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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of John Ingerfield and Other Stories, by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: John Ingerfield and Other Stories
+
+Author: Jerome K. Jerome
+
+Release Date: February, 2001 [eBook #2525]
+[Most recently updated: April 14, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: David Price
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN INGERFIELD AND OTHER STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+JOHN INGERFIELD
+AND OTHER STORIES
+
+by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+ To the Gentle Reader
+ In Remembrance of John Ingerfield and of Anne, his Wife
+ The Woman of the Sæter
+ Variety Patter
+ Silhouettes
+ The Lease of the “Cross Keys”
+
+
+
+
+TO THE GENTLE READER;
+also
+TO THE GENTLE CRITIC.
+
+
+Once upon a time, I wrote a little story of a woman who was crushed to
+death by a python. A day or two after its publication, a friend stopped
+me in the street. “Charming little story of yours,” he said, “that
+about the woman and the snake; but it’s not as funny as some of your
+things!” The next week, a newspaper, referring to the tale, remarked,
+“We have heard the incident related before with infinitely greater
+humour.”
+
+With this—and many similar experiences—in mind, I wish distinctly to
+state that “John Ingerfield,” “The Woman of the Sæter,” and
+“Silhouettes,” are not intended to be amusing. The two other
+items—“Variety Patter,” and “The Lease of the Cross Keys”—I give over
+to the critics of the new humour to rend as they will; but “John
+Ingerfield,” “The Woman of the Sæter,” and “Silhouettes,” I repeat, I
+should be glad if they would judge from some other standpoint than that
+of humour, new or old.
+
+
+
+
+IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOHN INGERFIELD, AND OF ANNE, HIS WIFE
+A STORY OF OLD LONDON, IN TWO CHAPTERS
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+If you take the Underground Railway to Whitechapel Road (the East
+station), and from there take one of the yellow tramcars that start
+from that point, and go down the Commercial Road, past the George, in
+front of which stands—or used to stand—a high flagstaff, at the base of
+which sits—or used to sit—an elderly female purveyor of pigs’ trotters
+at three-ha’pence apiece, until you come to where a railway arch
+crosses the road obliquely, and there get down and turn to the right up
+a narrow, noisy street leading to the river, and then to the right
+again up a still narrower street, which you may know by its having a
+public-house at one corner (as is in the nature of things) and a marine
+store-dealer’s at the other, outside which strangely stiff and
+unaccommodating garments of gigantic size flutter ghost-like in the
+wind, you will come to a dingy railed-in churchyard, surrounded on all
+sides by cheerless, many-peopled houses. Sad-looking little old houses
+they are, in spite of the tumult of life about their ever open doors.
+They and the ancient church in their midst seem weary of the ceaseless
+jangle around them. Perhaps, standing there for so many years,
+listening to the long silence of the dead, the fretful voices of the
+living sound foolish in their ears.
+
+Peering through the railings on the side nearest the river, you will
+see beneath the shadow of the soot-grimed church’s soot-grimed
+porch—that is, if the sun happen, by rare chance, to be strong enough
+to cast any shadow at all in that region of grey light—a curiously high
+and narrow headstone that once was white and straight, not tottering
+and bent with age as it is now. There is upon this stone a carving in
+bas-relief, as you will see for yourself if you will make your way to
+it through the gateway on the opposite side of the square. It
+represents, so far as can be made out, for it is much worn by time and
+dirt, a figure lying on the ground with another figure bending over it,
+while at a little distance stands a third object. But this last is so
+indistinct that it might be almost anything, from an angel to a post.
+
+And below the carving are the words (already half obliterated) that I
+have used for the title of this story.
+
+Should you ever wander of a Sunday morning within sound of the cracked
+bell that calls a few habit-bound, old-fashioned folk to worship within
+those damp-stained walls, and drop into talk with the old men who on
+such days sometimes sit, each in his brass-buttoned long brown coat,
+upon the low stone coping underneath those broken railings, you might
+hear this tale from them, as I did, more years ago than I care to
+recollect.
+
+But lest you do not choose to go to all this trouble, or lest the old
+men who could tell it you have grown tired of all talk, and are not to
+be roused ever again into the telling of tales, and you yet wish for
+the story, I will here set it down for you.
+
+But I cannot recount it to you as they told it to me, for to me it was
+only a tale that I heard and remembered, thinking to tell it again for
+profit, while to them it was a thing that had been, and the threads of
+it were interwoven with the woof of their own life. As they talked,
+faces that I did not see passed by among the crowd and turned and
+looked at them, and voices that I did not hear spoke to them below the
+clamour of the street, so that through their thin piping voices there
+quivered the deep music of life and death, and my tale must be to
+theirs but as a gossip’s chatter to the story of him whose breast has
+felt the press of battle.
+
+* * * * *
+
+John Ingerfield, oil and tallow refiner, of Lavender Wharf, Limehouse,
+comes of a hard-headed, hard-fisted stock. The first of the race that
+the eye of Record, piercing the deepening mists upon the centuries
+behind her, is able to discern with any clearness is a long-haired,
+sea-bronzed personage, whom men call variously Inge or Unger. Out of
+the wild North Sea he has come. Record observes him, one of a small,
+fierce group, standing on the sands of desolate Northumbria, staring
+landward, his worldly wealth upon his back. This consists of a
+two-handed battle-axe, value perhaps some forty stycas in the currency
+of the time. A careful man, with business capabilities, may, however,
+manipulate a small capital to great advantage. In what would appear, to
+those accustomed to our slow modern methods, an incredibly short space
+of time, Inge’s two-handed battle-axe has developed into wide lands and
+many head of cattle; which latter continue to multiply with a rapidity
+beyond the dreams of present-day breeders. Inge’s descendants would
+seem to have inherited the genius of their ancestor, for they prosper
+and their worldly goods increase. They are a money-making race. In all
+times, out of all things, by all means, they make money. They fight for
+money, marry for money, live for money, are ready to die for money.
+
+In the days when the most saleable and the highest priced article in
+the markets of Europe was a strong arm and a cool head, then each
+Ingerfield (as “Inge,” long rooted in Yorkshire soil, had grown or been
+corrupted to) was a soldier of fortune, and offered his strong arm and
+his cool head to the highest bidder. They fought for their price, and
+they took good care that they obtained their price; but, the price
+settled, they fought well, for they were staunch men and true,
+according to their lights, though these lights may have been placed
+somewhat low down, near the earth.
+
+Then followed the days when the chief riches of the world lay tossed
+for daring hands to grasp upon the bosom of the sea, and the sleeping
+spirit of the old Norse Rover stirred in their veins, and the lilt of a
+wild sea-song they had never heard kept ringing in their ears; and they
+built them ships and sailed for the Spanish Main, and won much wealth,
+as was their wont.
+
+Later on, when Civilisation began to lay down and enforce sterner rules
+for the game of life, and peaceful methods promised to prove more
+profitable than violent, the Ingerfields became traders and merchants
+of grave mien and sober life; for their ambition from generation to
+generation remains ever the same, their various callings being but
+means to an end.
+
+A hard, stern race of men they would seem to have been, but just—so far
+as they understood justice. They have the reputation of having been
+good husbands, fathers, and masters; but one cannot help thinking of
+them as more respected than loved.
+
+They were men to exact the uttermost farthing due to them, yet not
+without a sense of the thing due from them, their own duty and
+responsibility—nay, not altogether without their moments of heroism,
+which is the duty of great men. History relates how a certain Captain
+Ingerfield, returning with much treasure from the West Indies—how
+acquired it were, perhaps, best not to inquire too closely—is
+overhauled upon the high seas by King’s frigate. Captain of King’s
+frigate sends polite message to Captain Ingerfield requesting him to be
+so kind as to promptly hand over a certain member of his ship’s
+company, who, by some means or another, has made himself objectionable
+to King’s friends, in order that he (the said objectionable person) may
+be forthwith hanged from the yard-arm.
+
+Captain Ingerfield returns polite answer to Captain of King’s frigate
+that he (Captain Ingerfield) will, with much pleasure, hang any member
+of his ship’s company that needs hanging, but that neither the King of
+England nor any one else on God Almighty’s sea is going to do it for
+him. Captain of King’s frigate sends back word that if objectionable
+person be not at once given up he shall be compelled with much regret
+to send Ingerfield and his ship to the bottom of the Atlantic. Replies
+Captain Ingerfield, “That is just what he will have to do before I give
+up one of my people,” and fights the big frigate—fights it so fiercely
+that after three hours Captain of King’s frigate thinks it will be good
+to try argument again, and sends therefore a further message,
+courteously acknowledging Captain Ingerfield’s courage and skill, and
+suggesting that, he having done sufficient to vindicate his honour and
+renown, it would be politic to now hand over the unimportant cause of
+contention, and so escape with his treasure.
+
+“Tell your Captain,” shouts back this Ingerfield, who has discovered
+there are sweeter things to fight for than even money, “that the _Wild
+Goose_ has flown the seas with her belly full of treasure before now,
+and will, if it be God’s pleasure, so do again, but that master and man
+in her sail together, fight together, and die together.”
+
+Whereupon King’s frigate pounds away more vigorously than ever, and
+succeeds eventually in carrying out her threat. Down goes the _Wild
+Goose_, her last chase ended—down she goes with a plunge, spit foremost
+with her colours flying; and down with her goes every man left standing
+on her decks; and at the bottom of the Atlantic they lie to this day,
+master and man side by side, keeping guard upon their treasure.
+
+Which incident, and it is well authenticated, goes far to prove that
+the Ingerfields, hard men and grasping men though they be—men caring
+more for the getting of money than for the getting of love—loving more
+the cold grip of gold than the grip of kith or kin, yet bear buried in
+their hearts the seeds of a nobler manhood, for which, however, the
+barren soil of their ambition affords scant nourishment.
+
+The John Ingerfield of this story is a man very typical of his race. He
+has discovered that the oil and tallow refining business, though not a
+pleasant one, is an exceedingly lucrative one. These are the good days
+when George the Third is king, and London is rapidly becoming a city of
+bright night. Tallow and oil and all materials akin thereto are in
+ever-growing request, and young John Ingerfield builds himself a large
+refining house and warehouse in the growing suburb of Limehouse, which
+lies between the teeming river and the quiet fields, gathers many
+people round about him, puts his strong heart into his work, and
+prospers.
+
+All the days of his youth he labours and garners, and lays out and
+garners yet again. In early middle age he finds himself a wealthy man.
+The chief business of life, the getting of money, is practically done;
+his enterprise is firmly established, and will continue to grow with
+ever less need of husbandry. It is time for him to think about the
+secondary business of life, the getting together of a wife and home,
+for the Ingerfields have ever been good citizens, worthy heads of
+families, openhanded hosts, making a brave show among friends and
+neighbours.
+
+John Ingerfield, sitting in his stiff, high-backed chair, in his
+stiffly, but solidly, furnished dining-room, above his counting-house,
+sipping slowly his one glass of port, takes counsel with himself.
+
+What shall she be?
+
+He is rich, and can afford a good article. She must be young and
+handsome, fit to grace the fine house he will take for her in
+fashionable Bloomsbury, far from the odour and touch of oil and tallow.
+She must be well bred, with a gracious, noble manner, that will charm
+his guests and reflect honour and credit upon himself; she must, above
+all, be of good family, with a genealogical tree sufficiently
+umbrageous to hide Lavender Wharf from the eyes of Society.
+
+What else she may or may not be he does not very much care. She will,
+of course, be virtuous and moderately pious, as it is fit and proper
+that women should be. It will also be well that her disposition be
+gentle and yielding, but that is of minor importance, at all events so
+far as he is concerned: the Ingerfield husbands are not the class of
+men upon whom wives vent their tempers.
+
+Having decided in his mind _what_ she shall be, he proceeds to discuss
+with himself _who_ she shall be. His social circle is small.
+Methodically, in thought, he makes the entire round of it, mentally
+scrutinising every maiden that he knows. Some are charming, some are
+fair, some are rich; but no one of them approaches near to his
+carefully considered ideal.
+
+He keeps the subject in his mind, and muses on it in the intervals of
+business. At odd moments he jots down names as they occur to him upon a
+slip of paper, which he pins for the purpose on the inside of the cover
+of his desk. He arranges them alphabetically, and when it is as
+complete as his memory can make it, he goes critically down the list,
+making a few notes against each. As a result, it becomes clear to him
+that he must seek among strangers for his wife.
+
+He has a friend, or rather an acquaintance, an old school-fellow, who
+has developed into one of those curious social flies that in all ages
+are to be met with buzzing contentedly within the most exclusive
+circles, and concerning whom, seeing that they are neither rare nor
+rich, nor extraordinarily clever nor well born, one wonders “how the
+devil they got there!” Meeting this man by chance one afternoon, he
+links his arm in his and invites him home to dinner.
+
+So soon as they are left alone, with the walnuts and wine between them,
+John Ingerfield says, thoughtfully cracking a hard nut between his
+fingers—
+
+“Will, I’m going to get married.”
+
+“Excellent idea—delighted to hear it, I’m sure,” replies Will, somewhat
+less interested in the information than in the delicately flavoured
+Madeira he is lovingly sipping. “Who’s the lady?”
+
+“I don’t know, yet,” is John Ingerfield’s answer.
+
+His friend glances slyly at him over his glass, not sure whether he is
+expected to be amused or sympathetically helpful.
+
+“I want you to find one for me.”
+
+Will Cathcart puts down his glass and stares at his host across the
+table.
+
+“Should be delighted to help you, Jack,” he stammers, in an alarmed
+tone—“’pon my soul I should; but really don’t know a damned woman I
+could recommend—’pon my soul I don’t.”
+
+“You must see a good many: I wish you’d look out for one that you
+_could_ recommend.”
+
+“Certainly I will, my dear Jack!” answers the other, in a relieved
+voice. “Never thought about ’em in that way before. Daresay I shall
+come across the very girl to suit you. I’ll keep my eyes open and let
+you know.”
+
+“I shall be obliged to you if you will,” replies John Ingerfield,
+quietly; “and it’s your turn, I think, to oblige me, Will. I have
+obliged you, if you recollect.”
+
+“Shall never forget it, my dear Jack,” murmurs Will, a little uneasily.
+“It was uncommonly good of you. You saved me from ruin, Jack: shall
+think about it to my dying day—’pon my soul I shall.”
+
+“No need to let it worry you for so long a period as that,” returns
+John, with the faintest suspicion of a smile playing round his firm
+mouth. “The bill falls due at the end of next month. You can discharge
+the debt then, and the matter will be off your mind.”
+
+Will finds his chair growing uncomfortable under him, while the Madeira
+somehow loses its flavour. He gives a short, nervous laugh.
+
+“By Jove,” he says: “so soon as that? The date had quite slipped my
+memory.”
+
+“Fortunate that I reminded you,” says John, the smile round his lips
+deepening.
+
+Will fidgets on his seat. “I’m afraid, my dear Jack,” he says, “I shall
+have to get you to renew it, just for a month or two,—deuced awkward
+thing, but I’m remarkably short of money this year. Truth is, I can’t
+get what’s owing to myself.”
+
+“That’s very awkward, certainly,” replies his friend, “because I am not
+at all sure that I shall be able to renew it.”
+
+Will stares at him in some alarm. “But what am I to do if I hav’n’t the
+money?”
+
+John Ingerfield shrugs his shoulders.
+
+“You don’t mean, my dear Jack, that you would put me in prison?”
+
+“Why not? Other people have to go there who can’t pay their debts.”
+
+Will Cathcart’s alarm grows to serious proportions. “But our
+friendship,” he cries, “our—”
+
+“My dear Will,” interrupts the other, “there are few friends I would
+lend three hundred pounds to and make no effort to get it back. You,
+certainly, are not one of them.”
+
+“Let us make a bargain,” he continues. “Find me a wife, and on the day
+of my marriage I will send you back that bill with, perhaps, a couple
+of hundred added. If by the end of next month you have not introduced
+me to a lady fit to be, and willing to be, Mrs. John Ingerfield, I
+shall decline to renew it.”
+
+John Ingerfield refills his own glass and hospitably pushes the bottle
+towards his guest—who, however, contrary to his custom, takes no notice
+of it, but stares hard at his shoe-buckles.
+
+“Are you serious?” he says at length.
+
+“Quite serious,” is the answer. “I want to marry. My wife must be a
+lady by birth and education. She must be of good family—of family
+sufficiently good, indeed, to compensate for the refinery. She must be
+young and beautiful and charming. I am purely a business man. I want a
+woman capable of conducting the social department of my life. I know of
+no such lady myself. I appeal to you, because you, I know, are intimate
+with the class among whom she must be sought.”
+
+“There may be some difficulty in persuading a lady of the required
+qualifications to accept the situation,” says Cathcart, with a touch of
+malice.
+
+“I want you to find one who will,” says John Ingerfield.
+
+Early in the evening Will Cathcart takes leave of his host, and departs
+thoughtful and anxious; and John Ingerfield strolls contemplatively up
+and down his wharf, for the smell of oil and tallow has grown to be
+very sweet to him, and it is pleasant to watch the moonbeams shining on
+the piled-up casks.
+
+Six weeks go by. On the first day of the seventh John takes Will
+Cathcart’s acceptance from its place in the large safe, and lays it in
+the smaller box beside his desk, devoted to more pressing and immediate
+business. Two days later Cathcart picks his way across the slimy yard,
+passes through the counting-house, and enters his friend’s inner
+sanctum, closing the door behind him.
+
+He wears a jubilant air, and slaps the grave John on the back. “I’ve
+got her, Jack,” he cries. “It’s been hard work, I can tell you:
+sounding suspicious old dowagers, bribing confidential servants,
+fishing for information among friends of the family. By Jove, I shall
+be able to join the Duke’s staff as spy-in-chief to His Majesty’s
+entire forces after this!”
+
+“What is she like?” asks John, without stopping his writing.
+
+“Like! My dear Jack, you’ll fall over head and ears in love with her
+the moment you see her. A little cold, perhaps, but that will just suit
+you.”
+
+“Good family?” asks John, signing and folding the letter he has
+finished.
+
+“So good that I was afraid at first it would be useless thinking of
+her. But she’s a sensible girl, no confounded nonsense about her, and
+the family are poor as church mice. In fact—well, to tell the truth, we
+have become most excellent friends, and she told me herself frankly
+that she meant to marry a rich man, and didn’t much care whom.”
+
+“That sounds hopeful,” remarks the would-be bridegroom, with his
+peculiar dry smile: “when shall I have the pleasure of seeing her?”
+
+“I want you to come with me to-night to the Garden,” replies the other;
+“she will be in Lady Heatherington’s box, and I will introduce you.”
+
+So that evening John Ingerfield goes to Covent Garden Theatre, with the
+blood running a trifle quicker in his veins, but not much, than would
+be the case were he going to the docks to purchase tallow—examines,
+covertly, the proposed article from the opposite side of the house, and
+approves her—is introduced to her, and, on closer inspection, approves
+her still more—receives an invitation to visit—visits frequently, and
+each time is more satisfied of the rarity, serviceableness, and quality
+of the article.
+
+If all John Ingerfield requires for a wife is a beautiful social
+machine, surely here he has found his ideal. Anne Singleton, only
+daughter of that persistently unfortunate but most charming of
+baronets, Sir Harry Singleton (more charming, it is rumoured, outside
+his family circle than within it), is a stately, graceful, high-bred
+woman. Her portrait, by Reynolds, still to be seen above the carved
+wainscoting of one of the old City halls, shows a wonderfully handsome
+and clever face, but at the same time a wonderfully cold and heartless
+one. It is the face of a woman half weary of, half sneering at the
+world. One reads in old family letters, whereof the ink is now very
+faded and the paper very yellow, long criticisms of this portrait. The
+writers complain that if the picture is at all like her she must have
+greatly changed since her girlhood, for they remember her then as
+having a laughing and winsome expression.
+
+They say—they who knew her in after-life—that this earlier face came
+back to her in the end, so that the many who remembered opening their
+eyes and seeing her bending down over them could never recognise the
+portrait of the beautiful sneering lady, even when they were told whom
+it represented.
+
+But at the time of John Ingerfield’s strange wooing she was the Anne
+Singleton of Sir Joshua’s portrait, and John Ingerfield liked her the
+better that she was.
+
+He had no feeling of sentiment in the matter himself, and it simplified
+the case that she had none either. He offered her a plain bargain, and
+she accepted it. For all he knew or cared, her attitude towards this
+subject of marriage was the usual one assumed by women. Very young
+girls had their heads full of romantic ideas. It was better for her and
+for him that she had got rid of them.
+
+“Ours will be a union founded on good sense,” said John Ingerfield.
+
+“Let us hope the experiment will succeed,” said Anne Singleton.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+But the experiment does not succeed. The laws of God decree that man
+shall purchase woman, that woman shall give herself to man, for other
+coin than that of good sense. Good sense is not a legal tender in the
+marriage mart. Men and women who enter therein with only sense in their
+purse have no right to complain if, on reaching home, they find they
+have concluded an unsatisfactory bargain.
+
+John Ingerfield, when he asked Anne Singleton to be his wife, felt no
+more love for her than he felt for any of the other sumptuous household
+appointments he was purchasing about the same time, and made no
+pretence of doing so. Nor, had he done so, would she have believed him;
+for Anne Singleton has learned much in her twenty-two summers and
+winters, and knows that love is only a meteor in life’s sky, and that
+the true lodestar of this world is gold. Anne Singleton has had her
+romance and buried it deep down in her deep nature and over its grave,
+to keep its ghost from rising, has piled the stones of indifference and
+contempt, as many a woman has done before and since. Once upon a time
+Anne Singleton sat dreaming out a story. It was a story old as the
+hills—older than some of them—but to her, then, it was quite new and
+very wonderful. It contained all the usual stock material common to
+such stories: the lad and the lass, the plighted troth, the richer
+suitors, the angry parents, the love that was worth braving all the
+world for. One day into this dream there fell from the land of the
+waking a letter, a poor, pitiful letter: “You know I love you and only
+you,” it ran; “my heart will always be yours till I die. But my father
+threatens to stop my allowance, and, as you know, I have nothing of my
+own except debts. Some would call her handsome, but how can I think of
+her beside you? Oh, why was money ever let to come into the world to
+curse us?” with many other puzzling questions of a like character, and
+much severe condemnation of Fate and Heaven and other parties
+generally, and much self-commiseration.
+
+Anne Singleton took long to read the letter. When she had finished it,
+and had read it through again, she rose, and, crushing it her hand,
+flung it in the fire with a laugh, and as the flame burnt up and died
+away felt that her life had died with it, not knowing that bruised
+hearts can heal.
+
+So when John Ingerfield comes wooing, and speaks to her no word of love
+but only of money, she feels that here at last is a genuine voice that
+she can trust. Love of the lesser side of life is still left to her. It
+will be pleasant to be the wealthy mistress of a fine house, to give
+great receptions, to exchange the secret poverty of home for display
+and luxury. These things are offered to her on the very terms she would
+have suggested herself. Accompanied by love she would have refused
+them, knowing she could give none in return.
+
+But a woman finds it one thing not to desire affection and another
+thing not to possess it. Day by day the atmosphere of the fine house in
+Bloomsbury grows cold and colder about her heart. Guests warm it at
+times for a few hours, then depart, leaving it chillier than before.
+
+For her husband she attempts to feel indifference, but living creatures
+joined together cannot feel indifference for each other. Even two dogs
+in a leash are compelled to think of one another. A man and wife must
+love or hate, like or dislike, in degree as the bond connecting them is
+drawn tight or allowed to hang slack. By mutual desire their chains of
+wedlock have been fastened as loosely as respect for security will
+permit, with the happy consequence that her aversion to him does not
+obtrude itself beyond the limits of politeness.
+
+Her part of the contract she faithfully fulfils, for the Singletons
+also have their code of honour. Her beauty, her tact, her charm, her
+influence, are devoted to his service—to the advancement of his
+position, the furtherance of his ambition. Doors that would otherwise
+remain closed she opens to him. Society, that would otherwise pass by
+with a sneer, sits round his table. His wishes and pleasures are hers.
+In all things she yields him wifely duty, seeks to render herself
+agreeable to him, suffers in silence his occasional caresses. Whatever
+was implied in the bargain, that she will perform to the letter.
+
+He, on his side, likewise performs his part with businesslike
+conscientiousness—nay, seeing that the pleasing of her brings no
+personal gratification to himself—not without generosity. He is ever
+thoughtful of and deferential to her, awarding her at all times an
+unvarying courteousness that is none the less sincere for being
+studied. Her every expressed want is gratified, her every known
+distaste respected. Conscious of his presence being an oppression to
+her, he is even careful not to intrude it upon her oftener than is
+necessary.
+
+At times he asks himself, somewhat pertinently, what he has gained by
+marriage—wonders whether this social race was quite the most
+interesting game he could have elected to occupy his leisure—wonders
+whether, after all, he would not have been happier over his
+counting-house than in these sumptuous, glittering rooms, where he
+always seems, and feels himself to be, the uninvited guest.
+
+The only feeling that a closer intimacy has created in him for his wife
+is that of indulgent contempt. As there is no equality between man and
+woman, so there can be no respect. She is a different being. He must
+either look up to her as superior to himself, or down upon her as
+inferior. When a man does the former he is more or less in love, and
+love to John Ingerfield is an unknown emotion. Her beauty, her charm,
+her social tact—even while he makes use of them for his own purposes,
+he despises as the weapons of a weak nature.
+
+So in their big, cold mansion John Ingerfield and Anne, his wife, sit
+far apart, strangers to one another, neither desiring to know the other
+nearer.
+
+About his business he never speaks to her, and she never questions him.
+To compensate for the slight shrinkage of time he is able to devote to
+it, he becomes more strict and exacting; grows a harsher master to his
+people, a sterner creditor, a greedier dealer, squeezing the uttermost
+out of every one, feverish to grow richer, so that he may spend more
+upon the game that day by day he finds more tiresome and uninteresting.
+
+And the piled-up casks upon his wharves increase and multiply; and on
+the dirty river his ships and barges lie in ever-lengthening lines; and
+round his greasy cauldrons sweating, witch-like creatures swarm in
+ever-denser numbers, stirring oil and tallow into gold.
+
+Until one summer, from its nest in the far East, there flutters
+westward a foul thing. Hovering over Limehouse suburb, seeing it
+crowded and unclean, liking its fetid smell, it settles down upon it.
+
+Typhus is the creature’s name. At first it lurks there unnoticed,
+battening upon the rich, rank food it finds around it, until, grown too
+big to hide longer, it boldly shows its hideous head, and the white
+face of Terror runs swiftly through alley and street, crying as it
+runs, forces itself into John Ingerfield’s counting-house, and tells
+its tale. John Ingerfield sits for a while thinking. Then he mounts his
+horse and rides home at as hard a pace as the condition of the streets
+will allow. In the hall he meets Anne going out, and stops her.
+
+“Don’t come too near me,” he says quietly. “Typhus fever has broken out
+at Limehouse, and they say one can communicate it, even without having
+it oneself. You had better leave London for a few weeks. Go down to
+your father’s: I will come and fetch you when it is all over.”
+
+He passes her, giving her a wide berth, and goes upstairs, where he
+remains for some minutes in conversation with his valet. Then, coming
+down, he remounts and rides off again.
+
+After a little while Anne goes up into his room. His man is kneeling in
+the middle of the floor, packing a valise.
+
+“Where are you to take it?” she asks.
+
+“Down to the wharf, ma’am,” answers the man: “Mr. Ingerfield is going
+to be there for a day or two.”
+
+Then Anne sits in the great empty drawing-room, and takes _her_ turn at
+thinking.
+
+John Ingerfield finds, on his return to Limehouse, that the evil has
+greatly increased during the short time he has been away. Fanned by
+fear and ignorance, fed by poverty and dirt, the scourge is spreading
+through the district like a fire. Long smouldering in secret, it has
+now burst forth at fifty different points at once. Not a street, not a
+court but has its “case.” Over a dozen of John’s hands are down with it
+already. Two more have sunk prostrate beside their work within the last
+hour. The panic grows grotesque. Men and women tear their clothes off,
+looking to see if they have anywhere upon them a rash or a patch of
+mottled skin, find that they have, or imagine that they have, and rush,
+screaming, half-undressed, into the street. Two men, meeting in a
+narrow passage, both rush back, too frightened to pass each other. A
+boy stoops down and scratches his leg—not an action that under ordinary
+circumstances would excite much surprise in that neighbourhood. In an
+instant there is a wild stampede from the room, the strong trampling on
+the weak in their eagerness to escape.
+
+These are not the days of organised defence against disease. There are
+kind hearts and willing hands in London town, but they are not yet
+closely enough banded together to meet a swift foe such as this. There
+are hospitals and charities galore, but these are mostly in the City,
+maintained by the City Fathers for the exclusive benefit of poor
+citizens and members of the guilds. The few free hospitals are already
+over-crowded and ill-prepared. Squalid, outlying Limehouse, belonging
+to nowhere, cared for by nobody, must fight for itself.
+
+John Ingerfield calls the older men together, and with their help
+attempts to instil some sense and reason into his terrified people.
+Standing on the step of his counting-house, and addressing as many of
+them as are not too scared to listen, he tells them of the danger of
+fear and of the necessity for calmness and courage.
+
+“We must face and fight this thing like men,” he cries, in that deep,
+din-conquering voice that has served the Ingerfields in good stead on
+many a steel-swept field, on many a storm-struck sea; “there must be no
+cowardly selfishness, no faint-hearted despair. If we’ve got to die
+we’ll die; but please God we’ll live. Anyhow, we will stick together,
+and help each other. I mean to stop here with you, and do what I can
+for you. None of my people shall want.”
+
+John Ingerfield ceases, and as the vibrations of his strong tones roll
+away a sweet voice from beside him rises clear and firm:—
+
+“I have come down to be with you also, and to help my husband. I shall
+take charge of the nursing and tending of your sick, and I hope I shall
+be of some real use to you. My husband and I are so sorry for you in
+your trouble. I know you will be brave and patient. We will all do our
+best, and be hopeful.”
+
+He turns, half expecting to see only the empty air and to wonder at the
+delirium in his brain. She puts her hand in his, and their eyes meet;
+and in that moment, for the first time in their lives, these two see
+one another.
+
+They speak no word. There is no opportunity for words. There is work to
+be done, and done quickly, and Anne grasps it with the greed of a woman
+long hungry for the joy of doing. As John watches her moving swiftly
+and quietly through the bewildered throng, questioning, comforting,
+gently compelling, the thought comes to him, Ought he to allow her to
+be here, risking her life for his people? followed by the thought, How
+is he going to prevent it? For in this hour the knowledge is born
+within him that Anne is not his property; that he and she are fellow
+hands taking their orders from the same Master; that though it be well
+for them to work together and help each other, they must not hinder one
+another.
+
+As yet John does not understand all this. The idea is new and strange
+to him. He feels as the child in a fairy story on suddenly discovering
+that the trees and flowers he has passed by carelessly a thousand times
+can think and talk. Once he whispers to her of the labour and the
+danger, but she answers simply, “They are my people too, John: it is my
+work”; and he lets her have her way.
+
+Anne has a true woman’s instinct for nursing, and her strong sense
+stands her in stead of experience. A glance into one or two of the
+squalid dens where these people live tells her that if her patients are
+to be saved they must be nursed away from their own homes; and she
+determines to convert the large counting-house—a long, lofty room at
+the opposite end of the wharf to the refinery—into a temporary
+hospital. Selecting some seven or eight of the most reliable women to
+assist her, she proceeds to prepare it for its purpose. Ledgers might
+be volumes of poetry, bills of lading mere street ballads, for all the
+respect that is shown to them. The older clerks stand staring aghast,
+feeling that the end of all things is surely at hand, and that the
+universe is rushing down into space, until, their idleness being
+detected, they are themselves promptly impressed for the sacrilegious
+work, and made to assist in the demolition of their own temple.
+
+Anne’s commands are spoken very sweetly, and are accompanied by the
+sweetest of smiles; but they are nevertheless commands, and somehow it
+does not occur to any one to disobey them. John—stern, masterful,
+authoritative John, who has never been approached with anything more
+dictatorial than a timid request since he left Merchant Taylors’ School
+nineteen years ago, who would have thought that something had suddenly
+gone wrong with the laws of Nature if he had been—finds himself
+hurrying along the street on his way to a druggist’s shop, slackens his
+pace an instant to ask himself why and wherefore he is doing so,
+recollects that he was told to do so and to make haste back, marvels
+who could have dared to tell him to do anything and to make haste back,
+remembers that it was Anne, is not quite sure what to think about it,
+but hurries on. He “makes haste back,” is praised for having been so
+quick, and feels pleased with himself; is sent off again in another
+direction, with instructions what to say when he gets there. He starts
+off (he is becoming used to being ordered about now). Halfway there
+great alarm seizes him, for on attempting to say over the message to
+himself, to be sure that he has it quite right, he discovers he has
+forgotten it. He pauses, nervous and excited; cogitates as to whether
+it will be safe for him to concoct a message of his own, weighs
+anxiously the chances—supposing that he does so—of being found out.
+Suddenly, to his intense surprise and relief, every word of what he was
+told to say comes back to him; and he hastens on, repeating it over and
+over to himself as he walks, lest it should escape him again.
+
+And then a few hundred yards farther on there occurs one of the most
+extraordinary events that has ever happened in that street before or
+since: John Ingerfield laughs.
+
+John Ingerfield, of Lavender Wharf, after walking two-thirds of Creek
+Lane, muttering to himself with his eyes on the ground, stops in the
+middle of the road and laughs; and one small boy, who tells the story
+to his dying day, sees him and hears him, and runs home at the top of
+his speed with the wonderful news, and is conscientiously slapped by
+his mother for telling lies.
+
+All that day Anne works like a heroine, John helping her, and
+occasionally getting in the way. By night she has her little hospital
+prepared and three beds already up and occupied; and, all now done that
+can be done, she and John go upstairs to his old rooms above the
+counting-house.
+
+John ushers her into them with some misgiving, for by contrast with the
+house at Bloomsbury they are poor and shabby. He places her in the
+arm-chair near the fire, begging her to rest quiet, and then assists
+his old housekeeper, whose wits, never of the strongest, have been
+scared by the day’s proceeding, to lay the meal.
+
+Anne’s eyes follow him as he moves about the room. Perhaps here, where
+all the real part of his life has been passed, he is more his true self
+than amid the unfamiliar surroundings of fashion; perhaps this simpler
+frame shows him to greater advantage; but Anne wonders how it is she
+has never noticed before that he is a well-set, handsome man. Nor,
+indeed, is he so very old-looking. Is it a trick of the dim light, or
+what? He looks almost young. But why should he not look young, seeing
+he is only thirty-six, and at thirty-six a man is in his prime? Anne
+wonders why she has always thought of him as an elderly person.
+
+A portrait of one of John’s ancestors hangs over the great
+mantelpiece—of that sturdy Captain Ingerfield who fought the King’s
+frigate rather than give up one of his people. Anne glances from the
+dead face to the living and notes the strong likeness between them.
+Through her half-closed eyes she sees the grim old captain hurling back
+his message of defiance, and his face is the face she saw a few hours
+ago, saying, “I mean to stop here with you and do what I can for you.
+None of my people shall want.”
+
+John is placing a chair for her at the table, and the light from the
+candles falls upon him. She steals another glance at his face—a strong,
+stern, handsome face, capable of becoming a noble face. Anne wonders if
+it has ever looked down tenderly at anyone; feels a sudden fierce pain
+at the thought; dismisses the thought as impossible; wonders,
+nevertheless, how tenderness would suit it; thinks she would like to
+see a look of tenderness upon it, simply out of curiosity; wonders if
+she ever will.
+
+She rouses herself from her reverie as John, with a smile, tells her
+supper is ready, and they seat themselves opposite each other, an odd
+air of embarrassment pervading.
+
+Day by day their work grows harder; day by day the foe grows stronger,
+fiercer, more all-conquering; and day by day, fighting side by side
+against it, John Ingerfield and Anne, his wife, draw closer to each
+other. On the battle-field of life we learn the worth of strength. Anne
+feels it good, when growing weary, to glance up and find him near her;
+feels it good, amid the troubled babel round her, to hear the deep,
+strong music of his voice.
+
+And John, watching Anne’s fair figure moving to and fro among the
+stricken and the mourning; watching her fair, fluttering hands, busy
+with their holy work, her deep, soul-haunting eyes, changeful with the
+light and shade of tenderness; listening to her sweet, clear voice,
+laughing with the joyous, comforting the comfortless, gently
+commanding, softly pleading, finds creeping into his brain strange new
+thoughts concerning women—concerning this one woman in particular.
+
+One day, rummaging over an old chest, he comes across a coloured
+picture-book of Bible stories. He turns the torn pages fondly,
+remembering the Sunday afternoons of long ago. At one picture, wherein
+are represented many angels, he pauses; for in one of the younger
+angels of the group—one not quite so severe of feature as her
+sisters—he fancies he can trace resemblance to Anne. He lingers long
+over it. Suddenly there rushes through his brain the thought, How good
+to stoop and kiss the sweet feet of such a woman! and, thinking it, he
+blushes like a boy.
+
+So from the soil of human suffering spring the flowers of human love
+and joy, and from the flowers there fall the seeds of infinite pity for
+human pain, God shaping all things to His ends.
+
+Thinking of Anne, John’s face grows gentler, his hand kinder; dreaming
+of him, her heart grows stronger, deeper, fuller. Every available room
+in the warehouse has been turned into a ward, and the little hospital
+is open free to all, for John and Anne feel that the whole world are
+their people. The piled-up casks are gone—shipped to Woolwich and
+Gravesend, bundled anywhere out of the way, as though oil and tallow
+and the gold they can be stirred into were matters of small moment in
+this world, not to be thought of beside such a thing as the helping of
+a human brother in sore strait.
+
+All the labour of the day seems light to them, looking forward to the
+hour when they sit together in John’s old shabby dining-room above the
+counting-house. Yet a looker-on might imagine such times dull to them;
+for they are strangely shy of one another, strangely sparing of
+words—fearful of opening the flood-gates of speech, feeling the
+pressure of the pent-up thought.
+
+One evening, John, throwing out words, not as a sop to the necessity
+for talk, but as a bait to catch Anne’s voice, mentions girdle-cakes,
+remembers that his old housekeeper used to be famous for the making of
+them, and wonders if she has forgotten the art.
+
+Anne, answering tremulously, as though girdle-cakes were a somewhat
+delicate topic, claims to be a successful amateur of them herself.
+John, having been given always to understand that the talent for them
+was exceedingly rare, and one usually hereditary, respectfully doubts
+Anne’s capabilities, deferentially suggesting that she is thinking of
+scones. Anne indignantly repudiates the insinuation, knows quite well
+the difference between girdle-cakes and scones, offers to prove her
+powers by descending into the kitchen and making some then and there,
+if John will accompany her and find the things for her.
+
+John accepts the challenge, and, guiding Anne with one shy, awkward
+hand, while holding aloft a candle in the other, leads the way. It is
+past ten o’clock, and the old housekeeper is in bed. At each creaking
+stair they pause, to listen if the noise has awakened her; then,
+finding all silent, creep forward again, with suppressed laughter,
+wondering with alarm, half feigned, half real, what the prim,
+methodical dame would say were she to come down and catch them.
+
+They reach the kitchen, thanks more to the suggestions of a friendly
+cat than to John’s acquaintanceship with the geography of his own
+house; and Anne rakes together the fire and clears the table for her
+work. What possible use John is to her—what need there was for her
+stipulating that he should accompany her, Anne might find it difficult,
+if examined, to explain satisfactorily. As for his “finding the things”
+for her, he has not the faintest notion where they are, and possesses
+no natural aptitude for discovery. Told to find flour, he industriously
+searches for it in the dresser drawers; sent for the rolling-pin—the
+nature and characteristics of rolling-pins being described to him for
+his guidance—he returns, after a prolonged absence, with the copper
+stick. Anne laughs at him; but really it would seem as though she
+herself were almost as stupid, for not until her hands are covered with
+flour does it occur to her that she has not taken that preliminary step
+in all cooking operations of rolling up her sleeves.
+
+She holds out her arms to John, first one and then the other, asking
+him sweetly if he minds doing it for her. John is very slow and clumsy,
+but Anne stands very patient. Inch by inch he peels the black sleeve
+from the white round arm. Hundreds of times must he have seen those
+fair arms, bare to the shoulder, sparkling with jewels; but never
+before has he seen their wondrous beauty. He longs to clasp them round
+his neck, yet is fearful lest his trembling fingers touching them as he
+performs his tantalising task may offend her. Anne thanks him, and
+apologises for having given him so much trouble, and he murmurs some
+meaningless reply, and stands foolishly silent, watching her.
+
+Anne seems to find one hand sufficient for her cake-making, for the
+other rests idly on the table—very near to one of John’s, as she would
+see were not her eyes so intent upon her work. How the impulse came to
+him, where he—grave, sober, business-man John—learnt such story-book
+ways can never be known; but in one instant he is down on both knees,
+smothering the floury hand with kisses, and the next moment Anne’s arms
+are round his neck and her lips against his, and the barrier between
+them is swept away, and the deep waters of their love rush together.
+
+With that kiss they enter a new life whereinto one may not follow them.
+One thinks it must have been a life made strangely beautiful by
+self-forgetfulness, strangely sweet by mutual devotion—a life too
+ideal, perhaps, to have remained for long undimmed by the mists of
+earth.
+
+They who remember them at that time speak of them in hushed tones, as
+one speaks of visions. It would almost seem as though from their faces
+in those days there shone a radiance, as though in their voices dwelt a
+tenderness beyond the tenderness of man.
+
+They seem never to rest, never to weary. Day and night, through that
+little stricken world, they come and go, bearing healing and peace,
+till at last the plague, like some gorged beast of prey, slinks slowly
+back towards its lair, and men raise their heads and breathe.
+
+One afternoon, returning from a somewhat longer round than usual, John
+feels a weariness creeping into his limbs, and quickens his step, eager
+to reach home and rest. Anne, who has been up all the previous night,
+is asleep, and not wishing to disturb her, he goes into the dining-room
+and sits down in the easy chair before the fire. The room strikes cold.
+He stirs the logs, but they give out no greater heat. He draws his
+chair right in front of them, and sits leaning over them with his feet
+on the hearth and his hands outstretched towards the blaze; yet he
+still shivers.
+
+Twilight fills the room and deepens into dusk. He wonders listlessly
+how it is that Time seems to be moving with such swift strides. After a
+while he hears a voice close to him, speaking in a slow, monotonous
+tone—a voice curiously familiar to him, though he cannot tell to whom
+it belongs. He does not turn his head, but sits listening to it
+drowsily. It is talking about tallow: one hundred and ninety-four casks
+of tallow, and they must all stand one inside the other. It cannot be
+done, the voice complains pathetically. They will not go inside each
+other. It is no good pushing them. See! they only roll out again.
+
+The voice grows wearily fretful. Oh! why do they persist when they see
+it is impossible? What fools they all are!
+
+Suddenly he recollects the voice, and starts up and stares wildly about
+him, trying to remember where he is. With a fierce straining of his
+will he grips the brain that is slipping away from him, and holds it.
+As soon as he feels sure of himself he steals out of the room and down
+the stairs.
+
+In the hall he stands listening; the house is very silent. He goes to
+the head of the stairs leading to the kitchen and calls softly to the
+old housekeeper, and she comes up to him, panting and grunting as she
+climbs each step. Keeping some distance from her, he asks in a whisper
+where Anne is. The woman answers that she is in the hospital.
+
+“Tell her I have been called away suddenly on business,” he says,
+speaking in quick, low tones: “I shall be away for some days. Tell her
+to leave here and return home immediately. They can do without her here
+now. Tell her to go back home at once. I will join her there.”
+
+He moves toward the door but stops and faces round again.
+
+“Tell her I beg and entreat her not to stop in this place an hour
+longer. There is nothing to keep her now. It is all over: there is
+nothing that cannot be done by any one. Tell her she must go home—this
+very night. Tell her if she loves me to leave this place at once.”
+
+The woman, a little bewildered by his vehemence, promises, and
+disappears down the stairs. He takes his hat and cloak from the chair
+on which he had thrown them, and turns once more to cross the hall. As
+he does so, the door opens and Anne enters.
+
+He darts back into the shadow, squeezing himself against the wall. Anne
+calls to him laughingly, then, as he does not answer, with a frightened
+accent:
+
+“John,—John, dear. Was not that you? Are not you there?”
+
+He holds his breath, and crouches still closer into the dark corner;
+and Anne, thinking she must have been mistaken in the dim light, passes
+him and goes upstairs.
+
+Then he creeps stealthily to the door, lets himself out and closes it
+softly behind him.
+
+After the lapse of a few minutes the old housekeeper plods upstairs and
+delivers John’s message. Anne, finding it altogether incomprehensible,
+subjects the poor dame to severe examination, but fails to elicit
+anything further. What is the meaning of it? What “business” can have
+compelled John, who for ten weeks has never let the word escape his
+lips, to leave her like this—without a word! without a kiss! Then
+suddenly she remembers the incident of a few moments ago, when she had
+called to him, thinking she saw him, and he did not answer; and the
+whole truth strikes her full in the heart.
+
+She refastens the bonnet-strings she has been slowly untying, and goes
+down and out into the wet street.
+
+She makes her way rapidly to the house of the only doctor resident in
+the neighbourhood—a big, brusque-mannered man, who throughout these
+terrible two months has been their chief stay and help. He meets her on
+her entrance with an embarrassed air that tells its own tale, and at
+once renders futile his clumsy attempts at acting:—
+
+How should he know where John is? Who told her John had the fever—a
+great, strong, hulking fellow like that? She has been working too hard,
+and has got fever on the brain. She must go straight back home, or she
+will be having it herself. She is more likely to take it than John.
+
+Anne, waiting till he has finished jerking out sentences while stamping
+up and down the room, says gently, taking no notice of his denials,—“If
+you will not tell me I must find out from some one else—that is all.”
+Then, her quick eyes noting his momentary hesitation, she lays her
+little hand on his rough paw, and, with the shamelessness of a woman
+who loves deeply, wheedles everything out of him that he has promised
+to keep secret.
+
+He stops her, however, as she is leaving the room. “Don’t go in to him
+now,” he says; “he will worry about you. Wait till to-morrow.”
+
+So, while John lies counting endless casks of tallow, Anne sits by his
+side, tending her last “case.”
+
+Often in his delirium he calls her name, and she takes his fevered hand
+in hers and holds it, and he falls asleep.
+
+Each morning the doctor comes and looks at him, asks a few questions
+and gives a few commonplace directions, but makes no comment. It would
+be idle his attempting to deceive her.
+
+The days move slowly through the darkened room. Anne watches his thin
+hands grow thinner, his sunken eyes grow bigger; yet remains strangely
+calm, almost contented.
+
+Very near the end there comes an hour when John wakes as from a dream,
+and remembers all things clearly.
+
+He looks at her half gratefully, half reproachfully.
+
+“Anne, why are you here?” he asks, in a low, laboured voice. “Did they
+not give you my message?”
+
+For answer she turns her deep eyes upon him.
+
+“Would you have gone away and left me here to die?” she questions him,
+with a faint smile.
+
+She bends her head down nearer to him, so that her soft hair falls
+about his face.
+
+“Our lives were one, dear,” she whispers to him. “I could not have
+lived without you; God knew that. We shall be together always.”
+
+She kisses him, and laying his head upon her breast, softly strokes it
+as she might a child’s; and he puts his weak arms around her.
+
+Later on she feels them growing cold about her, and lays him gently
+back upon the bed, looks for the last time into his eyes, then draws
+the lids down over them.
+
+His people ask that they may bury him in the churchyard hard by, so
+that he may always be among them; and, Anne consenting, they do all
+things needful with their own hands, wishful that no unloving labour
+may be mingled with their work. They lay him close to the porch, where,
+going in and out the church, their feet will pass near to him; and one
+among them who is cunning with the graver’s chisel shapes the stone.
+
+At the head he carves in bas-relief the figure of the good Samaritan
+tending the brother fallen by the way, and underneath the letters, “In
+Remembrance of John Ingerfield.”
+
+He thinks to put a verse of Scripture immediately after; but the gruff
+doctor says, “Better leave a space, in case you want to add another
+name.”
+
+So the stone remains a little while unfinished; till the same hand
+carves thereon, a few weeks later, “And of Anne, his Wife.”
+
+
+
+
+THE WOMAN OF THE SÆTER.
+
+
+Wild-reindeer stalking is hardly so exciting a sport as the evening’s
+verandah talk in Norroway hotels would lead the trustful traveller to
+suppose. Under the charge of your guide, a very young man with the
+dreamy, wistful eyes of those who live in valleys, you leave the
+farmstead early in the forenoon, arriving towards twilight at the
+desolate hut which, for so long as you remain upon the uplands, will be
+your somewhat cheerless headquarters.
+
+Next morning, in the chill, mist-laden dawn, you rise; and, after a
+breakfast of coffee and dried fish, shoulder your Remington, and step
+forth silently into the raw, damp air; the guide locking the door
+behind you, the key grating harshly in the rusty lock.
+
+For hour after hour you toil over the steep, stony ground, or wind
+through the pines, speaking in whispers, lest your voice reach the
+quick ears of your prey, that keeps its head ever pressed against the
+wind. Here and there, in the hollows of the hills lie wide fields of
+snow, over which you pick your steps thoughtfully, listening to the
+smothered thunder of the torrent, tunnelling its way beneath your feet,
+and wondering whether the frozen arch above it be at all points as firm
+as is desirable. Now and again, as in single file you walk cautiously
+along some jagged ridge, you catch glimpses of the green world, three
+thousand feet below you; though you gaze not long upon the view, for
+your attention is chiefly directed to watching the footprints of the
+guide, lest by deviating to the right or left you find yourself at one
+stride back in the valley—or, to be more correct, are found there.
+
+These things you do, and as exercise they are healthful and
+invigorating. But a reindeer you never see, and unless, overcoming the
+prejudices of your British-bred conscience, you care to take an
+occasional pop at a fox, you had better have left your rifle at the
+hut, and, instead, have brought a stick which would have been helpful.
+Notwithstanding which the guide continues sanguine, and in broken
+English, helped out by stirring gesture, tells of the terrible
+slaughter generally done by sportsmen under his superintendence, and of
+the vast herds that generally infest these fields; and when you grow
+sceptical upon the subject of Reins he whispers alluringly of Bears.
+
+Once in a way you will come across a track, and will follow it
+breathlessly for hours, and it will lead to a sheer precipice. Whether
+the explanation is suicide, or a reprehensible tendency on the part of
+the animal towards practical joking, you are left to decide for
+yourself. Then, with many rough miles between you and your rest, you
+abandon the chase.
+
+But I speak from personal experience merely.
+
+All day long we had tramped through the pitiless rain, stopping only
+for an hour at noon to eat some dried venison and smoke a pipe beneath
+the shelter of an overhanging cliff. Soon afterwards Michael knocked
+over a ryper (a bird that will hardly take the trouble to hop out of
+your way) with his gun-barrel, which incident cheered us a little; and,
+later on, our flagging spirits were still further revived by the
+discovery of apparently very recent deer-tracks. These we followed,
+forgetful, in our eagerness, of the lengthening distance back to the
+hut, of the fading daylight, of the gathering mist. The track led us
+higher and higher, farther and farther into the mountains, until on the
+shores of a desolate rock-bound vand it abruptly ended, and we stood
+staring at one another, and the snow began to fall.
+
+Unless in the next half-hour we could chance upon a sæter, this meant
+passing the night upon the mountain. Michael and I looked at the guide;
+but though, with characteristic Norwegian sturdiness, he put a bold
+face upon it, we could see that in that deepening darkness he knew no
+more than we did. Wasting no time on words, we made straight for the
+nearest point of descent, knowing that any human habitation must be far
+below us.
+
+Down we scrambled, heedless of torn clothes and bleeding hands, the
+darkness pressing closer round us. Then suddenly it became black—black
+as pitch—and we could only hear each other. Another step might mean
+death. We stretched out our hands, and felt each other. Why we spoke in
+whispers, I do not know, but we seemed afraid of our own voices. We
+agreed there was nothing for it but to stop where we were till morning,
+clinging to the short grass; so we lay there side by side, for what may
+have been five minutes or may have been an hour. Then, attempting to
+turn, I lost my grip and rolled. I made convulsive efforts to clutch
+the ground, but the incline was too steep. How far I fell I could not
+say, but at last something stopped me. I felt it cautiously with my
+foot: it did not yield, so I twisted myself round and touched it with
+my hand. It seemed planted firmly in the earth. I passed my arm along
+to the right, then to the left. I shouted with joy. It was a fence.
+
+Rising and groping about me, I found an opening, and passed through,
+and crept forward with palms outstretched until I touched the logs of a
+hut; then, feeling my way round, discovered the door, and knocked.
+There came no response, so I knocked louder; then pushed, and the heavy
+woodwork yielded, groaning. But the darkness within was even darker
+than the darkness without. The others had contrived to crawl down and
+join me. Michael struck a wax vesta and held it up, and slowly the room
+came out of the darkness and stood round us.
+
+Then something rather startling happened. Giving one swift glance about
+him, our guide uttered a cry, and rushed out into the night. We
+followed to the door, and called after him, but only a voice came to us
+out of the blackness, and the only words that we could catch, shrieked
+back in terror, were: “_Sætervronen_! _Sætervronen_!” (“The woman of
+the sæter”).
+
+“Some foolish superstition about the place, I suppose,” said Michael.
+“In these mountain solitudes men breed ghosts for company. Let us make
+a fire. Perhaps, when he sees the light, his desire for food and
+shelter may get the better of his fears.”
+
+We felt about in the small enclosure round the house, and gathered
+juniper and birch-twigs, and kindled a fire upon the open stove built
+in the corner of the room. Fortunately, we had some dried reindeer and
+bread in our bag, and on that and the ryper and the contents of our
+flasks we supped. Afterwards, to while away the time, we made an
+inspection of the strange eyrie we had lighted on.
+
+It was an old log-built sæter. Some of these mountain farmsteads are as
+old as the stone ruins of other countries. Carvings of strange beasts
+and demons were upon its blackened rafters, and on the lintel, in runic
+letters, ran this legend: “Hund builded me in the days of Haarfager.”
+The house consisted of two large apartments. Originally, no doubt,
+these had been separate dwellings standing beside one another, but they
+were now connected by a long, low gallery. Most of the scanty furniture
+was almost as ancient as the walls themselves, but many articles of a
+comparatively recent date had been added. All was now, however, rotting
+and falling into decay.
+
+The place appeared to have been deserted suddenly by its last
+occupants. Household utensils lay as they were left, rust and dirt
+encrusted on them. An open book, limp and mildewed, lay face downwards
+on the table, while many others were scattered about both rooms,
+together with much paper, scored with faded ink. The curtains hung in
+shreds about the windows; a woman’s cloak, of an antiquated fashion,
+drooped from a nail behind the door. In an oak chest we found a tumbled
+heap of yellow letters. They were of various dates, extending over a
+period of four months; and with them, apparently intended to receive
+them, lay a large envelope, inscribed with an address in London that
+has since disappeared.
+
+Strong curiosity overcoming faint scruples, we read them by the dull
+glow of the burning juniper twigs, and, as we laid aside the last of
+them, there rose from the depths below us a wailing cry, and all night
+long it rose and died away, and rose again, and died away again;
+whether born of our brain or of some human thing, God knows.
+
+And these, a little altered and shortened, are the letters:—
+
+_Extract from first letter_:
+
+“I cannot tell you, my dear Joyce, what a haven of peace this place is
+to me after the racket and fret of town. I am almost quite recovered
+already, and am growing stronger every day; and, joy of joys, my brain
+has come back to me, fresher and more vigorous, I think, for its
+holiday. In this silence and solitude my thoughts flow freely, and the
+difficulties of my task are disappearing as if by magic. We are perched
+upon a tiny plateau halfway up the mountain. On one side the rock rises
+almost perpendicularly, piercing the sky; while on the other, two
+thousand feet below us, the torrent hurls itself into the black waters
+of the fiord. The house consists of two rooms—or, rather, it is two
+cabins connected by a passage. The larger one we use as a living room,
+and the other is our sleeping apartment. We have no servant, but do
+everything for ourselves. I fear sometimes Muriel must find it lonely.
+The nearest human habitation is eight miles away, across the mountain,
+and not a soul comes near us. I spend as much time as I can with her,
+however, during the day, and make up for it by working at night after
+she has gone to sleep; and when I question her, she only laughs, and
+answers that she loves to have me all to herself. (Here you will smile
+cynically, I know, and say, ‘Humph, I wonder will she say the same when
+they have been married six years instead of six months.’) At the rate I
+am working now I shall have finished my first volume by the spring, and
+then, my dear fellow, you must try and come over, and we will walk and
+talk together ‘amid these storm-reared temples of the gods.’ I have
+felt a new man since I arrived here. Instead of having to ‘cudgel my
+brains,’ as we say, thoughts crowd upon me. This work will make my
+name.”
+
+
+_Part of the third letter_, _the second being mere talk about the book_
+(_a history apparently_) _that the man was writing_:
+
+
+“MY DEAR JOYCE,—I have written you two letters—this will make the
+third—but have been unable to post them. Every day I have been
+expecting a visit from some farmer or villager, for the Norwegians are
+kindly people towards strangers—to say nothing of the inducements of
+trade. A fortnight having passed, however, and the commissariat
+question having become serious, I yesterday set out before dawn, and
+made my way down to the valley; and this gives me something to tell
+you. Nearing the village, I met a peasant woman. To my intense
+surprise, instead of returning my salutation, she stared at me, as if I
+were some wild animal, and shrank away from me as far as the width of
+the road would permit. In the village the same experience awaited me.
+The children ran from me, the people avoided me. At last a grey-haired
+old man appeared to take pity on me, and from him I learnt the
+explanation of the mystery. It seems there is a strange superstition
+attaching to this house in which we are living. My things were brought
+up here by the two men who accompanied me from Drontheim, but the
+natives are afraid to go near the place, and prefer to keep as far as
+possible from any one connected with it.
+
+“The story is that the house was built by one Hund, ‘a maker of runes’
+(one of the old saga writers, no doubt), who lived here with his young
+wife. All went peacefully until, unfortunately for him, a certain
+maiden stationed at a neighbouring sæter grew to love him.
+
+“Forgive me if I am telling you what you know, but a ‘sæter’ is the
+name given to the upland pastures to which, during the summer, are sent
+the cattle, generally under the charge of one or more of the maids.
+Here for three months these girls will live in their lonely huts,
+entirely shut off from the world. Customs change little in this land.
+Two or three such stations are within climbing distance of this house,
+at this day, looked after by the farmers’ daughters, as in the days of
+Hund, ‘maker of runes.’
+
+“Every night, by devious mountain paths, the woman would come and tap
+lightly at Hund’s door. Hund had built himself two cabins, one behind
+the other (these are now, as I think I have explained to you, connected
+by a passage); the smaller one was the homestead; in the other he
+carved and wrote, so that while the young wife slept the ‘maker of
+runes’ and the sæter woman sat whispering.
+
+“One night, however, the wife learnt all things, but said no word.
+Then, as now, the ravine in front of the enclosure was crossed by a
+slight bridge of planks, and over this bridge the woman of the sæter
+passed and repassed each night. On a day when Hund had gone down to
+fish in the fiord, the wife took an axe, and hacked and hewed at the
+bridge, yet it still looked firm and solid; and that night, as Hund sat
+waiting in his workshop, there struck upon his ears a piercing cry, and
+a crashing of logs and rolling rock, and then again the dull roaring of
+the torrent far below.
+
+“But the woman did not die unavenged; for that winter a man, skating
+far down the fiord, noticed a curious object embedded in the ice; and
+when, stooping, he looked closer, he saw two corpses, one gripping the
+other by the throat, and the bodies were the bodies of Hund and his
+young wife.
+
+“Since then, they say, the woman of the sæter haunts Hund’s house, and
+if she sees a light within she taps upon the door, and no man may keep
+her out. Many, at different times, have tried to occupy the house, but
+strange tales are told of them. ‘Men do not live at Hund’s sæter,’ said
+my old grey-haired friend, concluding his tale,—‘they die there.’
+
+“I have persuaded some of the braver of the villagers to bring what
+provisions and other necessaries we require up to a plateau about a
+mile from the house and leave them there. That is the most I have been
+able to do. It comes somewhat as a shock to one to find men and
+women—fairly educated and intelligent as many of them are—slaves to
+fears that one would expect a child to laugh at. But there is no
+reasoning with superstition.”
+
+
+_Extract from the same letter_, _but from a part seemingly written a
+day or two later_:
+
+“At home I should have forgotten such a tale an hour after I had heard
+it, but these mountain fastnesses seem strangely fit to be the last
+stronghold of the supernatural. The woman haunts me already. At night
+instead of working, I find myself listening for her tapping at the
+door; and yesterday an incident occurred that makes me fear for my own
+common sense. I had gone out for a long walk alone, and the twilight
+was thickening into darkness as I neared home. Suddenly looking up from
+my reverie, I saw, standing on a knoll the other side of the ravine,
+the figure of a woman. She held a cloak about her head, and I could not
+see her face. I took off my cap, and called out a good-night to her,
+but she never moved or spoke. Then—God knows why, for my brain was full
+of other thoughts at the time—a clammy chill crept over me, and my
+tongue grew dry and parched. I stood rooted to the spot, staring at her
+across the yawning gorge that divided us; and slowly she moved away,
+and passed into the gloom, and I continued my way. I have said nothing
+to Muriel, and shall not. The effect the story has had upon myself
+warns me not to do so.”
+
+
+_From a letter dated eleven days later_:
+
+
+“She has come. I have known she would, since that evening I saw her on
+the mountain; and last night she came, and we have sat and looked into
+each other’s eyes. You will say, of course, that I am mad—that I have
+not recovered from my fever—that I have been working too hard—that I
+have heard a foolish tale, and that it has filled my overstrung brain
+with foolish fancies: I have told myself all that. But the thing came,
+nevertheless—a creature of flesh and blood? a creature of air? a
+creature of my own imagination?—what matter? it was real to me.
+
+“It came last night, as I sat working, alone. Each night I have waited
+for it, listened for it—longed for it, I know now. I heard the passing
+of its feet upon the bridge, the tapping of its hand upon the door,
+three times—tap, tap, tap. I felt my loins grow cold, and a pricking
+pain about my head; and I gripped my chair with both hands, and waited,
+and again there came the tapping—tap, tap, tap. I rose and slipped the
+bolt of the door leading to the other room, and again I waited, and
+again there came the tapping—tap, tap, tap. Then I opened the heavy
+outer door, and the wind rushed past me, scattering my papers, and the
+woman entered in, and I closed the door behind her. She threw her hood
+back from her head, and unwound a kerchief from about her neck, and
+laid it on the table. Then she crossed and sat before the fire, and I
+noticed her bare feet were damp with the night dew.
+
+“I stood over against her and gazed at her, and she smiled at me—a
+strange, wicked smile, but I could have laid my soul at her feet. She
+never spoke or moved, and neither did I feel the need of spoken words,
+for I understood the meaning of those upon the Mount when they said,
+‘Let us make here tabernacles: it is good for us to be here.’
+
+“How long a time passed thus I do not know, but suddenly the woman held
+her hand up, listening, and there came a faint sound from the other
+room. Then swiftly she drew her hood about her face and passed out,
+closing the door softly behind her; and I drew back the bolt of the
+inner door and waited, and hearing nothing more, sat down, and must
+have fallen asleep in my chair.
+
+“I awoke, and instantly there flashed through my mind the thought of
+the kerchief the woman had left behind her, and I started from my chair
+to hide it. But the table was already laid for breakfast, and my wife
+sat with her elbows on the table and her head between her hands,
+watching me with a look in her eyes that was new to me.
+
+“She kissed me, though her lips were cold; and I argued to myself that
+the whole thing must have been a dream. But later in the day, passing
+the open door when her back was towards me, I saw her take the kerchief
+from a locked chest and look at it.
+
+“I have told myself it must have been a kerchief of her own, and that
+all the rest has been my imagination; that, if not, then my strange
+visitant was no spirit, but a woman; and that, if human thing knows
+human thing, it was no creature of flesh and blood that sat beside me
+last night. Besides, what woman would she be? The nearest sæter is a
+three-hours’ climb to a strong man, and the paths are dangerous even in
+daylight: what woman would have found them in the night? What woman
+would have chilled the air around her, and have made the blood flow
+cold through all my veins? Yet if she come again I will speak to her. I
+will stretch out my hand and see whether she be mortal thing or only
+air.”
+
+
+_The fifth letter_:
+
+
+“MY DEAR JOYCE,—Whether your eyes will ever see these letters is
+doubtful. From this place I shall never send them. They would read to
+you as the ravings of a madman. If ever I return to England I may one
+day show them to you, but when I do it will be when I, with you, can
+laugh over them. At present I write them merely to hide away,—putting
+the words down on paper saves my screaming them aloud.
+
+“She comes each night now, taking the same seat beside the embers, and
+fixing upon me those eyes, with the hell-light in them, that burn into
+my brain; and at rare times she smiles, and all my being passes out of
+me, and is hers. I make no attempt to work. I sit listening for her
+footsteps on the creaking bridge, for the rustling of her feet upon the
+grass, for the tapping of her hand upon the door. No word is uttered
+between us. Each day I say: ‘When she comes to-night I will speak to
+her. I will stretch out my hand and touch her.’ Yet when she enters,
+all thought and will goes out from me.
+
+“Last night, as I stood gazing at her, my soul filled with her wondrous
+beauty as a lake with moonlight, her lips parted, and she started from
+her chair; and, turning, I thought I saw a white face pressed against
+the window, but as I looked it vanished. Then she drew her cloak about
+her, and passed out. I slid back the bolt I always draw now, and stole
+into the other room, and, taking down the lantern, held it above the
+bed. But Muriel’s eyes were closed as if in sleep.”
+
+
+_Extract from the sixth letter_:
+
+“It is not the night I fear, but the day. I hate the sight of this
+woman with whom I live, whom I call ‘wife.’ I shrink from the blow of
+her cold lips, the curse of her stony eyes. She has seen, she has
+learnt; I feel it, I know it. Yet she winds her arms around my neck,
+and calls me sweetheart, and smoothes my hair with her soft, false
+hands. We speak mocking words of love to one another, but I know her
+cruel eyes are ever following me. She is plotting her revenge, and I
+hate her, I hate her, I hate her!”
+
+
+_Part of the seventh letter_:
+
+
+“This morning I went down to the fiord. I told her I should not be back
+until the evening. She stood by the door watching me until we were mere
+specks to one another, and a promontory of the mountain shut me from
+view. Then, turning aside from the track, I made my way, running and
+stumbling over the jagged ground, round to the other side of the
+mountain, and began to climb again. It was slow, weary work. Often I
+had to go miles out of my road to avoid a ravine, and twice I reached a
+high point only to have to descend again. But at length I crossed the
+ridge, and crept down to a spot from where, concealed, I could spy upon
+my own house. She—my wife—stood by the flimsy bridge. A short hatchet,
+such as butchers use, was in her hand. She leant against a pine trunk,
+with her arm behind her, as one stands whose back aches with long
+stooping in some cramped position; and even at that distance I could
+see the cruel smile about her lips.
+
+“Then I recrossed the ridge, and crawled down again, and, waiting until
+evening, walked slowly up the path. As I came in view of the house she
+saw me, and waved her handkerchief to me, and in answer I waved my hat,
+and shouted curses at her that the wind whirled away into the torrent.
+She met me with a kiss, and I breathed no hint to her that I had seen.
+Let her devil’s work remain undisturbed. Let it prove to me what manner
+of thing this is that haunts me. If it be a spirit, then the bridge
+wilt bear it safely; if it be woman—
+
+“But I dismiss the thought. If it be human thing, why does it sit
+gazing at me, never speaking? why does my tongue refuse to question it?
+why does all power forsake me in its presence, so that I stand as in a
+dream? Yet if it be spirit, why do I hear the passing of her feet? and
+why does the night-rain glisten on her hair?
+
+“I force myself back into my chair. It is far into the night, and I am
+alone, waiting, listening. If it be spirit, she will come to me; and if
+it be woman, I shall hear her cry above the storm—unless it be a demon
+mocking me.
+
+“I have heard the cry. It rose, piercing and shrill, above the storm,
+above the riving and rending of the bridge, above the downward crashing
+of the logs and loosened stones. I hear it as I listen now. It is
+cleaving its way upward from the depths below. It is wailing through
+the room as I sit writing.
+
+“I have crawled upon my belly to the utmost edge of the still standing
+pier, until I could feel with my hand the jagged splinters left by the
+fallen planks, and have looked down. But the chasm was full to the brim
+with darkness. I shouted, but the wind shook my voice into mocking
+laughter. I sit here, feebly striking at the madness that is creeping
+nearer and nearer to me. I tell myself the whole thing is but the fever
+in my brain. The bridge was rotten. The storm was strong. The cry is
+but a single one among the many voices of the mountain. Yet still I
+listen; and it rises, clear and shrill, above the moaning of the pines,
+above the sobbing of the waters. It beats like blows upon my skull, and
+I know that she will never come again.”
+
+
+_Extract from the last letter_:
+
+
+“I shall address an envelope to you, and leave it among these letters.
+Then, should I never come back, some chance wanderer may one day find
+and post them to you, and you will know.
+
+“My books and writings remain untouched. We sit together of a
+night—this woman I call ‘wife’ and I—she holding in her hands some
+knitted thing that never grows longer by a single stitch, and I with a
+volume before me that is ever open at the same page. And day and night
+we watch each other stealthily, moving to and fro about the silent
+house; and at times, looking round swiftly, I catch the smile upon her
+lips before she has time to smooth it away.
+
+“We speak like strangers about this and that, making talk to hide our
+thoughts. We make a pretence of busying ourselves about whatever will
+help us to keep apart from one another.
+
+“At night, sitting here between the shadows and the dull glow of the
+smouldering twigs, I sometimes think I hear the tapping I have learnt
+to listen for, and I start from my seat, and softly open the door and
+look out. But only the Night stands there. Then I close-to the latch,
+and she—the living woman—asks me in her purring voice what sound I
+heard, hiding a smile as she stoops low over her work; and I answer
+lightly, and, moving towards her, put my arm about her, feeling her
+softness and her suppleness, and wondering, supposing I held her close
+to me with one arm while pressing her from me with the other, how long
+before I should hear the cracking of her bones.
+
+“For here, amid these savage solitudes, I also am grown savage. The old
+primeval passions of love and hate stir within me, and they are fierce
+and cruel and strong, beyond what you men of the later ages could
+understand. The culture of the centuries has fallen from me as a flimsy
+garment whirled away by the mountain wind; the old savage instincts of
+the race lie bare. One day I shall twine my fingers about her full
+white throat, and her eyes will slowly come towards me, and her lips
+will part, and the red tongue creep out; and backwards, step by step, I
+shall push her before me, gazing the while upon her bloodless face, and
+it will be my turn to smile. Backwards through the open door, backwards
+along the garden path between the juniper bushes, backwards till her
+heels are overhanging the ravine, and she grips life with nothing but
+her little toes, I shall force her, step by step, before me. Then I
+shall lean forward, closer, closer, till I kiss her purpling lips, and
+down, down, down, past the startled sea-birds, past the white spray of
+the foss, past the downward peeping pines, down, down, down, we will go
+together, till we find the thing that lies sleeping beneath the waters
+of the fiord.”
+
+
+With these words ended the last letter, unsigned. At the first streak
+of dawn we left the house, and, after much wandering, found our way
+back to the valley. But of our guide we heard no news. Whether he
+remained still upon the mountain, or whether by some false step he had
+perished upon that night, we never learnt.
+
+
+
+
+VARIETY PATTER.
+
+
+My first appearance at a Music Hall was in the year one thousand eight
+hundred and s---. Well, I would rather not mention the exact date. I
+was fourteen at the time. It was during the Christmas holidays, and my
+aunt had given me five shillings to go and see Phelps—I think it was
+Phelps—in _Coriolanus_—I think it was _Coriolanus_. Anyhow, it was to
+see a high-class and improving entertainment, I know.
+
+I suggested that I should induce young Skegson, who lived in our road,
+to go with me. Skegson is a barrister now, and could not tell you the
+difference between a knave of clubs and a club of knaves. A few years
+hence he will, if he works hard, be innocent enough for a judge. But at
+the period of which I speak he was a red-haired boy of worldly tastes,
+notwithstanding which I loved him as a brother. My dear mother wished
+to see him before consenting to the arrangement, so as to be able to
+form her own opinion as to whether he was a fit and proper companion
+for me; and, accordingly, he was invited to tea. He came, and made a
+most favourable impression upon both my mother and my aunt. He had a
+way of talking about the advantages of application to study in early
+life, and the duties of youth towards those placed in authority over
+it, that won for him much esteem in grown-up circles. The spirit of the
+Bar had descended upon Skegson at a very early period of his career.
+
+My aunt, indeed, was so much pleased with him that she gave him two
+shillings towards his own expenses (“sprung half a dollar” was how he
+explained the transaction when we were outside), and commended me to
+his especial care.
+
+Skegson was very silent during the journey. An idea was evidently
+maturing in his mind. At the Angel he stopped and said: “Look here,
+I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Don’t let’s go and see that rot. Let’s go
+to a Music Hall.”
+
+I gasped for breath. I had heard of Music Halls. A stout lady had
+denounced them across our dinner table on one occasion—fixing the while
+a steely eye upon her husband, who sat opposite and seemed
+uncomfortable—as low, horrid places, where people smoked and drank, and
+wore short skirts, and had added an opinion that they ought to be put
+down by the police—whether the skirts or the halls she did not explain.
+I also recollected that our charwoman, whose son had lately left London
+for a protracted stay in Devonshire, had, in conversation with my
+mother, dated his downfall from the day when he first visited one of
+these places; and likewise that Mrs. Philcox’s nursemaid, upon her
+confessing that she had spent an evening at one with her young man, had
+been called a shameless hussy, and summarily dismissed as being no
+longer a fit associate for the baby.
+
+But the spirit of lawlessness was strong within me in those days, so
+that I hearkened to the voice of Skegson, the tempter, and he lured my
+feet from the paths that led to virtue and Sadler’s Wells, and we
+wandered into the broad and crowded ways that branch off from the Angel
+towards Merry Islington.
+
+Skegson insisted that we should do the thing in style, so we stopped at
+a shop near the Agricultural Hall and purchased some big cigars. A huge
+card in the window claimed for these that they were “the most
+satisfactory twopenny smokes in London.” I smoked two of them during
+the evening, and never felt more satisfied—using the word in its true
+sense, as implying that a person has had enough of a thing, and does
+not desire any more of it, just then—in all my life. Where we went, and
+what we saw, my memory is not very clear upon. We sat at a little
+marble table. I know it was marble because it was so hard, and cool to
+the head. From out of the smoky mist a ponderous creature of strange,
+undefined shape floated heavily towards us, and deposited a squat
+tumbler in front of me containing a pale yellowish liquor, which
+subsequent investigation has led me to believe must have been Scotch
+whisky. It seemed to me then the most nauseous stuff I had ever
+swallowed. It is curious to look back and notice how one’s tastes
+change.
+
+I reached home very late and very sick. That was my first dissipation,
+and, as a lesson, it has been of more practical use to me than all the
+good books and sermons in the world could have been. I can remember to
+this day standing in the middle of the room in my night-shirt, trying
+to catch my bed as it came round.
+
+Next morning I confessed everything to my mother, and, for several
+months afterwards, was a reformed character. Indeed, the pendulum of my
+conscience swung too far the other way, and I grew exaggeratedly
+remorseful and unhealthily moral.
+
+There was published in those days, for the edification of young people,
+a singularly pessimistic periodical, entitled _The Children’s Band of
+Hope Review_. It was a magazine much in favour among grown-up people,
+and a bound copy of Vol. IX. had lately been won by my sister as a
+prize for punctuality (I fancy she must have exhausted all the virtue
+she ever possessed, in that direction, upon the winning of that prize.
+At all events, I have noticed no ostentatious display of the quality in
+her later life.) I had formerly expressed contempt for this book, but
+now, in my regenerate state, I took a morbid pleasure in poring over
+its denunciations of sin and sinners. There was one picture in it that
+appeared peculiarly applicable to myself. It represented a gaudily
+costumed young man, standing on the topmost of three steep steps,
+smoking a large cigar. Behind him was a very small church, and below, a
+bright and not altogether uninviting looking hell. The picture was
+headed “The Three Steps to Ruin,” and the three stairs were labelled
+respectively “Smoking,” “Drinking,” “Gambling.” I had already travelled
+two-thirds of the road! Was I going all the way, or should I be able to
+retrace those steps? I used to lie awake at night and think about it
+till I grew half crazy. Alas! since then I have completed the descent,
+so where my future will be spent I do not care to think.
+
+Another picture in the book that troubled me was the frontispiece. This
+was a highly-coloured print, illustrating the broad and narrow ways.
+The narrow way led upward past a Sunday-school and a lion to a city in
+the clouds. This city was referred to in the accompanying letterpress
+as a place of “Rest and Peace,” but inasmuch as the town was
+represented in the illustration as surrounded by a perfect mob of
+angels, each one blowing a trumpet twice his own size, and obviously
+blowing it for all he was worth, a certain confusion of ideas would
+seem to have crept into the allegory.
+
+The other path—the “broad way”—which ended in what at first glance
+appeared to be a highly successful display of fireworks, started from
+the door of a tavern, and led past a Music Hall, on the steps of which
+stood a gentleman smoking a cigar. All the wicked people in this book
+smoked cigars—all except one young man who had killed his mother and
+died raving mad. He had gone astray on short pipes.
+
+This made it uncomfortably clear to me which direction I had chosen,
+and I was greatly alarmed, until, on examining the picture more
+closely, I noticed, with much satisfaction, that about midway the two
+paths were connected by a handy little bridge, by the use of which it
+seemed feasible, starting on the one path and ending up on the other,
+to combine the practical advantages of both roads. From subsequent
+observation I have come to the conclusion that a good many people have
+made a note of that little bridge.
+
+My own belief in the possibility of such convenient compromise must, I
+fear, have led to an ethical relapse, for there recurs to my mind a
+somewhat painful scene of a few months’ later date, in which I am
+seeking to convince a singularly unresponsive landed proprietor that my
+presence in his orchard is solely and entirely due to my having
+unfortunately lost my way.
+
+It was not until I was nearly seventeen that the idea occurred to me to
+visit a Music Hall again. Then, having regard to my double capacity of
+“Man About Town” and journalist (for I had written a letter to _The
+Era_, complaining of the way pit doors were made to open, and it had
+been inserted), I felt I had no longer any right to neglect
+acquaintanceship with so important a feature in the life of the people.
+Accordingly, one Saturday night, I wended my way to the “Pav.”; and
+there the first person that I ran against was my uncle. He laid a heavy
+hand upon my shoulder, and asked me, in severe tones, what I was doing
+there. I felt this to be an awkward question, for it would have been
+useless trying to make him understand my real motives (one’s own
+relations are never sympathetic), and I was somewhat nonplussed for an
+answer, until the reflection occurred to me: What was _he_ doing there?
+This riddle I, in my turn, propounded to him, with the result that we
+entered into treaty, by the terms of which it was agreed that no future
+reference should be made to the meeting by either of us—especially not
+in the presence of my aunt—and the compact was ratified according to
+the usual custom, my uncle paying the necessary expenses.
+
+In those days, we sat, some four or six of us, round a little table, on
+which were placed our drinks. Now we have to balance them upon a narrow
+ledge; and ladies, as they pass, dip the ends of their cloaks into
+them, and gentlemen stir them up for us with the ferrules of their
+umbrellas, or else sweep them off into our laps with their coat tails,
+saying as they do so, “Oh, I beg your pardon.”
+
+Also, in those days, there were “chairmen”—affable gentlemen, who would
+drink anything at anybody’s expense, and drink any quantity of it, and
+never seem to get any fuller. I was introduced to a Music Hall chairman
+once, and when I said to him, “What is your drink?” he took up the
+“list of beverages” that lay before him, and, opening it, waved his
+hand lightly across its entire contents, from clarets, past champagnes
+and spirits, down to liqueurs. “That’s my drink, my boy,” said he.
+There was nothing narrow-minded or exclusive about his tastes.
+
+It was the chairman’s duty to introduce the artists. “Ladies and
+gentlemen,” he would shout, in a voice that united the musical
+characteristics of a foghorn and a steam saw, “Miss ’Enerietta
+Montressor, the popular serio-comic, will now happear.” These
+announcements were invariably received with great applause by the
+chairman himself, and generally with chilling indifference by the rest
+of the audience.
+
+It was also the privilege of the chairman to maintain order, and
+reprimand evil-doers. This he usually did very effectively, employing
+for the purpose language both fit and forcible. One chairman that I
+remember seemed, however, to be curiously deficient in the necessary
+qualities for this part of his duty. He was a mild and sleepy little
+man, and, unfortunately, he had to preside over an exceptionally rowdy
+audience at a small hall in the South-East district. On the night that
+I was present, there occurred a great disturbance. “Joss Jessop, the
+Monarch of Mirth,” a gentleman evidently high in local request was, for
+some reason or other, not forthcoming, and in his place the management
+proposed to offer a female performer on the zithern, one Signorina
+Ballatino.
+
+The little chairman made the announcement in a nervous, deprecatory
+tone, as if he were rather ashamed of it himself. “Ladies and
+gentlemen,” he began,—the poor are staunch sticklers for etiquette: I
+overheard a small child explaining to her mother one night in Three
+Colts Street, Limehouse, that she could not get into the house because
+there was a “lady” on the doorstep, drunk,—“Signorina Ballatino, the
+world-renowned—”
+
+Here a voice from the gallery requested to know what had become of “Old
+Joss,” and was greeted by loud cries of “’Ear, ’ear.”
+
+The chairman, ignoring the interruption, continued:
+
+“—the world-renowned performer on the zither—”
+
+“On the whoter?” came in tones of plaintive inquiry from the back of
+the hall.
+
+“_Hon_ the zither,” retorted the chairman, waxing mildly indignant; he
+meant zithern, but he called it a zither. “A hinstrument well-known to
+anybody as ’as ’ad any learning.”
+
+This sally was received with much favour, and a gentleman who claimed
+to be acquainted with the family history of the interrupter begged the
+chairman to excuse that ill-bred person on the ground that his mother
+used to get drunk with the twopence a week and never sent him to
+school.
+
+Cheered by this breath of popularity, our little president endeavoured
+to complete his introduction of the Signorina. He again repeated that
+she was the world-renowned performer on the zithern; and, undeterred by
+the audible remark of a lady in the pit to the effect that she’d “never
+’eard on ’er,” added:
+
+“She will now, ladies and gentlemen, with your kind permission, give
+you examples of the—”
+
+“Blow yer zither!” here cried out the gentleman who had started the
+agitation; “we want Joss Jessop.”
+
+This was the signal for much cheering and shrill whistling, in the
+midst of which a wag with a piping voice suggested as a reason for the
+favourite’s non-appearance that he had not been paid his last week’s
+salary.
+
+A temporary lull occurred at this point; and the chairman, seizing the
+opportunity to complete his oft-impeded speech, suddenly remarked,
+“songs of the Sunny South”; and immediately sat down and began
+hammering upon the table.
+
+Then Signora Ballatino, clothed in the costume of the Sunny South,
+where clothes are less essential than in these colder climes, skipped
+airily forward, and was most ungallantly greeted with a storm of groans
+and hisses. Her beloved instrument was unfeelingly alluded to as a
+pie-dish, and she was advised to take it back and get the penny on it.
+The chairman, addressed by his Christian name of “Jimmee,” was told to
+lie down and let her sing him to sleep. Every time she attempted to
+start playing, shouts were raised for Joss.
+
+At length the chairman, overcoming his evident disinclination to take
+any sort of hand whatever in the game, rose and gently hinted at the
+desirability of silence. The suggestion not meeting with any support,
+he proceeded to adopt sterner measures. He addressed himself personally
+to the ringleader of the rioters, the man who had first championed the
+cause of the absent Joss. This person was a brawny individual, who,
+judging from appearances, followed in his business hours the calling of
+a coalheaver. “Yes, sir,” said the chairman, pointing a finger towards
+him, where he sat in the front row of the gallery; “you, sir, in the
+flannel shirt. I can see you. Will you allow this lady to give her
+entertainment?”
+
+“No,” answered he of the coalheaving profession, in stentorian tones.
+
+“Then, sir,” said the little chairman, working himself up into a state
+suggestive of Jove about to launch a thunderbolt—“then, sir, all I can
+say is that you are no gentleman.”
+
+This was a little too much, or rather a good deal too little, for the
+Signora Ballatino. She had hitherto been standing in a meek attitude of
+pathetic appeal, wearing a fixed smile of ineffable sweetness but she
+evidently felt that she could go a bit farther than that herself, even
+if she was a lady. Calling the chairman “an old messer,” and telling
+him for Gawd’s sake to shut up if that was all he could do for his
+living, she came down to the front, and took the case into her own
+hands.
+
+She did not waste time on the rest of the audience. She went direct for
+that coalheaver, and thereupon ensued a slanging match the memory of
+which sends a thrill of admiration through me even to this day. It was
+a battle worthy of the gods. He was a heaver of coals, quick and ready
+beyond his kind. During many years sojourn East and South, in the
+course of many wanderings from Billingsgate to Limehouse Hole, from
+Petticoat Lane to Whitechapel Road; out of eel-pie shop and penny gaff;
+out of tavern and street, and court and doss-house, he had gathered
+together slang words and terms and phrases, and they came back to him
+now, and he stood up against her manfully.
+
+But as well might the lamb stand up against the eagle, when the shadow
+of its wings falls across the green pastures, and the wind flies before
+its dark oncoming. At the end of two minutes he lay gasping, dazed, and
+speechless.
+
+Then she began.
+
+She announced her intention of “wiping down the bloomin’ ’all” with
+him, and making it respectable; and, metaphorically speaking, that is
+what she did. Her tongue hit him between the eyes, and knocked him down
+and trampled on him. It curled round and round him like a whip, and
+then it uncurled and wound the other way. It seized him by the scruff
+of his neck, and tossed him up into the air, and caught him as he
+descended, and flung him to the ground, and rolled him on it. It played
+around him like forked lightning, and blinded him. It danced and
+shrieked about him like a host of whirling fiends, and he tried to
+remember a prayer, and could not. It touched him lightly on the sole of
+his foot and the crown of his head, and his hair stood up straight, and
+his limbs grew stiff. The people sitting near him drew away, not
+feeling it safe to be near, and left him alone, surrounded by space,
+and language.
+
+It was the most artistic piece of work of its kind that I have ever
+heard. Every phrase she flung at him seemed to have been woven on
+purpose to entangle him and to embrace in its choking folds his people
+and his gods, to strangle with its threads his every hope, ambition,
+and belief. Each term she put upon him clung to him like a garment, and
+fitted him without a crease. The last name that she called him one felt
+to be, until one heard the next, the one name that he ought to have
+been christened by.
+
+For five and three-quarter minutes by the clock she spoke, and never
+for one instant did she pause or falter; and in the whole of that
+onslaught there was only one weak spot.
+
+That was when she offered to make a better man than he was out of a Guy
+Fawkes and a lump of coal. You felt that one lump of coal would not
+have been sufficient.
+
+At the end, she gathered herself together for one supreme effort, and
+hurled at him an insult so bitter with scorn, so sharp with insight
+into his career and character, so heavy with prophetic curse, that
+strong men drew and held their breath while it passed over them, and
+women hid their faces and shivered.
+
+Then she folded her arms, and stood silent; and the house, from floor
+to ceiling, rose and cheered her until there was no more breath left in
+its lungs.
+
+In that one night she stepped from oblivion into success. She is now a
+famous “artiste.”
+
+But she does not call herself Signora Ballatino, and she does not play
+upon the zithern. Her name has a homelier sound, and her speciality is
+the delineation of coster character.
+
+
+
+
+SILHOUETTES.
+
+
+I fear I must be of a somewhat gruesome turn of mind. My sympathies are
+always with the melancholy side of life and nature. I love the chill
+October days, when the brown leaves lie thick and sodden underneath
+your feet, and a low sound as of stifled sobbing is heard in the damp
+woods—the evenings in late autumn time, when the white mist creeps
+across the fields, making it seem as though old Earth, feeling the
+night air cold to its poor bones, were drawing ghostly bedclothes round
+its withered limbs. I like the twilight of the long grey street, sad
+with the wailing cry of the distant muffin man. One thinks of him, as,
+strangely mitred, he glides by through the gloom, jangling his harsh
+bell, as the High Priest of the pale spirit of Indigestion, summoning
+the devout to come forth and worship. I find a sweetness in the aching
+dreariness of Sabbath afternoons in genteel suburbs—in the evil-laden
+desolateness of waste places by the river, when the yellow fog is
+stealing inland across the ooze and mud, and the black tide gurgles
+softly round worm-eaten piles.
+
+I love the bleak moor, when the thin long line of the winding road lies
+white on the darkening heath, while overhead some belated bird, vexed
+with itself for being out so late, scurries across the dusky sky,
+screaming angrily. I love the lonely, sullen lake, hidden away in
+mountain solitudes. I suppose it was my childhood’s surroundings that
+instilled in me this affection for sombre hues. One of my earliest
+recollections is of a dreary marshland by the sea. By day, the water
+stood there in wide, shallow pools. But when one looked in the evening
+they were pools of blood that lay there.
+
+It was a wild, dismal stretch of coast. One day, I found myself there
+all alone—I forget how it came about—and, oh, how small I felt amid the
+sky and the sea and the sandhills! I ran, and ran, and ran, but I never
+seemed to move; and then I cried, and screamed, louder and louder, and
+the circling seagulls screamed back mockingly at me. It was an “unken”
+spot, as they say up North.
+
+In the far back days of the building of the world, a long, high ridge
+of stones had been reared up by the sea, dividing the swampy grassland
+from the sand. Some of these stones—“pebbles,” so they called them
+round about—were as big as a man, and many as big as a fair-sized
+house; and when the sea was angry—and very prone he was to anger by
+that lonely shore, and very quick to wrath; often have I known him sink
+to sleep with a peaceful smile on his rippling waves, to wake in fierce
+fury before the night was spent—he would snatch up giant handfuls of
+these pebbles and fling and toss them here and there, till the noise of
+their rolling and crashing could be heard by the watchers in the
+village afar off.
+
+“Old Nick’s playing at marbles to-night,” they would say to one
+another, pausing to listen. And then the women would close tight their
+doors, and try not to hear the sound.
+
+Far out to sea, by where the muddy mouth of the river yawned wide,
+there rose ever a thin white line of surf, and underneath those crested
+waves there dwelt a very fearsome thing, called the Bar. I grew to hate
+and be afraid of this mysterious Bar, for I heard it spoken of always
+with bated breath, and I knew that it was very cruel to fisher folk,
+and hurt them so sometimes that they would cry whole days and nights
+together with the pain, or would sit with white scared faces, rocking
+themselves to and fro.
+
+Once when I was playing among the sandhills, there came by a tall, grey
+woman, bending beneath a load of driftwood. She paused when nearly
+opposite to me, and, facing seaward, fixed her eyes upon the breaking
+surf above the Bar. “Ah, how I hate the sight of your white teeth!” she
+muttered; then turned and passed on.
+
+Another morning, walking through the village, I heard a low wailing
+come from one of the cottages, while a little farther on a group of
+women were gathered in the roadway, talking. “Ay,” said one of them, “I
+thought the Bar was looking hungry last night.”
+
+So, putting one and the other together, I concluded that the “Bar” must
+be an ogre, such as a body reads of in books, who lived in a coral
+castle deep below the river’s mouth, and fed upon the fishermen as he
+caught them going down to the sea or coming home.
+
+From my bedroom window, on moonlight nights, I could watch the silvery
+foam, marking the spot beneath where he lay hid; and I would stand on
+tip-toe, peering out, until at length I would come to fancy I could see
+his hideous form floating below the waters. Then, as the little
+white-sailed boats stole by him, tremblingly, I used to tremble too,
+lest he should suddenly open his grim jaws and gulp them down; and when
+they had all safely reached the dark, soft sea beyond, I would steal
+back to the bedside, and pray to God to make the Bar good, so that he
+would give up eating the poor fishermen.
+
+Another incident connected with that coast lives in my mind. It was the
+morning after a great storm—great even for that stormy coast—and the
+passion-worn waters were still heaving with the memory of a fury that
+was dead. Old Nick had scattered his marbles far and wide, and there
+were rents and fissures in the pebbly wall such as the oldest fisherman
+had never known before. Some of the hugest stones lay tossed a hundred
+yards away, and the waters had dug pits here and there along the ridge
+so deep that a tall man might stand in some of them, and yet his head
+not reach the level of the sand.
+
+Round one of these holes a small crowd was pressing eagerly, while one
+man, standing in the hollow, was lifting the few remaining stones off
+something that lay there at the bottom. I pushed my way between the
+straggling legs of a big fisher lad, and peered over with the rest. A
+ray of sunlight streamed down into the pit, and the thing at the bottom
+gleamed white. Sprawling there among the black pebbles it looked like a
+huge spider. One by one the last stones were lifted away, and the thing
+was left bare, and then the crowd looked at one another and shivered.
+
+“Wonder how he got there,” said a woman at length; “somebody must ha’
+helped him.”
+
+“Some foreign chap, no doubt,” said the man who had lifted off the
+stones; “washed ashore and buried here by the sea.”
+
+“What, six foot below the water-mark, wi’ all they stones atop of him?”
+said another.
+
+“That’s no foreign chap,” cried a grizzled old woman, pressing forward.
+“What’s that that’s aside him?”
+
+Some one jumped down and took it from the stone where it lay
+glistening, and handed it up to her, and she clutched it in her skinny
+hand. It was a gold earring, such as fishermen sometimes wear. But this
+was a somewhat large one, and of rather unusual shape.
+
+“That’s young Abram Parsons, I tell ’ee, as lies down there,” cried the
+old creature, wildly. “I ought to know. I gave him the pair o’ these
+forty year ago.”
+
+It may be only an idea of mine, born of after brooding upon the scene.
+I am inclined to think it must be so, for I was only a child at the
+time, and would hardly have noticed such a thing. But it seems to my
+remembrance that as the old crone ceased, another woman in the crowd
+raised her eyes slowly, and fixed them on a withered, ancient man, who
+leant upon a stick, and that for a moment, unnoticed by the rest, these
+two stood looking strangely at each other.
+
+From these sea-scented scenes, my memory travels to a weary land where
+dead ashes lie, and there is blackness—blackness everywhere. Black
+rivers flow between black banks; black, stunted trees grow in black
+fields; black withered flowers by black wayside. Black roads lead from
+blackness past blackness to blackness; and along them trudge black,
+savage-looking men and women; and by them black, old-looking children
+play grim, unchildish games.
+
+When the sun shines on this black land, it glitters black and hard; and
+when the rain falls a black mist rises towards heaven, like the
+hopeless prayer of a hopeless soul.
+
+By night it is less dreary, for then the sky gleams with a lurid light,
+and out of the darkness the red flames leap, and high up in the air
+they gambol and writhe—the demon spawn of that evil land, they seem.
+
+Visitors who came to our house would tell strange tales of this black
+land, and some of the stories I am inclined to think were true. One man
+said he saw a young bull-dog fly at a boy and pin him by the throat.
+The lad jumped about with much sprightliness, and tried to knock the
+dog away. Whereupon the boy’s father rushed out of the house, hard by,
+and caught his son and heir roughly by the shoulder. “Keep still, thee
+young ---, can’t ’ee!” shouted the man angrily; “let ’un taste blood.”
+
+Another time, I heard a lady tell how she had visited a cottage during
+a strike, to find the baby, together with the other children, almost
+dying for want of food. “Dear, dear me!” she cried, taking the wee
+wizened mite from the mother’s arms, “but I sent you down a quart of
+milk, yesterday. Hasn’t the child had it?”
+
+“Theer weer a little coom, thank ’ee kindly, ma’am,” the father took
+upon himself to answer; “but thee see it weer only just enow for the
+poops.”
+
+We lived in a big lonely house on the edge of a wide common. One night,
+I remember, just as I was reluctantly preparing to climb into bed,
+there came a wild ringing at the gate, followed by a hoarse, shrieking
+cry, and then a frenzied shaking of the iron bars.
+
+Then hurrying footsteps sounded through the house, and the swift
+opening and closing of doors; and I slipped back hastily into my
+knickerbockers and ran out. The women folk were gathered on the stairs,
+while my father stood in the hall, calling to them to be quiet. And
+still the wild ringing of the bell continued, and, above it, the
+hoarse, shrieking cry.
+
+My father opened the door and went out, and we could hear him striding
+down the gravel path, and we clung to one another and waited.
+
+After what seemed an endless time, we heard the heavy gate unbarred,
+and quickly clanged to, and footsteps returning on the gravel. Then the
+door opened again, and my father entered, and behind him a crouching
+figure that felt its way with its hands as it crept along, as a blind
+man might. The figure stood up when it reached the middle of the hall,
+and mopped its eyes with a dirty rag that it carried in its hand; after
+which it held the rag over the umbrella-stand and wrung it out, as
+washerwomen wring out clothes, and the dark drippings fell into the
+tray with a dull, heavy splut.
+
+My father whispered something to my mother, and she went out towards
+the back; and, in a little while, we heard the stamping of hoofs—the
+angry plunge of a spur-startled horse—the rhythmic throb of the long,
+straight gallop, dying away into the distance.
+
+My mother returned and spoke some reassuring words to the servants. My
+father, having made fast the door and extinguished all but one or two
+of the lights, had gone into a small room on the right of the hall; the
+crouching figure, still mopping that moisture from its eyes, following
+him. We could hear them talking there in low tones, my father
+questioning, the other voice thick and interspersed with short panting
+grunts.
+
+We on the stairs huddled closer together, and, in the darkness, I felt
+my mother’s arm steal round me and encompass me, so that I was not
+afraid. Then we waited, while the silence round our frightened whispers
+thickened and grew heavy till the weight of it seemed to hurt us.
+
+At length, out of its depths, there crept to our ears a faint murmur.
+It gathered strength like the sound of the oncoming of a wave upon a
+stony shore, until it broke in a Babel of vehement voices just outside.
+After a few moments, the hubbub ceased, and there came a furious
+ringing—then angry shouts demanding admittance.
+
+Some of the women began to cry. My father came out into the hall,
+closing the room door behind him, and ordered them to be quiet, so
+sternly that they were stunned into silence. The furious ringing was
+repeated; and, this time, threats mingled among the hoarse shouts. My
+mother’s arm tightened around me, and I could hear the beating of her
+heart.
+
+The voices outside the gate sank into a low confused mumbling. Soon
+they died away altogether, and the silence flowed back.
+
+My father turned up the hall lamp, and stood listening.
+
+Suddenly, from the back of the house, rose the noise of a great
+crashing, followed by oaths and savage laughter.
+
+My father rushed forward, but was borne back; and, in an instant, the
+hall was full of grim, ferocious faces. My father, trembling a little
+(or else it was the shadow cast by the flickering lamp), and with lips
+tight pressed, stood confronting them; while we women and children, too
+scared to even cry, shrank back up the stairs.
+
+What followed during the next few moments is, in my memory, only a
+confused tumult, above which my father’s high, clear tones rise every
+now and again, entreating, arguing, commanding. I see nothing
+distinctly until one of the grimmest of the faces thrusts itself before
+the others, and a voice which, like Aaron’s rod, swallows up all its
+fellows, says in deep, determined bass, “Coom, we’ve had enow chatter,
+master. Thee mun give ’un up, or thee mun get out o’ th’ way an’ we’ll
+search th’ house for oursel’.”
+
+Then a light flashed into my father’s eyes that kindled something
+inside me, so that the fear went out of me, and I struggled to free
+myself from my mother’s arm, for the desire stirred me to fling myself
+down upon the grimy faces below, and beat and stamp upon them with my
+fists. Springing across the hall, he snatched from the wall where it
+hung an ancient club, part of a trophy of old armour, and planting his
+back against the door through which they would have to pass, he
+shouted, “Then be damned to you all, he’s in this room! Come and fetch
+him out.”
+
+(I recollect that speech well. I puzzled over it, even at that time,
+excited though I was. I had always been told that only low, wicked
+people ever used the word “damn,” and I tried to reconcile things, and
+failed.)
+
+The men drew back and muttered among themselves. It was an ugly-looking
+weapon, studded with iron spikes. My father held it secured to his hand
+by a chain, and there was an ugly look about him also, now, that gave
+his face a strange likeness to the dark faces round him.
+
+But my mother grew very white and cold, and underneath her breath she
+kept crying, “Oh, will they never come—will they never come?” and a
+cricket somewhere about the house began to chirp.
+
+Then all at once, without a word, my mother flew down the stairs, and
+passed like a flash of light through the crowd of dusky figures. How
+she did it I could never understand, for the two heavy bolts had both
+been drawn, but the next moment the door stood wide open; and a hum of
+voices, cheery with the anticipation of a period of perfect bliss, was
+borne in upon the cool night air.
+
+My mother was always very quick of hearing.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Again, I see a wild crowd of grim faces, and my father’s, very pale,
+amongst them. But this time the faces are very many, and they come and
+go like faces in a dream. The ground beneath my feet is wet and sloppy,
+and a black rain is falling. There are women’s faces in the crowd, wild
+and haggard, and long skinny arms stretch out threateningly towards my
+father, and shrill, frenzied voices call out curses on him. Boys’ faces
+also pass me in the grey light, and on some of them there is an impish
+grin.
+
+I seem to be in everybody’s way; and to get out of it, I crawl into a
+dark, draughty corner and crouch there among cinders. Around me, great
+engines fiercely strain and pant like living things fighting beyond
+their strength. Their gaunt arms whirl madly above me, and the ground
+rocks with their throbbing. Dark figures flit to and fro, pausing from
+time to time to wipe the black sweat from their faces.
+
+The pale light fades, and the flame-lit night lies red upon the land.
+The flitting figures take strange shapes. I hear the hissing of wheels,
+the furious clanking of iron chains, the hoarse shouting of many
+voices, the hurrying tread of many feet; and, through all, the wailing
+and weeping and cursing that never seem to cease. I drop into a
+restless sleep, and dream that I have broken a chapel window,
+stone-throwing, and have died and gone to hell.
+
+At length, a cold hand is laid upon my shoulder, and I awake. The wild
+faces have vanished and all is silent now, and I wonder if the whole
+thing has been a dream. My father lifts me into the dog-cart, and we
+drive home through the chill dawn.
+
+My mother opens the door softly as we alight. She does not speak, only
+looks her question. “It’s all over, Maggie,” answers my father very
+quietly, as he takes off his coat and lays it across a chair; “we’ve
+got to begin the world afresh.”
+
+My mother’s arms steal up about his neck; and I, feeling heavy with a
+trouble I do not understand, creep off to bed.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEASE OF THE “CROSS KEYS.”
+
+
+This story is about a shop: many stories are. One Sunday evening this
+Bishop had to preach a sermon at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The occasion was
+a very special and important one, and every God-fearing newspaper in
+the kingdom sent its own special representative to report the
+proceedings.
+
+Now, of the three reporters thus commissioned, one was a man of
+appearance so eminently respectable that no one would have thought of
+taking him for a journalist. People used to put him down for a County
+Councillor or an Archdeacon at the very least. As a matter of fact,
+however, he was a sinful man, with a passion for gin. He lived at Bow,
+and, on the Sabbath in question, he left his home at five o’clock in
+the afternoon, and started to walk to the scene of his labours. The
+road from Bow to the City on a wet and chilly Sunday evening is a
+cheerless one; who can blame him if on his way he stopped once or twice
+to comfort himself with “two” of his favourite beverage? On reaching
+St. Paul’s he found he had twenty minutes to spare—just time enough for
+one final “nip.” Half way down a narrow court leading out of the
+Churchyard he found a quiet little hostelry, and, entering the private
+bar, whispered insinuatingly across the counter:
+
+“Two of gin hot, if you please, my dear.”
+
+His voice had the self-satisfied meekness of the successful
+ecclesiastic, his bearing suggested rectitude tempered by desire to
+avoid observation. The barmaid, impressed by his manner and appearance,
+drew the attention of the landlord to him. The landlord covertly took
+stock of so much of him as could be seen between his buttoned-up coat
+and his drawn-down hat, and wondered how so bland and innocent-looking
+a gentleman came to know of gin.
+
+A landlord’s duty, however, is not to wonder, but to serve. The gin was
+given to the man, and the man drank it. He liked it. It was good gin:
+he was a connoisseur, and he knew. Indeed, so good did it seem to him
+that he felt it would be a waste of opportunity not to have another
+twopen’orth. Therefore he had a second “go”; maybe a third. Then he
+returned to the Cathedral, and sat himself down with his notebook on
+his knee and waited.
+
+As the service proceeded there stole over him that spirit of
+indifference to all earthly surroundings that religion and drink are
+alone able to bestow. He heard the good Bishop’s text and wrote it
+down. Then he heard the Bishop’s “sixthly and lastly,” and took that
+down, and looked at his notebook and wondered in a peaceful way what
+had become of the “firstly” to “fifthly” inclusive. He sat there
+wondering until the people round him began to get up and move away,
+whereupon it struck him swiftly and suddenly that be had been asleep,
+and had thereby escaped the main body of the discourse.
+
+What on earth was he to do? He was representing one of the leading
+religious papers. A full report of the sermon was wanted that very
+night. Seizing the robe of a passing wandsman, he tremulously inquired
+if the Bishop had yet left the Cathedral. The wandsman answered that he
+had not, but that he was just on the point of doing so.
+
+“I must see him before he goes!” exclaimed the reporter, excitedly.
+
+“You can’t,” replied the wandsman. The journalist grew frantic.
+
+“Tell him,” he cried, “a penitent sinner desires to speak with him
+about the sermon he has just delivered. To-morrow it will be too late.”
+
+The wandsman was touched; so was the Bishop. He said he would see the
+poor fellow.
+
+As soon as the door was shut the man, with tears in his eyes, told the
+Bishop the truth—leaving out the gin. He said that he was a poor man,
+and not in good health, that he had been up half the night before, and
+had walked all the way from Bow that evening. He dwelt on the
+disastrous results to himself and his family should he fail to obtain a
+report of the sermon. The Bishop felt sorry for the man. Also, he was
+anxious that his sermon should be reported.
+
+“Well, I trust it will be a warning to you against going to sleep in
+church,” he said, with an indulgent smile. “Luckily, I have brought my
+notes with me, and if you will promise to be very careful of them, and
+to bring them back to me the first thing in the morning, I will lend
+them to you.”
+
+With this, the Bishop opened and handed to the man a neat little black
+leather bag, inside which lay a neat little roll of manuscript.
+
+“Better take the bag to keep it in,” added the Bishop. “Be sure and let
+me have them both back early to-morrow.”
+
+The reporter, when he examined the contents of the bag under a lamp in
+the Cathedral vestibule, could hardly believe his good fortune. The
+careful Bishop’s notes were so full and clear that for all practical
+purposes they were equal to a report. His work was already done. He
+felt so pleased with himself that he determined to treat himself to
+another “two” of gin, and, with this intent, made his way across to the
+little “public” before-mentioned.
+
+“It’s really excellent gin you sell here,” he said to the barmaid when
+he had finished; “I think, my dear, I’ll have just one more.”
+
+At eleven the landlord gently but firmly insisted on his leaving, and
+he went, assisted, as far as the end of the court, by the potboy. After
+he was gone, the landlord noticed a neat little black bag on the seat
+where he had been lying. Examining it closely, he discovered a brass
+plate between the handles, and upon the brass plate were engraved the
+owner’s name and title. Opening the bag, the landlord saw a neat little
+roll of manuscript, and across a corner of the manuscript was written
+the Bishop’s name and address.
+
+The landlord blew a long, low whistle, and stood with his round eyes
+wide open gazing down at the open bag. Then he put on his hat and coat,
+and taking the bag, went out down the court, chuckling hugely as he
+walked. He went straight to the house of the Resident Canon and rang
+the bell.
+
+“Tell Mr. ---,” he said to the servant, “that I must see him to-night.
+I wouldn’t disturb him at this late hour if it wasn’t something very
+important.”
+
+The landlord was ushered up. Closing the door softly behind him, he
+coughed deferentially.
+
+“Well, Mr. Peters” (I will call him “Peters”), said the Canon, “what is
+it?”
+
+“Well, sir,” said Mr. Peters, slowly and deliberately, “it’s about that
+there lease o’ mine. I do hope you gentlemen will see your way to
+makin’ it twenty-one year instead o’ fourteen.”
+
+“God bless the man!” cried the Canon, jumping up indignantly, “you
+don’t mean to say you’ve come to me at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night
+to talk about your lease?”
+
+“Well, not entirely, sir,” answered Peters, unabashed; “there’s another
+little thing I wished to speak to you about, and that’s this”—saying
+which, he laid the Bishop’s bag before the Canon and told his story.
+
+The Canon looked at Mr. Peters, and Mr. Peters looked at the Canon.
+
+“There must be some mistake,” said the Canon.
+
+“There’s no mistake,” said the landlord. “I had my suspicions when I
+first clapped eyes on him. I seed he wasn’t our usual sort, and I seed
+how he tried to hide his face. If he weren’t the Bishop, then I don’t
+know a Bishop when I sees one, that’s all. Besides, there’s his bag,
+and there’s his sermon.”
+
+Mr. Peters folded his arms and waited. The Canon pondered. Such things
+had been known to happen before in Church history. Why not again?
+
+“Does any one know of this besides yourself?” asked the Canon.
+
+“Not a livin’ soul,” replied Mr. Peters, “as yet.”
+
+“I think—I think, Mr. Peters,” said the Canon, “that we may be able to
+extend your lease to twenty-one years.”
+
+“Thank you kindly, sir,” said the landlord, and departed. Next morning
+the Canon waited on the Bishop and laid the bag before him.
+
+“Oh,” said the Bishop cheerfully, “he’s sent it back by you, has he?”
+
+“He has, sir,” replied the Canon; “and thankful I am that it was to me
+he brought it. It is right,” continued the Canon, “that I should inform
+your lordship that I am aware of the circumstances under which it left
+your hands.”
+
+The Canon’s eye was severe, and the Bishop laughed uneasily.
+
+“I suppose it wasn’t quite the thing for me to do,” he answered
+apologetically; “but there, all’s well that ends well,” and the Bishop
+laughed.
+
+This stung the Canon. “Oh, sir,” he exclaimed, with a burst of fervour,
+“in Heaven’s name—for the sake of our Church, let me entreat—let me
+pray you never to let such a thing occur again.”
+
+The Bishop turned upon him angrily.
+
+“Why, what a fuss you make about a little thing!” he cried; then,
+seeing the look of agony upon the other’s face, he paused.
+
+“How did you get that bag?” he asked.
+
+“The landlord of the Cross Keys brought it me,” answered the Canon;
+“you left it there last night.”
+
+The Bishop gave a gasp, and sat down heavily. When he recovered his
+breath, he told the Canon the real history of the case; and the Canon
+is still trying to believe it.
+
+
+
+
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