actress of our time, will give not only the story of her career
in the theatrical world, but also in social life, in which she has, of course, met nearly all the celebrated
people of the day, from Royalties downwards, and will be found throughout of the most striking
interest to all classes of readers.]

CHAPTER II.—HOW I BECAME DESTINED FOR THE STAGE.

arose one September morning,
my heart leaping with
some vague thought of coming
joy. It was eight o’clock. I
pressed my forehead against
the window-panes and gazed
out, looking at I know not what. I had been
roused with a start in the midst of a beautiful
dream, and I rushed towards the light, as if
in the hope of finding in the infinite space
of the grey sky some explanation of the feelings
that possessed me—the anxiety, and
yet the bliss, of expectation. Expectation
of what? I could not have answered that
question then, any more than after much
reflection I can do so now. I was on the
eve of my fourteenth birthday, and I was in
a state of expectation as to the future of my
life. That particular morning seemed to me
to be the precursor of a new era. I was not
mistaken, for on that September day my fate
was settled for me.

“I HAD BEEN ROUSED WITH A START IN THE MIDST OF A BEAUTIFUL DREAM.”

From a Drawing by G. Clairin.

As if hypnotized by what was taking place
in my mind, I remained with my forehead
pressed against the window-pane, gazing in
imagination through the halo of vapour
formed by my breath at houses, palaces,
carriages, jewels, pearls, which passed in
fantasy before my eyes. Oh! what pearls
there were! And there were princes and
kings also; yes, I saw even kings! Oh!
how fast imagination travels when left by its
enemy, reason, free to roam alone! In my
fancy I proudly rejected the princes, I rejected
the kings, I refused the pearls and the
palaces, and I declared that I was going to
be a nun. For in the infinite grey sky I had
caught a glimpse of the convent of Grand
Champ, of my white bedroom, and of the small
lamp that swung to and fro above the little
Virgin which our hands had decorated with
flowers. The king offered me a throne, but
I preferred the throne of our Mother Superior,
and I entertained a vague ambition to occupy
it on some distant day. The king was heart-broken
and dying of despair. Yes, mon Dieu!
I preferred to the pearls that were offered me
by princes the pearls of the rosary I was
telling with my fingers; and no costume
could compete in my mind with the black
barège veil that fell like a soft shadow over
the snowy white cambric that encircled the
beloved faces of the nuns of Grand Champ.

I do not know how long I had been
dreaming thus when I heard my mother’s
voice asking our old servant, Marguerite, if
I were awake. With one bound I was back
in bed, and I buried my face under the
sheet. Mamma half-opened the door very
gently and I pretended to wake up.

“How lazy you are to-day!” she said. I
kissed her, and answered in a coaxing tone,
“It is Thursday, and I have no music
lesson.”

“And are you glad?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” I replied, promptly.

My mother frowned; she adored music,
and I hated the piano. She was so fond of
music that, although she was then nearly
thirty, she took lessons herself in order to
encourage me to practise. What horrible
torture it was! I used very wickedly to do
my utmost to set at variance my mother and
my music mistress. They were both of them
excessively short-sighted. When my mother
had practised a new piece three or four
days she knew it by heart, and played it
fairly well, to the astonishment of Mlle.
Clarisse, my insufferable old teacher, who
held the music in her hand and read every
note with her nose nearly touching the page.
One day I heard, with joy, a quarrel beginning
between mamma and this disagreeable
person, Mlle. Clarisse.

“There, that’s a quaver!”

“No, there’s no quaver!”

“This is a flat!”

“No, you forget the sharp! How absurd
you are!” added my mother, perfectly furious.

A few minutes later my mother went to
her room and Mlle. Clarisse departed,
muttering as she left.

As for me, I was choking with laughter in
my bedroom, for one of my cousins, who was
very musical, had helped me to add sharps,
flats, and quavers to the music-sheet, and we
[pg 497]
had done it with such care that even a
trained eye would have had difficulty in
immediately discerning the fraud. As Mlle.
Clarisse had been sent off, I had no lesson
that day. Mamma gazed at me a long time
with her mysterious eyes—the most beautiful
eyes I have ever seen in my life—and then she
said, speaking very slowly:—

“After luncheon there is to be a family
council.”

I felt myself turning pale.

“All right,” I answered; “what frock am
I to put on, mamma?” I said this merely
for the sake of saying something and to keep
myself from crying.

“Put on your blue silk; you look more
staid in that.”

Just at this moment my sister Jeanne
opened the door boisterously, and with a
burst of laughter jumped on to my bed
[pg 498]
and, slipping under the sheets, called out:
“I’m there!” Marguerite had followed her
into the room, panting and scolding. The
child had escaped from her just as she was
about to bath her, and had announced:
“I’m going into my sister’s bed.” Jeanne’s
mirth at this moment, which I felt was a
very serious one for me, made me burst out
crying and sobbing. My mother, not understanding
the reason of this grief, shrugged
her shoulders, told Marguerite to fetch
Jeanne’s slippers, and, taking the little bare
feet in her hands,
kissed them tenderly.

MME. BERNHARDT’S SISTER, JEANNE, AT THE AGE AT
WHICH SHE IS DESCRIBED IN THIS CHAPTER.

From a Photo. by Delintraz.

I sobbed more
bitterly than ever.
It was very evident
that mamma loved
my sister more than
me, and this preference,
which did not
trouble me in an
ordinary way, hurt
me sorely now.

Mamma went
away quite out of
patience with me.
The nervous state in
which I was, together
with my anxiety and
grief, had quite exhausted
me. I fell
asleep again and was
roused by Marguerite,
who helped me
to dress, as otherwise
I should have been
late for luncheon.
The guests that day
were Aunt Rosine;
Mlle. de Brabender,
my governess, a
charming creature
whom I have always
regretted; my godfather,
and the Duc
de Morny, a great
friend of my godfather
and of my mother. The luncheon
was a melancholy meal for me, as I was
thinking all the time about the family council.
Mlle. de Brabender, in her gentle way and
with her affectionate words, insisted on my
eating. My sister burst out laughing when
she looked at me.

“Your eyes are as little as that,” she
said, putting her small thumb on the tip
of her forefinger, “and it serves you right,
because you’ve been crying, and mamma
doesn’t like anyone to cry. Do you,
mamma?”

“What have you been crying about?”
asked the Duc de Morny. I did not
answer, in spite of the friendly nudge Mlle.
de Brabender gave me with her sharp elbow.
The Duc de Morny always awed me a little.
He was gentle and kind, but he was a great
quiz. I knew, too, that he occupied a high
place at Court, and that my family considered
his friendship a great honour.

“Because I told her that after luncheon
there was to be a
family council about
her,” said my mother,
speaking slowly. “At
times it seems to me
that she is really
idiotic. She quite
disheartens me.”

“Come, come!”
exclaimed my godfather,
and Aunt
Rosine said something
in English to
the Duc de Morny
which made him
smile shrewdly
under his fine moustache.
Mlle. de Brabender
scolded me
in a low voice, and
her scoldings were
like words from
Heaven. When at
last luncheon was
over, mamma told
me, as she passed, to
pour out the coffee.
Marguerite helped
me to arrange the
cups and I went into
the drawing-room.

Maître G——, the
notary from Havre,
whom I detested,
was already there.
He represented the
family of my father, who had died a few
years before at Pisa in a way which had
never been explained, but which seemed
mysterious. My childish hatred was instinctive,
and I learnt later on that this
man had been my father’s bitter enemy. He
was very, very ugly, this notary; his whole
face seemed to have moved upwards. It was
as though he had been hanging by his hair
for a long time, and his eyes, his mouth, his
cheeks, and his nose had got into the habit of
[pg 499]
trying to reach the back of his head. He
ought to have had a joyful expression, as so
many of his features turned up, but instead of
this his face was smooth and sinister. He
had red hair, planted in his head like couch
grass, and on his nose he wore a pair of gold-rimmed
spectacles. Oh, the horrible man!
What a torturing nightmare the very memory
of him is, for he was the evil genius of my
father, and his hatred now pursued me!

THE HAVRE NOTARY IN HIS OFFICE. From a Drawing.

My poor grandmother, since the death of
my father, never went out, but spent her time
mourning the loss of her beloved son, who
had died so young.
She had absolute faith
in this man, who, besides,
was the executor
of my father’s will.
He had the control of
the money which my
dear father had left
me. I was not to
touch it until the day
of my marriage, but
my mother was to use
the interest for my
education.

FÉLIX FAURE. From a Drawing

My uncle, Félix
Faure (no relation of
the late President),
was also there. He
was a very delightful
man, handsome, too,
and he had a deep,
sympathetic voice. I
loved him dearly, and,
indeed, I love him
now, although I have not seen him for a long
time, as he has buried himself alive at the
Grande Chartreuse, to await there, far away
from the rest of the world, the time when he
will rejoin those whom he loved so dearly.

Seated near the fireplace, buried in an
arm-chair, M. Lesprin pulled out his watch
in a querulous way. He was an old friend
of the family, and he always called me “ma
fil,” which annoyed me greatly, as did his
familiarity. He considered me stupid, and
when I handed him his coffee he said, in a
jeering tone: “And is it for you, ma fil, that
so many honest
people have been hindered
in their work?
We have plenty of
other things to attend
to, I can assure you,
than to discuss the
fate of a little brat like
you. Ah, if it had
been her sister, there
would have been no
difficulty,” and with
his benumbed fingers
he patted Jeanne’s
head, as she sat on the
floor plaiting the fringe
of the sofa upon
which he was seated.

When the coffee
had been taken, the
cups carried away,
and my sister also,
there was a short
silence. The Duc
[pg 500]
de Morny rose to take his leave, but my
mother begged him to stay. “You will be
able to advise us,” she urged, and the Duke
took his seat again near my aunt, with whom,
it seemed to me, he was carrying on a slight
flirtation. Mamma had moved nearer to the
window, her embroidery-frame in front of her,
and her beautiful, clear-cut profile showing to
advantage against the light. She looked as
though she had nothing to do with what was
about to be discussed. The hideous notary
was standing up by the chimneypiece, and
my uncle had
drawn me near to
him.

My godfather,
Régis de L——,
seemed to be the
exact counterpart
of M. Lesprin;
they both of them
had the same
bourgeois mind,
and were equally
stubborn and
obstinate. They
were both devoted
to whist and good
wine, and they
both agreed that
I was thin enough
for a scarecrow.
The door opened
and a pale, dark-haired
woman entered,
a most
poetical-looking
and charming
creature. It was
Mme. Guérard,
“the lady of the
upstairs flat,” as
Marguerite always
called her. My
mother had made
friends with her,
in rather a patronizing
way certainly,
but Mme. Guérard was devoted to me
and endured the little slights to which she was
treated very patiently for my sake. She was
tall and slender as a lath, very compliant and
demure. She had no hat on, and was wearing
an indoor gown of indienne with a design
of little brown leaves.

MME. GUÉRARD, THE GREAT FRIEND OF SARAH BERNHARDT
WHEN A CHILD. From a Photo. by Delintraz.

M. Lesprin muttered something, I did not
catch what. The abominable man gave a
very curt bow, as Mme. Guérard was so
simply dressed. The Duc de Morny was
very gracious, for the new-comer was so
pretty. My godfather merely bent his head,
as Mme. Guérard was nothing to him. Aunt
Rosine glanced at her from head to foot—Mme.
Guérard was by no means rich. Mlle.
de Brabender shook hands cordially with
her, for Mme. Guérard was fond of me.

My uncle, Félix Faure, gave her a chair
and asked her to sit down, and then inquired
in a kindly way about her husband, a savant,
with whom my uncle collaborated sometimes
for his book, “The Life of St. Louis.”

Mamma had
merely glanced
across the room
without raising her
head, for Mme.
Guérard did not
prefer my sister to
me.

“Well, as we
have come here
on account of this
child,” said my
godfather, looking
at his watch, “we
must begin and
discuss what is to
be done with her.”

I began to
tremble, and drew
closer to “mon
petit dame,” as I
had always called
Mme. Guérard
from my infancy,
and to Mlle. de
Brabender. They
each took my
hand by way of
encouraging me.

“Yes,” continued
M. Lesprin,
with a laugh,
“it appears you
want to be a nun.”

“Ah, indeed?”
said the Duc
de Morny to Aunt Rosine.

“‘Sh! Be serious,” she remarked.
Mamma shrugged her shoulders and held
her wools up close to her eyes to match
them.

“You have to be rich, though, to enter a
convent,” grunted the Havre notary, “and
you have not a sou.” I leaned towards
Mlle. de Brabender and whispered, “I have
the money that papa left.”

The horrid man overheard.
[pg 501]

“Your father left some money to get you
married,” he said.

“Well, then, I’ll marry the bon Dieu,” I
answered, and my voice was quite resolute
now. I turned very red, and for the second
time in my life I felt a desire and a strong
inclination to fight for myself. I had no
more fear, as everyone had gone too far and
provoked me too much. I slipped away
from my two kind friends and advanced
towards the other group.

“I will be a nun, I will!” I exclaimed.
“I know that papa left me some money so
that I should be married, and I know that
the nuns marry the Saviour. Mamma says
she does not care, it is all the same to her;
so that it won’t be vexing her at all, and they
love me better at the convent than you do
here!”

“My dear child,” said my uncle, drawing
me towards him, “your religious vocation
appears to me to be mainly a wish to have
someone to care for.”

“And to be cared for herself,” murmured
Mme. Guérard, in a very low voice.

Everyone glanced at mamma, who shrugged
her shoulders slightly. It seemed to me as
though the glance they all gave her was a
reproachful one, and I felt a pang of remorse
at once. I went across to her and, throwing
my arms round her neck, said:—

“You don’t mind my being a nun, do
you? It won’t make you unhappy, will it?”

Mamma stroked my hair, of which she
was very proud.

“Yes, it would make me unhappy. You
know very well that, after your sister, I love
you better than anyone else in the world.”

She said this very slowly in a gentle voice.
It was like the sound of a little waterfall as it
flows down, babbling and clear, from the
mountain, dragging with it the gravel, and
gradually increasing in volume, with the
thawed snow, until it sweeps away rocks and
trees in its course. This was the effect my
mother’s clear, drawling voice had upon me
at that moment. I rushed back impulsively
to the others, who were all speechless at
this unexpected and spontaneous burst of
eloquence. I went from one to the other,
explaining my decision, and giving reasons
which were certainly no reasons at all. I
did my utmost to get someone to support me
in the matter. Finally the Duc de Morny
was bored, and rose to go.

“Do you know what you ought to do with
this child?” he said. “You ought to send
her to the Conservatoire.” He then patted
my cheek, kissed my aunt’s hand, and bowed
to all the others. As he bent over my
mother’s hand, I heard him say to her,
“You would have made a bad diplomatist,
but take my advice and send her to the
Conservatoire.”

He then took his departure, and I gazed
at everyone in perfect anguish.

The Conservatoire! What was it? What
did it mean?

I went up to my governess, Mlle. de
Brabender. Her lips were firmly pressed
together, and she looked shocked, just as
she did sometimes when my godfather told,
at table, some story of which she did not
approve. My uncle, Félix Faure, was looking
at the floor in an absent-minded way;
the notary had a spiteful look in his eyes;
my aunt was holding forth in a very excited
manner; and M. Lesprin kept shaking his
head and muttering, “Perhaps—yes—who
knows? Hum! hum!” Mme. Guérard was
very pale and sad, and she looked at me with
infinite tenderness.

What could be this Conservatoire? The
word uttered so carelessly seemed to have
entirely disturbed the equanimity of all these
people. Each of them seemed to me to have
a different impression about it, but none
looked pleased. Suddenly, in the midst of
the general embarrassment, my godfather
exclaimed, brutally:—

“She is too thin to make an actress.”

“I won’t be an actress!” I exclaimed.

“You don’t know what an actress is,” said
my aunt.

“Oh, yes, I do. Rachel is an actress!”

“You know Rachel?” asked mamma,
getting up.

“Oh, yes; she came to the convent once
to see little Adèle Sarony. She went all over
the convent and into the garden, and she
had to sit down because she could not get
her breath. They fetched her something to
bring her round, and she was so pale—oh,
so pale! I was very sorry for her, and Sister
Appoline told me that what she did was
killing her, for she was an actress, and so I
won’t be an actress, I won’t!”

I had said all this in a breath, with my
cheeks on fire and my voice hard.

I remembered all that Sister Appoline had
told me, and Mother Sainte-Sophie, too, the
Superior of the convent. I remembered,
too, that when Rachel had gone out of the
garden, looking very pale and holding a
lady’s arm for support, a little girl had put
her tongue out at her. I did not want people
to put out their tongues at me when I was
grown up. There were a hundred other
[pg 502]
things, too, to which I objected, and about
which I have only a vague memory now.

My godfather laughed heartily, but my
uncle was very grave. The others discussed
the matter in a very excited way with my
mother, who looked weary and bored.
Mlle. de Brabender and Mme. Guérard were
arguing in a low voice, and I thought of
the aristocratic man who had just left us.
I was very angry with him, for this idea of
the Conservatoire was his. “Conservatoire!”
This word frightened me. It was he who
wanted me to be an actress, and now he had
disappeared, and I could not talk the matter
over with him. He had gone away smiling
and tranquil, patting my head in the most
ordinary yet friendly way. He had gone off
without troubling a straw about the poor little,
meagre child whose future was being discussed.
“Send her to the Conservatoire,”
and this phrase, that had come to his lips so
easily, was like a veritable bomb hurled into
my life. I, the little, dreamy child, who that
morning had rejected princes and kings; I,
whose trembling fingers had only that
morning told over whole rosaries of dreams
and fancies; I, who only a few hours before
had felt my heart beat wildly with some
inexplicable emotion, and who had got up
expecting some great event to happen during
the day! Everything had given way under
that phrase, which seemed as heavy as lead
and as murderous as a cannon-ball. Send
her to the Conservatoire!

I guessed somehow that that phrase was
destined to be the finger-post of my life. All
these people had stopped at the bend of the
road where there were crossways.

Send her to the Conservatoire! I wanted
to be a nun, and they all thought that absurd,
idiotic, unreasonable. Those words, “Send
her to the Conservatoire,” had opened up a
new field of discussion, widened the horizon
of the future. My uncle, Félix Faure, and
Mlle. de Brabender were the only ones who
disapproved of this idea, but they were in
the minority—a passive minority which felt
for me. I got very nervous and excited, and
my mother sent me away. Mlle. de Brabender
tried to console me. Mme. Guérard said
that this career had its advantages. Mlle.
de Brabender considered that the convent
would have a great fascination for so dreamy
a nature as mine. The one was very
religious and a great church-goer, and the
other was a pagan in the purest acceptation
[pg 503]
of that word, and yet the two women got on
very well together, thanks to their affectionate
devotion to me.

Mme. Guérard adored the proud rebelliousness
of my nature, my pretty face, and the
slenderness of my figure; Mlle. de Brabender
was touched by my delicate health. She
spent no end of time trying to smooth my
refractory hair. She endeavoured to comfort
me when I was jealous at not being loved as
much as my sister; but what she liked best
about me was my voice. She always declared
that my voice was modulated for prayers,
and my delight in the convent appeared to
her quite natural. She loved me with a
gentle, pious affection, and Mme. Guérard
loved me with bursts of paganism. These
two women, whose memory is still dear to
me, shared me between them, and made the
best of my good qualities and my faults.
I certainly owe to both of them this
study of myself and the vision I have of
myself.

The day was destined to end in the
strangest of fashions. Mme. Guérard had
gone back to her apartment upstairs, and I was
lying back on a little straw arm-chair, which
was the most ornamental piece of furniture
in my room. I felt very drowsy, and was
holding Mlle. de
Brabender’s hand
in mine when
the door opened
and my aunt
entered, followed
by my mother.
I can see them
now—my aunt in
her dress of puce
silk trimmed
with fur, her
brown velvet hat
tied under her
chin with long,
wide strings,
and mamma, who
had taken off her
dress and put on
a white woollen
dressing-gown.
She always detested keeping on her dress in
the house, and I understood by her change of
costume that everyone had gone and that my
aunt was ready to leave. I got up from my arm-chair,
but mamma made me sit down again.

“Rest yourself thoroughly,” she said, “for
we are going to take you to the theatre this
evening—to the Français.”

THE THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS, TO WHICH SARAH BERNHARDT WAS TAKEN TO SEE HER FIRST PLAY WHEN HER DESTINY
FOR THE STAGE HAD BEEN DECIDED. From a Photo.

I felt sure that this was just a bait, and I
would not show any sign of pleasure, although
in my heart I was delighted at the idea of
going to the Français. The only theatre I
knew anything of was the Robert Houdin, to
which I was taken sometimes with my sister,
and I fancy that it was for her benefit we
went, as I was really too old to care for that
kind of performance.

“Will you come with us?” mamma said,
turning to Mlle. de Brabender.

“Willingly, madame,” she replied. “I will
go home and change my dress.”

My aunt laughed at my sullen looks.

“Little fraud,” she said, as she went
away, “you are hiding your delight. Ah,
well, you will see some actresses to-night.”

“Is Rachel going to act?” I asked.

“Oh, no; she is ill.”

My aunt kissed me and went away, saying
she should see me again later on, and
my mother followed her out of the room.
Mlle. de Brabender then prepared to leave
me, as she had to go home to dress, and
to say that she would not be in until quite
late. She lived at a convent where old maids
and widows were taken as boarders, and
special permission had to be obtained when
one wished to be out later than ten at night.
When I was alone I swung myself backwards
and forwards
in my arm-chair,
which, by
the way, was anything
but a rocking
chair. I began
to think, and
for the first time
in my life my
critical comprehension
came to
my aid. And so
all these serious
people had
been inconvenienced,
the notary
fetched from
Havre, my uncle
dragged away
from working
at his book, the
old bachelor, M. Lesprin, disturbed in his
habits and customs, my godfather kept away
from the Stock Exchange, and that aristocratic
and sceptical Duc de Morny cramped
up for two hours in the midst of our
bourgeois surroundings, and all to end in this
decision: she shall be taken to the theatre!

I do not know what part my uncle
had taken in this burlesque plan, but I
[pg 504]
doubt whether it was
to his taste. All
the same, I was glad
to go to the theatre;
it made me feel more
important. That morning
on waking up I
was quite a child, and
now events had taken
place which had transformed
me into a young
woman. I had been
discussed by everyone,
and I had expressed my
wishes—without any
result, certainly; but all
the same I had expressed
them, and now it
was deemed necessary
to humour and indulge
me in order to win me
over. They could not
force me into agreeing
to what they wanted
me to do; my consent
was necessary; and
I felt so joyful and so
proud about it that I
was quite touched and
almost ready to yield.
I said to myself that
it would be better to hold my own and let
them ask me again.

After dinner we all squeezed into a cab—mamma,
my godfather, Mlle. de Brabender,
and I. My godfather made me a present of
some white gloves.

THE HALL AND STAIRCASE OF THE THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS.

On mounting the steps at the Français I
trod on a lady’s dress. She turned round
and called me a “stupid child.” I moved
back hastily and came into collision with a
very stout old gentleman, who gave me a
rough push forward, so that I felt inclined to
burst out crying.

THE BOXES OF THE THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS, FROM ONE OF
WHICH SARAH BERNHARDT SAW HER FIRST PLAY.

When once we were all installed in a box
facing the stage, mamma and I in the first
row, with Mlle. de Brabender behind me, I
felt more reassured. I was close against the
partition of the box, and I could feel Mlle.
de Brabender’s sharp knees through the velvet
of my chair. This gave me confidence, and
I leaned against the back of the chair, purposely
to feel the support of those two knees.

When the curtain slowly rose I thought I
should have fainted. It was as though the
curtain of my future life were being raised.
Those columns (“Britannicus” was being
played) were to be my palaces, the friezes
above were to be my
skies, and those boards
were to bend under my
frail weight. I heard
nothing of “Britannicus,”
for I was far, far
away, at Grand Champ,
in my dormitory
there.

“Well, what do you
think of it?” asked my
godfather, when the
curtain fell. I did not
answer, and he laid his
hand on my head and
turned my face round
towards him. I was
crying, and big tears
were rolling slowly
down my cheeks, the
kind of tears that come
without any sobs and
as if there were no
hope that they would
ever cease.

My godfather shrugged
his shoulders and,
getting up, left the box,
banging the door after
him. Mamma, losing
all patience with me,
proceeded to review the house through
her opera-glass. Mlle. de. Brabender passed
me her handkerchief, for my own had fallen,
and I had not the courage to pick it up.

When the curtain rose on the second
piece, “Amphitryon,” I made an effort to
listen, in order to please my governess, who
was so kind and so conciliating. I remember
only one thing about it, and that was I
was so sorry for Alemène, who seemed to
be so unhappy, that I burst into audible
sobs, and that everyone, much amused,
looked at our box. My mother was most
annoyed, and promptly took me out, accompanied
by Mlle. de Brabender, leaving my
godfather furious. “Bon Dieu de bois!” I
heard him mutter, “what an idiot the child
is! They’d better put her in the convent
and let her stop there.”

My teeth were chattering when Mlle. de Brabender,
helped by Marguerite, put me to
bed. Mme. Guérard was there too; she
had been listening for my return, as though
foreseeing what would happen.

I did not get up again for six weeks, and
only narrowly escaped dying of brain fever.

Such was the début of my artistic career.

(To be continued.)

LTHOUGH Watchett of the
Battle-Axe and Ryder of the
Star of the South were cousins,
there was no great love lost
between them, and all unprejudiced
observers declared
that this lack of mutual admiration was in
no way due to Captain Ryder. That they
remained friends at all was owing largely to
his infinite good nature, and to the further
fact that Mrs. Ryder pitied Mrs. Watchett.

“I wonder she goes to sea with him at
all,” she said. “If you were one quarter as
horrid as your cousin, Will, I should never
go to sea till you came ashore.”

But she always went to sea with Will
Ryder. It was their great delight to be
together, and there were few men, married or
single, who did not take a certain pleasure
in seeing how fond they were of each other.
He was a typical seaman of the best kind;
he had a fine voice for singing and for hailing
the foretopsail yard; his eyes were as blue
as forget-me-nots, and his skin was as clear
as the air on the Cordilleras which peeped
at them over the tops of the barren hills
which surround the Bay of Valparaiso. And
Mrs. Ryder was just the kind of wife for a
man who was somewhat inclined to take
things easily. If she was as pretty as the
peach, she had, like the peach, something
inside which was not altogether soft. Her
brown eyes could turn black—she had resolution
and courage.

“You shall not put up with it,” was a
favourite expression on her tongue. And
there were times, to use his own expression,
when she made sail when he would have
shortened it. In that sense she was certainly
capable of “carrying on.”

Both vessels were barques of about eleven
hundred tons register, and if the Star of the
South had about twenty tons to the good in
size she was rather harder to work. It is
the nature of ships to develop in certain
ways, and though both of these barques were
sister ships it is always certain that sisters
are never quite alike. But as they belonged
to the same Port of London, and were owned
by two branches of the same family, all of
whose money was divided up in sixty-fourths,
according to the common rule with ships,
they were rivals and rival beauties. But,
unlike the more respectable ladies who
owned them, both the vessels were fast, and
it was a sore point of honour with Ryder and
Watchett to prove their own the fastest.

“If she only worked a little easier, I could
lick his head off,” said Ryder, sadly.

But there was the rub. The Star of the
South needed more “beef” on her than the
Battle-Axe. She wasn’t so quick in stays.
By the time Ryder yelled “Let go and haul,”
the Battle-Axe was gathering headway on a
fresh tack.

“And instead of having two more hands
than we are allowed, we are two short,” said
his wife, bitterly. “If I were you, Will, I’d
take those Greeks.”

“Not by an entire jugful,” replied Captain
Ryder. “I remember the Lennie and the
Caswell, my dear. I never knew Valparaiso
so bare of men.”

“And we’re sailing to-morrow,” said
Connie Ryder, angrily; “and you’ve betted
him a hundred pounds we shall dock before
him. It’s too bad. I wonder whether he’d
give us another day?”

But Ryder shook his head.

“And you’ve known him for years! He’s
spending that money in his mind.”

“But not on his wife, Will,” said Mrs.
Ryder. “If we win, I’m to have it.”

“I’d give him twenty to let me off,” said
Ryder.

But Connie Ryder went on board the
Battle-Axe to see if she could induce her
husband’s cousin to forego the advantage he
had already gained before sailing. She found
him dark and grim and as hard as adamant.

“A bet’s a bet and business is business,”
said Watchett. “We appointed to-morrow,
[pg 506]
and, bar lying out a gale from the north, with
two anchors down and the cables out to the
bitter end, I’ll sail.”

His wife, who was as meek as milk,
suggested humbly that it would be more
interesting if he waited.

“I ain’t in this for interest; I’m in it for
capital,” said Watchett, grinning gloomily.
“The more like a dead certainty it looks the
better I shall be pleased.”

Mrs. Ryder darkened.

“I don’t think you’re a sportsman,” she
said, rather shortly.

“I ain’t,” retorted old Watchett; “I’m a
seaman, and him that’d go to sea for sport
would go to Davy Jones for pastime. You
can tell Bill that I’ll give him ten per cent.
discount for cash now.”

As Mrs. Ryder knew that he never called
her husband “Bill” unless he desired to be
more or less offensive, she showed unmistakable
signs of temper.

“If I ever get half a chance to make you
sorry, I will,” she said.

“Let it go at that,” said Watchett, sulkily.
“I got on all right with Bill before you took
to going to sea with him.”

“He was too soft with you,” said Bill’s
wife.

“And a deal softer with you than I’d be,”
said Watchett.

“Oh, please, please don’t,” cried Mary
Watchett, in great distress.

“I thought you were a gentleman,” said
Connie Ryder.

“‘I THOUGHT YOU WERE A GENTLEMAN,’ SAID CONNIE RYDER.”

“Not you,” replied Watchett; “you never,
and you know it. I’m not one and never
hankered to be. I’m rough and tough
and a seaman of the old school. I’m
no sea dandy. I’m Jack Watchett, as
plain as you like.”

“You’re much plainer than
I like,” retorted his cousin’s
wife, “very much plainer.”

And though she kissed Mary
Watchett she wondered greatly
how any woman could kiss
Mary Watchett’s husband.

“If I ever get a chance,”
she said. “But there, how
can I?”

She wept a little out of pure
anger as she returned to the
Star of the South. When
she got on board she found
the mate and second mate
standing by the gangway.

“Is there no chance of
these men, Mr. Semple”?

“No more than if it was the year ’49 and this
was San Francisco,” said the mate, who was
a hoary-headed old sea-dog, a great deal more
like the old school than “plain Jack Watchett.”

“Why doesna the captain take they
Greeks, ma’am?” asked McGill, the second
mate, who had been almost long enough out
of Scotland to forget his own language.

“Because he doesn’t like any but Englishmen,”
said Connie Ryder.

“And Scotch, of course,” she added, as
she saw McGill’s jaw fall a little. “I’ve
been trying to get Captain Watchett to give
us another day.”

“All our ship and cargo to a paper-bag of
beans he didn’t, ma’am,” said Semple.

“I—I hate him,” cried Connie Ryder, as
she entered the cabin.

“She’s as keen as mustard—as red pepper,”
said Semple; “if she’d been a man she’d
have made a seaman.”

“I’ve never sailed wi’ a skeeper’s wife
before,” said McGill, who had shipped in the
Star of the South a week earlier, in place of
the second mate, who had been given his
discharge for drunkenness. “Is she at all
interferin’, Mr. Semple? “

Old Semple nodded.

“She interferes some, and it would be an
obstinate cook that disputed with her. She
made a revolution in the galley, my word,
when she first came on board. Some would
[pg 507]
say she cockered the crew over-much, but I
was long enough in the fo’c’s’le not to forget
that even a hog of a man don’t do best on
hogwash.”

Which was a marvellous concession on the
part of any of the after-guard of any ship,
seeing how the notion persists among owners,
and even among officers, that the worse men
are treated the better they work.

“She seems a comfortable ship,” owned
McGill.

And so everyone on board of her allowed.

“Though she is a bit of a heart-breaker to
handle,” said the men for’ard. “But for that
she be a daisy. And to think that the bally
Battle-Axe goes about like a racing yacht!”

It made them sore to think of it. But it
also made the men on board their rival sore
to think how comfortable the Star of the
South was in all other respects.

Owing to the fact that the Battle-Axe’s
crowd was sulky, the Star of the South got her
anchor out of the ground and stood to the
north-west to round Point Angelos a good
ten minutes before Watchett’s vessel was
under way.

“That’s good,” said Connie Ryder. “I
know they’re a sulky lot by now in the Battle-Axe.
And our men work like dears.”

It was with difficulty she kept from tailing
on to the braces as they jammed the Star
close up to weather the Point. For the wind
was drawing down the coast from the nor’ard,
and Valparaiso harbour faces due north. She
was glad when they rounded the Point and
squared away, for if there was any real difference
in the sailing qualities of the rival
barques, the Star was best before the wind and
the Battle-Axe when she was in a bow-line.

“And with any real luck,” said Mrs. Ryder,
“we may have a good fair wind all the way
till we cross the line.”

It was so far ahead to consider the north-east
trades, which meant such mighty long
stretches in a wind, that she declined to think
of them. And she entirely forgot the calms
of Capricorn.

“We’re doing very well, Will,” she said to
her husband when the starboard watch went
below and the routine of the passage home
commenced.

“It’s early days,” replied Will Ryder. “I
fancy the Battle-Axe is in her best trim for a
wind astern.”

But Mrs. Ryder didn’t believe it.

“And if she is, she mayn’t be so good
when it comes to beating.”

She knew what she was talking about and
spoke good sense.

“It’s going to be luck,” said Ryder. “If
either of us get a good slant that the other
misses, the last will be out of it. But I
wish I’d had those other two hands. The
Star wants ‘beef’ on the braces. Mr.
Semple, as soon as possible see all the parrals
greased and the blocks running as free as
you can make ’em.”

And Semple did his best, as the crew did.
But Mrs. Ryder had her doubts as to whether
her husband was doing his. For once he
seemed to think failure was a foregone
conclusion.

“I think it must be his liver,” said Mrs.
Ryder. “I’ll see to that at once.”

But instead of looking up the medicine
chest she came across the Pacific Directory.

“I never thought of that,” she said. “He’s
never done it, now he shall.”

She took the big book down and read one
part of it eagerly.

“I don’t see why not,” she decided, and
she went to her husband with the request that
he should run through Magellan’s Straits
when he came to it.

“Not for dollars,” said Will Ryder.
“When I’m skipper of a Pacific Navigation
boat I’ll take you through, but not till
then.”

“But look at all you cut off,” urged his
wife, “if you get through.”

“And how you are cut off if you don’t,”
retorted Ryder. “When I was an apprentice
I went through in fine weather, and I’d
rather drive a ‘bus down Fleet Street in a
fog than try it.”

She said he had very little enterprise and
pouted.

“Suppose the Battle-Axe does it?”

Ryder declined to suppose it.

“John wouldn’t try it if you could
guarantee the weather. I know him.”

“You never take my advice,” said his wife.

“I love you too much,” replied Will
Ryder. He put his arm about her, but she
was cross and pushed him away.

“This is mutiny,” said the captain, smiling.

“Well, I feel mutinous,” retorted Connie.
“I wanted you to steal two of your cousin’s
men and you wouldn’t. I’m sure they would
have come, for what the Battle-Axe owed
them. And you wouldn’t. And now I want
to go through the Straits and you won’t.
The very, very next time that I want to do
anything I shall do it without asking you.
Why did you bet a hundred pounds if you
weren’t prepared to try to win it?”

“We’ll win yet,” said the skipper, cheerfully,
“We’re only just started.”
[pg 508]

The two vessels kept company right down
to the Horn, and there, between Ildefonso
Island and the Diego Ramirez Islands, the
Star of the South lost sight of her sister and
her rival, in a dark sou’-westerly gale. With
the wind astern as it was when they squared
away with Cape Horn frowning to the
nor’-west the Star was a shooting star, as they
said for’ard.

“If we could on’y carry a gale like this
right to the line, we’d ‘ave a pull over the
Battle-Axe, ma’am,” said Silas Bagge, an old
fo’c’s’le man, who was Mrs. Ryder’s favourite
among all the
crew. He was
a magnificent
old chap with a
long white
beard, which he
wore tucked inside
a guernsey,
except in fine
weather.

“But we
can’t; there’ll
be the trades,”
said the captain’s
wife,
dolorously.

“I’ve picked
up the sou’-east
trade blowin’ a
gale, ma’am, before
now,” said
Bagge; “years
ago, in ’74 or
thereabouts, I
was in the Secunderabad,
and
we crossed the
line, bound
south, doing
eleven close-‘auled,
and we
carried ’em to
twenty-seven
south latitude.
There’s times when it’s difficult to say where
the trades begin south too. Mebbe we’ll be
chased by such a gale as this nigh up to
thirty south.”

“It’s hoping too much,” said Mrs. Ryder.

“Hope till you bust, ma’am,” said Silas
Bagge. “Nothin’s lost till it’s won. If we
can only get out of the doldrums without
breaking our hearts working the ship, there’s
no knowing what’ll ‘appen. ‘Twas a pity we
didn’t get them other two ‘ands, though.”

And there she agreed with him.

“‘HOPE TILL YOU BUST, MA’AM,’ SAID SILAS BAGGE.”

“Me and Bob Condy could ‘ave got
Gribbs and Tidewell out of the Battle-Axe
easy as easy,” said Silas, regretfully. “‘Twas
a lost hopportunity, and there you are.”

The honourable conduct of his skipper in
vetoing this little game seemed no more than
foolishness to Bagge.

“When we comes to the Hequator and it’s
‘square away’ and ‘brace up’ every five
minutes till one’s ‘ands are raw, ’twill be a grief
to every mother’s son aboard,” said Bagge, as
he touched his cap and went for’ard.

But now the Star of the South went booming
on the outside
of the Falklands
with a
gale that drew
into the sou’-sou’-west
and
howled after
her. She scooped
up the seas at
times and
dipped her nose
into them, and
threw them
apart and wallowed.
The men
were happy, for
the fo’c’s’le
didn’t leak, and
the galley-fire
was kept going
every night to
dry their clothes.
At midnight
every man got
a mug of cocoa,
and those that
rose up called
Mrs. Ryder
blessed, and
those that lay
down agreed
with them. The
Star was a happy
ship. There was
no rule against playing the concertina on a
Sunday in her fo’c’s’le, and the men were not
reduced to playing “blind swaps” with their
oldest rags for amusement, as they were in
the Battle-Axe. And yet every man in the
Star knew his time for growling was coming
on, with every pitch and send of the sea.

They picked up the trades in nearly 30deg.
south, with only a few days of a light and
variable breeze, and the trades were good.

“But where’s the Battle-Axe?” asked Mrs.
Ryder.
[pg 509]

She kept a bright look-out for her, and
deeply regretted that her petticoats prevented
her going aloft to search the horizon for John
Watchett. She rubbed her hands in hope.

“I do believe, Will, that we must be ahead
of him,” she declared, after the south-east
trade had been steady on the Star’s starboard
beam for a week.

“Not much ahead,” replied Will.

And just then Bob Condy, who was aloft
on the foreto’gallant yard cutting off old
seizings and putting on new ones, hailed the
deck.

“There’s a sail on the port beam, sir.”

“Take a glass aloft and have a look at
her, Mr. McGill,” said the skipper. “No,
never mind, I’ll go myself, as you’ve never
seen the Battle-Axe at sea. I know the cut
of her jib, and no mistake.”

So Will Ryder went up to the maintop-gallant-yard,
and with his leg astride of the
yard took a squint to loo’ard. He shut up
the glass so quick that his wife knew at once
that the distant sail was the Battle-Axe. As
he came down slowly he nodded to her.

“It is?”

“Rather,” said Ryder. “I’m sorry we’ve
no stun-sails. We’re carrying all we’ve got
and all we can.”

“And to think he’s as good as we were on
our own point of sailing!” said his wife, with
the most visible vexation. “Can’t you do
anything to make her go faster, Will?”

“MRS. RYDER SAT ON A HEN-COOP AND NEARLY CRIED.”

And when Will said he couldn’t unless he
got out and pushed, Mrs. Ryder sat on a
hen-coop and very nearly cried. For if the
Battle-Axe had done so well up to this she
would do better in the dead regions of the
line, and the Star would do much worse.
There the want of a few more hands would
tell. The Star was no good at catching
cat’s-paws, and short-handed she worked like
an unoiled gate.

“If I’d only done what Silas Bagge
wanted,” she said, “we’d have been all right.
To think that the want of a couple of hands
should make all the difference.”

It was cruelly hard, but when vessels are
undermanned at any time, less than their
complement means “pull devil, pull baker,”
with the former best at the tug of war.

For days there was nothing to choose
between the vessels, save that the unusual
strength of the trades gave the Star a trifling
advantage. Every night Watchett took in
his royals. This Ryder declined to do,
though he often expected them to take themselves
in.

“What did I say, ma’am?” said old
Bagge. “I told you it could blow quite ‘eavy
in its way in the south-east trades.”

And thus it happened that what the
Star lost by day she pulled up by
night. And presently the Battle-Axe
edged up closer
and at last was
within hailing distance.
Watchett
stood on his poop
with a speaking-trumpet,
and
roared in sombre
triumph:—

“I’m as good
as you this trip on
your best p’int,
Ryder!”

“Tell him to
go to—to thunder,”
said Mrs.
Ryder, angrily.
Nevertheless, she
waved her handkerchief
to her
enemy’s wife, who
was standing by
“plain Jack Watchett.”

“You’ve done
[pg 510]
mighty well,” said Ryder, in his turn, “but it
isn’t over yet.”

Jack Watchett intimated that he thought
it was. He offered to double the bet. He
also undertook to sail round the Star of the
South in a light wind. He offered to tow
her, and made himself so disagreeable that
Mrs. Ryder, who knew what became a lady,
went below to prevent her snatching the
speaking-trumpet from her husband and saying
things for which she would be sorry
afterwards. But Ryder, though he was by no
means a saint, kept his temper and only
replied with chaff, which was much more
offensive to Watchett than bad language.

“And don’t be too sure,” he added. “I
may do you yet.”

“Not you,” said Watchett. “I’m cocksure.”

They sailed in company for a week, and
gradually, as the trade lessened in driving
power, the Battle-Axe drew ahead inch by
inch. And as she did Mrs. Ryder’s appetite
failed—she looked thin and ill.

“Don’t feel it so much, chickabiddy,” said
her husband.

“I can’t help it,” sobbed Connie. “I hate
your cousin. Oh, Will, if you’d only let me
entice those two men from him. Bagge was
sure that Gribbs and Tidewell would have
come.”

“It wouldn’t have been fair,” said Ryder.

“I—I—wanted to win,” replied Connie;
“and it’ll be calm directly, and you know
what that means.”

It was calm directly, and very soon everyone
knew what it meant. For it was a real
fat streak of a calm that both vessels ran into.
And as luck would have it the Battle-Axe,
which was by now almost hull down to the
nor’ard, got into it first. The Star of the
South carried the wind with her till she was
within a mile of her rival. For a whole day
they pointed their jibbooms alternately at
Africa and South America, to the North Pole
and the South. What little breeze there was
after that day took them farther still into an
absolute area of no wind at all.

“This is the flattest calm I ever saw,” said
Ryder. “In such a calm as this he has no
advantage.”

They boxed the compass for the best part
of a week and lay and cooked in a sun that
made the deck-seams bubble. At night the
air was as hot as it had been by day. The
men lay on deck, on the deck-house, on
the fo’c’s’le head.

“This is a bally scorcher,” said the crews
of both ships. “Let’s whistle.”

They whistled feebly, but the god of the
winds had gone a journey, or was as fast
asleep as Baal. And day by day the two
vessels drifted together. At last they had
to lower the boats and tow them apart.
Watchett was very sick with the whole
meteorology of the universe, and being a
whole-souled man, incapable of more than
one animosity at a time, he found no leisure
to spare from reviling a heaven of brass to
taunt Ryder. At the end of the week he
even hailed the Star and offered to come on
board and bring his wife.

“I don’t want him,” said Connie Ryder:
“I won’t have him.”

And as she said so she jumped as if a pin
had been stuck into her.

“What’s the matter?” asked her husband.

“Nothing,” said Connie. “But let him
come!”

She went for’ard to interview the cook, so
she said. But she really went to interview
Silas Bagge. When she came back she
found Watchett and his wife on board. If
she was a little stiff with Watchett he never
noticed it. As a matter of fact, the whims
and fads and tempers of a woman were of
no more account than the growling of the
men for’ard. He was too much engaged in
cursing the weather to pay her any attention.

“This licks me,” he said; “in a week we
ain’t moved—we’re stuck. ‘Ow long will it
last, Bill?”

“It looks as if it might last for ever,”
replied Ryder. “We’ve struck a bad streak.”

The women had tea and the men drank
whisky and water. Although Watchett didn’t
know it, two of his hands left the boat and
were given something to eat in the galley by
Mrs. Ryder’s orders. It was Bagge who
conveyed the invitation, with the connivance
of the mate, for whom the word of the
captain’s wife was law.

“‘Ave some marmalade and butter?” said
Bagge. “Does they feed you good in the
Battle-Axe, Gribbs?”

“‘AVE SOME MARMALADE AND BUTTER?’ SAID BAGGE.”

“Hogwash,” said Gribbs, with his mouth
full. “Ain’t it, Tidewell?”

Tidewell, who was a youngster of a good
middle-class family, who had gone to sea as
an apprentice and run from his ship, agreed
with many bitter words.

“As I told you, we lives like fightin’-cocks
‘ere,” said Bagge. “When you’re full in the
back teeth, we’ll ‘ave your mates up. We
likes to feed the pore and ‘ungry, don’t we,
doctor?”

The cook, to whom Bagge had confided
something, said he did his best, his humble
best.
[pg 511]

“The Star’s an ‘appy ship,” he added.
“We know what your ship is.”

The other two men came up in their turn
and were filled with tea and biscuit and
butter and marmalade till they smiled.

“This is like
home,” said Wat
Crampe, who was
from Newcastle.

“It wass petter—much
petter,”
said Evan Evans,
“and ass for the
captain’s wife, she
iss a lady, whatefer.”

That evening
Ryder and his
wife returned the
call and were
rowed to the
Battle-Axe by
Bagge, Bob Condy,
and two more
of the men.
Bagge and Condy
went into the
fo’c’s’le. They lost
no time in condemning
the
Battle-Axe and
in lauding their
own ship.

“This ‘ere’s a
stinkin’ ‘ooker,
mates,” said Silas Bagge; “why, our fo’c’s’le
is a lady’s droring-room compared with it. And
as for the grub, ask them as come on board
us this afternoon. What d’ye say, Gribbs?”

“Toppin’,” said Gribbs. “It’s spiled my
happetite ‘ere.”

“It wass good,” said the Welshman; “it
wass good, whatefer.”

Bagge took Billy Gribbs aside on the deck
and had a talk with him.

“Oh, Lord!” said Gribbs. “Oh, what?”

“Straight talk,” replied Silas; “she said so.”

“Do you mean it? “

“Do I mean it?” replied Silas, with unutterable
scorn. “In course I mean it. It
will sarve them right as it sarves right.”

Gribbs held on to the rail and laughed till
he ached. “It’s the rummiest notion I ever
‘eard tell on.”

“Not so rummy!”

“Wot!” cried Gribbs, “not so rummy?
Well, if it ain’t so rummy, I’m jiggered. I’ll
think of it.”

“Do, and tell your mate Tidewell.”

“If I tell Ned, ‘e’ll do it for sure. ‘E’s
the biggest joker ‘ere!”

“Then tell him,” said Silas.

That evening Ned Tidewell and Billy
Gribbs acted in a very strange way on board
the Battle-Axe.
Without any obvious
reason they
kept on bursting
into violent fits of
laughter.

“The pore
blokes is gone
dotty from the
‘eat,” said the
pitying crowd.
“We’ve ‘eard of
such before.”

“Why shouldn’t
I laugh?”
asked Gribbs.
“I’m laughin’ because
I’m a pore
silly sailor-man
and my life ain’t
worth livin’. If
I’d died early I’d
ha’ been saved a
pile o’ trouble. I
was thinkin’ of
my father’s green
fields as I looked
over the side this
afternoon.”

“Was you
really?” asked the oldest man on board.
“Then you take my advice quick and go and
ask the skipper for a real good workin’ pill
of the largest size.”

“Wot for?” asked Gribbs.

“Because you’ve hobvious got a calentoor,”
said the old fo’c’s’le man. “And chaps as gets
a calentoor jumps overboard. Oh, but that’s
well known at sea by those as knows anythin’.”

But Gribbs laughed.

“The worst is as it’s catchin’,” said his
adviser, anxiously; “it’s fatally catchin’. I’ve
‘eard of crews doin’ it one hafter the hother,
till there wasn’t no one left. In ‘eat it was
and in calm.”

“Gammon,” said Gribbs. But he was
observed to sigh.

“Are you ‘ot in your ‘ead?” asked the
anxious and ancient one.

“I feels a little ‘ot and rummy,” said
Gribbs; “but what I chiefly feels is a desire
to eat grass.”

The old man groaned.

“Then it’s got you. Mates, we ought to tie
[pg 512]
Gribbs up, or lock ‘im in the sail-locker, or
‘is clothes will be auctioned off before long.”

But Gribbs kicked at that, and just then
eight bells struck.

“I’m turnin’ in,” said Gribbs, “and I’m
all right.”

But at six bells in the first watch he was
missing, as was discovered by old Brooks, the
authority on calentures. He waked up Ned
Tidewell, who was extraordinarily fast asleep.

“Where’s Gribbs?”

“Not in my bunk,” returned Ned, who
with Gribbs was one of the few who still
dossed in the fo’c’s’le.

“Then ‘e’s gone overboard for sartain,”
said Brooks, in great alarm; “there was the
look of it in his eye, and in yours too,
youngster. These long calms is fataller than
scurvy. I shall go aft and report it.”

He reported it to Mr. Seleucus Thoms, the
second mate, who came for’ard, and roused the
watch below from the deck-house and t’gallant
fo’c’s’le. When all hands were mustered it
was certain that Gribbs was missing.

“This is a terrible catastrophe,” said
Seleucus Thoms, who had a weakness for
fine language, derived from his rare Christian
name, of which he was extremely proud.
“My name is not Seleucus Thoms if he
hasn’t gone overboard.”

“‘E was rampagious with laughter in the
second dog-watch, sir,” put in old Brooks.
“And ‘e talked of green fields, the which I’ve
‘eard is a werry fatal symptom of calentoor.”

“Humph!” said Mr. Thoms, “there’s
something in that.”

And when he went for’ard old Brooks was
as proud as a dog with two tails! Though
he usually spent the second dog-watch daily
in proving that Thoms was no sailor, this
endorsement of his theory flattered him
greatly.

“I’ve been mistook in the second,” he
said, as Thoms went aft. “He’s got ‘orse
sense, after all. I shouldn’t be surprised if
he’d make a sailor some day.”

And Thoms reported the catastrophe to
Watchett.

“Drowned himself?” roared the captain;
“drowned himself? And who’s responsible if
you ain’t?”

He came on deck in a great rage and
scanty pyjamas and mustered the crew aft,
and roared at them for full ten minutes as if
it was their fault. When he had relieved his
mind he asked if there was anyone who could
throw light on the matter, and old Brooks
was shoved to the front. He explained his
views on calentures.

“Never ‘eard of ’em,” said Watchett.

“And I think, sir, as Tidewell ‘ere ‘as the
symptoms.”

“I haven’t,” said Tidewell, indignantly.

“Wild laughin’ is a known symptom, sir,
and Tidewell was laughin’ ‘orrid in the
second dog-watch,” insisted Brooks; “I’d
put him in irons, sir.”

But Watchett was not prepared to go so
far in prophylaxis.

“If any of you ‘as any more symptoms
I’ll flog ‘im and take the consequences,” he
declared. He went below again unhappily,
for he wasn’t quite a brute after all.

“This is a mighty unpleasant thing,” he
said to poor Mrs. Watchett, who cried when
she heard the news. “It’s a mighty unfortunate
affair. Gribbs was the smartest man in
the whole crowd and worth two of the others.”

But still the great and terrible calm lasted,
and the morning was as hot as yesterday and
the sea shone like polished brass and lapped
faintly like heavy oil against the glowing iron
of the sister barques. At dawn, which came
up like a swiftly opening flower out of the
fertile east, the vessels were just too far apart
for hailing, and Watchett signalled the news
to the Star of the South.

“Lost a man overboard!” said Ryder.
“That’s strange; I wish to Heaven we’d
found him!”

When he told his wife she seemed extraordinarily
callous.

“Serves him right,” she said.

And it was wonderful how the crew of the
Star took the news. They had never seemed
so cheerful. They grinned when Watchett
came aboard.

“This is an ‘orrid circumstance,” said
Watchett. “I never lost a man before, not
even when I was wrecked in the Violet. And
this a dead calm!”

“Your men aren’t happy,” said Mrs. Ryder,
“and you don’t try to make ’em. If I give
you three seven-pound tins of marmalade and
some butter, will you serve it out to them?”

“‘YOUR MEN AREN’T HAPPY,’ SAID MRS. RYDER.”

But Watchett shook his head angrily.

“I’ll not cocker no men up,” he declared;
“not if they all goes overboard and leaves
me and the missis to take ‘er ‘ome. And
what’s marmalade against ‘eat like this?”

He mopped a melancholy brow and sighed.

“It will help them to keep from gloomy
thoughts,” said Mrs. Ryder. “The Star of
the South is a home for our men.”

“And two run in Valparaiso,” retorted
Watchett. “And I on’y lost one.”

He took a drink with his cousin and went
back on board the Battle-Axe, and spent the
[pg 513]
torrid day in getting a deal of unnecessary
work done. And still no flaw of lightest air
marred the awful mirror of the quiet seas.
Early in the first watch the boats were
lowered again to tow the vessels apart. At
midnight, when the watch below came aft
and answered to their names in the deep
shadow of the moonless tropic night, Ned
Tidewell did not answer to his name.

“Tidewell!” cried Thoms, angrily and
anxiously.

And still there was no answer, but a groan
from old Brooks.

“Wot did I tell you?” he demanded. “I
seed it in ‘is eye.”

They searched the Battle-Axe from stem
to stern; they overhauled the sails in the
sail-lockers; they hunted with a lantern in
the forepeak; they even went aloft to the
fore and main tops, where once or twice
someone who sought for coolness where no
coolness could be found went up into what
they jocosely called the “attic.” But Ned
had lost the number of his mess.

“More clothes for sale,” said the melancholy
crew, as they looked at each other
suspiciously. “‘Oo’ll be the next?”

Brooks declared to the other fo’c’s’le men
that the next would be Wat Crampe, or
Taffy, as they called the Welshman.

“There’s an awful ‘orrid look o’ the deep,
dark knowledge
of death in their
faces,” declared
old Brooks.
“They thinks of
the peace of it
and the quiet, and
smiles secret!”

Next morning
Watchett hailed
the Star and told
the latest dreadful
news. And at
the end he added,
in a truly pathetic
roar, “Send me
them tins o’ marmalade
aboard,
and the butter.”

And when Mrs.
Ryder superintended
the steward’s
work getting
these stores out
of the lazaret, she
smiled very
strangely. She
said to her husband:
“If he loses another hand or two
the Battle-Axe will be no easy ship to work,
Will.”

“I wouldn’t have believed the matter of a
hundred pounds would have made you so
hard,” said Ryder. And Connie Ryder
pouted mutinously, and her pout ran off into
a wicked and most charming smile.

“I’m not thinking so much of the money
as of our ship being beaten,” she said.

And poor Watchett was now beginning
to think the same of his ship. Like most
vessels, the Battle-Axe required a certain
number of men to work her easily, and her
luck lay in the number allowed being the
number necessary. With two hands gone
a-missing she would not be much superior to
the Star in easiness of handling, and if more
went a week of baffling winds now or later,
when the north-east trade died out, might
give the Star a pull which nothing but an
easterly wind from the chops of the Channel
to Dover could hope to make up. He began
to dance attendance on his crew as if they
were patients and he their doctor. And the
curious thing was that they all began to feel
ill at once, so ill that they could not work in
the sun. A certain uneasy terror got hold of
them; they dreaded to look over the side,
lest in place of an oily sea they should look
down on grass and daisies.
[pg 514]

“Daisies draws a man, and buttercups
draws a man,” said old Brooks.

“Don’t,” said Crampe, with a snigger.
“You make me feel that I must pick buttercups
or die.”

“Do you now?” asked Brooks. “Do you
now?”

And he sneaked aft to the skipper, who
was turning all ways, as if wondering where
windward was.

“I’m very uneasy about Crampe, sir,” he
said, with a scrape, as he crawled up the port
poop ladder. “‘Is
mind is set on
buttercups.”

“The deuce it
is!” cried Watchett,
and going
down to the main
deck he called
Crampe out.

“What’s this I
‘ears about your
‘ankering after
buttercups?” he
demanded, very
anxiously.

“I did feel as
if I’d like to see
one, sir,” said
Crampe.

“Don’t let me
‘ear of it again,”
began Watchett,
angrily, but he
pulled himself up
with an ill grace.
“But there, go in
and lie down, and
you needn’t come
on deck in your
watch. I can’t
afford to lose
no more mad
fools. And you
shall have butter instead of buttercups.”

“YOU SHALL HAVE BUTTER INSTEAD OF BUTTERCUPS.”

“And marmalade, sir?” suggested Crampe.
“Marmalade’s yellow too, as yellow as
buttercups.”

“Say the word agin and I’ll knock you
flat,” said the skipper. But, nevertheless, he
sent the whole crowd marmalade and butter
at four bells in the first dog-watch.

“Hoo, but it iss fine,” said “Efan Efans.”
“Thiss iss goot grup whatefer and moreover,
yess!”

“They scoffs the like in the Star day in
and day out,” said Crampe; “if I can’t roll
on grass I’d like to be in her.”

And that night both Crampe and Evans
disappeared.

“I believe I ‘eard a splash soon after six
bells,” said old Brooks. “Mates, this is most
‘orrid. I feels as if I should be drawed overboard
by a mermaid in spite of myself.”

And Watchett went raving crazy.

Ryder came on board the Battle-Axe as
soon as the latest news was signalled to him.
Mrs. Ryder declined to go, but she gave him
a timely piece of advice.

“Don’t let him off the bet, Will, or I’ll
never forgive you.”

“I won’t do
that,” said her
husband, hastily,
as if he hadn’t
been thinking of
doing it.

“And if he
asks for a man or
two, you know
we’re short-handed
already.”

“Tell me something
I don’t
know,” said
Ryder, a trifle
crossly. Even his
sweet temper suffered
in 115deg.
in the shade.

“I dare say I
could,” said his
wife, when he was
in the boat; “I
dare say I could.”

Watchett received
his cousin
with an air of
gloom that would
have struck a
damp on anything
anywhere
but the Equator.

“This is a terrible business,” he said. “I
never ‘eard of anything like it. Every night
a man, and last night two!”

Ryder was naturally very much cut up
about it, and said so.

“Will you have some more marmalade?”
he asked, anxiously.

“Marmalade don’t work,” said Watchett,
sadly; “it don’t work worth a cent. Nor
does butter. I’d give five pounds for some
green cabbage.”

A brilliant idea struck Ryder.

“Why don’t you paint her green, all the
inside of the rail and the boats?”
[pg 515]

“She’d be a beauty show, like a blessed
timber-droghing Swede,” said Watchett, with
great distaste. “But d’ye think it’d work?”

“You might try,” replied Ryder.

“And now you’ve got the bulge on me,”
sighed Watchett; “with two ‘ands missing
from both watches, she’ll be as ‘ard in the
mouth as your Star. You might let me off
that bet, Bill.”

“No,” said Ryder, “a bet’s a bet.”

“But fairness is fairness,” urged Watchett;
“there should be a clause in a bet renderin’
it void by the act of God or the Queen’s
enemies.”

“There isn’t,” said his cousin, “and you
forget you wouldn’t help me about those
two hands I wanted.”

“Oh, if you talk like that——”

“That’s the way I talk,” said Ryder,
remembering the wife he had left behind
him. “I’m sorry.”

“Hang your sorrow,” said Watchett. “But
I’ll lose no more, and ’tain’t your money yet.”

“Will you and Mary come on board to
tea?” asked Ryder.

“I won’t tea with no unfair person with
no sympathy,” returned Watchett, savagely.

And when Ryder had gone he set the
crowd painting his beautiful white paint a
ripe grass-green.

“Watch if it soothes ’em any,” he said to
Seleucus Thoms. “If it seems to work I’ll
paint ‘er as green as a child’s Noah’s Ark.”

And that night there was no decrease of
the Battle-Axe’s sad crowd, in spite of the
fact that he did not act on his impulse to
lock them up in the stuffy fo’c’s’le. For
soon after midnight Mr. Double felt one
side of his face cooler than the other as he
stood staring at the motionless lights of the
Star of the South, then lying stern on to the
Battle-Axe’s starboard beam.

“Eh? What? Jerusalem!” said Double.
Then he let a joyous bellow out of him.
“Square the yards!”

For there was a breath of wind out of the
south. Both vessels were alive in a moment,
and while the Battle-Axe was squaring away
the Star’s foreyard was braced sharp up on
the starboard tack till she fell off before the
little breeze. Then she squared her yards
too, and both vessels moved at least a mile
towards home before they began fooling all
round the compass again.

“Them hands missin’ makes a difference,”
said Watchett, gloomily. “Less than enough
is starvation.”

As they fought through the night for the
flaws of wind which came out of all quarters,
the short watches of the Battle-Axe found
that out and grumbled accordingly. But it was
a very curious thing that the Star of the South
was never so easy to handle.

“That foreyard goes round now,” said old
Semple, “as if it was hung like a balance.
This is very surprisin’. So it is.”

He mentioned the remarkable fact to
McGill when he came on deck at four in the
morning, and so long as it was dark, as it
was till nearly six, McGill found it so too.
And both watches were in a surprisingly good
temper. For nothing tries men so much as
“brace up” and “square away” every five
minutes as they work their ship through a belt
of calm. But as soon as the sun was up the
Star worked just as badly as she did before.

“It’s maist amazin’,” said McGill.

During the day the calm renewed itself and
gave everyone a rest. But once more the
breeze came at night, and the amazing easiness
of the Star showed itself when the darkness
fell across the sea. Ryder and Semple
and McGill were full of wonder and delight.

“The character of a ship will change
sometimes,” said Semple. “It’s just like a
collision that will alter her deviation. This
calm has worked a revolution.”

Because of this revolution the Star got
ahead of the Battle-Axe every change
and chance of the wind. She got ahead
with such effect that on the third day
the Battle-Axe was hull down to the south’ard,
and when the fourth dawn broke she
was out of sight. This meant much more
than may appear, for the Star picked up the
north-east trade nearly four days earlier than
her rival, and a better trade at that. When
the Battle-Axe crawled into its area it was
half-sister to a calm, while the Star was doing
eight knots an hour. And as there was now
no need to touch tack or sheet, there was no
solution of the mysterious ease with which
she worked in the dark. How long the
mystery might have remained such no one
can say, but it was owing to Mrs. Ryder’s
curious behaviour that it came out. She
laughed in the strangest manner till Ryder
got quite nervous.

“These chaps that jumped over from the
Battle-Axe laughed like that,” he told her, in
great anxiety.

And she giggled more and more.

“Shall I try marmalade?” she asked.
Then she sat down by him and went off into
something so like hysterics that a mere man
might be excused for thinking she was crazy.

“They’re not dead!” she cried; “they’re
not dead!”
[pg 516]

“‘THEY’RE NOT DEAD!’ SHE CRIED; ‘THEY’RE NOT DEAD!'”

“Who aren’t dead?” asked her husband,
desperately.

And, remembering something which had
been told him years before, he took her
hands and slapped with such severity that
she screamed and then cried, and finally put
her head upon his shoulder and confessed.

“Was it mutiny of me to do it?” she
asked, penitently.

Will Ryder tried to look severe, and then
laughed until he cried. “What ever made
you think of it?”

“It wasn’t a what; it was a who,” said his
wife; “it was Silas Bagge.”

“The dickens it was,” said Will, and with
that he left her.

“Call all hands and let them muster aft,”
he said to McGill, who, much wondering, did
what he was told. The watch on deck
dropped their jobs and the watch below
turned out.

“Call the names over,” said Ryder, sternly.

“They’re all here, sir,” said McGill.

The skipper looked down at the upturned
faces of the men and singled out Silas Bagge
as if he meant to speak to him. But he
checked himself, and, going down to the
main deck, walked for’ard to the fo’c’s’le.
The men turned to look after him, and there
was a grin on every face which would have
been ample for two.
Ryder walked quietly,
and pushing aside the
canvas door he came
on a party playing
poker. He heard
strange voices.

“I go one petter,
moreover,” said one of
them.

“I see you and go
two better,” said a man
with a Newcastle burr
in his speech.

Then Ryder took a
hand.

“And I see you,”
he remarked. They
dropped their cards and
jumped to their feet.

“What are you doing
here?” he demanded.
And there wasn’t a word
from one of them;
they looked as sheepish
as four stowaways
interviewing the skipper
before a crowd of
passengers.

“Get on deck,” said Ryder. And much
to McGill’s astonishment the addition to the
crew appeared with the captain behind them.

“Divide this lot among the watches,” said
Ryder.

Leaving McGill to “tumble to the racket,”
he walked to the mate’s berth and explained
to him that henceforth the Star of the South
would go about as easy by day as by night.

“Then they’re not dead!” cried Semple.

“Not by a jugful,” said Ryder, nodding.

“This is very lucky, sir,” said the mate,
smiling.

“It’s confoundedly irregular, too,” replied
the skipper, as he rubbed his chin. “Are you
sure you knew nothing of it, Mr. Semple?”

“Me, sir! Why, I’d look on it as mutiny,”
said Semple; “rank mutiny!”

“It was Mrs. Ryder’s notion, Semple.”

“You don’t say so, sir! She’s a woman
to be proud of!”

“So she is,” replied Ryder. “So she is.”

He went back to his wife.

“You’ll win the hundred pounds now,
Will?”

“I believe I shall,” said Ryder.

“And I’ll spend it,” cried his wife, running
to him and kissing him.

“I believe you will,” said Ryder.

It was a happy ship.

The Size of the World’s Great Cities.

By Arthur T. Dolling.

HOSE imposing agglomerations
of houses and dwellers we call
cities (in most cases political
or commercial capitals) have
shown a notable rate of
progress during the last two
or three decades. More and more do the
centripetal forces at work in almost every
nation make for the growth of the capital at
the expense of the rural community. A
century ago a million human beings dwelling
side by side under a single municipal government
was almost of itself one of the great
wonders of the world. Men spoke of
London with bated breath and wondered
where it would all end. Reports of monster
cities in China with a population double that
of London were dismissed as travellers’ tales.
Travellers’ tales, verily, they have proved
to be, seeing that Peking even to-day has
fewer than a million souls. But what would
our forefathers have said of these twentieth-century
“wens,” these “gloomy or glowing,
febrile and throbbing concentrations” of
human life, numbering
not merely two,
but three, four, and
even five millions of
souls?

LONDON: THE ADMINISTRATIVE COUNTY OF LONDON, WITH WHICH THE OTHER CITIES ARE
COMPARED, IS SHOWN BY THE SHADED PORTION.

Let us take London
as the basis of our
diagrams. London is
an indeterminate
quantity. It may mean
the City of London,
which comprises only
673 acres, or it may
mean the Administrative
County of London,
which boasts
nearly 117 square
miles, or 74,839 acres,
or Greater London,
which embraces the
Metropolitan Police
district, and has an
area of no less than
692 square miles, or
443,420 acres. If we
take the second of
these Londons we
shall find it to consist
of twenty-nine large and small cities, ranging in
population from 334,991 to 51,247 inhabitants.
These are called the Metropolitan boroughs;
but as it is rather geographical size than population
which here concerns us, we may state
that the largest of these boroughs is Wandsworth,
with an area of 9,130 acres, and the
smallest is Holborn, with 409 acres. The
average area of these boroughs, if we exclude
the City, is about four square miles. Within
these borders of London—which must not be
confounded with Greater London—there were
in 1901 4,536,541 souls, living in 616,461
houses. Within this area, besides buildings,
must be counted 12,054 acres of grass,
including the public parks and gardens.

If we take Greater London we embrace a
far wider and yet still a homogeneous community,
for it cannot be denied that the
adjoining boroughs just outside the pale of
the administrative county are policed from
the same centre, are London to the Post
Office, and commonly regard themselves, what
they must soon be officially, as an integral
[pg 518]
part of the Great Wen. Greater London—within
the fifteen-mile radius—is far more
homogeneous and compact than Greater
Chicago, for example, or even than Greater
New York or Greater Boston. We have
here an aggregation of 6,580,000 inhabitants
and, as we have already seen, 443,420 acres.
But perhaps the fairest estimate of London
is the natural one of a single mass
of buildings, without any unoccupied or
unimproved areas. This gives us a solid,
compact city of 85,000 acres and 6,000,000
inhabitants; extending from Edmonton on
the north to Croydon on the south, and
east and west from Woolwich to Ealing.
Nor can one doubt, at the present rate of
expansion, that even more distant areas than
Croydon will eventually be included, although
the Scotsman may have been a little
“previous” who addressed a letter to a
friend at “Bournemouth, S.W.”

A MAP OF PARIS PRINTED UPON A MAP OF LONDON, SHOWING THE RELATIVE SHAPES AND SIZES.

In the following article we propose to
compare with London the sizes of the chief
cities of the world and, by printing a black
map of each city upon a map of London, to
display their relative magnitude at a glance.
Let us see, to begin with, how Paris compares
with London as represented in the
above diagram.

At a coup d’œil we perceive that the French
capital is for its population remarkably small
in area, a fact clearly owing to its fixed
military barriers, which make growth upward
rather than outward. Consequently, dwellers
in Paris often have six or eight pairs of stairs
to climb where the dweller in London has
but two. There have been repeated agitations
for municipal expansion, but so far
nothing has been done to annex the surrounding
communes. Paris has a population
of 2,700,000, living in 75,000 houses,
and an area of over thirty-one square miles.
If, however, the agglomeration of houses be
taken—including the suburbs—the area is
forty-five square miles and the population
3,600,000, although, as yet, this is not
actually and geographically Paris.

BERLIN COMPARED WITH LONDON.

Berlin, a mere village a century ago, is the
third city of Europe in point of population,
and its growth since 1870 has been phenomenal,
as we shall see. Yet the technical
barriers which enclose the city remain precisely
what they were more than forty years
ago, and Berlin is still as it was in 1861,
compressed within twenty-eight square miles,
six miles long and five and a half wide. At
the close of the Franco-Prussian War Berlin,
now the capital of a new empire, became
a paradise for builders. Streets of houses
appeared almost as if by magic, and the
[pg 519]
whole aspect of the city became changed.
From being the worst lighted, the worst
drained, and ugliest capital in Europe it has
become one of the
finest, cleanest, and
handsomest of
cities, and its population
has more
than doubled. Berlin
now boasts within
its boundaries
1,857,000 inhabitants.
But without
there is, in Ibsen’s
phrase, “the
younger generation
knocking at the
door,” and Greater
Berlin might have
a population of
2,430,000, with an
area at least treble,
extending, indeed,
as far as Potsdam.
Berlin’s actual increase
from 1800
to 1900 was 818 per
cent., multiplying
its population by
nine.

VIENNA COMPARED WITH LONDON.

“The transformation
of Vienna” has
for nearly half a century
been a watchword
amongst the
progressive party in
the Austrian capital.
The example of
Paris—with which
the Viennese love
to be compared—has,
since 1858,
brought to the fore
innumerable Haussmannizing
projects,
all of which have
tended to the city’s
amplifying and
beautifying. The
second or outer
girdle of fortifications
has been
taken down; the
barriers thus removed,
fifty suburbs
became, in 1891,
part and parcel of
the capital. Before
this time Vienna was
twenty-one English square miles, or one-third
less than Paris; afterwards it covered sixty-nine
square miles, besides having by the process
[pg 520]
added half a million to its population,
which now stands at 1,662,269. But Vienna
does not intend to be stationary in the coming
decade. The fever of the municipal race for
territory is upon her also. She is now reaching
out for the adjoining town of Floridsdorf across
the Danube, together with four other communes,
having a population of 50,000; and
this step increases the area of Vienna to
about eighty-two square miles, nearly thrice
the size of Berlin. Naturally such a large
territory for a population smaller than a third
that of London would comprise much open
ground, especially as there is great overcrowding
in the industrial districts. And, as
a matter of fact, over five-eighths of Vienna
is woods, pastures and vineyards, and arable
ground, while above a tenth of the total area
is made up of parks, gardens, and squares.
The cost of making Vienna so vast has been
enormous; but it has not been borne by the
ratepayers to any oppressive extent, because
the appropriated military ground and sites of
fortifications have yielded a handsome profit,
and municipal improvements in the annexed
districts have, of course, enhanced the value
of property. Moreover, the most acute
observers are convinced that, if Vienna had
not roused herself to material self-improvement,
her prestige, which is already
threatened by Budapest, would ere this
have completely vanished. After the Austro-Prussian
struggle and the marvellous rise of
Berlin and Budapest, the city on the
Danube would have sunk to be the Bruges
of the twentieth century.

ST. PETERSBURG COMPARED WITH LONDON.

There is, perhaps, hardly a capital in the
world so badly situated as St. Petersburg.
To its north and east is a desolate wilderness,
and to its south is a mighty stretch of marshland,
and it is 400 miles from any important
commercial centre. Yet, built at the behest
of an Imperial autocrat, it has risen steadily
into magnitude and wealth, at the cost of
hundreds of thousands of human lives.

St. Petersburg is, as all the world knows,
built on a swamp,
or low-lying alluvial
deposits, at
the mouth of the
Neva. These
cover altogether
an area of 21,185
acres, of which
12,820 are part of
the delta proper
of the river and
1,330 acres are
submerged. In
consequence of its
origin and present
condition the city
is naturally subject
to inundations,
but these,
owing to the admirable
public works
and precautions
taken, are
not of frequent
occurrence. Of
the area of the
city, 798 acres are
given up to gardens
and parks,
while a third of the whole area is densely
overcrowded, the average in some districts
being one inhabitant for every ninety-three
square feet and some dwellings containing
from 400 to 2,000 inhabitants each. As for the
population, it is now 1,248,739, to which if
that of the suburbs be added (190,635), the
Russian capital is the fifth city of Europe. Yet
in area it is far too small; overcrowding is
universal, in spite of the 1,000 dwellings
that are erected annually, and the mortality
is appalling.

LIVERPOOL COMPARED WITH LONDON.

Liverpool is about six miles long by about
three broad, the area being 13,236 acres. It
[pg 521]
has a population of 686,332 within boundaries
less than half the size of Berlin or Paris. But
it comprised only 5,210 acres in 1895. In
that year, feeling
cramped, Liverpool
annexed an area of
8,026 acres. Of the
total area, there is
comprised 772-1/2
acres of parks and
gardens.

PEKING COMPARED WITH LONDON.

Peking, as we may
see, is a walled city of
oblong shape, and
contains a total area
of about thirty
square miles. The
two chief divisions
are known as the Tartar
city and the outer
or Chinese city. The
population is now
about 1,000,000.
Writing twenty years
ago Sir Robert Douglas
thought that a
population of a mere
million was “out of
all proportion to the
immense area enclosed
within its walls.
This disparity,”
he continued, “is
partly accounted
for by the fact that
large spaces, notably
in the Chinese
city, are not built
over, and that the
grounds surrounding
the Imperial
Palace private residences
are very
extensive.”

What would
he have said of
Chicago, New
York, Budapest,
or, indeed, of any
modern capital
“expanded”? To
us, at the beginning
of the twentieth
century, a
million inhabitants
seems a very respectable
population
indeed for a
city of only thirty
square miles, and in this respect we can
no longer sneer or be astonished at the
“peculiarities” of Oriental cities.
[pg 522]

BOSTON COMPARED WITH LONDON.

Boston is one of the older and
more conservative American cities
which have lately
been seized by the
expansion fever, and
now proudly refers
to its “Greater Boston.”
But this is as
yet only a term, and
the new Boston metropolitan
district,
embracing all the
area within a circle
of ten miles from the
State House, is
hardly yet a distinct
municipality. It will
doubtless soon come
about, and in that
case twenty-two
towns and cities will
be taken to the bosom
of “the Hub,” and
the total population
will be close upon a
million and a quarter.
At present the
area of the city is over
thirty-seven square
miles (24,000 acres),
or just the size of
Chicago a decade
ago, of which 2,308
acres are common
open spaces and
126 acres ponds and
rivers, in addition
to numerous
squares, gardens,
and playgrounds.
The length of the
city is eight miles
and its greatest
breadth about seven
miles.

CHICAGO COMPARED WITH LONDON.—THE
SOLID BLACK AREA REPRESENTS THE
ACTUAL BUILDINGS OF CHICAGO; THE GREY AREA COMPLETING THE ADMINISTERED CITY.

Exactly one hundred
years ago the
American Government
built Fort
Dearborn, on Lake
Michigan. In 1831
there was a village
of one hundred
people on the site;
to-day the city of
Chicago has spread
out (rather too
generously, its rival
municipalities
think) until it comprises 190-1/2
square miles and a population
of 1,698,575. But only some
[pg 523]
seventy square miles of this area is improved,
and less than fifty miles built upon. As there
are also 2,232 acres of parks and open
spaces, Chicago cannot be said to be overcrowded;
especially when one remembers
the great
height of most
of the buildings
in the
business quarter.
Chicago’s
expansion, in
truth, follows
the lines laid
down by the
early Western
boom “cities,”
which were
prairie wilderness
one
week, were surveyed
the next,
had a population
of twelve,
one man to the
square mile,
and applied
for a charter
the week
following, and
elected a Mayor
and Corporation. The
next week the boom was
over and a mere shanty
remained to mark the site of Boomopolis.

NEW YORK COMPARED WITH LONDON, THE SOLID BLACK AREA
REPRESENTING THE ACTUAL BUILDINGS, THE GREY AREA COMPLETING
THE ADMINISTERED CITY.

Before 1898 the city of New York lay
partly on Manhattan Island, a long and
narrow strip of land at the head of New
York Bay, thirteen miles long and twenty-two
square miles in area, and partly, although
to a very trifling extent so far as population
was concerned, north of the Harlem River,
and on several small islands in the bay and
East River. The total area was forty-two
square miles, within which was a population of
1,515,301 souls. But in the aforementioned
year the great arms of the city flung themselves
out and gathered to its bosom so many
of the outlying parts and people as to bring
the total area of Greater New York up to
307 square miles, and the population to
3,437,202. It must be confessed that
much of this huge municipal territory has
been rather irrelevantly brought in—especially
Staten Island (area 57·19 square miles),
which is separated from New York proper
by the width of the bay. But, on the other
hand, other and nearer towns, such as Jersey
City and Hoboken, were excluded, for the
reason that they were in another State. Within
Greater New York are included 6,766 acres
of parks and open spaces, which is but little
more than half that of London; yet the proportion
of unoccupied land not under the
control of the city is, of course, many times
as great. The actual agglomeration of
buildings in Greater New York—excluding
Staten Island—covers barely 51,000 acres, or
eighty square miles, as is shown in the
diagram. Less than 5,000 acres is built
upon in Staten Island.

Some Novel Banquets.

By Theodore Adams.

HE art of him who prepares the
banquet has reached, in these
latter days, a distinction of
novelty which might reasonably
make the gastronomer of
fifty years ago hold up his
knife and fork in wonder. It is a novelty
born of the desire for change. No longer
does the dinner-giver merely prepare, with
the aid of his costly chef, the menu for his
guests and the viands on it. He—or, more
properly, she, because of the present prominence
of the fair hostess—tries not only to
set a pretty table with flowers and cutlery of
gold. The giver of dinners is ever thinking
of that which will make the banquet memorable
to the guest, and, in some cases, even
wonders what the Press will say about it.
This means to lie awake at night, and in
such nightly vigils many wondrous things
have been evolved.

Thus we have come to hear of banquets
under conditions that make the imagination
reel, and arouse speculation as to what the
dinner of the twenty-first century will be
like. When thirty-two people sat about
on horseback a year ago, in a temporary
stable, eating from dishes handed to them
by waiters dressed as grooms, it seemed
as if the top notch of bizarrerie had been
reached. But, as the German says, noch
nicht.

A HORSEBACK DINNER IN A HOTEL BALLROOM, THE TABLES BEING CARRIED IN FRONT OF THE SADDLES.

From a Photo. by Byron.

This remarkable horseback dinner was
given in the great ballroom at Sherry’s by Mr.
C. K. G. Billings, of New York, and, as it
was intended to celebrate the construction of
a new stable, the rumour went round that the
banquet would be held in the structure itself.
The guests, however, met at Sherry’s, and
were escorted to a small banquet room,
where a long table, in the form of an ellipse,
was lavishly banked with flowers. The
centre space was occupied by a stuffed horse,
which cast his glass eyes curiously upon the
assembly as the oysters and caviare were
served. So convinced were the guests that
this was the real and much-talked-about
equestrian dinner that their surprise was
great when they were asked to follow their
host into an adjoining room.

“Here,” according to the report of one
who was at this famous banquet, “there had
taken place an amazing transformation, for
the decoration, the waxed floors, and everything
of the world of indoors had been
obliterated. A space sixty-five by eighty-five
feet in the centre of the room had been
enclosed by scenery. The guests were in a
land of winding roadways, of brooks which
coursed through green meadows, and of
[pg 525]
giant elms. There were cottages, vine-covered,
and at the edge of a country estate
was a porter’s lodge. Far away stretched
fields of grain. Over all was the blaze of a
summer sun, for above in a vault of blue
were strung electric lights. On all sides
was the country, and in the middle of the
room, rising in a pyramid, were geraniums,
daisies, and roses, all blooming as if in
the air of June. Above them a palm
formed the apex of a pyramid thirty feet
at the base. The floor was covered with
long, velvety grass. Around the centrepiece
were arranged thirty-one horses waiting for
their riders. Mr. Billings’s mount stood
near the door, gazing into the geranium bed.
How the steeds got up to the ballroom is no
mystery in these days of large lifts, and they
were well-trained horses, who cared not for
lights and unusual conditions. Each guest
found his mount by means of a horseshoe-shaped
card attached to the saddle of the
horse, just as he had been guided to his seat
at the preliminary banquet by means of the
bits of Bristol-board at each cover.”

Between every two horses there was placed
a carpet-covered block, from which the
diners swung into their saddles, where, from
little tables placed upon the pommels, they
ate their splendid dinner. The horses
showed little nervousness. Their trappings
were yellow and gold, making pretty contrast
with the costumes of the servants, who wore
trousers of white buckskin, scarlet coats, and
boots with yellow tops. Towards the end of
the feast the horses were treated with a
consideration due to their efforts, for a
turkey-red fence surrounding the floral
pyramid was discovered by the guests to
contain feeding-troughs in which had been
placed a plentiful quantity of superior oats.
After dinner the horses were taken from the
room by the grooms, small tables and chairs
were brought in, and the guests sat down to
an after-dinner chat as if in a beautiful
garden.

A DINNER OF THE NEW YORK EQUESTRIAN CLUB, THE TABLE REPRESENTING A HORSE’S HEAD.

From a Photo. by Byron.

The horse has figured in a less ambitious,
though perhaps quite as attractive, manner
at the dinners of the Equestrian Club, which
meets in New York during the winter once
a month. For one of these banquets was
arranged a rural scene with trees, shrubs,
and beautiful beds of tulips and hyacinths,
the whole floor being covered with stage
grass. The table represented a horse’s head,
chairs being placed around the neck, while
the head proper of the horse was a mass of
flowers, with eyes, nose, and mouth displayed
by means of ornamental and many-coloured
flowers. The bridle, particularly,
stood out strongly in brilliant red. The
menu was formed in the shape of a horse’s
head, with a small bit and bridle made of
leather and steel attached to it.

A DINNER INSIDE AN EASTER EGG.

From a Photo. by Byron.

The use of effective scenery at such
functions is growing more common. Perhaps
the most effective use to which it was ever
put was at the Proal banquet of April, 1903,
[pg 526]
when thirty-five ladies dined within a monster
Easter egg. The egg itself towered to the
top of Sherry’s ballroom and extended almost
to the outer walls. Outside the egg was
represented a farm on which chickens, ducks,
geese, rabbits, pigs, lambs, and guinea-pigs
disported to the life—for they were really
live. The ballroom had been turned into a
fine landscape, with scenes representing fields
and pastures, with flowing brooks near by,
and farmhouses, windmills, and hayricks in
the distance. One or two mirrors reflected
parts of this landscape, which had been
arranged to express that longing for “green
fields and pastures new” which comes to all
who live a city life when spring appears.

In every respect the farm was true to life.
A farmer with blue overalls and smock passed
in front of the guests, followed by a flock of
geese. Pigs ran between his legs, and the
spring lamb frisked upon the green. Rabbits
munched their carrots until, timid at the sight
of strange people, they hid themselves in the
straw which lay about. Around were scattered
the implements of labour, as if the farmers
had just left their work. There were scythes,
mowing-machines, milk-pails, and milking-stools
to be seen. Every detail, in fact, had
been thought of necessary to make the illusion
complete, and the guests—all of whom had
been kept in ignorance until they came into
the room—were justly astonished at the sight.

The egg itself, with its shell of white, was
geometrically perfect, and brought to mind
the famous tale of Sindbad and the gigantic
roc. The shell was
fashioned with light
timber bands bent
to the required
shape, and the supports
were covered
with green, all making
a delightful
arbour-like effect.
The table was oval
in form, hollowed
in the centre, within
which were floral
decorations representing
the white
and yellow of an
egg. Daffodils and
jonquils were used
for the yolk, while
lilies, candytuft,
and other white
flowers were freely
used. The air was
filled with fragrance
from these blooms. Mrs. Proal sat at
the head of the ornamental table, with her
guests around the oval. Music was
provided by a band of negro musicians,
who, seating themselves on wooden benches
outside the dining-room, sang plantation
melodies. The waiters were dressed as farm-labourers
in gaily coloured shirts and smocks,
with wisps of straw upon their heads. Fortunate,
indeed, were the thirty-five women who
took part at this unique banquet, for the farm
and its giant egg had come into existence
only for a single day, to be destroyed when
luncheon was ended and its use was over.

THE GUESTS OF THE KETTLE CLUB DINNER WITH THE KETTLE IN WHICH THEY DINED.

From a Photo. by Byron.

We already begin to see in these dinners
the existence of a new form of humour.
This is shown even better in the so-called
“babies’ dinner” given at Sherry’s by a
Philadelphia organization called the Kettle
Club. This club, composed of gentlemen
who summer in the Adirondack Mountains,
and who eat their forest meals round a vast
and fragrant kettle, recently decided to admit
five new members, or “babies.” The only
condition of candidacy was that the “babies”
should show due appreciation of the honour
conferred upon them. The result was a
banquet such as had never been held before.
To it were invited the older members of the
club. The ballroom resembled a forest glade.
Round the walls were painted forests with real
trees in the foreground, to one of which was
hitched a hunting-horse. The scenic effects
included a dark blue cloth which represented
a sky, with a moon in the distance and
[pg 527]
twinkling stars. In the centre of the room
rested on a tall mound a huge kettle, twenty-five
feet high and twenty-eight feet in
diameter, with a door at one side reached by
a rustic stairway. There was a circular table
within the kettle, around which sat the guests,
each with a wine “cooler” at his side.

In the centre of the table, perfectly dark
when dinner began, was a bed of tall flowers
on the floor, nine feet below. Suddenly,
when this hole was lighted, was revealed a
magnificent display of orchids, with a vine of
pale purple flowers. Below sat a negro with
a banjo, who sang and played throughout the
evening for the pleasure of the guests. The
menu card showed a picture of the kettle,
into which five babies were climbing, the
faces of these being those of the five new
members, each with a teething ring, a nursing
bottle, and a rattle. Souvenirs of the occasion
were given to the guests in the form of
small kettles, each with the name of the
guest and the club motto, “Take the Kettle,”
painted on the side. This same inscription
appeared on the structure in which the
banquet took place, as shown in our illustration.
Here we may note the part which
the backcloth played at this noteworthy
function.

THE OLD GUARDS’ “MOCK-MENU” DINNER.

From a Photo. by Byron.

Another novel dinner was that given by a
well-known New Yorker, Colonel O’Brien, to
the Old Guard of Delmonico’s, known to
fame as the guard that “dines but never
surrenders.” For this affair two menus had
been provided, one as a joke, the other for
consumption. The mock bill of fare contained
a list of dishes which might have been
provided. For example, under the heading
of oysters were the words “half shell,” which
the waiters solemnly set before the assembled
gentlemen, minus the bivalves. These being
removed made way for the next item, which,
being “cream of celery” and presumably a
soup, was found to be small tubes of celery
with cold cream inside. Through all the
regular courses the joke was carried, with
amusing success, the joint being spring lamb
with “string,” or French, beans. What was
the astonishment of the guests to find served
for this course a woolly toy lamb on a spring,
which squeaked when pressed, and wore
dried beans on a string around its neck!
The humour of the dinner came with the
continued surprise at the ingenuity shown
by the preparer of the feast, and it can be
truly said that each item tickled the guests
immensely. With the woolly lambs this band
of gastronomers were especially pleased, and
it was at the moment when these ridiculous
toys were handed round to the well-proportioned
[pg 528]
diners that our photograph was
secured.

THE “LYRE DINNER,” THE TABLE BEING IN THE FORM OF A LYRE.

From a Photo. by Byron.

A few years ago Mr. Sherry himself was
returning with the impresario, Maurice Grau,
from Europe, and as the result of a wager
upon the ship’s “run” Mr. Grau was given a
splendid dinner. It is now known in gastronomic
history as the “lyre dinner,” for the
table was arranged in the form of an enormous
lyre. Long gilded ropes covered with pretty
vines represented the strings, while, to carry
out the idea of the instrument, there was a
golden cloth on the inner side of the table.
Into this were woven mauve orchids, with
electric lights sparkling under the green
leaves, thus bringing out sufficient brilliancy
to please the guests and not to affect their
eyesight. Between each two seats of the
table was a wine “cooler,” sunk into the
wood in such a way that the neck only of
each champagne bottle showed above the
edge. The banquet was attended by those
best known to music in New York, and its
brilliancy has probably never been surpassed.

A Doubtful Case.

By Mrs. Egerton Eastwick (Pleydell North).

HEN, in the year 189-, a
weakness of the throat prevented
me from preaching for
a time, I had considerable
difficulty in persuading Allan
Fortescue to take my place in
the pulpit.

He had been amongst us rather more than
two years; and although an ordained priest
in the Church of England, and a man of
considerable ability, was without preferment,
and, apparently, content to remain so.

How came it, I often wondered, that he
stayed on in our quiet village, with no
apparent interest or occupation in life
beyond his garden and his books?

Nor, when he at length consented to my
proposal and preached his first sermon in
Stony Lea, was my perplexity lessened. His
diction was that of a classical scholar, but his
words were also the outpouring of a sensitive,
warm-hearted man;
I could have fancied
that in these
impersonal utterances
he sought
compensation for
years of enforced
silence and isolation.

He had attracted
me from the first.
Manly, genial, but
strangely reserved,
Sir Lewin Maxwell
and myself
were, I believe, the
only visitors who
had gained admittance
to his cottage.

When I so far
induced him to
change his habits
as to help me with
my weekly sermons
Sir Lewin Maxwell
was abroad. He
had left Stony Lea
for the Riviera in
November, and
now, early in May,
the fact of his
marriage had just
been announced.
No particulars, however, concerning the bride
had reached us, and the appearance of the
newly-married couple at the Hall was looked
for with much interest and curiosity. They
did not come until June, and then, by the
express desire of Sir Lewin, were met by no
demonstration of any kind; indeed, no one,
I believe, except the steward and myself
knew the exact date or hour at which they
were to be expected.

On the Sunday following their arrival,
therefore, glances were turned with some
eagerness towards the Hall pew, but it was
occupied only by a stout, elderly lady, who
could not assuredly be Sir Lewin’s newly-married
wife.

No sooner, on that day, had Allan
Fortescue in due course mounted the pulpit
than I became aware of something amiss.
From my position in the chancel I could not
see his face, but the pause which preceded
his announcement of a text
was just long enough to
cause uneasiness, and his
voice, when at length he
broke the silence, was
harsh and unnatural, although,
when once fairly
started, he spoke with even
more than his usual fervour.

When I reached
the sacristy after the
service Fortescue
had already left,
and as I was preparing
to follow him
I was accosted by
the lady whom I
had seen in the
squire’s pew.

“SHE TURNED TO ME AND INQUIRED WHETHER I WAS AWARE OF
THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THE MAN.”

My visitor’s
comely, good-tempered
face was
flushed with heat
and nervous indignation.
After
abruptly closing the
sacristy door upon
the two of us she
turned to me and
inquired whether I
was aware of the
true character of
the man I had
[pg 530]
admitted to my pulpit, adding that it was with
the greatest difficulty she had refrained from
walking out of the church.

Somewhat startled, I asked for further
explanation, whereupon she gave me, at considerable
length, the particulars I will here try
to relate as concisely as possible.

It seemed that about five years previously
Allan Fortescue had been engaged as resident
tutor to Mrs. Llewellyn’s only son, and in
that capacity had accompanied
the family
to Llidisfarn, a solitary,
old-fashioned place in
Wales. The house was
occupied for the greater
part of the year by a
gardener and his wife
as caretakers; but
during the residence
of
their mistress
these people
retired to their
own cottage.
Mrs. Llewellyn
brought with
her two old
and faithful servants—both
women. Her
party further included
her niece
and ward, Edith
Graham, now
Sir Lewin Maxwell’s
wife. The
evening of her
arrival Mrs.
Llewellyn retired
early to her room
and to bed. The latter
was an antiquated four-poster;
the canopy had
been removed for the
sake of air, but the curtains remained, and on
the night in question, the weather being boisterous
and the room draughty, had been drawn
so as to have only a small opening at the foot.
Before retiring Mrs. Llewellyn had taken
from her travelling-bag an ebony and silver
casket which contained some valuable
diamonds. She had intended placing the
casket in an iron safe near the head of the
bed, but had found the lock rusty from
disuse; consequently, being exceedingly tired,
and believing there could be no fear of
burglars in this quiet and remote place, she
left the casket on the dressing-table.

The dressing-table faced the door of the
room, and to cross from one to the other it
was necessary to pass the foot of the bed.

“A FIGURE CARRYING A SMALL READING-LAMP PASSED
THE APERTURE.”

In the dead of the night Mrs. Llewellyn
awoke, feeling sure that someone was stirring
in the room, and, as she became more fully
conscious, saw on the ceiling above her a
dim reflection of light. Almost at the same
moment a figure carrying a small reading-lamp
passed the aperture between the curtains
at the foot of
the bed, going
towards the
door, and she
recognised, to
her amazement,
the tutor, Allan
Fortescue. She
described herself
as being
too surprised
and terrified to
call out; it
seemed but a
moment before
the door was
closed and she
was in darkness
and alone.
Then she struck
a light, sprang
from the bed,
and went to
the dressing-table.
The
ebony casket
was gone. Even
then she gave
no alarm. Except
her son
and Allan Fortescue,
only
women were in
the house;
and she reflected
that it would be safer and wiser to
wait until the morning. That the thief
should dispose of the diamonds during
the night was virtually impossible. Also the
circumstances were otherwise peculiar. Allan
Fortescue was at that time the avowed
admirer of Miss Graham, and for her sake
an open scandal was, if possible, to be
avoided.

The following morning, however, after
hours of sleepless anxiety, Mrs. Llewellyn
summoned the tutor to the study, made her
accusation, and demanded the return of her
property.
[pg 531]

He did not attempt either to explain or
deny his presence in her room during the
night, but appeared to treat the idea of theft
as a ludicrous jest, and stoutly maintained
that the jewels were not in his possession.
During the altercation which followed Miss
Graham entered, and Fortescue at once
explained the situation.

Apparently to his surprise, Miss Graham
took the affair very seriously, and seemed to
feel that the evidence against him was
overwhelming. She pleaded, however, so
piteously that for her sake he might be
spared from public disgrace that Mrs.
Llewellyn finally consented to allow him to
leave the house, upon the understanding that
he should seek no further intercourse with
any member of the family, and that he should
never again undertake the duties either of a
clergyman or a tutor. Under these circumstances
he at last seemed to realize the
seriousness of his position; he went away
that morning, maintaining towards the end
an obstinate silence. The most rigorous
search, made at his own request, among his
possessions failed to reveal the diamonds,
which, indeed, had never since been heard of.

I also gathered that, although made fully
aware of the penalty to be incurred by any
breach of the conditions named, he had
steadily refused to bind himself as to his
future.

That afternoon, as soon as I was at leisure,
I walked down to Allan Fortescue’s cottage.

Shocked and distressed as I was at the
story, I felt many points in it needed clearing
up, and was inwardly assured that, if he
would, he had the power to explain the
whole matter satisfactorily.

He opened the door himself.

“I know,” he said, abruptly, before I could
speak, “why you have come. Mrs. Llewellyn
was with you this morning; I saw her rustling
up towards the sacristy. Don’t let charity
bring you any farther.”

I signed to him to let me come in.

“We can’t talk on the doorstep,” I said.
“Of course, it is all a mistake.”

He let me come to the study; then, as he
closed the door behind me, he said:—

“There is no mistake. I was there—in
her room that night. She saw me.”

“You were not there to take the
diamonds,” I persisted.

“I was not there to steal the diamonds; I
will own so much.”

“In that case, who did steal them, if
stolen they were? No pains should have
been spared at the time to discover the
actual thief. Even now it might not be too
late, if you would only account for your
presence in the room.”

“The actual thief——” He began restlessly
to pace the floor. “What if I were to say that
I took the diamonds—with my own hands?”

“I should answer that you must have been
in some way unconscious of your actions.”

My confidence seemed to touch him; he
looked at me, and for a moment I hoped I
was to gain some enlightenment; then he
said, slowly:—

“I was never in my life more completely
master of myself. And now there must be
an end of my confessions.”

I saw that to question him further would
be useless, and shortly afterwards took my
leave. As we parted he grasped my extended
hand.

“I owe you an apology,” he said, “for
having brought this annoyance upon you,
and I don’t know how to thank you for your
patience with me.”

A few days later an invitation reached
me to dine at the Hall. Any intercourse
between Allan Fortescue and Sir Lewin
Maxwell had inevitably ceased. Sir Lewin,
not unnaturally, accepted Mrs. Llewellyn’s
view of the case, but he did not quarrel with
me for taking my own line, and young Lady
Maxwell seemed almost grateful for my belief
in the possible innocence of her old lover.
She was a most charming woman, with
an habitually sweet and gracious manner,
rendered only more attractive, I at first
thought, by a variableness of mood which
brought suggestion of possible storms.

An accomplished musician, her talent
made a link between us. Often, indeed,
during the earlier part of our intercourse
she became associated in my mind with the
harmonies of Beethoven, whose creations
she rendered with remarkable skill and
feeling. Later, however, I noticed an
increase of nervous restlessness, an expression
in her eyes as of some haunting, eager
desire, little in keeping with the works of the
master, which, however full of variety, are to
my mind always instinct with a great satisfaction
and repose.

For some time I was inclined to attribute
these signs of disturbance to the neighbourhood
of Allan Fortescue, and to think that
he would have done well to leave the village.
But, so far as I could see, he studiously
avoided all chance of encounter with any of
the Hall party; and, without definite reason,
I had not the heart to suggest that he should
become once more a wanderer.
[pg 532]

In this way some few months passed
without noticeable event. Sir Lewin, I
thought, at times looked careworn and more
aged than the passage of months would
justify, but he seemed, if possible, more
entirely devoted to his wife than in the
earlier days of their marriage. Then, one
Monday afternoon early in April, as I was
riding homewards from visiting an outlying
district, a curious thing happened.

My way led me through Oxley Dell, a
piece of road bordered on each side by Sir
Lewin’s woods, through which to the right
a bridle-path leads by a short cut to Stony
Lea. The path and immediate neighbourhood
are but little frequented, owing to an
old story of a murder and a subsequent ghost.

“A WOMAN SUDDENLY APPEARED FROM AMONG THE TREES.”

As I neared the Dell I saw Allan Fortescue
tramping along the road in front of me, but
before I could overtake him he turned aside
into the bridle-path. There I presently
followed, and had him once more in view,
when a woman suddenly appeared from
among the trees and accosted him. Allan
raised his hat, and the two walked on
together; the meeting had the air of an
appointment.

Having no wish to play the spy I turned
my pony’s head, but I was ill at ease. The
tall, graceful figure of the woman, enveloped
though it was in a long rain-coat, had been
ominously familiar, and as I jogged slowly
homewards I resolved that I would call that
evening on Allan and have the matter out
with him.

I found him in better spirits than usual,
but when I explained my errand he seemed
somewhat disconcerted.

“Ah! you saw us,” he said, and bent to
knock the ashes from his pipe; then added,
“You are sure, I suppose, of the identity of
the lady? “

“As sure as it is possible to be without
having seen her face to face.”

“Still, you might be utterly mistaken.
Would it not be better, for the sake of—the
lady chiefly concerned in your mind—to give
her the benefit of the doubt?”

His eyes met mine fully, I answered
question with question.

“Do you think you are dealing fairly with
me? Strictly speaking, perhaps this is no
affair of mine, and yet——”

“And yet you have been extraordinarily
[pg 533]
good to me, and deserve that I should be open
with you. I can only ask you to trust me a
little farther; to believe that the meeting you
witnessed to-day cannot possibly injure the
lady you are thinking of except through your
interference, and that it was as far removed
from being of a sentimental nature as though
I had met my grandmother.”

The Friday following this interview I
received a visit from the squire; he looked
ill and harassed.

“I am vexed,” he said, “about Edith.
She went to town for a day’s shopping on
Wednesday and has not returned. She was
to lunch with Mrs. Llewellyn and come back
for dinner. She has frequently made these
little excursions of late. In the evening,
however, I got a telegram to say she was
detained by the dressmaker, and yesterday
morning a letter to the same effect. This
morning I had no letter, but half an hour
ago I met General Anson—he had just
arrived by the three o’clock train. He told
me that he had seen Edith having lunch at
Franconi’s with Fortescue. They did not
see him—his table was behind theirs—but
as he left the room he passed close to them
and heard Fortescue say, ‘To-night, then,
without fail, by the seven-thirty.’ ‘So,’ the
old man went on, ‘I suppose Lady Maxwell
comes down to-night, and Mr. Fortescue is
to escort her. I thought there was a coolness—that
he was under a cloud.’ I
laughed, and told him it was a case of
mistaken identity.”

“And Fortescue?”

“He went to London yesterday; I happen
to know that.”

I must here mention that Stony Lea,
although but a small village in Kent, has a
good train service, and is but an hour’s run
from town. I looked at my watch. It was
barely four o’clock. “Why not,” I said, “go
up to town by the four-forty-five, and travel
down yourself with Lady Maxwell when she
is prepared to come? You could be in
Belgrave Road before six o’clock.”

“Will you come with me?” he asked.

I consented; and by 6.30 we were in
Belgrave Road.

Mrs. Llewellyn’s house had an empty,
uninhabited air, and the servant who came
to the door said his mistress had been out
of town for a few days. Lady Maxwell had
been staying there during the week. She
had driven out in the morning and not returned
until four o’clock; then, after a cup
of tea, she had gone out again, walking; she
had said she was leaving town that evening,
and would return about half-past six in
a cab for various parcels that were awaiting
her.

“Quite so,” Sir Lewin said; “she is travelling
down with me. I will wait for her here,”
and he walked straight into the drawing-room,
whither I followed him. The room opened
into the hall. Presently a hansom drove up;
Lady Maxwell got out and entered the house
with a latch-key. Sir Lewin moved towards
the door of the room as though intending
to meet her, when the arrival of another cab
made him pause and look round. Lady
Maxwell ran lightly upstairs; the door was
ajar and I heard the swish-swish of her
skirts. The second cab was a four-wheeler;
Fortescue descended from it, and the electric
bell of the front door tingled persistently in
the silence of the house. Then we heard
him asking for Lady Maxwell, and almost
before the servant could reply Sir Lewin was
on the doorstep. Fearful of what might
ensue I followed him from the room; I saw
him touch Fortescue on the shoulder, and
Allan’s start of surprise and, apparently,
dismay; then the two men entered the hall
together.

“Now,” said Sir Lewin, “kindly explain
your presence here and your business with
my wife.”

Allan’s answer was unexpected.

“I think,” he said, quietly, “I will leave
that to Lady Maxwell herself.”

They had spoken so far in low tones and
with outward calm; now Sir Lewin muttered
angrily some words which I could not hear,
and raised his arm.

“SIR LEWIN MUTTERED ANGRILY SOME WORDS WHICH I COULD NOT
HEAR, AND RAISED HIS ARM.”

I stepped forward.

“Come into the drawing-room,” I said
hurriedly in his ear. “Don’t make a public
scene.”

He shook me off, but at that moment
another and more importunate voice
intervened.

“My dear Lewin, you here? How exceedingly
fortunate! Now we need not rush for
that seven-thirty train; you and dear Edith
can stay to dinner.”

There was a darkening of the doorway, a
rustle of garments, and Mrs. Llewellyn
advanced with outstretched hands.

Sir Lewin stared in blank amazement.
Allan smiled.

“I was in the cab,” went on the lady,
“waiting for Edith. Mr. Fortescue kindly
drove with me from the station, and I had
intended to travel down with her, trusting,
my dear Lewin, to your hospitality to put me
up for the night. I am so sorry I have been
[pg 534]
unable to return before, to be with the dear
child all the time.”

She had talked us all to the drawing-room
door.

“I still quite fail to see,” began Sir Lewin,
stiffly, “how
Mr. Fortescue——”

“I will explain,”
said
Lady Maxwell.
She had come
down the stairs
unheard, and
now advanced
towards us.
Her face was
as white as the
gown she wore,
her eyes looked
wild and startled.
“Come
with me,” she
added to Sir
Lewin, and led
the way to a
small back
room. He followed
her without
a word.

“Pay the
cab,” said Mrs.
Llewellyn,
cheerfully, to
the servant,
“and bring all
those packages
in. Sir Lewin
and Lady Maxwell
will remain
to dinner. Mr.
Greyling and
Mr. Fortescue,
please come in,
and let me offer you some refreshment.”

She moved towards the dining-room and,
the door being safely closed, fell gasping into
a chair. There was wine upon the side-board;
Allan poured some into a glass and
brought it to her. She sighed heavily as she
took it. “How all this is to end, Heaven
only knows!”

“I think,” said Allan, “there is nothing
further for me to do. If you will allow me I
will bid you good-night.”

She looked at him curiously, the wineglass
half-way to her lips.

“Can you,” she said, “trust your vindication
to us?”

“Entirely. It has come to be the last
thing I think about,” he answered, sadly;
“and, if she may in any degree be spared,
I beg that it may be the very last thing
in your mind also.”

A few minutes later
Allan and I left the
house. We dined in
town and travelled back
to Stony Lea together;
but he offered me no
explanation of
the events of
the afternoon,
and I respected
his silence.

Nearly a
week passed
before I heard
anything further
about the
matter.

Then, one
morning, Sir
Lewin called
upon me; he
and Lady Maxwell
had returned
only the
previous night
from town.
He made no
reference to
the circumstances
of our
last meeting,
but asked me
to come to the
Hall that afternoon,
as his
wife was far
from well, and
anxious to see
me.

I went accordingly and found her alone,
lying upon a couch in her morning-room and
looking sadly, terribly changed.

“I have asked you to come,” she said,
when I had taken a seat beside her, “because
I want to tell you the truth about Allan
Fortescue; he has suffered all these years
through my fault, and I must make what
reparation I can before—— It was I
who really had the diamonds; I wanted
them, and I employed him to bring me
the casket; he did this quite innocently,
as you will hear, not knowing what it
contained. I had seen it on the dressing-table
when I went to say good-night to my
[pg 535]
aunt just after she had gone to bed—about
nine o’clock; but I was equally afraid either
to take it then or to return to the room in
the dark later on. Yet the chance seemed
too good to be lost; I had never seen the
casket left exposed before; it was always
kept under lock and key. On my way downstairs
I met Allan Fortescue, and we went
together to the drawing-room. As we sat
chatting by the fire, the plan I afterwards
carried out occurred to me. The talk turned
upon ghosts, and he said he should much
like to meet one. Then I told him, truly,
that one room in the house was said to be
haunted by the spirit of a lady who had died
there mysteriously on her return from a ball
at which she had promised her lover to elope
with him. I explained that nothing had been
disturbed since the morning she was found
there, dead in her chair before the mirror;
but instead of the room to which the story
really attached I described the one I had just
left, and dared him to visit it after midnight.
He said he had no fear, but I added that I
should not believe in his courage unless he
brought me as a proof a small ebony casket
which had always stood upon the dressing-table.
He laughed and said he would do
even that, and I promised to meet him in
the conservatory the following morning before
breakfast to receive it and hear his
experiences. He was quite strange to the
house and did not know how any of the
bedrooms were occupied except his own
and his pupil’s, which were in another wing.
In the morning he handed me the casket
as arranged. You know the rest; you see he
was helpless in my hands.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” I asked, “that
you wrecked a man’s life for a few jewels?”

“‘DON’T JUDGE ME TOO HARDLY,’ SHE SAID, PITEOUSLY.”

“Don’t judge me too hardly,” she said,
piteously. “I was in terrible straits. I had
been staying with some of my father’s relations
in town, and had learned much of a
side of life concerning which Aunt Mary
knew practically nothing. I owed a great deal
of money, and was afraid to tell her about it.
When I had the diamonds I was able to put
off the most threatening of my creditors with
promises of payment, and, later, one of my
cousins helped me to dispose of the stones.
I told him they were some jewels of my
mother’s which had just been made over to
me. Aunt Mary would hold no intercourse
with my father’s family, so I had no fear of
awkward explanations. When I was twenty-one
I came in for a little money, all
that was left of my mother’s fortune,
and I gave Aunt Mary some fresh jewels.
You see, I had inherited certain tendencies
from my father—perhaps in the beginning
there was some excuse for me; you will
understand when I say that he died from a
hurt received in a gambling quarrel when I
was about twelve years old. The house and
all he possessed were sold to pay his debts,
and Aunt Mary took charge of me. It was
a great change. To me at all events my
father had been good always, and I loved
him dearly.
[pg 536]

“As to Allan Fortescue, when he found
how I had tricked him he was furious,
but I managed to see him alone and persuaded
him to accept the situation. You
see, I had contrived things so that his
speaking would have been of very little
use unless I had chosen to confess—only
his word against mine. Of course,
I was dreadfully upset when I found that
Aunt Mary had seen him. That was just
what I had not counted upon; but I
couldn’t go back then and give up the
jewels—I couldn’t. I promised him that, if
he would keep silence, I would never be reckless
and extravagant or wicked again; and
for a long time I kept my word. But life
was dreadfully dull, and the thought of what
I had done made me wretched; if Allan had
been prosecuted I don’t think I could have
borne it—I must have spoken out. As it
was, I became subject to dreadful fits of
depression, and I think Aunt Mary was very
glad to get me safely married, as she called
it. For a time, then, I was very happy; for
I loved Lewin dearly, and I tried to forget.
Then, finding Allan here, seeing the wreck I
had made of his life, brought back to me all
my trouble. I began to crave again for
excitement of any sort. Lewin thought I
was ill, and at first used to give me champagne
as a tonic.

“When we were in town last year I got
back into the old set, from a different
standpoint, and with more money at command——”

Once more she stopped, but I would not
again interrupt her; I felt that the whole sad
story must be finished now.

“I don’t know,” she continued, presently,
“how Allan Fortescue discovered what was
going on, but he did. One day I received a
communication from him—I can’t call it a
letter—telling me that he knew the sort of life
I was leading, and that unless I kept my
promise to him he would speak and tell Lewin
the truth even now. He knew and could prove
where I had sold the diamonds. In reply to
that I induced him to meet me in the Oxley
Woods, and persuaded him to give me a
little more time. I promised to tell Lewin
that very night about my debts. Instead, I
went to London. I really meant to start
afresh; but I thought I could raise some
money and get fairly straight without saying
anything to my husband. I—I stayed
longer than I meant. Allan came to look
for me. He followed me to the places
where he thought I was likely to be—he
must have kept a watch upon me for
some time past—but our meeting at last was
accidental. I was really at my wits’ end,
and I went into Franconi’s with Allan to
talk things over. We saw General Anson
leave the place, and I think that made Allan
decide there must be no more concealment;
also, I suppose he felt it was useless to trust
me any longer. He went straight from me
to Aunt Mary and fetched her. She knew
that he must be speaking the truth. I had
promised to go home that night anyhow;
but I don’t know what I might have done if
I had been left to myself. Then you and
Lewin appeared—— It is better as it is—I
should never have had the strength, the
courage—I am so sorry—so sorry—for
Lewin—for myself—for Allan—for my little
child that is coming——”

She turned her face to the wall, and I saw
her slight frame shiver with voiceless, choking
tears.

There is little more to tell. Lady Maxwell
lived only a few months after she had made
this confession. Her child survived—a son—and
there are three men who watch over
that boy with perhaps exaggerated solicitude
and love—his father, Allan Fortescue, and
myself.

Will he reward our care? I think so. He
has his mother’s face and charm, but in
character he takes after Sir Lewin. Allan
Fortescue has remained in the village as my
curate. I trust he may never leave me, and
that the bishop may see fit hereafter to appoint
him vicar in my stead; I am growing old.

Illustrated Interviews.

No. LXXXI.—DR. EDWARD ELGAR.

By Rudolph de Cordova.

From a Photo. by] DR. EDWARD ELGAR. [George Newnes, Ltd.

F ever this votary of the
muse of song looked from
the hills of his present home
at Malvern, from the cradle
of English poetry, the scene
of the vision of Piers Plowman,
and from the British camp, with its
legendary memories of his own ‘Caractacus,’
and in the light of the rising sun sees the
towers of Tewkesbury and Gloucester and
Worcester, he might recall in that view the
earlier stages of his career, and confess with
modest pride, like the bard in the
‘Odyssey’:—

From a Photo. by] DR. ELGAR’S HOUSE AT MALVERN. [George Newnes, Ltd.

It was in November, 1900, that these
words were spoken by the Orator when the
University of Cambridge honoured itself by
conferring the honorary degree of Doctor of
Music on Dr. Elgar, whom one of the most
distinguished German writers on music
declared to be “the most brilliant champion
of the National School of Composition which
is beginning to bloom in England.”

The encomiums which Germany—the
acknowledged leader of the world in music—has
showered on Dr. Elgar have at
length been reflected in England, which has
awakened to the fact that to him at least
that much misapplied word “genius” belongs
by right divine. That awakening was marked
by the three days’ festival in the middle of
March, when Covent Garden Opera House
reverted to an old custom and for two
glorious nights became the home of oratorio,
with a concert on the third night. That
festival is unique in the history of music, for
it is the first time an English composer has
been so honoured.
[pg 538]

However gratifying the applause of the
public may be to the worker in any art, his
greatest pleasure must properly come from
his fellow-workers, who know the difficulties
which have to be surmounted before the
desired effect can be produced.

“Was not Herr Steinbach, the conductor
of the Meiningen Orchestra, among the
others who said that you have something
different from anybody else in the tone of
your orchestra?” I asked Dr. Elgar, as we
sat in his study at Malvern, with a great
expanse of country visible
through the wide windows.

From a Photo. by] DR. ELGAR’S STUDY. [George Newnes, Ltd.

“I believe so,” he
replied; “and that remark
has been one from
which I have naturally
derived great pleasure.

“You know,” said Dr.
Elgar, as he settled down
to talk for the purpose of
this interview, in accordance
with a long-standing
promise made in what he
came to regard as an unguarded
moment—”you
know, since you compel
me to begin at the beginning,
that I ‘began’ in
Broadheath, a little village
three miles from Worcester,
in which city my
father was organist of
St. George’s Catholic
Church, a post he held
for thirty-seven years. I
was a very little boy
indeed when I began to
show some aptitude for
music and used to
extemporize on the piano. When I was
quite small I received a few lessons on the
piano. The organ-loft then attracted me,
and from the time I was about seven or
eight I used to go and sit by my father and
watch him play. After a time I began to
try to play myself. At first the only thing
I succeeded in producing was noise, but
gradually, out of the chaos, harmony began to
evolve itself. In those days, too, an English
opera company used to visit the old Worcester
Theatre, and I was taken into the
orchestra, which consisted of only eight or
ten performers, and so heard old operas like
‘Norma,’ ‘Traviata,’ ‘Trovatore,’ and, above
all, ‘Don Giovanni.’

DR. EDWARD ELGAR.

From a Photo. by E. T. Holding.

“My general education was not neglected.
I went to Littleton House School until I was
about fifteen. At the same time I saw and
learnt a great deal about music from the
stream of music that passed through my
father’s establishment.

“My hope was that I should be able to get
a musical education, and I worked hard at
German on the chance that I should go to
Leipsic, but my father discovered that he
could not afford to send me away, and anything
in that direction seemed to be at an
end. Then a friend, a solicitor, suggested
that I should go to him for a year and see
how I liked the law. I
went for a year, but
came to the conclusion
that the law was not for
me, and I determined to
return to music. There
appeared to be an opening
for a violinist in
Worcester, and as it
occurred to me that it
would be a good thing
to try to take advantage
of the opening, I had
been teaching myself to
play the violin. Then I
began to teach on my
own account, and spent
such leisure as I had in
writing music. It was
music of a sort—bad,
very bad—but my juvenile
efforts are, I hope,
destroyed.

“Although I was teaching
the violin I wanted to
improve my playing, so
I began to save up in
order to go to London to
get some lessons from
Herr Pollitzer. On one occasion I was
working the first violin part of the Haydn
quartet. There was a rest, and I suddenly
began to play the ‘cello part. Pollitzer
looked up. ‘You know the whole thing?’
he said.

“‘Of course,’ I replied.

“He looked up, curiously. ‘Do you
compose, yourself?’ he asked.

“‘I try,’ I replied again.

“‘Show me something of yours,’ he said.

“I did so, with the result that he gave me
an introduction to Mr., now Sir, August
Manns, who, later on, played many of my
things at the daily concerts at the Crystal
Palace.

“When I resolved to become a musician
and found that the exigencies of life would
[pg 539]
prevent me from getting any tuition, the
only thing to do was to teach myself. I read
everything, played everything, and heard
everything I possibly could. As I have
told you, I used to play the organ and
the violin. I attended as many of the
cathedral services as I could to hear the
anthems, and to get to know what they
were, so as to become thoroughly acquainted
with the English Church style. The putting
of the fine new organ into the cathedral at
Worcester was a great event, and brought
many organists to play there at various times.
I went to hear them all. The services at the
cathedral were over later on Sunday than those
at the Catholic church, and as soon as the
voluntary was finished at the church I used
to rush over to the cathedral to hear the concluding
voluntary. Eventually I succeeded
my father as organist at
St. George’s. We lived at
that time in the parish of
St. Helen’s, in which is the
mother church of Worcester,
which had a peal
of eight bells. The Curfew
used always to be rung in
those days at eight o’clock
in the evening, and I
believe it is still rung. I
made friends with the
sexton and used to ring
the Curfew, and afterwards
strike the day of the month.
My enthusiasm was so great
that I used to prolong the
ringing from three minutes
to ten minutes, until the
people in the neighbourhood
complained, when
I had to reduce the time. On Sunday
the bells were supposed to go for half an
hour before service, from half-past ten to
eleven. The performance was divided into
certain parts. With a friend, I used to ‘raise’
and ‘fall’ the bell for ten minutes, chime a
smaller bell for ten minutes or so, and at five
minutes to eleven I would fly off to play the
organ at the Catholic church.

AN EARLY PORTRAIT OF DR. ELGAR.

From a Photograph.

“You ask me to go into greater details
about my musical education. I am constantly
receiving letters on this point from all
over the world, for it is well known that I am
self-taught in the matter of harmony, counterpoint,
form, and, in short, the whole of the
‘mystery’ of music, and people want to know
what books I used. To-day there are all sorts
of books to make the study of harmony and
orchestration pleasant. In my young days
they were repellent. But I read them and I
still exist.”

If only cold type could suggest the humour
with which those words were spoken!

“The first was Catel, and that was
followed by Cherubini. The first real sort
of friendly leading I had, however, was
from ‘Mozart’s Thorough-bass School.’
There was something in that to go upon—something
human. It is a small book—a
collection of papers beautifully and clearly
expressed—which he wrote on harmony for
the niece of a friend of his. I still treasure
the old volume. Ouseley and Macfarren
followed, but the articles which have since
helped me the most are those of Sir Hubert
Parry in ‘Grove’s Dictionary.'”

“How did these various authorities
mix?” I interrupted.

“They didn’t mix,” was
Dr. Elgar’s reply, “and it
appears it is necessary for
anyone who has to be self-taught
to read everything
and—pick out the best.
That, I suppose, is the
difficulty—to pick out the
best. How to forget the
rubbish and remember
the good I can’t tell you,
but perhaps that is where
his brains must come in.

“It would be affectation
were I to pretend that my
work is not recognised as
modern, and I hate affectation,
yet it would probably
surprise you to know
the amount of work I did
in studying musical form.
Only those can safely disregard form who
ignore it with a full knowledge and do not
evade it through ignorance.

“Mozart is the musician from whom everyone
should learn form. I once ruled a score
for the same instruments and with the same
number of bars as Mozart’s G Minor Symphony,
and in that framework I wrote a
symphony, following as far as possible the
same outline in the themes and the same
modulation. I did this on my own initiative,
as I was groping in the dark after light, but
looking back after thirty years I don’t know
any discipline from which I learned so much.

“So you insist on my telling you some more
of my early struggles and my early work?
I was interested in many other things besides
music, and I had the good fortune to be
thrown among an unsorted collection of old
[pg 540]
books. There were books of all kinds, and
all distinguished by the characteristic that
they were for the most part incomplete.
I busied myself for days and weeks arranging
them. I picked out the theological
books, of which there were a good many,
and put them on one side. Then I made
a place for the Elizabethan dramatists,
the chronicles including Baker’s and
Hollinshed’s, besides a tolerable collection
of old poets and translations of Voltaire,
and all sorts of things up to the eighteenth
century. Then I began to read. I used to
get up at four or five o’clock in the summer
and read—every available opportunity found
me reading. I read till dark.
I finished by reading every
one of these books—including
the theology. The result
of that reading has been that
people tell me I know more
of life up to the eighteenth
century than I do of my own
time, and it is probably true.

“In studying scores the
first which came into my
hands were the Beethoven
symphonies. Anyone can
have them now, but they were
difficult for a boy to get in
Worcester thirty years ago.
I, however, managed to get
two or three, and I remember
distinctly the day I was able
to buy the Pastoral Symphony.
I stuffed my pockets with
bread and cheese and went
out into the fields to study it. That was what
I always did. Even when I began to teach,
when a new score came into my hands I
went off for a long day with it out of doors,
and when my unfortunate—or fortunate?—pupils
went for their lessons I was not at
home to give them.

“By the way, talking about scores, it will
probably surprise you to know that I never
possessed a score of Wagner until one was
given to me in 1900.

DR. ELGAR AS A MEMBER OF HIS
QUINTET, FOR WHICH HE WROTE
THE MUSIC.

From a Photo. by Bennett.

“In the early days of which I have been
speaking five of us established a wind
quintet. We had two flutes, an oboe,
a clarionet, and a bassoon, which last I
played for some time, and afterwards relinquished
it for the ‘cello. There was no
music at all to suit our peculiar requirements,
as in the ideal wind quintet a horn
should find a place and not a second flute,
so I used to write the music. We met
on Sunday afternoons, and it was an understood
thing that we should have a new
piece every week. The sermons in our
church used to take at least half an
hour, and I spent the time composing the
thing for the afternoon. It was great experience
for me, as you may imagine, and the
books are all extant, so some of that music
still exists. We played occasionally for
friends, and I remember one moonlight
night stopping in front of a house to put the
bassoon together. I held it up to see if it
was straight before tightening it. As I did
so, someone rushed out of the house, grabbed
me by the arms, and shouted, ‘It will be
five shillings if you do.’ He thought I had
a gun in my hand.

“The old Worcester Glee
Club had been established as
long ago as 1809 for the performance
of old glees, with an
occasional instrumental night.
At these last I first played
second fiddle and afterwards
became leader, as, after a
time, I used to do the accompanying.
It was an enjoyable
and artistic gathering, and the
programmes were principally
drawn from the splendid
English compositions for
men’s voices. The younger
generation seemed to prefer
ordinary part-songs, and
ballads also were introduced,
and the tone of the thing
changed. I am not sure if
the club is still in existence.

“It was in 1877 that I first went to take
lessons of Pollitzer. He suggested that I
should stay in London and devote myself to
violin playing, but I had become enamoured
of a country life, and would not give up the
prospect of a certain living by playing and
teaching in Worcester on the chance of only
a possible success which I might make as a
soloist in London.

“The thing which brought me before a
larger public as a composer was the production
of several things of mine at Birmingham
by Mr. W. C. Stockley, to whom my music
was introduced by Dr. Wareing, himself a
composer, and still resident in Birmingham.
At that time I was a member of Mr.
Stockley’s orchestra—first violin.”

In this connection it is interesting to break
Dr. Elgar’s narrative to tell an anecdote
which Mr. Stockley relates. When he
decided to do something of Dr. Elgar’s, he
asked him if he would like to conduct it.
[pg 541]
“Certainly not,” Dr. Elgar replied; “I am a
member of the orchestra and I am going to
stick in the orchestra. I am not recognised
as a composer, and the fact that you are
going to do something of mine gives me no
title to a place anywhere else.” The piece
was a success and the audience called for Dr.
Elgar, who came down from among the
fiddles, made his bow, and then went back to
his place.

REDUCED FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF THE FULL SCORE OF “THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.”

To resume. “Don’t suppose, however,”
Dr. Elgar said, “that after that recognition
as a composer
things were easy
for me. The
directors of the
old Promenade
Concerts at
Covent Garden
Theatre were
good enough to
write that they
thought sufficiently
of my
things to devote
a morning to
rehearsing them.
I went on the
appointed day to
London to conduct
the rehearsal.
When I
arrived it was
explained to me
that a few songs
had to be taken
before I could
begin. Before
the songs were
finished Sir
Arthur Sullivan
unexpectedly
arrived, bringing
with him a selection
from one of
his operas. It
was the only
chance he had
of going through
it with the orchestra,
so they determined
to take
advantage of the
opportunity. He
consumed all my
time in rehearsing
this, and
when he had
finished the
director came out and said to me, ‘There
will be no chance of your going through your
music to-day.’ I went back to Worcester to
my teaching, and that was the last of my
chance of an appearance at the Promenade
Concerts.

“Years after I met Sullivan, one of the
most amiable and genial souls that ever lived.
When we were introduced he said, ‘I don’t
think we have met before.’ ‘Not exactly,’ I
replied, ‘but very near it,’ and I told him the
circumstance. ‘But, my dear boy, I hadn’t
[pg 542]
the slightest idea of it,’ he exclaimed, in his
enthusiastic manner. ‘Why on earth didn’t
you come and tell me? I’d have rehearsed
it myself for you.’ They were not idle words.
He would have done it, just as he said. He
never forgot the episode till the end of his life.

“Two similar occurrences took place at
the Crystal Palace: rehearsals were planned
which never came off, so I was no nearer to
getting a hearing for big orchestral works.

“Mr. Hugh Blair, then the organist of
Worcester Cathedral, saw some of the
cantata, ‘The Black Knight,’ and said: ‘If
you will finish it I will produce it at
Worcester.’ I finished it, and it was produced
by the Worcester Festival Choir. This
cantata then came under the notice of Dr.
Swinnerton Heap,
to whom I owe
my introduction to
the musical festivals
as a writer of
choral works. He
had known me for
a good many years
as a violinist, but
it had never occurred
to him to
talk to me about
my composing, and
he knew nothing
of it.

“It was through
Dr. Heap that I
was asked to write
a cantata for the
Staffordshire Musical Festival, and,
shortly after, the committee asked
me to provide an oratorio for the
Worcester Festival. They were
‘The Light of Life,’ performed in
Worcester Cathedral, and ‘King
Olaf,’ at Hanley.

“Since then it has been a record
of the production of one composition
after another until we come
to ‘The Apostles,’ and my new
overture ‘In the South,’ produced
at Covent Garden; the one great
event that particularly stands out
is the production of the ‘Variations’
by Dr. Richter, to whom I
was then a complete stranger.

“For a long time I had had the
idea of writing ‘The Apostles’ in
pretty much the form in which I
hope it will eventually appear.
As you know, there have been
oratorios on many points of Jewish
and Christian history, but none had shown
how Christianity has risen. I take the men
who were in touch with Christ, the Apostles
in fact, and show them to be ordinary mortals
rather than superhuman men, as they are
generally represented in art. I was always
particularly impressed with Archbishop
Whately’s conception of Judas, who, as he
wrote, ‘had no design to betray his Master
to death, but to have been as confident of
the will of Jesus to deliver Himself from His
enemies by a miracle as He must have been
certain of His power to do so, and accordingly
to have designed to force Him to make
such a display of His superhuman powers as
would have induced all the Jews—and, indeed,
the Romans too—to acknowledge Him King.’
[pg 543]

“In carrying out this plan I made the book
myself, taking out lines from different parts of
the Bible which exactly express my conception.
How it was done the following chorus
will show you, for you will notice that the references
to the text are printed in the margin:—

The Lord hath chosen them to stand before Him,
to serve Him.—II. Chron. 29, 11.

He hath chosen the weak to confound the mighty.—I.
Cor. 1, 27.

He will direct their work in truth.—Isa. 61, 8.

Behold, God exalteth by His power: who teacheth
like Him?—Job 36, 22.

The meek will He guide in judgment, and the
meek will He teach His way.—Ps. 25, 9.

He will direct their work in truth.—Isa. 61, 8.

For out of Zion shall go forth the law.—Isa. 2, 3.

“You will
notice that
occasionally, as
in the third
extract, I have
used the words
in their meaning
that appears
on the
surface, and
not in the real
meaning of the
sentence which
may be found
in any commentary.
To
keep the diction
exactly the
same I have
not gone outside
the Scripture
except in
one sentence
from the Talmud in the case of the watchers
on the Temple roof.

“It was part of my original scheme to
continue ‘The Apostles’ by a second work
carrying on the establishment of the Church
among the Gentiles. This, too, is to be
followed by a third oratorio, in which the
fruit of the whole—that is to say, the end of
the world and the Judgment—is to be exemplified.
I, however, faltered at that idea,
and I suggested to the directors of the
Birmingham Festival to add merely a short
third part to the two into which the already
published work, ‘The Apostles,’ is divided.
But I found that to be unsatisfactory, and
I have decided to revert to my original
lines. There will, therefore, be two other
oratorios.”

This definite pronouncement of Dr. Elgar’s
cannot fail to evoke the warmest anticipations
on the part of the music loving world.

It is worth noting here that shortly after
“The Dream of Gerontius” was produced
at the Birmingham Festival, in 1900, Herr
Julius Buths, the famous conductor of
Düsseldorf, was so struck with it that he
determined to produce it in Germany and
himself translated the libretto. So great a
success was this performance that “The
Dream,” which one of the most celebrated
German musical critics has declared to be
“the greatest composition of the last hundred
years, with the exception of the ‘Requiem’ of
Brahms,” was repeated at the Lower Rhine
Festival, a thing hitherto unheard of in the
annals of English music, and at the Lower
Rhine Festival
on Whit-Sunday
“The
Apostles” is to
be given.

Dr. Elgar
has a delightful
and most acute
sense of humour,
so that
I was sure I
should not be
misunderstood
if I ventured
to ask a question
about his
“musical
crimes.”

He smiled.
“But which of
my musical
crimes do you
mean? From
the point of view of one person or another I
understand all my music has been a crime,”
he replied, lightly. Then he added, “Oh,
you mean ‘The Cockaigne,’ ‘The Coronation
Ode,’ and ‘The Imperial March’ especially.
Yes, I believe there are a good many people
who have objected to them. But I like to
look on the composer’s vocation as the old
troubadours or bards did. In those days
it was no disgrace to a man to be turned
on to step in front of an army and inspire
the people with a song. For my own part, I
know that there are a lot of people who like
to celebrate events with music. To these
people I have given tunes. Is that wrong?
Why should I write a fugue or something
which won’t appeal to anyone, when the people
yearn for things which can stir them—”

“Such as ‘Pomp and Circumstance,'” I
interpolated.

“Ah, I don’t know anything about that,”
[pg 544]
replied Dr. Elgar, “but I do know we are
a nation with great military proclivities, and
I did not see why the ordinary quick march
should not be treated on a large scale in the
way that the waltz, the old-fashioned slow
march, and even the polka have been treated
by the great composers; yet all marches on
the symphonic scale are so slow that people
can’t march to them. I have some of the
soldier instinct in me, and so I have written
two marches of which, so far from being
ashamed, I am proud. ‘Pomp and Circumstance,’
by the way, is merely the generic
name for what is a set of six marches. Two,
as you know, have already appeared, and the
others will come later. One of them is to
be a Soldier’s Funeral March.

REDUCED FACSIMILE OF MS. OF “POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE.”

“As for ‘The Imperial March,’ which was
written for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee
of 1897, it would, perhaps, interest you to
know that only on January 22nd last it was
given in St. George’s Chapel, Berlin, at the
unveiling of the memorials of Queen Victoria
and the Empress Frederick, and Dr. G. R.
Sinclair, of Hereford Cathedral, played it on
the organ.

From a Photo. by] GOLF ON MALVERN COMMON. Foulsham & Banfield.

“How and when do I do my music? I
can tell you very easily. I come into my
study at nine o’clock in the morning and I
work till a quarter to one. I don’t do any
inventing then, for that comes anywhere and
everywhere. It may be when I am walking,
golfing, or cycling, or the ideas may come
in the evening, and then I sit up until any
hour in order to get them down. The
morning is devoted
to revising and
orchestration, of
which I have as
much to do as I can
manage. As soon
as lunch is over I
go out for exercise
and return about
four or later, after
which I sometimes
do two hours’ work
before dinner. A
country life I find
absolutely essential
to me, and here the
conditions are exactly
what I require.
As you see,” and
Dr. Elgar moved
over to the large
window which takes
up the whole of one
side of his study,
“I get a wonderful view of the surrounding
country. I can see across Worcestershire, to
Edgehill, the Cathedral of Worcester, the
Abbeys of Pershore and Tewkesbury, and
even the smoke from round Birmingham. It
is delightfully quiet, and yet in contrast with
it there is a constant stream of communication
with the outside world in the shape
of cables from America and Australia, and
letters innumerable from all over the world.”

In the house itself there are not many
evidences of Dr. Elgar’s productions, but prominent
in a corner of the drawing-room is the
laurel wreath presented to him at Düsseldorf
when “The Dream” was first produced. The
leaves are brown to-day, but the scarlet ribbon
is as bright as the memory of the music in
the enraptured ears of those who have heard
it. In his study are two prized possessions,
the one a tankard made by some members
of the Festival Choir at Hanley at the time
of the production of “King Olaf.” The
inscription, taken from one of the choruses,
is, appropriately, a Bacchanalian one:—

Next to this is a cup, also specially
designed by Mr. Noke, of Hanley, to commemorate
the performance of “The Dream.”
On one side is a portrait of Cardinal Newman
and on the other a portrait of Dr. Elgar, with
the following inscription from the work
itself:—

Off the Track in London.

BY George R. Sims.

II.—IN THE ROYAL BOROUGH OF KENSINGTON.

HE sun shines brightly on the
gay Kensington thoroughfare
in which I meet my artist
confrère and prepare to wander
off the track in a district which
is held to be the wealthiest
in the Empire.

It is a winter morning, but the sky is blue,
the air is balmy, and the flood of sunlight
gives a Rivieran aspect to the stately mansions
and pleasant villas that we pass on our
way to the point at which we are to turn off
and make our plunge into one of the
strangest districts of London, a district of
which its rich neighbours have no knowledge,
although it lies at their doors.

A walk of a few minutes and we have left
wealth and fashion behind us; the gay shops
have vanished, the well-dressed people have
disappeared as if by magic. The mansions
and the villas have given place to the long
streets of grey, weather-beaten, two and three
story houses, in which the local industry
writes itself large in white letters.

Here we are in Notting Dale and in the
heart of Laundry-Land. In every house in
street after street the blinds of the ground
floor are down as though someone lay dead
within. But if you look from the opposite
side of the street you will see that in every
room above the blinds lines are stretched
from wall to wall, and from these lines wrung
out details of the washing-tub are hanging.
If you cross to the dilapidated railings of
the sorry little patch that was once a front
garden and peer into the basement you will
see that laundry work is in full swing. The
blinds of the ground-floor rooms are probably
drawn because the hand laundresses
do not like to be criticised too closely by
the neighbours, who are also their business
rivals.

The street is typical of a dozen others.
You may see again and again that broken-down
little front garden, with its stunted trees,
strewn rubbish, and the little wooden, lop-sided
railing that looks as though it no longer
thought the patch it once guarded worth
standing up for. On the window-sill of the
top floor of a score of houses you may see a
lonely, empty flower-pot that looks more like
a handy missile in an emergency than an
adjunct of window gardening. The rain-sodden,
blackened stucco meets you at every
turn, and when you have counted the
twentieth cat sitting on a sill or a doorstep
washing its shirt to snowy whiteness you
begin to wonder why the local influence has
not made itself more widely felt. Everybody
inside the houses is washing for other people,
everything is conducted with scrupulous
cleanliness and under official inspection, but
there are plenty of streets adjacent to
Laundry-Land in which only the cats make
themselves conspicuously clean.

A little farther away towards Latimer
Road are the great steam laundries employing
a small army of young women, who at
the dinner hour will turn out and make every
street in the Dale a forest of white aprons.

But all the streets of Laundry-Land are
not given up to useful industry. A portion
of the district is so notorious as a guilt
garden that it has been called the London
Avernus. It is packed with common lodging-houses,
a large number of them for women,
and it has streets of evil reputation in which
almost every window is broken and stuffed
with rags. The Borough Council has now
in hand a splendid rehousing scheme which
will vastly improve the district, but we must
take it as we find it to-day.

We turn out of the sunlight, and entering
a narrow doorway descend into the basement
of a typical lodging-house. The house is
known locally as the “Golden Gates,” a
name bestowed upon it in a spirit of badinage
by a client with a sense of humour.

The kitchen is crowded with women,
young and old. Some are sitting on the
benches around the wall, one or two are
making a late breakfast; an old woman is
cooking something at the red coke fire.

As a rule there is little conversation in a
lodging-house in the morning hours. I have
been constantly struck by the note of moodiness,
not to say sullenness, which hangs over
the company during the hours of daylight.
The men are, as a rule, more communicative
than the women. Women of the class that
drift to the doss-house are not inclined to
exchange confidences with their neighbours.

But the kitchen of the Golden Gates as
we enter it has one talkative occupant. As
soon as our eyes get accustomed to the
gloom, which is only relieved by a ray of
[pg 546]
light filtering through a small, dust-covered
window, we notice that a tall woman in
faded finery and an astrachan hat, and with
some traces of refinement in features and
bearing, is standing in the centre and chaffing
the others. One or two smile at her jokes,
but the majority are wholly indifferent,
wearing that air of sullen aloofness which is
peculiarly characteristic of a woman’s lodging-house.

I have not intruded on the privacy of the
ladies of the Golden Gates without a show of
justification. To enable my companion to
make a sketch of the scene, I have resorted
to an expedient which permits me to make
certain inquiries of a semi-official nature, and
to attract the attention of the guests while
my confrère is at work. If they were
aware that they were being sketched it is quite
likely that there would be trouble, and my
comrade might find himself in as unpleasant
a fix as did a photographer who once went
with me to the Chinese quarter in Limehouse,
for “Living London,” and attempted to take
the proprietor of an opium den and some of
his clients. The photographer emerged unscathed,
but the camera required a considerable
amount of repair.

Fortunately I have an inquiry to make
which puts my audience in sympathy with me,
and my confrère is supposed to be making
notes of the information supplied as to the
last movements of a woman who had used the
house for some time and had mysteriously
disappeared.

During the whole time the lady in the
dingy astrachan keeps up a running fire of
chaff, which materially assists us.

“THE LADY IN THE DINGY ASTRACHAN KEEPS UP A RUNNING FIRE OF CHAFF.”

She welcomes us to the “Hotel de
Fourpence,” and says, though it isn’t exactly
the Carlton, it is quite comfortable when you
get used to it. She interlards her bantering
remarks with French words, and we come to
the conclusion that she is a governess who
has drifted down.

It is no uncommon thing to find men and
women of education in the lowest lodging-houses
of London. I have found a clergyman
in one of the worst dens of Flower and
Dean Street. In one of the Dale lodging-houses
there is a woman whose father had
his town house and his country house and
his villa in the South of France.

This woman in the astrachan hat is a
striking contrast to her surroundings. Most
of the other inmates are of the usual type—women
[pg 547]
who have drifted down from honest
industry to vagabondage, or have been born
to it.

Returning through the Golden Gates into
the sunshine, we make our way to Jetsam
Street. That is not its real name, but the
one I have given it. This is a street of black
and battered doors, of damaged railings, and
of broken windows. On the doorsteps here
and there stand groups of slatternly, unkempt
women. From the windows above a tousled
head occasionally appears. Many of the
houses here are common lodging-houses;
but some of them are in the hands of the
house-farmers, who let them out in furnished
rooms at a shilling a day. We enter a room
which is unoccupied and take stock of the
furniture. It consists of a bed, two chairs,
and the wreckage of a dirty deal table.

In this room a man and his wife and
children are accommodated at night, but the
shilling paid only entitles the family to
remain there until ten in the morning.

At that hour they are turned out and their
tenancy ceases. If they wish to renew it
they can do so in the evening, but not before.

These people, who are paying six shillings
a week, or seven shillings where Sunday is
not a free day, for a single room, have to
spend the day in the streets. Many of them
make their way to the public parks and sleep
on the seats or on the grass. Some of them
beg, some of them hawk trumpery articles.
They are probably paying eighteen pounds a
year for a wretched room, and yet in the
house-farmer’s hands they are homeless every
day in the week.

Jetsam Street is flooded with golden sunshine
as we pass through it, but the sunshine
has not made the inhabitants light-hearted.
Half-way down the street a man and a
woman are fighting. The man is delivering
a series of kicks in the style of La Savate at
the woman, who is defiant and nimble and
defends herself with her jacket, which she
has taken off and uses both as a guard and
as a weapon.

“ONE OR TWO WOMEN STANDING ON THE DOORSTEPS WATCH THE PROCEEDINGS.”

One or two women standing on the doorsteps
watch the proceedings, but apparently
without interest. An old woman proceeding
to the public-house for beer turns her head
for a moment and then passes on her way.
[pg 548]
A little boy in rags passes the fighting couple
and takes no notice whatever. It is an
ordinary incident, and has no special attraction
for the neighbours.

Presently the man succeeds in planting a
blow that sends the woman down. She is
up again in a moment and faces him, prepared
to continue the contest. But he thinks
he has scored a point and is satisfied.

“Now I’ll go to the workhouse,” he says.

“And the best place for you,” answers the
woman.

The man thrusts his hands in his pockets
and slouches off. The woman puts on her
jacket and strolls away. If we were to
investigate the circumstances that have led up
to the fight, we should find that we had been
assisting at a Notting Dale version of the
story of Carmen, Don José, and Escamillo,
only Carmen in this case is a laundry girl,
Don José is an idle
ruffian, and Escamillo
is another, only of a
bolder type.

In Notting Dale the
women are the principal
wage-earners,
and the district is
infested with a contemptible
set of
men, who are loafers
or worse. It is a
common thing in
the Dale for a man
to boast that he is
going to marry a
laundry girl and do
nothing for the rest
of his life.

It seems difficult
to realize that such
a scene and such
a street can exist
within a stone’s
throw of a quarter
crowded with the
wealth and fashion
of the capital. But wherever you
step off the beaten track in London
a hundred surprises await you.

I do not wonder at the fight in
Jetsam Street which fails to rouse
the lookers-on from their midday
lethargy, for I am an old traveller in this
strange land. But I must confess that it
gives me a little shock when at the end of
the street I come upon a man in the last
stage of consumption sitting propped up with
pillows in an arm-chair on the doorstep.

“BROUGHT OUT TO SIT A LITTLE WHILE
IN THE SUNSHINE.”

He has been brought out to sit a little
while in the sunshine. The poor fellow has,
I ascertain, taken his discharge from the
infirmary a few days previously. He wants
to die at home—at home in Jetsam Street!

The picture I have had so far to draw is a
painful one and a squalid one. But it is
typical of the neighbourhood, and could not
be omitted if in these travels off the track I
am to give a faithful account of the London
that is so little known even to Londoners.

Let us hasten through the sordid streets,
looking up at the blue skies and ignoring the
squalid houses, and make our way to a more
romantic spot.

“The Potteries!” How odd this description
of a portion of Kensington sounds, yet
the district we are now in is known by this
name, and yonder is what remains of the kiln.

Here in the Potteries the spell of the old
romance still lingers,
for this is the district
of the gipsies. In
front of it is the
pleasant recreation-ground,
Avondale
Park, which the
County Council has
made beautiful for
the children of the
Dale, and just
round the corner is
hidden a space
where, year after
year, the gipsies
came with their
vans and encamped
for the winter. And
close at hand are
cottages and gardens,
to which
ducks and geese
give quite a rural
appearance.

“THERE ARE ONE OR TWO VANS LEFT TO MARK THE SPOT.”

The gipsies are
not here this
winter, but there
are one or two
vans left to mark
the spot where,
until quite recently,
the sons and
daughters of Egypt
pitched their “tans” in the heart of fashionable
Kensington. Some of them, yielding
to the force of such modern ideas as the
sanitary inspector and the School Board
officer, have given up the fight for existence
in a dwelling-van and have gone to live
[pg 549]
under a roof like the gorgios, though a gipsy
of the true Romany blood believes that
nothing but ill-luck will attend the Romany
chal or the Romany chi who lives in a house.

To-day the children of the gipsies are,
many of them, in the Notting Dale Board
School and the fathers and mothers are in
the lodging-houses. One of the wanderers,
who in the old times used to pitch on the
vacant ground of the Potteries, so far fell into
Gentile ways as to take a lodging-house and
run it himself. He and his wife became
noted characters in the Dale, and when he
died a little time ago the gipsies came from
far and near and gave him a genuine Romany
funeral, with all the ancient rites and ceremonies
of the great Pali tribe who wandered
out of India long centuries ago and gave the
word “pal” to our language to signify brother.

Though the gipsy camp has departed and
the ground will know it no more, the surroundings
are still suggestive of the old days.
Hard by a dwelling-van left, like the rose of
the poet, blooming alone is the shed of a
chair-caner, a handsome, prosperous-looking
man, who is working in the open and singing
at his congenial task. The battered carts,
the old chains, the broken wheels, the pigeon
lofts, and the wooden sheds standing on a
patch of waste
ground remind
you of the pictures
you were
given to copy
at school when
you were in the
drawing-class.
If there had
only been a mill
handy the resemblance
would have
been complete,
but the chimney
of the old kiln
dominates the
scene and takes
the mill’s place.

Here the
note of Jetsam
Street has disappeared.
All
around are respectable
working-class dwellings
and stableyards.
A little
farther up is a
double row of
cottages with a paved way between them
that seem to have been lifted bodily out
of a Yorkshire mill town and dropped with
their quaint out-houses on to the confines of
Kensington. When you come upon Thresher’s
Place you rub your eyes and wonder if it is
possible that five minutes’ walk will bring
you out on Campden Hill.

In the mews round about the Potteries
are the remnants of the Italian colony that
drifted here some years ago, when Little Italy
in Clerkenwell began to be encroached upon
by the modern builder. The majority have
now drifted farther afield, to Fulham and
Hammersmith.

But there are still a fair number of the
children of the Sunny South in the Dale.
You may see the organs in the early morning
being polished up outside the houses, and if
you go into the yards you may discover the
ice-barrows packed away in the coach-houses,
waiting for the disappearance of the baked-chestnut
season and the coming of summer.

Here, in a large coach-house in a mews, is
a proprietor of ice-cream barrows hard at
work repainting his stock in gorgeous colours.
Brilliant streaks of red and green light up the
dreary place where the signor is working.
When we look in upon his artistic proceedings
[pg 550]
he is filling his studio with melody. He
is singing an air from “Il Trovatore” in his
native Italian, and at the same time painting
an Italian girl in her national costume on the
panel of an ice-barrow.

A little farther down the mews we climb
the crazy staircase that leads to the loft, and
find a middle-aged widow occupying it with
five children.

We have arrived at an awkward moment,
for the widow is in tearful converse with the
Industrial Schools officer.

One of the children has been caught the
previous night begging. Children are not
allowed to beg in the streets to-day, and if
it is found that the parents send them out or
have not sufficient control over them to keep
them in the little offenders can be taken
before a magistrate and sent to an industrial
school, to be trained for more reputable
occupations in life.

The widow declares that the boy was not
sent out by her, and weeps copiously while
she relates her story. She has five children
and no money. I don’t think the officer is
very much impressed. I am afraid he knows
more about the widow and the begging boy
than he cares to reveal in the presence of
strangers. He gives the woman a kindly
warning, and leaves her with the intimation
that if any more of her children are caught
begging she will be invited to pay a visit to
the magistrate.

The Industrial Schools officer has a busy
time in the Dale, for there are many young
children living in vicious and criminal surroundings,
and it is his task to remove them
at the first opportunity, in order that they
may have a chance in life. The work the
industrial schools are accomplishing is invaluable.
Under the Act a careful guardianship
can be exercised by the State until the
rescued boy or girl has reached the age of
eighteen. There is no coming out of the
industrial schools and returning to the evil
surroundings now. But the task of the
officer who has to see that the lads and
lasses do not, after their school days are up,
return to their evil associates is not a light
one. He has occasionally to exercise the
ingenuity of a Sherlock Holmes in order to
get on the track of “one of his young
people” who has mysteriously disappeared
from the place that has been found for him
or her.

Not long ago a young girl who had been
sent to Canada, and was supposed to be
doing well there, was discovered dressed in
boy’s clothes back again in the Dale with her
uncle and aunt, who were undesirable
companions for her. The girl had in some
way managed to get her passage-money and
come home, and had hoped, disguised as a
young man, to escape the vigilance of the
Industrial Schools officer.

Through a couple of streets and we are
back in common lodging-house land. There
is one long street in which the houses are
registered from end to end. Some of them
look like shops with the shutters up, others
like private houses that have come down in
the world. But every room is packed with
as many beds as the law permits, and the
common kitchen is reached by the area
steps.

At one of the houses along this street a
man and a woman are standing at the door.
The woman has only one arm and one eye,
the man has no arms. But they are a highly
popular couple, and a good many of the lodging-houses
in the street belong to them. The
lady is said to be quite equal to quieting any
disturbance among the lodgers with her one
hand, and the man displays the most remarkable
skill, suffering apparently little inconvenience
from his loss. When you have
seen him take his pipe out of his mouth with
the empty sleeve of his jacket you will
understand how he is able, with his wife’s
assistance, to keep his rough clientèle well in
hand, and to compel their respect.

There is one feature of Notting Dale which
strikes you forcibly if you go into a local
crowd engaged in a heated argument, and
that is the preponderance of the rural accent;
for this is a district in which the evil of rural
immigration has written itself large. Thousands
of honest country folks crowd up year
after year to the great city that they believe
to be paved with gold. Of those who come
in by the Great Western a large percentage
drift to the Dale, failing to find room in the
districts around the terminus; and in the
Dale a process of moral deterioration goes on
which is a tragedy.

The husband fails to find the work he
expected would be ready to his hand in
busy London. The little savings are soon
gone; the man and his wife are driven to
the common lodging-house, or, if there are
children with them, to the furnished room.
The wife perhaps goes to the laundry work.
The husband’s enforced idleness often ends
in his becoming a confirmed loafer, contented
to live on what his wife can earn.
There is in Notting Dale a large working
population living cleanly by honest industry,
but the country folk who have been unfortunate
[pg 551]
at the commencement of the
struggle for life in London cannot avail
themselves of the cleaner accommodation
and the better environment. They are forced
into the area which is given over to the
vicious and the criminal, and they gradually
sink to the level of their neighbours.

Many a tale of heroic struggle against evil
surroundings do the women tell who come
before the School Board officials to explain
the non-attendance of their children. Sometimes
it is the man who has had the moral
strength to resist, and with tears in his eyes
will tell of the healthy, country-bred wife who
came with him
one day from
the far-away
village full of
hope, but who
has yielded to
the awful environment,
deserted his
home, and left
his children to
fall into evil
companionship.

There is no
sadder chapter
in the story of
London than
that of the light-hearted
country
folk who come
to it full of
courage and
hope, and gradually sink down under the evil
influence of a slum to which their poverty
has driven them, until they themselves
are as criminal and as vicious as their
neighbours.

For them little can be done, though now
and again the brave men and women who
are working in the good cause succeed in
rescuing them, even though they have fallen
to the lowest depths of the abyss.

But for the next generation the hope is
greater. High above one of the most
notorious streets in the Dale tower the great
buildings in which the children are gathered
together and educated and taught the
principles of right doing.

This is the thought that comes to me as,
fresh from our pilgrimage of pain, we stand
in the big playground and watch the little
ones filing out in the sunshine to go to their
homes. Some of them are well clad, the
children of honest, hard-working folk who
love them and care for them. But many
are going back to miserable dens where there
is neither love nor care, where there is no
respect for the laws of God or man.

“MANY ARE GOING BACK TO MISERABLE DENS.”

They cannot all be saved from the evil
environment that awaits them, but they come
day after day to the schools, and there they
fall under an influence which, if they are not
inherently bad, will stand them in good stead
through all their lives.

We watch the little ones as with the light-heartedness
of childhood they trip away,
some to the meal which loving hands have
prepared for them, others to crowd and
clamour at the doors of the mission-house,
where the free meal stands between them
and the hunger pain, and then we turn into
a street that bore formerly so ill a name that
the authorities changed it, to remove the
stigma of the address from the few decent
people in it.

In five minutes we are once more on the
beaten track and in the heart of Royal and
aristocratic Kensington.

Copyright, 1904, by W. W. Jacobs, in the United States of America.

CHAPTER IX.

HE church bells were ringing
for morning service as Mr.
Vickers, who had been for a
stroll with Mr. William Russell
and a couple of ferrets, returned
home to breakfast.
Contrary to custom, the small front room
and the kitchen were both empty, and breakfast,
with the exception of a cold herring and
the bitter remains of a pot of tea, had been
cleared away.

“I’ve known men afore now,” murmured
Mr. Vickers, eyeing the herring disdainfully,
“as would take it by the tail and smack ’em
acrost the face with it.”

He cut himself a slice of bread, and,
pouring out a cup of cold tea, began his
meal, ever and anon stopping to listen, with
a puzzled face, to a continuous squeaking
overhead. It sounded like several pairs of
new boots all squeaking at once, but Mr.
Vickers, who was a reasonable man and past
the age of self-deception, sought for a more
probable cause.

A particularly aggressive squeak detached
itself from the others and sounded on the
stairs. The resemblance to the noise made
by new boots was stronger than ever. It
was new boots. The door opened, and Mr.
Vickers, with a slice of bread arrested half-way
to his mouth, sat gazing in astonishment
at Charles Vickers, clad for the first time in
his life in new raiment from top to toe. Ere
he could voice inquiries, an avalanche of
squeaks descended the stairs, and the rest of
the children, all smartly clad, with Selina
bringing up the rear, burst into the room.

“What is it?” demanded Mr. Vickers, in
a voice husky with astonishment; “a bean-feast?”

Miss Vickers, who was doing up a glove
which possessed more buttons than his own
waistcoat, looked up and eyed him calmly.
“New clothes—and not before they wanted
’em,” she replied, tartly.

“New clothes?” repeated her father, in a
scandalized voice. “Where’d they get ’em?”

“Shop,” said his daughter, briefly.

Mr. Vickers rose and, approaching his
offspring, inspected them with the same
interest that he would have bestowed upon a
wax-works. A certain stiffness of pose combined
with the glassy stare which met his
gaze helped to favour the illusion.

“For once in their lives they’re respectable,”
said Selina, regarding them with moist
eyes. “Soap and water they’ve always had,
bless ’em, but you’ve never seen ’em dressed
like this before.”

Before Mr. Vickers could frame a reply a
squeaking which put all the others in the
[pg 553]
shade sounded from above. It crossed the
floor on hurried excursions to different parts
of the room, and then, hesitating for a
moment at the head of the stairs, came
slowly and ponderously down until Mrs.
Vickers, looking somewhat nervous, stood
revealed before her expectant husband. In
scornful surprise he gazed at a blue cloth
dress, a black velvet cape trimmed with
bugles, and a bonnet so aggressively new
that it had not yet accommodated itself to
Mrs. Vickers’s style of hair-dressing.

“Go on!” he breathed. “Go on! Don’t
mind me. What, you—you—you’re not
going to church?”

Mrs. Vickers glanced at the books in her
hand—also new—and trembled.

“And why not?” demanded Selina.
“Why shouldn’t we?”

Mr. Vickers took another amazed glance
round and his brow darkened.

“Where did you get the money?” he
inquired.

“Saved it,” said
his daughter, reddening
despite
herself.

“Saved it?” repeated
the justly-astonished
Mr. Vickers. “Saved
it? Ah! out of my
money; out of the
money I toil and
moil for—out of
the money that
ought to be spent
on food. No wonder
you’re always
complaining that
it ain’t enough.
I won’t ‘ave it,
d’ye hear? I’ll
have my rights;
I’ll——”

“Don’t make
so much noise,”
said his daughter,
who was
stooping down to ease one of Mrs. Vickers’s
boots. “You would have fours, mother,
and I told you what it would be.”

“He said that I ought to wear threes
by rights,” said Mrs. Vickers; “I used
to.”

“And I s’pose,” said Mr. Vickers, who
had been listening to these remarks with
considerable impatience—”I s’pose there’s a
bran’ new suit o’ clothes, and a pair o’ boots,
and ‘arf-a-dozen shirts, and a new hat hid
upstairs for me?”

“Yes, they’re hid all right,” retorted the
dutiful Miss Vickers. “You go upstairs and
amuse yourself looking for ’em. Go and
have a game of ‘hot boiled beans’ all by
yourself.”

“‘WHY, YOU MUST HAVE BEEN STINTING ME FOR YEARS,’ CONTINUED MR. VICKERS.”

“Why, you must have been stinting me for
years,” continued Mr. Vickers, examining the
various costumes in detail. “This is what
comes o’ keeping quiet and trusting you—not
but what I’ve ‘ad my suspicions. My
own kids taking the bread out o’ my mouth
and buying boots with it; my own wife going
about in a bonnet that’s took me weeks and
weeks to earn.”

His words fell on deaf ears. No adjutant
getting his regiment ready for a march-past
could have taken more trouble than Miss
Vickers was taking at this moment over her
small company. Caps were set straight and
sleeves pulled down. Her face shone with
pride and her eyes glistened as the small fry,
discoursing in excited whispers, filed stiffly
out.

A sudden cessation of gossip in neighbouring
doorways testified to the impression
made by their appearance. Past little startled
groups the procession picked its way in
[pg 554]
squeaking pride, with Mrs. Vickers and
Selina bringing up the rear. The children
went by with little set, important faces; but
Miss Vickers’s little bows and pleased smiles
of recognition to acquaintances were so lady-like
that several untidy matrons retired inside
their houses to wrestle grimly with feelings
too strong for outside display.

“Pack o’ prancing peacocks,” said the
unnatural Mr. Vickers, as the procession
wound round the
corner.

He stood looking
vacantly up the street
until the gathering excitement
of his neighbours
aroused new
feelings. Vanity stirred
within him, and leaning
casually against the
door-post he yawned
and looked at the
chimney-pots opposite.
A neighbour in a pair
of corduroy trousers,
supported by one
brace worn diagonally,
shambled across the
road.

“What’s up?” he
inquired, with a jerk
of the thumb in the
direction of Mr.
Vickers’s vanished
family.

“Up?” repeated
Mr. Vickers, with
an air of languid
surprise.

“Somebody died
and left you a fortin?” inquired
the other.

“Not as I knows of,” replied Mr. Vickers,
staring. “Why?”

“Why?” exclaimed the other. “Why,
new clothes all over. I never see such a
turn-out.”

Mr. Vickers regarded him with an air of
lofty disdain. “Kids must ‘ave new clothes
sometimes, I s’pose?” he said, slowly. “You
wouldn’t ‘ave ’em going about of a Sunday in
a ragged shirt and a pair of trowsis, would
you?”

The shaft passed harmlessly. “Why not?”
said the other. “They gin’rally do.”

Mr. Vickers’s denial died away on his lips.
In twos and threes his neighbours had drawn
gradually near and now stood by listening
expectantly. The idea of a fortune was
common to all of them, and they were anxious
for particulars.

“THEY WERE ANXIOUS FOR
PARTICULARS.”

“Some people have all the luck,” said a
stout matron. “I’ve ‘ad thirteen and buried
seven, and never ‘ad so much as a chiney
tea-pot left me. One thing is, I never
could make up to people for the sake of
what I could get out of them. I couldn’t
not if I tried. I must speak my mind
free and independent.”

“Ah! that’s how you
get yourself disliked,”
said another lady,
shaking her head sympathetically.

“Disliked?” said the stout matron, turning
on her fiercely. “What d’ye mean?
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Who’s getting themselves disliked?”

“A lot o’ good a chiney tea-pot would be
to you,” said the other, with a ready change
of front, “or any other kind o’ tea-pot.”

Surprise and indignation deprived the stout
matron of utterance.

“Or a milk-jug either,” pursued her
opponent, following up her advantage. “Or
a coffee-pot, or——”

The stout matron advanced upon her, and
her mien was so terrible that the other,
retreating to her house, slammed the door
behind her and continued the discussion
[pg 555]
from a first-floor window. Mint Street, with
the conviction that Mr. Vickers’s tidings could
wait, swarmed across the road to listen.

Mr. Vickers himself listened for a little
while to such fragments as came his way,
and then, going indoors, sat down amid the
remains of his breakfast to endeavour to solve
the mystery of the new clothes.

He took a short clay pipe from his pocket,
and, igniting a little piece of tobacco which
remained in the bowl, endeavoured to form
an estimate of the cost of each person’s
wardrobe. The sum soon becoming too
large to work in his head, he had recourse to
pencil and paper, and after five minutes’ hard
labour sat gazing at a total, which made his
brain reel. The fact that immediately afterwards
he was unable to find even a few
grains of tobacco at the bottom of his box
furnished a contrast which almost made him
maudlin.

He sat sucking at his cold pipe and
indulging in hopeless conjectures as to the
source of so much wealth, and, with a sudden
quickening of the pulse, wondered whether
it had all been spent. His mind wandered
from Selina to Mr. Joseph Tasker, and
almost imperceptibly the absurdities of which
young men in love could be capable occurred
to him. He remembered the extravagances
of his own youth, and bethinking himself of
the sums he had squandered on the future
Mrs. Vickers—sums which increased with
the compound interest of repetition—came
to the conclusion that Mr. Tasker had been
more foolish still.

It seemed the only possible explanation.
His eye brightened, and, knocking the ashes
out of his pipe, he crossed to the tap and
washed his face.

“If he can’t lend a trifle to the man what’s
going to be his father-in-law,” he said, cheerfully,
as he polished his face on a roller-towel,
“I shall tell ‘im he can’t have Selina,
that’s all. I’ll go and see ‘im afore she gets
any more out of him.”

He walked blithely up the road, and, after
shaking off one or two inquirers whose
curiosity was almost proof against insult,
made his way to Dialstone Lane. In an
unobtrusive fashion he glided round to the
back, and, opening the kitchen door, bestowed
a beaming smile upon the startled Joseph.

“Busy, my lad?” he inquired.

“What d’ye want?” asked Mr. Tasker,
whose face was flushed with cooking.

Mr. Vickers opened the door a little wider,
and, stepping inside, closed it softly behind
him and dropped into a chair.

“Don’t be alarmed, my lad,” he said,
benevolently. “Selina’s all right.”

“What d’ye want?” repeated Mr. Tasker.
“Who told you to come round here?”

Mr. Vickers looked at him in reproachful
surprise.

“I suppose a father can come round to see
his future son-in-law?” he said, with some
dignity. “I don’t want to do no interrupting
of your work, Joseph, but I couldn’t ‘elp just
stepping round to tell you how nice they all
looked. Where you got the money from I
can’t think.”

“Have you gone dotty, or what?” demanded
Mr. Tasker, who was busy wiping
out a saucepan. “Who looked nice?”

Mr. Vickers shook his head at him and
smiled waggishly.

“Ah! who?” he said, with much enjoyment.
“I tell you it did my father’s ‘art
good to see ’em all dressed up like that;
and when I thought of its all being owing
to you, sit down at home in comfort with a
pipe instead of coming to thank you for it
I could not. Not if you was to have paid
me I couldn’t.”

“Look ‘ere,” said Mr. Tasker, putting the
saucepan down with a bang, “if you can’t
talk plain, common English you’d better get
out. I don’t want you ‘ere at all as a matter
o’ fact, but to have you sitting there shaking
your silly ‘ead and talking a pack o’ nonsense
is more than I can stand.”

Mr. Vickers gazed at him in perplexity.
“Do you mean to tell me you haven’t been
giving my Selina money to buy new clothes
for the young ‘uns?” he demanded, sharply.
“Do you mean to tell me that Selina didn’t
get money out of you to buy herself and ‘er
mother and all of ’em—except me—a new
rig-out from top to toe?”

“D’ye think I’ve gone mad, or what?”
inquired the amazed Mr. Tasker. “What
d’ye think I should want to buy clothes for
your young ‘uns for? That’s your duty. And
Selina, too; I haven’t given ‘er anything
except a ring, and she lent me the money
for that. D’ye think I’m made o’ money?”

“All right, Joseph,” said Mr. Vickers,
secretly incensed at this unforeseen display
of caution on Mr. Tasker’s part. “I s’pose
the fairies come and put ’em on while they
was asleep. But it’s dry work walking; ‘ave
you got such a thing as a glass o’ water you
could give me?”

The other took a glass from the dresser
and, ignoring the eye of his prospective
father-in-law, which was glued to a comfortable-looking
barrel in the corner, filled it to
[pg 556]
the brim with fair water and handed it to
him. Mr. Vickers, giving him a surly nod,
took a couple of dainty sips and placed it on
the table.

“It’s very nice water,” he said, sarcastically.

“Is it?” said Mr. Tasker. “We don’t
drink it ourselves, except in tea or coffee;
the cap’n says it ain’t safe.”

Mr. Vickers brought his eye from the
barrel and glared at him.

“I s’pose, Joseph,” he said, after a long
pause, during which Mr. Tasker was busy
making up the fire—”I s’pose Selina didn’t
tell you you wasn’t to tell me about the
money?”

“I don’t know what you’re driving at,”
said the other, confronting him angrily. “I
haven’t got no money.”

Mr. Vickers coughed. “Don’t say that,
Joseph,” he urged, softly; “don’t say that, my
lad. As a matter o’ fact, I come round to
you, interrupting of you in your work, and
I’m sorry for it—knowing how fond of it you
are—to see whether I—I couldn’t borrow a
trifle for a day or two.”

“Ho, did you?” commented Mr. Tasker,
who had opened the oven door and was using
his hand as a thermometer.

His visitor hesitated. It was no use asking
for too much; on the other hand, to
ask for less than he could get would be
unpardonable folly.

“If I could lay my hand on a couple o’
quid,” he said, in a mysterious whisper, “I
could make it five in a week.”

“Well, why don’t you?” inquired Mr.
Tasker, who was tenderly sucking the bulb
of the thermometer after contact with the
side of the oven.

“It’s the two quid that’s the trouble,
Joseph,” replied Mr. Vickers, keeping his
temper with difficulty. “A little thing like
that wouldn’t be much trouble to you, I
know, but to a pore man with a large family
like me it’s a’most impossible.”

Mr. Tasker went outside to the larder, and
returning with a small joint knelt down and
thrust it carefully into the oven.

“A’most impossible,” repeated Mr. Vickers,
with a sigh.

“What is?” inquired the other, who had
not been listening.

The half-choking Mr. Vickers explained.

“Yes, o’ course it is,” assented Mr. Tasker.

“People what’s got money,” said the
offended Mr. Vickers, regarding him fiercely,
“stick to it like leeches. Now, suppose I
was a young man keeping company with a
gal and her father wanted to borrow a couple
o’ quid—a paltry couple o’ thick ‘uns—what
d’ye think I should do?”

“If you was a young man—keeping company
with a gal—and ‘er father wanted—to
borrow a couple of quid off o’ you—what
would you do?” repeated Mr. Tasker,
mechanically, as he bustled to and fro.

Mr. Vickers nodded and smiled. “What
should I do?” he inquired again, hopefully.

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said the other,
opening the oven door and peering in.
“How should I?”

At the imminent risk of something inside
giving way under the strain, Mr. Vickers
restrained himself. He breathed hard, and
glancing out of window sought to regain his
equilibrium by becoming interested in a
blackbird outside.

“What I mean to say is,” he said at length,
in a trembling voice—”what I mean to say
is, without no roundaboutedness, will you
lend a ‘ard-working man, what’s going to
be your future father-in-law, a couple o’
pounds?”

Mr. Tasker laughed. It was not a loud
laugh, nor yet a musical one. It was merely
a laugh designed to convey to the incensed
Mr. Vickers a strong sense of the absurdity
of his request.

“I asked you a question,” said the latter
gentleman, glaring at him.

“I haven’t got a couple o’ pounds,” replied
Mr. Tasker; “and if I ‘ad, there’s nine
hundred and ninety-nine things I would
sooner do with it than lend it to you.”

“MR. VICKERS ROSE AND STOOD REGARDING THE IGNOBLE CREATURE WITH
PROFOUND CONTEMPT.”

Mr. Vickers rose and stood regarding the
ignoble creature with profound contempt.
His features worked and a host of adjectives
crowded to his lips.

“Is that your last word, Joseph?” he
inquired, with solemn dignity.

“I’ll say it all over again if you like,” said
the obliging Mr. Tasker. “If you want
money, go and earn it, same as I have to;
don’t come round ‘ere cadging on me,
because it’s no good.”

Mr. Vickers laughed; a dry, contemptuous
laugh, terrible to hear.

“And that’s the man that’s going to marry
my daughter,” he said, slowly; “that’s the
man that’s going to marry into my family.
Don’t you expect me to take you up and
point you out as my son-in-law, cos I won’t
do it. If there’s anything I can’t abide it’s
stinginess. And there’s my gal—my pore
gal don’t know your real character. Wait
till I’ve told ‘er about this morning and
opened ‘er eyes! Wait till——”
[pg 557]

He stopped abruptly as the door leading
to the front room opened and revealed the
inquiring face of Captain Bowers.

“What’s all this noise about, Joseph?”
demanded the captain, harshly.

Mr. Tasker attempted to explain, but his
explanation involving a character for Mr.
Vickers which that gentleman declined to
accept on any terms, he broke in and began
to give his own version of the affair. Much
to Joseph’s surprise the captain listened
patiently.

“Did you buy all those things, Joseph?”
he inquired, carelessly, as Mr. Vickers paused
for breath.

“Cert’nly not, sir,” replied Mr. Tasker.
“Where should I get the money from?”

The captain eyed him without replying,
and a sudden suspicion occurred to him. The
strange disappearance of the map, followed
by the sudden cessation of Mr. Chalk’s visits,
began to link themselves to this tale of unexpected
wealth. He bestowed another searching
glance upon the agitated Mr. Tasker.

“You haven’t sold anything lately, have
you?” he inquired, with startling gruffness.

“I haven’t ‘ad nothing to sell, sir,” replied
the other, in astonishment. “And I dare say
Mr. Vickers here saw a new pair o’ boots on
one o’ the young ‘uns and dreamt all the rest.”

Mr. Vickers intervened
with passion.

“That’ll do,” said the
captain, sharply. “How dare
you make that noise in my
house? I think that the
tale about the clothes is all
right,” he added, turning to
Joseph. “I saw them go
into church looking
very smart. And you
know nothing about
it?”

Mr. Tasker’s astonishment
was too
genuine to be mistaken,
and the captain,
watching him
closely, transferred
his suspicions to a
more deserving
object. Mr. Vickers
caught his eye and
essayed a smile.

“Dry work talking,
sir,” he said, gently.

Captain Bowers
eyed him steadily.
“Have we got any
beer, Joseph?” he inquired.

“Plenty in the cask, sir,” said Mr. Tasker,
reluctantly.

“Well, keep your eye on it,” said the
captain. “Good morning, Mr. Vickers.”

But disappointment and indignation got
the better of Mr. Vickers’s politeness.

CHAPTER X.

“A penny for your thoughts, uncle,” said
Miss Drewitt, as they sat at dinner an hour
or two after the departure of Mr. Vickers.

“H’m?” said the captain, with a guilty
start.

“You’ve been scowling and smiling by
turns for the last five minutes,” said his niece.

“I was thinking about that man that was
here this morning,” said the captain, slowly;
“trying to figure it out. If I thought that
that girl Selina——”

He took a draught of ale and shook his
head solemnly.

“You know my ideas about that,” said
Prudence.
[pg 558]

“Your poor mother was obstinate,” commented
the captain, regarding her tolerantly.
“Once she got an idea into her head it stuck
there, and nothing made her more angry than
proving to her that she was wrong. Trying
to prove to her, I should have said.”

Miss Drewitt smiled amiably. “Well,
you’ve earned half the sum,” she said.
“Now, what were you smiling about?”

“Didn’t know I was smiling,” declared
the captain.

With marvellous tact he turned the conversation
to lighthouses, a subject upon which
he discoursed with considerable fluency until
the meal was finished. Miss Drewitt, who
had a long memory and at least her fair share
of curiosity, returned to the charge as he
smoked half a pipe preparatory to accompanying
her for a walk.

“You’re looking very cheerful,” she
remarked.

The captain’s face fell several points.
“Am I?” he said, ruefully. “I didn’t
mean to.”

“Why not?” inquired his niece.

“I mean I didn’t know I was,” he replied,
“more than usual, I mean. I always do
look fairly cheerful—at least, I hope I do.
There’s nothing
to make me look
the opposite.”

Miss Drewitt
eyed him carefully
and then
passed upstairs
to put on her
hat. Relieved of
her presence the
captain walked to
the small glass
over the mantelpiece
and, regarding
his tell-tale
features with
gloomy dissatisfaction,
acquired,
after one or two
attempts, an expression
which he
flattered himself
defied analysis.

He tapped the
barometer which
hung by the door as they went out, and,
checking a remark which rose to his lips, stole
a satisfied glance at the face by his side.

“Clark’s farm by the footpaths would be a
nice walk,” said Miss Drewitt, as they reached
the end of the lane.

The captain started. “I was thinking of
Dutton Priors,” he said, slowly. “We could
go there by Hanger’s Lane and home by the
road.”

“The footpaths would be nice to-day,”
urged his niece.

“You try my way,” said the captain,
jovially.

“Have you got any particular reason for
wanting to go to Dutton Priors this afternoon?”
inquired the girl.

“Reason?” said the captain. “Good
gracious, no. What reason should I have?
My leg is a trifle stiff to-day for stiles, but
still——”

Miss Drewitt gave way at once, and,
taking his arm, begged him to lean on her,
questioning him anxiously as to his fitness for
a walk in any direction.

“Walking ‘ll do it good,” was the reply, as
they proceeded slowly down the High Street.

“HE BECAME INTENT ON A DERELICT PUNT.”

He took his watch from his pocket, and,
after comparing it with the town clock, peered
furtively right and left, gradually slackening
his pace until Miss Drewitt’s fears for his leg
became almost contagious. At the old stone
bridge, spanning the river at the bottom of the
High Street, he paused, and, resting his arms
on the parapet, became intent
on a derelict punt. On the
subject of sitting in a craft of
that description in mid-stream
catching fish he discoursed at
such length that the girl eyed
him in amazement.

“Shall we go on?” she said, at length.

The captain turned and, merely pausing
to point out the difference between the lines
of a punt and a dinghy, with a digression to
sampans which included a criticism of the
[pg 559]
Chinese as boat-builders, prepared to depart.
He cast a swift glance up the road as he
did so, and Miss Drewitt’s cheek flamed with
sudden wrath as she saw Mr. Edward Tredgold
hastening towards them. In a somewhat
pointed manner she called her uncle’s
attention to the fact.

“Lor’ bless my soul,” said that startled
mariner, “so it is. Well! well!”

If Mr. Tredgold had been advancing on
his head he could not have exhibited more
surprise.

“I’m afraid I’m late,” said Tredgold, as he
came up and shook hands. “I hope you
haven’t been waiting long.”

The hapless captain coughed loud and
long. He emerged from a large red pocket-handkerchief
to find the eye of Miss Drewitt
seeking his.

“That’s all right, my lad,” he said, huskily.
“I’d forgotten about our arrangement. Did
I say this Sunday or next?”

“This,” said Mr. Tredgold, bluntly.

The captain coughed again, and with some
pathos referred to the tricks which old age
plays with memory. As they walked on he
regaled them with selected instances.

“Don’t forget your leg, uncle,” said Miss
Drewitt, softly.

Captain Bowers gazed at her suspiciously.

“Don’t forget that it’s stiff and put too
much strain on it,” explained his niece.

The captain eyed her uneasily, but she
was talking and laughing with Edward Tredgold
in a most reassuring fashion. A choice
portion of his programme, which, owing to
the events of the afternoon, he had almost
resolved to omit, clamoured for production.
He stole another glance at his niece and
resolved to risk it.

“Hah!” he said, suddenly, stopping short
and feeling in his pockets. “There’s my
memory again. Well, of all the——”

“What’s the matter, uncle?” inquired
Miss Drewitt.

“I’ve left my pipe at home,” said the
captain, in a desperate voice.

“I’ve got some cigars,” suggested Tredgold.

The captain shook his head. “No, I
must have my pipe,” he said, decidedly. “If
you two will walk on slowly, I’ll soon catch
you up.”

“You’re not going all the way back for
it?” exclaimed Miss Drewitt.

“Let me go,” said Tredgold.

The captain favoured him with an inscrutable
glance. “I’ll go,” he said, firmly. “I’m
not quite sure where I left it. You go by
Hanger’s Lane; I’ll soon catch you up.”

He set off at a pace which rendered
protest unavailing. Mr. Tredgold turned,
and, making a mental note of the fact that
Miss Drewitt had suddenly added inches to
her stature, walked on by her side.

“Captain Bowers is very fond of his pipe,”
he said, after they had walked a little way in
silence.

Miss Drewitt assented. “Nasty things,”
she said, calmly.

“So they are,” said Mr. Tredgold.

“But you smoke,” said the girl.

Mr. Tredgold sighed. “I have often
thought of giving it up,” he said, softly,
“and then I was afraid that it would look
rather presumptuous.”

“Presumptuous?” repeated Miss Drewitt.

“So many better and wiser men than
myself smoke,” explained Mr. Tredgold,
“including even bishops. If it is good
enough for them, it ought to be good enough
for me; that’s the way I look at it. Who
am I that I should be too proud to smoke?
Who am I that I should try and set my poor
ideas above those of my superiors? Do you
see my point of view?”

Miss Drewitt made no reply.

“Of course, it is a thing that grows on
one,” continued Mr. Tredgold, with the air
of making a concession. “It is the first
smoke that does the mischief; it is a fatal
precedent. Unless, perhaps——How pretty
that field is over there.”

Miss Drewitt looked in the direction indicated.
“Very nice,” she said, briefly.
“But what were you going to say?”

Mr. Tredgold made an elaborate attempt
to appear confused. “I was going to say,”
he murmured, gently, “unless, perhaps, one
begins on coarse-cut Cavendish rolled in a
piece of the margin of the Sunday newspaper.”

Miss Drewitt suppressed an exclamation.
“I wanted to see where the fascination was,”
she said, indignantly.

“And did you?” inquired Mr. Tredgold,
smoothly.

The girl turned her head and looked at
him. “I have no doubt my uncle gave you
full particulars,” she said, bitterly. “It
seems to me that men can gossip as much
as women.”

“I tried to stop him,” said the virtuous
Mr. Tredgold.

“You need not have troubled,” said Miss
Drewitt, loftily. “It is not a matter of any
consequence. I am surprised that my uncle
should have thought it worth mentioning.”

She walked on slowly with head erect,
[pg 560]
pausing occasionally to look round for the
captain. Edward Tredgold looked too, and
a feeling of annoyance at the childish stratagems
of his well-meaning friend began to
possess him.

“We had better hurry a little, I think,”
he said, glancing at the sky. “The sooner
we get to Dutton Priors the better.”

“Why?” inquired his companion.

“Rain,” said the other, briefly.

“It won’t rain before evening,” said Miss
Drewitt, confidently; “uncle said so.”

“Perhaps we had better walk faster,
though,” urged Mr. Tredgold.

Miss Drewitt slackened her pace deliberately.
“There is no fear of its raining,”
she declared. “And uncle will not catch us
up if we walk fast.”

A sudden glimpse into the immediate
future was vouchsafed to Mr. Tredgold; for
a fraction of a second the veil was lifted.
“Don’t blame me if you get wet, though,” he
said, with some anxiety.

They walked on at a pace which gave the
captain every opportunity of overtaking them.
The feat would not have been beyond the
powers of an athletic tortoise, but the most
careful scrutiny failed to reveal any signs of
him.

“I’m afraid that he is not well,” said Miss
Drewitt, after a long, searching glance along
the way they had come. “Perhaps we had
better go back. It does begin to look rather
dark.”

“Just as you
please,” said
Edward Tredgold,
with unwonted
caution; “but the
nearest shelter is
Dutton Priors.”

He pointed to
a lurid, ragged
cloud right ahead
of them. As if
in response, a low,
growling rumble
sounded overhead.

“Was—was
that thunder?”
said Miss Drewitt,
drawing a little
nearer to him.

“Sounded
something like it,”
was the reply.

A flash of lightning
and a crashing
peal that rent
the skies put the matter beyond a doubt.
Miss Drewitt, turning very pale, began to
walk at a rapid pace in the direction of
the village.

The other looked round in search of some
nearer shelter. Already the pattering of
heavy drops sounded in the lane, and before
they had gone a dozen paces the rain came
down in torrents. Two or three fields away
a small shed offered the only shelter. Mr.
Tredgold, taking his companion by the arm,
started to run towards it.

Before they had gone a hundred yards
they were wet through, but Miss Drewitt,
holding her skirts in one hand and shivering
at every flash, ran until they brought up at a
tall gate, ornamented with barbed wire,
behind which stood the shed.

The gate was locked, and the wire had
been put on by a farmer who combined with
great ingenuity a fervent hatred of his fellowmen.
To Miss Drewitt it seemed insurmountable,
but, aided by Mr. Tredgold and
a peal of thunder which came to his assistance
at a critical moment, she managed to
clamber over and reach the shed. Mr.
Tredgold followed at his leisure with a strip
of braid torn from the bottom of her dress.

“AIDED BY MR. TREDGOLD AND A PEAL OF THUNDER, SHE MANAGED TO CLAMBER OVER.”

The roof leaked in twenty places and the
floor was a puddle, but it had certain redeeming
features in Mr. Tredgold’s eyes of
which the girl knew nothing. He stood at
the doorway watching the rain.
[pg 561]

“Come inside,” said Miss Drewitt, in a
trembling voice. “You might be struck.”

Mr. Tredgold experienced a sudden sense
of solemn pleasure in this unexpected concern
for his safety. He turned and eyed her.

“I’m not afraid,” he said, with great
gentleness.

“No, but I am,” said Miss Drewitt, petulantly,
“and I can never get over that gate
alone.”

Mr. Tredgold came inside, and for some
time neither of them spoke. The rattle of
rain on the roof became less deafening and
began to drip through instead of forming
little jets. A patch of blue sky showed.

“It isn’t much,” said Tredgold, going to
the door again.

Miss Drewitt, checking a sharp retort,
returned to the door and looked out. The
patch of blue increased in size; the rain
ceased and the sun came out; birds exchanged
congratulations from every tree. The
girl, gathering up her wet skirts, walked to
the gate, leaving her companion to follow.

Approached calmly and under a fair sky
the climb was much
easier.

“I believe that I could
have got over by myself
after all,” said Miss
Drewitt, as she stood on
the other side. “I suppose
that you were in too
much of a hurry the last
time. My dress is ruined.”

She spoke
calmly, but her
face was clouded.
From her manner
during the
rapid walk home
Mr. Tredgold
was enabled to
see clearly that
she was holding
him responsible
for the captain’s
awkward behaviour;
the
rain; her spoiled
clothes; and a
severe cold in
the immediate
future. He glanced at her ruined hat and
the wet, straight locks of hair hanging about
her face, and held his peace.

Never before on a Sunday afternoon had
Miss Drewitt known the streets of Binchester
to be so full of people. She hurried on with
bent head, looking straight before her, trying
to imagine what she looked like. There was
no sign of the captain, but as they turned
into Dialstone Lane they both saw a huge,
shaggy, grey head protruding from the small
window of his bedroom. It disappeared
with a suddenness almost startling.

“Thank you,” said Miss Drewitt, holding
out her hand as she reached the door.
“Good-bye.”

Mr. Tredgold said “Good-bye,” and with a
furtive glance at the window above departed.
Miss Drewitt, opening the door, looked round
an empty room. Then the kitchen door
opened and the face of Mr. Tasker, full of
concern, appeared.

“Did you get wet, miss?” he inquired.

Miss Drewitt ignored the question. “Where
is Captain Bowers?” she asked, in a clear,
penetrating voice.

The face of Mr. Tasker fell. “He’s gone
to bed with a headache, miss,” he replied.

“Headache?” repeated the astonished
Miss Drewitt. “When did he go?”

“About ‘arf an hour ago,” said
Mr. Tasker; “just after the
storm. I suppose that’s what
caused it, though it seems funny,
considering what a lot he must
ha’ seen at sea. He said he’d go
straight to bed and try and sleep
it off. And I was to ask you
to please not to
make a noise.”

Miss Drewitt
swept past him
and mounted the
stairs. At the
captain’s door
she paused, but
the loud snoring
of a determined
man made her
resolve to postpone
her demands
for an
explanation to a
more fitting opportunity.
Tired,
wet, and angry
she gained her
own room, and
threw herself thoughtlessly into that famous
old Chippendale chair which, in accordance
with Mr. Tredgold’s instructions, had been
placed against the wall.

“SHE THREW HERSELF THOUGHTLESSLY INTO THAT FAMOUS OLD
CHIPPENDALE CHAIR.”

The captain stirred in his sleep.

(To be continued.)

Wild Western Journalism.

By an ex-Editor.

NE of the most thrilling occupations
that a human being
could follow in the old days—say
a brief generation
since—was that of editing a
newspaper in a small American
town. There was a fulness in the life, a
feverish activity in the office and a perpetual
spice of danger out of it, that made all other
callings seem trivial. Things have changed
a great deal in the past few years, but even
yet Wild Western journalism can boast a
flavour—a tang of its own. There is no
other Press in the world quite like it; there
is no similar body of men like those who
engineer it. To our old friends, Mr. Pott,
of the Eatanswill Gazette, and Mr. Slurk,
of the Eatanswill Independent, their Occidental
followers of the Arizona Arrow and
the Tombstone Epitaph bear but faint resemblance.
Perhaps in the birth-throes of
English journalism—in the era of the Mercurius
Pragmaticus and the Scot’s Dove—the
vicissitudes of editors were not dissimilar to
those endured by the Colorado and Texas
editor of yesterday, who was often his own
publisher, his own printer, and his own
editor rolled in one—and not only that, but
was forced to perform these functions with a
six-chambered revolver reposing gracefully,
yet ominously, on his desk. As to his
Protean character there has been little if
any improvement. I cull the following from
a recent issue of the Yampa (Oregon)
Leader:—