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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Better Dead, by J. M. Barrie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Better Dead
+
+Author: J. M. Barrie
+
+Release Date: March 13, 2007 [EBook #20807]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BETTER DEAD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Photograph of J. M. Barrie]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE NOVELS, TALES AND SKETCHES OF J. M. BARRIE
+
+
+BETTER DEAD
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's note:  This volume from which this e-book was created
+contained originally the two books, "Auld Licht Idylls" and "Better
+Dead."  The Introduction (below) discusses both books.]
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHED IN NEW YORK BY
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+1896
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S EDITION
+
+Copyright, 1896, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+FREDERICK GREENWOOD
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+This is the only American edition of my books produced with my
+sanction, and I have special reasons for thanking Messrs. Scribner for
+its publication; they let it be seen, by this edition, what are my
+books, for I know not how many volumes purporting to be by me, are in
+circulation in America which are no books of mine.  I have seen several
+of these, bearing such titles as "Two of Them," "An Auld Licht Manse,"
+"A Tillyloss Scandal," and some of them announce themselves as author's
+editions, or published by arrangement with the author.  They consist of
+scraps collected and published without my knowledge, and I entirely
+disown them.  I have written no books save those that appear in this
+edition.
+
+I am asked to write a few lines on the front page of each of these
+volumes, to say something, as I take it, about how they came into
+being.  Well, they were written mainly to please one woman who is now
+dead, but as I am writing a little book about my mother I shall say no
+more of her here.
+
+Many of the chapters in "Auld Licht Idylls" first appeared in a
+different form in the _St. James's Gazette_, and there is little doubt
+that they would never have appeared anywhere but for the encouragement
+given to me by the editor of that paper.  It was pressure from him that
+induced me to write a second "Idyll" and a third after I thought the
+first completed the picture, he set me thinking seriously of these
+people, and though he knew nothing of them himself, may be said to have
+led me back to them.  It seems odd, and yet I am not the first nor the
+fiftieth who has left Thrums at sunrise to seek the life-work that was
+all the time awaiting him at home.  And we seldom sally forth a second
+time.  I had always meant to be a novelist, but London, I thought, was
+the quarry.
+
+For long I had an uneasy feeling that no one save the editor read my
+contributions, for I was leading a lonely life in London, and not
+another editor could I find in the land willing to print the Scotch
+dialect.  The magazines, Scotch and English, would have nothing to say
+to me--I think I tried them all with "The Courting of T'nowhead's
+Bell," but it never found shelter until it got within book-covers.  In
+time, however, I found another paper, the _British Weekly_, with an
+editor as bold as my first (or shall we say he suffered from the same
+infirmity?).  He revived my drooping hopes, and I was again able to
+turn to the only kind of literary work I now seemed to have much
+interest in.  He let me sign my articles, which was a big step for me
+and led to my having requests for work from elsewhere, but always the
+invitations said "not Scotch--the public will not read dialect."  By
+this time I had put together from these two sources and from my
+drawerful of rejected stories this book of "Auld Licht Idylls," and in
+its collected form it again went the rounds.  I offered it to certain
+firms as a gift, but they would not have it even at that.  And then, on
+a day came actually an offer for it from Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton.
+For this, and for many another kindness, I had the editor of the
+_British Weekly_ to thank.  Thus the book was published at last, and as
+for Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton I simply dare not say what a generous
+firm I found them, lest it send too many aspirants to their doors.
+But, indeed, I have had the pleasantest relations with all my
+publishers.
+
+"Better Dead" is, by my wish, no longer on sale in Great Britain, and I
+should have preferred not to see it here, for it is in no way worthy of
+the beautiful clothes Messrs. Scribner have given it.  Weighted with
+"An Edinburgh Eleven" it would rest very comfortably in the mill dam,
+but the publishers have reasons for its inclusion; among them, I
+suspect, is a well-grounded fear that if I once began to hack and hew,
+I should not stop until I had reduced the edition to two volumes.  This
+juvenile effort is a field of prickles into which none may be advised
+to penetrate--I made the attempt lately in cold blood and came back
+shuddering, but I had read enough to have the profoundest reason for
+declining to tell what the book is about.  And yet I have a sentimental
+interest in "Better Dead," for it was my first--published when I had
+small hope of getting any one to accept the Scotch--and there was a
+week when I loved to carry it in my pocket and did not think it dead
+weight.  Once I almost saw it find a purchaser.  She was a pretty girl
+and it lay on a bookstall, and she read some pages and smiled, and then
+retired, and came back and began another chapter.  Several times she
+did this, and I stood in the background trembling with hope and fear.
+At last she went away without the book, but I am still of opinion that,
+had it been just a little bit better, she would have bought it.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    I.  ENGAGED?
+   II.  THE S. D. W. S. P.?
+  III.  THE GREAT SOCIAL QUESTION?
+   IV.  WOMAN'S RIGHTS?
+    V.  DYNAMITERS?
+   VI.  A CELEBRITY AT HOME?
+  VII.  EXPERIMENTING?
+ VIII.  A LOST OPPORTUNITY?
+   IX.  THE ROOT OF THE MATTER?
+    X.  THE OLD OLD STORY?
+
+
+
+
+BETTER DEAD
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+When Andrew Riach went to London, his intention was to become private
+secretary to a member of the Cabinet.  If time permitted, he proposed
+writing for the Press.
+
+"It might be better if you and Clarrie understood each other," the
+minister said.
+
+It was their last night together.  They faced each other in the
+manse-parlour at Wheens, whose low, peeled ceiling had threatened Mr.
+Eassie at his desk every time he looked up with his pen in his mouth
+until his wife died, when he ceased to notice things.  The one picture
+on the walls, an engraving of a boy in velveteen, astride a tree,
+entitled "Boyhood of Bunyan," had started life with him.  The horsehair
+chairs were not torn, and you did not require to know the sofa before
+you sat down on it, that day thirty years before, when a chubby
+minister and his lady walked to the manse between two cart-loads of
+furniture, trying not to look elated.
+
+Clarrie rose to go, when she heard her name.  The love-light was in her
+eyes, but Andrew did not open the door for her, for he was a Scotch
+graduate.  Besides, she might one day be his wife.
+
+The minister's toddy-ladle clinked against his tumbler, but Andrew did
+not speak.  Clarrie was the girl he generally adored.
+
+"As for Clarrie," he said at last, "she puts me in an awkward position.
+How do I know that I love her?"
+
+"You have known each other a long time," said the minister.
+
+His guest was cleaning his pipe with a hair-pin, that his quick eye had
+detected on the carpet.
+
+"And she is devoted to you," continued Mr. Eassie.
+
+The young man nodded.
+
+"What I fear," he said, "is that we have known each other too long.
+Perhaps my feeling for Clarrie is only brotherly--"
+
+"Hers for you, Andrew, is more than sisterly."
+
+"Admitted.  But consider, Mr. Eassie, she has only seen the world in
+soirees.  Every girl has her day-dreams, and Clarrie has perhaps made a
+dream of me.  She is impulsive, given to idealisation, and hopelessly
+illogical."
+
+The minister moved uneasily in his chair.
+
+"I have reasoned out her present relation to me," the young man went
+on, "and, the more you reduce it to the usual formulae, the more
+illogical it becomes.  Clarrie could possibly describe me, but define
+me--never.  What is our prospect of happiness in these circumstances?"
+
+"But love--" began Mr. Eassie.
+
+"Love!" exclaimed Andrew.  "Is there such a thing?  Reduce it to
+syllogistic form, and how does it look in Barbara?"
+
+For the moment there was almost some expression in his face, and he
+suffered from a determination of words to the mouth.
+
+"Love and logic," Mr. Eassie interposed, "are hardly kindred studies."
+
+"Is love a study at all?" asked Andrew, bitterly.  "It is but the trail
+of idleness.  But all idleness is folly; therefore, love is folly."
+
+Mr. Eassie was not so keen a logician as his guest, but he had age for
+a major premiss.  He was easy-going rather than a coward; a preacher
+who, in the pulpit, looked difficulties genially in the face, and
+passed them by.
+
+Riach had a very long neck.  He was twenty-five years of age, fair, and
+somewhat heavily built, with a face as inexpressive as book-covers.
+
+A native of Wheens and an orphan, he had been brought up by his uncle,
+who was a weaver and read Herodotus in the original.  The uncle starved
+himself to buy books and talk about them, until one day he got a good
+meal, and died of it.  Then Andrew apprenticed himself to a tailor.
+
+When his time was out, he walked fifty miles to Aberdeen University,
+and got a bursary.  He had been there a month, when his professor said
+good-naturedly--
+
+"Don't you think, Mr. Riach, you would get on better if you took your
+hands out of your pockets?"
+
+"No, sir, I don't think so," replied Andrew, in all honesty.
+
+When told that he must apologise, he did not see it, but was willing to
+argue the matter out.
+
+Next year he matriculated at Edinburgh, sharing one room with two
+others; studying through the night, and getting their bed when they
+rose.  He was a failure in the classics, because they left you where
+you were, but in his third year he woke the logic class-room, and
+frightened the professor of moral philosophy.
+
+He was nearly rusticated for praying at a debating society for a
+divinity professor who was in the chair.
+
+"O Lord!" he cried, fervently, "open his eyes, guide his tottering
+footsteps, and lead him from the paths of folly into those that are
+lovely and of good report, for lo! his days are numbered, and the
+sickle has been sharpened, and the corn is not yet ripe for the
+cutting."
+
+When Andrew graduated he was known as student of mark.
+
+He returned to Wheens, before setting out for London, with the
+consciousness of his worth.
+
+Yet he was only born to follow, and his chance of making a noise in the
+world rested on his meeting a stronger than himself.  During his summer
+vacations he had weaved sufficient money to keep himself during the
+winter on porridge and potatoes.
+
+Clarrie was beautiful and all that.
+
+"We'll say no more about it, then," the minister said after a pause.
+
+"The matter," replied Andrew, "cannot be dismissed in that way.
+Reasonable or not, I do undoubtedly experience sensations similar to
+Clarrie's.  But in my love I notice a distinct ebb and flow.  There are
+times when I don't care a hang for her."
+
+"Andrew!"
+
+"I beg your pardon.  Still, it is you who have insisted on discussing
+this question in the particular instance.  Love in the abstract is of
+much greater moment."
+
+"I have sometimes thought, Andrew," Mr. Eassie said, "that you are
+lacking in the imaginative faculty."
+
+"In other words, love is a mere fancy.  Grant that, and see to what it
+leads.  By imagining that I have Clarrie with me I am as well off as if
+I really had.  Why, then, should I go to needless expense, and take her
+from you?"
+
+The white-haired minister rose, for the ten o'clock bell was ringing
+and it was time for family worship.
+
+"My boy," he said, "if there must be a sacrifice let the old man make
+it.  I, too, have imagination."
+
+For the moment there was a majesty about him that was foreign to his
+usual bearing.  Andrew was touched, and gripped his hand.
+
+"Rather," he cried, "let the girl we both love remain with you.  She
+will be here waiting for me--should I return."
+
+"More likely," said the minister, "she will be at the bank."
+
+The banker was unmarried, and had once in February and again in June
+seen Clarrie home from the Dorcas Society.  The town talked about it.
+Strictly speaking, gentlemen should not attend these meetings; but in
+Wheens there was not much difference between the men and the women.
+
+That night, as Clarrie bade Andrew farewell at the garden gate, he took
+her head in his hands and asked what this talk about the banker meant.
+
+It was no ignoble curiosity that prompted him.  He would rather have
+got engaged to her there and then than have left without feeling sure
+of her.
+
+His sweetheart looked her reply straight his eyes.
+
+"Andrew!" was all she said.
+
+It was sufficient.  He knew that he did not require to press his point.
+
+Lover's watches stand still.  At last Andrew stooped and kissed her
+upturned face.
+
+"If a herring and a half," he said anxiously, "cost three half-pence,
+how many will you get for elevenpence?"
+
+Clarrie was mute.
+
+Andrew shuddered; he felt that he was making a mistake.
+
+"Why do I kiss you?" he cried.  "What good does it do either of us?"
+
+He looked fiercely at his companion, and her eyes filled with tears.
+
+"Where even is the pleasure in it?" he added brutally.
+
+The only objectionable thing about Clarrie was her long hair.
+
+She wore a black frock and looked very breakable.  Nothing irritates a
+man so much.
+
+Andrew gathered her passionately in his arms, while a pained, puzzled
+expression struggled to reach his face.
+
+Then he replaced her roughly on the ground and left her.
+
+It was impossible to say whether they were engaged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Andrew reached King's Cross on the following Wednesday morning.
+
+It was the first time he had set foot in England, and he naturally
+thought of Bannockburn.
+
+He left his box in the cloak-room, and, finding his way into
+Bloomsbury, took a bed-room at the top of a house in Bernard Street.
+
+Then he returned for his box, carried it on his back to his lodgings,
+and went out to buy a straw hat.  It had not struck him to be lonely.
+
+He bought two pork pies in an eating-house in Gray's Inn Road, and set
+out for Harley Street, looking at London on the way.
+
+Mr. Gladstone was at home, but all his private secretaryships were
+already filled.
+
+Andrew was not greatly disappointed, though he was too polite to say
+so.  In politics he was a granite-headed Radical; and on several
+questions, such as the Church and Free Education, the two men were
+hopelessly at variance.
+
+Mr. Chamberlain was the man with whom, on the whole, he believed it
+would be best to work.  But Mr. Chamberlain could not even see him.
+
+Looking back to this time, it is impossible not to speculate upon how
+things might have turned out had the Radical party taken Andrew to them
+in his day of devotion to their cause.
+
+This is the saddest spectacle in life, a brave young man's first
+meeting with the world.  How rapidly the milk turns to gall!  For the
+cruellest of his acts the vivisectionist has not even the excuse that
+science benefits.
+
+Here was a young Scotchman, able, pure, of noble ambition, and a first
+medallist in metaphysics.  Genius was written on his brow.  He may have
+written it himself, but it was there.
+
+He offered to take a pound a week less than any other secretary in
+London.  Not a Cabinet Minister would have him.  Lord Randolph
+Churchill would not speak to him.  He had fifty-eight testimonials with
+him.  They would neither read nor listen to them.
+
+He could not fasten a quarrel on London, for it never recognised his
+existence.  What a commentary on our vaunted political life!
+
+Andrew tried the Press.
+
+He sent one of the finest things that was ever written on the Ontology
+of Being to paper after paper, and it was never used.  He threatened
+the "Times" with legal proceedings if it did not return the manuscript.
+
+The "Standard" sent him somebody else's manuscript, and seemed to think
+it would do as well.
+
+In a fortnight his enthusiasm had been bled to death.
+
+His testimonials were his comfort and his curse.  He would have
+committed suicide without them, but they kept him out of situations.
+
+He had the fifty-eight by heart, and went over them to himself all day.
+He fell asleep with them, and they were there when he woke.
+
+The moment he found himself in a great man's presence he began:
+
+"From the Rev. Peter Mackay, D. D., author of 'The Disruption Divines,'
+Minister of Free St. King's, Dundee.--I have much pleasure in stating
+that I have known Mr. Andrew Gordon Cummings Riach for many years, and
+have been led to form a high opinion of his ability.  In the summer of
+18-- Mr. Riach had entire charge of a class in my Sabbath school, when
+I had ample opportunity of testing his efficiency, unwearying patience,
+exceptional power of illustration and high Christian character," and so
+on.
+
+Or he might begin at the beginning:
+
+"Testimonials in favour of Andrew G. C. Riach, M.A. (Edin.), applicant
+for the post of Private Secretary to any one of her Majesty's Cabinet
+Ministers, 6 Candlish Street, Wheens, N. B.--I, Andrew G. C. Riach, beg
+to offer myself as a candidate for the post of private secretary, and
+submit the following testimonials in my favour for your consideration.
+I am twenty-five years of age, a Master of Arts of the University of
+Edinburgh, and a member of the Free Church of Scotland.  At the
+University I succeeded in carrying a bursary of 14_l._ 10_s._ per
+annum, tenable for four years.  I was first medallist in the class of
+Logic and Metaphysics, thirteenth prizeman in Mathematics, and had a
+certificate of merit in the class of Natural Philosophy, as will be
+seen from my testimonials."
+
+However, he seldom got as far as this.
+
+It was when alone that these testimonials were his truest solace.  Had
+you met him in the Strand conning them over, you might have taken him
+for an actor.  He had a yearning to stop strangers in the streets and
+try a testimonial's effect on them.
+
+Every young man is not equally unfortunate.
+
+Riach's appearance was against him.
+
+There was a suggestion of latent strength about him that made strangers
+uncomfortable.  Even the friends who thought they understood him liked
+him to go away.
+
+Lord Rosebery made several jokes to him, and Andrew only looked at him
+in response.  The general feeling was that he was sneering at you
+somewhere in his inside.
+
+Let us do no one an injustice.
+
+As it turned out, the Cabinet and Press were but being used in this
+case as the means to an end.
+
+A grand work lay ready for Andrew's hand when he was fit to perform it,
+but he had to learn Naked Truth first.  It was ordained that they
+should teach it him.  Providence sometimes makes use of strange
+instruments.
+
+Riach had two pounds with him when he came to London, and in a month
+they had almost gone.
+
+Now and again he made an odd five shillings.
+
+Do you know how men in his position live in London?
+
+He could not afford the profession of not having any.
+
+At one time he was a phrasemonger for politicians, especially for the
+Irish members, who were the only ones that paid.
+
+Some of his phrases have become Parliamentary.  Thus "Buckshot" was
+his.  "Mend them--End them," "Grand Old Man," and "Legislation by
+Picnic" may all be traced to the struggling young man from Wheens.[1]
+
+He supplied the material for obituary notices.
+
+When the newspaper placards announced the serious illness of a
+distinguished man, he made up characteristic anecdotes about his
+childhood, his reputation at school, his first love, and sent them as
+the reminiscences of a friend to the great London dailies.  These were
+the only things of his they used.  As often as not the invalid got
+better, and then Andrew went without a dinner.
+
+Once he offered his services to a Conservative statesman; at another
+time he shot himself in the coat in Northumberland Street, Strand, to
+oblige an evening paper (five shillings).
+
+He fainted in the pit of a theatre to the bribe of an emotional
+tragedian (a guinea).
+
+He assaulted a young lady and her aunt with a view to robbery, in a
+quiet thoroughfare, by arrangement with a young gentleman, who rescued
+them and made him run (ten shillings).
+
+It got into the papers that he had fled from the wax policeman at
+Tussaud's (half-a-crown).
+
+More than once he sold his body in advance to the doctors, and was
+never able to buy it out.[2]
+
+It would be a labour, thankless as impossible, to recover now all the
+devices by which Andrew disgraced his manhood during these weeks rather
+than die.  As well count the "drinks" an actor has in a day.
+
+It is not our part to climb down into the depths after him.  He
+re-appeared eventually, or this record would never have been written.
+
+During this period of gloom, Clarrie wrote him frequently long and
+tender epistles.
+
+More strictly, the minister wrote them, for he had the gift of
+beautiful sentiment in letters, which had been denied to her.
+
+She copied them, however, and signed them, and they were a great
+consolation.
+
+The love of a good girl is a priceless possession, or rather, in this
+case, of a good minister.
+
+So long as you do not know which, it does not make much difference.
+
+At times Andrew's reason may have been unhinged, less on account of his
+reverses than because no one spoke to him.
+
+There were days and nights when he rushed all over London.
+
+In the principal streets the stolid-faced Scotchman in a straw hat
+became a familiar figure.
+
+Strange fancies held him.  He stood for an hour at a time looking at
+his face in a shop-window.
+
+The boot-blacks pointed at him and he disappeared down passages.
+
+He shook his fist at the 'bus-conductors, who would not leave him alone.
+
+In the yellow night policemen drew back scared, as he hurried past them
+on his way to nowhere.
+
+In the day-time Oxford Street was his favourite thoroughfare.  He was
+very irritable at this time, and could not leave his fellow wayfarers
+alone.
+
+More than once he poked his walking-stick through the eyeglass of a
+brave young gentleman.
+
+He would turn swiftly round to catch people looking at him.
+
+When a small boy came in his way, he took him by the neck and planted
+him on the curb-stone.
+
+If a man approached simpering, Andrew stopped and gazed at him.  The
+smile went from the stranger's face; he blushed or looked fierce.  When
+he turned round, Andrew still had his eye on him.  Sometimes he came
+bouncing back.
+
+"What are you so confoundedly happy about?" Andrew asked.
+
+When he found a crowd gazing in at a "while you wait" shop-window, or
+entranced over the paving of a street--
+
+"Splendid, isn't it?" he said to the person nearest him.
+
+He dropped a penny, which he could ill spare, into the hat of an
+exquisite who annoyed him by his way of lifting it to a lady.
+
+When he saw a man crossing the street too daintily, he ran after him
+and hit him over the legs.
+
+Even on his worst days his reasoning powers never left him.  Once a
+mother let her child slip from her arms to the pavement.
+
+She gave a shriek.
+
+"My good woman," said Andrew, testily, "what difference can one infant
+in the world more or less make?"
+
+We come now to an eccentricity, engendered of loneliness, that altered
+the whole course of his life.  Want had battered down his door.  Truth
+had been evolved from despair.  He was at last to have a flash into
+salvation.
+
+To give an object to his walks abroad he would fasten upon a wayfarer
+and follow him till he ran him to his destination.  Chance led to his
+selecting one quarry rather than another.  He would dog a man's
+footsteps, struck by the glossiness of his boots, or to discover what
+he was in such a hurry about, or merely because he had a good back to
+follow.  Probably he seldom knew what attracted him, and sometimes when
+he realised the pursuit he gave it up.
+
+On these occasions there was one person only who really interested him.
+This was a man, somewhat over middle age, of singularly noble and
+distinguished bearing.  His brow was furrowed with lines, but they
+spoke of cares of the past.  Benevolence had settled on his face.  It
+was as if, after a weary struggle, the sun had broken through the heavy
+clouds.  He was attired in the ordinary dress of an English gentleman;
+but once, when he raised his head to see if it rained, Andrew noticed
+that he only wore a woollen shirt, without a necktie.  As a rule, his
+well-trimmed, venerable beard hid this from view.
+
+He seemed a man of unostentatious means.  Andrew lost him in Drury Lane
+and found him again in Piccadilly.  He was generally alone, never twice
+with the same person.  His business was scattered, or it was his
+pleasure that kept him busy.  He struck the observer as always being on
+the outlook for someone who did not come.
+
+Why attempt to account for the nameless fascination he exercised over
+the young Scotchman?  We speak lightly of mesmeric influence, but,
+after all, there is only one mesmerist for youth--a good woman or a
+good man.  Depend upon it, that is why so many "mesmerists" have
+mistaken their vocation.  Andrew took to prowling about the streets
+looking for this man, like a dog that has lost its master.
+
+The day came when they met.
+
+Andrew was returning from the Crystal Palace, which he had been viewing
+from the outside.  He had walked both ways.  Just as he rounded the
+upper end of Chancery Lane, a man walking rapidly struck against him,
+whirled him aside, and hurried on.
+
+The day was done, but as yet the lamps only dimmed the streets.
+
+Andrew had been dreaming, and the jerk woke him to the roar of London.
+
+It was as if he had taken his fingers from his ears.
+
+He staggered, dazed, against a 'bus-horse, but the next moment he was
+in pursuit of the stranger.  It was but a continuation of his dream.
+He felt that something was about to happen.  He had never seen this man
+disturbed before.
+
+Chancery Lane swarmed with lawyers, but if they had not made way Andrew
+would have walked over them.
+
+He clove his way between those walking abreast, and struck down an arm
+extended to point out the Law Courts.  When he neared the stranger, he
+slightly slackened his pace, but it was a stampede even then.
+
+Suddenly the pursued came to a dead stop and gazed for twenty minutes
+in at a pastry-cook's window.  Andrew waited for him.  Then they
+started off again, much more leisurely.
+
+They turned Chancery Lane almost together.  All this time Andrew had
+failed to catch sight of the other's face.
+
+He stopped twice in the Strand for a few minutes.
+
+At Charing Cross he seemed for a moment at a loss.  Then he sprang
+across the street, and went back the way he came.
+
+It was now for the first time that a strange notion illumined Andrew's
+brain.  It bewildered him, and left him in darkness the next moment.
+But his blood was running hot now, and his eyes were glassy.
+
+They turned down Arundel Street.
+
+It was getting dark.  There were not a dozen people in the narrow
+thoroughfare.
+
+His former thought leapt back into Andrew's mind--not a fancy now, but
+a fact.  The stranger was following someone too.
+
+For what purpose?  His own?
+
+Andrew did not put the question to himself.
+
+There were not twenty yards between the three of them.
+
+What Riach saw in front was a short stout man proceeding cheerfully
+down the street.  He delayed in a doorway to light a cigar, and the
+stranger stopped as if turned to stone.
+
+Andrew stopped too.
+
+They were like the wheels of a watch.  The first wheel moved on, and
+set the others going again.
+
+For a hundred yards or more they walked in procession in a westerly
+direction without meeting a human being.  At last the first of the trio
+half turned on his heel and leant over the Embankment.
+
+Riach drew back into the shade, just before the stranger took a
+lightning glance behind him.
+
+The young man saw his face now.  It was never fuller of noble purpose;
+yet why did Andrew cry out?
+
+The next moment the stranger had darted forward, slipped his arms round
+the little man's legs, and toppled him into the river.
+
+There was a splash but no shriek.
+
+Andrew bounded forward, but the stranger held him by one hand.  His
+clear blue eyes looked down a little wistfully upon the young
+Scotchman, who never felt the fascination of a master-mind more than at
+that moment.  As if feeling his power, the elder man relaxed his hold
+and pointed to the spot where his victim had disappeared.
+
+"He was a good man," he said, more to himself than to Andrew, "and the
+world has lost a great philanthropist; but he is better as he is."
+
+Then he lifted a paving-stone, and peered long and earnestly into the
+waters.
+
+The short stout man, however, did not rise again.
+
+
+
+[1] Some time afterwards Lord Rosebery convulsed an audience by a story
+about a friend of his who complained that you get "no forrarder" on
+claret.  Andrew was that friend.
+
+[2] He had fine ideas, but no money to work them out.  One was to start
+a serious "Spectator," on the lines of the present one, but not so
+flippant and frivolous.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Lost in reverie, the stranger stood motionless on the Embankment.  The
+racket of the city was behind him.  At his feet lay a drowned world,
+its lights choking in the Thames.  It was London, as it will be on the
+last day.
+
+With an effort he roused himself and took Andrew's arm.
+
+"The body will soon be recovered," he said, in a voice of great
+dejection, "and people will talk.  Let us go."
+
+They retraced their steps up Arundel Street.
+
+"Now," said Andrew's companion, "tell me who you are."
+
+Andrew would have preferred to hear who the stranger was.  In the
+circumstances he felt that he had almost a right to know.  But this was
+not a man to brook interference.
+
+"If you will answer me one question," the young Scotchman said humbly,
+"I shall tell you everything."
+
+His reveries had made Andrew quick-witted, and he had the judicial mind
+which prevents one's judging another rashly.  Besides, his hankering
+after this man had already suggested an exculpation for him.
+
+"You are a Radical?" he asked eagerly.
+
+The stranger's brows contracted.  "Young man," he said, "though all the
+Radicals, and Liberals, and Conservatives who ever addressed the House
+of Commons were in ----, I would not stoop to pick them up, though I
+could gather them by the gross."
+
+He said this without an Irish accent, and Andrew felt that he had
+better begin his story at once.
+
+He told everything.
+
+As his tale neared its conclusion his companion scanned him narrowly.
+
+If the stranger's magnanimous countenance did not beam down in sympathy
+upon the speaker, it was because surprise and gratification filled it.
+
+Only once an ugly look came into his eyes.  That was when Andrew had
+reached the middle of his second testimonial.
+
+The young man saw the look, and at the same time felt the hold on his
+arm become a grip.
+
+His heart came into his mouth.  He gulped it down, and, with what was
+perhaps a judicious sacrifice, jumped the remainder of his testimonials.
+
+When the stranger heard how he had been tracked through the streets, he
+put his head to the side to think.
+
+It was a remarkable compliment to his abstraction that Andrew paused
+involuntarily in his story and waited.
+
+He felt that his future was in the balance.  Those sons of peers may
+faintly realise his position whose parents have hesitated whether to
+make statesmen or cattle-dealers of them.
+
+"I don't mind telling you," the stranger said at last, "that your case
+has been under consideration.  When we left the Embankment my intention
+was to dispose of you in a doorway.  But your story moves me strangely.
+Could I be certain that you felt the sacredness of human life--as I
+fear no boy can feel it--I should be tempted to ask you instead to
+become one of us."
+
+There was something in this remark about the sacredness of human life
+that was not what Andrew expected, and his answer died unspoken.
+
+"Youth," continued the stranger, "is enthusiasm, but not enthusiasm in
+a straight line.  We are impotent in directing it, like a boy with a
+toy engine.  How carefully the child sets it off, how soon it goes off
+the rails!  So youth is wrecked.  The slightest obstacle sends it off
+at a tangent.  The vital force expended in a wrong direction does evil
+instead of good.  You know the story of Atalanta.  It has always been
+misread.  She was the type not of woman but of youth, and Hippomenes
+personated age.  He was the slower runner, but he won the race; and yet
+how beautiful, even where it run to riot, must enthusiasm be in such a
+cause as ours!"
+
+"If Atalanta had been Scotch," said Andrew "she would not have lost
+that race for a pound of apples."
+
+The stranger regarded him longingly, like a father only prevented by
+state reasons from embracing his son.
+
+He murmured something that Andrew hardly caught.
+
+It sounded like:
+
+"Atalanta would have been better dead."
+
+"Your nationality is in your favour," he said, "and you have served
+your apprenticeship to our calling.  You have been tending towards us
+ever since you came to London.  You are an apple ripe for plucking, and
+if you are not plucked now you will fall.  I would fain take you by the
+hand, and yet--"
+
+"And yet?"
+
+"And yet I hesitate.  You seem a youth of the fairest promise; but how
+often have I let these impulses deceive me!  You talk of logic, but is
+it more than talk?  Man, they say, is a reasonable being.  They are
+wrong.  He is only a being capable of reason."
+
+"Try me," said Andrew.
+
+The stranger resumed in a lower key:
+
+"You do not understand what you ask as yet," he said; "still less what
+we would ask in return of you."
+
+"I have seen something to-day," said Andrew.
+
+"But you are mistaken in its application.  You think I followed the man
+lately deceased as pertinaciously as you followed me.  You are wrong.
+When you met me in Chancery Lane I was in pursuit of a gentleman to
+whose case I have devoted myself for several days.  It has interested
+me much.  There is no reason why I should conceal his name.  It is one
+honoured in this country, Sir Wilfrid Lawson.  He looked in on his man
+of business, which delayed me at the shop-window of which you have
+spoken.  I waited for him, and I thought I had him this time.  But you
+see I lost him in the Strand, after all."
+
+"But the other, then," Andrew asked, "who was he?"
+
+"Oh, I picked him up at Charing Cross.  He was better dead."
+
+"I think," said Andrew, hopefully, "that my estimate of the sacredness
+of human life is sufficiently high for your purpose.  If that is the
+only point--"
+
+"Ah, they all say that until they join.  I remember an excellent young
+man who came among us for a time.  He seemed discreet beyond his years,
+and we expected great things of him.  But it was the old story.  For
+young men the cause is as demoralizing as boarding schools are for
+girls."
+
+"What did he do?"
+
+"It went to his head.  He took a bedroom in Pall Mall and sat at the
+window with an electric rifle picking them off on the door-steps of the
+clubs.  It was a noble idea, but of course it imperilled the very
+existence of the society.  He was a curate."
+
+"What became of him?" asked Andrew.
+
+"He is better dead," said the stranger, softly.
+
+"And the Society you speak of, what is it?"
+
+"The S. D. W. S. P."
+
+"The S. D. W. S. P.?"
+
+"Yes, the Society for Doing Without Some People."
+
+They were in Holborn, but turned up Southampton Row for quiet.
+
+"You have told me," said the stranger, now speaking rapidly, "that at
+times you have felt tempted to take your life, that life for which you
+will one day have to account.  Suicide is the coward's refuge.  You are
+miserable?  When a young man knows that, he is happy.  Misery is but
+preparing for an old age of delightful reminiscence.  You say that
+London has no work for you, that the functions to which you looked
+forward are everywhere discharged by another.  That need not drive you
+to despair.  If it proves that someone should die, does it necessarily
+follow that the someone is you?"
+
+"But is not the other's life as sacred as mine?"
+
+"That is his concern."
+
+"Then you would have me--"
+
+"Certainly not.  You are a boxer without employment, whom I am showing
+what to hit.  In such a case as yours the Society would be represented
+by a third party, whose decision would be final.  As an interested
+person you would have to stand aside."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"The arbitrator would settle if you should go."
+
+Andrew looked blank.
+
+"Go?" he repeated.
+
+"It is a euphemism for die," said his companion a little impatiently.
+"This is a trivial matter, and hardly worth going into at any length.
+It shows our process, however, and the process reveals the true
+character of the organization.  As I have already mentioned, the
+Society takes for its first principle the sanctity of human life.
+Everyone who has mixed much among his fellow-creatures must be aware
+that this is adulterated, so to speak, by numbers of spurious
+existences.  Many of these are a nuisance to themselves.  Others may at
+an earlier period have been lives of great promise and fulfilment.  In
+the case of the latter, how sad to think that they should be dragged
+out into worthlessness or dishonour, all for want of a friendly hand to
+snap them short!  In the lower form of life the process of preying upon
+animals whose work is accomplished--that is, of weeding--goes on
+continually.  Man must, of course, be more cautious.  The grand
+function of the Society is to find out the persons who have a claim on
+it, and in the interests of humanity to lay their condition before
+them.  After that it is in the majority of cases for themselves to
+decide whether they will go or stay on."
+
+"But," said Andrew, "had the gentleman in the Thames consented to go?"
+
+"No, that was a case where assistance had to be given.  He had been
+sounded, though."
+
+"And do you find," asked Andrew, "that many of them are--agreeable?"
+
+"I admit," said the stranger, "that so far that has been our chief
+difficulty.  Even the men we looked upon as certainties have fallen
+short of our expectations.  There is Mallock, now, who said that life
+was not worth living.  I called on him only last week, fully expecting
+him to meet me half-way."
+
+"And he didn't?"
+
+"Mallock was a great disappointment," said the stranger, with genuine
+pain in his voice.
+
+He liked Mallock.
+
+"However," he added, brightening, "his case comes up for hearing at the
+next meeting.  If I have two-thirds of the vote we proceed with it."
+
+"But how do the authorities take it?" asked Andrew.
+
+"Pooh!" said the stranger.
+
+Andrew, however, could not think so.
+
+"It is against the law, you know," he said.
+
+"The law winks at it," the stranger said.  "Law has its feelings as
+well as we.  We have two London magistrates and a minister on the
+executive, and the Lord Chief Justice is an honorary member."
+
+Andrew raised his eyes.
+
+"This, of course, is private," continued the stranger.  "These men join
+on the understanding that if anything comes out they deny all
+connection with us.  But they have the thing at heart.  I have here a
+very kind letter from Gladstone--"
+
+He felt in his pockets.
+
+"I seem to have left it at home.  However, its purport was that he
+hoped we would not admit Lord Salisbury an honorary member."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, the Society has power to take from its numbers, so far as
+ordinary members are concerned, but it is considered discourteous to
+reduce the honorary list."
+
+"Then why have honorary members?" asked Andrew in a burst of enthusiasm.
+
+"It is a necessary precaution.  They subscribe largely too.  Indeed,
+the association is now established on a sound commercial basis.  We are
+paying six per cent."
+
+"None of these American preachers who come over to this country are
+honorary members?" asked Andrew, anxiously.
+
+"No; one of them made overtures to us, but we would not listen to him.
+Why?"
+
+"Oh, nothing," said Andrew.
+
+"To do the honorary list justice," said his companion, "it gave us one
+fine fellow in our honorary president.  He is dead now."
+
+Andrew looked up.
+
+"No, we had nothing to do with it.  It was Thomas Carlyle."
+
+Andrew raised his hat.
+
+"Though he was over eighty years of age," continued the stranger.
+"Carlyle would hardly rest content with merely giving us his
+countenance.  He wanted to be a working member.  It was he who
+mentioned Froude's name to us."
+
+"For honorary membership?"
+
+"Not at all.  Froude would hardly have completed the 'Reminiscences'
+had it not been that we could never make up our minds between him and
+Freeman."
+
+Youth is subject to sudden fits of despondency.  Its hopes go up and
+down like a bucket in a draw-well.
+
+"They'll never let me join," cried Andrew, sorrowfully.
+
+His companion pressed his hand.
+
+"Three black balls exclude," he said, "but you have the president on
+your side.  With my introduction you will be admitted a probationer,
+and after that everything depends on yourself."
+
+"I thought you must be the president from the first," said Andrew,
+reverently.
+
+He had not felt so humble since the first day he went to the University
+and walked past and repast it, frightened to go in.
+
+"How long," he asked, "does the period of probation last?"
+
+"Three months.  Then you send in a thesis, and if it is considered
+satisfactory you become a member."
+
+"And if it isn't?"
+
+The president did not say.
+
+"A thesis," he said, "is generally a paper with a statement of the line
+of action you propose to adopt, subject to the Society's approval.
+Each member has his specialty--as law, art, divinity, literature, and
+the like."
+
+"Does the probationer devote himself exclusively during these three
+months to his thesis?"
+
+"On the contrary, he never has so much liberty as at this period.  He
+is expected to be practising."
+
+"Practising?"
+
+"Well, experimenting, getting his hand in, so to speak.  The member
+acts under instructions only, but the probationer just does what he
+thinks best."
+
+"There is a man on my stair," said Andrew, after a moment's
+consideration, "who asks his friends in every Friday night, and recites
+to them with his door open.  I think I should like to begin with him."
+
+"As a society we do not recognise these private cases.  The public gain
+is so infinitesimal.  We had one probationer who constructed a very
+ingenious water-butt for boys.  Another had a scheme for clearing the
+streets of the people who get in the way.  He got into trouble about
+some perambulators.  Let me see your hands."
+
+They stopped at a lamp-post.
+
+"They are large, which is an advantage," said the president, fingering
+Andrew's palms; "but are they supple?"
+
+Andrew had thought very little about it, and he did not quite
+comprehend.
+
+"The hands," explained the president, "are perhaps the best natural
+weapon; but, of course, there are different ways of doing it."
+
+The young Scotchman's brain, however, could not keep pace with his
+companion's words, and the president looked about him for an
+illustration.
+
+They stopped at Gower Street station and glanced at the people coming
+out.
+
+None of them was of much importance, but the president left them alone.
+
+Andrew saw what he meant now, and could not but admire his forbearance.
+
+They turned away, but just as they emerged into the blaze of Tottenham
+Court Road they ran into two men, warmly shaking hands with each other
+before they parted.  One of them wore an eye-glass.
+
+"Chamberlain!" exclaimed the president, rushing after him.
+
+"Did you recognise the other?" said Andrew, panting at his heels.
+
+"No! who was it?"
+
+"Stead, of the 'Pall Mall Gazette.'"
+
+"Great God," cried the president, "two at a time!"
+
+He turned and ran back.  Then he stopped irresolutely.  He could not
+follow the one for thought of the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The London cabman's occupation consists in dodging thoroughfares under
+repair.
+
+Numbers of dingy streets have been flung about to help him.  There is
+one of these in Bloomsbury, which was originally discovered by a
+student while looking for the British Museum.  It runs a hundred yards
+in a straight line, then stops, like a stranger who has lost his way,
+and hurries by another route out of the neighbourhood.
+
+The houses are dull, except one, just where it doubles, which is gloomy.
+
+This house is divided into sets of chambers and has a new frontage, but
+it no longer lets well.  A few years ago there were two funerals from
+it within a fortnight, and soon afterward another of the tenants was
+found at the foot of the stair with his neck broken.  These fatalities
+gave the house a bad name, as such things do in London.
+
+It was here that Andrew's patron, the president, lived.
+
+To the outcast from work to get an object in life is to be born again.
+Andrew bustled to the president's chambers on the Saturday night
+following the events already described, with his chest well set.
+
+His springy step echoed of wages in the hearts of the unemployed.
+Envious eyes, following his swaggering staff, could not see that but a
+few days before he had been as the thirteenth person at a dinner-party.
+
+Such a change does society bring about when it empties a chair for the
+superfluous man.
+
+It may be wondered that he felt so sure of himself, for the night had
+still to decide his claims.
+
+Andrew, however, had thought it all out in his solitary lodgings, and
+had put fear from him.  He felt his failings and allowed for every one
+of them, but he knew his merits too, and his testimonials were in his
+pocket.  Strength of purpose was his weak point, and, though the good
+of humanity was his loadstar, it did not make him quite forget self.
+
+It may not be possible to serve both God and mammon, but since Adam the
+world has been at it.  We ought to know by this time.
+
+The Society for Doing Without was as immoral as it certainly was
+illegal.  The president's motives were not more disinterested than his
+actions were defensible.  He even deserved punishment.
+
+All these things may be.  The great social question is not to be solved
+in a day.  It never will be solved if those who take it by the beard
+are not given an unbiassed hearing.
+
+Those were the young Scotchman's views when the president opened the
+door to him, and what he saw and heard that night strengthened them.
+
+It was characteristic of Andrew's host that at such a time he could put
+himself in the young man's place.
+
+He took his hand and looked him in the face more like a physician than
+a mere acquaintance.  Then he drew him aside into an empty room.
+
+"Let me be the first to congratulate you," he said; "you are admitted."
+
+Andrew took a long breath, and the president considerately turned away
+his head until the young probationer had regained his composure.  Then
+he proceeded:
+
+"The society only asks from its probationers the faith which it has in
+them.  They take no oath.  We speak in deeds.  The Brotherhood do not
+recognise the possibility of treachery; but they are prepared to cope
+with it if it comes.  Better far, Andrew Riach, to be in your grave,
+dead and rotten and forgotten, than a traitor to the cause."
+
+The president's voice trembled with solemnity.
+
+He stretched forth his hands, slowly repeating the words, "dead and
+rotten and forgotten," until his wandering eyes came to rest on the
+young man's neck.
+
+Andrew drew back a step and bowed silently, as he had seen many a
+father do at a christening in the kirk at Wheens.
+
+"You will shortly," continued the president, with a return to his
+ordinary manner, "hear an address on female suffrage from one of the
+noblest women in the land.  It will be your part to listen.  To-night
+you will both hear and see strange things.  Say nothing.  Evince no
+surprise.  Some members are irritable.  Come!"
+
+Once more he took Andrew by the hand, and led him into the
+meeting-room; and still his eyes were fixed on the probationer's neck.
+There seemed to be something about it that he liked.
+
+It was not then, with the committee all around him, but long afterwards
+at Wheens, that Andrew was struck by the bareness of the chambers.
+
+Without the president's presence they had no character.
+
+The trifles were absent that are to a room what expression is to the
+face.
+
+The tenant might have been a medical student who knew that it was not
+worth while to unpack his boxes.
+
+The only ornament on the walls was an elaborate sketch by a member,
+showing the arrangement of the cellars beneath the premises of the
+Young Men's Christian Association.
+
+There were a dozen men in the room, including the president of the
+Birmingham branch association and two members who had just returned
+from a visit to Edinburgh.  These latter had already submitted their
+report.
+
+The president introduced Andrew to the committee, but not the committee
+to him.  Several of them he recognized from the portraits in the shop
+windows.
+
+They stood or sat in groups looking over a probationer's thesis.  It
+consisted of diagrams of machinery.
+
+Andrew did not see the sketches, though they were handed round
+separately for inspection, but he listened eagerly to the president's
+explanations.
+
+"The first," said the president, "is a beautiful little instrument
+worked by steam.  Having placed his head on the velvet cushion D, the
+subject can confidently await results.
+
+"No. 2 is the same model on a larger scale.
+
+"As yet 3 can be of little use to us.  It includes a room 13 feet by
+11.  X is the windows and other apertures; and these being closed up
+and the subjects admitted, all that remains to be done is to lock the
+door from the outside and turn on the gas.  E, F, and K are couches,
+and L is a square inch of glass through which results may be noted.
+
+"The speciality of 4, which is called the 'water cure,' is that it is
+only workable on water.  It is generally admitted that release by
+drowning is the pleasantest of all deaths; and, indeed, 4, speaking
+roughly, is a boat with a hole in the bottom.  It is so simple that a
+child could work it.  C is the plug.
+
+"No. 5 is an intricate instrument.  The advantage claimed for it is
+that it enables a large number of persons to leave together."
+
+While the thesis was under discussion, the attendance was increased by
+a few members specially interested in the question of female suffrage.
+Andrew observed that several of these wrote something on a piece of
+paper which lay on the table with a pencil beside it, before taking
+their seats.
+
+He stretched himself in the direction of this paper, but subsided as he
+caught the eyes of two of the company riveted on his neck.
+
+From that time until he left the rooms one member or other was staring
+at his neck.  Andrew looked anxiously in the glass over the mantelpiece
+but could see nothing wrong.
+
+The paper on the table merely contained such jottings as these:--
+
+"Robert Buchanan has written another play."
+
+"Schnadhoerst is in town."
+
+"Ashmead Bartlett walks in Temple Gardens 3 to 4."
+
+"Clement Scott (?)"
+
+"Query: Is there a dark passage near Hyndman's (Socialist's) house?"
+
+"Talmage.  Address, Midland Hotel."
+
+"Andrew Lang (?)"
+
+Andrew was a good deal interested in woman's suffrage, and the debate
+on this question in the students' society at Edinburgh, when he spoke
+for an hour and five minutes, is still remembered by the janitor who
+had to keep the door until the meeting closed.
+
+Debating societies, like the company of reporters, engender a
+familiarity of reference to eminent persons, and Andrew had in his time
+struck down the champions of woman's rights as a boy plays with his
+ninepins.
+
+To be brought face to face with a lady whose name is a household word
+wheresoever a few Scotchmen can meet and resolve themselves into an
+argument was another matter.
+
+It was with no ordinary mingling of respect with curiosity that he
+stood up with the others to greet Mrs. Fawcett as the president led her
+into the room.  The young man's face, as he looked upon her for the
+first time, was the best book this remarkable woman ever wrote.
+
+The proceedings were necessarily quiet, and the president had
+introduced their guest to the meeting without Andrew's hearing a word.
+
+He was far away in a snow-swept University quadrangle on a windy night,
+when Mrs. Fawcett rose to her feet.
+
+Some one flung open the window, for the place was close, and
+immediately the skirl of a bagpiper broke the silence.
+
+It might have been the devil that rushed into the room.
+
+Still Andrew dreamed on.
+
+The guest paused.
+
+The members looked at each other, and the president nodded to one of
+them.
+
+He left the room, and about two minutes afterwards the music suddenly
+ceased.
+
+Andrew woke with a start in time to see him return, write two words in
+the members' book, and resume his seat.  Mrs. Fawcett then began.
+
+"I have before me," she said, turning over the leaves of a bulky
+manuscript, "a great deal of matter bearing on the question of woman's
+rights, which at such a meeting as this may be considered read.  It is
+mainly historical, and while I am prepared to meet with hostile
+criticism from the society, I assume that the progress our agitation
+has made, with its disappointments, its trials, and its triumphs, has
+been followed more or less carefully by you all.
+
+"Nor shall I, after the manner of speakers on such an occasion, pay you
+the doubtful compliment of fulsomely extolling your aims before your
+face.
+
+"I come at once to the question of woman's rights in so far as the
+society can affect them, and I ask of you a consideration of my case
+with as little prejudice as men can be expected to approach it.
+
+"In the constitution of the society, as it has been explained to me, I
+notice chiefly two things which would have filled me with indignation
+twenty years ago, but only remind me how far we are from the goal of
+our ambition now.
+
+"The first is a sin of omission, the second one of commission, and the
+latter is the more to be deprecated in that you made it with your eyes
+open, after full discussion, while the other came about as a matter of
+course.
+
+"I believe I am right in saying that the membership of this society is
+exclusively male, and also that no absolute veto has been placed on
+female candidature.
+
+"As a matter of fact, it never struck the founders that such a veto in
+black and white was necessary.  When they drew up the rules of
+membership the other sex never fell like a black shadow on the paper;
+it was forgotten.  We owe our eligibility to many other offices
+(generally disputed at law) to the same accident.  In short, the
+unwritten law of the _argumentum ad crinolinam_ puts us to the side."
+
+Having paid the society the compliment of believing that, however much
+it differed from her views, it would not dismiss them with a laugh,
+Mrs. Fawcett turned to the question of woman's alleged physical
+limitations.
+
+She said much on this point that Andrew saw could not be easily
+refuted, but, interesting though she made it, we need not follow her
+over beaten ground.
+
+So far the members had given her the courteous non-attention which
+thoughtful introductory remarks can always claim.  It was when she
+reached her second head that they fastened upon her words.
+
+Then Andrew had seen no sharper audience since he was one of a Scotch
+congregation on the scent of a heretic.
+
+"At a full meeting of committee," said Mrs. Fawcett, with a ring of
+bitterness in her voice, "you passed a law that women should not enjoy
+the advantages of the association.  Be they ever so eminent, their sex
+deprives them of your care.  You take up the case of a petty maker of
+books because his tea-leaf solutions weary you, and you put a stop to
+him with an enthusiasm worthy of a nobler object.
+
+"But the woman is left to decay.
+
+"This society at its noblest was instituted for taking strong means to
+prevent men's slipping down the ladder it has been such a toil to them
+to mount, but the women who have climbed as high as they can fall from
+rung to rung.
+
+"There are female nuisances as well as male; I presume no one here will
+gainsay me that.  But you do not know them officially.  The politicians
+who joke about three acres and a cow, the writers who are comic about
+mothers-in-law, the very boot-blacks have your solicitude, but you
+ignore their complements in the softer sex.
+
+"Yet you call yourselves a society for suppressing excrescences!  Your
+president tells me you are at present inquiring for the address of the
+man who signs himself 'Paterfamilias' in the 'Times'; but the letters
+from 'A British Matron' are of no account.
+
+"I do not need to be told how Dr. Smith, the fashionable physician, was
+precipitated down that area the other day; but what I do ask is, why
+should he be taken and all the lady doctors left?
+
+"Their degrees are as good as his.  You are too 'manly,' you say, to
+arrest their course.  Is injustice manliness?  We have another name for
+it.  We say you want the pluck.
+
+"I suppose every one of you has been reading a very able address
+recently delivered at the meeting of the Social Science Congress.  I
+refer to my friend Mrs. Kendal's paper on the moral aspect of the drama
+in this country.
+
+"It is a powerful indictment of the rank and file other professional
+brothers and sisters, and nowhere sadder, more impressive, or more
+unanswerable than where she speaks of the involuntary fall of the actor
+into social snobbishness and professional clap-trap.
+
+"I do not know how the paper affected you.  But since reading it I have
+asked in despair, how can this gifted lady continue to pick her way
+between the snares with which the stage is beset?
+
+"Is it possible that the time may come when she will advertise by
+photographs and beg from reporters the 'pars' she now so scathingly
+criticises?  Nay, when I look upon the drop scene at the St. James's
+Theatre, I ask myself if the deterioration has not already set in.
+
+"Gentlemen, is this a matter of indifference to you?  But why do I ask?
+Has not Mrs. Lynn Linton another article in the new 'Nineteenth
+Century' that makes her worthy your attention?  They are women, and the
+sex is outside your sphere."
+
+It was nearly twelve o'clock when Mrs. Fawcett finished her address,
+and the society had adopted the good old rule of getting to bed
+betimes.  Thus it was afterwards that Andrew learned how long and
+carefully the society had already considered the advisability of giving
+women equal rights with men.
+
+As he was leaving the chambers the president slipped something into his
+hand.  He held it there until he reached his room.
+
+On the way a man struck against him, scanned him piercingly, and then
+shuffled off.  He was muffled up, but Andrew wondered if he had not
+seen him at the meeting.
+
+The young Scotchman had an uneasy feeling that his footsteps were
+dodged.
+
+As soon as he reached home he unfolded the scrap of paper that had been
+pushed into his hand.  It merely contained these words--
+
+"Cover up your neck."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+On the following Tuesday Andrew met the president by appointment at the
+Marble Arch.
+
+Until he had received his final instructions he was pledged not to
+begin, and he had passed these two intervening days staring at his
+empty fireplace.
+
+They shook hands silently and passed into the Park.  The president was
+always thoughtful in a crowd.
+
+"In such a gathering as this," said Andrew, pointing an imaginary
+pistol at a lecturer on Socialism, "you could hardly go wrong to let
+fly."
+
+"You must not speak like that," the president said gently, "or we shall
+soon lose you.  Your remark, however, opens the way for what I have to
+say.  You have never expressed any curiosity as to your possible fate.
+I hope this is not because you under-estimate the risks.  If the
+authorities saw you 'letting fly' as you term it, promiscuously, or
+even at a given object, they would treat you as no better than a
+malefactor."
+
+"I thought that all out yesterday," said Andrew, "and I am amazed at
+the society's success in escaping detection."
+
+"I feared this," said the president.  "You are mistaken.  We don't
+always escape detection.  Sometimes we are caught--"
+
+"Caught?"
+
+"Yes, and hanged."
+
+"But if that is so, why does it not get into the papers?"
+
+"The papers are full of it."
+
+Andrew looked incredulous.
+
+"In the present state of the law," said the president, "motive in a
+murder goes for nothing.  However iniquitous this may be--and I do not
+attempt to defend it--we accept it as a fact.  Your motives may have
+been unexceptionable, but they hang you all the same.  Thus our members
+when apprehended preserve silence on this point, or say that they are
+Fenians.  This is to save the society.  The man who got fifteen years
+the other day for being found near St. Stephen's with six infernal
+machines in his pockets was really one of us.  He was taking them to be
+repaired."
+
+"And the other who got ten years the week before?"
+
+"He was from America, but it was for one of our affairs that he was
+sentenced.  He was quite innocent.  You see the dynamiters, vulgarly so
+called, are playing into our hands.  Suspicion naturally falls on them.
+He was our fifth."
+
+"I had no idea of this," murmured Andrew.
+
+"You see what a bad name does," said the president.  "Let this be a
+warning to you, Andrew."
+
+"But is this quite fair?"
+
+"As for that, they like it--the leading spirits, I mean.  It gives them
+a reputation.  Besides, they hurt as well as help us.  It was after
+their appearance that the authorities were taught to be distrustful.
+You have little idea of the precautions taken nowadays.  There is Sir
+William Harcourt, for instance, who is attended by policemen
+everywhere.  I used to go home from the House behind him nightly, but I
+could never get him alone.  I have walked in the very shadow of that
+man, but always in a company."
+
+"You were never arrested yourself?" asked Andrew.
+
+"I was once, but we substituted a probationer."
+
+"Then did he--was he--"
+
+"Yes, poor fellow."
+
+"Is that often done?"
+
+"Sometimes.  You perhaps remember the man who went over the Embankment
+the night we met?  Well, if I had been charged with that, you would
+have had to be hanged."
+
+Andrew took a seat to collect his thoughts.
+
+"Was that why you seemed to take to me so much?" he asked, wistfully.
+
+"It was only one reason," said the president, soothingly.  "I liked you
+from the first."
+
+"But I don't see," said Andrew, "why I should have suffered for your
+action."
+
+For the moment, his veneration for this remarkable man hung in the
+balance.
+
+"It would have been for the society's sake," said the president,
+simply; "probationers are hardly missed."
+
+His face wore a pained look, but there was no reproach in his voice.
+
+Andrew was touched.
+
+He looked the apology, which, as a Scotchman, he could not go the
+length of uttering.
+
+"Before I leave you to-day," said the president, turning to a
+pleasanter subject, "I shall give you some money.  We do not, you
+understand, pay our probationers a fixed salary."
+
+"It is more, is it not," said Andrew, "in nature of a scholarship?"
+
+"Yes, a scholarship--for the endowment of research.  You see we do not
+tie you down to any particular line of study.  Still, I shall be happy
+to hear of any programme you may have drawn up."
+
+Andrew hesitated.  He did not know that, to the president, he was an
+open book.
+
+"I dare say I can read your thoughts," said his companion.  "There is
+an eminent person whom you would like to make your first?"
+
+Andrew admitted that this was so.
+
+"I do not ask any confidences of you," continued the president, "nor
+shall I discourage ambition.  But I hope, Andrew, you have only in view
+the greatest good of the greatest number.  At such a time, it is well
+for the probationer to ask himself two questions: Is it not
+self-glorification that prompts me to pick this man out from among so
+many? and, Am I actuated by any personal animosity?  If you cannot
+answer both these questions in the negative, it is time to ask a third,
+Should I go on with this undertaking?"
+
+"In this case," said Andrew, "I do not think it is self-glory, and I am
+sure it is not spite.  He is a man I have a very high opinion of."
+
+"A politician?  Remember that we are above party considerations."
+
+"He is a politician," said Andrew, reluctantly, "but it is his politics
+I admire."
+
+"And you are sure his time has come?  Then how do you propose to set
+about it?"
+
+"I thought of calling at his house, and putting it to him."
+
+The president's countenance fell.
+
+"Well, well," he said, "that may answer.  But there is no harm in
+bearing in mind that persuasion is not necessarily a passive force.
+Without going the length of removing him yourself, you know, you could
+put temptation in his way."
+
+"If I know my man," said Andrew, "that will not be required."
+
+The president had drunk life's disappointments to the dregs, but it was
+not in his heart to damp the youth's enthusiasm.
+
+Experience he knew to be a commodity for which we pay a fancy price.
+
+"After that," said Andrew, "I thought of Henry Irving."
+
+"We don't kill actors," his companion said.
+
+It was Andrew's countenance's turn to fall now.
+
+"We don't have time for it," the president explained.  "When the
+society was instituted, we took a few of them, but merely to get our
+hands in.  We didn't want to bungle good cases, you see, and it did not
+matter so much for them."
+
+"How did you do it?"
+
+"We waited at the stage-door, and went off with the first person who
+came out, male or female."
+
+"But I understood you did not take up women?"
+
+"Nor do we.  Theatrical people constitute a sex by themselves--like
+curates."
+
+"Then can't I even do the man who stands at the theatre doors, all
+shirt-front and diamonds?"
+
+The president shivered.
+
+"If you happen to be passing, at any rate," he said.
+
+"And surely some of the playwrights would be better dead.  They must
+see that themselves."
+
+"They have had their chance," said the president.  Despite his
+nationality, Andrew had not heard the story, so the president told it
+him.
+
+"Many years ago, when the drama was in its infancy, some young men from
+Stratford-on-Avon and elsewhere resolved to build a theatre in London.
+
+"The times, however, were moral, and no one would imperil his soul so
+far as to give them a site.
+
+"One night, they met in despair, when suddenly the room was illumined
+by lightning, and they saw the devil in the midst of them.
+
+"He has always been a large proprietor in London, and he had come to
+strike a bargain with them.  They could have as many sites as they
+chose, on one condition.  Every year they must send him a dramatist.
+
+"You see he was willing to take his chance of the players.
+
+"The compact was made, and up to the present time it has been
+religiously kept.  But this year, as the day drew near, found the
+managers very uneasy.  They did what they could.  They forwarded the
+best man they had."
+
+"What happened?" asked Andrew, breathlessly.
+
+"The devil sent him back," said the president.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+It was one Sunday forenoon, on such a sunny day as slovenly men seize
+upon to wash their feet and have it over, that Andrew set out to call
+on Mr. Labouchere.
+
+The leaves in the squares were green, and the twittering of the birds
+among the boughs was almost gay enough to charm him out of the severity
+of countenance which a Scotchman wears on a Sunday with his blacks.
+
+Andrew could not help regarding the mother-of-pearl sky as a favourable
+omen.  Several times he caught himself becoming light-hearted.
+
+He got the great Radical on the door-step, just setting out for church.
+
+The two men had not met before, but Andrew was a disciple in the school
+in which the other taught.
+
+Between man and man formal introductions are humbug.
+
+Andrew explained in a few words the nature of his visit, and received a
+cordial welcome.
+
+"But I could call again," he said, observing the hymn-book in the
+other's hand.
+
+"Nonsense," said Mr. Labouchere heartily; "it must be business before
+pleasure.  Mind the step."
+
+So saying, he led his visitor into a cheerful snuggery at the back of
+the house.  It was furnished with a careful contempt for taste, and the
+first thing that caught Andrew's eye was a pot of apple jam on a side
+table.
+
+"I have no gum," Mr. Labouchere explained hastily.
+
+A handsomely framed picture, representing Truth lying drowned at the
+bottom of a well, stood on the mantel-piece; indeed, there were many
+things in the room that, on another occasion, Andrew would have been
+interested to hear the history of.
+
+He could not but know, however, that at present he was to some extent
+an intruder, and until he had fully explained his somewhat delicate
+business he would not feel at ease.
+
+Though argumentative, Andrew was essentially a shy, proud man.
+
+It was very like Mr. Labouchere to leave him to tell his story in his
+own way, only now and then, at the outset, interjecting a humorous
+remark, which we here omit.
+
+"I hope," said Andrew earnestly, "that you will not think it fulsome on
+my part to say how much I like you.  In your public utterances you have
+let it be known what value you set on pretty phrases; but I speak the
+blunt truth, as you have taught it.  I am only a young man, perhaps
+awkward and unpolished--"
+
+Here Andrew paused, but as Mr. Labouchere did not say anything he
+resumed.
+
+"That as it may be, I should like you to know that your political
+speeches have become part of my life.  When I was a student it seemed
+to me that the Radicalism of so called advanced thinkers was a
+half-hearted sham; I had no interest in politics at all until I read
+your attack--one of them--on the House of Lords.  That day marked an
+epoch in my life.  I used to read the University library copy of
+'Truth' from cover to cover.  Sometimes I carried it into the
+class-room.  That was not allowed.  I took it up my waistcoat.  In
+those days I said that if I wrote a book I would dedicate it to you
+without permission, and London, when I came to it, was to me the town
+where you lived."
+
+There was a great deal of truth in this; indeed, Mr. Labouchere's
+single-hearted enthusiasm--be his politics right or wrong--is well
+calculated to fascinate young men.
+
+If it was slightly over-charged, the temptation was great.  Andrew was
+keenly desirous of carrying his point, and he wanted his host to see
+that he was only thinking of his good.
+
+"Well, but what is it you would have me do?" asked Mr. Labouchere, who
+often had claimants on his bounty and his autographs.
+
+"I want you," said Andrew eagerly, "to die."
+
+The two men looked hard at each other.  There was not even a clock in
+the room to break the silence.  At last the statesman spoke.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+His visitor sank back in his chair relieved.  He had put all his hopes
+in the other's common-sense.
+
+It had never failed Mr. Labouchere, and now it promised not to fail
+Andrew.
+
+"I am anxious to explain that," the young man said glibly.  "If you can
+look at yourself with the same eyes with which you see other people, it
+won't take long.  Make a looking-glass of me, and it is done.
+
+"You have now reached a high position in the worlds of politics and
+literature, to which you have cut your way unaided.
+
+"You are a great satirist, combining instruction with amusement, a sort
+of comic Carlyle.
+
+"You hate shams so much that if man had been constructed for it I dare
+say you would kick at yourself.
+
+"You have your enemies, but the very persons who blunt their weapons on
+you do you the honour of sharpening them on 'Truth.'  In short, you
+have reached the summit of your fame, and you are too keen a man of the
+world not to know that fame is a touch-and-go thing."
+
+Andrew paused.
+
+"Go on," said Mr. Labouchere.
+
+"Well, you have now got fame, honour, everything for which it is
+legitimate in man to strive.
+
+"So far back as I can remember, you have had the world laughing with
+you.  But you know what human nature is.
+
+"There comes a morning to all wits, when their public wakes to find
+them bores.  The fault may not be the wit's, but what of that?  The
+result is the same.
+
+"Wits are like theatres: they may have a glorious youth and prime, but
+their old age is dismal.  To the outsider, like myself, signs are not
+wanting--to continue the figure of speech--that you have put on your
+last successful piece.
+
+"Can you say candidly that your last Christmas number was more than a
+reflection of its predecessors, or that your remarks this year on the
+Derby day took as they did the year before?
+
+"Surely the most incisive of our satirists will not let himself
+degenerate into an illustration of Mr. Herbert Spencer's theory that
+man repeats himself, like history.
+
+"Mr. Labouchere, sir, to those of us who have grown up in your
+inspiration it would indeed be pitiful if this were so."
+
+Andrew's host turned nervously in his chair.
+
+Probably he wished that he had gone to church now.
+
+"You need not be alarmed," he said, with a forced smile.
+
+"You will die," cried Andrew, "before they send you to the House of
+Lords?"
+
+"In which case the gain would be all to those left behind."
+
+"No," said Andrew, who now felt that he had as good as gained the day;
+"there could not be a greater mistake.
+
+"Suppose it happened to-night, or even put it off to the end of the
+week; see what would follow.
+
+"The ground you have lost so far is infinitesimal.  It would be
+forgotten in the general regret.
+
+"Think of the newspaper placards next morning, some of them perhaps
+edged with black; the leaders in every London paper and in all the
+prominent provincial ones; the six columns obituary in the 'Times'; the
+paragraphs in the 'World'; the motion by Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Healy for
+the adjournment of the House; the magazine articles; the promised
+memoirs; the publication of posthumous papers; the resolution in the
+Northampton Town Council; the statue in Hyde Park!  With such a
+recompense where would be the sacrifice?"
+
+Mr. Labouchere rose and paced the room in great mental agitation.
+
+"Now look at the other side of the picture," said Andrew, rising and
+following him: "'Truth' reduced to threepence, and then to a penny;
+yourself confused with Tracy Turnerelli or Martin Tupper; your friends
+running when you looked like jesting; the House emptying, the reporters
+shutting their note-books as you rose to speak; the great name of
+Labouchere become a synonym for bore!"
+
+They presented a strange picture in that room, its owner's face now a
+greyish white, his supplicant shaking with a passion that came out in
+perspiration.
+
+With trembling hand Mr. Labouchere flung open the window.  The room was
+stifling.
+
+There was a smell of new-mown hay in the air, a gentle breeze tipped
+the well-trimmed hedge with life, and the walks crackled in the heat.
+
+But a stone's throw distant the sun was bathing in the dimpled Thames.
+
+There was a cawing of rooks among the tall trees, and a church-bell
+tinkled in the ivy far away across the river.
+
+Mr. Labouchere was far away too.
+
+He was a round-cheeked boy again, smothering his kitten in his
+pinafore, prattling of Red Riding Hood by his school-mistress's knee,
+and guddling in the brook for minnows.
+
+And now--and now!
+
+It was a beautiful world, and, ah, life is sweet!
+
+He pressed his fingers to his forehead.
+
+"Leave me," he said hoarsely.
+
+Andrew put his hand upon the shoulder of the man he loved so well.
+
+"Be brave," he said; "do it in whatever way you prefer.  A moment's
+suffering, and all will be over."
+
+He spoke gently.  There is always something infinitely pathetic in the
+sight of a strong man in pain.
+
+Mr. Labouchere turned upon him.
+
+"Go," he cried, "or I will call the servants."
+
+"You forget," said Andrew, "that I am your guest."
+
+But his host only pointed to the door.
+
+Andrew felt a great sinking at his heart.  They prate who say it is
+success that tries a man.  He flung himself at Mr. Labouchere's feet.
+
+"Think of the public funeral," he cried.
+
+His host seized the bell-rope and pulled it violently.
+
+"If you will do it," said Andrew solemnly, "I promise to lay flowers on
+your grave every day till I die."
+
+"John," said Mr. Labouchere, "show this gentleman out."
+
+Andrew rose.
+
+"You refuse?" he asked.
+
+"I do."
+
+"You won't think it over?  If I call again, say on Thursday--"
+
+"John!" said Mr. Labouchere.
+
+Andrew took up his hat.  His host thought he had gone.  But in the hall
+his reflection in a looking-glass reminded the visitor of something.
+He put his head in at the doorway again.
+
+"Would you mind telling me," he said, "whether you see anything
+peculiar about my neck?"
+
+"It seems a good neck to twist," Mr. Labouchere answered, a little
+savagely.
+
+Andrew then withdrew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+This unexpected rebuff from Mr. Labouchere rankled for many days in
+Andrew's mind.  Had he been proposing for the great statesman's hand he
+could not have felt it more.  Perhaps he did not make sufficient
+allowance for Mr. Labouchere; it is always so easy to advise.
+
+But to rage at a man (or woman) is the proof that we can adore them; it
+is only his loved ones who infuriate a Scotchman.
+
+There were moments when Andrew said to himself that he had nothing more
+to live for.
+
+Then he would upbraid himself for having gone about it too hurriedly,
+and in bitter self-contempt strike his hand on the railings, as he
+rushed by.
+
+Work is the sovereign remedy for this unhealthy state of mind, and
+fortunately Andrew had a great deal to do.
+
+Gradually the wound healed, and he began to take an interest in Lord
+Randolph Churchill.
+
+Every day the Flying Scotchman shoots its refuse of clever young men
+upon London who are too ambitious to do anything.
+
+Andrew was not one of these.
+
+Seeking to carry off one of the greatest prizes in his profession, he
+had aimed too high for a beginner.
+
+When he realised this he apprenticed himself, so to speak, to the
+president, determined to acquire a practical knowledge of his art in
+all its branches.  Though a very young man, he had still much to learn.
+It was only in his leisure moments that he gave way to dreams over a
+_magnum opus_.
+
+But when he did set about it, which must be before his period of
+probation closed, he had made up his mind to be thorough.
+
+The months thus passed quietly but not unprofitably in assisting the
+president, acquainting himself with the favourite resorts of
+interesting persons and composing his thesis.
+
+At intervals the monotony was relieved by more strictly society work.
+On these occasions he played a part not dissimilar to that of a junior
+counsel.
+
+The president found him invaluable in his raid on the gentlemen with
+umbrellas who read newspapers in the streets.
+
+It was Andrew--though he never got the credit of it--who put his senior
+in possession of the necessary particulars about the comic writers
+whose subject is teetotalism and spinsters.
+
+He was unwearying, indeed, in his efforts with regard to the comic
+journals generally, and the first man of any note that he disposed of
+was "Punch's" favourite artist on Scotch matters.  This was in an alley
+off Fleet Street.
+
+Andrew took a new interest in the House of Lords, and had a magnificent
+scheme for ending it in half an hour.
+
+As the members could never be got together in any number, this fell
+through.
+
+Lord Brabourne will remember the young man in a straw hat, with his
+neck covered up, who attended the House so regularly when it was
+announced that he was to speak.  That was Andrew.
+
+It was he who excitedly asked the Black Rod to point out Lord
+Sherbrooke, when it was intimated that this peer was preparing a volume
+of poems for the press.
+
+In a month's time Andrew knew the likeliest places to meet these and
+other noble lords alone.
+
+The publishing offices of "England," the only Conservative newspaper,
+had a fascination for him.
+
+He got to know Mr. Ashmead Bartlett's hours of calling, until the sight
+of him on the pavement was accepted as a token that the proprietor was
+inside.
+
+They generally reached the House of Commons about the same time.
+
+Here Andrew's interest was discriminated among quite a number of
+members.  Mr. Bradlaugh, Mr. Sexton, and Mr. Marjoribanks, the
+respected member for Berwickshire, were perhaps his favourites; but the
+one he dwelt with most pride on was Lord Randolph Churchill.
+
+One night he gloated so long over Sir George Trevelyan leaning over
+Westminster Bridge that in the end he missed him.
+
+When Andrew made up his mind to have a man he got to like him.  This
+was his danger.
+
+With press tickets, which he got very cheap, he often looked in at the
+theatres to acquaint himself with the faces and figures of the constant
+frequenters.
+
+He drew capital pencil sketches of the leading critics in his note-book.
+
+The gentleman next him that night at "Manteaux Noirs" would not have
+laughed so heartily if he had known why Andrew listened for his address
+to the cabman.
+
+The young Scotchman resented people's merriment over nothing; sometimes
+he took the Underground Railway just to catch clerks at "Tit-Bits."
+
+One afternoon he saw some way in front of him in Piccadilly a man with
+a young head on old shoulders.
+
+Andrew recognized him by the swing of his stick; he could have
+identified his plaid among a hundred thousand morning coats.  It was
+John Stuart Blackie, his favourite professor.
+
+Since the young man graduated, his old preceptor had resigned his
+chair, and was now devoting his time to writing sonnets to himself in
+the Scotch newspapers.
+
+Andrew could not bear to think of it, and quickened his pace to catch
+him up.  But Blackie was in great form, humming "Scots wha hae."  With
+head thrown back, staff revolving and chest inflated, he sang himself
+into a martial ecstasy, and, drumming cheerily on the doors with his
+fist, strutted along like a band of bagpipers with a clan behind him,
+until he had played himself out of Andrew's sight.
+
+Far be it from our intention to maintain that Andrew was invariably
+successful.  That is not given to any man.
+
+Sometimes his hands slipped.
+
+Had he learned the piano in his younger days this might not have
+happened.  But if he had been a pianist the president would probably
+have wiped him out--and very rightly.  There can be no doubt about male
+pianists.
+
+Nor was the fault always Andrew's.  When the society was founded, many
+far-seeing men had got wind of it, and had themselves elected honorary
+members before the committee realised what they were after.
+
+This was a sore subject with the president; he shunned discussing it,
+and thus Andrew had frequently to discontinue cases after he was well
+on with them.
+
+In this way much time was lost.
+
+Andrew was privately thanked by the committee for one suggestion,
+which, for all he knows, may yet be carried out.  The president had a
+wide interest in the press, and on one occasion he remarked to Andrew:
+
+"Think of the snobs and the prigs who would be saved if the 'Saturday
+Review' and the 'Spectator' could be induced to cease publication!"
+
+Andrew thought it out, and then produced his scheme.
+
+The battle of the clans on the North Inch of Perth had always seemed to
+him a master-stroke of diplomacy.
+
+"Why," he said to the president, "not set the 'Saturday's' staff
+against the 'Spectator's.'  If about equally matched, they might
+exterminate each other."
+
+So his days of probation passed, and the time drew nigh for Andrew to
+show what stuff was in him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Andrew had set apart July 31 for killing Lord Randolph Churchill.
+
+As his term of probation was up in the second week of August, this
+would leave him nearly a fortnight to finish his thesis in.
+
+On the 30th he bought a knife in Holborn suitable for his purpose.  It
+had been his original intention to use an electric rifle, but those he
+was shown were too cumbrous for use in the streets.
+
+The eminent statesman was residing at this time at the Grand Hotel, and
+Andrew thought to get him somewhere between Trafalgar Square and the
+House.  Taking up his position in a window of Morley's Hotel at an
+early hour, he set himself to watch the windows opposite.  The plan of
+the Grand was well known to him, for he had frequently made use of it
+as overlooking the National Liberal Club, whose membership he had
+already slightly reduced.
+
+Turning his eyes to the private sitting-rooms, he soon discovered Lord
+Randolph busily writing in one of them.
+
+Andrew had lunch at Morley's, so that he might be prepared for any
+emergency.  Lord Randolph wrote on doggedly through the forenoon, and
+Andrew hoped he would finish what he was at in case this might be his
+last chance.
+
+It rained all through the afternoon.  The thick drizzle seemed to
+double the width of the street, and even to Andrew's strained eyes the
+shadow in the room opposite was obscured.
+
+His eyes wandered from the window to the hotel entrance, and as cab
+after cab rattled from it he became uneasy.
+
+In ordinary circumstances he could have picked his man out anywhere,
+but in rain all men look alike.  He could have dashed across the street
+and rushed from room to room of the Grand Hotel.
+
+His self-restraint was rewarded.
+
+Late in the afternoon Lord Randolph came to the window.  The flashing
+waterproofs and scurrying umbrellas were a surprise to him, and he
+knitted his brows in annoyance.
+
+By-and-by his face was convulsed with laughter.
+
+He drew a chair to the window and stood on it, that he might have a
+better view of the pavement beneath.
+
+For some twenty minutes he remained there smacking his thighs, his
+shoulders heaving with glee.
+
+Andrew could not see what it was, but he formulated a theory.
+
+Heavy blobs of rain that had gathered on the window-sill slowly
+released their hold from time to time and fell with a plump on the hats
+of passers-by.  Lord Randolph was watching them.
+
+Just as they were letting go he shook the window to make the wayfarers
+look up.  They got the rain-drops full in the face, and then he
+screamed.
+
+About six o'clock Andrew paid his bill hurriedly and ran downstairs.
+Lord Randolph had come to the window in his greatcoat.  His follower
+waited for him outside.  It was possible that he would take a hansom
+and drive straight to the House, but Andrew had reasons for thinking
+this unlikely.  The rain had somewhat abated.  Lord Randolph came out,
+put up his umbrella, and, glancing at the sky for a moment, set off
+briskly up St. Martin's Lane.
+
+Andrew knew that he would not linger here, for they had done St.
+Martin's Lane already.
+
+Lord Randolph's movements these last days had excited the Scotchman's
+curiosity.  He had been doing the London streets systematically during
+his unoccupied afternoons.  But it was difficult to discover what he
+was after.
+
+It was the tobacconists' shops that attracted him.
+
+He did not enter, only stood at the windows counting something.
+
+He jotted down the result on a piece of paper and then sped on to the
+next shop.
+
+In this way, with Andrew at his heels, he had done the whole of the W.
+C. district, St. James's, Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Bond Street, and
+the Burlington Arcade.
+
+On this occasion he took the small thoroughfares lying between upper
+Regent Street and Tottenham Court Road.  Beginning in Great Titchfield
+Street he went from tobacconist's to tobacconist's, sometimes smiling
+to himself, at other times frowning.  Andrew scrutinised the windows as
+he left them, but could make nothing of it.
+
+Not for the first time he felt that there could be no murder to-night
+unless he saw the paper first.
+
+Lord Randolph devoted an hour to this work.  Then he hailed a cab.
+
+Andrew expected this.  But the statesman still held the paper loosely
+in his hand.
+
+It was a temptation.
+
+Andrew bounded forward as if to open the cab door, pounced upon the
+paper and disappeared with it up an alley.  After five minutes' dread
+lest he might be pursued, he struck a match and read:
+
+"Great Titchfield Street--Branscombe 15, Churchill 11, Langtry 8,
+Gladstone 4.
+
+"Mortimer Street--Langtry 11, Branscombe 9, Gladstone 6, Mary Anderson
+6, Churchill 3.
+
+"Margaret Street--Churchill 7, Anderson 6, Branscombe 5, Gladstone 4,
+Chamberlain 4.
+
+"Smaller streets--Churchill 14, Branscombe 13, Gladstone 9, Langtry 9.
+Totals for to-day: Churchill 35, Langtry 28, Gladstone 23, Branscombe
+42, Anderson 12, Chamberlain nowhere."  Then followed, as if in a burst
+of passion, "Branscombe still leading--confound her."
+
+Andrew saw that Lord Randolph had been calculating fame from vesta
+boxes.
+
+For a moment this discovery sent Andrew's mind wandering.  Miss
+Branscombe's photographs obstructed the traffic.  Should not this be
+put a stop to?  Ah, but she was a woman!
+
+This recalled him to himself.  Lord Randolph had departed, probably for
+St. Stephen's.
+
+Andrew jumped into a hansom.  He felt like an exotic in a glass frame.
+
+"The House," he said.
+
+What a pity his mother could not have seen him then!
+
+Perhaps Andrew was prejudiced.  Undoubtedly he was in a mood to be
+easily pleased.
+
+In his opinion at any rate.  Lord Randolph's speech that night on the
+Irish question was the best he ever delivered.
+
+It came on late in the evening, and he stuck to his text like a
+clergyman.  He quoted from Hansard to prove that Mr. Gladstone did not
+know what he was talking about; he blazed out against the Parnellites
+till they were called to order.  The ironical members who cried "Hear,
+hear," regretted it.
+
+He had never been wittier, never more convincing, never so
+magnificently vituperative.
+
+Andrew was lifted out of himself.  He jumped in ecstasy to his feet.
+It was he who led the applause.
+
+He felt that this was a worthy close to a brilliant career.
+
+We oldsters looking on more coolly could have seen where the speech was
+lacking, so far as Andrew was concerned.  It is well known that when a
+great man, of whom there will be biographers, is to die a violent
+death, his last utterances are strangely significant, as if he foresaw
+his end.
+
+There was nothing of this in Lord Randolph's speech.
+
+The House was thinning when the noble lord rose to go.  Andrew joined
+him at the gate.
+
+The Scotchman's nervous elation had all gone.  A momentary thrill
+passed through his veins as he remembered that in all probability they
+would never be together again.  After that he was quite calm.
+
+The night was black.
+
+The rain had ceased, but for an occasional drop shaken out of a
+shivering star.
+
+But for a few cabs rolling off with politicians, Whitehall was deserted.
+
+The very tax-collectors seemed to have got to bed.
+
+Lord Randolph shook hands with two or three other members homeward
+bound, walked a short distance with one of them, and then set off
+towards his hotel alone.
+
+His pace was leisurely, as that of a man in profound thought.
+
+There was no time to be lost; but Andrew dallied.
+
+Once he crept up and could have done it.  He thought he would give him
+another minute.  There was a footstep behind, and he fell back.  It was
+Sir William Harcourt.  Lord Randolph heard him, and, seeing who it was,
+increased his pace.
+
+The illustrious Liberal slackened at the same moment.
+
+Andrew bit his lip and hurried on.
+
+Some time was lost in getting round Sir William.
+
+He was advancing in strides now.
+
+Lord Randolph saw that he was pursued.
+
+When Andrew began to run, he ran too.
+
+There were not ten yards between them at Whitehall Place.
+
+A large man turning the corner of Great Scotland Yard fell against
+Andrew.  He was wheeled aside, but Mr. Chaplin had saved a colleague's
+life.
+
+With a cry Andrew bounded on, his knife glistening.
+
+Trafalgar Square was a black mass.
+
+Lord Randolph took Northumberland Avenue in four steps, Andrew almost
+on the top of him.
+
+As he burst through the door of the Grand Hotel, his pursuer made one
+tremendous leap, and his knife catching Lord Randolph in the heel,
+carried away his shoe.
+
+Andrew's face had struck the steps.
+
+He heard the word "Fenian."
+
+There was a rushing to and fro of lights.
+
+Springing to his feet, he thrust the shoe into his pocket and went home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"Tie this muffler round your neck."
+
+It was the president who spoke.  Andrew held his thesis in his hand.
+
+"But the rooms are so close," he said.
+
+"That has nothing to do with it," said the president.  The blood rushed
+to his head, and then left him pale.
+
+"But why?" asked Andrew.
+
+"For God's sake, do as I bid you," said his companion, pulling himself
+by a great effort to the other side of the room.
+
+"You have done it?" he asked, carefully avoiding Andrew's face.
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"Then we can go in to the others.  Remember what I told you about
+omitting the first seven pages.  The society won't stand introductory
+remarks in a thesis."
+
+The committee were assembled in the next room.
+
+When the young Scotchman entered with the president, they looked him
+full in the neck.
+
+"He is suffering from cold," the president said.
+
+No one replied, but angry eyes were turned on the speaker.  He somewhat
+nervously placed his young friend in a bad light, with a table between
+him and his hearers.
+
+Then Andrew began.
+
+"The Society for Doing Without," he read, "has been tried and found
+wanting.  It has now been in existence for some years, and its members
+have worked zealously, though unostentatiously.
+
+"I am far from saying a word against them.  They are patriots as true
+as ever petitioned against the Channel Tunnel."
+
+"No compliments," whispered the president, warningly.  Andrew hastily
+turned a page, and continued:
+
+"But what have they done?  Removed an individual here and there.  That
+is the extent of it.
+
+"You have been pursuing a half-hearted policy.  You might go on for
+centuries at this rate before you made any perceptible difference in
+the streets.
+
+"Have you ever seen a farmer thinning turnips?  Gentlemen, there is an
+example for you.  My proposal is that everybody should have to die on
+reaching the age of forty-five years.
+
+"It has been the wish of this society to avoid the prejudices
+engendered of party strife.  But though you are a social rather than a
+political organisation, you cannot escape politics.  You do not call
+yourselves Radicals, but you work for Radicalism.  What is Radicalism?
+It is a desire to get a chance.  This is an aspiration inherent in the
+human breast.  It is felt most keenly by the poor.
+
+"Make the poor rich, and the hovels, the misery, the immorality, and
+the crime of the East End disappear.  It is infamous, say the
+Socialists, that this is not done at once.  Yes, but how is it to be
+done?  Not, as they hold, by making the classes and the masses change
+places.  Not on the lines on which the society has hitherto worked.
+There is only one way, and I make it my text to-night.  Fortunately, it
+presents no considerable difficulties.
+
+"It is well known in medicine that the simplest--in other words, the
+most natural--remedies may be the most efficacious.
+
+"So it is in the social life.  What shall we do, Society asks, with our
+boys?  I reply.  Kill off the parents.
+
+"There can be little doubt that forty-five years is long enough for a
+man to live.  Parents must see that.  Youth is the time to have your
+fling.
+
+"Let us see how this plan would revolutionise the world.  It would make
+statesmen hurry up.  At present, they are nearly fifty before you hear
+of them.  How can we expect the country to be properly governed by men
+in their dotage?
+
+"Again, take the world of letters.  Why does the literary aspirant have
+such a struggle?  Simply because the profession is over-stocked with
+seniors.  I would like to know what Tennyson's age is, and Ruskin's,
+and Browning's.  Every one of them is over seventy, and all writing
+away yet as lively as you like.  It is a crying scandal.
+
+"Things are the same in medicine, art, divinity, law--in short, in
+every profession and in every trade.
+
+"Young ladies cry out that this is not a marrying age.  How can it be a
+marrying age, with grey-headed parents everywhere?  Give young men
+their chance, and they will marry younger than ever, if only to see
+their children grown up before they die.
+
+"A word in conclusion.  Looking around me, I cannot but see that most,
+if not all, of my hearers have passed what should plainly be the
+allotted span of life to man.  You would have to go.
+
+"But, gentlemen, you would do so feeling that you were setting a noble
+example.  Younger, and--may I say?--more energetic men would fill your
+places and carry on your work.  You would hardly be missed."
+
+Andrew rolled up his thesis blandly, and strode into the next room to
+await the committee's decision.  It cannot be said that he felt the
+slightest uneasiness.
+
+The president followed, shutting the door behind him.
+
+"You have just two minutes," he said.
+
+Andrew could not understand it.
+
+His hat was crushed on to his head, his coat flung at him; he was
+pushed out at a window, squeezed through a grating and tumbled into a
+passage.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked, as the president dragged him down a
+back street.
+
+The president pointed to the window they had just left.
+
+Half a dozen infuriated men were climbing from it in pursuit.  Their
+faces, drunk with rage, awoke Andrew to a sense of his danger.
+
+"They were drawing lots for you when I left the room," said the
+president.
+
+"But what have I done?" gasped Andrew.
+
+"They didn't like your thesis.  At least, they make that their excuse."
+
+"Excuse?"
+
+"Yes; it was really your neck that did it."
+
+By this time they were in a cab, rattling into Gray's Inn Road.
+
+"They are a poor lot," said Andrew fiercely, "if they couldn't keep
+their heads over my neck."
+
+"They are only human," retorted the president.  "For Heaven's sake,
+pull up the collar of your coat."
+
+His fingers were itching, but Andrew did not notice it.
+
+"Where are we going?" he asked.
+
+"To King's Cross.  The midnight express leaves in twenty minutes.  It
+is your last chance."
+
+Andrew was in a daze.  When the president had taken his ticket for
+Glasgow he was still groping.
+
+The railway officials probably thought him on his honeymoon.
+
+They sauntered along the platform beyond the lights.
+
+Andrew, who was very hot, unloosened his greatcoat.
+
+In a moment a great change came over his companion.  All the humanity
+went from his face, his whole figure shook, and it was only by a
+tremendous effort that he chained his hands to his side.
+
+"Your neck," he cried; "cover it up."
+
+Andrew did not understand.  He looked about him for the committee.
+
+"There are none of them here," he said feebly.
+
+The president had tried to warn him.
+
+Now he gave way.
+
+The devil that was in him leapt at Andrew's throat.
+
+The young Scotchman was knocked into a goods waggon, with the president
+twisted round him.
+
+At that moment there was heard the whistle of the Scotch express.
+
+"Your blood be on your own head," cried the president, yielding
+completely to temptation.
+
+His fingers met round the young man's neck.
+
+"My God!" he murmured, in a delirious ecstasy, "what a neck, what a
+neck!"
+
+Just then his foot slipped.
+
+He fell.  Andrew jumped up and kicked him as hard as he could three
+times.
+
+Then he leapt to the platform, and, flinging himself into the moving
+train, fell exhausted on the seat.
+
+Andrew never thought so much of the president again.  You cannot
+respect a man and kick him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The first thing Andrew did on reaching Wheens was to write to his
+London landlady to send on his box with clothes by goods train; also
+his tobacco pouch, which he had left on the mantelpiece, and two
+pencils which she would find in the tea-caddy.
+
+Then he went around to the manse.
+
+The minister had great news for him.
+
+The master of the Wheens Grammar School had died.  Andrew had only to
+send in his testimonials, and the post was his.
+
+The salary was 200 pounds per annum, with an assistant and the
+privilege of calling himself rector.
+
+This settled, Andrew asked for Clarrie.  He was humbler now than he had
+been, and in our disappointments we turn to woman for solace.
+
+Clarrie had been working socks for him, and would have had them
+finished by this time had she known how to turn the heel.
+
+It is his sweetheart a man should be particular about.  Once he settles
+down it does not much matter whom he marries.
+
+All this and much more the good old minister pointed out to Andrew.
+Then he left Clarrie and her lover together.
+
+The winsome girl held one of the socks on her knee--who will chide
+her?--and a tear glistened in her eye.
+
+Andrew was a good deal affected.
+
+"Clarrie," he said softly, "will you be my wife?"
+
+She clung to him in reply.  He kissed her fondly.
+
+"Clarrie, beloved," he said nervously, after a long pause, "how much
+are seven and thirteen?"
+
+"Twenty-three," said Clarrie, putting up her mouth to his.
+
+Andrew laughed a sad vacant laugh.
+
+He felt that he would never understand a woman.  But his fingers
+wandered through her tobacco-coloured hair.
+
+He had a strange notion.
+
+"Put your arms round my neck," he whispered.
+
+Thus the old, old story was told once more.
+
+A month afterwards the president of the Society for Doing Without
+received by post a box of bride-cake, adorned with the silver gilt
+which is also largely used for coffins.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+More than two years have passed since Andrew's marriage, and already
+the minister has two sweet grandchildren, in whom he renews his youth.
+
+Except during school-hours their parents' married life is one long
+honeymoon.
+
+Clarrie has put Lord Randolph Churchill's shoe into a glass case on the
+piano, and, as is only natural, Andrew is now a staunch Conservative.
+
+Domesticated and repentant, he has renounced the devil and all her
+works.
+
+Sometimes, when thinking of the past, the babble of his lovely babies
+jars upon him, and, still half-dreaming, he brings their heads close
+together.
+
+At such a time all the anxious mother has to say is:
+
+"Andrew!"
+
+Then with a start he lays them gently in a heap on the floor, and,
+striding the room, soon regains his composure.
+
+For Andrew has told Clarrie all the indiscretions of his life in
+London, and she has forgiven everything.
+
+Ah, what will not a wife forgive!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Better Dead, by J. M. Barrie
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