Midsummer Madness
Date: 1908-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Adventure; Supernatural Fiction; Mystery; Romance
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

MIDSUMMER
MADNESS

MORLEY ROBERTS

MobileRead Edition
2023

A collection of nine stories: some touched by humor and some dipped in the macabre, with quite a lot of adventure along the way. Clever and entertaining tales.

Morley Roberts (29 December 1857 – 8 June 1942) was an English novelist and writer. He wrote essays, biography, drama and verse, and is perhaps best known for The Private Life of Henry Maitland, based on the life of novelist George Gissing.

Originally published in 1909, This book is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

CONTENTS:

- The Mad Hatter
- The Fog
- The Sud Express
- The Blood Fetish
- The Closed Chamber
- The Man with the Nose
- A Thing of Wax
- Tritt
- Out of the Great Silence

THE MAD HATTER

“If I had only had an adventure of my own, I’d write it,” said the editor of the Piccadilly magazine gloomily.

“Well, it couldn’t be worse than these,” replied Mivart, the assistant editor, meaning to be polite. But Pegram, his chief, snorted and went on with his loathsome work. They were late in the office, and besides themselves there was no one in the building but O’Flanagan the porter, and his wife. Outside the rain pattered, and the rising wind howled almost as lugubriously as the Piccadilly’s office Tom, who courted the official cat of the Cambrian upon the leads. The atmosphere inside was thick, and not the less so because Pegram, who rarely used unorthodox language till making-up day, was hunting through a pile of stories, sent to him by an agent, for one good enough to make a feature of in the summer number. Mivart, seated in the next room, was engaged on a batch contributed singly by such as may come from Peckham but will never reach Parnassus, and have not even reached so near it as to inspire any agent with the hope of ten per cent. Sometimes Pegram said “Pish,” as he threw a manuscript upon the floor, and occasionally Mivart muttered “Tosh,” as he did the same.

“I’m getting desperate,” said Mivart, through the open door.

“I am desperate now,” retorted Pegram.

“There’s no spelling in half my lot,” said Mivart.

“There’s nothing but spelling in mine,” said Pegram. “Are all the lively writers paralysed, or have they retired on their ill-gotten gains? All I want is a yarn with some go in it, some characters remotely human, and writing which suggests that the author has at least seen a real man of letters once in his life.”

“You want a precious lot,” grumbled Mivart. “You’ll never get all three at once.”

“I must,” said Pegram, “and I will.”

“I wish I could write,” murmured Mivart, as he slung another story on his pile.

“I wish to heaven you could,” said Pegram bitterly, perhaps‘ too bitterly, for Mivart retorted—

“Well, you can’t either.”

“I can,” said Pegram, as he lighted a cigarette; “I’m sure I can. But I’ve had no experience. Never had an adventure in my life. For two pins I’d sling the Piccadilly and go to Texas. But don’t talk. I’ve got ten more ditches to wade through.”

“I’ve got twenty,” said Mivart, “and I’ll bet my boots there’s nothing but ditchwater in the lot.”

“Well,” said Pegram, striking the desk with the palm of his hand, “I’d give anything in reason, or out of reason, for a real good rattling adventure story with something, I don’t care what, that was fresh in it.”

“You would, would you?” said a loud voice behind him; “then why the devil did you reject ‘How I escaped from Hanwell’?”

The door clicked as the stranger spoke, and Pegram, turning round in a marvellous hurry, saw a very tall thin man lock the door and put the key in his pocket.

“Who — why — what?” said the editor fiercely, but before he could say anything else, and before Mivart understood what had happened, the intruder jumped at Pegram and fell with him across the desk. Forty manuscripts and typescripts fell upon the floor, the inkpot followed them, and Pegram, with his new acquaintance, did the same. For the desk promptly went to pieces, and Pegram found himself almost in the fireplace, with the long man grabbing his throat.

“I’ll teach you to reject a thing like that,” said the stranger, in a horrid scream.

“Help, Mivart, help,” roared Pegram while he could still speak, and Mivart, coming to his senses, ran in armed with a ruler.

“I’ll kill the pair of you,” said the stranger. He gave Pegram’s throat a very disagreeable squeeze, bounded to his feet, grabbed Mivart by the collar and hurled him across the editor. He seemed as strong as the most disagreeable novel of the year, and few things were stronger than that. His eyes bolted from his head, and were most unpleasant to see within six inches of one’s own, as Pegram felt. For some thirty seconds after Mivart landed across his chief and the stranger fell upon the pair of them, there was a remarkable blind skirmish. No one could see anything on account of the ancient dust which filled the whole room. Not even a mathematician and bacteriologist in one could have estimated the pathogenic germs to the cubic centimetre of space, but the meanest intelligence among the unlearned would have came to the conclusion that there was trouble in the office of an unusual nature. For Mivart was not weak, and Pegram, having recovered from his surprise and filled his lungs, was really very strong. The two editors got to their feet, grabbed each other and the intruder and waltzed, without music, but to the accompaniment of highly unpoetic words, three times round the room. Another desk was smashed; a large table, loaded with papers, which was weak in its legs, gave way with a bang; someone put his elbow through a window; and someone else knocked away the supports of some pigeon holes. Mivart got a severe blow in the eye which made him very angry, and he hit out blindly — which was natural, as he could not see — and nearly knocked Pegram over. Pegram, who was very cross by now, though he had remarkable self-control when dealing with printers and even with poets, let go and banged Mivart’s head against the head of the writer of “How I escaped from Hanwell.” Then, as luck and the dust would have it, the new writer struck Mivart just as Mivart struck Pegram, which was exactly at the same moment that Pegram got in a real beauty on the new contributor.

The result of this was that they all landed in different parts of the room, Mivart being close to the bell. Though he had not kept his legs he still kept his head and rang the bell, hoping to bring up O’Flanagan, who had a reputation as a fighter, of which Mrs. O’Flanagan was very proud, seeing that it helped her to speak the truth to her neighbours. But the interval for refreshment was short. It seemed as if nothing could destroy the new man’s energy. Though his head had gone through a cupboard, he rose with a yell and unabated ardour as O’Flanagan came bounding upstairs. It was not so much the bell as a piece of window glass which had fallen on him as he held up the outside wall, that brought him so quickly.

“Phwat is ut?” roared O’Flanagan, when he found the door locked. “Oh, phwat is ut?”

“Burst the door in,” shrieked Mivart, as he hurled the ink-pot at the advancing foe. “There’s a madman here!”

Mivart thought later this was no inducement for an ordinary man to interfere in the proceedings; but then O’Flanagan was Irish. He hurled himself against the door just as the ink-pot, having missed its mark, went through the window, while Mivart dodged a blow from a table leg with which the madman was armed. Pegram, now remembering that in his unadventurous life he had yet essayed the adventures of football, tackled the man low down, and they all went over with a crash that loosened the plaster of the room beneath, just as O’Flanagan, on his second attempt, came through the door like a mad bull through a gate. He was met by the unexhausted and inexhaustible stranger, who was once more on his feet, and having been caught by his extended wrist and the slack of his jacket, went with a crash on the top of Mivart and the editor. The interloper calmed down when he had done this, and, walking to the door, stood there. He spoke, and they listened to the following remarkable pronouncement—

“One I despise,” said he, “two I can manage easily, but three might not unreasonably be too many. Nevertheless, do not think you have done with me. I shall pursue you to the death, for I am a mad hatter.”

With which dark saying he turned, leapt for the staircase and clattered downstairs. They heard him slam the street door with a crash that shook the whole building.

“Phwat wuz the reason of this riot, sorr?” asked O’Flanagan from his position on the floor.

“I don’t quite know,” replied Pegram, somewhat weakly, for he had not yet recovered from his last contact with the wall. He, too, still sat where he had been hurled.

“I say — what!” remarked Mivart. It was not an illuminating saying, yet the others found it adequate in a way. It emphasized by its very flabbiness the impossibility of clothing the situation in exact and wonderful words.

“I should think the man was mad,” said Pegram solemnly.

“He seemed so to me, sorr,” said O’Flanagan, rubbing his head.

“For the matter of that, he said he was,” said Mivart, “so we have it on good authority.”

“Did you, by any chanst, do anything to him, sorr?” asked O’Flanagan.

“I rejected something he wrote, or at least he said so,” replied Pegram.

“Thank hiven, they’re not all like that,” cried O’Flanagan fervently. “A fight’s a fight, and I don’t object to ut, and a riot is a riot, well in ut’s place, which is me native counthry, but a row with a lunatic isn’t to me taste. I’ve seen many o’ the great rejected since oi tuk me prisint job, but among thim all not one the likes o’ him. Some o’ thim that calls and goes aw’ay with a roll in their pockuts looks sad, and some as if they wuz sorry for th’ editor not knowin’ good stuff whin he saw ut, but to ut’ly wreck good old furniture like this and massacree us so shameful is past enjurance. What’s the polis doin’?”

No one volunteered to say. But they rose from the floor.

“I think we’ve done for tonight, O’Flanagan,” said Pegram soberly.

“By the looks o’ the room, me and my missis haven’t barely begun,” said O’Flanagan.

“I shall go home,” added Pegram. “I seem to want a rest. Mivart, you might look in at the police station and tell them about this.”

“I will,” said Mivart.

“Say a man from Hanwell did it.”

“Was he from Hanwell really?”

“Oh, look at the room,” said Pegram wearily. “Good-night.”

“Th’ editor seems shaken up a bit, sorr,” said O’Flanagan.

“Aren’t you?” asked Mivart.

“I’ve bin used to the likes of ut,” said O’Flanagan cheerily; “ut reminded me of th’ ould counthry, and it makes me deadly sick to be at a fair or a good lively wake.”

Pegram, on his way home, went to the bar of the nearest hotel and took something to steady his nerves.

“What is it all about?” asked the barmaid, who knew him.

“About — oh, about a story,” said Pegram, rather dully.

“The first storey?” asked the barmaid, who had some reputation for humour.

“I don’t understand,” replied Pegram.

“Well, you look as if you had fallen out of the fourth storey at the least,” said the barmaid.

“Good,” said the editor seriously, “but it was the twentieth, as a matter of fact. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

But tomorrow was yet to come. It was eleven when he reached his chambers in the Inn, and the rain was still falling heavily, while it blew the best half of a whole gale. He climbed to the third floor, sat down, filled a pipe and smoked till he came to himself. He felt his head and found some new developments there.

“It was a good fight,” he murmured. As an epicure of adventure stories he knew a good one when he came across it. “A devil of a time Mivart and I had. I never thought that an editor’s life could be so adventurous in England. I never had an adventure in my life till now. I’ll go to bed.” He stood up, knocked his pipe out, and looked about his room as if he had never seen it before. A real shake up such as he had had sometimes affects a man so. His eyes fell upon an old Moorish knife given him years ago by a war correspondent, and he saw new things in it. It perhaps had had adventures, had drunk blood. He touched it and nodded thoughtfully.

“I wish I’d had some real adventures,” he murmured. “But they must be confoundedly fatiguing.” ‘

He shook his head and went into the other room, entirely forgetting to sport his oak. The rejected one from Hanwell had evidently disorganized him. Nevertheless, he locked his bedroom door.

“I really want a rest,” said Pegram. “I’m evidently a little out of condition.”

His one form of athletics was swimming, and he swam very well indeed. But lately he had done nothing but edit, which is not a sport, as some think, but very hard work-.

“It was pretty nigh a knock-out,” said Pegram, as he tumbled into bed. “I want a rest.”

He was not to get it. Just as he fell asleep he woke up, as O’Flanagan might have said, and heard a noise which did not explain itself as any common noise of the night. At first he thought it was already morning and that his laundress had come. But at that very moment the clock outside struck one.

“What was it?” said Pegram, raising himself on his elbow. He heard steps in the other room and jumped out of bed much quicker than he had got in. His first impulse was to open the door, but his nerves had been shaken up too much to allow him to do that.

“I’m — I’m scared,” said Pegram angrily, for having had such little experience he could not distinguish between nervousness and natural cowardice.

“Who’s that?” he called out loudly.

“It’s I,” said someone.

“You?”

“The hatter! I’m on your track. I’ll teach you to reject work like mine with scorn. Wait till I’m ready, and I’ll cut your throat.”

“Cut what?” said Pegram, who did not hear the last words.

“Your throat, and deep. In fact, I’ll cut your head off,” said the hatter.

“I shall call the police if you do not go away immediately,” said Pegram, with considerable firmness considering the situation. No man can edit without firmness. It is impossible to publish everything one’s friends write. But editors are usually friendless and sad and lonely.

“Open your window and I’ll break the door in and cut your head off in the tenth of one tick of a chronometer,” said the hatter spiritedly.

“Look here,” suggested Pegram, for he felt diplomacy might yet save him; “what do you say if I undertake to publish that little thing of yours?”

“Too late.”

“At five pounds a thousand, say.”

“Not for fifty.”

“Look here,” said Pegram, “I’ll not only do that, but print an interview with you about hats and Hanwell. Have you any photographs of yourself in your youth?”

“Thanks. I don’t care about it. And I have no photographs. I prefer to cut your throat with this knife.”

“With what knife?” asked Pegram.

“One that hung on your wall. I’m now sharpening it on my boot,” replied the hatter. “It appears to be of Oriental make.”

Pegram, who by this had lighted the gas, looked about for a weapon; but the only thing available to meet the knife was his cracked water-jug. “Not good enough for a madman,” he said. “If I can’t escape, I’m done for.”

He turned to the window. It was a full forty-foot drop to the pavement below, and it seemed that he had no time to knot his bedclothes together and slip down that way. Then, in his desperation he recalled the fact that in his youth he had once climbed along a stable at home by the roof gutter. The one outside his window had only just been renewed.

“I might get upon the ledge of the window of the next room. It’s my only chance,” said Pegram dolorously.

He heard the hatter laugh very unpleasantly in the sitting-room.

“I dare say you wonder why I laugh,” said the hatter.

“Oh, not at all,” replied Pegram, fumbling delicately at the catch of his window.

“I thought I’d look about me to see if I could find something which spoke well of your character,” said the hatter; “but all I’ve come on is a bundle of slips saying that ‘the editor regrets he is unable to make use of the enclosed contribution.’ You’ll send no more of them.”

Pegram undid the catch and put up the window as softly as possible. But his rooms were ramshackle and his window was assuredly an ancient light. It creaked sadly, and as he got out he heard the hatter swear and throw his weight against the bedroom door. Crazy as it was, it was not so crazy as the hatter, and held for a moment. At his second attempt it gave way at the hasp and hinges, and the intruder fell headlong into the room. Pegram felt he was being hurried, but there was no help for it, and he laid hold of the gutter, hoping fervently that the plumbers — masters and men — had done honest work. He put his weight on it and was nearly three yards from the window when the hatter thrust his head out.

“All right,” said the hatter coolly. “That, I may remark, is one of the ways I escaped from Hanwell. You do not thus escape me.”

It was evident to Pegram that he had possibly misjudged this man’s work. The hatter had literary talent. He got out on the window ledge. Dark as it was, Pegram saw he had the knife in his hand, and more than ever regretted he had not accepted the escape from Hanwell. The hatter, before he grasped the gutter, put the back of the knife between his teeth. Then he laid hold of the guttering. It creaked horribly, and Pegram wished that part of the work had been done by a dishonest plumber. But though it creaked, it held, for Pegram was yards ahead and on another section.

Yet he was not so far ahead as to give him time to land on any other window ledge belonging to the Inn. He wished he knew who occupied the rooms. Some of them might have a revolver, which would be most useful. He determined to buy one if he lived. And still he swung himself along the gutter. The eaves of the old Inn ended against a newer house adjoining and overlooking his court. From its appearance it was probably let as flats and offices. The nearest window to the gutter had flowers outside. A broad ledge ran below it, which Pegram thought he could get on if he had luck and if his strength lasted. He now wished he had been brought up as an acrobat. Some men are never satisfied. “If I can’t get on that ledge I shall have to drop and chance it,” he said in desperation. There was no one passing below for him to fall on. And the hatter came along easily. He mumbled through his teeth as he swung.

“I’ve got you,” said the hatter, almost cheerfully.

Pegram said nothing. But the human mind works absurdly. He thought it ridiculous for the hatter to be bare headed. No doubt it was ridiculous; but it would have been equally ridiculous to see him there in a high hat.

Pegram came to the end of the gutter. There was no pipe by which a descent could be made, and the ledge he aimed at was about two feet from the level of the eaves of the Inn, and, of course, at a right angle. It was six or eight inches broad. Letting go the gutter with his left hand, he laid that hand on the ledge, and by a tremendous effort did a feat something like the muscle-breaking exercise known in gymnasiums as “the upstart,” while his right hand was still on the gutter. He lifted himself, stretched his left foot out, got it on the ledge, and the next minute stood there trembling. He laid hold of the window ledge which the flowerpots adorned. He wondered who was in the room to which the flowers belonged, and could not help feeling that anyone there was likely to feel surprised in much less than half-a-minute.

“I’m after you,” said the hatter.

Pegram leapt upon the window ledge. One flowerpot went down with a fearful crash, but Pegram seized another and burst in the window with it. The pot broke when the window did, and he hurled the shard at the hatter, but missed him. He put his hand inside the window, undid the catch, heard a shrill scream~from the room, threw up the window, and jumped inside, bringing down the blind and a dressing-table as he did so, and just then an electric light was turned up. As he disentangled himself from the blind he saw a bedroom, and in the bed a very pretty girl, though just then he was neither beautiful himself nor a judge of beauty. Still, he had a quick mind. One must have to edit properly. Some editors have slow minds, and their Christmas stories come out in the summer number.

“Oh, oh, what do you want?” screamed the pretty girl.

“A madman’s after me,” gasped Pegram. Though this was not a complete explanation it suggested that immediate action was necessary, and if anyone could be pleased in such circumstances, she should have been gratified to see him tackle the situation. He slammed the window down, latched it, looked round for a weapon, and once more found nothing but a full water-jug. The hatter was now roaring on the ledge, and Pegram hurled the jug at him through the window. Want of practice with such projectiles made him miss his target, and the owner of the room, now out on the floor in her nightdress, saw one terrible hand come in armed with a knife, while the other fumbled for the catch. There was no time to lose, and Pegram did not lose any.

“Come on,” he said desperately. Catching hold of her round the waist, he dragged her to the door. There was a dressing-gown lying on a chair. He picked it up, threw it over her shoulders, and opened the door, taking the key as he did so.

“Oh, oh!” said the young lady, as if in remonstrance.

“Not at all,” said Pegram, firmly but hurriedly. “He’ll kill you instead of me. I apologize. It’s all my fault. Come on! Turn down the light!”

As the light went out the window opened and the hatter came in. The wrecked dressing-table delayed him for an instant, and Pegram was outside with his new acquaintance before the hatter rose to his feet. Pegram tried to lock the door, but, of course, his luck being what it was that night, could not even find the keyhole.

“Come on! Run!” said Pegram. And the girl ran, gasping.

“This is dreadful, dreadful,” she cried.

“Isn’t it?” said Pegram, “isn’t it?”

The stairs were in front of them and they bolted down, almost falling as they ran. The hatter, after some difficulty, found the door and opened it. They heard him roaring and padding on the landing above.

“Can you open the front door?” asked Pegram.

“Yes, but I shall faint,” said the lady, gasping.

“Don’t you dare faint,” cried Pegram fiercely. “Here it is. Open it!”

The next moment they were in the street. The wind howled and the rain was heavy, and not a single soul could be seen anywhere. The street went steeply to the Embankment and the river, and they turned that way. Once more the hatter failed at the slammed front door and gave them a few seconds of precious time.

“Run, run! Buck up,” said Pegram. He quite forgot that he had been fatigued and required a rest. The hatter was a wonderful stimulant. A new hat has been known to renew a decayed character.

“Oh, why, why?” said Pegram’s new friend vaguely.

“I’ll explain later. At least I hope to,” said Pegram. He put his arm under hers and almost lifted her off her feet. She found him comfortably strong and began to rely on him. By now, whether this was reality or a nightmare, she seemed to have been escaping madmen in the company of a handsome stranger for many hours. There are psychologic dream illusions in waking.

“Here he comes,” said Pegram hurriedly.

“What, oh, what shall we do?” asked the girl, as her bare feet pattered on the wet pavement.

“I don’t know in the least,” returned Pegram. “He’s a mad hatter.”

She gave a hysterical little laugh, as they heard him yell behind them, at the enormous irrelevancy of Pegram’s information.

“A mad hatter!”

“He chased me along the gutter. I’m sorry for you, but it couldn’t be helped,” said Pegram, looking round. He saw the knife glitter in the light of a lamp, and increased his pace. They came to the broad Embankment, and saw nothing there but a distant cab’s disappearing red lamp, and the few lights of the sleeping hotels. The storm, for it was a full gale now, had driven even the loafers of the night into shelter. They ran across the road and came to the parapet above the river as the long hatter charged down the last twenty yards of the sloping street.

“He’ll kill us! Save me,” shrieked Pegram’s new acquaintance, clasping him round the neck as if she loved him. 1

“Let go! Can you swim?” roared Pegram.

“No! no! I can’t!”

“Thank Heaven I can,” said Pegram. He felt almost fond of her as he picked her up in his arms and fairly slung her over the parapet into the river. He felt wonderfully strong as he jumped in and took hold of her in the most approved manner.

“Keep still and keep your mouth shut,” said Pegram, as he swam into the strength of the early ebb. They saw the hatter come to the parapet and heard him yell lamentably.

“I’ve done you,” said Pegram. But he had done no such thing. The hatter sprang upon the parapet, uttered another yell which might have been heard at Westminster, and plunged in after them with a tremendous splash.

“Oh, he can swim too,” moaned the girl woefully.

“Damn him, and he’s a hatter!” said Pegram, as bitterly as if no hatter ought to be able to swim. Then he added: “but there are boats hereabouts; we’ll get in one and keep him off and shout for help.”

The hatter, with the knife in his teeth, came after them like a shark. He swam exceedingly well, though if Pegram had been unencumbered he could have swum rings round him. He came up with them fast, but just ahead of them Pegram saw the loom of two rowing-boats which he knew of old were usually moored there. They swept down upon them.

“Hold my shoulders,” said Pegram through his clenched teeth.

He caught hold of the bow mooring-rope of the first boat, swung from that to the gunwale, and went along it to the stern.

“Lay hold of the boat,” he said, and climbed in over the stern, barking himself as he did so. But he was in no mood to miss a little skin just then. In such a situation no one ever does. He bent down over the stern, got his hands under her arms, and drew her in. It is hardly necessary to say that by now she had lost the dressing-gown he put over her when they left her room. She tumbled gasping on the wet bottom boards, and he laid hold of the stern mooring-rope. The hatter was within twenty yards of them when the rotten old rope parted under Pegram’s powerful hands. He stumbled for’ard, glad to see a pair of sculls were in her, and laid hold of the bow rope, which at first defied him. He remembered having heard or read something which appeared useful, so he twisted the rope against the lay till it opened, and got one strand by itself. That parted easily and the other two yielded at once. They were adrift.

And so was the hatter. He got into the other boat with a leap like that of a fish, cut it adrift with his knife, and started after Pegram.

“I’ll have you yet,” said the hatter, as he laid hold of the sculls.

“He can even row,” said Pegram. “Oh, he’s a very useful hatter! By the way, what’s your name?”

“Edith Sinclair,” groaned the young woman.

“Mine’s Pegram. I’m awfully sorry, you know. But you understand how it was.”

“Not — not quite,” said Miss Sinclair. “Why did he want to kill you?” ‘

“I rejected a story of his,” said Pegram, putting his back into his work and keeping well ahead of the pursuit.

“A story! I don’t seem to understand; at least, not quite,” said Miss Sinclair.

“I’m an editor, you see.”

“Oh, do they always do like this when you reject them?”

“Oh no, not even often; I must say that for them,” replied Pegram. “But he says he’s a hatter from Hanwell. I’m sorry I came in as I did, Miss Sinclair, but you see I was in a difficulty.”

“I thought you couldn’t have come in like that unless you were,” said Miss Sinclair.

“I must have surprised you.”

“You did — rather,” said Miss Sinclair.

“And now you’re wet.”

“I’m afraid I am rather wet,” said Miss Sinclair apologetically.

“And cold?”

“Yes, I am rather cold,” she admitted. “I lost the dressing-gown.”

“I see,” said Pegram, but he added hastily, for he was a man of delicacy, “at least I don’t see, but I understand.”

And the hatter howled just as the gale did.

“Perhaps my teeth chatter as much from fright as from cold,” said Miss Sinclair. “Is he catching us up?”

“I hope not,” said Pegram. “He said he’d cut my head off, you know.”

The tide ran fast, as fast as the events of that night, and the wind was very angry with everyone and everything. It whipped the river into foam, and spurred Pegram and the hatter almost equally. Certainly the hatter was indomitable. He must have been wonderful at hats, thought Pegram.

“But I wish I could run into, or near, a police boat,” said Pegram. “I’m hardly keeping my distance.”

They went under Blackfriars Bridge with a swish and a swirl which made Edith Sinclair’s heart come into her mouth. They missed an anchored barge by a hair’s breadth, and she screamed a little. Then the railway bridge was over them like a thundercloud. The thunder of a train deafened them. But the tide ran fast and Pegram rowed like a hero, or a member of Leander, when they got into the open. Then suddenly they heard, mixed with the pursuing yells of the hatter, whose lungs seemed as strong as his arms, the sound of the engines of some steamboat.

A black squall sang out again and blinded Pegram. He saw nothing for a minute. Then at last he did see that a fast little tugboat, one of the tiny bulldog tugs of London River, was overhauling them. Its little red and green port and starboard eyes glared at him wickedly. Then he heard other yells than those of the hatter, and the next moment the tug was almost into them as the skipper roared, “Stop her,” “Go astern.” The way of the reckless tug was checked, and Pegram’s boat swung alongside. He grabbed at a buoy-shaped fender hanging almost to the water. The rail of the tug was then hardly two feet six from the water’s edge, and as Pegram held on desperately, Miss Sinclair lost her head and did what no one ought to do in any boat. But this time it fell out right, for she fell into the tug when she stood up, going right across the gunwale. One of the crew, a man with hands like clip-hooks, laid hold of Pegram by the arm and hauled him out of danger. The boat, which had had her side crushed in, promptly went astern and sank.

“Why the blue blazes are you foolin’ about here at two in the morning?” asked a very stout person who turned out to be the skipper.

“For heaven’s sake don’t pick up the hatter, and I’ll tell you all about it,” said Pegram, getting on his feet.

“The hatter, the hatter! and who the blue blazes is the hatter?” the other demanded. “Is he that bloke yonder in t’other boat yellin’ like an ’andled pig?”

“That’s him,” said the editor ungrammatically. Non semper arcum tendit Apollo: which can be translated “wet editor in a tugboat may forget his office.” “Don’t take him aboard, for heaven’s sake. He wants to cut my throat.”

“Go ahead, Tom,” said the skipper. Then he turned again to Pegram. “Now, young man in panjammers afloat wiv a young lady in a nightgown, what does that josser want to cut your throat for?”

“Oh, it’s very complicated,” replied the shivering young man in pyjamas, “but I rejected a story of his.”

“Rejected a story! Wodyer mean? Couldn’t believe some whacker ’e told yer?”

“I’ll explain it later,” said Pegram. “Let me see how Miss Sinclair is first.”

“Aye, we’ll make ’er comfy. I’m glad she’s not a married woman you’re scootin’ off wiv. When a chap wiv a knife is after two, that’s my first thought,” said the skipper. He turned to his other passenger.

“You’re wet, my dear.”

“Very,” said Miss Sinclair, almost dryly.

“Come below, then. The cabin’s small but snug, and a bit ’ot and stuffy. But ’otness and stuffiness ought to suit your complaint. This way, miss.”

The lamp below was very dim. Indeed, it gave more smell than light. For this Miss Sinclair was grateful. Nevertheless, the skipper spoke simply and to the point.

“Why ain’t you got more on?” he asked.

“I lost my dressing-gown when Mr. Pegram flung me in the river,” said Miss Sinclair.

“Flung you in the river? Blimy, wot for?”

“To save my life.”

The skipper scratched his head. “To save yer life! ’Ere — I say — well, never mind now. You’re in need o’ clothes, and there’s no ch’ice.”

He raked in a locker and produced some pyjamas.

“Don’t wear ’em myself, but my mate does,” he said. To these gifts he added a heavy pair of trousers and a pilot jacket.

“Do your best as I’ve done mine,” he said kindly, as he turned to go on deck again with another jacket for Pegram. As he put his head out, Bill, his mate, said hurriedly—

“Simpson’s ketching of us up, Tom! ’Ear ’im ’oller!”

They looked aft in the drift of wind and rain, and saw close astern the red and green lights of another tug.

“That ain’t ’is voice, not by a long chalk,” said Captain Tom.

“No, it’s the hatter, it’s the hatter, our madman!” cried Pegram. “They must have picked him up. There he is, there!”

They saw a wild figure in the bows of the pursuing tug, and Pegram fancied he saw his own knife brandished.

“Will they catch us?” he asked anxiously.

“Well, they might,” owned the skipper. “Simpson’s tug is uncommon fast when ’er old engines steams well.”

“Don’t let them, don’t,” urged Pegram. “Am I never to get rid of him?”

“Stop, stop,” roared the hatter in a lull of the gale. “They’re two murderers and they flung me in the river!”

“Says e’, you flung ’m in the river,” remarked the skipper.

“Doesn’t it look likely that I and a young girl, dressed as we are, flung him in the river?” retorted Pegram bitterly.

“The less said as to wot the pair of you ’ad on, the better,” said the skipper; “but it’s all a mystery to me. Fire up, Bill. jump, Jones, and make ’er jump! I never did like to ’ave Simpson get a’ead 0’ me. ’Ow’s the young lady, I wonder?”

“Yes, I wonder, too,” said Pegram, still with an anxious eye astern.

“’Ow did you come in the river? Are you old pals?”

“Not at all. I never saw her before tonight.”

“Blimy! Then where did you find ’er?”

“In her room. I broke in through the window with a flowerpot,” said Pegram distractedly. There are situations which distract the calmest intelligences, the greatest editors.

“Wiv a flowerpot! Oh, my sainted aunt!” said the skipper.

“How he howls!” said Pegram, referring to the hatter.

“Don’t he just! I fair admire that voice,” said the skipper. “But why did you break in through the poor girl’s window wiv a flowerpot?”

“He was after me, you see.”

“Not much I don’t,” said the curious confused skipper.

“He chased me along the guttering of the roof, you see,” said Pegram.

“Don’t say I see! Wot was you doin’ on a roof such a night? It ain’t an ’abit of yours, is it?”

“I got out of my window,” said Pegram crossly. “I say, are they catching us?”’

“They might, and again they mightn’t,” said the skipper coolly. “But why did you get out o’ your winder? And wot was ’e doin’ on the roof?”

“He was in my room, saying he’d cut my throat, so I got out,” replied Pegram, dancing to keep warm.

“Wot for did you ’ave a man like that in your room?”

“He broke in, burst my door down,” said Pegram savagely.

“And all about a story?”

“Yes,” said Pegram.

“Well, I never ’eard a more unlikely ’posterous yarn in all my born days,” said the skipper.

“But here we are!” retorted Pegram. “You can’t deny what you’ve seen!”

“True, true! That’s so, and I own it,” said the skipper. “And there ’e is, ’owling ’orrid! I wonder wot tale ’e’s pitched to Simpson! Is there anythin’ about flowerpots in it, I wonder?”

“Oh, never mind that now,” said Pegram; “where are we?”

“Don’t you know Lim’us Reach when you see it?” asked the skipper. g

“Not in the least,” returned Pegram. “Where are we going?”

“To Greenwich to pick up some barges, and so’s Simpson.”

“The devil he is!” said Pegram. “I say, if that chap catches us there’ll be bloodshed.”

“By the tremenjus ’owls of ’im, the bloke does mean biz,” ‘said the skipper.

“If he doesn’t kill me I shall kill him,” said Pegram ferociously. “There must be an end to it, there must!”

“So there must,” said the skipper thoughtfully. “You take my advice and kill him. You ain’t got no weapon. Take this old shovel. I gives it you. As a shovel it’s no good on account of the worn-out jags of it, but as a weapon it’s all right. I’ve seen uncommon good work done in a fight wiv a worse shovel than this.”

“Thanks very much,” said Pegram, grasping his shovel firmly.

“I’ll put you and the pore gal ashore at Greenwich at the hotel. You nips into a boat and ’urries and knocks ’em up. They’ll be some surprised at your rig-out, but say Captain Tom Smith of the Sunbeam tug sent you. Everyone knows Tom Smith, and though I says it, likes ’im. But I believe we’re gainin’ on the ’owler. I’ll ’ear wot Simpson ’as to say later. I wonder ’ow the lady is! Pretty gal she is, too!”

“Is she? Oh yes! I believe I thought so when I saw her first,” said Pegram.

“You’ll ’ave to marry ’er now,” said the skipper; “so it’s all to the good ’er bein’ ’andsome.”

“Marry her!” said the astounded Pegram.

“I’m a father myself, and if any young man, I don’t care if ’e was a lord, threw one o’ my daughters in ’er nightgown into London River, I’d insist on ’is makin’ a square deal of it if I ’ad to negotiate the biz wiv a firebar,” said the skipper sternly.

“Would you now?” asked Pegram, who thought perhaps this was the proper view to take.

“Plump and plain I would,” said the skipper. “If any gay young spark off of a roof bust into my gal’s winder wiv a flowerpot, dragged ’er into the street and ’ove ’er into London River, ’e’d wed her or I’d ’ave‘ the last lingerin’ drop of ’is blood.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Pegram weakly.

“l know I’m right,” said the skipper warmly. “I’ll fix things up for you. We’ll be in Greenwich Reach, opp’site the hotel, in two two’s, and we’ll get a boat and put you ashore afore the ’owler can screech two ’owls.”

“Thanks,” said Pegram vaguely, for he hardly knew where he was or what he was.

It seemed impossible that he should be the mere editor of a magazine. But he felt that he had now some insight into the nature and truth of romance. He cursed the writers of it fluently as he shivered on the classic deck of the heroic vessel, ennobled in a thousand tales, wherein he bore the heroine from danger. Meantime then skipper, who was also in his way a classic bound in Bermondsey leather, went to pay his duty to the lady.

“Are you dressed, my dear?” he demanded at the cabin door.

“As far as I can be,” said Miss Sinclair sombrely.

“Then I’ll come in and let you know wot I’ve fixed up for you,” said the skipper. He found her in the pilot jacket. Under her nightdress she wore the pyjamas. They were at any rate dry.

“I’ve daughters of my own,” said the skipper, as he sat down and drew forth a pipe which he filled from loose tobacco in his pocket.

“Have you? I’m — I’m so glad,” she murmured, thinking she was half an idiot.

“And I’ll be a father to you,” added the skipper. “In fact, I’ve bin one already.”

“Already 1” cried Edith Sinclair.

“’E’s agreed to marry you,” said the skipper triumphantly.

“To marry me?” echoed Edith; “to marry me!”

“Aye, I insisted on it,” said the skipper, puffing at his pipe till an expert might have fancied it was filled with crude tar and Newcastle coal; “as I said, I’m a father myself, ’avin’ two girls of your own age, my dear, and I allowed no josser, whatever ’is weight, could ’eave either of ’em into London River at midnight, or thereabouts, in their nightgear and then back out of the affair, ’owever polite and apol’getic; to say nothin’ of bustin’ in their winders with flowerpots, the reason of which flowerpots I ain’t yet got the ’ang of, and ’aulin’ of the pore gal out of bed. Oh no, there’s nothin’ else for it, and the lad’s agreeable, I must say that. For ’e owned you was pretty, and so you are, uncommon pretty, and ’e said so wiv the shovel in ’is ’and.”

“The shovel!” asked Edith. “The shovel?”

“I give ’im it in case, you see,” said the skipper.

“Yes, of course; in case—” said Edith. “But, if you please, it’s all so very confusing.” She burst into tears.

“Ah, you allow it’s confusin’,” said the skipper warmly, “but it ain’t ’arf so confusin’ for you as for me. You was in at the start and I comes in at the tangle. ’Owever, he’s a bold young chap, ‘specially since I give ’im that jagged shovel, and I reckon ’e’ll fix the other bloke if they comes ’andy to each other. And ’e’s very henterprisin’, ain’t ’e?”

“I — I think so,” said Edith. “Very! Oh, yes!”

“And so’s the other gay spark in the tug astern, wot belongs to Simpson, and ’e’s ’ollerin’ blue murder now, wavin’ a knife,” said the skipper.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Edith, clasping her hands. “You won’t let him kill Mr. Pegram, will you?”

“Wot — me! After fixin’ up as ’e’s to marry you! Not by a jugful of the best, my dear. I’ll put you two ashore at Greenwich, and you can go to the hotel, while I’ll tell Simpson to ’old the other gay johnny,” said the skipper, rising from his seat. And just then the tug’s whistle said “hoot-toot-toot.” He jumped on deck and grabbed Pegram by the arm.

“The light’s bad below,” said he, “and she’s not ezackly dressed to kill, but she’s a pretty piece, my lad; I never saw a prettier. She’s agreeable to marry; not to say hover-anxious, but, still, ready. So there you are!”

“Yes, there I am,” said Pegram. The skipper, leaving pleasure, turned to business.

“Stop ’er! Now — go astern!” he roared, as if the engineer was a mile off. “’Ard a-port, Bill! Leggo the anchor! And ’ere we are!”

He jumped to where Pegram stood. “This is Greenwich, my son. Where’s a boat? Oh, there you are, Sam! Come alongside quick, you drowned water-rat. I’ve a job for you.”

A prowling midnight waterman, on the lookout for the quick or dead, came alongside the tug.

“Now then, miss,” roared the skipper, and Edith ran up on deck.

“’Ere you are, both of you! Tumble in, tumble in, and get to the hotel. Don’t forget you’ve my clothes on. This ’ere tug’s the Sunbeam, and I’m Captain Smith. ’Ave a ’ot barf when you gets in, miss. Don’t forget I fixed you both up. Now quick, quick!”

Edith fell into the boat and Pegram followed her, just as Simpson’s tug rounded to against the half ebb and let go her anchor. The hatter ran from the bows to the stern, while the others got out of his way alertly. He yelled most ferociously.

“Don’t let him escape,” he roared. “I’ve got to cut his throat from ear to ear.”

“W’y don’t you put the kibosh on that bloke, Simpson?” asked the skipper of the Sunbeam.

“Come aboard and do it yourself,” roared Simpson angrily. “He’s got a knife, and moreover he allows they ’ove ’im in the river.”

“Well, if you’re afraid, don’t let ’im ’ave a boat,” said Smith. “Give the gal a chance. Oh, damn, he’s overboard!”

For the hatter, seeing the boat making for the steps, sprang into the water and swam with amazing energy after the boat, where Edith was in Pegram’s arms, weeping.

“Don’t, don’t, my dear,” said Pegram. He felt wonderfully soft towards her. But with his right hand he still grasped his trusty shovel.

“I — I can’t help it,” sobbed Edith. “It’s all so sudden!”

“What did the skipper say?” he asked. Then he cried out, “Oh, here he comes after us!”

“The skipper?” asked Edith hopefully.

“No, no, the hatter,” said Pegram fiercely. “If he comes near I’ll knock his brains out.”

Then he asked the waterman which was the hotel, and the man pointed it out with natural scorn. “Wot sort of a bloke was it as didn’t know that?” he asked himself.

“’Oo’s the bloke hafter hus?” he inquired in his turn.

“He’s a madman,” said Pegram, and before any more questions could be asked they ran alongside the steps. Pegram grabbed hold of Edith, and without letting go his shovel fairly lifted her from the boat and began to go up the steps.

“Where’s my fare?” roared the waterman.

“Come to the hotel,” roared Pegram.

“Stop him. I’ll have his blood!” roared the hatter, as he scrambled out of the water with a yell that made the boatman’s blood run as cold as a January tide.

When the hatter got to his feet, Pegram and Edith were at the top of the steps, and they fairly fell down those on the land side, sprawling on the pavement. Luckily for them, or for himself, as Pegram’s blood was up, the madman slipped on the river steps and came a real cropper there. This gave Pegram and Edith time to spring to their feet, and Pegram, who had let go his wonderful shovel, got hold of it again. They saw the lights of the hotel on their left hand, and as it chanced they also saw a man, who turned out to be the landlord, letting himself in at the side door. just as he got it open Pegram and Edith were upon him. Pegram fairly hurled him inside, and, dragging Edith after him, slammed the door to and bolted it.

“What the devil—?” said the landlord, as he scrambled to his feet.

“No, it’s a madman,” gasped Pegram.

“So I thought,” said the landlord, who was much upset. No one can help being when he is knocked down.

“He’s outside, outside, I tell you!” said Pegram.

It was not the truth, for at that instant the wood and glass of the door gave way with an awful crash, and the hatter came through like a cannon ball. He rolled over and over three times, still holding his knife. After the third roll, which coincided with Edith’s third scream, he sprang to his feet from the wreck of the hall table and a case of stuffed parrots.

“Take that,” said Pegram. “That” was a heavy and well-directed “biff” with the shovel, which, after all, came in useful, for Pegram was naturally angry and excited, and did not care whether he killed anyone or not. The hatter said nothing, but went down and lay as quietly as if he were sleeping. Perhaps he needed rest and quiet.

“Where’s the telephone?” asked Pegram.

“It’s there,” said the landlord. “Have anything you like, anything!”

Pegram rang up Hanwell, and after a short time (for a telephone) got it. Edith and the landlord heard one side of the conversation.

“Is that Hanwell? … Has anyone escaped lately? … Yes, he says he’s a hatter…. He tried to murder me. I’m the editor of the Piccadilly magazine…. I’m at Greenwich at the Ship…. Yes, please, as soon as you can. He’s insensible now…. I did it with a shovel…. Very well, we’ll tie him up, and get a doctor…. You’ll come as soon as you can. Thanks.”

He hung up the receiver and turned to the landlord. The whole of the hotel staff filled the stairs by now.

“Two rooms, please. If you’ve any hot water, give this lady a bath.”

“Certainly,” said the landlord; “oh yes, of course.”

“And help me tie this chap,” said Pegram.

“Glad to do it,” said the landlord, “but look at my door!”

“Put it on the bill,” said Pegram, “and send for a doctor.”

By the time they had the hatter helpless he came to, and looked up so meekly that Edith was quite sorry for him.

“Didn’t I cut your throat from ear to ear?” he asked Pegram.

“No, I think not,” said Pegram.

“Have I done nothing, nothing at all, after all this?” asked the hatter mournfully.

“You’ve done a good deal,” said Pegram dryly. “For one thing, you’ve given me a remarkable story. And you may have done more. Much more!”

He turned to Edith, who smiled and looked down.

“Good-night,” she said bashfully.

“I’ll see you in the morning, my poor dear,” said Pegram.

“I don’t quite know where I am,” said Edith, half in tears.

“Why, you’re in Greenwich,” said the landlord.

THE FOG

The fog had been thickening for many weeks, but now, moving I like a black wall, it fell on the town. The lights that guided the world were put out — the nearest were almost as invisible as the stars; a powerful arc-lamp overhead was but a blur. Traffic ceased, for drivers could not see; screams were heard in the streets, and cries for help, where none could help themselves.

“I’m blind,” said Tom Crabb, as he leant against the pillar outside the Café Français in Regent Street. He said it with a chuckle, for he, alone of a street full of the lost, did not feel lost. “I’m blind, but know my way home!”

Day by day and night by night he patrolled the street with a placard upon his breast marked in big letters, “Blind”. People with eyes saw him. Out of a thousand one gave him a penny; out of ten thousand one gave him sixpence. The millionth, or some charitable madman, made it half a crown. The red-letter day of his blind life was when he found a sovereign in his palm, put there by a soft little hand that touched his. He heard a gentle girl’s voice say, “Poor blind man.” He had a hard life, and was a hard and lonely man, but he remembered that voice, as he did all voices.

As he stayed by the pillar a man stumbled against him and apologized.

“That’s Mr Bentley,” said Tom Crabb.

“Who are you?”

“I’m blind Crabb, sir, bless your heart. You’ve given me many a copper, haven’t you?”

Bentley was a chauffeur and engineer. He drove for Lord Gervase North, the balloonist and motor-racer, and was forever about the West End and Regent Street, as Lord Gervase often dined at the Français.

“To be sure. I know your voice,” said Bentley. “It’s an awful night, Crabb.”

“Must be,” said Crabb. “But fog or none is the same for an eyeless man. To hear the folks, it might be the end of the world, sir.”

“There never was such a fog,” replied Bentley; “it’s just awful. I can’t see you; no, nor my hand before my face.”

“You can’t get home, then. What are you doing?”

“I’ve come for my boss and the lady he’s to marry. They’re dining here with her mother. But we’ll never get home.”

“Bentley!” called a voice.

“Yes, my lord,” said the chauffeur.

“What are we to do?”

“Don’t know, my lord.”

“Can we get to an hotel?”

“They’re crammed already, I hear, my lord.”

Crabb put out his hand and touched Bentley.

“Where does he want to go? Perhaps I could lead you.”

It was a strange notion, but then the blind know their way. “Aye, perhaps you could. The ladies live in Eccleston Square and my lord in Pont Street.”

“I don’t know either of them, but I could take them and you to your place.”

“My place?” said Bentley. Then his master spoke.

“Who’s that with you, Bentley?”

“A blind man, my lord. He thought he might take you all home, but he doesn’t know Eccleston Square. All he knows is my place.”

“Better be there than in the street,” said Crabb. He had a sense of power in him. All the rest of the world were blind. He alone had some sight.

“If the hotels are full we must go somewhere,” said Lord Gervase. “There’s no room here, nor a bed. They want to shut up now. I’ll speak to the ladies.”

“Good bloke that,” said Crabb. “He gave me a shilling once and said a kind word.”

The darkness was thicker than ever. It was incredibly thick and choking — it made the useless eyes ache. It was a threat, a terror. So might the end of the world come.

“Bentley!” said Lord Gervase once more.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Come here.”

Bentley found him, and his employer put his hand upon his shoulder. “Can you trust this man? If so, the ladies will come to your place till it clears, if you will take us in.”

“My wife will do her best, my lord. I know this Crabb to speak to. He says you once gave him a shilling. I’m sure he’ll lead us right. But what about the car?”

“You must leave it, or get him to bring you back. I want you with us. Come, Lady Semple; come, Julia.”

The mother and daughter, who had been close behind him, moved timidly.

“Let me lead her ladyship,” said Bentley.

“Thank you, Bentley,” said Lady Semple. There was a painful note in her voice. She was never strong, and the fog alarmed her. Julia clung to her lover and did not speak.

“Crabb, take us to my place, then, if you can,” said Bentley.

“I’ll give you a flyer if we get there all right,” said Lord Gervase.

“You gave me a shilling once, my lord, and after that I’d take you for nothing,” said Crabb. “’Tisn’t often I get so much.”

He led the way and Bentley took hold of his coat.

“Keep close, all of you,” said Crabb. “The Circus is packed terrible, but if I can get across Piccadilly, ’twill be easy.”

They were on the west side of Regent Street and went down Air Street into Piccadilly. Out of the darkness wandering folks came and met them. Some wailed, some asked for help, some seemed dazed or half mad, as all folks get in deep fog. And every now and again there was a crash of glass.

They came to Piccadilly and heard the trampling of horses. People in carriages spoke. The darkness was a visible, awful darkness, and in it a mad world was buried.

“Here’s the way across to Eagle Place,” said Crabb. “But can we get across?”

It was a passage of such peril as might be found in war, or upon an unknown mountain in heavy snow, or in a wreck upon a reef of sharp rocks. They heard the dreadful cry of a hurt man. Crabb’s foot came upon one who lay on the pavement. He was dead, or so Crabb averred when he stooped and felt him.

“I’ve seen many dead when I was soldiering in India,” said Crabb. Julia trembled to hear him say so.

There were many people in the street; some were drunk, and many wild, but most were fearful. Yet the darkness released some from fear and let loose their devilry. It seemed that two men in front of them smashed every window as they passed, and laughed wildly. Once Julia called out, and her lover said, “What is it?”

“Did you kiss me, Gervase?”

There was horror in her voice. He had not kissed her.

“My God!” said Gervase. “My God!”

There was a strange laugh in the darkness. He leapt at the laugh, caught it by the throat, and dashed the laugher on the pavement. And Julia’s cry brought him back to her. But they crossed at Duke Street, and wondered how they did it.

“Now it’s easy,” said Crabb. “We’re as good as there, my lord.”

In St James’s Square there were few people, and they rested. Julia spoke again.

“Did you — did you hurt him?”

But Crabb heard her speak.

“Who spoke?” he said, suddenly.

“’Twas Miss Semple spoke,” answered Bentley.

“Young lady, did you ever give a poor blind man a sovereign?” asked Crabb, in a strange, far-off voice.

“Yes, once, many years ago,” said Julia, wondering.

“And you said, ‘Poor blind man.’ God bless you, miss. I knew your voice just now,” said Crabb. “’Twas the fifth of July, five years ago; I never forget a voice.”

He went on in silence and led them by way of Pall Mall and the Square down Whitehall and Parliament Street, going through many perils, till the Houses of Parliament were on their left and the Abbey on their right.

“We’re close now,” said Crabb. “’Tis strange it should be the same to me as any other night. Is it better now?”

“It’s worse,” said Bentley, gloomily.

But they came to the stairway of the flat that Bentley lived in.

“Is this it?” asked Bentley, in surprise. He could see nothing.

“You live here, or I’m a fool,” said Crabb. “I’ve led you straight. Go up and see.”

On the first floor his flat was, and Bentley’s young wife opened the door and cried out as she took hold of him.

“A blind man led me, dear,” said Bentley, “and we’ve brought Lord Gervase North and Lady Semple and Miss Semple. They cannot get home. We must keep them till tomorrow, when the fog goes.”

So shadow spoke to shadow, and she whom they could not see spoke to them and bade them welcome in a trembling voice, and found chairs for them. But Bentley and Lord Gervase went out again to Crabb, who took his five pounds gratefully.

“Will this fog last?” asked Lord Gervase. But none could answer him. Ere Crabb went off to his solitary house close by, Bentley said to him:

“If the fog’s like this tomorrow, come in and see us, Crabb.”

They shook hands, for the danger brought them close, and Crabb went off murmuring to himself. Bentley went back upstairs again, and it seemed to him that the fog was thicker still. In the room was lighted darkness, and the lamps showed the night feebly.

“There never was such a fog,” he said, cheerfully. But Lady Semple moaned and shed tears, and nothing they could say consoled her. To be in her own home in such a fog would be bad enough, but to be here! Poor Mrs Bentley, only lately married, was terrified to think she had three such folks to deal with, but she had sense and some energy in her. She took her husband aside.

“The Thompsons are away,” she began. These people lived in the opposite flat on their landing. “Why shouldn’t we break in there and take their beds for these ladies?”

“Break in!” cried Bentley. “Suppose they came back?”

“They’ve gone for a week, and how can they come back in this fog? Besides, what can we do?”

“It’s a notion after all,” said her husband. “I’ll propose it to his lordship.”

As a result of the proposal he and Lord Gervase put their heads and shoulders together and turned housebreakers inside five minutes. They lighted fires and lamps and mitigated the horrid darkness as much as they could, and sent Lady Semple and Julia to bed. Mrs Bentley soon followed, and left her husband and his employer together.

“This is a queer situation, Bentley. I wonder if it will last?” said Lord Gervase.

“It’s a rum start, my lord,” replied Bentley; “and, to look at it, it might last forever.”

“Then what will become of London and of us?”

“We’ll have to leave in your balloon, my lord,” said Bentley, with a grim laugh. “But let’s hope it will be better in the morning.”

Lord Gervase slept in the Bentleys’ spare room, and slept soundly. When he woke it was pitch-dark. He looked at his watch by the light of a match and could not discern the figures. It seemed as if he was blind. But on opening the watch and feeling the hands he found it was eight o’clock in the morning. The fog was worse than ever. The gloom that was outside settled on their hearts. They had breakfast together and hardly spoke. Lady Semple cried continually, and Julia could hardly restrain her own tears.

“It’s like the end of the world,” sobbed Lady Semple. “We — we shall die of it.”

In truth Mrs Bentley wondered where food was to come from if it continued. She had nothing left after breakfast but a loaf of bread. And they could not see each other. When they opened the window the outside fog was as thick as a black blanket. It inspired a helpless, hopeless horror. They sat about till nearly noon and said nothing. At ten Crabb came to the outer door and knocked. When they let his dark shadow in he put something on the table.

“It’s grub,” he said. “I thought you might want it.”

He came to them from the outer world; they asked him for news.

“Things are awful, my lord,” he said, quietly. But there was a strange ring in his voice. “They’re awful; I can’t tell you all that’s going on. ’Tis madness. There are awful things being done; fires, murders, and horrible screams about. I was in Trafalgar Square and folks cried out suddenly, ‘Light! Light!’ Something broke in the fog overhead and a great light shone. People cried out, and then — then the fog came down again. Terror is in us all, but many have broken into liquor shops and are drunk; the whole town’s mad.”

“Oh, will it last?” asked Julia. “What do the papers say?”

There were no papers; there was nothing, said Crabb. The very electric lights were out; it seemed no one worked, no one could work. There was a blind mob in the streets, and all were lost. They sought to escape, and knew not which way to run. When he had finished Lady Semple fainted, falling into her daughter’s arms. Julia and Mrs Bentley took hold of her, and Crabb and Bentley and Lord Gervase went apart.

“What’s to be done?” asked Lord Gervase, in a kind of despair.

“Nothing but wait, my lord,” said Bentley.

“Could you lead us out of London, Crabb?” asked Lord Gervase. “I don’t know more than my beat and a bit over,” said Crabb.

“What I know I know like the inside of my hat, but beyond it there’s a sort of blackness for me. But I’ll get you food.”

“How did you get what you brought?” asked Bentley.

“Out of an open shop,” said Crabb. “There was a dead man in it.” They said nothing for a time.

“Folks are going mad and jumping into the river,” said Crabb.

“And I heard women shrieking awfully. Wicked people are about. There’s fires already here and there.”

“What can we do?” asked Lord Gervase. “It can’t last,” said Bentley.

“Why can’t it?” asked Crabb, after a pause.

“It might last a week, eh?” said Bentley; “or — or more?”

“Where’s London’s food to come from? Where are folks to find it?” asked Crabb. “In three days they’ll be eating each other. I heard horrid things said in the dark by blind voices, my lord. They gave me the shivers and shakes.”

“Where’s that balloon, Bentley?” asked Lord Gervase, in a shaken voice. “Could we — could we use it? We must get Lady Semple out of this; we must, or she will die!”

It was in a store close by the gasworks, but Bentley couldn’t find it. Crabb said he knew the gasworks if Bentley could find the place in which the balloon was.

“But what will you do with it, my lord?”

“Go up in it and out of this, and drift away,” said Lord Gervase. “It could be done.”

“Will there be any gas left?” asked Bentley, and then he clapped his thigh as if he thought of something.

“What is it, Bentley?”

“There’ll be none working at the gasworks, my lord!”

“No?”

“Crabb and I will go down and turn off the supply if we can,” said Bentley; “turn it off before it’s gone.”

“Do it,” said Lord Gervase; “this is horrible — my eyes ache. It’s driving me mad. Poor Julia!”

“Will you help me, Crabb?” asked Bentley.

So they went out together, and passed murder in the streets, and saw the glare of fires, and heard awful things. And Bentley was blind. But Crabb had eyes in his mind. So at last they came to the works, and smote on the door to see if by happy chance there were any there. The watchman came running; he had lost his nerve, and cried as he held to them, telling how the men had left him all alone. But he lived there, and they had their homes elsewhere.

“What gas have you left?” they asked him, and when he could answer he said that one gasometer was half full, but that it went quickly.

“Come and turn it off, so that it won’t waste any more,” cried Bentley. And they turned it off, knowing they brought bitter darkness to many. But Crabb said he would bring food to the watchman, and he was easier in his mind.

“London’s being destroyed,” said the watchman. “I hear dreadful things.”

“Dreadful things are being done,” said Crabb. “But dreadful things are always being done, my lad. I’m not so blind I can’t see that.”

“This is blindness,” said the watchman. “I can’t smoke even. ’Tis dreadful. Shall we all die?”

“Someday,” said Crabb. “I can see that.”

And he and Bentley tried to find the store where the balloon was, and, in trying, Crabb once got lost and said so. Bentley’s blood ran cold, for Crabb was his sight, his life, and the life of those he loved. For he loved not only his wife, but Gervase North and Julia Semple, since they were made to be loved, both of them, and Bentley was kind-hearted.

Yet Crabb found himself again, and they went back to the Square without discovering the balloon shed.

“We’ll try tomorrow,” said Crabb.

They tried next day and failed.

They tried the next day — and still failed. But Crabb brought them food, very fine food, wonderful things in pots and jars.

“I went up to Piccadilly and smashed a window for ’em,” said Crabb. “God’s truth I did. I hope they’re good. Is it too dark to see?”

They, too, had no gas.

“We can taste,” they answered. But they tasted fog — fog thick, congealed, yellow, a pasty fog. And they tasted horror, for there were lamentable voices in the streets, voicing death and murder.

“What’s this in the bottom of the sack?” asked Bentley, when he had taken out the jars and the fine glasses of preserved foods.

“Jewels, I think,” said Crabb, in a strange voice. “I thought the ladies might like ’em. I found ’em on the pavement in an open bag, and by the feel of ’em thought they might be di’monds. And I passed another shop and smashed the window and grabbed a handful. Why not? Who wants ’em? London’s dying. But you’ve your balloon.”

Again a heavy silence fell on them. Crabb went away — he wanted news, he said. So he went lightly through the gloom, the paste of darkness and night. London was like the Pit: it was silent, but in the silence were cries. Horses lay dead; others wandered loose. There were fires in the streets, made of smashed vehicles; gloomy shadows burnt themselves and cooked horseflesh by the leaping hidden flames; some danced drunkenly and fell in the fires. Many offered golden loot for food, jewels for a mouthful, and went about hunting. They said — voices said — that the river was thick with floating corpses already, and fires increased. Out of the night came the mad shrieks of women and the wildest laughter. Dying men played with death and fell on fire and crime and the awfullest disasters. Some went madly crying for their wives and daughters, their little children and their old people who were lost. In churches they prayed; a blind organist made mad music to Heaven in a church that Crabb passed. For him a madman blew.

“’Tis an awful strange world,” said Crabb. “Darkness fell on me years ago. But this city’s blind.”

Some he spoke to were quiet and some wild. They told him rumours — the strangest. It was wonderful how rumours went in the dark. Wild crowds were marching east and west and south and north, or trying to march. But few had any guidance. ’Twas said one man had a compass and led a thousand to the river and there fell in. The parks were full of wanderers. Rich people offered thousands from windows, and were slain for money that the slayers could not find. One man lighted a fire with banknotes. A voice said that men were in the Bank, in all the banks, stealing the sacks of gold. The pavements were slippery with a thick fluid, and the dead lay everywhere. Folks drank at the river and fell in. They threw themselves from windows and fell on blind wanderers.

The railways were quiet; nothing moved there. Ships were deserted in the lower river. The telegraphs were quiet; men fled from them. The telephone exchanges were empty. The outside world had deserted London and cut it off. It was sunk in a pit; it lay at the bottom of a well. And these things Crabb gathered up and, going back to his friends, told them. But he brought them food and they ate in the darkness. He took them wine and they drank in the night. And they lost count of the days and the nights. But every day (or night) Bentley and Crabb sought for the place where the balloon was stored.

On the tenth day they found it. That day Lady Semple seemed near to death.

With infinite labour, though they had the help of the watchman, they took the balloon to the gasworks, and then Lord Gervase came with them, leaving Julia with her sick mother.

“It’s our only chance, my darling,” he said, as he left her.

He kissed her in the darkness, and kissed the dying woman — for, indeed, unless they got her out of darkness she was dead — and went away with Crabb and Bentley.

With blind eyes they worked; their eyes ached and saw nothing; their hearts laboured, for the air was thick and foul, and ever fouler and thicker, since the fires of the town grew by the folly and madness of lost men. And once again for an hour it grew lighter overhead. They saw each other. Then the darkness fell again. With the help of the watchman, now their slave and the slave of Crabb — who did the work of many and was the calmest of all — they started the inflating of the great balloon. In the blackness of things they had to use infinite care lest they should wound the gigantic ship which was to save them. Yet at last the monster commenced to grow wonderfully, like a huge toadstool in the night. As it grew it straightened out the gear, and they felt its proportions and recognized this and that and felt easier.

“We shall get out,” said Lord Gervase. He yearned to live. He was young and loved a woman, and the world was big for him and fine. But he found Bentley a bigger man than himself; and Crabb was bigger than either, though he had been no more than a soldier, wounded in a foolish fight in far-off India. He gave them courage to drink — he held up their hearts. For he loved the voice of Julia Semple, and remembered her gift, and was glad to help her and her lover.

“You shall want nothing after this, Crabb,” said Gervase.

“I shall want much, or little always,” returned Crabb, in a strange exaltation. For he had never loved a woman till now, though he had kissed many. And her whom he loved he could never kiss.

The world outside was not their world. They were lost in London in the darkness, and were cut off. But the balloon grew and grew. And then it ceased to grow. There was no more gas.

That night it was a little lighter (for it was night, though they knew it not), and the four men laboured in the works, and set the retorts going and made more gas. Crabb was a man of strength, and now he grew more strong. He held them up and laboured, and made the watchman, who was a poor creature, do all that he should do. He made him feel brave. This is the gift of the strong; the gift by which men know them. And at last the balloon stood up and tugged upon its ropes, made fast to an old boiler in the open space.

“It will carry — how many?” asked Crabb. This was a thing none had asked. It was a great balloon, built for a special race and for purposes of science, but it could not carry them all, and they knew it.

Lord Gervase whispered to him.

“Five at the most, Crabb.”

Including the watchman they were seven.

“I’ll stay, my lord,” said Crabb. “I can get on by myself, as you see.”

“You’re a brave man,” said Lord Gervase.

He was more than a brave man, this poor blind fellow. But for him what would they have done? By now they would have been dead. Through him they had one chance.

But if Crabb stayed, who was the other to be? They fought it out that night in the flat among the three — Lord Gervase, Crabb, and Bentley. The women stayed apart in another room, where some feared Lady Semple was dying.

“I’ll stay with those who can’t go,” said Crabb. They understood him. He could live. For him it was not dark. He had, as he said, eyes, and his strong and quiet mind could endure the horrors of which he told them. They knew he never told half, but their minds told them the rest.

“Let it be so, Crabb. You’ve saved us,” said Lord Gervase. “When this is over, ask what you like and you shall have it.”

“I’ll stay with Crabb, sir,” said Bentley. He too was brave, but his heart sank as he spoke.

“Your wife must go, then!”

“She must,” said Bentley.

“What about the watchman?” asked Crabb.

“If I stay he can go,” said Bentley. “He has helped; but for him we couldn’t have filled the balloon. Let him go.”

Bentley called to his wife. She came from the other flat and went to his voice, and leant upon him while he told her what they meant to do. She was a young girl still, no more than nineteen, and her soul was her husband’s in this hour.

“I’ll stay with you, Will.”

They could not move her. For when they spoke urgently she laughed at them in scorn. Every reason they urged for her safety was one for her man’s.

“I’d rather die with him. Don’t say any more. Let the watchman go,” said she. Bentley kissed her in the darkness, which was lighted for him by her faith and love, and she wept upon his heart.

“Take poor Lady Semple out of this place quickly,” she said, “or she will die.”

They knew it was the truth. Lord Gervase spoke.

“Then it’s Lady Semple and Miss Semple, myself and the watchman. Yet the balloon might carry five. It’s a pity.”

“So much the better chance for you, my lord,” said Bentley. The higher they could rise the greater chance there was of getting an air-current to carry them away from London. But they knew there might be none.

“Lose no time,” said Crabb. He was the strongest there. They needed a strong man, for if the fog could be worse it was now worse indeed. The heavy smoke of many fires ran along the ground; nothing but the calm that destroyed them kept them from being destroyed.

“Let’s go now,” said Crabb. He carried Lady Semple to the works in his arms, and as they went she spoke to him.

“Save my daughter, Crabb. I shall never get out alive.”

“We’ll save you both, and all of you, my lady,” said Crabb, cheerfully.

“Oh, it’s dreadful,” she moaned. “Am I blind, Crabb? I see nothing — nothing! I choke!”

“You’ll be in sunlight, God’s sunlight, in half an hour, my lady,” said Crabb. “Up above this there’s light — there must be; think of it — fine sunlight shining such as I’ve not seen these ten years, since I saw it out in India. ’Tis a sun there, my lady. I remember shining temples, gold and marble. Oh, yes, there’s sunlight up above.”

They came to the works and entered. The watchman greeted them nervously.

“You must take me, gentlemen; you must take me,” he cried, fearfully.

“Shut up,” said Crabb. “You’re going to be taken. Don’t act the cur.”

But the watchman was half mad. There were thousands mad that hour in London, and tens of thousands would be. Yes, there was sunlight up above, said Crabb. Oh, the brave man he was! Could there be sunlight, or had the sun been put out?

They laid the sick woman in the car, and she rested her head upon Julia’s knees. The watchman held to the basket-work and leapt in hurriedly. But Gervase North spoke with Crabb and Bentley.

“Stay here if you can, Crabb. You, Bentley, go back to your wife. She’ll be lonely. You’re both brave men — the bravest. I feel a cur to leave you. But you stay, Crabb. If there’s no wind up aloft we shall come down here — here! You understand?”

They understood and shook hands.

“I’d like to shake hands with Miss Julia, my lord,” said Crabb, in a queer, strained voice.

“Yes, yes,” said Lord Gervase. So Crabb spoke to the girl.

“Will you shake hands, miss?” Julia cried softly.

“Oh, yes; you’re a brave man.”

“You said years ago, ‘Poor blind man,’” said Crabb. He kissed her hand gently.

“Goodbye, miss.”

Gervase was in the car.

“You can let go, Crabb,” he said. “Goodbye, Bentley; goodbye, Crabb.”

“Good luck and God’s sunlight to you all,” said the blind man.

He and Bentley let the rope run slowly, easing it off round a heavy pipe of iron that lay by the big boiler.

“I’m at the end of the rope,” said Crabb. “Stand clear, Bentley. Goodbye, sir. Goodbye, miss.”

The balloon was invisible, the car unseen; the world was blank and awful.

“Let go,” said Gervase.

He heard a far dim voice below him cry “Goodbye,” and knew the earth had dropped away. He grasped Julia’s hand. Lady Semple fainted and was quiet. The watchman laughed. But Gervase looked up — up!

Above him he saw something — a dimness, a blur, a space. It was almost black, but visible; it was brown, it was yellow, and then grey. There was a dash of wonderful blue in it, and then they shot out into a magic and intolerable day of noon! The sun shone upon them, and far below lay a wonderful cloud with sunlight on it.

And the watchman giggled strangely. Julia shrank from him and held out her hand to her lover. They saw each other once more — their sight was their own again. But Gervase was grimed with the labour he had done; she hardly knew him. Even his voice was strange.

“Thank God! It’s wonderful!” she said. He bent and kissed her.

“My dearest!” he answered. And Lady Semple moaned and woke.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“In the daylight,” said Gervase.

“The poor men who were left!” cried Julia. She had never seen this Crabb with her eyes; she only knew him as a big shadow, a voice that was strong and yet trembled when he spoke to her. She knew he was a hero, and knew, as women must know, that he loved her. He was in the darkness beneath them.

But how wonderful the world was! The sun was glorious, the heaven above a perfect blue. The far cloud below was white, and yet in places a strange dun colour. It heaved and moved and rose and sank. Out of it came strange pillars of yellow clouds.

“What are they?” asked Julia, pointing into the void.

“Fires,” said her lover. He wondered if the balloon moved, and could not see that it did. There was no speck of cloud above them to say if the air moved.

Far away from the city, to the east and west, they saw a shining gleam of the river. The great cloud rested only on the town. They saw far off blue hills, and the far, far country adorned with happy little towns. Wrath lay only on the city; far away was peace. The lower river was full of ships. The outer world wondered at the end of things.

They rose no further. And they did not move. Gervase grasped Julia’s hand.

“You’re brave, my dear?”

It was a question, and she knew it.

“What is it, Gervase?”

“We don’t move, Julia. Neither up nor away from here.”

“What does that mean?”

She saw how grave he looked.

“What does it mean?”

“You’re brave and will be,” he said.

So she understood. He knew the balloon was slowly sinking. Perhaps there was a little leak in it.

They came slowly, very slowly, from the heights. But still the watchman chuckled, for he watched no longer. The golden cloud heaved close beneath them.

“We’re going down, down,” said the lovers. It was as though a ship sank in a turbid sea. A little grey cloud gathered about them. The sun lost its golden clear sharpness. And the watchman saw it and watched, and ceased to laugh.

“Do we go down again, sir?” he asked.

“Aye,” said Gervase. Lady Semple heard him, but saw nothing. The light of day grew dim. It was as though night fell about them. The sun went out and darkness gathered where they sank. They breathed uneasily and sank into utter blackness.

•   •   •   •   •

Down below Crabb waited, quietly wondering. He had taken Bentley home and had come back to the works by himself. He sat quiet as a stone — hoping, happy and unhappy. She was, at any rate, in sunshine. He thanked what gods there were for that. The time went. Perhaps a wind blew high up in the sunlight!

As he waited he heard a little sharp cry like that of a bat, and then a sudden rushing sound, and the flat sound of something striking earth not many yards from him. It was very horrible, for what fell was soft — humanly soft — and he knew it. He groped his way to where the thing fell, and his hands were wet when he touched it, and his heart failed him. But he felt again, and knew it was a man, or had been one, and not a woman. He felt a beard. It was the watchman. He sat by the body — by the wreck of the body — and wondered. Had Lord Gervase thrown him out? That was possible. Anything was possible. Or perhaps the man had gone mad. He knew he was unbalanced. There were few wholly sane in the great city. But if the balloon had been coming down, it must have ascended again.

“I’ll wait,” said Crabb. How long he waited he did not know. No clocks chimed. He had no sense of the hours; there was no light for him or for any. But at last — at last — he heard a far dim voice. It was not in the Street, for now none came there, or if they came they cried lamentably. It was far above him. The next moment he heard the faint light impact of the car; heard it rebound lightly and come down again, not twenty yards from where it had ascended.

“Is that you, my lord?” he asked.

A voice within two yards of him answered, “Yes, Crabb.”

“I’m sorry, sorry, my lord.” Now for a break from the story. Where do you think that this came from? Another site, that’s where. Sorry if you find this annoying, but you might want to find a site that does the work instead of stealing someone else’s work.

“It can’t be helped,” said Gervase. “Did you hear anything fall, Crabb?”

“Aye, my lord.”

“The watchman went mad and jumped out. We rose again, but sank once more. There’s no wind up there, Crabb. And Lady Semple’s dead, Crabb.”

Crabb heard Julia Semple weeping quietly, but he found a sheet of iron and dragged it over the hollow in which the watchman’s body lay before he went to the car.

“Make the ropes fast, Crabb,” said Lord Gervase.

Then they lifted Julia and her dead mother from the car. They laid the body apart.

“God help us,” said Gervase. “Where’s Bentley?”

“With his wife,” said Crabb.

“We must keep the balloon full and try again,” said Gervase. Crabb brought Bentley, and his wife came with him. The men fired the retorts and made more gas with infinite labour. Once more the balloon, which had become limp and flaccid, stood up boldly. There were five of them left. The car could carry five, but even with four they had done nothing. Before they did anything else they buried Lady Semple, and heaped earth upon the battered watchman. They thought then that it was day.

“We must go,” said Gervase.

Crabb stood apart once more, but Julia Semple spoke.

“Let Crabb come.”

“Oh, no, miss.”

“You must come, or I will not go.”

She took the blind man by the arm.

“Yes; come, Crabb. We owe everything to you,” said Gervase.

“I’ll come, then,” said Crabb. His voice was strained. They remembered it afterwards. Some folks have gifts in their voices: they mark the power of their nature, the strength of them.

Before they went up they lightened the car of every superfluous thing and cut away the guide-rope. They took little food with them, and even cast away their boots.

“It’s our last chance, Bentley,” said Lord Gervase. “We can’t make more gas, Crabb says.”

They got into the car again.

“I’ll cut the rope, my lord,” said Crabb.

“Aye,” said Gervase.

“Are we ready?”

“Yes.”

Crabb cut the rope, and they rose. But overhead the darkness was intense.

“We came through black and dun and yellow and grey before,” said Gervase. “And then the light — the light!”

Now they breathed again and saw a faint greyness, and then stars sparkling suddenly in deep dark blue, and far away to the west a thin, thin moon. It was night, the dark hour before the dawn. Towns shone with lights far below them, sparkling on the horizon.

“It’s night still,” they said.

Even as they spoke they saw in the east a little grey flame of dawn, a faint whiteness, a growth as of a lily opened.

“There’s the day!”

“I wish I could see it,” said Crabb.

“Poor blind man,” said Julia, and she pressed his big hand.

“That’s better than gold, missy. Oh, if I could see your face!” said Crabb.

“I’ve never seen yours,” she said, softly.

But the dawn rose like a magic palm in a desert. There was gold in the flame of it, and a heart of gold, and the upper limb of the sun grew out of the east, and she saw Crabb at last. Grimed though he was by labour she saw a strangely carved face, which was very calm and strong. The lids upon his sightless eyes were full and hid them. His mouth was like that of some strange Egyptian. It had power in it, and resolution.

“I see you now, Crabb,” she said to him.

The others looked at the dawn. Mrs Bentley wept softly.

“If I could only see you! May I touch your face, missy?”

She raised his hand to it and he felt its sweet, soft contours.

“You must be very beautiful,” he murmured. Then he said to Lord Gervase:

“Do we still rise, my lord?”

“I think so, Crabb,” Gervase answered.

“Look up, my lord. Is there a cloud above us?”

High in the zenith there was a faint wisp of vapour in a cool current.

“That cloud above moves, my lord,” said Bentley.

“We don’t move,” said Gervase, dully. “’Tis a thousand feet above us.”

“Can we cast out anything?” said Crabb, in an eager voice.

They cast out some clothes — aye, and some food and water.

“It’s not enough,” said Gervase. “But there’s a strong current high above us.”

“Oh, there’s enough,” said Crabb.

But they only stared at him.

“You’re blind, Crabb.”

“I can see things,” said Crabb. “I see if we go down we shall not rise again. I see that — and more.”

He bent his head to Julia.

“You see me, missy? Will you remember me?”

“Oh, yes, Crabb.”

He stood up and held the edge of the car.

“Sit down, man!” cried Bentley.

But he stared at the warmth of the sun, which he felt upon his pallid cheek.

“Oh, the sun’s good, though I cannot see it! And I’ve a sense of light in me! Goodbye, missy.”

He said that to Julia, and ere they knew what he did he threw himself from the car.

They saw his body fall, and Julia shrieked vainly. He fell into the cloud, but the balloon rose and entered the great wind of the upper air. And the heavy cloud below them slipped to the east.

THE SUD EXPRESS

The thin pines stood close together, ranked in order. Each was scarred cruelly: each held a little tin cup into which its life-blood, the resin, drained drop by drop. In the close shadow of the pines some sour herbage grew, and such coarse plants as could draw their nutriment from the unfertile soil. The trees blocked out the horizon, which, even without them, would have been sombre and melancholy.

It was long past the hour of noon, and yet no sun declared it. The sky was a close pall of grey. Its light was an even wanness: no whiter glare discovered the west. The dull grey overhead matched in monotonous harmony the green below, green which was undistinguished, mournful. In this world aloof from the world there was no song of birds. The only things that moved were colourless: a few black and white cows that sought listlessly the means to live.

The settled order of the pines, each bleeding from open veins; the stacks of ‘poles cut from those which had done their work, and the dim spaces where young pines grew once more, declared that this was the Landes, the melancholy Landes. Those who knew it would have said it lay between Morcenx and Lamothe. It was perhaps Lugos or Yehoux. There are towns in the Landes: the soil of iron alias even grows towns. Each town bleeds a little; perhaps bleeds into the cup of the City of the Girondo. Men go away: perhaps they return. There is for some a fascination in the Landes. There are cheerful people there; perhaps a red cow.

There is one great cut in the Landes. This is a story of it: it is also the story of Pierre, called Pierre of Yehoux by the folk of Caudos and Lugos. The man lived not far from Lugos, and looked after the black and white cows belonging to Monsieur Pantin, who was a rich man. He had a shop in Labouheyre, but owned some land at Lugos. Pierre had worked for him for thirteen years.

“Someday I will go away, even to Bordeaux,” said Pierre, thirteen years ago. Nevertheless, he had lived in the meantime. One can live very well in the Landes, and one dies there as well as elsewhere, as Pierre knew.

“Nevertheless—” said Pierre. Nevertheless he looked after Pere Pantin’s cows.

From the City of the Gironde the railway runs by way of Lamothe and Morcenx to Dax and Spain.

“Spain!” said wondering Pierre. Spain was far off, and wonderful. The sun always shone there. It grew wine like the Médoc, good wine, splendid wine, so people said. But Bordeaux was a great place, greater than any city in Spain. Often Pierre wondered as a boy what Bordeaux was like. It was very much greater than Lamothe or Morcenx. He once saw a picture of a street in Bordeaux but did not understand it. Nor did he believe what it told him. Nevertheless it drew him.

“Someday I will go,” said Pierre. They gasconaded to Pierre about Paris. Bordeaux Would be but a street in Paris. Paris was the centre of France, of the world, of the universe. “Someday I will go,” said the grown-up Pierre, hard of hand and very soft of eye. “Someday—”

In the meantime the trains ran from Morcenx to Lamothe. It dawned upon him that they also ran from Bordeaux to Spain, and from Paris to a dim far place called Madrid. Whenever he. could he watched the trains go through. He went to Lamothe in one, and was a happy man.

“I can save money and go to Paris,” said Pierre.

Then he fell in love. Presently he married Berthe Leroux, and they had a child.

“I will go to Paris with the boy when he is grown up,” said the father, as he gathered resin in the forests. So days passed, and the boy grew up. And Berthe died. Pierre sat by her grave, and pondered mournfully.

“She is in heaven,” he said. He made heaven like Paris, Paris like heaven. He watched the railway more and more. To die was to go somewhere in a strange train. He told his boy so, the poor dreamer.

“Perhaps by the Sud Express,” said Pierre.

Day by day the train that took away dead Berthe went further over the horizon, and she was lost in mists. He sometimes wondered what she was like when she was alive. He could not remember her face, but only some of her words. But Paris remained and the Sud Express. He got older: the army took his boy. Pierre grew stiff: he was hardly fit for work, though he was not really old. He looked after a patch of pine forest and Monsieur Pantin’s black and white cows. He was able to see the Sud Express every day as it came up from far-away Spain on its way to Paris.

It was very wonderful to Pierre as he watched the swift train coming out of the south. He got to love it more and more. It was the swiftest train of all, and the finest and grandest, and had fine long carriages, with big words on them that he at last learnt to read. He knew the drivers by sight. He knew they knew him, for sometimes they nodded to him and threw up a hand to him as he stood among his cows, and leant upon the fence guarding the way.

“They go to Paris,” he said, for he believed the engineers got on in Spain and went through to the great city. “How fine to see Madrid one day and Paris the next!”

He sat mournfully when the Express had gone by, for there was an hour before him which was very dull before he began to think of the train which would come tomorrow. At first he did not even know how it got back. Then he found out that another great train went south in the late evening. Sometimes he went out between eight and nine to see it go past on its way to Madrid. But still he loved most the late noonday train to Paris. “I will go on it to Paris,” said Pierre, dreaming. “I have fifty francs saved already. Someday—”

Day by day the train passed by, and he heard it come and go. Sometimes he shouted aloud to the driver, and cheered feebly. The cows, who minded not the known roar of the great train, lifted their heads in mild surprise when they heard him shout. He was a little ashamed of himself.

He had a great wonder about the rich people who travelled in the Sud Express. They wore black coats and cravats. There were richly dressed women in the carriages, beautiful strange women. They ate splendid things, the very best of everything. One day, as the train lurched a little on a carelessly laid rail, one of the waiters in the train stumbled and threw out of an open window some white rolls. Pierre picked them up and ate them slowly.

“Every day they eat such bread, apparently,” said Pierre. “And they drink wine-always wine, good red wine from Spain, perhaps.” ‘

In Paris, apparently, everyone ate good white bread and drank splendid red wine out of bottles. Paris was a good place to live in; no wonder people went there from Spain and other places. For someone said that Spain was poor, after all. Compared with France it must be, naturally.

Berthe, his wife, went over the horizon altogether. He could not remember the poor woman’s voice. His son had done his service in the army, but had not returned to the Landes. He stayed in Bordeaux. Pierre could not remember what his boy was like. He had not seen him for five years.

“He and I will meet in Paris,” said Pierre. But he did not much want to see Berthe. And his son did not write. He thought more and more of the Sud Express and Paris. He lived to see the train. Once a driver rolled up a bottle of wine in several newspapers and threw it on the grass near him, and as he did so he waved his other hand gaily to the silent man with the cows. Pierre drank the wine, and though it was poor, thin wine, rough Rioja, he thought it a heavenly nectar. It came from far-off countries, and was a gift from the Sud Express, the one great glory of the melancholy Landes.

“It is very good of him to give it me,” said Pierre. And once more the same man threw him a half-bottle of wine. This time the bottle broke, and Pierre wept about his loss.

“I shall never go to Paris, after all,” said Pierre. That night he dreamed of a strange city, and was in its streets. He met his boy, now become a monsieur, in a black coat, and with him was Berthe, poor Berthe.

“How did you get to Paris P ” they asked him.

“In the Sud Express,” he said. And then he woke.

“After all, I’m sorry Berthe died,” he said. “I remembered her quite well in my dream, but now I cannot see her face. And though my son was grown up he had his boy’s face still. I wonder it I shall ever see him, or Berthe!”

The broken dream was like lost wine to him. He wept a little and felt that he was old. People said that he grew old soon. But he was good enough to look after black and white cows, and to gather the tears of the scarred pines.

Day by day as he grew older he lived more in Paris, more in the train. He said he must go to Paris soon. He often dreamed he was in the Express. He saw it thunder by him, either in the hot sun or in the rain, or in the chill winds of winter, which moaned through the forest. He tried to see himself in it.

“That might be me,” he said of one worker in the train, showing in a blouse. “I might have been he; why was I not?”

He sat down now to see the train go by. And one day he saw himself upon the train, a strange, worn old man, sitting in his peasant’s clothes in a reserved seat, drinking fine red wine and eating rich meat and pain blanc [white bread]. He woke to see the train disappearing in the dream dust of the iron way and was sad to have missed it.

When he talked with others, he talked of the Sud Express. They no longer called him Pierre of Yehoux, but Pierre of the Sud Express. He told them all about Paris, and about the inside of the train, and his dreams. They said he was an old fool, but he smiled. He was proud of his new name.

“Pierre of the Sud Express,” he said; “oh, that is something like a name!”

He told the great train as it went past him so proudly what his name was. The train was alive, conscious, sentient, fierce, haughty, wonderful.

“I am Pierre of the Sud Express,” said Pierre. Every one of those who worked the train knew now. Word of him drifted even to Dax, perhaps to Bordeaux. They threw him newspapers. He was very proud and happy, and every day he grew older, so that people said he was no good any more. But Monsieur Pantin, who was almost a socialist (as some averred), behaved very kindly to the poor old fellow.

“After all, he is good enough to look after cows,” said Pantin. Pantin even went down to the place where Pierre looked after the cows, and heard him talk about the Sud Express.

“It is a very fine thing, monsieur,” said Pierre, “to work here and yet to see the great train. Possibly monsieur has travelled by it, to Bordeaux and to Paris?”

The only time Pantin, then a private in a regiment of infantry, had ever travelled to Paris, was part of the way in a third-class carriage and the remainder in a truck.

“To be sure,” said Pantin, “one has to go quick at times, Pierre.”

Pantin posed, and Pierre admired him. “It is wonderful,” said Pierre. “I should like to go to Paris in the Sud Express, but it is, of course, impossible.”

“Ah, impossible for you,” said Pantin. “But the time will come when we shall all travel in the fine trains, Pierre—”

“And eat pain blanc and drink good wine,” said Pierre, glowing at the thought.

“No doubt, but not yet,” said Pantin. “Good-bye, Pierre; look after the cows, Pierre.”

“They are my life, monsieur,” said Pierre proudly. For indeed he was very good to them, and he often scratched them between their horns and under their big jaws. One lanky cow came to him to be scratched.

“She is fond of me,” said Pierre.

But as Pantin was going Pierre heard the sound of the Express coming.

“The train comes, monsieur,” he said. So his master waited awhile, and presently they saw the great train in the distance.

“All the way to Paris,” said Pierre. “Do you think, monsieur, that I could go in it to Paris and back for sixty francs?”

Monsieur said he feared it was impossible, and Pierre looked sad. But now the train came thundering past them, and who could be sad then? Pierre waved his cap to the people in the train and to the driver, and was happy because the driver waved his hand to him.

“Do you see he saluted us, monsieur?” asked Pierre. “Ah, but it is a great thing to be a driver in that train, and such a train!”

So indeed it seemed.

“Poor devil,” said Pantin, as he walked away. “I, too, wish I could see Paris again!”

But Pierre thought that Pére Pantin could go to Paris when he liked. Happy Pére Pantin!

“If I were very rich I would send the poor devil to see Paris,” said Pantin, “but not in the Sud Express!”

To go in any other train would have seemed wrong to Pierre. That one train was his world. He forgot wholly that he had been married. He even forgot his far-off son. It is a strange world, and very strange for the old as they dream. They are shortly to go somewhere in the Great Express, the greatest express of all, and yet they are never ready, never packed up. But they are carried free!

And the day was at hand when the Great Express was to come for Pierre. It was his happiest day, perhaps the happiest of his life, happier than his wedding day (that day now forgotten), and happier than the day his son was born. For on that day he spoke to those on the Sud Express, and touched the great train, and, greatest of all, even rode on it l He could not have believed this if he had been told it would happen. But it did happen, and it happened in this way.

As he waited for the hour when the train would pass him, it seemed to him that he waited long. The train was late. That did sometimes happen, but this time it was a whole hour late. And when he saw it coming it seemed to him that it came slower than usual. It did come slower, and when it came within a few hundred yards of him he heard something snap, and there was a strange grinding noise, and he saw sparks issue from the brake blocks, and presently the train stopped close to him. He saw people put their heads out of the window, and some of the men of the train got off and went to inquire. The engineer swore terribly and also tore his hair, but could not do much harm to any that still remained to him, for he was nearly bald. It appeared that the engine had been doing badly all the way from Hendaye, and now some bolt had broken or some nut had been lost, and for awhile the engine was helpless, quite helpless, until they had replaced the nut or the bolt. So much Pierre learnt from what folk said, and when he crossed the fence and came timidly close to the train, he heard many strange oaths from strange people out of the south. Pierre paid little attention to them, but touched the train and even patted it.

“You are the Sud Express,” he said.

A passenger, who got out of the train and stood smoking between the rails and the fence, spoke to him. Pierre answered, but he did not know what he answered. The passenger gave him a cigarette, though, and Pierre smoked it.

“You are doubtless from Madrid, monsieur?” he asked, as he woke up.

But no, monsieur was from Burgos.

The good passenger spoke to him about his cows. It appeared that the passenger knew a great deal about cows. He had been in a place called America where there were millions of cattle. He asked Pierre about the gathering of the gum It was annoying to be stopped there, said the passenger. Pierre said it must be annoying, but presently they would go on. What could stop the Sud Express?

“Do you think, monsieur, I might look inside the train P ” he asked timidly.

The good passenger said he thought so, and he called to a man in a fine suit of clothes, with a gilt cap, and gave him a franc, and asked him to show Pierre the inside of one of the carriages. This the gold-capped man did, and Pierre, with his cap in his hand, looked into the carriage. It surpassed in splendour all his ideas of things. It was full of rich people, of course.

“It is very fine, wonderful,” said Pierre. He told the man that he was called Pierre of the Sud Express, and his guide asked him why? And Pierre told him why. It was because he talked so much about the train.

“I always wait to see it go by,” said Pierre, “and I always wave my cap, and sometimes the driver nods to me — to me, old Pierre, formerly of Yehoux but now of the Sud Express, you see, monsieur.”

He was now very old, one sees, and the man to whom he spoke was also quite kind to him.

“It is a very fine train, is it not, mon vieux?” he asked.

“The finest in the world,” said Pierre, nodding.

“You are right, mon vieux,” said his new friend; “will you have half-a-bottle of wine and some pain blanc?”

And Pierre took it, and just then the train moved on a hundred yards. For a moment Pierre was frightened. Perhaps they would ask him to pay. But if he could not they might take him all the way to Paris! It was a dreadful, splendid thought.

“Oh,” said Pierre, and then the train stopped again, and he got down reluctantly, yet with an eased mind.

“After all,” he said sadly, “perhaps I’m too old to go to Paris.”

The passenger gave him a franc and got in, and presently the engine whistled, and the train went on. “Nevertheless,” said Pierre, “I have been on the Sud Express.”

That was true, it was really true. He had achieved his great ambition, there was no doubt of it. He would be able to tell people that he had been in it, that he had talked to people belonging to it, that he had eaten and drunk on board of it.

“Ah,” said Pierre, when the train had gone; “how wonderful.”

He told everyone about it in the village, and those who were gentle were pleased, and very few jeered, because he was very old and white.

“If I have been in it,” said Pierre, “I can hope for other things. Yesterday it seemed impossible, but now everything is possible. Why should I not go to Paris? Who can tell?”

Of a surety no one could tell. Some said he was sure to go someday. When he had gone they said he was getting very, very old.

“His son ought to look after him,” said one old man, who remembered all about Pierre and, indeed, had known his wife.

But Pierre did not think of his son.

That night he determined to see the Express when it came back. So he went out in the darkness and came to the railway, and sat down by the rails and smoked his pipe quietly as the light went out of the sky wholly and the stars began to shine. Where he sat was in the forest, and the thin pines whispered to each other in the westerly breeze. Pierre heard them whisper, and then he fell asleep and lay down, and put his weary old head upon the rails.

“I have worked very hard today,” he said before he slept. “I will lie down one moment.”

He had worked very hard all his days while he was able to work. And now he slept and dreamed of the great lighted Express of the night which was coming from the north. He dreamed that he sat in the train, and found that he wore a black coat and had a cravat, and in front of him was a fine meal. Opposite him was a woman, a very beautiful woman, and next him was a man. He spoke to them, and discovered at last. that they were his wife and his son. But Berthe was very much more beautiful than she had been, and his boy was very kind and gentle to him.

“It is long since we met,” said Pierre. He had to speak ‘rather loudly. The train made a great noise. For, as one can find out, if one tries, a far-off train makes a very Qstrange noise a long way off if one puts one’s ear on the rails.

“But now we are together,” said Berthe tenderly. She was not very tender of old, but then she had been dead, and being dead no doubt alters one, said the dreamer.

And then his son drank to him. They clinked glasses, but could not hear themselves speak.

“My son,” said Pierre happily. He was glad to be with them, after all. He had not forgotten and they had not forgotten. They were going somewhere together.

And the Sud Express, bound for Madrid, roared in his ears. He did not wake. But very suddenly it was an awful day for him, and in a blinding flash of light he and Berthe and his boy went home in the Great Express of all.

His body lay quietly in the silent pine woods, and the Sud Express, with blood upon its wheels, roared down the rails towards the south.

THE BLOOD FETISH

Outside the tent the forest was alive and busy, as it is forever in the tropics of Africa. Birds called with harsh strange notes from dark trees, for, though the forest was even more full of creeping shadows, the sun had not yet sunk beyond the western flats through which the Kigi ran to the sea. Monkeys chattered and howled: and beneath this chorus was the hum of a million insects, that voice of the bush which never ceases. The sick man in the tent moved uneasily and looked at his companion.

“Give me something to drink, doctor,” he said.

The doctor supported his head while he drank.

“Were there any of your drugs in it?” asked the patient.

“No, Smith,” said the doctor.

“My taste is morbid,” said Smith. “I shan’t last long, old chap.”

Dr Winslow looked out into the forest, into the night, for now it was night very suddenly.

“Nonsense,” said Winslow. “You’ll live to take your collection home and be more famous than you are now.”

“Am I famous?” asked Simcox Smith. “I suppose I am in my way. I’m thought to know more than most about this country and the devilish ways of it. Everyone acknowledges that, or everyone but Hayling.”

He frowned as he mentioned the name.

“He’s no better than an ignorant fool,” he remarked. “But we see strange things here, doctor.”

The doctor sighed.

“I suppose so,” he said, “but what fools we are to be here at all.”

The dying man shook his head.

“No, no, I’ve learnt a lot, old chap. I wish I could teach Hayling. I meant to, and now I can’t. He’ll spend all his time trying to discredit my — my discoveries.”

“Lie quiet,” said the doctor, and for long minutes Simcox Smith and the anthropologist said nothing. He lay thinking. But he spoke at last.

“I’ve not bought that thing from Suja,” he said.

“Don’t,” said Winslow.

“You think it’s fraud?”

“I’m sure of it,” said Winslow.

Simcox Smith laughed.

“You are as bad as Hayling.”

He put out his hand and drew Winslow closer to him.

“Suja showed me what it did,” he said. “I saw it myself.”

“On what?” asked Winslow quickly.

“On a prisoner, one who was killed when you were away.”

“And it did—”

“Did something! My God, yes,” said the anthropologist, shivering.

“What?” asked the doctor curiously, but with drawn brows.

“He grew pale and it got red. I thought I saw the wrist,” said Simcox Smith. “I thought I saw it. I did see it.”

Winslow would have said it was all a delusion if Smith had been well. He knew how men’s minds went in the rotten bush of the West Coast. He had seen intellects rot, and feared for his own.

“Oh,” said Winslow.

The sick man lay back in his bed.

“I’ll buy it and send it to Hayling.”

“Nonsense,” said Winslow; “don’t.”

“You don’t believe it, so why shouldn’t I send it? I will. I’ll show Hayling! He’s a blind fool, and believes there are no devilish things in this world. What is this world, old chap, and what are we? It’s all horrible and ghastly. Fetch Suja, old chap.”

“Nonsense, lie down and be quiet,” said Winslow.

“I want Suja, the old rascal, I want him,” said Smith urgently. “I must have it for Hayling. I’d like Hayling or some of his house to grow pale. They’ll see more than the wrist. Oh God! What’s the head like?”

He shivered.

“I want Suja,” he said moaning, and presently Winslow went out and send a boy for Suja, who came crawling on his hands and knees, for he was monstrously old and withered and weak. But his eyes were alive. They looked like lamps in a gnarled piece of wood. He kneeled on the floor beside Smith’s bed. Smith talked to him in his own tongue that Winslow could not understand, and the two men, the two dying men, talked long and eagerly while Winslow smoked. Suja was dying, had been dying for twenty, fifty years. His people said they knew not how old he was. But Smith would die next day, said Winslow. Suja and Smith talked, and at last they came to an agreement. And then Suja crawled out of the tent.

“Get me a hundred dollars out of my chest,” said Smith. “And when I am dead you will give him my clothes and blankets; all of them.”

“All right if you say so,” said Winslow. He got the hundred dollars out, and presently the old sorcerer came back. With him he brought a parcel done up in fibre and a big leaf, and over that some brown paper on which was a label in red letters, with great care. It was a precious piece of paper, and not a soul thereabouts but Suja would have touched it. The red letters were some dreadful charm, so Suja had told the others.

“This is it,” said Suja.

“Give him the money,” said Smith eagerly.

He turned to Suja and spoke quietly to him in his own tongue.

“It’s not mine, Suja, but John Hayling’s. Say it.”

Winslow heard Suja say something, and then he heard the words, “Shon ’Aylin’.”

Simcox Smith looked up at Winslow.

“He gives it to Hayling,Winslow,” he said triumphantly.

“Is that part of the mumbo jumbo?” asked Winslow, half contemptuously. But somehow he was not wholly contemptuous. The darkness of the night and the glimmer of the lamp in the darkness, and the strange and horrible aspect of the sorcerer affected him.

“Shon ’Aylin’,” mumbled Suja, as he counted his dollars.

“Yes, it’s part of it,” said Smith. “It won’t work except on the one who owns it and on his people. It must be transferred. We have it to the slave who died.”

“It’s a beastly idea,” said Winslow.

“You’ll send it for me,” said Smith. “You must.”

“Oh, all right,” said Winslow.

With trembling hands Smith put the packet into a biscuit tin.

Old Suja crept out into the darkness.

“I believe anything with that old devil in the tent,” said Winslow.

Smith giggled.

“It’s true, and it’s Hayling’s. I always meant to send it to him, the unbelieving beast,” he said. “I wish I was going to live to see it. You’ll send it,Winslow?”

“Yes.”

“You promise on your word of honour?” insisted Smith.

Reluctantly enough, Winslow gave his word of honour, and Smith was satisfied. And at ten o’clock that night he died in his sleep.

Winslow packed up all his papers and collections, and sent him down to the coast by carriers and canoe. The packet containing the fetish which Smith had bought from the ancient sorcerer he sent by post to England. He addressed it to A.J. Hayling, 201 Lansdown Road, St John’s Wood. By this time Winslow had recovered his tone. He believed nothing which he could not see. He was angry with himself for having been affected by what Smith and old Suja had said and done.

“It’s absurd, of course,” said Winslow, with bend brows. He added, “but it’s a beastly idea.”

When he sent the fetish away he wrote a letter to go with it, saying that Simcox Smith had often spoken to him of his rival in England. He described briefly what had occurred at the time of Smith’s death, and gave some brief details of old Suja. He was obviously very old, and all the natives for miles round were frightened of him. Nevertheless, there was, of course, nothing in the thing. Latterly the climate and overwork had obviously affected Smith’s mind. “I should not sent it if he had not made me promise to do so on my word of honour,” wrote Winslow.

He dismissed the matter from his mind, and the parcel and letter went home by the next Elder Dempster boat.

Mr Hayling was rather pleased than otherwise to hear of Simcox Smith’s decease, although he said “poor fellow,” as one must when a scientific enemy and rival dies. They had quarrelled for years when they met at the Society’s rooms, and had fought in the scientific journals. Hayling was an anthropological Mr Gradgrind. He wanted facts, and nothing but facts. He believed he was a Baconian, as he knew nothing of Bacon. It had never occurred to him that there was any mystery in anything. There was nothing but ignorance, and most men were very ignorant. The existence of men, of things, of the universe, of matter itself, were all taken for granted by him, in the same way they were taken for granted by the average man. What made Simcox Smith (who had a penchant for metaphysics) once jokingly called the Me-ness of the Ego was an absurdity. It was idiocy. When a man begins to think what made himself an Ego and what constitutes “Me”, he is on the verge of insanity unless he is a great philosopher.

“Simcox Smith is an ass,” said Hayling, quite oblivious to the fact that Smith had done good work in many directions and offered some conjectural hypotheses to the world which had much merit and might someday rank as theories. “Simcox Smith is an ass. He believed in occultism. He believed, I am prepared to swear, in witchcraft. He mistook the horrible ideas of a savage race for realities. Would you believe it, he even said that everything believed in utter and simple faith had a kind of reality? He said this was a law of nature!”

Obviously Simcox Smith had been mad. But some easily affected and imaginative people said it was a dreadful idea, just as Winslow had said the notion of Suja’s blood fetish was a beastly one. Imagine for an instant that the idea was true! It meant that the frightful imaginations of madmen had a quasi existence at least! It meant that there was a dreadful element of truth (for who knew what truth was?) in any conceived folly. A man had but to imagine something to create it. One of Smith’s friends really believed this. He was an atheist, he said, but he believed (in a way, he added, as he laughed) that mankind had really created a kind of anthropomorphic deity, with the passions and feelings attributed to him by belief and tradition. No wonder, said this friend of Smith’s, that the world was a horrible place to anyone who could grasp its misery and had ears for its groans.

It must be acknowledged that this idea of Simcox Smith’s was a horrible one. It really affected some men. One tried it on a child (he was very scientific, and believed in his experiments he could more or less control) and the child saw things which threw it into a fit and injured it for life. Nevertheless, it was a very interesting experiment, for something happened to the child (there were odd marks on it) which looked like something more than suggestion, unless it all true that we hear of stigmata. Perhaps it is, but personally I have an idea (I knew Smith) that there is something in his damnable creating theory.

But to return to Hayling. He got the parcel from the Coast, and he read Winslow’s letter.

“Poor fellow,” said Hayling; “so he’s dead at last. Well, well! And what is this that he sends? A blood fetish? Ah, he thinks he can convert me at the last, the poor mad devil.”

He opened the parcel, and inside the matting and the leaves, which smelt of the West Coast of Africa (the smell being muddy and very distinctive to those who have smelt it), he found a dried black hand, severed at the wrist joint.There was nothing else, only this hand.

“Humph,” said Hayling, who had nerves which had never been shaken by the bush and the fevers of the bush, and had never heard black men whispering dreadfully of the lost soulds of the dead. “Humph.”

He picked it up and looked at it. It was an ordinary hand, a right hand, and there was nothing remarkable about it at first. On a further look the nails seemed remarkably long, and that gave the hand a rather cruel look. Hayling said “humph,” again. He examined it carefully and saw that it was very deeply marked on the palm.

“Very interesting,” said Hayling. Curiously enough (or rather it would have been curious if we didn’t know that the strongest of us have our weak spots), he had a belief or some belief in palmistry. He had never acknowledged it to a soul but a well-known palmist in the west of London. “Very interesting. I wonder what Sacconi would say of these lines?”

Sacconi was the palmist. He was an Irishman.

“I’ll show it to Sacconi,” said Hayling. He packed it up in its box again and put it in a cupboard, which he locked up. He dismissed the matter, for he had a good deal to do. He had to write something about Simcox Smith, for instance, and he was working on totemism. He hardly thought of the dried hand for some days.

Hayling was a bachelor, and lived with a niece and a housekeeper. He was a nice man to live with unless one knew anything about anthropology and totems and such like, and Mary Hayling knew nothing about them whatever. She said “Yes, uncle dear,” and “No, uncle dear,” just as she ought to do, and when he abused Simcox Smith, or Robins-Gunter, or Williams, who were rivals of his, she was always sympathetic and said it was a shame.

“What’s a shame?” said Hayling.

“I don’t know, dear uncle,” said Mary Hayling.

And Hayling laughed.

Then there was the housekeeper. She was fair, stout and ruddy, and very cheerful in spite of the fact that skulls and bones and specimen things in bottles made her flesh creep. She knew nothing whatever about them, and wondered what they mattered. Why Mr Hayling raged and rumbled about other men’s opinions on such horrid subjects she didn’t know. However, she took everything easily, and only remonstrated when the fullness of the house necessitated skulls being exposed to public view. The passage even had some of them and the maids objected to dusting them, as was only natural. Hayling said he didn’t want ’em dusted, but what would any housekeeper who was properly constituted think of that? She made the girls dust them, though she herself shivered. She even saw that they wiped glass bottles with awful things inside them. She and the housemaid cleaned up Mr Hayling’s own room and opened the cupboard where the hand was. The girl gave a horrid squeak as she put her hand in and touched it.

“O, law, ma’am, what is it?” asked Kate.

“Don’t be a fool, girl,” said Mrs Farwell, with a shiver. “It’s only a hand.”

“Only — oh Lord! I won’t touch it,” said the girl. “There’s a dead mouse by it.”

“Then take out the dead mouse,” said the housekeeper. The girl did so, and slammed the cupboard door to and locked it. The mouse was a poor shriveled little thing, but how interesting it would have been to dead Simcox Smith neither Kate nor the housekeeper knew. It went into the dustbin as if it did not bear witness to a horror.

That afternoon Mrs Farwell spoke to Hayling.

“If you please, sir, there’s a hand in that cupboard, and I couldn’t get Kate to clean it out.”

“A hand! Oh yes, I remember,” said Hayling. “The girl’s a fool. Does she think it will hurt her? How did she know it was there? I wrapped it up. Someone’s been meddling.”

“I don’t think so, sir,” said Mrs Farwell, with dignity. “She is much too frightened to meddle, and so am I.”

“Mrs Farwell, you are a fool,” said Hayling.

“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs Farwell. When Mrs Farwell had sailed out of the room Hayling opened the cupboard and found the hand out of its package.

“Someone has been meddling,” growled Hayling.“They pretend that they are frightened and come hunting here to get a sensation. I know ’em. They’re all savages, and so are all of us. Civilization!”

He gave a snort when he thought of what civilization was. That is an anthropological way of looking at it. It’s not a theological way at all.

He looked at the hand. It was a curious hand.

“It’s contracted a little,” said Hayling. “The fist has closed, I think. Drying unequally. But it’s interesting; I’ll show it to Sacconi.”

He put the hand into its coverings, and took it that very afternoon to Sacconi.

Personally Hayling believed in chiromancy. As I have said, it really was his only weakness. I never used to believe it when he argued with me, but now I have my doubts. When Sacconi took the thing into his own white and beautiful hands and turned it over to look at the palm, his eyebrows went up in a very odd way. Hayling said so.

“This, oh, ah,” said Sacconi. His real name was Flynn. He came from Limerick. “This is very odd — very—”

“Very what?” asked Hayling.

“Horrible, quite horrible,” said Sacconi.

“Can you read it, man?”

Sacconi grunted.

“Can I read the Times? I can, but I don’t. I’ve half the mind not to read this. It’s very horrible, Hayling.”

“The devil,” said Hayling;“what d’ye mean?”

“This is a negro’s hand.”

“Any fool can see that,” said Hayling rudely.

“A murderer’s hand.”

“That’s likely enough,” said Hayling.

“A cannibal’s hand.”

“You don’t say so!” said Hayling.

“Oh, worse than that.”

“What’s worse?”

Sacconi said a lot that Hayling denounced as fudge. Probably it was fudge. And yet—

“I’d burn it,” said Sacconi, with a shiver, as he handed it back to Hayling, and went to wash his hands. “I’d burn it.”

“There’s a damn weak spot in you, Sacconi,” said the anthropologist.

“Perhaps,” said Sacconi, “but I’d burn it.”

“Damn nonsense,” said Hayling. “Why should I?”

“I believe a lot of things you don’t,” said Sacconi.

“I disbelieve a lot that you don’t,” retorted Hayling.

“You see, I’m a bit of a clairvoyant,” said Sacconi.

“I’ve heard you say that before,” said Hayling, as he went away.

When he got home again he put the hand in the cupboard. He forgot to lock it up. And he locked the cat up in his room when he went to bed.

There was an awful crying of cats, or a cat, in the middle of the night. But cats fight about that time.

And when Kate opened the door of Hayling’s working-room in the morning she saw the hand upon the hearthrug, and gave a horrid scream. It brought Mrs Farwell out of the drawling room, and Hayling out of the bathroom in a big towel.

“What the devil—” said Hayling.

“What is it, Kate?” cried Mrs Farwell.

“The hand! the hand!” said Kate. “It’s on the floor.”

Mrs Farwell saw it. Hayling put on his dressing-gown, and came down and saw it, too.

“Give that fool a month’s notice,” said Hayling. “She’s been meddling again.”

“I haven’t,” said Kate, sobbing. And then Mrs Farwell saw the cat lying stretched out under Hayling’s desk.

“It was the cat. There she is,” said Mrs Farwell.

“Damn the cat,” said Hayling. He took Kate’s broom and gave the cat a push with it.

The cat was dead.

“I don’t want a month’s notice,” said Kate, quavering. “I’ll go now.”

“Send the fool off,” said Hayling angrily. He took up the cat, of which he had been very fond, and put it outside, and shut the door on the crying girl and Mrs Farwell. He picked up the hand and looked at it.

“Very odd,” said Hayling.

He looked again.

“Very beastly,” said Hayling. “I suppose it’s my imagination.”

He looked once more.

“Looks fresher,” said Hayling. “These fools of women have infected me.”

He put the hand down on his desk by the side of a very curious Maori skull, and went upstairs again to finish dressing.

That morning the scientific monthlies were out, and there was much of interest in them that Hayling forgot all about the hand. He had an article in one of them abusing Robins-Gunter, whose views on anthropology were coloured by his fanaticism in religion. “Imagine a man like that thinking he is an authority on anything scientific,” said Hayling. It was a pleasure to slaughter him on his own altar, and indeed this time Hayling felt he had offered Robins-Gunter up to the outraged deity of Truth.

“It’s a massacre,” said Hayling; “it’s not a criticism — it’s a massacre.”

He said “Ha-ha!” and went to town to hear what others had to say about it. They had so much to say that he remained at the club till very late, and got rather too much wine to drink. Or perhaps it was the whisky-and-soda. He left his working-room door open and unlocked.

Kate had gone, sacrificing a fortnight’s wages. Mrs Farwell said she was a fool. Kate said she would rather be a fool outside that house. She also said a lot of foolish things about the hand, which had a very silly effect upon the housekeeper. For how else can we account for what happened that night? Kate said that the beastly hand was alive, and that it had killed the cat. Uneducated superstitious girls from the country often say things as silly. But Mrs Farwell was a woman of nerves. She only went to sleep when heard her master come in.

She woke screaming at three o’clock, and Hayling was still so much under the influence of Robins-Gunter’s scientific blood and the club whisky that he didn’t wake. But Mary Hayling woke and so did the cook, and they came running to Mrs Farwell’s room. They found her door open.

“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” screamed Mary Hayling. She brought a candle and found Mrs Farwell sitting up in bed.

She was as white as a ghost, bloodlessly white. “There’s been a horrible thing in my room,” she whispered.

The cook collapsed on a chair; Mary Hayling sat on the bed and put her arms round the housekeeper.

“What?”

“I saw it,” whispered Mrs Farwell. “A black man, reddish black, very horrible—”

She fainted, and Mary laid her down.

“Stay with her,” said Mary. “I’ll go and wake my uncle.”

The cook whimpered, but she lighted the gas and stayed, while Mary hammered on Hayling’s door. He thought it was thunderous applause at a dinner given him by the Royal Society. Then he woke.

“What is it?”

Mary opened the door and told him to get up.

“Oh, these women,” he said.

His head ached. He went upstairs cursing and found Mrs Farwell barely conscious.

The cook was shaking like a jelly, and Hayling thrust her aside. He had some medical training before he turned to anthropology, and he took hold of the housekeeper’s wrist, and found her pulse a mere running thread.

“Go and bring brandy,” said Hayling, “and fetch Dr Sutton from next door.”

He was very white himself. So far as he could guess she looked as if she were dying of loss of blood. But she didn’t die. Sutton, when he came in, said the same.

“She’s not white only from fainting, she’s blanched,” he declared.

He turned back her nightgown, and found a very strange red patch on her shoulder. It was redder than the white skin, and moist. He touched it with a handkerchief, and the linen was faintly reddened. He turned and stared at Hayling.

“This is very extraordinary,” he said, and Hayling nodded.

He tried to speak and could not. At last he got his voice. It was dry and thick.

“Don’t you think the patch is the shape of a hand?” asked Hayling.

“Yes, rather,” replied Sutton; “somewhat like it, I should say.”

They were all in the room then: Mary Hayling and the cook. There was no other person in the house. They could have sworn that was a fact. They heard a noise below.

“What’s that?” asked Hayling.

“Someone gone out the front door, sir,” said the trembling cook.

“Nonsense,” said Hayling.

But the door slammed. When he ran down he found no one about. He went upstairs again shaking. For he had looked for something in his own room and had not found it.

•   •   •   •   •

The next day there was a curious paragraph in all the evening papers.

“The freshly severed hand of a negro was picked up early this morning in Lansdown Road, St John’s Wood, just outside the residence of the well-known anthropologist, Mr A. J. Hayling. The police are investigating the mystery.”

But Hayling destroyed the article in which he proposed to massacre the poor credulous Simcox Smith.

THE CLOSED CHAMBER

Harter was no mean sculptor, and he rose in the estimation of his knowing fellows day by day. Though the ignorant public had too gross a taste in marble to appreciate to its full extent the delicacy of his work, they were, perhaps, sufficiently open to right influences to buy some of it, and to show it to their friends. For to his delicacy he added a rare and extraordinary purity which appealed to many. If any man in England could make marble mirror and mould fragility, it was Simeon Harter; he was a master of his material and a master of great, though limited power. He chose the airiest and wildest subjects, and made them live and breathe. In his hands Psyche showed her very soul, and became true spirit; under his magic and delicate chisel a maiden sprang from stone and carried lilies in her hand that seemed to tremble in the wind. A few, indeed, there were who said he should have painted rather than carved, seeing that he missed in some way the chill and wonderful magic of the marble that he breathed upon like a god, but even those who cared least for his labours, which, truly, seemed to be no result of toil, were none the less insistent on the beauty of his mind and his tender inspiration.

“The man is amazing in his purity,” said Underwick, one of the few critics who had any real knowledge of sculpture.

“He is a genius, and if any man is innately pure, it is Harter,” said Gray, who often wrote about what he did not understand to people who did not understand him, but, nevertheless, knew marble from bronze, and bronze from clay.

Harter only gradually attained his measure of popularity, but when a celebrated preacher, who was also a connoisseur of some merit, preached about his group, “The Body and the Soul,” his future was assured. His work deserved a better fate, but it was bought for a provincial museum by a Nonconformist manufacturer, where it was hidden from the few who really understood.

And yet Harter himself was anomalous, peculiar, inexplicable. He was fat, as huge as Balzac, terrible and grotesque as the elder Dumas in his decadence, and atrociously, pathetically ugly. He rolled rather than walked, wallowed rather than sat, roared rather than spoke. But he talked well and wisely, and with a peculiar melancholy sobriety. It seemed as though he had lived through something, and had now attained peace. He was, in spite of his portentous voice, extraordinarily decent and reserved and restrained in his conversation. Out of his Bacchic and intolerable mouth men expected gross jests and Rabelaisian laughter. They got, instead, matter not out of tone with his work and his artistic record.

He was choice of words, an artist with them, a great reader and knower of poetry. Yet he preached too much, men said, even as they listened. Perhaps this was true, and yet it was monstrously and piquantly entertaining to hear him on virtue, on purity of soul and body, on chastity, on the value of the ascetic principle in man. With red lips he spoke of pale virtue, and exalted her with tears in his eyes. And yet, gross though he seemed, and his corporeal vestment was indeed amazingly, ludicrously, gross, never a word of scandal touched his open life. Men who knew him well declared that he lived as he spoke. Women (some of whom liked him well) said so, too; the models averred it, some of them with laughter. One might say everybody believed it because it was impossible. The outsider jeered, became an insider, and was converted. It was a jest among the younger men that the only good one among them was this rubicund parody of an elderly god of the vine. They restrained their tongues before him and treated him with rare and extraordinary respect, due not only to him as a sculptor, but as a man of attainments unconnected with his art. He read the classics, appreciated the Greek dramatists, and was an all round critic of no mean order. He had many friends. But only one of them knew him.

“He is far more amazing than any of you think,” said Hugh Wharncliffe, who was himself a sculptor, and did good work of an undistinguished kind. Nevertheless, Wharncliffe had a distinguished and peculiar intellect, and was a psychologist born, not made.

“Harter is magnificent,” he said, “a splendid study. Do I really like him? My dear man, why ask such questions? You know I do.”

They were much together. But it was noticed by one or two more endowed than the others with gifts of observation, that Harter rarely, if ever, preached when Wharncliffe was in the room or studio. If he did, he showed a certain odd nervousness and deference to his friend. He was more doubtful in his dicta, and yet more religiously convinced. He spoke as one convicted of sin when Wharncliffe was there. He was more the catechumen than the catechist, more the poor follower of good than the prophet. It was obvious to the very observant that when Wharncliffe said he understood Harter he spoke what was true.

“There is — there must be — some secret in Harter’s life,” one man said.

During years there was no hint of what this secret was. But as time went on, any secret that there might be was connected with an inner room of Harter’s that no one was supposed to enter but himself. It was always locked. Its skylight was always obscured by curtains. If he ever worked there it was by artificial light. But he was not supposed to work there. Among a thousand hypotheses offered by the curious, one attained lasting approbation. The man who suggested it was looked on as exceptionally clever.

“It is a sort of oratory,” said Smith Bailey. Bailey was a Roman Catholic. He damned new Catholic churches to all eternity by the worst of work. It was hard to believe that so bad a sculptor could guess the truth of anything. And yet what other fantastic hypothesis covered the salient facts of Harter’s remarkable character? The oratory had it by a huge majority. It~ was settled that Harter, whose religion no one knew, had a definite scheme of belief and a chapel.

They told Wharncliffe their solution, and Wharncliffe’s acute satiric face became more inscrutable than ever.

“A chapel—” he said.

“Yes, an oratory,” said Smith Bailey sapiently. “It was my idea.”

“What a clever chap you are, Bailey,” said Wharncliffe.

“Have you ever been in it, Wharncliffe?”

Wharncliffe looked at the speaker with a quiet eye.

“If I said I had not you would not believe me. If I said I had you would be equally incredulous. I shall allow Harter’s methods to influence me, and decline to say anything about a matter that my most particular friend chooses to say nothing about. All I will say is that I am not in the least curious about this — oratory.”

They had to be content with that. It says a great deal for Harter’s force and power that none dared to interrogate him openly on the subject. Perhaps it says something for most of the men who might otherwise have spoken to him about it, that they really believed in Bailey’s idea. Though most of them had no religion themselves, they were not ready to scoff at another man’s belief. And Harter was obviously a good man, kindly, charitable, fervent and sad.

Nevertheless, there were some, perhaps even three, who disbelieved in Harter, or did not wholly believe in him. The cleverest of the sculptors was Raymond.

“I simply rely on my disgusting instincts,” said Raymond, laughing. “I believe in good — certainly I believe in it, but I can’t believe in our ascetic Bacchus, our water-drinking Silenus, our monstrous magnificent Harter. I believe he’s a concealed horror, a secret criminal, an artistic Blue Beard. Have any beautiful models disappeared lately? I can conceive him wallowing in vice, and I’m never so sure of it as when he is talking beautifully of virtue.”

But when the incredulous can give no reasons who shall esteem them reasonable? The others said that Raymond must himself have an evil mind, and Raymond smiled. “I suppose I’ve an average beastly mind,” he said pensively. “I pretend to nothing else. I’m human and not godlike. But shall I believe our diabolically vestured Harter a deity? Rather do I esteem him of the cult of Cotytto, and strange are his groves and strange his oratory. What are his prayers?”

They were prayers of tears and blood, perhaps, but Raymond, though he understood the motions of the blood, knew little of tears. ‘

“There’s a devil, a beastly devil in us all,” said Raymond. The other men did not like to hear of it. Who does? Perhaps they all had an — oratory!

“The men are very curious about your inner studio, Harter,” said Wharncliffe, soon after the oratory hypothesis was put forth by Bailey. Harter was sitting by his stove. He opened its door and stirred the fire before he spoke.

“They’ve no notion—”

He left the sentence unfinished.

“Not the least,” said Wharncliffe.

Harter closed the stove door and the studio grew darker.

“What do they say?”

“Bailey says—”

“What! has Bailey an idea?”

If Harter ever sneered he sneered then.

“Poor Bailey says it’s an oratory!”

“Ah l ” said Harter.

He raked absent-mindedly at the stove with an iron instrument.

“An oratory—”

“Odd, isn’t it?” asked Wharncliffe.

“An oratory I One prays in an oratory, Hugh!”

They sat in silence for a while.

“I’m a monstrous queer beast,” said Harter. “And yet—”

“There are many queer beasts among men,” said Wharncliffe; “most of us have our oratories.”

Harter’s head sank on his breast.

“It’s not an oratory! It’s a confessional,” he said suddenly. “Before God, Hugh, it’s a confessional! You — you understand that?”

“I understand,” said Wharncliffe. “Don’t worry, Harter.”

“My confessional,” repeated Harter. “And if others knew my confessions, Hugh, they’d say — they’d say—”

“They are ignorant,” said his friend. “If no one else understands, I understand.”

Harter got up from his seat and walked about the dim studio.

“When I talk to the others as I do, on my soul, on my soul, Hugh, I’m sincere!”

He spoke with intense and pleading pathos.

“I believe it,” said Hugh.

“I believe what I say, I believe in heaven, in hell (oh yes, in hell! ), and in God, Hugh. And yet I’m what I am! There are times when I could go out in the streets and preach with fervour.”

“You can preach in marble,” said Hugh. “I wish I could. But I’ve my limitations. You’re a master!”

Harter suddenly broke into laughter, laughter that was exaltation.

“By God, I am,” he said, with intense conviction. “I can see glorious things in a block of marble! And I get them out at times! But till I had that — oratory, that — confessional, there was something brutal, coarse, and horrible in my work. You never saw any of it, Hugh, but what I did was crude, foul, laborious. You understand?”

“Perfectly,” said Hugh Wharncliffe. “It’s easy to understand.”

“You’re a wonder,” said Harter, out of the darkness. “There are so few who understand or dare to say so. When I die, and suddenly, as I shall, you’ll keep your word to me, Hugh?”

“Don’t doubt it,” said Wharncliffe. He rose from his seat and shook hands with Harter. Then he went away.

“An oratory!” said Harter. “A confessional!”

He burst into an extraordinary laugh, which echoed about the bare stone walls of his studio, and then he lighted the gas. In the middle of the studio there was a marble figure.

“You are the Soul,” said Harter. “I saw you, sweet, in the stone, and I’ve unveiled you little by little. But even yet there is a mist about you. I can’t see clearly yet.”

He walked hurriedly, went with a quick lumbering step to and fro.

“I’ll work a little in the — confessional,” he said suddenly.

He laughed again, this time with a strange, fat, gross chuckle. He turned down the lights till they twinkled like faint blue stars, and then he unlocked the inner room.

It was four o’clock in the morning before he came out. He lay down on a big couch and went to sleep. But before he lay down he prayed fervently, perhaps to God, perhaps to the figure of Psyche. Then he slept heavily and his breathing was laboured.

The next evening he spent in Bailey’s studio with many men. They got him talking of art and of his faith.

“Oh, then, you are good, Harter?” asked Raymond.

“I? Oh no,” said Harter. “No one is, no one can be. But I do my best, and so should you, Raymond. You jeer too much. I put what I wish to be into marble, not what I am. I know you boys call me Bacchus, aye, and Silenus, but I wish I could make you drunk with beauty and virtue!”

It seemed such foolish talk, and yet he felt it deeply. There were tears in his eyes. Wharncliffe sighed as Harter finished. Sometimes he said he had been a better man since he had known Harter. Perhaps it was true.

They went away together, back to Harter’s studio.

“They’d say I was a hypocrite,” said Harter unhappily.

“They are fools,” said Wharncliffe. “They’d say it of anyone but themselves. What of me?”

“Well, what of you?”

“I’ve told you much of myself, Harter.” “Words,” said Harter. “Well, I shan’t live long.”

Wharncliffe pressed his arm. “Cheer up, Harter. If I could do work like yours—”

“Yes, I know my best is great,” said Harter simply, “I know that. You are very good to me, Hugh. You’ll keep your word to me, the word I took from you when I showed you — what you know!”

“Of course,” said Wharncliffe. “I understand.”

And Harter sighed. Then he stopped, and said—

“I worked all night last night. Today I feel purified. I finished my Psyche today. She’s wonderful. My vision was clear as crystal.”

“Did you — what did you do in the night?” asked Wharncliffe.

“A frightful thing,” said Harter, shaking like a jelly. “But my Psyche today, my new-born wonderful Psyche! I have achieved her at last.”

She was, he said, wonderful, heavenly, devout, pure, majestic, and divinely humble. She was the soul purified by life and death.

“Come and see her tomorrow,” said Harter. “I want to be alone with my own soul tonight.”

They shook hands.

“She’s great,” said Harter wistfully, as they parted.

“I believe it,” said Hugh.

She was great, and she was also Harter’s crown. For he died that night.

Next morning Wharncliffe went to see him, and found the sculptor dead. Before he gave the alarm to any, he broke open the door to the inner studio, and with a heavy hammer destroyed a hundred figures and groups done by the dead man.

They were all monstrous and most unspeakable indecencies.

THE MAN WITH THE NOSE

In London there must have been another man with a nose resembling that of the Reverend Peter Francillon; but no one in Billington-Bungay knew anything about him. They were amply satisfied with their vicar’s nose, and so was he, for it resembled and exaggerated the most remarkable feature of the Iron Duke’s very remarkable countenance. It was sharp, aquiline, pronounced, and very painful when punched, as all such noses are. This was so obviously the case that he was excused from fighting at Rugby. The fifth and sixth form boys decided in conclave that such a nose was too great a handicap. It was, in fact, as bad as two noses. They called him Naso, and told him to be civil to others, lest worse should befall his saving feature. He accepted the epithet peaceably, and the possession of this vulnerable point possibly influenced him in the choice of a profession: it being understood that the” clergy generally may quarrel, but do not fight.

He enjoyed peace, and it became a habit, even though a certain spirit of adventure lingered in him, as it does, we are told, in the soul of the meanest Englishman. He married the quietest daughter of a quiet squire; played quiet whist, even when bridge became popular, and enjoyed a game of golf every Monday and Friday. In spite of the delicacy of his nose he drove a fairly long ball, and, when he timed his stroke properly, hit a real screamer with much satisfaction. He showed courage on the greens, and to do that is a great test of man, for he never trembled at a two-foot put. This indicates that he might have faced tigers if occasion had presented itself. There were none in the neighbourhood, however, and the greatest spectacle there was the vicar’s nose.

Once every year Peter Francillon, Mrs. Francillon, and his two little girls spent three weeks at Felixstowe. On their return, or shortly afterwards, he used to say to his wife—

“I shall take my usual week in town, dear. It keeps me in touch with things, and I really think it necessary.”

“You will take care of yourself, dear?” said his wife anxiously.

“Of course, of course,” said Peter. He rubbed his nose.

“I am always nervous when you are away; though I know it is foolish,” said Mrs. Francillon.

He explained to her, as he did every year, that there was no danger in London provided a man did not go to sleep as he crossed the road. His club was preposterously quiet, and a stroll through the South Kensington and British Museums did not seem risky.

“Positively the most dangerous thing I do is to walk down Wardour Street,” said Peter. “I might be tempted to buy a modern antique at modern prices.”

Perhaps he was a little disingenuous in making Wardour Street stand, by a figure of speech, for the whole of Soho. But a married man is justified in practising a certain economy of truth at times. His love of Soho (he owned to himself that he loved it) might have disturbed his consort’s mind. Wardour Street was all very well, but Greek Street, for instance, might have suggested certain vague dangers to her, unless she had believed that the whole thoroughfare was devoted to Greek literature. This is not the case, and Peter knew it just as well as he knew his Greek Testament, which he carried up to London with him in case he felt dull at any time.

Not disdaining comfort, and being more than moderately well off, he put up in Half-moon Street, in very comfortable rooms kept by the former butler of his father, which were near his quiet club.

In town he modified the severity of his clerical attire by the substitution of a short black jacket for a coat with ecclesiastic skirts, and he wore a slouch hat which was not positively indicative of the Church. If he retained his white tie it was of modest dimensions and most frequently hidden, as the weather was chilly, by a muffler of silk. In this costume he went round to his club, greeted the elderly waiters with correct geniality, shook hands warmly with three men who remembered his nose and felt almost intimate with him on that account, though they had to ask the porter his name, and dined all by himself in a room measuring forty feet by sixty, with a ceiling almost the height of the church in which he officiated.

After dinner, which included a large glass of port, he smoked a carefully chosen cigarette in the smoking-room. This year he took a Turkish cigarette, for he imagined that his last year’s choice of an American had disagreed with him. On saying so to the waiter, that very correct person admitted that American cigarettes were a mistake, and this made Peter Francillon feel that he knew something about tobacco. By the time that he had smoked half his annual cigarette he found himself alone. It was then nearly nine o’clock, and when he walked to the window and looked out across Piccadilly and St. ]ames’s Park the evening seemed fine, and the electric lights sparkled invitingly. London said, as plainly as if it spoke the words, “Come out and take a walk.” After a moment’s hesitation between town and the Times, which he had not seen that day, he walked into the hall, put on his coat and hat, and went into Piccadilly with his best umbrella, which was reserved for London. He felt very happy and comfortable; the cigarette agreed with him, and the large glass of port had given him a pleasant sensation of well-being.

“I will go into Soho,” said Peter Francillon.

He had not yet been much abroad, but someday promised himself and Mrs. Francillon a grand tour through Europe. In the meantime Soho was a microcosm of it — it pleased him, arrided him, as he might have said, to hear the various tongues of the Latin races as he walked. Even German did not disturb‘ him — it suggested Heidelberg, the Rhine, the Lorelei, and the easier works of Schiller, with whom he had a bowing acquaintance.

In Wardour Street he inspected some shops in which furniture of an uncertain origin was exposed for sale to Americans, examined some strange pipes in a manufacturer’s window, and presently found himself by St. Anne’s Church, in which he had once listened to Bach’s Mass in Minor. Having some musical memory, he recalled a bar or two, and from it diverged into more popular Handel. He hummed Harapha: “So mean a triumph I disdain,” which somehow made him feel as if he could drive two hundred yards against the wind, on any golf links.

“I’m really enjoying myself,” he said. He heard French spoken as he walked, and also Italian, and something he believed to be Spanish. On very insufficient evidence he decided that some other men spoke Magyar. He found himself in a street, which is always busy and a kind of West End Petticoat Lane. After walking down it boldly, he turned into a quieter way, and presently lost himself in a network of alleys. This did not disturb him in the least. He was a man of courage, in spite of his nose. It is true that the smells of Soho displeased that delicate organ, but he found some pleasure in using it. It distinguished swiftly between odours, and warned him fifty feet away of fried fish. He came out of a narrow lane into a very quiet street, and, not knowing which way to go, turned instinctively towards a mouldy scent of oranges rather than towards the acrid smell of pickles. On such small details may adventure, fortune or disaster, hang. Peter Francillon’s nose led him as Destiny may, and, like other people, he followed it.

He did not remember having been in this particular street, and could not read its name. It was narrow, and the houses were high. There was, to say the truth, a peculiar sombreness about it, such as Meryon might have etched, getting its character no one knows how, biting it in, perhaps, in the acid of his perceptive grim mind. It looked as if few people lived there. He saw a girl cross it rapidly at the next turning, A van with a horse in it stood close to the curb on his right as he walked westward. The horse reached its head almost to the roadway, as if it wished to lip some banana skin. But when Peter Francillon passed it the animal seemed merely bored. Something, he knew not what, told him there was a man inside the van who might naturally be as much bored as the horse, in spite of the fact that Soho was such an interesting place. And then, very suddenly and without so much warning as a preliminary spit, it began to rain very heavily.

“Dear me, how annoying,” said Peter Francillon. Other men might have drawn more largely on the comminatory resources of his mother tongue. Peter never did, even when he lost his ball in sand. Yet there was one rule in golf which tried him severely. It was the one which forbids a player in competitions to take shelter from the rain. It pleased him to think that he was not now playing against Bogey, and was therefore not compelled to expose his best umbrella to the downpour. He stepped sideways into the shelter of a door. As he did so he thought he saw the whitish blur of a man’s face, or perhaps of two men’s faces, in the van.

The doorway in which he stood was that of a dwelling-house, perhaps the only one in the street. There was, at any rate, no light in any of the houses opposite. They probably manufactured things there for foreigners. But by the glimmer in an opposing window he saw there was a light in a room over his head. He leant against the wall and watched the rain. Now he saw no one in the van. But he heard the horse rattle its bit or some harness. And his umbrella slipped out of his hand. Instead of its falling into the street, which he feared, it fell backwards and gave a hard single knock upon the door. Again he saw a whitish blur in the shadow of the van. A figure, obscure in the darkness and rain, slipped from it and walked up the street on the opposite side. But there was still a white blur in the shadow. He heard steps inside the house.

“I must explain and apologize,” said Peter. “I trust they speak English.”

Then the door opened suddenly. He turned, saw a face in the six-inch opening, but before he could open his mouth, he heard a woman’s voice. It was hurried, lamenting, terrified, and it made Peter’s blood run cold even before he gathered the meaning of the words hissed at him in a strange accent—

“Go, go, for God’s sake! He knows everything,” said the voice. Then the door was shut, and he heard a bolt clang. He stepped upon the pavement, and then a Cockney spoke curiously, and used strange words in an accent of London — much altered, it might be, by long life abroad or among foreigners.

“Pipe his boko! That’s his nibs!” said the Cockney. Peter seemed to know that this man also spoke Italian. And, by a piece of knowledge not strange in a man whose nose had been almost as much of a trial to him as if he had been Cyrano de Bergerac, he was aware that ‘boko’ meant ‘ nose.’ This man marked it, jeered at it, as so many had done, and before Peter could so much as resent it in his mind, he heard an Italian say ‘maladetto porco,’ and something struck him heavily upon the back of his head and neck. Even as he thought that “that’s his nibs” probably meant “it’s he,” he lay insensible upon the pavement.

How long it was ere he became conscious he could not tell. But he was aware of peculiar discomfort long before he reached the stage of consciousness which uses words. He dreamed as a man does who wakes from an anaesthetic and is dimly aware of a burden of pain. It appeared to him that he moved rapidly through space, but where, or how, or why, he did not know, and at last he groaned, as if he had a nightmare. He felt that this was the explanation, and struggled to awake, being sure that he was at home and that his wife would push him. Presently she did so, but her push was more like a punch, and he resented her unwifely violence. He heard her say in a hoarse voice—

“Lie quiet, you swab, or I’ll kick the stuffing out of you.” And still he was rattled through space violently. He wondered how it was that she used such language to him when his head ached so violently. He struggled hard to get hold of words, and some drifted through his mind. It was as though he heard them spoken. The word “watch” was one of them, and another “posh,” and also “a thick ’un,” and then he caught a sentence, or at least part of one. It was this: “Nosey won’t want ’em again, Carlo.” He wondered who would not want what. Then it suddenly flashed upon him that he was Nosey, and consciousness returned. He spoke feebly.

“Where am I?”

“’Ere you are!” said a cockney voice he seemed to know. ‘

“What has happened?”

“’Is nibs ’as woke up, Carlo,” said the Cockney. “Shut up, Nosey. You’ll soon diskiver wot ’as ’appened.”

The unfortunate parson shook his head, for things were wonderfully obscure. Then he saw again the silent street in Soho, grim as a Meryon etching of a sombre part of Paris, and remembered the rain, the doorway, the falling umbrella, the knock, and the strange answer. What did it mean? He lay quiet and considered it.

“She said ‘ Go, go, for God’s sake! He knows everything.’ Who knows? and who was she? Where am IP Why, I’m — I’m in the van!”

Again he saw the dark van in the street, the sleepy horse, the blur of white faces.

“Did an accident happen?” he asked suddenly.

“Accident be blowed,” said the Cockney. “It was a dead plant and you’re Pinsuti’s meat now. You’ll never see Giulietta again, my son.”

“I don’t understand,” said Peter Francillon; “why, I’m being driven somewhere! Good God, I’m handcuffed!”

“That’s what,” said the Cockney. “’E’s findin’ out wot’s ’appened bit by bit, Carlo!”

“Maladetto serpente,” said the Italian, who was driving.

“That’s Pinsuti’s brother wot’s driving,” said the Cockney; “and may be you don’t know that Giulietta is like to die after the way Pinsuti served ’er.”

“Stop,” said Peter, “there’s some mistake. I’m a clergyman.”

“So much the worse for you. The old ’un ’ates priests,” returned the Cockney. “Don’t be scared: there’s no mistake made. We savvied you by your nose!”

“My nose!” said Peter.

“Your conk’s a dead give away,” said the Cockney. “Did you ever see another bloke with a jib like it?”

Naturally enough, Peter knew that ‘conk’ and ‘jib ‘ referred to his nose. In fact, there was no word in the vocabulary of school-boys’ slang referring to noses of which he was ignorant.

“No, I never did,” he said.

“No more did I. Nor no other cove ever did. And I spotted it myself the day afore yesterday when you went to Giulietta’s last. I wonder what she seed in a bloke like you. If I ’ad a conk like yours I’d cut it off.”

“I don’t in the least understand,” said Peter. “I’m a clergyman and a married man.”

“The more shame for you. So’m I,” said the Cockney. He lighted a pipe and, holding the match close to Peter’s face, apparently inspected his nose. He blew the match out, and added—

“Your wife’s a widow, cocky!”

“It’s a mistake, a wretched, miserable mistake,” said Peter Francillon. He began to see that the matter was serious. “You wouldn’t murder me?”

“Wot! Me! Not much! You can settle it with Pinsuti,” said the Cockney. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t ha’ settled you if you’d come after my missis, but you didn’t, and she’d ’ave belted you on the boko if you ’ad.”

“I came up to London this morning,” said Peter.

“Liar,” said the Cockney. “I seed you myself the night afore last.”

“I was at home, in Billington-Bungay,” said Peter hopelessly. “I assure you I was.”

“If you lie again I’ll spoil you afore Pinsuti gets ’is ’ands on you,” said the Cockney. “So shut up.”

The van went rapidly, for the Italian was a wicked driver, as they mostly are. But Peter Francillon had not the least idea as to where he was being driven. Nor could he think of any plan by which to escape. By now he knew that his legs were tied. Yet he wondered what would happen if he called out or screamed. He was in a lighted street and heard other traffic: other human voices. Perhaps he showed signs of doing something or his keeper had intuitions, for the Cockney produced a short iron bar.

“If you opens your mouth to squeal I’ll flatten you with this,” he said quietly.

“Take my watch and money, and let me go,” said Peter.

“Carlo’s got your watch and I’ve your money,” returned the Cockney. He spoke. to Carlo in Italian, and Carlo laughed.

“I was in Naples three years,” said the Cockney confidentially; “that’s ’ow I learnt to parlare Italiano. I speaks it like a bloomin’ native. Do you speak it, cocky?”

“No,” said Peter. “I’ll give you a hundred pounds to let me go.”

“You ain’t got it on you. I knows that,” said the other.

“I’ll give it you tomorrow,” said Peter.

“Tomorrow, why you won’t be ’ere tomorrow!” said the Cockney brutally, and Peter Francillon shivered.

“Do you mean — really mean — that I shall be dead?” he asked.

“I knows nothin’. Pinsuti wanted you and ’e gets you, and when ’e’s got you I’m through with it,” said his captor.

“But I’m innocent, innocent!”

“Tell that to Pinsuti,” said the Cockney.

Peter Francillon had never had an adventure in his life. So far as he could remember he had never run a risk beyond that of visiting the sick when an epidemic of scarlet fever struck Billington-Bungay. But it was his profession to administer consolation to the dying, and he wondered now, with a dazed mind, why it was that he did not think of religion. In no sense did he reject the consolations he had offered to others: but they seemed something that did not touch his own peculiar and monstrous case. So strange an accident robbed him of the sense of full life. The thing was a dream, a curious and very horrible nightmare. He spoke.

“Edith!” he called out. Edith was his wife.

“Who’s Edith?” said the Cockney.

“She’s my wife,” said Peter.

“Dry up,” said the Cockney, “or else I’ll knock you stiff.”

“Tell me where I am?” asked Peter. But the Cockney smoked his pipe. Presently he again said something in Italian to Carlo. And Carlo laughed.

“I wish I’d learnt Italian,” said Peter to himself. “I will begin tomorrow. Why can’t I wake, wake?”

But he knew, too, that he was not sleeping. He wondered what had become of his umbrella. It was almost new, or certainly as good as new.

“I’m thinking of my umbrella,” he said. But he knew he was in a van, being driven — where?

“Somewhere — to a man called Pinsuti,” said Peter. “It’s absurd, it’s monstrous! I wish I had screamed just now.”

For they were in quieter ways, roads that were less well lighted, roads that led to — Death!

“Has this man Pinsuti ever seen the man you think I am?” he asked presently.

“Not as I knows of. No, ’e ’asn’t,” said the Cockney.

“Then when he sees me he’ll see I’m different,” said Peter. He was confused, but the Cockney was acuter.

“If ’e’s never seed you, ’ow will he know you ain’t ’im?”

“But I’m a clergyman, a country clergyman!”

“It’s the nose does it,” said the Cockney. “We reco’nized you by it. Giulietta’s girl said as much. Besides, didn’t I pipe you the day before yesterday?”

“Pipe me?”

“Seed you, spotted you, know’d you,” said the Cockney. “There ain’t two beaks like yours in London. You savvy that good and plenty.”

While at school his nose had been a trial, a humiliation and a curse to him. Even at the University it had been a source of disquiet and vexation and the cause of epigram. But when Edith married him and he was made Vicar of Billington-Bungay, he grew proud of it, especially when he discovered, on laborious inquiry, that he was a very distant cousin of the Iron Duke’s. Its outline, its delicacy, its resemblance to a curve in Conics, and its being, as it were, unique and utterly unparalleled by the noses of the neighbourhood, gave him peculiar pride in it. Now it appeared that a similar nose belonged to a haunter of the purlieus of Soho who knew a Giulietta Pinsuti only too well. He wondered where the other man was, and what he was doing. Perhaps he had knocked at the same door that very night after Peter had done so. And what was Giulietta like?

“We’re nearly there,” said the Cockney.

“Won’t you let me go?” said Peter desperately. “Believe me, pray, pray, believe me, you’re wrong, quite wrong. Let me go.”

“Carlo won’t, and they’d knife me if I did,” said the Cockney. “And I wouldn’t anyway. You got Giulietta into trouble, poor thing, and I don’t blame Pinsuti a cent. You’d better say your prayers.”

Peter Francillon could say no prayers. All he could do was to think of his wife and his little girls. Now they were all asleep in their peaceful village under the shelter of his pretty church, and knew nothing of what was happening. When would they know? Would they ever know? They would never know, perhaps.

“I wish I’d not had this nose,” he said lamentably.

“It was the deadest give away,” remarked the Cockney.

“I’m a clergyman; it’s all impossible, ridiculous. Man, man, you’re wrong, wrong!”

As he spoke he heard a steamer’s whistle. They were, then, near the river.

“They’ll put me in it,” said Peter. He sweated ice already; the cold water ran on him. The place they were in was very quiet. Then suddenly the van turned abruptly, went down a slope and stopped.

“We’re there!” said the Cockney.

“Where, where?” asked Peter wildly.

The Cockney answered sullenly — “Where you gave a bid to be, Nosey. At Tommaso Pinsuti’s place. You’d better by ’arf ’ave left pore Giulietta alone.”

And Peter said nothing. There was nothing to say to such a man. But surely, surely, this Pinsuti, Tommaso Pinsuti, who had some far off horrible place down by the river, would see at once how absurd, how incredible, how infinitely ridiculous the accusation was!

He heard another voice, not that of the silent Carlo, but of another man who also spoke Italian. Peter guessed at the meaning of the unknown words in an agony of sweat. The voice was harsh, almost grating, and yet vibrant.

“He says, ‘ Have you got him? ‘ and Carlo says, ‘Yes,’ and this awful Cockney says so, too! I hear ‘Naso,’ ‘naso.’ That’s my nose! Was that ‘ bring him in ‘? Good God, I wish I could pray. I’ve never done any harm! It’s awful, awful!”

The van opened at the rear, and the Cockney caught him by the ankles and dragged him out till he was sitting on the tail-board. Then he cut adrift the lashings on Peter’s ankles. They had not been drawn so tightly that he could not now walk. Carlo was with the Cockney, but when Peter stood upon his feet he could see no one else.

“Where’s this Mr. Pinsuti?” he asked. “I want to see him.”

He was urgent to see him, urgent to finish, to be free, but they answered him nothing, nothing at all. They took him in through the open door. Inside it a light twinkled, a little oil lamp that smelt and smoked. A cold blast of air chilled him as he entered. And then he saw that he was in an ice store, a place where ice which came from far away was kept till it was needed in London. He saw the great square blocks glistening, though some were covered by sacking, some half smothered in sawdust. The floor ran water: drops fell: he heard them fall slowly. And there was another door, and another light shone inside it. But still he saw no one but his captors.

“Where’s Mr. Pinsuti?” said Peter. “Where’s Mr. Pinsuti?”

He did not know his own voice, but it did not tremble. It was cold and clear, as they dragged him to the inner door, and thrust him in, shutting it behind him. He stood staggering, but still he stood. And he saw the man he had been brought to see, a big Italian with a black beard, who stood with a lamp in his hand. The light fell upon his face, and Peter Francillon recognized, not the man, but rather Destiny, with whom there is no reasoning, and from whom there is no appeal. This man, deluded and cheated by appearance into murder, would not flinch at murder. Though he flamed with the fire of hate, even before he spoke, the great glittering cubes of ice behind him would not be colder to any pleas of mercy, and Peter Francillon knew it.

But Peter saw his wife and his children, and he also saw life as he had never seen it in the security of his seclusion. Now life was a sweet fruit upon a windy bough: it was a great glow that passed swiftly: it was a gift, precious and many coloured, hanging by a hair above a gulf unsounded by the fears of man. He saw it like a pageant, dear, most wistfully dear, divine and sweet, and hungered for its due continuance, its delicate or ruder joys: its songs, its splendid vigour, its hours of genial companionship, its high thoughts, its warm intimacy with his sound body that might endure like a rooted tree. And here in front of him stood one to shatter this triumph that man’s life was, for all its failures and its sins. So some rude hand might break the divine glory of stained glass in an ancient church. Peter stood upon the verge of nothingness, and resented it wildly; resented its empty lack of form, its cold disorder. He wished to live, to endure; he ached for diuturnity, for perpetuation. And here and now the sweetness of the bland and suave little soul within him was as nothing, and he marvelled. He wished to go nowhither into the empty universe, for it was chiller than glittering ice when he looked where it loomed even then before him.

“I wish to live,” he told himself. “I will live!”

“You hound,” said the Italian.

Their eyes had met like swords, in swift engagement, but Peter’s never fell. He was manacled, the other free. Peter had but his mind, he thought, if he could save himself therewith. His blue eyes took on an air of calm, of innocence, of surprise.

“This is a mistake, a very dreadful mistake,” said Peter. “You do not know me, surely you do not?”

“I never saw you, but these months past I knew you existed, you dog,” said Pinsuti. “I felt you everywhere — at home. Now I know you, see you, and can touch you!”

He stepped close to Peter and tapped him with his fingers.

“Listen,” said Peter. “I tell you this is a mistake. I am a clergyman from a little village in Norfolk. I come to London for a week once a year. I came to town yesterday afternoon, and had not been there for a whole year.”

“You lie,” said Pinsuti. He went to the door, opened it and called: “Carlo!”

And Carlo came in.

Tommaso spoke rapidly in Italian.

“I do not understand your language,” said Peter.

“I will speak in English,” said Tommaso. “Say, then, Carlo, did this man with the nose knock at my door tonight?”

“He knocked, Tommaso,” said Carlo.

“Had you seen him before?”

“Three times I saw him, and he knocked the same way,” said Carlo.

“You cannot be mistaken, Carlo?”

“I cannot. Look at his nose.”

“That will do,” said Tommaso. “Send in Bob.”

And Bob entered, still with his sullen air.

“Have I been your friend, Bob, here and in Napoli? Would you deceive me into killing the innocent?”

“You’re all right,” said Bob. “That’s the man, and that’s ’is nose. Is there another beak like it? And I saw the bloke go to your door and knock. Someone came and spoke. ’Twas Giacinta. She opened the door, and spoke, and shut it.”

“That will do,” said Tommaso. He followed Bob to the door, and shut and locked it after him.

“You liar,” said Tommaso.

“I do not lie. I speak the exact truth. Keep me here, send a man to Billington-Bungay, and ask if I have been in London till today for a year,” said Peter. “I’ve a wife and children there—”

“I had a wife,” said Tommaso fiercely. “Maybe she’s dead now. I stabbed her. Shall I, then, spare you?”

“Spare me? Good God!” said Peter, “don’t you know you’re sparing the other man? Do I look like a man to hunt round Soho for your wife or another’s? I could not do such a thing.”

But Tommaso laughed.

“Giacinta, when I got her by the throat, told me about you, about your nose, and how and when you came to see my wife. It’s useless for you to speak, you dog. This is your last night. D’ye know what’s outside?”

Peter heard the lap of running tides. Again a steamer’s whistle blew.

“The river?”

“Aye, the river, the river! You’ll sleep there tonight. Is it true you are a priest, you hound?”

“That’s true,” said Peter thickly. “It’s quite true. I’m a clergyman in a little Norfolk village. I’ve a wife and two little girls. I came up today—”

“To go to Soho? You’ll say you were not in Soho next, nor in my street, that you did not even knock!”

Peter had been glad his new umbrella had not fallen upon the wet pavement. He remembered that he had turned to the left rather than to the right on account of the smell of oranges. The acrid smell of pickles was in his nostrils now.

“Oh, God,” he said. An immense weariness oppressed him, choked him, drowned him. He was a point of fatigue, of strain, in the universe. The light of the lamp danced; he saw the glittering ice blocks move. Water dripped slowly like blood. Tommaso swelled before him, became gigantic. But his eyes were steady points of fire. Peter tried to pray, and found he had no words. He appealed dumbly to Some One, to Some Thing, to the sky, the river, the ice, to the old wild gods of man. He was afraid. And yet — he was not. A species of fury came upon him that he did not understand, that astounded his quiet soul. Had his hands been free he would have sprung upon Pinsuti, have caught his throat with his hands, his very teeth. He saw his wife come across the little lawn, and heard his children singing. He heard himself speak in a high key, and heard strange incredible words, words of provocation, rage.

“Damn you, kill me then,” said Peter. It seemed to him that he was mad, and that a little calm, bland soul inside him watched and wondered. Perhaps it directed him. Who could tell? But he was mad: the outside Peter, the body Peter. So strange the world was that now it seemed to him that perhaps he did know poor wounded Giulietta; perhaps he did love her. With a shriek he taunted Tommaso.

“Kill me, then. Your wife hates you!” he cried. And Tommaso screamed mad, foul Italian at him, and Peter saw in the light of the lamp, which his gaoler had set down on a block of ice, the glitter of a knife. He saw Tommaso run upon him, and it seemed so long ere he got near. But Peter cried out, “Edith, Edith!” and lifted up his fettered hands and struck blindly at the knife, so that Tommaso’s blow failed. And again he struck, and Peter felt the man’s leg against him, and struck back blindly. Something touched his hand, and then he felt that the knife was loose in the air, even as his clenched hand struck it. And Tommaso struggled backwards, and Peter saw him with his hand to his breast. His mouth was open as he clutched at his heart, where the haft of the knife showed, and a terrible scream came out of his opened mouth, slowly, very slowly, so slowly that it seemed like the dripping of blood. And then he fell upon his knees and rolled over, and Peter saw him quivering, stretched out in puddles and sawdust from the melting ice blocks.

“I’ve — I’ve killed him,” said Peter. Now his soul was very quiet, and he saw clearly and keenly and made no noise, uttered no loud word. For the other men were outside, listening and trembling, or perhaps laughing at the scream the man with the nose gave when he died. He moved swiftly to the dead man, even as some Norse ancestor might have done, and without a tremor wrenched the knife from his deep breast. Even as he did so he saw the barrel of a revolver protruding from Tommaso’s side pocket. He dropped the bloody knife upon the man’s still heart and drew out the other weapon.

There came a knock upon the door: a timid knock, as if one asked something fearfully.

“Tommaso,” said a voice, the changed voice of his brother. But Tommaso did not hear. And Peter smiled fiercely, and thought of his wife and children and his little church.

Once and once only in all his life he had fired a revolver at the youthful solicitation of his cousin in the Service, and then had missed an easy mark. But something told him that he would miss nothing now, that he must not. He feared nothing, for fear disabled, fear killed, destroyed. Fear was, and would be, death.

“Tommaso!” quavered the voice outside; “parla, mio fratre!”

But his brother would speak no more. Tommaso’s mouth was ‘done: he grinned. A red wound should speak for him.

“They’ll kill me if they can,” said Peter. He cocked the revolver and held it in his right hand. With his left he clutched his wrist and the steel of the handcuff that still held him.

“Tommaso, Tommaso l ” cried Carlo. And he battered madly at the door. But Peter blew out the light, and then saw a gleam of the other lamp in the cracks of the walls. He went swiftly to the door and turned the key, wondering that he dared do it. But now he dared anything, for he had killed a man. He threw the door open, and with the muzzle of the revolver pointing before him and his finger on the trigger stepped into the opening. Bob, the Cockney, was seated on a plank, and for a moment did not see him. But Carlo did, and uttered as horrible a cry as that of Tommaso, who would cry out no more. And Bob turned his head and saw the man with the nose, even as Carlo saw him. And both drew their knives as Bob leapt to his feet.

Tommaso had showed to Peter like a gigantic figure, something monstrous, wavering and awful as a vision. But hope sat with Peter’s soul now, hand-in-hand with it, comforting his spirit. He still felt as if the world was a dream, and that this was a nightmare in the dream. But he was hard and clear and cold. So desperation works, or may work, and out of death, death given or death avoided, strength can come. So Peter saw them move upon him, drawn by hate or perhaps by fear, for fear is a great mover of men towards action when it comes suddenly, and when those whom it nerves are not cowards. And he heard a shot ring out, and then another. But after that there was no sound, not even a word or a groan. But he saw Carlo throw up his hands and stand for an instant, which seemed very long. And then he pitched upon the floor and rolled over. But Bob stood and worked a useless, silent mouth. Peter thought he seemed surprised. But there is a surprise of the body that is not surprise. Then his (face seemed to shut up, and he sank upon his knees and lay down very quietly, while Peter grinned curiously at him.

“I’ve killed both of them,” said Peter; “both! And also Tommaso!”

Neither of them moved, and Peter did not move, either. But he heard a clock strike across the water. He counted the strokes. It was just eleven.

“I left the club before nine,” said Peter. “I believe it was before nine.”

He heard voices outside. Two men talked and Peter listened. He wished they would go away. He heard the clink of harness as the horse outside shook his head. Peter wondered if anyone had heard the sound of shots. He heard one man say “Well, good-night!”

“Oh, go home!” said Peter, with a sense of irritation. He was still holding the revolver and his right wrist. He looked down and saw the handcuffs. He knew they came off with a key, for the village constable at Billington-Bungay had explained them to him with a proper pride in such professional implements.

“One of them probably has the key,” said Peter. He put the revolver down on the plank from which Bob had risen, and went first to Carlo. He found the cuffs made him very clumsy indeed, but he was surprised to find that he had no reluctance to handle the dead man. It seemed to him that he had been killing men ever since he remembered. Besides, it was like a dream. He did not find the key, but he found his watch. He remembered that Bob had said Carlo had it. He took it out of Carlo’s pocket and laid it by the revolver. Then he turned to Bob and very soon discovered the key in a pocket of the Cockney’s velveteen waistcoat. With some difficulty he unlocked the handcuffs and slipped them into his pocket. They were essentially of the nature of a trophy.

“And Bob has my money: he said so,” thought the Vicar of Billington-Bungay. He looked for his purse and found it. Then he put the revolver and his watch into different pockets.

“That’s all,” said Peter. But he shut the door upon Tommaso, wondering as he did so how Giulietta was, and what the other man with the nose was thinking about. Then he opened the outer door. There was no one about, and the sky was now perfectly clear. Looking up, he saw the North Star. He was tolerably familiar with the heavens, for he sometimes gave little lectures on astronomy in his own and other villages.

“Polaris,” he said. It pleased him to think he knew that name, but could not say why. The horse shook its head, and the bit jingled.

“Poor thing,” said Peter. “They might have put his nosebag on. If there is one I’ll do 1t.”

He found a nosebag half full.

“No, I’d better drive,” said Peter. He shut the warehouse door, and, finding the key in the lock, turned it mechanically. Then he went to the horse’s head, turned him round, climbed up into the seat and clicked encouragingly to the animal, as he did to his own pony.

“I’m bareheaded! I wonder where my hat is,” he said. Then he seemed to remember that he had had if in the van, but had come out of it bareheaded. He stooped backwards and found it lying behind him. The horse went easily, climbed the little rise, turned to the left as if it knew the way, and went at a slow trot.

“Its stable is possibly in Soho,” said Peter. “But tonight I’ve killed three men.”

He thought he could not think, for he did not do it in the ordinary manner. The calm little stream of his usual thoughts of happiness was now like a rapid river, broken by rocks. He remembered Edith as if she were a dead woman, once very much loved. Yet that very morning she had said, “I hope you’ll take care of yourself, Peter, dear.” That seemed very long ago. His children, too, were like a dim memory.

“I’ve killed three men,” said the vicar. “Three, Tommaso and Carlo Pinsuti, dealers, apparently, in ice, and a man called Bob. I shall tell no one about it.”

He was surprised to learn that he meant to tell no one about it, for he could not see why. They deserved it, and there was nothing else to do. And somewhere deep within him there was a great sense of pride that he had been able to do it, though he recognized that the death of Tommaso was practically an accident.

“I abused him, though, and said ‘damn,’” thought Peter. He remembered the story about Leigh Hunt, who as a little boy used to say, when he received praise from his elders, “Ah, they little think I’m the boy who said ‘damn!”’ That was very amusing, though, of course, no one should say “damn,” least of all a little boy or a vicar.

“I used language I did not think I knew,” said Peter. “I must have been mad. Still, I dare say I acted for the best. If I had not enraged him I might have been dead, as he is. Three of them! I’m — I’m a very strange man, a very remarkable man. I wonder if many are like me. I don’t mean my nose. I shan’t come to London again. At least not to Soho.”

The horse seemed to know his way, and Peter, who had no sense of earthly topography, though he knew the Pole star when he saw it, let him go where he would. But the clouds came up again and more rain came down, and when he reached the better-lighted parts of East London the streets were very empty. But he saw some policemen at intervals.

“They little think I’m the man who has killed three men tonight,” said Peter. “I won’t tell anyone. I wonder what the bishop would say? He would be very much disturbed, I’m sure.”

But Peter loved his bishop.

“Still, I won’t tell him or anyone, certainly not Edith. I wonder where I am?”

Presently he discovered that he was in the Commercial Road, though naturally enough he did not know where that was. But when he found himself in Leadenhall Street, he knew that he was in the city, and felt nearer home.

“I shall go home tomorrow. I shall be in Billington-Bungay. But I shall know I killed three men today. Now I’m in Cheapside. What shall I do with the van?”

That was a puzzle.

But when he came to St. Paul’s churchyard, he saw the dim length of Paternoster Row in front of him. He knew it, for he had been there several times to see a publisher who was doing something for the bishop. Peter had passed a volume through the press for the bishop, because he wrote beautiful English and was an authority on it.

“I’ll leave the van there,” said Peter. For now the Lane looked dark and deserted.

“I trust I shall not meet a policeman,” said Peter.

He met no one. The Lane was silent, as silent and even more deserted than the street in which Giulietta lived or died. Peter pulled up outside the office of the publisher who had printed the episcopal sermons, and getting out, slipped the strap of the nosebag over the horse’s ears. He was a very kind man.

“But I’ve killed three men today,” said Peter, as he walked to the West end of the Lane and turned into Ludgate Hill. There he picked up a taxicab.

“Drive me to Half-Moon Street, Piccadilly,” said Peter.

“All right, sir,” said the driver.

“And stop at achemist’s, if you know one that’s open,” said Peter.

“Any will open if you want them, sir,” said the driver.

“Very well,” said Peter, and he got in. He felt the revolver and the handcuffs in his pocket, and had a monstrous, remarkable pride in them.

“I must be a remarkable character,” said Peter. “I never suspected it.” .

The driver found a chemist who was not yet in bed when they came to Leicester Square, and Peter got out.

“I want a sleeping draught,” said Peter.

The chemist looked at him and thought he had never seen so remarkable a nose. It took his attention from Peter Francillon’s attire, which had suffered on the floor of the van.

“What do you usually take, sir?” asked the chemist.

“I never take any, but I fancy I shan’t sleep tonight if I don’t,” said Peter.

“You might try fifteen grains of chloral,” said the chemist.

“I’ll try fifteen grains of chIoral,” said Peter.

“Dissolve it in water and drink it as you undress,” said the chemist.

“Dissolve it in water and drink it as I undress,” repeated the vicar. He took the tabloids, paid for them and went out.

“A wonderful nose,” said the chemist, as he yawned.

When Peter came to his lodgings in Half-Moon Street the driver said the same as he took his fare and an extra sixpence.

“I’m in Half-Moon Street,” said Peter, as he climbed the stairs. “No one knows I’ve killed three men. I wonder if fifteen grains of chloral dissolved in water and drunk as I undress will make me sleep.”

He took the handcuffs from one pocket and the revolver from the other, and put them on his dressing-table. He wound up his watch, which was still going and now marked ten minutes after midnight.

“A great deal can happen in a very little while,” said Peter. He dissolved the chloral, and drank it. “Nothing on earth can make me sleep if I’m not asleep already,” he said, as he swallowed it.

He folded his clothes carefully and put them on a chair.

“If I’m dreaming they’re not dirty, and if they’re really dirty I’ll wear others tomorrow,” said Peter. “But I shan’t sleep. Fifteen grains of chloral dissolved in water and drunk as I undress can’t make me sleep.”

He turned out the light and got into bed. Then he saw Bob and Carlo on the floor of the ice-house. He went through the scene with Tommaso.

“Fifteen grains can’t possibly make me sleep,” said Peter. He said it again and again, and at last, just as he said “fifteen grains can’t possibly—” he fell out of the world and slept like a dead man.

It was eight o’clock in the morning when he awoke, and the sun shone into his window. He lay perfectly still for a minute or two. Then he said—

“I’ve had an awful dream!”

He moved and felt very stiff, and wondered why he felt so. It was extraordinary that he remembered the dream so vividly.

“I — I dreamt I killed three men,” said Peter vaguely. Then he added, as he stared at the ceiling: “I’m glad I’m awake!”

He sat up suddenly and looked over to the dressing-table. On it lay a revolver and a pair of handcuffs

A THING OF WAX

“So you are immortal, if not of the Forty,” said Jules Lepin, laughing.

The immortal one smiled. They called him ‘The madman,’ in Paris. There was something in his laugh which suggested tears. His smile was transitory, full of melancholy.

“Wax!” he said.

“Le Musée Grèvin adorns itself with Monsieur Jacques Landerer, politician, poet, revolutionary,” said Lepin. “I shall go and see you!”

“So shall I,” said Landerer. His smile had gone. There was an uneasy wrinkle between his eyes.

“After all, it’s a compliment!”

“A compliment! The pigs—”

“Well, you are indeed someone when you reach wax! Marble is always there at so many francs! So is paint. There are the two Salons! But wax — mon cher, vous être vraiment illustre!”

Paris roared about them. They stood in the shadow of the Louvre. A dozen passers-by said—

“There is Jacques Landerer!”

“Illustrious, am I? Well, adieu,” said Landerer. He went away with his head down. Wax, in wax! These waxworks were horrible things. “They’re — they’re so devilishly like,” said Landerer. “Art—”

Yes, art was art, and though it might sting, it was, after all, art. But wax was a copy, a dreadful copy.

“I wonder if they’ve got my clothes, too,” said Landerer. “I don’t like it. The idea—”

Yes, the idea of man, of life, of reality, and of nothingness!

“I don’t think I ever liked a looking-glass,” said Jacques. And yet he was a handsome man, some said. “One’s eyes are not one’s own in a glass. By God! what is one, after all?”

Why, one was clay, perhaps, and now one was coloured wax with clothes on, sitting or standing, never moving; staring without a wink. Well, someday one wouldn’t move, wouldn’t wink, wouldn’t live, or love, or fight, or speak.

“I’ll not see it,” said Landerer.

He meant it, as he spoke. But all day long friends said—

“So you are immortalized in wax. You should see it! Very good, my dear fellow; oh, excellent! You to the life! I wanted to shake hands. You smiled like an enigma, and wouldn’t know me. I was outraged by your indifference, and almost agreed with a miserable bourgeois who abused you. Go and see it.”

He had been in the Musée Grèvin years ago. It had disturbed him. The dead who yet lived were dreadful, but the living who were dead in wax and glass and cloth were more dreadful still. How could the living endure to see themselves? It put them in the grave, even as it tore up the great dead from their tombs. But only now did Landerer understand his boyish uneasiness before those wax masks. He understood death better, and he understood it less! It was the same with life, with living, with being, with enduring and fighting, with all the anodynes that make us forget stark death in the smiling, enigmatic mask which stands at the doorway of each man’s warm house.

“I get confused,” said Landerer the illustrious.

All Paris knew him, the very cochers smiled at him. He was popular even with his enemies, who laughed at him and enjoyed him. Now people passed him with a strange smile, so he thought.

“They’ve seen Me at the Musée,” he said.

“Me! What is Me?”

*****

That night, when the outer Boulevards hummed, and the world was in the streets, with a clear. warm sky of stars overhead, he marched towards the Museum. But no one recognized him in an unusual dress. He wore a slouch hat, pulled over his eyes; he had curled his moustaches differently. They now stood up in waxed spikes instead of drooping towards his shoulders. He looked strange; he had rouged his pale face and browned it.

“No one will know me,” he said. Truly it appeared that no one did. As he stood by the entrance he heard a man say—

“Landerer is the only new one. It is marvellously Landerer.”

Others said, “Landerer”; he caught a woman saying he was handsome. One man said to another, “That poor fool Landerer.” His skin twitched in a sudden shiver, and he entered the building.

In the Théâtre Grèvin the orchestra was playing during an entr’acte; he heard the music and frowned. Somehow it hurt him. What should anyone be playing for in this devilish Morgue? He stared at a ghastly representation of a scene in the outworks of some fort in Port Arthur. The sun rose and blood ebbed. The ghastly horizon burned while lives went out. A sentry stood and stared at him — at him, a spy! And the live music danced all the while at this perpetuated agony of stained wax. It was hideous, bestiall For it was not triumphant, this music; not the wild music of war, but a trivial patter of indifferent, callous song. He looked at the dying man.

“He’ll be dying for years,” said Landerer. “This is worse than the doctors, who prolong things.”

The white mask agonized before him. The sentry stared.

“Where am I?” asked Landerer.

He saw in wax many men he knew. Rodin, for instance — clumsy, wonderful Rodin, tyrant over marble and bronze, a brutal but great god of matter into which he flung a soul. There was Napoleon in his dead men’s company and his dear dead women’s; little Napoleon, little, trivial, magnificent Napoleon, emperor, corporal, tyrant, martyr, the instrument of the awful gods, who made earth their Musée Grèvin, and played trivial, terrible music near at hand.

Then he saw Himself.

At first there was no shock in seeing Himself — or he thought so. He was sitting down, musing, musing quietly as he did sometimes. It was impossible to see His eyes. They looked on the ground.

“It can’t be like,” said Landerer. But he knew it was like. He averted his eyes and walked on with his heart beating.

“Why should I mind, why should it disturb me?”

It did disturb him. He sat down a little way off and watched. People passed; many stopped. They talked of him; said it was very like, or not so like, or exactly like. “I thought it was the man himself. I knew him well,” said one man. He lied, for Landerer, who never forgot, did not know him.

“Here’s the madman,” said another.

“When will he make his next revolution in a teaspoon?” asked one, yawning. “He’s nothing; nothing but wax!”

Landerer said this man was right. How could he, a little living foolish figure, do anything, as the gods and the earth lay before him? The little people drifted back to the theatre. He heard laughter and applause. Someone was imitating something again. All things were wax. By God! Rodin himself was wax! The worshipped gods were wax. Who was the sneering Maker of wax? Who owned the earth and let in devils to see the wax play?

It had been a shock to see Himself, after all.

“It’s so like me,” said Landerer, writhing. It got more and more like him. “It — it breathed,” said Landerer, as he choked. It seemed to move a little. He rubbed his eyes and rose and went closer.

Yet outside Paris flowered, loved, laughed and grew: Paris the fair, the wicked, the wonderful, the logical! And he was of Paris now. Part of the life of La Ville Lumiere, part of its ambitions, its laughter, its foolish hopes, its admirable ridicule which still could not kill him. Inside there was no Paris. There were wax things and music afar off, and futile applause of things unseen by him. He was quite alone.

“I don’t know—” he said. Then he paused. There were tears in his eyes. He wiped them away.

“I — I don’t know—” he said again, as he stared at Himself: the calm, inscrutable, quiet Landerer, musing on the world. “I don’t know which is which!”

For one awful moment this was true — absolutely true: so true that he stiffened to a dull white mask beneath his rouge. If He had got up from the bench and walked away, Landerer would have sat down I

“By God! I must be mad,” he said, as he came back to himself; “I must be mad. Perhaps I shall be like that when I’m — dead?”

He would sit on a bench — in hell, perhaps — and muse on life, on vanity, on emptiness, on success; on Sisyphus, on revolutions which changed nothing, on progress, on the churches, on God, on wax and human clay. A very quiet bench in some calm place of nothingness!

“I’d like to smash it,” said Landerer threateningly. But perhaps if he struck it, he himself would bleed! So mad a thought appalled him. He dragged himself away. And he believed that the wax Landerer looked after him. He seemed to hear a thin voice say something. What did it say? He came out into the living stream of men without knowing, and Paris laid hold of him as a stream lays hold of a leaf. He came back to himself before he slept. Or so he said.

But he dreamed of the Museum, and saw the Figures walk, and heard them speak. But it was only the really dead ones who moved and spoke. The figures of live men, such as Himself, remained as they were, motionless, staring, or musing and thoughtful. This seemed strange at first to him, but after a little while it was not strange at all, for a reason he could not quite explain. And yet it seemed to him that some of the silent, motionless figures were more alive than others. Of all men it was Napoleon who explained this to a newcomer.

“They are nearer our life when they are asleep,” said the Emperor. That seemed very reasonable to the dreamer. He now saw that His eyes were not fixed on the ground. They smiled inscrutably, but were strangely hostile.

“I hate myself, and myself hates me,” said the dreamer. He saw the Emperor speak to the Russian sentry. The sentry saluted, gave up his rifle and lay down, and the Emperor took his place outside Port Arthur. The other generals drank coffee with the ladies. Ah, they were charming, but very sad, it seemed!

Then there was a big gun fired! Someone knocked at the dreamer’s door. It was morning in Paris.

He went again to the Museum. And again, and always in disguise at night. At this hour his life was empty of its old excitements. Paris was at rest. France was like a theatre during an entr’acte; or like one between two tragedies, those wonderful tragedies of laughter and woe in which she shows herself ridiculous, impassioned, devout and cynical. Landerer was out of political work: he sank into himself. Not now was he the madman some adored. But he was the less sane. He began to live in the darkness of the mind: in the shadows; and considered during long hours those things which darken even the sanest souls for dreadful moments. What was he, what was life, what the flesh, what God, what death? All these things were — wax! He laughed. Truly he was not so sane as when they called him the politician of delirium. He went to see Himself, to ask himself questions.

He began to get answers. Wax answers in time. So does the face in a mirror, always, always. So does clay. Ask, and it shall be given you! Try, questioner.

The wax Self became a vice, a monstrous vice, one he loved and hated, and took a foul pleasure in that was hideous because it was hideously close to religion and philosophy, and was neither. The Figure ate up love, and divorced him from his weeping mistress: it ate up faith and religion (once he had both), and the enthusiasm that one time burned within him worthily. His Cécile became a figure of wax, a puppet: she strained him to her heart in vain. He shivered horribly at her touch, and she grew pallid. He thrust her away.

“You look like — wax!” he said.

Men who knew him wondered at him. They said he changed, and he quailed, knowing it to be true. He said so to Himself at the Museum.

“I become wax; you become — what?”

The sombre Figure smiled. The face looked like flesh, many said. The little god who had made it said it was his masterpiece.

Perhaps it was;

“It grows better every day,” said the little god.

Perhaps it did.

Once, and once only, Landerer found himself compelled to face Himself as himself in the company of friends: of Lepin, of Morier, of Alfonse Fée, and Ligonnier. They met him near the Museum and dragged him in, laughing.

“You haven’t seen yourself; come in and be introduced,” said Lepin: fat little jovial Lepin, who should have been Lapin, a skipping rabbit of the warrens of journalistic Paris. Big Morier roared with laughter at the notion. Fée smiled and watched Landerer. Fée wrote horrible tales: some of them wonderful, and he understood the underneath of things. Ligonnier was a sculptor of the outside only, and very successful.

“Let us enter,” said Ligonnier. “All work is interesting, and I want to see Landerer in wax.”

“Faith, he’s waxy to look at now,” thought Fée.

Lepin chuckled, laughed, chattered. Old Morier (he was a philosopher of the cafés) shrugged his fat shoulders as they went in.

“Be cheerful, Landerer,” he said. “We will see you and He don’t quarrel. It is an ordeal, I know, but be polite.” ‘

The people at the entrance smiled at the party and at Landerer, whom they now knew so well. The manager went before them proudly.

“I hoped to have seen you before, monsieur,” he said to Landerer. “This figure is a triumph. The artist proclaims it. He says ‘ Behold, it is the man Himself.’ Sapristi, he’s right. It is good, artistic, a chef-d’oevre!”

He came to the Figure.

“Behold,” he said.

“Allow me, Monsieur Fait-de-cire, to introduce to you Monsieur Jacques Landerer,” said Lepin, taking off his hat with a bow.

“It’s wonderful,” said Fée. “Horrible!”

Landerer smiled faintly.

“What do you think of it, Jacques?” asked Morier. “It gives me the shivers. I hate waxworks.”

“It’s all right, I suppose,” said Landerer.

“Of course it’s not art,” began Ligonnier.

“What is art?” asked Lepin.

“What Ligonnier does,” said Fée, “and what those do who get less than he for their work.”

“Beside Fée what is Anatole France, then?” asked Ligonnier, who could also bite.

“Peace,” said Lepin. “Quarrel not in the face of our quiet, strange friend Landerer, Marquis de Cire! How strange. Can the world, can Paris, support two of him? Landerer, you overpower me.”

“Sit down by the side of it,” said Ligonnier. “Let me pose you as it is posed.”

Landerer was wax in his hands.

“Marvellous, wonderful,” said the manager. “Oh, that our little artist was here now. He would weep tears of joy.”

“Well, that’s enough. I think it horrible,” said old Morier. “Let’s have daylight, and a bock, and a game of dominoes. I prefer Père-la-Chaise to this.”

He turned about and back again, and saying, “Come, Jacques,” laid his hand on the figure of wax. Landerer smiled. He rose, and they went out, and had their bocks, and Lepin played dominoes with Morier.

“I hate all things,” said Landerer, musing. He fell into the attitude of the wax Figure. Fée saw it and so did the sculptor, and when Landerer looked up he knew what they thought. After that he avoided them all. His mind melted, perhaps, or perhaps it was his brain.

He thought of nothing but the Figure, who sucked his blood. He knew the stories of magic, of magic tortures, of wasting figures of wax before fires to torture an enemy.

“Perhaps I can’t die while it lives,” said Landerer. Decidedly he was not sane. But he knew that very well. Like Fée, he knew the underneath of things. But he hadn’t Fée’s strength.

He dreamed again of the Figures, and saw them move and heard them talk. But this time he did not see Himself. This was strange, because he knew it was a dream. It was stranger still that, do what he would, he couldn’t see the bench on which He sat. This puzzled him. He said so aloud, and it appeared that the Emperor, who was with Marshal Lannes, heard him. The great Emperor was in his best mood and very kind. He took a great interest in everything, and was pleased to speak with Landerer.

“You appear to be troubled, mon ami,” said the Emperor.

It seemed rude to Landerer to call the poor Emperor “sire.” One sees the unhappy politician spelt it with a c, as was natural. But he got the word out, and the Emperor turned to Lannes.

“Explain to Monsieur Landerer,” he said. Of course, Napoleon knew everyone’s name. So Lannes explained that Landerer was probably dead, as they said in the world outside, and that He was now wax.

“I see,” said Landerer. He had been sitting all the time, in spite of the Emperor’s presence. “It appears, then, that I can walk?” asked Landerer of the Marshal.

“You might try,” said Lannes. “Let me help you.”

And Landerer in wax rose to his feet.

“I feel stiff,” said Landerer apologetically.

“We all do at first,” said Lannes; “but it wears off little by little. Even the Emperor—”

“I was very stiff,” said the Emperor, smiling.

It appeared that there were so many figures of the Emperor that even his big soul could hardly go round. The explanation was perfectly satisfactory to Landerer. He strolled about the Museum very happily until he tripped up.

He found himself lying on his bed with all his clothes on. The clocks of Paris said it was two o’clock, and he crept into bed and shivered till dawn.

“I’ll destroy it,” said Landerer.

Every now and again he said he was mad, but on growing madder he saw how sane a proceeding the proposed act was. This damnable thing was killing him. He saw that he grew paler: his eyes were dark-circled, his wan cheeks sunken.

“Life’s being sucked out of me,” said Landerer indignantly.

He cared nothing about politics. The Republic was no longer an enemy. He loved the Orleanists as much as the Bonapartists. He refused to speak: refused an undoubted opportunity for causing trouble in Paris, and even avoided the most obvious chance of a duel.

“He’s extinct,” said his enemies.

“But the Enemy in the Museum was not extinct,” said Landerer. He dreamed he was himself every night and in the morning was horribly exhausted.

“I must act,” said the waking man. For when he dreamed as the thing of wax he scorned the sleeper of wax, which had so little life.

“I — I must act quick,” said Landerer, shivering. “I must act quick, or when the summer comes in hot I shall — melt!”

Yes, that was it, he was becoming wax: he knew it: saw it. He had to be very careful of himself, most exceedingly careful. One sees how necessary it was. If one is wax, made of wax, the least carelessness, and, pouff! one is done for! One runs into a pool. You see, my friend, the need of care. One must avoid fires, hot sunlight, hot soups. A careful man of wax will live on ices and iced wines, and if he dares to take a bath it will be a very cold one. Landerer was a careful man of wax, a very careful one. The other Landerer was becoming flesh, of course.

“But I can stop it,” said Landerer. “I will.”

He knew every hole and corner of the Museum by now, and laid his plans carefully.

“They will be surprised,” said Landerer.

When He slept that night and dreamed, He was aware that He stood in danger. The Figure of Wax, as it moved jerkily among the other figures, was apprehensive: yes, very much afraid. The others, on learning His fears, did their best to calm Him. His friend Lannes offered to stand by Him: he offered Him, moreover, the especial protection of the Emperor.

“We must stand by each other,” said the Marshal.

“Fear nothing,” said Napoleon gloomily.

So He cheered up. And when the sleeper woke it was he who feared. He touched his skin delicately.

“I’ll do it tonight,” said Landerer. He went into the Museum late, this time without any disguise. As it chanced, no one noticed him. The man at the Caisse was sleepy. Landerer heard sounds from the theatre, and knew the play was coming to an end.

“All plays come to an end,” said Landerer threateningly, as he passed Himself. He felt very cold and feeble. But that was better than feeling hot, of course. He saw his friends of the night and hated them. It was so dreadful to think they lived in the fashion he knew so well. He saw the Emperor—

But this was the corner he had selected. No one would find him. Presently the theatre would empty and the lights would be extinguished. Then he would kill the Figure and break out and go home, and sleep without dreaming, and become flesh again. Tomorrow he might be able to have a warmer bath; perhaps a little soup, not too hot, but still not cold. He tried his corner, and it seemed too small.

“If anyone goes round he’ll see me,” said Landerer. He stared about him. And then he smiled joyfully.

“The beast shall go there,” said Landerer. He ran to the Figure, lifted it up, carried it to the corner, thrust it in, and then went and sat upon the bench whence he had taken it. A nail that had kept the Figure firm caught his coat. He took its very attitude, exactly as the sculptor had posed him. He waited.

The last act of the farce was a long one. He heard the people laugh, heard them applaud. The Museum seemed warmer, he thought. That made him uneasy. Then he heard footsteps. A man and a woman came round, looking at the Figures. The man pointed out some of them by name. He came at last to his bench.

“That’s Jacques Landerer,” said the man.

“I don’t think it like him,” replied the woman. “I saw him last year.”

“Oh, it’s like enough,” said the man. “After all, it’s wax, my dear.”

“I think they’re all horrible,” said the woman. “Let’s go home.”

Then there was a roar of applause from the theatre.

“The farce is over,” said Landerer.

A few of the audience came round his way. Some noticed him. A boy nearly touched him, but his mother pulled him back.

“He’s alive,” said the little boy.

“You are foolish, child,” said the mother.

“I’m sure of it,” said the boy. “It’s only wax, mon petit chou,” said his father. They moved on. No one else came till the theatre was emptied. Then a man walked round hurriedly. The lights went out. The door was locked. Landerer said he was alone. He felt colder, more feeble. His heart beat so that it shook him. He raised his head and in the storm saw the Figures standing. They seemed to whisper. He struck a match and lighted a candle. Then he dragged Himself out of the corner and trod upon its face viciously.

“You’re dead,” said Landerer. “You’re dead.”

He thrust the bundle of stuff into the corner again and kicked at it. He wiped his feet as if he wiped blood from them.

“I feel cold,” he murmured, “very cold.”

He sat down upon the bench again in his posed attitude, but with the candle in his hand. He breathed with great difficulty. The Figures whispered again. He sighed.

“What am I?” asked Landerer. He felt his cold cheeks.

“I’m still wax,” he whispered: “wax, wax!”

He thought he screamed. He was mistaken. No one would have heard that scream ten yards away. He dropped the candle on the floor. It lay there still alight for fully a minute. Then the light went out. Landerer said so to himself. “My heart’s wax,” he said. “I’ve been too late.”

He stiffened into the attitude of the Figure and could not move. He heard the Emperor speak to Lannes quite plainly. He was sure of it. There was a ghostly light in the Museum! The Figures moved!

But Landerer did not move.

TRITT

Amazing man, Tritt! You shall believe it if aught I can write may convince you. And yet Tritt, being Tritt, was so amazing as hardly to be credible. To write of the incredible and unbelievable may be waste, and one is not Rabelais, to justify wild invention in quaint words, while one shakes with gusts of laughter. But to resume, to begin again with Tritt, the humble, the amazing, the petty, the magnificent Tritt. Tritt had no humour — not a spark, not a scintilla. He was sober, serious, high-minded, wonderful. He was also a German. He claimed to be the fellow-countryman of Goethe, Heine, Frederick the Great, Richter, und so weiter. I vow he transcended them all, was greater than Great Frederick himself, than Goethe swimming in the unfathomable second pool of Faust, than Richter in Titan, than Heine in the Travels. But Tritt spoke English and French and Italian, and other odd tongues, barely indicating Germany’s accent as he talked seriously and to the simple point.

His nationality was nothing. He was Tritt pure and simple. That for his being a German! He sprang from nowhere, was the son of no man, no woman. He was not a cosmopolitan, he had no country, and all countries were not his. You might think he was a gypsy. God forbid you’re being so foolish. Man alive! Gypsies are born, after all. I believe a mad writer, my literary friend Frankenstein, made Tritt of paper and ink. I suspected Ryecroft, my friend Ryecroft. I suspect him still at times. He showed Tritt to me: told me about him, instructed me in him, set him working before me, made him howl and smile, and weep and groan, pulled out the stops — in fine, blew the bellows of Tritt.

I wasn’t introduced to Tritt. I became aware of him. “He’s coming presently,” said Ryecroft. Tritt came in meekly, wandered round a corner, with an apologetic smile on his lips. He appeared; as it were, he materialized. In his hands he dangled certain forlorn, miserable odd pieces of art work in which (at that moment only) his quiet soul was lapped.

“Fire screens,” said Tritt proudly.

In the name of all that’s holy, unholy, heavenly, hellish, picaresque and suburban, what was Tritt doing in Ryecroft’s room in Baker Street with fire screens? Answer, Vulcan; answer, Liberty’s! I sat confounded, confused, while ready Ryecroft indicated Tritt with the modest hand of a creator showman.

“I told you about Tritt!”

Ryecroft: clever, inscrutable Ryecroft, with the finely cut mouth of the true artist, smiled as though he said, “My chef-d’oevre, friend.” He knew Tritt (or so he said). He had read him, analysed, dissected Tritt.

In his voice one read—

“This is the marvellous, peculiar, solitary, solipsistic, ordinary, wondrous, terre-à-terre Tritt of whom we spoke aforetime. I don’t know him, and I know him. He represents mystery and is mysteriously commonplace, sane, mad, rare, mild, generous, mean. See how sweet he is. See how he dangles fire screens! In the name of heaven and earth and the queen of illusion and reality, why fire screens, and what fire? But, as I said before, he’s the small, gigantic, harmonious, discordant, unimaginable Tritt.”

That’s what Ryecroft’s smile said. It was a tremendous smile: as strange as Heine’s, but more human.

“They’re on satin,” said Tritt.

On satin! He was a phenomenon with phenomenal paint marks on phenomenal satin. Why satin, why paint? I looked at him.

“Painted?” I inquired benignantly.

“On satin,” said Tritt. He smiled tenderly on the screens. “I’m trying to sell them!”

So might a mother in a famine go round with her brats, saying, “Children for sale.” His lips trembled. If he sold them he would weep, might even spot them.

They were the ghastly, hideous, abominable, damnable miscreations of an art miscreant. They were not screens, they were extinguishers. Hold one before the fire of London, the fire of Chicago, what awful fire you will, and that fire (for you) goes out at once, is nothing, not two sticks and a match, my friend. Their glaring, bolting-eyed colours confounded my weak eyes. They would have shamed a peacock’s tail into folding. They would have confounded a fire: firemen would have put them out or have tried to do so. But Tritt, seated on the humble edge of a chair, explained them to us. He told us meekly how he did them. They were flowers, he said. “I’ve been going round with them,” said Tritt, cheerfully and sadly. “Some shopkeepers were very rude to me. They are very good, though, are they not?”

He held them up for us to see. Ryecroft and I shut our eyes and said they were good. A stranger, a common poor stranger (all men we don’t know are asses) would have said, “Here’s a wild ass, a poor thing, a wandering lunatic who should wear straw!” Such a blind ass of a stranger would have retreated from his screens; would have eyed him with a contempt; would have lifted his nose in the air as for a bray. A thousand stay-at-homes would have put him aside, would have hustled him, would have said, “Here at last is a meek person we can trample on. He will cry if he can’t sell us a screen. We will give him a penny and dispatch him to the German Consul to be sent home and taken care of.”

“Oh, sir, you stranger ass, what an ineffable ass you are!”

The above is my reply to the embodied fools who can’t understand Tritt, or Trittism, which is really a great philosophy. I put Tritt above Descartes, Hobbes, Berkeley, Spinoza, Kant, and beneath his heel I hear Hegel screaming. Do you think, sir Ass, that a man like Ryecroft, author of so many big books, a great writer, a keen critic, a swift judge of character, a hanging judge of shams, a man we shall not soon see again, would have taken all the pains he did to show me Tritt acting Trittically, if Tritt had been a nobody, a nothing, a sort of zero, an elided word, a lacuna, a cancelled factor, considering I am what I am? But I scorn to speak of myself, and will not blow against the Walls of Jericho. I tell you Ryecroft put Tritt preciously into my extended eager palm as if he were an archaeologist handling gifts from the graves of a great old city, or a numismatist with a coin among ten thousand, or a biologist with protoplasm made in a laboratory. I tell you again he was as proud as if he had constructed Tritt out of chaos. If I could only have made him! If I only could put him down now!

Good Lord! what a man Tritt was! I fail, I fail! With flat brush or round, or graver, or burin, or even a camera, Tritt shall elude me.

I perceive, as you stand dumbfounded, aghast, and yet near to giggling, not one touch, one iota, one faint indication of understanding in you people. I must explain. Well — Tritt — Good Lord, assist me to deliver myself of Tritt, the body and bones and blood of Tritt. I maintain, pathetically, that he was real, that he had form, a body, and blood, and bones not a few. Tritt — if I annoy others I annoy myself, for this is a devil of a task, this vain painting of Tritt, not on a fire screen, but still, it might be, to be sold. Let me get at Tritt, get him down, put pins in him, peg him out, cut him up, docket him.

He was a hero and didn’t know it. He was a fool and didn’t suspect it, a great wild lover and wouldn’t have believed it, an artist bigger than he knew in spite of fire screens. He was a man and a child. He roared on the floor when grim necessity, having snatched his last obol, took Giulietta from him. But I forgot: you know not Giulietta. Tritt, then, was in Rome. You ask how, why, and when he was in Rome? Tut, man, do not interrupt. I tell you it matters not an obol, or a dime, or a para, or a centime, or a groschen, or what you will in current coin, how and why he was there. He was Tritt, man alive! and for Tritt to be in Rome or in Ramsgate, in Athens or in Kamschatka, in Naples or Newgate, in Syracuse or Chicago, in Callao or Berlin or Bordeaux or Penobscot or Chilliwack or Penang or Santa Rosa de los Andes or Brighton, was nothing. Why, when he was painting scenery in Bundaberg (don’t you know where Bundaberg is, you ignoramus?) he started right off with coals for the Lord-knows-where. I shall explain the coals presently, I hope, but am not sure. For one must explain Tritt first. And yet Tritt, as one sees, was humble and serious, given to staring past one, dreaming, perpending, brown-studying. How came he to carry coals at Bundaberg, and to offer satin screens in Baker Street, when he should have been teaching Greek or Latin at some gymnasium in Heidelberg? That’s what I don’t know. No one knew or could know. I saw Ryecroft didn’t make Tritt, after all. He didn’t know or learn his past, not even when he dragged him from the half-starved arms of Giulietta. The man’s all in pieces, and how shall one assemble him like the parts of a disparted Maxim gun, say? In truth I know not.

Obviously the man knew things, was educated, ‘civilized,’ as Ryecroft would have said. For Ryecroft was quite as wonderful in his way as Tritt, and had absurd ideas. However, it tells something of Tritt that the super-civilized Ryecroft loved him, dandled him, showed him, drew him out, and even fed him out of his scanty scholar’s larder, while the screens were unsold. He told me all about Giulietta. Now I remember it was through Giulietta that Ryecroft knew Tritt in Rome. For Tritt, discharged from Bundaberg coals, had shipped before the mast in Brisbane and come back to Europe, where, I know not, and proceeded to drift to Rome, getting there by way of Paris and Constantinople and Vienna, perhaps, but having got there, he smote his palms together and said he would be an artist of great magnitude. He saw the big men and determined to be big. Having by some occult, inscrutable, probably honest, means got some money together, he took a ramshackle den of a studio somewhere in Rome, and proceeded to paint. Paint means models, models mean love, or so it was with Tritt.

He picked up a girl of the Campagna, and painted her, loved her, adored her, would have carried coals for her, if anyone would have hired him for it. She was big and fine, and had the darkest eyes and the most lovely brown olive skin, and she was as big a fool as any woman can be. But Tritt gave her shelter, half a rug, half his food, half everything, or all of it, and painted her damnably. It would have made Raphael shriek to see his pictures, so Ryecroft says, and Ryecroft knows — or knew, for he’s dead, poor chap, and gone perhaps to some celestial Bundaberg or Penobscot. They starved, these two poor fools, the Italian model and the German adventurer, and he wept into his paints. Next door Ryecroft lived for a while, saving money and seeing Rome: he, too, being poor as a mouse, but just then burdened with no Giulietta, and he heard Tritt’s oaths as he painted, and his moans as he failed to paint or to feed Giulietta. They howled in company, poor children, sobbed as if their hearts would break, and Ryecroft, human and humane Ryecroft, stepped out of his den into Tritt’s and found Tritt there blubbering, while Giulietta also howled and looked very thin.

Said Tritt simply (he was Tritt, you see) —

“We’re hungry!”

“The devil,” said mild Ryecroft.

“Very hungry, both of us,” said Tritt.

Ryecroft looked at the paintings. They were nudes which wouldn’t have shocked any Puritan. It was as much as one could see that they were nudes.

“No wonder you’re hungry,” said Ryecroft. “Tell me about yourself. You’re a German?”

Tritt said he was.

“Tell the girl to put her clothes on, and go out and get some bread and a bottle of wine and sausage of sorts,” said Ryecroft, producing five lire. Giulietta smiled, adorned herself in her rags and went out.

“I love her,” said Tritt.

“Very much?” asked Ryecroft, who also loved people very much at times.

“Oh, so much,” said Tritt.

He extended his arms as if to measure with a fathom his unfathomable love for Giulietta. So they were in sympathy and talked, and Tritt told Ryecroft fragments of his heroic life, coals and Bundaberg and so on, until Giulietta returned and they all had lunch together on the floor, with the Secolo spread out as a table. After three mouthfuls of wine and bread and sausage, Tritt expanded like a balloon, and soared. He was going to be great, and by and by he would marry Giulietta. He told her so in the worst Italian Ryecroft had ever heard, but it was sweet Italian to Giulietta, and she smiled and held his hand till he took it away to grasp the neck of the bottle. For an hour or two Tritt was mildly stupendous. He wasn’t exactly stupid, but he was awfully mild. Ryecroft said that the whole scene made him feel as if he had met a cow in a field, a cow with super-cowlike eyes, who had spoken to him of what she meant to do to rival Michael Angelo. Such a mildness, thick, crass, inspissated, was our Tritt.

He told Ryecroft how he painted scenery at Bundaberg. There he wandered in a dusty street, past a dusty hall, where a dusty company prepared to act some dusty play. Why they proposed to act it, and who in Bundaberg cared a ‘continental’ whether they did or did not, I cannot tell. And how it came about that some wild-eyed genius had an inspiration on finding that the scenery was missing, and went out into the street and grasped Tritt, saying “Come in and paint for us,” I cannot say, either. But so it happened, or so Tritt said, and I affirm it was the truth, for who in the name of all gods and devils could invent such a story? ‘He went in and demanded brushes and paints, and manufactured something so lurid and awe-inspiring, so terrific in dawns and sunsets, or woods or oceans, that on the first night the audience rose up on their feet and thundered applause. So said the mild, ox-eyed Tritt. The audience roared for the painter, and they threatened to pull the roof off if Tritt didn’t come, while the manager, overwhelmed with his success, entreated their patience as he sought out the desired Tritt. And then it appeared that Tritt, on leaving the theatre, had seen someone who said, “Come to the wharf and help discharge the Mary Jane schooner of coals, and you shall be shipped before the mast and go back to Sydney!” “Why not?” said Tritt. So down he went and plunged into coals and coal dust. To him and others sweating in the dark, dimly illumined by stinking lamps, appeared a theatrical emissary, who had tracked him. He demanded Tritt, had to have him, told him that he was a success and must appear before the curtain. So Tritt, getting half-an-hour’s leave, rushed to the theatre, washed his face or partly washed it, and showed himself to the connoisseurs of Bundaberg, and was applauded to the echo.

“It was wonderful,” said Tritt to Ryecroft. “It was my first success. It showed me I could paint.”

His eyes fell fondly on the outrages on the easels, and Ryecroft shuddered. What was the taste of Bundaberg? And where, oh, where was Bundaberg? That was what Ryecroft inquired. As for me, I knew where Bundaberg was, but the knowledge brought no solution of the Trittism of the thing. I could hardly bracket Tritt and Bundaberg. By the gods, what was he — the mild, the ox-eyed, the dreamer — speculative as when he painted and carried coals at Bundaberg? Could I visualize Leopardi giggling drunk at Gottenberg? Or Michael Angelo sewing on buttons in Hoxton? Or Cervantes as a pander? Or Gibbon as a raping swash-buckler, a brigand? Or Kant admiring Captain Kidd? I could not, and how could I swallow Tritt and Bundaberg?

And yet Tritt, solid truthful Tritt, said so! Let it be. There are mysteries in the Theory of Groups, in non-Euclidean geometry, in hyperbolic spaces, and in man!

To return to Giulietta.

And yet equally mysterious to hyphenate Giulietta and Tritt, to bracket them. Ryecroft said, “I saw them together, and because it was impossible I believed it.” She hung on his lips, looked in his beaming eye, mild as moonshine, but ever and again glowing with pride of pictures. Ambitious Tritt, magnificent, hopeful, hopeless Tritt, with a dark jewel of a Giulietta, even though sadly starved, on thy breast!

To proceed with Ryecroft and the pair of lovers.

“How do you propose to live?” said Ryecroft, on whom fate thrust a vast responsibility. There was that about Tritt which said, “Take care of me, please, and also of my Giulietta. You understand that I am talented, can paint, as you see, and all I require is bread and cheese, for a while, and I shall shine.” With bread and steel, they say, one can get to China. But the land of fame for Tritt was further. “How could I?” asked Ryecroft of me, his friend. Yet he was even then self-condemnatory. Tritt’s silent natural demand for help, aid, sustenance, rent and tore him in pieces even when Tritt had passed out, screens in hand, into Baker Street and the beyond. Ryecroft stared at me sorrowfully. “I felt a beast,” said poor, kindly, wise Ryecroft; “and was to feel a greater one by and by.” .

The time of Ryecroft in Rome was limited by his limited means. At that time he was poor (he never got rich but once in one year; a Great Year made five hundred pounds), and could not stay in Rome too long. Publishers needed him (or he them) in vast publishing London, and no one indeed but a wise fool like Ryecroft would have spent what he did in visiting Italy. Yet without Italy what were man or Ryecroft? Now his pockets were near as empty as Tritt’s.

“How should I support Tritt, the sudden Tritt, thus thrust on me by sobs penetrating a thin partition, and yet go home to work?” gloomed Ryecroft. How indeed!

Wondrous wise was Ryecroft in the ways of women when they did not cling to his heart, did not speak soft things to him. He could give good sound advice to fools wrapped in silk, bond-men to pretty flesh and slaves of dark eyes and rounded cheeks. ’Tis a common gift, alas! So now what could be done but to abandon Tritt or persuade Tritt to abandon Giulietta? Horrible the alternative, and some would weep to do the latter. For she was sweet, a daughter of sunny earth, whose fathers had been fed in vineyards for a thousand generations. How could one leave her, cast her adrift again in the Piazza di Spagna, to await some other Tritt! But then to abandon Tritt himself, to leave him ashore, wrecked, bilged, on the sands of Rome, was absolutely, utterly, gar und ganz, unthinkable.

“I determined,” said the stern and awful Ryecroft, “to take him away to Germany.”

The stern and awful Ryecroft sighed. Yet had not he, a scholar, a lover of classic times, achieved distinction by writing books of deadly unclassic London? He who adored the past and hated Time for the gift of Now, had yet put aside the Great Dead and painted the Mean Living. He who had been better born with Vergil or with Petrarch, showed the world what Camberwell was like, or Clerkenwell. Should such a hero fail with Tritt? It was impossible to think of, and yet, Tritt being Tritt, the outcome of Tritt minus Giulietta, but plus a fare to Potsdam, say, was merest guesswork.

“Germany, what’s Germany to me?” said Tritt. “I’m not hungry now. I will paint again. Giulietta!”

Giulietta, the obedient slave, rose in her rags and her beauty, and would indeed have discarded both to serve her Tritt. But Ryecroft intervened and took Tritt away into the Colosseum, if I remember, and there tied him to a post and served him as if he were an Early, a too Early, Christian. He raged round him with lions of arguments, tortured him with logic, tore him with pleas, showed him to himself as if he were skinned like St. Bartholomew in the Duomo at Milan. Tritt the heroic pagan, tied to the hypothetic post, endured tortures mildly and fought with Ryecroft’s horrid menagerie of arguments.

Impossible to make Tritt believe that he and Giulietta would be hungry again in some three hours. Impossible to make him believe that he would not sell the horrid libel he was doing of dark Giulietta without her rags. And as for Germany and Potsdam (if it were Potsdam), he snapped his fingers at them and the Empire, Holy or Roman or Infernal.

“I left him mildly beaming hope,” said Ryecroft. “I walked on the Pincian Hill by myself, considering, and he returned to Giulietta,-ardent for carnations and rich impastos, speaking of Correggio and Raphael, meekly proud of being one of them.”

And on returning from the Pincian he found Tritt and Giulietta hungry again. It was a horrid surprise for Tritt, though not for Giulietta. Tritt rebelled against the fact, swore he was not hungry, could not, would not be hungry. By the nine gods and ninety devils he swore food was a superfluity, was not needed. And yet, oh, how hungry he was I

“This can’t last,” said agonized Ryecroft. He pointed out to Tritt that he had never seen or heard of him till twelve hours ago. Did Tritt expect to be fed by him? Was Ryecroft to be his Raven? Tritt modestly suggested he might buy or acquire an interest in a picture of Giulietta, but this Ryecroft declined to do, even at the price of fifty centesimi, though the canvas was worth far more than that.

“If I could buy Giulietta herself, and take her out and give her away to some unhungry capable, I would,” said Ryecroft to himself. He appealed to the girl of the Campagna in floods of good Italian, such as Tritt could not follow. He pointed out to Giulietta that death was on this path. Would she starve forever with her Tritt?

“Mio adorato,” said Giulietta, flinging her thin arms about Tritt’s thinning neck; “mia gioia!”

She burst into a torrent of weeping, a bridal veil fall of tears, and sobbed as if her heart would burst. This roused Tritt, and like an angry and ferocious lamb he asked Ryecroft what he had said. Ryecroft, being a fine linguist, explained in German, and presently Tritt, overcome, perhaps, by hearing his own tongue, also burst into tears and lay upon the bare floor and howled tumultuously, ungermanically, more like Philoctetes than a Teuton. For the Teuton’s more usual gift of tears is mild, sentimental water.

“I’m starving you, my beloved,” said Tritt, sobbing.

Giulietta wept.

“You are getting anatomical,” said Tritt.

Giulietta wept, though she did not understand.

“Woe is me,” said Tritt.

And Giulietta still wept.

“I must not kill you, dear,” said Tritt. “He’s right.”

Giulietta knew it, but she roared that Ryecroft, the sudden intrusive Ryecroft, was a “maladetta bestia.” She also kissed his hand, poor thing, hoping he would buy her picture. It was quite awful, said Ryecroft, a scene to outrage human hearts, to make them doubt Providence, who didn’t provide. Ryecroft said that he also wept and wanted to kiss Giulietta. That was very like Ryecroft. He had a tender heart and loved beauty, even when thin.

“I’ll — I’ll do it,” said Tritt. “I’ll go with you tomorrow to Germany. I’ll go home and see my people. I’ll paint there, achieve fame, come back and marry Giulietta.”

What was beyond him who had carried coals at Bundaberg and achieved horrible sunsets for a theatrical company? He hugged his Giulietta and said sweet pitiful things to her, and Ryecroft went out and bought bread and wine and meat.

“My adored,” said Tritt.

“Mia gioia,” said Giulietta.

“Good Lord,” said Ryecroft.

He went away and left them, but even before he went, the ever-hopeful took him aside.

“I’m not so sure now,” said Tritt.

“You’re not hungry now,” said Ryecroft “but you’ll be so in the morning. I’ll come at ten.”

“Lend me a lira,” said Tritt, beaming.

But Ryecroft wouldn’t do it. They were capable of living three more hopeful wasted days on a lira. Ryecroft tore himself from him and went back to his own den to dream of Tritt.

“Why should I burden myself with a coal-carrying, paint-spoiling amorous ass from Bundaberg?” asked Ryecroft, as he lay in bed.

Only those who had seen Tritt could answer. And yet not everyone was touched by the man from Potsdam and Bundaberg. It took a certain sympathetic genius to understand Tritt.

The dread morning came.

“The struggle comes, too,” said Ryecroft. He packed his little bag, knocked at Tritt’s room and entered.

“Away,” said Tritt; “I cannot!”

“You must,” said Ryecroft.

Absolutely impossible to leave him there! It couldn’t be done. Giulietta howled. Tritt bellowed, lay on the floor and bellowed like a bull-calf, like a Tritt.

“My adored Giulietta, I cannot,” said Tritt desperately.

“You shall not,” said Giulietta. And yet, how hungry she was!

“If you will come I’ll give her ten lire,” said Ryecroft, “so that she can get some good food while she has not you to rely on.”

. It sounded like satire, but they saw no satire in it. Ryecroft was good. Giulietta no doubt loved her Tritt, but she had some simple sad Campagna wisdom in her. She fell to weeping again, and Ryecroft spoke to her quietly.

“I’m doing all I can for him. Kiss him and go, dear Giulietta, and don’t come back, child. It’s been sweet while it lasted, but now’s the end,” said Ryecroft.

She understood only too well, poor thing. If he stayed with her what would be the result of it? He could not paint, even she knew that. She kissed the howling Tritt upon his cheeks and forehead, and rose up and fled. Ryecroft followed her and gave her ten lire. Perhaps he kissed her. I do not know. Perhaps she smiled through her tears. I saw her two years after in the Piazza di Spagna. She was plump and gay. Folk have to live, one sees.

“Where’s Giulietta?” said Tritt, as he raised his tear-stained face to heaven and Ryecroft.

“She’s gone,” said Ryecroft.

Draw a curtain over this, the last woe of our Philoctetes howling on the stage of that dark studio in Rome. Why should one depict his grief, and rage, and pain, and passionate adjurations to the gods? In two hours or more Ryecroft calmed him down, and made him pack up his few mean things. He kissed one picture of Giulietta. The others he had destroyed in his wrath. And now he smiled, he absolutely smiled.

“Poor dear Giulietta. I’ll come back and marry her,” said Tritt. “I’m ready now.”

They went to Germany, and on the way Tritt related strange things of Chile, and Borneo, and China, and Hungary. He thought nothing of them. How could anyone? It was so natural to be there. It was natural to be anywhere, he explained. I suppose it is. Ryecroft said he supposed so, too. Tritt prattled all the way to Berlin, and then he explained he did not think he could go home, after all.

“I always wanted to go to Russia,” said Tritt. “I can live by painting scenery. And portraits.”

Or by carrying coals, perhaps.

Ryecroft gave him five marks in Berlin, and saw him sink like a mild moon behind chimney pots. Perhaps he was on his way to Russia. Or, having five marks, he might go back to Giulietta.

Yet he did not. A year afterwards he turned up in Baker Street with painted fire screens.

“They’re on satin,” said Tritt; “painted on satin. I’m trying to sell them.”

He stood and beamed on us.

“Fire screens,” repeated Tritt, “on satin. I think they’re very good. Don’t you?”

Ryecroft and I said they were very good.

OUT OF THE GREAT SILENCE

The traffic roared in Holborn, while the rain, falling in floods, ran far up the sloping camber of the roadway. In the broken mirror of the water and the shining pavements a thousand electric lights sparkled, repeating themselves from the windows of the shops, and here and there the tail lamp of a cab flicked the road with ruby red. Greens and purples shone from a distant chemist’s shop, and streamed over the pavement wonderfully, filling the eye with colour as magical as the dreams of a strange drug from far-off lands: such lands as many knew who that night rejoiced in the spell of the great city. And the voice of the town was like that of a roaring river to some, and the clamour of a great wind to others, and to one at least it was like the roar of the surf beating on the desolate beaches of an unmarked island in the great Southern Ocean that rings about the Antarctic Pole.

“But I’m out of the great silence, all the same,” said Tom Carew. “Here’s my own city and the speech of it. Oh, but it has changed and grown even in these ten years!”

A city is a mighty plant: it grows ceaselessly; it is grey or green for a thousand winters, and then, in some summer night of hot world growth, flowers splendidly. The voyager from afar saw that London flowered, and he wondered, while the tropic rain fell and washed it clean for his homecoming, how it had grown so strangely beyond his old and deep knowledge.

“London’s a wonder! I went to see wonders!” he murmured to himself. So he had spoken, in such quiet speech, to the silence out of which he had come. For there he had been all alone: the greatest silence is the loss of human voices.

By his side, in the shelter of a doorway, stood a policeman in an oil cape shining with the rain. He stared at the man beside him. For Tom Carew, seaman and castaway, was as tall as he, and very powerful. The breadth of his shoulders and the depth of his chest showed well in his ragged coat of blue, which fitted him over-tightly, for it had once belonged to a smaller man. On his head was an old cloth cap; in his lean brown hand he held a bundle, made of a stained red bandanna, such a handkerchief as an Italian mariner with a childish love of gaudy colours might have rejoiced to possess. But though the constable saw these things, he looked mostly at the man’s face, which was tanned to the colour of madder, with the life of red blood in it.

“Come home from somewhere,” said the constable. “A strange-lookin’ chap, surely. Where’s he from?”

He spoke aloud.

“Rains ’eavy, eh? And you’re a stranger in London?”

Carew turned marvellous eyes upon him. The constable thought they looked through and beyond him.

“It’s my own city, constable. But it’s changed! Oh, how it’s changed!”

“Ah, you’d notice it, ’avin’ been abroad, as one might guess,” said the constable, staring at him hard. The ragged man’s voice, in spite of his rags and bundle, had a quality which urged the policeman to call him ‘ sir.’ “You see, we tackles the changes as they come.”

“What have you been doing to it these ten years?” said Carew.

“These ten years! Where were you all that time, sir?”

He had to call the man ‘sir.’ He could not help it.

“The last three in solitary confinement,” said Carew; “three solid years and some months to boot.”

He waved a hand as if to some big empty space: the great space he had stared at till it almost mastered him.

“Solitary! Why, where was that?” asked the constable, starting.

“In the Southern Pacific,” said Carew. “You’re the first Englishman I’ve spoken to these four years. I was cast away at sea. And this is London; this is Holborn! I can’t believe it!”

“That’s it, sir. Holborn it is, and this is rain, real rain, not to speak of the wind,” replied the policeman, with a laugh.

“Where’s Southampton Row?” asked Carew suddenly. ‘

The constable pointed to a way which was strangely new and broad.

“We London folk changed it while you slept, sir.”

“And Russell Square? Have you pulled that down?”

“God bless you, sir. It was in its place this afternoon. Do you want it?”

“I was born there,” said Carew.

“So you’re goin’ ’ome, sir?”

“That’s it, I’m going home,” returned Carew quietly. He stood in silence, thinking of home, while the rain still fell.

“I ’ope you’ll find things all right, but changes do take place in four years, not to speak of ten,” said the constable.

And Carew fingered his bundle nervously.

“Well, I’m changed. I wish I could ask you to have a drink, constable, but I can’t!”

“Thank you all the same, sir,” said the constable, “and I wish you luck, sir.”

“The same to you,” said the man with the bundle. “Good-night.”

“Good-night, sir,” said the constable. And Carew went across the street with a swift light step.

Several times he stayed as he went north, for he looked in the big shops and stood by the mouth of the tunnel out of which shot marvellous lights and resounding tramcars from the bowels of the earth.

“I wonder where they come from, and where they run to,” said Carew. Then he found himself in the old part of the Row which still remains a narrow street. But even that was changed. He lingered as he walked, regretting the old days, and tasting them anew with an odd bitter savour.

“How many times I’ve come down here whistling,” he said, with a smile at the boy that he had been. A silent year is like a century: the speechless days cut most men from their past, for they truly live by converse with their fellows.

He came out upon the Square and, turning to the left, stood in front of a corner house. Then he walked across ‘the road to the inner gardens and stared into the darkness.

“I never had such fine adventures as I had there,” he murmured. “Tom Carew, my lad, you never killed tigers outside Russell Square.”

He turned and, leaning against the railings, looked back at the house that he was born in. He was conscious that he trembled a little.

“Ten years since I saw it, and four years and over since they heard from me! What’s happened? They mayn’t live there now. The house looks dark.”

Yet there was a light from one window on the ground floor, while gas and the glare of a fire warmed the kitchen in the basement. He walked across the road again, went up the steps slowly, and laid his hand on one of the two knockers which all the houses in Russell Square boast. But he did not knock, after all: he could not; a knock seemed so loud and peremptory a noise, and he felt the old house was full of ghosts, and over-silent. So he rang instead of knocking, and waited patiently, almost humbly, for he was so poor a man, so long a stranger, so long a vagabond and castaway. That great house awed even its own child. He took a deep breath of air, as though when the door opened he was to dive into deep waters.

“I hope — I hope they’re alive,” said Carew. He knew now that ‘they’ were not; something told him so, spoke it kindly in his ears: the old house itself said “Death” to him, and “too late, too late.” He shook his head as he heard steps in the hall, and saw the light turned up suddenly. Then the door opened and he saw the glow strike across a woman’s face, for the lamp was overhead.

“Thank God,” said Carew, and smiled. But his lips trembled and he could not speak, though he was a strong man and hard.

“What is it?” said the girl. She looked little more than twenty, though it was ten years since he had seen her, and then she was sixteen and his mother’s little maid, a pet of the house, the child of an old servant. Tow Carew was twenty then, and he remembered kissing Kitty and being caught by his mother, who said gravely, “If you do that, Tom, I shall have to send Kitty away.” Six months later the world enticed him, and he went to the war in Africa, and afterwards the sea called him, and so he had his lonely island days, that made him a man as much as any war could do. And this was Kitty; Kitty grown up and beautiful perhaps, as the child had promised to be, for Mrs. Carew loved beauty, and had no daughters, only her wild son Tom, and his half-brother, the child of another woman.

“What do you want?” said Kitty. It was the first woman’s voice that had spoken to him since he shipped in an Italian barque at Cape Town for Australia. He did not remember what woman spoke last to him. Perhaps it was a yellow girl of the Cape, some half-breed, the sister, it might be, of the Cape boy who carried his dunnage down to the wharf.

“What do I want?” said Tom Carew. He wanted there and then to catch her in his arms and kiss her, out of gladness to think he knew her. So he would have kissed the old cook, who loved him. He made a step towards Kitty, and smiled. The light fell fully on his face.

“Kitty, my dear!” said the wild man with the bundle. And Kitty stared at him and, lifting up her hands, caught him by the arm and stared again.

“Oh, oh, it’s Master Tom,” she said, and cried there and then, sobbing strangely as she looked at him through her tears.

He stepped inside, slung his bundle on the hall table, and shut the door.

“How are things?” he asked, with a dry throat. ‘Things’ meant so much; his dear mother and his old father: a strange old man of books, learned, severe, ascetic, and yet sweet.

“Oh, sir, oh, Master Tom,” she said again. And he caught her by the shoulders, half roughly, half tenderly, for she was soft to the touch, and touching a woman’s sweet flesh moved him strangely and sweetly.

“My mother, Kitty?”

“Oh, sir, she’s dead this year past.”

“Ah! And my father?”

“Last month, sir, last month—”

Tom nodded, and again nodded bitterly.

“Aye, I knew it, I knew it. The very house said so!”

“Why didn’t you come home sooner, Master Tom? And for four years you never wrote,” she cried.

“I could not,” he answered. “The dear old folk died a thousand times for me when I could not, Kitty. Where’s my brother, and how is he now?”

“Mr. William’s out. He’s very ill, they say.” Then she hesitated, and Tom Carew looked at her.

“What were you going to say, Kitty?”

“He’s leaving the house, sir, and he has sent away all but me and one more.”

“Why?” asked Tom Carew dryly. But of old he knew his half-brother. There had never been peace between the young boy and his elder.

“Why?” he repeated, and Kitty looked at him and opened the palms of her hands with a gesture half foreign but most eloquent.

“Oh, he’s the same, then,” said Tom bitterly; “it’s money once more and always; and I suppose he has it all now?”

“They thought you were dead, sir. It’s said he has it all.”

“The dear old home! And he’s leaving it to strangers! Damn him!” he said suddenly.

And Kitty flinched.

“You won’t quarrel with him, sir, when he comes in. I expect him every minute. And he’s ill, I know.”

“What’s wrong with him?” asked Tom angrily.

But Kitty could not tell him. All she knew was that the doctor saw him very often, though he went to the city always, well or ill.

“You won’t quarrel with him, sir,” she implored.

“I’ll quarrel with no one, my dear,” he answered. “But will he quarrel with me? ’Twas he sent me away to the war, Kitty, and not my mother when she caught me kissing you I Have you forgotten that?”

She had never forgotten it, and smiled. “Oh, no, sir; at least, not quite.”

She was worth a kiss, said the wanderer, a sweet girl and pretty. But she was beautiful rather than that, only now he did not see it.

“Well, I’ve not forgotten,” said Tom, “and you’re the first woman I’ve spoken to these four years. Do you believe that, Kitty?”

As he spoke they heard a latchkey in the door.

“It’s Mr. William, sir,” said Kitty hurriedly.

The door opened, and William Carew came in. He was as tall a man as his half-brother, and heavier, but gross of habit and bearing. His lips were strangely purple: heavy veins lined his pallid face. He stared hard at the wild stranger in his hall.

“Who’s this?” he said abruptly.

“Don’t you know me, Will?” asked his brother.

Will Carew put up his glasses and stared at him again.

“Oh, you!” he said. He fumbled in his ungracious mind for some more gracious greeting. “Oh, yes, it’s Tom.”

“That’s who it is,” said the ragged man. “So we’re all that’s left, Will.”

“You know, then?”

“Kitty has told me,” said Tom softly.

“’Twas your fault, or half of it,” said William.

“The fault of the seas, Will, not mine.”

He saw Kitty look at him imploringly, as if she asked him to be gentle. He smiled back at her and nodded. To her he seemed a splendid man, for all his rags, but to Will nothing was visible but rags.

“Come in,” he said ungraciously. And Tom followed him into ‘the library. There sat the stern ghost of his father, a hard man, yet kind and learned. There were the books he loved; yonder, by the window, the desk he worked at. That was the chair in which he died, (though Tom knew it not. Will sat down in it, thinking not of the dead, but of the money that was his, the money that he loved and could not share.

“Why didn’t you write?”

His voice was peevish, strained and cold.

“I couldn’t.”

“And you come back — like this?”

“Aye, in rags, and no need of pockets save for a knife. All my other gatherings are in an old bandanna outside.” ‘

“You brag of it!”

“I brag of nothing. It’s mere plain fact, Will.”

“You’re going abroad again?”

“Do you hope so? Shall I not sit down here and stay with you?”

“I’m leaving the house next month.”

“The dear old house; we were born in it. You’ll not sell it!”

“’Tis as good as sold now.”

“If it were mine, I’d not sell it.”

“It’s not yours,” said Will Carew’ harshly.

“No, to be sure, brother,” said Tom. He sat the wrong way in a chair, with his hands folded over the back of it.

“I’ve nothing, I suppose,” he said.

“Nothing. They thought you dead?”

“How careless of me to get wrecked!”

“They resented your not writing — aye, and your general conduct,” said his brother hastily.

“Ah, it was bad. I fought in South Africa when I might have stayed at home and made money. I could have worked under you at the office,” said Tom. “That would have been good conduct. But not content with fighting, I must see the world too, and get wrecked on a desert island!”

He held out his hand at Will, and jumped to his feet.

His brother started.

“You hoped I was dead,” said Tom. “Tell the truth now! Didn’t you hope that I should never turn up and ask you for a fiver?”

And Will never said a word.

“You always were — what you are, Will,” said Tom; “a pattern, a model, the good boy of the family I What a contrast, eh, there is between you and me; you with the home and the business, and I with a bundle in a bandanna. Oh, what a man you look!”

“Leave my house,” said Will, rising from his chair. But Tom pulled out his pipe, filled it with loose tobacco from his pocket and lighted it, and sat down once more.

“When I get ready, my half of a brother,” he said almost lightly. “I wondered as I walked here from the docks (do you know them, or make money out of them? A splendid part of London, Will I) whether any but you would be alive. And I reckoned up the sort of welcome I should get if you were top dog now. I’m the prodigal, the returned cheque, the protested note (is that what you call it?), the bad shilling, and you’re the good boy, the certified cheque, the note that anyone will discount, and the splendid shilling! You’re a damned curiosity, Will, that’s what you are!”

“And you’re a blackguard,” said his brother. “Will you go, or shall I get someone to turn you out?”

“Don’t trouble the police. I loved to see them today. I talked with one in Holborn and told him I’d had three years’ solitary confinement!”

“A gaol-bird, a gaol-bird!” said Will.

“On an island in the big Southern Ocean, my stay-at-home brother. You know the sea at Brighton! ’Twas the same sea, Will.”

“He’s a madman,” said Will.

“And you’re sane, Will. What sweet sanity! Till today I’ve not spoken to a countryman for years. If my speech is rude, put it down to that. I sailed with Italians from the Cape, and a Dutchman picked me up. They were mostly men, though, and did their best for me. Won’t you do the same? I suggest you ask me to dinner and divide the inheritance, Will!”

“You shan’t have a penny. Before God, not a penny!”

“Strange isn’t it! I could wring your neck, Will!”

“You threaten me! not a penny, curse you!”

“Say a hundred thousand, no more than that!”

“Not a penny!”

“Not a stiver, not a maravedi, not a piastre, not a cent, not even a real. Where’s the nearest workhouse, Will? It’s a wet night, and I must sleep somewhere. Hear the rain!”

Will rose to his feet and walked unsteadily to the desk.

“If I give you fifty pounds will you go and never come back!” he asked, shaking.

“My generous brother, you overwhelm me; let me see the money,” said Tom.

Will took the notes from a drawer in the desk and held them out.

“Bring them here,” said Tom, and Will brought them.

“Now you owe me ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and fifty!”

“I owe you nothing, and — and I always hated you,” said Will.

“How unlike you to be so open,” said Tom. “Have you a pain anywhere, because you give me these? You’re an unhappy man, Will. In the old days, though I was so much younger I always got the best of life and of you. I’ve got the best now.”

“That’s not true, not true.”

“There never was a truer word. You know it. You’d give your soul to be me. If I give you back this money I shall still have the best of you.”

He saw his brother’s eyes fixed upon the notes.

“There are hundreds of men all over the world would be pleased to see me. I doubt if there’s one would grieve if you went out. Oh, you poor devil, here’s fifty pounds for you. When you make your will, if you haven’t made it, leave it, on my account, to the Home for Lost and Starving Dogs.”

He threw the notes upon the floor at his brother’s feet. But Will stooped eagerly and gathered them up.

“Don’t say I didn’t give them to you!” he cried.

“I’ll remember, Will. Good-bye to you, my generous brother. You’ll never see me again. Does that give you joy?” And Will broke out furiously—

“I hate you and always did. Isn’t that enough?”

“Aye, it’s enough,” said Tom soberly. “It’s the poorest thing, hate, and a mean gift. There were hours in my lonely island that I loved you. Good-bye, old chap. I owe you nothing, not even a grudge. You can’t help being what you are, and I’m sorry, very sorry. Good-bye.” He opened the door, went out, closed it gently, and left Will standing there.

“To be as strong as he is I’d give ten thousand pounds,” said Will. He fell into a chair and sat there shaking.

“I’ve never made my will,” he said. “I’ll make it — tonight!” He held the fifty pounds in his hands, and when he heard the outer door shut he grinned even then to think that Tom should be such a fool.

The fool stood outside in the Square with his bundle in his hand, thinking not of his brother, nor of his houseless state, but of Kitty.

“I wish I’d kissed her once,” he said. But it seemed that kisses were not for him. “I’ll go to sea again.”

He walked a few yards eastward and then stopped.

“I will speak to her again,” he said. Even as he spoke he heard the area gate open and saw Kitty running towards him in the darkness and the rain. She came to him and put her hand timidly on his sleeve.

“Oh, sir,” she said, “oh, Master Tom.”

“What is it, Kitty, my dear!” he asked.

“You’re going, going!”

“Aye,” said Tom, “I suppose I am.”

“He — he turned you out, Master Tom?”

“He offered me fifty pounds, Kitty.”

“Oh, you didn’t take it?”

“How do you know that, Kitty?”

“I — I know,” she said. “And now — now you’ve no money?”

“Not a cent, my dear.”

“When you went away you gave me a sovereign, Master Tom.”

“I thought it was only a kiss, Kitty. The second one,” said Tom. “Do you remember?”

She remembered.

“Mayn’t I lend it to you now?”

“The kiss, Kitty? It would be sweet.”

“The sovereign, sir!”

“I’d rather take a thousand from you than a cent from him,” said Tom. “Yes, Kitty, you shall lend it to me, if you like.”

She put it in his hand. He held her hand firmly.

“Did he say the master and mistress were angry with you, sir?” she asked.

“He said as much, my dear child,” said Tom sadly.

“It was a lie I They grieved most bitterly, and thought that you were not alive. I want to tell you what your mother said.”

As she spoke the rain came down heavily.

“Would you — would you come into the kitchen, sir?” she asked.

“’Tis his kitchen, you know,” said Tom. “But who’s with you?”

“There’s but two of us now, and the other girl is out.”

“Then he sent the old servants away?”

“Yes, sir, all of them.”

“And you’re the cook, Kitty?”

“For the time I am, Master Tom.”

Tom laughed.

“The kitchen belongs to the cook, I’m told. Kitty, I’ll come into the cook’s kitchen. But I’m hungry, Kitty, and though the kitchen is the cook’s, I’m told the food is the master’s. Can you run round to the Row and get me something with this sovereign which has just been given to me. If you will, I’ll come in and talk with you and eat with you.”

“Wait here, sir,” she said eagerly.

“I’ll wait,” replied the outcast. And Kitty ran into the darkness swiftly:

“She’s a sweet girl,” said the wanderer. “I’m a lucky dog, after all I a very lucky dog!”

And before he had smoked half a pipe, Kitty came back.

She took him by the arm again in a trembling triumph, and led him down the steps. The fire was burning brightly in the kitchen, and he sat down by it.

“It’s a strange world, Kitty.”

“Yes, sir,” said Kitty. For the moment it was a sweet world for her.

“A very strange world. For three years I lived on shellfish, sea-birds and sea-weed, and cooked them myself.”

“How dreadful, sir. Were you all alone?” she asked, as he stood at the fire.

“When my last Italian‘ friend died I was all alone,” he said. “Is that a chop, Kitty?”

“Yes, it’s a chop,” said Kitty.

“I’m in luck then. What’s all the other stuff you’re cooking?”

“That’s the master’s dinner. It won’t be ready for an hour yet.”

“Tell me about my mother.”

So Kitty told him all she knew, and the wanderer softened strangely.

“And my father?”

She told him of the strange old man who read and worked to the last, and died in the great chair in the library.

“I was coming home then,” said Tom. He stared into the fire.

Overhead they heard a sharp bell ring.

“What’s that, Kitty?”

“That’s the telephone, sir. Mr. Carew is at it always, even at night sometimes. Someone’s rung him up.”

“I wish I’d had a ‘phone in my wild island, Kitty. I’d have rung you up and asked you to tell me everything. You might even have sent me a kiss over it. I was very lonely.”

“I — I often thought about you, sir,” said Kitty. “I wish you were rich.”

“I wish I was, Kitty. Do you know what I’d do?” he asked.

“What, Master Tom?”

“I’d take a big house, and when the things are sold here, if they are, I’d buy them all, if they cost their weight in gold, Kitty,” said Tom; “and I’d send for the old cook and all the others, too, and put them in their places again. But l don’t quite know what I should do with ‘you, Kitty!”

She did not speak. He saw the light upon her fair head, and knew now that she was beautiful.

“The old cook is too old,” she said suddenly. “I — I could help her!”

It was a dream for her as well as for him. But they heard William Carew’s step overhead.

“He’s at the ‘phone again,” said Kitty.

But Tom smiled and cared for nothing that his brother did. Now he sat at the table and began to eat. She served him humbly. For he was a strange man and yet not strange, a wonder and yet an ancient playmate. So many things he had seen, so much endured. Odysseus and the Moor alike were loved for what they had seen and done in the wonderful great world.

“How brown you are, Master Tom!” she said suddenly.

“I’ve seen the sun, child. But how fair you are, Kitty I You’re like milk and roses! Do you know I’ve not tasted milk or seen a rose for four years? You’re as fair as a ship, Kitty I You don’t know how fair a ship may be till you’ve been cast away.”

“Was it very dreadful being alone?”

“Aye, my dear! I dream every night that I’m alone again under a roaring great sky. Are you very lonely here, Kitty?”

She sighed, for there are many kinds of loneliness, and the heart of woman knows them all by turns.

“’Tis a big house for so few,” she said.

“And when the old house is sold, what will you do?”

“I must get another place, Master Tom .”

“I wish I’d one to offer you. It’s a very strange place, this world, Kitty. One can be in a desert island anywhere!”

He laughed aloud in an access of peculiar bitterness. But Kitty smiled on him, and he saw she was a very beautiful woman. He remembered her dead mother, who had also been beautiful.

And then they heard steps upon the kitchen stairs.

“Who’s that?” she said in sudden alarm. The rose went out of her skin and left her very pale.

“It’s — it’s the master,” she said, whispering.

But Tom sat still at the table, even when the door opened suddenly and Will Carew stood upon the threshold. He was white with anger.

“You here, here?” he said.

Tom looked up at him calmly. “You wouldn’t have me upstairs, brother!”

“So you sneak in by the area gate, sneak into the kitchen with the servants,” said Will.

“There’s better company here, brother Will, than upstairs. I’ve learnt to love good company.”

Will Carew could scarcely speak.

“You insult me but eat my food!”

“Think of the fifty pounds I gave you just now,” said Tom. “You’re an ungrateful elder brother! I gave you the only fifty pounds I had, absolutely all I possessed, and now you grudge me a chop in the kitchen with Kitty.” ‘

“She goes tomorrow,” cried Will; “tomorrow morning!”

Kitty was very pale, but her eyes had courage in them.

“Oh, thank you, sir. I shall be glad to go. So glad, so glad. Since the old master died I’ve hated the house.”

“You’re insolent, girl!”

Tom laughed.

“Could you not tell him what you think of him, while I go on eating the chop you bought with your own money, Kitty?” he asked. But he could eat nothing.

“Get out of my house,” said his brother, “and take her with you.”

“Have you nothing to say to him, Kitty?” asked Tom.

“Oh, nothing, nothing, Master Tom!” she said. “Don’t answer him, sir. I know he’s ill.”

“You lie,” said the master of the house, “you lie. I’m well, quite, quite well!”

His face was ghastly even then.

“Go away, brother, go away. The kitchen’s no place for you,” said Tom.

“You’d like to kill me,” panted Will.

“I hate death. I’ve seen too much of it, Will. I’ve slept among the dead in the war, and I saw my last friend die in the island I told you of. I’ve no wish to kill you, none at all.”

“Then leave my house before I send for the police to turn you and this girl out,” said his brother. “She, oh, she—”

He had something to say of her but did not say it. Tom sprang to his feet, and walked to him.

“She — Kitty — what of the little girl my mother loved?”

William Carew was dressed as any rich man might be. Tom was in chance rags, the charity of seamen. But to Kitty, now herself without a home, he looked a king: his brother but a slave. She ran to them and put her hand on Tom’s arm.

“Don’t hurt him, Master Tom!”

And Tom laughed bitterly.

“My dear. I’d not lay a finger on him for myself, but for you I’d break him. And he knows it.”

And Will Carew turned upon his heel and went upstairs. On the top of them he stayed and called down to Tom in a thick voice—

“If you’ve not gone in five minutes I’ll send for the police.”

Then again they heard the telephone ring in the library and heard his step overhead.

“So you’ve to go, Kitty,” said Tom. “I’ve brought that on you. You, too, are without a home.”

“It does not matter,” she said bravely. “I can do all right. But this was my home. It’s been my home so long.”

The tears were in her eyes.

“You’d have had to go soon, would you not, Kitty?”

“Yes, Master Tom.”

“Did my brother hate you, Kitty? I saw a strange look in his eyes, or thought I did.”

But Kitty’s eyes were troubled.

“Oh, sir!”

“Then it was not hate he had for you!”

“I hated him,” said Kitty, in a whisper.

“Ah, I understand,” said Tom. “Well, we’re both in the street, Kitty, both penniless, perhaps; and I’m in rags and you’re not clad as you should be. I wish I was rich, Kitty; or even not so poor. I should go—”

“Oh, don’t,” she cried.

“Why, I must, my dear. But I’ll see if I can get some work. The Lord knows I’m strong enough. And if I do, I shall be rich,” he said. “How little would make me rich now! What’s that?”

It was nothing but his brother at the telephone, said Kitty. They heard his voice.

“Will you kiss me, Kitty, before I go?”

She looked down, and then lifted her eyes to his.

“Yes, Master Tom!”

He put his arms about her, but even as he stooped to her there was a strange cry overhead, a cry and then a heavy fall, as though some picture came down, or as though a chair gave way, or a man dropped even as he walked.

“What’s that?” she cried. I

“Aye, what?” said Tom. “Go up and see!”

“Come with me! I’m afraid.”

“It’s nothing, perhaps. Wait!”

But they heard nothing, and the same thought grew in them at once.

“He’s stopped talking. He doesn’t move!” She clung to him as she spoke. “Oh, Master Tom, come up with me!”

“Aye,” said Tom, in a strange, far-off voice; “aye, I’ll come.”

He followed her upstairs. And still they heard nothing even when they stood in the sombre hall outside the library.

“He doesn’t move!” she said.

And Tom threw the door open.

The telephone was in the far corner, and a big desk stood in between them and it. The lights were up. But they saw no one.

“Where is he?”

And Tom went swiftly round the desk.

“He’s here!”

Will Carew lay upon the floor very quietly. In his left hand was the receiver of the telephone with part of the wire attached to it. He had torn it from the wall as he fell, in one last effort to hold on to the world.

“Oh, is he dead?” breathed Kitty, as she leant upon the desk.

“I’ve seen many! Yes, he’s dead,” replied Tom dully; “he’s dead!” ‘

There was even then a heavy knock upon the outer door. It resounded in the empty hall strangely, with a ghastly effect, for it said so plainly that someone wanted William Carew, and wanted him urgently.

“Go to the door,” said Tom. “Whoever it is, send him for the doctor, Kitty.”

He still knelt beside the dead man as she went, and when she opened the hall door he heard her cry out—

“Oh, sir, come in!”

A quick step sounded in the hall.

“What do you say! Ill? He telephoned for me a few minutes ago,” said a voice. And Tom saw a man come into the library.

Kitty cried out behind him—

“It’s the doctor, sir!”

“He’s dead,” said Tom. The doctor saw him and wondered who he was, but he knelt beside William Carew without a word.

“Yes, he’s dead,” he said presently. He dropped the dead man’s hand.

“I’ve seen many and knew it,” said Tom.

“Who are you?” asked the doctor.

“I’m his brother, his half-brother!” said Tom. He added as he rose, “Did you expect this?”

“Aye,” said the doctor, “at any time.”

There was another heavy knock upon the hall door, another visitor for the dead. Kitty let him in. She knew him for William Carew’s solicitor.

“Is Mr. Carew in?”

“He’s dead, sir,” said Kitty.

“Good God! he wanted me to make his will this very night,” said the solicitor. But Kitty thought nothing of what he said.

“Where is he?”

She showed him into the library.

“The doctor’s there, sir.”

They knew each other, and shook hands. The lawyer looked upon the dead man, and turned away. He saw Tom standing by the window.

“Who’s that?” he whispered to the doctor.

“His half-brother, he says.”

“Eh, what? They thought him dead!”

He went across to Tom Carew.

“You’re Mr. Carew?”

“Aye,” said the wanderer.

The lawyer’s quick eye noted his bronze, his strength, his rags.

“I’m just home from sea. I was cast away for three years,” said Tom; “three long years.”

“You’re a rich man now,” said the lawyer.

“Eh,” said Tom, “I’m what?”

“A rich man, for your brother left no will, and you’re the only relative he had.”

“Aye, that’s so,” said Tom. He wondered where Kitty was. A rich man, a very rich man!

They put him who had been rich upon the couch, and covered his face.

“I’ll do all that’s necessary, Mr, Carew,” said the doctor. He might have added, “You may be in rags, but you’re a rich man, a very rich man.”

“It’s your house now,” said the lawyer. “It was to be sold. Will you complete the sale, Mr. Carew?”

“I’ll keep it,” said Tom. “No, I’ll never sell it, never.”

“You’ve had great experiences, I gather,” said the lawyer.

“Aye,” said Tom, still in a dream.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” said the lawyer. “If I may venture, in such sad circumstances, to congratulate you on what must be some consolation, I do it heartily. I also — condole with you.”

“I thank you,” said Tom Carew.

And for a little while he was alone. He went into the dining-room and stood by the fire, which glowed bright red. The table was laid for one.

“A beggar! a rich man!” said Tom.

He saw Kitty at the door.

“Kitty!”

“Yes, Master Tom!”

“I’m — a rich man, Kitty!”

She said nothing.

“A rich man!” he murmured, and he sighed. “You took nothing downstairs, sir,” she said presently.

“No?” said Tom, “didn’t I?”

“Could you eat now?” she asked.

“I’ve eaten a hundred times among those who had gone, Kitty! But I’m not hungry.”

“You must eat, Master Tom.”

He leant upon the mantelpiece and recalled the old times when he had sat at table in this dear old haunted room. It was haunted now by his sweet mother and his stern, sweet old father and the ghosts of his own boyhood.

“A rich man!”

Kitty brought up the dinner quietly and swiftly. She was in a whirlwind of strange and wild thoughts, but the one that leapt up and sang loudest was the thought she had not to go; or not yet I She touched her new master’s sleeve.

“It’s ready, sir.”

He did not hear her.

“It’s ready, Master Tom.”

He turned and saw her.

“Do you know where the old cook lives, Kitty, and the butler — Thomas? Aye, that was his name!”

She knew.

“Send round to them tonight, and say they can come back if they will. Or wait, I’ll think of it. You shall decide it.”

“Won’t you sit down, sir?” she said.

“Lay for another,” he answered briefly, and she wondered for whom she was to lay. Perhaps Doctor Watson or the solicitor was coming back.

“It’s laid, sir,” she said presently. “Will you wait for — for—”

“I’ll wait for nothing. I have waited,” he said. Then he smiled upon her.

“You never gave me that kiss, after all, Kitty!”

He put his arm about her and kissed her, and tears ran down her face.

“I don’t like you in that cap, Kitty! Take it off,” said Tom Carew.

“Oh, sir!”

“Take it off,” said the master.

So she took it off.

“That’s better,” said Tom Carew. “But — I prefer you without that apron, Kitty.”

“Oh, sir!”

“Take it off, my dear!”

She looked at him appealingly.

“Take it off, Kitty; off with it.”

And she obeyed him, wondering.

“Sit down at the head of the table,” said Tom Carew.