Date: 1905-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Humor; Manners and Morals; Social Life and Customs
Description: A collection of seventeen short pieces. Seven of these are presented as little playlets, satirizing contemporary manners and morals. The remaining pieces are on a different level — each a fantastical short story. Amongst others, we have someone’s spirit inheriting a monkey, a novelist’s characters coming to visit him, a man who believes his love’s spirit has returned to him in the form of a seagull, a demon making a pact with a man so that he will pronounce his H’s, and an encounter with a princess and a dragon in a snow globe. (— adapted from Goodreads review)
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+80” or less, and in the USA.

SALTED  ALMONDS

F. ANSTEY
(1856–1934)

MobileRead Edition
2021

A collection of seventeen short pieces. Seven of these are presented as little playlets, satirizing contemporary manners and morals. The remaining pieces are on a different level — each a fantastical short story. Amongst others, we have someone’s spirit inheriting a monkey, a novelist’s characters coming to visit him, a man who believes his love’s spirit has returned to him in the form of a seagull, a demon making a pact with a man so that he will pronounce his H’s, and an encounter with a princess and a dragon in a snow globe.
(— adapted from Goodreads review)

Thomas Anstey Guthrie (8 August 1856 – 10 March 1934) was an English author (writing as F. Anstey), most noted for his comic novel Vice Versa about a boarding-school boy and his father exchanging identities. His reputation was confirmed by The Tinted Venus and many humorous parodies in Punch magazine. Guthrie became an important member of the staff of Punch magazine, in which his “Voces Populi” pieces and his humorous parodies of a reciter’s stock-piece (“Burglar Bill,” etc.) represent his best work. Many of Anstey’s stories have been adapted into theatrical productions and motion pictures.

This collection was first published in 1906. This ebook is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+80” or less, and in the USA.

CONTENTS

- … Preface

- Salted Almonds
- At a Moment’s Notice
- “As the Twig Is Bent”
- Caveat Emptor!
- Lunch Among the Ruins
- Why I Have Given Up Writing Novels
- Going Round the Caves

- Mrs. Brassington-Claypott’s Children’s Party

- A Business Meeting of the Society of Penguins

- The Gull
- The Game of Adverbs
- A Bohemian Bag
- The Magic H’s
- After Rehearsal
- The Lights of Spencer Primmett’s Eyes
- A “First Night” Supper
- The Adventure of the Snowing Globe

PREFACE

I take this opportunity of explaining that the title of these collected stories and sketches has not been chosen merely because it is that of the first in the list of contents — although if that were the only reason I might claim many distinguished precedents in justification — but also because it seemed appropriate to the collection generally.

For the contents of this volume resemble salted almonds in that they are not provided as articles of nourishment, but rather to beguile the intervals between the courses of a substantial banquet.

And, like salted almonds too, they should be indulged in with a certain discretion, since, if more than, let us say, two or three are taken at a time, they are extremely apt to prove indigestible.

But I am quite aware that even the choice of so unambitious a title as this is not without its danger. It affords an obvious opening to the caustic critic for a complaint that the description implies a flavour which, after conscientiously tasting the samples before him, he has entirely failed to detect.

However, we must take our risks, and so I have decided to face this, trusting that to less fastidious palates these particular almonds may not seem altogether insipid.

F. ANSTEY.

February 1906.

SALTED ALMONDS,
OR,
PLAYING THE GAME

SCENE I.—
At the Dinner-table.

SITUATION — MR. PLUMLEY DUFF, a middle-aged bachelor with a well-earned reputation for social tact and fluency combined with extreme polish, has been sent in to dinner with MISS IMOGEN PUREFOY, an obvious ingenue. Her youthful charm, however, has induced him to overlook any intellectual inferiority, and, even on the stairs, he has so far unbent as to impart some highly valuable information concerning the state of the weather for the last few days, besides confiding the intelligence that the Parliamentary Session is responsible for many more people being in Town than usual. MISS PUREFOY has received these utterances with a reverential assent which only confirms him in an impression originally favourable.

MISS PUREFOY  (after declining fish — to Mr. P. D.). Aren’t those salted almonds over there? Could you reach them for me? … Thanks so much! I absolutely adore salted almonds! (She selects three.) I can’t think what people did at dinner-parties before salted almonds were invented. Can you?

MR. PLUMLEY DUFF  (conscientiously applying his mind to the problem while adopting a tone of playful levity) You are inviting me to embark upon a — er — field of highly interesting speculation. But, on the whole, I should be inclined to hazard the opinion that in — er — that benighted period people probably — er — did without them.

MISS P.  (humbly). I suppose it was a silly question. I ought to have known that when there weren’t any salted almonds people simply had to do without, poor dears! Still, do you know, I can’t help thinking dinner-parties must have been more cheerful, somehow, in — well, in Queen Anne’s time, for instance.

MR. D.  (with a kindly but superior smile). If we inay draw any inference from contemporary records, such as the works of Swift, the table-talk of those days was neither remarkably brilliant, nor — er — particularly edifying—

MISS P.  Oh, but I meant because of the costumes. Everybody was so picturesquely dressed then, even the men, weren’t they? Wouldn’t you love to wear nice coloured velvet and satin with ruffles and things, instead of just plain black and white, as you do now?

MR. D.  Now, my dear young lady, our sex is content to serve as useful foils to the magnificence of yours. But, by way of compensation, if our — er — habiliments are, as is doubtless the case, less becoming, they have at least the merit of being considerably more — er — economical.

MISS P.  (regarding him with the innocent brown eyes of a squirrel). I never thought of that. It’s quite a new idea to me! Did men’s clothes cost so very much in those times?

MR. D.  Let me give you a few facts. Oliver Goldsmith — with whose immortal “Vicar of Wakefield” you are possibly familiar? — (MISS PUREFOY murmurs an intelligent, but vague, assent) — is known to have paid as much as fifteen guineas — which at that time was probably equivalent to at least double the present value of the money — for a simple suit of “Tyrian bloom” coloured satin. Now, I don’t suppose I pay—

[He discourses here at some length on the precise sum per annum his evening clothes cost him, while MISS PUREFOY listens with rapt attention.

MISS P.  Really! How interesting! And I suppose there were all sorts of other expensive things they had to wear, besides?

MR. D.  (pleased with her intelligence). Why, if you merely take such indispensable items as a silver-hilted sword, a lace cravat, a snuffbox, shoe-buckles, and so forth, they would represent a serious outlay. Not to speak of Wigs, which frequently cost as much as thirty or forty guineas.

MISS P.  (as she absently pushes one of her salted almonds over the edge of the brocade “table-centre”). Not really? How glad you must be that you can keep your money to spend on more sensible things! Motorcars, perhaps? For I’m sure you go in for motoring?

MR. D.  (flattered, but a little disconcerted by this abrupt change of subject, as he was about to give her an instructive catalogue of the various wigs that characterised the eighteenth century). I confess I do not. Quite apart from all questions of a pecuniary nature, I should decline to give any countenance to a form of conveyance which, in my opinion, will soon render the horse as extinct an animal as the — er — dodo.

MISS P.  Ah, the poor horse! But perhaps he won’t mind being extinct so very much! I mean, I’ve often thought it rather unfair that he should be chosen to draw us about, and not some other animal.

MR. D.  (delighted by her ingenuousness). Nature has her injustices, I am afraid. Possibly her excuse in this case would be that no other quadruped is so well adapted for the — er — particular purpose. But you are mistaken in assuming that the horse alone has been so employed.

MISS P.  Why, of course! How idiotic of me! I was forgetting the Donkey!

MR. D.  Also the Dog, the Bullock, the Reindeer, and — for heavy artillery, if for no other vehicle — the Indian Elephant.

MISS P.  (with sparkling eyes). You make me feel so ignorant! Though of course I might have remembered them. But I can’t think of any other animal that is used in that way. And I don’t believe that even you can, either!

MR. D.  (in quiet triumph). I think I can. Unless I am greatly misinformed, Zebras have been successfully trained to go in harness.

MISS P.  Zebras! Isn’t it wonderful! (She deposits a second almond by the side of the first.) Is there anything you don’t know, Mr. Duff?

MR. D.  I dare say I could tell you a few further facts about Zebras which may be new to you.

MISS P.  They’re quite certain to be. You see, I’ve never learnt any facts. I’ve been so shockingly educated. Like all women!

MR. D.  (bowing with the courtly grace that he has found effective on former occasions). No woman can be badly educated when she has learnt to render herself an agreeable companion to Man.

MISS P.  (pouting). Ah, I see what it is! You despise women. (As Mr. DUFF protests gallantly.) Oh yes, you do! You don’t believe they can do anything as well as men can. You would prevent them even trying to — if you only could!

MR. D.  I would prefer to put it in this form. While I allow that your — er — charming sex is capable of attaining a certain proficiency — I will go even further, and say, excellence — in the Arts, I frankly own that I have far too high an admiration for Woman to endure to see her unsex herself by stepping into the arena to engage with Man in the sterner conflicts of what I may describe as the serious Business of Life.

MISS P.  But don’t women make rather good clerks?

MR. D.  I will grant you that the superior suppleness of the feminine hand — (with a glance at MISS PUREFOY’s, which is idly fingering a third almond) — may give a woman some small advantage in manipulating purely mechanical instruments like — well — typewriters — but, Great Heavens! is such slavery as that a fitting career for — (He enlarges on this theme with real eloquence, until he is brought up short by the discovery that her mind is elsewhere, and that she is frivolously attracting the notice of somebody whom he cannot see across the table to three salted almonds, with which she has amused herself by placing side by side). I fear I have failed to retain your entire attention!

MISS P.  How can you think so! Why, I’ve been most awfully interested! You don’t know how much you have helped me! You’ve said exactly what I wished you to say! But you must tell me the rest another time. Because, do you know, your other neighbour has been trying to get a word from you for ever so long — So I’m afraid I must be unselfish and give you up to her.

[She turns to the man on her right, who monopolises her during the remaining courses.

MR. D.  (later, seizing his chance just before their hostess gives the signal). I observe, Miss Purefoy, that, notwithstanding your — er — professed adoration for salted almonds, you are leaving the few you took absolutely untouched.

MISS P.  You are too frightfully observant, Mr. Duff! I see I had better confess at once that I didn’t take them to eat — only to play with.

MR. D.  (to himself, as the ladies rise). Rather an attractive child — but immature at present. A mind that merely requires forming, though.

SCENE II.—
In the Drawing-room.

SITUATION — The men have come upstairs; Mr. PLUMLEY DUFF, who was hoping for a further opportunity of sounding the depths of MISS PUREFOY’s engaging ignorance, finds himself intercepted by his hostess, and presented to another young lady — a MISS PEGGY BLOUNT.

MR. DUFF  (with heroic affability). The — er — gaieties of the Season are beginning early this year. I dare say you are already up to your eyes, Miss — er — Blount, in what one may perhaps be permitted to term the Social Whirlpool — dances, dinners, and so forth — h’m?

MISS BLOUNT.  Oh, I don’t know. Not any dances, so far. Another dinner-party though, only next week — (with a little grimace) — worse luck! Don’t tell anybody — but I simply loathe dinners!

MR. D.  At your age, my dear young lady, one has not yet commenced to dine. But I infer from your tone that you have not been entirely fortunate in your partner this evening. Or am I mistaken?

MISS B.  Well, he might have been worse. I wish he had been. Then I should have had a chance of winning.

MR. D.  A chance of—? Pardon me, but I don’t quite understand.

MISS B.  How could you, when you don’t know! But I’ll tell you, if you’ll promise faithfully not to give me away. (Mr. DUFF promises.) Well, a girl-friend and I have invented a game for getting through dull dinnerparties without being bored. We each try to get the man who takes us in to mention certain things, and the one who does it first wins. Now do you see?

MR. D.  (amused). Perfectly. And I must congratulate you on a most ingenious device for avoiding boredom.

MISS B.  Isn’t it? But this evening Miss Purefoy (my friend’s name, you know) won in a perfect canter. By two salted almonds!

MR. D.  By two-?

MISS B.  We use them to score with, you know. That is, when there are any. There generally are — but bread pills will do instead. And, as soon as each of the three things is mentioned, one of us puts an almond where it can catch the other’s eye.

MR. D.  And is it allowable to ask what those three things were, on this particular occasion?

MISS B.  Let me see. The first was “Wigs,” the second “Zebras,” and — what was the third? Oh, I know, “Typewriters.” And just imagine! Miss Purefoy managed to make her partner mention all three before dinner was half over. It’s a record!

MR. D.  (acidly). Miss Purefoy must be a young lady of quite exceptional ability.

MISS B.  She did awfully well at Newnham in the History Tripos. Still, I expect whoever took her in this evening must have been — well, rather a duffer. I couldn’t see who it was, because of the flowers between us. I wonder if you noticed, and could point him out to me?

MR. D.  (stiffly). I’m afraid it is not in my power to oblige you.

[He takes his leave as soon as he can, without making any further attempts to stimulate the intelligence of Miss  IMOGEN PUREFOY.

AT A MOMENT’S NOTICE

I

Nothing could have been more unexpected. If any fellow had met me as I was leaving my rooms, and told me what sort of day I was in for, my reply to him would have been “Liar!” But he’d have been right all the same,

I was due to lunch with Monty Blundell at his Club, and started to walk, but when I got into Piccadilly I found I was beastly late. It’s funny, but, though I haven’t anything in particular to do, I generally am beastly late in most things. So of course I had to call a hansom. It struck me, as I told the Johnny across the roof to drive like the very deuce to the Junior Beaufort Club, that he was a trifle glassy in the eye and white about the gills, and he was driving a chestnut that seemed to have got a bit out of hand. But I was in a hurry, and we were off at a canter before I had time to do more than tumble in anyhow and hope for the best. The canter quickened up into a gallop very soon, and, at the top of St. James’s Street, the gallop became an unmistakable bolt. I saw the cabbies on the stand running to their horses’ nosebags, and everybody skipping out of our road, and I sat as tight as I knew and prepared for trouble. The gate of St. James’s Palace was open, and I rather expected to find myself put down there, where of course they weren’t expecting me — but the cabman managed to slew round somehow into Pall Mall. There was a piano-organ just ahead with a monkey on top, and I made sure we should bowl over the entire show in another second. But there had been some rain, and the going was greasy, so, just before we overtook it, there was slither, a tremendous crash, followed by fireworks, and the next thing I knew I was standing looking on from a distance, feeling rather muzzy, but otherwise quite all right.

The usual crowd had sprung up, as if through star-traps in the road. They got the chestnut on his legs, looking as if he was beginning to suspect he had made a fool of himself; the driver, too, appeared to be none the worse, and was being questioned by a constable, who did not seem to show him all the sympathy he expected.

I was rather puzzled, though, when I saw them lifting a young fellow up and carrying him off to the nearest chemist’s. He was evidently the fare, and, up to then, I had been under the impression that it was my accident. I saw now it couldn’t have been, since there I was, looking on. But, from a glimpse I caught of him in passing, I had an idea I’d met him somewhere or other, and I wondered whether I oughtn’t to go and see if there was anything I could do for him. I knew the chemist very well, having often looked in there for a pick-me-up.

Still, if I did, I should be later than ever for that appointment — whatever it was, for I couldn’t recollect it for the moment. Besides, now I came to think, I couldn’t really have recognised him, he was much too muddy; it was only his overcoat, which happened to be of much the same pattern as the one I had on.

I glanced at my coat-sleeve to make sure of this — and then I made a perfectly fearful discovery. It wasn’t so much that I wasn’t wearing any overcoat, because it was a mild spring morning, and I’d hesitated for some time whether I hadn’t better leave it at home. It was the suit I was in. I take a lot of pains over choosing my clothes, and I think I’m entitled to call myself a well-turned-out man. So it was a most awful shock to find that I had come out — in Pall Mall too — in a lounge suit of red and blue plaid, with black braid round the cuffs! I couldn’t think what had induced me to order such things — or, for that matter, my tailor to make them. I should have expected he’d sooner have died.

While I was wondering, a tambourine was suddenly shoved under my nose. I never encourage street music at any time, and I was certainly not in the humour for it just then, so I pushed the tambourine away — not over civilly, I dare say — and it fell into the gutter. On this the person with the tambourine caught me a downright nasty clip on the side of my head.

I was just hesitating whether to call a constable and give the bounder in charge, or risk a row by knocking him down — he seemed rather below my height — when I happened to notice what queer gloves I’d got on instead of my ordinary white buckskins. I do occasionally wear grey reindeer — but these were so beastly hairy.

Feeling more upset than ever, I put my hand to my head, and found I was wearing, very much on one side, a small round cap fastened under the chin by elastic. This I took off and examined closely; it had no hatter’s name printed inside, and seemed to be of some regimental pattern, perhaps the latest War Office improvement. Now, except that I did once join a Volunteer corps for a short time (and might have stuck it, if they’d only let me take my poodle into camp with me), I never was what you might call a military man, and even if I had been I shouldn’t parade Pall Mall in an undress cavalry cap. It was so utterly unlike me!

And then I suddenly remembered my engagement — and the thought of it made me feel prickly all over.

I was lunching with Monty Blundell at the Junior Beaufort Club, where he had promised to put me up for election — and I’d actually, for some reason or other which was beyond me, proposed to go there like this!

For all I knew, Monty might have asked some influential fellows on the Committee to meet me — and what on earth would they think of a candidate who was capable of turning up on such an occasion in dittoes of some beastly loud tartan? I should be pilled to a dead certainty! It wasn’t fair on old Monty either, who’s even more particular, if possible, about clothes than I am. Altogether the best thing to do was to slip quietly back to my rooms while I could, and pretend afterwards that the engagement had slipped my memory.

I’d have done it, too — but unfortunately it was just too late. I’d been moving slowly along Pall Mall all this while without noticing, and when I looked up, there was I, right under the Club windows, and there was Monty, evidently on the look-out for me!

I caught his eye, and I thought I saw him nod cheerily in return. After all, if he didn’t see anything to object to in my get-up, why should I? So long as a fellow looks a gentleman and all that, he can carry off the rummest sort of clothes. I’d forgotten that for the moment.

Anyhow, I couldn’t get out of it now. So I waved to him in an airy kind of manner, as much as to say: “Got here at last, my dear old chap. Awfully sorry I’m so late. Explain everything when I get in.” Though how the . deuce I was going to explain, I’d no idea. And I admit I rather funked passing the hall-porter and the pageboys — not to mention the Club waiters in their black velvet knee-breeches and silk stockings.

However, Blundell didn’t answer my signal; he simply stared at me as if he’d never seen me before in all his life, and then turned away. There couldn’t be a neater cut. And really, now I come to think of it, I couldn’t blame him. It is enough to put the best-tempered chap off when he asks a fellow to lunch at his Club (and an exclusive Club too, mind you — not a pot-house!) and a fellow actually drives up to the door on top of a piano-organ!

For that was where I was — though somehow I hadn’t given it a thought before.

That explained why I felt taller than usual, and — just here my conveyance gave a lurch, and, as I steadied myself, I caught a glimpse between my legs of something long and greyish and hairy, like a lady’s boa which had seen better days — and it flashed upon me suddenly that there could be only one explanation of my situation.…

I dare say I ought to have realised it long before, but when a fellow has just been shot out of a hansom like a clay pigeon out of a trap, it’s generally some time before he’s able to make out exactly where he is.

Now I understood. That young fellow I had seen being carried off to the chemist’s round the corner was myself after all. But he was far beyond the aid of any pick-me-up. The vital principle, or intelligence, or whatever you choose to call it, which had inhabited the body of Reginald Ballimore, had already quitted it, and was now occupying this little beast of a monkey. Perhaps there was nowhere else for it to go to just then — and I remember noticing at the time that the monkey’s mouth was ajar — perhaps it was even betting on the cab-horse. I don’t know, and I must leave it to the scientific Johnnies to explain exactly how it happened. It had happened — and that was enough for me.

And really, you know, to come in at one end of Pall Mall in a hansom cab as a well-groomed young bachelor, and to come out at the other as a shockingly-dressed monkey on a piano-organ, is one of those blows which would knock most men out of their stride, for a time at all events.

II

As I said before, it must naturally be a nasty jar for any fellow to find himself suddenly reduced, through no fault of his own, to the position of a monkey on a piano-organ. And I don’t mind admitting that, for a moment or two, I was what you might call in the cart. After that, oddly enough, I began to see that in some ways it was almost a relief. For one thing, I didn’t feel nearly such a fool.

You see, for a man who prides himself on dressing correctly, it’s impossible to feel at ease in Pall Mall with nothing on but a plaid tunic fastened up the back with mother-o’-pearl buttons, and a frill round the neck. But, for a monkey, it’s quite correct kit — if it isn’t actually classy. And I hadn’t got to lunch at the Junior Beaufort in it either, which was a let-off.

Another thing: without being what you would call extravagant, I never have been able to live within my income. Consequently my affairs had got into a regular beastly mess. simply up to my neck in money worries of all kinds. Well, I was out of them all now. Nobody would dream of serving me with a writ.

Again, I’d every reason to suppose that the Reggie Ballimore of old must have pegged out — or else I shouldn’t be where I was. But I was alive at all events — and that’s something. Isn’t there a proverb about a live monkey being better than a dead policeman? So altogether I bucked up sooner than might have been expected.

I didn’t attempt to leave the organ. To tell you the truth, it wouldn’t have been any good, as I was attached to the confounded instrument by a stoutish cord and a leather belt round my waist.

Nor yet, though, as we passed down Pall Mall, I met several men I knew, did I hail them and explain the fix I was in. What was the use? The right words wouldn’t come: I didn’t understand what I said myself, so how could I expect any one else to? Besides, I’d a sort of feeling that it wouldn’t be quite Cricket. I know I shouldn’t have cared to be appealed to as an old pal by a monkey on an organ.

No, since that was what I had come down to, it seemed to me that the manly thing to do was to grin and bear it — to play the monkey, in short, for all it was worth. People were always telling me I ought to make a fresh start, and do something for my living. Now perhaps they would be satisfied!

There was just one thing, though, that caused me a pang when I remembered it. This change in my mode of life would prevent me from dining at my Aunt Selina’s that evening. She didn’t often ask me, and when she did I seldom went — for her parties are, as a rule, devilish dull. But somehow I had been rather looking forward to this particular dinner. My cousin Phyllis would be there now — which made all the difference. She only came out last year, and, so I understand, with considerable success. I know I saw her described as “the lovely Miss Adeane” in the Society journals, and as being present at every smart party of the season. I only met her very occasionally, but she seemed to me no end improved since I remembered her in a pigtail — in fact, she’d grown into an absolute ripper — though perhaps a little bit above herself, inclined to be airified, if you know what I mean.

She hadn’t taken much notice of me, so farseemed indeed to consider I had become rather a piffler. But I’d been hoping that I might sit next to her, perhaps even take her in to dinner that evening. Then I could let her see that there was a more serious side to my character than I chose to show the world. Of course, all that was out of the question now.

No matter! I might have been a failure as a man — but, hang it all! with my education and intelligence, any monkey ought to have a fine career before it! Pall Mall — as the couple of idiots with my piano-organ might have known — is a most unsuitable place for a street performance, but, as soon as we were permitted to halt without being moved on, I was determined to show the public that I was a cut above the ordinary professional.

I should have preferred Trafalgar Square as a pitch, but my two ruffians took me up a small lane near the National Gallery and across Coventry Street into Soho, and I didn’t get a chance of displaying my abilities till we stopped in a slum off Wardour Street.

My idea was to surprise the audience by giving them a cakewalk, in which I hoped to make some sensation. But it didn’t come off, somehow. It wasn’t nervousness exactly — that would have been ridiculous when they were all so young. I fancy the cord hampered me, and my tail kept getting in the way, too — and then the tunes I was expected to dance to! I’ve noticed that a monkey generally has rather poor luck in the music he’s sent out with, and I’ll defy any one to cake-walk to “Jerusalem” or “Killarney” and put any kind of “go” into it.

So I gave it up, and just jumped about anyhow, accompanying myself on the tambourine. But the bally tambourine had two of the jingling thingummies missing and wouldn’t keep time. I don’t believe I got much more music out of it than an ordinary monkey would have, I really don’t.

However, my chance came presently. One of the organ Johnnies handed me up a little wooden musket. “What-oh!” I said to myself. “Now I’ll open their eyes!” For of course you can’t be in a Volunteer corps, even for a short time, without knowing more about the manual exercise than your average monkey.

I had got rustier in the drill than I thought, and besides it was a rotten little rifle to handle when you’re so long in the arms, and haven’t learnt to control them completely. Still, it was a fairly creditable performance, and improved with practice, though quite thrown away on such audiences as I had.

Not that I was a failure — don’t imagine that for a moment. I should think I took at least thirteen halfpence in the first ten minutes — more than I had ever earned before in all my life! But it went rather against the grain to take the money — especially from some poor little beggar who obviously belonged to quite the lower orders. I should like to have said, “Don’t you be a young ass — run away and spend your halfpenny on sweets instead of squandering it on these lazy bounders!” But whenever I did reject a copper I got a tug at the belt that nearly cut me in two.

I should say we gave a matinée that afternoon in every street in Soho. I was getting quite knocked up, for I had had no lunch. At least I don’t call half a cracknel biscuit and the over-ripe end of a banana “lunch” myself. Monty would have done me to rights at the Junior Beaufort.

We stopped at last outside a small public just off Oxford Street, and my men went inside for refreshment. They might have thought of sending me out a whisky-and-soda — but not they! So I sat on the top of the piano in the sunshine, keeping a wary eye on my tail, which some of the little brutes of children thought it funny to pull.

When we moved off again in the direction of the Marble Arch, I felt more cheerful. Thank Heaven! we had got back into a civilised region again. There would be people there capable of appreciating real talent when they saw it. Suppose only suppose some music-hall manager happened to be in the crowd and offered me an engagement?

Why not? I ought to be able to wear evening clothes, order a little dinner, and smoke a cigar on the stage better than a common Chimpanzee who’d never done the real thing in any kind of society!

Great Scot! I might be earning my hundred quid a week before long — which I should never have done as Reggie Ballimore. And I’d always had a hankering after the stage, and should have gone on it long before, if it didn’t cut into one’s evenings so.

I was still indulging these golden dreams when I was brought up with a round turn.… There was a victoria standing outside a glove and fan shop we were coming to, and on the box I recognised Tumbridge, my aunt’s coachman. And in the carriage, as I saw when our respective vehicles were alongside, sat my cousin Phyllis, looking simply ripping! Upon my word, I didn’t quite know what to do. I knew she must have seen me, for she smiled in that perfectly fetching way she has. My hand flew to my hat instinctively, but the infernal elastic made it fly back and catch me on the ear. Then, recollecting myself, I gave what I am afraid was a rather sketchy rendering of a military salute, and at that same instant my aunt came out of the fan and glove shop, followed by an assistant with parcels. I felt most beastly awkward-I all but lost my head and wished more than ever that the frill round my neck had been a trifle cleaner.

But something had to be done, and, as luck would have it, I was still carrying the little wooden musket. So, as my aunt was about to step into the carriage, I presented arms.

It was a jolly decent “present,” too — though I say it myself!

III

“Oh Mums!” cried my cousin Phyllis, with that impulsive enthusiasm of hers which some people — not myself — say is all put on, “do look at this sweet little monkey on the organ! Isn’t he deevie?”

“Deevie” is, I believe, short for “divine” with certain sets. I wouldn’t mind betting that Phyllis had never applied such a term to me before.

My aunt didn’t seem impressed by my deeviness just then. She examined me through a pair of long-handled glasses, which always had the effect of making me feel rather a worm. On this occasion I dropped feebly on all fours.

“Since you ask me, Phyllis,” said my aunt, “I think he’s a frightful little object!” Which was my poor dear aunt all over — never could make the slightest allowances for me!

“I call him perfectly twee!” persisted Phyllis. (I don’t know what “twee” stands for exactly — but something deuced complimentary.) “Only see how prettily he’s scratching his ducky little ear.” (This was a bad habit I had been trying all the afternoon to correct). “He’s quite too trotty for words. I wonder if those two nice men would part with him?”

“My dear Phyllis!” exclaimed my aunt, stepping into the victoria. “Are you quite mad? Home, Charles.”

“No, wait, Charles,” said Phyllis, as he was about to touch his hat and mount the box by Tumbridge’s side. “Darling Mums, I’m quite serious — I am, really. And you know we’ve no pet ever since poor Cockie died.” (Cockie was a white cockatoo, and I could understand from what I remembered of him that they would be glad of a little peace.) “I must just see if they will sell him.”

Even as a child Phyllis generally got her own way. Now she had come out, everybody — my aunt included — knocked under to her at once if she was at all keen on anything. It saved time.

Phyllis opened negotiations at once. Fortunately she had no difficulty in making herself understood, as the two sportsmen who ran my show happened to be British artisans of sorts who, being presumably thrown out of employment by foreign competition, had adopted this means of Retaliation.

But as a crowd had already collected, a constable promptly appeared, and, with a civility paid rather to my aunt’s conveyance than my own, requested us to move on and not obstruct the traffic.

Aunt Selina would have driven off and left me to my fate, but Phyllis wouldn’t hear of it, so the disgusted Tumbridge had to turn up a small and unfrequented street close by, followed by me and the piano-organ, and the crowd, which by this time was taking a deep interest in my future.

Phyllis is a most awfully charming girl, but a poor hand at monkey-buying — much too eager.

Even those two utter outsiders spotted at once that she had set her heart on getting me, and piled it on accordingly. I’d no idea before how fond they were of me — it appeared I was the sunbeam of their cheerless homes, the darling of Joe’s missus, the playfellow of Bill’s offspring.

“Really, Phyllis,” said my downy aunt, “I think it would be too cruel to deprive the poor men of such a pet.”

I knew the idiots would muff it! and, in my despair, I hit my tambourine a vicious bang.

“Yer see, lydy,” explained Bill, “my kids and his missus ’d be on’y too thankful to ’ear as poor Jocko ’ad found a good ’ome where he’d be took proper care on. For, I tell yer strite, we can’t feed ’im not like the likes of ’im had orter be fed, bein’ so dellikit.”

“My mate means a dellikit feeder,” put in Joe hastily, “and, bein’ outer work, we can’t git him luxuries and relishes like we did in ’appier times.”

It’s my belief that precious pair of humbugs had never seen me till that morning, when they had probably hired me for the day with the organ in Leather Lane or Saffron Hill. All this took time, and I could see that Aunt Selina was getting a bit restive; even Phyllis seemed to find the publicity and notice she was attracting rather more than she had bargained for.

It isn’t every day a London crowd has the excitement of seeing a sumptuously-attired young person in a victoria trying to buy a monkey at a fancy figure off an organ, so she was immensely popular. Several of her admirers urged my proprietors to “let the young lydy ’ave the monkey cheap as she’d took sech a fancy for it,” though there were two soured socialists who cried “Shame!” on the idle aristocracy which was trying to deprive two poor hard-working men of their only bread-winner.

As for me, I was powerless. I could only sit and look on from the top of my pedestal like some classical Johnny in a melodrama being put up to auction as a Greek slave. Except that whenever I thought Phyllis was beginning to weaken, I tried to revive her enthusiasm by rattling the tambourine.

Perhaps that just turned the scale. Anyhow, she got me at last. What she actually paid for me I don’t know — but I’ve no doubt it was a long way above the market value for a monkey, of whatever breed I belonged to. To be sure, I had talents and intelligence denied to any monkey — but then neither of the parties suspected that as yet.

There wasn’t enough in the purse which Phyllis took out of her dainty wrist-bag to make up the purchase-money.

She obliged to borrow from my aunt, and even from the blushing Charles, before my ransom was finally paid in full.

My aunt declined to have me on the little strapontin seat in front. As a matter of fact I had been there before, more than once — and a jolly uncomfortable perch it was, too. Still, I’m bound to say I didn’t altogether blame her just then.

So, when we drove off amidst loud cheers, which I do not think were intended altogether in chaff, I was on the box, sitting bodkin between Charles and Tumbridge, who were distinctly shirty at having to drive home through the Park with such a companion.

At least so I gathered from the subdued remarks they exchanged above my inoffensive head. Till then I had always thought Tumbridge and Charles such respectable men!

Much I cared for their opinions! I had got a rise in the world already, and in a quarter I little expected. I wonder what they would have said if they had known who the quiet, unassuming-looking monkey that was sharing the box-seat with them really was, or guessed that if I blinked my eyes it was merely because I was dazzled by the brilliancy of the future that seemed within my grasp.

Naturally they couldn’t know all that — and perhaps it was just as well they didn’t.

IV

As we bowled swiftly along past Hyde Park Corner, Albert Gate, and the Cavalry Barracks, my brain was working busily on the problem of how to carry out my idea of going on the Variety Stage and knocking spots out of the ignorant apes which were being palmed off on a credulous Public as “educated.”

Now I really was educated, having been at a well-known Public School — at two of them, for that matter! And if an ordinary baboon can earn the screw of a Cabinet Minister or a Judge by simply appearing on the stage for a few minutes, and giving a clumsy imitation of some outsider’s notion of a man-about-town, what mightn’t I expect?

Without being a positive Paderewski, I could pick out several tunes by ear on the piano; I could play billiards, and bridge, too,I won’t say well, but marvellously for a monkey!

The only rock ahead I saw was Phyllis. She mightn’t like the notion of any monkey of hers performing nightly at the Palace or the Empire. She might consider it would deprive her of most of the advantage of my society. I decided not to spring the idea on her all at once, but accustom her to it by degrees.

First of all, she would naturally notice a sort of distinction about me; she would realise that I possessed a tact and savoir faire, an ease of manner which no piano-organ can impart. Then, when she had learnt to respect me, I could reveal my accomplishments gradually, one by one, and she would have to admit that such talents as mine ought not to be wasted in obscurity — they belonged not to her, but to the whole World!

It was a bit of a bunker that, as yet, I could not talk intelligibly — but I was sure to hit upon some method of conveying my ideas before long — and then I could inform Phyllis that I had quite made up my mind to go on the stage.

She was too sensible to stand in my way — especially if I offered her a commission on my salary — say ten percent, which, even if I was making no more than two hundred a week, would be a welcome addition to her pocketmoney.

Should I ever reveal to her the secret of my identity? It would be a temptation some day to let her know that the brilliant and wealthy monkey who was the darling of Society and the idol of the Public had once been her rather shiftless and unsatisfactory cousin Reginald. Still, perhaps it was better she should never suspect the truth. It would put the family in a deuced awkward position. No, Reggie Ballimore was better dead. I would use his dead self, as some poet-Johnny (Milton, isn’t it? or Shakespeare?) puts it, “as a stepladder to something higher.”

By the time I had come to this decision, the carriage stopped at my aunt’s house in Cadogan Gardens — and I shall never forget Macrow the butler’s face as Charles handed me to him by the scruff of my neck.

“It is Miss Phyllis’s monkey, Macrow,” explained my aunt, with an anxiety to disown all responsibility for me that was not flattering. “And, Phyllis, dearest, if you insist on having it in the drawing-room, hadn’t you better?”

I failed to catch the rest, but Phyllis replied, “Well, perhaps it might be as well. Macrow, will you take him to Friswell, please, and ask her to — to wash him for me and send him into the drawing-room?”

Friswell, I fancy, was not altogether chummy with Macrow just then; at all events she told him it was “no part of her work to bath a little beast of a monkey,” and recommended him strongly to do it himself.

But he turned me over to the under scullerymaid instead — and even she was sniffy about it.

To be held under a tap in a sink, soused with cold water, and scrubbed with beastly yellow soap and a most infernal hard brush, is not exactly the kind of treatment I was accustomed to, even under my aunt’s roof — but I showed no resentment. I thought I probably required it.

It was over at last, and in a condition of almost offensive cleanliness [I loathe the smell of yellow soap myself — so depressing!] I was carried upstairs and deposited outside the drawing-room door, which Macrow opened for me. My little plaid tunic had been burnt, so I had absolutely nothing on but the leather belt. One can’t get rid of one’s prejudices all at once, and though I knew that even this costume wouldn’t be considered at all outré in my present case, I did feel just a little bit shy about going in. After all, though, I was one of the family, and I resolved to saunter in unconcernedly, as a person who had a right to feel at home.

Whether Nature was too strong for me, or whether I got a gentle push from Macrow’s boot, I can’t say, but I’m afraid that, as a matter of fact, I shambled in anyhow on all fours.

“You can’t say he isn’t clean now, Mums!” cried Phyllis. “Isn’t he a perfect angel? 1 think I must have some new clothes made for him — he’ll look frightfully sweet in them!”

I thought I should look all right if she would only let me go to my own tailor, who, though a trifle too given to press for immediate payment, does understand my figure — but how was I to give her his address? She said a lot more about me, till at last, not being used to such open admiration — especially from her — I began to feel a bit embarrassed; it was enough to turn most monkeys’ heads. To cover my confusion, I wandered round the room, just as I should have done if I had remained my old self, looking at this and that, taking up an article here and there, fingering it, and putting it down again. Then I sat on the music-stool and struck a few careless chords on the piano. I had meant to play them as much as I could remember of the Choristers’ Walts, but my fingers had all got so fumbly that I couldn’t raise any tune in particular. But that would come back to me, with practice.

Phyllis was highly amused, at first, by my performance, but she did not appear to think it showed any marked musical ability. If she had, she would not have insisted on my leaving off so soon. Of course a hint from her was enough for me, and I got off the music-stool and retired to a sofa without, I hope, letting her see how deeply she had disappointed me. I took up the nearest Society journal and began to glance through it with a show of interest. Not that I really cared two straws how Lady Honor Hyndlegge’s small dance had gone off, or who were letting their houses for Ascot week, or going to have a houseboat at Henley-1 seemed now to have got so far beyond all that!

But I was determined to make Phyllis understand that I had intellectual tastes.

However, it was a deuced tricky paper to manage — especially as my feet would keep on trying to turn over the pages instead of leaving it to my hands. So I am not sure that Phyllis quite took in the fact that I was actually reading, and, whatever it was I did read, I can’t remember a single line of it now.

But all of a sudden, as I sat there, Macrow appeared and announced: “Mr. Blundell” — and sure enough, in walked old Monty, irreproachably got up as usual! I was a bit staggered at first, for I wasn’t aware he knew my aunt — I hadn’t introduced him.

Then it struck me why he had come. He had heard of my decease, and volunteered to break the sad news to my family. It was pretty decent of him, really — though I would rather it had been anybody else. Because, between ourselves, I wouldn’t have trusted dear old Monty to break the death of a bluebottle without managing to foozle it somehow.

He couldn’t see me behind the paper, and, as I couldn’t be of much assistance to him, I lay doggo, being naturally curious to hear how he would prepare them for the shock, and how they — especially Phyllis — would bear up under it.

V

As it happened, my aunt and Phyllis had met Monty already, and evidently imagined he was merely making an ordinary afternoon call. Monty sat down, and asked Phyllis “if she had been in the Park that afternoon” — which struck me as rather a circuitous route to the information that I’d been cut off in the flower of my youth by being pitched out of a cab in Pall Mall. But he went on talking Society drivel for some minutes before my aunt inquired “if he had seen anything lately of her good-for-nothing nephew?” — meaning me.

This of course was Monty’s cue — and I poked my head out round the corner of my paper, and nodded hard at him, meaning, “Now’s your time! Out with it! Don’t keep ’em in suspense!

Tell ’em the worst!” I suppose he hadn’t noticed me before, and it rather upset him, for he dropped his eyeglass as if it had been red-hot. For the moment, I thought he must have recognised me, without remembering how improbable that was under the circumstances.

“Oddly enough,” said Monty, looking everywhere but at me, “I was expecting him to lunch with me at the Club today. But he — er — didn’t turn up.”

“He gets more erratic every day!” lamented my dear aunt. “He ought to be dining here this evening, and I shall be seriously annoyed if he forgets that, as there will be nobody to take in poor Miss Yellowly.”

So I was to have taken in Miss Yellowly! If I had wanted anything to reconcile me to what I had become, that would have about done it!

“I suppose he sent you some sort of excuse?” said Phyllis.

Again I tried to catch Monty’s eye and buck him up to tell his news and get it over — but it was no good.

“What? Reggie! He’s much too casual for that!” said Monty. “Likely as not he overslept himself or somethin’.”

Now this was too bad of Monty — he knows perfectly well that I hardly ever sit down to breakfast later than half-past twelve! But I began to see now that he couldn’t have heard of my accident after all.

“Disgraceful!” said my aunt. “At his age, he ought to be ashamed of such lazy, idle habits.”

“There’s this to be said,” put in Monty. “Dear old Reggie hasn’t anything particular to do when he is up.”

“Then he ought to have!” declared my aunt — and Monty agreed with her.

“I’m always tellin’ him he doesn’t take half enough exercise,” he added.

He wouldn’t have said that if he had seen me jumping about all the afternoon with that confounded tambourine! And Monty, too; who takes all his exercise in a motor!

“I didn’t mean exercise,” said Aunt Selina. “I meant work. Every young man ought to have some profession.”

Monty agreed once more, and said that, for his part, he found being at the Bar had made all the difference to him. What difference except knowing that his name was painted up outside some door in Lincoln’s Inn which he never by any chance darkened, I fancy Master Monty wouldn’t have found it easy to explain. But my aunt said she was glad to think that I had one friend who set me a good example, and begged him to look after me as much as possible. To which old Monty, trying to look as like the infant Samuel in plaster as he could at such short notice, replied that she could rely on him to do his best to keep me out of any serious mischief.

The notion of old Monty as my guardian angel was so rich that I couldn’t resist grinning at him from behind the journal — and I saw him gasp. No doubt he thought that, for a monkey, I was a trifle over familiar, but he took no further notice. And my aunt went on slanging me; I had had every advantage, excellent opportunities of making my own way in the world, and I was so incorrigibly indolent that I had neglected them all — and so forth, all of which I had heard on several previous occasions.

Good old Monty stuck up for me — after a fashion. He didn’t think it was my fault exactly; I was a dear good chap — one of the best, in short. It was only that I was naturally too thick to learn anything thoroughly, and in fact, what he might call — if my aunt would forgive the expression — “a born rotter.” Aunt Selina didn’t object to the expression in the least — in fact, both she and Phyllis appeared to think it hit me off rather neatly. Then they asked if Monty considered I was likely to do better in the Colonies, but Monty thought (and it just shows how little he knows me) that roughing it was not precisely in my line of country.

By this time I was, as you may suppose, getting fairly sick of the subject. It wasn’t pleasant to feel I was eavesdropping, as it were, and I knew, too, that when they did hear that I was scratched for all my engagements, they would be no end sorry they had been so down on me. For myself, of course, I didn’t mind a rap. The worse they made Reggie Ballimore out, the more satisfied I felt at being no longer connected with such a waster,

Still, it struck me it was quite time to switch Monty on to some pleasanter topic, so I got quietly down from the sofa, and, stealing up behind his chair, I scratched him gently just above his coat-tail buttons.

He turned sharp round and saw me. I never saw any one go quite so green before — but he said nothing.

“I’m afraid, Mr. Blundell,” said my aunt, noticing how he was shifting about in his seat, “that you have chosen rather an uncomfortable chair?”

Monty said, “Oh, not at all — most comfortable,” and inquired if Phyllis “had done the Academy yet?” Which, as it didn’t open for some days, was a silly-ass thing to say — even for Monty — but I don’t believe he knew precisely what he was saying just then.

“Are you quite sure the monkey isn’t bothering you?” asked Phyllis; “I thought he was on the sofa.”

“Oh, then — then you noticed it too?” poor old Monty blurted out.

“Why, of course — it’s mine,” said Phyllis, “I only bought it this afternoon. I hope you’ve no antipathy to monkeys?”

“Oh, not a bit!” said Monty, beginning to turn a wholesomer colour. “Can’t say I ever kept one myself — but awfully fond of them, assure you I am.”

On which Phyllis gave the history of my purchase.

“Wish you’d told me you were on the lookout for a monkey, Miss Adeane,” said that blundering ass Monty, “because I could have got you one from a man who has some clinkers; real well-bred ones, don’t you know — the sort they don’t send out with organs!”

Phyllis — bless her!-replied with a slight fall of temperature that she was “afraid she preferred to choose her pets for herself, and that I was the only monkey she had ever seen that she could imagine herself caring for in the least.”

Which was one in the eye for old Monty! I could afford to despise him now; my position in the household was already secure. Before she was much older, Phyllis would be proud that she alone had had the insight to detect my marvellous superiority! So, as I sat in one of the window-seats, cooling my tail among the marguerites that filled the flower-box, I allowed myself to dream of my coming glory — till Macrow came in with afternoon tea.

Here, I thought, was a good opportunity to show that I was perfectly familiar with the ordinary social amenities. I was in my aunt’s house — almost in the position of host, so to speak — and anyway I wasn’t going to let Monty attend to Phyllis’s wants while I was there to look after her myself! So I made a beeline for the tea-table, and got hold of a plate of hot teacakes and another of cucumber sandwiches.

Perhaps I was too impetuous; my wrists were weaker than I had thought, and, as usual, I did not take my tail into consideration. The result was that I not only shot the cakes and cucumber sandwiches over my cousin’s charming afternoon frock, but upset the cream-jug into Aunt Selina’s lap.

It was awkward of course — but it might have happened to any fellow without necessarily putting him out of countenance; it was the kind of thing which a man of the world could pass off easily enough with a graceful apology or a witty remark, and perhaps make a friend for life into the bargain. Only, unfortunately, situated as I was, I could do nothing at all just then except gibber — and I realised that one of the undeniable drawbacks to monkey-existence is that one is so apt to get misunderstood over the merest trifles.

VI

I should say it would be about as much as Aunt Selina’s place is worth to speak severely to Phyllis, and, to do her justice, she is far too well-bred a woman to make any visitor feel uncomfortable by ragging her in his presence. Still, any one could have seen she was annoyed; and, while the cream was being spooned out of her lap into a slop-basin, she made remarks on the inconveniences of allowing monkeys to be about at afternoon tea which I, for one, considered most beastly offensive.

And even Phyllis could find no better excuse for me than that I was probably half-starved, and the sight of cucumber sandwiches had proved too much for my manners. Which was too sickening — considering my sole object had been to nip in ahead of Monty in handing the food to her! And yet people talk rot about “feminine insight!”

But I kept my temper. I merely let them see that I was hurt by turning my tail on them all, and stalking off to a corner — not, I flatter myself, without a certain dignity. I had had nothing since breakfast, except, as I fancy I mentioned before, a bit of biscuit and a rotten banana — but, after my aunt had called me “a greedy little horror,” I could not bring myself to accept one of her sandwiches. Not to mention that my doctor has often told me never on any account to touch cucumber.

Presently I had what I thought (and still think) a flash of real inspiration. If I couldn’t speak, by Jove! I could spell! Rather rockily, perhaps — in fact it was my spelling that really spun me in more than one exam. — but still, quite well enough to make myself understood by the meanest intelligence.

All I actually required was some sort of Alphabet. With that I could fix up a few simple sentences and lay them at Phyllis’s feet. When she read, for instance, something like this:

“Sorry. My mistake. Not Pig. Only Polite. Disguised, but still a Gentleman. Please let me go on Stage,” she would be astonished — but even more touched by my appeal. The problem was, how to get hold of an Alphabet.

Now, though few people give me credit for it, I have brains when I choose to exert them — and it didn’t take me long to come across the identical thing for my purposes.

For, lying on a chair in the corner, I found a book in a thick leather binding — oldish, I imagined (I must tell you my aunt rather fancies herself as a Connoisseur, and of course gets taken in with all manner of worthless old rubbish). But what fetched me was the inside of the book. On nearly every page there was a big fat capital letter, gilded and painted in a rather gaudy style, much after that of the texts I used to illuminate when I was a good little boy in a holland blouse. If I’d searched for a month I couldn’t have got hold of anything more topping!

So I went to work, and soon ferreted out an S, and an O, and then an R — but I couldn’t discover another R, and the silly old Johnny who had painted the bally book didn’t seem ever to have heard of a Y! However, SORI was correct enough for a monkey, and I tore those letters out — pretty neatly on the whole, for the paper was devilish tough — and then selected others I was likely to want, keeping as quiet as possible, so as to surprise Phyllis all the more later on.

But that interfering idiot of a Monty spotted me before I was half ready!

“Mischievous little beggars monkeys are,” he remarked, “always up to somethin’ or other!”

“Some monkeys may be,” said Phyllis; “not mine. It wasn’t mischief just now — only hunger, poor darling!”

“Well, but I say,” persisted Monty, “he’s busy tearin’ up some paper now, with pictures in it, too!”

“Oh, I expect it’s only Punch,” said Phyllis, without looking round. “It doesn’t matter, because we’ve seen that — at least we’ve looked at the pictures, you know.”

Monty said he never saw Punch himself — it didn’t amuse him, somehow — still, he might be mistaken, but he’d a sort of idea that it hadn’t gone in yet for giving coloured illustrations. That fetched them all up to see what I was about, and then my aunt gave a kind of scream: “Good gracious, Phyllis!” she cried, “the miserable little wretch has got hold of that book of ours” (or she may have said “Hours,” — I don’t know) “which Professor Peagrum kindly lent me to look at. And he’s tearing it all to pieces!”

All Phyllis said to me was, “O Monkey! — Monkey!”

But even as I still frantically tried to deal her out an S and an O and an R, this gentle reproof cut me to the quick.

“What shall I say to the poor dear Professor?” wailed my aunt. “A valuable MS. like that! And when he was hoping the British Museum might buy it, too!”

“Afraid they won’t give him much for it now,” said Monty, inspecting the fragments through his glass. “Monkey’s taken a lot off the value already!”

“Mums, darling!” put in Phyllis. “It was only his play! And really, it was a good deal your fault, you know! You shouldn’t leave such things about! The poor monkey couldn’t possibly know what he was doing!”

“It’s high time he was taught,” said my aunt grimly. On which Monty volunteered the opinion that “a good licking would be a lesson to me.”

“I won’t have him whipped!” declared Phyllis. “He knows already that he’s done wrong. Only look at him!” [I dare say I did look pretty abject — for I really was rather annoyed with myself.] “And I’ll pay for it, out of my allowance!”

“As I believe the Professor gave some hundreds of pounds for it at Sotheby’s, Phyllis,” retorted Aunt Selina, “it may be some little time before you are able to make up the amount.”

Of course I shouldn’t allow her to do anything of the sort; I would take the entire responsibility on myself! After all, what would a few hundreds matter to me, as soon as I got that engagement at the Palace or the Hippodrome?

“Fact of the matter is, Miss Adeane,” said dear Monty, “you’ll never feel safe with a little beast like that about. I should advise you to get rid of it. If you’re really keen on having a monkey, I can get you one with no nonsense about it — as quiet and well-behaved as any poodle. Only got to say the word, don’t you know.”

“I thought I told you before,” said Phyllis, looking all the jollier in a bait, “that the word is ‘No,’ Mr. Blundell. Do you quite understand? No — no — no! And if you persist in pressing any more monkeys on me which I don’t want, I shall be really vexed!”

But old Monty wouldn’t take a hint; he seemed bent on crabbing my chances if he could — and we’d always been such pals too!

“What I mean to say is,” he went on, “if you must keep a monkey, why not a healthy one?

I don’t set up for a judge of ’em myself, but even I can see the little beggar is about as rickety as he can be.”

“He isn’t!” said Phyllis indignantly. “And if he is, he can be cured. And he shall, too!”

“I should have said he was too far gone myself,” said Monty. “Besides, I fancy he’s got something worse the matter, if you ask me.”

“I don’t ask you,” said Phyllis.

“What else do you think he’s got?”

“Oh, I may be wrong,” said Monty. “Hope so, I’m sure. But those pink patches under the skin, eh? Look to me like — well — like the beginning of — er — mange, don’t you know.”

“O Mr. Blundell! Not really?” cried Phyllis.

But I could see that her ideal of me had received its first serious shock,

“I could have told you better if he’d been a fox-terrier,” said Monty. “Still, if I were you, I’d have in a vet. Nasty thing, mange!”

“Horrible!” said Phyllis, with a shudder. “But no. I won’t believe it’s anything so unpleasant!

“I always abstain, on principle, my dear, as you know,” observed my aunt, “from saying anything so banal as ‘I told you so.’ Otherwise I should be tempted to ask what else you could possibly expect from a piano-organ!”

The suddenness of the accusation had completely floored me. It was so beastly unjust too! What on earth did an unmitigated ass like Monty know about mange? I admit that I may have been a trifle flushed in places. What fellow wouldn’t be, I’d like to know, after being scrubbed with such an infernal hard brush as I had been!

Still, I was determined to keep myself under control — to meet this terrible charge with the calm consciousness of innocence.

A hero in a melodrama, when accused by the villain of something he hasn’t done, only has to stand in the limelight, with his right hand raised to the ceiling, and shout: “I call upon the Eternal Justice to decide between that Man and Me!” (or some such remark). And that brings the curtain down.

But I had no speech and no limelight. There wasn’t even a curtain that would come down. I can assure you that just then I jolly well wished there had been one, if it would only have put an end to my trying situation.

VII

I had put up with a good deal. I had heard Monty discuss the Reggie Ballimore that was, and give him away with a pound of tea, so to speak, — and I hadn’t turned a hair. The coming Variety Star, “the Unparalleled Phenomenon of Simian Intelligence” (as they would probably announce me in the advertisements), was infinitely above such paltry detractors.

But now, not content with running me down as the man I had ceased to be, he had done his best to disenchant Phyllis with me in my present shape; he had made the one insinuation which no sensitive monkey with the spirit of a sick caterpillar could take lying down — he had charged me with showing symptoms of incipient — I can hardly bring myself to mention the beastly word, but I must — mange!

Yet, sorely as I was provoked, I still struggled to be calm. I recollected that I was a Gentleman first, a Monkey afterwards. I would not condescend to a vulgar brawl with Monty in the presence of my aunt and Phyllis.

I simply looked him straight in the face, my chest heaving with indignation, my eyes flashing (naturally I couldn’t see them doing it, but I’ve no doubt whatever that they did flash), and my teeth chattering with righteous wrath.

And Monty was unable to meet my eyes.

“I say, Miss Adeane,” he stammered, “I — I don’t quite like the look of this monkey. Seems to me he’s turnin’ nasty.

D’you think he’s quite safe, loose like this?”

“He was as quiet as possible only a minute or two ago,” faltered Phyllis.

“He was busy tearing up the professor’s missal then,” said my aunt.

“But of course, Phyllis, if you consider he should be given every facility for further mischief, I have nothing to say.”

“Perhaps,” Phyllis admitted reluctantly, “it might be better to — to keep him on a chain in future.”

“He’d soon slip that,” said Monty; “monkeys are so artful. If I might suggest, Miss Adeane, I should put him in a cage. Then, don’t you see — supposing he’s really got the ma—”

“Yes — yes,” said Phyllis petulantly. “But you see, Mr. Blundell, we haven’t got a cage!”

“But, my dear,” put in my aunt, “we have. He could have poor Cockie’s — the very thing! I’ll ring for Macrow and tell him to find it and bring it here.” Which she did, promptly. Of course I saw at once that this would about biff me. What earthly chance should I have to exhibit all my accomplishments then? Why, the Admirable Crichton himself couldn’t have gained any reputation worth mentioning inside a cockatoo’s cage! I decided to “off” it while I could — but Monty was too smart for me.

“Shut the windows, quick!” he yelled and they were shut before I could decide which one to make for!

“Perhaps I’d better catch hold of him,” that officious ass next suggested. “Or he might bolt through your butler’s legs, don’t you know, the minute the door is opened.”

“Oh, do be careful, dear Mr. Blundell,” my aunt entreated; “he might bite you.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” declared Monty, wishing to show off before Phyllis. “Still, I’ll try coaxing first. Poo’ little Chappie, then,” he began, snapping his foolish thumb and finger at me, “come along, good little mannie!”

I came along. I shinned up Monty’s lovely fawn-coloured waistcoat with a suddenness that took his wind; I smacked his flabby cheeks; I wrung his nose; I boxed his ears; I hung on behind and helped myself to his hair by the handful-I’m afraid I even bit him! But, after all, what’s the good of being a monkey unless you act up to it?

For quite a couple of minutes I simply gave old Monty beans. And I don’t think he could have cut a very heroic figure in Phyllis’s eyes as he hopped about the room, howling, “Take the little devil off me, somebody, do!” If she’d had just a shade more sense of humour she would have roared — but, so far as I was able to notice, she was more alarmed than amused just then.

At this stage of the proceedings, Macrow turned up with the parrot-cage.

I tried to dodge past him — but he shut the door just in time. So I made a spring for the mantelpiece. Aunt Selina rather goes in for old china, and there were cups and plates and things up each side of the overmantel on brackets, which made a ripping ladder. I discovered I was a nailer at climbing, and the crockery came in useful to keep Monty and Macrow in check for a while.

They tell you monkeys can’t shy — I only know I could. I doubled up Macrow with a bit of Old Staffordshire, which caught him just under his silver watch-chain, and I landed Monty in the jaw with a well-delivered lustre milkpot, and again with an Urbino plate on the shin — all three really pretty shots! Even if Phyllis and my aunt had come within range (which they took jolly good care not to do), I shouldn’t have hurt either of them — not even my aunt. I was not making war on women!

However, my ammunition ran short at last, and, when Macrow slipped out and returned with a long-handled broom, I saw I couldn’t hold the position against such overwhelming odds, and should have to quit. So I made a flying leap for a console-table between the windows, where I found a fresh supply of projectiles — chiefly Dresden ware, if I remember right — till I was forced to retreat up the curtains and along the pole, Macrow jobbing at me with the beastly broom, and Monty buzzing books after me — any one of which would have done my business if they hadn’t gone through the windows instead.

Then I took a daring dive off the pole, on to my aunt’s back — I was sorry, but she shouldn’t have got in my way — and leap-frogged over her head on to the piano, which I defended as long as I could with the flower-vases and photograph-frames.

Take it altogether, it was one of the very finest rags I ever had in my life, and under happier circumstances I should have thoroughly enjoyed it. But the top of the piano was too exposed to the enemy’s fire, so I retired into entrenchments underneath, where they could only dislodge me by a frontal attack. It made me realise once more that my volunteer training had not been entirely thrown away!

Macrow advanced in force with the drawing-room tongs, while Monty directed operations from a distance. I knew Macrow, of course, and if only I’d had half a sovereign in my pocket, I believe I could have squared him, even then,-but I hadn’t so much as a pocket! A similar reason prevented me from hoisting a white handkerchief and proposing an honourable surrender. And I had fallen into the common military mistake of leaving my rear insufficiently protected. The consequence was that, with no warning whatever, a waste-paper basket was clapped down on me from behind by hands which I recognised only too well through the wickerwork — Phyllis has rather jolly hands. I don’t say it wasn’t plucky of her, for she couldn’t know that nothing would ever induce me to bite her fingers. Still, it was not the act of a sportswoman. And that she should turn against me was a knock-out blow! After that there was nothing for it but to let myself be ignominiously hustled into Cockie’s confounded cage.

How I wished I could recover my speech, for even a moment — and then somehow, all at once, back it came with a rush! “You’re making a great mistake!” I managed to articulate, quite distinctly. “Telephone, Manager, Empire, come immediately. Important business proposal!”

I dare say they were slightly astonished, but I can’t say. Because just then my head began“o swim, everything got dark — I suppose I must have gone off.

•   •   •   •   •

When I opened my eyes, a strange man — evidently the Empire Manager — was bending over me. “I want engagement,” I said eagerly. “Cleverest Monkey in Universe. Tremendous draw. Will take a hundred a week to start with!”

“Coming round at last,” he said to a young lady, who, I now saw, was not Phyllis, being in a nurse’s uniform. “But still wandering.”

I found I was lying in bed in the accident ward of St. George’s Hospital, and the stranger was not a variety Manager — merely the house-surgeon.

Also I was no longer a monkey — which was beastly disappointing at first. It seemed that that cab accident had given severe concussion of the brain, but I had not lost my life — only my consciousness for several hours. And, as it is obvious that anything, even when lost, is bound to be somewhere or other all the time, my consciousness must have got mislaid for a while inside the monkey.

I have been moved to my own rooms, and am told I shall be as right as rain in another day or two. I am well enough already to dictate my adventures to the trained nurse who looks after me — and most awfully kind and attentive and all that she is, too, though she will go off into fits of giggles every now and then for no reason that I can see!

Old Monty has called once or twice — but, to tell you the truth, after what has passed between us, I haven’t felt quite up to seeing him yet. As soon as I am fit enough and can raise the funds, I mean to go quite away and lead an entirely new life. Where, I haven’t decided yet. Canada, most likely — or Monte Carlo.

I am not sure whether I shall have the courage to call and say good-bye to Phyllis and Aunt Selina before I start. That drawing-room in Cadogan Gardens would be rather too full of painful reminiscences — if you know what I mean.

And, for another thing, I own I shirk hearing what became of the monkey.

Now I look back on it, it seems curious that, with all my accomplishments and knowledge of the world and so on, I should only have managed to land that monkey in a worse hat than I found him in.

But I’ve always had the most rotten luck wherever I’ve been — and so I suppose the poor little beggar got let in for some of it!

“AS THE TWIG IS BENT”

(A Domestic Dialogue)

SCENE — Library in the Town-house of PETER SLACKSOLE, Esq. (of SLACKSOLE & SCRYMGEOUR, Drysalters, Bishopsgate Street).

TIME — About 7 PM towards the end of May.

MR. SLACKSOLE  (alone, to himself). I must put my foot down! I’m determined not to — (starts as door opens and Butler enters). Oh, ah — yes, I rang, Trundler.… Er — Mr. Frederick not in yet, I suppose?

TRUNDLER.  Been in some time back, Sir — from Lord’s. (With reflected pride) We managed to beat Chalkshire, Sir, after all!

MR. SLACK.  (without elation). Did we? Tell Mr. Frederick I should be glad to see him here, at once. (To himself, after TRUNDLER has left) Always at this confounded cricket! He’s not been near the office for days! So long as he was at college, I never said a word. No one can say I’ve been a harsh father to my children! How many parents would have allowed themselves to be habitually addressed as “Poffles”? But I’ve always gone on the principle of encouraging them to look upon me as a friend. Still, to be wasting his time like this now — when he ought to be devoting himself heart and soul to business — no, it’s really more than I can put up with! A few quiet words — when his mother isn’t in the room — will—

Enter FREDERICK exuberantly.

FRED.  So you’ve heard the result? Toppin’, isn’t it? I knew you’d be jolly pleased about it, Poffles! They only wanted 60 to win — and we got ’em all out for 56! “Collapse of Chalkshire. Slacksole’s Brilliant Bowling” they’ve got on the posters. You know the sort of bally rot those Cricket Editions go in for. Still, I must say I was rather in form. I was no sooner put on to—

MR. SLACK.  (interrupting nervously). Yes, yes, I dare say. But I didn’t send for you to talk about the match, precisely.

FRED.  (bewildered). Not? But — Poffles — what on earth else is there to talk about?

MR. S.  (with growing embarrassment). Something that is — er — more serious — for both of us, Frederick. The fact is, I — well, I’m beginning to see that I’ve made a mistake — a very great mistake.

FRED.  (reassuringly). Well, we’ve all done that in our time, you know, Poffles. (Sits down and crosses his legs.) Don’t you mind telling me. Better get it off your chest. Two heads are better than one, eh? Chances are I can put you up to a way out of it without its coming round to the Mater.

MR. S.  (on his dignity). It is a very different matter from what you — er — seem to suppose, Frederick. And, before I go any further, I — I think for the future it would be better if you gave up calling me “Poffles.”

FRED.  (generously). I’m hanged if I do! I’ve never called you anything else since I was a kid — and you’ll always be “Poffles” to Me whatever you’ve done! After all, it can’t be anything downright—

MR. S.  (bounding in his chair). You — you persist in misunderstanding me, Frederick! I never — er — the only thing I have to reproach myself with is my indulgence to you. And I consider I have every right to complain of — of the kind of life you have chosen to lead.

FRED.  (staring). The kind of—? Oh, now I see. (Bursts out laughing.) Some one’s been pulling your innocent old leg, Poffles! Why, I’m as steady as a church! Think it over, and ask yourself: Is it likely I should be such an ass as to risk lowering my cricket average by playing the goat?

MR. S.  I am not accusing you of — er — playing the goat. What I’m complaining of is the way you are playing cricket.

FRED.  (aggrieved). Well, really, Poffles, I shouldn’t have thought you could find much fault with that! It’s rather rough, when I’ve knocked up my sixth century already this season, and done the hat trick only this afternoon, to come home and be treated as if I’d made a brace of blobs and been slogged all over the field!

MR. S.  (at sea). I’m not objecting to cricket in moderation — say, on Saturday afternoons.

FRED.  In Regent’s Park, I suppose? Come, now, Poffles, you can’t seriously believe that a first-class match can be played out in a half holiday, however bad the pitch may be? You know better than that!

MR. S.  (nettled). Whatever I may not know, Frederick, at least I know this. All the money I’ve spent on having you equipped at school and college for the serious business of life seems to have been absolutely thrown away!

FRED.  “Thrown away”! I do like that! Why, if I hadn’t made the very best of my time at school, should I have got my Cricket Blue while I was a Fresher? You grumbled a bit at my having a professional to coach me in the holidays — but see how it’s got me on! And I won the Hundred and the Quarter at the Sports last year! Upon my word, Poffles, I don’t quite see what it is you do want!

MR. S.  What I want, Frederick, is to see you attending more regularly to your duties at the office, and — and, once for all, I must insist on your not addressing me as “Poffles”; it is a familiarity I can no longer permit.

FRED.  Of course if you’re determined to keep me at arm’s length, you must please yourself. But for me to chuck up cricket, with such a career as I’ve got before me — why, it would be perfect skittles!

MR. S.  Believe me, my boy, you can never earn a living by cricket!

FRED.  I could if I turned professional. But I suppose even you wouldn’t care for me to do that!

MR. S.  I? I am trying to show you the folly of frittering away all your youth in idleness!

FRED.  You’d find there’s precious little “frittering” about playing forward in Rugger, and you don’t get much chance to idle when you’re bowling on a plumb wicket. It’s jolly hard work, I can tell you!

MR. S.  That may be so, Frederick. But your hard work should be at the office!

FRED.  It’s all very well — but you’ve no idea what it is for a fellow who’s led the open-air life I have, to be boxed up all the week in a beastly office! It knocks me up in no time. You ask the Mater if it doesn’t!

MR. S.  Young Scrymgeour doesn’t seem to find it too much for him!

FRED.  It may suit a smug like Bob Scrymgeour — a rotter who never made a run in his life, and don’t know the difference between Rugger and Soccer! All I know is, it don’t suit me!

MR. S.  And the consequence is, Frederick, that he will be taken into partnership instead of you.

FRED.  (loftily). He’s welcome to it, for all I care! We should never pull together, you know. He’s not my sort. He takes to business naturally. Now, I never shall — not my line at all!

MR. S.  You had your choice of the Army or the Bar — and you wouldn’t go in for either.

FRED.  Because of the bally exams. You see, after a hard day’s exercise, you can’t sit down and grind away at stiff subjects — you’re simply bound to go to sleep over ’em! But, though I don’t pretend to be keen about the office, I’m quite game to put in a day there — whenever I’ve got nothing else on.

MR. S.  (with bitterness). What earthly use do you imagine that would be — to us?

FRED.  (with superiority). More use than you fancy, perhaps — even if I never did a stroke! You mayn’t know it, but you may take this from me: Athletics count for just as much in the City as they do everywhere else. Look at the way a Blue gets on in the House! And I don’t mind betting you that it’s done you a lot of good already, being known as my Governor.

MR. S.  (exasperated). However it may be on the Stock Exchange, Frederick, drysalting is — er — not governed by such considerations. You are talking downright nonsense!

FRED.  (stiffly). I’m not accustomed to being told I talk nonsense, and I think it’s jolly well time I went. I’ve had about enough of being ragged like this, when I’ve done nothing to deserve it!

[Rises, and moves towards door.

MR. S.  (climbing down). I — I didn’t mean to “rag” you, my boy. I was merely — er — endeavouring to—

FRED.  (with severity). Whether you intend it or not, you seem to me to be doing your level best to destroy all confidence between us. Up to now, I’ve always looked upon you as a pal rather than a father. In future I shall know better!

[He opens the door,

MR. S.  (overwhelmed with contrition). Fred! Don’t leave me like that. If — if I’ve spoken too harshly!

FRED.  If! I can tell you this much. If I hadn’t happened to be in a nailing good temper over winning that match, you and I might have had a downright row — and, even as it is (Sees MR. S.’s face, relents, comes back, and pats him affectionately on the shoulder.) No, it’s all right, Poffles, dear old boy! I’m not really angry. I know how it was. Something’s gone wrong at the office, and you come home and let off steam at me! If you’d been at a Public School and ’Varsity yourself, you’d understand better what it means to have a reputation to keep up. There, there — I hope I know how to make allowances — don’t let it occur again, that’s all. And, I say, Poffles, there’s the dressing gong! Better hurry up, hadn’t you?unless you want to keep the Mater waiting again!

MR. S.  (to himself, as he follows FRED upstairs). After all, he’s just the type of manly young Englishman that has made our country what it is! I ought to be proud of him, instead of — but he’s forgiven all that — he called me “Poffles” twice! (Aloud) And so, Fred, you bowled Chalkshire out with — er — a brace of blobs, eh? Capital! capital!

[He disappears into dressing-room as curtain falls.

CAVEAT EMPTOR!

(Being the remarkable experience
of an Art Collector)

It was the afternoon of my arrival at Domstadt — how many days ago, I really forget. I only intended to stay a night there, on my way to take the waters at Bad Schoppenegg — but I am still in Domstadt. Why, will appear later on. I was strolling through one of the narrow and winding thoroughfares of this ancient city, which (though I am beginning to know it fairly well by this time) I had never visited before, when I chanced to see a small antiquity-shop. I went in, of course. No bric-à-brac hunter ever can resist entering an antiquity-shop. It is not an expensive amusement: you go in, and potter about for a few minutes, asking the prices of various objects you have no intention of purchasing. Then you say “Adieu” or “Guten Tag” politely, and walk out. The proprietor is perfectly contented — he never expects any other result. After all, it is the way in which he makes his living.

So I walked in. It was quite the usual sort of shop, with the usual bald, bearded, and spectacled proprietor inside it. Simply to play the game, I asked the price of something which I should have been sorry to take as a gift. He said it was twenty marks, and, having satisfied my curiosity, I was preparing to go — when, rather to cover my retreat than with any genuine desire for information, I asked if he had any really old pieces of stained glass. He said he had one in the back shop, if I would care to see it, and I said I would.

He was so evidently shy about showing it that I felt convinced it would turn out to be some amusingly audacious “fake.” I followed him into his back parlour, disregarding his entreaties that I should stay where I was, and then he reluctantly fished out a panel in a wooden frame, which he handed me with a grunt.

The first sight of it almost took away my breath. Old stained glass has a peculiar fascination for me, and this was absolutely as fine an example as I ever remember to have seen of sixteenth-century Swiss work — heraldic in character, bold in design, and rich in colouring. I examined it carefully. I happen to have some knowledge of glass, and I could discover no new pieces — it was in perfect condition, with scarcely a crack. “How much do you want for this?” I said, with the sad foreknowledge that the lowest sum he was likely to ask would be far beyond my limited means. He was silent for a moment, as if he were speculating how much I could stand, and then he said “Twendy mark.”

Considering that this particular panel would easily fetch £150, if not more, in any saleroom, I did not think a sovereign was at all out of the way for it. “I’ll have that panel,” I said, with all the calm I could command, and he said, “Very well,” and seemed anxious to get me back into the front shop again.

But I had begun to look about me, and I speedily discovered that this back shop contained a variety of objects of sufficient beauty and rarity to delight the heart of any connoisseur. There was a Limoges enamel plaque, for instance, by the younger Pénicaud, which was almost priceless; a boxwood medallion, about the size of a draught, with a carved and painted relief of a female in a Holbein headdress, similar, though far superior, to one I had been offered at Frankfort for sixty pounds; an engraved goblet of rock crystal; a tiny fifteenth-century group (German, I think) of St. Hubert and the miraculous stag, exquisitely carved in pear-wood; a small ivory cabinet, inlaid with lapis-lazuli: and a seventeenth-century portrait in coloured wax with miniature jewellery, which was equal to the best specimens of the kind in the Wallace Collection.

And not a single one of all these things could by any possibility be other than genuine; no person with the slightest experience and judgement could have doubted that for a moment!

I inquired the price of each, and I invariably got the same answer — “Twendy mark.” I bought them all. I felt it was a justifiable piece of extravagance under the circumstances. When one does come across a dealer whose prices are so extremely reasonable, he deserves to be encouraged. I scorned to haggle or beat him down — and yet, although in the short time I was there I must have laid out at least as much as forty pounds (which was considerably more than I anticipated when I first went in), if he felt any gratification at the briskness of the business he was doing, he certainly suppressed it.

And I must confess that, without pretending to any higher code of ethics than my brother collectors, I was not wholly free from misgivings. Why was he selling these things so much under ordinary trade prices? He must know their value — and if he did not, it was not my business to teach him — I couldn’t be buyer and seller, too! But had he some pressing reason for wanting to get rid of them at any cost? They hadn’t the sinister look of objects to which a curse was attached — and even in that case I thought I would risk it. But suppose they were stolen goods — should I not be exposing myself to rather awkward consequences? Might not my proceedings be capable of misconstruction?

My expression must have betrayed something of my mental state, for this paragon of dealers hastened to reassure me.

“Don’t be sorry,” he said (meaning, I think, “Don’t be uneasy “). “I haf not robbered dese tings. I led you haf dem so cheap, begaus each, I gannot dell it to you in English” — and he proceeded to explain in his own tongue.

I did not follow him as perfectly as I could wish — but I gathered that, either as a penance for something he had done, or in gratitude for some danger he had escaped, he had made a solemn vow that, between sunrise and sunset on a certain anniversary, he would ask no more and no less than twenty marks for any article, no matter what its intrinsic value might be. I had happened to look in on that particular day — that was all.

I now began to understand his desire to keep me in the front shop, where the rubbish was.

While applauding his piety, I felt (for even a collector may have a conscience) that I oughtn’t to take too great an advantage of it.

“Perhaps,” I said, “I could manage to do without one or two of the things.”

I felt it would be a hard matter to decide which. But he said a vow was a vow, and he must hold himself bound by it; though he considered it lucky that I had not looked in till the sun was so near setting.

I never interfere between a man and his conscience, so I let him have his way. It only remained to pay, and it was a convenience to me when he said he would take a cheque — for to part with forty pounds in hard cash would have obliged me to remain in Domstadt till I could obtain fresh supplies. That being settled, I left him to pack up my purchases, while, in a state of excitement and exultation that will perhaps be only comprehensible to a fellowcollector, I hurried back to my hotel to get out my cheque-book. I tore out a cheque without waiting to fill it in — indeed I did not yet know to whom to make it payable, but I should soon find that out from the man himself.

I had no difficulty in regaining the little street — but what rather puzzled me was that there didn’t seem to be any antiquity-shop in it. The local trade was entirely restricted to boots, sausages, and pictorial postcards. Evidently, since antiquity-shops are not in the habit of disappearing in so abrupt a manner, I must have struck the wrong street — the right one could not be very far off.

And eventually, after a few failures, I found it, to my unspeakable relief. There was the board with “Antiquitäten” painted on it in red letters, and there was the stout, bald, bearded, and spectacled proprietor inside. I entered and told him, laughingly, that I had begun to fear he had vanished. He appeared puzzled. I produced my cheque; and he imagined (or affected to imagine) that I was asking him to cash it. I have such a wretched memory for faces that I could not be positive he was my man. If he was, he pretended to have no recollection whatever of any business transaction between us. He allowed me to look into his back-parlour, and I am bound to say it contained no treasures of any sort, packed or unpacked.

At last I staggered out, feeling that I must have made a mistake. The real shop must be farther from my hotel than I had fancied — but I was bound to come upon it sooner or later. The annoying thing was that I had absolutely nothing to identify it by. I had scarcely glanced at the window — and, if I had, I have never practised memorising the contents of shop windows, as Houdin did. I only wish I had. It had the kind of articles in it that most antiquity-shops do exhibit — that was all I knew. I did not know the name of the street (does any one ever look at the name of any street he is strolling through? — I don’t) — it might be a “strasse,” or a “gasse,” or a “gässchen,” or even “unter”-something, or “am”-something else, for anything I could tell. After a time I completely lost my bearings, and began to feel really worried.… Still I persevered. I went into one Antiquitäten shop after another — and every proprietor looked more like the man I wanted than the last — but I never could convince him that he was. Our interviews began by being ridiculous, and ended in scenes that almost approached violence.

Not till long past my dinner-hour, when every curiosity-dealer in Domstadt had put his shutters up, did I crawl back to my hotel, more dead than alive. But I was not going to be beaten. I got a Domstadt directory, made out a complete list of every Alterthümershandlung in the city, and marked them down with red crosses on a big map, and early next morning I began all over again. I worked through most of those establishments, likely or not, more than once. Some of the dealers were unknown at their registered addresses, some of their addresses did not seem to exist at all — but, whether I found them in or not, it was all the same — they were unanimous in repudiating all knowledge of me and my purchases. In fact, they ended by threatening to have me taken off to the Polizeiwache, if I would not go away quietly. So I gave up calling on them at last. But I am still in Domstadt. I haven’t abandoned all hope, even yet. There may still be a street somewhere in the city which I haven’t searched — though I doubt it. I have also inserted guarded advertisements in the local papers, imploring my dealer to communicate with me. So far, he does not seem to have come across any of them, and, I fear, it is hardly probable that he will read this statement. Still, if it should meet his eye, he can have his money the moment he delivers the goods to me at the Hotel Domhof, No. 707. I feel quite sure there has merely been some unfortunate misunderstanding. Meanwhile, I warn all rival collectors that if they should purchase any of the articles above described they will do so at their peril. Morally, if not legally, they are mine — and I intend to have them.

LUNCH AMONG THE RUINS

(A Sketch in a Baronial Stronghold)

SCENE — The Courtyard of Cromlingbury Castle. On the left is the Gateway Tower; on the right what remains of the Banqueting Hall. The walls facing us are neatly labelled: “Kitchen” and “Armoury.” In the left corner is a stall where refreshments and pictorial postcards may be obtained. In the centre are three long tables, placed parallel to one another, with benches of an uninviting aspect. An elderly Female Custodian is discovered in a black bonnet, a blue print dress with white spots, a lilac apron, and low spirits.

THE CUSTODIAN  (bitterly, to her small grandson). Gettin’ on for ar-pas one, Tommy, and not a livin’ soul bin in yet-’cep’ them two cyclissin’ gents as couldn’t stop fur no refreshermints! The Publick is all fur novelties nowadays, simingly, an’ Harchiology’s quite hout o’ date! Them rock-cakes ’ll be flints by tomorrer, and now milk turnin’ soon as look at it this ’ot weather! … Was that wheels? (looking through window). A long waginette, with a young ladies’ school inside of it! Orter git rid o’ them rock-cakes — young ladies gen’ally ’as good ’elthy happetites, bless their ’arts! (a bell inside the archway jangles rustily). They ain’t got no call fur ter ring — the door’s hopen wide enough!

[The Pupils of Pelican House, Groyne-borough-on-Sea, enter by twos and threes, followed by Mlle. SIDONIE DUVAL, the resident French Governess, and MISS MALKIN, the Principal.

MISS MALKIN  (with guidebook) … precise date History is silent. On entering, the visitor cannot fail to be struck by the imposing—

CUST.  Charge for hedjucation’l establishmints is threepence per ’ed, Mem, please, hordinary persons bein’ sixpence. (As MISS MALKIN pays the sum demanded, and enters it as an item under the heading “Pleasure Excursion”) If your young ladies was requiring hany refreshermints, I’ve some loverly rock-cakes, fresh baked this mornin’, likewise noo milk and hother teetotal drinks.

MISS M.  Thank you — we have our own provisions. But we shall want a few plates and tumblers — oh, and a clean tablecloth, if you have such a thing. (The Custodian departs with a sound between a sigh and a sniff.) A majestic ruin, is it not, Mamzell? Ah, if these grey old walls could but speak, what stories they might tell us!

MLLE. DUVAL  (presuming, like Becky Sharp, on her employer’s imperfect familiarity with colloquial French). Mon Dieu, Madame, je n’en sais trop-un tas de choses joliment embêtantes, probablement!

MISS M.  Vous avez raisong. Quel dommage, donc, qu’ils sont — (forgets the French for “dumb”) qu’ils ne peuvent pas!

MLLE. D.  Puisque vous êtes ici, Madame, ce sera précisément la même chose!

MISS M.  Oh! beaucoup moins intéressante, je crains! (To herself) French people certainly have a knack of putting things pleasantly! (To the Pupils) I think, my dears, we had better lunch before we explore the ruins. Be careful not to leave your eggshells about, and reserve your jam-puffs until after you have eaten the sandwiches. (They take their seats at the table on the left.) How wonderfully peaceful it is here — one feels so remote from all the whirl and stress of modern life!

[A prolonged “toot” without, followed by a succession of snorts, pants, and clanks; the bell jangles, and presently a Motorist enters, with the condescending air of a god from a machine, accompanied by two rather flamboyant females.

MOTORIST  (to Custodian). I — ah — s’pose we can lunch heah, what?

CUST.  (cheering up). Cert’nly, Sir, arter payin’ for hentrance — sixpence per ’ed is the charge, which it does not go ter me, but towards keepin’ the ruings in repair. I’ve some nice ’ome-made rock-cakes, Sir, also noo milk and hother temp’rence—

MOTORIST  (appalled). Good Gad! (Calling to some one in gateway) Just bring that basket in, will yah.

[A Chauffeur staggers in with a huge luncheon-basket, and unpacks a raised pie, cold chicken, champagne, &c., on the table farthest from the School.

CUST.  (to herself, as she retires, wounded). My vittles may be ’umble — but they are ’olesome!

FIRST FLAMBOYANT FEMALE  (pettishly). Why you should want to break the run here is beyond me! I loathe taking my meals in this scrambly way, and being stared at like wild beasts, too, by a pack of saucer-eyed schoolgirls!

MOTORIST.  Won’t hurt you to rough it for once, my dear girl! (To Chauffeur) Alphonse, here’s a packet of food for you, and a halfbottle of fizz — you’ll feel more at home with them in the tonneau, I dare say.

[ALPHONSE withdraws.

SECOND F. F.  Champagne for a chauffeur! You are lavish, I must say!

MOTORIST  (apologetically). Well, look what a pace he’s brought us along at! Must do the fellah decently. Besides, between ourselves, it’s a different brand from this, what?

SECOND F. F.  So long as it doesn’t spoil him! … I call it rather jolly, lunching out like this in the open — more romantic than having it in a restaurant, anyhow.

FIRST F. F.  Don’t see where the jollity comes in, myself — nor yet the romance. These mouldy old ruins give me the hump! What I like is a first-class hotel, with a band playing, and serviettes, and everything of the latest. That’s my idea of comfort. Isn’t there any jelly in that pie? — thanks — and a little more pigeon while you’re about it.

MISS M.  (in an undertone to Mademoiselle). Nouveaux riches riches — trés — mauvais tong un exemple détressant de la luxe moderne! (To the Pupils) In such surroundings, my dears, we should endeavour — without, Cecilia, allowing our attention to be distracted by what is no concern of ours! — to call up a mental picture of this place as it was in the days of old. Try to fancy these ancient walls all hung with costly arras (or tapestry), those gaping window-frames glowing with painted glass, this courtyard full men-at-arms and pages in rich liveries — (The Pupils stop munching, and allow their mouths to fall slightly apart under the mental strain; the bell jangles once more) — while through the archway, returning, perhaps, from some raiding or hawking expedition, there enters a gay and rollicking party. (Here a Tripper in gorgeous raiment makes an impressive entrance, attended by his “young lady,” also in festal attire, an elderly couple in more sombre garb, and a sheepish youth with a billycock on the back of his head). I am wholly at a loss to imagine, Emmeline Tittensor, what I can have said to provoke such immoderate and unladylike mirth!

TRIPPER  (an inveterate farceur, to whom mediaeval diction of the Wardour Street order seems to have suggested itself as the most appropriate medium for his facetiousness). A ’arty welcome, fair Uncle Josh, to thee and all thy kin! Would that me ancesteral ’alls were worthier to receive ye! But the ’Ouse of ’Enery Urch ’as come down in the world, and so ’tis many a long year since we last ’ad the old place prop’ly done up! (His party endeavour to repress this exuberance by exhorting him to “beyave and not go acting the goat with comp’ny present; Mr. HENRY URCH, however, observing an audience, is unable to resist playing up to it, and, on the Custodian’s appearance, strikes an attitude of melodramatic recognition.) But ’oom do I beyold? Is it — kin it be the fythful retyner of me noble famuly — dear ole Dame Marj’ry, with ’oom, when I was but a che-ild and she still a sorcy centinarian, I used to ply at ’orses in the Harmry? Dost thou reckonise thy young Master, Dame? (The Custodian, with an expression of patient disgust, applies for the entrance fees.) ’Ast thou the nerve to demand a tester from the last of ’is rice when ’e cometh to drop a tear on the ’ome of ’is boy’ood? Thou ’ast? Well, well-’ere is a broad ’alf bull ter pay thy charges. I bring distinguished guests — (introducing his companions, whose resentment is only restrained by the fact that he is paying all expenses) — Herl and Countess Odlum, the Lady Louey Ekins — me intended bride — and ’er brother, the Lord ’Erb. We ’ave come from far and are a’nungered. ’Ast thou a cold boar’s ’ed in cut, good Dame?

CUST.  Don’t you go a-good-damin’ me. If it’s refreshermints you want, you must put up with rock-cakes.

MR. ’ENERY URCH.  Nay, Mistress, thou art spoofin’ us! Kin I not beyold a party o’ pilgrims partakin’ yonder of a ven’sin parsty, also fair young gyurls engaged in samplin’ ’ardboiled eggs? … Oh! I see — my error! Har well, ’twould ha’ broke me proud ole parint’s ’art, could he ha’ seen his son, in ’alls that was once a byword for their perfuse ’orspitality, redooced to regale his guests on the lowly rock-kike! No matter — we will e’en ’ave a few on appro. An’ now to tyble! (He conducts the others with ceremony to the centre table.) Lady Ekins will set on my right ’and, Countess Odlum oppersite — me noble Herl, I prithee unbuckle yer ’arness fer a blow-out. Me Lord ’Erb, do not scruple ter remove your ’elmet.

[They seat themselves, with feeble protests against any further tomfoolery; the motoring party affect a lofty unconsciousness; MISS MALKIN glares at the unfortunate EMMELINE TITTENSOR, whose pocket-handkerchief is wholly insufficient to stifle her untimely sense of humour; the other Pupils regard her over their jam-puffs with eyes of wondering disapproval.

MISS MALKIN.  Il est évidemment un peu — er — élevé, Mamzell — une triste faillite de nos ordres inférieures en vacances! (To the Pupils) We will, I think, finish our lunches in the Banqueting Hall. Emmeline, I shall have a word to say to you later, when you are sufficiently composed to realise fully the impropriety of your behaviour.

MR. URCH  (endeavouring to divide a rock-cake). By me ’alidome, Dame, ’tis rightly termed! Could you oblige us with the loan of a battleaxe? But stay, we ’ave a noble thust on us. Whatto! a stoup o’ Marmsey or Kinairy wine withal! What, no wines in the ’Ouse? Send ’ither ole Simon the Cellarer, Dame Marj’ry, and, an ’e perdooce not lickers in less than ’alf a non, ’e shall be striteway ’oofed inter the oobiliette! (The Pupils disperse and purchase picture postcards; EMMELINE, by this time on the verge of hysterics, seeks sanctuary in the ruined chapel.) Well, never mind, if he’s out, we’ll ’ave a noggin o’ sparklin’ cider instead, sime as what the party at the next tyble are ’aving.

MOTORIST  (to his ladies, but speaking at Mr. URCH). Fellah must be shockin’ boundah not to know cidah from — ah — champagne, what?

MR. URCH  (to UNCLE Josh, in a stage whisper). Did you ’ear that, Mr. Odlum? Acshally drinkin’ Shempine — with their lunch! I dessay, though, they don’t know no better — ’aven’t ’eard yet that it ain’t the classy thing to do, nowadays. (To Custodian) Fetch some flaggins of the rare ole gingerile as me noble Dad laid down to be broached the day I come of age!

[Custodian departs mystified.

FIRST F. F.  (to the Motorist). I wish to goodness we’d gone to a hotel — they don’t let horrid vulgar people in there! And they don’t give you tough fowls to eat, either!

MR. URCH  (to MISS EKINS). ’Ave another rock-cake, Loo — you needn’t be afride of it — it ain’t as if it was some old ’en we’d ’ad to buy, ’cause we’d run over it! (The Motorist and his ladies decide to go and see what ALPHONSE is up to.) Why, blest if we ain’t got the place all to ourselves, now!

MISS EKINS  (with some asperity). Ah, that’s the beauty of coming out for the day with you, ’Enery. We do get privacy!

WHY I HAVE GIVEN UP
WRITING NOVELS

(A Personal Explanation)

I have presented the world with but one work of fiction — and yet I have already come to the irrevocable resolution that my first novel shall be also my last! Such a decision is so unusual that I feel the public is entitled to some explanation of the circumstances which have left me no other alternative.

First let me say that my reason was not that Poisoned Porridge (Bellows and Böhmer, 6s.) was a failure in any sense of the term. Far from it. It was referred to as “the Novel of the Week” by so high an authority on literary matters as “Toney Tosh”; both the Clacton Courier and the Peebles Post gave it notices so flattering as to be almost fulsome, while the Giggleswick Gazette pronounced the opinion that “it would serve to while away an idle half-hour which could not be better employed.” I have preserved these and many similar press-cuttings in case I should be called upon to prove my assertions. Moreover, I know of several friends who inquired for the work at more than one circulating library and were informed that it was “out.” This being so, I have every reason for anticipating that my publisher’s statement of accounts, when furnished, will be found a highly satisfactory document.

But indeed I had never a doubt from the first that Poisoned Porridge would thrill the public as intensely to read as it thrilled me to write it. Each successive chapter, as it flowed like lava from my glowing pen, came as a further revelation of the wondrous creative force that had till then been latent and unsuspected within me. Athene is recorded in the Classical Dictionary to have sprung in complete armour from the head of Zeus, but one character after another came out of my brain, and all endued with such superabundant vitality that I was quite incapable of controlling their sayings and doings, which I could only record with breathless admiration.

This, I am aware, is quite a common experience with all novelists who possess the priceless gift of imagination, but the sequel in my own case was, I venture to think, rather more exceptional.

I should explain that I am a person of studious and literary habits, with a fixed income, and that I occupy a semi-detached villa residence in a quarter that has acquired a considerable reputation for social exclusiveness — I allude to Upper Balham. It was here that Poisoned Porridge was composed (though the proofs, or at least the major part of them, were revised in temporary lodgings fronting the Marine Parade at Bognor, Sussex).

Well, on a certain evening shortly after the work was published, I was seated in my study at Helicon Lodge, Upper Balham, when I heard the front-door bell ring violently, and presently my housekeeper announced that a young gentleman, who declined to give his name, but declared that he was well known to me, requested an interview.

I decided to receive him — not without misgivings that he had already absconded with the coats and umbrellas; but, when he was shown in, my first glance at his countenance told me the injustice of my suspicions. I could not be mistaken in that open brow, over which the chestnut hair fell in a crisp wave, that smooth-shaven face with the firmly chiselled lips and the square resolute chin — it was Cedric, the hero of Poisoned Porridge!

He was far too strong a character, as I realised at once, to be long confined within the covers of any book; he had burst his bindings, and naturally he felt that his first visit was due to the author of his being.

I gave him a cordial welcome (for I could not help feeling proud of the boy), and soon he was in a chair opposite mine, enthusiastically pouring out all his youthful ambitions, dreams, and speculations into my sympathetic ear.

He continued to do so for several hours — until in fact the suspicion that he was a bit of an egotist (he never once mentioned Poisoned Porridge!) had crystallised into the conviction that he was no end of a bore. At last I had to hint that it was long past my usual hour for retiring, and that I must not keep him any longer from his own home. It then appeared that he had no home of his own, and no resources, which was why he had come to me.

I wished then that I had provided him in the novel with some regular occupation, or at least a competence (which would have cost me practically nothing), but I had avoided such prosaic details from motives of artistic reticence which I now recognise were overstrained. The result was that I had to put him up in the spare bedroom and finance him till he could find employment of some sort — which he never did.

The very next day a dear old lady, with snowy side-curls and cheeks like a winter apple, drove up in a four-wheeler, which she left me to pay. She was Cedric’s mother — and I might have known that she never could endure her son to be out of her sight for long, because I had made rather a point of this maternal devotion in the book. Obviously the only thing to be done was to resign my own sleeping-apartment, and put up with a folding-bedstead in the dressing-room. Even this, though, I never actually occupied — for that afternoon there was a fresh arrival: an attached old family domestic named Martha, who would not hear of parting from her mistress, wages or no wages. And, as the old lady liked her to be within call, Martha had to have the dressing-room, and I slept, fitfully, in the bath. In the novel, Martha had been one of my favourite characters, rough and uncouth, but with a heart of gold. She spoke a racy dialect which I had vaguely described as “Clodshire,” a sort of blend of Dorset and Lincolnshire, with just a dash of Suffolk. I cannot say I always understood her meaning myself. She had a characteristic exclamation — “My tender kitties!” — which had struck me as quaintly humorous, in print. In actual life it soon grew slightly tiresome — but then I do think she overdid it.

Cedric’s mother, too, was addicted to smoothing his rebellious locks as he sat at her knee, with a hand that Time had left as smooth and dimpled as ever. It was pretty and touching at first, but the mannerism ended by getting on my nerves. So did Cedric’s habit of addressing her as “Mother mine!” — which was quite the correct expression, I know, and one I had, I believe, invented for him myself, but I didn’t like the way he said it.

However, I was getting fairly accustomed to them — when Yolande turned up, quite unexpectedly. Yolande, it will be remembered, was the heroine in Poisoned Porridge. The poor child was homeless; I was responsible for her existence, so I could not well refuse to take her in — especially when Cedric’s mother generously offered to share my bedroom with her. So there we all were — quite a happy family, so to speak. That is, we might have been, if Yolande had only shown a particle of common-sense. She was all that was adorable and enchanting, or she would have been no heroine of mine — she had a trick of raising a slim forefinger in arch rebuke which (for a while) was extremely engaging. But, with all her sweetness and amiability, she was a trifle trying at times. She had a positive genius for misunderstanding the simplest statements, and acting in consequence with an impulsiveness that was little less than idiotic.

For instance, she loved Cedric fondly, and he was passionately devoted to her. Yet, as often as he sought to declare himself, she would perversely conclude that he was announcing his engagement to another, and that it was her bounden duty to suppress her feelings under a mask of indifference or disdain. In the book this was all right, because otherwise I could not have kept the lovers estranged and apart through the necessary number of chapters. But in real life I had never expected that she would write a blotted note of formal farewell and leave the house for ever about every other day! It cost me a small fortune simply in rewards to the police for her recovery.

Though, mind you, I blame Cedric almost as much. He invariably expressed himself with such ambiguity as absolutely to court misunderstanding, and his excessive modesty rendered it impossible for him to believe that Yolande could ever regard him with any sentiment but loathing. He would lament the fact to me, night after night, till I was nearly dead for want of sleep — but nothing I could say would convince him that his despair was wholly unnecessary. As if, forsooth, I didn’t know the state of my own heroine’s feelings!

But I am sorry to say that Cedric — in spite of his lofty brow and his strong jaw, and of the fact that in the novel I had invested him with an intellect far above the average — was, not to mince matters, a most particularly exasperating young ass. And this, although I had expressly stated in the book that he had received a liberal Public School and University education — blessings I myself had never enjoyed! Then he was so totally wanting in backbone, too, as to be utterly incapable of supporting himself in any walk of life.

I thought our little party was about complete, but it was soon reinforced by yet another addition in the person of old Mr. Deedes, the highly respectable family solicitor of Poisoned Porridge, with a peculiarity of wiping his spectacles and blowing his nose vigorously to conceal his emotion before pronouncing any legal opinion. He did not know much Law — which is hardly surprising, as I knew none myself — and I had, again from a mistaken regard for artistic reticence, purposely refrained from assigning him an office in any specified quarter.

Consequently he came to me, and I could hardly object to allow him to use the breakfast-room for professional purposes, though the japanned tin boxes full of musty precedents and parchments that formed his stock-in-trade, so to speak, seemed a little incongruous in such surroundings. Have I mentioned that the heroine always called him “Daddy” Deedes? She did.

Still, I confess that I could not repress a certain elation. So unique an experience as mine could not be other than gratifying to the self-esteem of any author. For — without intending, without even being conscious of it at the time — I had created a set of fictitious characters who were so real and actual that they were literally living!

The one drawback I could see to such phenomenal mental fecundity was that they should all be literally living on me!

The hour was at hand when this would seem but a trivial worry indeed, in comparison with what I was next called upon to undergo.

Indeed, a period was approaching prior to which the troubles caused by my too fertile imagination can scarcely be said to have commenced. Personally, I should date this period from the ill-omened hour in which Desmond M’Avelly first crossed my threshold. M’Avelly, it is perhaps unnecessary to remind the reader, was the villain in Poisoned Porridge, and even the modesty of an author cannot blind me to the fact that he was a devilish good villain, as villains go.

He arrived in the powerful automobile with which for the purposes of the plot I had provided him in the novel, and, when he threw off his goggled mask and fur overcoat, he revealed himself in irreproachable evening-dress, which seemed to indicate the drawing-room as the most appropriate place for him. It was accordingly placed at his disposal, and there he sat all day, consuming innumerable cigarettes, as he thought out his intricate and infernal schemes.

At mealtimes, however, he joined the other residents at my board — for I was practically running a boarding-house, except that, as they none of them possessed any visible means of support, I made no profits worth mentioning.

I was pained to observe that he completely got round the hero’s mother, who persisted in believing that M’Avelly was a cruelly misunderstood person, with excellent moral principlesindeed, the only time the dear old lady and I ever differed at all seriously was once when I ventured to warn her that he might possibly be other than he seemed. Considering that I could not give her my grounds for distrusting him, it would perhaps have been wiser to have held my peace.

As for the hero (who really was more of a noodle than I ever could have anticipated), he fell at once under the spell of M’Avelly’s baleful glamour, and was absurdly flattered by his slightest notice.

Not so Yolande, who, I am proud to record, was true to my conception of her as the embodiment of guileless British girlhood, and shrank instinctively from his insidious advances. He took his revenge by poisoning her lover’s mind against her, as of course such a villain would. How he managed it exactly I do not know, as I was not present, but the consequence that Cedric began to treat her with marked coldness, if not actual aversion. She quitted our roof, determined to end her despair by suicide, rather frequently about this time.

Honest Martha could not, as she frankly stated, “thole” M’Avelly, who invariably adopted towards her a politely ironical tone that no respectable elderly domestic could be expected to stand. I should have felt easier in my mind if I could have known precisely what he was plotting during the long hours he spent alone in my drawing-room, because, in the novel, I had thrown out a vague suggestion (merely for effect, as the plot did not turn upon it) that, when not otherwise engaged, he was rather by way of being an anarchist of sorts.

It was by no means pleasant to think that, in his spare moments, he might be busy compounding bombs on the chiffonier!

So that, when a middle-aged stranger in blue spectacles presented himself, and, after explaining that he was a chronic invalid with a pet cobra (quite harmless) and a passion for playing the concertina and eating hashish, begged me to receive him into my household as a paying guest, I consented with unspeakable relief.

For of course I knew at once that he could be no other than my great but eccentric amateur detective, Rumsey Prole. Some critics have professed to see certain resemblances between this character of mine and one of Sir Conan Doyle’s. I can only say that, if any similarity exists at all, it is purely accidental. Rumsey Prole is an entirely original creation evolved from my own unassisted imagination. Besides, his methods are so absolutely different from those of the rival specialist. But I hope I can afford to ignore these pettifogging criticisms.

With Prole on the spot, I felt safer. I fitted up a box-room in the attics for him as a sort of snuggery, where he could play with the cobra, or on the concertina, and chew hashish to his heart’s content. I frequently went up to consult him, and generally found him absorbed in reading Euclid, which he maintained was more amusing and better illustrated than most of the popular magazines. I regret to say, however, that he seemed to attach but little importance to my suspicions of M’Avelly, and, in short, behaved with a brusquerie which — had I known him less well — I might have mistaken for offensive rudeness. But it was a great comfort to have him about. That massive mind of his was, I knew, working all — or most of — the time, and the ease with which he had unravelled the rather complicated mystery of Poisoned Porridge seemed a guarantee that he would be fully equal to checkmating any fresh devilries M’Avelly might attempt.

How it happened I can’t explain — perhaps Prole took a little too much hashish — but M’Avelly contrived to pull off his crime — whatever it was, for I never ascertained its precise character. I gathered, however, from Inspector Chugg (another creation of mine whom, for reasons of my own, I had not thought fit to invest with any excessive brilliancy) that it was something in the nature of Common Barratry — and a hanging matter. With truly diabolical cunning, M’Avelly had contrived to throw suspicion on the innocent and unfortunate Cedric, who, believing, though on insufficient grounds, that Yolande was the culprit, nobly took the blame on himself — which was only what I should have anticipated from him. He had done much the same thing before in the book. Naturally Yolande misunderstood his motive, and, being a thoroughly nice-minded girl, recoiled from a lover who had openly confessed himself a Common Barrator. But I was rather surprised when Inspector Chugg arrested them both, and, after subjecting them to a searching cross-examination, warned them that whatever they had said would be taken down and used in evidence against them at their trial.

In fact, I was about to make an indignant protest, when, to my unfeigned delight, Rumsey Prole, having emptied his box of hashish, finished the first book of Euclid, and charmed the cobra into a state of coma by playing all the tunes he knew on the concertina, came down to the rescue.

This marvellous man, by a series of ingenious deductions from cigarette-ashes, tea-leaves, a disused tramcar ticket, a marked farthing, and samples of fluff, all of which his trained eye had detected on the carpet, demonstrated beyond all possibility of doubt that the actual culprit was no other than myself!

I was positively thunderstruck; for, up to that juncture, I could have sworn that I was innocent, and it was a bitter moment when my own Cedric and Yolande, their faith in one another now completely restored, avowed their conviction of my guilt, adjuring me in moving terms not to suffer this dark stain to blight their young lives, but to confess all, and hope for the mercy of heaven! I adjured them not to be a couple of young idiots. Still, I could not help recognising that, unless the world at large were more amenable to reason, I was in rather a tight place. In fact, I saw the gallows plainly looming before me!

Fortunately, at the eleventh hour, a deliverer came forward in the homely person of good old Martha, who remembered by the merest chance that there were certain documents in a brass-bound desk belonging to her mistress which might possibly throw some light on the subject. These were produced and submitted to Mr. Deedes, the family solicitor, who perused them anxiously, spectacles on nose, during a prolonged and most dramatic silence. At last he wiped his spectacles, blew his nose with more than usual resonance, and, in accents husky with emotion, pronounced that, so far as he had been able to interpret the papers, they not only proved my entire innocence and incriminated M’Avelly (whom I had suspected from the first), but also established Cedric’s claim to a dormant peerage, and identified Yolande as the long-sought heiress of a South African millionaire, who had lately died intestate after bequeathing her ten thousand a year and a palatial mansion in Park Lane!

Altogether dear old Deedes trumpeted to some purpose on that occasion! Even I should never have thought of such a way out of the labyrinth in which we were all so inextricably entangled. But it only shows how marvellously an author’s characters may be capable of developing if they are only started with a strong enough individuality!

There is little more to relate. M’Avelly, humming a careless snatch and muttering horrible imprecations under his breath, had already evaded the strong arm of the law by sauntering out of the house — and out of our lives, for ever! Rumsey Prole wrung my hand warmly, with the remark that the result was in exact accordance with all his calculations — after which he packed up his cobra and concertina, and left to lay in a fresh supply of hashish before proceeding to investigate another case that demanded his assistance.

Cedric and his mother, with Yolande and the faithful Martha, departed to claim the dormant peerage and occupy the palace in Park Lane. I made no attempt to detain them. Only good old Mr. Deedes was left on my hands, and, as I could not stand his practising as a solicitor any longer in my breakfast-room, I took an office for him in Bedford Row, where he can wipe his spectacles and blow his nose unseen and unheard — for I can hardly believe that any sane client will ever consult him professionally. I know I shan’t.

I think I have now said enough to enable the gentle reader to understand how and why it is that, in spite, or perhaps I should say because, of the unprecedented success that has attended my first humble effort in fiction, I am resolved that it must never be repeated.

Indeed, what I have gone through already has upset me so severely that my doctor has ordered me to take a complete rest, and I am just now staying (though only temporarily) at a sanatorium.

The medical superintendent here is inclined — as I can see plainly, however he may endeavour to disguise it — to regard my strange experiences as more or less imaginary.

However, when he sees them in print, I think that even he will be convinced that so plain and unexaggerated a statement could hardly proceed from a disordered fancy. But if he isn’t, it will make no difference to me.

GOING ROUND THE CAVES

(A Sketch from
a well-known Watering-Place)

The party of Sightseers, having paid their respective sixpences and passed the turnstile, find themselves in a penitential chamber, vaulted and furnished with shallow and columned alcoves, in one of which is displayed a placard inscribed “Waltz.” They seat themselves on a row of kitchen chairs and converse in subdued tones as they await the official guide, who presently appears bearing a large flat sconce full of flaring candle-ends.

GUIDE (with the customary contempt for stops, and a more than Early-Victorian prodigality in the matter of aspirates). Ladies and gentlemen the hapartment you are now in it is the ballroom it has not been built up nothing of the kind what you see ’ere bein’ hall ’ollered hout of the solid sandstone by the discoverer of these caves you will now kindly foller me … (he leads the party down a long corridor with recesses on both sides, in which more candle-ends are flickering). This passage forms the new hentrance to the caves the hideer was taken hoff of the Catacombs of Rome as you may heasily perceive from the niches and pillars though not of so hancient a period not ’aving been constructed no longer than sixty-two years. We now henter the first of these ’ighly hinteresting caves that haperture in front of you was the hold entrance has may heasily be seen by the steps cut in the rock which it is supposed that they were done by the horig’nal hoccupants — (here one of the party commits himself to a statement that the interior is “picturesque,” while it reminds another of the “Forty Thieves”). The haperture was haccidently discovered hover sixty years ago by a gardener of the name of Golding while hengaged in digging the soil fell through the ’ole thereby revealing the hexistence of the caves he then hobtained leave to make hexcavations sell the sand for his hown benefit and hexhibit the caves for a term of years — (A ponderous member of the party expresses an opinion that the caves must be a “very valuable asset,” which, remembering the sixpence for admission, nobody seems prepared to dispute). Heleven years he was in hexecuting the work dying six months hafter completion so that he did not live long to henjoy the fruits of his hindustry though his widow and children survived to in’erit them till quite recently. Now some of you on be’olding the haperture may hask (here he fixes upon the most vacuous Sightseer, whose mouth falls open at once), “Why ’ave a second hentrance at all — why not come in by this one?” (the V. S., pulling himself together, is understood to murmur something about an “emergency exit.”) I will tell you the reason for why the howners of the surface refused to allow haccess hover their land thus it consequently became necessary to construct the passage by which hentrance is now hobtained.

[At this a satirical Sightseer whispers to his Young Lady that the Guide seems “crule ’ard on pore ole letter haitch,”to which she signifies assent by a delighted giggle.

The colossal statue above the harch if you will kindly stand a little back where I now am is a correck representation of the Reverend Mr. Blott Mr. Golding’s minister at that period bein’ cut out by his own ’ands from the solid stone without assistance of hany kind except two day labourers to carry away the sand which you will all agree with me that for a gardener Mr. Golding must have been a very clever man. (The party inspect the Rev. Mr. Blott’s legs, which are all of him that is visible by candlelight, with the silent reverence due to High Art, before passing to the next cave.) Some will tell you that these caves they were all done by smugglers now that is not a very probable the’ry it would require consid’rable time and labour to construct caves of this size and they would need all their time for smuggling purposes though hundoubtedly these caves they were used by smugglers halso their hobject bein’ to dispose of their goods as quickly as possible they would not require so much room for storage therefore far the most probable the’ry is that they were due to the Herly Christians who fled ’ere to havoid persecution hunder the hancient Romans and Hanglo-Saxons. Hon the hupper part of this wall you will hobserve a large bust — (here an elderly lady inquires whether it is supposed to be the likeness of one of the Early Christians)from the fact that it is represented with hepaulettes on both shoulders the general opinion is that it’as not come down from hany very remote period and is certainly not hantique it is far more likely to be a portrait of one of the smugglers but ’oo it is we cannot say not possessing no records of hany kind hall we do know is that smugglers were in the ’abit of using these caves though we ’ave no hactual proof that they did so.

Our present King ladies and gentlemen when he visited these caves some years ago made a re-mark bein’ Prince of Wales at the time. The re-mark he made was that they would make a very good wine cellar which I think they would do so myself. Through this ’ole ’ere hunder which I shall presently hask you to follow me the present King and Queen passed on the hoccasion the ’ole bein’ then of far smaller dimensions than it now is their Majesties were compelled to crawl through it on all fours the widenin’ of the ’ole bein’ hintirely caused by friction from boots below and clothes above you will please to lower your ’eds to havoid crushing your ’ats.…

[The party follow him through the hole, with the jokes and exclamations appropriate to the situation.

Hon this wall near which I am now standing you will notice one of our most hinteresting monuments a carving representing the hexact shape of a Roman hurn it has been suggested that it may be the tomb of some Herly Christian but a moment’s reflection will convince you(here he again fixes the vacuous Sightseer, who looks as convinced as possible on such short notice) that this hidea cannot be the correct one and I will tell you for why honly two methods of sepulchre bein’ practised by the Herly Christians one cremation the hother hurn-burial now it is hobvious that this hurn carved as it is on the surface of the solid stone cannot possibly contain yuman hashes but is merely a memorial to ’oom it is not known the hinscriptions on the walls around they are hall modern bein’ done by visitors.…

[They enter the next cave.

’Ere you will hobserve faults (the party assume a critical air) due to volcanic haction these caves ’aving been cast up many thousand years ago from the hocean bed in proof of which I will draw your attention to the roof on which you can plainly perceive ripple-marks hexactly resembling those left on the sand at low tide these ripple-marks bein’ hupside down will give you some hidea of the violence of the heruption it is not my hown opinion I am now giving you but that of leading scientists who have hexamined them. Kindly step carefully into the next cave the slope of the floor bein’ somewhat habrupt.… The ’alf-length figure on the wall ’ere is supposed to be the work of the Herly Christians from the full sleeves bein’ hevidently a bishop.

Hoppersite is a hancient bath when discovered the bottom was coated hover with clay happarently to ’inder the water from hescaping it has been suggested that it was more probably hintended to contain a supply of drinkin’ water now that not a bad suggestion though I think I can show that it is hincorrect for it would soon become stargnant and a hample supply could be carried in in skin and barrels therefore it is far more likely that it was used as a babtisimal fount by the Herly Christians who would merely ’ave to make a ’ole in the clay to let the water run off and be habsorbed by the sand nor would it be necessary to fill it very full heighteen hinches bein’ sufficient for total himmersion … we next henter the largest cave of hall it is hestimated to contain has many as fifteen thousand men standing hupright a pretty big harmy you will agree though howing to the habsence of ventilation their hair would soon become too foul to support life besides which the hexits being well known at present it would be uselsss as a niding place for hany army. We are now one ’undred and forty-five feet below the surface not that the floor has descended but because of the helevation of the ’ill as can be proved by our bein’ hexactly oppersite St. Clement’s Terrace hif the most violent thunderstorm was takin’ place over’ed you would not be aware of it down ’ere which rendered it a safe ’iding place for the Herly Christians who could make what noise they liked with no fear of being hover’eard — (the party seem to appreciate the value of this Christian privilege) — the honly light is hobtained from the haperture in the first cave therefore at sunset this place is in total darkness to give you some ideer what that darkness is I will now remove the light (which he proceeds to do). Hany one left be’ind ’ere for a night would soon go out of his mind though no such event has ’appened since these caves were first hopened bein’ carefully searched hevery night the last thing this passage conducts us back to the ballroom where we started it is ’ighly patronised during the season by parties who are fond of a novelty all who care to dance bein’ free to do so which brings us to the end of our journey ladies and gentlemen are kindly requested not to forget the guide we ’ave no regler salary being hintirely dependent on such gratooities we may receive thank you very much.

[The Party bestow tips as they file out, with a feeling that their minds have been enlarged.

MRS. BRASSINGTON-CLAYPOTT’S
CHILDREN’S PARTY

If I had had my way we should not have had a children’s party at all this year. As I said to Marmaduke, “Modern children, especially in such social circles as we move in, expect more and more nowadays, and I really can’t undertake to do things on the same scale as the Guldenschweins, or the McMammons, or the Sploscheimers. And when you’re always saying things haven’t gone so well in the City lately!”

Marmaduke said he didn’t like the idea of our children accepting their young friends’ hospitalities without making any return, but, as I told him, our Torquil and Ermyngarde are such popular children people are only too delighted to have them.

As for the disappointment to our chicks, they had both expressed their perfect willingness to accept five shillings apiece instead of having a party — which of course would come incalculably cheaper.

But he said things hadn’t come to such a pass that he couldn’t afford to give a children’s party, and do the thing in style, too. He hinted that this was good policy from a business point of view. I represented that it was utterly out of the question for me to do the thing as it should be done on my housekeeping allowance, and he gave me an extra cheque, which he said ought to cover not only a first-class sit-down tea and supper, but a really refined and expensive entertainment from Harrod’s or Whiteley’s into the bargain.

I might have managed to make it do, I dare say, if only I hadn’t had such frightfully bad luck at bridge about that time that I was positively compelled to economise wherever possible.

So, when my maid Melanie happened to mention a young man of her acquaintance who was anxious to obtain engagements at parties as a conjurer, and who (according to her) was quite extraordinarily talented, I told her to see if she could arrange with him to come to me and give an hour and a half’s performance for a guinea, this sum to include his cab-fares. I was careful to add this, because most entertainers make an extra charge for cab-fares, and they all seem to live a long way outside the radius. Melanie was to point out that, as at my house he would have an opportunity of exhibiting before highly influential and wealthy people like the McMammons, the Sploscheimers, the Guldenschweins, and others, he might find it to his advantage to make a considerable reduction in his usual terms.

Later Melanie reported that she had so strongly impressed this upon him that he had declared his willingness to perform for me gratis, just for the sake of the introduction, and Melanie added that he had offered to conclude by distributing a few small gifts, provided I saw no objection. I said if he liked to go to the expense he was of course at perfect liberty to do so, so long as he remembered that such presents should be of a certain value if they were to give pleasure to children in such a set as ours.

Melanie assured me he quite understood, and that it would be all right, so I left it entirely to her — rather against my own instincts, for she was a girl I never could take to, somehow — it was always most unpleasant to meet her eyes in the looking-glass while she was brushing my hair of an evening. Still she was clever and useful in many ways, and I quite thought I could depend on her in a matter of this sort.

We had next to no refusals, and Marmaduke not only came home early from the City himself that evening, but actually persuaded such busy people as Mr. Sploscheimer, Mr. McMammon, and Mr. Guldenschwein to look in while their respected offspring were still seated at the tea-table.

It was a thrilling thought, as one of our grown-up guests remarked to me at the time, that every one of those tiny tots was a potential little fifty-thousand-pounder at the very least, always supposing, of course, that their dear parents met with no serious financial reverses before they reached maturity.

The little Guldenschweins are not what I call prettily-behaved children at table, and I am sure they had enough to eat of one sort and another, even if I did not think fit to provide quite enough hot teacake and crumpets to please them.

The other children made no complaints — except that the young Sploscheimers declared the crackers were swindles and not worth pulling, as they contained no jewellery; but when, on Ermyngarde’s announcing proudly that there was going to be a conjurer upstairs after tea, one of the little McMammons declared he was sick of conjurers, and at their party they were going to have a Magic Kettle and a Ballet from the Empire, I confess I began to have misgivings about the entertainment I had provided.

For I really knew nothing about the man — not even his name. I had only Melanie’s word for his being able to conjure at all, and I shuddered when I reflected that he might actually be capable of coming without a dress suit on.

It is not surprising that when at length every child admitted having reached the stage of repletion, and the butler announced that the conjurer had arrived and was awaiting us in the drawing-room, I led the way upstairs with a sinking heart, and a fervent wish that I had not gone out of my way to do a kindness to this obscure protégé of Melanie’s.

Many a time did I repeat that wish before that awful evening was over!

When we got upstairs, there was the conjurer, waiting for us under the arch between the two drawing-rooms. He had put on a dress suit, and was, for a person in that position, quite gentlemanly-looking, though pale. He commenced his performance with a few simple card-tricks — but either it was too soon after tea, or the children were not impressed by an entertainer who was not in fancy costume and had none of the usual gilded apparatus — for the poor little things made no attempt to conceal their boredom.

And my Ermyngarde, who is rather a proud child, was naturally offended by his taking such a liberty as to extract eggs and billiard-balls from her hair before all her young friends. Though I must say our Torquil, who is his dear father’s own boy for smartness, made the conjurer look supremely ridiculous by not only denying that he was really producing the yards and yards of coloured paper which were apparently being reeled out of his little inside, but by informing everybody (and correctly, too!) how the trick was done.

Altogether the entertainment seemed to be falling so flat that I felt obliged to tell Mrs. Gildingham that I could not understand it, as the man had been very highly recommended to me, and that I hoped he would show us something really clever and amusing by-and-by. He must have overheard (as I certainly intended him to do), and it seemed to put him on his mettle, for he said that for his next experiment he should require the assistance of a grown-up, and singled out Mr. Gildingham, who, with a condescension remarkable indeed in a company promoter of his experience, consented to oblige him.

I could see Mr. G.’s dignity was a little ruffled at the mere suggestion that he might be a confederate, and he was as startled as anybody when something alive and kicking was taken out of his double-breasted waistcoat.

The conjurer called it a rabbit — but it was unlike any breed of rabbits that I am acquainted with, having a much longer tail for one thing, besides being a bright scarlet, and covered all over with little scales. He rubbed the beast into two — a red and a green one — before our eyes, and they shot up the curtains and disappeared behind the gilt cornice.

Nobody made any comment, though I could see several people were considerably impressed. As for Mr. Gildingham, he slipped quietly downstairs, and, so I afterwards heard, asked the butler for a whisky-and-soda before leaving the house. Then the conjurer suddenly called out little Moritz Rosenstern, and asked him if he had a headache, which the child denied. But we could all hear his little head ticking away like a tape machine, and presently we saw a stream of tape actually flowing from his left ear.

His father, from sheer force of habit, I suppose, rushed to read off the message. What it was I cannot say, as we could not find the tape afterwards, but Mr. Rosenstern, with a smothered exclamation, which I only trust the children did not catch, rushed from the room, and presently we heard a hansom clattering off in a frantic hurry. Moritz told Torquil next day that, when he got home that evening, he was severely spanked by his papa, which seems rather unreasonable.

I really forget what trick came next, but I think it was the production of an immense glass bowl of water from Mr. Sploscheimer’s coattail pocket. When this trick is done with goldfish it is quite pretty, but there was hardly time to notice what was in the water in this case, as Mr. Sploscheimer in his nervousness upset the bowl, and the thing inside got away.

Mrs. McMammon declared that it bit her on the ankle, which I do not believe. She was always a fanciful, hysterical woman, and if it was a snake at all I am convinced it was a perfectly harmless one.

Still, though the man was certainly a cleverer conjurer than had at first appeared, and the juveniles began to look with more approval on his efforts to amuse them, none of the older people seemed to be really enjoying themselves. However, we all applauded, to avoid hurting his feelings, and, even when he gave a ventriloquial exhibition with an excessively rude little wooden puppet out of a bag, which made remarks on every grown-up present that were so personal as to be almost libellous, they managed to laugh good-humouredly, though I could see that I and Marmaduke were suspected of having furnished the particulars.

There is no doubt that, in persuading Mr. Guldenschwein, much against his wishes, to be hidden for a second or so under an embroidered piano-cover, and then revealing him as a large and very pink pig, the conjurer went much too far — though I am bound to admit that the children, and especially the little Guldenschweins, were delighted. For myself, I was most distressed that such a thing should have happened in my house, and to Mr. Guldenschwein of all people!

At the same time, I do think he might have shown a little more of what I call bonhomie about it, especially as the effects of the illusion (or transformation, or whatever it was) wore off very soon, and indeed were hardly noticeable by supper-time. But some people are born without the sense of humour!

I should have been thankful myself, as I know a good many people were, when the tiresome man announced the last item on his programme, if only it hadn’t been a Distribution of Gifts to all the children from what he called “the Inexhaustible Electrolier.” For one thing, I was anxious about the chandelier (which is coloured Venetian glass and fragile), and, for another, I had the gravest doubts as to what he might choose to consider suitable presents for those innocent mites.

How he contrived that a series of white-paper parcels neatly tied up in ribbon — blue for boys, and pink for girls — should appear to drop, one by one, into a hat from the centre of the chandelier is more than I can explain — but it was a relief to find that the contents gave satisfaction not only to the children but to their parents also.

At least, it was a relief till I discovered that each of the pink packets contained one of the trinkets which only left my jewel-case on very special occasions, while every boy received an Oriental curio in carved jade or ivory or crystal, from a collection which Marmaduke had picked up privately for a mere trifle and hoped to dispose of at Christie’s some day at an immense profit. And, as the little wretches were quite aware of the value of the objects, it would have been useless to try and reclaim them. Under all the circumstances, the only thing to do was to encourage the parents in their impression that our little surprise had been carefully thought out beforehand. So it really was hard to bear when I found out afterwards, from indirect sources, that it was considered to be a piece of vulgar ostentation on our part!

I managed to persuade Torquil and Ermyngarde to leave their own parcels with me unopened — hoping to get back something at all events — but there was absolutely nothing inside either packet, though I am afraid both the children still suspect their mother of being a storyteller.

If I had had an opportunity I should certainly have told that conjuring person in very plain terms what I thought of his performance, but by the time I was sufficiently composed to do so the man had gone. I sent for Melanie, fully intending to discharge her on the spot, but was informed that she had discharged herself some time previously — which shows that she was every bit as bad as the man.

Who he was, or why he should have chosen to play such pointless and ungentlemanly pranks on us is a perfect mystery to me, but I cannot for a moment admit that there was anything in the least supernatural about the affair. We are hardly, I should hope, the kind of people for a visitation of that description. Whatever we saw, (or rather imagined we saw) that evening, I am positive can be quite satisfactorily put down to hypnotism, or something of that sort.

All the same the consequences have been most unfortunate. Marmaduke is not nearly so intimate with Mr. Guldenschwein, Mr. Sploscheimer, and Mr. McMammon, or indeed any of his rich City friends, as he used to be,-and of course he puts all the blame on me! And for some days after the party there were troubles in the nursery too, owing to nurse’s finding such quantities of ivorine billiard-balls and breakfast eggs in darling Ermyngarde’s hair, while poor little Torquil would spout streams of coloured shavings by the hour together, which was very troublesome for everybody, though I am thankful to say the doctor prescribed some medicine which effectually prevented any return of the symptoms.

I think I am a little run down myself, and I have had to give up my “At Home” day. I should be sorry to miss Mrs. McMammon, Mrs. Sploscheimer, or Mrs. Guldenschwein, and all my other friends, if they should happen to call — but sitting alone in the drawing-room waiting for them was more than I could endure.

It was nothing but nerves, I know — but I simply could not keep my eyes off the cornices.

A BUSINESS MEETING
OF THE SOCIETY
OF PENGUINS

(A Study of Elderly Children)

SCENE — The Garden of a picturesque old Country Inn within easy distance from London. Around the Bowling Green are rustic arbours and sheds. In the largest of these a party of ten or eleven middle-aged gentlemen of intensely serious aspect are seated at a long table, smoking cigars and drinking spirits and water. It is somewhat late in the afternoon. Suddenly the oldest and most solemn of the party rises and raps the table with an air of authority natural to one who occupies the position of a Grand Prime Penguin.

THE GRAND PRIME PENGUIN.  I rise, brother Penguins — order, please. I must ask Penguin Gogarty to reserve the conclusion of the anecdote, or whatever it is he is relating to Penguin Titterton, until the business before us has been disposed of. (Penguins GOGARTYand TITTERTON instantly assume a portentous gravity.) I will first read one or two communications received from brother Penguins who have been unavoidably prevented from being present at our proceedings this afternoon. Penguin Shuffery writes: “My dear Grand Prime, your brother Penguin is awfully sick at being unable to support his Prime on such an occasion — but he knows how it is.” (Here the other Penguins sympathetically murmur, “Squawk, squawk!” which is apparently the prescribed form of approval.) I have also a wire from Penguin Tootell: “Regret impossible attend. Just starting for honeymoon. Needless say am with you in spirit. May Heaven guide your counsels! Yours in links of Penguinship, TOOTELL.” (Renewed squawks.) Other Penguins have been communicated with, but have not written to explain their non-appearance. (Here several Penguins exclaim, “Quonk-quonk-quonk!” — which seems to be Penguinese for “Shame!”) Before, as your retiring Grand Prime, I vacate the rock, I will call on Recorder Penguin Mincoff to read the agenda. (They are read by a nervous Penguin in a straw hat, and appear to consist in electing a new “Grand Prime” and “Vice-Penguin” for the coming year.) Voting-papers will be handed round. There are three candidates for the rock — viz. Penguins Stickney, Ikin, and Cronkeyshaw. I need not remind you of the fact that Penguin Stickney is one of our oldest and most respected Penguins, and has already discharged the duties of Vice-Penguin with singular tact and ability.

PENGUIN CRONKEYSHAW.  I should just like to ask this. If we’re all asked to pledge ourselves beforehand, what becomes of the secrecy of the ballot?

THE GRAND PRIME  (with dignity). I can only answer that if Penguin Cronkeyshaw insists on impugning my conduct on this rock, I shall treat it as a matter of confidence and offer myself for re-election.

PENGUIN CRONKEYSHAW.  In that case, Mr. Grand Prime, I beg to withdraw my question, and merely remark that I shall hold myself personally free to vote for any candidate I please, be he the youngest Penguin on the list!

[The Penguins fill up their papers in solemn silence, fold them, and deposit them in Recorder-Penguin MINCOFF’s straw hat, which is then handed to the Grand Prime.

THE GRAND PRIME  (counting the votes). Penguin Stickney, 4; Penguin Ikin, 4; Penguin Cronkeyshaw, 1. Owing to the chivalry of Penguins Stickney and Ikin in each voting for the other — (commendatory squawks from all but Penguin CRONKEYSHAW) — the election has resulted in a tie. I shall therefore avail myself of the privilege of this rock, and give a casting vote to Penguin Stickney, whom I declare to be duly elected.

[Squawks — and a solitary quonk from Penguin CRONKEYSHAW; Penguin STICKNEY then takes the rock as the new Grand Prime.

GRAND PRIME PENGUIN STICKNEY.  Brother Penguins, my heart is too full adequately to thank you for the very great honour you have just conferred upon me by electing me as your Grand Prime. I can only say that I will do my best to prove myself worthy of your confidence during my occupation of this rock, though I fear I can never hope to fill it as ably and — er — energetically as the distinguished and highly popular Penguin who has preceded me. (Squawks; a new VicePenguin is next elected with similar formalities.) I will now call upon any Penguin who has a motion to bring forward to do so as briefly as possible, since our time is getting short.

A PENGUIN IN A HOMBURG HAT.  I — ah — beg to propose that, for all future meetings, every Penguin should adopt a uniform head-covering. I would suggest a straw, with a distinctive ribbon of salmon, purple, and green, in alternate layers. By this means, Penguins would be more easily enabled to recognise one another on a railway platform than is the case under present conditions. (Squawks.)

PENGUIN CRONKEYSHAW  (whose temper has distinctly not improved during the proceedings). I object to Penguin Jeffcock’s proposal in toto. Are Penguins in a free country like England to submit to be curtailed and hampered in their choice of hats? Why, I ask, why should I be compelled to wear a hat that I consider eminently unsuitable to myself personally? I no longer — as some here today have considered it humorous to remind me more than once — possess a head of hair like some Penguins. If Penguin Jeffcock is determined to force a form of headgear upon me which, viewed from behind, would infallibly render my appearance more or less ridiculous, I shall have no alternative but to send in my resignation and cease henceforth to be a Penguin. I will not make a public exhibition of myself in an infernal straw hat with a tomfool ribbon to please any Penguin alive!

PENGUIN JEFFCOCK  (diplomatically). I am sure that I voice the general sentiment when I say that I should be sorry indeed to press any motion which would tend to deprive us of Penguin Cronkeyshaw’s genial presence. For the moment I had forgotten the — ah — peculiarity to which he has so feelingly referred. I now beg to amend my original proposal by substituting for the straw hat and ribbon a distinctive badge which each Penguin will wear in his buttonhole on occasions like the present. It might be in enamel, and represent a Penguin rampant, which could be executed in artistic colours for a comparative trifle. (Squawks.)

PENGUIN CRONKEYSHAW.  I object to the badge as, if possible, even more preposterous than the straw! It may be all very well for Penguin Jeffcock to talk of the expense as a trifle. Some Penguins may not have managed to feather their nest as he has. I know I haven’t. And speaking as a Penguin, I do not see why I should be called on to put my hand in my pocket for a mere superfluity. I maintain that paying my railway fare and my share of the bill — which, considering it was a cold lunch, I must say was nothing less than downright extortion — is as much as can reasonably be expected from a Penguin in my position.

GRAND PRIME PENGUIN STICKNEY.  I will now put Penguin Jeffcock’s amended motion to a show of pinions. (Every Penguin raises his right hand, except Penguin CRONKEYSHAW, who strenuously uplifts his left.) The proposal is carried by eight pinions to one. (Loud squawks.) I therefore authorise Penguin Jeffcock to obtain estimates for executing the badges and to report accordingly. Has any other Penguin a motion to bring?

PENGUIN CRONKEYSHAW  (quivering with wrath). I have, Mr. Grand Prime! I beg to move that this Honourable Society of Penguins be immediately dissolved and re-constituted without any titles of office, rules, regulations, or formalities whatsoever!

[Sensation, and loud cries of “Quonk-quonk — quonk!”

THE GRAND PRIME PENGUIN.  I consider that I should be untrue to the traditions of this rock if I were to put such a revolutionary proposal as that before an assembly of Penguins — and I therefore decline to do so. (Squawks from all, except Penguin CRONKEYSHAW, who rises and retires into an adjoining arbour, where he sits glowering and blaspheming furiously under his breath.) Brother Penguins, we must all regret that the harmony of our meeting should have been marred by this little contretemps — however, we all know Penguin Cronkeyshaw — he has threatened to resign on many previous occasions, but has always come round during the return journey. In conclusion, I will call upon you to drink the usual toast. “The Penguins — and may they long flap together!” (The toast is drunk with enthusiastic squawks.) And now I think we had better be making a move for the station.

[The company break up and stroll off together in twos and threes; Penguin CRONKEYSHAW sulks in his arbour until the last member of the Society has left the garden, when he hurries after them to convey, we are permitted to hope, the comforting intelligence that, in spite of all that has occurred, he has decided to remain a Penguin till further notice.

THE GULL

(A Story of the Super-normal)

Parmenas Filmer awoke in the bedroom of his seaside lodgings at Weymouth.

From the bed in which he lay the sea was usually visible, but on this particular August morning it was shrouded by a dense white veil.

All through the night his sleep had been disturbed by the prolonged wail of distant sirens; there must have been a heavy fog out at sea, and instinctively his thoughts flew to Isolde Le Vazon, who was probably at that very moment preparing to land on her native Guernsey, where — unless the unexpected happened — she would be henceforth as far removed from him as if she were on some Pacific isle.

How fascinating she had been, with her strange spiritual loveliness, her air of dreamy melancholy! He recalled their first meeting only a brief fortnight ago_in a glazed shelter on the Esplanade; he traced back each stage of their progress towards the sweetest intimacy.

Never till then, although he was in his twenty-sixth year, had he met the woman who answered to his ideal, but in Isolde Le Vazon he had found her once for all. Her beauty was of the mystic and morbidezza type that had always most appealed to him; she was high-strung, romantic, her literary taste was exquisite. No one before had ever shown such perfect appreciation of his poetry — for he wrote verses when he was not engaged in the uncongenial duties of the Inland Revenue Department, in which, on leaving Oxford, he had obtained a superior clerkship.

Short as their acquaintance had been, and limited as were their opportunities of meeting for she had come to Weymouth to attend an invalid aunt by whose sickbed most of her day was necessarily passed — he had allowed himself to declare his passion, and Isolde had confessed that in happier circumstances she might have returned it.

Unhappily she was already engaged to certain Mr. Taudevin whom, if she could not love, she respected as one of the largest tomato growers in all Guernsey.

Isolde had more rigid views than many of her sex upon the binding nature of an engagement, holding that to withdraw from it, unless expressly released by the other party to the contract, was as culpable for a girl as for a man,

But she had promised to lay the case before Mr. Taudevin as soon after her return to Guernsey as possible, and should he consent to set her free, which she warned Parmenas was in the highest degree improbable, all obstacles between them would be removed. On the other hand, should her fiancé insist on holding her to her word, she was resolved to sacrifice herself at the call of duty.

All she asked in that event was that she might have the consolation of feeling that Parmenas would be ever constant to her memory, and that no other would ever replace her in his heart, which he found it easy to promise, feeling that she was and would always be the one love of his life.

He was by nature rather a dreamer than a man of action, and the idea of a lifelong and hopeless passion was not without a certain attraction for his peculiar temperament.

Then the end had come. Isolde had been suddenly summoned back to Guernsey, and he had seen her off the night before. Never could he forget that last parting on the deck of the Chamois. She had been more sadly, sweetly emotional than ever — oppressed by a presentiment she could not shake off that they were destined never to meet again on earth, pitying him for the loneliness he would have to endure when she was taken from him.

“But I will come back to you, Parmenas if I am permitted,” she had said, with an inspired look in her uplifted eyes. “You shall not be quite desolate. Some day, perhaps, you will find a little white dove tapping ever so gently at your window. Don’t drive it away, for it will be your poor Isolde, trying to tell you that she is dead, and that her last thought was of you!”

She had been almost overcome by her own pathos, and he himself had been deeply affected. “But the dove will fly away again,” he had said, “and I shall be lonelier than ever!”

“Who knows? Perhaps I shall be allowed to stay and comfort you,” she had whispered: “at least, till the time comes when you learn to care for — for somebody else, Parmenas, and then-then you will see a poor little white bird lying in a corner, quite, quite dead. You might write one of your little poems on that, mightn’t you? But I mustn’t be sentimental. After all, I mayn’t die first; Mr. Taudevin may release me, and we may be happy together all our lives. Only somehow, tonight, I can’t help feeling as if something were going to happen. Promise that, whatever happens, you will be constant, Parmenas!”

If he thought her fears fantastic, her project of returning to him in the form of a bird slightly unpractical, he merely loved her the better for them; so he had sworn undying fidelity, and, as she declined to go below, he had wrapped her up in rugs and shawls in a covered bench on deck and returned sadly to his lodgings. He lay still, thinking of all this, trying to summon up her looks and the least things she had said and done, until his eyes closed and he fell asleep once more.

When he awoke again he became aware that something was in his room. He could not see it, but he heard a curious fluttering noise which seemed to proceed from the floor. Raising himself on his elbow, he looked, and was startled for the moment to see a large greyish bird perched on the edge of his bath, and gazing at him with fearless brown eyes.

It was a remarkably fine specimen of the common gull (Larus canus).

He had slept, according to his custom, with the window open, and the bird had evidently lost its bearings in the fog and flown in. He went towards it, but it did not budge; it allowed him to take it up and put it on the windowsill, without attempting to fly away.

One of its wings drooped slightly, as if it had struck against something in the darkness and bruised itself.

It was still there when he had finished dressing, and humanity forbade him to drive it away in its crippled condition, so he consulted his landlady, who undertook to borrow a wicker cage from a neighbour who had recently lost a pet jackdaw.

The cage was brought, and the gull was easily persuaded to enter it, upon which Filmer sat down to breakfast and soon forgot the incident. After a merely perfunctory meal he wandered along the Esplanade, feeding his melancholy by the sight of the shelter in which he had so often sat with Isolde. She had been reading a library novel that first morning, he remembered: it was “Ardath,” by Miss Marie Corelli, of whose genius she was an ardent admirer. Now a fat woman sat there, knitting a woollen stocking.

But as the morning passed, Filmer, even in his abstracted state, was conscious of an unusual stir and excitement in the passing crowd; presently he caught scraps of talk that filled him with vague uneasiness, until he could not refrain from asking if anything had happened.

Something had indeed happened. News had just come that the Chamois had run upon the Casket rocks in the fog, and gone to the bottom — it was rumoured, with all on board.

What Filmer felt at this crushing blow need not be set down here; his reason tottered under it, and might have left him altogether, had not more reassuring tidings arrived later in the day. The passengers were safe after all — at least, all the ship’s boats but one had reached land, and, as the sea was perfectly calm, no fears were entertained for the remaining boat, which was known to have been successfully launched, and had probably steered for the French coast.

To Filmer the relief was considerable, even though he could not help remembering Isolde’s presentiment the night before. But presentiments are not infallible, and the chances were immensely in favour of her having been in one of the boats that had turned up.

However, the list of names was published, and Isolde Le Vazon’s was not among them, and nothing more had been heard of the missing boat.

Even then he clung to hope, for the general opinion was that it had been picked up by some outward-bound vessel. And yet there was one thing which, whenever his eye fell upon it, struck a chill of superstitious dread into his inmost soul — it was the gull in its wicker cage.

Try as he might, he could not conquer a suspicion that it might be connected in a manner that he had little imagined at first with the fate of his beloved Isolde. Had she not promised to return to him if permitted, in the shape of a bird? Had not this creature flown into his window at the very hour the disaster must have happened?

But Isolde had mentioned a white dove and this was a grey gull: he would not despair yet, especially as the lost boat might still prove to have been rescued.

And soon this hope was justified by news of it from Malta. A liner had arrived there with some sailors and a lady and a gentleman passenger belonging to the ill-fated Chamois; and Filmer breathed more freely, for he never doubted, though the names were not given, that the lady was Isolde.

Alas! this certainty of his was only too speedily shattered. The two passengers were a newly wedded couple of the name of Goldingham, who had been intending to make a short tour in the Channel Islands before returning to their home in South Africa.

Doubt was no longer possible. Isolde’s prediction had been tragically fulfilled; she had perished in the confusion, probably whilst sleeping soundly in the covered seat which she had insisted on occupying.

And the gull? … He reproached himself now for his blindness and want of faith. What though it were not precisely the bird she would have chosen as the tenement of her spirit?

Gulls are more frequent at sea than white doves, and in her urgent desire to come to him she would naturally avail herself of the first means that offered themselves.

“Isolde!” he cried, as he knelt by the wicker cage, “is it indeed you? Have you come back to me as you promised? Tell me it is true!”

A sort of ripple passed through the gull’s plumage, but she made no other answer.

“You are mine now!” he said with exultation, “mine forever! So long as you are with me, I need no other companion. None shall come between you and me. Only give me some sign, to tell me you understand.”

The gull gave a little shrug, so startlingly like a gesture of Isolde’s when she had affected to doubt his protestations, that even a sceptic must have been convinced.

Henceforth he resolved to cherish this bird for the sake of the spirit that informed it just as the Duchess of Kendal, we are told, cherished the great raven that flew into her window at Twickenham after the demise of King George I. He did not conceal from himself that the situation had its difficulties: the most ordinary prudence required that his strange secret should be concealed from all the world; and yet, even in public, he could not bring himself to treat his transformed divinity as the mere sea-fowl whose semblance she had adopted.

It was impossible, for instance, when he took her up to town, to allow her to be put in the luggage-van; and, as it is not every first-class passenger who appreciates a seagull as a fellow-traveller, the journey was scarcely an agreeable experience. He felt some natural embarrassment, too, on presenting himself to the astonished housekeeper in his rooms at Spring Gardens carrying his adored Isolde in a large wicker cage; and he shuddered when the good woman protested against being expected to undertake the care of what she was pleased to describe as “poultry.”

However, as soon as Isolde was safely established in his rooms, he set himself to render her new existence as tolerable as possible. He procured for her a spacious and handsome cage, a portion of which he curtained off, so as to ensure the privacy essential to a delicate minded female; and from the satisfied air with which she pecked the hangings he could see that she was grateful for his forethought.

He also altered the furniture and decoration of his bachelor’s den, until it was more in harmony with what he conceived to be her taste, though he failed to detect any indication in her manner that she was gratified by, or even observed, his efforts to please her. But she appeared to appreciate her food-dish, a tray of genuine old Canton enamel, and her antique Venice drinking-glass, which, remembering that at Weymouth she had once expressed a passion for bric-à-brac, he had picked up at a curiosity dealer’s in Wardour Street.

With such a new and absorbing interest in his life, Filmer could not fairly be called unhappy; he did his work at the office with his customary intelligence, even though longing inwardly for the hour to strike which set him free to return to the cage which contained his Isolde.

He had never been fond of society; now he went nowhere; he was quite content to pass all his evenings at home, reading Shelley aloud to her, for her fine sensitiveness to what was best and highest in literature had not deserted her, and she seldom failed to greet the most inspired passages with a low croak of rapturous approval. When, on the other hand, he ventured to read her some little composition of his own she was more critical, and it was a proud moment for him when she was so carried away by a stanza of his as to spread her wings and utter a squawk of unmistakable enthusiasm.

Yes, on the whole these evenings were characterised by tranquil yet real happiness.

•   •   •   •   •

He had come home early from the office one Saturday afternoon, and was reading “Epipsychidion” to the gull, which was listening voluptuously with closed eyes, when he was unceremoniously interrupted by a visitor. The intruder was a fellow-clerk of his — a certain Frank Challis, who had been up at Oxford with him, and with whom, before his eventful holiday at Weymouth, he had been on terms of some intimacy. Filmer had frequently dined with Challis’s family at their house in Craven Hill Gardens, and had always been glad when Frank looked him up for a smoke and a confidential chat of an evening.

But of late he had rather avoided him, from a feeling that his boisterous high spirits and reckless talk would grate upon Isolde’s refined ear.

“What-ho! old chap,” began Challis. “So you’re all alone, eh? Thought I heard you jawing to somebody.”

“I was reading aloud — to myself,” explained Filmer, a little awkwardly, for he could not very well admit that he had been reading poetry to a gull.

“What the deuce have you done to your digs’?-they look more like a woman’s boudoir than a fellow’s rooms. I say — I don’t want to be inquisitive — but you aren’t married, by any chance?”

“No,” said Filmer with a sad smile, “I shall never be that — now.” And he glanced at the gull.

“Oh, it’s too soon to chuck up yet!” said Frank. “So you’ve started an aviary. Going in for keeping canaries? … Why, you’ve got a gull in it — a common gull, by gad!”

“Excuse me,” said Filmer stiffly; “it is by no means a common gull.”

“Well, it’s evident you think so, or you wouldn’t give it enamel and coloured glass to eat and drink out of — and a Japanese bronze to tub in — and frilled curtains to go to bed behind. Great Scot! you’ll provide it with a toilet-table next!”

“I fail to see what business it would be of yours if I did,” said Filmer irritably.

“My dear old chap, you needn’t get shirty about it. Can you give me a cigar? I’ve come out without mine.”

“I’m sorry,” said Filmer, “but I’ve quite given up smoking.” Which was true, for Isolde had once told him that she could not endure the smell of tobacco.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter — I’ve got a pipe.” And Challis was proceeding to light up, when Filmer felt obliged, in Isolde’s interests, to beg him to forbear. Then, to his horror, Frank began to tell him a good story he had just heard which had originated on the Stock Exchange, and which Filmer instinctively felt would prove unsuited to Isolde’s delicate sense of propriety, so he hastened to say that anecdotes of that kind did not appeal to his sense of humour.

“I never knew you had one,” said Frank. “And you might tell this story to a maiden aunt — a frisky maiden aunt. However, it’s too good to be wasted on you!”

The gull had cocked her head on one side with an air of expectation, and, if Filmer had not known Isolde so well, he would almost have imagined she was disappointed. But then, of course, she could not know what she had been spared!

“Do you know, old man,” said Frank presently, with concern in his honest face, “it strikes me you want rousing. Can’t be healthy for you, shutting yourself up like this. Why not come and dine quietly with us? Doriel’s back from Dresden now — you remember Doriel?”

Filmer did remember Doriel as a rather engaging tomboy with a cloud of tawny hair, who had made him play tennis and cycle and skate with her, and had chaffed him unmercifully for his want of proficiency in all these exercises. He did not feel inclined to meet her just then.

“She’s grown up now,” Frank went on, “come out, and all that. And though I am her brother, I will say she’s turned out a ‘ripper.’ She’s simply A1 at hockey!”

But Filmer pleaded an engagement for that evening, and just then the servant entered with a tray on which were some scalloped oysters daintily served in a silver shell. “Mrs. Trotman is very sorry, sir,” said the girl, “but she couldn’t send up the gull’s lunch any earlier.”

“The gull’s lunch!” exclaimed Challis, after the servant had departed. “You do that bird devilish well! Never heard of giving a gull scalloped oysters before. It don’t seem to take very kindly to ’em, though.”

The bird was, indeed, merely toying with the bread-crumbed morsels — for, as Isolde had frequently informed Filmer, she regarded all food with indifference and even repugnance.

“They have kept her waiting for her lunch till nearly tea-time,” he said: “no wonder she has no appetite. And she is a delicate feeder at the best of times.”

“Rats!” said Frank, with distressing coarseness. “You try her with a fat slug or two!”

It need hardly be said that Filmer repudiated this profane suggestion with indignant horror.

“I tell you I know,” persisted Frank; “I kept a tame gull myself when I was a kid. It’s no use giving ’em kickshaws. Slugs — Slugs and snails and worms are the grub they like!”

“I suppose,” said Filmer with dignity, “you’ll allow me to be the best judge of what food my gull prefers.”

“Oh, you can take her to dine at Prince’s or the Carlton, for all I care!” retorted Challis, as he rose to go. “But I bet you anything I’m right.”

As soon as he had gone Filmer hastened to apologise to Isolde for the outrageous insults which she had been forced to endure, and he resumed his reading of “Epipsychidion”-only to be a second time interrupted by the irrepressible Frank, who was so bent on proving to him that his views upon what constituted a gull’s favourite diet were mistaken that he had actually taken the trouble to go all the way to a naturalist’s shop in Drury Lane and procure an assortment of slugs and worms in a tin box for experimental purposes.

Worse still, he insisted, despite Filmer’s protests, on emptying the box into Isolde’s cage.

Instead of going into violent hysterics, as Filmer had fully expected, she sidled delicately up to a worm of particularly unprepossessing exterior, and absorbed it with unaffected gusto.

“Bravo, old girl!” cried Frank. “Now let’s see if you can put away a slug!”

And, after a little coquettish hesitation, Isolde did put away a slug — several slugs, in fact.

“Didn’t I tell you!” said Challis triumphantly. “Perhaps you’ll believe me now?”

“I do,” said Filmer heavily, as he saw him to the door, “I do. And,” he added awkwardly in a lower tone, “if you’ll let me change my mind, I will come and dine with you this evening. It may cheer me up.”

“Right-oh!” said Frank heartily. “We shall all be delighted to see you — especially Doriel. I won’t tell her about the gull, old chap, or she might rot you.” And Filmer felt grateful to him for this forbearance.

Calmer reflection convinced him of the injustice of blaming his Isolde for tastes which were probably inseparable from the nature of the bird she had chosen to inhabit, and he took care that in future she should be provided with the kind of sustenance she evidently preferred.

But he read her no more Shelley.

•   •   •   •   •

He spent a pleasanter evening at Craven Hill Gardens than he had anticipated. Doriel was no longer the pretty romp he remembered. She had become an extremely charming young woman, and the frank friendliness with which she received him was soothing to his overstrung nerves.

It was late when he returned to his rooms. Isolde was sleeping peacefully on her perch, her beak pointing towards her tail, and the sight of her filled him with compunction. Would she slumber so serenely if she knew where he had been and how completely he had forgotten her?

He resolved to see more of Doriel in future — and, for a time, he kept his resolution.

Unfortunately, Isolde either could not or would not make any effort to be an intellectual companion to him. She seemed fond of him, in her way, but gradually all her former sprightliness deserted her, and there were times when he feared that she had found him a bore.

Nothing, it is well known, is so calculated to estrange affection as the mere suspicion that we bore our beloved, and Filmer was not long in realising that the boredom was, to say the least, reciprocal.

What wonder, then, that he should sometimes seek solace and recreation in the sight of Doriel’s winsome face, in the sound of her gay chatter? He did not mention this to the gull, because she would not have understood it; but when with Doriel he endeavoured to convey that some hidden sorrow had set him apart from all other men, and that his heart was dead to all earthly love.

He honestly believed this himself, and hoped that she realised it also, until an evening came which revealed to him the peril to which they were both unconsciously drifting. He was dining at Craven Hill Gardens, and, as usual, his place was next to Doriel. On her other side sat a young man of the name of Mowbray, a good-looking, athletic, if somewhat unintellectual youth, who was obviously attracted by Miss Doriel, and in whom she might have been expected to take at least a passing interest.

Filmer had honestly sought to efface himself by directing his conversation to his other neighbour, and replying to Doriel’s overtures with a brevity that only just escaped brusqueness; but she declined to be repulsed, and exerted all her very considerable powers of witchery to subdue him, entirely neglecting the unfortunate Mowbray.

To his consternation, Filmer found that his heart was very much alive after all; and for the remainder of the dinner, and even upstairs in the drawing-room afterwards, he surrendered himself entirely to Doriel’s charm, and was rather stimulated than otherwise by observing the increasing gloom on young Mowbray’s ingenuous countenance.

But on his way home the inevitable reaction followed.

He saw, in a flash, that he was fast falling in love with Doriel; that, should she continue this encouragement, nothing would save him from proposing to her — and he was pledged, solemnly pledged, to lifelong constancy to Isolde!

Isolde was awake that evening; she had evidently been sitting up for him, and he could scarcely bring himself to meet her bright, reproachful eye. “I know what you would say if you could,” he faltered apologetically; “and I deserve it. I have neglected you shamefully of late. I will do so no more. In future, Isolde, all my evenings shall be passed with you!”

Isolde explored the region under her wing with her beak — it was a mannerism of hers which had often distressed him before she raised her head and gazed intently at him for an instant. Then her glittering eye slowly disappeared in the soft down that surrounded it — and he felt that she was appeased, and that he was forgiven.

•   •   •   •   •

Doubtless a more prosaic and practical mind than Filmer’s would have rebelled against the fate which required him to abandon all hope of married felicity, and be content to remain platonically bound for life to a mere bird. But to his exalted and mystical nature such abnegation seemed an obvious duty. After all, Isolde had made the greater sacrifice in voluntarily projecting herself into the body of a bird so grossly unromantic in its captive state as a seagull. She must be suffering at least as much as himself for her generous impetuosity, and he was determined never again to vex her gentle spirit by ingratitude or unfaithfulness.

Accordingly — much as it cost him — he kept away from the Challises, hoping that in time they would understand that he preferred to be left in solitude.

And his renunciation did not go altogether unrewarded, for it really seemed as if the gull were trying to do her best to fill the blank in his life. She grew gentler, more subdued, every day; the brisk perkiness that had once repelled him disappeared; she even overcame her voracious appetite, as though in deference to his prejudices — he was touched to observe that she could scarcely be prevailed upon now to dally with the most tempting slug.

The year drew to its close, and he had almost succeeded in putting Doriel out of his thoughts, when one Sunday afternoon the maidservant suddenly opened the door and announced: “Mr. and Miss Challis”-and Filmer sprang to his feet with a wild joy, which he could only hope escaped the gull’s observant eye.

“We’ve just been to service at the Abbey,” explained Doriel, looking more bewitching than ever in a highly becoming black hat and sables, “and I insisted on Frank bringing me on here to ask you what you mean by neglecting us for weeks and weeks.”

“I told her you had one of your unsociable fits on, and didn’t want to be bothered,” said Frank, “but she would come. She will have it that you’re offended with us.”

Filmer stammered something incoherent as he offered them tea. He did not think the gull could object to his doing that.

“You know you’re glad to see us!” said Doriel: “confess you were feeling horribly lonely up here!”

“Not he!” laughed Frank. “He’s got his beloved gull to keep him company.”

“A gull?” cried Doriel. “So that’s what you keep in that cage there. sort of pet! Is it amusing?

Can it do any tricks?”

Her light tone jarred on Filmer just then. He replied, somewhat shortly, that a gull was hardly on the same footing as a performing canary.

“How dull!” said Doriel, going up to the cage. “I should have thought a cockatoo would be more cheerful for you than a mopy creature like this. I’d no idea gulls were such ugly things. What makes it flap its wings at me like that?”

“She is not accustomed to hearing such extremely personal remarks,” said Filmer coldly.

“You say that as if you thought she understood what I said!” exclaimed Doriel, raising her pretty eyebrows.

“And if I do, Miss Challis,” he replied, “perhaps I have my reasons.”

“I’m sorry,” said Doriel with provoking good humour. “I apologise. Do you hear, gull?I apologise. And just to show there’s no illfeeling, you may come and perch on my finger.”

She had already stripped off her glove, and, before Filmer could interfere, she had thrust her slim white hand into the gull’s cage… The temptation was too much for Isolde: she struck viciously at her rival’s forefinger with her sharp yellow beak, and Doriel drew back her hand with a little cry of pain. “See what your horrid bird has done to me!” she said, exhibiting the wound to him with a childishly pathetic moue; and he longed to seize the injured hand and cover it with kisses, but loyalty to Isolde forbade. It was not Doriel, standing there in her fresh young beauty, that most deserved his pity, but rather the homely grey bird Auttering in a paroxysm of impotent jealousy.

“Any bird would be frightened,” he said, clumsily enough, “when you put your hand in like that.”

“I suppose I ought to have known,” said Doriel, with a distinct change of manner; “but you see I’d no idea my poor hand was quite such a hideous object. Frank, will you lend me your handkerchief and bind it up — as Mr. Filmer doesn’t seem to think it worth troubling himself about?”

“I say! it’s bleeding like blazes!” cried her brother, binding up the finger, as the unhappy Filmer stood there, too paralysed to offer his services. “You poor little girl! Upon my soul, Filmer,” he added indignantly, “it would serve that brute right if you were to wring its beastly neck for it. I’d do it myself for two pence!”

“Touch her if you dare!” cried Filmer, exasperated beyond all self-control.

“It was not her fault; she was provoked — deliberately, wantonly provoked! You — you don’t know what she is to me!”

“Apparently not,” said Doriel. “I think we won’t wait for tea, Frank. Mr. Filmer doesn’t seem to be quite himself this afternoon.”

Filmer made no attempt to detain them — he felt it would be useless. As soon as they were gone he turned to Isolde, who had quieted down again.

“Are you satisfied now?” he cried fiercely. “I loved that girl — do you hear? I own it; and I have let her go,-for your sake. You need not fear that she will ever come between us in future; that accursed beak of yours has alienated her for ever.

But oh, Isolde, think-is it fair to demand this from me? Must you always remain a bird? Can you not comfort me in some less incongruous shape? I implore you at least to make an effort!”

As he said this he heard a sound behind him, and turned, to see Doriel Challis standing in the doorway.

“I — I fancy I must have dropped my glove here,” she said, and he noticed that she was deadly pale.

“Did you hear,” — he asked her, — “did you hear anything?”

“Everything,” she admitted. “I — I came back, really, to tell you — but that doesn’t matter now. Parmenas, you mustn’t give way to these morbid ideas — I can’t bear it! Get rid of that wretched bird — to please me!”

She was tempting him — Doriel was tempting him — to some unspeakable infamy; but he felt just then that he was proof against all her wiles. “I will not!” he cried. “I have sworn to be constant, and I will be! Nothing on earth shall make me part from my Isolde, so long as she chooses to remain with me.”

“You will never be happy till you do,” entreated Doriel. “Dear, dear Parmenas, don’t make me miserable! Come to me tomorrow and tell me that it is over — that you are your own self again. Then I shall have something to tell you.”

And so she left him; but her spell over him was broken by the callous selfishness of her request. She knew all now, and yet she could urge him to destroy (for what else could her words mean?) this bird which stood in her way.

“No, Isolde,” he murmured, “I may be weak — but I am not so weak as that. She has made me yours once more. I love her no longer. This time my heart will never waver from you again!”

But the gull made no response; she was strangely still, he thought. It was growing dark, and he lit a candle and peered into the cage… There she lay at the bottom, her wings spread, her eyes dull and filmy, her yellow beak partly open, her crumpled feet already stiffening.

She was quite dead. Isolde’s spirit had, as she had once predicted, been unable to bear the revelation of his inconstancy.

•   •   •   •   •

In the first ecstasy of his remorse, Filmer had no sense of recovered freedom.

On the contrary, he felt more irrevocably bound than ever. Wherever Isolde’s spirit had betaken itself, he vowed that it should never again be grieved by the least inconstancy on his part. Perhaps, he thought, when she realised the sincerity of his repentance, she would return to him in some form more worthy of her.

And, that he might always have a safeguard at hand against further backsliding, he took the gull himself to be prepared and set up by one of the leading naturalists in London,

But the naturalist kept it a long time — and insensibly Filmer’s thoughts began to recur to Doriel Challis. Had she really been so heartless as she seemed? She had only begged him to “get rid of” the gull: might she not merely have meant that he should part with it? If so, how unjust he had been to her! And what if Isolde had vacated the bird in pity for them both? In that case he was simply frustrating her generous intention.

His relations with Frank had, ever since that memorable Sunday afternoon, been of the most distant character; they never spoke to one another, except when the work of their department brought them in contact; but he saw no reason why he should not write to Doriel, and one evening in February, on his way home from the office, he made up his mind to do so.

But no sooner had he carried his reading lamp to his bureau and sat down to write, than he fell back in his chair in stupefied dismay.

On the blank surface of his blotting-pad a sentence was traced in large irregular letters which turned his heart sick and cold as he read. “Could stay no longer. Will come back if possible. — ISOLDE,” ran the message.

She was coming back! In what form? Hardly the gull’s since that was in the hands of the stuffer. One thing only was clear — she had not intended to release him after all, and with that spirit-message staring him in the face it was impossible to write that letter to Doriel.

As he sat there trying to collect his scattered senses, there came three low raps at his door, which he knew were given by no maidservant; he tried to say “Come in,” but his dry tongue refused to obey him. And the door opened slowly, and on the threshold stood a figure which, even in the comparative darkness, he knew could only be that of Isolde.

At least, he thought, she had come in human shape this time.

“Have you no welcome for me, Parmenas?” she said, in the voice he so well remembered. “Or are you too utterly disgusted by the way I behaved?”

“If you refer to — to the slugs, Isolde,” he replied, “forget them — as I do. I could not hold you responsible for the appetites of the form you assumed!”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she said; and he perceived that she either did not remember, or did not choose to be reminded of, this incident in her recent avatar.

“You are thinking of how you pecked Doriel’s — Miss Challis’s hand?” he said. “It was a not unnatural outburst of jealousy — you had much provocation.”

“I’ve no recollection of pecking any person’s hand,” she said. “And who is Miss Challis?”

“You cannot really have forgotten the girl who made uncomplimentary remarks on you when you were in that cage?” he replied. “That was Miss Challis.”

“When I was in that cage!” she repeated slowly. “Parmenas! what are you talking about?”

“It will all come back to you,” he said. “Think, Isolde! That last day, at Weymouth, when you solemnly promised that, if you should die before me, you would come to me in the form of a white dove — now don’t you remember?”

“Did I ever really say anything so ridiculously sentimental?” she asked.

“Ah, don’t scoff, Isolde! Because you kept your word. Yes, on that fatal night when the Chamois went down, a bird — not a white dove precisely, but a grey gull — flew in at my open window. I knew you at once — at least, almost at once. And I brought you here, and kept you in that very cage till — till you could remain in the gull no longer.… So you have forgotten? No matter, since you have come back to me once more.”

She threw herself rather suddenly in the nearest armchair (he would have offered it to her before but for an impression that spirits never sat down), and then — to his utter astonishment, for in life she had seldom relaxed even into a smile — she went into peal after peal of half-hysterical laughter.

At first he imagined that she was sobbing convulsively, but he soon recognised that he was mistaken.

“How could you have been so absurd?” she gasped, as soon as she could speak. “It’s horrid of me to laugh — for it’s really rather touching of you — but a gull!… Me!… Oh, it’s quite too killing!”

“But it’s true!” he assured her: “I could show you the gull, only it’s being stuffed!”

This only set her off again. “But I wasn’t in the thing!” she cried. “How could I be? Why, I do believe you’ve been taking me for a ghost all this time!”

“My poor Isolde,” he said, endeavouring to break the truth to her as gently and considerately as he could, “can you really be unaware of — of your present state?”

“Don’t be so silly!” she replied petulantly. “How can I be a ghost when I’m not dead? There, take that green shade off the lamp, and look at me well.… Now do you see anything spectral about me?”

As she sat there in the white glare of the unshaded lamp, Filmer had to admit that she was indeed a creature of solid flesh and blood — almost too solid, in fact — for in her robust physique there were few traces of the fragile and almost diaphanous form of the Isolde of the previous August — there were even indications of an approaching double chin!

“Yes,” he said slowly, “I see now. You are no ghost, Isolde!”

“Perhaps you would have preferred that I had been?” she said.

He could not help feeling that he was pledged to her, and that she was here to claim him; but all he said was: “Isolde! When I have been faithful to your memory all these weary months!”

“Are you quite sure that you have been faithful?” she asked. “Honestly now, Parmenas?”

“There may have been moments,” he confessed, “when the gull failed to fill the aching void in my life.”

“And then you fitted that Miss — what is her name? Challis, isn’t it?-into the vacancy? I’m rather glad she got her hand pecked!”

“I am still yours,” he said, “if you care to claim me.”

“But supposing I don’t — you would use your liberty to propose to this Challis girl? Well, you may do so, Parmenas — you are free.”

“This is too generous!” he cried in a burst of Quixotism. “No, Isolde, I cannot accept this sacrifice!”

“It’s no sacrifice at all, because, as it happens, I am already another’s.”

“What?” he cried, with unspeakable relief. “You have married Mr. Taudevin, then?”

It was Isolde’s turn to look embarrassed. “No, not him,” she replied — “somebody else. Somebody who was on board the Chamois that night. I was in a covered seat on deck — he came and shared it with me. We discovered that we had much in common. When the crash came, he got me into one of the boats with a few sailors, and we drifted for days. He did not propose to me until we were reduced to the last Osborne biscuit; and, under the impression that, in any case, we had but a short time to live, I accepted him. The people on the liner that picked us up took us for a newly-wedded couple, and, not wishing to be identified, I did not undeceive them. The fraud was a very innocent one, for as soon as we reached Malta I became Mrs. Goldingham.”

“You might have let me know all this earlier,” he said: “it would have spared me considerable inconvenience.”

“I could not bear to shatter your ideal of me,” she explained. “I felt that you would rather think of me as dead than know the truth, And there was Mr. Taudevin to be considered, too. But he has married since. Then I thought that, as I was about to return for the last time to South Africa, it was fairer perhaps to come and tell you that you needn’t grieve for me any longer. So I came — only to find that you are faithless too. Ah, there is no such thing as constancy in men!’

“You would not say so,” he remonstrated, “if you knew how I cherished the gull for your sake, Isolde!”

She began to laugh again. “I think there were — intervals,” she said; “and I utterly decline to be responsible for the gull. But now neither of us will stand in your way any longer. I must run away now — or my husband will be asking inconvenient questions. Good-bye, Parmenas — accept my best wishes!”

•   •   •   •   •

She was gone — and he was free, really free at last — to write to Doriel. Stay: why should he write, when he might go to her and plead his cause in person? In ten minutes he was on his way to Craven Hill Gardens in a hansom.

It was dark by the time he reached the house, but not so dark that he failed to notice a temporary awning over the front door. So the Challises were giving a dance, or an evening party. He had forfeited all right to an invitation, he knew, but he felt sure that he would have one, when once Doriel had realised that he was in his right mind at last, cured for ever of his fantastic delusion.

He asked for “Mr. Frank,” meaning first to set himself right with Challis, who, he remembered now with some anxiety, had not been at the office that day. He could not be seriously ill, however, for the manservant showed him into the billiard-room, where Frank was engaged in idly knocking the balls about.

He was clearly surprised to see Filmer, though he tried not to betray it. “Sit down, old chap,” he said, as heartily as though there had been no coolness between them. “Sorry you couldn’t turn up before — but better late than never!”

“I — I wasn’t free to come before,” said Filmer, and added, with a gulp, “I can’t help being afraid that you and — and Doriel thought I behaved rather oddly — about that wretched gull, you know.”

“Oh, that’s all right!” said Frank hurriedly. “Have you got rid of it at last, eh?”

“It died,” said Filmer simply. “I made a fearful ass of myself over it. I see that now!”

“Then don’t say any more about it. We understand how it was,” declared Frank, who seemed unaccountably anxious to avoid the subject.

“But I must tell Doriel that — that I’ve come to my senses.”

“You take my advice and leave things as they are,” counselled Frank.

“And anyway, you can’t tell Doriel anything at present — she’s half-way to Dover by this time!”

“To Dover! what has she gone to Dover for?” asked Filmer, rendered inquisitive by disappointment.

“Well, they only stay the night there,” said Frank, “on their way to the Italian Lakes.”

“They?” said Filmer. “Has your mother gone too, then?”

“Not exactly!” said Frank, with a laugh: “Doriel and Cecil Mowbray — for their honeymoon, Didn’t you know? I made sure you’d had an invitation. Doriel meant to send you one, I know.”

For a moment the billiard-table and lamps seemed to spin round giddily, and then Filmer heard himself saying, quite quietly and naturally, “No, I never got it. Did you say — Cecil Mowbray?”

“Yes; clinking good chap he is, too. You met him here the last time you dined with us — don’t you remember? It was just beginning then. We dropped in to tell you the news that Sunday just before Christmas — only — well, we came away without doing it for some reason. Care to come up and have a look at the presents? They won’t have put ’em away yet, and she’s had some rather jolly ones.”

But Filmer thought he had hardly time for it that evening.

“Well, I won’t ask you to stay and dine tonight, because it would be rather poor fun for you — we shan’t be over-cheery, now Doriel’s gone. You must come and meet them both when they’re back from the honeymoon.”

“Thanks,” said Filmer, “I — I will, if I can. And when you’re writing, will you tell — Mrs. Mowbray that I wish her every happiness?”

•   •   •   •   •

Some hours later he got back to Spring Gardens, after consuming a dismal dinner at an Italian restaurant, surprised to find that he could eat at all, and that he felt no particular emotion. But the truth was that he was still numbed by the shock he had undergone.

When he reached his sitting-room he found a large wooden box on his table, which he opened with no very clear notion of what might be inside.

It contained a glass case, in which, on a rock covered with dried seaweed and with a background imperfectly suggesting the boundless ocean, the gull was perched in a lifelike attitude.

She had been admirably stuffed, and in the glass eyes which challenged his he seemed to see a gleam of cynical mockery, as though the bird were exulting in the thought of the long and successful imposture by which she had obtained food and shelter, and the most reverent and unremitting attention — all under false pretences!

He felt a sudden impulse to destroy it then and there, and with it every vestige of his infatuation — he had already seized the poker for the purpose — and then his hand relaxed.

After all, it was childish as well as brutal to wreak vengeance on the dead. Besides, this poor effigy had not deceived him — it was he who had deceived himself. And then he remembered how much she — if the bird was a female, for he had taken her sex for granted had done to sustain him at the beginning of his imaginary bereavement; he thought of the patience with which she, a wild sea-bird, had endured captivity, of her fearless trust in him, and her dumb efforts to be a companion to him; and his heart softened.

Gull though she was, she was the one creature that had been constant to him to the end.

And so the glass case was suffered to remain intact — but not in Filmer’s sitting-room: he felt he could not stand the ironical inquiry of those artificial eyes — and the stuffed gull now forms the most cherished ornament in his housekeeper’s parlour.

In fact, the good woman appreciates it far more in its present condition than ever she did in the flesh, when, as she remarks — with more accuracy than she is aware of — “It couldn’t have made more mess and trouble if it had been a Christian!”

THE GAME OF ADVERBS

(A Country-House
Tragi-comedy,
in Two Parts)

PART I

SCENE — The Drawing-room at Dripstone Manor, a stately Jacobean mansion recently acquired by MR. JOSEPH SHUTTLEWORTH (of SHUTTLEWORTH & CLACK, Carpet Manufacturers, Yarnminster). It is towards dusk in early October. MRS. SHUTTLEWORTH, a plump, good-humoured-looking matron of about fifty, is discovered with her children, vis. GRACE, a rather prim and precise young woman of twenty-three; FLOSSIE, a pretty and lively girl of eighteen; CONNIE, twelve, and COLIN, ten. With them are GILLIAN PINCENEY, a High School friend of GRACE’s; IVY GORING, a Boarding-school chum of FLOSSIE’S,who are staying at the Manor; and the younger children’s Governess, MISS MARKHAM. Mr. SHUTTLEWORTH, fifty-five, florid and prosperous-looking, enters with his son BOB, twenty-one, of Eton and Cambridge. Both are in shooting things.

MRS. SHUTTLEWORTH  (to them). So you’re back at last! I’ve just sent away the tea. But if you’d like some, I could easily—

MR. SHUTT.  Not for me, Louisa, thanks. Bob and I had something as we came through the dining-room. That Jack-o’-dandy friend of Bob’s, Dormer, may like a cup, though, for all I can say.

MRS. SHUTT.  But what’s become of Mr. Dormer?

MR. SHUTT.  Gone upstairs to titivate, I expect. Bless you, you wouldn’t catch him coming in here in his shooting toggery!

BOB.  Fact is, Mater, the Governor’s rather riled with Dormer for saying on the way home that, on the whole, he thought the safest thing to be was a pheasant. Dormer didn’t mean anything by it, Sir.

MR. SHUTT.  It’s my belief he did. And considering how confoundedly bad the lights been this afternoon, and that I never took to shooting at all till late in life, I don’t call myself a particularly poor shot.

BOB (sotto voce, to MISS GORING). Never knew any one who did. But the poor old Governor is rather apt to draw his bow at a venture.

MRS. SHUTT.  I can’t say I quite take to your friend Mr. Dormer, Bob. He has such a nasty sneering way with him.

GRACE.  He’s atrociously conceited. If he’s a type of the Oxford undergraduate, I prefer Cambridge.

FLOSSIE.  I’m certain he’s looking down on us secretly all the time.

BOB.  What bosh! You don’t understand old Dormer, that’s all. He’s a nailing good fellow. Capital company!

MRS. SHUTT.  You said he would keep us all amused if he could only be got to come. But so far, I can’t say—

BOB.  Well, Mater, after being at the same house at Eton with him, I ought to know. And all I can tell you is, that he was far and away the best mimic I ever heard. He could imitate everybody and everything.

FLOSSIE.  Up to now he has only favoured us with an imitation of a disagreeable stuck-up pig. It’s lifelike — but still it is beginning to pall. (She starts as DORMER lounges in; he has dressed for dinner, except that he is wearing a black smoking-coat.) Oh, Mr. Dormer, you did startle me so! You look exactly like a curate.

DORMER.  And are curates such alarming objects? But you’re all in the dark, here.

FLOSSIE.  Yes. We thought you would come in and be brilliant.

DORMER.  I’m afraid I can’t compete with the ordinary methods of illumination. (to himself.) Wish this girl would see that I’m not in the humour for this sort of thing.

MR. SHUTT.  (to himself). Can’t do with this young fellow! (Aloud, to his wife.) I’m off to my study, Louisa. Got some letters to write.

[He goes out.

DORMER  (to himself). On the sofa — with his eyes shut! Only wish I could slip out, too — but they might think it rather casual. (Aloud, to Flossie.) You haven’t told me why you charged me with looking clerical? Can’t say I feel complimented.

FLOSSIE.  Oh, it doesn’t go any deeper than a buttoned-up coat and white tie. might have a worse compliment than being compared to a clergyman!

MRS. SHUTT.  Talking of clergymen, my dear, that reminds me the Rector has never called yet. Considering we have been here six weeks, and attended church regularly every Sunday morning, I do think he might have found time to return the civility before this!

DORMER.  If it was the Rector I had the privilege to hear last Sunday, impressing upon us the duty of cheerfulness in sepulchral tones that were calculated to draw howls from a china poodle, I should be inclined to think myself that the gaiety of the party has not suffered appreciably from his delay.

MRS. SHUTT.  Mr. Polyblank’s pulpit manner is little melancholy, certainly — he’s bachelor, poor man. But they tell me he’s very much looked up to; comes of a very good family, and intimate with all the county folk, so perhaps he doesn’t consider us good enough for him.

GRACE . Really, mamma, you talk as if we were pariahs! Most of the county people round here have called on us. What does it matter if Mr. Polyblank chooses to stay away?

MRS. SHUTT.  All the same, my dear, there’s a sort of natural tie between the Rectory and the Manor which not that I’m one to force my acquaintance on anybody. Still he might give us credit for not being downright savages, if we do come from Yarnminster!

FLOSSIE.  There, mother dear, that’s enough of the Reverend Poly. I vote we have a game at something. Are Are you fond of games, Mr. Dormer?

DORMER.  Indoor games? Er — not immoderately. The mere fact of being supplied with a slip of paper and a stumpy pencil, and required to compile a list of animals beginning with A, paralyses my faculties. I assure you I never can produce a single animal beginning with A.

FLOSSIE  (with intention). Not even one? But it’s too dark to see to write. We might have a guessing game — where somebody has to go out of the room, you know.

DORMER.  Ah, I think I could play at that.

FLOSSIE.  And when you come back, you have to guess from our questions what celebrated historical person you’re supposed to be.

DORMER.  I should never get within a mile of it. I’ve forgotten my Little Henry’s History of England ages ago.

MISS MARKHAM  (in small thin voice). There’s a most amusing guessing game called “Adverbs.”

DORMER.  It sounds perfectly delightful. Only I’m afraid that I’ve only the sketchiest idea of what sort of thing an adverb is.

MISS MARKHAM.  Surely you know that! It’s a part of speech, formed by adding the termination “ly” to an adjective. For instance: bad — badly—

DORMER.  Good — goodly. I see now, Miss Markham. Tremendous fun, I’ve no doubt.

MISS MARKHAM  (annoyed). I was about to explain how it’s played. One of the party goes out, and the rest agree in what manner they are all to receive him when he returns “admiringly,” “affectionately,” and so on.

DORMER.  And he comes in pretending he’s somebody else?

MISS MARKHAM.  He can if he chooses, of course. But all he need do is to ask questions all round, and from the way in which they are answered he guesses what the adverb is. Now do you see, Mr. Dormer?

DORMER.  I think I have grasped the idea. I don’t mind volunteering to go out of the room, at all events.

GRACE.  Very well. You go out, Mr. Dormer, and just wait about in the hall till we call you in.

DORMER.  Delighted. (To himself, as he goes out.) It’s just possible I may be a little hard of hearing.

FLOSSIE  (after he has closed the door). Now, what adverb shall it be? Do let’s make it something difficult!

MISS PINCENEY.  Why not something which would let us show him what we think of him — “Candidly”? “Contemptuously”?

BOB.  That would be rather rough on him, Miss Pinceney. I asked him down here, you know, and really—

MRS. SHUTT.  Yes, my dear, it wouldn’t be kind to make any visitor of ours uncomfortable, would it?

FLOSSIE.  He makes us uncomfortable. He’s as rude as ever he can be!

GRACE  (thoughtfully). Why not make the adverb “rudely”? We could be rude without being personal.

MRS. SHUTT.  If you’re sure he won’t misunderstand—

BOB.  Oh, he’ll understand all right. After all, it’s only a game. “Rudely” will do first-rate. I’ll call him in.

IN THE ENTRANCE-HALL

THE REV. PEREGRINE POLYBLANK  (at the glazed doors). I wonder if they heard me ring. (He descries DORMER in the gloom.) Ah, at last! He doesn’t seem to see me — Perhaps I’d better — (He goes in.) Er — I am the Rector — Mr. Polyblank. Is Mrs. Shuttleworth at home, my good man?

DORMER  (stiffly). I’ve no doubt Mrs. Shuttleworth will be pleased to see you, Sir, if you wait a moment. (To himself, as he passes on to the library.) Confounded cheek, taking me for the butler! But this will put that adverb foolery out of their heads, thank goodness. I shall get a nap in peace, now!

THE RECTOR  (alone, to himself). Painful to enter the old place again. I miss those poor dear Hardupps at every turn. To find strangers in the familiar rooms — it will be an ordeal, but I could not put it off any longer. Why doesn’t the butler return? Does this good lady mean to keep me here awaiting her pleasure? If these are manufacturing manners — But I must beware of prejudice. No doubt there is some good reason for her delay. After all, people may have made a fortune out of carpets without being necessarily lacking in the refinements and courtesies of well-bred society.

BOB (opening the drawing-room door). We’re ready for you now, old chap. You can come in as soon as you like!

THE RECTOR  (to himself). “Old chap!” I “can come in!” … Well, well, I suppose this is the Yarnminster idea of cordiality. A little crude, perhaps — but well-meant.

[He enters the drawing-room.

PART II

SCENE — The Drawing-room at Dripstone. The RECTOR has just entered, and stands helplessly endeavouring to identify the Mistress of the House in the deepening dusk.

BOB (cheerily). Make yourself at home, old fellow. Take a pew!

THE RECTOR  (to himself). “Take a pew!” The heartiness of manufacturing circles is really rather trying! (Aloud.) But excuse me, I don’t yet see—

BOB (taking him by the shoulders and thrusting him down on a couch in the centre of the circle). Squat there, and fire away.

THE RECTOR.  I — ah — don’t know whether you are aware that my — ah — name is — um — Polyblank, and that I am the Rector of Dripstone?

[A general ripple of genuine, if reluctant, amusement.

BOB.  The Reverend Poly, eh? by Jove! capital! All right, now begin asking questions any rot will do, you know. Start with the Mater.

THE RECTOR  (to himself). Are they all like this in Yarnminster? (Aloud.) I confess that in this — ah — semi-darkness I find considerable difficulty in ascertaining the precise whereabouts of my — um — ah — hostess.

[An outburst of irrepressible laughter.

MRS. SHUTT.  (giggling helplessly). Oh, dear, dear, I oughtn’t to laugh — but he is so ridiculous! This is me, over here in the corner.

THE RECTOR  (pitching his voice in that direction). I trust, my deah Mrs. Shuttleworth, that I have not seemed reprehensibly — ah — tardy in coming here to make your acquaintance?

MRS. SHUTT.  (in a whisper). I don’t know what to answer. (Aloud.) Tardy? Oh dear, I shouldn’t have cared if you’d stayed away altogether. (In a whisper, to GRACE.) Do you think that was too rude, dear?

GRACE.  Oh, not at all, mamma. (Aloud to THE RECTOR.) There, you’ve had mamma’s answer. Now it’s my turn.

THE RECTOR  (to himself, in mild surprise). These people are really too impossible! (Addressing himself to GRACE.) May I plead in excuse that my delay is due (firstly) to the preparations for Harvest Festival, and (secondly) to the entire parish work being thrown upon my shoulders by my curate’s having unexpectedly extended his holiday.

[A universal roar of delight.

BOB.  Just his pulpit manner, isn’t it? (Sotto voce, to FLOSSIE.) Now perhaps you’ll own I was right about Dormer.

FLOSSIE  (in the same tone, to him). I must say he can be awfully clever and amusing when he chooses.

GRACE  (replying to THE RECTOR). You can plead no excuse for trying to be clever at the expense of a clergyman who, with all his peculiarities, has fifty times your brains.

THE RECTOR  (to himself). I should not have said that Barlam’s brains were — But why should I let myself be annoyed by such a trifle? (Aloud.) My dear young lady, need I protest that I had not the slightest ideah?

BOB.  Leave this to me, Grace. (to THE RECTOR.) Not the slightest idea? No, old chap, nobody here ever supposed you had!

[Applause.

THE RECTOR  (to himself). I trust I am not unduly puffed up with the pride of intellect but really! (Aloud.) I came here in the hope that the natural ah bond between the Rectory and the Manor — (Shouts of laughter.) Don’t you think — (with pathos) — don’t you think you are making this rather difficult for me?

FLOSSIE.  It would be easy enough for any one who wasn’t a hopeless idiot.

THE RECTOR  (to himself). Can there be insanity in this family? Merely ill-manners, I suspect. I won’t give up just yet. Perhaps, by patience and sweetness, I shall win them over in the end. (Aloud, with laboured urbanity.) I am indeed in the Palace of Truth! But there we must no more look for reverence from the young than for — er — figs from an — um — ah — thistle. Must we?

IVY GORING.  I should have thought myself you would prefer the um — ah — thistles.

[Uproarious applause.

THE RECTOR  (gasping). You compel me to remind you of a certain passage in the beautiful Catechism of our Church which—

GILLIAN PINCENEY.  Please don’t. There are some things which should be respected — even by a professional buffoon!

THE RECTOR  (thunderstruck). A professional buff — ! (Allowing his voice to boom.) Is there nobody here capable of answering the most ordinary remark without some monstrous insult?

COLIN.  Not your remarks.

THE RECTOR  (to himself). I was never in such a household in all my life — never! (Aloud.) As far as I can distinguish in this dusk, there is a little girl sitting over there. I’m sure she — (to CONNIE.) Are you fond of animals, little girl?

CONNIE.  I’m not fond of animals like you.

[A felicitous repartee, which is received with the wildest enthusiasm.

THE RECTOR  (to himself). I will make just one more effort. (To Mrs. SHUTTLEWORTH.) You must find a great pleasure, Mrs. — ah — Shuttleworth, in occupying such a picturesque, and, I may say, historic house as this?

MRS. SHUTT.  (wiping her eyes). Oh, dear, is it me again? … Yes, it is a pleasant house — except when one has to entertain tiresome visitors who will ask foolish questions.

THE RECTOR.  You may rely upon being secure from such inflictions for the future, madam. (With warmth.) Why, why is it that I can count upon a kindly welcome in the humblest cottage, whereas here?

[He chokes.

MISS MARKHAM  (demurely). I really can’t say, perhaps cottagers are not very particular.

THE RECTOR  (passing his hand over his brow). I confess I am utterly at a loss to understand what all this means!

COLIN.  Keep on asking questions. Ask Grace how she’d like to be the Reverend Mrs. Poly, and see what she says. Mummy said only the other day how nice it would be if—

THE RECTOR  (rising). Silence, boy! I have heard enough! I have stayed too long. I will go, before I am tempted to disgrace my calling by some unclerical outburst!

ALL  (in fits of laughter). No, no, you mustn’t go yet. You haven’t said how we’ve received you!

THE RECTOR  (in a white rage). How? How!! Why, outrageously! Abominably!!

[General hissing.

ALL.  Wrong, wrong! You haven’t got it yet. Don’t give it up! Try again!

THE RECTOR  (stiffly). Pardon me — but a necessarily restricted vocabulary—

[Howls of laughter.

FLOSSIE  (as they calm down). Well, the right adverb was “rudely.”

THE RECTOR.  I am not prepared to dispute it. Though there are others which perhaps are even more—

FLOSSIE.  I thought you saw it long ago. We might have been a little ruder, perhaps.

THE RECTOR.  I should be sorry to question your capabilities — but still, I can hardly conceive that possible.

MRS. SHUTT.  Well, I don’t know when I’ve had such a good laugh. It certainly is a most amusing game. Or at least you made it so. How wonderfully you did take the poor dear Rector off, to be sure! When you first came in, I said to myself, “That can’t be Mr. Dormer!” But of course, directly you began to be so ridiculous, I remembered Bob had told us what a mimic you were. You really ought to go on the stage. You’d make your fortune as an actor, you would indeed!

THE RECTOR  (dropping feebly into a chair). I — ah — you do me too much honour, my dear Mrs. Shuttleworth. (To himself.) These poor dear deluded people! I see now… It was a game They didn’t know me in the dark — they don’t know me now!… What a position — for them and me. What a horrible position!

MRS. SHUTT.  Grace, my dear, will you ring for the lights?

THE RECTOR  (to himself). The lights! If they’re brought in, I shall never be able to look this family in the face again! (Aloud.) Er — ah — so pleased to have afforded you so much — um — ah — innocent amusement — but I’m a little fatigued, and, if you’ll allow me, I — I think I’ll slip away.

[He makes his exit, amidst hearty rounds of applause.

IN THE LIBRARY
A LITTLE LATER.

BOB (to DORMER whom he discovers asleep on a sofa). What, lying down, old chap? Well, I must say you deserve a rest after your labours.

DORMER  (apologetically). Tramping over those beastly wet roots does take it out of a fellow. But hasn’t somebody called — the Rector, wasn’t it?

BOB.  What a chap you are! I should jolly well think it was the Rector! Joking apart, old man, you were simply ripping! How on earth you got old Poly’s voice and manner so perfectly, after only hearing him once, beats me. What with the room being dark, and that, I swear that once or twice, when we were all rotting you, and being as beastly rude as we knew, I half thought you really were the Rector.

DORMER  (to himself). The Rector must have had the deuce’s own time of it! (Aloud.) I — I hope your mother isn’t — er — doesn’t—?

BOB.  The Mater? Not she! She was in fits. And as for the girls, why, they’re all raving about you!

DORMER.  Are they, though? Very nice of them. (To himself.) I’m like Thingummy — I’ve awoke to find myself famous!

BOB.  The way you kept it up to the very end!

DORMER.  I’m glad you think I kept it up to the very end.

BOB.  Your exit was a stroke of genius. I’m not flattering you, old chap, it was downright genius. I say, you’ll do old Poly for us again after dinner, eh?

DORMER.  My dear fellow, I couldn’t if you paid me. Besides, I — I’d rather, if you don’t mind, it didn’t get talked about; it — well, it might be awkward, don’t you know.

BOB  (nodding his head sapiently). I see. You mean, it might get round to the Rector, eh?

DORMER.  Exactly. It might — er — get round to the Rector.

A BOHEMIAN BAG

In appearance it is quite an ordinary Gladstone — but either the cow from which it derived its being was exceptionally erratic in her habits, or else the bag is possessed by some inferior order of demon with an elementary sense of humour.

The salesman at the portmanteau-shop where I bought it assured me that I should find it a very good little bag indeed — for the price — but I do him the justice of believing that, like myself, he was imposed upon by its extremely inoffensive appearance.

I had not been on many journeys with it before I became indignantly aware of the gross carelessness with which porters on every line I travelled by seemed to treat luggage committed to their charge.

I tried taking it in the carriage with me but it refused to go under the seat, while it was too bulky to remain long in a rack intended for light articles only, so I entrusted it to a porter, saw it labelled myself, and thought no more about it until I arrived at my destined station — which the bag never by any chance did until hours afterwards.

It is trying at first — especially on a visit to comparative strangers — to enter a country-house drawing-room, and join a large and formal dinner-party in the clothes one has travelled down in — but I became fairly accustomed to it in time. Some of my fellow-guests — particularly when I met them again under precisely similar conditions no doubt concluded that I had some conscientious objection to dress for dinner. Those who knew wondered at my lack of even sufficient intelligence to look after my own luggage like other people. They didn’t lose their bags. Which was all very well — but I would defy them not to lose mine.

Yet, although I see now of course how blind I was, I went on blaming porters, traffic-superintendents, stationmasters, even myself, for months before it ever occurred to me to suspect the bag. How could I imagine that, under its sleek and stolidly respectable surface, it was seething with suppressed revolt, that a passion for liberty and independence had permeated every fibre of its leather?

Perhaps my eyes were not even partly opened till one autumn, when I had been staying with some friends in Ayrshire. My bag had rejoined me there in a day or two, after running up as far as Inverness. So, on my way south from Edinburgh to York, I saw the bag with other luggage into a composite luggage-van, and took a compartment immediately adjoining it, expressly to keep an eye upon it.

At York an elderly guard in the van attempted to convince me that my luggage was at the other end of the train, and while I persisted in demanding it, the argument was interrupted by the arrival of several huge Saratoga trunks which monopolised his attention. At last I had to get in myself, and identify my property. I got out all but the bag, which I could see, but not reach, behind a pile of other luggage; just then the train began to move, and I had to leap out to avoid being taken on to Peterborough. The bag, of course, went on.

It condescended to return late the same night, but from that instant my confidence in it was shaken. I could not understand such obstinacy and cunning in a mere bag, nor how it had contrived to enlist, not only Saratoga trunks, but a white-bearded Scotch railway-guard, as its accomplices. I only felt that in future, even for weekend visits, I should prefer to take a portmanteau. It might give the impression that I expected to be pressed to stay longer but at least we should arrive in company. And so the bag was condemned to inglorious idleness till the next summer, when, not without misgivings, I decided to give it another chance by permitting it to accompany me and the portmanteau in my Continental wanderings.

Any ordinary bag would have been touched by this appeal to its better feelings — mine merely regarded it as an opportunity to work off long arrears of devilry. It broke out as early as Paris, where I had seen my baggage registered for Munich and received the bulletin for it at the Gare de l’Est. I was roused from sleep at about 1.30 AM to go to the luggage-car and see it examined by the Customs officers. But it had spared them that trouble by inducing somebody to put it into the express for Carlsbad, and, which I minded even more, it had persuaded my hitherto immaculate portmanteau to elope with it. They came back together in a day or two, and, while I thought I could see signs of depression, if not penitence, in the portmanteau, the bag maintained the demure calm of a cat that has taken a retriever out for his first poaching expedition.

The bag, by the way, possessed a key — a long one with a weak profile which could never prevail upon it to open under a quarter of an hour, an embarrassing delay when crossing a frontier. At last it broke short off in the lock, and I had to send for an Italian locksmith to force it open — an indignity which I fear destroyed any lingering remnant of self-respect the bag had still retained. It would roll out on the platform, yawning impudently, and proceed to disgorge articles which a more loyal bag would have kept to itself. Italian officials refused at last to register it without the precautions of a stout rope and a leaden seal — which unfortunately was not stamped with the name of Solomon — and every time it was thus corded and sealed I had to pay an extra fee.

Whenever an eye was off it for a single moment it escaped. It saw considerably more of Italy than I did myself, so much of my time was spent in describing its salient features to officials, who drew up innumerable documents concerning it with leisurely thoroughness. It returned from these escapades an absolute wreck; I was obliged to have its back strengthened with an iron brace, while its mouth remained as permanently open as an imbecile’s. Still, I managed to get it safely home — though it very nearly contrived to return to Calais by the next boat from Dover.

Since then it has been once more in penitential retreat till this very last Christmas. Then — it may have been the influence of the season — I relented. I was spending Christmas a little way out of town, and I thought the bag must be tired of tomfoolery by that time, so I started with it in a hansom on that particularly foggy Wednesday afternoon which no Londoner who was out in it is likely to forget. My hansom, after landing me in a cul de sac, declined to take me any further, so I had to get myself and the bag to the District Station at Victoria as well as I could. I was not sorry when a stranger, who — so much as was visible of him in the fog, seemed respectable enough — offered to carry it for me.

I know now that he was quite honest, but I confess that I had my doubts of it when, after dismissing him at the station, I discovered that my confounded bag had vanished during the short time I was taking my ticket. I gave information at the proper quarters, with no real expectation of seeing it again. It was only too easy for a thief to make off with it in such a fog, and, on the whole, I was rather relieved to be rid of it. For once — I chuckled to think — it had overreached itself in its artfulness.

But I was mistaken. The bag turned up in the last place I expected to find it in — the Left Luggage Office. Somehow, at the moment I put it down by the booking office, it had managed to suggest to a man (who must have been a bit of an idiot) that it had been left behind by a friend of his. So he had rushed down below after him — only to find out his mistake, and hand the bag to a porter, who took it up to the superintendent as soon as he had time. Still the bag got out of coming with me, which was evidently its intention from the first. I cannot help thinking there must be something morbid and depraved about a bag which can prefer to spend its Christmas in a Left Luggage Office instead of in a cheerful family circle.

After this last mortification I feel that all further attempts on my part to civilise a bag like that must be abandoned. And yet — am I justified in letting it loose on society? I doubt it. If I presented it to a gipsy caravan, it might settle down with its fellow nomads. Or it might, out of sheer perversity, insist on tracking its way back to me. Is there any kind reader with a talent for reclaiming abandoned baggage who would care to adopt it? If so, I shall be pleased to hand it over to any one who will undertake to provide it with a comfortable home.

It mayn’t be such a bad bag, if only it finds some one who really understands it.

THE MAGIC H’S

(A Society Story
of Up-to-date Diablerie)

[I did not invent this story myself — I should not have dared. Nor will I pledge myself even in a political sense — for it as being true in every particular. There is much in it that I can only accept under considerable reserve; there are even certain things that strike me as frankly incredible. However, I tell it as it was related to me by a communicative and rather seedy stranger, in the Tube between Shepherd’s Bush and Tottenham Court Road Stations, on Saturday the 1st of April last. I am able to fix the precise date, because it was the day I lost my pocketbook. The stranger began abruptly with a remark on the singular value of the letter “h” as a passport to polite society. “I happen,” he said, “to know a rather striking instance in point, if you would care to hear it.” Whereupon he told me the following narrative, for the somewhat inflated diction of which I must decline to be responsible:]

“Harold Hipperholme seemed, at the time when I first knew him, a young man on whom Fortune had showered her choicest gifts. Of respectable, though not distinguished, origin, he possessed exceptional good looks, a commanding intelligence, considerable accomplishments, and wealth that was absolutely phenomenal. But alas! there was a dash of bitter irony in the cup of his happiness — he had everything — everything he could possibly require — except ‘h’s.’

The unhappy young man had never yet succeeded in aspirating even his own name!

“For a while he could scarcely be said to suffer acutely from this infirmity. Indeed, he was scarcely conscious of it. Not till he became acquainted with the beautiful Lady Icilia Chilwell, daughter of the Earl of Stonistairs, was his deficiency brought home to him in all its full horror. He met her first at a Charity Bazaar, where she was assisting at a stall of fancy goods, and he fell hopelessly in love with her at first sight. After purchasing a ‘toilet-tidy,’ worked, as she assured him, by her own hands, for the sum of ten guineas, he had ventured to remark that the ’eat was simply ’orrible.’ It struck him afterwards that she had shivered — but he thought nothing of it at the moment; and at their next meeting (which took place at a Flower Show in the Botanical Gardens) he addressed her more boldly with an inquiry whether she was ‘going to ’Urlingham that Saturday.’ Once more he observed her shiver, but, gathering courage as he went on, he ended by making her a formal offer of his hand and heart. No doubt his handsome appearance and faultless attire, together with the fact (which he did not try to conceal) that he was a person of unbounded affluence, prevented Lady Icilia’s refusal from being as harsh as might otherwise have been expected. But she made it abundantly clear that it was a refusal. Even should she herself have been able to overlook such an insuperable barrier as utter ‘h’-lessness in a suitor, she gave him distinctly to understand that her haughty father, the Earl, would never permit her union with one to whom the very existence of an eighth letter of the alphabet seemed so entirely problematical.…”

[Here I could not help remarking that I should hardly have thought that any aristocratic parent in these days would reject an aspirant as wealthy as Harold Hipperholme for so trifling a reason. For, though I cannot boast an acquaintanceship at first hand with any members of the nobility, I have read the diatribes of “Rita” and Miss Corelli, and have also frequently seen impecunious peers in society comedies welcome proposals from the most impossible outsiders, when sufficiently wealthy, with positive effusion. So that I felt pretty sure of my ground. The stranger, however, replied that my objection merely showed that I must temporarily have forgotten the extreme fastidiousness that notoriously characterises the House of Stonistairs. I admitted that I had, and he resumed his story:]

“Needless to say that Harold endeavoured to overcome her decision by all the eloquence at his command. He urged that a true heart could beat as faithfully without its ‘h’ as with it. He reminded her that the very letter on which she laid such unnecessary stress modestly ignored its own existence, since it was universally pronounced ‘aitch’ — not ‘haitch.’ All was in vain. Unless, or until, she told him, he could acquire a complete mastery of the elusive aspirate, he must never hope to call her his! He left her with the fixed resolve to win her, whatever it might cost him.

“He put himself under several professors of elocution. They taught him to elocute, it is true — but not one of them could instil a solitary ‘h’ into him, and elocution without aspirates is as incapable of soaring to the sublime as a cherub with its wings clipped! There came an hour when he realised that he had exhausted all human aid, and that henceforth his sole hope lay in seeking assistance from the Powers of Evil!

“By the merest chance he saw on a railway bookstall a volume of one of the admirable ‘A B C series,’ entitled ‘The A B C of the Black Art. By a Black Artist.’ With an appendix containing fifteen different formulae for invoking fiends.’ He purchased the book — for, to one of his vast means, a shilling net was the merest trifle — took it home, and, locking himself into his study, traced a pentagram on the floor, as directed, and set to work to raise some unemployed fiend who should help him to attain his ends.

“For whole days and nights he laboured without conspicuous success. Occasionally some evil spirit with nothing worse to do would obey his summons, but no sooner did they hear the purpose for which they had been invoked, than (whether in disgust at its utter triviality, or to conceal their own incompetence) they indulged in demonstrations of fury so violent as almost to frighten him out of his wits. But the fifteenth and last formula produced a more satisfactory result. This time the fiend who answered his call was both less appalling of appearance and more obliging in disposition. In comparison with his predecessors he was almost undersized and, though inky, he was sympathetic and even resourceful.

“I suppress his name for obvious reasons — but he seemed to see no difficulty whatever in the affair. According to him, all Harold had to do was to procure certain articles, of which he gave him a list, and be at a given spot by the following midnight. There the fiend undertook to meet him with a magic type-foundry, and together they would turn out as many ‘h’s’ as possible before cockcrow. It is conceivable that the fiend may have been inspired by reminiscences of the opera of Der Freischütz. Or it may have been his own idea entirely. That we shall never know now!

“After ascertaining that he would not be in any way prejudicing his future prospects by compliance, Harold made a note of the appointment, and the demon left. The next day was spent in collecting the necessary skulls and braziers, &c., and, shortly after 11 PM, Hipperholme chartered a four-wheeler to convey himself and his occult paraphernalia to the midnight rendezvous.

“The precise spot I prefer not to indicate further than by mentioning that it was where four crossroads met, and just outside the radius. You may readily believe that on that journey Harold’s heart was not altogether free from apprehensions. He could not but be aware that proceedings which might well escape remark in the seclusion of a German forest would inevitably attract attention in a London suburb. Suppose he and the fiend were brought up before a London magistrate for disturbing the traffic? What an opportunity for, say, Mr. Plowden! However, after arriving at the crossroads and dismissing the cab with an extra sixpence, he found the fiend punctually awaiting him with a curious contrivance, somewhat between a cauldron and a type-casting machine on the Linotype principle. They set out a circle with the skulls and lamps and sundries, and then the weird labour commenced. But not, as Harold had anticipated, without annoying interruptions — from motorcars, market wagons, nocturnal hansoms, and the like. Fortunately, the fiend had a short and summary method of dealing with them. Once, at a critical stage in the proceedings, a constable on night duty came up with a request to know ‘what they were up to’ — but the fiend explained that they were only relaying the gas-pipes under instructions from the Local Borough Council, and the policeman departed quite satisfied, after wishing them a not uncordial goodnight.

“And at last, well before the earliest village cock had shaken off his slumber, the dread task was accomplished. I am unable to furnish the exact figures of their output, but it may be safely estimated at several millions — a sufficient supply of h’s to set up the most inveterate and conversational Cockney for eighteen months at the very least!

“I must not forget to mention that the fiend, before taking his leave, remarked, with a diabolical giggle to which Harold at the time was too elated to attach any importance, ‘By the way, my friend, I had better warn you that six of those h’s are “wrong ’uns!”’ With which he sank through the soil, and Hipperholme never saw him again.

“But his spirits were high as he hastened home with his ill-gotten acquisitions. I hear you ask” — [I had not opened my lips, but the question had certainly occurred to me] — “by what possible process a supply of typed aspirates, even from an infernal matrix, could be introduced into any mortal’s system? I can only reply that I have not the smallest idea — but that the assimilation undoubtedly took place. For no sooner had Harold reached his quarters than he hastened to put his new powers to the test.

“It so happened that he had accepted a generous offer from the Times to lend him their new Century Dictionary for a week, gratis, on approval, and he now went all through the h’s in one of the volumes without a single mishap. He was just exulting over the fact when his Guardian Fairy unexpectedly appeared.…” [I suppose the fairy, coming so soon after the fiend, must have caused me to exhibit an involuntary surprise, for he immediately explained:] “You may or may not be aware of it — but certain individuals do possess a Guardian Fairy, whose business it is, according to so distinguished an authority on the subject as Mr. W. S. Gilbert, to see that they do not get into scrapes, or to pull them through when they have done so. Hipperholme was one of these favoured persons, and his Guardian Fairy, on hearing his account of the lurid scene that had transpired at the crossroads, naturally expressed strong disapproval of his proceedings. She considered he had acted most imprudently in having any dealings whatever with a fiend, who was almost certain to do him in the long run. Harold replied that this one seemed a decent sort enough, and had made no attempt to bind him by any obligation whatever, and that, anyhow, he was several millions of h’s to the good by the transaction.

“‘But I understood,’ said the fairy, that six of those h’s are — to use your new friend’s slightly common expression — “wrong ’uns”?’

“‘So they are,’ said Harold; ‘but what are half-a-dozen out of all those millions?’

“‘Still,’ she said, ‘if but a single one of the six were to slip out in the hearing of Lady Icilia or her father before she has become your bride, it would suffice to undo you!’

“Harold said that, according to the theory of probabilities, it was uncommonly long odds against a wrong ’un turning up at all.

“The fairy retorted that, probabilities or no probabilities, he might take it from her that it would.

“In that case,’ he said, ‘I think you might have warned me before, instead of after, I had embarked upon such an enterprise as this.’

“She said that it was his fault, not hers — for, if his previous conduct had not been so invariably discreet that her office was practically a sinecure, she would never have felt free to take a brief holiday, during which all the mischief was done. “Fortunately, however,’ she added, it is not too late to repair it — even yet. Take this talisman,’ — and here she handed him a small crystal locket, containing a model of a ladybird coloured after Nature, but lacking in finish — in fact, just such a trinket as you may see in almost any jeweller’s window, marked as low occasionally as eighteen-pence, though the price will vary according to size. “Take this,’ she said, “and should any vowel escape you at some unguarded moment unattended by its rightful aspirate, you have merely to touch your locket and all will be well!’

“Immediately after her departure Hipperholme attached the charm to his watch-chain, though he did not, even then, expect that he would ever be reduced to put its powers to the test. That same afternoon he repaired in rich apparel to the Earl’s portals, and, giving his full name to the butler without the slightest effort, was ushered into Lady I cilia’s presence.

“At first she could scarcely credit him when he gave her the joyful intelligence that the sole obstacle to their union was now removed — but when she had the unspeakable happiness of hearing him triumphantly reel off a long string of words beginning with h, and including such compounds as ‘hedge-hog,’ ‘heart-whole,’ and even ‘hen-house,’ her last doubt vanished, and she acknowledged that he could now speak to her parent with no apprehension that the peppery old peer would summon his menials to eject him from the premises.

“If Hipperholme behaved with some lack of candour in encouraging Lady Icilia to believe that his proficiency was the result of the lessons he had taken in elocution, we should not condemn him too harshly on this account. How few of us in his situation would have had the moral courage to admit the dubious means by which such h’s had been actually obtained! Rightly or wrongly, he preserved his sinister secret to the end.

“Lord Stonistairs, when Harold applied to him for his daughter’s hand, consented, though without enthusiasm, to a trial engagement, which, as you will no doubt remember, was duly announced in the Morning Post.

“But a formidable ordeal was still to be faced. He had to undergo inspection by Icilia’s high-born and extremely critical relatives. For this purpose the Earl had invited the family to partake of a sumptuous and recherché high tea at his town residence in Belgrave Square.

“The gathering was small but select, comprising as it did Icilia’s aunt, the Duchess of Marsaye and her daughter, Lady Fresia Dedcott; the Earl and Countess of Northpole; Lord Norman Beaucoe (another cousin); Sir Basil Iske; the Hon. Medusa Glayre; Mrs. ‘Jack’ Frost, and one or two others — all names that will be familiar to you, and some of whose owners you have probably met in society on more than one occasion.”

[I could not remember ever having even heard of any one of them — but does there breathe an Englishman with a soul so dead as to confess to ignorance of his own peerage? I murmured an assent from which almost any inference might be drawn, and the stranger proceeded:]

“Hipperholme was a trifle nervous at starting; he found them rather difficult to get on with — in fact, they literally paralysed him. But Love put him, so to speak, on his mettle. He exerted all his considerable social powers to break the glacial spell, and he succeeded beyond his hopes. Gradually there came a general thaw, until even the proud old Earl unbent so far as to recommend him strongly to have a second helping of ham and eggs, and to rally him, in an affable, good-humoured way, upon betraying some indecision on the subject.

“This set Harold completely at his ease: Since,’ he replied, with a graceful deference that sat well upon him, ‘since your lordship is so pressing, I will take another poached egg — without any more ’am.’ … The word had slipped out before he could prevent it. He had felt so absolutely sure of that h — and it had turned out a ‘wrong ’un’!

“Already the haughty aristocrats around the board were perceptibly stiffening; Lady Icilia had turned deadly pale; her noble father rose, bristling, with the obvious intention of declaring the engagement off’ — when Hipperholme suddenly bethought him of the ladybird in his pocket. He touched it with frantic haste, and, as he did so, heard himself serenely finishing his sentence with — ‘biguity. He was saved! He regained his former control of aspirates, and by the time the powdered lackeys appeared to clear the table he was now fully recognised as one of the family. All the same, it had been an unpleasant shock for the moment, though the effect soon passed from his memory. He told himself that it was over, and most unlikely to occur again.

“Nor did it, for several delirious week — sand then, once more, he found himself on the very verge of a similar abyss. He had been invited, together with his fiancée and her father, to join certain members of the Smart Set in an excursion to Epping Forest, and the distinguished party was driving in a brake drawn by four spanking steeds along an avenue of magnificent beeches. The sense of intimacy with such a company, the charm of Lady Icilia’s society, the azure sky, the glorious sunshine, the surroundings generally, all contributed to render him intoxicated with sheer happiness. He became almost lyrical in his ecstasies.

“‘Oh the relief,’ he exclaimed, ‘the unspeakable refreshment, for jaded worldlings like ourselves, to escape — if only for the day — from the fevered social round to such rural scenes as these! To revel in the scent of bracken, the song of birds, and the ’um — ’ He broke off in horror; he had intended to say the ‘hum of insects’-for the flies were unusually persistent that summer — but another spurious ‘h’ had perfidiously betrayed him!

“Yes?’ said the grim old Earl, who sat opposite, in a tone of sardonic encouragement. Pray proceed. You were remarking, “the ’um—”’

“‘Brageous foliage!’ Harold just managed to gasp as he clutched his talisman — and, as before, the danger was averted.

“Another interval succeeded of such absolute immunity that the possibility of ever again omitting anything so obvious as an aspirate seemed unthinkable. And then, like a bolt from the blue, out came a most unmistakable wrong ’un! He had arranged to escort his betrothed to a Gala Fête, which was one of the principal functions of that season, and which Royalty was expected to attend. It was at Rosherville Gardens, and Lady Icilia, having in a moment of caprice insisted that the party should go down by an ordinary penny steamer, Hipperholme, after arraying himself in a faultless frock-coat, had, very naturally, thought it more prudent to put on a billycock hat as being less likely to blow off. When he joined the others on the landing-stage at Charing Cross, Lord Norman Beaucoe, who, as usual, was in a blue striped lounge suit and a tall white chimney-pot, permitted himself to pass some remark on Harold’s choice of headgear. It was not precisely a sneer, but sufficiently so to nettle Hipperholme’s high spirit.

“I would have you to know, my lord,’ he retorted, “that a gentleman can look the gentleman in any kind of ’at!’ … As the fatal word left his lips he caught the Earl’s eye and his talisman at the same moment. “Tire,’ he concluded calmly, and the ill-concealed discomfiture of Lord Norman, the milder expression of his uncle, and the proud glow that suffused the face of Lady Icilia, told him not only that his faux pas had been successfully obliterated, but that he had actually risen a step higher in their esteem!

“What wonder then if, when the date of their nuptials was fixed and the invitations issued for the ceremony, he ceased to have any further misgivings? And yet, little as he suspected it, beneath the roses which strewed his path to the altar there lurked still another pitfall, and the moment was fast approaching when he would see it yawning in front of him — and this time!”

[“Was, I should imagine,” I put in, suppressing a tendency to imitate the pitfall, “exactly like the other three. If not, what on earth was the good of giving him a talisman at all?” “Don’t be in such a hurry!” said the stranger, patting me significantly on the chest (he had a most unpleasant habit of pawing me about in the course of his narrative). “Wait till you have heard the sequel.”

[We had by this time arrived at Bond Street, and I did wait for the sequel. As I was getting out at the British Museum, I could not very well help myself.]

“You implied just now,” said the voluble stranger, as the train glided out of Bond Street Station, “that, even should any further disaster overtake Hipperholme, the talisman given to him by his Guardian Fairy could safely be depended upon to extricate him. That was a very natural assumption on your part, and in the main a perfectly correct one. Under ordinary circumstances, it is a matter of common knowledge that a fairy is fully a match for the average fiend. But such calculations are always liable to be upset by some trivial accident which it is totally impossible to foresee. As Harold was soon to discover:

“He was at a brilliant evening party given by a certain peeress, who shall be nameless, at her magnificent mansion in Park Lane. The society craze last season, as I dare say you recollect, took the form of parlour games — an intellectual pastime for which Harold had a natural aptitude, and in which he easily held his own against the very smartest of the Smart Set. That night he outshone even himself, and Lady Icilia (who with her father, the Earl, was of course among those invited) was the pleased recipient of many congratulations on the gentlemanly deportment and ready wit displayed by the object of her choice. At last, after repeated triumphs, he was required to submit himself to a test compared with which all previous ones were child’s play. He had to leave the room while the rest of the company settled among themselves what celebrated historical character on what particular occasion he was to represent, and it was for him to guess, if he could, from the cryptic remarks addressed to him by each of the players in turn, whom they supposed him to be. Very possibly you have played this game yourself?”

[I had — and had not found it particularly exhilarating, though I did not consider it necessary to say so.]

“Well, Hipperholme came in, and brought all the powers of his mind to bear on the problem — but for once he found himself completely baffled. Nothing they said afforded him the faintest clue.

“I must admit, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen,’ he owned at length with a genial frankness, ‘that I’m rather up the stick this time. I’m really afraid I must ask you to assist me a little by giving me just the slightest ’int!’.

“He knew what he had done, but he was not seriously perturbed — the talisman would get him out of it as usual, and instinctively his fingers sought his watch-chain. Judge of his horror when he found that the crystal locket was no longer there! He searched his waistcoat pockets in vain — it was not in either of them; he had lost it somehow!

“‘Just the slightest ’int,’ the wretched man repeated mechanically, amidst a silence so intense that, had any patrician present possessed such a thing as a pin and allowed it to drop, it would assuredly have fallen with a sickening thud. Fortunately, this was not the case.

“Hipperholme gazed round the semicircle in wild despair, as he wiped the perspiration from his clammy brow — and then he caught sight of a glittering object lying just underneath a gilded sofa. He dived for it frantically; with inexpressible relief he recognised his lost ladybird, and, as he resumed the perpendicular with the talisman in his clutch, the conclusion-‘erval for reflection’ — fell from his lips, and the intolerable strain was instantly relaxed.

“Immediately afterwards it flashed upon him that he could be no other personage but King Harold on the occasion of being hit in the eye by an arrow at the Battle of Hastingswhich proved to be perfectly correct.

“But, even amidst the general applause that greeted this display of penetration, Hipperholme shivered at the recollection of the narrow squeak he had just experienced.

“He had the fastening of the talisman repaired — while he waited — at the earliest opportunity, after which he felt himself once more invulnerable. To be sure, there were two more ‘wrong ’uns’ to be expected — but, even if they did slip out before his marriage with Lady Icilia, it would not signify so long as he had the charm at hand and he would take uncommonly good care not to lose sight of it in future.

“When she was once his bride, he would be safer still. It would take more than a couple of defective aspirates to sever them then!

“As it happened, during the weeks that remained he was never once under the necessity of employing the talisman, a circumstance which so increased his sense of security that, while arraying himself on his wedding morn for the ceremony, it occurred to him that he might safely leave the locket on his dressing-table.

“He had always thought it a rather cheap and tawdry ornament for a man of his means to wear; it would be an unsightly blot on the magnificence of his attire on this momentous occasion; it would not be required, since he could hold no conversation with either Lady Icilia or her parent until after the conclusion of the nuptials.

“Still, he would have to say a few words in the vestry afterwards — and then there was the drive with his bride from the church, and the wedding breakfast. Perhaps it would be wisest to avoid all risks. So, for the present, at all events, he decided to allow the locket to remain on his watch-chain.

“The wedding was at St. George’s, Hanover Square, which was crowded to suffocation by persons of rank, commoners finding it hopeless to obtain admittance, and the vergers being compelled to turn even Countesses away!

“Harold, with Lord Norman Beaucoe as his best man, stood by the altar, awaiting the arrival of the bridal cortège, and, as he heard the society small talk behind him drowning even the pealing notes of the organ, his bosom swelled with a satisfaction that made him entirely oblivious of the fact that he owed the proud position in which he stood to a fiend of the most plebeian order.

“And then — preceded by the choir, and followed by eight bridesmaids, all ladies of title, and wearing costly diamond brooches in the form of two interlaced h’s, the gift of the bridegroom — Lady Icilia Chilwell came slowly up the centre aisle, leaning on the arm of her father, the Earl of Stonistairs, and the ceremony commenced.

“It was conducted by the Bishop of Mumbleborough, assisted by several of the minor clergy, and, as the venerable prelate, in accents almost inaudible with emotion, dictated the responses, the happy bridegroom repeated them in tones as full as was his heart. ‘To have and to hold,’ quavered the good old Bishop and through the sacred edifice Harold’s resonant voice rang out like a clarion call: ‘To ’ave and to ’old!’

“I can only qualify the result as electrical. Never before, perhaps, had that aristocratic fane heard the aspirate treated with such appalling irreverence; the walls seemed to rock, strong men grew pale, the very choristers were visibly concerned, the Bishop was struck dumb, while Lady Icilia, withdrawing her hand from Harold, shrank from him with a movement of uncontrollable repulsion.

“Hipperholme alone preserved his composure. He felt that he could hardly have dropped two h’s at a more unpropitious moment — but fortunately the matter could easily be set right. How lucky that he had not followed his first impulse and left his ladybird at home! He fingered the talisman with confidence.

“To his indescribable dismay it failed him for the first time! He could not believe it at first, could not understand how such a thing could have happened. And then the terrible truth dawned upon him. It was useless to expect the talisman to aid him there. Not even a fairy could venture to introduce any additions to the marriage service. What he had said he had said!

“Lady Icilia had already collapsed — a mere heap of white satin, Brussels lace, and orange blossom — into the arms of her principal bridesmaid, the Earl had stepped forward and held a whispered colloquy with the Bishop, who seemed to agree with him that the ceremony could not proceed, as Harold rushed madly from the building, bareheaded, for he had resigned his hat to Lord Norman Beaucoe. And, at the moment he gained the portico, and was descending the steps into George Street, he heard a malicious snigger, which seemed to come from the telephone wires overhead, and a voice he remembered but too well cried out with shrill derision: What did I tell you? Six of ’em wrong ’uns!’

“The fairy knew more about fiends than he did, after all. They were not to be trusted!”

“But surely,” I said, as we ran into the next station, “that isn’t the end of the story? The fairy couldn’t possibly leave him in such a fix as that. Or why have a Guardian Fairy at all?”

“You are right,” he said impressively, patting me with approval on the chest; “absolutely right! That is not the end. The finale is singular, but satisfactory, as you are about to hear. But, bless me, this is Tottenham Court Road! I’m afraid I must bid you farewell, with many thanks for your courteous attention. I get out here.”

And he did so I missed the finale. It was not till I reached the British Museum that I missed my pocketbook.

AFTER REHEARSAL

(An Object-Lesson
for Would-be Playwrights)

SCENE — The interior of the Vacuity Theatre, which is to open shortly under the management of that enterprising and popular young actor, MR. SIDNEY SANGWIN.

TIME — The fag-end of a November afternoon. On the stage — which is lit by a few electric lights in the flies, and is bare, except for sundry pieces of furniture placed to mark the entrances — the rehearsal of “A House of Cards,” the comedy by a hitherto unacted dramatist with which MR. S. S. has decided to tempt Fortune, is slowly dragging to a close. MR. AIKENHEAD, the author, is seated in an un-shrouded section of the stalls, drearily wondering how he could ever have deluded himself into a belief that his dialogue was humorous. Next to him is MISS ARDLEIGH, who, not being on in the final act, is kindly endeavouring to relieve his obvious depression.

MISS ARDLEIGH  (referring to her part — a baronet’s wife who has been on the music-hall stage). The on’y thing I’m afraid of is that I shall be too refined in it — that’s reely how I feel! (MR. A. hastens to reassure her on this score.) Oh, it’s very sweet of you to say so, I’m sure — and of course it’s wonderful what one can do with technique — still, vulgarity doesn’t seem to come easy to me, somehow. I should love to play Lady Cynthia. Now, Miss Daintrey — well, I don’t know what you think — but to me, her style isn’t distangay enough, — she seems to fall just short of the real lady, if you understand my meaning!

MR. AIKENHEAD  (for whom Miss PHYLLIS DAINTREY is the one bright star in his clouded horizon). Afraid I can’t agree with you — Miss Daintrey is everything I could wish.

MISS A.  Well, if you’re satisfied, that’s everything, isn’t it? But I’m understudying her, as p’raps you know, so, if anything should occur to prevent her playing—

MR. A.  (watching MISS DAINTREY, as she looks on with a charmingly amused smile during a protracted wrangle over a “cross” which is not down in the prompter’s book, and inwardly congratulating himself upon her evidently perfect health). Miss Daintrey doesn’t look as if she was going to break down just yet.

MISS A.  It was on’y something she said to me this morning. But, as I told her, “My dear girl,” I said, “when you’ve been ten years longer in the profession you can begin to pick and choose. You don’t hear me grumbling,” I said, “and yet, look at my part compared to yours!” And such lovely frocks as she’ll have, too! I don’t know what more she wants, I’m sure!

[The rehearsal comes to an end.

MR. SANGWIN  (on stage). We’ll take the first act tomorrow at eleven sharp, please, and I do hope some of you will be better up in your words by then. At present the only person who rehearses without the script in her hand is Miss Daintrey. You really must buck up a bit!

MR. STILTNEY BELLAIRS.  Dear old boy, what is the use of studying till we get our scenery? Only means beginning all over again when it comes. Thought it was promised for last week — and here we are, still messin’ about!

[Sympathetic murmurs from the Company.

MR. S. S.  We’ll get it in time, old chap. They’re all rather elaborate sets, but old Dawbler thinks he can get the first act up by next Friday, (To MISS DAINTREY) Eh? Certainly, dear — just step up into my room — I’ll be there in half a jiff. (To MR. A. as MISS D. departs) Just a word with you, Aikenhead, my boy. (MR. A. finds his way through the proscenium door on to the stage.) Well, it’s beginning to shape a bit better, eh? The only thing it wants now is — but I’ll talk to you about that presently, when I’ve settled things with Miss Daintrey — it’s about time she signed her contract.

MR. A.  (aghast). Why, hasn’t she done that yet?

MR. S. S.  No, asked for time to think over it — several of ’em did, you know. But I’m not going to stand any more shilly-shallying. I’ll run up and make sure of her — don’t go away till I see you.

[He bustles off.

MISS NUROSA RECKITT  (intercepting MR. A.). Mr. Aikenhead, I must speak to you, I simply must! I’m absolutely in despair about my part! I feel I can do nothing with it — nothing! I’m merely a “feeder” to Miss Nasmyth. She crushes me whenever we’re on the stage together — I’m nowhere!

MR. A.  But I assure you, Miss Reckitt, you’re quite admirable. I’m perfectly satisfied — perfectly!

MISS R.  (with dignity). I hope, Mr. Aikenhead, I am capable of satisfying any author. I ought to be with all my experience. But (becoming agitated again) I can’t make bricks without straw. If I might speak my lines with a stutter — anything — anything in the world to put a little colour into them! If not, I shall have to consider very seriously whether—

[She goes off with a gulp of repressed emotion.

MR. RAVENSNELL.  Another rocky rehearsal, Mr. Aikenhead! ’Pon my soul, I think things get worse instead of better! Most of ’em as fluffy as feather beds! Though your lines, if you’ll pardon my frankness, sir, are difficult to get round the tongue — writing for the stage has to be learnt, like everything else. But it’s the slackness everywhere that I complain of. A dear good fellow, old Sidney, but no disciplinarian. Lets ’em do whatever they please. I don’t know if you remarked it, but the tag was actually spoken today at rehearsal! That’s always supposed, as you are probably aware, to bring bad luck. All superstition, of course. Though I’m bound to say that, in my experience, I’ve never known it fail. By-the-bye, do you think that “Dumb-Crambo” scene in the second act will go? Don’t see your way to cutting it out, I suppose?

MR. A.  No, I think it will be all right when it’s worked up. And it’s never been done on the stage.

MR. R.  There you’re mistaken, sir. done two years ago at the Nullity, in a piece called A Flash in the Pan. I remember it ran just a week. I happen to know because I was in the cast. I thought it as well to mention it.

[He shuffles away as Mr. STILTNEY BELLAIRS approaches.

MR. S. B.  I say, Mr. Aikenhead, I wish you’d let me leave out a line in the last act. It’s no use to me, and it strikes me as a bit dangerous. I mean where I say, “Well, I call this thunderin’ rot!” Gives the gallery such a chance, don’t you know!

[On reflection, MR. A. consents to this omission.

MR. PETTIPHER  (who is on for about five minutes in the first act). One moment, Mr. Aikenhead. How would you wish me to make up for Captain Guestling, now? For instance, what is the precise shade of wig you have in your mind’s eye?

MR. A.  (conscious of utter vacancy in that organ). Well, I hardly — need you wear a wig at all?

MR. P.  Played in my own hair, sir, the character would never come out. I was thinking that a chestnut wig, not too light — and what would you say, now, to a chintuft?

MR. A.  (with a forlorn attempt at jocularity). Wouldn’t that rather depend on what the chintuft said to me?

MR. P.  (with solemnity). I beg you will not treat this matter in a spirit of flippancy, sir. My one anxiety is to realise my author’s conception, — and there’s really nothing in the lines themselves for me to build up a character upon or I wouldn’t trouble you. I see him myself as a sort of man-about-town, with a chintuft, and, I think, spats would complete the costume? Then I may take it you agree to spats? Now, regarding the colour. Should they be white, or drab? I possess both. Perhaps drab would be more in keeping? Would you have a white edging to his waistcoat? Well, we can discuss that question tomorrow.

[He makes way for MR. NEWGASS.

MR. NEWGASS.  Oh, I’ve thought out rather a good bit of business for my entrance in the second act. How would it be if I took the butler for the old Earl and shook hands, and asked him to present me to Lady Cynthia, eh?

[He chuckles.

MR. A.  Afraid it would be rather forced. You see, the butler has just shown you in, and, besides, you’ve met Lord Limpsfield already.

MR. N.  But I might be short-sighted-eyeglass worked down the back of my neck — frantic search for it, and all that.… Well, of course your wishes are paramount — but it would be a big laugh — and if you don’t mind my saying so, that’s what the piece wants! However, since you don’t accept my suggestion, I say no more.

[He goes off in a huff.

MR. ION SELFE.  We’re pulling it together, Mr. Aikenhead, pulling it together — by degrees. But you’ll have to cut a good half-hour out of it yet!

MR. A.  (thinking he has cut several out of it already). I might shorten the scene between you and Limpsfield, perhaps, and your soliloquy after reading the letter. I don’t see what else I can do.

MR. I. S.  (with a falling jaw). Mark my words, sir. If you touch a word of my part — in the way of compression — you ruin your play. I should say just the same if I was playing any other part. Where the piece drags, where it’s let down, is precisely in those scenes where I’m not on. Shorten those, give me a little more to do in the last act, let me go off just before the curtain, instead of ten minutes earlier, and it’s a dead cert! Otherwise, it’s my deliberate opinion, sir, that we’re in for a record frost. Now I’ve got that off my chest I feel happier!

[He stalks away with the air of a Sibyl.

IN THE VESTIBULE —
A LITTLE LATER.

MR. SIDNEY SANGWIN.  Oh, there you are, Aikenhead! … Miss Daintrey? What, haven’t you seen her? She wanted to speak to you before she went, I know.… Well, no, she hasn’t signed her contract — not exactly. In fact, she’s rather thrown us over … Yes, it is a nuisance, of course — but it can’t be helped.… I did my best, old chap!… No, only that, on consideration, she didn’t think it quite worth her while. Pretty little part enough — if she’d only see it!… Oh, that Ardleigh girl won’t be half bad as Lady Cynthia! … I don’t say she is — but she’ll look quite young enough at night, and Phyllis’s frocks can be altered to fit her.… My dear fellow, there’s no time to get anybody else in now — and she’s up in the part.… Well, we may have to alter the cast a bit, but they’re getting used to that by now. Don’t you worry — we’re going to come out on top all right — and let me see, there was something I wanted to say to you. Ah yes, look here, I wish you’d take this script home with you and just run through the dialogue again.… No, no, capital, A1, old boy! I only thought that, if you could see your way to working in a smart line here and there, don’t you know — well, it wouldn’t do any harm, eh?

[MR. A. goes home to give these finishing touches with all the verve and freshness that can reasonably be anticipated.

THE LIGHTS
OF SPENCER PRIMMETT’S EYES

A worthier and more estimable young man than Spencer Primmett it would have been difficult to find in the whole of London. He was in one of the Government Departments, in which he occupied an exceptionally good position for one of his years, while he was also in enjoyment of a very comfortable private income.

His principal ambition was to eschew any conduct which might possibly have the effect of rendering him conspicuous, in which laudable object he had so far succeeded admirably.

There was nothing whatever remarkable about his countenance, which was mild and rather round; or his demeanour, which was correct without assumption; or his opinions, which were those of all well-regulated persons.

Wherefore mothers and chaperons generally regarded him with favour as a highly eligible parti — a fact of which he was modestly but fully aware. He had indeed but one defect, and that of so gradual a growth that he was pardonable for being the last to perceive it. He was excessively near-sighted. For some time it had struck him more and more forcibly that the British climate was becoming mistier than at any previous period in his recollection, and he was surprised that none of his friends and acquaintances were observant enough to notice so obvious an atmospherical deterioration.

But there came an afternoon when Spencer Primmett was compelled to admit that his own observation was less acute than he had imagined. For while paying a call — a social duty which he was ever punctilious in discharging — on the Bellinghams in Cornwall Gardens, he was not a little mortified by the discovery that he had been wasting much time and many blandishments in a futile endeavour to induce a footstool to sit up and beg for a biscuit.

This led him to infer that there might be some slight imperfection in his eyesight, which, to avoid all chance of some really ludicrous blunder, he would do well to rectify by purchasing an eyeglass.

He had another and even stronger motive for taking such a step. Hilda and Rhoda Bellingham were both extremely attractive girls, and of late his thoughts had begun to dwell, not unpleasingly, upon the possibility of his falling in love with one of them. But which? For the life of him he could not determine, being by no means sure, now that he came to consider, whether he had ever seen either at all distinctly.

Ordinary prudence suggested that it would be advisable to be better acquainted with the features of each before committing himself by any definite advances to either. It would be a pity to find out, when it was too late to retract, that he had pledged himself to the plainer of the two.

So he tried several opticians in turn, but none of them had an eyeglass, or even a pince-nez, in stock that could do anything more than increase the dimness of his natural sight, and at last he took the course which he should have taken at first, and consulted a leading oculist.

After a prolonged examination, the oculist informed him that he was “abnormally astigmatic,” which seems a harsh thing for any man to say of a fellow-creature.

However, he wrote him out a prescription for a pair of special glasses of differing powers, and this Spencer took to be made up by the firm to whom he was recommended.

A few days afterwards, on returning from Whitehall to his rooms, he found awaiting him a neat little parcel containing a pair of spectacles, and accompanied by the account, which came to more than he had anticipated. He would have preferred, too, a pair of pince-nez to spectacles, which he knew have a tendency to add years without the corresponding experience, and it was not without anxiety that he fitted them on and inspected himself in a hand-glass which lay on his dressing-table.

It was a considerable relief to him to find that they were not by any means unbecoming, Indeed, his eyes, now that they were framed and glazed, as it were, looked larger and more brilliant; the glasses gave him an air of higher intelligence and deeper thoughtfulness than he had previously discerned in his expression, while they were so light and so easily adjusted that he was scarcely aware of having them on.

But it was less from vanity than an uncontrollable impatience to see what the Miss Bellinghams were really like, that he called a hansom and gave the address of Cornwall Gardens.

As he drove westward, facing the sunset sky, he was delightfully conscious of the extraordinary degree to which his powers of vision had improved. No longer was the sun a mere scarlet blur for him, but a clear golden disc surrounded by mauve and crimson clouds, while more immediate objects had become defined with a sharpness that revealed much that hitherto would have altogether escaped him.

For instance, he remarked for the first time the singular incompetency of London cabmen, evidenced by the fact that the drivers of almost all the hansoms he met seemed to have the greatest difficulty in controlling their horses. It impressed him as an additional proof of the decadence in our national character.

Fortunately his own cabman was an exception to the general rule, and brought him to his destination without mishap.

Spencer learnt on inquiry that Mrs. Bellingham was at home, and he followed the butler upstairs to the drawing-room with a thrill of excitement. For he might find the daughters of the house there as well, and then he would know at last whether it was Hilda or Rhoda who would prove to be his actual enchantress.

They were at home, as it happened, and greeted him with a cordiality sufficiently charming to remove all doubt, had he felt any, which he did not, of the gratification he was affording them. He accepted a cup of tea and a seat by the fire, and, as often and intently as he could without infringing the ordinary rules of good breeding, he studied the features of the two graceful girls who sat opposite to him in the lamplight. Thanks to his recent acquisition, he could now see them perfectly, and was delighted to find that they surpassed all his previous conceptions.

Even then he had as much difficulty as ever in making up his mind which of the two was the more irresistibly engaging, they were both so adorably pretty in their different styles; but at least he saw now that there was a difference.

So he sat there talking — rather pleasantly, he thought — to all three ladies, with the sense that he was making an increasingly favourable impression. Indeed, before long he began to fear that he was inspiring a deeper sentiment in both the Miss Bellinghams than he had any right or intention to do at that stage of their acquaintance.

Without being unduly conceited, he could not help observing that, whenever he turned to address Miss Bellingham, she regarded him with a kind of spellbound subjection closely resembling fascination; whereas Miss Rhoda, on the other hand, seemed powerless to meet his eye at all.

These were trifles, no doubt, — but not without significance. He was wondering whether he had not better go, when the dog, which had been previously snoring soundly in its basket, created a diversion by waking up and coming out for its usual saucer of weak and milky tea.

This time Spencer made no mistake; he knew it was not a footstool, or even a doormat, but a Maltese terrier a trifle out of condition. So he beamed upon it with affable recognition, and called it by its name, which was “Lulu.” But instead of responding to his advances, the animal uttered a sharp howl and fled into the back drawing-room with every sign of abject terror.

Spencer said he could not understand it, as he generally got on so well with dogs, and the Bellinghams agreed that it was most unaccountable, and began to talk of something else.

But somehow the incident caused a certain constraint. Hilda and Rhoda chattered on, it was true, but in rather a random and desultory manner, while their mother’s silence was marked by a want of repose which was unusual in one so essentially a woman of the world.

So he cut short his visit, after staying little more than an hour, heartily wishing that the dog had not chosen to make such a fool of itself, just when things were going so well.

On thinking over it afterwards, he recalled sundry symptoms which almost led him to the distressing conclusion that the Bellingham family was inclined to be slightly hysterical.

Spencer had forgotten that he had to dine out that evening at a house in Lancaster Gate, and did not get back to his rooms until just before eight, which obliged him to dress in frantic haste. Even then he arrived quite a quarter of an hour after everybody else, so that he could hardly expect anything but the chilling reception which he certainly got.

He was consoled, however, by the discovery that the Bellinghams were among the guests, and that it would be his privilege to take Miss Bellingham in to dinner. He would have been equally pleased had she been her sister, for both were looking more bewitching than ever in those brilliantly-lighted rooms.

Still, as he advanced eagerly to claim her, he felt at once that something had come between them; he distinctly noticed her flinch, as though with repressed aversion, as he offered her his arm with a playful allusion to his good fortune.

And when they were seated at the dinnertable, on which innumerable electric lamps, artistically disposed around the walls, shed a soft but still dazzling radiance, he could not feast his eyes on her face so constantly as he desired and expected, for the reason that she seldom looked at him in speaking, and then only by an obvious effort. Was it merely his disordered fancy, or did she invariably turn away her head on such occasions with something suspiciously like a shudder?

At the first opportunity she turned away from him altogether to enter into an animated conversation with her right-hand neighbour, leaving him with nothing of her to contemplate except her left shoulder till dessert.

He tried his other neighbour, but she was anything but forthcoming, and after one or two perfunctory replies, evidently preferred to be entertained by her allotted partner.

So, in his utter isolation, Spencer was free to let his thoughts dwell on Miss Rhoda, who was seated exactly opposite. He wished now that it had been she who had fallen to his lot; she would not have treated him, he was sure, with this inexcusable caprice, she was much too kind-hearted, and, besides, she was quite as pretty as Hilda, if not actually prettier.

He directed a glance of half-humorous, half-melancholy appeal for sympathy across the table at her, which he intended should establish a secret bond of intelligence between them, but he found an unexpected difficulty in catching her eye. Even when he succeeded in doing so, he only knew it because he saw her start and bite her lower lip hard, as if to control some rising emotion which too obviously was not maidenly confusion, since she neither blushed nor accorded him the discreetest smile of recognition.

What in the world was the matter with them both? It was impossible that he could have done anything since that afternoon to account for the change in their conduct. Surely they could not be influenced by the fact that that little overfed beast of a terrier of theirs had exhibited a perfectly unreasonable antipathy to him! He had thought modern young women possessed more common-sense.

And presently it was apparent to him, as he allowed his eyes to wander idly round the table, that he must be generally unpopular — or how was it that every face on which his gaze casually lighted seemed to freeze instantly into petrifaction? He had arrived a little late, he knew, but, hang it all! he could not think he had spoilt the dinner so much as all that! And even if he had, it was most unchristian of them to carry unforgiveness further than the fish! It was horrible to sit there, feeling like an apologetic skeleton. He had never felt less at home at a dinner-party in all his life.

Even on rising, Rhoda had no look nor word for him, and, as soon as the ladies had departed, Mr. Bellingham began to tell a story that gave every promise of lasting for a considerable time.

Spencer had never met him before, and, had he been the parent of anybody but Hilda and Rhoda, might have been tempted to regard him as an insufferable old bore. As it was, in his anxiety to propitiate at least one member of the family, he leaned forward, drinking in every detail of the narrative with an air of absorbed and eager interest which was perhaps a little overdone.

At all events, he did not propitiate the old gentleman — he merely put him out. For Mr. Bellingham grew more and more uneasy under Spencer’s ardent attention, until at length he brought his monologue to a lame and evidently premature conclusion.

Primmett made really heroic efforts during the awkward silences that ensued to put the company at their ease by throwing out intelligent remarks from time to time on some topic of the day. But, although he was confident that he said nothing that was not perfectly safe in any gathering, somehow his blameless platitudes seemed to burst on his hearers like bombshells. Every one appeared to have a positive dread of being drawn into conversation with him. He noticed those he addressed directly blinking nervously as they returned some monosyllabic reply, while others evaded his advances by studiously looking in any other direction but his own.

He affected the nerves of the very servants, for, as he turned towards a footman who was offering him coffee, the man suddenly let the tray fall with a crash.

Spencer was glad when the host proposed that they should go upstairs, though, even when he reached the drawing-room, he was happier. Before he could obtain the explanation for which he was hoping from Rhoda or Hilda, he was introduced to two or three older ladies, all of whom responded to his agreeable nothings with absent minds and roving eyes, and before he could escape from these compulsory amenities, he had the misery of seeing the Bellinghams take their leave.

He left himself as soon afterwards as he was able, and it struck him that his hostess was almost indecently glad to get rid of him.

Spencer walked back to his rooms in a pitiable frame of mind. He was conscious of having shed a kind of blight on the whole dinner-party — but how or why he was at a loss to imagine.

Was there, unknown to him, some discreditable rumour in circulation with regard to his private character? But that was impossible, for his conscience assured him that he had done nothing that could have given occasion for the slightest scandal.

Then why — why did the Bellinghams and everybody else shrink from him as though he were some accursed thing?

Was he to go through life henceforth as an object of universal repugnance — he, who by nature was so eminently sociable and desirous of winning esteem? Would he never find any one to look him in the face again with the old friendliness and approval? If so, it seemed hard that he should not even know why this fate had befallen him!

Still gloomily pondering over his probable future, he regained his sitting-room, where, resting his elbow upon the mantelpiece, he stood staring hopelessly down at the cheerily burning fire!

Suddenly, on looking up, he beheld his own reflection in the bevelled mirror of the overmantel, and recoiled in positive terror.

For the eyes that met his own were no human eyes — they were two glowing caverns in which flickered lurid flames, as though his brain were being slowly consumed by an infernal fire!

The effect was simply appalling. He realised at once that no man with such eyes as those could ever hope to inspire the object of his affection with any feelings but instinctive distrust, and even horror. Gaze at her as tenderly and pleadingly as he might, it was impossible to prevent his ardour from impressing her as unpleasantly volcanic.

And yet, how could he have been thus transformed into a fiend of peculiarly repulsive aspect without being even aware of the process?

Then all at once he remembered his spectacles. They fitted him so comfortably that after he had once grown accustomed to the improvement in his sight, he had ungratefully forgotten their very existence. However, he found that he was still wearing them.

Was it just barely possible that they — He removed them hurriedly, and, on closely approaching the mirror, discovered with inexpressible relief that his eyes were no longer illumined by their former baleful glare.

He put them on once more, and, placing a lamp between himself and the mirror, observed the result at some distance. The right lens was slightly concave, and threw rays as blinding as those of a searchlight, while the left, which was convex, blazed like some illuminated globe of distilled water in a chemist’s window!

After repeated experiments, he ascertained that — to himself at least — this disquieting phenomenon was apparent in the mirror only when a strong artificial light struck his spectacles at particular angles of refraction, which accounted for his failure to notice it by daylight, or even while dressing for dinner.

But he had no difficulty in understanding now why the cab-horses had shied that afternoon as his spectacles reflected all the glories of the sunset; why the Bellinghams’ dog had fled in dismay from the unearthly radiance of his eyes, and the Bellinghams themselves had been so susceptible to their mesmeric influence; or why, in short, throughout that fearful evening he had been innocently producing the effect of a human basilisk or a Medusa head!

He felt he could not go about doing that any more — it made him altogether too remarkable.

And so, in another instant he had torn those costly but perifidious spectacles from his ears, and ground the glasses to splinters under his heel.…

Since that day he has not had the courage to try any others — but he is rewarded for his sacrifice by the knowledge that he can now permit his eyes to rest on both the Miss Bellinghams without reducing them to a cataleptic condition. The only drawback is that he is as unable as ever to distinguish one from the other.

Which is possibly the reason why there has been no intimation, as yet, of his engagement to either.

A “FIRST NIGHT” SUPPER

SCENE — A Corridor in the Hotel Magnifique.

TIME — About 11.30 PM.

SYDNEY SHELCASTLE, a diffident young Dramatist whose first Comedy, “Facing the Music,” has been produced that evening at the Jollity Theatre, is discovered in the act of giving hat and coat to an attendant.

SYDNEY SHELCASTLE.  Er — Mr. Berkeley Carlton expects me. I believe he has a supper-party here?

ATTENDANT.  Quite correct, sir. Straight down the corridor and third door on the left.

SYD. SHEL.  (to himself). Almost wish I’d gone to the Jollity first. (As he reaches door of private supper-room) However, I shall soon know now!

[He pulls himself together and enters; the only persons in the room as yet are his host, BERKELEY CARLTON, the popular Actor-Manager; HORSLEY COLLARD, who plays the chief character-part in his piece; and SPRATT-WHALEY, the lessee of the Jollity. The first two greet his arrival with a heartiness which strikes him as overdone.

SYD. SHEL.  Well? Did it — did it go off all right?

BERKELEY CARLTON  (raising his eyebrows). “Did it go off all right?” Why — weren’t you in front?

SYD. SHEL.  (embarrassed). Well — ah — no. I didn’t feel quite equal to it. (Watching their faces) I hope it wasn’t—?

HORSLEY COLLARD  (with a glance at CARLTON which does not escape the Dramatist). Haven’t you heard anything?

SYD. SHEL.  Not a word. I — I haven’t met anybody who could tell me. I came straight here.

BERK. CARLT.  Been strollin’ up and down the Embankment to pass the time, eh?

SYD. SHEL.  No,-as a matter of fact I went to the Hippodrome.

BERK. CARLT.  Did you, though? What did you think of the show?

SYD. SHEL.  Capital! That is, I didn’t pay much attention to it — wondering all the time how Facing the Music was getting on.

BERK. CARLT.  Ah? Glad you gave us a thought now and then. I say, Horsley, know whether Angela Daventry means to turn up?

HORS. COLL.  Can’t say. She may be feeling too upset. Perhaps I’d better go and see where the others are. (To BERKELEY CARLTON, in a too audible undertone) I’ll leave you to break it to the poor chap while I’m gone.

[He goes out.

BERK. CARLT.  Well, Shelcastle, you seem to have spent a pleasant evenin’ anyhow. Always amusin’ beggars, elephants. And these plunge, don’t they? By the way, you don’t know Spratt-Whaley. (He introduces them.) He’s just been tellin’ us all about his new motorcar.

[The unhappy Playwright strives to affect an interest in automobiles, while wishing that CARLTON would not be so confoundedly tactful — until HORSLEY COLLARD returns with the other invited members of the Company, who are obviously putting considerable restraint on themselves.

MISS ANGELA DAVENTRY  (the extremely charming and sympathetic actress who impersonates S.’s heroine). Good evening, Mr. Shelcastle. I hear you didn’t patronise our poor little efforts tonight. Oh, we quite understood. And we all think it so wise of you. (She approaches the fireplace.) Br-r-r! Isn’t it cold! I’m sure there’s a frost tonight!

MISS DAISY ARCHBUTT  (engaged for the light comedy part). Oh, my dear! For goodness’ sake don’t mention frosts! Before poor dear Mr. Shelcastle, too!

HAWLEY BRAY  (whose forte is Society idiots). I say, you know. Now you have done it! If you hadn’t said that, Mr. Shelcastle wouldn’t have been any the wiser — he wasn’t there.

MRS. CHESTERFIELD MANNERS  (the Dowager in S.’s play). I’m afraid it must have been an effort for you to give us the pleasure of seeing you at all this evening, Mr. Shelcastle — under the circumstances!

SYD. SHEL.  Well, you see, Mrs. Manners, when I came here I hadn’t heard — in fact, I don’t know anything definite even now — though I — I gather—

HORSLEY COLLARD  (compassionately). Now, my dear old chap, do take a tip from me. Don’t you spoil your supper by trying to gather any more. Be jolly while you may!

ANGELA DAV.  But you will spoil his supper. It isn’t fair to keep him in suspense like this!

BERK. CARLT.  Don’t fuss, dear, You leave it to us. He’ll find out quite soon enough — and now let’s have supper.

[They sit down.

SYD. SHEL.  (who is seated next to DAISY ARCHBUTT). You might just tell me this, Miss Archbutt — was there was there much of a row?

DAISY  (with a giggle). I — I really shouldn’t like to say, Mr. Shelcastle. But in the last act you might have fancied you were in churchso much coughing, you know!

[HAWLEY BRAY guffaws suddenly.

SYD. SHEL.  I was always afraid of that last act. But — it didn’t all drag, eh?

HORS. COLL.  Not while I was on, old man. I took care of that. I hate gagging as a general rule — inartistic, I call it. But I simply had to bring in a wheeze now and then — just to keep the gallery quiet.

SYD. SHEL.  (with a pale smile). I can quite imagine it — ah — would have that effect. Still, if you don’t mind, Collard, I must ask you to stick to the original lines, for the future.

HORS. COLL.  Certainly, dear boy. It will be quite a relief not to have to be funny!

ANGELA  (indignantly). Horsley! How can you?

BERK. CARLT.  Ah, well — there’s this to be said: a first-night house isn’t like any other.

HORS. COLL.  Fuller, for one thing!

BERK. CARLT.  You can always paper. And I don’t despair of seeing the piece catch on yet, Shelcastle, if we can only see our way between us to cutting, say, about a third of each act.

[Another guffaw from HAWLEY BRAY.

SYD. SHEL.  You may do what you like with it, Carlton — but I’m hanged if I touch the beastly thing again!

ANGELA  (aside). Berkeley! Do stop it! Only look at his face, poor little thing!

BERK. CARLT.  (aside to her). Nonsense, dear, he’s all right! (Aloud) Well, it must take its chance as it is, then. After all, it might have had a worse reception. If they did boo a bit, they didn’t mean it ill-naturedly. Anythin’ amusin’ you, Hawley?

HAWLEY BRAY  (who has guffawed again). No — nothing particular. I — I was only thinking of that chap in the gallery.

BERK. CARLT.  Oh, ah, the beggar in the brown bowler. He was rather nasty at times. I’d have had him chucked, only the gallery all seemed to be with him. Still, I distinctly saw some of the stalls applaudin’ when it was all over.

SPRATT-WHALEY.  What will the critics say tomorrow, my boy, that’s the question!

BERK. CARLT.  We shall know before we’re much older. Old Bill Burleigh can’t say much, anyhow, for he bolted in the middle of the second act. But Jack Hall came round afterwards and said there could only be one opinion about the piece. Didn’t like to ask him what.

MISS DAV.  (impulsively). Haven’t you rubbed it in quite enough? Mr. Shelcastle, you mustn’t mind them!

BERK. CARLT.  My dear child, he don’t. It’s nothing to him. Why, he didn’t even care enough to come and see us. Preferred the performin’ elephants!

MRS. CHEST. MAN.  And I’ve no doubt he found them far more graceful and accomplished comedians.

SYD. SHEL.  I — I assure you you’re mistaken. I wasn’t indifferent. I knew I couldn’t have a better cast and that you’d all do your very best for me. It was the piece that was all wrong. I saw that at the last dress rehearsal. And — well, I’m afraid I funked the first night. I’m awfully sorry it’s come to grief — for your sakes as well as my own. I suppose I ought to have known I couldn’t write a play. (He rises.) And now I must ask you to excuse me. I — I’ve got to go home and pack.… I’m going away early tomorrow, for — for a little holiday. I may be away some years.

[Reaction, followed by general applause.

ANGELA.  Now, I will speak! Dear Mr. Shelcastle, don’t you see? We’ve been taking you in all this time. Oh, I know it was perfectly piggish of us. Only we did think you might have been there, you know!

SYD. SHEL.  I — don’t understand. You don’t mean that the piece wasn’t such an absolute failure after all?

BERK. CARLT.  Considerin’ we were all called five times after every act, and I had to make a speech and explain that the author was not in the house at the end, I shouldn’t describe it myself as a howling frost precisely.

DAISY.  Why, they simply roared all through! I was only chipping you about the coughing.

HAWLEY BRAY.  And that Johnnie in the brown bowler — all spoof, you know. Jove! I nearly gave the show away by smiling like a silly ass once or twice!

HORS. COLL.  I’d no need to gag, my boy. Got my laughs all right without that!

BERK. CARLT.  And I don’t think there’ll be much to alter tomorrow. Every scene seemed to go.

SPRATT-WHALEY.  The box offices have come forward in style. We shall want three extra rows of stalls.

SYD. SHEL.  (sitting down heavily). Look here — you — you’re not pulling my leg again, are you?

ANGELA.  Indeed we’re not! And you must try to forgive us for doing it at all. Say you do!

SYD. SHEL.  (recovering). But there’s nothing to forgive. I knew all along that it couldn’t really have gone wrong.

BERK. CARLT.  Of course you did, old boy. Pity you’ve got to go home and pack, though. How many years did you say you would be away?

SYD. SHEL.  (rising and going towards him). You didn’t think I meant it, did you? When I’ve got an idea for a new comedy which would — I say, I should like most awfully to tell you about it.

BERK. CARLT.  (pressing him back into his chair). Now just you try and manage a little food first, old fellow. You haven’t had a mouthful yet. You’ve lots of time to write me a new comedy — we shan’t be wanting it for another eight months at least!

[SYDNEY SHELCASTLE sits down and makes the discovery that he was hungrier than he imagined

THE ADVENTURE
OF THE SNOWING GLOBE

Before beginning to relate an experience which, I am fully aware, will seem to many so singular as to be almost, if not quite, incredible, it is perhaps as well to state that I am a solicitor of several years’ standing, and that I do not regard myself — nor, to the best of my knowledge and belief, have I ever been regarded — as a person in whom the imaginative faculty is at all unduly prominent.

It was in Christmas week of last year. I was walking home from my office in New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, as my habit is — except on occasions when the state of the weather renders such open-air exercise too imprudent — and on my way I went into a toyshop, with a view to purchasing some seasonable present for a sinall godchild of mine.

As was only to be expected at that time of year, the shop was crowded with customers, and I had to wait until one of the assistants should be at liberty. While waiting, my attention was attracted to a toy on the counter before me.

It was a glass globe, about the size of a moderately large orange.

Inside it was representation of what appeared to be the façade of a castle, before which stood a figure holding by a thread a small pear-shaped airball striped red and blue. The globe was full of water containing a white sediment in solution, which, when agitated, produced the effect of a miniature snowstorm.

I cannot account for such a childish proceeding, except by the circumstance that I had nothing better to occupy me at the moment, but I employed myself in shaking the globe and watching the tiny snowflakes circulating in the fluid, till I became so engrossed as to be altogether oblivious of my surroundings. So that I was not particularly surprised when I found, as I presently did, that the flakes were falling and melting on my coat-sleeve. Before me was a heavy gateway belonging to a grim, castellated edifice, which I thought at first must be Holloway Gaol, though how I could have wandered so far out of my way was more than I could understand.

But on looking round I saw no signs of any suburban residences, and recognised that I had somehow strayed into a locality with which I was totally unacquainted, but which was evidently considerably beyond the Metropolitan radius. It seemed to me that my best plan would be to knock at the gate and ask the lodge-keeper where I was and my way to the nearest railway-station; but before I could carry out my intention a wicket in one of the gates was cautiously opened by a person of ancient and venerable appearance. He did not look like an ordinary porter, but was in a peculiar livery, which I took to be a seneschal’s — not that I have ever seen a seneschal, but that was my impression of him. Whoever he was, he appeared distinctly pleased to see me. “You are right welcome, fair sir!” he said, in a high, cracked voice. “Well knew I that my hapless lady would not lack a protector in her sad plight, though she had well-nigh abandoned all hope of your coming!”

I explained that I had not called by appointment, but was simply a stranger who found himself in the neighbourhood by the merest chance.

“’Tis no matter,” he replied, in his old-fashioned diction, “seeing that you have come, for truly, sir, she is in sore need of any one who is ready to undertake her cause!” I said that I happened to be a member of the legal profession, and that if, as I gathered, his mistress was in any difficulty in which she desired my assistance, I was quite prepared to advise her to the best of my ability, and to act for her, should her case be one which, in my opinion, required it.

“That does it, indeed!” he said; “but I pray you stand no longer parleying without, which, since I perceive you are but ill-protected at present,” he added fussily, “may be fraught with unnecessary danger. Come within without further delay!”

I did not think there was any real risk of catching cold, but I did wonder why it had not occurred to me to put up my umbrella, until I discovered that my right hand was alreadly engaged in holding a cord to which was attached a gaudily-coloured balloon that floated above my head. This was so unsuitable an appendage to any solicitor, especially to one about to offer his services in an affair which was apparently serious, that I was somewhat disconcerted for the moment. But I soon recollected having gone into a toyshop some time previously, and concluded that I must have purchased this air-ball as a present for my godchild.

I was about to explain this to the old man, when he pulled me suddenly through the wicket-gate, shutting the door so sharply that it snapped the string of the balloon. I saw it soaring up on the other side of the wall till a whirl of snow hid it from my sight.

“Trouble not for its loss,” said the seneschal; “it has fulfilled its purpose in bringing you to our gates.”

If he really supposed that anybody was at all likely to adopt so eccentric a means of conveyance, he must, I thought, be in his dotage, and I began to have a misgiving that, by accepting his invitation to step in, I might have placed myself in a false position.

However, I had gone too far to retract now, so I allowed him to conduct me to his mistress. He took me across a vast court. yard to a side entrance, and then up a winding stair, along deserted corridors, and through empty ante-chambers, until we came into a great hall, poorly lighted from above, and hung with dim tapestries. There he left me, saying that he would inform his mistress of my arrival.

I had not long to wait before she entered by an opposite archway,

I regret my inability — owing partly to the indifferent manner in which the apartment was lit — to describe her with anything like precision. She was quite young — not much, I should be inclined to say, over eighteen; she was richly but fantastically dressed in some shimmering kind of robe, and her long hair was let down and flowing loose about her shoulders, which (although I am bound to say that the effect, in her case, was not unbecoming) always has, to my mind at least, a certain air of untidiness in a grown-up person, and almost made me doubt for moment whether she was quite in her right senses.

But, while she was evidently in a highly emotional state, I could detect nothing in her manner or speech that indicated any actual mental aberration. Her personal appearance, too, was distinctly pleasing, and altogether I cannot remember ever to have felt so interested at first sight in any female client.

“Tell me,” she cried, “is it really true? Have you indeed come to my deliverance?”

“My dear young lady,” I said, perceiving that any apology for what I had feared must seem a highly irregular intrusion necessary, “I have been given to understand that you have some occasion for my services, and if that is correct I can only say that they are entirely at your disposal. Just try to compose yourself and tell me, as clearly and concisely as you can, the material facts of your case.”

“Alas! sir,” she said, wringing her hands, which I remember noticing were of quite remarkable beauty, “I the unhappiest Princess in the whole world.”

I trust I am as free from snobbishness as most people, but I admit to feeling some gratification in the fact that I was honoured by the confidence of a lady of so exalted a rank.

“I am extremely sorry to hear it, ma’am,” I said, recollecting that that was the proper way to address a Princess. “But I am afraid,” I added, as I prepared to take her instructions, “that I can be but of little assistance to you unless you can bring yourself to furnish me with somewhat fuller particulars.”

“Surely,” she said, “you cannot be ignorant that I am in the power of a wicked and tyrannous uncle?”

I might have explained that I was far too busy a man to have leisure to keep up with the latest Court scandals, but I refrained.

“I may take it, then,” I said, “that you are an orphan, and that the relative you refer to is your sole guardian?”

She implied by a gesture that both these inferences were correct. “He has shut me up a close prisoner in this gloomy place,” she declared, “and deprived me of all my attendants one by one, save the aged but faithful retainer whom you have beheld.”

I replied, of course, that this was an unwarrantable abuse of his authority, and inquired whether she could assign any motive for such a proceeding on his part.

“He is determined that I shall marry his son,” she explained, “whom I detest with an unutterable loathing!”

“Possibly,” I ventured to hint, “there is some one else who—”

“There is none,” she said, “since I have never been permitted to look upon any other suitor, and here I am held in durance until I consent to this hated union — and I will die sooner! But you will save me from so terrible a fate! For what else are you here?”

“I should be incompetent indeed, ma’am,” I assured her, “if I could not see a way out of what is really a very ordinary predicament. By attempting to force you into a marriage against your will your guardian has obviously shown himself a totally unfit person to have you in his custody. You have the law entirely on your side.” “Unfit is he, truly!” she agreed.

“But I care not who else is on my side, so long as you will be my champion. Only, how will you achieve my rescue?”

“Under all the circumstances,” I told her, “I think our best course would be to apply for a habeas corpus. You will then be brought up to the Courts of Justice, and the judge could make any order he thought advisable. In all probability he would remove your uncle from his position and have you made a ward of court.”

There is always a difficulty in getting ladies to understand even the simplest details of legal procedure, and my Princess was exception to the rule. She did not seem in the least to realise the power which every court possesses of enforcing its own decrees.

“Sir, you forget,” she said, “that my uncle, who has great renown in these parts as a sorcerer and magician, will assuredly laugh any such order to scorn.”

“In that case, ma’am,” said I, “he will render himself liable for contempt of court. Besides, should his local reputation answer your description, we have another hold on him. If we can only prove that he has been using any subtle craft, means, or device to impose on any of his Majesty’s subjects, he could be prosecuted under the Vagrancy Act of 1824 as a rogue and a vagabond. He might get as much as six months for it!”

“Ah, sir,” she cried — rather peevishly, I thought — “we do but waste precious time in idle talk such as this, of which I comprehend scarce a word! And the hour is nigh when I must meet my uncle face to face, and should I still refuse to obey his will, his wrath will be dire indeed!”

“All you have to do is to refer him to me,” I said. “I think I shall be able, in the course of a personal interview, to bring him to take a more reasonable view of his position. If you are expecting him shortly, perhaps I had better remain here till he arrives?”

“Happily for us both,” she replied, “he is still many leagues distant from here! Can you not see that, if my rescue is to be accomplished at all, it must be ere his return, or else am I all undone? Is it possible that, after coming thus far, you can tarry here doing naught?”

I took a little time for reflection before answering “After careful consideration,” I said at last, “I have come to the conclusion that, as you are evidently under grave apprehension of some personal violence from your uncle in the event of his finding you on the premises, I should be fully justified in dispensing with the usual formalities and removing you from his custody at once. At all events, I will take that responsibility on myself — whatever risk I may incur.”

“I crave your pardon for my seeming petulance,” she said, with a pretty humility. “I should have known right well that I might safely rely on the protection of so gallant and fearless a knight!”

“You will understand, I am sure, ma’am,” I said, “that I cannot, as a bachelor, offer you shelter under my own roof. What 1 propose (subject, of course, to your approval) is that I should place you under the care of an old aunt of mine at Croydon until some other arrangement can be made. I presume it will not take you long to make your preparations for the journey?”

“What need of preparation?” she cried. “Let us delay no longer, but fly this instant!”

“I should recommend you to take at least a dressing-bag,” I said; “you will have time to pack all you may require while your retainer is fetching us a fly. Then I know of nothing to hinder us from leaving at once.”

“Nothing?” she exclaimed. “Do you dread a dragon so little, then, that you can speak thus lightly?”

I could not help smiling; it was so surprising to find a Princess of her age who still retained a belief in fairytales. “I think, ma’am,” I said, “that at this time of day a dragon is not an obstacle which we need take into serious consideration. You have evidently not been informed that such a monster has long since ceased to exist. In other words, it is undoubtedly extinct.”

“And you have slain it!” she cried, and her eyes blazed with admiration.

“I might have guessed as much! It is slain — and now even my uncle has no longer power to detain me here! For many a long month I have not dared to look from out my casements, but now I may behold the light of day more without shrinking!” She drew back some hangings as she spoke, disclosing a large oriel window, and the next moment she cowered away with a cry of abject terror.

“Why have you deceived me?” she demanded, with indignant reproach. “It is not extinct. It is still there. Look for yourself!”

I did look; the window commanded the rear of the castle, which I had not hitherto seen, and now I saw something else so utterly unexpected that I could hardly trust the evidence of my own eyesight.

Towering above the battlemented outer wall I saw a huge horny head, poised upon a long and flexible neck, and oscillating slowly from side to side with a sinister vigilance. Although the rest of the brute was hidden by the wall, I saw quite enough to convince me that it could not well be anything else than a dragon — and a formidable one at that. I thought I understood now why the seneschal had been so anxious to get me inside, though I wished he had been rather more explicit.

I stood there staring at it — but I made no remark. To tell the truth, I did not feel equal to one just then.

The Princess spoke first. “You seem astonished, sir,” she said “yet you can hardly have been in ignorance that my uncle has set this ferocious monster to guard these walls, and devour me should I strive to make my escape.”

“I can only say, ma’am,” I replied, “that this is the first intimation I have had of the fact.”

“Still, you are wise and strong,” she said. “You will surely devise some means whereby to rid me of this baleful thing!”

“If you will permit me to draw the curtain again,” I said, “I will endeavour to think of something.… Am I right in assuming that the brute is the property of your uncle?” She replied that that was so. “Then I think I see a way,” I said. “Your uncle could be summoned for allowing such a dangerous animal to be at large, since it is clearly not under proper control. And if an application were made to a magistrate, under the Act of 1871, he might be ordered to destroy it at once.”

“You little know my uncle,” she said, with a touch of scorn, “if you deem that he would destroy his sole remaining dragon at the bidding of any person whatever!”

“He will incur a penalty of twenty shillings a day till he does,” I replied. “In any case, I can promise you that, if I can only manage to get out of this place, you shall not be exposed to this annoyance very much longer.”

“You will?” she cried. “Are you quite sure that you will succeed?”

“Practically I am,” I said. “I shall apply — always supposing I can get home safely the first thing tomorrow morning, and, if I can only convince the Bench that the terms of the Act are wide enough to include not only dogs, but any other unmanageable quadrupeds, why, the thing is as good as done!”

“Tomorrow! tomorrow!” she repeated impatiently. “Must I tell you once more that this is no time to delay? Indeed, sir, if I am to be rescued at all, your hand alone can deliver me from this loathly worm!”

I confess I considered she was taking an altogether extravagant view of the relations between solicitor and client.

“If,” I said, “it could be described with any accuracy as a worm, I should not feel the slightest hesitation about attacking it.”

“Then you will?” she said, entirely missing my point, as usual. “Tell me you will — for my sake!”

She looked so engaging whilst making this appeal that I really had not the heart to pain her by a direct refusal.

“There is nothing,” I said, “that is, nothing in reason, that I would not do cheerfully for your sake. But if you will only reflect, you will see at once that, in a tall hat and overcoat, and with absolutely no weapon but an umbrella, I should not stand the ghost of a chance against a dragon. I should be too hopelessly overmatched.”

“You say truth,” she replied, much to my satisfaction. “I could not desire any champion of mine to engage in so unequal a contest. So have no uneasiness on that score.”

On this she clapped her hands as a summons to the seneschal, who appeared so promptly that I fancy he could not have been very far from the keyhole. “This gallant gentleman,” she explained to him, “has undertaken to go forth and encounter the dragon without our walls, provided that he is fitly furnished for so deadly a fray.”

I tried to protest that she had placed a construction on my remarks which they were not intended to bear — but the old man was so voluble in thanks and blessings that I could not get in a single word.

“You will conduct him to the armoury,” the Princess continued, “and see him arrayed in harness meet for so knightly an endeavour. Sir,” she added to me, “words fail me at such an hour as this. I cannot even thank you as I would. But I know you will do your utmost on my behalf. Should you fall —”

She broke off here, being evidently unable to complete her sentence, but that was necessary. I knew what would happen if I fell.

“But fall you will not,” she resumed. “Something tells me that you will return to me victorious; and then and then should you demand any guerdon of me — yea” (and here she blushed divinely) “even to this hand of mine, it shall not be denied you.”

Never in the whole course of my professional career had I been placed in a position of greater difficulty. My common sense told me that it was perfectly preposterous on her part to expect such services as these from one who was merely acting as her legal adviser. Even if I performed them successfully — which was, to say the least of it, doubtful — my practice would probably be injuriously affected should my connection with such an affair become known. As for the special fee she had so generously suggested, that, of course, was out of the question. At my time of life marriage with a flighty young woman of eighteen — and a Princess into the bargain would be rather too hazardous an experiment.

And yet, whether it is that, middle-aged bachelor as I am, I have still a strain of unsuspected romance and chivalry in my nature, or for some other cause that I cannot explain, somehow I found myself kissing the little hand she extended to me, and going forth without another word to make as good a fight of it as I could for her against such an infernal beast as a dragon. I cannot say that I felt cheerful over it, but, anyhow, I went.

I followed the seneschal, who led me down by a different staircase from that I had come up, and through an enormous vaulted kitchen, untenanted by all but black-beetles, which were swarming. Merely for the sake of conversation, I made some remark on their numbers and pertinacity, and inquired why no steps had apparently been taken to abate so obvious a nuisance. “Alas! noble sir,” he replied, as he sadly shook his old white head, “’twas the scullions’ office to clear the place of these pests, and the last minion has long since vanished from our halls!”

I felt inclined to ask him where they had vanished to — but I did not. I thought the answer might prove discouraging. Even as it was, I would have given something for a whisky-and-soda just then — but he did not offer it, and I did not like to suggest it for fear of being misunderstood.

And presently we entered the armoury.

Only a limited number of suits were hanging on the walls, and all of them were in a deplorably rusty and decayed condition, but the seneschal took them down one by one, and made fumbling attempts to buckle and hook me into them. Most unfortunately, not a single suit proved what I should call workmanlike, for I defy any man to fight a dragon in armour which is too tight even to move about in with any approach to comfort.

“I’m afraid it’s no use,” I told the seneschal, as I reluctantly resumed my ordinary garments. “You can see for yourself that there’s nothing here that comes near my size!”

“But you cannot engage in combat with the dragon in your present habiliments!” he remonstrated. “That were stark madness!”

I was glad that the old man had sufficient sense to see that. “I am quite of your opinion,” I replied; “and believe me, my good old friend, nothing is farther from my thoughts. My idea is that if I do not ask you to expose yourself to any unnecessary risk — but if you could contrive to divert the dragon’s attention by a demonstration of some sort on one side of the castle, I might manage to slip quietly out of some door on the other.”

“Are you but a caitiff, then, after all,” he exclaimed, “that you can abandon so lovely a lady to certain doom?”

“There is no occasion for addressing me in offensive terms,” I replied. “I have no intention whatever of abandoning your mistress. You will be good enough to inform her that I shall return tomorrow without fail with a weapon that will settle this dragon’s business more effectually than any of your obsolete lances and battle-axes!”

For I had already decided on this as the only course that was now open to me. I had a friend who spent most of the year abroad in the pursuit of big game, but who chanced by good luck to be in town just then. He would, I knew, willingly lend me an express rifle and some expansive bullets, and, as an ex-volunteer and marksman, I felt that the odds would then be slightly in my favour, even if I could not, as I hoped I could, persuade my friend to join me in the expedition.

But the seneschal took a less sanguine view of my prospects.

“You forget, sir,” he remarked lugubriously, “that, in order to return hither, you must first quit the shelter of these walls — which, all unarmed as you are, would be but to court instant death!”

“I don’t quite see that,” I argued. “After all, as the dragon made no effort to prevent me from coming in, it is at least possible that it may not object to my going out.”

“For aught I can say,” he replied, “it may have no orders to hinder any from entrance. As to that I know naught. But of this I am very sure — it suffers no one to depart hence undevoured.”

“But could I not contrive to get out of its reach before it was aware that I had even started?” I suggested.

“I fear me, sir,” he said despondently, “that the creature would not fail to follow up your tracks ere the snow could cover them.”

“That had not occurred to me,” I said. “But now you mention it, it does not seem altogether unlikely. In your opinion, then, I should do better in remaining where I am?”

“Only until the enchanter return,” was his reply, “as, if I mistake not, he may do at any moment, after which your stay here will assuredly be but brief.”

“You can’t mean,” I said, “that he would have the inhumanity to turn me out to be devoured by his beastly dragon? For that is what it would come to.”

“Unless, perchance, by dint of strength or cunning you were to overcome the monster,” he said. “And methought you had hither with that very intent.”

“My good man,” I replied, “I’ve no idea why or how I came here, but it was certainly with no desire or expectation of meeting a dragon. However, I begin to see very clearly that if I can’t find some way of putting an end to the brute — and promptly, too — he will make an end of me. The question is, how the deuce am I to set about it?”

And then, all at once, I had an inspiration. I recollected the black-beetles, and something the seneschal had said about its being the scullions’ duty to keep them down. I asked him what methods they had employed for this purpose, but, such humble details being naturally outside his province, he was unable to inform me. So I returned to the kitchen, where I began a careful search, not without some hope of success.

For a while I searched in vain, but at last, just when I had begun to despair, I found on a dusty shelf in the buttery the identical thing I had been looking for.

It was an earthen vessel containing a paste, which, in spite of the fungoid growth that had collected on its surface, I instantly recognised as a composition warranted to prove fatal to every description of vermin.

I called to the seneschal and asked if he could oblige me with a loaf of white bread, which he brought in evident bewilderment. I cut a slice from the middle and was proceeding to spread the paste thickly upon it when he grasped my arm. “Hold!” he cried. “Would you rashly seek your death ere it is due?”

“You need not be alarmed,” I told him; “this is not for myself. And now will you kindly show me a way out to some part of the roof where I can have access to the dragon?”

Trembling from head to foot he indicated a turret-stair, up which, however, he did not offer to accompany me; it brought me out on the leads of what appeared to be a kind of bastion. I crept cautiously to the parapet and peeped over it, and then for the first time I had a full view of the brute, which was crouching immediately below me. I know how prone the most accurate are to exaggeration in matters of this kind, but, after making every allowance for my excited condition at the time, I do not think I am far out in estimating that the dimensions of the beast could not have been much, if at all, less than those of the “Diplodocus Carnegii,” a model of which is exhibited at the Natural History Museum, while its appearance was infinitely more terrific. I do not mind admitting frankly that the sight so unmanned me for the moment that I was seized with an almost irresistible impulse to retire by the way I had come before the creature had observed me. And yet it was not without a certain beauty of its own; I should say, indeed, that it was rather an unusually handsome specimen of its class, and I was especially struck by the magnificent colouring of its scales, which surpassed that of even the largest pythons. Still, to an unaccustomed eye there must always be something about a dragon that inspires more horror than admiration, and I was in no mood just then to enjoy the spectacle. It was hunched up together, with its head laid back, like a fowl’s, between its wings, and seemed to be enjoying a short nap. I suppose I must unconsciously have given some sign of my presence, for suddenly I saw the horny films roll back like shutters from its lidless eyes, which it fixed on me with a cold glare of curiosity.

And then it shambled on to its feet, and slowly elongated its neck till it brought its horrible head on a level with the battlements. I need not say that on this I promptly retreated to a spot where I judged I should be out of immediate danger. But I had sufficient presence of mind to remember the purpose for which I was there, and, fixing the prepared slice on the ferrule of my umbrella, I extended it as far as my arm would reach in the creature’s direction.

I fancy it had not been fed very lately. The head made a lightning dart across the parapet, and a voracious snap — and the next moment both bread and umbrella had disappeared down its great red gullet.

The head was then withdrawn. I could hear a hideous champing sound, as of the ribs of the umbrella being slowly crunched. After that came silence.

Again I crawled to the parapet and looked down. The huge brute was licking its plated jaws with apparent gusto, as though, which was likely enough — an umbrella came as an unaccustomed snack to its jaded palate. It was peacefully engaged now in digesting this hors d’oeuvre.

But my heart only sank the lower at the sight. For if an alpaca umbrella with an ebony handle could be so easily assimilated, what possible chance was there that beetle-paste would produce any deleterious effect? I had been a fool to place the faintest hope on so desperate a hazard. Presently he would be coming for more — and I had nothing for him!

But by-and-by, as I gazed in a sort of fascinated repulsion, I fancied I detected some slight symptoms of uneasiness in the reptile’s demeanour.

It was almost nothing at first — a restless twitch at times, and a squint in its stony eyes that I had not previously noticed — but it gave me a gleam of hope. Presently I saw the great crest along its spine slowly begin to erect itself, and the filaments that fringed its jaws bristling, as it proceeded to deal a succession of vicious pecks at its distended olive-green paunch, which it evidently regarded as responsible for the disturbance.

Little as I knew about dragons, a child could have seen that this one was feeling somewhat seriously indisposed. Only — was it due to the umbrella or the vermin-killer? As to that I could only attempt to speculate, and my fate — and the Princess’s, too_hung upon which was the correct diagnosis!

However, I was not kept long in suspense.

Suddenly the beast uttered a kind of bellowing roar — the most appalling sound I think I ever heard — and after that I scarcely know what happened exactly.

I fancy it had some kind of fit. It writhed and rolled over and over, thrashing the air with its big leathery wings, and tangling itself up to a degree that, unless I had seen it, I should have thought impossible, even for a dragon.

After this had gone on for some time, it untied itself and seemed calmer again, till all at once it curved into an immense arch, and remained perfectly rigid with wings outspread for nearly half a minute. Then it suddenly collapsed on its side, panting, snorting, and quivering like some monstrous automobile, after which it stretched itself out to its full length once or twice, and then lay stiff and still. Its gorgeous hues gradually faded into a dull, leaden-grey tint.… All was over — the vermin-destroyer had done its work after all.

I cannot say that I was much elated. I am not sure that I did not even feel a pang of self-reproach. I had slain the dragon, it was true, but by a method which I could not think would have commended itself to St. George as entirely sportsmanlike, even though the circumstances left me no other alternative.

However, I had saved the Princess, which, after all, was the main point, and there was no actual necessity for her to know more than the bare fact that the dragon was dead.

I was just about to go down and inform her that she was now free to leave the castle, when I heard a whirring noise in the air, and, glancing back, I saw, flying towards me through the still falling snow, an elderly gentleman of forbidding aspect, who was evidently in a highly exasperated state. It was the Princess’s uncle.

I don’t know how it was, but till that moment I had never realised the extremely unprofessional proceeding into which I had been betrayed by my own impulsiveness. But I saw now, though too late, that, in taking the law into my own hands and administering a poisonous drug to an animal which, however furious it might be, was still the property of another, I had been guilty of conduct unworthy of any respectable solicitor.

It was undoubtedly an actionable tort, if not a trespass — while he might even treat it as a criminal offence.

So, as the magician landed on the roof, his face distorted with fury, I felt that nothing would meet the case but the most ample apology. But, feeling that it was better to allow the first remark to come from him, I merely raised my hat and waited to hear what he had to say…

“Are you being attended to, sir?” was the remark that actually came — and both words and tone were so different from what I had expected that I could not repress a start.

And then, to my utter astonishment, I discovered that battlements and magician had all disappeared. I was back again in the toyshop, staring into the glass globe, in which the snow was still languidly circling.

“Like to take one of these shilling snowstorms, sir?” continued the assistant, who seemed to be addressing me; “we’re selling a great quantity of them just now. Very suitable and acceptable present for a child, sir, and only a shilling in that size, though we have them larger in stock.”

I bought the globe I had first taken up — but I have not given it to my godchild. I preferred to keep it myself.

Of course, my adventure may have been merely a kind of daydream; though, if so, it is rather odd that it should have taken that form, when, even at night, my dreams — on the rare occasions when I do dream — never turn upon such subjects as castles, princesses, or dragons.

A scientific friend, to whom I related the experience, pronounces it to be an ordinary case of auto-hypnotism, induced by staring into a crystal globe for a prolonged period.

But I don’t know. I cannot help thinking that there is something more in it than that.

I still gaze into the globe at times, when I am alone of an evening; but while I have occasionally found myself back in the snowstorm again, I have never, so far, succeeded in getting into the castle.

Perhaps it is as well; for, although I should not at all object to see something more of the Princess, she has most probably, thanks to my instrumentality, long since left the premises, and I cannot say that I have any particular desire to meet the magician.