Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: This anthology of out of copyright stories in the Life+70 jurisdictions includes as usual well-known authors and entirely unknown authors, and some "different" stories. They are from old magazines and newspapers, and out-of=rpint collections or anthologies. One of them, The Last Crash, was billed as a " book length novel", which in pulp magazines meant about 25,000 words (or in the rest of the publishing world, a novelette). 1: Cutting a Long Story Short / Harold Mercer 2: Squire Toby's Will / Sheridan Le Fanu 3: Pink Tulips / Ethel Lina White 4: At Sunrise / Henry E. Mitchell 5: The Black Bel

PAST MASTERS 133

Produced and Edited by Terry Walker from short stories in magazines, newspapers and other sources, and all in the Life + 70 years public domain.

4 August 2023

Contents

1: Cutting a Long Story Short / Harold Mercer

2: Squire Toby's Will / Sheridan Le Fanu

3: Pink Tulips / Ethel Lina White

4: At Sunrise / Henry E. Mitchell

5: The Black Bell Buoy / Rupert Chesterton

6: Staley Fleming's Hallucination / Ambrose Bierce

7: An Even Break / H. C. Witwer

8: Some Evidence of Alfred Curran / Mrs. Campbell Praed

9: The Last Crash / Kenneth Latour

10: The Lady With the Hatchet / Maurice Leblanc

11: The Weed of Lethe / C. L. Antrobus

12: The Former Passengers / B. M. Croker

13: A First Night / Richard Marsh

14: The Whale and the Grasshopper / Seumas O'Brien

15: The Genius of Dakaru Island / Frank Reid

16:  The Delusion of Mrs. Donohoe / Richard Dehan

___________________

1: Cutting a Long Story Short

Harold Mercer (as by "Hamer")

1882-1952

The Bulletin, 26 Oct 1916

A freelance Australian journalist who served in WW1 on the Western Front, worked as a union organiser (he helped found the journalists' union which later became the present day Australian Journalists' Association), and who was (as he had to be, as a freelance), enormously prolific in a wide variety of genres from leader articles, gossip paragraphs, humorous paragraphs, and verse,  as well as short stories; and he had one novel published.   He used a number of pen-names, the most prolific being "Hamer". He died when struck by a car while crossing a road.

This 1926 caricature from "The Bulletin" is the only picture I can find of this author.

"WELL, to cut a long story short," said Snigsby, "they both got married."

"Who got married?" I asked, for the mixed reminiscences of the doings of many people left me in doubt as to the hero and heroine of his narrative.

Snigsby had been the keeper of lodgings for years, though his wife did most of the keeping; and, having very little except time to spend, but plenty of that, he was very discursive in detail. Likewise, he was a man who hated to be brought too suddenly to a point, so he began the whole narrative over again.

"There was this young feller I was talking about with the queer notions, ad the girl that was supposed to be married to him I was telling you of, and the actor-chap I mentioned. You heard me telling you of them, didn't you? Well, they got married."

"Have it your own way," I said: "but I thought you were telling me mainly about the young woman who used to wait at the top of the stairs for the young fellow while her husband was sleeping off the drink. Was it they who got married?"

Snigsby looked at me in a resigned sort of way."

"This young feller," he said—"this young feller he comes to the house and says to me one day, 'Have you got a room?' 'Well, what d yer think we have got?' I says. 'We dont sell oysters.' 'That's the sort of answer I like to get,'  he says with a laugh, 'Let's see your best— a double.' Well, he takes the best double, and after him shakin' hands that way I made sure I got the money in advance.  I'm suspicious of them, sort of thing.

"The girl arrives with him half an hour later, and a fine pair they was. She does what cooking they do on the balcony, and keep mostly to themselves an' there's nothing to complain about; but the missus says to me one night— you know what women are!— 'Them people ain't married,' she says; and she keeps worrying me about it, as if it mattered to me as long as they were respectable.

"They weren't neither, an' he didn't make no bones about it. He didn't believe in marriage, he didn't, and he said so. Like a lot of young fellers he was proud of gettin' up against other people's ideas. A bit raw he was, like a lot of youngsters who kid themselves a lot of things before they've been grilled on the fire of life, which sometimes overdoes 'em.

"Well, because I like the two of them, and partly because of what the wife says about their not being married, I takes a friendly interest in them. The wife likes them,. too, an' when, after she's been worryin' me, I says, 'All right, I'll tell 'em we want the room,' she says, 'No; but I wish to speak to the priest about them. So they went on living in sin at our house, and enjoym it. And, to cut a ong story short, I think they got as much outer it as if they d been married.

"But, though that was all right for a few weeks, it didn't last long. After a time I got wise that the girl wasn't as happy as she seemed to be. It wasn't that I listened at the door," he explained with a defiant look, "but I heard a. good deal of what they had to say. Picked it up, as you might say.

"Everything would be going merry and bright, an' you'd think they was Adam and Eve living in Eden with only one chair worth sitting on in it, when she'd say, strokin' his hair most like, 'Don't you think it'd be better if we got married?' and he'd just laugh an' say, 'I couldn't love you any more if we did !' But once started she'd keep on. 'Supposing there was a baby,' she'd say, an' he'd laugh and say it'd make no difference; fifty marriages couldn't make it more their baby. In the morning, when she went about the house after he'd gone there was a troubled sort of look at the back of her eyes.

"After a time the way she kept coming back to the same old point got to irritating him, as you know that sort of thing does, Instead of answering in a lover-like way he'd get impatient and say: 'lf I did a thing that I don't believe in, it'd be the end of love between, us'; or, 'Again! I tell you I don't believe in marriage!' Later on she'd flare back sometimes, and say he was conceited with his ideas, and he'd learn sense when he was older. Generally they'd make it up; but once he left the room so quick that he nearly fell over me. I was only fixing up the oilcloth.

"A couple of days later he got in a temper and went out of the house for ever; but he was back in half an hour with some stout and oysters to dry her tears. By this time things weren't working at all smooth. In general they was just as much in love with one another as ever; but, to cut it short, her nag about marriage was wearing on him, and the things a man says when he's angry were hurting her. I'm not blaming her. mind you; a woman naturally feels that her position's insecure when she ain't married, and she just goes on making it insecure or hopeless because of her anxiety.

"There was this actor-chap staying in the house, and he took an interest in the pair. He was a lonely sort of chap, who, though he was grey at the sides of his hair, was still youngish. He used to bring home supper, and have it with ns in the kitchen sometimes, and then he'd say, 'That poor little lady upstairs! She'll lose that husband of hers if she's not careful. He's young and restless.' Or something like that.

"One night, when he's a bit potty, the actor-chap stays with me after the wife's gone to bed, and gets some more beer.

" 'My wife—' he begins suddenly, and stops. Then he gets up in a restless sort of way as if he's going off to bed; then he comes back, sits on the table and helps himself to another glass.

" 'Didn't know you were married,' I says.

" 'Neither I was,' he said, the beer making him confidential. 'But the little girl who should have been my wife'

"He stopped, and when I said, as a sort of lead for him to go on, 'Your wife?' he just says:

" 'She's married. Good night. I'll take one of those bottles upstairs with me.' And upstairs he goes.

"That puts me wonderin'. The actor-chap is on the burst nearly all next day, and he scares the girl when, meeting her on the stairs, he squeezes her hand, and keeps holding it while he tells her that if ever he can do anything for her he'll do it. That night I bought some beer, an' after the wife had gone to bed I told him that another glass might pull him together,

" 'Last night I told you—something,' he says. 'That little lady upstairs reminds me of my own little girl. We never thought of getting married—at least I never thought of it; it didn't seem to matter, anyway, as long as we cared about one another. There always seemed to me something sordid about the marriage business, just as— ' He stopped there, because, of course, even if we knew otherwise, the people upstairs were supposed to be married.

" 'I went on a tour,' he says, 'and had to leave her, because she wasn't engaged by the show, and me own salary wasn't too good; and one of the first letters I get contains news, and she says I must marry her and do it right off. Well, I was willing if it would make her more comfortable, so I wrote saying I'd marry her when we got back. The tour was supposed to be tour weeks, but it lasted six, and then we went to Melbourne. I wrote saying she had no need to come down, as I was finishing after the first piece; but again I was kept on, in an indefinite sort of way.'

" 'Damn it!' he says, and drinks a full glass off and walks away restlessly, and comes back and fills another glass.

" 'lt was my fault. Moving from town to town, I forgot to write often, and all that. When I got to Sydney I found my little girl married.

"'I knew about it before. She wrote me saying that she had been waiting and waiting, and was quite satisfied that, being away, I had forgotten her. She had written to me in Auckland, asking me-finally if I was the same (the letter followed me all over the place, and reached me later) and then she had married— for the sake of the child.

" 'She told me when I met her— I had felt like killing her, but I got over that— that she would always love me, but she asked me if I loved her to make things easier for her, and let her alone. And it's my child! That's where— Good-night!' he says suddenly.

"Next day, fancying he may have offended her, he apologises to the girl upstairs, and after that they get quite friendly; and once or twice they have walks together. Her young feller he gets flashes of rage when he hears of it. Well, to cut it short, there's the situation, those two quarrelling every night, and the actor-chap getting as friendly as can be.

"One night there's a worse row than ever. The young chap goes out furious, but comes back after a time and finds the girl talking to the actor-chap at the top of the stairs.

" 'Hullo!' he says to the actor-chap in a fighting sort of way.

" 'I had just come in,' said the actor-chap quietly, 'and Mrs. Brian had asked me if I'd seen you.'

"Well, he couldn't say anything after that; but afterwards the two were wrangling for an hour, and I heard him say that he'd come back then, but it was the last time he'd stand any nonsense on the marriage business.

"Next day the girl looks pretty doleful; and the actor-chap, meeting her, gets her, after a lot of-persuadin', to go to a matinée to cheer her up. The young feller is in by the time they reach home, and for a moment I thought there was going to be a row. But the actor-chap carries it off well, and there was nothin' doin' till the two were in their room.

" 'Well, why don't you marry me?' says the girl.

"He was in a flame in a minute, and shot out of the house. And he didn't come back, neither.

"So, to finish up," said Snigsby, "they got married."

"What!" I said. "The girl and the actor? And what became—"

"I'm telling you," said Snigsby, ponderously. "The next afternoon young Brian passes the girl standing in the street near a marriage-shop close to where he works. He was going to pass without noticing her, but he turned back.

" 'What are you doing, here?' he demanded, harshly.

" 'l'm going to be married,' she said, with a sort of defiance.

" 'What?'

" 'What right have you to object? You won't marry me yourself!'

He seemed staggered and went pale.

"Come on," he said suddenly, taking her by the hand and moving towards the marriage-shop.

" 'What do you mean?' she says.

" 'Will you? With me?' he says.

"When it was over they came out, but Brian didn't seem too happy.

" 'I didn't think you thought anything of that actor-fellow,' he said glumly.

" 'Neither I do,' she said.

"He seemed more pleased, but not entirely glad.

" 'But you came here to marry him,' he said.

" 'I didn't,' she answered. 'I came here because I thought I was bound to meet you. I came to marry you. Oh, Jack!' You know how a woman can say that!

"Well, he kissed her there, in the street. When they came home that night he had some champagne and cakes with him, and he brought some down for us to share with them— said they were keeping up a sort of birthday.

"When the actor-chap came home after the show I told him. He didn't waste time: he goes out and gets some beer just as the pubs were closing, and keeps me up, laughing and singing, till morning. I never see a man so happy in my life."

______________

2: Squire Toby's Will

Sheridan Le Fanu

1814-1873

Temple Bar, Jan 1868

A novelette sub-titled "A ghost story"

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

MANY PERSONS accustomed to travel the old York and London road, in the days of stage-coaches, will remember passing, in the afternoon, say, of an autumn day, in their journey to the capital, about three miles south of the town of Applebury, and a mile and a half before you reach the old Angel Inn, a large black-and-white house, as those old-fashioned cage-work habitations are termed, dilapidated and weather-stained, with broad lattice windows glimmering all over in the evening sun with little diamond panes, and thrown into relief by a dense background of ancient elms. A wide avenue, now overgrown like a churchyard with grass and weeds, and flanked by double rows of the same dark trees, old and gigantic, with here and there a g ap in their solemn files, and sometimes a fallen tree lying across on th e avenue, leads up to the hall-door.

Looking up its sombre and lifeless avenue from the top of th e London coach, as I have often done, you are struck with so many signs of desertion and decay; the tufted grass sprouting in the chinks of the steps and window-stones, the smokeless chimneys over which the jackdaws are wheeling, the absence of human life and all its evidences, that you conclude at once that the place is uninhabited and abandoned to decay. The name of this ancient house is Gylingden Hall. Tall hedges and old timber quickly shroud the old place from view, and about a quarter of a mile further on you pass, em bowered in melancholy trees, a small and ruinous Saxon chapel, which, time out of mind, has been the burying-place of the family of Marston, and partakes of the neglect and desolation which brood over their ancient dwelling-place.

The grand melancholy of the secluded valley of Gylingden, lonely as an enchanted forest, in which the crows returning to their roosts among the trees, and the straggling deer who peep from beneath their branches, seem to hold a wild and undisturbed dominion, heightens the forlorn aspect of Gylingden Hall.

Of late years repairs have been neglected, and here and there the roof is stripped, and “the stitch in time” has been wanting. A t the side of the house exposed to the gales that sweep through th e valley like a torrent through its channel, there is not a perfect window left, and the shutters but imperfectly exclude the rain. The ceilings and walls are mildewed and green with damp stains. Here and there, where the drip falls from the ceiling, the floors are rotting. On stormy nights, as the guard described, you can hear the doors clapping in the old house, as far away as Old Gryston bridge, and the howl and sobbing of the wind through its empty galleries.

About seventy years ago died the old Squire, Toby Marston, famous in that part of the world for his hounds, his hospitality, and his vices. He had done kind things, and he had fought duels: he had given away money and he had horse-whipped people. He carried with him some blessings and a good many curses, and left behind him an amount of debts and charges upon the estates which appalled his two sons, who had no taste for business or accounts, and had never suspected, till that wicked, open-handed, and swearing old gentleman died, how very nearly he had run the estates into insolvency.

They met at Gylingden Hall. They had the will before them, and lawyers to interpret, and information without stint, as to the encumbrances with which the deceased had saddled them. The will was so framed as to set the two brothers instantly at deadly feud.

These brothers differed in some points; but in one material characteristic they resembled one another, and also their departed father. They never went into a quarrel by halves, and once in, they did not stick at trifles.

The elder, Scroope Marston, the more dangerous man of the two, had never been a favourite of the old Squire. He had no taste for the sports of the field and the pleasures of a rustic life. He was no athlete, and he certainly was not handsome. All this the Squire resented. The young man, who had no respect for him, and outgrew his fear of his violence as he came to manhood, retorted. This aversion, therefore, in the ill-conditioned old man grew into positive hatred. He used to wish that d——d pipen-squeezing, humpbacked rascal Scroope, out of the way of better men— meaning his younger son Charles; and in his cups would talk in a way which even the old and young fellows who followed his hounds, and drank his port, and could stand a reasonable amount of brutality, did not like.

Scroope Marston was slightly deformed, and he had the lean sallow face, piercing black eyes, and black lank hair, which sometimes accompany deformity.

“ I’m no feyther o’ that hog-backed creature. I’m no sire of hisn, d——n him! I’d as soon call that tongs son o’ mine.” The old man used to bawl, in allusion to his son’s long, lank limbs: “ Charlie’s a man, but that’s a jack-an-ape. He has no good-nature; there’s nothing handy, nor manly, nor no one turn of a Marston in him.”

And when he was pretty drunk, the old Squire used to swear he should never “ sit at the head o’ that board; nor frighten away folk from Gylingden Hall wi’ his d——d hatchet-face— the black loon!"

Handsome Charlie was the man for his money. He knew what a horse was, and could sit to his bottle; and the lasses were all clean wad about him. He was a Marston every inch of his six foot two.”

Handsome Charlie and he, however, had also had a row or two. The old Squire was free with his horsewhip as with his tongue, and on occasion when neither weapon was quite practicable, had been known to give a fellow “ a tap o’ his knuckles.” Handsome Charlie, however, thought there was a period at which personal chastisement should cease; and one night, when the port was flowing, there was some allusion to Marion Hayward, the miller’s daughter, which for some reason the old gentleman did not like. Being “ in liquor,” and having clearer ideas about pugilism than self-government, he struck out, to the surprise of all present, at Handsome Charlie. The youth threw back his head scientifically, and nothing followed but the crash of a decanter on the floor. But the old Squire’s blood was up, and he bounced from his chair. Up jumped Handsome Charlie, resolved to stand no nonsense. Drunken Squire Lilboume, intending to mediate, fell flat on the floor, and cut his ear among the glasses. Handsome Charlie caught the thump which the old Squire discharged at him upon his open hand, and catching him by the cravat, swung him with his back to the wall. They said the old man never looked so purple, nor his eyes so goggle before; and then Handsome Charlie pinioned him tight to the wall by both arms.

“Well, I say— come, don’t you talk no more nonsense o’ that sort, and I won’t lick you,” croaked the old Squire. “You stopped that un clever, you did. Didn’t he? Come, Charlie, man, gie’ us your hand, I say, and sit down again, lad.” And so the battle ended; and I believe it was the last time the Squire raised his hand to Handsome Charlie.

But those days were over. Old Toby Marston lay cold and quiet enough now, under the drip of the mighty ash-tree within the Saxon ruin where so many of the old Marston race returned to dust, and were forgotten. The weather-stained top-boots and leather-breeches, the three cocked hat to which old gentlemen of that day still clung, and the well-known red waistcoat that reached below his hips, and the fierce pug face of the old Squire, were now but a picture of memory. And the brothers between whom he had planted an irreconcilable quarrel, were now in their new mourning suits, with the gloss still on, debating furiously across the table in the great oak parlour, which had so often resounded to the banter and coarse songs, the oaths and laughter of the congenial neighbours whom the old Squire of Gylingden Hall loved to assemble there.

These young gentlemen, who had grown up in Gylingden Hall, were not accustomed to bridle their tongues, nor, if need be, to hesitate about a blow. Neither had been at the old man’s funeral.

His death had been sudden. Having been helped to his bed in that hilarious and quarrelsome state which was induced by port and punch, he was found dead in the morning,— his head hanging over the side of the bed, and his face very black and swollen.

Now the Squire’s will despoiled his eldest son of Gylingden, which had descended to the heir time out of mind. Scroope Marston was furious. His deep stem voice was heard inveighing against his dead lather and living brother, and the heavy thumps on the table with which he enforced his stormy reclamations resounded through the large chamber. Then broke in Charles’s rougher voice, and then came a quick alternation of short sentences, and then both voices together in growing loudness and anger, and at last, swelling the tumult, the expostulations of pacific and frightened lawyers, and at last a sudden break up of the conference. Scroope broke out of the room, his pale furious face showing whiter against his long black hair, liis dark fierce eyes blazing, his hands clenched, and looking more ungainly and deformed than ever in the convulsions of his fury.

Very violent words must have passed between them; for Charlie, though he was the winning man, was almost as angry as Scroope. The elder brother was for holding possession of the house, and putting his rival to legal process to oust him. But his legal advisers were clearly against it. Bo, with a heart boiling over with gall, up he went to London, and found the legal firm who had managed his father’s business fair and communicative enough. They looked into the settlements, and found that Gylingden was excepted. It was very odd, but so it was, specially excepted; so that the right of the old Squire to deal with it by his will could not be questioned.

Notwithstanding all this, Scroope, breathing vengeance and aggression, and quite willing to wreck himself provided he could ran his brother down, assailed Handsome Charlie, and battered old Squire Toby’s will in the Prerogative Court and also at common law, and the feud between the brothers was knit, and every month their exasperation was heightened.

Scroope was beaten, and defeat did not soften him. Charles might have forgiven hard words; but he had been himself worsted during the long campaign in some of those skirmishes, special motions, and so forth, that constitute the episodes of a legal epic like that in which the Marston brothers figured as opposing combatants; and the blight of law-costs had touched him, too, with the usual effect upon the temper of a man of embarrassed means.

Years flew, and brought no healing on their wings. On the contrary, the deep corrosion of this hatred bit deeper by time. Neither brother married. But an accident of a different kind befell the younger, Charles Marston, which abridged his enjoyments very materially.

This was a bad fall from his hunter. There were severe fractures,  and there was concussion of the brain. For some time it was thought that he could not recover. He disappointed these evil auguries, however. He did recover, hut changed in two essential particulars. He had received an injury in his hip, which doomed him never more to sit in saddle. And the rollicking animal spirits which hitherto had never failed him, had now taken flight for ever.

He had been for five days in a state of coma— absolute insensibility— and when he recovered consciousness he was haunted by an indescribable anxiety.

Tom Cooper, who had been butler in the palmy days of Gylingden Hall, under old Squire Toby, still maintained his post with old- fashioned fidelity, in these days of faded splendour and frugal housekeeping. Twenty years had passed since the death of his old master. He had grown lean, and stooped, and his face, dark with the peculiar brown of age, furrowed and gnarled, and his temper, except with his master, had waxed surly.

His master had visited Bath and Buxton, and came back, as he went, lame, and halting gloomily about with the aid of a stick. When the hunter was sold, the last tradition of the old life at Gylingden disappeared. The young Squire, as he was still called, excluded by his mischance from the hunting-field, dropped into a solitary way of life, and halted slowly and solitarily about the old place, seldom raising his eyes, and with an appearance of indescribable gloom.

Old Cooper could talk freely on occasion with his master; and one day he said, as he handed him his hat and Btick in the hall:

“You should rouse yourself up a bit, Master Charles!”

“It’s past rousing with me, old Cooper.”

“It’s just this, I’m thinking: there’s something on your mind, and you won’t tell no one. There’s no good keeping it on your stomach. You’ll be a deal lighter if you tell it. Come, now, what is it, Master Charlie?”

The Squire looked with his round grey eyes straight into Cooper’s eyes. He felt that there was a sort of spell broken. It was like the old rule of the ghost who can’t speak till it is spoken to. He looked earnestly into old Cooper’s face for some seconds, and sighed deeply.

“It ain’t the first good guess you’ve made in your day, old Cooper, and I’m glad you’ve spoke. It’s bin on my mind, sure enough, ever since I had that fall. Come in here after me, and shut the door.”

The Squire pushed open the door of the oak parlour, and looked round on the pictures abstractedly. He had not been there for some time, and, seating himself on the table, he looked again for a while in Cooper’s face before he spoke.

“It’s not a great deal, Cooper, but it troubles me, and I would not tell it to the parson nor the doctor; for, God knows, what they’d say, though there’s nothing to signify in it. But you were always true to the family, and I don’t mind if I tell you.”

“ ’Tis as safe with Cooper, Master Charles, as if ’twas locked in a chest, and sunk in a well.”

“It’s only this ” said Charles Marston, looking down on the end of his stick, with which he was tracing lines and circles, “all the time I was lying like dead, as you thought, after that fall, I was with the old master.” He raised his eyes to Cooper’s again as he spoke, and with an awful oath he repeated— “I was with him, Cooper!”

“He was a good man, sir, in his way,” repeated old Cooper, returning his gaze with awe. “He was a good master to me, and a good father to you, and I hope he’s happy. May God rest him!”

“Well,” said Squire Charles, “ it’s only this: the whole of that time I was with him, or he was with me— I don’t know which. The upshot is, we were together, and I thought I’d never get out of his hands again, and all the time he was bullying me about some one thing; and if it was to save my life, Tom Cooper, by —— from the time I waked I never could call to mind what it was; and I think I’d give that hand to know; and if you can think of anything it might be— for God’s sake! don’t be afraid, Tom Cooper, but speak it out, for he threatened me hard, and it was surely him.”

Here ensued a silence.

“ And what did you think it might be yourself, Master Charles?" said Cooper.

“I han’t thought of aught that’s likely. I’ll never hit on’t—never.

I thought it might happen he knew something about that d—  hump-backed villain, Scroope, that swore before Lawyer Gingham I made away with a paper of settlements— me and father; and, as I hope to be saved, Tom Cooper, there never was a bigger lie! I’d a had the law of him for them identical words, and cast him for more than he’s worth; only Lawyer Gingham never goes into nothing for me since money grew scarce in Gylingden; and I can’t change my lawyer, I owe him such a hatful of money. But he did, he swore he’d hang me yet for it. He said it in them identical words— he’d never rest till he hanged me for it, and I think it was, like enough, something about that, the old master was troubled; but it’s enough to drive a man mad. I can't bring it to mind—I can’t remember a word he said, only he threatened awful, and looked—Lord a mercy on us!— frightful bad.”

“There’s no need he should. May the Lord a-mercy on him!” said the old butler.

“No, of course; and you’re not to tell a soul, Cooper— not a living soul, mind, that I said he looked bad, nor nothing about it.”

“God forbid!” said old Cooper, shaking his head. “But I was thinking, sir, it might ha’ been about the slight that’s bin so long put  on him by having no stone over him, and never a scratch o’ a chisel to say who he is.”

“Ay! Well, I didn’t think o’ that. Put on your hat, old Cooper, and come down wi’ me; for I’ll look after that, at any rate.”

There is a bye-path leading by a tnmstile to the park, and thence to the picturesque old burying-place, which lies in a nook by the roadside, embowered in ancient trees. It was a fine autumnal sunset, and melancholy lights and long shadows spread their peculiar effects over the landscape as “ Handsome Charlie ” and the old butler made their way slowly toward the place where Handsome Charlie was himself to lie at last.

“Which of the dogs made that howling all last night?” asked the Squire, when they had got on a little way.

“ ’Twas a strange dog, Master Charles, in front of the house; ours was all in the yard— a white dog wi’ a black head, he looked to he, and he was smelling round them mounting-steps the old master, God be wi’ him! set up, the time his knee was bad. When the tyke got up a’top of them, howlin’ up at the windows, I’d a liked to shy something at him.”

“Hullo! Is that like him?” said the Squire, stopping short, and pointing with his stick at a dirty-white dog, with a large black head, which was scampering round them in a wide circle, half crouching with that air of uncertainty and deprecation which dogs so well know how to assume.

He whistled the dog up. He was a large, half-starved bull-dog.

“That fellow has made a long journey— thin as a whipping-post, and stained all over, and his paws worn to the stumps,” said the Squire, musingly. “He isn’t a bad dog, Cooper. My poor father liked a good bull-dog, and knew a cur from a good ’un.”

The dog was looking up into the Squire’s face with the peculiar grim visage of his kind, and the Squire was thinking irreverently how strong a likeness it presented to the character of his father’s fierce pug features when he was clutching his horsewhip and swearing at a keeper.

“If I did right I’d shoot him. He’ll worry the cattle, and kill our dogs,” said the Squire. “Hey, Cooper? I’ll tell the keeper to look after him. That fellow could pull down a sheep, and he shan’t live on my mutton.”

But the dog was not to be shaken off. He looked wistfully after the Squire, and after they had got a little way on, he followed timidly.

It was vain trying to drive him off. The dog ran round them in wide circles, like the infernal dog in “Faust",  only he left no track of thin flame behind him. These manoeuvres were executed with a sort of beseeching air, which flattered and touched the object of this odd  preference. So he called him up again, patted him, and then and there in a manner adopted him.

The dog now followed their steps dutifully, as if he had belonged to Handsome Charlie all his days. Cooper unlocked the little iron door, and the dog walked in close behind their heels, and followed them as they visited the roofless chapel.

The Harstons were lying under the floor of this little building in rows. There is not a vault. Each has his distinct grave enclosed in a lining of masonry. Each is surmounted by a stone kist, on the upper flag of which is inscribed his epitaph, except that of poor old Squire Toby. Over him was nothing but the grass and the line of masonry which indicates the Bite of the kist, whenever his family should afford him one like the rest.

“Well, it does look shabby. It’s the elder brother’s business; but if he won’t, I’ll see to it myself, and I’ll take care, old boy, to cut sharp and deep in it, that the elder son having refused to lend a hand the stone was put there by the younger.”

They strolled round this little burial-ground. The sun was now below the horizon, and the red metallic glow from the clouds, still illuminated by the departed sun, mingled luridly with the twilight. When Charlie peeped again into the little chapel, he saw the ugly dog stretched upon Squire Toby’s grave, looking at least twice his natural length, and performing such antics as made the young Squire stare. If you have ever seen a cat stretched on the floor, with a bunch of Valerian, straining, writhing, rubbing its jaws in long-drawn caresses, and in the absorption of a sensual ecatacy, you have seen a phenomenon resembling that which Handsome Charlie witnessed on looking in.

The head of the brute looked so huge, its body so long and thin, and its joints so ungainly and dislocated, that the Squire, with old Cooper beside him, looked on with a feeling of disgust and astonishment, which, in a moment or two more, brought the Squire’s stick down upon him with a couple of heavy thumps. The beast awakened from his ecstacy, sprang to the head of the grave, and there on a sudden, thick and bandy as before, confronted the Squire, who stood at its foot, with a terrible grin, and eyes that glared with the peculiar green of canine fury.

The next moment the dog was crouching abjectly at the Squire’s fleet.

“Well, he’s a rum ’un!” said old Cooper, looking hard at him.

“I like him,” said the Squire.

“I don’t,” said Cooper.

“But he shan’t come in here again,” said the Squire

“I shouldn’t wonder if he was a witch,” said old Cooper, who remembered more tales of witchcraft than are now current in that part of the world.

“He’s a good dog,” said the Squire, dreamily. “ I remember the time I’d a given a handful for him— but I’ll never be good for nothing again. Come along.”

And he stooped down and patted him. So up jumped the dog and looked up in his face, as if watching for some sign, ever so slight, which he might obey.

Cooper did not like a bone in that dog’s skin. He could not imagine what his master saw to admire in him. He kept him all night in the gun-room, and the dog accompanied him in his halting rambles about the place. The fonder his master grew of him, the less did Cooper and the other servants like him.

“He hasn’t a point of a good dog about him,” Cooper would growl. “ I think Master Charlie be blind. And old Captain (an old red parrot who sat chained to a perch in the oak parlour, and conversed with himself, and nibbled at his claws and bit his perch all day),— old Captain, the only living thing, except one or two of us, and the Squire himself, that remembers the old master, the minute he saw the dog, screeched as if he was struck, shakin’ his "feathers out quite wild, and drops down, poor old soul, a-hangin’ by his foot, in a fit.”

But there is no accounting for fancies, and the Squire was one of those dogged persons who persist more obstinately in their whims the more they are opposed. But Charles Marston’s health suffered by his lameness. The transition from habitual and violent exercise to such a life as his privation now consigned him to, was never made without a risk to health; and a host of dyspeptic annoyances, the existence of which he had never dreamed of before, now beset him in sad earnest. Among these was the now not unfrequent troubling of his sleep with dreams and nightmares. In these his canine favourite invariably had a part and was generally a central, and sometimes a solitary figure. In these visions the dog seemed to stretch himself up the side of the Squire’s bed, and in dilated proportions to sit at his feet, with a horrible likeness to the pug features of old Squire Toby, with his tricks of wagging his head and throwing up his chin; and then he would talk to him about Scroope, and tell him “all wasn’t straight,” and that he “must make it up wi’ Scroope,” that he, the old Squire, had “ served him an ill turn,” that “time was nigh up,” and that “fair was fair,” and he was “troubled where he was, about Scroope.”

Then in his dream this semi-human brute would approach his face to his, crawling and crouching up his body, heavy as lead, till the face of the beast was laid on his, with the same odious caresses and stretchings and writhings which he had seen over the old Squire’s grave. Then Charlie would wake up with a gasp and a howl, and start upright in the bed, bathed in a cold moisture, and fancy he saw something white sliding off the foot of the bed. Sometimes he thought it might be the curtain with white lining that slipped down, or the coverlet disturbed by his uneasy turnings; but he always fancied, at such moments, that he saw something white sliding hastily off the bed; and always when he had been visited by such dreams the dog next morning was more than usually caressing and servile, as if to obliterate, by a more than ordinary welcome, the sentiment of disgust which the horror of the night had left behind it

The doctor half-satisfied the Squire that there was nothing in these dreams, which, in one shape or another, invariably attended forms of indigestion such as he was suffering from.

For a while, as if to corroborate this theory, the dog ceased altogether to figure in them. But at last there came a vision in which, more unpleasantly than before, he did resume his old place.

In his nightmare the room seemed all but dark; he heard what he knew to be the dog walking from the door round his bed slowly, to the side from which he always had come upon it. A portion of the room was uncarpeted, and he said he distinctly heard the peculiar tread of a dog, in which the faint clatter of the claws is audible. It was a light stealthy step, but at every tread the whole room shook heavily; he felt something place itself at the foot of his bed, and saw a pair of green eyes staring at him in the dark, from which he could not remove his own. Then he heard, as he thought, the old Squire Toby say— “The eleventh hour be passed, Charlie, and ye’ve done nothing— you and I ’a done Scroope a wrong!” and then came a good defil more, and then— “The time’s nigh up, it’s going to strike.” And with a long low growl, the thing began to creep up upon his feet; the growl continued, and he saw the reflection of the up-turned green eyes upon the bed-clothes, as it began slowly to stretch itself up his body toward his face. With a loud scream, he waked. The light, which of late the Squire was accustomed to have in his bed-room, had accidentally gone out. He was afraid to get up, or even to look about the room for some time; so sure did he feel of seeing the green eyes in the dark fixed on him from some comer. He had hardly recovered from the first agony which night-mare leaves behind it, and was beginning to collect his thoughts, when he heard the clock strike twelve. And he bethought him of the words “the eleventh hour be passed— time’s nigh up— it’s going to strike!” and he almost feared that he would hear the voice reopening the subject.

Next morning the Squire came down looking ill.

“Do you know a room, old Cooper,” said he, “they used to call King Herod’s Chamber?”

“Ay, sir; the story of King Herod was on the walls o’t when I was a boy.”

“There’s a closet off it— is there?”

“I can’t be sure o’ that; but ’tisn’t worth your looking at, now; the hangings was rotten, and took off the walls, before you was born;  and there’s nou’t there but some old broken things and lumber. I seed them put there myself by poor Twinks; he was blind of an eye, and footman afterwards. You’ll remember Twinks? He died here, about the time o’ the great snow. There was a deal o’ work to bury him, poor fellow!”

“Get the key, old Cooper; I’ll look at the room,” said the Squire.

“And what the devil can you want to look at it for?” said Cooper, with the old-world privilege of a rustic butler.

“And what the devil’s that to you? But I don’t mind if I tell you. I don’t want that dog in the gun-room, and I’ll put him somewhere else; and I don’t care if I put him there.”

“A bull-dog in a bed-room! Oons, sir! the folkB ’ill say you’re clean mad!”

“Well, let them; get you the key, and let us look at the room.”

“You’d shoot him if you did right, Master Charlie. You never heard what a noise he kept up all last night in the gun-room, walking to and and fro growling like a tiger in a show; and, say what you like, the dog’s not worth his feed; he hasn’t a point of a dog; he’s a bad dog.”

“I know a dog better than you— and he’s a good dog!” said the Squire, testily.

“If you was a judge of a dog you’d hang that un,” said Cooper.

“I’m not a-going to hang him, so there’s an end. Go you, and get the key; and don’t be talking, mind, when you go down. I may change my mind.”

Now this freak of visiting King Herod’s room had, in truth, a totally different object from that pretended by the Squire. The voice in his nightmare had uttered a particular direction, which haunted him, and would give him no peace until he had tested it. So far from liking that dog to-day, he was beginning to regard it with a horrible suspicion; and if old Cooper had not stirred his obstinate temper by seeming to dictate, I dare say he would have got rid of that inmate effectually before evening.

Up to the third storey, long disused, he and old Cooper mounted. At the end of a dusty gallery, the room lay. The old tapestry, from which the spacious chamber had taken its name, had long given place to modern paper, and this was mildewed, and in some places hanging from the walls. A thick mantle of dust lay over the floor. Borne broken chairs and boards, thick with dust, lay, along with other lumber, piled together at one end of the room.

They entered the closet, which was quite empty. The Squire looked round, and you could hardly have said whether he was relieved or disappointed.

“No furniture here,” Baid the Squire, and looked through the dusty window. “Did you say anything to me lately— I don’t mean this morning— about this room, or the closet— or anything— I forget— ”

“Lor’ bless you! Not I. I han’t been thinkin’ o’ this room this forty year.”

“ Is there any sort of old furniture called a buffet—do you remember?” asked the Squire.

“A buffet? why, yes— to be sure— there was a buffet, sure enough, in this closet, now you bring it to my mind,” said Cooper. “ But it’s papered over.”

“And what is it?”

“A little cupboard in the wall,” answered the old man.

“Ho— I see— and there’s such a thing here, is there, under the paper? Show me whereabouts it was.”

“Well— I think it was somewhere about here,” answered he, rapping his knuckles along the wall opposite the window. “Ay, there it is,” he added, as the hollow Bound of a wooden door was returned to his knock.

The Squire pulled the loose paper from the wall, and disclosed the doors of a small press, about two feet square, fixed in the wall.

“The very thing for my buckles and pistols, and the rest of my gimcracks,” said the Squire. “Come away, we’ll leave the dog where he is. Have you the key of that little press?”

No, he had not. The old master had emptied and locked it up, and desired that it should be papered over, and that was the history of it.

Down came the Squire, and took a strong turn-screw from his gun-case; and quietly he re-ascended to King Herod’s room, and, with little trouble, forced the door of the small press in the closet wall. There were in it Borne letters and cancelled leases, and also a parchment deed which he took to the window and read with much agitation. It was a supplemental deed executed about a fortnight after the others, and previously to his marriage, placing Gylingden under strict settlement to the elder son, in what is called “tail male.” Handsome Charlie, in his fraternal litigation, had acquired a smattering of technical knowledge, and he perfectly well knew that the effect of this would be not only to transfer the house and lands to his brother Scroope, but to leave him at the mercy of that exasperated brother, who might recover from him personally every guinea he had ever received by way of rent, from the date of his father’s death.

It was a dismal, clouded day, with something threatening in its aspect, and the darkness, where he stood, was made deeper by the top of one of the huge old trees overhanging the window.

In a state of awful confusion he attempted to think over his position. He placed the deed in his pocket, and nearly made up his mind to destroy it. A short time ago he would not have hesitated for a moment under such circumstances; but now his health and his nerves were  shattered, and he was under a supernatural alarm which the strange discovery of this deed had powerfully confirmed.

In this state of profound agitation he heard a sniffing at the closet- door, and then an impatient scratch and a long low growl. He screwed his courage up, and, not knowing what to expect, threw the door open and saw the dog, not in his dream-shape, but wriggling with joy, and crouching and fawning with eager submission; and then wandering about the closet, the brute growled awfully into the comers of it, and seemed in an unappeasable agitation.

Then the dog returned and fawned and crouched again at his feet.

After the first moment was over, the sensations of abhorrence and fear began to subside, and he almost reproached himself for requiting the affection of this poor friendless brute with the antipathy which he had really done nothing to earn.

The dog pattered after him down the stairs. Oddly enough, the sight of this animal, after the first revulsion, reassured him; it was, in his eyes, so attached, so good-natured, and palpably so mere a dog.

By the hour of evening the Squire had resolved on a middle course; he would not inform his brother of his discovery, nor yet would he destroy the deed. He would never marry. He was past that time. He would leave a letter, explaining the discovery of the deed, addressed to the only surviving trustee— who had probably forgotten everything about it— and having seen out his own tenure, he would provide that all should be set right after his death. Was not that fair? at all events it quite satisfied what he called his conscience, and he thought it a devilish good compromise for his brother; and he went out, towards sunset, to take his usual walk.

Returning in the darkening twilight, the dog, as usual attending him, began to grow frisky and wild, at first scampering round him in great circles, as before, nearly at the top of his speed, his great head between his paws as he raced. Gradually more excited grew the pace and narrower his circuit, louder and fiercer his continuous growl, and the Squire stopped and grasped his stick hard, for the lurid eyes and the grin of the brute threatened an attack. Turning round and round as the excited brute encircled him, and striking vainly at him with his stick, he grew at last so tired that he almost despaired of keeping him longer at bay; when on a sudden the dog stopped short and crawled up to his feet wriggling and crouching submissively.

Nothing could be more apologetic and abject; and when the Squire dealt him two heavy thumps with his stick, the dog whimpered only, and writhed and licked his feet. The Squire sat down on a prostrate tree; and his dumb companion, recovering his wonted spirits immediately, began to sniff and nuzzle among the roots. The Squire felt in his breast-pocket for the deed— it was safe; and again he pondered, in this loneliest of spots, on the question whether he should preserve it for restoration after his death to his brother, or destroy it forthwith. He began rather to lean toward the latter solution, when the long low growl of the dog not far off Btartled him.

He was sitting in a melancholy grove of old trees, that slants gently westward. Exactly the same odd effect of light I have before described ; a faint red glow reflected downward from the upper sky, after the sun had set, now gave to the growing darkness a lurid uncertainty. This grove, which lies in a gentle hollow, owing to its circumscribed horizon on all but one side, has a peculiar character of loneliness.

He got up and peeped over a sort of barrier, accidently formed of the trunks of felled trees laid one over the other, and saw the dog straining up the other side of it, and hideously stretched out, his ugly head looking in consequence twice the natural size. His dream was coming over him again. And now between the trunks the brute’s ungainly head was thrust, and the long neck came straining through, and the body, twining after it like a huge white lizard ; and as it came striving and twisting through, it growled and glared as if it would devour him.

As swiftly as his lameness would allow, the Squire hurried from this solitary spot towards the house. What thoughts exactly passed through his mind as he did so, I am sure he could not have told. But when the dog came up with him it seemed appeased, and even in high good-humour, and no longer resembled the brute that haunted his dreams.

That night, near ten o’clock, the Squire, a good deal agitated, sent for the keeper, and told him that he believed the dog was mad, and that he must shoot him. He might shoot the dog in the gun-room, where he was— a grain of shot or two in the wainscot did not matter, and the dog must not have a chance of getting out.

The Squire gave the gamekeeper his double-barrelled gun, loaded with heavy shot. He did not go with him beyond the hall. He placed his hand on the keeper’s arm; the keeper said his hand trembled, and that he looked “as white as curds.”

“Listen a bit!” said the Squire, under his breath.

They heard the dog in a state of high excitement in the room— growling ominously, jumping on the window-stool and down again, and running round the room.

“You’ll need to be sharp, mind— don’t give him a chance— slip in edgeways, d’ye see? and give him both barrels!”

“Not the first mad dog I’ve knocked over, sir,” said the man, looking very serious as he cocked the gun.

As the keeper opened the door, the dog had sprung into the empty grate. He said he “never seed sich a stark, staring devil. The beast made a twist round, as if, he thought, to jump up the chimney— "but that wasn’t to be done at no price,”— and he made a yell— not like a dog— like a man caught in a mill-crank, and before he could spring at the keeper, he fired one barrel into him. The dog leaped towards him, and rolled over, receiving the second barrel in his head, as he lay snorting at the keeper’s feet!

“I never seed the like; I never heard a screech Hke that!” said the keeper, recoiling. “It makes a fellow feel queer.”

“Quite dead?” asked the Squire.

“Not a stir in him, sir,” said the man, pulling him along the floor by the neck.

“Throw him outside the hall-door now,” said the Squire; “and mind you pitch him outside the gate to-night— old Cooper says he’s a witch,” and the pale Squire smiled, “so he shan’t lie in Gylingden.”

Never was man more relieved than the Squire, and he slept better for a week after this than he had done for many weeks before.

It behoves us all to act promptly on our good resolutions. There is a determined gravitation towards evil, which, if left to itself, will bear down first intentions. If at one moment of superstitious fear, the Squire had made up his mind to a great sacrifice, and resolved in the matter of that deed so strangely recovered, to act honestly by his brother, that resolution very soonj gave place to the compromise with fraud, which so conveniently postponed the restitution to the period when further enjoyment on his part was impossible. Then came more tidings of Scroope’s violent and minatory language, with always the same burthen— that he would leave no stone unturned to show that there had existed a deed which Charles had either secreted or destroyed, and that he would never rest till he had hanged him.

This of course was wild talk. At first it had only enraged him; but with his recent guilty knowledge and suppression, had come fear. His danger was the existence of the deed, and little by little he brought himself to a resolution to destroy it. There were many falterings and recoils before he could bring himself to commit this crime. At length, however, he did it, and got rid of the custody of that which at any time might become the instrument of his disgrace and ruin. There was relief in this, but also the new and terrible sense of actual guilt.

He had got pretty well rid of his supernatural qualms. It was a different kind of trouble that agitated him now.

But this night, he imagined, he was awakened by a violent shaking of his bed. He could see, in the very imperfect light, two figures at the foot of it, holding each a bed-post. One of these he half fancied was his brother, Scroope, but the other was the old Squire— of that he was sure— and he fancied that they had shaken him up from his sleep. Squire Toby was talking as Charlie wakened, and he heard him say:

“Put out of our own house by you! It won’t hold for long. We’ll  come in together, friendly, and stay. Forwarned, wi’ yer eyes open, ye did it; and now Scroope ’ll hang you! We’ll hang you together! Look at me, you devil’s limb.”

And the old Squire tremblingly stretched his face, tom with shot, and bloody, and growing every moment more and more into the likeness of the dog, and began to stretch himself out and climb the bed over the foot-board; and he saw the figure at the other side, little more than a black shadow, begin also to scale the bed; and there was instantly a dreadful confosion and uproar in the room, and such a gabbling and laughing; he could not catch the words; but, with a scream, he woke, and found himself standing on the floor. The phantoms and the clamour were gone, but a crush and ringing of fragments was in his ears. The great china bowl, from which for generations the Marstons of Gylingden had been baptized, had fallen from the mantelpiece, and was smashed on the hearth-stone.

“I’ve bin dreamin’ all night about Mr. Scroope, and I wouldn’t wonder, old Cooper, if he was dead,” said the Squire, when he came down in the morning.

“God forbid! I was adreamed about him, too, sir: I dreamed he was dammin’ and sinkin’ about a hole was burnt in his coat, and the old master, God be wi’ him! said— quite plain— I’d ’a swore ’twas himself—‘ Cooper, get up, ye d——d land-loupin’ thief, and lend a hand to hang him—for he’s a daft cur, and no dog o’ mine.’ ’Twas the dog shot over night, I do suppose, as was runnin’ in my old head. I thought old master gied me a punch wi’ his knuckles, and says I, wakenin’ up, 'At yer service, sir;’ and for a while I couldn’t get it out o’ my head, master was in the room still.”

Letters from town soon convinced the Squire that his brother Scroope, so far from being dead was particularly active; and Charlie’s attorney wrote to say, in serious alarm, that he had heard, accidentally, that he intended setting up a case, of a supplementary deed of settlement, of which he had secondary evidence, which would give him Gylingden. And at this menace Handsome Charlie snapped his fingers, and wrote courageously to his attorney; abiding what might follow with, however, a secret foreboding.

Scroope threatened loudly now, and swore after his bitter fashion, and reiterated his old promise of hanging that cheat at last. In the midst of these menaces and preparations, however, a sudden peace proclaimed itself: Scroope died, without time even to make provision for a posthumous attack upon his brother. It was one of those cases of disease of the heart in which death is as sudden as by a bullet.

Charlie’s exultation was undisguised. It was shocking. Not, of course, altogether malignant. For there was the expansion consequent on the removal of a secret fear. There was also the comic piece of luck, that only the day before Scroope had destroyed his old will, which left to a stranger every farthing he possessed, intending in a day or two to execute another to the same person, charged with the express condition of prosecuting the suit against Charlie.

The result was, that all his possessions went unconditionally to his brother Charles as his heir. Here were grounds for abundance of savage elation. But there was also the deep-seated hatred of half a life of mutual and persistent aggression and revilings; and Handsome Charlie was capable of nursing a grudge, and enjoying a revenge with his whole heart.

He would gladly have prevented his brother’s being buried in the old Gylingden chapel, where he wished to lie; but his lawyers doubted his power, and he was not quite proof against the scandal which would attend his turning back the funeral, which would, he knew, be attended by some of the county gentry and others, with an hereditary regard for the Marstons.

But he warned his servants that not one of them were to attend it; promising, with oaths and curses not to be disregarded, that any one of them who did so, should find his door shut in his face on his return.

I don’t think, with the exception of old Cooper, that the servants cared for this prohibition, except as it baulked a curiosity always strong in the solitude of the country. Cooper was very much vexed that the eldest son of the old Squire should be buried in the old family chapel, and no sign of decent respect from Gylingden Hall. He asked his master, whether he would not, at least, have some wine and refreshments in the oak parlour, in case any of the country gentlemen who paid this respect to the old family should come up to the house? But the Squire only swore at him, told him to mind his own business, and ordered him to say, if such a thing happened, that he was out, and no preparations made, and, in fact, to send them away as they came. Cooper expostulated stoutly, and the Squire grew angrier; and after a tempestuous scene, took his hat and stick and walked out, just as the funeral descending the valley from the direction of the “Old Angel Inn” came in sight.

Old Cooper prowled about disconsolately, and counted the carriages as well as he could from the gate. When the funeral was over, and they began to drive away, he returned to the hall, the door of which lay open, and as usual deserted. Before he reached it quite a mourning coach drove up, and two gentlemen in black cloaks, and with crapes to their hats, got out, and without looking to the right or the left, went up the steps into the house. Cooper followed them slowly. The carriage had, he supposed, gone round to the yard, for, when he reached the door, it was no longer there.

So he followed the two mourners into the house. In the hall he found a fellow-servant, who said he had seen two gentlemen, in black cloaks, pass through the hall, and go up the stairs without removing their hats, or asking leave of any one. This was very odd, old Cooper thought, and a great liberty ; so upstairs he went to make them out.

But he could not find them then, nor ever. And from that hour the house was troubled.

In a little time there was not one of the servants who had not something to tell. Steps and voices followed them sometimes in the passages, and tittering whispers, always minatory, scared them at corners of the galleries, or from dark recesses ; so that they would return panic-stricken to be rebuked by thin Mrs. Beckett, who looked on such stories as worse than idle. But Mrs. Beckett herself, a short time after, took a very different view of the matter.

She had herself begun to hear these voices, and with this formidable aggravation, that they came always when she was at her prayers, which she had been punctual in saying all her life, and utterly interrupted them. She was scared at such moments by dropping words and sentences, which grew, as she persisted, into threats and blasphemies.

These voices were not always in the room. They called, as she fancied, through the walls, very thick in that old house, from the neighbouring apartments, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other ; sometimes they seemed to hollo from distant lobbies, and came muffled, but threateningly, through the long panelled passages. As they approached they grew furious, as if several voices were speaking together. Whenever, as I said, this worthy woman applied herself to her devotions, these horrible sentences came hurrying toward the door, and, ih panic, Bhe would start from her knees, and all then would subside except the thumping of her heart against her stays, and the dreadful tremours of her nerves.

What these voices said, Mrs. Beckett never could quite remember one minute after they had ceased speaking; one sentence chased another away ; gibe and menace and impious denunciation, each hideously articulate, were lost as soon as heard. And this added to the effect of these terrifying mockeries and invectives, that she could not, by any effort, retain their exact import, although their horrible character remained vividly present to her mind.

For a long time the Squire seemed to be the only person in the house absolutely unconscious of these annoyances. Mrs. Beckett had twice made up her mind within the week to leave. A prudent woman, however, who has been comfortable for more than twenty years in a place, thinks oftener than twice before she leaves it. She and old Cooper were the only servants in the house who remembered the good old housekeeping in Squire Toby’s day. The others were few, and such os could hardly be accounted regular servants. Meg Dobbs, who acted as housemaid, would not sleep in the house, but walked home, in trepidation, to her father’s, at the gate-beose, under the escort of her little brother, every night. Old Mrs. Beckett, who was high and mighty with the make-shift servants of fallen Gylingden, let herself down all at once, and made Mrs. Kymes and the kitchen- maid move their beds into her large and faded room, and there, very frankly, shared her nightly terrors with them.

Old Cooper was testy and captions about these stories. He was already uncomfortable enough by reason of the entrance of the two muffled figures into the house, about which there could be no mistake. His own eyes had seen them. He refused to credit the stones of the women, and affected to think that the two mourners might have left the house and driven away, on finding no one to receive them.

Old Cooper was summoned at night to the oak parlour, where the Squire was smoking.

“I say, Cooper,” said the Squire, looking pale and angry, “what for ha’ you been frightenin’ they crazy women wi’ your plaguy stories ? d—— me, if you see ghosts here it’s no place for you, and it’s time you should pack. I won’t be left without servants. Here has been old Beckett, wi’ the cook and the kitchenmaid, as white as pipe-clay, all in a row, to tell me I must have a parson to sleep among them, and preach down the devil ! Upon my soul, you’re a wise old body, filling their heads wi’ maggots! and Meg goes down to the lodge every night, afeard to lie in the house—all your doing, wi’ your old wives’ stories,—— ye withered old Tom o’ Bedlam!”

“I’m not to blame, Master Charles. Tisn’t along o’ no stories o’ mine, for I’m never done tellin’ ’em it’s all vanity and vapours. Mrs. Beckett ’ill tell you that, and there’s been many a wry word betwixt ns on the head o’t. Whate’er I may think,” said old Cooper, significantly, and looking askance, with the sternness of fear in the Squire’s face.

The Squire averted his eyes, and muttered angrily to himnftlft and turned away to knock the ashes out of his pipe on the hob, and then turning suddenly round upon Cooper again, he spoke, with a pale face, but not quite so angrily as before.

“I know you’re no fool, old Cooper, when you like. Suppose there was such a thing as a ghost here, don’t you see, it ain’t to them snipe-headed women it ’id go to tell its story. "What ails you, man, that ye should think aught about it, but just what I think ? You had a good headpiece o’ yer own once, Cooper, don’t be yon clappin’ a goose- cap over it, as my poor father used to say ; d— it, old hoy, you mustn’t let ’em be fools, settin’ one another wild wi’ their blether, and maVin' the folk talk what they shouldn’t, about Gylingden and the family I don’t think ye’d like that, old Cooper, I’m sure ye wouldn’t. The women has gone out o’ the kitchen, make up a bit o’ fire, and get your pipe. I’ll go to you, when I finish this one, and we’ll smoke a bit together, and a glass o’ brandy and water.”

Down went the old butler, not altogether unused to such condescensions in that disorderly, and lonely household ; and let not those who can choose their company, be too hard on the Squire who couldn’t.

When he had got things tidy, as he said, he sat down in that big old kitchen, with his feet on the fender, the kitchen candle burning in a great brass candlestick, which stood on the deal table at his elbow, with the brandy bottle and tumblers beside it, and Cooper’s pipe also in readiness. And these preparations completed, the old butler, who had remembered other generations and better times, fell into rumination, and so, gradually, into a deep sleep.

Old Cooper was half awakened by some one laughing low, near his head. He was dreaming of old times in the Hall, and fancied one of “the young gentlemen ” going to play him a trick, and he mumbled something in his sleep, from which he was awakened by a stem deep voice, saying, “You weren’t at the funeral; I might take your life, I’ll take your ear.” At the same moment, the side of his head received a violent push, and he started to his feet. The fire had gone down, and he was chilled. The candle was expiring in the socket, and threw on the white wall long shadows, that danced up and down from the ceiling to the ground, and their black outlines he fancied resembled the two men in cloaks, whom he remembered with a profound horror.

He took the candle, with all the'haste he could, getting along the passage, on whose walls the same dance of black shadows was continued, very anxious to reach his room before the light should go out. He was startled half out of his wits by the sudden clang of his master’s bell, close over his head, ringing furiously.

“Ha, ha ! There it goes— yes, sure enough,” said Cooper, reassuring himself with the sound of his own voice, as he hastened on, hearing more and more distant every moment the same furious ringing. “He’s fell asleep, like me ; that’s it, and his lights is out, I lay you fifty—”

When he turned the handle of the door of the oak parlour, the Squire wildly called, “Who’s there?” in the tone of a man who expects a robber.

“It’s me, old Cooper, all right, Master Charlie, you didn’t come to the kitchen after all, sir.”

“I’m very bad, Cooper; I don’t know how I've been. Did you meet anything?” asked the Squire.

“No,” said Cooper.

They stared on one another.

“Come here— stay here ! Don’t you leave me ! Look round the room, and say is all right ; and gie us your hand, old Cooper, for I must hold it.” The Squire’s was damp and cold, and trembled very much. It was not very far from day-break now.”

After a time he spoke again : “I ’a done many a thing I shouldn’t. I’m not fit to go, and wi’ God’s blessin’ I’ll look to it— why shouldn’t I ? I’m as lame as old Billy— I’ll never be able to do any good no more, and I’ll give over drinking, and marry, as I ought to ’a done long ago— none o’ yer fine ladies, but a good homely wench ; there’s Farmer Crump’s youngest daughter, a good lass, and discreet. What for shouldn’t I take her? She’d take care o’ me, and wouldn’t bring a head full o’ romances here, and mantua-makers’ trumpery, and I’ll talk wi’ the parson, and I’ll do what’s fair wi’ everyone; and mind, I said I’m sorry for many a thing I ’a done.”

A wild cold dawn had by this time broken. The Squire, Cooper said, looked “awful bad,” as he got his hat and stick, and sallied out for a walk, instead of going to his bed, as Cooper besought him, looking so wild and distracted, that it was plain his object was simply to escape from the house. It was twelve o’clock when the Squire walked into the kitchen, where he was sure of finding some of the servants, looking as if ten years had passed over him since yesterday. He pulled a stool by the fire, without speaking a word, and sat down. Cooper had sent to Applebury for the doctor, who had just arrived, hut the Squire would not go to him. “If he wants to see me, he may come here,” he muttered as often as Cooper urged him. So the doctor did come, charily enough, and found the Squire very much worse than he had expected.

The Squire resisted the order to get to his bed. But the doctor insisted under a threat of death, at which his patient quailed.

“Well, I’ll do what you say— only this— you must let old Cooper and Dick Keeper stay wi’ me. I mustn’t he left alone, and they must keep awake o’ nights; and stay a while, do you. When I get round a bit, I’ll go and live in a town. It’s dull livin’ here, now that I can’t do nou’t, as I used, and I’ll live a better life, mind ye ; ye heard me say that, and I don’t care who laughs, and I’ll talk wi’ the parson. I like ’em to laugh, hang ’em, it’s a sign I’m doin’ right, at last.”

The doctor sent a couple of nurses from the County Hospital, not choosing to trust his patient to the management he had selected, and he went down himself to Gylingden to meet them in the evening. Old Cooper was ordered to occupy the dressing-room, and sit up at night, which satisfied the Squire, who was in a strangely excited state, very low, and threatened, the doctor said, with fever.

The clergyman came, an old, gentle, “book-learned” man, and talked and prayed with him late that evening. After he had gone the Squire called the nurses to his bed-side, and said :

“There’s a fellow sometimes comes: you’ll never mind him. He looks in at the door and beckons,— a thin, hump-backed chap in mourning, wi’ black gloves on; ye’ll know him by his lean face, as brown as the wainscot: don’t ye mind his smilin’. You don’t go out to him, nor ask him in ; he won’t say nout ; and if he grows anger’d and looks awry at ye, don’t ye be afeared, for he can’t hurt ye, and he’ll grow tired waitin’, and go away ; and for God’s sake mind ye don’t ask him in, nor go out after him!”

The nurses put their heads together when this was over, and held afterwards a whispering conference with old Cooper. “Law bless ye !— no, there’s no madman in the house,” he protested; “not a soul but what ye saw,— its just a trifle o’ the fever in his head— no more.” The Squire grew worse as the night wore on. He was heavy and delirious, talking of all sorts of things—of wine, and dogs, and lawyers ; and then he began to talk, as it were, to his brother Scroope. As he did so, Mrs. Oliver, the nurse, who was sitting up alone with him, heard, as she thought, a hand softly laid on the door-handle outside, and a stealthy attempt to turn it. “ Lord bless us ! who’s there ?” she cried, and her heart jumped into her mouth, as she thought of the hump-backed man in black, who was to put in his head smiling and beckoning.— “Mr. Cooper! sir! are you there ?” she cried. “Come here, Mr. Cooper, please— do, sir, quick!”

Old Cooper, called up from his doze by the fire, stumbled in from the dressing-room, and Mrs. Oliver seized him tightly as he emerged.

“The man with the hump has been atryin’ the door, Mr. Cooper, as sure as I am here.” The Squire was moaning and mumbling in his fever, understanding nothing, as she spoke.— “No, no! Mrs. Oliver, ma’am, it’s impossible, for there’s no sich man in the house: what is Master Charlie sayin’?”

“He’s saying Scroope every minute, whatever he means by that, and—and— hisht!— listen!— there’s the handle again,” and, with a loud scream, she added— “Look at his head and neck in at the door!” and in her tremour she strained old Cooper in an agonizing embrace.

The candle was flaring, and there was a wavering shadow at the door that looked like the head of a man with a long neck, and a longish sharp nose, peeping in and drawing back.

“ Don’t be a d—— fool, ma’am !” cried Cooper, very white, and shaking her with all his might. “It’s only the candle, I tell you— nothing in life but that. Don’t you see?" and he raised the light; “and I’m sure there was no one at the door, afld I’ll try, if you let me go.” The other nurse was asleep on a sofa, and Mrs. Oliver called her up in a panic, for company, as old Cooper opened the door. There was no one near it, but at the angle of the gallery was.'a shadow resembling that which he had seen in the room. He raised the candle a little, and it seemed to beckon with a long hand as the head drew back. “Shadow from the candle!” exclaimed Cooper, aloud, resolved not to yield to Mrs. Oliver’s panic; and, candle in hand, he walked to the corner. There was nothing. He could not forbear peeping down the long gallery from this point, and as he moved the light, he saw precisely the same sort of shadow, a little further down, and as he advanced the same withdrawal, and beckon. “Gammon!” said he; “it is nout but the candle.” And on he went, growing half angry and half frightened at the persistency with which this ugly shadow— a literal shadow he was sure it was— presented itself. As he drew near the point where it now appeared, it seemed to collect itself, and nearly dissolve in the central panel of an old carved cabinet which he was now approaching.

In the centre panel of this is a sort of boss carved into a wolfs head. The light fell oddly upon this, and the fugitive shadow seemed to be breaking up, and re-arranging itself as oddly. The eye-ball gleamed with a point of reflected light, which glittered also upon the grinning mouth, and he saw the long, sharp nose of Scroope Marston, and his fierce eye looking at him, he thought, with a steadfast meaning.

Old Cooper stood gazing upon this sight, unable to move, till he saw the face and the figure that belonged to it begin gradually to emerge from the wood. At the same time he heard voices approaching rapidly up a side gallery, and Cooper, with a loud “Lord a-mercy on us!” turned and ran back again, pursued by a sound that seemed to shake the old house like a mighty gust of wind.

Into his master’s room burst old Cooper, half wild with fear, and clapped the door and turned the key in a twinkling, looking as if he had been pursued by murderers.

“Did you hear it?” whispered Cooper, now standing near the dressing-room door. They all listened, but not a sound from without disturbed the utter stillness of night. “God bless us! I doubt it’s my old head that’s gone crazy!” exclaimed Cooper.

He would tell them nothing but that he was himself “an old fool,” to be frightened by their talk, and that “the rattle of a window, or the dropping o’ a pin” was enough to scare him now; and so he helped himself through that night with brandy, and sat up talking by his master’s fire.

The Squire recovered slowly from his brain fever, but not perfectly. A very little thing, the doctor said, would suffice to upset him. He was not yet sufficiently strong to remove for change of scene and air, which were necessary for his complete restoration.

Cooper slept in the dressing-room, and was now his only nightly attendant. The ways of the invalid were odd: he liked, half sitting up in his bed, to smoke his churchwarden o’ nights, and made old Cooper smoke, for company, at the fire-side. As the Squire and his humble friend indulged in it, smoking is a taciturn pleasure, and it was not until the Master of Gylingden had finished his third pipe that he essayed conversation, and when he did, the subject was not such as Cooper would have chosen.

“ I say, old Cooper, look in my face, and don’t be afeared to speak out,” Baid the Squire, looking at him with a steady, cunning smile; “you know all this time, as well as I do, who’s in the house. You needn’t deny— hey?— Scroope and my father?”

“Don’t you be talking lie that, Charlie,” said old Cooper, rather sternly and frightened, after a long silence; still looking in his face, which did not change.

“What’s the good o’ shammin,’ Cooper? Scroope’s took the hearin’ o’ yer right ear— you know he did. He’s looking angry. He’s nigh took my life wi’ this fever. But he’s not done wi’ me,yet, and he looks awful wicked. Ye saw him—ye know ye did.”

Cooper was awfully frightened, and the odd smile on the Squire’s lips frightened him still more. He dropped his pipe, and stood gazing in silence at his master, and feeling as if he were in a dream.

“If ye think so, ye should not be smiling like that,” said Cooper, grimly.

“I’m tired, Cooper, and it’s as well to smile as t’other thing; so I’ll even smile while I can. You know what they mean to do wi’ me. That’s all I wanted to say. Now, lad, go on wi’ yer pipe— I’m goin’ asleep.”

So the Squire turned over in his bed, and lay down serenely, with his head on the pillow. Old Cooper looked at him, and glanced at the door, and then half-filled his tumbler with brandy, and drank it off, and felt better, and got to his bed in the dressing-room.

In the dead of night he was suddenly awakened by the Squire, who was standing, in his dressing-gown and slippers, by his bed.

“I’ve brought you a bit o’ a present. I got the rents o’ Hazelden yesterday, and ye’ll keep that for yourself— it’s a fifty— and give t’ other to Nelly Carwell, to-morrow; I’ll sleep the sounder; and I saw Scroope since; he’s not such a bad ’un after all, old fellow! He’s got a crape over his face— for I told him I couldn’t bear it; and I’d do many a thing for him now. I never could stand shilly-shally. Good-night, old Cooper!”

And the Squire laid his trembling hand kindly on the old man’s shoulder, and returned to his own room. “I don’t half like how he is. Doctor don’t come half often enough. I don’t like that queer smile o’ his, and his hand was as cold as death. I hope in God his brain’s not a-tumin’!”

With these reflections, he turned to the pleasanter subject of his present, and at last fell asleep.

In the morning, when he went into the Squire’s room, the Squire had left his bed. “Never mind; he’ll come back, like a bad shillin’,” thought old Cooper, preparing the room as usual. But he did not return. Then began an uneasiness, succeeded by a panic, when it began to be plain that the Squire was not in the house. What had become of him? None of his clothes, but his dressing-gown and slippers, were missing. Had he left the house, in his present sickly state, in that garb? and, if so, could he be in his right senses; and was there a chance of his surviving a cold, damp night, so passed, in the open air?

Tom Edwards was up to the house, and told them, that, walking a mile or so that morning, at four o’clock— there being no moon— along with Farmer Notes, who was driving his cart to market, in the dark, three men walked, in front of the horse, not twenty yards before them, all the way from near Gylingden Lodge to the burial-ground, the gate of which was opened for them from within, and the three men entered, and the gate was shut. Tom Edwards thought they were gone in to make preparation for a funeral of some member of the Marston family. But the occurrence fseemed to Cooper, who knew there was no such thing, horribly ominous.

He now commenced a careful search, and at last bethought him of the lonely upper story, and King Herod’s chamber. He saw nothing changed there, but the closet door was shut, and, dark as was the morning, something, like a large white knot sticking out over the door, caught his eye.

The door resisted his efforts to open it for a time; some great weight forced it down against the floor; at length, however, it did yield a little, and a heavy crash, shaking the whole floor, and sending an echo flying through all the silent corridors, with a sound like receding laughter, half stunned him.

When he pushed open the door, his master was lying dead upon the floor. His cravat was drawn halter-wise tight round his throat, and had done its work well. The body was cold, and had been long dead.

In due course the coroner held his inquest, and the jury pronounced, “that the deceased, Charles Marston, had died by his own hand, in a state of temporary insanity.”

But old Cooper had his own opinion about the Squire’s death, though his lips were sealed, and he never spoke about it. He went and lived for the residue of his days in York, where there are still people who remember him, a taciturn and surly old man, who attended church regularly, and also drank a little, and was known to have saved some money.

_________________

3: Pink Tulips

Ethel Lina White

1879-1944

The Windsor Magazine, April 1922

Ethel Lina White

"I BELIEVE in fairies. I—I've seen them!"

"I'm sure you have."

Edgar Nelson responded conventionally, while his eyes said plainly, "Little liar!" At the same time he was conscious that Fay Pearson spoke with intention to irritate rather than to deceive.

"Of orthodox type, I suppose?" he asked drily. "Butterfly wings, gauzy skirts, and silver wands?"

"No. Not a bit like that. You mustn't believe all you read, even if it's in the financial papers. This is what happened. I was sticking the peas, when I felt suddenly that someone was watching me. You know the feeling?"

"No."

"Ah, you're not psychic! I looked up and saw the most extraordinary little man. He wore an absurd brown cap and a tight brown suit with silly little splashes of white. He had beady brown eyes, a beaky nose, and a snappy mouth. I saw him as plainly as I see you."

Something in her eye made Nelson glance sharply at his white spats and brown suit, which, with silent but eloquent voice, rose up and called a good tailor blessed. But his nose was Roman, his eyes were compelling, and his mouth denoted strong character. He did not in the least resemble her ridiculous fairy."

"Yet, all the same, you stung him for the three wishes?"

"Rather. In classic style I hailed him: 'Fairy! The wishes are on you!' But he only gave me one. You could see he was one of the stingies by the set of his lips."

Nelson tightened his own firm mouth.

"Not at all. You were on the make— 'something for nothing.' I consider you got most generous treatment. You can't expect pre-War conditions even in Fairyland."

"I suppose not. Besides, now I think of it, he looked like a business fairy. Business would spoil a fairy's temper, wouldn't it, cheating and haggling all day?"

Nelson's face, which had grown dark, suddenly brightened, as though he beheld the exact spot where the rainbow ended.

"Your sad story reminds me of one of my own. I once saw a fairy."

"You couldn't; you're not psychic."

Fay spoke sharply, for she alone knew of the countless times he had proved unresponsive when she had willed him to look up at her casement window.

"What was your fairy like?" she asked grudgingly.

"Beautiful. An exquisite, if reduced, edition of woman. No one could mistake her for a man. Golden hair, rose-petal cheeks, violet eyes."

"What did she wear?"

"Skirts, gauzy yet adequate. A womanly toilette—Parisian in its simplicity. My fairy had a dash of Eve, and knew that her mission was to attract."

"H'm! Did the attractive fairy grant you a wish?"

"No."

"There you are! She resembled the attractive type of woman who takes all and gives nothing."

"Pardon me, I addressed my fairy in terms of business, which is the most courteous language that I know. 'Madam, with reference to your esteemed wish, I beg that you will allow it to mature until your further convenience.'"

"And did she understand all that?"

"Naturally. In Fairyland they understand fair dealing, truth, and honour, and business is merely the prose of all that."

"She should meet my little brown business fairy. What colour was her dress?"

Nelson's severe face was irradiated by his smile.

"Pink."

"That's Mrs. Lemon's favourite colour— my boss, you know. Good morning!"

Fay, who was breeched and booted as befitted Mrs. Lemon's gardener, covered the path with steps twice as long as her natural stride, just to show what a fine man she was. But she pulled the sacking from her frames with unnecessary vigour.

The frames were full of cuttings of pink geraniums, for Mrs. Lemon had a passion for pink. There were rose silken curtains at her windows, and she sorrowed for her late husband in mourning of the deepest pink.

Fay did not like her employer, because she treated her gardener as a man in every respect but one. She expected her to grow flowers exactly like those unnatural beauties printed on the covers of the packets of seeds, to have a back which never ached, and no delicate feelings over worms. On the other hand, she paid her the salary which corresponded to these handicaps of sex.

"Gardener!"

Fay turned at her employer's clear voice. She studied her as she came down the path.

Mrs. Lemon was sufficiently young and pretty to awake desire in the heart of a man. In every respect she corresponded to Nelson's description of his fairy.

Blue eyes, pink cheeks— one slightly pinker than the other, for the widow was careless— and a frock which might have been cut out of a sunrise, double width and on the cross.

"What vegetables for to-day, madam? Sea-kale or purple sprouting broccoli?"

"Again? Why is there never any choice?"

"Season." Fay played her useful trump. "I can't give you peas in April."

Each looked warily at the other. Nina Lemon knew little about a garden, and Fay only a little more. She had previously been on the land, and had acquired her present post through the misrepresentation of a kindly but unmoral friend who put her plight before the eternal truth.

But, with prayer and fasting and unstinted labour. Fay was learning more every day. The garden was no longer a job to be held down, but a passion. She loved its every season— loved it in all weathers, loved its weeds as well as its fruits. In short, loved it.

Of late, her dread of dismissal was sharpened with foreboding. Owing to the unfortunate fact of common ancestry, Nina Lemon was showing a streak of Adam and was reading books on gardening. As her knowledge was theoretical, she knew what results to expect, while Fay, who was practical, knew that those good things only happened in the books.

The widow's blue eyes rested on the central bed of tulip.

"Gardener, I hope those tulips will be out by Sunday. I've week-end visitors."

"Certainly, madam."

"I hope I shall not be disappointed again!"

She turned away, once more mollified by the exquisite order of her garden. Fay drew a sigh of relief. She had her orders. Pink tulips by Sunday. And that was that.

As she gave her lawn its first cutting for the season, she thought of fairies. She wished fervently that they were true— useful little green and brown men who would swing from that tree and, in return for a bowl of porridge, mow the grass while she slept.

She had introduced the topic merely as a fanciful offence to the prejudices of the matter-of-fact Nelson, who always wore creased trousers and white spats, carried a creased Times, and caught the nine-fifteen. He angered her by the disapproval in his eye and the chill in his voice.

"Why does he look at me as if I'd cut down the cherry tree and was lying good and hard? I've never been rude to him until to-day. Guess the cap fitted for that brown fairy. Wish he was the grass! There— and there!"

Nelson caught his train that morning, but only by an acrobatic feat. He had lingered, snared by the young golden-brown foliage of the oaks against the blue sky and the foam of cherry-blossom. He might give the impression of having been flattened in a letter-press and afterwards smoke-dried, but there was the stir in his heart and the quiver of his pulse which trembled to life every year with the green tip of the first snowdrop.

He was feeling the response to the Spring— hearing the fluting of Pan as prelude to the Big Adventure.

And still Romance passed him by. Every December, after a successful business audit, he smoked out the Old Year and welcomed in the New— alone.

There was the usual reason for his composite nature. As the son of a sugar broker and a dark-eyed girl who wrote sonnets, he was the battle-ground of two opposing personalities. If father were evident on the strong surface current, the undertow was pure mother.

He returned that evening to the tick, but in a state of nervous irritation. He wanted— something.

As usual, he shed his business armour and, incredibly loose in an old velvet smoking-jacket and ancient slippers, he strolled into his beloved garden.

It was a gracious spot, mellowed by time. with quaint grass-plots and flagged pathways, their cracks cemented with tiny rock flowers. The perennials which made it a jungle of old-fashioned blooms were still tidy cropped clumps, but the apple-blossom was out in pink and white snow, and the grass starred with daffodils.

It was perfect, yet incomplete. When God made the Garden, He created someone to walk there, and then someone else.

The worst of it was that Nelson always expected so much. No girl fitted his fancy. He wanted some white stray from the past— some gracious lady of powder and patches, who once had actually paced between these same hedges of clipped yew. At this point Reason asserted herself and told Nelson the only remedy of marriage.

Pipe in mouth, he strolled into the lane, grappling with the situation. Narrowed down, he only knew two women, and those but slightly, owing to his hermit-like seclusion— the pretty pink widow and the gardening girl.

He shook his head at the thought of Fay. He did not like her appearance. She always wore big boots, a smock, and a slouched hat pulled down over her eyes. She would have been an easy model for a beginner to draw, because she showed so few features— just a chin and mouth and part of a nose. One couldn't fall in love with that.

Moreover, as a real gardener himself, he judged her by her works and found them evil. He had seen some of her first failures on the rubbish heap— boxes of pathetic seedlings, whose stems, through over-long exposure under glass, had been drawn out to white threads. On the evidence of those slaughtered innocents, he held her the equivalent of a baby-farmer.

So he strolled along, thinking solely of the pretty pink widow. He resolved to call at The Beeches on the next Sunday. The tender green of the hawthorn hedges was blurred to vague grey, and upon the sharpened air stole a faint perfume of primroses. He felt sopped through with pleasing melancholy.

He passed the thatched cottage where Fay lodged, oblivious to the dim white figure, with unbound hair, who leaned out of her lattice.

Fay, relaxing after her labours, was also responsive to the twilight spell. Putting off her boyhood with her boots, she was yearning, like Juliet, to write a name in the stars, only, as yet, the name was unknown. She dreamed of someone splendid and romantic— quite different to a man who wore white spats and caught the nine-fifteen.

Yet, as Nelson stopped to light his pipe she studied his face with sudden interest. He had good eyes and a finely-cut mouth. At that moment he looked a man one could grow to like. Besides, he was the only man she knew She almost wished he did not dislike her so thoroughly. … And so to bed.

She was up with the dawn to inspect the tulip bed, for the widow wished for pink tulips by Sunday, and Fay had rather less control over the sun than over her mowing machine. To her joy, there were numerous splits in each pale-green calyx, according to time-table.

Suddenly her smile vanished.

"White! Yes, every one. Like pink sugar-almonds when you've sucked them. In mercy's name, what shall I do?"

Nelson, who was enjoying his first pipe in his dew-spangled garden, was arrested by the sound of sobs. It was a shock to discover the gardener, her head buried on the top bar of the gate, crying into her sleeve like a Victorian maiden.

"Can I help?" he asked awkwardly.

"No." Fay raised streaming eyes. "Nobody can help me. You see, Canute couldn't!"

"Couldn't what?"

"Reverse the course of Nature, and you can't, either. He couldn't turn back the tide, and you can't turn white tulips into pink!"

"So that's the trouble." He walked inside and inspected the bed. "Yes, they're white, sure enough. Look up your order! It may be the florist's funeral."

"That makes no difference. She wanted pink tulips by Sunday, and if there are none, I'll be fired. And— and I do love the garden so!"

"Yes— as a woman loves the bird on her hat. And you water it with the sun on it and give the poor flowers measly sprinkles just to draw their roots to the surface. And prune ramblers instead of cutting out. And give foul feeders, like roses, nothing but water. Oh, yes, I dare say you do love the garden! Umph!"

The last exclamation is what Nelson actually uttered, but in it he managed to embody the drift of the other sentences. Because he was a real gardener, he hardened his heart.

"Sounds to me like a fairy's job. Didn't you vow you'd seen one? Better get him to make delivery of his wish."

"Brute!" said Fay to his back.

Nelson reviewed the incident that evening as he smoked in his beloved garden, over which hung a lilac mist of approaching dusk. A silver nail-painting of a moon hung in the green sky. A thrush was fluting in the distance.

He thought again of the pretty pink widow, and resolved once more to call on Sunday. And then he thought of fairies. They had all passed with Merrie England, or, rather, they had never existed. All the same, although he would have died sooner than admit it, every Midsummer Eve, in the wonderful theatre of his garden, he liked to think of Titania and Puck and the rest of the merry folk.

That impudent gardening wench had introduced a personal element in her description of the brown business fairy. It would be well indeed for her if there were such a kindly sprite to get her out of her hole. He hoped that the new gardener would be a competent man.

But he had to admit Fay had improved of late. She was keen and a glutton for work. It might be rather a lark— and he had not played the fool since he had entered the business— to prove that a beaky-nosed, beady-eyed fairy had his points.

He counted the number of pink tulips in his own borders. Those great inartistic beds simply ate up bulbs, but he could just manage to make up the number, for a substitute. Testing the soil with his thumb, he found it friable.

He chuckled as he donned his rubber-soled shoes and carefully prised open the connecting door in the wall. Then, carefully lifting six pink tulips, each with a huge ball of mould at its roots, he carried them to the adjoining garden and, with infinite caution, he exchanged them for six white bulbs.

It was a long and wearisome job, for he transplanted the white tulips into his own borders as he lifted them; but, once fairly started, it was impossible to stop. Moreover, although he would not admit it, he was filled with a savage desire to vindicate the honour of that despised brown fairy. When he had finished, the rain joined in the conspiracy and washed out all traces of human handiwork.

That next morning Fay, pale from a sleepless night, visited the scene of her crime to see if the murder were out.

She started, rubbed her eyes briskly, and then cried out in ecstasy—

"Glory, glory! Pink!"

As only one person knew of her trouble, it took her about half a minute to guess the identity of the miracle-worker, but the whole day was insufficient to reconcile the kindness of the action with his previous dislike. Curiosity, dashed with gratitude, led her through, the gate at the bottom of Nelson's garden.

She gave a cry of rapture. This was a real garden— something which had grown with generations of love and labour.

"Adam planted the first seed, and the Flood watered it. And I can see those flowers sneering when Virgil gave them all Latin names."

She scanned the borders eagerly for white tulips. There were plenty, half-opened, as they should be, according to time-table.

"Hullo, boy! What do you want? Oh, sorry!"

A flash in Fay's eye acknowledged Nelson's first shot.

"You wouldn't believe it, but when I'm not a gardening boy, my name is Fay. Don't you think I look exactly like a fairy?"

"Exactly. In disguise."

"I was just admiring your white tulips. We had some, but we—we've mislaid them."

"And you think these might be yours? Like to examine the laundry marks?"

"Not this evening. I wanted to tell you a thrilling piece of news. The brown fairy was a real sport and granted my wish."

"Good. Prompt delivery, by return of post. That's the advantage of dealing with a business fairy."

Fay frowned at an inconsequent wonder as to how the romantic lover of her twilight dreams would have dealt with the situation. For the life of her, she could not imagine him spitting on his palms, which is the classic way of subduing a spade.

She looked straight at Nelson, who was still creased from the City.

"Well, I'm very grateful to that fairy. He's taught me a kind heart may lurk under a prickly crust."

"I've never yet caught a heart lurking, but I'll watch out for one.… So you think better of the beaky-nosed fairy?"

"Pardon me, Mr. Nelson, his nose was pure Roman. How dare you make such an insinuation! I only wish I were a pink fairy, so that I could grant him his wish."

To his annoyance, Nelson reddened under her gaze.

"Perhaps I can guess. If I can help it on with a word, trust me!"

He squeezed her hand sheepishly. In spite of the pink tulips, her heart felt suddenly empty. Love was on all sides of her, but it passed her by; and it was the spring.

She opened the propaganda the next day, when the widow admired the pink tulips.

"They're nothing to Mr. Nelson's. He's such a clever gardener. But then he does everything well. Such a brain! He'll be a big man some day. He must be making a lot of money— he's so regular and keen. Always catches the nine-fifteen. The dependable sort make the best husbands, don't they, madam?"

The widow, who regarded every adjacent male as her perquisite, looked at Fay with eyes of suspicion.

"If you would spare my garden a little of the interest you lavish upon Mr. Nelson, I might point out there's a plantain on the lawn."

The next Sunday Nelson, wearing seasonable grey and the spring in his heart, called upon Nina Lemon. She gave him an effusive welcome, but he did not enjoy his afternoon. There were too many sugared cakes, his tea was over-sweetened, and there was another man who called the pretty pink widow by her Christian name. Although he promised to come again, he left with the feeling that the bloom had been rubbed off an illusion.

Fay awaited him at the gate.

"I've just come over to shut the lights and stoke the furnace, and I hoped you'd have a look round the garden and— and tell me what you think of it."

Nelson really enjoyed the next hour. In spite of her breeches, the gardener exhibited a womanly deference to his opinion, accepting both blame and advice and kindling to his scant praise. At the end of the tour, however, he began to suspect that she had been picking his brain.

"Did they teach you anything at that grand horticultural college besides the Latin names for columbine, and snapdragon?" he asked.

Fay actually blushed.

"I've found out that the only college at which I can really learn is experience. And I do so hate seeing the poor flowers suffer while I make my mistakes."

"That's the right spirit." Nelson felt suddenly drawn towards her. "If Adam were alive to-day, he'd still be learning."

"But your garden is perfection!"

"Oh, no." He swelled visibly at her praise, "Just a scratch on the soil, for all it's centuries old. It's up to me to leave it better for my son's son's son's son's son's son."

"Gracious! If you mean to have all that long family, you had better begin by proposing to someone right away!"

Fay spoke curtly as the young April green bleached to winter's wizened drab. Oh, why wouldn't Prince Charming come for her? She was so tired of waiting.

The freshness of April melted into the beauty of May. It was an early summer, so that the flowers bloomed almost visibly and the meadow-grass shot up in sorrel and seeding grasses. Every garden was golden with laburnum and soaked with lilac.

Nelson continued his visits to the widow, but they always ended in a conversation with the widow's gardener. Despite these outward signs, his romance was not ripening with the season. As the days grew hotter, so the quiver at his heart was stilled.

Nina Lemon had stripped him of his illusions. She was an egoist, who in the next life would probably be a gramophone. Her voice was never still, and since Nelson had learned the history of her love-affairs, he found it impossible to connect her with a golden-haired, violet-eyed fairy.

His practical self again, he began to think of his cherished pink tulips. They were far finer bulbs than the white of his exchange, and he wanted them back. Most bitterly he regretted the spring madness which caused him to play the part of a brown fairy.

The central bed was denuded to make room for ten-week stocks and asters. Nelson haunted Fay to pump her on the whereabouts of his precious tulips, but she was guarded, as though she suspected his felonious designs.

"When you lifted your bulbs, I suppose you first heeled them out?" he asked.

"I did the proper thing."

"Where? I never saw them."

"They're not there now. I'm drying them for the autumn."

On one pretence after another, he had trapped her into showing him all her glass, her frames and sheds, but nowhere could he detect signs of the pink tulips. A dark suspicion began to fester.

"She's chucked them away. If she has, I'm done with woman for eternity."

May mellowed into a flaming June which kissed every flower to premature life. Nelson's garden was a riot of bloom, canopied with pink and cream festoons of ramblers, so he stopped guessing in favour of a campaign against green fly.

On Midsummer Eve Fay worked on in the garden until, at long last, the sunset stain faded and a faint glow, as of a shaded candle, behind a belt of oaks, heralded the moon.

Her cottage, thickly interlaced with honeysuckle, seemed dark and stifling when she entered it. Indoors was purgatory, and bed an insult to Nature.

With a sigh of relief she unwound the fair coil of hair and shook it loose. In her shortest muslin dress, and wearing dancing sandals over exquisitely-fitting but inexpensive hose— part of her birthday suit— she wandered into the little garden.

The moon was now up, incredibly large and golden. The scent of new-mown hay mingled with the almost overpowering fragrance of jessamine. Fay drew a breath and held out her arms.

"I want to fly!"

Of course she did nothing of the kind. But the strains of a gramophone in the village, softened by distance, set her toes a-tingle. Waving her arms, she wove a dainty measure, springing and bending, as though she had been taught by the winds and the tides, and were inspired by the magic of eternal motion. In reality she was remembering scraps of a dance she had learned from Margaret Morris.

She stopped, panting, at the sight of a tall white figure, who leaned over the hedge, watching her.

"Carry on!"

It looked like her romantic lover, with ruffled hair and ardent eyes, but the voice was the voice of Edgar Nelson.

In turn, Nelson— without glasses and miraculously uncreased— stared at the dainty form with diaphanous draperies and floating hair. It was the dream lady whom he had awaited so long in his old-world garden, even though the mouth and chin were those of the gardening girl.

Fay laughed.

"I'm a fairy. Who are you?"

"As a matter of fact, I've been something of a fairy in my time— done useful stunts, you know." Nelson felt an awful fool, but common-sense was an insult to the moonlight. "I'm out to-night to settle up a contract for a ring."

Twelve chimes struck from the church tower.

"The witching hour! It's Midsummer Eve. I'm going abroad to work my spells."

Nelson looked after her in sudden alarm, as she tripped into the lane.

"It's late. Honestly, you ought to be in bed."

"Idiot! I've been asleep all day inside a flower-cup. Would you like to see a fairy at her labours?"

"Er— if anyone saw us—"

"Then the romantic age is dead indeed. I must go alone. And I'm so frightened of the wood. There are poachers there. If I'm murdered, it will be your fault."

"Oh, come!"

He followed helplessly as she disappeared down the narrow track into the wood. He caught her up in a glade spun in a web of moonlight. Moths fluttered around spectral foxgloves. Everywhere was an undercurrent of rustling movement. The white scuts of rabbits flashed and vanished. To Nelson's horror, they gave Fay her first inspiration.

"My first duty will be to protect my furry subjects from the cruelty of man."

Her sharp eyes soon discovered a gin, which she made Nelson destroy, with some damage to his fingers, while she waved her wand— a peeled switch— to demonstrate that she was doing the actual work.

"A real fairy ought to do things off her own bat," he grumbled.

"A fairy uses man to confound man. Oh, hang these nettles! Let us hither to the village!"

By the time they reached the green, where the old houses huddled together in the moonlight, like cronies gathered for a gossip, Nelson had shed his scruples. They were out to give some of these good people the surprise of their lives.

At the back door of a spinster who adored cats they found a saucer of milk. Fay hailed it with a crow.

"Put out for the good folk! Here is someone who believes in fairies. She shall have her reward."

An extinguished lantern and a sinister tin showed that Miss Tippett had been snail-hunting before she retired to bed. With the withdrawal of the opposing force, the foe was once again on the war-path.

"Carry on!" cried Fay, flourishing the tin.

Never before had Nelson realised the full ferocity of the gentle sex. He underlined the quotation that the female is the more deadly of the species.

"Look! Isn't that Parson's, the lawyer's, garden next door?"

Fay stopped her slaughter, to glare with real murder in her eye at several small birds nailed to a tree.

"Fetch that tin!" she commanded. "A good thing they are so lively after they're dead!"

She gloated over the snails when Nelson set them loose over the lawyer's lettuce-bed. He shrank in the commission of his crime, for the plants were young and luscious.

"Eat!" cried the fairy, waving her wand. "Eat till you— bust!"

To relate the history of that mad night in detail would be wearisome, although it covered the passage of but three bare hours. Nelson's shoulders were aching when the first pallid light began to steal over the fields, for the fairy persisted in pinning unjustified faith to the waving of a wand.

Presently Fay stopped before the gate of The Beeches, lying shuttered and blind, awaiting the dawn.

"In this domain," she said, "works a maid in bondage. Her name is Fay Grigson Pearson. The 'Grigson' was her parents' trap to snare the wealth of a wicked uncle, but all the poor girl got was a hateful name and a cold in her nose at his funeral. I always sign 'Fay G. Pearson.'"

"Good way out."

"List! The maid's parents were passing rich, and she was brought up in luxury— real lace, golden plate, and hot baths. All the fairies were invited to her christening, and all brought gifts. The wise men taught her, and she took every extra. She was brought up just to go to dances and to refuse young men."

"What was her dad?" asked Nelson, with the natural male interest in the wealth of others.

"Stock Exchange. The War broke him— poor dad! The poor maid was thrown on the cold world, with no training. She went on the land— joined the W.L.A. Say, I did look topping in the uniform! I wore my hair in a school-girl plait and bobbed the side-bits."

"Did the maid like the land?"

"Loved it, although it was passing hard. Her shoulders used to ache like blazes after shovelling manure over a whole field. But oh, the scent of the ploughed earth and the early song of the birds! She'd never even seen a sunrise, except some rotten town effect, when extra late after a dance. Then the War ended and the men came back, so she bluffed good and hard, and got a job as a gardener."

"Ah, that explains a lot! Was this your first billet?"

"No. The first only lasted three weeks, and the second not much longer. In each case she had little to do, for the husbands insisted on helping in the garden, and then the wives sacked the poor maid."

"Hard lines!"

"So she disguised her beauty under a disfiguring hat and smock, and put her whole heart into her garden. And men despised her because she did not please the eye. They thought she was only boots. They little knew of the nights when she sat alone and ate out her heart for a lover who wouldn't care, for the silly world, but just want her. Look!"

Fay pointed to the brightening east.

"The sun will soon rise, and I must vanish. But I want to grant that poor maid in bondage a boon. She can't save much on a cottage, twenty-five bob, and milk, for they won't let her save the cottage."

She waved her wand.

"I bequeath to Fay G. Pearson a handsome husband and ten thousand a year."

"I don't make quite that," interposed Nelson.

"Are you handsome?" snapped the fairy. "Follow me!"

There was a militant gleam in Nelson's eye as Fay stopped before his own house.

"Here," said Fay, "sleeps a brown business man who has a heart of gold. Once he did a very kind action. In return I grant him his heart's desire!"

She caught her breath as Nelson snatched her in his arms.

"I want you!"

"But I'm not a pink fairy. You're a beast! You know you're after the widow!"

"I'm not. It was all a mistake.… Just you!"

"Stop! The day is dawning. In another minute the spell will be broken and we shall be transformed to our true selves. Wait till then!"

They stood, back to back, watching each golden split in the cloud-bank. In the misty fields the cattle moved like drifting derelicts. Fay scraped her hair from her face and plaited it into a tight knot. Nelson searched for his glasses.

"Now!"

They faced each other.

"Horrors! It's the 'nine-fifteen'!"

"I'm stung! It's only the gardening boy!"

Laughing with delight, Fay slipped into Nelson's arms.

"Sure?"

"Certain sure. We'll have to get married."

"Um! You haven't ten thousand a year."

"No, but I'm handsome."

In the middle of a kiss, Nelson stopped and held her away at arm's length.

"Woman, tell me the truth, eye to eye and heart to heart!"

"I will. When you look at me like that, I feel like glass. Edgar, I swear I have never kissed a man before!"

"Good! But that's nothing. Fay— Fay darling, what have you done with my pink tulips?"

"I— I don't know. Isn't it awful? I put them somewhere, and I've hunted and hunted, but I can't find them. Can you forgive me?"

"Even that." All the same, Nelson looked very grave. "But we must hurry back to your cottage before there is anyone stirring."

They walked along silently, hand in hand.

"What are you thinking of?" asked Fay presently.

"The future. One day you'll grow homely and I'll grow fat, and people will wonder what that absurd old married couple can see in the other. But you will be seeing me as I am to-day, while to me you'll always be a slim, golden-haired fairy. And that's midsummer magic!"

THEY got married, but, for all that, the story has a happy ending; for they found the pink tulips the very next spring, when they sprouted from Mrs. Lemon's onion bed.

___________________

4: At Sunrise

Henry E. Mitchell
fl. 1910

Everybody's Magazine, Sep 1910

World's News (NSW) 8 Oct 1910

This otherwise unknown author seems to have published just this one story.

WITHIN the shell-scarred walls of an ancient Chinese temple an American soldier was on trial for his life. Around the huge stone sarcophagus of some ancient Chinese mandarin, pressed into service as a rude court-martial table, a group of officers was gathered. In the dim light of the great room the rows of world-old, monstrous idols seemed to gaze upon these creatures of a later civilisation with grotesque malice and contempt. A ray of sunshine darted through an embrasure in the wall, trembled over the little group of officers, and rested upon the prisoner,

Harris, crouched in his crumpled khaki uniform between his guards. Fear was written in his shifty eyes, in his slinking posture, and in the lines of his drawn and haggard face.

"—— them," he muttered, and wet his trembling lips. That was all: the fierce despair that might have led another man at least to battle like a cornered rat, lacked even so much force in Harris. "——them," he muttered again, and peered at the open door of the temple and then at his guards, standing there with loaded Krags.

But no human legs could outstrip the bullet of a Krag. Harris sank back limply, his shifty eyes roving from face to face. His counsel was speaking now, and the prisoner leaned forward, moving his lips as if to speak also. But his tongue seemed suddenly thick and useless; only a rumble came from his throat, and he gave over the effort.

So far they had been trying him for looting only, and had not touched upon the other charge— -of cowardice. Soon he must hear the witnesses tell of that deeper shame; of the time when he lay hidden in a ditch, while the bugles sounded the charge and his comrades rushed on to a gallant victory.

One of the guard touched him, and he stood up to be arraigned for this second crime, the most heinous in the soldier's calendar. There was no question of a defence, and his counsel answered "Guilty." Then followed a few words from the judge-advocate, an order from the guard, and Harris was led into the brilliant sunshine, stumbling and falling on his way to the guardhouse. A steel-lined door opened, clanged shut again, there was the rasp of a key, and the prisoner plunged headlong on his cot in mortal, abject fear.

Late that afternoon the American troops were drawn up for dress parade. In the front was the dearly-won City Wall, scarred by the shells of the Allied Forces. Every window, every doorway, and even the roofs of the nearby houses were crowded with the motley-garbed citizens of Pekin. The sinking sun touched the gilded roofs and pinnacles of the massive temples, and was reflected in the shimmering silks and satins of the gorgeous mandarins. There was a deep stillness over the throng, as this conquered people gazed spellbound upon their conquerors-upon the men who but yes- terday had been storming China's boasted wall. and to-day, their shattered ranks closed up, were drilling as calmly as though secure at home.

There was a deeper stillness as the adjutant drew some orders from his pocket, and one was conscious of the city's voice— the tinkle of a hidden temple's bell, the grind of carts over the ill-paved streets, the shrill cries of their drivers, and, in the distance, the troubled muttering of some heathen gong. The crisp, incisive voice of the adjutant cut the intense silence, as he began to read:

Headquarters, 1st Army Corps,

Pekin, China, Aug. 22, 1900.

General Orders

No. 20.

Private Robert Harris, Troop 'G.' -th U.S. Cavalry, having been found guilty of looting and of cowardice in the face of the enemy, and the court-martial having sentenced him to be shot to death, the sentence is confirmed, and will be duly executed. Private Harris will be shot at six o'clock a.m., to-morrow, the 23rd instant, in the presence of the Allied Forces. The Commanding Officer -th U.S. Cavalry, will detail an officer in charge of the firing squad.

By order of General Chaffee.

R. C. Edwards.

Major —th Cavalry.

Adjutant-General."

There was a crash in the ranks of the guard. Private Harris had fainted. On the parade ground the band broke into a lively tune, the troops marched briskly past the reviewing of-ficers and were dismissed. Lieutenant Norton, on his way to his tent, was stopped by a hurrying orderly.

"The colonel's compliments, sir, and he would like to see the lieutenant at once."

As Norton entered, Colonel Philips looked up from the mass of papers on his desk. "Mr. Norton. I have detailed you in charge of the firing squad for Harris. Do you know the orders?"

"Yes,. sir."

''Very well. I wanted a quiet, steady man for this duty, and so chose you. You were noticed by General Chaffee in our charge yesterday. I hope your work will continue as well as it has begun. Good-night, Mr. Norton."

"Thank you. sir. Good-night, sir."

Norton had barely settled himself in his tent when another orderly appeared with a note from the officer of the day:

My Dear Norton,

The prisoner Harris has been begging to see you to-night. If pos-sible, will you come to the guard-house at once?

Brown.

As Norton entered the prisoner's cell, the man rose to meet him, with shaking hand out-stretched. The guard's lantern lighted Har-ris's face distinctly, and Norton fell back against the cell wall with a low moan.

"My God, you!" he cried. "I thought you were dead."

"I soon will be unless you hurry," was the sullen answer.

"Hurry? What do you mean?"

"You must see General Chaffee at once. Get him to grant me a reprieve. In a few days pressure can be brought upon the President to save me. But now-now there is not— Lord! not a second to lose."

"I am afraid it's too late, Bob; but God knows I'll do my best. Wait for me here."

Unconscious of the grim irony in his last words. Norton rushed from the guard-house straight to General Chaffee's tent. An hour later he left it. and a moment later was again standing before Colonel Philips.

The colonel glanced up impatiently. "Well, Mr. Norton, what is it?"

"Sir, I can't take that detail. I wish to ask to be relieved."

Colonel Philips's eyes narrowed suddenly. "You mean," he said slowly, "that you want to throw the burden on someone else?"

Norton's eyes fell before the contempt in his colonel's.

"I can't take it, sir," he repeated, nervously wetting his lips.

"Why not?" Colonel Philips rose and faced him sternly. "Mr. Norton, your father is one of my dearest friends " He broke off and harshly cleared his throat. "I hope you have a good reason, sir."

Norton wet his lips again. "The prisoner-this fellow, Harris-he is my brother Robert."

"Your what?" cried Colonel Philips. "I thought your brother was dead."

"So did I, sir. He sent for me to-night in the guard-house. And I went at once to General Chaffee to plead for his life."

"Useless, of course," muttered the colonel.

"The general was most kind and sympathetic, but could do nothing. This looting must be stopped— and then-Robert's cowardice— that he could not possibly pardon nor condone. So I have come to you, sir, for one great favor. I can't give the order that would make me my brother's murderer."

Colonel Philips sank back into his chair, his voice broken and shaky as he spoke. "My poor boy! Of course you shall be excused. Come to me at five o'clock to-morrow morning, and I will give you some duty that will keep you away from camp all day."

"One more favor, sir. May I spend to-night with my brother? I wish to be near him— to talk to him— to keep his mind from dwelling on his shameful death."

"Certainly, Mr. Norton. I wish I could do more for you."

"You have done a great deal for me. Goodnight, sir."

As Norton again entered the cell, the prisoner sprang up, eager-eyed, only to fall back muttering miserably, "You have failed."

THROUGHOUT that long night the brothers were together, talking in low and earnest tones. Gradually the sullen, terror-haunted face of the prisoner changed, till, when Norton left him, he was calm and even firm.

In the shadowy light of the false dawn, Norton stood outside the guard-house for a moment motionless. One might well have taken him for the condemned man— so piteous and haggard was his face, so drooping and listless was his carriage. Drawing his hand sharply across his eyes, he started from his reverie and hurried to report to Colonel Philips.

Promptly at five-thirty the guard threw open the door of Harris's cell. They were amazed at the change in the man before them. The shrinking, terror-stricken creature of yesterday had vanished. In his stead was a man, erect, smiling, and quite ready to accompany them to where the Allied Forces waited.

Brightly the sun shone on their ranks, drawn up in a hollow square outside the historic Chinese city. On the western side were the American forces; on the south the German and English, while on the north stood, shoulder to shoulder, the soldiers of Russia and Japan, whom Fate was so soon to hurl at each other's throats. Massed behind the troops, crowding doors, windows, roofs, were ranks of Chinese spectators, their garish silks and satins mak-ing a gorgeous background for the sombre troops, and leanding a light, almost holiday, aspect to the tragic scene.

The eastern side of the square was open, and down the long lane came the little guard of Americans. In their centre was Harris, marching with quick, brisk step, his head thrown back, a confident smile upon his lips. Half way down the square they halted; the guard fell back; the firing squad marched out, and Har- ris was left facing the golden sunrise, the coffin and open grave before him, but with the smile still on his lips. Silence for a moment deep, painful silence-and then a calm, emotion- less voice broke the intense stillness. "Ready-aim-fire!"

As one gun the twelve Krags spoke, and, still smiling, Robert Norton fell.

LATE that night Colonel Philips sat alone in his tent awaiting Norton's return. Finally the
flap was raised, and Norton stood silently before him. The older man answered at once the mute appeal in his subordinate's eyes.

"He died painlessly. Norton. His death was instantaneous. And he met it as bravely as man ever did "

Norton dropped into a chair, his face in his hands, and Colonel Philips stopped. But in a moment the younger man raised his haggard face.

"No, no-not that," he said brokenly. "I lied to him."

Colonel Philips stared. "What do you mean?" he demanded.

"I told him he was to be spared for the sake of father's long service and splendid record." the lieutenant answered wretchedly. "I toid him that the sentence would be apparently carried out, but in reality he would be saved— would be given a light sentence and then discharged. I realised only that he was my brother, and wanted to spare him the dread and horror of anticipation. Colonel, I never even told him good-bye."

The colonel still stared, bewildered, incredulous. "But the hollow square— the coffin— the firing squad," he gasped. "Surely he must have realised."

"He thought he had only to sham death." Norton answered. "God forgive me, I told him the rifles were to be loaded with blanks."

There was a quick step, the tent fly dropped, and Colonel Philips was alone in the darkening tent. Outside, the night was filled with the shifting, mysterious noises of the old city and the great, sleeping camp. But Colonel Philips saw nothing, heard nothing. He sat stunned.

_______________

5: The Black Bell Buoy

Rupert Chesterton
fl 1907-1923

The Novel Magazine Feb 1907

Mostly a writer for the British schoolboy magazines such as "Chums", this little known author sometimes ventured out of that niche. This is an early crime/horror story.

FORTY years, man and boy, have I been in the Australian pilot service, chiefly on the eastern coast, the waters and ports within the Great Barrier Reef being my special territory.

As you may guess, I have seen some queer things during that time, but the queerest, the most unaccountable, was the Black Bell Buoy affair.

A good many years ago now, the Queensland Government had a monster bell-buoy made, to be anchored over a dangerous rock near the channel leading to the Cardingham River, two miles up which, as I don't need to tell you, lies the busy port of Cardingham.

This nasty lump of coral, which had already taken toll of several fine ships, was called the Black Rock, and so, as a matter of course, the buoy took its name from it. It was a particularly big affair, very heavy and strong—the largest thing of its kind ever turned out in the Government yards, and they were rather proud of it.

When the buoy was finished and ready for work, it was shipped on board the little Marine Board steamer Rockwell, which at once set off for the Black Rock. Here the big iron globe was hoisted overboard and anchored to the coral with a special cable. Then, just as the officers thought the job complete, it was discovered that some of the riveting was rather faulty and would have to be seen to if the buoy were to keep afloat.

After some discussion, it was decided to leave two men behind in the gig to attend to it, while the Rockwell went a little way further up the coast to drop supplies at a lighthouse. It was summer time, the sea was smooth, and there was not the slightest danger.

Now, the Marine Board was a mighty small affair in those days, very different from the big Government department it has since grown to, and it was quite a job to find two competent men among the Rockwell's little company to attend to the defective plates. At last, however, the pair were selected— Danvers, the second engineer, for one, and Pettitt, first-officer of the steamer, for his mate. With the necessary tools they moored on to the buoy, then the Rockwell steamed off to visit the lighthouse, promising to pick them up on her way south again.

Before I go any further I ought to tell you that, according to Cardingham gossip, which in this case was pretty correct, Danvers and Pettitt were rivals in love— and keen rivals at that. Old Captain O'Higgins' daughter was the lass both were after, but in each case the same reason— lack of cash— prevented them from proposing, for the old man had vowed that he would have no penniless whippersnappers hanging round the belle of Cardingham.

Little Lucy had many admirers, but it was generally recognized that Danvers and Pettitt held the leading place in her estimation. Which would win the race no one could say, though most people favoured Danvers, Pettitt being a morose, bad-tempered fellow, somewhat given to drinking, if all accounts were true. The pair were not friends, of course, but they had the good sense, being fellow-servants of the Board, not to be open enemies.

And now you know exactly how things stood between those two young men when they were left behind in the Rockwell's gig to put in a few hours' work on the Black Bell Buoy.

Exactly twelve hours afterwards, having landed the stores for the lighthouse, the Marine Board steamer ran back to the buoy— to find Pettitt alone, apparently in a state of mortal terror. The tale he had to tell was a remarkable one.

They had practically finished their work, he said, and were just rubbing down the outside of the buoy, when Danvers suddenly gave a cry of alarm. Looking round, Pettitt saw to his amazement that a long tentacle had emerged from the quiet water alongside, and seized his unfortunate comrade round the waist.

Even as Pettitt sprang for the boat to secure an oar wherewith to smash the dreadful-looking thing, poor Danvers gave another shriek and slipped from the buoy. Pettitt got one glimpse of a hideous octopus, or devil-fish, the largest he had ever seen, then man and fish disappeared beneath the waters, leaving the survivor half dead with horror.

Needless to say, when the Rockwell got back to Cardingham and the news became known the story created a vast sensation. Most people believed it implicitly, but there were not wanting one or two busybodies who shook their heads sagely and said that it was ill-advised to leave two known enemies together on a buoy.

Wasn't it possible, they suggested furtively, that Pettitt, overcome by jealousy, might have murdered his rival and then trumped up the octopus yarn? But proof was lacking, and the scandalmongers were in the minority, so that Pettitt's version of the sad affair was generally accepted. Little Lucy O'Higgins seemed very much distressed at Danvers' death, but as time went on she appeared to recover her former spirits.

Curiously enough, Pettitt never seemed quite the same after the accident. Whether it was the suspicion that had been cast upon him by the gossips, or the horror of his meeting with the octopus, it was impossible to say, but he grew moody and irritable, so that his superiors began to look upon him as half crazy. He gave way more than ever to drink, too, and at last someone or other told him that the Government service would be better without him.

The loss of his comfortable billet on the Rockwell seemed to make him more queer than ever; but it was not long before he got a berth as mate of the schooner Bertha, running between various East Coast ports.

Some months went by, and then, to the disgust of the Marine Board, it was discovered that the Black Bell Buoy, which had been doing useful work, had somehow or other got adrift. Even while the Government steamer was on her way to look for it and fix up a temporary buoy, a French brig went and piled herself up on the Black Rock, and the officials' disgust changed to active annoyance.

The Rockwell failed to find the wanderer, whereupon the Marine Board issued a "Notice to Mariners," wherein they offered a reward of fifty pounds for the recovery of the big globe, which was supposed to be drifting alternately north and south within the Barrier Reef, according to the set of the tides.

The prospect of earning fifty pounds for a simple towing job set every skipper between Rockhampton and Cape York on his mettle, but for some time the bell-buoy eluded them altogether. Then one day a tramp steamer put into Cardingham and reported that she had heard a bell ringing the previous night, and had seen a large sphere drift past her in the gloom.

A week after, a brigantine put into Rockhampton with extensive damage to her bows, caused by running into a globular object with a bell on top.

The Marine Board grew still more annoyed; not only was their buoy a deserter, but it was rapidly becoming a danger to navigation. So they increased the reward to a hundred pounds, and every man jack on the coasters kept his eyes peeled night and day for an iron globe with a melancholy bell clang-clanging away on top.

At last, about a month later, a steamer came into port and announced that she had actually captured the derelict, and had taken it in tow, but, a swell springing up, the buoy had got under her stern, smashing two blades of her propeller, whereupon the anxious skipper had cut his prize adrift.

That captain's tale of woe proved to be the forerunner of several. Two schooners, several steamers, and one or two smaller craft all sighted the bell-buoy at different points and took it in tow, but not a solitary one of them succeeded in getting it into port. Either it broke adrift, bobbed alongside and stove in a plate, or else it made a vicious dart at the towing vessel's stern and damaged her steering-gear.

From a standing joke among seafarers the bell-buoy progressed till it became an emblem of bad luck; most of the skippers— reward or no reward— would as soon have thought of hooking on to it as of taking Davy Jones for a messmate.

A year went by, and the buoy was sighted only once, so that at last people began to think that it had been cast ashore at some lonely spot or got stove in and sent to the bottom. A smaller substitute had been moored in its place, and the general public forgot all about it. Curiously enough, though the Marine Board people had given it up as lost, they omitted to withdraw the reward.

Meanwhile Pettitt, late of the Rockwell, had been jogging along fairly well in his new billet on the Bertha. He was still as gloomy and preoccupied as ever, and given to drinking more than was good for him, but he was a good navigator and officer, and so kept his job— till after what happened one squally night. The facts of the affair, I should explain, were given to me afterwards by the bo'sun of the Bertha.

The schooner was running up the coast, bound for Cooktown, when the look-out man reported a bell ringing some way ahead.

"You must be mistaken, man," said Pettitt gruffly. "We're out of Soundings, and there's no ship near."

"It wasn't a ship's bell, sir," answered the sailor. "My colonial oath! Perhaps it might be the old Black Bell Buoy, sir!"

At that Pettitt seemed to stagger, and told him not to be a fool. All the same, however, he got his glasses and had a look round forward. Soon everyone on deck could hear the irregular strokes of the bell, and they began to talk about the buoy and the hundred pounds reward hanging on to it.

Presently the mate came back aft, looking very pale.

"It's the buoy right enough," he said. "I thought the cursed thing was at the bottom long ago. Put your helm down a couple of points"— to the man at the wheel— "we want nothing to do with that lump of ill-luck."

Just as the schooner's head was paying off, with the bell clanging away to port, the captain came on deck. Directly he heard what was a foot he bristled up.

"Put the ship back on her course," he said, "and clear away the boat. I'm going to get that hundred pounds, or know the reason why!"

Pettitt flared up at that, and put all sorts of objections in the way, but the skipper laughed at him for a superstitious old woman and ordered the boat away. They soon picked up the bell-buoy, made a line fast to it, and started to tow.

"You'll repent it, sir," cried the mate, looking like death himself. "There's some curse on that buoy; we shall fail like all the other ships."

"To blazes with your nonsense!" answered the captain angrily. "Do you think I'm afraid of a lump of iron? I'd tow Old Nick himself for a hundred pounds!"

Pettitt went off in a huff, and the schooner went on her way, with the buoy bobbing and yawing about astern, clanging away till the din got on everyone's nerves. As the night went on the wind rose to half-a-gale, and the sea got up with it, till at last the Bertha was making precious bad weather of it, sometimes with the buoy half under her stern, sometimes with the tow-rope twanging like a harp-string.

At last, seemingly, Pettitt could stand it no longer; he went aft to the captain with several of the more timid hands behind him, and asked that the buoy should be cut adrift, as it was no longer safe to attempt to tow it.

Accounts differ somewhat as to exactly what happened; but there was a pretty lively argument, the captain losing his temper and swearing he'd stick to the globe till the line parted. While they were all jabbering, as luck would have it, a big sea got up behind the schooner, and before anything could be done the buoy came rushing along in the crest of it and crashed full tilt into the Bertha's stern, starting pretty nearly all the timbers.

"We're sinking!" yelled someone. "It's the working of the curse!"

Pettitt cut the line; but the mischief was done, and in less than ten minutes the schooner sank like a stone. The crew got away just in time in their boat, but rowing ashore through the surf the craft got broken up, and only Pettitt and two men reached the beach alive.

After their tale was told, of course, the buoy got a worse name than ever, and so strong was the feeling about the mischievous thing among shipmasters and owners that the Marine Board sent the Rockwell off on a special cruise just to locate the sphere and sink it. But the buoy dodged its would-be destroyer with the same uncanny persistency with which it got in the way of other craft, and the Government steamer returned to Cardingham with her errand unaccomplished.

As the months went by and nothing more was heard of the buoy, everyone agreed that it must finally have perished from sheer old age and rough usage.

And now I'm getting near my own little part in the story. It was about a year after the loss of the Bertha, when I was cruising up and down in my cutter looking for inward-bound ships. Late one evening we sighted a fine-looking 2000-ton steamer. She made a signal for a pilot, and I went on board. Judge of my surprise when, as the captain came forward, I recognized him as Jim Pettitt, whom I had known in his Marine Board days, but had more or less lost sight of afterwards. He was looking very old and grey for so young a man, I thought, and there was a queer light in his eyes that I didn't like.

"I daresay you're surprised to see me here, old man," he said, as we paced the bridge together, after I had set a course for Cardingham. "To tell you the truth, I'm a bit surprised myself. I had a long spell ashore after the old Bertha went down, and it was the greatest luck that gave me the command of this new steamer. She's new and I'm new, old man— this is my maiden voyage and hers. Come into the chart-room and drink luck to us!"

I did as he wished, but in my heart I decided that he would have to lock up his bottles if he meant to keep the Hippolyte.

Back on the bridge again he went, rambling on in the same odd, excited fashion.

"Ah!" he said. "It seems too good to be true, pilot— here am I steering for Cardingham, skipper of a ship! I shall be able to marry Lucy O'Higgins now, if she'll have me. Her father won't refuse her to a full-fledged captain, will he?"

"I suppose not," said I, and then I made a blunder.

"I always thought poor Danvers was her favourite," I added unthinkingly. "She seemed to pine after—"

Pettitt turned upon me furiously.

"He wasn't!" he growled angrily. "He boasted as though he were, but it was all lies. I'd have asked her to marry me long ago, but the luck's always been against me. Now it's turned, I'll go and see her directly we tie up. Jove, but I'm anxious to get into port!"

"You find this a contrast to your Marine Board days, don't you?" I asked presently, staring ahead through the darkness.

"Yes," returned Pettitt thoughtfully, "you're right."

"You'll be pleased to hear that the old bell-buoy seems to have finally disappeared," I told him.

The captain started as though I had struck him.

"Ah, that cursed buoy!" he gritted through his teeth. "The thing seemed to haunt me; I think it would have driven me mad if it had stayed afloat much longer. And yet— ha, ha!— it brought me luck. But for it sinking the Bertha and losing me my job I should never have drifted to Melbourne and picked up the Hippolyte. But I'm glad the wretched thing has gone— more than glad. I hope by this time it's red rust, a hundred fathoms deep."

He spoke so savagely that I glanced at him in surprise, but without another word he strode to the starboard side of the bridge and leant over the rail, muttering to himself.

As for me, I kept my eyes lifting ahead for the first twinkle of the Cross Reef light, while I listened intently for the warning note of the Black Bell Buoy— the smaller globe which had taken the place of the unlucky wanderer.

It was a fine, calm night, but very dark, and prudence dictated that till I picked up the light or the bell-signal I should reduce speed. I was just moving towards the telegraph when Pettitt intercepted me with an impatient gesture.

"Let her alone, pilot," he said. "She's all right. Jove! Surely you're not nervous, man? I ought to know this bit of coast by the very smell of the water, seeing the things I've gone through hereabouts. We shan't hear the buoy, it's too calm, but I'm willing to wager we pick up the light within the next five minutes. How excited I feel! There'll be a wedding in Cardingham before the month's out, or I'll never go to sea again."

He broke off abruptly, and stood gazing ahead, apparently listening intently, with the strangest look on his face, as revealed by the binnacle lamp, that I have ever seen.

I let him have his way about the ship's speed for another five minutes, then, as no light hove in sight, I moved to the telegraph. Pettitt's hand closed over mine as I seized the lever.

"Heavens, are you trying to annoy me?" he demanded fiercely. "She's all right, I tell you; I know the waters. I only took a pilot because—"

"I'm in charge here for the present," I said firmly. "My judgment tells me—"

"Hang your judgment!" cried Pettitt. "I'm going to take the ship into Cardingham to-night, or—"

Crash!

As he spoke there came a dull, thudding sound forward, followed by the wild clanging of a bell. The steamer seemed to recoil, flinging us this way and that; then her bows sagged downwards, and affrighted cries rose from the forecastle.

"We've struck the Black Rock!" I cried, thinking of the bell I had heard.

"You lie!" shouted a voice beside me, and, turning in amazement, I beheld Pettitt, his face distorted with fury and his eyes ablaze, pointing a degree or two to starboard of the steamer's bows. There, drifting slowly through the gloom, I beheld a huge black sphere, with a bell on its top, still tolling out an occasional melancholy note as it topped the wavelets.

"It's the old Black Bell Buoy!" shrieked the captain, while I stared aghast. "It's been my ruin all along, curse it! But I've—"

The mate sprang up the bridge three steps at a time.

"It's all up with us," he cried hoarsely. "Our bows are completely stove in, and the water's pouring in like a mill-race! Shall I order the boats out, sir? I don't think she'll float a quarter of an hour."

"Aye, do what you like," answered Pettitt dully, then he turned and gripped me by the arm.

"See," he cried, pointing ahead, "there is the light, we are two miles at least from the Black Rock. It was the old Bell Buoy we struck—that wandering curse! I have, lost my ship, I have lost Lucy— and all through that. And yet I deserve it all, mark you— I deserve it all!"

"Never mind that now," I told him, for the ship was settling fast, and the frightened men needed some sharp talking to if the boats were to be got out properly. "It's all—"

"I say I deserve it," Pettitt almost shrieked, and one look into his blazing eyes, as he gripped my arm and held me there powerless, showed me that the man's brain had been turned by his misfortune. "I was a villain, a cold-blooded murderer. The gossips were right— it was I that killed Danvers! He boasted, as we worked together on the buoy, that Lucy O'Higgins preferred him to me. I hated him, and when he got through the manhole to the inside of the globe my temper got the better of me. Something whispered to me that he was in my power, and I threw the cover back and screwed it up. Do you hear? I buried him there alive, inside the buoy!"

I tried to shake him off, but he clung to me the tighter, while the stricken steamer settled lower and lower and the panic at the davits grew worse.

"When I had shut him in," continued the madman, with his lips almost at my ear, "I saw my blunder— the buoy would be inspected sooner or later and my crime discovered. But it was too late to bring him back to life— the lack of air had suffocated him— and so I filed through the cable-chain, so that the buoy might soon go adrift, and be lost for ever. But the luck was against me— the cursed thing haunted the coast, and drove me well-nigh frantic, while the memory of Danvers was always with me. And now— do you hear me?— now the curse has worked itself out. I wrecked his life— his spirit, inside that iron tomb, has wrecked mine! Ha, ha! It is fate, pilot. If I—"

Savagely I flung off his vice-like grip, for the boats were in the water and the mate was calling to us to come at once if we would save our lives.

"Come, sir!" I cried to Pettitt, still babbling furiously to himself. "She'll be under in another minute."

"I'm going to take her into Cardingham," he shouted fiercely. "Get off my ship, you coward! The Black Bell Buoy, ahoy! Ah, Danvers, you've paid me out at last! That cursed bell!"

The deck heaved under my feet, and I dived headlong over the side just as the Hippolyte flung her battered bows high in air, rolled slowly to port, and sank like a stone, with a shrieking, cursing figure still clinging to her high bridge.

There was an inquiry, of course, but I was fully exonerated on the evidence of the quartermaster at the wheel, who proved that the captain had forcibly prevented me from reducing speed.

It was also demonstrated indisputably that the Hippolyte had not struck the Black Rock, her shattered hull being discovered some three miles to the westward. Captain Pettitt's body was never recovered.

For a long time I kept the terrible story he had revealed to me in his frenzy strictly to myself, doubtful as to whether it were not merely some hideous phantasm of his overwrought brain, unbalanced by the suddenness of catastrophe which had overwhelmed him.

But two months afterwards, the old Black Bell Buoy, sadly battered and red with rust, was washed ashore not many miles from Cooktown. Inside it they found a skeleton and some shreds of mouldering cloth still bearing the uniform brass buttons of the Marine Board. The last link of the short length of cable which still hung from the bottom of the globe bore traces of having been filed nearly through, the remaining portion having been fractured, probably by strain.

And then I knew that Captain Pettitt, madman as he was, had told me the dreadful truth that night when he stood face to face with the workings of an inscrutable Fate on the bridge of the sinking Hippolyte, with the strokes of the Black Bell Buoy ringing out his funeral knell.

_________________

6: Staley Fleming's Hallucination

Ambrose Bierce

(1842-1914?)

Cosmopolitan Magazine March 1906

OF two men who were talking, one was a physician.

"I sent for you, Doctor, " said the other, "but I don't think you can do me any good. Maybe you can recommend a specialist in psychopathy. I fancy I'm a bit loony."

"You look all right," the physician said.

"You shall judge— I have hallucinations. I wake every night ;i".d see in my room, intently watching me, a big black Newfoundland dog with a white forefoot."

"You say you wake ; are you sure about that? Hallucinations are sometimes only dreams. "

"Oh, I wake all right. Sometimes I lie still a long time, looking at the dog as earnestly as the dog looks at me—I always leave the light going. When I can't endur e it any longer I sit up in bed—and nothing is there!"

"M'm—what is the beast's expression?"

"It seems to me sinister. Of course I know that, except in art, an animal's face in repose has always the same expression. But this is not a real animal. Newfoundland dogs are pretty mild looking, you know; what's the matter with this one?"

"Really, my diagnosis would have no value: I am not going to treat the dog."

The physician laughed at his own pleasantry, but narrowly watched his patient from the corner of his eye. Presently he said:

"Fleming, your description of the beast fits the dog of the late Atwell Barton."

Heming half rose from his chair, sat again and mad e a visible attempt at indifference.

"I remembe r Barton, "he said. "I believe he was— it was reported that— wasn't there something suspicious in his death? "

Looking squarely now into the eyes of his patient, the physician said:

"Three years ago the body of your old enemy, Atwell Barton, was found in the woods near his house and yours. He had been stabbed to death. There have been no arrests; there was no clue. Some of us had theories. I had one. Have you?"

"I? Why, bless your soul, what could I know about it ? You remember that I left for Europe almost immediately afterward— a considerable time afterward. In the few weeks since my return you could not expect me to construct a theory. In fact, I have not given the matter a thought. What about his dog?"

"It was first to find the body. It died of starvation on his grave."

We do not know the inexorable law underlying coincidences. Staley Fleming did not, or he would perhaps not have sprung to his feet as the night wind brought in through the open window the long wailing howl of a distant dog. He strode several times across the room in the steadfast gaze of the physician; then, abruptly confronting him, almost shouted:

"What has all this to do with my trouble, Dr. Halderman? You forget why you were sent for."

Rising, the physician laid his hand upon his patient's arm and said gently: "Pardon me. I cannot diagnose your disorder offhand— to-morrow, perhaps. Please go to bed, leaving your door unlocked; I will pass the night here with your books. Can you call me without rising?"

"Yes, there is an electric bell."

" Good. If anything disturbs you, push the button without sitting up. Good-night."

Comfortably installed in an arm-chair, the man of medicine stared into the glowing coals and thought deeply and long, but apparently to little purpose, for he frequently rose and, opening a door leading to the staircase, listened intently, then resumed his seat. Presently, however, he fell asleep, and when he woke it was past midnight.

He stirred the failing fire, lifted a book from the table at his side and looked at the title. It was Denneker's Meditations. He opened it at random and began to read:

"Forasmuch as it is ordained of God that all flesh hath spirit and thereby taketh on spiritual powers, so, also, the spirit hath powers of the flesh, even when it is gone out of the flesh and liveth as a thing apart, as many a violence performed by wraith and lemure sheweth. And there be who say that man is not single in this, but the beasts have the like evil inducement, and—"

The reading was interrupted by a shaking of the house, as by the fall of a heavy object. The reader flung down the book, rushed from the room and mounted the stairs to Fleming's bed-chamber. He tried the door, but contrary to his instructions it was locked. He set his shoulder against it with such force that it gave way.

On the floor near the disordered bed, in his nightclothes, lay Fleming, gasping away his life. The physician raised the dying man's head from the floor and observed a wound in the throat.

"I should have thought of this," he said, believing it suicide.

When the man was dead an examination disclosed the unmistakable marks of an animal's fangs deeply sunken into the jugular veins. But there was no animal.

______________

7:  An Even Break

H. C. Witwer

1880-1929

Popular Magazine 7 July 1915

Harry Charles Witwer

IF it had merely been a large diamond, Lomax would have looked at it with a speculative eye and resumed his perusal of the sporting page as the express lumbered through the abyss under Manhattan. But when his fascinated gaze persisted in glueing itself to the dead center of the beams of fire and life it shot forth, he decided, after a feeble resistance, that he must possess it.

Lomax had never seen the mate of the ball of dazzling flame marooned in the center of the old gentleman's massive white shirt front. It quivered like a living thing. Its owner nodded sleepily as the train jolted on. Such callousness amazed Lomax. If the stone had been in his shirt front, he would have been sitting as erect as the footman on Mrs. Smyth-Browne's limousine. He would have allowed nothing to obstruct the view.

Having determined to transfer the diamond from the sleepy old gentleman to his more appreciative self, Lomax glanced warily around the car at the other occupants. Near the forward platform a rough-looking individual was engaged in an animated conversation. with the guard. Almost directly opposite was a smug this-suit-at-ten-dollars clerk. At the rear end of the car— Lomax involuntarily sat erect. No, Lillian Russell would be stouter— could it be— but she was in Paris The other passenger was a combination of what musical-comedy managers assert are in their choruses and what Psyche would resemble in modern garb, all rolled up into one ravishing girl. Lomax's spell of admiration was only broken when the guard shouted :

"NinesixchangeferWes'Farms!"

It was effective, and brought Lomax back to the matter on hand. The direct descendant of the temptresses of St. Anthony rose and glided down the car toward the open side door. Lomax also left his seat and stood opposite the old gentleman and the mammoth diamond—one hand ready for the deft downward swoop, the other, steadying him, on a strap. The girl brushed against him. Lomax apologized and stepped politely aside, allowing her to pass. When she stepped through the doorway— the old gentleman's diamond had disappeared!

Lomax gasped audibly at the flawless technique the girl had displayed. Just one swift flash of the beautiful arm, a quick jerk of the lovely wrist, and the stone had vanished! On the crowded platform, Lomax got a brief glimpse of a swirling skirt disappearing at the top of the stairway.

Five seconds later, Lomax emerged into the street. The girl had gained the corner when he saw her. She hesitated for a fleeting moment, then started down Ninety-sixth Street toward the river. Lomax lit a cigarette and, smiling grimly, swung after her. The street was dark—almost deserted—Lomax was himself again.

It was halfway down the block that he caught up with her. He did not cough and "er—" Lomax was crude, but successful. He grasped the girl by the arm and swung her around brutally, facing him.

"Classy is no name for your work," he said, "but I was right behind you in the car!"

Swiftly the girl appraised him.

"Are you a detective?" she breathed, trembling in his rough grasp.

"Yes," answered Lomax, assuming a menacing look.

The girl jerked her arm away and fumbled-in her muff.

"Here!" She thrust a glittering object into his hand. '"Here— take it! I— I don't know what made me do it. I've tried ~ Oh, how I've tried to stop! I— oh! Can't you understand? Let me go, and keep the stone. Think, it's yours— you'll get— for taking me in. I—"

She broke off, sobbing hysterically:

Lomax didn't hear what else she said— he didn't know she was there. The stone glittered and scintillated in the palm of his trembling hand. He gazed at it, hypnotized. Why, it was worth thousands! He glanced up— the girl was gone!

"You're a slick one!' growled a hoarse voice in his ear.

Lomax, startled, turned so abruptly that the stone fell from his grasp. The newcomer lunged for it. Lomax kicked him without a pang, and as the man, caught off his balance, fell, Lomax regained the stone.

"Easy, boss," whined the fallen one.

"What do you want?" asked Lomax sharply.

The man got up warily. He had an"evil, predatory face.

"I wants dat sparkler!" he said.

Lomax laughed shortly.

"I saw you take it from th' skirt," explained the man.

"If you are here in one minute, I'll have you sent up for a year!' Lomax said deliberately.

"Shoot!" said the other, assuming a truculent attitude. "I'll wise 'em up that you got th' stone. They'll be some noise over dat when the old guy wakes up."

"So you were in that car, eh?" asked Lomax, after a pause.

"Sure! That skirt's some nifty worker, ain't she?" answered the other, becoming more at ease.

Lomax reached in an inner pocket and brought out his wallet. He took a yellowback from a thick roll of bills and pushed it into the other's hand.

"On your way!" he commanded.

The man looked at the bill, at Lomax, and at the heavens. Then he crushed the bill in his grimy hand and walked off, without a word.

Lomax put the diamond in his wallet and reached for his cigarette case. Although it was quite cool, he mopped his brow and opened his overcoat. A young, clerkish-looking individual crossed from the other side of the street and stopped in front of Lomax.

"Don't make no fuss now, because there's some bulls around the corner waitin' to hear me blow this!" was his salutation as he held a whistle before Lomax's face.

"I'm afraid I don't get you," Lomax, cigarette.

"Well, you will!" returned the other grimly. "I want you to take a little ride downtown with me and tell the commissioner the story of the missing diamond. I hear you wrote it," he added, with sneering facetiousness.

"I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about," began Lomax.

"Say," interrupted the other wearily, said tossing away the unlighted "why don't you guys get some new stuff? If I ever nailed one of you birds an' he said, 'You got me right!' I'd fall over dead! Well, come on, let's go!"

"I'll give you one hundred dollars to remember an engagement around the corner," suggested Lomax hopefully.

"Don't break your wrist!" admonished his captor. "Come on, it's getting late."

"Two hundred dollars," said Lomax.

"Say!" exclaimed the man abruptly, "you're a fine generous guy, ain't you? That stone's worth fifteen hundred dollars if it's worth a nickel! I watched it all the way up from Brooklyn Bridge before that skirt of yours nailed it. I knew somebody'd get it."

Lomax removed the diamond from his wallet and passed the leather case over to the man.

"There is five hundred dollars there. Take it. I won't get anything like what this stone is worth, and you know it."

Unconsciously he repeated the girl's appeal: "You won't get anything for bringing me in. Five hundred dollars is a lot of money— think what you can do with it— maybe the wife—"

The man stood pensively for a moment, and Lomax gulped down the lump in his throat.

"Gimme th' roll!" he muttered finally. "ll take a chance!"

Lomax grasped his arm as he started off.

"Wait," he said, "I've given you all the money I have. Give me enough to get home with, will you?"

The man glanced up suspiciously, then sank one hand in his pocket and extended a worn dollar bill. Lomax took it, bowed, and called to a passing taxicab.

MADAME CARRERO was dancing her daringest at the Cabaret Malpert. A reckless, joyous crowd filled the café.

As madame discarded the seventh veil, a vision of femininity, a smug this-suit-at-ten-dollars clerk, a rough-appearing character, and an elderly gentleman entered. They were bowed to a table well in the rear. The elderly gentleman scanned the wine list, smacking his lips anticipatingly as he gave a few sharp orders to an obsequious waiter. The clerkish-looking one threw a roll of bills on the table, and the elderly gentleman began to count the money, thumbing each bill almost affectionately.

"Those last stones are beauties," remarked the girl. "Max gets better all the time. I suppose if we'd pay a dollar a piece for them, he'd give us real ones, eh?" she laughed, enjoying her quip.

"If that guy had fallen any harder hed 'a' broken his neck!" declared the rough-looking member of the party.

"Five hundred and fifty dollars," announced the elderly gentleman, finishing his count. "I guess that's bad, eh?"

The girl picked up one of the bills idly— then she sat up straight in her chair and held it to the light, with flushed face. The clerk, observing her action, tore it roughly from her hand. He studied it deeply, then, with an oath, tore it in two and tossed the ragged pieces at the open-mouthed elderly gentleman.

"You're a good guesser!" he said.

An oppressive silence fell on the merry party— the rough one broke it.

"Well," he said, with a ponderous attempt at cheerfulness, "it's an even break. He gets the fake diamond, and we get the stage money."

The clerk awoke from his trance, and woke the others by crashing his fist down on the table.

"Where d'ye get that stuff?" he cried. "I gave that guy a dollar!"

________________

8: Some Evidence of Alfred Curran,  News Paper Reporter, Concerning a Pair of True Lovers

Mrs. Campbell Praed

1851-1935

From: Seven Xmas Eves, Hutchinson & Co, 1894

Rosa Caroline Praed

Christmas Eve! Strange that that letter should have reached me to-day. In medias res was always my journalistic motto. Plunge straight into the heart of your subject, and don't bore your readers with preliminaries.

I was thinking of Nan when Jem Starr, mail-man, rode up to the bachelors' quarters this afternoon, and chucked the mail-bag on the veranda at my feet.

He told me to take it to the Big House and give it to the Boss. Took me for a new chum most likely— said, he was in a hurry to yard his horse— said, there was a chance of the river coming down with floods up at the heads, and that it was hot enough for us to be let off a term of purgatory. A queer independent chap is Starr.

Nan and Nick! Nick and Nan! But I was thinking of Nan more than of Nick. Yes, it is strange there should have been in that mail-bag a letter, asking me to tell all I knew of Nan and Nick, and of that Christmas time at Eungella Diggings, when I was sub-editor of The Eungella Star.

Sounds grand— Sub-editor of The Eungella Star. It sounded grander still, when Jessop wrote to me— I was Jessop's cousin, you know, and he was under promise to give me an opening if he could. He said he had started a paper and struck gold, and that if I liked, I might come out and run the paper, while he looked out for more gold.

Didn't I jump at the offer, just! Didn't I make sure, that I'd struck gold in my line, too! Didn't I see visions of a fortune and a coming back to England, and a great Liberal organ started, with all the New World go, and getting into Parliament, and all the rest!

But it wasn't for me that destiny reserved the fulfilment of those dreams. It was for Nan's husband. Nan didn't bring me luck.

Sometimes it seems to me, that she brought more bad luck than good, to the men who loved her— all, that is, except one. And there were a good many of them. It wasn't her fault. But that's how it came out in my experience of that Christmas Eve.

Anyhow, my fortune hasn't amounted to much. Eungella Diggings smashed up, and Jessop smashed up, and The Star smashed up, too. Things have a way of smashing up in Australia.

And here I am, a hack reporter, glad to get a job on anything. Bush races or bush-ranging, prize cattle, or a new cure for pleuro; "bush naturalist" articles, or gush over an election; it is all "copy."

Election business, it was this time. Election finished; "copy" sent in, and a free and easy kind of invitation from one of the election bosses— the biggest squatter in these parts— to loaf about his station and pick up material, till the Christmas holidays are over.

I like loafing. I'm doing a story of bush life. I'm happy enough in the bachelors' quarters. My lady squatteress doesn't encourage me at the Big House, though I'm asked there for Christmas dinner to-morrow. The new chums are "tailing" on an out-station, and the Superintendent has gone to town for a spree.

That's how I come to be jotting down shorthand notes of my reflections on this Christmas Eve.

Every now and then, I drop my pen to go and take a smoke in the hammock in the veranda, and think a little more of Nan.

I watch the Southern Cross, dipping over the mountains. I listen to the frogs, flopping from the veranda roof on to the grass, and to the hum of the flying ants, and the queer buzzings of the myriads of insects, and the cry of the curlews down by the swamp. I see the heat mist rising on the plain and the lightning zig-zagging on the horizon, west.

It makes me melancholy, a night like this. Those trumpet flowers give out a sickly scent, and there's a Cape jasmine creeper, twined round a pole, that looks like a ghost. Sets one dreaming—dreaming. And there's a girl over at the Big House singing; and I can catch the tune and a word here and there. It's a singing kind of thing. It goes—

"For the old love's sake,

For the old love's sake!"

And I seem to see Nan. The jasmine reminds me of her, and the pointers of the Southern Cross are like her eyes. Nan, with her pretty, pale face and her red lips, so resolute and so sweet, and her deep, bright, dark eyes, and her black, curly hair.

We came out to Australia together. She was a second-class passenger, and so was I, but she kept very much to herself; and then she was in her cabin a good bit the first part, and we didn't get to know each other till the voyage was getting on.

She was all by herself, but she didn't seem lonely; and she didn't seem to want to talk. I'd watch her on deck, reading and working by the hour together, and sometimes just thinking, with a happy smile on her face.

She was a great one for reading, and she read clever books— histories and travels and biographies, and I would even see her studying grammars and suchlike. I wondered why she was so eager to improve herself, and I wondered what made her look so happy.

It was seeing me usually reading, too, that made her notice me, I think, and I contrived to make the books a means of falling into talk.

I offered to lend her one I had, that was the sequel to one of hers, and it came about after this, that she would let me sit with her on deck, and she said she learned things from me that none else had taught her. But she had plenty of brains, had Nan; anyone could see that, though, of course, I saw, too, that she had not been educated in the way girls are, and, in fact, that she wasn't a lady, as the saying goes.

Nan was a lady, every inch of her, as far as Nature went; but she hadn't the ways of those "born." I could see that then, having my mother and my sisters and the dear old Rectory full in my mind. Perhaps I shouldn't so easily tell the difference now.

Nan didn't make any secret of her humble beginnings. She had been a girl in a baker's shop, and she had been nurse in a Children's Hospital.

I supposed that was where she picked up her gentle manners. But that hadn't lasted long, she said, and she had never had any time for improving her mind. And she told me, that her only friends were in a low walk of life.

That didn't matter to me. I fell in love with Nan, before we had been talking half an hour— before, indeed, we had ever spoken at all, and I asked her to marry me, just ten days before the ship landed at Australia.

She refused me. I hadn't supposed she would accept me right off. In spite of her frank cordiality where she trusted, there was a sort of impenetrableness and stand-offishness about Nan, which always rebuffed me. I felt somehow that she wasn't in love with me. But I thought that was her way. And I didn't expect to find that she was on the eve of being married to somebody else. And yet I might have guessed it if I hadn't been a fool.

That was the secret of her dreamy, happy smile— of her suppressed excitement as the voyage neared its close— of stray allusions which, preoccupied with my own hopes, I had totally misunderstood. I had got the impression that she was going to join her brother in Australia; now I found that it was her lover, who was awaiting her— her lover, whom she hadn't seen for seven years.

"Seven long, weary years, Mr. Curran," she said. "Seven years of waiting and hoping and struggling— everything, as it seemed, against us."

Then she told me something of hers and Nick's story; of the wrongful accusation and unjust sentence; of its remission, and of his efforts to earn sufficient money to pay her passage out, so that they might marry and work together.

But people wouldn't believe in Nick's innocence, and in spite of what he had done, there was a prejudice against employing him. Then, she said, luck had been altogether against Nick.

Just when he was getting on, his little savings had been lost; and then he had had a bad illness, and for a very long while she had heard nothing, and had been almost wild with anxiety.

Letters had miscarried, and at one time she had almost believed that he had forgotten her. But two years before he had written to tell her that he had his health again, and that he would never rest until he could make her his wife. And then had come a letter telling her, that he had found gold and would be a rich man— a letter enclosing a sum for her expenses to Australia.

"It seems like a dream," she said. "I wake of nights, and I can't believe, that, in a little while, I shall see my Nick again. And then I get afraid that he may be disappointed in me, and find that, while he has risen, I have sunk. For I am only a poor girl, and I've led a hard life.

"It was all right, while I was in the Children's Hospital, and I think they would have made almost a lady of me there; but Miss Challice died, and her brother was removed to another place, and things went wrong, and one day I found," she went on, "that I was turned out without a penny in the world.

"I don't know how I managed. I got into a factory and worked there, and after a bit, I got easier work, but I could never save enough to be of any use. Ah, Mr. Curran, if you knew how Nick and I have loved each other, and how we have looked forward to this meeting, you wouldn't grudge us our happiness."

It went to my heart, and touched all the best part of me, that girl's way of taking my disappointment.

She seemed to think it was her fault, and that she ought to have told me at the first.

She asked me to let her be my friend, and she asked me to go on teaching her and helping her to be worthy of Nick.

It's only good women that can rub it into a chap, by saying things like that.

Help to improve her for the joy of another man— a man probably, I thought then, not worthy to tie her shoe-strings! But I said I'd do my best to be her friend, and I'd love her always. And I think I had a lurking hope that the other fellow might throw her over at the last, or that she might find she had been making a mistake.

Of course I didn't believe all that, about the unjust sentence. I asked her where he was, and then it seemed like a fate, that she should say Eungella, and I told her that it was Eungella I was bound to.

She knew he was to meet her in Sydney. I knew it, too. And I shall never forget the wonderful look on Nan's face, as we steamed in between Sydney Heads into the new world.

She was trembling all through her little thin body, and her red lips were parted, and her eyes were like two shining stars set in darkness. "Oh, how beautiful it is!" I heard her murmur; "and Nick is there."

It was beautiful: the great rugged cliffs and the sun setting over the barren ridge of rock, and then the harbour with all its little bays lying blue and peaceful, and the town and the forts, and the lovely Botanic Gardens with their tropical trees and the feathery clumps of bamboos.

Nan had never seen such trees and plants before. But I don't think she distinguished anything; I am sure it was all like a picture in a dream to her. She could think of nothing, but that she was going to see Nick.

I felt her give a little gasp and a strange cry, as he came pressing forward from the crowd on the wharf. He never seemed to pause or hesitate. He knew her at once for his own.

He was a great, tall fellow, with a sunburnt face, and he had a noble presence—I was obliged to own that. And he had clear, blue eyes and fair, curly hair. He made me think, somehow, of one of the old Vikings of the North. I didn't wonder that she loved him.

"Nan!" I heard him say, as she cried "Nick!" and if I had ever had any hope of change in her or him, it died in that moment, when I saw the wonderful and immortal love in their eyes.

Love! love, real love! In spite of the cynics, there's nothing else in this universe that endures. I turned away feeling lonely and sick at heart. I'd had my dream, and it was over; but I knew that I should never love any woman as I loved Nan, and when I saw the two, drawn as it were into each other's arms, both uttering that strange yearning cry, of a longing that was at last to be fulfilled, I swore to myself that I'd be Nan's loyal brother and Nick's friend, as long as Fate kept us three together.

Eungella Diggings was a wild sort of place to bring a woman to— a straggling town, set in a hollow of the hills, with claims all about, and heaps of mullock, as they call the refuse after the crushing of the quartz, and queer, unsightly erections of machinery, of which the whirr ceased not day nor night.

Then there were mushroom tenements of canvas, and shanties of bark, and weather-board lean-to's, and zinc-roofed buildings, mostly of a public character— the Courthouse, and Bank, and The Star Office, and the many public-houses, into which all the scum of the earth seemed to gather itself. And some of its aristocracy, too.

There was a baronet doing a store business two doors from The Star, and "Honourables" were as thick as peas— or Chinamen, which is saying much the same thing at the Diggings.

There were all sorts, mostly scamps; and fine, daredevil scamps they were that went out to Australia in those days. Many are the stories I could tell, if I hadn't to tell that of Nick and Nan, about the Diggings crew.

There were lags, too, of course— old hands, as bad as you make 'em, and rough miners as honest as you make 'em, and Oxford and Cambridge men, and army swells, that you'd expect to see in London drawing-rooms.

There were women, too, of all sorts— the worst and the best; and drink flowing, and divine bank-notes flying, and knives gleaming, and tomahawks and pistols at men's belts.

I often wondered what Nan thought of it all, and if things startled her as much as they sometimes did me. Perhaps it was a good thing for me, that I had the new work and the queer experiences and the "copy" to think of; they helped me to reconcile myself to my disappointment, though I never saw Nan and Nick without a nasty pain at my heart, and at first I rather avoided seeing them at all.

I cannot think why Nick didn't marry Nan straight off— why he hadn't married her in Sydney, when she arrived, and brought her to Eungella as his wife.

He was rich enough. He had a good claim, and was turning out gold hand over hand. I believe that was what he wanted and intended, but Nan had some romantic notion that she wasn't educated enough to be his equal, and that it would be right of her to give him a little time before the knot was irrevocably tied, so that he might be quite certain of his own mind.

She was a noble creature, and I am not sure that she wasn't right. And she wouldn't take any more money from Nick, but insisted on working for herself. She talked it over with the doctor's wife, and they got her nursing jobs to do, and she was called there, as she had been called in the hospital, she said, "Sister Nan."

There was sickness enough at Eungella— accidents in the mines, and touches of fever and sunstroke cases as the great heat came on. It was early in November when we got to Eungella, and hot indeed then. But that heat was nothing to what came later.

Sometimes on the blazing December days, when the sun would beat on the zinc roofs, and the glare be reflected from the white stones and the mullock heaps, and when there was no shade to be got under the straight lank gum-trees, and the miners, red and grimy and perspiring, would loaf about the street, and the bars would be filled with the sound of swearing, I used to fancy that, if you wanted to find an earthly similitude of Hades, you couldn't go to a more likely place than Eungella Diggings.

There were drink cases, too— plenty of them, only Nick drew the line there. Though he humoured Nan's pride and independent spirit, he watched her as carefully as Dummy, the dog, had done in days gone by.

It was to last only a few months— this probation and testing of each other.

Nick made a bargain for a certain date, though he was always begging her to change her mind, and let him off a month or so, more especially as the nuggets thickened.

And when he pleaded in his earnestness, Nan's face, for all its wistful, resolute look, would brighten and brighten till it seemed to me the face of an angel, and would give me that nasty pain at my heart once more. But she was resolute always, and the richer Nick became the more she held to her determination.

Nan used to live with the Postmaster's wife, who was a good sort and something of a lady. She used to take Nan to the entertainments, that were given at Eungella, and there were balls and picnics and concerts, and even a kind of theatre, for money was so plentiful there just then, that actors and conjurors and people of that sort were bound to come.

This was all good for The Eungella Star, which flourished mightily, and I made quite a feature of "social topics."

It was a short time before Christmas when there was a big ball given at the Town Hall, as they called the zinc building. That was the wind up of some races, to which I went as in duty bound, and at which Nick ran and rode a horse, and Nan was present with the Postmaster's wife, and clapped Nick as he went victoriously past the winning post.

Nick could afford to keep racehorses in these days.

It was only a few days before, that he had come into my office— we had got great friends— I couldn't help liking the fine, generous fellow in spite of my love for Nan and the soreness of my disappointment. I am sure that Nan had told him about the whole affair, though he never said a word to me on the subject, and that was what made him so nice in his ways to me.

"Curran," he said, and his whole face was alight, "do you believe in a good fairy coming to bring a man luck? Nan is my good fairy— she has brought me luck. The gold has been coming up thicker and thicker ever since my darling came out to me. To-day has come the biggest luck of all. I'm a rich man, Curran— my fortune is made."

I could not help quoting the old proverb, but Nick only laughed.

"Unlucky in love! Looks like it, eh? Nan and I are a living disproof of all the saws. Ah, my Nan shall drive down the Ladies' Mile in her carriage yet, and I shall perhaps fulfil what has been— next to Nan— my life's dream!"

"What's that?" I said.

"To be a power, Curran— a power for good in that terrible city— that Babylon in which I was born. I want to do something for the poor and the vicious; I want to help to save such helpless, deserted children as were Nan and I from the fate that, but for God's mercy, might have been Nan's fate and mine. I want to get into the English Parliament, Curran; I want to plead the cause of the friendless— to get protection for the children— justice for the hireling."

There was a great solemnity in Nick's tone, and a curious prophetic look in his eyes.

He had been talking it all over with Nan, he said. They were to be married in two months' time, which was the limit she had fixed, and as soon as he was in a position to make a good start in the old country, he would leave Australia. And he would leave no stone unturned to clear himself of the charge, which would, he knew, cling to him through life, and hinder the useful career, which he might otherwise carve out for himself.

But I am getting away from the races. It was after Nick had won his race that a rather handsome man of a coarse, underbred type, well dressed, and looking what the Australians call "flash," was brought up by a friend of Nan's, and introduced as Mr. Tempest.

I was standing near Nan at the time. Nick had left her to see after something about his horse, and she was talking gaily to a little knot of her Eungella friends, elated at the good luck that had befallen Nick, and looking cool and fresh and surprisingly beautiful in her white dress which she had put on in honour of the occasion.

I had been noticing this "Mr. Tempest." He was a recent arrival at the diggings, and I did not like his manner or appearance. He was loud, boastful, and vulgar, with a veneer of smartness— and an occasional lapse into ways, that would have disgraced a navvy.

Just now he was on his good behaviour. He had evidently been greatly struck with Nan, who was certainly the belle of the Stand. He made her a very low bow and said a few words of compliment.

I saw an odd startled look come over Nan's face, and she looked at him closely, and repeated his name, as if she were puzzled. "Mr. Tempest?"

"Reginald Tempest— at your service," said he, with a kind of leer that made me inclined to strike him.

They began to talk, and at every word, the man said, I saw the mystified look deepening in Nan's face. She seemed glad when she spied Nick— away down the course— and proposed to me that we should walk and find him.

Before she went, however, Tempest had got her promise to dance several dances with him at the ball that evening.

Nan was greatly agitated. "Mr. Curran," she said as we walked along, "that man's name isn't Tempest. I wish you'd try and find out something about him; he is either the brother of a man I knew long ago— the man who got Nick into terrible trouble— or he is the man himself, and his name is Rummles. But he has grown a beard and moustache since then, and is changed in every way, and I can't be sure.

"Oh, if I knew!" she went on, excitedly. "He, and he only, can clear Nick, and give him the right to go about the world without a stain.

"Mr. Curran, if there's any spark of good feeling in him, he'd do it now— now, after Nick and I have suffered so. And now that Nick is rich and has a career before him, and wants so to do good— we'd pay him, Mr. Curran.

"I'd promise for Nick the half of his fortune—you know about the big nugget— and Nick wants me to marry him at once, and to get away from this dreadful place, and start a fresh life in England. But what's the good of his trying, with that stain always on him? Oh, I feel that I'd almost sell my soul to clear him."

She told me that was the reason she had promised the dances to Tempest. She wanted to find out if he was really Rummles. She said he had been fond of her once, and perhaps he would tell her the truth now.

Remembering a look in the man's eyes, when they had rested on Nan, I told her it was a dangerous game, and that she had best not encourage this Tempest, or Rummles, whichever he might be. But she shook her head, and her eyes had that shining look, which Nan's eyes always took, when she was determined.

We missed Nick somehow in that walk; and it wasn't for some time—not till we got back near the stand— that we saw him coming from it. His face was quite white, and I could see that he was deeply moved. He came up to Nan.

"Nan," he said, hoarsely, "I've seen him, I've recognized him— our enemy. And you've been speaking to him! Nan, I forbid you to do it. He will work us harm again, as he did before. And he has been talking about you— chaffing— pretending that he has made a conquest. I won't have it, Nan."

I never before saw Nick angry. He was almost angry with Nan, and when she told him that she had promised to dance with Rummles, forbade her sternly. But Nan tightened her lips. She had her own design, I knew. I wished that she would not try to carry it out.

There was a coolness, it was very evident, between Nick and Nan that evening. The Postmaster's wife told me they had almost had words on the way to the ball, because Nan wanted to do something that he wouldn't allow.

The Postmaster's wife was curious about it, and there was talk in the ballroom, for a good deal of interest attached to Nick just now, because of his splendid find and his rapidly increasing fortune.

Nan looked lovely. She had a soft colour, and her white dress set off her beautiful eyes and hair.

It was quite a grand affair, the ball. You wouldn't expect there could be anything so fine at a place like Eungella Diggings. The stewards had sent blacks into the scrub, and they had brought back branches of treefern and bunya cones and creepers, and what with flags and one thing and another, it was as pretty a sight as you could fancy.

The Baronet had turned out in swell evening clothes, and so had the "Honourables"— though nobody knew how they had managed it, as they had only brought their swags on their backs to the diggings. And they had got out all their London manners, and danced unlike the other men.

The Gold Commissioner was at the ball, too, and the Police Magistrate, and we had all got ourselves up, as well as we could.

Tempest was in regular dress clothes, with a flower in his button-hole, and looked like a Strand shopman, I thought.

Nan kept to her word and danced with him, and I saw them sitting out and talking very earnestly. But for all Nan's bright colour, she looked unhappy, and Nick scarcely went near her. "It's for Nick's good," she said to me, when we were dancing together. "Mr. Curran, I was right; it is Rummles, and he has promised me—  Oh! Nick will thank me some day."

Whatever Rummles had promised, he didn't seem in a hurry to keep his promise, and tried in the meantime to get as much as he could of Nan's company. He was always up at the doctor's and the Postmaster's, where Nan spent most of her time, and the consequence was that Nick went seldom to see her.

Nick began to look moody and wild; but he was so proud that he wouldn't go straight to Nan and have things out. He had got it into his head already, I could see, that she was being attracted to Rummles.

Now was my time, and the devil did whisper to me— I'll own it honestly— that if I chose to foment the mischief by working on Nick's suspicions, there'd be a chance for me yet with Nan. But I didn't yield to the temptation.

I did my best to put it away, and I even expostulated with Nan for letting Rummles come between her and Nick. The tears came into her eyes as I talked to her. She was looking very worn and white and thin. All she said was, "It won't last much longer, Mr. Curran; I've got his promise, and Nick will be grateful to me in the end."

That very afternoon, as I was going across the gully from The Star office to one of my claims, I came upon Rummles and Nan. They were standing close by the passionfruit hedge, which screened the Postmaster's garden, and she seemed to be pleading earnestly, and he was looking at her in a mad, wicked sort of way.

I crept round the hedge. I suppose it was dishonourable, but I couldn't help it. I wanted to take care of Nan, and I felt by that look on Rummles' face, that he was up to devilry.

"You've got to do this for me," I heard him say, "and then I'll do what you ask. I'll give you the proofs because I love you— yes, I love you, Nan, and I've always loved you, and I hate Nick because he has taken you from me."

"Oh, don't say that," she cried. "You mustn't say that. I love none but Nick, and you mustn't say you're doing it for love of me. You are doing it for love of right and justice."

"Very well," he said with a malign laugh, "I'm doing it for the love of right and justice. But I'm not going to abate my terms, Nan. You are to come yourself, and alone."

She was frightened, and argued with him, and begged him to let her bring Nick, but he roughly refused.

She had to come alone— to his hut up the gully— after dusk that evening, and he pledged himself to give her the proof of Nick's innocence. Then they parted, and I went on to the claim, a good deal disturbed in my mind.

I was afraid, that if I told Nick, there would be murder done, but I was determined Nan should not go to that villain's hut, without my being somewhere within earshot.

I skulked about the Postmaster's house till after sunset, and it was almost dark when I saw Nan come out, looking very pale and very frightened, but with the steadfast, resolute look in her face, that I knew meant she wasn't to be turned from her purpose. I felt easier about things when I saw her stop and take a little pistol from her belt, look at it, and hide it away again under her jacket. Nan was a brave woman, but she was not blindly foolhardy.

I followed her to Rummles' hut. I knew he had a mate, and he was by way of working hard, but I felt pretty sure he would have got rid of his mate that evening, and it turned out that he had.

He met Nan outside his hut, and he tried to make her go in, but she refused. She was very quiet and gentle, and she talked to him, as she might have done if she had been his sister.

He must have had a bad heart, indeed, not to be touched by the way she begged him, to be true to anything that was good in him, and to turn over a new leaf, and lead a worthy life. And then she promised him that she would always be his friend, and that she and Nick would do everything in their power to help him.

He listened to her for a bit, and then, when she begged him to give her the proofs he had promised her, he came closer to her, and broke out into a wild declaration of love; he told her he couldn't live without her, abused Nick, and implored her to throw Nick over and run away with him.

I don't know what idea he had in his mind about carrying her off.

Anyhow, he wasn't given the chance of trying the experiment. Directly his arm went out to draw Nan to him, there was a dash and a scuffle, and before I could fling myself forward, as I had been about to do on Nan's behalf, I saw that another man had darted from the shadow of the hut, on the opposite side to where I had hidden myself, and that it was Nick who was wrestling with his enemy, and who finally flung him to the ground.

The fellow lay half stunned; his head had struck against the post, which supported the bough-shade of the hut, and when I stooped over him, I saw that blood was streaming from his mouth and nose.

"I've knocked one of his teeth out," said Nick savagely. "Oh, Nan, Nan, my darling, how could you make me so anxious and miserable?"

They were in each other's arms, the two completely reconciled. And Nan begged Nick to forgive her, and then they saw me and there was an explanation, and a half hysterical laughing and crying on Nan's part.

Nick gripped my hand. "God bless you, Curran," he said. He told me how he, too, had been hanging round the Postmaster's house trying to make up his mind to go in.

And at first, in the dusk, he had fancied I was Rummles, and when he had seen Nan come out and me follow her, he had followed us both with rage and jealousy tearing at his heart, till, when he had reached the hut, and Rummles appeared, he had found out his mistake.

Rummles groaned at his pain, and Nick told me to stay and look after him, and took Nan's hand to lead her away.

Nan, however, clung to the idea of the proofs of Nick's innocence, which Rummles had promised her, and would not leave till Nick showed her, that there could be no proof except Rummles' own full confession, and that he had been fooling her all the time.

This episode brought things to a crisis between Nan and Nick. Nan was so remorseful for the suffering she had caused Nick that she was ready to agree to anything he wished. And the whole thing had shaken her nerves, and she longed to get away from Eungella.

As for Nick, he had an almost superstitious dread of Rummles, whom he looked upon as his evil genius, and was firmly convinced, that, if they all three remained at the Diggings, Rummles would in the end accomplish his evil purpose of separating him from Nan. And so, saying no word to anyone at first, he quietly made his arrangements for departure.

On Christmas Eve the downward steamer would touch at the seaport for Eungella— a half day's coach journey from the Diggings. And on the morning of Christmas Eve Nick was married to Nan.

Nick had got a special licence, and the wedding took place very early in the morning, and had but few spectators.

The day was tropical in its heat, but a faint breeze crept up the gully, and there were some misty clouds in the bright blue sky. The grapes were ripening in the Chinamen's gardens on the gully slope, and we gathered some jasmine flowers for Nan to wear. Strange irony of fate— to use the old penny-a-liner phrase— it was I who gave Nan to her husband.

I went with them to the seaport, and waited with them till the steamer came in.

It was just such a night as this, and the Southern Cross was shining as brightly as it shines on me to-night. And in a garden by the wharf there was a tree of great ghostly strong-scented trumpet flowers.

As I stood on the wharf and watched the steamer going out to sea, taking Nan out of my life for ever, the clock struck, and I knew it was Christmas Day. And it seemed a mockery of my sorrow, when the voices of the children came down to me, from the road above, singing the old carol of frosty nights and ice-bound roads and clear glistening Northern constellations, singing here, under these tropical skies and strange stars, and in the murmurous night laden with rich sickly perfume—

"God bless you, merry gentlemen,

Let nothing you dismay,

For Jesus Christ our Saviour

Was born this Christmas Day."

And Nan was gone!

I went back to Eungella and duly chronicled the wedding and the departure of the bride and bridegroom in The Star. And I wrote a leader on Nick's sudden gain of fortune, and on the finding of big nuggets in general, and I made Nick the text for a sermon on pluck and perseverance and fidelity.

But I didn't write anything about my own aching heart.

I was in The Star office reading over the slips of proof, one night not long after, when a digger I knew came in. He was one of the "Honourables," and he and I were rather chums.

"There's some 'copy' for you down at Ruffey's," he said.

Ruffey's was the big public-house of the place.

"I couldn't stand it. This devil's hole has finished me. I am going to clear out of it to-morrow."

"What's the row?" I asked carelessly. Rows were common enough at Eungella, and knife scratches too.

"Oh, a regular 'go-as-you-like-it' fight," he said. "A digger called Voucher— you know him, next claim to mine— and another fellow, a good-looking counter-jumper sort of fellow.

"They brought some tools in to sharpen, and they went drinking, and the end was a flourish of the tomahawk, Voucher was sharpening. Voucher hit the other chap on the head with the edge and rubbed it in with the flat.

"I made for the tomahawk and collared it after a scuffle, but not before the other chap had pulled out a knife. That was the signal for Voucher's bowie knife, and the other fellow got a nasty wound. I came off for a doctor, and I've sent him along to Ruffey's, and now I shall go and turn in."

One used to get callous to that sort of thing at Eungella. But it was "copy" for me. I prepared for a move to the scene of the fight.

"Who is the man, who has been stabbed?" I asked.

"The chap that was after that girl you saw married the other day— Sister Nan. He is not a friend of yours, is he? If he is, I am sorry for you. But you needn't be uneasy. He'll get over his scratch right enough. They all do, worse luck."

"No, he is not a friend of mine," I answered. And I did not wait for another word. An idea had taken possession of me. It seemed to me a call of fate. I took up my hat and rushed to Ruffey's.

The bar had a curiously quiet look. The men who were in it seemed awed, I thought.

There was a policeman hanging about, and policemen were not common at Eungella, and generally kept out of the way when there was a row.

I pushed my way into the inner parlour. A crowd of people were collected there, and I saw the doctor bending over a stretcher covered with a red blanket, on which lay the wounded man. The man was Rummles.

I asked the doctor what he thought of the case. "It's a bad business," he answered. "They have sent for the Police Magistrate. He says he wants to make a deposition, and he had better make haste."

Rummles looked up and saw me. "You'll do," he said, in a broken, hoarse voice. "I'm done for, and I'd best make what amends I can. I'm doing it for her; not for justice, mind you, but for her— for Nan."

The Police Magistrate and the clergyman came in just then. The doctor cleared a space round the dying man, and he made his last confession.

He confessed that it was he, who had stolen the watch and had placed it in Nick's pocket, and allowed Nick to be punished for the theft.

The deposition was read out to him, and, with an effort, he signed his name. "She's brought me bad luck," were his last words. "I've never had any luck since I took that watch. I've never had any luck, since I fell in love with Nan. And just as I was beginning to get on, she came back, and here's the worst luck of all. But I'd like her to know that I loved her, and that it's done— for Nan."

_____________________

9: The Last Crash

Kenneth Latour
fl 1922-1927

The Popular Magazine 7 Dec 1923

JOHN NORRIS, whom you will remember as the man who flew the first straightaway from Langstrom Field to Cristobal, had a touch of the mystic in him, for all he was the sort of a man that good men favor. And in this, it may interest you to know, Norris wasn't different from most men of his calling. He was different, however, in this respect, that he was outspoken with his ideas about unearthly matters whereas most airmen keep their mysticism to themselves.

If Norris knew you and liked you he would tell you stories— stories to prove his conviction that "things do not happen; they are arranged." He was a fatalist, you see.

Being a fatalist is one of the characteristic peculiarities of the flyer which he shares, perforce, in common with other men whose professions keep their spiritual elbows raw with constant rubbing against the harsh specter of sudden and violent death.

"There must be an explanation for the things that happen in the air," Norris once affirmed. "The papers call them 'accidents' but don't you believe it. They aren't accidents. They are consummations.

"I think this: A man is given a course to run; he runs it; and then he is wiped out. The manner, the time and the place of each man's last crash is already marked up on somebody's office tickler at Cosmic headquarters.

"Otherwise— why? Why should men like Hawker and Alcock, with all their biggest risks behind them, wash out on puny little expeditions that they undertook with no more thought than they would have given to drinking a cup of tea? Why should a ship running free and smooth catch fire in the air, for no good reason that is earthly?

"There is a reason, of course, but it has nothing to do with physical or mechanical flaws, if you ask me. The flaw is not the cause. You've got to look for the cause in something behind the flaw. Did you ever hear of 'Last Crash' Cobb?"

The story of Billy Cobb, and how he came to his last crash, was one of Norris' classics. There is no denying that it points a moral if you want to look at it that way.

This is what Halliday, the old crew chief, told the accident-investigating officer.

He was standing just outside hangar number three about six-thirty of that simmering August evening when Captain Cobb came in with No. 59. The pilot had executed his customary landing, a tight spiral directly over the field, followed by a spin and two accurately timed fishtails which brought the ship to ten feet where it leveled off up the wind and hovered swiftly to the ground.

Up to this point nothing unusual. Then the fantastic. A tire burst as the wheels touched. The crew chief heard the sharp report. A wheel crumpled. The right wing lurched sharply up and No. 59 dove into a sudden cart wheel.

The crew chief was heading across the field, calling "Ambulance!" as he went, before the tangle of ripped canvas, splintered spars and tortured wires came to rest on its back, quivering.

There followed a significant stirring amid the mass of débris. The crew chief uttered a prayerful ejaculation of relief and stopped running. He saw a man emerge from the wreck of No. 59. It was Cobb— unrecognizable! His face was black with blood; his goggles— But the rough preliminary transcription— slightly reconstituted— from the sergeant major's stenographic notes of the investigation tells the amazing incident in the words of the only close-up witness.

"Well, sir," the crew chief deposed, "like I said, I stopped when I seen the captain was starting to crawl out. I thought he was all right. I seen officers crawl out o' lots worse'n that, in my time, an' start cussin' as healthy as you please.

"But the minute I got a good look at Captain Cobb I knew different. You couldn't see his face for blood, an' by the way he put out his hands, kind o' feelin' ahead of him, I knew he was blind. His goggles, like you seen, was all crushed into his eyes.

"Well, sir, he staggered a step, or maybe two. Me, I was sort o' paralyzed. I just stood an' watched. The captain was a good friend o' mine an' it was my ship done it. I seen him stiffen up all of a sudden. Then he laid himself down careful, just like he was easin' into bed, you might say. He didn't fall, sir; he just laid down like he meant to be comfortable.

"Well, then he raised up a little on one elbow, an'— an'— Now, sir, you says I got to tell you what I seen an' I'm tellin' you. You don't have to believe it, sir. But I wasn't more'n twenty feet away, sir, an' I seen this, an' heard it, too. Maybe it didn't happen that way, but I seen it that way!

"The captain he raises up, like I said. An' he appears to be starin' at somethin' just over his head. He hadn't his eyes any more but he was starin' just the same, without 'em. He kind o' rubs his free arm across his eyes— what was his eyes, that is— an' his sleeve wipes away the blood on his face. Then I seen that he was smilin', sir. Yes, smilin'! I ain't never seen no smile like that, an' I hope I never will!

"Well, sir, it might 'a' been a second an' it might 'a' been ten minutes the captain stays that way, propped up, starin' at nothin' my eyes could see, an' smilin'. Then he speaks. I could hear him plain. His voice was as strong as mine right now and I could tell by it he was awful glad about somethin'.

"This is what I hear him say: 'Hello, Jennie, sweetheart. It's the last crash and you kept your promise. Let's go!'

"He said that. You won't believe it. Nobody believes it. But he did. An' when it's said he lays down again, flat on his back an'— an'— reaches up with both hands. He seems to find somethin' to take hold of there in the air. For a minute I can't make out what he's doin'. Then I get it. He is holdin' somebody's head close to his face— at least he thinks he is— an' he is—he is— well, he is kissing somebody!

"After that, sir, his hands drop an' he lays there an' never moves again. When I get to him he is dead as far as I can see. He'd got the machine-gun butts in the head, the way they all do.

"I don't know nothin' more, sir, except that a little ways back from where the ship crashed I found a bit of wood with a big nail in it. Which might explain how that tire come to bust."

How much of the old crew chief's deposition actually found credence with the members of the crash board and the personnel generally of Langstrom Field, all of whom, of course, came into possession of more or less elaborated versions of the story, cannot be definitely determined. Publicly the old mechanic was scoffed out of court. The C. O., who was worried for the state of his pilots' nerves, took occasion to call the talkative witness into private session and threaten certain unspeakable consequences if he let his tongue grow any longer.

So that the affair was a three-week sensation, with everybody talking about it and everybody proclaiming intrepidly that it was all damfoolishness and very bad medicine for a flying field. There are certain things that flying men always affect to disdain— and always take more seriously than anybody else.

There was one particular discussion of the case, on the night of the crash, in the lounge at the officers' club. But to appreciate what passed between the three, Norris, Weyman, and Crawley, who held that quiet conference you must know many things that went before.

ii

THREE YEARS intervened between Billy Cobb's first crash and his last. He had three crashes in all—which, as any pilot will tell you, is not a high score for so long a time, particularly when you consider the amount of flying that Cobb packed into those years.

He was a man who originally took the dangers of his profession philosophically.

"Sure, there's always got to be a last crash," he would say when the question of hazard came up, "but it won't be today." Hence his sobriquet.

And having satisfied himself that all the cotter pins were clinched in place and the controls well greased at the bearings he would swing into the cockpit, buckle his safety belt, and command "Contact!" with the perfect assurance of the pilot who knows that barring an act of God he is safe in his own hands.

Some pilots fly on faith, others fly on nerve, but Last Crash Cobb flew on skill which was consummate and knowledge which was complete. It was no fault of his that tragedy entered his life by way of the air.

He was an aviator neither by chance nor by interest. He was an aviator by vocation. And fortunate it was for him that he first saw the light of day in a flying age for had he been of an earlier generation it is difficult to imagine what would have become of him. He had gone to flying at the first opportunity as the steel goes to the magnet.

There was something ascetic about his devotion to his profession. He wore his wings as a priest wears the cloth— reverently. What the air might bring him he never questioned. Advancement, power, gain he never considered excepting as they might be turned back to the profit of the air.

"I'll tell you what," he said one day to an heretical upstart who was talking about flying pay and trying to prove the candle not worth the risk; "this is no game for a brainy young business man like you who's going to be a major general some day. Clever boys don't thrive on the air. What we want here is men with hearts. Go back to the school of the line, sonny. You'll be a great man in a few years. But you'll always be a bum flyer!"

And again he was sent before a general court and deprived of ten files for bearding a lieutenant colonel of the technical section with the following sally:

"The asphalt is all cluttered up with kiwis like you. You ground grippers are set to make the conquest of the air if it costs the last flyer. Did you ever fly? No! Why don't you join the tank corps then?"

That was Last Crash Cobb. He was of the same breed that makes the sea leaders. Narrowed to his own sphere he was, without a doubt, as the sailor is; and indifferent to all that lay outside it, impatient especially of ignorant meddlers who tried to dictate and interfere. He could abide the man who was frankly not of the air and approached him without pretense, but the airfaring dilettante, the "expert" whose vicarious knowledge was always on parade, he could not tolerate, nor would he. However, that is beside the point excepting as it gives some vague index to the character of Cobb and his type— a type that will live some day in tradition as the type that won the sea now lives.

With airplanes he had a way and an understanding that might be likened to the way and the understanding of certain men with horses. To Billy Cobb an airplane was a sentient thing, with life and personality. The sailor has the same feeling about ships. He would appraise a craft at a glance and in that glance instantly catalogue its faults and its talents, knowing with a knowledge that is not promulgated in the manuals of the technical section just what might be expected of that ship— whether she were sluggish on the level, fast, or very fast; whether swift on the climb, long on the glide, tricky on the turns, treacherous on the landings, and all the other points that a pilot must canvass in his ship before he may invest her with his confidence.

He never asked more of a ship than was built into it, either. And it outraged him to see anybody else do it.

"Hinky," he said to his roommate one evening— this was during his first detail as a tester at McCook— "if you treat that bus of yours the way you're doing any longer I'm going to lick you. It's fiendish cruelty. She ain't made to zoom like that. What's more, she's got spirit and she's going to take it out on you some early morning. You watch. You'll try her patience an extra degree too much and we'll have to pick the dirt out of your teeth before we plant the daisies on you."

And the records show that "Hinky" Morse did not live to get his licking. For he rode in a baggage car the next night, inside a long white box.

Billy Cobb, sitting on the floor beside the casket— he refused the comfort of a Pullman berth— blew his nose frequently, and to the baggage man pronounced Hinky's brutal epitaph, between stations.

"I feel pretty bad about this," said Billy. "I don't mind about him so much," indicating the pine box; "he asked for it and he got it. But you should see what he did to the poor little ship. It's birds like him that give the service a black eye. Gosh darn it all!"

He blew his nose eloquently.

"I've got a fierce summer cold," he explained.

"Oh, sure," said the baggage man tactfully. "This flyin's a mighty risky game, anyhow."

"It's a damn lie!" exploded Billy Cobb, and put his handkerchief away until the argument was over.

All of which may seem like a great deal of bootless rambling. And rambling it is— but not bootless. The only way to illumine a portrait properly is to light it from various angles.

The important thing to know about Billy Cobb is that he was intensely earnest about the craft of which he was a master. He loved it and revered it and lived for it only. If you believe that you may then understand better how the things that happened to him came about as they did, and perhaps—perhaps— you may think you perceive why.

It has just been said that Cobb lived only for his profession. That should be qualified. There was a brief period when he lived only for Jennie.

Until Jennie appeared Cobb had regarded women with the same indifferent toleration that bespoke his attitude toward everything else outside the level frontiers of the airdrome. But Jennie was of the air herself. She commanded devotion the minute he set eyes on her. He was born to Jennie just as he had been born to the air.

It was on a bright May morning at Langstrom Field—this was three years ago, remember— that they discovered each other and for all spiritual purposes were instantly merged into unity. Billy had just come from officers' call at headquarters where he had met the new C. O.— not for the first time in his life. The old C. O., a man named Weifer, to Billy's intense gratification had departed to a staff detail with the D. M. A. the night before.

"Staff is right!" mused Billy, reflecting on the demerits of the departed. "But cane or crutch would be more accurate. He needed one to keep his wings from limping. The big kiwi!"

Now a kiwi, "for the information of all concerned," as the technical bulletins put it, is the human counterpart of a certain type of training plane with reduced wing surface which roars like a lion but never leaves the ground.

Billy was still thinking anathema on the score of kiwis in general and Weifer in particular when he reached the hangar and was confronted with Jennie. His own scout ship was standing just outside the curtains with the blocks at the wheels and the engine idling gently. The crew chief, Hansen, was in the seat, holding back the stick. A little cloud of dust eddied in the mild backwash of the propeller and blew outward across the green expanse of the field. The little ship was straining at her blocks and vibrating just a trifle along her stubby fuselage as a whippet strains at the leash and trembles at the haunches on the scratch line. She was settled back taut against her stocky tail skid, with her landing gear gathered in a crouch beneath her stream-lined belly and her nose lifted eagerly toward a perky white cloud that drifted temptingly across the blue of a tender spring sky. Her four varnished wings— she was a biplane— stretched out, it seemed to Cobb as he came up, in a pathetic gesture of appeal to be off.

Jennie was standing just by the right wing tip, a caressing hand curled lightly about the leading strut. She was drinking in the picture of the eager little craft with a wistful eye. Billy appraised her at a glance, much as he appraised airplanes. And it struck him suddenly that he wanted to know this girl— wanted to know her right away, and intensely. She was small— like a scout ship he thought. And her nose turned up, not arrogantly but eagerly— also like a scout. And she was lithe and taut and alert. A queer comparison flashed through Billy's mind.

"By golly," he exclaimed, half aloud, "she's stream-lined!"

Ordinarily Cobb would have resented the presence of a woman on an airdrome. In the first place he sensed an incongruity between most women and airplanes— a lack of understanding and sympathy. In the second place he was shy and uncomfortable in the presence of women anywhere.

But now without any of his usual gaucherie and diffidence with womankind he went straight to Jennie, slipping off his oil-stained helmet and exposing a shock of crumpled light hair that matched appropriately the viking blue of deep-set steady eyes.

Jennie, watching him advance, saw that he was not tall, but heavy for all that, a solid four-square pattern of a man, thick through and wide across, with stocky legs that had a suspicion of a bow. She guessed that he had ridden horses before airplanes, which was true.

Their meeting was singularly devoid of either form or reticence. They might have been childhood companions. Yet neither had set eyes on the other until that moment.

Jennie was the first to speak, forestalling the casual greeting and introduction that had risen easily to Billy's lips.

"Is she yours?" asked Jennie, patting the polished wing of the silver scout.

"Mine and the government's," grinned Billy. "But she minds me best. Like her, eh?"

"Don't you?"

"You bet!"

"Then for goodness' sake hurry and take her up top before she gets hysterics waiting. Her plugs will be all foul with impatience if she has to idle much longer!"

Billy shot a startled glance at the girl.

"Gosh," he said, "you know ships, don't you?"

"I love them," said Jennie.

"Well," said Cobb, "this little bus will stand a lot of affection, sure."

He slipped on his helmet and was fumbling with the chin strap as he turned to circle the ship's wing. Jennie laid a restraining hand on his arm.

"Let me fix that for you," she offered.

The gesture had the untaught spontaneity of twenty years of innocence. There was no art in it, nor coquetry. It was the purest act of friendliness. Which is probably why it was so deadly. Billy Cobb, submitting, looked down at Jennie's earnest face, her tightly pursed lips, the little wrinkle of concentration between her slender brows; he felt the small fingers working strap and buckle at his throat; and a new religion reared its altar in his heart.

He waved the mechanic from the cockpit and swung under the top plane and into the seat— but not until he had circled the ship twice with an eye to details like cotter pins and turnbuckles, and a hand to the tension of flying wires and fabric. Jennie could just see the top of his leather-sheathed head turning slowly from right to left as he ran his eyes over the cluster of dials on the instrument board. She heard the engine drop and pick up as he tested first one magneto and then the other. She saw the ailerons and tail surfaces fan the air tentatively as he swung the stick and rudder bar.

Hansen, the mechanic, fell back to the tail and propped himself on the empennage.

"All fast, sir," he bawled. "Let her out when you're ready."

Notch by notch the throttle moved forward. The engine speeded in a crescendo roar until it was screaming off a clear sixteen hundred r. p. m., and mechanic, airdrome, and the hills of the distant landscape disappeared from Jennie's view behind the choking veil of dust that billowed back whirling in the cyclone of the propeller stream. She did not flinch nor stop her ears.

Gradually the uproar subsided, the dust cloud thinned, mechanic and landscape reappeared, and the motor resumed its drowsy, chuckling drone, like water bubbling in a giant boiling pot.

Jennie nodded a judicial nod of approval to herself. Nothing overlooked. Nothing hurried. Here was a pilot who gave a ship a chance, a pilot after her own heart! Billy had declared that the girl knew ships. She did— and pilots too. The colonel, her father, had swung in the baskets of the early army spheroids when the Wrights were still bicycle tinkers with absurd dreams. She had entered life in the shadow of the hangars. She had played dolls in the cockpits of old JN's. The song of the propeller and the blast of the exhaust had been her reveille and her lullaby since days she could no longer recall. She knew the ships of the air and the men that rode them, for they were her life and her people. She did not know Billy's name yet, but she knew Billy. He belonged, at sight, to the elect of the upper levels.

He was waving a brown hand from side to side above the cockpit now, the signal to clear away. The mechanic jerked the blocks from the wheels and hung back against a wing while Billy eased the tail and swung the ship around with gentle prods of the throttle, heading out for the field. His upflung arm saluted Jennie as he taxied away toward the line.

She watched the take-off. Nose down, tail flaunting high, Cobb drove the ship up the wind till it took the air cleanly without sag or falter. A line of blue showed between the far-off hilltops and the hull of the craft before he altered course or angle. Then the nose dropped sharply, just a hair but just enough, the left wing flipped up, wheels and undercarriage flashed into view against the silver of the ship's belly, and she was around in a vertical turn and heading full out along the back track and up in a thirty-degree climb with the needle on the altimeter registering, as Jennie guessed, a thousand feet a minute.

Back and forth above the field Billy shuttled the ship, his turns at the end of each soaring leg crackling with precision. At five thousand he caught the cloud, drove up under it, passed it, spun around on a wing tip, and shot downward. The wisp of drifting vapor engulfed the airplane for an instant. Then with gun cut and wires screaming the silver scout emerged, whooping groundward with flaunting tail waving the astonished cloud an impertinent Godspeed.

Billy's landing was a classic. At three thousand over the downwind limit of the airdrome Jennie saw him start his left-hand spiral. It began with a steady, majestic sweep. Twice around the spacious rim of an invisible half-mile funnel the silver airplane moved, her engine purring at an easy twelve hundred. Then the inverted cone of its course grew tighter. Higher and higher the flashing wings tipped as Billy inched back on the tilted stick. Faster and faster the shortening circuit ran until ship and pilot were whirling down the air like a chip in a racing vortex.

They reached a point where the diameter of the spiral was scarce two airplane lengths. That was the spout of the funnel. And through the spout they spun vertically, wings whirling in a silver disk about the eccentric axis of the flashing fuselage.

At five hundred Billy set the stick at neutral and nudged the rudder bar. The spinning stopped with calculated precision. Gently he drew back on the stick. The tail dropped. She sailed along on level keel. The grass came up to kiss her wheels. A procession of hangars shot past. She hovered, caressing the grass blades with tire and skid. A faint whispering answered as she touched the sod.

Another hundred feet she ran, the soil showing black in the torn wake of the guttering skid. She stopped.

Jennie, reaching out a hand, touched her polished wing, incredulous.

"I never saw anything so perfect," she breathed. "You brought her to my feet!"

Perhaps already Jennie dimly perceived something symbolic in the landing of Billy Cobb— at her feet.

She gave him her small firm hand to steady him when he heaved himself up from the cockpit and leaped to the ground. They walked off the field together and down the gaunt post street between bare rows of flimsy frame huts.

Jennie stopped before one of them larger than the rest that boasted a screen-inclosed veranda. Odd lots of weird furniture— the potpourri of outlandish home equipment that bespeaks the officer of many "fogies" who has gathered his store of household gods in all the ports of the seven seas—littered the minute grass plots on either side of the cinder path to the door. Sweating men in dingy overalls and campaign hats were bearing it in, table by table, chair by chair, trophy by trophy, to a running fire of humorous comment.

"I live here," said Jennie.

"Oh," said Billy, "you're the new C. O.'s family, aren't you?" It was the first time he had considered who she might be or where she had come from, so completely had he accepted her on sight.

"I'm Jennie Brent, yes."

"Sure," said Billy. "Now I get why you're so— so— dog-goned— well, full out!"

She colored very pleasantly.

"Oh," she smiled—and in her smile there was a combination of pleasure and wistfulness hard to picture and harder to interpret— "you think that?" She turned wholly serious and wholly wistful. "Why?"

"Gosh!" he temporized, "I— I don't know. But anyway, Colonel Brent's daughter—"

She flushed with pleasure and interrupted:

"You know daddy, then?"

"You bet!"

"Then you've got to come in for tea this afternoon. We'll be all settled by then. I'll tell daddy you're coming. Oh, and I almost forgot— how shall I describe you to him?"

"But— but I was going to take a flying kiwi up for his pay hops."

"Why," exclaimed Jennie in mock astonishment, "I thought you knew Colonel Brent!"

It was Billy's turn to be astonished.

"What's that got to do—" he began.

"Don't you know what daddy does with flying officers who daren't fly without a nurse?"

"I— I'm afraid I don't."

"He lets them live on base pay until they're transferred to the infantry, where they belong. Daddy sees that they're transferred, too. So, you see, you're not going to fly a kiwi this afternoon after all."

"Hallelujah! What time's tea?"

"Five o'clock. Who's coming, please?"

"Bill Cobb."

"I thought so," declared Jennie.

"Hunh?" he grunted, taken aback. "How come?"

"I heard you were stationed on this post, and you check with the specifications, sir. You are not without honor among your own people, you know."

She turned up the cluttered cinder path, annexing a bamboo stool with one capable hand and a teakwood humidor with the other as she went. Billy stood shamelessly and stared after her until she disappeared in the house.

ii

IT IS TOLD of Billy Cobb that he never had to woo the air.

The first instructor to take him up reported back to the pilotage office an hour later in a semihysterical condition.

"Say," he demanded of the senior instructor who had assigned him to introduce Cadet Cobb to the opening chapter of the flying primer, "what're you trying to do— kid me?"

"Kid you! How come?"

"This What's-his-name cadet— this Cobb! If he's a cadet I'm an ostrich!"

"What's the trouble with Cobb?"

"Trouble with Cobb? Trouble with me, you mean! He's been showing me how to fly for the last half hour. Come out to the line. You've got to see this!"

Of course it was weeks before Billy was officially turned loose and rated for his wings. The office of the D. M. A. is a stickler for preservation of the forms and appearances. But actually the marvel spread through hangar, shop, and barrack that day. Cobb was "over the hump!"

It was the first day, mind you, he had ever warped a wing or kicked a rudder bar. He had laid his hand on the airplane and the airplane in that instant had become his to do with as he willed. And this was so, of course, precisely because some occult well of sympathy within him taught the man exactly what he must will to do— and what must not be willed.

There was that same sympathy in him where Jennie was concerned. And he won her, as he won the air, instantly— without wooing. His spirit laid its spell upon her heart just as his hand had set its cunning on the airplane. The air and Jennie. Both became his in the hour of meeting. He was not then aware of it but when Jennie Brent had slipped the strap through the buckle of his helmet at that first encounter she already belonged to him. The gesture was the first signal between them of dedication on her part and consecration on his. Once again Bill Cobb was "over the hump."

In all their brief life together the analogy between Jennie and the air with respect to Billy Cobb holds true. Thus, it was nothing but the idle matter of appearances that kept Cobb waiting those weeks succeeding his conquest of the airplane before his pilot's rating was bestowed. And it was the same matter of appearances that withheld for a space the open avowal of Jennie's surrender. A woman has need to be at least as jealous of the forms as the D. M. A.

Eight weeks to a day after Billy's first encounter with the air— in 'seventeen things happened faster in the service than they do now— his rating had come through. Was it blind coincidence, or was it a cunningly fitted fragment in that symbolic mosaic of analogy which made their relationship so remarkable, that Jennie's overt surrender should likewise have chanced exactly eight weeks after their first meeting?

June was passing in the farewell blaze of an incomparable sunset. A little wind wandered curiously into the airdrome bringing a breath of grassy freshness from the tablelands beyond the coastal hills to mingle with the acrid bouquet of fresh-burned castor oil and gas. It rippled the canvas curtains of the Bessoneau hangars where they stood in a massive row, shoulder to shoulder, silent, placid, like elephants chained and sleeping, long shadows stretched behind them. It quivered the flaccid form of the landing sock, hanging nerveless against its staff by the door of the pilotage hut at the end of the hangar line. But most of all it stirred the heart of Jennie, standing near an open Bessoneau, peering steadfastly into the gold and glory of the west, and waiting. For at the same time that it kissed and cooled her cheek it murmured in her ear a faintly intoned chantey— the song of a distant homing motor.

Billy was coming at last! He was an hour overdue, the longest hour Jennie could recall. But it was all right now. She could hear the singsong shouting of the full-out engine clearly.

"Billy is coming!" That was the burden of the engine's song that reached her down the wind. Jennie marveled at the sweetness of that music.

Her eyes confirmed the message of the wind. High above the purple summit of a rose-framed thunder head she made him out, a buoyant purple speck in a dazzling flood of wine-clear gold. She watched the speck until it grew to a flake, the flake until it became an airplane, the airplane until it roared above her head, crossed to the downwind limit of the field, spun about with a flash of upflung wing and flirting tail, and shot for the landing with a sudden hushing of the deep-voiced engine.

The silver ship rolled up with friendly little snorts and chuckles and stopped beside her. Billy took her upstretched hand and jumped down. They left the plane to Hansen and his crew and walked away together in the twilight down the row of brooding hangars.

"Oh," Jennie sighed happily, "I am glad, Billy!"

"Glad? Why, particularly, Jennie?"

"I— I don't know. How was the ship today?"

"Better than ever, Jennie."

He paused, hesitating to voice the thought that followed, groping, too, for words to give it form. Then:

"Do you know," he said, "there's something about that ship and you, Jennie, that— Well, what I mean is that when I am with that ship and when I am with you I sort of feel— the same way. Kind of comfortable and— and, well, happy, Jennie. Do you know what I mean?"

He felt her sway toward him. He felt her hand on his arm.

"Perhaps"— she answered, a little breathlessly, "perhaps I do, Billy—tonight!"

"Why 'tonight,' Jennie?"

"Because— because—"

They walked on with no more speech until they reached the pilotage hut beyond the hangars. It was dim and silent. They sat down, side by side, on the low step before the door. Excepting where Hansen and his crew were tucking the silver ship to bed by the flitting light of a trouble-shooter's lamp, two hundred yards away, no life appeared anywhere on the glooming expanse of the quiet field.

"Jennie," said Billy Cobb, "I know why that little ship reminds me of you."

"Why, Billy?"

"Because I love it, too."

There was just enough of the blue-gray twilight left for Billy to see the widening of her eyes at that and the accentuation of the wistful curve at either corner of her mouth.

She sat considering his face intently. Then she turned away, leaned a little forward, clasped her hands about her knees, and stared off at something he could not see— something in the remote distance, beyond the faintly outlined crests of the western hills.

"You are sure," she asked at length, very softly, "that it is true— what you have said about the ship and me, Billy?"

"I am sure," he said. "It is true now, it will always be true, Jennie—till—till the last crash."

He thought she shuddered just a little. Then:

"Why do you always say that— that— about the last crash, Billy?"

"Why— why, I don't know. Just a habit— means something a long ways off, I guess."

"Oh!" said Jennie, a faint tremor in her voice. "I— I hope so, Billy."

"Why, Jennie—"

"Nothing, Billy— nothing at all. A foolish idea. It's gone."

She paused, looked away, then turned her face to his again.

"And just what," she questioned, a little timidly, a little eagerly, "did you mean, Billy, about— about the ship—and— and me?"

Billy Cobb drew a deep breath.

"I will show you— dear," he said.

At ten o'clock a single figure moved through the moon-cast shadow of the pilotage hut. At the edge of the shadow the figure paused. There was a little noise— such a noise as tokens the parting of close-pressed lips. The single figure became twain. Billy Cobb and Jennie Brent emerged reluctantly into the argent flood that bathed the airdrome and passed again along the row of canvas stables where the airplanes slept, under the silver benediction of the moon.

iv

THE WEDDING was set for late October. Jennie had sounded out the attitude of authority toward an earlier consummation.

"Any time you say, youngster," agreed the C. O. "But the service needs your bridegroom pretty badly this summer. Wouldn't October do?"

"Daddy! Over three months!"

Old "Full-out" Brent, tall and lean, keen-eyed, straight-nosed, straight-browed, square-chinned, and square-souled, looked down at his daughter. A whimsical smile twitched his short mustache.

"I remember a similar occasion," he reminisced slowly, "when a girl waited three years for me, because the service asked it."

Jennie studied her father's boots.

"I forgot," she pleaded. "I belong to the service, too."

Billy took it philosophically.

"Come to think of it," he acquiesced, "there is a lot to do around here this summer. And it takes at least six weeks to be decently married. October's a bully month, too."

During July Billy worked prodigiously. It was unreasonably hot, and the engineering section, which Billy directed, got the reaction in the shape of an endless procession of stricken motors.

The post was overrun, too, with visiting officers of every clan and nation of the army— officers of the line, officers of the staff, officers of the quartermaster and ordnance and signal corps, officers of the reserve, shavetails of the National Guard, and even a detachment of cadets from the Academy—most of them detailed to look on and grow wise, some of them detailed for technical work, but all of them crowding, elbowing and clamoring for a taste of the air.

And Billy did his bit with the rest of the post to satisfy them— so much so that five hours of grueling work with the stick, in heavy DH's, with the air a bedlam of cross-chopping heat bumps to make it more interesting, was an average component of his routine day. This, you understand, "in addition to his other duties" with the engineering section.

His working day started on the flying line an hour before reveille and ended, as a rule, in the repair shop, any number of hours after tattoo. He might have side-stepped the flying, in his capacity of engineer, but he would not. He knew that the ground lubber who has once made a flight talks about it with expansive enthusiasm for the rest of his life. And he made it his job to see that no ground lubber left Langstrom Field without a mouthful of nice things to say about the air. Smooth ladylike flights he gave them, ironing out the heat bumps to the limit of his ability with deft twitches of the stick, wheeling ponderously around the turns, emphasizing the ease and simplicity of flight, minimizing the intricacy and hazard.

"Propaganda hopping," he called it.

In one sense he welcomed the heavy program. It kept him too busy and too tired to dwell on the tantalizing weeks that stretched drearily ahead between him and the dazzling goal of October. But the grind told on him heavily. Only his burning enthusiasm for the advancement of the flying idea kept him at it. No other pilot on the field— and there were other enthusiasts at Langstrom that summer— could have equaled the pace he set. The groundsman has no conception of what air fatigue can do in a few hours. Cobb grew lean and gray. The change was gradual but by August it had become distinctly noticeable.

And Jennie, watching him jealously, protested at last.

"Billy," she chided one steaming evening when, for a miracle, he had escaped the slavery of the shop— or rather repudiated it out of sheer weariness— "you are a wreck! I suppose you've got to keep the Liberties turning up but you might let down a little on the propaganda hops. Are they necessary, so many of them?"

"I think they are. Aviation is in a bad way, Jennie. You know that. It's crash, crash, crash, the way these barnstormers at the summer resorts and half-winged kiwis on some of the army posts handle ships. We don't crash on this field. Not since the colonel came and weeded out the duds, God bless him. We don't joy hop. We really do aviate. And the more of it we do, the better for the general average, don't you see? Why, we've scored a hundred hours a day with only thirty ships active since July first. And not a shock absorber sprained yet, excepting by some of these outside birds from the reserve and the guard. That's something to shout about. That's what makes the ground grippers take heart. It's the sort of thing we're doing here this summer that makes the good name of aviation, in the long run— not speed records and cross-continent flights. It's the good work, Jennie, and we've got to keep it up— keep it up till the last crash!"

Jennie drew a quick breath.

"But must you wear yourself out to do it, dear? Is it— is it quite safe for you to go on when you're so tired? Can't you ease off, just a little?"

"Really, I don't mind. I'm tired, maybe, but aside from that I feel great. And winter's coming. Lots of rest then. In the meantime, every outsider I take up top, Jennie, is going to head straight away from this post and 'tell the world.' Fly 'em sweet and often and land 'em safe. They never forget it! Keep at it everlastingly. That's the only way. Till the last crash!"

"Billy! You've said that twice tonight. Please—please don't!"

"Don't what, Jennie?"

"That gruesome phrase about the last crash! Please— I don't like it, Billy. It— it makes me think!" She shuddered.

Cobb was startled. He peered at her. They were sitting on the screen-inclosed veranda. Inside the house, where Colonel Brent was reading, a table lamp stood by a window and its shaded light, shining through ruffled chintz curtains, illumined Jennie's profile with a soft glow. The subdued radiance was just sufficient for Billy to apprehend the fleeting contraction that swept her wistful features like a black gust. Just sufficient, but more than enough to show him the thing which then and there unsettled and reversed the entire philosophy he had lived by until that moment.

For the thing he had seen on Jennie's face in that swift flash of revelation was more than distaste, concern, or anxiety. It was stark fear!

"Jennie!" he cried. "What—"

She bit her lip and looked away. The secret was out; the secret she had been trying to hide even from herself. She was afraid— terribly afraid— of the air. And she had spent her short life disdaining folk who were guilty of that same weakness!

But that was before she had met Billy. Then the air and the folk and the things of the air had been her chief interest. It had seemed to her natural and right that the air should be served with tribute of limb and of life, if need be. For that was the creed in which she had lived, under the tutelage of her father. Now she had a new creed, a new religion. The air had become a secondary faith. Billy Cobb was all that really mattered to her. He obscured all the old horizons she had known.

Yet, even as she realized this, she knew there was no alternative for what must lie ahead. It was Billy Cobb, the man of the air, that she loved, after all. As anything else, in any other rôle, she would not have loved him at the first. As anything else she could not think she might love him to the last. There could be no turning off or backing out. She must take him and the air of which he was an integral part together. She must either master her fear or live with and endure it.

Miserably she sat, with averted face, and stared into the dark, until she found the answer. She felt his troubled eyes seeking and questioning and turned at last to face him— and the issue.

"Billy, dear," she said, "I am sorry— oh, so sorry— that I couldn't spare you this. I scarcely knew it was there, myself, you see; and it popped out tonight, and you saw it, before I had learned to handle it. But sooner or later it must have come out. I couldn't have locked it up inside me forever. So perhaps it is just as well we should have it out now, and over with."

"You mean you really worry— about my flying, Jennie?"

"You have seen it, Billy. A lie about it now would do no good—only tantalize you."

"But, Jennie, you never—"

"I know, dear. I never did, before."

"Then why now?"

"Because— because— oh, it's hard to talk of this, Billy dear! Because I never had anything quite— quite so— so precious at stake!"

"Oh, my gosh!" groaned Billy Cobb.

He hitched his armchair closer and took her hand in both of his.

"Listen, Jennie," he pleaded; "this isn't so. It can't be so, it simply can't! It's the— the heat. And this— well, this waiting— for October, you know. Your nerves— Look here! If I thought this would last I'd— yes, by gosh— I'd chuck—"

"No!"

The word was scarcely more than whispered but it carried the intensity and arresting power of an outcry.

"Billy! That was just what I was afraid you'd try to say. Don't you see? You mustn't— you can't! Why, I wouldn't marry you if you did. I'd hate myself too much. And— yes, it seems impossible but I know it's true— I shouldn't love you, either, as I do now. It's so strange, so contradictory! I don't try to understand it but I feel it and know it. I am afraid for you when you fly yet I couldn't care for you, not wholly, if you didn't. There is a part of you that belongs to the air. And that is the part that I love best. With that gone—" She dared not go on to the completion of the thought.

Billy Cobb drew a deep breath. He leaned far forward and kissed her. And when he took his face from hers there were tears on his cheek. But his own eyes were dry. He kissed her again and she clung to him forlornly.

At length they drew apart. Billy took her hand again and patted it.

"I understand," he comforted. "It's the same part of you that I love. The part that makes me think of airplanes way up top, and clouds, and the way an engine sounds, far off, when the wind is blowing. It may be hard on us to stick it out. Hard on you, because you worry, and hard on me because of you. But it would be a lot harder the other way. We couldn't stick that out— not together— could we, Jennie?"

"We never could, dear. We'd be ashamed to look each other in the face."

"It's settled then. We'll stay with it."

"We'll stay with it— with the air, dear— until— until the— the last crash!"

He gathered her up and folded her in his arms.

v

AS JENNIE had said, her emotions, touching Billy Cobb and the air, were conflicting and contradictory. Yet they were not difficult to render into logic.

This girl who had breathed the atmosphere of the airdrome all her life must inevitably have done one of two things; either grown to hate and fear the element that exacted mortal toll of its servants or grown to worship it. And she had done the latter. For she had the intellectual stability to perceive that if men were killed by the air it was because of their own unworthiness, the imperfections of themselves and of their implements of flight, not because of any inherent malignity in the air. And she foresaw with clear conviction the coming of a day when toll would no longer be exacted, when man's mastery of the air would be at least as secure and complete as his domination of the sea and the land. So she did not hate the air. For she knew it a reluctant and involuntary killer, asking nothing better than to abandon its rôle of murderous tyrant and assume the benevolent part of the willing and faithful jinni.

Instead of hating the air she regarded it, therefore, as a deity more sinned against than sinning. And it was natural that, in Jennie's eyes, the early airfarers, the men who offered their lives to the cause of air conquest, should be glorified. She invested them with the romantic glamour that is the meed of the pioneer in every fresh field of hardship and hazard. She set them above other men. In fact, she considered the existence of other men scarcely at all. And when they did cross her thoughts she saw them simply as an alien race of animated lay figures that did not live on airdromes. She could not conceive of a complete, satisfactory and thoroughly real man who should be anything but a flyer.

It was inevitable, therefore, that her choice for the man of men should fall on a flyer. And it was impossible that the man who won her favor should hold the precious gift unless he kept faith with the air— as Billy Cobb would have phrased it— to the last crash. For she could respect none but the men of the air, the only men she knew and understood. And there is more depends upon respect in love than many folk suppose.

On the other hand, Jennie was a woman. She was a very complete and thoroughgoing woman. And she had her full share of the woman's primitive maternal instinct, which is the protecting and sheltering instinct. The primitive-woman part of Jennie was a quite distinct part. It was not a reasoning component. It was emotional solely and concerned with the fundamental realities, not with intellectual ideals.

The intellectual, idealistic part of Jennie Brent loved Billy Cobb the flyer, the pioneer, the potential martyr for a cause. But the instinctive-woman part loved Billy Cobb the man. And the maternal urge, the sheltering element in Jennie the primal woman demanded the protection of Billy the man regardless of ideals and abstract traditions. It revolted violently at the grisly vision of his crushed and battered body lying some day in a crazy pyramid of wreckage.

Which explains convincingly enough why Jennie Brent was at the same time afraid to trust her lover to the air and fearful of winning him from it. But this much, as she told Billy, was evident to her. Whether he flew or not the woman of her would always love him. While, if he turned traitor to the air, shed the romance of his calling, and became one with the animated lay figures who lived outside the airdrome, the intellectual ideal-worshiping part of her could no longer love him— even though his renunciation of the air were for her sake only.

And so, with rare understanding and insight, she made her decision. The protective urge which had come with love and bred fear must be dominated and stilled— or, failing that, the anguish borne patiently. The alternative was even worse than the vision of Billy in the wreckage.

Out on the screened veranda Billy held her close and long. Off in the dark, where the squat little huts of the post lay along in orderly, shadowy rows, lights in windows began winking out, one by one. Then a tremulous cry floated over hut and hangar.

Taps!

Billy released her. They crossed to the door. She put a hand on his arm.

"It will be all right, dear. I have been foolish. Don't mind me. I feel so much better already, now that I have told you! But you mustn't think of it any more— never. I can beat it. I am sure I can. And of course you will be safe! The air won't hurt two people who love it as much as you and I do. Now, mind! Forget all about this. I promise you I shall. Good night, Billy dear. And dream about— about October."

But Billy did not dream about October. He dreamed of crashes. That was something he had never done before. The horrible thing about the crashes he dreamed of was that they didn't hurt him— they hurt Jennie. She seemed always to be there watching when they came, looking on in frozen helplessness, speechless, anguished, mortally stricken, while shadowy figures dashed toward the wreckage to drag him out, dead.

Once his ship caught fire. And then he saw Jennie go white, sway, and sink to the ground, to lie there pitifully at peace until some fool revived her and brought back her hopelessness.

Cobb was not aware in these dreams of the absurdity of dying and watching himself die at the same time. It seemed quite natural and horribly real and vivid.

Some time before morning the dreaming stopped. And all that remained to Billy of that night of horrors when he opened his eyes in the gray light of the oncoming day was an oppressive sense of foreboding.

"What's the matter with me?" he muttered sitting up in his Q. M. cot and blinking questioningly at the recumbent form of his roommate, Norris, who was snoring comfortably in another cot. Norris did not answer.

Out on the airdrome some one opened a throttle. The sudden roar of an engine struck on Billy's ears with ominous impact. That gave him the answer. An icy current coursed his spine and he was instantly aware of a panicky urge to duck under the bedclothing and shut out the hideous turmoil. Instead he swung his bare feet to the floor and sat there, gripping the cold frame of the iron cot and shivering.

He had heard of this thing before, this pilot's sickness, this miserable cringing and shrinking at the voice of an airplane. He remembered that Norris once—

But he refused to think of it. He got up hastily, shook himself, and hurried into his clothes. He went out into the chill of the pink dawn and headed resolutely toward the hangars.

His morning's allotment of propaganda hoppers were waiting for him, punctual with the punctuality of eagerness. They stood in an animated group discussing the mysteries of the lumbering two-passenger DH that squatted in readiness for Billy's coming, the engine idling patiently. It seemed to Billy that the bubbling of the exhaust manifolds had changed character overnight. Usually the engine greeted him in the morning with a warm welcoming pur. Now the pur held a sinister note. It sounded cunningly gratified instead of frankly glad, and there was a siren quality of oily venom, and a leering chortle in the voice of the engine.

Billy waved a passenger into the rear cockpit and made his accustomed round of inspection while the man was fussing with his helmet and goggles and fumbling with the safety belt. But he might just as well have foregone the tour for he did not consciously see a single cotter pin or turnbuckle. His vision was all of the inward-looking variety. He was acutely aware of Jennie. He saw her sitting as she sat the night before in the dim aura of the colonel's reading lamp on the screened veranda. He saw her humid eyes turned on him, pleading. He sensed the faint chill of her tears on his cheek. He felt the clinging warmth of her beseeching arms about his shoulders.

Those arms! They were the arms of Jennie the woman— protecting, maternal arms. He could feel them poignantly now, drawing him back, back from this treacherous monster of wood and wire and fabric with the voice of flame; back from the brooding hangars; back from the waiting air!

And he wanted to go. How he wanted to go! His feet itched to be off, to run with him to Jennie. If he could only do it— go to her now, without delay— and tell her he had renounced every service but hers. He knew how it would be with her this morning. She would be lying abed wide-eyed and fearful, listening to the hum of his engine, straining for the first sound of disaster, the little deprecatory cough, the sudden silence that would follow, and then, perhaps, the rending explosion of— the last crash! Not until he had come in from his final hop and given the ship over to Hansen would she relax and turn to her pillow to sleep again— perhaps. And if—

Billy stopped his pacing round the waiting ship. He realized that Hansen was eying him queerly.

"Hell!" he grunted to himself and swung up the fuselage and into his seat.

In the ship he felt better. The touch of the controls steadied him. The familiar dials, staring at him like great round eyes from the instrument board, reassured him somewhat. He tested the engine. The needle on the tachometer jumped obediently to fifteen-fifty. The engine didn't sound so badly now.

He fancied the attack was passing. "Must be something I ate last night," he told himself as he settled his goggles and waved to Hansen to clear away the blocks. Then he tried to swallow and it hurt. His throat was like parchment. He ran his tongue over his lips. They felt like crinkled cardboard.

He swore hoarsely under his breath and headed the ship for the starting line, allowing himself twice as much run for the take-off as even his conservative principles habitually dictated. In the air he was painfully conscious of being careful. He had always been careful but never consciously so. Now, on the turns, he found himself constantly twitching the stick to get the feel of the ailerons and make sure of his flying speed. DH's are not healthy in a spin, it is true. He had never spun a DH. But he had never been afraid of spinning one. Now he was afraid. If he should lose speed on a turn and she should drop into that eccentric corkscrew descent— and shed a wing—

He had a picture of Jennie sitting bolt upright in bed, paralyzed with horror as the echoes of the thud and crash reverberated through the post. Of the crash itself, what it would do to him, he never thought. It was Jennie alone, her tragedy, that fixed his troubled attention.

He circled the field and measured off the distance for his landing. He gave the matter of landing many seconds of intense calculation. Not even in his cadet days had he ever concentrated deliberately on the problem of bringing a ship safely to the ground. He had done it without thought, automatically, and always just right. Now he reasoned about it. Moderate speed, settling gradually with a swift rush, tail skid and wheels brushing the ground simultaneously— that was the best way, for the ship. And the danger of a blowing tire was so remote that it wasn't worth consideration. But Billy considered it. With the ship running free a blown tire might mean a crumpled wheel, a fast nose over, and—fire or a broken neck! Better to lumber in slowly, level off high, and drop to the ground with most of the headway lost before she touched. A tire was more likely to burst, but then there wouldn't be enough speed to hurt anything but the ship. Plenty of time as her nose went down and the propeller snapped to cut the switch and nip the fire in the bud. And a hand braced against the cowl would take up the shock. Yes, that was the best way to land— not for the ship but for Jennie. Clumsy, inelegant, unprofessional perhaps, but— safe, eminently safe!

And that was the way he landed. A turtle jumping from a table would have been equally graceful—and not half as secure. The big DH floated ponderously into the airdrome under Billy's restraining guidance, dropped its tail three feet over the grass tops, yawed along hesitantly for a hundred-odd feet, and then literally sprawled onto the turf with a thump and a bounce and a creaking and straining of struts and wires and longerons. She all but stopped in her tracks. It was a scandalous performance and Hansen, the crew chief, groaned with reprobation when he thought of the ship. He had been with Cobb for a year and had seen nothing to approach this for clumsiness in all that time.

"Holy smoke!" the mechanic snorted. "A major general couldn't have done it worse!"

But Billy was satisfied. He wasn't thinking of his reputation as a technician with the stick. He wasn't thinking of the DH. He was thinking of the girl who lay with straining ears in a chintz-curtained bedroom somewhere to the rear of a one-story hut fronted by a wide screened veranda. When the bumping and the creaking were over and he knew he was safe— for that time— he experienced a shameless sense of prayerful relief.

But what about the next time? He wished there were never another passenger on any airdrome in all the world. But there were nine more on this very one, all waiting for him, all ignorant of the girl who lay and listened. He cursed them all, severally and collectively. Then he gritted his teeth and taxied around to pick up another.

When that morning's propaganda hopping was over Hansen was ready to burst into tears. He spent the rest of the forenoon and part of the afternoon with plumb lines and a level straightening out the kinks in Billy's abused ship. But it did little good, for the same thing happened the next day, and the next, and the next, until Hansen was beside himself and almost ready to desert.

He thought his pilot had lost his eye. But he was wrong. Billy's eye was as good as ever. His hand was as cunning, his brain as quick. Physically there was nothing wrong with him. But he was in a bad way none the less. And two persons at Langstrom Field knew what the trouble really was. One of these was Norris, his roommate— who was also his confidant. The other, of course, was Jennie.

Billy Cobb, they knew, was becoming a very sick man, not in body but in spirit. Billy Cobb had "the wind up." Jennie knew this because she was Jennie. Norris knew because, watching Billy grow gaunter and more morose, day by day, and observing that he tossed about in bed at night and often lay for hours on end smoking cigarettes in a chain, he had asked him bluntly what the matter was. And Billy had told him. He trusted Norris.

"John," confessed Billy, "I've got what you had once, I guess."

"I thought so, Bill," said Norris. "Well, I beat it— more or less. You'll beat it too. But it's certainly hell, ain't it?"

"It's hell," groaned Billy. "And I won't beat it, John."

"Shucks! 'Course you will, Bill. Don't tell me anything I could do you can't!"

"I won't beat it, John. I've simply got to live with it till the last crash. There's no way out for me."

"Don't be a fool, Bill. You've just got nerves. Workin' too hard. Twice as hard as anybody on the post. And since you've had the wind up you've worked harder still to ease your conscience. Let up, old-timer. Let 'George' do some of the work."

"John, I tell you I'll never hear an engine again as long as I live without getting the hoo-haws. And I'll tell you why. Jennie worries!"

"What? Not Jennie Brent?"

"John, she's worrying herself sick. You watch her eyes the next time you see her. And she's losing weight. Think I can beat a thing like that, John?"

"My God, Bill!" said Norris, "I don't know. But it's bad— bad! To think that Jennie Brent, of all—"

"And she won't let me quit, either. I've promised her to stay with it, whatever."

"Well, that sounds like Jennie, anyhow. All grit. Always thought so."

"But it's killing her slowly!" wailed Billy. "I can see it."

"Bill," said Norris, "damned if I know what to say. You're in an awful fix now, all right. And so is Jennie. But perhaps," he added brightening, "she'll get over it after a while— after you're married."

Billy shook his head.

"She won't," he denied. "It's getting the best of her by the minute, John."

Norris considered, puffing at the black brier clenched in his teeth.

"I give it up," he conceded at last. "But I'll tell you what I think, Bill. This is a funny game we're in. Queer things are always happening as if— as if they were made to order. You know what I mean. Take me. I had the wind up for six months— you remember? And nobody suspected a thing— only you. Then just when I was walking in on the C. O. to tell him I was through the adjutant stopped me and handed me my orders to fly the XT-1 from Aberdeen to San Diego. I said I couldn't. But the C. O. and the D. M. A. insisted that I not only could but I would. Well, when I finished that hop to California alive I figured nothing was going to happen to me until it happened. I was cured. Something always turns up in this game, Bill. Something'll turn up for you. And remember this, Bill. Things don't happen in this world. It is my belief that they're arranged."

"If I could catch the bird who does my arranging for me, then," exploded Billy, "by golly, I'd—"

"Bill," warned Norris, "that's sacrilegious!"

vi

AUGUST dragged along its procession of heat-smitten 'teens and twenties. Billy Cobb grew thinner and more miserable. A ray of hope appeared to him, however. There was the "609."

The 609, in the parlance of the air service, is the rigid physical test that every army flyer must survive twice yearly. A man who can triumph over the 609 is verging on bodily perfection. There is no other examination so searching.

And Billy judged that he was a long way from physical impeccability. He prayed that he might not pass the test. It was the only honorable avenue of escape from the incubus of fear that was slowly breaking Jennie and, through Jennie, breaking him, too.

Of course he could have failed to qualify by deliberate deceit. It would be the easiest matter in the world to claim that his eyes were weakening and to prove his claim by false readings of the testing charts. And there were other possibilities. But deceit was a world away from Billy's code. He had to keep faith and a clean conscience for Jennie. He would do his honest best to qualify— and hope to fail honestly.

Late in the month he reported to the flight surgeon. He was feeling particularly rocky that morning. Which— paradoxically— made him almost cheerful.

"I'll flunk it sure," he told himself.

He watched the face of the orderly who took his pulse, blood pressure and temperature anxiously. But the man was an automaton. He was not interested in anything he might discover about Billy's condition. His face betrayed nothing but boredom.

The junior surgeon who put Billy through the nauseating gates of the revolving chair was professionally discreet.

On the eye charts Billy read a perfect "twenty-twenty" with either eye and then essayed a discouragingly successful "twenty-fifteen." But he had expected this.

"Not so bad— not so bad," commented the junior surgeon. "I'll hand you over to Captain Weyman. He wants to look at you before we turn you loose."

Billy undressed in the examining room. The dismal conviction was growing on him that he would qualify after all. Nobody had batted an eye or shaken a head. Still, hope was not entirely dead. Weyman might find something. Weyman was thorough.

The surgeon came in and set to work. He waived the minor preliminaries.

"You're thin," he said, "but that's nothing this kind of weather. I hear you've been overdoing the flying a bit. I'll look into that."

He went over Billy with a stethoscope. Billy could not believe that the excited pounding of his heart would escape comment. Finally Weyman put the stethoscope away. He misread the anxious light in Billy's eyes.

"Oh," he said, "you needn't worry this time. You'll do. But you've got to ease up. I've been looking over the reports on the other tests. Blood pressure pretty high. And your heart doesn't sound as good as the last time. But you'll do. Get more sleep. Cut down the flying by half. A rest will fix you up like new. You're taking a spell off in October. You'll be a new man after that. Well, come back here in February. See you at the club tonight."

He clattered out and Billy sat down suddenly. He felt very faint.

Then he remembered that he was to lunch with Jennie. He struggled into his clothes. He had been picturing to himself how he would break the good news of his disqualification. He had visioned the little play of dismay she would make when he told her. He had painted on his mind's eye the flush of happiness that would relieve the pallor of her cheeks, betraying her gladness in spite of pretended concern.

Now it would not happen. There would be the same mummery of pretense that had been going on for the past month between them, the same transparent mask of unconcern that covered up but did not hide. By tacit consent they would talk of casual things casually. They would smile brightly for each other's benefit. They would discuss some new phase of the plans for October with the colonel. But neither would be deceived. In the depths of Jennie's wistful eyes Billy would see the lurking specter of fear. In the deepening lines of Billy's haggard face Jennie would read the story of his yearning to ease her trouble. And in the back of their minds, while they mouthed inconsequentialities, would be the relentless query of their common obsession: "The last crash— when?"

Billy decided that he couldn't face Jennie now. It would be turning the knife. He would beg off, have a bite at the club, and bury himself in work. In the evening he would call. By then the edge of his disappointment would have worn off. He could dissemble better then. In the evening—

But would there be any evening?

There it was again! The obsession! He hurled the thought from him. But it would come back! In a moment it would be there dogging him again!

He thought bleakly of the years ahead that he must live with that leering, tantalizing demon mocking him from the back of his brain.

And then it was back, confronting him again! Years ahead? Perhaps only hours! He was scheduled to fly at five o'clock! He decided he would lunch with Jennie after all. It might be the last—

"God!" he choked, tugging at a boot.

She was waiting for him behind the screens on the veranda. She sat listlessly, staring off at distant things. She wondered if Billy suspected a tithe of the whole truth— that she had not slept seven hours in the past week; that she could no longer eat excepting under the compulsion of her father's watchful eye, or Billy's; that it was increasingly difficult for her to muster the strength to rise from a chair; that the sound of an engine made her faint and giddy.

She wondered how long it would be before she must give up, must go to bed, must stay there. It wouldn't be until the sheer impossibility of physical resistance forced it— but that might be any day. She dreaded the revelation the day would bring. She was afraid of its effect on Billy. But she held to her resolution. It was the air or nothing for them.

The crunching of Billy's boots on the path roused her.

She was standing at the door, holding it ajar, as he came up the two short steps. She was smiling— a pathetic, lying smile.

He led her back to her chair. It occurred to her that if he hadn't done that she must have sunk to the floor and been carried. She thought she would have liked that. Yet she had the courage to sit erect and smile at him.

"Did you pass all right, dear?" she questioned.

"Yes," he said dully; "I passed."

"Oh, Billy, that's good. I was afraid you might have been overdoing. I wondered. I'm awfully glad, dear." It was a supreme show of pathetic courage.

He revolted.

"Jennie," he exclaimed, "I wish to Heaven I'd failed! You're going out on your feet. I can see it. I confess, I never in my life hoped for anything as I hoped today that Weyman would turn me down! I've told Norris about this— he's the only one that knows. And he said one night that something always turned up. I thought it might be true. I thought the 609 would be the thing. It only proves that Norris—"

"No, Billy dear. It only proves what I have told you—the air needs you, even more than I."

"It isn't so Jennie! I know it isn't so. I'm going to quit. You come first!"

"You are not, Billy Cobb!! That was settled a month ago. You know you're not. I understand, dear— how you feel. But it can't be. I won't permit it. Now come in to lunch and don't let's discuss anything gloomier than October. You promise?"

There was nothing else he could do. They went in silently. The colonel was already at table.

The red rim of the sun was just dipping out of sight behind the western hills that evening when Jennie, dressed in white of a crispness that belied the drooping state of her spirits, slipped away from the screened veranda and made painfully off toward the hangars. All afternoon the sultry air had screamed and reverberated with the voices of engines. But now only one ship remained aloft, doggedly circling the field in the falling twilight with throttled motor droning sullenly. The ship was Billy's. Soon he would make the field and taxi in to the hangar. Jennie meant to be there to meet him. She wanted to let him know in this fashion that she approved and that her strength was equal to the ordeal even of watching him fly.

It was hard going. She stumbled innumerable times. Once she all but fell. But she reached the hangar at length and pulled herself together for the benefit of Hansen, who was waiting with his crew.

Billy's ship was still circling. Hansen brought Jennie a folding camp stool to sit on while she watched. He never suspected how grateful she was for that small piece of hesitant courtesy.

The mechanic dug a heavy watch from the breast pocket of his oil-stained coveralls and consulted it.

"Been up twenty-five minutes on this hop, Miss Brent," he said. "He'll be coming in any minute now."

As he spoke Billy commenced a sedate spiral at the northern extremity of the field. He was coming in. Not a breath of air stirred. He might have landed equally well from the east, the west, or the south. But the "T" in the white circle clearly pointed the only right way. Billy never disregarded flying regulations. He would have landed the way the T pointed if there hadn't been another plane to cut his right of way within a million miles.

As a matter of fact there was another plane, but Billy didn't know it. A strange, battered affair it was, with patched and tattered wings, that came coughing along, low down, out of the west; a disreputable gypsy of the air, a mangy sky pariah, seeking lodging for the night. Just above the treetops it scuttled, driving heedlessly for shelter, its pilot intent only on reaching a safe field before his gas was spent. Without a thought for other traffic or regulations it cleared the last obstacle by a scant yard and shot for the landing dead across the monitory T, coming fast from west to east.

It was then that Billy first saw it. And he saw it as soon as anybody else, for it had slunk into port wholly unobserved under cover of the landscape, the sound of its puny engine muffled in the full-voiced note of Billy's Liberty.

"Hell and all!"

Hansen's fervid exclamation drew Jennie's eyes from their anxious vigil over Billy's landing. She saw the furtive gypsy shooting in at dead right angles to the course of the oncoming DH. And a rapid glance from ship to ship told her that the thing she had spent the last month dreading was at hand. There was going to be a crash. The gypsy and the DH had leveled off together. Both were losing flying speed. Neither could open out and pick up fast enough to gain the air and clear the other. They were going to meet— going to meet hard! And Billy was in the DH!

What Jennie saw, Billy saw in the same instant. And the next instant he acted. He could not possibly get over or around the stranger. He must stop or collide. And he stopped. The maneuver was simple and instantly effective. Billy did nothing more than snap the stick back and to the left the full length of its course.

Have you ever seen a curveting stallion rear wildly, slip, and fall heavily on his side? The DH did just that. Its nose lifted ponderously, its wheels pawed the air, its left wing dropped sharply, it faltered and hung, and just as it swayed and slipped groundward Billy cut the switch. It struck with an indescribably sickening sound, a combination of thud, crackle and crash all rolled together in a terrifying, explosive snarl.

But there was no danger to speak of. Billy's cunning had provided against that. All the speed had been absorbed by the lift as the ship reared. She had stopped before she struck the ground. And Billy and his passenger were scrambling out when the gypsy slipped with a guilty swish across the shattered bow of the quivering wreck and ran out its momentum— safe with twenty feet to spare.

Jennie stood in frozen anguish until it was over. She saw the rearing ship. She heard the hideous outburst as it crashed. But she did not see Billy emerge from the heap of rumpled fabric, kindling wood, and junk. For by the time that happened she lay a pathetic heap of white on the oil-soaked ground beside the camp stool.

Billy made straight for the gypsy ship with murder in each knotted fist. But he never reached it. He was intercepted by a breathless crew man.

"Sir," panted the mechanic, "Miss Brent— is at— the hangar. She fainted!"

vii

BILLY dropped to his knees beside the silent heap of white. Jennie was breathing rapidly— short gasping breaths. Her eyes were closed. She did not answer when he spoke. She did not hear his forlorn ejaculation of grief. She was past all hearing, for the time. But even unconsciousness had not wiped out the set lines that the sight and the sound of the crash had drawn about her pale lips.

Hansen, seeing Billy's distraction, ventured a suggestion.

"I've sent a man for Captain Weyman and the ambulance, sir. They'll be here in a minute."

Billy shook off his daze and got to his feet.

"Never mind the ambulance," he said. "Ask the surgeon to come to Colonel Brent's quarters. We'll be there."

He lifted Jennie's limp body and made off with her in his arms.

He reached the house unobserved. The inhabitants of the post were still idling over late dinners. Dinner is always late on an active flying field in summer. Billy was aware of a mournful gratitude that he had been spared the sympathetic importunities that an encounter must have evoked. He struggled through the screen door, found Jennie's room, and laid her on her bed. He wondered where the colonel was. Then he remembered that Jennie's father had left that morning in answer to a hurried summons from Washington. He would be away overnight.

A hasty search of kitchen and bath provided a basin of water, a chunk of ice and a sponge. Billy assembled these at the bedside. But there was no need. He was dipping the sponge when Jennie's eyes opened slowly.

They turned on him blankly at first, then widened with glad incredulity. Jennie lay quite still, scanning the haggard face looking fearfully into hers.

Billy stooped and kissed her lips. She sighed gratefully.

"Billy dear," she whispered, "you're sure it's you?"

"Of course, sweetheart."

"Then— then it wasn't the—"

"The last crash? Yes, it was, Jennie. The first and the last!"

She understood and rolled her head feebly from side to side in brave protest.

"Billy! Don't, dear! You mustn't now. I can't—" Her eyes closed wearily.

But he persisted grimly.

"Never again, Jennie! Not as long as you live!"

She opened her eyes and smiled mournfully at that.

"Perhaps," she said, "that won't be very long, Billy."

He threw out a hand to steady himself.

"Jennie!" he cried. "Hush!"

She only smiled at him and went on gently.

"No, Billy. You may as well know now. My heart— I didn't tell you. I'm afraid, dear, this has been the last crash for me. Perhaps— perhaps it is— better that way. Perhaps it was— meant to be —that way— from the first."

"Jennie! Don't— don't give up this way. It can't be true. Just one little crash couldn't— You must try— try—"

"I won't give up, Billy. I'll try— as hard— as I can. But oh, Billy dear— I'm so— tired!"

The screen door slammed lightly. Weyman came down the hallway.

Billy met him outside Jennie's door.

"How is she?" the surgeon asked. "Her heart, you know—"

"I didn't know!" groaned Billy. "If I only had!"

"I'll see what's to do," said Weyman, and left Billy in the hall.

Out on the veranda, Cobb fumbled for a cigarette and matches. The surgeon found him there a moment later, smoking furiously.

"Not so good," said Weyman gravely. "It isn't so much her heart as a general breaking down. Heart makes it doubly bad, of course. Looks like pernicious— But never mind. Make yourself useful, Bill. Step over to Cahill's quarters and see if Mrs. Cahill can come in for the night. If she's not there get somebody else. Pull yourself together, man! And hurry up!"

He disappeared in the house and Billy stumbled off on his errand.

News of Jennie the next day was equivocal. The colonel returned at noon. When Billy collared him after lunch he pursed his lips and shook his head.

"Not too good, son," he said. "So far, no better and no worse. Weyman won't commit himself one way or the other."

He swung away toward headquarters, and Billy falling into step alongside followed into his office.

From his desk the colonel looked up.

"What else, son?"

"This," said Billy. He drew a white envelope from the pocket of his tunic and laid it on the desk.

"I imagine," said the colonel, "I can guess the contents."

Billy nodded.

"Will you approve it, sir?"

Colonel Brent leaned back and interrogated the ceiling with his eyes. Then he leaned forward and brought his gaze to bear on Billy.

"Boy," he said, "you've been having a hell of a time, haven't you? Now listen to me. I've been through all this, too. Perhaps I wasn't hit so badly, perhaps I was. But never mind. It was bad. Anyway, the thing that's worrying you killed my wife, Jennie's mother, by inches. At least, that's what I think. Perhaps it is killing Jennie now. We may as well face the possibility. If Jennie lives we'll let her decide whether I approve your resignation or not. There's time enough for that. But supposing—"

He paused and gulped painfully. Then he went on.

"Well, let that be. Put it this way. Without somebody like Jennie, where would you be if you left the service? Would you have anything remaining to live for? Flying was all your life until you and Jennie came to—an understanding. If— just for instance, mind— you had to do without Jennie, flying would be all your life once more. Isn't that about the way of it?"

"No, sir. I'll never touch a stick again. Not after yesterday. When I think of Jennie's face— brrr-r-r!"

The colonel considered at length.

"Very well, son," he decided. "I'll approve this. Maybe your case is worse than I thought."

He drew the inclosure from the envelope. Billy had already typed the indorsement of approval for his signature. The colonel read it over slowly, shook his head dubiously, and signed.

"There you are," he said and tossed the document in the outgoing-mail basket. "No more engines, no more ships, no more chasing clouds."

"And no more crashes!" said Billy fervently. "Amen, and thank you, sir. I'm not happy about it. It's a hard thing to do. It'll take me a long time to get used to being a kiwi. But I'll have Jennie— if she'll have me now. And if she won't, well, it's for her good, anyway."

"I hope so," said the colonel, with little conviction. "By the way, what will you do when you get out? Jennie will have to eat when she gets well, you know."

"I can manage. I know something about gas engines. The automobile business—"

"Of course. And that reminds me. You've got to keep busy until your discharge. I have a job that will hold your mind off things you won't want to think of. Washington is sending the XT-6 in tomorrow from Dayton—McCook Field, you know. You'll take charge of her final conditioning for a nonstop hop to Panama. Norris will fly her down about the tenth if she's ready. I recommended him and his orders are out. He doesn't know this yet. You might tell him. Ask him to see me this afternoon."

The colonel was the C. O. again. He would be the C. O. until he left his office. Then he would be Jennie's father until another day.

Cobb pulled himself together, saluted, and went out to find Norris.

As the door closed behind him the colonel retrieved his resignation from the mail basket, slipped it into a folder marked "Hold" and put the folder away in a private drawer.

"He's too good to lose," muttered the colonel. "We'll wait and see. I almost did that once."

Into the work of conditioning the XT-6 Billy Cobb threw himself with the fervor of desperation. There really wasn't much to be done, but he made things to do. Every nut and bolt, every cotter pin, turnbuckle, wire, pulley and bearing that wasn't spanking brand-new he took out and replaced. He pulled the motor, took it to pieces, and literally rebuilt it. He relined the entire ship with micrometric accuracy. He discovered a way that the McCook engineers had overlooked to enlarge the gas tank and add an extra two hundred miles' worth of fuel. The massive metal monoplane had been a new ship when she left McCook. She was new-plus before Billy pronounced her ready for the twenty-five-hundred-mile straightaway from Langstrom to the Canal.

Most of the things he did to her were gratuitous. She didn't need them, for at McCook, her home station, they are thorough before everything else. He did them to have something to do. Driving himself like a fury, driving his team of mechanics, up at dawn and in at midnight or after, he found that there were periods during the day, some of them as long as five minutes, when he ceased to think of the tragedy in the hushed bedroom at the rear of the colonel's quarters.

Jennie was failing steadily. He had been confident, at first, that his final renunciation of the air would revive her. But it hadn't. She had chided him as vigorously as her failing strength allowed and then relapsed into pitiable acceptance.

"I mustn't blame you, Billy," she had whispered at last; "it's because I was so selfish. I wanted you all for myself. It's my fault, dear. But, oh, I am sorry. And you will suffer for it more than I, I know. I should think you'd hate me."

He had turned away and brushed a sleeve across his eyes at that.

Weyman allowed him a scant half hour with her each day, and he had chosen the time just before sundown, between five and six, when his crew of mechanics were at evening mess and there was a lull in the work at the XT's hangar.

He would tiptoe into the room, in the failing light. She would smile her wistful greeting. He would sit beside the bed and lift her hand— which she could no longer raise herself— and hold it tight. Every day that hand grew more woefully thin, lighter, more transparent. And thinking of it at night, as he lay wide-eyed, Billy would grit his teeth in agony and groan softly, so as not to waken Norris, until the brief respite of sleep, which did not always come, stilled his misery.

During these days the voice of an airplane was sheer torture. It would break on his ears, a poignant reminder of the only two things he had cared for in life, the air and Jennie. And now he feared and had renounced the first; and the second was being swept away from him, under his eyes.

Once he had tried to vision what the world would be like with Jennie gone and the air denied him by his fear— for he scarcely doubted now that Jennie was doomed, and his present terror was too great to admit the supposition of a return to the air. He had revolted with a shudder from the bleakness of the prospect. He had a feeling that existence could not persist in the empty void of the barren future his brain conjured. His world must end with the passing of Jennie. He could perceive nothing beyond but interminable reaches of hopelessness.

Another thing added to the maze of troubles and questionings that enmeshed him. It was paradoxical, unbelievable, but he had discovered, now that the air was put from him definitely and for all time, that he wanted to fly again! Explain this as you will, it was so. And Cobb was by no means the first nerve-broken pilot to know that strange contradiction of desire for the thing feared. Not a few of the men but all of the men whom the air has broken have carried, or are carrying, that same fierce longing for the blue remotenesses on with them to their graves. In some the longing has waxed, at length, even greater than their fear and they have returned. They are the happy ones. For in those whose fear has proven the stronger urge the suffering bred of conflict between their fear and their desire has been intense. It was so with Billy Cobb. He suffered intensely.

So, haggard and drawn, dead for lack of sleep, worked to exhaustion, a prey to grief and to this strange mingling of fear and desire, he wore along hopelessly, watching Jennie burning lower and lower, through the heat of early September.

On the ninth the XT-6 was ready to the last safety wire. He told Norris, who was expecting it.

"Check!" agreed his friend. "God willing, I shall open a bottle of forbidden nectar at Cristobal, or vicinity on the eleventh. We hop tomorrow at four o'clock. Have the valet pack my toothbrush in the morning, Bill."

Billy shuddered at the prospect of what lay ahead of Norris. Once he would have leaped at the chance to lay such a course, himself. But no longer. He was amazed that his friend could face the undertaking at this eleventh hour with cheerful banter on his lips. He, Billy, dared not make one circuit of the airdrome off the ground. Yet Norris was talking carelessly about flying to Panama for a drink! It seemed impossible that he himself had been as Norris so short a time ago. Less than two months since, it was! Two months that were a lifetime long.

On the morning of the tenth a thin stream of civilians began trickling into the post and out onto the airdrome where the XT-6 was drawn up before her hangar with heat waves squirming and flickering along the upper surfaces of her tapered metal wings. She was an unlovely, sullen-appearing brute, with a surly upturned snout projecting eight feet above and beyond the main spars of her thick-cambered gray pinions. She had wheels like millstones for size, and the V-struts of her undercarriage suggested the trusswork of a railway bridge. A banquet for ten might have been served on the ample stream-lined spreader board that hid her heavy axles. There was nothing birdlike about her. Rather she was reptilian, hideous, like the imagined flying monsters of the Mesozoic swamps.

Norris went up her ladder and into the pilot's cabin at the tip of the snout. Behind him, on either side of the fuselage, the twin propeller blades projecting from the motor housings on the wings whirled idly with a vicious whisper. He taxied out to the line and took off for a final air test. The steel-winged monster moved with no effect of speed whatever. She left the ground reluctantly. She climbed reluctantly, although her load was not yet aboard. She turned reluctantly. There was no spontaneity in anything she did. Decidedly she was a flying machine and no airplane.

Other ships were in the air, a small host of them; eager, nervous little scouts, steady DH's, a pair of wide-winged Cardinals. The XT lumbered past them disdainfully like a dowager at a garden party.

"My Aunt Maria, what a tub!" commented a reporter, addressing Billy Cobb who stood toying listlessly with a spanner. "Can that thing fly to Panama?"

"I guess so," said Billy, without interest.

Norris eased the XT-6 gingerly into the home stretch and floated her down smoothly for a perfect three-point contact.

"Cunning little mastodon, isn't she?" he grinned to Billy when he had coaxed her in and turned her over to the crew. "But she's going to make Cristobal for tea tomorrow— with rum in the tea, too. You've groomed her to the pink, Billy."

"Grin if you want to, John," said Cobb. "I don't envy you this hop."

Norris sobered.

"I suppose not, Bill. I wish to God you did! How is she this morning?"

"I haven't heard yet," groaned Billy.

At noon mess, Billy struggled to consume a cracker and a glass of milk. He left Norris attacking a second portion of sirloin and baked potatoes, the last real food he would get until the next day's tea time at the equator.

On the club veranda, stretched wearily in a canvas chair, Billy lit a cigarette. He was vaguely disturbed. Something was wrong. Jennie wanted him. She was calling. A tightness at the throat, a clutching at the heart, a whispering in the ears, told him to go, to go now, not to wait. He ground out the smoldering stub of his cigarette with an impatient heel and left the club.

Jennie stirred a little and brightened when he tapped on her half-open door and tiptoed in. He drew a chair to the bedside and bent over her. Her wistful eyes seemed to him clearer today. There was a little of their old starriness back again he thought. His pulse quickened hopefully.

"I had a hunch you were lonely," he explained, "so I came early."

She smiled, almost happily.

"I was going to ask daddy to send for you," she confessed.

"It's funny," he said. "I had a feeling just now that I ought to come. I can't make it out. It was like—"

"Never mind what, dear. I wanted you and you are here. I wanted—"

She paused to consider how she should say what was in her mind. It would be difficult. But it must be said before— before it was too late.

"Billy, dear," she began, "lying here and trying to think things out an idea has come to me. I think I know why this trouble has visited us. Have you ever thought why?"

"I have thought of only one thing, Jennie, for so long that it seems like years."

"I know, dear, I know. And that is just it. It's wrong, wrong for people who belong to a— a— well, a cause— like the air, to think only of themselves, as we have done. And this is the punishment. It is, Billy. I am sure. We loved the air, we were dedicated to it, and then we turned our coats and were ready to desert it for each other. And we deserve to be punished! Perhaps I am light-headed from being sick. Perhaps this sounds very foolish. But I feel it so strongly, dear. I think it must be true."

Cobb sat silent, twisting his stubby fingers miserably.

"Does this hurt you— very much— Billy?" she questioned anxiously.

"Go on, Jennie. Never mind if it does," he said with an effort.

"Then I'll finish," she said. "It all seems to have moved along so inevitably. The air needed you. Then I won you away— even if I tried not to. And the air must have you back. So— so I am being— being put— out of the way."

"No, Jennie! No!" he cried.

"Perhaps not, dear. Perhaps not. But wouldn't it be almost better so? Have you thought what our life will be— if I do— get well? Either way, whether you live for me or for the air—suffering for both of us, Billy! I never knew my mother well. But daddy has told me. They suffered terribly. And in the end it came to— to this that has come to us."

"I don't care, Jennie— I don't care! I couldn't go on if you—"

"Yes, you could, Billy. You could. You would have the air again. It would comfort you after a time. You think not now, but it would, dear. And— and— Billy, do you believe in the— the Afterward?"

"I don't know. I only know—"

"I think," said Jennie slowly, "there must be an Afterward. I almost know it now. I used to doubt and wonder. But now I am sure. Because, Billy, the air won't need you always. There will be others, sooner or later, to take your place. But I shall need you, always—and there can be no others, ever. You will come to me— Afterward. It is only fair. It would be so-so cruelly futile and incomplete, otherwise. I have a certainty— something I can't explain— but a certainty, that when the air is done with you we shall find each other— somewhere— somehow! If I weren't sure of that I couldn't, I know I couldn't, go away, even for a little while. And if I do have to go, dear, you will remember— remember what I tell you now. It will only be for a little while. Try to believe. Try— try! And go back to the air, Billy. I shall be waiting— waiting for you— until— the last crash— Billy, dear!"

She stopped speaking. Billy saw that her eyes were closed and that she was panting with the effort of what she had said. She looked unutterably weary and yet, somehow, indescribably happy.

In a little while her eyes opened and her lips moved feebly again, more feebly than before.

"Isn't— isn't John hopping off this afternoon, Billy?" she asked.

"About four o'clock," said Billy.

"Daddy said something about it. You are helping him, aren't you?"

"I'm supposed to be."

"I am keeping you from what you should be doing again. John may need you. You mustn't humor me any longer. Come back— this evening— if—"

Billy's heart leaped violently and he started up.

" 'If!' " he cried. " 'If!' If what? Jennie!"

"If the doctor will let you, dear," she concluded. But that was not what had trembled on her tongue. She had caught herself just in time. What she had barely missed saying was: "If I am still here."

His alarm passed. The merciful deceit worked. He bent and kissed her and went out to join Norris. He promised himself confidently to look in again that evening, if only to say good night.

He had not heard her yearning whisper as he passed the threshold: "Good-by, Billy. Good-by— oh, my dear!"

viii

THE LAST reporter had asked the last question. The last photographer had snapped the last shutter. And the XT-6 was turning her tail to the farewell group at the hangar and her nose to the line. She crawled painfully across the field, snorting protests from time to time when Norris jabbed the throttles to keep up the headway. A squad of sweating mechanics trotted about her like so many solicitous tugs escorting a liner down the bay.

There was no wind to help her off the ground. The day was passing in a bath of stagnant heat. Stripped though the big gray ship was of everything but the barest necessities— she was not even carrying radio— yet she was so heavily laden with fuel that there was some small doubt if she could clear the field. A little wind to blow her up would have been a welcome circumstance. But the only movement in the air was the dancing of the heat waves.

Norris was confident he could coax her off. There was a fair mile-and-a-quarter stretch available for the take-off, with no obstacles higher than a man's head for another quarter mile beyond. If the wind-speed gauge played true he could drop the tail when the needle read seventy and trust to the god of aviators to yank her wheels off the grass. Once in the air it would be a question of what the cellars of Panama could provide for a celebration. Norris was not concerned with anything that lay along the two-thousand-odd miles between the boundaries of Langstrom and the hangars of Cristobal.

The face of his companion, a likely enough youngster but with no considerable experience of record-distance work, was grave and a little drawn. Norris nudged him with his shoulder and grinned a reassurance.

"Buck up, bird!" he shouted above the synchronized beating of the engines. "In five minutes we'll be over the hump or out of the world."

But he was taking no chances. Every inch must count. He held on doggedly clear to the extreme corner of the field. Mechanics closed in when he finally shut the throttles down. They set their humid shoulders to the fuselage and swung the tail around.

Norris waved a hand.

"All clear?"

"All clear, sir," came the answer.

He drove the throttles home, shoved the wheel forward, nudged the rudder bar, and cocked an eye on the wind-speed gauge.

"It's cocktails in Panama or candles at Langstrom!" he yelled.

The XT-6 moved a foot toward the Canal— two— three— ten. Her tail began to rise. She set her nose on the low horizon and charged heavily down the fairway, roaring with the voice of eight hundred horse. The needle on the speed gauge trembled. It began to climb. It made thirty at the quarter mile. At the half it pointed fifty-five and still rising. When it reached sixty it hesitated and Norris stopped breathing. Then it moved on upward— slowly— slowly.

A quarter mile more of grace.

"Cocktails or candles!" grunted Norris, and inched the wheel forward.

The last inch did it.

"Seventy!" proclaimed the needle.

"Cocktails!" answered Norris. He drew the wheel back lovingly.

The great gray wings tilted as the tail sank. They bit the air. The first low bush shot beneath the spreader board.

"I like Martinis best," said John Norris.

"Thank the Lord!" prayed the youngster on his left.

Two minutes later on Langstrom a red-faced mechanic burst from the armament stores with a stubby blue pistol in one hand and a carton of shells in the other. If Norris or his companion, Crawley, had looked back then they would have seen a red Véry light burst, high above the hangars. The mechanic with the stubby pistol was loading rocket shells and firing as fast as his fingers could charge the piece. But the crew of the XT-6 had their eyes on the road to Panama. The recall rockets were unavailing.

And between their eyes and the undercarriage spread broad wings. They did not know and they could not see that the XT-6 was minus a wheel. The rubber-rimmed disk had snapped the retaining cotter pin, spun to the end of the axle, and dropped off as the ship took the air.

It would be candles, not cocktails, at Cristobal, unless—

Standing with the colonel on the field, Billy Cobb had seen the wheel drop. He had ordered the recall lights. But he foresaw that they would do no good. Norris would not be looking back. And as for circling the field, that was out of all expectation. It would have been suicide to turn the XT-6 with the load she bore under five hundred feet altitude. She would have laid twenty miles behind her ere that.

And so it turned out. Without a deviation to right or left she bore due south, floundering through the heat waves, and in five minutes had passed from view in the thick haze that hung on the burning air.

A picture flashed through Billy's brain; a picture of a great gray ship that floated down to Cristobal, circled the sun-bleached hangars, settled groundward, touched, dropped a wing, somersaulted mightily, crashed with a roar of rending steel, and lay still, a hideous mass of riven junk. He saw the broken bodies of two men pinned beneath that mass.

Norris must be warned. He must. If he knew, he could pancake in, stall, and save young Crawley and himself, though not the ship, perhaps. A dropped wheel was deadly if you didn't know. But if you knew, it could be dealt with.

He was trying to think. How could Norris be reached? Radio? The XT-6 had no radio. Cable Cristobal? Obviously. But something might happen to the message. It might be delayed, or garbled in transmission. Not likely. Still, there was that chance and this was a matter of life and death. And again, if Cristobal got the message, what then? They would send men out on the field to wave wheels at Norris. That was the classic signal. Norris would understand, if he saw. But would he see? He might not circle the field. His gas might be out and he might drive straight in the moment he picked up the T. Cristobal would be notified by cable, of course. But that wouldn't be enough. It wasn't sure.

Norris must be reached before he lifted Panama. And he could be reached. Billy knew how. Then, with stunning impact, the conviction struck him. There was only one way to save Norris, and only one man to do it. He, Billy Cobb, was the man.

He tried to suppress the thought. Jennie! It would be the final blow to her. But she might not know. He would warn the colonel. And if all went well— It wouldn't, though. He had the washed-out pilot's certainty of that. No flyer in Billy's condition of air nerves ever believes he can fly without crashing. That is one of the unchanging symptoms that make the disease. And Billy's plan to warn Norris involved flying. It involved not only flying. It involved landing— landing perhaps hundreds of miles from an airdrome, perhaps in swamps, perhaps in mountains, perhaps in the ocean, and almost certainly in the obscurity of night!

He racked his brain desperately for excuses. He found none excepting Jennie. Could he do it? Could he leave her? Could he so much as straddle a fuselage without swooning of dread?

Then the questions reversed themselves. Could he possibly escape it? What would she say if he did—when she found out, when she learned of John Norris' death, and young Crawley's, by the hangar lines of Cristobal—when she knew who had let them go to that inevitable ending? Was it possible that he could refuse this summons, that he could even consider refusal?

Yet consider he did for a split second longer. There were other pilots, good pilots, pilots without nerves, above all, pilots without the slender thread of a sweetheart's tenuous life tangled round their hearts and bound up in their actions. Why not let them— But it was begging the question. Norris was Billy's friend a hundred times more than theirs. This was his own show. He could not put it off. And he knew what Jennie would say if he tried.

He became aware that the colonel was eying him. Then he felt the colonel's hand on his arm.

"Are you going to do it, son?" asked the C. O. quietly.

Billy did not stop to wonder how Jennie's father knew. It seemed to him that his thoughts must have screamed aloud to every ear on Langstrom.

He gulped, trying to force an answer from his parched throat.

While he hesitated an orderly drew the colonel aside and spoke some urgent message. The face of Jennie's father was a gray mask when he turned back to Billy Cobb.

Billy made his decision.

"I'll go, sir. I've got to. But Jennie mustn't—"

"I think," said the colonel gravely, "Jennie will not know."

"I told her I'd drop in tonight. You'll fix up some excuse?"

"Yes— if she— asks for you— son."

"All right, sir." Billy swallowed hard. "Good-by— until— until—"

"Get going, son. Get going. You've lost too much time already. And catch them, catch them if it takes the last drop of gas! I'm taking other measures but I'm counting on you."

It was five o'clock when Hansen cleared the blocks frantically from Billy's DH. Other ships had started in pursuit already. But Cobb discounted them. They would fail one way and another. This was his show. His last show, he thought grimly. Strangely, it wasn't proving so hard, now that his mind was set to it.

If it weren't for Jennie— Even Jennie worried him less than he could have believed. Gradually, as he checked the DH over minutely, supervised the fueling, tested the lights on the instrument board, and gave the engine a brief run on the blocks, a mood of exaltation took possession of him. Jennie would approve. She would have something to remember him by— something worth remembering. And he was going to fly again! Going back to the air! It would never be said of him that he had not stuck to the last crash!

Hansen broke in on his thoughts.

"Here you are, sir," panted the mechanic, and handed him a light wheel filched from his own silver scout— the ship he loved and had not flown for weeks. Hansen was gasping, dripping wet from the feverish exertion of getting the deserted DH in flying trim for the long route ahead. Billy tucked the wheel beside him in the cockpit.

"Engine O. K., sir?" queried Hansen.

"O. K.," confirmed Billy, his heart beginning to race as the moment for the take-off loomed.

"Shall I clear away?" said Hansen.

A last violent misgiving assailed Billy. He saw Jennie again, as he had left her a few hours since, feeble, pale, her face a wistful wraith against the pillow. He would not see that face again! A paroxysm of yearning seized him. To leap from the ship, to race to her, to kiss her once more, to lift her and hold her in his arms!

"Wait!" he gasped to Hansen. "Wait— I—"

What were those things she had said to him? "Back to the air— wrong to think of yourself— Afterward— After—"

"Let's go!" cried Billy Cobb. "Clear away!"

No rolling to the line, this time; no dropping of precious minutes in deference to flying rules. Billy opened out the instant the blocks left the wheels. He was off the ground and flashing into a turn before Hansen realized that the ship was gone.

"Gosh!" grunted the amazed mechanic spitting out dust as he watched Billy flip around a fifty-degree bank and scream off southward. "He's full out again, all right!"

Billy was far from full out as yet. But he was driving himself to a semblance of that attitude which looked very much like the genuine thing. The line of hangars streaked past as he bore on the stick, then some trees and a huddle of farm buildings. Swiftly the landscape flattened beneath him and in three minutes the world had lost its familiar contour of wood and hill and valley and was changed to a slowly crawling panorama, a giant painted map that rolled up out of the haze-dimmed horizon and slipped back into the haze.

At five-forty a blur of smoky white emerged from the veil ahead, and the glint of orange sunlight on water showed through the whirling disk of the propeller as Billy stared into the south.

New York and the harbor!

He tore past Manhattan at three thousand feet. The lower city looked as flat as Harlem, its jagged, towering sky line merged with the cable slots of Broadway, humbled and erased from that height.

The yellow stubble fields of Jersey began their steady passage far below. Off to the left a creamy thread of ocean beach slipped past, flanked by a vast expanse of gray-blue surface that ran out and up into the mist without a break. Little shreds arranged in parallels, north and south, were steamers and windjammers in and outbound on the bosom of the Atlantic.

A gray stain on the giant map appeared. Atlantic City!

Billy looked at his clock and began to calculate. The XT-6 had left at four o'clock or thereabouts. She was rated for a speed of eighty miles. It was half past six now. She should be two hundred miles along her course, somewhere south of the Delaware Capes. He was pulling up on her at a hundred and twenty an hour. Mathematically he should overtake her two hundred and forty miles out, at seven o'clock. She should be in the neighborhood of Cape Charles when he sighted her. If happily luck and his calculations coincided there was an even chance that he could signal Norris and cut off across Chesapeake Bay in time to make Douglas Field by the last glimmer of twilight.

But if he missed her, which was something more than likely, for the sky is an infinite hunting ground—

He wouldn't miss her! He would prowl her course until she showed up if it took the last whiff of gas in the tank. He dismissed Douglas Field from his mind.

The world below was going dim. Off in the west the haze-draped rim of the day still showed a pale yellow shot through with red and purple pencilings. Away to the east night already was screening off the edge of the ocean.

Stars began to show palely in the tenuous blue above as the DH thrust the capes of the Delaware behind her tail skid. And below there were more stars set in a gray-blue mosaic of vaguely hinted roads, fields and homesteads, with here and there a constellation of little luminaries that told of a shadowy town or hamlet beneath.

Steadily the mobile, twilit map of the East coast slipped northward, marching slowly under the speck that swung suspended between the fleeing day and the creeping night. Billy's engine sang a full-voiced vesper and the wires, quivering in the back draft, took up the burden on a higher key. Whipping the air behind her, a mile to every thirty seconds, the DH bore down the trail of Norris and the XT-6 with all twelve plugs a-spark and a wake of red streaming spitefully along her flanks from the lips of the glowing manifolds.

Lower Delaware, the coast line of Maryland, and then the dim finger of Cape Charles!

Seven o'clock, the Chesapeake, and night drew on but not John Norris and the XT-6. Ten miles to the east or ten miles to the west they might be droning now, and still on their course. The highways of the air are something wider than the boulevards below. There is plenty of room to pass without a hail.

Off the tip of the Cape, Billy drew the throttle back. The XT-6 must be somewhere thereabouts and he knew at what altitude he ought to spy her. Two thousand feet, Norris had said the course would be. Billy coasted down to fifteen hundred and circled round a ten-mile radius. If Norris passed above, and within eyeshot, he would catch the silhouette against the sky where some of the brightness of the departed day still lingered. He waited half an hour. But the black outlines of a southing plane that he raked the heavens for did not show.

He shook his head and opened out again, roaring with flaming manifolds head on into the black masses of piled-up cloud that towered now against the south, barring the road to Panama.

The storm closed in on him suddenly. It came with a stunning burst of blue-white light and a blast that drowned the shouting of the manifolds and the screaming of the wires. A giant hand reached down out of the gray cloud bluff ahead, clutched the DH in invisible tentacles and swept it irresistibly into the smother. The hand was the first cloud current. And there were more waiting. Billy knew them. The clouds are full of currents. They grapple with a ship. They hurl it back and forth from one to another. They thrust it up. They stamp it down. They fling it crazily from wing to wing. But there is no harm in them if you are not afraid. And Billy was no longer afraid. He let them have their frolic, fighting back with sweeping stick and swinging rudder bar.

Rain began to bite his face. It spewed back from the wind shield in a hissing sheet. He switched on the dash light and laid his course through the blackness of the clouds and the blinding of the lightning by compass and the bubble of the inclinometer. The engine yelled defiance through the turmoil as the DH tossed the spray of mist and raindrops over its heaving shoulders.

His head buried in the cockpit, Billy watched the inclinometer go mad. Between gusts he edged back on the stick, gaining fifty feet here, dropping twenty there when some spiteful gust thrust him down again. But the altimeter showed a steady average gain. And suddenly, on the crest of a mighty leaping spout of air, the DH shot dizzily up into the calm of the clear night and rode easily in the starlight above the roof of the storm, a sea of gray-white billows stretched about her, beyond the span of eye.

"Now where am I?" muttered Billy. "And where is John?"

He circled the two-thousand-foot level, peering along the sea of clouds and up into the star-sprinkled bowl of deepening blue. Nothing! Clouds below, stars above, and somewhere between a shadowy monster forging toward the equator with two men in its maw— and in Cristobal a pair of yawning graves!

Eight-thirty! An hour, perhaps a little more, to go. Above the roof of the storm a waxing moon rode up and turned the gray expanse of cloud to gleaming silver. Higher it drew. And looking down Billy saw the moon-cast shadow of his own ship skimming along the bright cloud sea.

That gave him an idea. He began to peer restlessly from side to side and downward. The thing he sought would be plain to see now if it crossed his course. But was his course the right one? There was no way of knowing to within fifty miles. The world lay veiled beneath. There was not a beacon or landmark visible this side of the North Star. He could only hope.

This much was certain, at least. He must be miles ahead of the XT-6. He could stop the southward rush, now, and cruise the course at right angles. Norris must pass him somewhere. And if he passed near enough—

Nine-thirty! The engine sang a soft lullaby of twelve hundred r.p.m. Billy was hoarding fuel as he tacked above the silver sea.

Twenty miles east— twenty miles west, and the moonbeams flashed on the burnished wings as the DH swung the turns with a lazy dip.

Ten o'clock!

Twenty miles east— twenty miles west.

The moon rode high and the silver sea began to break into islands and headlands, with rifts of dusk between.

How much longer would the gas—

And then he saw it, the thing his weary eyes strained to catch! A scuttling black shadow it was that slipped out of a dusky channel, rode swiftly across the bright expanse of a fleecy headland, and disappeared back into the dusk again. That was it; the moon-cast silhouette of the XT-6 snoring through the night to Panama!

Billy looked up and saw her, a great gray-winged ghost shouldering down the meridians with the dim stars in the moon-bright sky winking off and on as she passed them.

The DH woke with a roar. Streamers of flame broke from the trailing manifolds. She set her nose to the moon and spurned five hundred feet beneath her in one leap.

Perhaps a minute passed. Perhaps two. Then she rolled in like a nuzzling whale calf alongside the XT-6 and dropped to the dogged pace of the larger ship.

Billy could see two pale spots peering out at him from the black cockpit in her snout, ten feet below. He guessed the amazement those faces must wear. And indeed, so bright was the light of the moon, intensified as it was by the reflected radiance from the clouds below, that he could almost make out the features of Norris and Crawley as they raised their eyes to question the import of his coming.

Floating along precariously with no more than bare flying speed Billy took the spare wheel tucked beside him and waved it overside. The moonlight drenched the form of a man who rose in the nose of the XT-6 and flung a gesture of understanding back at him.

Then the DH coughed and spat. And Billy slipped her off with engine stalled. The gas was out. There was none in the emergency tank for the very good reason that he had been flying on that for the past twenty minutes.

Wheeling slowly the DH spiraled down the night. With the voice of the engine stilled the wind whispered forebodingly around her tilted struts. The wires sang a high-keyed dirge.

"It's the last crash now," said Billy Cobb. And then he thought of Jennie and his throat went dry.

Into the mottled light and shadow, under the isles and headlands of the breaking clouds, Billy and the DH coasted reluctantly. Below where the moonbeams struck he could make out in patches the silver blue of fields and the argent thread of a meandering stream. Far away down there a single ruddy star marked the lighted window of a farmhouse. A chalk-white road ran east and west. The road was straight. That meant level country.

There were fields, anyhow. They weren't swamps, he judged. But they would be none too wide. At a thousand feet he circled one that promised some degree of safety. It looked a smooth clear surface. If there were no great amount of wind, there was an even chance. The black and white of light and shadow showed the run of the furrows which gave him his landing direction.

Once he would have made this landing with scarcely a qualm. But now, after all he had been through, with his nerve weakened and his muscles taut with fear, his judgment warped by overanxiety, could he do it? He held his breath as he made the last flanking leg along the ends of the furrows and turned in fearfully for the landing.

Roadside trees barred the way, and a string of bare poles with wires swayed between. He must clear them to a nicety, perhaps a yard to spare, no more, for the field was short in all conscience and at the far end he could see what looked like a stone wall— a barrier of some sort, in any case.

The trees reached up to clutch him down and barely missed their grip. He had done this before. It was still with him, then, the cunning he had thought was gone. Bare crosstrees strung with copper strands flashed by at either wing tip. Whispering gratulatingly the DH settled groundward, her tail dropping inch by inch as the furrows rose to brush the wheels.

She touched smoothly. And then Billy saw that fate was set against him. A crazy gray form lay dead ahead, a weather-beaten plow, waiting like a grim skeleton. He kicked the rudder bar violently. But too late. The ship ground into the obstacle with a snarl. Her undercarriage crumpled. She plunged her heavy nose into the rain-soaked earth, stopped with a crash of snapping spars, and quivered her upflung tail helplessly at the moon.

Billy felt his belt snap with the shock. Then he knew nothing more until he saw Jennie coming toward him, sweet and luminous, along the moonlit field.

She came to him slowly, picking her way across the furrows. He stepped from the shattered wreck of the DH and went to meet her. She held out her hands to him. He put his arms about her and kissed the smile that met his lips.

He heard her whisper something.

"Only for a little while, Billy, my dear. Just to say good night. But I shall be waiting— waiting dear, again— when the air is done with you— at the last crash."

She was gone. His arms were empty and aching. He raised his head and saw that he was not standing in the furrowed field at all. He was slumped on the flooring of the cockpit still, with a shoulder braced against a spar. Blood was trickling down his face from a cut on his forehead.

He pulled himself up unsteadily, clambered to the ground, got a handkerchief from the pocket of his leather coat, slipped off his helmet and bound up the flesh wound as best he could. Then he stumbled out to the road and staggered away toward a white building with one lighted window that gleamed comfortingly through the green haze of the ground mist in the moon's rays.

He knew now what the colonel might have told him— but mercifully withheld—five hours ago at Langstrom. Jennie had gone on to wait for him in the place she called the Afterward. And strangely enough he was not grief burdened. Rather happy instead. Happier than he had been through many anguished weeks.

He had returned to the air. And in the end the air would bring him back to Jennie.

ix

A YEAR slipped by. Then another. Billy Cobb was shunted from post to post and detail to detail wherever his talents were most needed. The third year saw him back at Langstrom again for the summer activities. And chance and the D. M. A. brought Norris and Crawley and Weyman there to meet him once more.

During those years since he had met Jennie that last time in the moonlight of a Carolina night Billy had flown early and late, in season and out, every trace of the old fear gone. And never a scratch to show for his pains. He had run chances that woke the headlines of a continent into vociferous black. He had flown ships that no one else would, or could; strange outlandish maunderings of the engineer's intemperate brain. He had been lost in the Black Hills of the Dakotas; he had landed with a stalled engine in the peaks of the high Sierras; he had drifted through a night of tempest in the Caribbean. But he had never spent a day in the infirmary to pay for his venturing. Death had stacked the deck against him many times— and he had won regardless. The air that needed men like Billy Cobb was clinging to him.

This summer he and Norris were wearing two bars on their shoulders and rooming together again. Billy was at his old grind of propaganda hopping mixed with engineering, up at dawn and to bed just ahead of the first cock crow. He was gaunt again, but not haggard; weary, but not worried.

Norris was worried, though.

"Listen here, Bill," he said, one early August night with the crickets singing a sultry chorus outside the windows, "you've got to let up, bird. You may not know what I know, but you're killing yourself. That high-altitude work you did last summer with the Kite weakened your heart plenty. Weyman told me so. He had to stretch a point to let you by when he gave you your last 609 in February, down at Douglas."

"So?" said Billy, thoughtfully. "He kept that from me. Just mentioned something about going easy, that was all. But I can't go easy, John. When I slow up I think too much about Jennie."

"Well, you face another 609 in three weeks. It'd be worse than going easy if you were thrown out entirely, I guess. Better think of that and lay off. Give yourself a chance."

Billy smiled a queer haunting smile and peered at Norris.

"John," he said, "if I were a praying man I would pray morning, noon and night that Weyman might throw me out the next time."

"The hell, Billy! You—"

"Listen, John. Do you remember what I told you about seeing Jennie? And what she said? She'll be waiting. I haven't a doubt about that. And all I've been asking for in the last three years is a crash. Not deliberate, you know. A real one. The sooner it comes the better. But I know it won't come until the air is done with me. If I disqualify when Weyman gets at me it'll be the end. I haven't an idea how it will happen, but I know it will. What was that you told me once— about things being arranged? Well, that's all arranged. Jennie promised me. At least, I believe she did. 'When the air is done with you,' she said— 'at the last crash.' "

"And you think that means—" mused Norris.

"Just what it appears to mean. When something happens to take me away from the air I'll go to Jennie. Maybe I'll crash with somebody else, as a passenger. Maybe I'll contract whooping cough and die. But I'll crash off, somehow."

"Well, Bill, perhaps. But that's getting pretty literal. I wouldn't be so sure."

"You would if you loved Jennie," said Cobb.

Norris gave over his exhortations to moderation and sat smoking silently. Billy rolled into his cot and fell off to sleep, in defiance of the drop lamp on the table and the heat.

His roommate put his pipe aside at length and rose to douse the light. Looking down he saw that Billy was smiling faintly in his sleep.

"You sure deserve to smile, old boy," said Norris, and snapped off the switch. "I wonder, now," he grunted as he stretched himself on the torrid sheets.

On August 20th Norris took a five-day leave. On August 25th he returned. Coming by the guard at the gate he headed straight for the club with a vision of sandwiches and coffee in his mind. He had missed his dinner in order to make train connections. As chance provided, Norris had met nobody from Langstrom on his way out to the post. What had happened on the field that day was still the secret of the field as far as Norris was concerned.

Weyman and young Crawley were sitting on the club veranda as Norris came up the steps and through the screen door. He nodded to them and went inside, dropping his suit case in the hall.

He had his sandwiches and his coffee and smoked a cigarette to top off with, letting his thoughts meander idly, glad to rest comfortably after the heat and the grime of the trains. Weyman sitting with Crawley crossed his mind. Weyman recalled something to him. Oh, yes. Billy's 609. It had been due that day. He must ask the surgeon how it turned out. He went out to the veranda and drew a chair beside the two who sat there.

"Where's Bill tonight?" he asked.

He heard the surgeon's chair scrape suddenly. Then he saw that Crawley was eying him with consternation written all over his smooth face.

"Hell!" exclaimed Norris, sitting bolt upright. "What's the matter with you two?"

Weyman cleared his throat.

"Haven't you heard, John?" he said huskily.

"Heard? Heard what? What should I hear?"

"Billy crashed, late this afternoon. He's dead, John."

"Good God! How—"

"Nobody knows," put in Crawley. "It was pretty late. There was only that old crew chief of Bill's, Halliday, who saw it. Everybody else had gone home or was back in the hangars or somewhere. He just floated in, Halliday said, and made a regular landing. Then a tire blew and a wheel buckled and it was all over. His head got the gun butts. Belt broke, they say."

"But that isn't all," Weyman took up the thread. "I think Halliday's brain is softening. He tells a yarn about Billy climbing out of the wreck and babbling to somebody who wasn't there and making weird gestures—"

"Wait a minute," Norris interrupted. "Somebody who wasn't there, you say? How do you know there wasn't anybody there?"

"Why, good Lord, man, there simply wasn't! Halliday saw nobody."

"You think it strange, then— Billy's babbling and gesturing before he died?"

"Strange, certainly. Unless old Halliday—"

"Well, I'll tell you something else that may sound strange, coming from me who haven't been near this post in five days. Doctor, isn't it true that when Billy went up for his 609 this afternoon you disqualified him irrevocably, unconditionally, for good and all?"

The surgeon gaped his astonishment.

"Good night!" he gasped. "How did you know that? It's a fact!"

"If I told you how I knew you'd disqualify me, you'd say I was crazy. I'll tell you some time— perhaps. But not tonight. I feel too low to brawl with a skeptic. But just to show you that I'm not simply a good guesser I'll tell you something else."

Norris paused impressively, then affirmed:

"Billy didn't know you'd disqualified him when he went out to fly. Something had interfered. You hadn't told him."

Weyman gaped again.

"John, you've got me going! It's so. I was trying to think up some way to break the bad news gently to Bill when a hurry call came in over the phone. An enlisted man's wife had convulsions. I told Bill I'd be right back. But I was kept away for an hour and he must have thought everything was all right, because he wasn't in the infirmary when I got back there. I sent an orderly to call him in but he was just taking off when the man reached the field. See here, John, how in hell did you guess that?"

"I didn't guess it," protested Norris. "It's simple enough. Bill wouldn't have hopped if he'd known officially he was disqualified. He never deliberately broke a flying regulation in his life."

"Yes, he did," recalled the surgeon. "I saw him do it. The day he went after you with the wheel he crossed the T on the take-off."

"Poor old Bill," said Norris. "That was like him. Somebody else's show was at stake then."

"Well," said the surgeon, "you've explained your second guess, anyhow. But I'm damned if I see how you figured so surely that Bill had been disqualified. Nobody knows that yet excepting the three of us here."

"Never mind how I figured it, doctor. I'll try to make it clear another time. But while you and Crawley are waiting for the explanation you might ask yourselves if the way events shaped themselves this afternoon wasn't a little— a little— awesome. In a minute more, doctor, you would have told Bill he couldn't fly— that the air was through with him. But something intervened at the critical moment. You were prevented. Then you sent an orderly. The orderly reached Billy just in time to miss him. He was prevented. That's twice running. Do you think those things were accidents, or were they deliberately arranged?"

"Don't be an idiot, John!" grunted the surgeon, who was careful to keep both his mental and physical feet on the ground all the time.

But young Crawley, who belonged to the air, stared wide-eyed at Norris.

"Gosh!" he exclaimed. "Gosh, it certainly looks—" Then catching the skeptical eye of the man of science frowning on him he held his peace.

Norris lay on his cot, staring into the dark. He was thinking of the things Weyman and Crawley had just said, of their divergent reactions to the things he had said to them, and of Billy. He couldn't sleep. Whether it was the heat or grief at the loss of his friend he did not know. He rather thought it must be the heat, because he had lost many friends in his time, and grieved, and slept for all his grieving. It would be cooler on the open airdrome. He decided to go out and have a smoke. He slipped into a soft white shirt, a pair of khaki slacks, and tennis slippers, and left the hut.

A great moon silvered the silent hangars and the sweep of the close-cropped grass across the broad field as Norris strolled with a cigarette in his lips. He was glad he had come out. It was cooler.

A sentry stopped on his beat and challenged sharply.

"Officer of the post," said Norris and continued his stroll.

He came to the end of the hangar line. Beyond was the pilotage hut with the flaccid landing sock drooping at its staff by the door. Outside the last hangar stood an empty gasoline drum beside a girder. Norris sat down on the drum and leaned against the girder.

He had not thought it would be so cool out here. Decidedly this was pleasanter than the clammy sheets inside the torrid hut. He closed his eyes contentedly. His cigarette dropped to the ground and went out.

A little noise startled him. He must have been dozing. He opened his eyes to situate the noise. Somehow it sounded like a kiss. Then in wonderment he stared toward the near-by hut where the sock was stirring just a little in a vagrant draft.

Somebody was standing there in the moon-cast shadow. Somebody was moving. Not a sentry. A sentry would not move like that. Then Norris saw that there were two people in the shadow, not one. They walked together. At the edge of the shadow they paused. And he heard that little noise again, the noise that had startled him. It was such a noise as tokens the parting of close-pressed lips.

The two at the edge of the shadow stepped a little apart. They emerged reluctantly into the silver light beyond. Then, so close they passed that Norris might have reached a hand and touched them, Billy Cobb and Jennie Brent walked for the last time along the row of hangars and disappeared together, vanishing into the moon mist as a silver ship might fade into a cloud.

The moon, looking down, saw a sentry pacing the hangar line. The only other life in sight from end to end of Langstrom Field was a man in khaki slacks, a white shirt, and tennis slippers, perched on a gas drum, his head thrown back against a girder, who slept with a smile on his face.

______________

10: The Lady With the Hatchet

Maurice Leblanc

1864-1941

Metropolitan Magazine, May 1922

ONE of the most incomprehensible incidents that preceded the great war was certainly the one which was known as the episode of the lady with the hatchet. The solution of the mystery was unknown and would never have been known, had not circumstances in the cruellest fashion obliged Prince Rénine— or should I say, Arsène Lupin?— to take up the matter and had I not been able to-day to tell the true story from the details supplied by him.

Let me recite the facts. In a space of eighteen months, five women disappeared, five women of different stations in life, all between twenty and thirty years of age and living in Paris or the Paris district.

I will give their names: Madame Ladoue, the wife of a doctor; Mlle. Ardant, the daughter of a banker; Mlle. Covereau, a washer-woman of Courbevoie; Mlle. Honorine Vernisset, a dressmaker; and Madame Grollinger, an artist. These five women disappeared without the possibility of discovering a single particular to explain why they had left their homes, why they did not return to them, who had enticed them away, and where and how they were detained.

Each of these women, a week after her departure, was found somewhere or other in the western outskirts of Paris; and each time it was a dead body that was found, the dead body of a woman who had been killed by a blow on the head from a hatchet. And each time, not far from the woman, who was firmly bound, her face covered with blood and her body emaciated by lack of food, the marks of carriage-wheels proved that the corpse had been driven to the spot.

The five murders were so much alike that there was only a single investigation, embracing all the five enquiries and, for that matter, leading to no result. A woman disappeared; a week later, to a day, her body was discovered; and that was all. The bonds that fastened her were similar in each case; so were the tracks left by the wheels; so were the blows of the hatchet, all of which were struck vertically at the top and right in the middle of the forehead.

The motive of the crime? The five women had been completely stripped of their jewels, purses and other objects of value. But the robberies might well have been attributed to marauders or any passersby, since the bodies were lying in deserted spots. Were the authorities to believe in the execution of a plan of revenge or of a plan intended to do away with the series of persons mutually connected, persons, for instance, likely to benefit by a future inheritance? Here again the same obscurity prevailed. Theories were built up, only to be demolished forthwith by an examination of the facts. Trails were followed and at once abandoned.

And suddenly there was a sensation. A woman engaged in sweeping the roads picked up on the pavement a little note-book which she brought to the local police-station. The leaves of this note-book were all blank, excepting one, on which was written a list of the murdered women, with their names set down in order of date and accompanied by three figures: Ladoue, 132; Vernisset, 118; and so on.

Certainly no importance would have been attached to these entries, which anybody might have written, since every one was acquainted with the sinister list. But, instead of five names, it included six! Yes, below the words "Grollinger, 128," there appeared "Williamson, 114." Did this indicate a sixth murder?

The obviously English origin of the name limited the field of the investigations, which did not in fact take long. It was ascertained that, a fortnight ago, a Miss Hermione Williamson, a governess in a family at Auteuil, had left her place to go back to England and that, since then, her sisters, though she had written to tell them that she was coming over, had heard no more of her.

A fresh enquiry was instituted. A postman found the body in the Meudon woods. Miss Williamson's skull was split down the middle.

I need not describe the public excitement at this stage nor the shudder of horror which passed through the crowd when it read this list, written without a doubt in the murderer's own hand. What could be more frightful than such a record, kept up to date like a careful tradesman's ledger:

"On such a day, I killed so-and-so; on such a day so-and-so!"

And the sum total was six dead bodies.

Against all expectation, the experts in handwriting had no difficulty in agreeing and unanimously declared that the writing was "that of a woman, an educated woman, possessing artistic tastes, imagination and an extremely sensitive nature." The "lady with the hatchet," as the journalists christened her, was decidedly no ordinary person; and scores of newspaper-articles made a special study of her case, exposing her mental condition and losing themselves in far-fetched explanations.

Nevertheless it was the writer of one of these articles, a young journalist whose chance discovery made him the centre of public attention, who supplied the one element of truth and shed upon the darkness the only ray of light that was to penetrate it. In casting about for the meaning of the figures which followed the six names, he had come to ask himself whether those figures did not simply represent the number of the days separating one crime from the next. All that he had to do was to check the dates. He at once found that his theory was correct. Mlle. Vernisset had been carried off one hundred and thirty-two days after Madame Ladoue; Mlle. Covereau one hundred and eighteen days after Honorine Vernisset; and so on.

There was therefore no room for doubt; and the police had no choice but to accept a solution which so precisely fitted the circumstances: the figures corresponded with the intervals. There was no mistake in the records of the lady with the hatchet.

But then one deduction became inevitable. Miss Williamson, the latest victim, had been carried off on the 26th of June last, and her name was followed by the figures 114: was it not to be presumed that a fresh crime would be committed a hundred and fourteen days later, that is to say, on the 18th of October? Was it not probable that the horrible business would be repeated in accordance with the murderer's secret intentions? Were they not bound to pursue to its logical conclusion the argument which ascribed to the figures— to all the figures, to the last as well as to the others— their value as eventual dates?

Now it was precisely this deduction which was drawn and was being weighed and discussed during the few days that preceded the 18th of October, when logic demanded the performance of yet another act of the abominable tragedy. And it was only natural that, on the morning of that day, Prince Rénine and Hortense, when making an appointment by telephone for the evening, should allude to the newspaper-articles which they had both been reading:

"Look out!" said Rénine, laughing. "If you meet the lady with the hatchet, take the other side of the road!"

"And, if the good lady carries me off, what am I to do?"

"Strew your path with little white pebbles and say, until the very moment when the hatchet flashes in the air, 'I have nothing to fear; he will save me.' He is myself... and I kiss your hands. Till this evening, my dear."

That afternoon, Rénine had an appointment with Rose Andrée and Dalbrèque to arrange for their departure for the States. * Before four and seven o'clock, he bought the different editions of the evening papers. None of them reported an abduction.

_________

* See The Tell-tale Film.

At nine o'clock he went to the Gymnase, where he had taken a private box.

At half-past nine, as Hortense had not arrived, he rang her up, though without thought of anxiety. The maid replied that Madame Daniel had not come in yet.

Seized with a sudden fear, Rénine hurried to the furnished flat which Hortense was occupying for the time being, near the Parc Monceau, and questioned the maid, whom he had engaged for her and who was completely devoted to him. The woman said that her mistress had gone out at two o'clock, with a stamped letter in her hand, saying that she was going to the post and that she would come back to dress. This was the last that had been seen of her.

"To whom was the letter addressed?"

"To you, sir. I saw the writing on the envelope: Prince Serge Rénine."

He waited until midnight, but in vain. Hortense did not return; nor did she return next day.

"Not a word to any one," said Rénine to the maid. "Say that your mistress is in the country and that you are going to join her."

For his own part, he had not a doubt: Hortense's disappearance was explained by the very fact of the date, the 18th of October. She was the seventh victim of the lady with the hatchet.

"THE ABDUCTION," said Rénine to himself, "precedes the blow of the hatchet by a week. I have, therefore, at the present moment, seven full days before me. Let us say six, to avoid any surprise. This is Saturday: Hortense must be set free by mid-day on Friday; and, to make sure of this, I must know her hiding-place by nine o'clock on Thursday evening at latest."

Rénine wrote, "THURSDAY EVENING, NINE O'CLOCK," in big letters, on a card which he nailed above the mantelpiece in his study. Then at midday on Saturday, the day after the disappearance, he locked himself into the study, after telling his man not to disturb him except for meals and letters.

He spent four days there, almost without moving. He had immediately sent for a set of all the leading newspapers which had spoken in detail of the first six crimes. When he had read and reread them, he closed the shutters, drew the curtains and lay down on the sofa in the dark, with the door bolted, thinking.

By Tuesday evening he was no further advanced than on the Saturday. The darkness was as dense as ever. He had not discovered the smallest clue for his guidance, nor could he see the slightest reason to hope.

At times, notwithstanding his immense power of self-control and his unlimited confidence in the resources at his disposal, at times he would quake with anguish. Would he arrive in time? There was no reason why he should see more clearly during the last few days than during those which had already elapsed. And this meant that Hortense Daniel would inevitably be murdered.

The thought tortured him. He was attached to Hortense by a much stronger and deeper feeling than the appearance of the relations between them would have led an onlooker to believe. The curiosity at the beginning, the first desire, the impulse to protect Hortense, to distract her, to inspire her with a relish for existence: all this had simply turned to love. Neither of them was aware of it, because they barely saw each other save at critical times when they were occupied with the adventures of others and not with their own. But, at the first onslaught of danger, Rénine realized the place which Hortense had taken in his life and he was in despair at knowing her to be a prisoner and a martyr and at being unable to save her.

He spent a feverish, agitated night, turning the case over and over from every point of view. The Wednesday morning was also a terrible time for him. He was losing ground. Giving up his hermit-like seclusion, he threw open the windows and paced to and fro through his rooms, ran out into the street and came in again, as though fleeing before the thought that obsessed him:

"Hortense is suffering.... Hortense is in the depths.... She sees the hatchet.... She is calling to me.... She is entreating me.... And I can do nothing...."

It was at five o'clock in the afternoon that, on examining the list of the six names, he received that little inward shock which is a sort of signal of the truth that is being sought for. A light shot through his mind. It was not, to be sure, that brilliant light in which every detail is made plain, but it was enough to tell him in which direction to move.

His plan of campaign was formed at once. He sent Adolphe, his chauffeur, to the principal newspapers, with a few lines which were to appear in type among the next morning's advertisements. Adolphe was also told to go to the laundry at Courbevoie, where Mlle. Covereau, the second of the six victims, had been employed.

On the Thursday, Rénine did not stir out of doors. In the afternoon, he received several letters in reply to his advertisement. Then two telegrams arrived. Lastly, at three o'clock, there came a pneumatic letter, bearing the Trocadéro postmark, which seemed to be what he was expecting.

He turned up a directory, noted an address— "M. de Lourtier-Vaneau, retired colonial governor, 47 bis, Avenue Kléber"— and ran down to his car:

"Adolphe, 47 bis, Avenue Kléber."

HE WAS SHOWN into a large study furnished with magnificent book-cases containing old volumes in costly bindings. M. de Lourtier-Vaneau was a man still in the prime of life, wearing a slightly grizzled beard and, by his affable manners and genuine distinction, commanding confidence and liking.

"M. de Lourtier," said Rénine, "I have ventured to call on your excellency because I read in last year's newspapers that you used to know one of the victims of the lady with the hatchet, Honorine Vernisset."

"Why, of course we knew her!" cried M. de Lourtier. "My wife used to employ her as a dressmaker by the day. Poor girl!"

"M. de Lourtier, a lady of my acquaintance has disappeared as the other six victims disappeared.

"What!" exclaimed M. de Lourtier, with a start. "But I have followed the newspapers carefully. There was nothing on the 18th of October."

"Yes, a woman of whom I am very fond, Madame Hortense Daniel, was abducted on the 17th of October."

"And this is the 22nd!"

"Yes; and the murder will be committed on the 24th."

"Horrible! Horrible! It must be prevented at all costs...."

"And I shall perhaps succeed in preventing it, with your excellency's assistance."

"But have you been to the police?"

"No. We are faced by mysteries which are, so to speak, absolute and compact, which offer no gap through which the keenest eyes can see and which it is useless to hope to clear up by ordinary methods, such as inspection of the scenes of the crimes, police enquiries, searching for finger-prints and so on. As none of those proceedings served any good purpose in the previous cases, it would be waste of time to resort to them in a seventh, similar case. An enemy who displays such skill and subtlety would not leave behind her any of those clumsy traces which are the first things that a professional detective seizes upon."

"Then what have you done?"

"Before taking any action, I have reflected. I gave four days to thinking the matter over."

M. de Lourtier-Vaneau examined his visitor closely and, with a touch of irony, asked:

"And the result of your meditations...?"

"To begin with," said Rénine, refusing to be put out of countenance, "I have submitted all these cases to a comprehensive survey, which hitherto no one else had done. This enabled me to discover their general meaning, to put aside all the tangle of embarrassing theories and, since no one was able to agree as to the motives of all this filthy business, to attribute it to the only class of persons capable of it."

"That is to say?"

"Lunatics, your excellency."

M. de Lourtier-Vaneau started:

"Lunatics? What an idea!"

"M. de Lourtier, the woman known as the lady with the hatchet is a madwoman."

"But she would be locked up!"

"We don't know that she's not. We don't know that she is not one of those half-mad people, apparently harmless, who are watched so slightly that they have full scope to indulge their little manias, their wild-beast instincts. Nothing could be more treacherous than these creatures. Nothing could be more crafty, more patient, more persistent, more dangerous and at the same time more absurd and more logical, more slovenly and more methodical. All these epithets, M. de Lourtier, may be applied to the doings of the lady with the hatchet. The obsession of an idea and the continual repetition of an act are characteristics of the maniac. I do not yet know the idea by which the lady with the hatchet is obsessed but I do know the act that results from it; and it is always the same. The victim is bound with precisely similar ropes. She is killed after the same number of days. She is struck by an identical blow, with the same instrument, in the same place, the middle of the forehead, producing an absolutely vertical wound. An ordinary murderer displays some variety. His trembling hand swerves aside and strikes awry. The lady with the hatchet does not tremble. It is as though she had taken measurements; and the edge of her weapon does not swerve by a hair's breadth. Need I give you any further proofs or examine all the other details with you? Surely not. You now possess the key to the riddle; and you know as I do that only a lunatic can behave in this way, stupidly, savagely, mechanically, like a striking clock or the blade of the guillotine...."

M. de Lourtier-Vaneau nodded his head:

"Yes, that is so. One can see the whole affair from that angle... and I am beginning to believe that this is how one ought to see it. But, if we admit that this madwoman has the sort of mathematical logic which governed the murders of the six victims, I see no connection between the victims themselves. She struck at random. Why this victim rather than that?"

"Ah," said Rénine. "Your excellency is asking me a question which I asked myself from the first moment, the question which sums up the whole problem and which cost me so much trouble to solve! Why Hortense Daniel rather than another? Among two millions of women who might have been selected, why Hortense? Why little Vernisset? Why Miss Williamson? If the affair is such as I conceived it, as a whole, that is to say, based upon the blind and fantastic logic of a madwoman, a choice was inevitably exercised. Now in what did that choice consist? What was the quality, or the defect, or the sign needed to induce the lady with the hatchet to strike? In a word, if she chose— and she must have chosen— what directed her choice?"

"Have you found the answer?"

Rénine paused and replied:

"Yes, your excellency, I have. And I could have found it at the very outset, since all that I had to do was to make a careful examination of the list of victims. But these flashes of truth are never kindled save in a brain overstimulated by effort and reflection. I stared at the list twenty times over, before that little detail took a definite shape."

"I don't follow you," said M. de Lourtier-Vaneau.

"M. de Lourtier, it may be noted that, if a number of persons are brought together in any transaction, or crime, or public scandal or what not, they are almost invariably described in the same way. On this occasion, the newspapers never mentioned anything more than their surnames in speaking of Madame Ladoue, Mlle. Ardent or Mlle. Covereau. On the other hand, Mlle. Vernisset and Miss Williamson were always described by their Christian names as well: Honorine and Hermione. If the same thing had been done in the case of all the six victims, there would have been no mystery."

"Why not?"

"Because we should at once have realized the relation existing between the six unfortunate women, as I myself suddenly realized it on comparing those two Christian names with that of Hortense Daniel. You understand now, don't you? You see the three Christian names before your eyes...."

M. de Lourtier-Vaneau seemed to be perturbed. Turning a little pale, he said:

"What do you mean? What do you mean?"

"I mean," continued Rénine, in a clear voice, sounding each syllable separately, "I mean that you see before your eyes three Christian names which all three begin with the same initial and which all three, by a remarkable coincidence, consist of the same number of letters, as you may prove. If you enquire at the Courbevoie laundry, where Mlle. Covereau used to work, you will find that her name was Hilairie. Here again we have the same initial and the same number of letters. There is no need to seek any farther. We are sure, are we not, that the Christian names of all the victims offer the same peculiarities? And this gives us, with absolute certainty, the key to the problem which was set us. It explains the madwoman's choice. We now know the connection between the unfortunate victims. There can be no mistake about it. It's that and nothing else. And how this method of choosing confirms my theory! What proof of madness! Why kill these women rather than any others? Because their names begin with an H and consist of eight letters! You understand me, M. de Lourtier, do you not? The number of letters is eight. The initial letter is the eighth letter of the alphabet; and the word huit, eight, begins with an H. Always the letter H. And the implement used to commit the crime was a hatchet. Is your excellency prepared to tell me that the lady with the hatchet is not a madwoman?"

Rénine interrupted himself and went up to M. de Lourtier-Vaneau:

"What's the matter, your excellency? Are you unwell?"

"No, no," said M. de Lourtier, with the perspiration streaming down his forehead. "No... but all this story is so upsetting! Only think, I knew one of the victims! And then...."

Rénine took a water-bottle and tumbler from a small table, filled the glass and handed it to M. de Lourtier, who sipped a few mouthfuls from it and then, pulling himself together, continued, in a voice which he strove to make firmer than it had been:

"Very well. We'll admit your supposition. Even so, it is necessary that it should lead to tangible results. What have you done?"

"This morning I published in all the newspapers an advertisement worded as follows: 'Excellent cook seeks situation. Write before 5 P.M. to Herminie, Boulevard Haussmann, etc.' You continue to follow me, don't you, M. de Lourtier? Christian names beginning with an H and consisting of eight letters are extremely rare and are all rather out of date: Herminie, Hilairie, Hermione. Well, these Christian names, for reasons which I do not understand, are essential to the madwoman. She cannot do without them. To find women bearing one of these Christian names and for this purpose only she summons up all her remaining powers of reason, discernment, reflection and intelligence. She hunts about. She asks questions. She lies in wait. She reads newspapers which she hardly understands, but in which certain details, certain capital letters catch her eye. And consequently I did not doubt for a second that this name of Herminie, printed in large type, would attract her attention and that she would be caught to-day in the trap of my advertisement."

"Did she write?" asked M. de Lourtier-Vaneau, anxiously.

"Several ladies," Rénine continued, "wrote the letters which are usual in such cases, to offer a home to the so-called Herminie. But I received an express letter which struck me as interesting."

"From whom?"

"Read it, M. de Lourtier."

M. de Lourtier-Vaneau snatched the sheet from Rénine's hands and cast a glance at the signature. His first movement was one of surprise, as though he had expected something different. Then he gave a long, loud laugh of something like joy and relief.

"Why do you laugh, M. de Lourtier? You seem pleased."

"Pleased, no. But this letter is signed by my wife."

"And you were afraid of finding something else?"

"Oh no! But since it's my wife...."

He did not finish his sentence and said to Rénine:

"Come this way."

He led him through a passage to a little drawing-room where a fair-haired lady, with a happy and tender expression on her comely face, was sitting in the midst of three children and helping them with their lessons.

She rose. M. de Lourtier briefly presented his visitor and asked his wife:

"Suzanne, is this express message from you?"

"To Mlle. Herminie, Boulevard Haussmann? Yes," she said, "I sent it. As you know, our parlour-maid's leaving and I'm looking out for a new one."

Rénine interrupted her:

"Excuse me, madame. Just one question: where did you get the woman's address?"

She flushed. Her husband insisted:

"Tell us, Suzanne. Who gave you the address?"

"I was rung up."

"By whom?"

She hesitated and then said:

"Your old nurse."

"Félicienne?"

"Yes."

M. de Lourtier cut short the conversation and, without permitting Rénine to ask any more questions, took him back to the study:

"You see, monsieur, that pneumatic letter came from a quite natural source. Félicienne, my old nurse, who lives not far from Paris on an allowance which I make her, read your advertisement and told Madame de Lourtier of it. For, after all," he added laughing, "I don't suppose that you suspect my wife of being the lady with the hatchet."

"No."

"Then the incident is closed... at least on my side. I have done what I could, I have listened to your arguments and I am very sorry that I can be of no more use to you...."

He drank another glass of water and sat down. His face was distorted. Rénine looked at him for a few seconds, as a man will look at a failing adversary who has only to receive the knock-out blow, and, sitting down beside him, suddenly gripped his arm:

"Your excellency, if you do not speak, Hortense Daniel will be the seventh victim."

"I have nothing to say, monsieur! What do you think I know?"

"The truth! My explanations have made it plain to you. Your distress, your terror are positive proofs."

"But, after all, monsieur, if I knew, why should I be silent?"

"For fear of scandal. There is in your life, so a profound intuition assures me, something that you are constrained to hide. The truth about this monstrous tragedy, which suddenly flashed upon you, this truth, if it were known, would spell dishonour to you, disgrace... and you are shrinking from your duty."

M. de Lourtier did not reply. Rénine leant over him and, looking him in the eyes, whispered:

"There will be no scandal. I shall be the only person in the world to know what has happened. And I am as much interested as yourself in not attracting attention, because I love Hortense Daniel and do not wish her name to be mixed up in your horrible story."

They remained face to face during a long interval. Rénine's expression was harsh and unyielding. M. de Lourtier felt that nothing would bend him if the necessary words remained unspoken; but he could not bring himself to utter them:

"You are mistaken," he said. "You think you have seen things that don't exist."

Rénine received a sudden and terrifying conviction that, if this man took refuge in a stolid silence, there was no hope for Hortense Daniel; and he was so much infuriated by the thought that the key to the riddle lay there, within reach of his hand, that he clutched M. de Lourtier by the throat and forced him backwards:

"I'll have no more lies! A woman's life is at stake! Speak... and speak at once! If not...!"

M. de Lourtier had no strength left in him. All resistance was impossible. It was not that Rénine's attack alarmed him, or that he was yielding to this act of violence, but he felt crushed by that indomitable will, which seemed to admit no obstacle, and he stammered:

"You are right. It is my duty to tell everything, whatever comes of it."

"Nothing will come of it, I pledge my word, on condition that you save Hortense Daniel. A moment's hesitation may undo us all. Speak. No details, but the actual facts."

"Madame de Lourtier is not my wife. The only woman who has the right to bear my name is one whom I married when I was a young colonial official. She was a rather eccentric woman, of feeble mentality and incredibly subject to impulses that amounted to monomania. We had two children, twins, whom she worshipped and in whose company she would no doubt have recovered her mental balance and moral health, when, by a stupid accident— a passing carriage— they were killed before her eyes. The poor thing went mad... with the silent, secretive madness which you imagined. Some time afterwards, when I was appointed to an Algerian station, I brought her to France and put her in the charge of a worthy creature who had nursed me and brought me up. Two years later, I made the acquaintance of the woman who was to become the joy of my life. You saw her just now. She is the mother of my children and she passes as my wife. Are we to sacrifice her? Is our whole existence to be shipwrecked in horror and must our name be coupled with this tragedy of madness and blood?"

Rénine thought for a moment and asked:

"What is the other one's name?"

"Hermance."

"Hermance! Still that initial... still those eight letters!"

"That was what made me realize everything just now," said M. de Lourtier. "When you compared the different names, I at once reflected that my unhappy wife was called Hermance and that she was mad... and all the proofs leapt to my mind."

"But, though we understand the selection of the victims, how are we to explain the murders? What are the symptoms of her madness? Does she suffer at all?"

"She does not suffer very much at present. But she has suffered in the past, the most terrible suffering that you can imagine: since the moment when her two children were run over before her eyes, night and day she had the horrible spectacle of their death before her eyes, without a moment's interruption, for she never slept for a single second. Think of the torture of it! To see her children dying through all the hours of the long day and all the hours of the interminable night!"

"Nevertheless," Rénine objected, "it is not to drive away that picture that she commits murder?"

"Yes, possibly," said M. de Lourtier, thoughtfully, "to drive it away by sleep."

"I don't understand."

"You don't understand, because we are talking of a madwoman... and because all that happens in that disordered brain is necessarily incoherent and abnormal?"

"Obviously. But, all the same, is your supposition based on facts that justify it?"

"Yes, on facts which I had, in a way, overlooked but which to-day assume their true significance. The first of these facts dates a few years back, to a morning when my old nurse for the first time found Hermance fast asleep. Now she was holding her hands clutched around a puppy which she had strangled. And the same thing was repeated on three other occasions."

"And she slept?"

"Yes, each time she slept a sleep which lasted for several nights."

"And what conclusion did you draw?"

"I concluded that the relaxation of the nerves provoked by taking life exhausted her and predisposed her for sleep."

Rénine shuddered:

"That's it! There's not a doubt of it! The taking life, the effort of killing makes her sleep. And she began with women what had served her so well with animals. All her madness has become concentrated on that one point: she kills them to rob them of their sleep! She wanted sleep; and she steals the sleep of others! That's it, isn't it? For the past two years, she has been sleeping?"

"For the past two years, she has been sleeping," stammered M. de Lourtier.

Rénine gripped him by the shoulder:

"And it never occurred to you that her madness might go farther, that she would stop at nothing to win the blessing of sleep! Let us make haste, monsieur! All this is horrible!"

They were both making for the door, when M. de Lourtier hesitated. The telephone-bell was ringing.

"It's from there," he said.

"From there?"

"Yes, my old nurse gives me the news at the same time every day."

He unhooked the receivers and handed one to Rénine, who whispered in his ear the questions which he was to put.

"Is that you, Félicienne? How is she?"

"Not so bad, sir."

"Is she sleeping well?"

"Not very well, lately. Last night, indeed, she never closed her eyes. So she's very gloomy just now."

"What is she doing at the moment?"

"She is in her room."

"Go to her, Félicienne, and don't leave her."

"I can't. She's locked herself in."

"You must, Félicienne. Break open the door. I'm coming straight on.... Hullo! Hullo!... Oh, damnation, they've cut us off!"

Without a word, the two men left the flat and ran down to the avenue. Rénine hustled M. de Lourtier into the car:

"What address?"

"Ville d'Avray."

"Of course! In the very center of her operations... like a spider in the middle of her web! Oh, the shame of it!"

He was profoundly agitated. He saw the whole adventure in its monstrous reality.

"Yes, she kills them to steal their sleep, as she used to kill the animals. It is the same obsession, but complicated by a whole array of utterly incomprehensible practices and superstitions. She evidently fancies that the similarity of the Christian names to her own is indispensable and that she will not sleep unless her victim is an Hortense or an Honorine. It's a madwoman's argument; its logic escapes us and we know nothing of its origin; but we can't get away from it. She has to hunt and has to find. And she finds and carries off her prey beforehand and watches over it for the appointed number of days, until the moment when, crazily, through the hole which she digs with a hatchet in the middle of the skull, she absorbs the sleep which stupefies her and grants her oblivion for a given period. And here again we see absurdity and madness. Why does she fix that period at so many days? Why should one victim ensure her a hundred and twenty days of sleep and another a hundred and twenty-five? What insanity! The calculation is mysterious and of course mad; but the fact remains that, at the end of a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five days, as the case may be, a fresh victim is sacrificed; and there have been six already and the seventh is awaiting her turn. Ah, monsieur, what a terrible responsibility for you! Such a monster as that! She should never have been allowed out of sight!"

M. de Lourtier-Vaneau made no protest. His air of dejection, his pallor, his trembling hands, all proved his remorse and his despair: "She deceived me," he murmured. "She was outwardly so quiet, so docile! And, after all, she's in a lunatic asylum."

"Then how can she...?"

"The asylum," explained M. de Lourtier, "is made up of a number of separate buildings scattered over extensive grounds. The sort of cottage in which Hermance lives stands quite apart. There is first a room occupied by Félicienne, then Hermance's bedroom and two separate rooms, one of which has its windows overlooking the open country. I suppose it is there that she locks up her victims."

"But the carriage that conveys the dead bodies?"

"The stables of the asylum are quite close to the cottage. There's a horse and carriage there for station work. Hermance no doubt gets up at night, harnesses the horse and slips the body through the window."

"And the nurse who watches her?"

"Félicienne is very old and rather deaf."

"But by day she sees her mistress moving to and fro, doing this and that. Must we not admit a certain complicity?"

"Never! Félicienne herself has been deceived by Hermance's hypocrisy."

"All the same, it was she who telephoned to Madame de Lourtier first, about that advertisement...."

"Very naturally. Hermance, who talks now and then, who argues, who buries herself in the newspapers, which she does not understand, as you were saying just now, but reads through them attentively, must have seen the advertisement and, having heard that we were looking for a servant, must have asked Félicienne to ring me up."

"Yes... yes... that is what I felt," said Rénine, slowly. "She marks down her victims.... With Hortense dead, she would have known, once she had used up her allowance of sleep, where to find an eighth victim.... But how did she entice the unfortunate women? How did she entice Hortense?"

The car was rushing along, but not fast enough to please Rénine, who rated the chauffeur:

"Push her along, Adolphe, can't you?... We're losing time, my man."

Suddenly the fear of arriving too late began to torture him. The logic of the insane is subject to sudden changes of mood, to any perilous idea that may enter the mind. The madwoman might easily mistake the date and hasten the catastrophe, like a clock out of order which strikes an hour too soon.

On the other hand, as her sleep was once more disturbed, might she not be tempted to take action without waiting for the appointed moment? Was this not the reason why she had locked herself into her room? Heavens, what agonies her prisoner must be suffering! What shudders of terror at the executioner's least movement!

"Faster, Adolphe, or I'll take the wheel myself! Faster, hang it."

At last they reached Ville d'Avray. There was a steep, sloping road on the right and walls interrupted by a long railing.

"Drive round the grounds, Adolphe. We mustn't give warning of our presence, must we, M. de Lourtier? Where is the cottage?"

"Just opposite," said M. de Lourtier-Vaneau.

They got out a little farther on. Rénine began to run along a bank at the side of an ill-kept sunken road. It was almost dark. M. de Lourtier said:

"Here, this building standing a little way back.... Look at that window on the ground-floor. It belongs to one of the separate rooms... and that is obviously how she slips out."

"But the window seems to be barred."

"Yes; and that is why no one suspected anything. But she must have found some way to get through."

The ground-floor was built over deep cellars. Rénine quickly clambered up, finding a foothold on a projecting ledge of stone.

Sure enough, one of the bars was missing.

He pressed his face to the window-pane and looked in.

The room was dark inside. Nevertheless he was able to distinguish at the back a woman seated beside another woman, who was lying on a mattress. The woman seated was holding her forehead in her hands and gazing at the woman who was lying down.

"It's she," whispered M. de Lourtier, who had also climbed the wall. "The other one is bound."

Rénine took from his pocket a glazier's diamond and cut out one of the panes without making enough noise to arouse the madwoman's attention. He next slid his hand to the window-fastening and turned it softly, while with his left hand he levelled a revolver.

"You're not going to fire, surely!" M. de Lourtier-Vaneau entreated.

"If I must, I shall."

Rénine pushed open the window gently. But there was an obstacle of which he was not aware, a chair which toppled over and fell.

He leapt into the room and threw away his revolver in order to seize the madwoman. But she did not wait for him. She rushed to the door, opened it and fled, with a hoarse cry.

M. de Lourtier made as though to run after her.

"What's the use?" said Rénine, kneeling down, "Let's save the victim first."

He was instantly reassured: Hortense was alive.

The first thing that he did was to cut the cords and remove the gag that was stifling her. Attracted by the noise, the old nurse had hastened to the room with a lamp, which Rénine took from her, casting its light on Hortense.

He was astounded: though livid and exhausted, with emaciated features and eyes blazing with fever, Hortense was trying to smile. She whispered:

"I was expecting you... I did not despair for a moment... I was sure of you...."

She fainted.

An hour later, after much useless searching around the cottage, they found the madwoman locked into a large cupboard in the loft. She had hanged herself.

HORTENSE refused to stay another night. Besides, it was better that the cottage should be empty when the old nurse announced the madwoman's suicide. Rénine gave Félicienne minute directions as to what she should do and say; and then, assisted by the chauffeur and M. de Lourtier, carried Hortense to the car and brought her home.

She was soon convalescent. Two days later, Rénine carefully questioned her and asked her how she had come to know the madwoman.

"It was very simple," she said. "My husband, who is not quite sane, as I have told you, is being looked after at Ville d'Avray; and I sometimes go to see him, without telling anybody, I admit. That was how I came to speak to that poor madwoman and how, the other day, she made signs that she wanted me to visit her. We were alone. I went into the cottage. She threw herself upon me and overpowered me before I had time to cry for help. I thought it was a jest; and so it was, wasn't it: a madwoman's jest? She was quite gentle with me.... All the same, she let me starve. But I was so sure of you!"

"And weren't you frightened?"

"Of starving? No. Besides, she gave me some food, now and then, when the fancy took her.... And then I was sure of you!"

"Yes, but there was something else: that other peril...."

"What other peril?" she asked, ingenuously.

Rénine gave a start. He suddenly understood— it seemed strange at first, though it was quite natural— that Hortense had not for a moment suspected and did not yet suspect the terrible danger which she had run. Her mind had not connected with her own adventure the murders committed by the lady with the hatchet.

He thought that it would always be time enough to tell her the truth. For that matter, a few days later her husband, who had been locked up for years, died in the asylum at Ville d'Avray, and Hortense, who had been recommended by her doctor a short period of rest and solitude, went to stay with a relation living near the village of Bassicourt, in the centre of France.

________________

11: The Weed of Lethe

C. L. Antrobus

1846-1919

Temple Bar July 1902

AN EASTERLY wind blew strongly that hot July morning, and the little white village in the forest was filled with a mingled odour of dust and strawberries, for the fruit-gatherers had just come in with their fragrant baskets. East and west ran the road, white as the houses, emerging from the encompassing woodland for the brief two hundred yards of the village, then plunging again into the green depths to meet other white roads that wound for long miles through that living emerald. And over all was the burning blue of the summer sky.

The wind rose higher, coming in gusts, and a thick white pillar of dust whirled up the street, then broke into scattered clouds, powdering the roofs, falling underfoot, rolling away into the woods. When the dust column had passed, it left a man standing at the end of the street, as though he had stepped out of that wild eddy; a fantastic figure, tall, alert; in shabby black trousers, white flannel shirt, a long black scarf wound round his waist, and a large, much battered white felt hat. His pipe or flageolet seemed but the hollow stem of some umbelliferous plant; yet, when he put it to his lips, the sound that he drew from that poor instrument startled the loungers in front of the hotel as though a breath of flame had passed over them.

For it was a wondrous tumult of harmonies, like the rush of the wind in the forest; it was the music heard by Oarolan the Bard when he slept on the fairy h ill; it was Father Odin's chant in battle; it was Orpheus singing amid the frenzied chorus of the Bacchantes: and as the walls of Thebes rose to witchery of music, so rose in each hearer's soul the fairy palace of his dreams, whether of the shining past or the glowing future; to some only a dim vision of impossible rest, yet enough to "take the prison'd soul, And lap it in Elysium."

For the man with the pipe held his listeners prisoned, strangers and villagers alike. Silent and motionless, they stood where those magic notes had first fallen on their ears; the saddler, the wheelwright, the old chemist, the women with their baskets of strawberries, the grey-bearded snake-catcher leaning on his stick with his bag and adder tin, the labourer with scythe on shoulder, the group of visitors by the hotel;— all paused, forgetting the thing they were doing, oblivious of aught save that wild stream of melody flowing round them. Still the piper played, and the breeze blew the dust in white swirls about his feet. Then the wind rose and the dust rose also, till the piper was seen through it as through a pale mist. Suddenly, still playing, with amazing leapings and twirlings, piper and dust-cloud spun away together up the road and into the forest depths. For a minute, while yet the notes of the pipe were heard, the people remained immovable, silent; then, awaking as from a dream, each one looked upon his neighbour, and turned again to the daily business of life.

"The pied piper has departed without handing round the hat," observed a tourist. "Truly a most singular piper!"

"There's two on 'em," muttered the old snake-catcher, staring after the vanishing dust-cloud.

"What! Are there two pipers?"

The old man nodded.

"T'other's harmless enough, like this;" he pulled a green snake out of his bag, and the creature glided up his sleeve. "But yon," pointing to the woods, "he's like what I've got here," tapping the adder tin. "Ay, there's queer things i' the forest," he added as he moved away.

" 'Pied piper'?" said another idler reflectively, "I have always pictured that troublesome musician in a garment of many colours like Jacob. Yet after all we call the magpie pied."

"Whatever his dress," rejoined the first speaker, "undoubtedly he is the piper."

"In these days?" asked the other jestingly.

"Even in these days. I might say, particularly in these days. Old beliefs, old legends have come to the surface again now and then at all times— weeds of Lethe; and the amount of ancient wreckage lately thrown up by that slow stream is surprising; living wreckage, some of it ; the old gods are returning."

"The piper is a weed worth cultivating," remarked a third visitor standing in the hotel doorway, a red-haired, keen-eyed, cheerful individual; "and the snake-catcher is right, there are two pied fellows going piping about. This one I have not seen before, but the other was playing here yesterday. He looked ill, poor chap, and his piping was as melancholy as himself. Nothing like what we have just heard. The pipe was different too, it was a flageolet. Now this last resembled the thing the pifferari play upon— sort of old Greek thing— I forget its name."

"Monanlos," said a tall man in clerical dress, with a strong, clever face, perhaps a little hard in expression, as the face of a priest is apt to be; a hardness, however, that might be disturbed, and to-day there was a perceptible softening of glance and manner.

"Monanlos," he repeated, "curious that it should have sung in the ears of mankind so many centuries."

"This is its swan-song, Powell," said the red-haired visitor, "we are going to iron the world flat into the commercial ideal. Nobody will know anything except how to switch on something or other, and dexterously to tell as many lies as the devil let fall over Syria."

"I hope not."

"Must be so; we shall be much too busy with our muck-rakes to think of any immortal garland. The dust of the arena not only clings to our feet, it is rising and veiling our sight, smothering our souls. There is the germ of a sermon for you, Powell. However, one miracle will happen, one that all good men have desired. The whole earth will be of one faith—  Mammon-worship, mingled with that which accompanies it, a craving for ignoble power."

" 'Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell,' " quoted Powell with a half smile.

"Of course," replied his friend. "A suitable god for those cramped by stooping over the muck-rakes. Nobody will want to stand upright, either in body or spirit. Going to Barrow Down? Well, remember me to Mrs. Warrington. I'm off to see the abbey."

The two departed, and one of the remaining loungers idly inquired, "Who's the parson? I seem to know the name. Noticed him at breakfast."

"Yes, he arrived last night," answered another.

"He's Eldred Powell, the preacher. Sure to be a bishop by-and-by, then archbishop. The red-haired man, who gave you a beating at billiards last night, is Yates the barrister, Powell's particular friend. He is here as best man."

"Best man?" with lively interest.

"Just so. You recollect that tremendous smash of Black and Warrington last year? Black blew his brains out, and Warrington bolted, and was luckily drowned in the wreck of the Marina. Well, Powell is going to marry Warrington's widow."

"Oh? What is she like?"

"Don't know. Never saw her. She is staying at Barrow

Down for the wedding next week. It is to be a quiet affair, Yates tells me. Powell preaches at Barrow to-morrow, I believe."

"I think I will go and hear him."

"Be early then. I'm told the ohurch won't hold more than a dozen."

And the speaker strolled away.

All forest roads are more or less beautiful, and the sun-dappled way to Barrow Down was fair indeed that morning. There was a sense of rejoicing life everywhere. The woods were in their fullest luxuriance, musical with rustling leaves and sweet with soents of lime-blossom and fern and ripening grass. And Eldred Powell's spirit was in harmony with the joy of the summer day. He was a dreamer who intended that his dreams should become realities. Already he had done well in the fierce fight; he would do still better in the future. His name was even now in the mouths of men; by-and-by it should not be "a," but "the" name; and when he who bore it had passed out of the battle, it should echo down the centuries as did those of the great churchmen of old. Such were his dreams; but to-day the tumult of that strife seemed far distant. His keen face softened, life was very good to him; his one impossible dream had become a reality, he was going to marry Amy Warrington. His thoughts went back to the time when she was Amy Marston, and he poor, struggling, perforce silent. Now— he checked his musings, the piper again! Yet those plaintive, hesitating notes stealing from out the woodland surely were never blown by that masterful piper whose cadences swept round like wind-driven flame?

Powell stopped a moment to listen, then went on with a frown; he remembered the air this invisible musician was playing; Dick Warrington had been fond of it, had often played it on his flageolet. Poor Dick had gone downward of his own free w ill; idle, extravagant: not oruel, but neglectful, absorbed in his boon companions while his wife sat alone— the one woman whom Powell had desired to marry. Then the weaving years had wrought at the web of life, and the pattern had changed; Dick slept under the Channel seas, as was best, and here was this sunny July morning, the sunny future. Powell walked more swiftly, and gradually the sighing melody died in the forest behind him; he was glad when the familiar notes no longer reached his ear.

A rise of the ground, a turn of the road, and he was in the hamlet of Barrow Down, its thatched cottages, little church, and well, clustering, together within the surrounding belt of forest, cottages and church alike white with the snow of climbing roses. Nearly opposite the church was a small house with blue palings and a mulberry-tree at the gate, and here Powell was welcomed by a fair, slender woman with a face like Signorelli's Enthroned Madonna. "You have arrived, then?" she said, and voice and smile were sweet and radiant as the day.

"Two hours ago," he replied, "two long hours. How well you are looking I This place suits you." "Is it not idyllic? Though I have been here so short a time years seem to have passed since I left town. One feels like a dreaming chrysalis rolled up in a green leaf, or a sleepy butterfly, so carelessly happy."

"It is time you were carelessly happy," he responded; a remark that would have considerably surprised his friends had they heard it, for Powell had the reputation of being a just but somewhat hard man, one to whom the expression "careless happiness" was as rank heresy. Indeed, he was not quite sure that anybody ought to be happy at all; if they were, it should be a sober, cautious enjoyment, not a feast of the gods, but a family dinner ordered by himself. However, Powell, like many others, was better than his opinions, and Amy Warrington could bring to light, as with a magic wand, the spring of sympathy that welled far below the seeming arid surfaoe.

"Come and see the church where you will preach to-morrow," she went on, "it is so tiny one could almost put it in one's pocket."

"The church where we shall be married the day after to-morrow. I do not know what possessed me to say I would preach. The sermon will be either my best or my worst; probably the latter."

His companion shook her head.

"Not the latter," she said, as they strolled across the road and up the churchyard path, strewn with white rose-petals blowing off the porch.

"Well, Haughton"— Haughton was the Vicar of Barrow Down — "seems to have set his heart on my preaching, so I could hardly refuse. At any rate, I shall have no difficulty in making myself heard," added Powell, glancing round. They were standing within the church.

"Does it not remind you," she asked, "of the fairy carriage and pair that went into a walnut-shell? There are no aisles, you see; only the nave, and that is very small. One hears all the outside sounds; the rustle of the leaves, and the cow-bells."

Powell was about to speak, when he became aware that somebody was looking in at them through an open window behind him. He turned suddenly, and a white slouch hat vanished below the sill.

"What is it?" Amy Warrington turned also, but there was nothing save the white-rose dusters swinging to and fro in the wind.

"I fancied I saw a man at that window," said Powell; "a piper whom I heard at Crowhnrst this morning."

"In black and white clothes?— the Pied Piper as I call him? Does he not play wonderfully? The villagers are quite superstitious about him; they think his playing witchcraft. Of course I hear the news of the forest, at least of Barrow Down. The women gossip at the well, just as they did in old times; and I have made friends with them that I may go and gossip too. They are quite pleased to see me."

"Who would not be pleased to see you?" She laughed softly; everything about her was soft and gentle, almost subdued, yet with a sense of reviving life as of a rain-beaten flower expanding again to the sunshine.

"The people tell me there are two pipers," she resumed, "exactly like each other, one who takes money and one who does not I have only seen the one who does not, he never stops for it. Perhaps they are brothers, or perhaps the people are mistaken in imagining there are two."

"Mistakes are easily made concerning these human grass-hoppers," replied Powell. "They disappear when the sun no longer warms. I wonder where they go? If we searched a hollow tree in winter, should we find a piper asleep in it? But if you smiled like that, Amy, he would wake up, thinking summer had come. Now show me the gossiping well, I want to see the whole of Barrow Down."

He had spoken jestingly, but he felt a vague, unreasoning dislike to the idea of the two pipers. The memory of both recurred to him at intervals during the day, always with an indefinable uneasiness, a slight chill of the backbone, which he told himself was sheer nonsense and rank superstition as absurd as the village gossip of witchcraft. What if ten or a dozen such fellows were wandering in the forest? Yet there had been something uncanny about that fantastically leaping piper in the dustcloud, something that caused a faint stirring at the roots of one's hair, and which, Powell told himself, was of course a ridiculous delusion. Nevertheless, a certain discomfort of thought connected with the pied musician went with him when he returned to his hotel, waited on him during dinner, and mingled with his dreams.

Sunday was another day of clear heat and summer glory. A little wind went to and fro in the forest, and the sound of church bells went with it, bringing many strangers to Barrow Down; for the visitors at the Crowhurst hotels felt that to hear a celebrated preacher in this place of fair quiet was like the pepper in the cream tart of Arabian story; therefore the tiny church was filled even to the crowding of the rose-shadowed porch. In the brief panse ere he began, Powell looked down on the upturned faces—  one or two of them well-known in the great world— and his soul swelled with satisfaction; here was an audience able to appreciate him, able to criticise, and he did not fear criticism. He meant to give his beet; a sermon carefully considered, brilliantly written; the discourse of a clever man which was exceedingly like the discourses of other clever men. This was what the congregation expected, and as the opening sentences fell upon their ears, they settled themselves to listen with an air of serene content.

Without, the forest sang its mighty undersong, a vast murmur that rose and fell like a distant surge; while at the windows blossom and leaf rustled softly as the warm wind blew over them. Eight, ten minutes passed; Powell was in full swing and thoroughly satisfying both himself and his listeners, when above that murmuring voice of the woodland rose a ripple of melody, like summer rain among the leaves. Faint and far away at first, slowly increasing in volume, drawing nearer, nearer, the weird music of the pied piper.

Powell stopped as suddenly as a lassoed steed; he lost the thread of his sermon, knew also that he had lost the rapt attention which he had commanded a moment before. The piper entangled preacher and congregation alike in his marvellous net of sound. The check, however, was but momentary to Powell, he gathered up his scattered thoughts and went doggedly on. Tet he was conscious that he no longer held the minds of those he addressed; and the rain of melody beoame a rushing river of music, a falling of waters. Then into his memory flashed that old tale of Thessaly, of the pouring fountains that were human lives wasting— so many human lives! The piteousnees of it all! And casting aside everything he had intended to say, Powell spoke as he had never spoken before and perhaps never would again; preaching as the piper played, feeling in unison with that sweeping flood of harmony.

He regained mastery over his audience; their minds were his to sway as he wished. How long he was thus speaking he did not know, neither did those who heard; but the aetnal time was short. He ceased as suddenly as he had begun, and the music without ceased also, as the last word left his lips, the swift silence coming almost as a shook. During a full minute no one stirred; then a sigh breathed through the churoh as though all were awaking from a dream, and Powell gave the benediction.

The congregation slowly streamed out into the sunshine, talking in low tones.

"He is even better than I anticipated," said a thin, dark man with keen eyes, "much better! Extraordinarily eloquent!"

"Yes," agreed the friend addressed, "and did you hear the piper? What with the fellow without and the fellow within, I feel as though I had been bewitobed."

"Extraordinarily eloquent!" repeated the other thoughtfully.

That day Powell dined with the vicar of Barrow Down. Later, standing with Amy Warrington under the mulberry tree by the gate, he mentioned the piper.

"It is best to be simple," he said. "The piper has taught me something. The whole place has taught me something. You are right in all you say of it. I begin to peroeive the need of the desert. One might learn a great deal here."

"I hoped you would like it," she responded. "When we are white-haired and very old, we might live here, and forget our elderly aches and pains. Nothing seems to matter in the forest, earth and sky are so soothing. Have you noticed that all the sounds are pleasant? Think how much that means. There is no noise whatever, only musical sound. I am beginning to realise how we needlessly torment ourselves by living in the monotony of towns, and refusing the natural consolations offered to us. Here everything changes from hour to hour. Look at the poppies dosing their petals now that the sunset is dying; they fold them like hands in prayer. There is a glow-worm; do you see it?"

"I see nothing but you," said Powell, and a smile flickered over her face.

"Another thing I have learnt," she resumed, "the infinite variety in the lights of God. That moon just rising behind the trees is not the same as yesterday, nor will it be the same to-morrow, and it casts different shadows. The lights we make are always the same; but moonlight, starlight, sunlight, daylight; the dawns and sunsets, all vary continually. I seemed to have gained new eyes in these few weeks."

"Help me to see too. There are many things I could perceive more clearly through your eyes."

The moon rose above the forest as Powell walked back to Crowhurst along the white road, barred and ohequered by moving shadows of bush and tree. The night was fragrant and still; only the faintest breeze rustled the leaves and shook the perfume from lime-blossom and wild-flower. He had gone rather more than half a mile, when from out the moon-flecked gloom on his right came a whisper of music, sweet, vibrating— the pied piper again. The whisper grew, became an exquisite maze of harmonies soft as the wind in the leaves, delicate as the shadows and sparkling as the dew; yet with a strange quality of insistence, a calling, as it were, alluring, irresistible.

Powell stopped a moment to listen, then turned aside into the dusky labyrinth of the woodland; he wonld speak with this wondrous piper; so he followed that music with quiet unhurrying step as in a dream. He did not hasten to overtake the player, he was not sure after all that he wished to meet him face to face; but he desired to hear once more those singing rushing waves of melody that had so stirred his spirit in the church at Barrow Down. Apparently the musician retreated as Powell advanced, for the same distance seemed always between them. Still he walked on, hardly conscious of thought, surrendering himself to the magic of the night and the spell of that strange piping that drew him through the white sheen and olive-black shadows of the moonlit forest.

And how varied were those shadows! He noticed them, as he passed onward; no two alike, a million fantastic shapes thrown across his path, meeting him, thronging round him, behind him. In the gloom, a ray of moonlight fell on something shining, silvery, a lustrous fretwork of grey crystal on the trunk of a fallen tree. It was but dew-drenched lichen, yet it looked like lattice-work carved by the fairies. As Powell drew near the fallen trunk, the glistening fretwork vanished, there remained but a pale blur on the dark bark. The glimmering fairy lattice was visible from one point only, where the moonbeams fell on it aslant and lit the dew entangled in its meshes. Such evanescent loveliness!— and unseen; perhaps never to reappear; needing the hour, the especial conditions of air and light. For whose pleasure was it and all other beauty oreated? Why Bhould the monstrous egotism of man imagine anything unseen because he does not see it?

Familiar words rose dimly in Powell's mind: "And behold, it was very good." Yes, that was it, "very good," and he had not much observed the world's beauty, he had been too busy. Was it a sin to be too busy to stand humbly before the works of the Great Artist? Perhaps to admire was a duty; to ignore, ingratitude? Had he been ungrateful?

A winged shadow flitted before him, crossing a moonbeam and so visible, then lost in the darkness; only a grey night-moth, a marvellous little life. And the forest was full of these marvellous little lives! Here, at his feet, were jewels that surely Titania had dropped, tiny lights gleaming from the short herbage; jewels? no, glow-worms; little lives again. Nay, the woods themselves were alive! He was walking in a living world, not the dead one of houses built by man, but the world-home not made with hands. The forest scents floated round him as he walked on; here a gush of lime-blossom, there the breath of grass and fern, followed by the faint fragrance of the wild rose. All th is!— and the deep, soft gloom, the phantasmal beauty of the shadows, the white lustre of the moon— Powell stood still, the piper had ceased playing. That wonderful music no longer rippled through the forest, only the ohurring of the fern-owls and the rustle of the wind in the trees broke the silence of the night.

The sudden stillness aroused Powell as from a vision. Where was he? How far from Crowhurst? He had not the slightest idea in what direction he had wandered, nor did he know the hour. He was standing in an open grassy space; high in the blue moon-flooded heaven the dragon coiled and sparkled, and Bootes swung slowly westward, with Arcturus glittering through the moonshine as through white mist.

"Fled is that music— do I wake or sleep?" murmured Powell. Then he looked up. "Past eleven," he said, forgetting his watch. He had wandered far indeed, back almost to the morning of the world, and the star-dials sufficed him. He turned to retrace his steps, star-guided, when he saw on the left a charcoal-burner's hut; one of those shelters of turf laid on poles that men have not yet lost the art of making, and resembling a giant fir-cone set on end. There was evidently someone within, for the yellow gleam of a candle shone from the half-open door. Whoever might be the inmate, he would know the nearest way back to Crowhurst, thought Powell, as he went, moth-like, to the candle flame. The dusky interior of the little wood dwelling was comfortable enough. There was the usual square of four bricks to put fire upon; a coffee-pot stood in the ashes. On a rough bench serving as a table were a cup, a jug of water, the candle, and one or two medioine bottles. Beside the bench was a wooden box; the remaining wall-space being occupied by a primitive bed which was merely a solid block of wood, not more than a foot high, and covered with a horse-cloth. On this, his head pillowed on a rolled-up coat, his face turned towards the wall, lay the pied piper.

For a moment Powell felt extreme astonishment; then he asked himself why he should be surprised. This woodland hut accounted for the sudden cessation of the music; the piper had simply stopped playing and walked in here.

"Who is it?" he asked feebly, not changing his position.

"Pardon me," began Powell, standing at the open door, "I have lost my way. Can you direct me "—  his voice died, for the man in the piper's dress turned his head and the light of the candle fell full on his face— the face of Richard Warrington, who had been drowned in the wreck of the Marina.

"What!" he ejaculated, raising himself on his elbow, "is it you, Powell? What brought you here? Come in and sit down."

But the shock had been so great that the other felt powerless to more.

"Come in," repeated Warrington fretfully. "Can't you see I am ill— dying? Sit down on that box, and let me think a little."

Powell obeyed mechanically. Was he dreaming? Surely he must be; and yet he knew himself awake.

"Now, tell me what brought you here?"

"I do not know. I mean, it was purely accidental. I followed some music and lost my way."

"That confounded piper, my double? I believe he is the devil, or a particular friend of the devil's. Perhaps I ought to say I am his double, rather than he mine. I found him here when I came, and thought it would be a good idea to dress like him ; two alike make more impression on people's minds. Not that they ever mistook my playing for his!" Here Warrington laughed; adding, "Have you ever seen his face?"

"No, he was playing in clouds of dust the only time I saw him, and wore his hat drawn low." Powell spoke almost unconsciously, he hardly knew what he was saying; his mind was in the utmost confusion..

"Exactly. That is one of the queer things about him. No one ever sees his face. There is always the dust or the distance, the hat or the trees, or something or other that is in the way. He is the devil of Tartini's dream, though perhaps he plays too well to be a devil. They never do anything well except mischiefmaking. But our piper excels in that, he led you here."

Dick Warrington paused, and a silence of some minutes ensued. Powell sat with unseeing eyes fixed on the half-open door, where the white moonlight lay on the threshold and made the grass look hoary. He could not realise this monstrous happening, this dead man alive. His whole spirit was in a tumult of revolt; he sat striving to master the whirling chaos within him. The flame of the candle flickered unsteadily as the night breeze wandered in, the churring of a fern-owl sounded near, then there was stillness again, save for the ceaseless murmur of the forest, which seemed to deepen the silence in the hut. At last he spoke.

"You were saved, then?" he said dully.

"Obviously. I was picked up by a fishing-boat, and the idea came into my head of giving a false name and becoming a conveniently dead man. So I told the fishing-folk I was Peter Smith, and asked them to pat me ashore on the Cornish coast. I knew Amy had friends who wonld look after her; at least, I hoped so, and really my dying seemed an excellent notion. What else oould I do? I was stone-broke, yon know; and I was going over to Guernsey to try if an old acquaintance there could give me a lift of any sort. I assure you I had not the least idea my partner was such a rascal. I left everything to his management, and thought he was feathering both our nests very nicely. I never imagined he was doing it with the clients' money. So, when the smash came, I hurried off, as I didn't exactly know what I had been let in for. I thought my Guernsey friend could tell me, and possibly assist. Well, I landed in Cornwall and got work on a farm. The farmer was a decent chap, and I stayed there till this spring, when I bought an oboe— I could play it, you know— and started life again as a musical tramp. The fact was I could no longer work. A chill I got in the wreck had stuck to me somehow, and— you see the result. Gradually I drifted here, imitated the piper's dress— I couldn't imitate his music!— and that's all. Putting it baldly, I stole, or permitted Black to steal for me; then I ran away; and hare been hiding ever since."

Powell made no comment. After a moment's pause, the other resumed.

"Now that I can see the end coming, I can also see what a fool I have been all along. But that's always the way. No use talking about it. I'm very comfortable here. The charcoal-burner permits me to use the hut for the merest trifle; and I have a doctor and a parson— not the parson of Barrow Down who is going to marry you and Amy to-morrow; mine belongs to South Beeches, a mile from here. By the way, do you know you are a good eight miles from Crowhurst, and nearly ten from Barrow. Of course, to my parson and doctor, and everyone else, I am Peter Smith. In fact, I am Peter Smith, Dick Warrington died a year ago; and Peter Smith is dying too; my doctor says so. Better give me some of that stuff of his in the bottle there. It picks me up for a minute or two: I am talking a good deal, and I shall not last out the night."

Powell gave the medicine in dilence; he did not in the least believe Warrington was in any immediate danger, and he could not yet trust himself to speak. Despite his priestly training, his whole soul seethed with fury.

"Thanks. In my wanderings about the forest," Dick continued, "I naturally heard all the gossip, and latterly it has interested me very much. At first I was rather taken aback when I heard that Amy was at Barrow and going to marry yon; but on reflection I perceived what an excellent arrangement it was. It is a great solace to me to leave my wife in such good hands."

The levity of this exasperated Powell.

"If you were not ill—" he began.

"Yes, I understand," responded Warrington, with a glance of mocking amusement, "you would give me a thrashing; just as you did when we were at school together, and I lied about something—  I forget what. How long ago it seems! Well, never mind, you can't do it now, and I wish you to listen. You may give me some more of that physic by-and-by in lieu of the thrashing; it's much worse! I heard, as I have said, all the news, and took care to keep out of the way. I had had a scare at Crowhurst when I went to pipe to the tourists and saw Yates there. He did not recognise me, but I got a fright. However, I could not resist taking a peep at you and Amy in the church at Barrow yesterday."

"Then it was you whom I saw outside a window?"

"Yes; I dodged below the sill when you turned your head. That was my last outing, I got a lift back in a cart. To-day you have heard the real piper; he has the field to himself now. I retire before my rival— before both my rivals."

"If you have nothing more to say than this sort of thing—"

"But I have!" interrupted the other. "I've lots to say, and it's worth listening to. Balaam was no good, yet he could see clearly enough; he was a true prophet. Bear that in mind, regard me as Balaam, and attend. I shall not live till morning. You do not believe that, nevertheless it is the truth; therefore your marriage must take place as arranged; that is, to-morrow. Wait!" as Powell opened his mouth to speak, "I know all you would say, and it is mere conventional rubbish. And don't look so freezingly indignant, one would think I was asking you to commit bigamy. There is no fear of that, I shall go out before sunrise."

"The question does not appear to me to admit of discussion."

"Oh, doesn't it, though! Of course if you were as sensible as I am there would be no discussion. As you are not, argument is necessary. You are now resolved to be the usual high-minded nuisance; to proclaim the erroneous date of my first demise, and the annoying date of my second; to delay your marriage for— say six months or a year; set people's tongues wagging delightedly— they would probably say you and Amy knew I was living, but somebody else found it out; your bishop would hear that and be scandalised, and doubtful of you. All this you would bear with an uplifted feeling of martyrdom and conscious excellence. Yet, as the time of waiting passed on— and it would pass slowly— you would begin to reflect that for the sake of your career it might be wiser not to marry Amy."

His listener made a swift gesture of negation. Warrington smiled and continued.

"Yes, you would, and your hesitation would urge you on. Because you did not wish to forsake her, you would do so. You would esteem it a duty to your bishop and the churoh, for if you remained celibate people would pity and regard you as a saintly martyr, having escaped the toils of a designing woman who would have led you into bigamy if luck had not befriended you. Your fame would go up by leaps and bounds. Am I not right? Have I not touched Achilles' heel?"

"I humbly trust I should not be so basely mean."

"You trust, yes; but you are not sure, you cannot say that you are sure, because in your soul you feel I may be right. Moreover, you would not feel base, you would so thoroughly enjoy doing violence to your own feelings; the hair shirt would be one of your own choosing— your own making. Now I offer you a hair shirt that will worry nobody but yourself; that, in short, will be a garment of righteousness to you if you accept it meekly."

He paused, a gleam of good-humoured malice in his eyes, and Powell stirred impatiently.

"Yes, I know," resumed Dick, "I am worse than the hair shirt. Still, I am right; there is the point. I am undoubtedly right. Your hair shirt fits your own spiritual vanity and harasses other people. The one I am advising fits everything except your spiritual vanity, and a little sand-papering of that would really be an improvement. You are a good fellow, but you have a tendency towards arrogance; the jingle of St. Peter's keys, you know. Now the cause of your reluctance to agree with me respecting this matter of the marriage is that you are afraid of the date of my demise coming out some day. You fear people saying, 'Powell married the widow the day after her husband's death.' You need not fear; the secret will never be known unless you reveal it; and the consciousness of the oiroumstances of my departure will be just the hair shirt needed. Your sense of social propriety is too strong. I am aware it is open to you to retort that my sense of social propriety has always been too weak; both statements are correct; and if you persist in your crooked notions, your strictness will prove as disastrous to Amy's happiness as my laxity. I did not behave altogether well to her, therefore I am trying to do what I can to smooth her future. But you who profess to despise the world are ready to spoil her life for fear of what the world might say! It will never say anything, because it will never have anything to say unless you go Bhouting to it to come and look at me. There will be nothing to hinder your marriage to-morrow, I am going fast."

Warrington stopped speaking, and there was a short silence. The night breeze sighed through the forest, a long, deep suspiration that, coming from afar, swelled softly upon the ear, filling all the air, drew near like an invisible presence, passed and died in the distance.

"Curious that, is it not?" said the sick man, "that sort of wind passing like a vast bird. What does Raleigh say?— 'The wings of man's life are plumed with the feathers of death.' I've noticed all sorts of odd things since I have been wandering about here. It has been a return to Mother Earth, and a wonderful old dame she is." Powell turned and looked at his companion.

"Are you not talking too much?" he asked in a more friendly tone.

"Too much for my health or for your satisfaction? Don't trouble about me. I have not much time left, and if I am to say anything I must say it now. Hullo I there is my double again. Now what do you suppose he is playing, a dirge? There is the sound of a going in it. Hear the Ave atque vale! Considerate of him, is it not? An act of courtesy to his poor double."

As the strange wailing music rose in the forest, Powell felt a sense of startled uneasiness. Perhaps too, the woodland spells were working, those spells of serenity, of repose, of feeling softened by the peace of the forest as the air is softened by the leaves, for it was in a gentle compassionate voice that he said, "Do you think you are worse? Where is your doctor? Let me fetch him."

"Certainly not!" Dick positively laughed. "Peter Smith is no concern of yours, and you are not to appear in connection with him. I'm no worse than I was when you came. My doctor was here this afternoon, and he will be here again to-morrow, also the parson. What more do you want? And the charcoal-burner— a decent fellow— turns up at six. Just sit and think things out while I listen to my piper who makes such delicate music in the woods. Look at the situation as though you were advising— not yourself, but a friend; deny yourself the joy of martyrdom; put the priest aside and treat the matter as a man. Remember I am known only to strangers, and my name is Peter Smith. I die to-morrow, nay, to-day, for I see it is past midnight; the moon is sinking, going with the piper's dirge; and I am going too."

"If you would but let me fetch—"

"Nonsense! Besides, you could not find the way unless I described it, which I shall not do. I am only tired. I will sleep a little while yon think oyer what I have said. I'll talk about it again presently."

He turned over and seemed to sink into slnmber. Without, that strange melody still wailed through the forest, but more softly, muffled as it were; the white moonlight moved away from the door as the moon sank lower; and Powell sat immovable, thinking— thinking. Yet more softly the piper piped, was he going? Powell bent over the sleeper, Dick was breathing quietly. The moon sank, and without was the starlit darkness and the faint rustle of the leaves, the piper was gone! Still Powell sat thinking. He did not believe that Warrington would die so soon; but if he did? Was he right? Was silence right?

And still Powell sat motionless, while Warrington slept and the world swung round till Aroturus dipped beneath the earth-rim and the Pleiades rose over the eastern horizon. Then came the indefinable stir that heralds the dawn. A wind stole through the forest, not the long sigh of deepest night, but the waking wind, the forerunner of the sun. A few birds twittered; slowly the black masses of foliage paled, then took form and colour. The dawn wind returned, this time stronger; the shadows changed, as the pearl-grey light glimmered in the east. The candle flickered, went out; there was no need of it in the growing radiance— not grey now, but blue. Powell rose to his feet with a little shiver, and a vague idea of making a fire lest the sleeper should need anything when he awoke. Surely Hick was very still! Something in the attitude of the motionless figure struck Powell, and he bent over the rough bed. The pale clear light fell full on Warrington's face, and his old friend drew back; the wanderer had been right, he had departed before sunrise.

Hardly knowing what he did, Powell went out of the hut into the exquisite freshness of the dawn, and the risen sun sent a shaft of gold across the dewy grass to his feet. He walked on a little way, trying to collect his thoughts. All round him was the awakened woodland, rejoicing in the glory of the new day, he himself the only unhappy thing, a blot on that fair peace. Presently he came to a cottage, where a woman was milking cows. It was no matter of surprise to her that gentlefolk should be abroad at that hour. She merely supposed him to be a restless tourist or insatiate butterfly-destroyer, and supplied him with the milk he desired and a slice of bread. Powell ate this meal sitting on a bank opposite the cottage; then bidding farewell to the  milker, he took his way back as he thought to the hut. But he could not find the open glade where stood the odd little dwelling. No matter, he would return to the cottage and inquire; there could not be many such huts in the forest, the woman would be able to tell him.

Woodland ways are confusing; Powell tried first one white road, then another, yet he failed to find a cottage. After walking for nearly an hour, he came upon a fallen tree, and sat down. The food had calmed him, that and the dawn miracle, his mind was clear and quiet. Here in this radiant morning the past night seemed unreal, incredible. Had he sat in that hut?— talked with a man believed dead a year ago?— seen him die? Or was it all a shadowy horror before dawn?— an evil dream to be forgotten? Here was the fresh beauty of the summer day, and at Barrow Down the wind would be blowing the white rose petals, and Amy would be waking to her wedding morning while he was on his way to darken her happiness with the risen ghost of past grief—  with a memory of present pain that would be as a cloud throughout her life.

There was pain enough in the world, was he bound to cause more? Almost the past night seemed to him a vision; would it be wiser, better to let it remain a vision, seen only by himself? Had he not followed the piper? Why did he? Powell was as free from superstition as any man, but when he recalled the spell of that weird piping— well, he drove it from his mind, he could not solve the mystery. An evil weed of Lethe truly, for that uncanny music had led him to that other weed of Lethe. Once more the question presented itself; that poor weed had but risen for a moment, to sink again beneath the waves of oblivion; must he speak of that brief rising? Silence would hurt no one. Powell rose to his feet.

"Whether I am right or wrong I cannot tell," he said aloud, "but I will be silent."

He took the first road he could find, and presently met a labourer who directed him to Crowhurst.

"It was about five miles off," the man said.

As Powell walked on a familiar voice hailed him, and to his astonishment he saw Yates advancing from a side path.

"Oh, here you are!" ejaculated the barrister. "That's right! I'm thankful to see a human being, particularly yourself. Where are we? Does this road lead to Crowhurst? Powell, I've spent the night in the forest. I lost my way."

"So did I."

"Did you? Well, it happened thus. I started for Barrow Down after dinner, thinking I should meet you, but met the old snake-catcher instead, who told me he had seen you following that mysterious piper; and as there is something uncommonly odd about that pied fellow, I thought I had better follow too. It is such a slur on the best man if he loses the bridegroom!"

"Did you hear the piper?"

"The music?— yes, and went after it like a boy after a butterfly. It led me through the woods for what seemed hours, then suddenly stopped close by a church with an inviting porch. There, the piping having ceased, I sat down to rest and fell asleep, praising the charity of our forefathers who built porches to churches. When I awoke it was broad day, but nobody about. I suppose there must have been a village near, but I didn't see it. I set out to find a guide and rambled here. Most extraordinary night! The piper is either the devil or Pan in disguise, else how could he drag us both about the place like that? However, it does not matter, since all's well"

"Yes," replied Powell, "all's well."

_______________

12: The Former Passengers

B M Croker

1849-1920

In: To Let, Chatto & Windus, 1893

"Who is whispering and calling through the rain?

Far above the tempest crashing,

And the torrent's ceaseless dashing,

I hear a weary calling, as of pain."

"IF ANY ONE can help you, it will be Captain Blane."

This sentence was uttered by a smart young clerk, in a shipping office in Rangoon, who, clothed in cool white drill, leant his elbows confidentially on the desk, and concluded his speech with a reassuring nod.

I was en route from Upper Burmah to Singapore, in order to attend my sister's wedding. Our flat river-boat was late, and when I presented myself at the booking-office of the P. and O., I found to my dismay that the steamer for the Straits had sailed at dawn, and that there would not be another for a week! I was therefore bound to miss the wedding, and waste my precious leave in Rangoon, thanks to the leisurely old tub that had dawdled down from Mandalay.

I turned my eyes expectantly on Captain Blane, a short-necked, weather-beaten sailor, in a blue serge coat with gilt buttons, and a peaked cap. He surveyed me steadily, with a pair of small keen eyes, and evidently did not receive the suggestion with enthusiasm.

"We don't carry passengers," he announced in a gruff voice. "My ship is only a cargo-boat, a tramp; and we have no accommodation whatsoever."

"No accommodation!" echoed the clerk, incredulously. "Oh, I say, come!"

"Why, you know very well that all the cabins are chock-full of cargo; and we have never carried a passenger since I took command."

"If there was any hole or corner where you could stow me, I don't mind how I rough it," I urged; "and I'll pay full first-class fare."

"Oh, there's lots of holes and corners," admitted the captain. "And you'd just get the ship's rations, same as the officers and myself; no soups and entrées— plain roast and boiled."

"I'm not particular; I'm ready to eat salt junk and sea biscuit. I'll do anything, short of swimming, to get to Singapore by next Wednesday."

"Is it so very important?" demanded Captain Blane.

"A wedding. No— no," in answer to his commiserating stare, "not my own— but I've to give away the bride."

"Well, well, I suppose I must try and stretch a point. Mind! I'll take you at your word about the passage money. 'Never refuse a good offer,' is my motto; so, Mr. ——?" and he paused interrogatively.

"Lawrence is my name."

"Mr. Lawrence, if you'll be down at Godwin's Wharf to-morrow, at nine o'clock, with your baggage and bedding and servant, we will lie off a bit, and any sampan will put you aboard in five minutes. Ask for the Wandering Star;" and with a nod between the clerk and myself, he turned his back and stumped out.

"He is not very keen about passengers, eh?" remarked the clerk with a laugh. "I wonder why?"

"I suppose because she is a dirty old cargo-boat. But any port in a storm, or rather, any ship, in this crisis, for me!"

"Ah," said the clerk, rubbing his chin reflectively, "I've a sort of idea— though perhaps I dreamt it— that there is something rum, or out of the way, about this Wandering Star."

"Well, whatever it is, I'll risk it," I answered with a laugh, as I followed the captain's example, and took my departure.

Punctually at nine o'clock next morning I embarked in a sampan, and was rowed down the swift Irrawaddy.

"That cannot be my steamer," I protested, as the boatman made for a long, low, raking craft, a craft of considerable pretensions! She looked like one of the smaller vessels of the P. and O. fleet.

But sure enough the boatman was right, for as we passed under her stern, I read in yellow letters the name— Wandering Star.

A closer inspection showed her to be simply what her commander had stated— a tramp; she was dirty, rusty, and travel-stained. When I clambered aboard, I found no snowy decks, or shining brasses, but piles of cargo, bustling coolies, and busy blue-clad lascars. I was immediately accosted by the captain, who presented me to the chief officer, and to a fellow-traveller, a sallow, lanky youth of nineteen, going to join his friends in the Straits.

"I thought he would be company for you," explained the sailor. "We are off in half an hour," pointing to the Blue Peter at the fore. "And we're loaded to the hatches. Mr. Kelly here will show you your quarters."

As I followed the chief officer, I was astonished at the dimensions of the Star; it was a considerable distance from the captain's snug cabin, near the bridge, to the poop. We made our way below, into a long saloon with tables and seats intact, but the aft part piled high with bales. There was a strange, musty, mouldy smell; it felt damp and vault-like, and afforded a sharp contrast to the blazing sun and cobalt sky on deck.

As my eye became used to the gloom, I noticed the lavish carving, the handsome mahogany and brass fittings, the maple-wood doors and panels—the remains of better days!

My cabin contained two bunks, and in one of these my servant, a Madras butler, called "Sawmy," had already arranged my bedding.

"I wonder you don't carry passengers?" I remarked to Mr. Kelly. "What a fine saloon! I should have thought it would have paid well."

"She carried hundreds in her day," he said complacently. "You see there is where the piano was hitched, and there the swinging lamps, and bookcase; but, all the same, it would never pay us to take passengers;" and he laughed— an odd sort of laugh. "We are not a regular liner, you know, trading between two ports. Regular liners look on us as dirt; but lots of 'em would give a good deal for our lines, and our engines. There's some of them I would not send my old boots home in! We pick up cargo as we find it; one time we run to Zanzibar, another to Hong Kong, another to the Cape, or maybe Sydney. I've not been home this three years. I hope you'll find your bunk comfortable; the youngster is opposite, just across the saloon— you know your way back!" and having done the honours, he left me.

Certainly, the Star was much above her present business, and bore the remains of having seen better days. Even my marble washstand was not in keeping with a cargo-steamer. I opened the next cabin; it was crammed to the door with freight— bird-cages in this instance. Every cabin was no doubt similarly packed. I was not sorry to exchange the earthy, chill atmosphere below for the bright sunshine on deck. Soon we had weighed anchor, and were moving smoothly down the rapid Irrawaddy, between high banks of tawny grass, gradually losing sight of the shipping, then of the golden Pagoda, then of Elephant Point; finally the Star put her nose straight out, to cross the Gulf of Martaban. The sea was calm, we were well fed and found, and made a pleasant party of six; the captain, first and second officers, the chief engineer, and two passengers. I slept like a top that night, and awoke next morning, and found we were anchored off Moulmein, with its hills covered with pagodas and palms. From Moulmein we put to sea, and still the weather once more favoured us. The captain was a capital companion, full of anecdotes and sea-stories; the chief engineer was a first-rate chess-player, and I began to think I had done rather a smart thing in securing a passage in this stray steamer. As the captain concluded a thrilling yarn apropos of a former ship, in which he had been third officer, I suddenly recalled the shipping clerk's hint, and asked—

"Are there no stories about this one? has she no history?"

Captain Blane looked at the chief officer with a knowing grin, and then replied—

"History?— of course she has. What do you call the log-book? That's her history. I suppose that chap at the office told you she was considered an unlucky ship? Eh? Come, now, own up!"

"No; but he said he had an idea that there was something queer about her— he could not remember what it was."

"Well, I've been in command of her now four years, and I've seen nothing to complain of. What do you say, Kelly?" appealing to the first officer.

"I say that I never wish to put foot on a better sea-boat, and there's nothing wrong with her, as far as I know."

But Sawmy, my Madras boy, entertained a totally different opinion of the Star. When I asked him why he did not sleep outside my door in the saloon, he frankly replied—

"Because plenty devil in this ship; the chief Serang" (head of the Lascars) "telling me that saloon plenty bad place."

WE WERE now within forty-eight hours of Singapore, when the weather suddenly changed, as it frequently does in those treacherous seas. The awning was taken down—sure presage of a bad time coming. The ports were closed, and all was made ready for a blow; and we were not disappointed—it came. We had a rough night, but I was not in the least inconvenienced; I slept like a dormouse rocked in the cradle of the deep.

In the morning my fellow-passenger (whose name, by the way, was Mellish, and who had evidently "suffered," to judge by his ghastly appearance) accosted me timidly and said—

"Did you get up and walk about last night?"

"No."

"Do you ever walk in your sleep?" he continued.

"Not to my knowledge— why?"

"Because last night some one came and hammered on my cabin door, and shouted, 'The ship's aground.' What do you think it can have been?" he asked with a frightful face.

"I think there is no doubt that it was the hot tinned lobster you had for supper," I answered promptly.

"No, no, no, it was not a dream— it woke me," he returned. "I thought it was you. Then I tried to think it was a nightmare, and had almost brought myself to believe it, and was dropping off to sleep, when a cold, cold wet hand was passed slowly across my face;" and he shuddered violently.

"Lobster!" I repeated emphatically.

"No, no. Oh, Mr. Lawrence, I heard moaning and whispering and praying. I'm afraid to sleep in that cabin alone; may I come and share yours?"

"There is no room," I answered, rather shortly. "The top berth is crammed full of my things."

At breakfast there was a good deal of movement, and now and then a loud splash upon the deck. The captain, who had been tapping the barometer, looked unusually solemn, and said—

"We are in for a bit of dirty weather; unless I'm mistaken, there's a cyclone somewhere about. I don't think we shall do more than touch the edge of it, and this is a stout craft, so you need not be uneasy."

This was vastly reassuring, when the sky to the west changed from a lowering grey to an inky black. The wind rose with a whimper, that increased to a shriek; it lashed the sea with fury, lashed it into enormous waves, and, laden as we were, we began to roll, at first majestically, then heavily, then helplessly. We took in great green seas over the bows, tons of water discharged themselves amidships, and made us stagger and groan, but still through it all the engines thumped doggedly on.

We seized our dinner anyhow; sitting, standing, kneeling, adapting ourselves to the momentary angle of the vessel. It was a miserable evening, wet and cold, and Mellish and I went to bed early. The dead-lights were down, the hatchway closed behind us; we were entirely cut off from the rest of our shipmates for the night, and the saloon smelt more vault-like than ever. I turned away from Mellish's grey frightened face, and stammering, piteous importunities, shut myself into my cabin, bolted the door, went to bed, and fell asleep. Meanwhile the storm increased to a hurricane, the motion was tremendous. I was flung violently out on the floor, as the Star made one awful plunge, and then righted herself. I was, needless to state, now thoroughly awake, and scrambling back into my berth, and clinging to the woodwork with both hands, lay listening to the roaring of the tempest, which rose now and then to a shrill shriek, that had a terribly human sound; my heart beat fast, as my ears assured it that I was not merely listening to the raving of the gale, but actually to the piercing screams of women, and the hoarse shouts of men! Just as I had arrived at this amazing conclusion, the door of the cabin was burst open, and an elderly man, in his shirt-sleeves, was hurled in.

"She's going down," he bawled excitedly, "and the hatches are fast."

I sprang up, and the next lurch shot us both out into the saloon. And what a scene did I behold by three lamps that swung violently to and fro! Their fitful light showed me a large number of half-dressed strangers, in the last extremity of mortal fear; there was the horrible, selfish pushing and struggling of a panic-stricken crowd, fighting their way towards the companion-ladder; the wild frenzied distraction people exhibit when striving to escape from some deadly peril; the tumult, the cries and shrieks of frightened women making frantic appeals for rescue— cries heart-rending to hear.

Besides the dense struggling block at one end of the cabin, battling fiercely for escape, there were various groups, apparently resigned to their impending fate. A family at prayer; two men drinking raw brandy out of tumblers; an ayah beating her head upon the floor, and calling on "Ramasawmy;" an old lady, with a shawl over her head, and a Bible on her knee; a young man and a girl, hand locked in hand, whispering last words; a pale woman, with a sleeping child in her arms. I saw them all. I saw Mellish clinging to the saloon hand-rail, his eyes glazed with horror, and gibbering like an idiot.

The crash of broken crockery, the shrieks of despair, the roaring of the wind, the sullen thundering of the seas overhead, combined to make up the most frightful scene that could possibly be imagined.

Then all at once, a beautiful girl, with long dark hair, streaming over a white gown, rushed out of a cabin, and threw herself upon me, flinging her arms round my neck; she sobbed—

"Oh, save me— save me! Don't let me die— don't let me die!"

Her wild agonized face was pressed closely to mine; her frantic clasp round my neck tightened like a band of steel— closer, closer, closer. I was choking. I could not move or breathe. She was strangling me, as she shrieked in my ear—

"It is coming now! This is death!"

There was one awful lurch, a grinding crash, a sinking sensation, a vice-like grip about my throat—and outer darkness.

I WAS AROUSED in broad daylight by Sawmy, who had brought my tea and shaving-water. I was lying on the floor of the saloon, and he was stooping over me, with a frightened expression on his broad, brown countenance.

"At first I thinking master dead!" was his candid announcement. "Me plenty fraiding. Why master lying here and no in bed?" Why indeed!

A plunge of my head into cool water, and a cup of tea, brought me to myself, and then I flung on my dressing-gown, and hurried across the saloon to see what had become of the miserable Mellish.

He was stretched in his berth, with a life-belt beside him, rigid and cold, and in a sort of fit.

With brandy, burnt brown paper, and great difficulty, Sawmy and I brought him round. As soon as he had come to his senses, and realized that he was still in the land of the living, he sat up and turned on me quite ferociously, and said—

"And that's what you call lobster!"

THE WEATHER had moderated considerably, and though I had no great appetite, I was able to appear at breakfast. Mellish was too shattered to join us, and lay in a long chair in the deck-house, sipping beef-tea, and hysterically assuring all inquirers that "he would never again set foot in the saloon—no, he would much rather die!"

"I suppose you got knocked about a bit last night?" inquired the captain, with a searching glance.

"Not exactly knocked about; I did not mind that so much, but—" and I hesitated.

"But you were disturbed?" he added significantly.

"Yes, very much so; I hope I shall never be disturbed in such a way again."

"Then I take it you've seen them— the former passengers? They are generally aboard, they say, in dirty weather."

"Whatever they were, I trust in God I may never witness such another scene."

"You don't wonder now that we are not free of offering cabin accommodation, eh? Not that I ever saw anything myself."

"But you admit that there is something."

"So they say"— nodding his head with a jaunty air.

"And what is the explanation? What do they say?" I asked impatiently.

"Just this. The Wandering Star was once the Atalanta, a fine passenger steamer, and, coming out her last trip, she fell in for the tail of a cyclone, and came to grief off the Laccadives; blown out of her course, engine-fires put out, went on a rock, and sank in ten fathoms; every soul on board went down, except a steward and a fireman, who got off on a hen-coop. It was an awful business— sixty-nine passengers, besides officers and crew. She sank like a stone, no time to get battered to pieces, and so she was right well worth her salvage. A company bought her cheap; she was but little damaged—they raised and sold her. She was intended for the pilgrim traffic, from Bombay to Mecca, and in fact she did make a couple of trips; but somehow she got a bad name; the pilgrims said she was possessed of devils— ha! ha!— and so the owners put her into the wheat and rice and general cargo trade, and we have no complaints. She has been at it these five years, and is, as I take you to witness, a grand sea-boat, and has fine accommodation betweendecks as well as aft; it's only in real dirty weather that there is anything amiss, and that in the saloon. They say," lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper, "they kept the passengers below, battened down; they got no chance for their lives. It was a mistake; they were all drowned like rats in their holes. Mind you, I've seen nothing, and I'm not a superstitious man."

"Would you sleep in the saloon?" I sternly demanded.

"No; for in a blow my place is on the bridge. But I'll not deny that a second officer, who has left us, tried a bunk down there once, out of curiosity, and did not repeat the experiment; he was properly scared;" and the captain chuckled at the recollection.

"I suppose we shall get in to-night?" I remarked, as we paced the deck together.

"Yes, about eleven o'clock. We are doing our twelve knots, dirty-looking old hooker as we are!"

"So much the better," I answered, "for you will not be surprised to hear that I'm not anxious to occupy my berth again."

I am thankful to relate that I slept on land that same night, and was not "disturbed."

I OFTEN glance at the shipping lists, to see if there is any news of the Wandering Star. I note that she is still tramping the ocean from China to Peru, and I have not the smallest doubt but that, on stormy nights, the saloon is still crowded with the distracted spectres of her former passengers.

_______________

13: A First Night

Richard Marsh

1857-1915

The Cornhill Magazine April 1893

Richard Bernard Heldmann

"WHAT does Shepherd say?"

"Well, he doesn't say, right out, so much as he implies."

I opened Shepherd's letter, and glanced through it again.

"It is easy to see that he thinks Ruthven is in a bad way."

"Then I shall at once get someone to take his part."

"He says that the mere thought of such a thing would be sufficient to send Ruthven headlong into his grave."

Trotter became excited.

"Then do you mean to tell me that I've only a choice between murder and suicide?"

"Shepherd puts it that Ruthven has been waiting and working all his life for such a chance, and that if now he only gets it to lose it the man will break his heart and die."

Trotter threw himself into a chair.

"Ince, you'll drive me mad! I consider that I've been badly used all through. When, at your special request, I offered the part to Ruthven—"

"There is no man upon the English stage who could act it like him."

"Did I say there was? Good heavens, man, let me speak! When I offered the part to Ruthven, and he accepted it, there was not a word said about his being unwell. A few days afterwards, when the reading is called, he writes and says he is a little off colour, but that if I will send him his part he will show at first rehearsal. I send him his part. First rehearsal comes, and still no Ruthven! Second rehearsal, and still no Ruthven! Third rehearsal, and still no Ruthven! Until we have drifted where we are! Then you ask Shepherd to go and see the man, who has stuck himself in some remote hole in some remote corner of Scotland— as if he had done it on purpose!— and tell us what prospect there is of his putting in an appearance. Shepherd writes that there is little or none. Then you say that if I take the part away from him I shall send the man headlong to his grave."

"That's what Shepherd says, not I."

"Then I say, Shepherd be hanged! I have never met the man in my life. I have never seen him act. I know nothing about him."

"But I have seen him act, and I know something about him, and I tell you that in a part of this particular kind he would prove that he possesses something very much like genius."

"What has that to do with it, if the man's too ill to act? You don't propose, I presume, that he should come on to the stage the first night without having attended rehearsal at all?"

What Trotter said was true enough. And I was quite as anxious for the success of the play as he could be. As he put it,

"Anybody would think I was the only person concerned. It's your play, not mine!"

"My dear Trotter, don't hit me."

"I should like to— or somebody. I don't know how long you mean to keep the stage waiting for rehearsal. I'm going! And after rehearsal I intend to get somebody to take his place."

It was annoying. In writing the play, throughout it I had had Ruthven in my mind's eye. The part of Blaise Townshend was, in no slight degree, the play. As Blaise Townshend I had felt convinced Ruthven would score a success which would make "A Story of Today" the most successful drama I had given to the public. And now it appeared that the man was so ill that, unless we postponed the production of the piece which neither Trotter nor I was disposed to do the part would have to be given to some man who, in all probability, would be no more my Blaise Townshend than I myself should be.

When we reached the theatre, and were hurrying through the passages which lead from the stage-door to the stage, someone who was standing there touched Trotter on the arm, and stopped him.

"Excuse me Mr. Trotter, I believe? I am Mr. Ruthven."

"Mr. Ruthven!" In his surprise Trotter started back and almost trod upon my toes. Here was the man standing at our elbows whom we had supposed to be lying on a bed of sickness four hundred miles away. My personal acquaintance with him had been but slight. I had seen him act in a provincial town, and had been so struck by his performance that I had gone behind between the acts and obtained an introduction. During the three or four days I remained in the town I had met him twice or thrice again. As he stood in the uncertain light, holding his hat in his hand, his eyes fixed wistfully on Trotter's countenance, I could not but be struck by the change in his appearance. He appeared to have shrunk to nothing. He even seemed to have lost in height. His slight, fragile figure had so decreased that one felt that if it decreased much more it would reach a vanishing-point. His face was worn, and wan, and white. Trotter stared at him in bewildered amazement so, indeed, did I.

"I may truly say, Mr. Ruthven, that this is an unexpected pleasure. I was under the impression that you were ill in bed."

Mr. Ruthven put his hand up to his brow.

"I— I haven't been quite well."

Trotter turned to me. "You know Mr. Ince?"

"I ought to."

But he did not seem as though he did. He looked at me with expressionless eyes, as though I were an entire stranger. I held put my hand to him.

"Surely, Mr. Ruthven, you have not forgotten me? I give you my word that I have not forgotten you. I would sooner see you than— anything."

He smiled or rather I should write that he attempted to smile, because the attempt was a failure. Trotter slipped his arm through his.

"Mr. Ruthven, we are already late for rehearsal. May I ask if you have looked at your part?"

"I am letter perfect."

He was. He went through his lines, cues and all, without a hitch. But with what an air! With the air of a man whose thoughts were far away of a man who took not the slightest interest in his surroundings. He certainly did not appear to be an actor who acted at rehearsals. Trotter came to me while he was going through one of his scenes.

"What do you think of him?" he asked.

"I think he's ill."

"So do I. I'm not sure that it isn't my duty to order him straight off home to bed."

Shortly after Ruthven joined us. Trotter made to him some half-jesting remark of the kind. He looked up at Trotter with an air of curious hesitation. As he spoke he rubbed his hands slowly one against the other.

"Why do you think I am ill? Because I don't act? I never do until I have got my business, and sometimes not even then until the night. But"— he turned to me— "I like the part. I think I understand it. I shall make something of it. I know I shall. I ought to. It is now or never." He repeated the last word "never!"

"Why do you say that?"

He stretched out his hands in front of him, with a little appealing gesture.

"Ah why?"

THAT afternoon I met Maidment of the Evening Journal. He fell in at my side. We walked together down the Strand.

"Sad news this about Ruthven."

I looked at him.

"To what news are you referring?"

"I hear he is at death's door."

"Where did you hear that?"

"The fellows were talking about it at the club. They talk about getting him something from the Fund. It appears that he is actually in want. Seems hard lines just when he was going to get his chance. By the way, whom are you going to put in his place?"

"I don't know if you are aware that Mr. Ruthven is at this moment in town?"

"In town! Why, I just heard Farncombe saying that only the day before yesterday he left Ruthven dying at Pittenweem. It seems that Farncombe was golfing at St. Andrews, and Stanley found out by accident that Ruthven was close at hand. He went over and saw him."

"My information is later than Mr. Farncombe's. I just left Mr. Ruthven at the stage-door of the theatre. He has been attending rehearsal."

"Attending rehearsal! Then Farncombe must have been piling it on."

"I have heard of stranger things. Good-day."

I left Maidment standing on the pavement. I had not advanced another two hundred yards towards Fleet Street when I almost ran into Farncombe.

"Hallo, Ince, you're the very man I wanted to see. I say, couldn't you spare a bit for Ruthven? It's wanted badly enough. I know his going under just now is hard upon you, but it's harder on him. His wife is in a dreadful state, and there isn't enough to pay the funeral."

I took a good long look at Mr. Farncombe. I have known him some years. He has the reputation of being a truthful man that is, as men go. I myself have certainly no reason to suppose that he is an habitual liar.

"I don't think that a funeral will be required at least, just yet."

"My dear fellow, he's doomed. The doctor told me what, for the matter of that, I could see for myself that, at the most, it's only a question of days, perhaps only of hours. It is quite possible that he's dead already."

"Possible, but not probable. I think not."

"Why? Have you had news?"

"Slight news."

"From his wife?"

"No; from Ruthven himself."

"You don't mean to say he has written to you? Why, when I saw him the day before yesterday, he hadn't strength enough to raise his hand, far less to hold a pen."

"He has now; or, at least, a few minutes ago he had."

"A few minutes ago! What are you driving at?"

"At the facts. Which are, that I have just attended rehearsal with him, and that I have just parted with him at the stage-door of the theatre."

"Ince, you're joking."

"Nothing is farther from my thoughts."

"Do you mean to tell me that Ruthven Philip Ruthven is actually in town?"

"Unless he has just taken train again for Scotland. Which is hardly likely, since he is to rehearse again tomorrow."

Farncombe stood stock still in the middle of the pavement. He thrust his hands into his trousers-pockets. He knit his brows. His demeanour must have struck the passengers in the Strand as strange. "Ince, there's a mystery somewhere. I give you my word of honour that I saw Philip Ruthven the day before yesterday at Pittenweem. He was lying in bed. His wife was crying at his side. He could not speak; he could not move. At least, every attempt at movement brought on suffocation. He could only look. Such a look! If ever I saw the near presence of death upon a man's face, I saw it then on his."

ii

IT CAME— the first night. That night which means the prospect of a little fun to those in front, and which means something so very different to those behind. I make it a rule to shun the first nights of my own plays. I have a strong feeling that those are occasions on which the author is better away. That night I broke my rule.

All men say that they are not superstitious. But I fancy that, at bottom, and on occasion, we all of us are. I know that something told me that that night would be a night of disaster. I had never written a play of which I hoped greater things. I felt that I had put into it some of the best work of which I was capable. If it was a failure, then I was a failure too. And yet—

Several things worked together to bring about this unsatisfactory state of mind. But, oddly enough, they all grouped themselves about Mr. Ruthven. The more I saw of him the less I liked him. I found that this feeling of mine was shared by others. Trotter, in confidence, actually told me that he was afraid of him. He said that he never came near him without a shudder that his presence filled him with a sense of physical repulsion. This was nonsense. I told him so. But I myself was conscious, in my heart of hearts, of something of the kind. And yet the man was inoffensive. He was the most retiring of mortals. He never spoke unless he first was spoken to. He never thrust himself to the front. Indeed, I wished he would have thrust himself a little more to the front. Anything more depressing than his demeanour at rehearsals I never witnessed. He acted like a wet blanket. He was absolutely lifeless! At the eleventh hour both Trotter and I wished that we were rid of him. But Trotter wouldn't take the initiative, and, ridiculous though it sounds, I felt I couldn't.

"You're the manager!" I reminded Trotter, who seemed to need reminding.

"And you're the author!"

"You engaged him!"

"At your instigation!"

"Well, you play a leading part, and if you choose to let him spoil you, it's your affair, not mine."

"To listen to you anybody would think that it's a matter of complete indifference to you if he ruins your play!"

All this was of course absurd. But the consequence was that the man retained his part.

As the night approached I worked myself into a state of fever. On the night itself I couldn't keep away from the theatre. An irresistible fascination drew me Strandwards. I was haunted by a hideous and altogether unreasonable suspicion that, at the last moment, Ruthven would play us a trick and fail to appear. As my cab drew up at the stage-door, I put the question to the door-keeper:

"Has Mr. Ruthven arrived?"

"Just arrived, sir."

"Are you sure?"

The man stared.

"Quite sure, sir. He just went through."

In spite of the man's protestation I went myself to see. I knocked at the door of Mr. Ruthven's dressing-room. There was no answer. I knocked again. Still no answer.

"Mr. Ruthven!" I cried.

Not a sound! I turned the handle. The door opened. I stepped inside. My first impression was that the room was empty. Then, looking round, I saw that something, someone, was lying on the floor. It was a man lying all of a heap. I am not ashamed to confess that, in the already agitated state of my mind, the sight of that heap filled me with a sense of distinct discomfort.

"Ruthven!" I said, "is that you, Ruthven?"

No reply. My impulse was to seek for help. What I did was to move forward, and lay my hand upon the recumbent mass. As I did so, it moved. A face looked up at me. It was Ruthven's. But what a face! It was the face of a man long dead. White and drawn, with great, glassy, staring eyes.

"Ruthven! Aren't you well?"

He stood up, rising slowly like a corpse from a grave.

"I am quite well."

He did not look well. He did not sound well either. His voice was harsh and husky. There was about him an air of wildness, of abandonment, which was altogether indescribable.

"A bit nervous, Ruthven, eh?"

"Nervous? I am not nervous. A man in my position is not likely to be nervous." His manner changed. His voice rose like the wail of a trumpet.

"Why, tonight I will witch the world with acting. I will cut for your play a notch on the tree of fame. They shall acknowledge me at last. I will charm them"— he spoke with a degree of earnestness which I did not find altogether agreeable— "with a voice from the grave."

I did not stay with him long. I did not find his company congenial.

"Mad!" I told myself, as I left his dressing-room. "I believe the man's stark mad! I only hope that his madness has a method, and that he will do as he says, and pull the piece through. Hullo! What do you want here?"

This ejaculation was caused by suddenly encountering Maidment wandering about behind the scenes as though he were strolling through the halls of his fathers. "I'm going in front. I thought I'd just come round and ask you what you were going to do."

"Do you mean now, or in ten years' time?"

Maidment laughed. He seemed to think I was joking.

"Whom have you got to take Ruthven's place?"

"Confound it, Maidment, you seem to be uncommonly anxious that I should get someone to take Ruthven's place."

He laughed again. He seemed in a laughing mood.

"How have you managed about a substitute? You must have found Ruthven's death a little awkward."

"Death!" I fancy I started. Maidment stared at me. "Ruthven's death!"

"Haven't you heard?"

"Heard what?"

"My dear fellow, you don't mean to say that you don't know that Philip Ruthven died last night."

For a moment I was speechless: it was with an effort I drew myself together.

"Look here, Maidment: I have a great respect for your character, but, if you don't take care, I shall lose it. I don't know in what society you have been mixing lately, but it must have been in that of persons who are descendants in the right line from Ananias. I have just left Mr. Ruthven in his room. He is not in his coffin. He is dressing for the stage. If you require ocular demonstration of that fact, you shall have it, if you will only go in front and take your seat, and wait till he comes on."

I had hardly rid myself of Maidment when Miss Stacey came up. She seemed to be in a state of excitement, and even of distress.

"Now what's to be done?"

I sighed. No more first nights for me!

"My dear Miss Stacey, would you kindly address that question to someone else, and ask me another?"

"But I hear that Mr. Ruthven's dead?"

"That is exactly what I hear. But Mr. Ruthven himself assures me that he isn't. He is at present in his room, and tells me that he is in excellent health. He is engaged, my dear Miss Stacey, in doing what you ought to be doing, and that is dressing."

Two or three other people had come up.

"What's that? Ruthven's not dead?

Why," said Cardewe, "everybody's talking about it at the club."

"Babree, of the Herald, just told me that he had heard of it through the Central News."

That was Charlie Gordon! He is one of those men who are always hearing things, is Gordon.

"Tom Dawson tells me that he has had it in a private wire."

That was Rayne— Cecil Rayne. He's another man like Gordon.

"Gentlemen, if you desire to hear Mr. Ruthven's own testimony as to whether he is or is, not dead, I shall be happy to escort you, so that you may interview him in his dressing-room."

"Not I!" said Gordon. "I wouldn't for a fiver! I'm not fond of ghosts!"

Miss Stacey gave a little scream. She clasped her hands with what I imagine she thought was an effective gesture.

"Joking apart," said Rayne, "I don't like these stories being always told about a man. He ought to be dead, if everybody says he is. Upon my word, it's quite upset me."

I should have liked to box their ears. But a man cannot assault his company on the first night of his own play and before the curtain rises! Afterwards, of course, it is a different thing.

"Ladies and gentlemen, might I ask you to adjourn to your own apartments?"

They were just moving off, when who should come blundering up but Trotter. I immediately saw that he was as bad as they were and worse.

"Ince, what's all this I hear about Ruthven? Is he dead?"

"No, my dear Trotter, he is not dead! not dead! not dead! As I have just been explaining to our friends here, he is at the present moment alive and kicking in his dressing-room. Might I venture to suggest that it would be no harm if somebody else was alive and kicking in his dressing-room as well?"

I went upstairs with him. He seemed half beside himself.

"Ince, are you sure that Ruthven's in his dressing-room?"

"As sure as I am that you at present are in yours."

"Are you sure it's Ruthven?"

"Do you suggest that it's his ghost?"

"Ince"— he caught me, with no slight pressure, by the arm— "last night I dreamt that he was dead; not once, nor twice, but over and over again. I kept on dreaming it. I saw that he was dead; I knew that he was dead. I have stayed indoors all day to get myself a little calm. Calm! Feel my pulse; I'm in something like a raging fever! As I was coming down to the theatre half-a-dozen men stopped me to tell me that Ruthven was dead."

"My dear Trotter, would you like to step downstairs and ask the man himself if he is dead?"

"No." He moved across the room with an unmistakable shudder. "Not for worlds! It it will be time enough to meet him when we meet upon the stage. Ince, do you know that I half believe that I am going mad?"

This was pleasant hearing! Trotter, who was at once manager and leading actor, half believed he was going mad. I myself believed in Ruthven's madness. So that it only required that I should be attacked with sudden softening of the brain to make a trio.

On all first nights everybody behind is in a state of what may mildly be termed nervous excitement. They may not always show it, but they always are. As regards nervous excitement, that first night eclipsed the record. Of those principally concerned I was the coolest. When I mention that, to the best of my judgement and belief, my temperature was about two hundred degrees in the shade, that fact speaks volumes. I had serious thoughts, even at the last moment, of enforcing a postponement of the whole affair. But I didn't.

The curtain rose; the play began. The scene of the first act was laid in a room in a common lodging-house in the East-end of London. There was a good deal of business. The lodgers were coming and going. The principal theme of their conversation was a great crime which had just been committed in one of the suburbs. There was one there who listened— a woman; and as she listened she knew who had done it— she recognised his workmanship. As they talked of the large reward which had been offered for the discovery of the criminal, a great hunger began to fill her soul and a desire to rise out of the depths into which she had sunk and to attain to comparative affluence by means— of the price of blood. This guilty man had been her lover. She loved him still. But she told herself that he was doomed— doomed! Someone would gain by his eternal fall; and why not she? As she went off upon her errand the man himself, against whom all men's hands would soon be turned, came on. This was Blaise Townshend, known to his then associates as "Gentleman Jo." He was a man who had been buffeted and torn— a genius gone wrong, an inventor none of whose inventions had attained fruition. Crammed full of ideas which seemed all to be abortions, the devil had got into him— that devil which comes to disappointed and to hungry men— and, extreme in everything, he had sunk to this— to crime.

While the opening was being played, like a restless spirit I was wandering about behind. The call was passed for Mr. Ruthven. As he came I shrank away, so marvellously did his appearance realise the creation of my fancy— the man with a devil. It was difficult to believe that this was the lifeless creature who had droned through the rehearsals. Two minutes after his entrance the house was in a tumult of applause. He had done what every actor hopes to do one day, and which scarcely one in a generation does do— he had taken his audience by storm. Instead of the disaster which I feared, it already seemed that I was within measurable distance of that stupendous, that fairy like, that world-echoing success for which we work, and of which we dream.

After Ruthven's entrance the action moved quickly. He was left alone with the journals, whose columns were filled with the story of his crime. He gloated over the hideous details with a sort of devilish exultation. While he was thus engaged a visitor entered, an unusual visitor in those parts— a lawyer who had brought him news— news of the death of a distant relative who had died in a far-off portion of the world, and who had left him one of those immeasurable fortunes which are characteristics of the day. The lawyer had come in person to offer his congratulations. And already the shadow of the gallows was falling over him. And while the tale is being told the woman returns from her Judas-errand and hears it all. She has sold the man she loves, this ten times millionaire, for a mess of pottage. Already the avengers of blood are at his heels.

When the curtain fell the audience gave Ruthven a call which shook the theatre. It was his success, not mine; his acting which told, not that of his companions. I went on to the stage to shake him by the hand; but he walked past me as though he did not see that I was there.

"Ruthven!" I cried.

If he heard he paid no heed. Walking straight on, he vanished out of sight. His demeanour was so strange that I hardly knew what to make of it. Trotter was standing by me; he had been acting the lawyer.

"He is either a genius of the first water, er else the Old Gentleman himself. When I was telling him that story about the fortune which had been left to him, the look upon his face made my blood run cold."

"I believe," said Gordon, "that he is the Old Gentleman."

"He has made me all of a tremble," declared Miss Stacey. She had played the woman who betrayed Blaise Townshend. "I really don't think I can go on with him again; he frightens me."

She sank into a chair and burst into something very like hysterics. I pooh-poohed their words as nonsense. I hurried them off to their dressing-rooms, but I declined Trotter's invitation to accompany him upstairs; I went out into the street to get a breath of air. I myself was haunted by a feeling that there was something about Ruthven which was not altogether what it should be. I had no desire to make it worse by listening to Trotter's ravings.

That night? well, who does not know that that night was a blaze of triumph? Disaster? disaster there was none. Ruthven went on from victory to victory to a perfect triumph! The house was in a frenzy. Yet his companions on the stage, and those behind, shunned him as though he were the plague. Even I held aloof from the man who had done, who was still doing, so much for the offspring of my brain. There was something about him which certainly was strange. The last act was on. My pulse was beating like a sledgehammer. I was straining my ears to listen to the intense silence in which the house was hanging on Ruthven's last great scene. Suddenly someone came rushing wildly towards me; it was Farncombe. He appeared to be in a state of extraordinary excitement; his coat-tails were flying in the wind; his hat was at the back of his head.

"Ince!"

It was a gasp rather than an articulate utterance. My first impression was that he was drunk, though undoubtedly he was no drunkard. He was trembling as though he could hardly stand. His eyes were unnaturally distended; his whole countenance exhibited mental disorder.

"Give— give me a chair!"

He clutched at a chair. He sank into it, trembling all the time as though he had a fit of ague. This was a case of something more than drunkenness.

"Farncombe, what is wrong?"

He seemed to struggle to speak.

"Ince" — he caught at his throat as if he were suffocating— "Ince, have you got any brandy?"

I went to Trotter's private store and poured him out a wine-glassful. He drank it at a gulp, neat.

"Give me some more."

I poured him out another glass. He drank that too; it seemed to do him good.

"Ince, do you think I'm mad?"

"Or drunk?"

"You think I'm drunk? I've been travelling all day from Scotland; I have only just arrived in town. It is therefore extremely probable that I am drunk, it being my invariable habit to get that way when I spend the day in railway trains."

"I was only joking. What's the matter?"

Directly I asked the question his trembling fit came back again. He looked about the room in such a way that I really began to think that he was in the early stages of delirium.

"Ince, I— I saw him!"

"Saw whom?"

"Ruthven!"

"Ruthven?"

"On the stage! Great Heaven!"

He put his hands before his face; he trembled like a leaf. The case seemed clear enough.

"Come, Farncombe, I think you would be better at home."

He looked at me, his face as white as this sheet of paper.

"You think so? Perhaps I had. Perhaps the strain has been too great. But I must be pretty bad, because I could have sworn I saw him."

"Of course you saw him."

"Of course I saw him?"

I never saw such a look of astonishment upon a person's face before.

"Where's the mystery? If you have been in front you must have seen him. Ruthven is breaking the record. I never saw such acting."

Farncombe had stood up, rising to his feet as if automatically. Now he sank back again as if I had struck him a blow.

"It was his ghost!"

"His ghost?"

"Ince, Ruthven's dead!"

"Dead? You've got hold of that nonsensical story which is going the rounds."

He looked at me in silence for a second or two. Then he put his hand into an inner pocket of his coat. He took out a pocketbook. From the pocket-book he took a folded paper. This he handed me. I opened it. It purported to be the medical certificate of Philip Ruthven's death!

"Farncombe! What— what is this?"

"The doctor's certificate."

"Someone has been fooling you. The man is as much alive as I am."

"Ince!"— Farncombe rose. He came close to me. He almost whispered in my ear— "I saw him die."

"You— saw him die?"

"I saw him die. At Pittenweem, yesterday evening, at nine o'clock."

"But— it's impossible."

"Ince, listen to me. The other day, when you told me that Ruthven was rehearsing, I couldn't understand it. But I supposed that it was all right, until, a day or two ago, I had a letter from Mrs. Ruthven, asking for the loan of a sovereign. She said that Ruthven was at death's door, and that they were absolutely penniless. I posted straight away to Pittenweem. I found things were as she said. Ince, last night he died. His wife, the doctor, and I were present. Directly afterwards I got the doctor to give me a certificate. Mrs. Ruthven was anxious that he should be brought to Kensal Green, where his little girl lies buried. And I thought that if I had the medical certificate in my pocket I could manage a whip among you fellows for the funds; and, later on, we might get up a benefit. Ince, where's that brandy?"

He helped himself to another glass. I felt that I myself should be none the worse for one, but I did not say so.

"So today I came back again. I knew this was your first night. As I was coming along I wondered how you would manage. I wondered also why you told me that cock-and-bull story about Ruthven rehearsing. Because, as Mrs. Ruthven informed me, and as I could see for myself, he had never been out of bed since the day I saw him last. It was late when I reached town. I thought I would come and see how you were getting on. I drove straight here. When I got inside, the first person I saw upon the stage was— Philip Ruthven!"

He paused. He gave a little gasp. I also was almost reduced to gasping-point.

"I caught his eye. He caught mine. He gave me such a look!"

Farncombe covered his face. He shuddered. There was an interval of silence. Then I spoke.

"But, Farncombe, he has been rehearsing all the time."

"You don't mean it?"

"He has!"

"Then it was his ghost!"

"But, apart from any other consideration, how can that be, when you say that the man was actually alive?"

"Heaven knows! I don't!"

"He is at this moment on the stage."

"Let me get away! Let me go home! Ince, I wouldn't meet him for a thousand pounds! If you had only seen him die!"

He hurried away. I hurried after him. As we were going the curtain fell. As it fell there rose a hurricane of applause, which seemed to shake the building. People came hurrying to and from the stage. In a moment we were in the centre of an excited crowd.

"They're calling him," I said.

"Calling him! Philip Ruthven! Ince, Philip Ruthven lies dead in a little room which looks out upon the sea. It it must all be some hideous dream."

Just then Trotter came up.

"Is that you, Farncombe? Did you ever hear such a tumult? There never was such acting! No one is in it tonight but him."

"But whom?"

"Ruthven!"

"Ruthven! Trotter"— Farncombe clutched at Trotter's arm— "it's Ruthven's ghost."

"Farncombe!"

"It is! I swear it is! Ruthven's dead! I saw him die!"

Trotter stared; well he might.

"When?"

"Last night!"

Trotter leaned against the wall. He appeared to need its support to help him stand.

"My prophetic soul! my uncle! Ince, I told you he was dead! I knew he was. I dreamt it. I dreamt that I saw him lying dead, and I saw that the clock was just on nine."

"Yes," said Farncombe, "the clock was just on nine."

"Great Jupiter! And I've been acting with a ghost!"

Several others joined us.

"A ghost?" said Gordon. "What's that?"

Trotter turned to him. "We've been acting with a ghost the ghost of Ruthven."

"You're joking!"

"Ruthven's dead. He died last night at nine. Farncombe saw him die."

The crowd fell back. Ruthven was standing within a yard of us. The tumult still continued in the theatre. I wondered, even then, if they were calling for the author. Seldom has an author felt less inclined to bow his thanks! Ruthven's eyes blazed like lightning. He seemed to have increased in height. At that moment his very personality would in itself have been almost sufficient to carry a scene.

"You saw him die!"

He addressed himself to Farncombe. He spoke with a strength of passion which was in uncomfortable consonance with his entire bearing. At sight of him Farncombe shrank away as, indeed, we all did.

"Ruthven!"

"Yes Ruthven!"

Ruthven stretched out his hands in front of him. He uttered his own name almost in a shriek. For a moment I thought that Farncombe was going to have a fit, or else turn tail and flee. But he did neither. Suddenly he rushed forward at the man before us.

"It's not!" he shouted— "by the Lord! it isn't Philip— it's his brother! What a fool I've been!"

Not the least surprising incident of that night was the extraordinary change which took place in Farncombe's bearing. Ruthven broke into a peal of discordant laughter laughter which suggested anything but merriment. He still held out his hands with the same wild gesture.

"It isn't Philip— it's his brother! Philip's dead! He died last night— in misery and beggary! His life-dreams faded, his hopes all blasted! The voice which told him that his time would come proved a liar after all!"

Advancing a step or two, he addressed himself directly to Trotter and to me.

"And I— I'm a fraud! a swindler! It's a clear case of impersonation— send for the police! I'm only Ruthven's brother! Years ago I tried my luck upon the boards, and failed! and failed! and failed! I tried again, and failed again! I was a failure even in a booth! Ha! ha! ha! As a super I almost failed! But I knew that it was in me, all the time, if I could only get a chance, and I could only get it out. And then Philip fell ill. He had had a little better luck than mine, but he too had been kicked from pillar to post. Six months out of a shop, and six months a couple of pounds a week— that had been the sort of thing with him. I went and saw him as he lay in bed. He told me that Robert Ince had seen him act, and had offered him the big part in his new play. His chance had come at last— as he lay dying. The dream of his life was realised— when he was face to face with death. Half in joke, he put an idea into my head. He said I believed in my own powers; no one knew him up in town; why didn't I take his part? I said nothing, but I took the scrip away and read it. As I read it I knew that my chance had come; that this was the part of which I had been dreaming; that I was fitted to a hair; that, if I could only get the chance of playing it, this time I should not fail. I told him so. He was incredulous. He wanted at least to write and suggest me as his substitute. But I knew better. I knew that it wasn't likely that the odd man in a fit-up travelling leg-show would be allowed to create the big part in a new piece by one of the most famous dramatists of the day, at a first-rate West-end London theatre. So he let me go. And you took me for Philip. And you thought I was a stick at rehearsals. So I was. I was half-fed, I was ill-lodged, I was pretty nearly penniless. I knew that Philip was dying. I realised, a little late, the responsibility I had taken on my shoulders. My heart sank. I began to think that, after all, I should fail. But this morning I— I heard that Philip was dead, and— and I went mad, and and I came down to the theatre, and— and— You hear those shouts? You hear that noise? I'm a fraud! I'm not Philip— I'm his brother! It's a clear case of impersonation! But I've not failed! Not failed!"

Just then Clifford, the acting-manager, came hurrying up.

"I don't know if you're aware that there's something very like a riot in the house. I don't know what's the matter behind here, but nobody seems paying much attention. They're calling for the author!"

The author went.

__________________

14: The Whale and the Grasshopper

Seumas O'Brien
fl. 1915-1932

The Illustrated Sunday Magazine 10 Oct 1915

WHEN STANDISH MCNEILL started talking to his friend Felix O'Dowd as they walked at a leisurely pace towards the town of Castlegregory on a June morning, what he said was: "The world is a wonderful place when you come to think about it, an' Ireland is a wonderful place an' so is America, an' though there are lots of places like each other there's no place like Ballysantamalo. When there's not sunshine there, there's moonshine an' the handsomest women in the world live there, an' nowhere else except in Ireland or the churchyards could you find such decent people."

"Decency," said Felix, "when you're poor is extravagance, and bad example when you're rich."

"And why?" said Standish.

"Well," said Felix, "because the poor imitate the rich an' the rich give to the poor an' when the poor give to each other they have nothing of their own."

"That's communism you're talking," said Standish. "an' that always comes from education an' enlightenment. Sure if the poor weren't dacent they'd be rich an' if the rich were dacent they'd be poor an' if everyone had a conscience they'd be less millionaires."

"'Tis a poor bird that can't pick for himself."

"But suppose a bird had a broken wing an' couldn't fly to where the pickings were?" said Felix.

"Well, then bring the pickings to him. That would be charity."

"But charity is decency and wisdom is holding your tongue when you don't know what you're talking about."

"If the people of Ballysantamalo are so decent, how is it that there are so many bachelors there? Do you think it right to have all the young women worrying their heads off reading trashy novels an' doin' all sorts of silly things like fixin' their hair in a way that was never intended by nature an' doin' so for years an' years an' havin' nothin' in the end but the trouble of it all."

"Well, 'tis hard blamin' the young men because every young lady you meet looks better to you than the last until you meet the next an' so you go on to another until you're so old that no one would marry you at all unless you had lots of money, a bad liver, an' a shaky heart."

"An old man without any sense, lots of money, a bad liver, an' a shaky heart can always get a young lady to marry him," said Felix, "though rheumatics, gout, an' a wooden leg are just as good in such a case."

"Every bit," said Standish, "but there's nothin' like a weak constitution, a cold climate, an' a tendency to pneumonia."

"Old men are quare," said Felix.

"They are," said Standish, "an' if they were all only half as wise as they think they are then they'd be only young fools in the world. I don't wonder a bit at the suffragettes. An' a time will come when we won't know men from women unless some one tells us so."

"Wisha, 'tis my belief that there will be a great reaction some day, because women will never be able to stand the strain of doin' what they please without encountering opposition. When a man falls in love he falls into trouble likewise, an' when a woman isn't in trouble you may be sure that there's something wrong with her."

"Well," said Standish, "I think we will leave the women where the devil left St. Peter—"

"Where was that?" asked Felix.

"Alone," answered Standish.

"That would be all very fine if they stayed there," said Felix.

"Now," said Standish, "as I was talking of me travels in foreign parts, I want to tell you about the morning I walked along the beach at Ballysantamalo, an' a warm morning it was too. So I ses to meself, 'Standish McNeill,' ses I, 'what kind of a fool of a man are you? Why don't you take a swim for yourself?' So I did take a swim, an' I swam to the rocks where the seals goes to get their photograph's taken an' while I was havin' a rest for meself I noticed a grasshopper sittin' a short distance away an' 'pon me word, but he was the most sorrowful lookin' grasshopper I ever saw before or since. Then all of a sudden a monster whale comes up from the sea and lies down beside him an' ses: 'Well,' ses he, 'is that you? Who'd ever think of finding you here. Why, there's nothing strange under the sun but the ways of woman.'

" ''Tis me that's here, then,' said the grasshopper. 'Me grandmother died last night an' she wasn't insured either.'

" 'The practice of negligence is the curse of mankind and the root of sorrow,' ses the whale. 'I suppose the poor old soul had her fill of days, an' sure we all must die, an' 'tis cheaper to be dead than alive at any time. A man never knows that he's dead when he's dead an' he never knows he's alive until he's married.'

" 'You're a great one to expatiate on things you know nothing about, like the barbers and the cobblers,' said the grasshopper. 'I only want to know if you're coming to the funeral to-morrow?'

" 'I'm sorry I can't,' ses the whale. 'Me grandfather is getting married, for the tenth time, an' as I was in China on the last few occasions I must pay me respects by being present at to-morrow's festivities,' ses he.

" 'I'm sorry you can't come,' ses the grasshopper, 'because you are heartily welcome an' you'd add prestige to the ceremony besides.'

" 'I know that,' ses the whale, 'but America doesn't care much about ceremony.'

" 'Who told you that?' ses the grasshopper.

" 'Haven't I me eyesight, an' don't I read the newspapers,' ses the whale.

" 'You mustn't read the society columns, then,' ses the grasshopper.

" 'Wisha, for the love of St. Crispin,' ses the whale 'have they society columns in the American newspapers?'

" 'Indeed they have,' ses the grasshopper, 'and they oftentimes devote a few columns to other matters when the dressmakers don't be busy.'

" 'America is a strange country surely, a wonderful country, not to say a word about the length and breadth of it. I swam around it twice last week without stoppin,' to try an' reduce me weight, an' would you believe me that I was tired after the journey, but the change of air only added to me proportions.'

" 'That's too bad,' said the grasshopper.

" 'Are you an American?' said the whale.

" 'Of course I am,' ses the grasshopper. 'You don't think 'tis the way I'd be born at sea an' no nationality at all like yourself. I'm proud of me country.'

" 'And why, might I ask?'

" 'Well don't we produce distinguished Irishmen? Don't we make Americans of the Europeans and Europeans of the Americans? Think of all the connoisseurs who wouldn't buy a work of art in their own country when they could go to Europe and pay ten times its value for the pot-boilers that does be turned out in the studios of Paris and London.'

" 'There's nothin' like home industry,' ses the whale, 'in a foreign country, I mean.'

" 'After all, who knows anything about a work of art but the artist? and very little he knows about it, either. A work of art is like a flower, it grows, it happens. That's all. An' unless you charge the devil's own price for it, people will think you are cheating them.'

" 'Wisha, I suppose the best anyone can do is to take all you can get an' if you want to be a philanthropist, give away what you don't want,' ses the grasshopper.

" 'All worth missing I catches,' ses the whale, 'an' all worth catchin' I misses, like the fisherwoman who missed the fish and caught a crab. How's things in Europe? I didn't see the papers this morning.'

" 'Europe is in a bad way,' ses the grasshopper. 'She was preaching civilization for centuries so that she might be prepared when war came to annihilate herself.'

" 'It looks that way to me,' ses the whale. 'Is there anything else worth while going on in the world?'

" 'There's the Irish question,' ses the grasshopper.

" 'Where's that, Ireland is?' ses the whale. 'Isn't that an island to the west of England?'

" 'No,' ses the grasshopper, 'but England is an island to the east of Ireland.'

" 'Wisha,' ses the whale, 'it gives me indigestion to hear people talking about Ireland. Sure, I nearly swallowed it up be mistake while I was on a holiday in the Atlantic last year, an' I'm sorry now that I didn't.'

" 'An' I'm sorry that you didn't try,' ses the grasshopper. 'Then you'd know something about indigestion. The less you have to say about Ireland the less you'll have to be sorry for. Remember that me father came from Cork.'

" 'Can't I say what I like?' ses the whale.

" 'You can think what you like,' ses the grasshopper, 'but say what other people like if you want to be a good politician.'

" 'There's nothin' so much abused as politics,' ses the whale.

" 'Except politicians,' ses the grasshopper. 'Only for the Irish they'd be no one bothering about poetry and the drama to-day. Only for fools they'd be no wise people an' only for sprats, hake, and mackerel there 'ud be no whales an' a good job that would be, too.'

" 'What's that you're saying?' ses the whale very sharply.

" 'Don't have me to lose me temper with you,' ses the grasshopper.

" 'Wisha, bad luck to your impudence an' bad manners, you insignificant little spalpeen. How dare you insult your superiors?' ses the whale.

" 'Who's me superior?' ses the grasshopper. 'You, is it?'

" 'Yes, me then,' ses the whale.

" 'Another word from you,' ses the whale, 'an' I'll put you where Napoleon put the oysters.'

" 'Well,' ses the grasshopper, 'there's no doubt but vanity, ignorance and ambition are three wonderful things an' you have them all.'

" 'Neither you nor Napoleon, nor the Kaiser himself an' his hundred million men could do hurt or harm to me. You could have every soldier in the German Army, the French Army, an' the Salvation Army lookin' for me an' I'd put the comether on them all.'

" 'I can't stand this any longer,' ses the whale, an' then and there he hits the rock a whack of his tail an' when I went to look for the grasshopper, there he was sitting on the whale's nose as happy an' contented as if nothing happened. An' when he jumped back to the rock again he says: 'A little exercise when 'tis tempered with discretion, never does any harm, but violent exertion is a very foolish thing if you value your health. But it is only people who have no sinse but think they have it all who make such errors.'

" 'If I could get a hold of you,' ses the whale, 'I'd knock some of the pride out of you.'

" 'That would be an ungentlemanly way of displaying your displeasure,' ses the grasshopper.

" 'I'd scorn,' ses he, 'to use violent means with you, or do you physical injury of any kind. All you want is self-control and a little education. You should know that quantity without quality isn't as good as quality without quantity.'

" 'Sure 'tis I'm the fool to be wasting me time listening to the likes of you,' ses the whale. 'If any of me family saw me now, I'd never hear the end of it.'

" 'Indeed,' ses the grasshopper, 'no one belonging to me would ever recognize me ever again if they thought I was trying to make a whale behave himself. There would be some excuse for one of my attainments feeling proud. But as for you!--'

" 'An' what in the name of nonsense can you do except give old guff out of you?'

" 'I haven't time to tell you all,' ses the grasshopper. 'But to commence with, I can travel all over the world an' have the use of trains, steamers, sailing ships and automobiles and will never be asked to pay a cent, an' I can live on dry land all me life if I choose, while you can't live under water, or over water, on land or on sea, and while all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't catch me if they were trying till the crack of doom, you could be caught be a few poor, harmless sailors, who wouldn't know a crow from a cormorant, and who'd sell your carcass to make oil for foolish wives to burn an' write letters to other people's husbands an' fill the world with trouble.'

" 'An' what about all the whalebone we supplies for ladies' corsets an' paper knives, and what about all the stories we make for the novelists an' the moving pictures an'—' "

"We're at the Sprig of Holly now," said Felix. "Is it a pint of porter or a bottle you'll have?"

"I'll have a pint, I think," said Standish.

_____________

15: The Genius of Dakaru Island

Frank Reid

Alexander Vennard, 1884-1947

Queenslander  21 July 1927

Alexander Vindex Vennard

"Frank Reid" was one of two pen-names used by Alexander Vennard in his writing career.  The other was "Ben Bowyang". His unique middle name is that of the Queensland cattle station on which he was born.

FROM distance Dakaru Island looked like any other isle in the South Seas. Twenty miles long perhaps, and of little width. Girt with a narrow sand beach, the ground broke sharply upward from this, and the sides of the small, heavily-wooded mountain forming the centre of the island were ga?hed nnd pock-marked with deep gullies. The whole place was rank with luxuriant tropical vegetation, with brilliant colour— intense greens and blues that hurt the eyes in the glare of the fierce mid-afternoon sunlight. Now and then a parrot settling in the bush made a vivid splash of crimeon, as though a drop of blood had fallen there. Toward the waterside, in the lowlands, there was the usual steaming, dismal, festering mangrove swamp.

Harold Boyd, the trader, had decided to spend a month on Dakaru Island. Natives erected a bungalow fronting the bench, and here he set up his household gods. He even went to the extreme of bringing a piano— a tough, weather-proof little upright. It had been transported by his schooner from Sydney. And great was the amusement of the two white planters on the island, and greater yet the wonder of the natives when it was unpacked.

It was set up in the main room, which opened toward the beach. Above it, and to right and left, Boyd hung three mirrors, reflecting what passed behind him while he played. He had not struck a dozen chords before many natives gathered outside, and, and he did not appear to observe them, gave themselves free rein. They evidently thought the performance, absurd: they grimaced and laughed, frankly expressing their judgments of the uncouth din.

But, whatever they may have felt, the instrument was a comfort to its owner. When the two planters with their wives and families came to console him in his solitude, the little mirrors would reflect emotions far different from the laughter and derision of the natives, Often it was an old song or a time-worn hymn he was asked for; then, he played or sang, he saw many a look of homesickness— many a smile, half tears, in the betraying mirrors.

One hot afternoon Boyd sat at his instrument, intently curious over the shifting visions in the mirrors. Past the door and down toward the beach led the road upon which trooped the natives. They passed in groups and singly— sad and merry, old and young— in endless procession. Unconsciously be began to play the Pilgrim Chorus from Tannhauser, though the joyous, happy natives outside were far from embodying the grief-worn spirits of Wagner's opera. Though half conscious of the incongruity, even of the absurdity, of the music in this scene, he kept on with the theme, becoming more and more rapt as it developed. The passing figures in the gloss dimmed and blurred, and at last concentrated into a single careworn face, deep-lined by haggard suffering— a face prematurely old, it with desperate eagerness. A moment more brought the realisation that the pathetic vision was no creature of the imagination, but a reffection from the real world of the dusty lawn outside.

A man was sitting on the edge of the veranda, looking in. His was the face reflected in the glass. He did not see the mirror that revealed him; he was, indeed, utterly unconscious of all save the music. His dress was that of the poorest native, but no native would have been affected by that song. Boyd played the chorus to the end, then drifted off through chord after chord, trying old familiar melodies. He played  Home, Sweet Home,  and  Santa Lucia.  The man showed no recognition, but the haunting look of soul starvation in his face deepened to agony.

Under that native's dress surely lay a mystery. Boyd became keen to discover it. Could he but touch with his music the hidden chord of feeling, the stranger would reveal himself. The musician experimented— with simple songs, those to which the heart-strings of memory vibrated; but with no success. At last, made impatient by failure, he turned and made a gesture of invitation,

"Won't you come in?" Instantly the man flushed, rose and hurried away.

"Friend! friend!" called Boyd. "Stop! stop!"

Half a dozen natives paused and turned to him with smiling faces. The man scurried on, disappearing at a turn of the beach. Boyd was mystified.

The next day brought a similar experience— this time the stranger would not venture so near the house. His reflected image could be seen as he sat on the other side of the road, ready for instant flight, intent upon the music, nevertheless, with a pitiful insistency— a look half-beseeching, half-terrified. He sat there all the afternoon, while his puzzled entertainer played. But Boyd rose, the listener vanished. That was the last seen of him for some days.

Then came the beginning of a strange companonship. As time passed there grew upon the lonely trader on Dakaru Island the sensation of being haunted. He never sat down to his piano without the feeling of a presence near him. Sometimes the form of his mysterious visitor flitted across the glass. But always when search was made, the man disappeared.

Gradually Boyd became accustomed to his invisible auditor. At last he came to crave his presence as a stimulus to his playing. There was a weird enchantment in the mysterious proximity of the spirit he could feel answering to every note. However, all the lures that Boyd put forward were of no avail— the Unknown persisted in his unaccountable conduct. The mystery deepened.

AT this juncture came Ferrier's yacht, on a world's tour, and amongst those on board was Pentanoff, a Russian pianist. As Ferrier decided to stay on Dakaru Island for several days, Boyd's musical inclinations and piano brought him and the Russian much together. The virtuoso was a pale little man. His  mother was an English woman, and, besides his mastery of what was literally his "mother tougue," he had inherited from her a certain power and gentle directness unusual in his race.

One night, in Boyd's bungalow, as the two sat over their coffee and cigars, the host told of his weird experience.

"I'm sure he's near ue now!" he exclaimed, as he finished the tale. "I Am vividly conscious of him, though where he keeps himself is a mystery."

Pentanoff was all interest. "Not German, French, nor English, you say, or he would have answered to all three— Scandinavian?"

"I don't think so."

"I wonder—" said Pentanoff, tapping with tuneful finger a minor note.

Then rapidly, nervously, slamming the  music stool into position, he settled himself and plunged into the ringing measures of a Russian battle hymn.

How he played! Boyd felt an electrifying thrill. He could not keep still, he rose and walked about the room. That tormenting, irresistible music ran riot in his blood. He wanted a forlorn hope to lead— a height to storm— a dash to death with drawn sword, in some mad charge for liberty! The hysteria of the passionate song shook him like a great wind. He turned— and came face to face with the mysterious stranger.

Great tears coursed down the man's cheeks. He turned to speak— only dry sobs came. Pentanoff heard, and whirled around. The musician spoke in a language Boyd did not understand. The man threw himself on his knees in a passion of weeping. It was some moments before he controlled himself.

Pentanoff received then a merciful inspiration. Turning to the piano, he played gentle, half-savage airs, strange, thrilling songs of the infancy of a people— the simplest, sweetest, saddest in the world. They soothed like an enchantment the poor creature at his feet. Gradually the scalding tears gavg place to gentle sobs of childlike relief, iInfinitely pitiful— then silence.

Again the musician spoke, his eyes, with gentle test, intent upon the keyboard. The answer came, hesitating; halting.

"Would you mind," Pentanoff said, "leaving us alone?"

Boyd reluctantly left the room, and far into the night he heard the hum of voices— then more of the strange eerie music.

DAWN had almost come when Pentanoff rejoined him. "It's very sad!" he said.

"Tell me," demanded the host after a lengthened silence. "Am I to be 'pied piper' against my will, and not know why?"

"It's very sad!" he repeated. "His whole story is disconnected— a sort of patchwork of memory— and there are hopeless rents in it. He is my countryman. He was a Bolshevik."

Again Pentanoff lapsed into silence, an odd look in his inscrutable eyes.

"An official in his district," he resumed at length, "had become obnoxious to the cause, and wad condemned. The Circle, of which your man was a member, was called upon to furnish the murderer. They drew lots, and it fell to him— Fate is such an ironical dame! He was the first violin in the most popular orchestra, and it was decided that the offender might be shot at one of the balls which it was known they would both attend.

"Unfortunately for the society chance had not chosen wisely; the avenger had a gentle soul— he was weakhe couldn't do it. I wish you had heard him describe it. I feel as if I had lived it all myself, or dreamt it in a nightmare. He sat through the evening, his viotin trembling in his hand, his revolver lying in his breast. Dance after dance went by, and still he did not shoot. He pictured it to himself as he pictured it to me— how the man would fall— how that brilliant gathering would rise in screaming disorder— how he would be seized— perhaps not have time to empty another cartridge into his own brain! He saw it over and over again while the lights winked and glared at him and perspiration hung chill at his temples. He could not kill in cold blood.

"He was ordered to play a solo. He determined that thid one— this, the last time —he would play, and then —he would make an end of it. He improvised,- tearing out from his soul all that terrible day of fear had held for him. He lost trace of everything but his music, and his misery  He paused. The audience he had held spellbound burst into a roar of applause. The host sent him his own glass of wine, the hostess her gold bracelet. He was dazed for a few moments, then the mists cleared, and be saw that his man had gone.

"Vaguely he murmured the name. Someone told him that the official had received a message which called him away. The rest of the evening is a blank. He  remembers only stumbling into the outer darkness.

"According to his colo of honour he must give himself up to the society. That meant a disgrace he could not bear— and death!— that he feared with overpowering terror. He went home, secured his little savings, and fled. Realising that his fellow-conspirators would leave nothing undone to find him, and make an example of him as a renegade and a coward, he lived panic-stricken— hiding, running, starving for days at a time, possessed by a fear that daily grew upon him.

"He does not seem to know how long, or where he wandered; but after months of anguished flight he reached the coast and concealed himself in a vessel whose destination he did not even guess. She was an English tramp, bound for Australian ports, Yokohama her last call, he learned when hunger forced him on deck. He was impressed as stoker. Even on board the ship he did not feel himself safe from the grasp of the men whose confidence he had betrayed. He lived in apprehension. His mind was already in the clutch of the fixed idea— the monomania of the hunted.

"When he reached Sydney he was terrified at the prospect of the return voyage. He thought of embarking for America, and had already completed arrangements for that, when the war broke out. Then he took passage on a South Sea schooner, and later on buried himself in a little village in Fiji.

"There he lived five years, perhaps longer. He picked up the language and gradually became identified with the people, who accepted him at first with curiosity, at last with friendship, even with uniform gentleness.

"The fear was with him always, though its cause had after a time vanished front his clouded mind. Only one longing, one need, remained clear and persistentmusic. He purchased a sorry-looking violin from a native, but its melody wm a poor solace. A month back he came to this island in a copra schooner. Wanted to see new places and faces. Suddenly—you can imagine what it must have been to him— out of the blur of sandy beach and blue shadows came the long-lost tunes, the melodies for which his heart hungered. He was drawn to them as by a spell. Memories sprang to life, faint and indistinct at first, dim visionss of another existence. He followed the sounds till ha came to your veranda, and sat there looking in at the strange yet familiar instrument. Slowly he drank in harmonies long forgotten, long sought for. When at last you rose and spoke to him the old terror smote his heart and he fled.

"But the music drew him back. He would often crouch under the veranda listening with all his soul. In the last few weeks his mind has been born again, but the dread remains.

"To-night— but you know the rest— the final awakening came. He was exhausted. I played him to sleep at last. He's is there now, poor wretch! Think of it— what a life!"

THE two men sat silent. For the moment they entered that strange existence of fear and longing— understood the unutterable effort of that numbed brain working through a labyrinth of darkness, guided only by the slender thread of sound, leading slowly, out into the light.

Pentanoff rose.

"I'll come back in the morning," he said, "to talk over what we had best do. Leave the poor devil where he is; let him alone. I've made him comfortable, and he'll sleep for 24 hours at least."

Bidding his friend good-fight, Boyd went to his room and to bed, falling into a heavy doze, from which he suddenly awoke. He was sitting bolt upright in his bed, startled. He was sure he had heard some strange noise. It came again—three great chords on the piano! The suddenness of the awakening had confused him. For some moments he was at a loss to account for the sounds in the room beneath. His feet shpped to the floor— then a rush of music held him still and silent.

What was it— this overwhelming uprising of sound? Terror, terror, abject terror in every note. Then fragment of longing, yearning— reminiscent melodies— and again fear, smiting, all-benumbing fear!

Boyd swayed back and forth, blinded with tears. Again and again, he tried to rise, but sank down trembling.  A crash— a discord, that seemed to break the very heart of the instrument— then silence, through which the last chord hummed in a roaring circle of sound.

Snatching his dressing-gown, Boyd ran to the sitting-room. The swinging lamp that hung from the ceiling was turned low, and threw distorted gigantic shadows as it swung slightly to and fro in the draught of the opened door. The room at first glance seemed empty, but across the keyboard of the piano lay huddled, limp shape, one arm hanging idly, the other bent under the drooping head. Slowly the body lost balance— sinking, collapsing to the floor. The thread in the labyrinth was broken.

_________________

16:  The Delusion of Mrs. Donohoe

Richard Dehan

Clotilde Graves, 1863-1932

In: The Cost of Wings, and other stories, 1914

Clotilde Augusta Inez Mary Graves

IT was in the spring of 19— that the Dapple Grays returned from South Africa, covered with wounds, glory, boils, and khaki, this last presenting many solutions of continuity. One finds the arrival of H. M. troopship Paradise at Porthampton Dockyard referred to in the newspapers bearing the date of that occurrence as an event calculated to awaken emotions of gratitude and enthusiasm in the bosom of every Briton. An illuminated address was presented to the Chief by the Mayor and Corporation of the borough, and the Dapple Grays were subsequently entertained, the Colonel and officers to a banquet, and the rank and file to a blowout.

"You return to us, Captain," the Mayor is reported to have said in a complimentary rider addressed to the commanding officer of the Paradise, "with a freight of heroes."

"A freight of devils, sir!" the Captain remarked in loud-toned confidence to the neighbor on his left. "If the Admiralty had any sense of humor— or any sense of fitness, by George!— the name of the ship would have been changed before we sailed. But the Paradise has seemed almost like one, sir, since we disembarked 'em, and that's a fact. What's the next toast on the list, did you ask? 'The united healths of the two regimental V. C.'s, Captain the Hon. Gerald Garthside and Private Dancey Juxon.'"

"What were the special acts of gallantry, do you— ah!— happen to— ah!— remember?" asked the Captain's left-hand neighbor (a pompous local magnate), "for which the Cross has been— ah!— conferred?"

"Usual thing. Garthside— that's Garthside, on the Mayor's left hand, trying to look modest, and succeedin' uncommon badly— Garthside rode from Mealiekloof to Blitzfontein with despatches for the Brigadier, peppered by Cronje's outposts from overlooking ground nearly the whole distance. Juxon was cut off while out on scout with a detachment, and got away from twenty Boers with his officer on the crupper. Young Bogle, next-of-kin to Lord Baverstone, died before Juxon got back to the regiment, chipped in too many places for recovery! Better off if he'd been left behind, do you say? Probably— probably. But Juxon has the V. C., and they're bringin' him in to hear his health proposed.... Fine-lookin' young Tommy, isn't he? Looks quiet and well-behaved, you think? Ah, you ought to have been with us on the voyage from the Cape. The evil genius of the lower troop-deck, and that's facts. Ringleader in every act of insubordination, up to all sorts of devilment, a black sheep, sir, a black— hip, hip, hurray! For he's a jolly—"

"And so," said the Colonel of the Dapple Grays to his Senior Major, a few weeks later, when the regiment had shaken down in its old barracks at Studminster; when its feminine complement had rejoined it; when wives once more "upon the strength" were washing the tattered remains of shirts which had seen more service than soap-suds, and husbands were employing eloquence in the effort to convince civilian visitors to the canteen that, despite the solemn warning recently issued from the most authoritative quarters, to treat the newly-convalescent enteric patient to beer or ardent spirits is to accelerate and not to retard his return to perfect health— "And so it's a settled thing, the engagement between your little girl and Garthside? Affair not jumped up in a hurry? Began a year before the regiment was ordered to the Front? Of course. My wife saw the attachment growing between 'em, and helped it on, she tells me. Every married woman's a match-maker, you know— don't you know— whether she's put her own private pot on a bit of good blood, with temper and stayin' power and so forth, or a dee-d confounded showy screw. And your little girl, not having a level-headed mother of her own alive to look after her!... Deucedly raw weather, you know, don't you know!"

Sir Alured broke off, anticipating rather than seeing the gray change in Major Rufford's face, and remembering that the handsome wife, who had died when Emmie was a hoyden of thirteen, had signalized the close of her career upon earth as Major Rufford's wife and the mother of his children by an act of desperate folly. But the Senior Major's wounds had been cicatrized by the great healer Time, and he looked back quietly enough as the Colonel cleared his throat with unnecessary violence, and twisted the great moustache that had been iron-gray and was now snow-white.

"Lady Gassiloe has been very kind, and Emmie doesn't forget how much she owes her. And there's the right stuff in Garthside; I can trust him to make my little girl a good husband. It's odd, when one comes to think of it, that our other Victoria Cross man is going to be married, and to Emmie's foster-sister, Peggy Donohoe."

"The deuce!" said Sir Alured. "Is that dee-d young scoundrel, Juxon, going to settle down? Seems too good to be true. Why, the old Paradise was hell when Juxon wasn't in the cells. Nearest approach to a rhyme I ever made in my life, by George! But Juxon's character apart it's not a bad match. The young blackguard has plenty of good looks, and Peggy's as pretty a girl as you may see, look high or low. And she thinks Juxon a proo shevally with his V. C.; and so do poor Bogle's people, and so do the public, by Jove! You should have heard him when he reported himself.... 'What did you mean, you dee-d idiot,' I asked him, 'by picking up a man who'd had the top of his head shot clean off, and couldn't live five minutes? D'ye call that philanthropy? In my opinion it's dee-d foolery!' 'Beggin' your pardon, Colonel, sir!' says Juxon, 'I calls it precaution. When I 'oisted Mr. Bogle up be'ind me, I see'd 'e'd 'ad 'is gruel, an' the last breath went out of 'im before old 'Andsome-Is— that's wot I calls that 'ere spavined gray o' mine— 'ad got into 'is stride. But the bullets was 'ummin' round me like 'ornets, an' pore Mr. Bogle, lyin' as 'e wos acrost my 'ams, drawed fire an' furnished cover.' Furnished cover! The cool young beggar fortifies his rear with the next in succession to one of the oldest peerages in the United Kingdom, gets mentioned in despatches, and receives his V. C.! Too dee-d funny, you know, don't you know!"

And Sir Alured mixed a brandy and soda, and chose an enormous cigar from a case resembling a young Gladstone bag. The conversation took place in a curious ground-glass hutch, sacred to the inner mysteries of Official business, and labeled "Private." And as the second in command charged and kindled a meerschaum of incredible age and foulness, there came a knock at the door.

"C'min!" barked the Chief over the rim of the tilted tumbler, and the regimental Doctor looked round the door. "Oh! it's you, Assassin!" he said, as he wiped the froth off the great white moustache. "How many exenterics have you kicked out of the convalescent ward this morning?"

"Three," said the Assassin— "Denver, Moriarty, and Jarman. Garthside's lambs all."

"And dee-d malingerers, in my opinion!" said Sir Alured.

"I'm with you there, sir," responded the Assassin with a twinkle. Then he relapsed into professional gravity, and said as he accepted a cigar and a peg, "There are one or two bad cases of relapse, I'm sorry to say— as the result of incautious indulgence in alcoholic beverages."

"Of course, of course!" growled Sir Alured. "When a man with a granulated stomach uses the organ as a receptacle for whisky, beer, and gin, contributed in unlimited quantities by admirin' friends, he oughtn't to be surprised when he finds himself drivin' to the cemetery on a gun carriage to the tune of the Dead March in Saul, with his boots following as chief mourners. Stands to reason!"

"I don't anticipate any serious results, except in the case of Sergeant Donohoe," the Assassin said, with a worried look in his usually cheerful countenance.

"Donohoe down again. Poor devil! I'm sorry to hear it!" The Chief tugged at the ends of the great white moustache and looked grave.

"Only yesterday," said the Senior Major, "I thought him looking about as fit as a man needs to be. He told me about Juxon's engagement to his daughter, and went off as pleased as Punch—"

"To drink their healths," interpolated the Assassin.

"Hah! That's about it," grumbled the Chief. "Well, I shall go round and look Donohoe up presently. Can't afford to lose my Senior Color-Sergeant, you know, don't you know!" Sir Alured frowned savagely, and cleared his throat with ominous vigor.

"You'll find him pretty low down," said the Assassin, "and I fancy Father Haggarty will be on duty. They'd sent for him before I came away."

"Is it as bad as that?" said the Senior Major, and there was a moment's silence, broken by a clinking step on the stone flags outside and a respectful knock on the glass door.

"A 'ospital horderly, sir," said the passage orderly to Major Rufford, "with Color-Sergeant Donohoe's respectful duty, and would you mind the trouble of steppin' over and hearin' somethin', sir, wot 'e 'as to say? It's Ward C., and a case of perforation— and, beggin' your pardon, sir, there ain't much time to lose."

"Of course I'll come! Say, at once!" Major Rufford lumbered up out of his chair, emptied the office kitten out of his undress cap, took his cane, which the office puppy had been chewing, and went.

"Donohoe's wife was Rufford's girl's foster-mother, you know, don't you know!" said Sir Alured. "There's not more than a month's difference between Peggy Donohoe and Emmie Rufford in age. When they were babies I've seen 'em sleepin' in the same cradle; and dee me if I knew which of 'em was which, though I suppose their mothers did. Not that Rufford's poor wife was over and above devoted to her babies. Odd now if the little beggars had got mixed up somehow, and Donohoe had sent for Rufford with the object of easin' his conscience before he gave up the number of his mess."

"Oh, that's all Gilbert and Sullivan!" said the Assassin, getting up. "Such things don't happen in real life, Colonel, and I'm going back to the hospital."

"You think not? Differ with you there. Walk over with you, if you've no objection." And the Chief and the Assassin followed in the wake of Major Rufford, who had only a moment before received point-blank and at short range from Sergeant Donohoe's puffy blue lips— parted for easier passage of the slow, painful breaths that were taken with such agony— the second overwhelming surprise of his life.

For Sir Alured's stray shot had registered a bull's-eye. Donohoe, conscious that the grim messenger who had beckoned and passed by so many times— under the heights of Jagai, in the clammy Burmese hill jungles, amid the muddy swamps of West Africa, or the karroo scrub or grass veldt of the South— meant business on this occasion— had given up the secret less hidden than forgotten for many years. Many years since, according to her own confession, faltered out to the Sergeant upon her dying bed, the pretty young wife of Private Donohoe, urged by the promptings of motherly love, or incited, as Father Haggarty would have said, by the temptation of the Devil, arrayed her own nursling in the long-tailed cambric robe with insertion of Valenciennes, properly appertaining to the foster-babe; enduing the said foster-babe, namely Emmeline, infant daughter of Captain and Mrs. Rufford, not only with the abbreviated cotton frock which was the birthright of a Donohoe, but with all the privileges appertaining to a daughter of the rank and file; including a share in the Christmas tree and bran-pie diversions annually given under the patronage of the Colonel's wife and other ladies of the Regiment— including her own mother.

"Don't say it, Donohoe," pleaded the bewildered Major, sitting on the foot of Donohoe's cot-bed, holding the rigid hand, and shaken by the throes that were rending the Sergeant's soul from the Sergeant's body. "It's an idea you've got into your head— nothing more! She— your wife— never changed the babies.... For God's sake, man, say you know she didn't!"

But Father Haggarty's kindly, pitying look had in it knowledge, religiously kept sacred, now freed by voluntary confession from the sacramental seal. He held the Crucifix to Donohoe's livid lips, and they moved, and a living voice came forth as from a sepulchre:

"She did ut. Sure enough she did ut; but for the right rayson why, sorr, I'm yet asthray. For wan thing— herself was a poor hard-workin' woman— an' the choild would be wan if ut lived. 'Twas ten years she carried the saycret— a mortial weight for a wake crayture, an' a Prodesdan' at that, wid no relief av clargy— and it wore her to the grave. On her dyin' bed she confessed ut to me. I had my thoughts av makin' a clane breast, and then— wurra! 'twas the divil at my elbow biddin' me whisht or I'd lose my Peggy that was the pride av me eyes an' the joy av me harrut. An' I held off from Father Haggarty, till I could hould no longer. That was six Aysthers back; and— 'Tell the truth,' says his Reverence, 'or you'll get no more of an absolution from me, me fine man, than Micky-would-you-taste-it?' An' at that I stiffened me upper lips an' riz from me marra bones an' wint me way. But the Hand is on me now, an' I've made my paice wid Thim above; an' I'd be glad you'd send for my Peggy to be afther biddin' her ould dada good-bye— more by token she's your Miss Emmeline by rights, and not my purty Peggy at all, at all!"

ii

MISS Margaret Donohoe— popularly known in the regiment as "Peggy," and, as it will be remembered, betrothed to Private Dancey Juxon, V. C.— Miss Margaret Donohoe was not summoned to the bedside of her hitherto-reputed father in time to hear from his own lips the secret of her birth. She was trimming an old hat with new crape for mourning exigencies, the day after the Sergeant had been consigned with the usual military honors to the Catholic division of the cemetery, when heavy footsteps sounded in the flagged passage of the Married Quarters, and the Colonel and the Senior Major, both visibly disturbed, walked into Donohoe's clean sanded kitchen, and, in as few words as possible, broke the news.

"It's a terrible shock to you, my poor girl— as it has been to me!" said the Major, very white about the gills. "And to— to another I needn't name!" He was thinking of his Emmie, and how piteously she had sobbed last night and hung about his neck, with her pretty hair all coming down over his mess waistcoat, as she begged him not to send her away from him, because it wasn't her fault that she had turned out to be Donohoe's daughter and not his own; and how at that moment she was breaking the news to Garthside— that Junior Captain and Victoria Cross hero to whom, it will be remembered, she was engaged. Poor Emmie, poor darling Emmie!— or Peggy, as she ought now to be called! Major Rufford felt that he never would be able to do it. "But— I'll try and do my duty to you as your father should, and— I must look to you to— to do as much by me!" he concluded lamely.

"Oh, Major!" cried Peggy— Peggy with the hard, bright, black eyes, the red lips, the tip-tilted nose, the Milesian upper lip, and the coarse but plenteous mane of dark brown hair liberally "banged" in front and arranged behind in massive rope coils, secured by hairpins of imitation tortoiseshell as long as the farrier's pincers. "Oh, Major! can you ax it? Sure I'll thrate you as dacent as ever I did him that's gone, an' the Colonel hears me say it!..."

She checked the inclination to weep for one who was, all said and done, no relation, and put her crackling six-penny-three-farthings black-bordered handkerchief back in her pocket with an air of resolution. A flood of new ideas inundated her brain. All that she had ever dreamed of in the way of the unattainable lay hence-forth within her reach, and everything that had hitherto appeared most desirable and possible was from this bewildering hour rendered impossible. Her eyes fell on Private Dancey Juxon, V. C., who had been sitting on the kitchen table when the tall shadow of Sir Alured fell upon the sanded floor, and who had remained, from that moment until this, petrified in an attitude of military respect, against the whitewashed wall; and she realized that Dancey— Dancey, the Adonis of the rank and file, the hero once desired above all others, wrested at the expense of the most costly and variegated hats and the most dazzling toilettes from the clutches of how many other women!— Dancey must now be numbered among the impossibles. If a cold dash of regret mingled with the inward exultation of Miss Peggy, it was excusable.

"Sure, the dear knows! 'Tis like a tale out av the Pinny Romancir," she said, "an' troth it's no wondher av my breath was tuk away wid the surprise. To think of that bould craythur, Donohoe's wife!—"

"Do you mean your mother, my girl?" began the Colonel, but Peggy gave Sir Alured a look that put him in his place.

"I mane the woman that changed me in me cradle, bad cess to her for a thrickster!" said Peggy, "an' put her own sojer's brat in the place av me— me that belonged to the Quality by rights. Not that I'm not pityin' Miss Emmeline— now that she's Peggy Donohoe, a poor craythur sprung from nothin'." The Major turned a groan into a cough, and the Colonel hauled at the ends of his huge white moustache, but the tide of Peggy's brogue was not to be stemmed. "It'll be a change for her, it will so, afther livin' on the fat av the land— an orphan's pinsion to find her in stirabout, an' never a chick nor a child in the woide wurruld but her ould Aunt Biddy Kinsella!"

"Who— haw!— is Biddy Kinsella?" broke in the Colonel.

"Av' she's alive— an' a bag av dhry bones she must be av she is," says Peggy— "it's at Carricknaclee, in Aher, you may find her. She used to live wid her niece— manin' Mrs. Donohoe— an' she wint back to Ireland whin me mother died— manin' Mrs. Donohoe agin— a matter av eight years ago. An' 'tis natural Donohoe's daughter would call her to mind at a time like this. Maybe the young woman would go to live wid her," continued Miss Peggy calmly. "An' that brings to me own mind, Major— I mane Papa— whin do ye want me to come home?"

"Home! Oh, Lord!" said the poor Major, before he could stop himself.

"Dee-d cool!" growled Sir Alured, under the huge moustache, squeezing the Major's arm with his great, gaunt, brown hand. "But she's got the right— got the right, Rufford, you know, don't you know. Ha— hum!"

"You shall hear from me soon— very soon, Peggy," said the Major brokenly. "Good-bye for now, my girl." He took her coarse red hand, so unlike his Emmie's, and kissed her equally red cheek; and as he did so the petrified Juxon recovered the temporarily suspended powers of speech and motion, stepped forward, and saluted.

"Beg pardon, gentlemen," he began, "and pre-'aps I oughtn't to take the freedom; but 'avin' over'eard...."

"Saw you, Juxon! Knew you were there! Thought you had a right to hear, you know, don't you know!" said Sir Alured.

But a shrill feminine note of indignation pierced the Colonel's bass, as Miss Peggy cried, "Right! I'd be glad you'd tell me what right you have, Misther Dancey Juxon, to be afther pokin' the nose av you into business that doesn't consarn you, let alone the privit affairs av an officer's daughther. Away wid you, an' larn your place! your room's more welcome than your company; an' if it's a wife you're lookin' afther, maybe when wan av thim that's av your own station stands up before the priest wid you, I'll be making you a little prisint toward the housekeepin', av the young woman's dacent an' respictable!"

And the bewildered Juxon found himself outside the black-painted door— marked III. in large white numerals— in the character of a lover dismissed.

"Well, I'm blowed!" he said, and said no more, but clinked away in search of the Lethean streams of the canteen.

"Rufford," said Sir Alured solemnly, as the Chief and the second in command exchanged the atmosphere of coals and potato peels prevailing in the Married Quarters for the open air of the barrack square, "I'm confoundedly afraid she's a Tartar! Sharp as a needle, sir, and knowing as a pet fox, if you ask me!"

And the Major said in reply, "These things are supposed to be hereditary. I wonder where she gets it from!" Then he broke out, "I can't believe it, Colonel! I couldn't, if fifty dying men had taken an oath to it. That my poor Clara's girl! It's impossible! If an angel were to come down from Headquarters Above, with despatches confirming the report, I couldn't credit it!"

"And dee-d if I should blame you," the Chief responded. "Breed's bound to show, somewhere, and there's not a drop of good blood in the girl's veins, I'll swear!"

"There's an Irish strain in my family, too," said poor Rufford despondently, "and my Emmie has brown hair and eyes; and her nose, bless it! is a little tilted at the end."

"A nay retroussy. So it is, by George! But there are noses and noses, y'know," said Sir Alured. "And Emmie's a Rufford, from the crown of her head to the ends of her toes; and we'll prove it, we'll prove it, sir! Donohoe hasn't a leg to stand on"— which was true— "and as to that Mullingar heifer"— thus the Chief designated Peggy— "she'll be sorry one day for throwing Juxon over, mark my words. Send for that old aunt of Donohoe's dead wife— the bag of bones Peggy talked of— and pump her for all she's worth. Turn her inside out!— it's the only advice I can give you, for my head's in as dee-d a muddle as yours. And remember, whatever happens, my Lady is staunch to Emmie! Game woman, my Lady. Doesn't care a dee what society says, as long as— — God bless me, Rufford! I'm talkin' as though Emmie wasn't your daughter. But the whole thing's infernally confusin', you know, don't you know!"

An opinion in which the regiment concurred. An excited beehive would have furnished but a poor comparison to the barracks upon the morrow, when Peggy's great news, imparted in ostentatious secrecy to Mrs. Quartermaster Casey and a few other non-commissioned officers' ladies, had percolated through them. Visitors thronged the Donohoes' quarters; Peggy was the heroine of the hour. Press reporters from the town hung about the barracks on the chance of seeing either of the heroines of what was termed in the local paper "An Extraordinary Romance in Real Life," and the officers' wives called in a body to condole with Emmie Rufford, who, as we have heard, had broken off her engagement with Captain Gerry Garthside.

"I shall not break my heart over things," she had said, with an attempt at being everyday and common-sensible that was plucky, if not convincing, "and I hope you won't dwell too much upon the collapse of our house of cards. I hope— I pray you'll build more solidly, with— with somebody else. Don't, Gerry! Oh, don't! It's not fair to make my duty harder to do than—"

Then Emmie had broken down, wept wildly, been kissed, consoled, and assured of her lover's undying love and eternal fidelity. Part? Never! Lose such a pearl of a wife! Not for all the Donohoes past, present, or to come! I believe, in spite of Emmie's woe and Captain Gerry Garthside's agitation, the young people secretly enjoyed the scene dramatic; and when Lady Alured came rustling in, about the time when Gerry's eloquence attained its utmost pitch of fervor, and hugged and cried over the hero and heroine of the little drama, that dear woman was not the least happy of the three.

And later on, after returning to quarters, Captain Garthside found a letter on his doormat. The contents of the soiled envelope, directed in a sprawling hand, ran as follows:

"Door No. 3, Ground floor, Block Q.

"Miss E. Rufford presents comps And wold be Glad to see Cap Garthside & if Yu will call at 2 remane

"Your Oblidged
"E. Ruffor"

Of course the Captain knew Peggy Donohoe; had danced with her at non-commissioned officers' balls; given her gloves and chocolates, and sipped the roses of her cheek in common with many another passing admirer. "And who'd be the worse of a kiss," as Peggy would have said, "from a dacent girl?" "Dacent" she undoubtedly was, if not from pure innate virtue, perhaps from the consciousness that a depreciation in marketable value attaches to goods that have been soiled by handling. Had it been otherwise, the state of Major Rufford had been less gracious, thought Captain Gerry Garthside.

And he looked at Emmie's photograph standing in a silver frame upon his mantelshelf, and remembered the piteous smile with which she had told him that everything must now be over between them, and mentally renewed his vows of fealty before he went round to "look up Peggy."

The rooms occupied by the late Sergeant Donohoe were three— a kitchen and two bedchambers. One of these latter, Peggy, with the assistance of Mrs. Quartermaster Casey, a dozen yards of cheap Liberty muslin, a gross of Japanese fans, one or two pieces of Oriental drapery, and a few articles of furniture of the tottery bamboo kind, had converted for the time being into a boudoir. Only for the time being, she said to herself, because when she got her rights she would enjoy all the splendors now usurped by the real Peggy Donohoe— Miss Emmie, as she called the usurper when she forgot, which was not often. She would dress for dinner every evening, and attend balls and theaters in low-necked, long-trained frocks, chaperoned by Lady Alured, adorned with the late Mrs. Rufford's diamond stars, and attended by Captain Gerry Garthside, V. C. For not one, but all the possessions held and prerogatives hitherto enjoyed by the false Miss Rufford would naturally devolve to the real one, once formally recognized and received by her papa and the regiment; the "ould duds" and bits of sticks once pertaining to the supposed Margaret Donohoe being transferred to the veritable Peggy, together with all rights in Private Dancey Juxon, V. C. The topsy-turvy, comic-operatic whimsicality of her own idea did not appeal to Peggy's sense of humor. She was very much in earnest as she waited for her visitor, seated in state upon one of her own ornamental chairs, her red hands— hands which could not be transferred to the real Peggy Donohoe with the other things— folded in her lap.

"She's here, Captain," Mrs. Quartermaster Casey— retained as chaperon until Lady Alured should awaken to a sense of her duties— had said, opening the door.

"Oh, Captain," said Peggy, rising coyly, "is it yourself?"

And, owning the soft impeachment as he squeezed the red hand (Gerry Garthside's manners to the plainest woman were fatally caressing), the Captain inquired how he could serve her.

"Sure," said Peggy, making play with her fine eyes, "you'll maybe thinking me forward, Captain, for makin' the first sign. But me papa— the Major— will be takin' up a great dale of me toime by-an'-by, and wid Mrs. Casey sittin' in the kitchen widin call, we're givin' no handle to the tongue of scandal, as the sayin' is—"

"My dear Miss Peggy!—" the Captain was beginning, when Peggy took him up short.

"I'll trouble you," she said, "to remimber that I'm not takin' any more Peggy from anywan, high or low, an' I'd be glad it was ginerally known. 'Miss Emmeline,' or 'Emmie' for short, you're free to use, or any pet name ye may pick." She cast a languishing glance upon Captain Gerry. "I'm not likely to quarrel wid it"— she moved nearer— "or wid you. Och, thin! but 'tis quare how things have turned round wid me! Peggy Donohoe a week ago, an' walkin' out wid Dancey Juxon— an' now— the Major's daughter, an' your promised bride, Captain jewel! Sure 'tis like a dhrame, it is!"

And Peggy rested her rather large head upon the shoulder of the astonished Captain, who hastily withdrew the support.

"Look here, Peggy, my girl!" he said hastily. "What's this notion you've got into your noddle? You don't think...."

"I think that you're a gintleman, Captain," said Peggy, with a tender smile, "and would never go back on the promise you gev to the Major's daughter. An' now that I'm her, an' she's me, you'll do your duty by me, as Dancey Juxon will do his to Donohoe's poor unfortunate girl. You may thrust him. We've had it out betune us, an' he's with her now."

"With— her— now?" repeated the bewildered Captain.

"I sent him to the Major's— I mane papa's— quarters ten minnits ago, wid a flea in his ear!" said Peggy, folding her red hands about the elbow of her captive, and rubbing her cheek against his shoulder strap. "'I dar' you,' sez I, 'to hang about here,' sez I, 'makin' sheep's eyes at a daughter av the Quality, whin that poor crayture you gev your promise to is cryin' her two eyes out for the gliff av a glimpse av your red head. Away wid you,' sez I, 'an' prove yourself a man av your word, Dancey Juxon, or maybe Peggy Donohoe'll be takin' the law av you wan av these fine days!'"

"My good girl," said Gerry Garthside, almost pleadingly, "you can't really believe what you say you've told Juxon— that he is obliged to marry Miss Rufford, or the lady who has borne that name until now, because he happens to have given a promise of marriage to Peggy Donohoe, and Miss Rufford and Peggy have changed places?"

"I mane that!" Peggy's black eyes snapped out sparks of fire; as she tossed her head, a loosened coil of black hair tumbled upon her shoulder. Her fine bust heaved, her cheeks burned scarlet— she had never looked finer in her life. "Do I not mane just that? Think! Isn't her father mine? Isn't her home my home?— the dhress she wears upon her back mine?— the ring she has upon the finger av her mine? Ah, musha, an' the man that put it there!" Her grasp on Captain Gerry's arm tightened, her eyes sought his and held his; her warm, fragrant breath came and went about his face like a personal caress. "Sure, dear, you'll not regret ut," said Peggy, "for I loved you iver since I clapped my two eyes on you— I take the Blessed Saints to witness! An' Dancey Juxon'll be dacent to Donohoe's daughter, an' you an' me will be afther lendin' the young couple a hand, lettin' her have the washin' maybe, or the waitin' at our table— or by-an'-by"— she lowered her black lashes— "she might come as nurse to the children. So, darlin'...."

The sentence was never finished, for the alarmed Captain broke from the toils and fled. The Mess story goes that he double-locked his outer door, barricaded the inner one with a chest of drawers and a portable tin shower bath, and spent the rest of the day in reconnoitering from behind the window curtains in anticipation of a descent of the enemy. But in reality he bent his steps toward the North Quadrangle, where the Major's quarters were, and over the familiar blue crockery window boxes full of daffodils, he caught a glimpse of Emmie's sweet face, not pale or bearing marks of secretly shed tears as when he last kissed it, but bright-eyed, flushed, and dimpling with laughter as she nodded and waved her hand to a departing visitor, who, absorbed in the charming vision, glimpsed above the daffodils, collided with and cannoned off the Captain.

"Hullo! You, Juxon?"

"Beg pardon, sir," said Private Juxon, rigidly at the salute. "I 'ope I 'aven't 'urt you!" He grinned happily.

"Have you come into a fortune, or inherited a title? You look pretty chirpy!" said the Captain.

"Not a bad 'it of 'is by 'arf," said Private Juxon critically to Private Juxon, "about the comin' into a title. 'For,' says she, 'the greatest gentleman in the land couldn't 'ave done more— and though I can't accept your offer, I shall always look up to you and respect you as the most chivalrousest and honorablest man I ever met!' Wot price me, after that?"

For, as may be guessed, Private Juxon had proposed, and been rejected. Standing very stiff and red and upright on the passage door mat, he had confessed his sense of responsibility and explained his views.

"The general run of feelin' in the regiment bein' the same, Miss, as her own, that I'm bound as a man to keep my promise to Peggy Donohoe, whether she's you or you are 'er. I've took the freedom of callin' to say as wot I'm ready," said Juxon. "An' the weddin' was to come off in June; but you've only got to name an earlier day, Miss, an' I'll 'ave the banns put up, you not bein' a Catholic, like Peggy— which I ought to call 'er Miss Rufford now, as owing to 'er station, Miss. But if you think I'll ever come short in duty an' respect to the Major's daughter, because she's turned out to be only the Sergeant's, you're wrong, Miss, you're wrong— upon my bloo— — upon my 'tarnal soul!"

And then it was that Emmie Rufford conferred upon Private Juxon the title of nobility, which made him a proud man— and unconditionally refused his offer, making him a happy one.

She is now married to Captain Gerry Garthside, who yet fulfilled his engagement to the Senior Major's daughter in leading her to the altar. For within a week the bubble had burst, topsy-turvydom reigned no more, the barracks ceased to seethe like one of its own mess cauldrons, and Peggy Donohoe was compelled to relinquish the privilege of calling Major Rufford "Papa." For old Aunt Biddy Kinsella had been discovered in the smokiest corner of her grandson's cottage at Carricknaclee, in Aher, by a smart young solicitor's clerk; and her sworn deposition, duly marked with her cross and attested by her parish priest, dispersed the clouds of doubt from the Major's horizon, relieved Sir Alured's moustache from an unusual strain, and proved the deceased Mrs. Donohoe to have been the victim of a delusion.

"For 'twas at Buttevant Barracks where the regiment was stationed nineteen years ago, an' me stayin' on a visit wid me niece, that I saw her— Maggie Donohoe— rest her unaisy soul, the misfortnit craythur!— I saw her change the children's clothes wid the two eyes I have in my head," said Aunt Biddy Kinsella, "barrin' that only wan av thim was at the keyhole. 'Och, murdher!' sez I, lettin' a screech an' flyin' in on her— for I had the use av me legs in thim days— 'what have you done, woman, asthore?' 'Made a lady av little Peggy,' says she, wid the fingers av her hooked like claws ready to fly at me, 'an' I dar' you to bethray me.' 'Bethray!' sez I. 'It's bethrayed her to the divil, you mane— that she'll be brought up a black Prodesdan', and not a dacent Catholic, as a Donohoe should be by rights.' 'Holy Virgin, forgive me! Sure, I never thought av that!' sez herself, and all thrimblin' we undhressed the children an' changed the clothes again. An' a day or so afther the Major's baby was waned an' wint back to uts mother. But Maggie Donohoe was niver the same in her mind afther that day. Sit an' brood she would, an' hour by hour; an' creep out av her own bed an' into mine night afther night, and wake me wid her cowld hand upon me mouth an' the whisper in me ear to know had she given little Peggy's sowl to the divil or changed the childhren back afther all! An' as years wint on she kem to a quieter mind, but on her dyin' bed the ould fear and thrimblin' got hould av her ag'in, an' she tould Donohoe— not what she'd done at all, at all!— but what she wanst had the intintion av doin', but that her heart failed her; an' so made a fool av the man that owned her, as many another woman has done before!"

Thus Aunt Biddy Kinsella, who, having spoken, may be dismissed to her smoky corner under the turf thatch, where a greasy parcel reached her in the middle of the following June, containing, not an olive branch, but a concrete slab of wedding cake, with the joint compliments of Mr. and Mrs. Dancey Juxon. For "the general run of feelin' in the regiment" was in favor of Private Juxon's renewing his matrimonial engagements to Peggy Donohoe, now that she had been proved, past all doubt, to be herself. And by the last advices received from headquarters it appears that Mrs. Lance-Corporal Juxon is acting at this moment as nurse to the Garthside baby.

End

Table of Contents

- 1: Cutting a Long Story Short / Harold Mercer

- 2: Squire Toby's Will / Sheridan Le Fanu
- 3: Pink Tulips / Ethel Lina White
- 4: At Sunrise / Henry E. Mitchell
- 5: The Black Bell Buoy / Rupert Chesterton

- 6: Staley Fleming's Hallucination / Ambrose Bierce

- 7: An Even Break / H. C. Witwer

- 9: The Last Crash / Kenneth Latour

- 10: The Lady With the Hatchet / Maurice Leblanc

- 11: The Weed of Lethe / C. L. Antrobus
- 12: The Former Passengers / B. M. Croker
- 13: A First Night / Richard Marsh

- 14: The Whale and the Grasshopper / Seumas O'Brien

- 15: The Genius of Dakaru Island / Frank Reid

- 16:  The Delusion of Mrs. Donohoe / Richard Dehan