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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Strange Stories, by Grant Allen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Strange Stories
+
+Author: Grant Allen
+
+Illustrator: George du Maurier
+
+Release Date: January 15, 2012 [EBook #38575]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STRANGE STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Annie R. McGuire. This book was produced from
+scanned images of public domain material from the Google
+Print archive.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PICCADILLY NOVELS.
+
+
+_POPULAR STORIES BY THE BEST AUTHORS._
+
+Many of them Illustrated. Crown 8vo., cloth extra, 3s. 6d. each.
+
+
+By MRS. ALEXANDER.
+
+  Maid, Wife, or Widow?
+
+
+By WALTER BESANT & JAMES RICE.
+
+  Ready-Money Mortiboy.
+  My Little Girl.
+  Case of Mr. Lucraft.
+  This Son of Vulcan.
+  With Harp & Crown.
+  The Golden Butterfly.
+  By Celia's Arbour.
+  Monks of Thelema.
+  'Twas In Trafalgar's Bay.
+  The Seamy Side.
+  Ten Tears' Tenant.
+  Chaplain of the Fleet.
+
+
+By WALTER BESANT.
+
+  All Sorts and Conditions of Men.
+  The Captains' Room.
+  All In a Garden Fair.
+
+
+By ROBERT BUCHANAN.
+
+  A Child of Nature.
+  God and the Man.
+  Shadow of the Sword.
+  Love Me for Ever.
+  Martyrdom of Madeline.
+  Annan Water.
+  The New Abelard.
+
+
+By MRS. LOVETT CAMERON.
+
+  Deceivers Ever.
+  Juliet's Guardian.
+
+
+By MORTIMER COLLINS.
+
+  Sweet Anne Page.
+  Transmigration.
+  From Midnight to Midnight.
+
+
+By MORTIMER & FRANCES COLLINS.
+
+  Blacksmith and Scholar.
+  The Village Comedy.
+  You Play Me False.
+
+
+By WILKIE COLLINS.
+
+  Antonina.
+  Basil.
+  Hide and Seek.
+  The Dead Secret.
+  The Queen of Hearts.
+  My Miscellanies.
+  The Woman in White.
+  The Moonstone.
+  Man and Wife.
+  Poor Miss Finch.
+  Miss or Mrs.?
+  The New Magdalen.
+  The Frozen Deep.
+  The Law and the Lady.
+  The Two Destinies.
+  The Haunted Hotel.
+  The Fallen Leaves.
+  Jezebel's Daughter.
+  The Black Robe.
+  Heart and Science.
+
+
+By DUTTON COOK.
+
+  Paul Foster's Daughter.
+
+
+By WILLIAM CYPLES.
+
+  Hearts of Gold.
+
+
+By ALPHONSE DAUDET.
+
+  Port Salvation.
+
+
+By JAMES DE MILLE.
+
+  A Castle in Spain.
+
+
+By J. LEITH DERWENT.
+
+  Our Lady of Tears.
+  Circe's Lovers.
+
+
+By M. BETHAM-EDWARDS.
+
+  Felicia.
+  Kitty.
+
+
+By MRS. ANNIE EDWARDES.
+
+  Archie Lovell.
+
+
+By R. E. FRANCILLON.
+
+  Olympia.
+  Queen Cophetua.
+  A Real Queen.
+  One by One.
+
+
+Prefaced by SIR BARTLE FRERE.
+
+  Pandurang Hari.
+
+
+By EDWARD GARRETT.
+
+  The Capel Girls.
+
+
+By CHARLES GIBBON.
+
+  Robin Gray.
+  For Lack of Gold.
+  In Love and War.
+  What will World say?
+  For the King.
+  In Honour Bound.
+  Queen of the Meadow.
+  In Pastures Green.
+  Flower of the Forest.
+  A Heart's Problem.
+  The Braes of Yarrow.
+  The Golden Shaft.
+  Of High Degree.
+  Fancy Free.
+  Loving a Dream.
+
+
+By THOMAS HARDY.
+
+  Under the Greenwood Tree.
+
+
+By JULIAN HAWTHORNE.
+
+  Garth.
+  Ellice Quentin.
+  Sebastian Strome.
+  Prince Saroni's Wife.
+  Dust.
+  Beatrix Randolph.
+  Fortune's Fool.
+
+
+By SIR ARTHUR HELPS.
+
+  Ivan de Biron.
+
+
+By MRS. ALFRED HUNT.
+
+  Thornicroft's Model.
+  The Leaden Casket.
+  Self-Condemned.
+
+
+By JEAN INGELOW.
+
+  Fated to be Free.
+
+
+By HENRY JAMES, Jun.
+
+  Confidence.
+
+
+By HARRIETT JAY.
+
+  Queen of Connaught.
+  The Dark Colleen.
+
+
+By HENRY KINGSLEY.
+
+  Number Seventeen.
+  Oakshott Castle.
+
+
+By E. LYNN LINTON.
+
+  Patricia Kemball.
+  The Atonement of Leam Dundas.
+  The World Well Lost.
+  Under Which Lord?
+  With a Silken Thread.
+  Rebel of the Family.
+  'My Love!'
+  Ione.
+
+
+By HENRY W. LUCY.
+
+  Gideon Fleyce.
+
+
+By JUSTIN McCARTHY.
+
+  Waterdale Neighbours.
+  My Enemy's Daughter.
+  Linley Rochford.
+  A Fair Saxon.
+  Dear Lady Disdain.
+  Miss Misanthrope.
+  Donna Quixote.
+  Comet of a Season.
+  Maid of Athens.
+
+
+By GEORGE MACDONALD, LL.D.
+
+  Paul Faber, Surgeon.
+  Thomas Wingfold.
+
+
+By MRS. MACDONELL.
+
+  Quaker Cousins.
+
+
+By KATHARINE S. MACQUOID.
+
+  Lost Rose.
+  The Evil Eye.
+
+
+By FLORENCE MARRYAT.
+
+  Open! Sesame!
+  Written in Fire.
+
+
+By JEAN MIDDLEMASS.
+
+  Touch and Go.
+
+
+By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY.
+
+  A Life's Atonement.
+  Joseph's Coat.
+  Val Strange.
+  Coals of Fire.
+  A Model Father.
+  Hearts.
+  By the Gate of the Sea.
+  The Way of the World.
+
+
+By MRS. OLIPHANT.
+
+  Whiteladies.
+
+
+By MARGARET A. PAUL.
+
+  Gentle and Simple.
+
+
+By JAMES PAYN.
+
+  Lost Sir Massingberd.
+  The Best of Husbands.
+  Fallen Fortunes.
+  Halves.
+  Walter's Word.
+  What He Cost Her.
+  Less Black than we're Painted.
+  By Proxy.
+  High Spirits.
+  Under One Roof.
+  Carlyon's Year.
+  A Confidential Agent.
+  From Exile.
+  A Grape from a Thorn.
+  For Cash Only.
+  Kit: a Memory.
+  The Canon's Ward.
+
+
+By E. C. PRICE.
+
+  Valentina.
+  The Foreigners.
+
+
+By MRS. J. H. RIDDELL.
+
+  Her Mother's Darling.
+  The Prince of Wales's Garden Party.
+
+
+By CHARLES READE.
+
+  It is Never Too Late to Mend.
+  Hard Cash.
+  Peg Woffington.
+  Christie Johnstone.
+  Griffith Gaunt.
+  The Double Marriage
+  Love Me Little, Love Me Long.
+  Foul Play.
+  Cloister and Hearth.
+  The Course of True Love.
+  The Autobiography of a Thief.
+  Put Yourself in His Place.
+  Terrible Temptation.
+  The Wandering Heir.
+  A Simpleton.
+  A Woman-Hater.
+  Readiana.
+  Singleheart and Doubleface.
+  The Jilt.
+  Good Stories of Men and other Animals.
+
+
+By F. W. ROBINSON.
+
+  Women are Strange.
+  The Hands of Justice.
+
+
+By JOHN SAUNDERS.
+
+  Bound to the Wheel.
+  One Against the World.
+  Guy Waterman.
+  The Lion in the Path.
+  The Two Dreamers.
+
+
+By KATHARINE SAUNDERS.
+
+  Joan Merryweather.
+  Margaret and Elizabeth.
+  Gideon's Rock.
+  The High Mills.
+
+
+By T. W. SPEIGHT.
+
+  The Mysteries of Heron Dyke.
+
+
+By R. A. STERNDALE.
+
+  The Afghan Knife.
+
+
+By BERTHA THOMAS.
+
+  Proud Maisie.
+  The Violin-player.
+  Cressida.
+
+
+By ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
+
+  The Way We Live Now.
+  American Senator.
+  Kept in the Dark.
+  Frau Frohmann.
+  Marion Fay.
+  Mr. Scarborough's Family.
+  The Land-Leaguers.
+
+
+By FRANCES E. TROLLOPE.
+
+  Mabel's Progress.
+  Anne Furness.
+  Like Ships upon the Sea.
+
+
+By T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.
+
+  Diamond Cut Diamond.
+
+
+By IVAN TURGENIEFF, and Others.
+
+  Stories from Foreign Novelists.
+
+
+By C. C. FRASER-TYTLER.
+
+  Mistress Judith.
+
+
+By SARAH TYTLER.
+
+  What She Came Through.
+  The Bride's Pass.
+
+
+By J. S. WINTER.
+
+  Cavalry Life.
+  Regimental Legends.
+
+_CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY, W._
+
+
+
+
+STRANGE STORIES
+
+
+
+
+STRANGE STORIES
+
+
+BY
+GRANT ALLEN
+(_J. Arbuthnot Wilson_)
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+_WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY GEORGE DU MAURIER_
+
+
+London
+CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY
+1884
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+It is with some little trepidation that I venture to submit to the
+critical world this small collection of short stories. I feel that in
+doing so I owe some apology both to my readers and to the regular
+story-tellers. Being by trade a psychologist and scientific journeyman,
+I have been bold enough at times to stray surreptitiously and
+tentatively from my proper sphere into the flowery fields of pure
+fiction. Some of these my divarications from the strict path of sterner
+science, however, having been already publicly performed under the
+incognito of "J. Arbuthnot Wilson," have been so far condoned by
+generous and kindly critics that I am emboldened to present them to the
+judgment of readers under a more permanent form, and even to dispense
+with the convenient cloak of a pseudonym, under which one can always so
+easily cover one's hasty retreat from an untenable position. I can only
+hope that my confession will be accepted in partial extenuation of this
+culpable departure from the good old rule, "Ne sutor ultra crepidam;"
+and that older hands at the craft of story-telling will pardon an
+amateur novice his defective workmanship on the general plea of his
+humble demeanour.
+
+I may perhaps also venture to plead in self-defence that though these
+stories do not profess to be anything more than mere short sensational
+tales, I have yet endeavoured to give to most of them some slight tinge
+of scientific or psychological import and meaning. "The Reverend John
+Creedy," for example, is a study from within of a singular persistence
+of hereditary character, well known to all students of modern
+anthropological papers and reports. Members of barbarous or savage
+races, trained for a time in civilized habits, are liable at any moment
+to revert naturally to their primitive condition, especially under the
+contagious influence of companionship with persons of their own blood,
+and close subjection to the ancestral circumstances. The tale which I
+have based upon several such historical instances in real life
+endeavours briefly to hint at the modes of feeling likely to accompany
+such a relapse into barbarism in an essentially fine and sensitive
+savage nature. To most European readers, no doubt, such a sheer fall
+from the pinnacle of civilization to the nethermost abysses of savagery,
+would seem to call for the display of no other emotion than pure disgust
+and aversion; but those who know intimately the whole gamut of the
+intensely impressionable African mind will be able to treat its
+temptations and its tendencies far more sympathetically. In "The Curate
+of Churnside," again, I have tried to present a psychical analysis of a
+temperament not uncommon among the cultured class of the Italian
+Renaissance, and less rare than many people will be inclined to imagine
+among the colder type of our own emancipated and cultivated classes. The
+union of high intellectual and �sthetic culture with a total want of
+moral sensibility is a recognized fact in many periods of history,
+though our own age is singularly loth to admit of its possibility in its
+own contemporaries. In "Ram Das of Cawnpore," once more, I have
+attempted to depict a few circumstances of the Indian Mutiny as they
+must naturally have presented themselves to the mind and feelings of a
+humble native actor in that great and terrible drama. Accustomed
+ourselves to looking always at the massacres and reprisals of the Mutiny
+from a purely English point of view, we are liable to forget that every
+act of the mutineers and their aiders or abettors must have been fully
+justified in their own eyes, at the moment at least, as every act of
+every human being always is to his own inner personality. In his
+conscience of conscience, no man ever really believes that under given
+circumstances he could conceivably have acted otherwise than he actually
+did. If he persuades himself that he does really so believe, then he
+shows himself at once to be a very poor introspective psychologist. "The
+Child of the Phalanstery," to take another case, is a more ideal effort
+to realize the moral conceptions of a community brought up under a
+social and ethical environment utterly different from that by which we
+ourselves are now surrounded. In like manner, almost all the stories
+(except the lightest among them) have their germ or prime motive in some
+scientific or quasi-scientific idea; and this narrow link which thus
+connects them at bottom with my more habitual sphere of work must serve
+as my excuse to the regular story-tellers for an otherwise unwarrantable
+intrusion upon their private preserves. I trust they will forgive me on
+this plea for my trespass on their legitimate domains, and allow me to
+occupy in peace a little adjacent corner of unclaimed territory, which
+lies so temptingly close beside my own small original freehold.
+
+I should add that "The Reverend John Creedy," "The Curate of Churnside,"
+"Dr. Greatrex's Engagement," and "The Backslider," have already appeared
+in the _Cornhill Magazine_; while "The Foundering of the _Fortuna_" was
+first published in _Longman's Magazine_. The remainder of the tales
+comprised in this volume have seen the light originally in the pages of
+_Belgravia_. I have to thank the courtesy of the publishers and editors
+of those periodicals for kind permission to reprint them here.
+
+  G. A.
+  THE NOOK, DORKING,
+  _October_ 12, 1884.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                    Page
+  THE REVEREND JOHN CREEDY                                             1
+  DR. GREATREX'S ENGAGEMENT                                           21
+  MR. CHUNG                                                           47
+  THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE                                             66
+  AN EPISODE IN HIGH LIFE                                            100
+  MY NEW YEAR'S EVE AMONG THE MUMMIES                                126
+  THE FOUNDERING OF THE "FORTUNA"                                    144
+  THE BACKSLIDER                                                     164
+  THE MYSTERIOUS OCCURRENCE IN PICCADILLY                            191
+  CARVALHO                                                           207
+  PAUSODYNE                                                          234
+  THE EMPRESS OF ANDORRA                                             255
+  THE SENIOR PROCTOR'S WOOING                                        278
+  THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY                                       301
+  OUR SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATIONS ON A GHOST                             321
+  RAM DAS OF CAWNPORE                                                341
+
+
+
+
+_THE REVEREND JOHN CREEDY._
+
+
+I.
+
+"On Sunday next, the 14th inst., the Reverend John Creedy, B.A., of
+Magdalen College, Oxford, will preach in Walton Magna Church, on behalf
+of the Gold Coast Mission." Not a very startling announcement that, and
+yet, simple as it looks, it stirred Ethel Berry's soul to its inmost
+depths. For Ethel had been brought up by her Aunt Emily to look upon
+foreign missions as the one thing on earth worth living for and thinking
+about, and the Reverend John Creedy, B.A., had a missionary history of
+his own, strange enough even in these strange days of queer
+juxtapositions between utter savagery and advanced civilization.
+
+"Only think," she said to her aunt, as they read the placard on the
+schoolhouse-board, "he's a real African negro, the vicar says, taken
+from a slaver on the Gold Coast when he was a child, and brought to
+England to be educated. He's been to Oxford and got a degree; and now
+he's going out again to Africa to convert his own people. And he's
+coming down to the vicar's to stay on Wednesday."
+
+"It's my belief," said old Uncle James, Aunt Emily's brother, the
+superannuated skipper, "that he'd much better stop in England for ever.
+I've been a good bit on the Coast myself in my time, after palm oil and
+such, and my opinion is that a nigger's a nigger anywhere, but he's a
+sight less of a nigger in England than out yonder in Africa. Take him to
+England, and you make a gentleman of him: send him home again, and the
+nigger comes out at once in spite of you."
+
+"Oh, James," Aunt Emily put in, "how can you talk such unchristianlike
+talk, setting yourself up against missions, when we know that all the
+nations of the earth are made of one blood?"
+
+"I've always lived a Christian life myself, Emily," answered Uncle
+James, "though I have cruised a good bit on the Coast, too, which is
+against it, certainly; but I take it a nigger's a nigger whatever you do
+with him. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, the Scripture says, nor
+the leopard his spots, and a nigger he'll be to the end of his days; you
+mark my words, Emily."
+
+On Wednesday, in due course, the Reverend John Creedy arrived at the
+vicarage, and much curiosity there was throughout the village of Walton
+Magna that week to see this curious new thing, a coal-black parson. Next
+day, Thursday, an almost equally unusual event occurred to Ethel Berry,
+for, to her great surprise, she got a little note in the morning
+inviting her up to a tennis party at the vicarage the same afternoon.
+Now, though the vicar called on Aunt Emily often enough, and accepted
+her help readily for school feasts and other village festivities of the
+milder sort, the Berrys were hardly up to that level of society which is
+commonly invited to the parson's lawn tennis parties. And the reason why
+Ethel was asked on this particular Thursday must be traced to a certain
+pious conspiracy between the vicar and the secretary of the Gold Coast
+Evangelistic Society. When those two eminent missionary advocates had
+met a fortnight before at Exeter Hall, the secretary had represented to
+the vicar the desirability of young John Creedy's taking to himself an
+English wife before his departure. "It will steady him, and keep him
+right on the Coast," he said, "and it will give him importance in the
+eyes of the natives as well." Whereto the vicar responded that he knew
+exactly the right girl to suit the place in his own parish, and that by
+a providential conjunction she already took a deep interest in foreign
+missions. So these two good men conspired in all innocence of heart to
+sell poor Ethel into African slavery; and the vicar had asked John
+Creedy down to Walton Magna on purpose to meet her.
+
+That afternoon Ethel put on her pretty sateen and her witching little
+white hat, with two natural dog-roses pinned on one side, and went
+pleased and proud up to the vicarage. The Reverend John Creedy was
+there, not in full clerical costume, but arrayed in tennis flannels,
+with only a loose white tie beneath his flap collar to mark his newly
+acquired spiritual dignity. He was a comely looking negro enough,
+full-blooded, but not too broad-faced nor painfully African in type; and
+when he was playing tennis his athletic quick limbs and his really
+handsome build took away greatly from the general impression of an
+inferior race. His voice was of the ordinary Oxford type, open,
+pleasant, and refined, with a certain easy-going air of natural
+gentility, hardly marred by just the faintest tinge of the thick negro
+blur in the broad vowels. When he talked to Ethel--and the vicar's wife
+took good care that they should talk together a great deal--his
+conversation was of a sort that she seldom heard at Walton Magna. It was
+full of London and Oxford, of boat-races at Iffley and cricket matches
+at Lord's; of people and books whose very names Ethel had never
+heard--one of them was a Mr. Mill, she thought, and another a Mr.
+Aristotle--but which she felt vaguely to be one step higher in the
+intellectual scale than her own level. Then his friends, to whom he
+alluded casually, not like one who airs his grand acquaintances, were
+such very distinguished people. There was a real live lord, apparently,
+at the same college with him, and he spoke of a young baronet whose
+estate lay close by, as plain "Harrington of Christchurch," without any
+"Sir Arthur"--a thing which even the vicar himself would hardly have
+ventured to do. She knew that he was learned, too; as a matter of fact
+he had taken a fair second class in Greats at Oxford; and he could talk
+delightfully of poetry and novels. To say the truth, John Creedy, in
+spite of his black face, dazzled poor Ethel, for he was more of a
+scholar and a gentleman than anybody with whom she had ever before had
+the chance of conversing on equal terms.
+
+When Ethel turned the course of talk to Africa, the young parson was
+equally eloquent and fascinating. He didn't care about leaving England
+for many reasons, but he would be glad to do something for his poor
+brethren. He was enthusiastic about missions; that was a common
+interest; and he was so anxious to raise and improve the condition of
+his fellow-negroes that Ethel couldn't help feeling what a noble thing
+it was of him thus to sacrifice himself, cultivated gentleman as he was,
+in an African jungle, for his heathen countrymen. Altogether, she went
+home from the tennis-court that afternoon thoroughly overcome by John
+Creedy's personality. She didn't for a moment think of falling in love
+with him--a certain indescribable race-instinct set up an impassable
+barrier against that--but she admired him and was interested in him in a
+way that she had never yet felt with any other man.
+
+As for John Creedy, he was naturally charmed with Ethel. In the first
+place, he would have been charmed with any English girl who took so much
+interest in himself and his plans, for, like all negroes, he was
+frankly egotistical, and delighted to find a white lady who seemed to
+treat him as a superior being. But in the second place, Ethel was really
+a charming, simple English village lassie, with sweet little manners and
+a delicious blush, who might have impressed a far less susceptible man
+than the young negro parson. So, whatever Ethel felt, John Creedy felt
+himself truly in love. And after all, John Creedy was in all essentials
+an educated English gentleman, with the same chivalrous feelings towards
+a pretty and attractive girl that every English gentleman ought to have.
+
+On Sunday morning Aunt Emily and Ethel went to the parish church, and
+the Reverend John Creedy preached the expected sermon. It was almost his
+first--sounded like a trial trip, Uncle James muttered--but it was
+undoubtedly what connoisseurs describe as an admirable discourse. John
+Creedy was free from any tinge of nervousness--negroes never know what
+that word means--and he spoke fervently, eloquently, and with much power
+of manner about the necessity for a Gold Coast Mission. Perhaps there
+was really nothing very original or striking in what he said, but his
+way of saying it was impressive and vigorous. The negro, like many other
+lower races, has the faculty of speech largely developed, and John
+Creedy had been noted as one of the readiest and most fluent talkers at
+the Oxford Union debates. When he enlarged upon the need for workers,
+the need for help, the need for succour and sympathy in the great task
+of evangelization, Aunt Emily and Ethel forgot his black hands,
+stretched out open-palmed towards the people, and felt only their hearts
+stirred within them by the eloquence and enthusiasm of that appealing
+gesture.
+
+The end of it all was, that instead of a week John Creedy stopped for
+two months at Walton Magna, and during all that time he saw a great deal
+of Ethel. Before the end of the first fortnight he walked out one
+afternoon along the river-bank with her, and talked earnestly of his
+expected mission.
+
+"Miss Berry," he said, as they sat to rest awhile on the parapet of the
+little bridge by the weeping willows, "I don't mind going to Africa, but
+I can't bear going all alone. I am to have a station entirely by myself
+up the Ancobra river, where I shall see no other Christian face from
+year's end to year's end. I wish I could have had some one to accompany
+me."
+
+"You will be very lonely," Ethel answered. "I wish indeed you could have
+some companionship."
+
+"Do you really?" John Creedy went on. "It is not good for man to live
+alone; he wants a helpmate. Oh, Miss Ethel, may I venture to hope that
+perhaps, if I can try to deserve you, you will be mine?"
+
+Ethel started in dismay. Mr. Creedy had been very attentive, very kind,
+and she had liked to hear him talk and had encouraged his coming, but
+she was hardly prepared for this. The nameless something in our blood
+recoiled at it. The proposal stunned her, and she said nothing but "Oh,
+Mr. Creedy, how can you say such a thing?"
+
+John Creedy saw the shadow on her face, the unintentional dilatation of
+her delicate nostrils, the faint puckering at the corner of her lips,
+and knew with a negro's quick instinct of face-reading what it all
+meant. "Oh, Miss Ethel," he said, with a touch of genuine bitterness in
+his tone, "don't you, too, despise us. I won't ask you for any answer
+now; I don't want an answer. But I want you to think it over. Do think
+it over, and consider whether you can ever love me. I won't press the
+matter on you. I won't insult you by importunity, but I will tell you
+just this once, and once for all, what I feel. I love you, and I shall
+always love you, whatever you answer me now. I know it would cost you a
+wrench to take me, a greater wrench than to take the least and the
+unworthiest of your own people. But if you can only get over that first
+wrench, I can promise earnestly and faithfully to love you as well as
+ever woman yet was loved. Don't say anything now," he went on, as he saw
+she was going to open her mouth again: "wait and think it over; pray it
+over; and if you can't see your way straight before you when I ask you
+this day fortnight "yes or no," answer me "no," and I give you my word
+of honour as a gentleman I will never speak to you of the matter again.
+But I shall carry your picture written on my heart to my grave."
+
+And Ethel knew that he was speaking from his very soul.
+
+When she went home, she took Aunt Emily up into her little bedroom, over
+the porch where the dog-roses grew, and told her all about it. Aunt
+Emily cried and sobbed as if her heart would break, but she saw only one
+answer from the first. "It is a gate opened to you, my darling," she
+said: "I shall break my heart over it, Ethel, but it is a gate opened."
+And though she felt that all the light would be gone out of her life if
+Ethel went, she worked with her might from that moment forth to induce
+Ethel to marry John Creedy and go to Africa. Poor soul, she acted
+faithfully up to her lights.
+
+As for Uncle James, he looked at the matter very differently. "Her
+instinct is against it," he said stoutly, "and our instincts wasn't put
+in our hearts for nothing. They're meant to be a guide and a light to us
+in these dark questions. No white girl ought to marry a black man, even
+if he _is_ a parson. It ain't natural: our instinct is again it. A white
+man may marry a black woman if he likes: I don't say anything again him,
+though I don't say I'd do it myself, not for any money. But a white
+woman to marry a black man, why, it makes our blood rise, you know,
+'specially if you've happened to have cruised worth speaking of along
+the Coast."
+
+But the vicar and the vicar's wife were charmed with the prospect of
+success, and spoke seriously to Ethel about it. It was a call, they
+thought, and Ethel oughtn't to disregard it. They had argued themselves
+out of those wholesome race instincts that Uncle James so rightly
+valued, and they were eager to argue Ethel out of them too. What could
+the poor girl do? Her aunt and the vicar on the one hand, and John
+Creedy on the other, were too much between them for her native feelings.
+At the end of the fortnight John Creedy asked her his simple question
+"yes or no," and half against her will she answered "yes." John Creedy
+took her hand delicately in his and fervidly kissed the very tips of her
+fingers; something within him told him he must not kiss her lips. She
+started at the kiss, but she said nothing. John Creedy noticed the
+start, and said within himself, "I shall so love and cherish her that I
+will make her love me in spite of my black skin." For with all the
+faults of his negro nature, John Creedy was at heart an earnest and
+affectionate man, after his kind.
+
+And Ethel really did, to some extent, love him already. It was such a
+strange mixture of feeling. From one point of view he was a gentleman by
+position, a clergyman, a man of learning and of piety; and from this
+point of view Ethel was not only satisfied, but even proud of him. For
+the rest, she took him as some good Catholics take the veil, from a
+sense of the call. And so, before the two months were out, Ethel Berry
+had married John Creedy, and both started together at once for
+Southampton, on their way to Axim. Aunt Emily cried, and hoped they
+might be blessed in their new work, but Uncle James never lost his
+misgivings about the effect of Africa upon a born African. "Instincts is
+a great thing," he said, with a shake of his head, as he saw the West
+Coast mail steam slowly down Southampton Water, "and when he gets among
+his own people his instincts will surely get the better of him, as safe
+as my name is James Berry."
+
+
+II.
+
+The little mission bungalow at Butabu�, a wooden shed neatly thatched
+with fan palms, had been built and garnished by the native catechist
+from Axim and his wife before the arrival of the missionaries, so that
+Ethel found a habitable dwelling ready for her at the end of her long
+boat journey up the rapid stream of the Ancobra. There the strangely
+matched pair settled down quietly enough to their work of teaching and
+catechizing, for the mission had already been started by the native
+evangelist, and many of the people were fairly ready to hear and accept
+the new religion. For the first ten or twelve months Ethel's letters
+home were full of praise and love for dear John. Now that she had come
+to know him well, she wondered she had ever feared to marry him. No
+husband was ever so tender, so gentle, so considerate. He nursed her in
+all her little ailments like a woman; she leaned on him as a wife leans
+on the strong arm of her husband. And then he was so clever, so wise, so
+learned. Her only grief was that she feared she was not and would never
+be good enough for him. Yet it was well for her that they were living so
+entirely away from all white society at Butabu�, for there she had
+nobody with whom to contrast John but the half-clad savages around them.
+Judged by the light of that startling contrast, good John Creedy, with
+his cultivated ways and gentle manners, seemed like an Englishman
+indeed.
+
+John Creedy, for his part, thought no less well of his Ethel. He was
+tenderly respectful to her; more distant, perhaps, than is usual between
+husband and wife, even in the first months of marriage, but that was due
+to his innate delicacy of feeling, which made him half unconsciously
+recognize the depth of the gulf that still divided them. He cherished
+her like some saintly thing, too sacred for the common world. Yet Ethel
+was his helper in all his work, so cheerful under the necessary
+privations of their life, so ready to put up with bananas and cassava
+balls, so apt at kneading plantain paste, so willing to learn from the
+negro women all the mysteries of mixing agadey, cankey, and koko
+pudding. No tropical heat seemed to put her out of temper; even the
+horrible country fever itself she bore with such gentle resignation.
+John Creedy felt in his heart of hearts that he would willingly give up
+his life for her, and that it would be but a small sacrifice for so
+sweet a creature.
+
+One day, shortly after their arrival at Butabu�, John Creedy began
+talking in English to the catechist about the best way of setting to
+work to learn the native language. He had left the country when he was
+nine years old, he said, and had forgotten all about it. The catechist
+answered him quickly in a Fantee phrase. John Creedy looked amazed and
+started.
+
+"What does he say?" asked Ethel.
+
+"He says that I shall soon learn if only I listen; but the curious thing
+is, Ethie, that I understand him."
+
+"It has come back to you, John, that's all. You are so quick at
+languages, and now you hear it again you remember it."
+
+"Perhaps so," said the missionary, slowly, "but I have never recalled a
+word of it for all these years. I wonder if it will all come back to
+me."
+
+"Of course it will, dear," said Ethel; "you know, things come to you so
+easily in that way. You almost learned Portuguese while we were coming
+out from hearing those Benguela people."
+
+And so it did come back, sure enough. Before John Creedy had been six
+weeks at Butabu�, he could talk Fantee as fluently as any of the natives
+around him. After all, he was nine years old when he was taken to
+England, and it was no great wonder that he should recollect the
+language he had heard in his childhood till that age. Still, he himself
+noticed rather uneasily that every phrase and word, down to the very
+heathen charms and prayers of his infancy, came back to him now with
+startling vividness and without an effort.
+
+Four months after their arrival John saw one day a tall and ugly negro
+woman, in the scanty native dress, standing near the rude market-place
+where the Butabu� butchers killed and sold their reeking goat-meat.
+Ethel saw him start again, and with a terrible foreboding in her heart,
+she could not help asking him why he started. "I can't tell you, Ethie,"
+he said, piteously; "for heaven's sake don't press me. I want to spare
+you." But Ethel would hear. "Is it your mother, John?" she asked
+hoarsely.
+
+"No, thank heaven, not my mother, Ethie," he answered her, with
+something like pallor on his dark cheek, "not my mother; but I remember
+the woman."
+
+"A relative?"
+
+"Oh, Ethie, don't press me. Yes, my mother's sister. I remember her
+years ago. Let us say no more about it." And Ethel, looking at that
+gaunt and squalid savage woman, shuddered in her heart and said no more.
+
+Slowly, as time went on, however, Ethel began to notice a strange shade
+of change coming over John's ideas and remarks about the negroes. At
+first he had been shocked and distressed at their heathendom and
+savagery, but the more he saw of it the more he seemed to find it
+natural enough in their position, and even in a sort of way to
+sympathize with it or apologize for it. One morning, a month or two
+later, he spoke to her voluntarily of his father. He had never done so
+in England. "I can remember," he said, "he was a chief, a great chief.
+He had many wives, and my mother was one. He was beaten in War by Kola,
+and I was taken prisoner. But he had a fine palace at Kwantah, and many
+fan-bearers." Ethel observed with a faint terror that he seemed to speak
+with pride and complacency of his father's chieftaincy. She shuddered
+again and wondered. Was the West African instinct getting the upper hand
+in him over the Christian gentleman?
+
+When the dries were over, and the koko-harvest gathered, the negroes
+held a grand feast. John had preached in the open air to some of the
+market people in the morning, and in the evening he was sitting in the
+hut with Ethel, waiting till the catechist and his wife should come in
+to prayers, for they carried out their accustomed ceremony decorously,
+even there, every night and morning. Suddenly they heard the din of
+savage music out of doors, and the noise of a great crowd laughing and
+shouting down the street. John listened, and listened with deepening
+attention. "Don't you hear it, Ethie?" he cried. "It's the tom-toms. I
+know what it means. It's the harvest battle-feast!"
+
+"How hideous!" said Ethel, shrinking back.
+
+"Don't be afraid, dearest," John said, smiling at her. "It means no
+harm. It's only the people amusing themselves." And he began to keep
+time to the tom-toms rapidly with the palms of his hands.
+
+The din drew nearer, and John grew more evidently excited at every step.
+"Don't you hear, Ethie?" he said again. "It's the Salonga. What
+inspiriting music! It's like a drum and fife band; it's like the
+bagpipes; it's like a military march. By Jove, it compels one to dance!"
+And he got up as he spoke, in English clerical dress (for he wore
+clerical dress even at Butabu�), and began capering in a sort of
+hornpipe round the tiny room.
+
+"Oh, John, don't," cried Ethel. "Suppose the catechist were to come in!"
+
+But John's blood was up. "Look here," he said excitedly, "it goes like
+this. Here you hold your matchlock out; here you fire; here you charge
+with cutlasses; here you hack them down before you; here you hold up
+your enemy's head in your hands, and here you kick it off among the
+women. Oh, it's grand!" There was a terrible light in his black eyes as
+he spoke, and a terrible trembling in his clenched black hands.
+
+"John," cried Ethel, in an agony of horror, "it isn't Christian, it
+isn't human, it isn't worthy of you. I can never, never love you if you
+do such a thing again."
+
+In a moment John's face changed and his hand fell as if she had stabbed
+him. "Ethie," he said in a low voice, creeping back to her like a
+whipped spaniel, "Ethie, my darling, my own soul, my beloved; what have
+I done! Oh, heavens, I will never listen to the accursed thing again.
+Oh, Ethie, for heaven's sake, for mercy's sake, forgive me!"
+
+Ethel laid her hand, trembling, on his head. John sank upon his knees
+before her, and bowed himself down with his head between his arms, like
+one staggered and penitent. Ethel lifted him gently, and at that moment
+the catechist and his wife came in. John stood up firmly, took down his
+Bible and Prayer-book, and read through evening prayer at once in his
+usual impressive tone. In one moment he had changed back again from the
+Fantee savage to the decorous Oxford clergyman.
+
+It was only a week later that Ethel, hunting about in the little
+storeroom, happened to notice a stout wooden box carefully covered up.
+She opened the lid with some difficulty, for it was fastened down with a
+native lock, and to her horror she found inside it a surreptitious keg
+of raw negro rum. She took the keg out, put it conspicuously in the
+midst of the storeroom, and said nothing. That night she heard John in
+the jungle behind the yard, and looking out, she saw dimly that he was
+hacking the keg to pieces vehemently with an axe. After that he was even
+kinder and tenderer to her than usual for the next week, but Ethel
+vaguely remembered that once or twice before, he had seemed a little odd
+in his manner, and that it was on those days that she had seen gleams of
+the savage nature peeping through. Perhaps, she thought, with a shiver,
+his civilization was only a veneer, and a glass of raw rum or so was
+enough to wash it off.
+
+Twelve months after their first arrival, Ethel came home very feverish
+one evening from her girls' school, and found John gone from the hut.
+Searching about in the room for the quinine bottle, she came once more
+upon a rum-keg, and this time it was empty. A nameless terror drove her
+into the little bedroom. There, on the bed, torn into a hundred shreds,
+lay John Creedy's black coat and European clothing. The room whirled
+around her, and though she had never heard of such a thing before, the
+terrible truth flashed across her bewildered mind like a hideous dream.
+She went out, alone, at night, as she had never done before since she
+came to Africa, into the broad lane between the huts which constituted
+the chief street of Butabu�. So far away from home, so utterly solitary
+among all those black faces, so sick at heart with that burning and
+devouring horror! She reeled and staggered down the street, not knowing
+how or where she went, till at the end, beneath the two tall date-palms,
+she saw lights flashing and heard the noise of shouts and laughter. A
+group of natives, men and women together, were dancing and howling round
+a dancing and howling negro. The central figure was dressed in the
+native fashion, with arms and legs bare, and he was shouting a loud song
+at the top of his voice in the Fantee language, while he shook a
+tom-tom. There was a huskiness as of drink in his throat, and his steps
+were unsteady and doubtful. Great heavens! could that reeling, shrieking
+black savage be John Creedy?
+
+Yes, instinct had gained the day over civilization; the savage in John
+Creedy had broken out; he had torn up his English clothes and, in West
+African parlance, "had gone Fantee." Ethel gazed at him, white with
+horror--stood still and gazed, and never cried nor fainted, nor said a
+word. The crowd of negroes divided to right and left, and John Creedy
+saw his wife standing there like a marble figure. With one awful cry he
+came to himself again, and rushed to her side. She did not repel him, as
+he expected; she did not speak; she was mute and cold like a corpse, not
+like a living woman. He took her up in his strong arms, laid her head on
+his shoulder, and carried her home through the long line of thatched
+huts, erect and steady as when he first walked up the aisle of Walton
+Magna church. Then he laid her down gently on the bed, and called the
+wife of the catechist. "She has the fever," he said in Fantee. "Sit by
+her."
+
+The catechist's wife looked at her, and said, "Yes; the yellow fever."
+
+And so she had. Even before she saw John the fever had been upon her,
+and that awful revelation had brought it out suddenly in full force. She
+lay unconscious upon the bed, her eyes open, staring ghastlily, but not
+a trace of colour in her cheek nor a sign of life upon her face.
+
+John Creedy wrote a few words on a piece of paper, which he folded in
+his hand, gave a few directions in Fantee to the woman at the bedside,
+and then hurried out like one on fire into the darkness outside.
+
+
+III.
+
+It was thirty miles through the jungle, by a native trackway, to the
+nearest mission station at Effuenta. There were two Methodist
+missionaries stationed there, John Creedy knew, for he had gone round by
+boat more than once to see them. When he first came to Africa he could
+no more have found his way across the neck of the river fork by that
+tangled jungle track than he could have flown bodily over the top of the
+cocoa palms; but now, half naked, barefooted, and inspired with an
+overpowering emotion, he threaded his path through the darkness among
+the creepers and lianas of the forest in true African fashion. Stooping
+here, creeping on all fours there, running in the open at full speed
+anon, he never once stopped to draw breath till he had covered the whole
+thirty miles, and knocked in the early dawn at the door of the mission
+hut at Effuenta.
+
+One of the missionaries opened the barred door cautiously. "What do you
+want?" he asked in Fantee of the bare-legged savage, who stood crouching
+by the threshold.
+
+"I bring a message from Missionary John Creedy," the bare-legged savage
+answered, also in Fantee. "He wants European clothes."
+
+"Has he sent a letter?" asked the missionary.
+
+John Creedy took the folded piece of paper from his palm. The missionary
+read it. It told him in a few words how the Butabu� people had pillaged
+John's hut at night and stolen his clothing, and how he could not go
+outside his door till he got some European dress again.
+
+"This is strange," said the missionary. "Brother Felton died three days
+ago of the fever. You can take his clothes to Brother Creedy, if you
+will."
+
+The bare-limbed savage nodded acquiescence. The missionary looked hard
+at him, and fancied he had seen his face before, but he never even for a
+moment suspected that he was speaking to John Creedy himself.
+
+A bundle was soon made of dead Brother Felton's clothes, and the
+bare-limbed man took it in his arms and prepared to run back again the
+whole way to Butabu�.
+
+"You have had nothing to eat," said the lonely missionary. "Won't you
+take something to help you on your way?"
+
+"Give me some plantain paste," answered John Creedy. "I can eat it as I
+go." And when they gave it him he forgot himself for the moment, and
+answered, "Thank you" in English. The missionary stared, but thought it
+was only a single phrase that he had picked up at Butabu�, and that he
+was anxious, negro-fashion, to air his knowledge.
+
+Back through the jungle, with the bundle in his arms, John Creedy wormed
+his way once more, like a snake or a tiger, never pausing or halting on
+the road till he found himself again in the open space outside the
+village of Butabu�. There he stayed awhile, and behind a clump of wild
+ginger, he opened the bundle and arrayed himself once more from head to
+foot in English clerical dress. That done, too proud to slink, he walked
+bold and erect down the main alley, and quietly entered his own hut. It
+was high noon, the baking high noon of Africa, as he did so.
+
+Ethel lay unconscious still upon the bed. The negro woman crouched, half
+asleep after her night's watching, at the foot. John Creedy looked at
+his watch, which stood hard by on the little wooden table. "Sixty miles
+in fourteen hours," he said aloud. "Better time by a great deal than
+when we walked from Oxford to the White Horse, eighteen months since."
+And then he sat down silently by Ethel's bedside.
+
+"Has she moved her eyes?" he asked the negress.
+
+"Never, John Creedy," answered the woman. Till last night she had always
+called him "Master."
+
+He watched the lifeless face for an hour or two. There was no change in
+it till about four o'clock; then Ethel's eyes began to alter their
+expression. He saw the dilated pupils contract a little, and knew that
+consciousness was gradually returning.
+
+In a moment more she looked round at him and gave a little cry. "John,"
+she exclaimed, with a sort of awakening hopefulness in her voice, "where
+on earth did you get those clothes?"
+
+"These clothes?" he answered softly. "Why, you must be wandering in
+your mind, Ethie dearest, to ask such a question now. At Standen's, in
+the High at Oxford, my darling." And he passed his black hand gently
+across her loose hair.
+
+Ethel gave a great cry of joy. "Then it was a dream, a horrid dream,
+John, or a terrible mistake? Oh, John, say it was a dream!"
+
+John drew his hand across his forehead slowly. "Ethie darling," he said,
+"you are wandering, I'm afraid. You have a bad fever. I don't know what
+you mean."
+
+"Then you didn't tear them up, and wear a Fantee dress, and dance with a
+tom-tom down the street? Oh, John!"
+
+"Oh, Ethel! No. What a terrible delirium you must have had!"
+
+"It is all well," she said. "I don't mind if I die now." And she sank
+back exhausted into a sort of feverish sleep.
+
+"John Creedy," said the black catechist's wife solemnly, in Fantee, "you
+will have to answer for that lie to a dying woman with your soul!"
+
+"_My_ soul!" cried John Creedy passionately, smiting both breasts with
+his clenched fists. "_My_ soul! Do you think, you negro wench, I
+wouldn't give my poor, miserable, black soul to eternal torments a
+thousand times over, if only I could give her little white heart one
+moment's forgetfulness before she dies?"
+
+For five days longer Ethel lingered in the burning fever, sometimes
+conscious for a minute or two, but for the most part delirious or drowsy
+all the time. She never said another word to John about her terrible
+dream, and John never said another word to her. But he sat by her side
+and tended her like a woman, doing everything that was possible for her
+in the bare little hut, and devouring his full heart with a horrible
+gnawing remorse too deep for pen or tongue to probe and fathom. For
+civilization with John Creedy was really at bottom far more than a mere
+veneer; though the savage instincts might break out with him now and
+again, such outbursts no more affected his adult and acquired nature
+than a single bump supper or wine party at college affects the nature of
+many a gentle-minded English lad. The truest John Creedy of all was the
+gentle, tender, English clergyman.
+
+As he sat by her bedside sleepless and agonized, night and day for five
+days together, one prayer only rose to his lips time after time: "Heaven
+grant she may die!" He had depth enough in the civilized side of his
+soul to feel that that was the only way to save her from a lifelong
+shame. "If she gets well," he said to himself, trembling, "I will leave
+this accursed Africa at once. I will work my way back to England as a
+common sailor, and send her home by the mail with my remaining money. I
+will never inflict my presence upon her again, for she cannot be
+persuaded, if once she recovers, that she did not see me, as she did see
+me, a bare-limbed heathen Fantee brandishing a devilish tom-tom. But I
+shall get work in England--not a parson's; that I can never be
+again--but clerk's work, labourer's work, navvy's work, anything! Look
+at my arms: I rowed five in the Magdalen eight: I could hold a spade as
+well as any man. I will toil, and slave, and save, and keep her still
+like a lady, if I starve for it myself, but she shall never see my face
+again, if once she recovers. Even then it will be a living death for
+her, poor angel! There is only one hope--Heaven grant she may die!"
+
+On the fifth day she opened her eyes once. John saw that his prayer was
+about to be fulfilled. "John," she said feebly--"John, tell me, on your
+honour, it was only my delirium."
+
+And John, raising his hand to heaven, _splendide mendax_, answered in a
+firm voice, "I swear it."
+
+Ethel smiled and shut her eyes. It was for the last time.
+
+Next morning, John Creedy--tearless, but parched and dry in the mouth,
+like one stunned and unmanned--took a pickaxe and hewed out a rude grave
+in the loose soil near the river. Then he fashioned a rough coffin from
+twisted canes with his own hands, and in it he reverently placed the
+sacred body. He allowed no one to help him or come near him--not even
+his fellow-Christians, the catechist and his wife: Ethel was too holy a
+thing for their African hands to touch. Next he put on his white
+surplice, and for the first and only time in his life he read, without a
+quaver in his voice, the Church of England burial service over the open
+grave. And when he had finished he went back to his desolate hut, and
+cried with a loud voice of utter despair, "The one thing that bound me
+to civilization is gone. Henceforth I shall never speak another word of
+English. I go to my own people." So saying, he solemnly tore up his
+European clothes once more, bound a cotton loin-cloth round his waist,
+covered his head with dirt, and sat fasting and wailing piteously, like
+a broken-hearted child, in his cabin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nowadays, the old half-caste Portuguese rum-dealer at Butabu� can point
+out to any English pioneer who comes up the river which one, among a
+crowd of dilapidated negroes who lie basking in the soft dust outside
+his hut, was once the Reverend John Creedy, B.A., of Magdalen College,
+Oxford.
+
+
+
+
+_DR. GREATREX'S ENGAGEMENT._
+
+
+Everybody knows by name at least the celebrated Dr. Greatrex, the
+discoverer of that abstruse molecular theory of the interrelations of
+forces and energies. He is a comparatively young man still, as times go,
+for a person of such scientific distinction, for he is now barely forty;
+but to look at his tall, spare, earnest figure, and his clear-cut,
+delicate, intellectual face, you would scarcely imagine that he had once
+been the hero of a singularly strange and romantic story. Yet there have
+been few lives more romantic than Arthur Greatrex's, and few histories
+stranger in their way than this of his engagement. After all, why should
+not a scientific light have a romance of his own as well as other
+people?
+
+Fifteen years ago Arthur Greatrex, then a young Cambridge fellow, had
+just come up to begin his medical studies at a London hospital. He was
+tall in those days, of course, but not nearly so slender or so pale as
+now; for he had rowed seven in his college boat, and was a fine,
+athletic young man of the true English university pattern. Handsome,
+too, then and always, but with a more human-looking and ordinary
+handsomeness when he was young than in these latter times of his
+scientific eminence. Indeed, any one who met Arthur Greatrex at that
+time would merely have noticed him as a fine, intelligent young English
+gentleman, with a marked taste for manly sports, and a decided opinion
+of his own about most passing matters of public interest.
+
+Already, even in those days, the young medical student was very deeply
+engaged in recondite speculations on the question of energy. His active
+mind, always dwelling upon wide points of cosmical significance, had hit
+upon the germ of that great revolutionary idea which was afterwards to
+change the whole course of modern physics. But, as often happens with
+young men of twenty-five, there was another subject which divided his
+attention with the grand theory of his life: and that subject was the
+pretty daughter of his friend and instructor, Dr. Abury, the eminent
+authority on the treatment of the insane. In all London you couldn't
+have found a sweeter or prettier girl than Hetty Abury. Young Greatrex
+thought her clever, too; and, though that is perhaps saying rather too
+much, she was certainly a good deal above the average of ordinary London
+girls in intellect and accomplishments.
+
+"They say, Arthur," she said to him on the day after their formal
+engagement, "that the course of true love never did run smooth; and yet
+it seems somehow as if ours was wonderfully smoothed over for us by
+everybody and everything. I am the happiest and proudest girl in all the
+world to have won the love of such a man as you for my future husband."
+
+Arthur Greatrex stroked the back of her white little hand with his, and
+answered gently, "I hope nothing will ever arise to make the course of
+our love run any the rougher; for certainly we do seem to have every
+happiness laid out most temptingly before us. It almost feels to me as
+if my paradise had been too easily won, and I ought to have something
+harder to do before I enter it."
+
+"Don't say that, Arthur," Hetty put in hastily. "It sounds too much like
+an evil omen."
+
+"You superstitious little woman!" the young doctor replied with a
+smile. "Talking to a scientific man about signs and portents!" And he
+kissed her wee hand tenderly, and went home to his bachelor lodging with
+that strange exhilaration in heart and step which only the ecstasy of
+first love can ever bring one.
+
+"No," he thought to himself, as he sat down in his own easy-chair, and
+lighted his cigar; "I don't believe any cloud can ever arise between me
+and Hetty. We have everything in our favour--means to live upon, love
+for one another, a mutual respect, kind relations, and hearts that were
+meant by nature each for the other. Hetty is certainly the very sweetest
+little girl that ever lived; and she's as good as she's sweet, and as
+loving as she's beautiful. What a dreadful thing it is for a man in love
+to have to read up medicine for his next examination!" and he took a
+medical book down from the shelf with a sigh, and pretended to be deeply
+interested in the diagnosis of scarlet fever till his cigar was
+finished. But, if the truth must be told, the words really swam before
+him, and all the letters on the page apparently conspired together to
+make up but a single name a thousand times over--Hetty, Hetty, Hetty,
+Hetty. At last he laid the volume down as hopeless, and turned dreamily
+into his bedroom, only to lie awake half the night and think perpetually
+on that one theme of Hetty.
+
+Next day was Dr. Abury's weekly lecture on diseases of the brain and
+nervous system; and Arthur Greatrex, convinced that he really must make
+an effort, went to hear it. The subject was one that always interested
+him; and partly by dint of mental attention, partly out of sheer desire
+to master the matter, he managed to hear it through, and even take in
+the greater part of its import. As he left the room to go down the
+hospital stairs, he had his mind fairly distracted between the
+premonitory symptoms of insanity and Hetty Abury. "Was there ever such
+an unfortunate profession as medicine for a man in love?" he asked
+himself, half angrily. "Why didn't I go and be a parson or a barrister,
+or anything else that would have kept me from mixing up such incongruous
+associations? And yet, when one comes to think of it, too, there's no
+particular natural connection after all between 'Chitty on Contract' and
+dearest Hetty."
+
+Musing thus, he turned to walk down the great central staircase of the
+hospital. As he did so, his attention was attracted for a moment by a
+singular person who was descending the opposite stair towards the same
+landing. This person was tall and not ill-looking; but, as he came down
+the steps, he kept pursing up his mouth and cheeks into the most
+extraordinary and hideous grimaces; in fact, he was obviously making
+insulting faces at Arthur Greatrex. Arthur was so much preoccupied at
+the moment, however, that he hardly had time to notice the eccentric
+stranger; and, as he took him for one of the harmless lunatic patients
+in the mental-diseases ward, he would have passed on without further
+observing the man but for an odd circumstance which occurred as they
+both reached the great central landing together. Arthur happened to drop
+the book he was carrying from under his arm, and instinctively stooped
+to pick it up. At the same moment the grimacing stranger dropped his own
+book also, not in imitation, but by obvious coincidence, and stooped to
+pick it up with the self-same gesture. Struck by the oddity of the
+situation, Arthur turned to look at the curious patient. To his utter
+horror and surprise, he discovered that the man he had been observing
+was his own reflection.
+
+In one second the real state of the case flashed like lightning across
+his bewildered brain. There was no opposite staircase, as he knew very
+well, for he had been down those steps a hundred times before: nothing
+but a big mirror, which reflected and doubled the one-sided flight from
+top to bottom. It was only his momentary preoccupation which had made
+him for a minute fall into the obvious delusion. The man whom he saw
+descending towards him was really himself, Arthur Greatrex.
+
+Even so, he did not at once grasp the full strangeness of the scene he
+had just witnessed. It was only as he turned to descend again that he
+caught another glimpse of himself in the big mirror, and saw that he was
+still making the most horrible and ghastliest grimaces--grimaces such as
+he had never seen equalled save by the monkeys at the Zoo, and
+(horridest thought of all!) by the worst patients in the mental-disease
+ward. He pulled himself up in speechless horror, and looked once more
+into the big mirror. Yes, there was positively no mistaking the fact: it
+was he, Arthur Greatrex, fellow of Catherine's, who was making these
+hideous and meaningless distortions of his own countenance.
+
+With a terrible effort of will he pulled his face quite straight again,
+and assumed his usual grave and quiet demeanour. For a full minute he
+stood looking at himself in the glass; and then, fearful that some one
+else would come and surprise him, he hurried down the remaining steps,
+and rushed out into the streets of London. Which way he turned he did
+not know or care; all he knew was that he was repressing by sheer force
+of muscular strain a deadly impulse to pucker up his mouth and draw down
+the corners of his lips into one-sided grimaces. As he passed down the
+streets, he watched his own image faintly reflected in the panes of the
+windows, and saw that he was maintaining outward decorum, but only with
+a conscious and evident struggle. At one doorstep a little child was
+playing with a kitten; Arthur Greatrex, who was a naturally kindly man,
+looked down at her and smiled, in spite of his preoccupation: instead of
+smiling back, the child uttered a scream of terror, and rushed back into
+the house to hide her face in her mother's apron. He felt instinctively
+that, in place of smiling, he had looked at the child with one of his
+awful faces. It was horrible, unendurable, and he walked on through the
+streets and across the bridges, pulling himself together all the time,
+till at last, half-unconsciously, he found himself near Pimlico, where
+the Aburys were then living.
+
+Looking around him, he saw that he had come nearly to the corner where
+Hetty's little drawing-room faced the road. The accustomed place seemed
+to draw him off for a moment from thinking of himself, and he remembered
+that he had promised Hetty to come in for luncheon. But dare he go in
+such a state of mind and body as he then found himself in? Well, Hetty
+would be expecting him; Hetty would be disappointed if he didn't come;
+he certainly mustn't break his engagement with dear little Hetty. After
+all, he began to say to himself, what was it but a mere twitching of his
+face, probably a slight nervous affection? Young doctors are always
+nervous about themselves, they say; they find all their own symptoms
+accurately described in all the text-books. His face wasn't twitching
+now, of that he was certain; the nearer he got to Hetty's, the calmer he
+grew, and the more he was conscious he could relax his attention without
+finding his muscles were playing tricks upon him. He would turn in and
+have luncheon, and soon forgot all about it.
+
+Hetty saw him coming, and ran lightly to open the door for him, and as
+he took his seat beside her at the table, he forgot straightway his
+whole trouble, and found himself at once in Paradise once more. All
+through lunch they talked about other things--happy plans for the
+future, and the small prettinesses that lovers find so perennially
+delightful; and long before Arthur went away the twitching in his face
+had altogether ceased to trouble him. Once or twice, indeed, in the
+course of the afternoon he happened to glance casually at the
+looking-glass above the drawing-room fireplace (those were the
+pre-Morrisian days when overmantels as yet were not), and he saw to his
+great comfort that his face was resting in its usual handsome repose and
+peacefulness. A bright, earnest, strong face it was, with all the
+promise of greatness already in it; and so Hetty thought as she looked
+up at it from the low footstool where she sat by his side, and half
+whispered into his ear the little timid confidences of early betrothal.
+
+Five o'clock tea came all too soon, and then Arthur felt he must really
+be going and must get home to do a little reading. On his way, he
+fancied once he saw a street boy start in evident surprise as he
+approached him, but it might be fancy; and when the street boy stuck his
+tongue into the corner of his cheek and uttered derisive shouts from a
+safe distance, Arthur concluded he was only doing after the manner of
+his kind out of pure gratuitous insolence. He went home to his lodgings
+and sat down to an hour's work; but after he had read up several pages
+more of "Stuckey on Gout," he laid down the book in disgust, and took
+out Helmholtz and Joule instead, indulging himself with a little
+desultory reading in his favourite study of the higher physics.
+
+As he read and read the theory of correlation, the great idea as to the
+real nature of energy, which had escaped all these learned physicists,
+and which was then slowly forming itself in his own mind, grew gradually
+clearer and clearer still before his mental vision. Helmholtz was wrong
+here, because he had not thoroughly appreciated the disjunctive nature
+of electric energy; Joule was wrong here, because he had failed to
+understand the real antithesis between potential and kinetic. He laid
+down the books, paced up and down the room thoughtfully, and beheld the
+whole concrete theory of interrelation embodying itself visibly before
+his very eyes. At last he grew fired with the stupendous grandeur of his
+own conception, seized a quire of foolscap, and sat down eagerly at the
+table to give written form to the splendid phantom that was floating
+before him in so distinct a fashion. He would make a great name, for
+Hetty's sake; and, when he had made it, his dearest reward would be to
+know that Hetty was proud of him.
+
+Hour after hour he sat and wrote, as if inspired, at his little table.
+The landlady knocked at the door to tell him dinner was ready, but he
+would have none of it, he said; let her bring him up a good cup of
+strong tea and a few plain biscuits. So he wrote and wrote in feverish
+haste, drinking cup after cup of tea, and turning off page after page of
+foolscap, till long past midnight. The whole theory had come up so
+distinctly before his mind's eye, under the exceptional exaltation of
+first love, and the powerful stimulus of the day's excitement, that he
+wrote it off as though he had it by heart; omitting only the
+mathematical calculations, which he left blank, not because he had not
+got them clearly in his head, but because he would not stop his flying
+pen to copy them all out then and there at full length, for fear of
+losing the main thread of his argument. When he had finished, about
+forty sheets of foolscap lay huddled together on the table before him,
+written in a hasty hand, and scarcely legible; but they contained the
+first rough draft and central principle of that immortal work, the
+"Transcendental Dynamics."
+
+Arthur Greatrex rose from the table, where his grand discovery was first
+formulated, well satisfied with himself and his theory, and fully
+determined to submit it shortly to the critical judgment of the Royal
+Society. As he took up his bedroom candle, however, he went over to the
+mantelpiece to kiss Hetty's photograph, as he always did (for even men
+of science are human) every evening before retiring. He lifted the
+portrait reverently to his lips, and was just about to kiss it, when
+suddenly in the mirror before him he saw the same horrible mocking face
+which had greeted him so unexpectedly that morning on the hospital
+staircase. It was a face of inhuman devilry; the face of a medi�val
+demon, a hideous, grinning, distorted ghoul, a very caricature and
+insult upon the features of humanity. In his dismay he dropped the frame
+and the photograph, shivering the glass that covered it into a thousand
+atoms. Summoning up all his resolution, he looked again. Yes, there was
+no mistaking it: a face was gibing and jeering at him from the mirror
+with diabolical ingenuity of distorted hideousness; a disgusting face
+which even the direct evidence of his senses would scarcely permit him
+to believe was really the reflection of his own features. It was
+overpowering, it was awful, it was wholly incredible; and, utterly
+unmanned by the sight, he sank back into his easy-chair and buried his
+face bitterly between the shelter of his trembling hands.
+
+At that moment Arthur Greatrex felt sure he knew the real meaning of the
+horror that surrounded him. He was going mad.
+
+For ten minutes or more he sat there motionless, hot tears boiling up
+from his eyes and falling silently between his fingers. Then at last he
+rose nervously from his seat, and reached down a volume from the shelf
+behind him. It was Prang's "Treatise on the Physiology of the Brain." He
+turned it over hurriedly for a few pages, till he came to the passage he
+was looking for.
+
+"Ah, I thought so," he said to himself, half aloud: "'Premonitory
+symptoms: facial distortions; infirmity of the will; inability to
+distinguish muscular movements.' Let's see what Prang has to say about
+it. 'A not uncommon concomitant of these early stages'--Great heavens,
+how calmly the man talks about losing your reason!-'is an unconscious or
+semi-conscious tendency to produce a series of extraordinary facial
+distortions. At times, the sufferer is not aware of the movements thus
+initiated; at other times they are quite voluntary, and are accompanied
+by bodily gestures of contempt or derision for passing strangers.' Why,
+that's what must have happened with that boy this morning! 'Symptoms of
+this character usually result from excessive activity of the brain, and
+are most frequent among mathematicians or scholars who have overworked
+their intellectual faculties. They may be regarded as the immediate
+precursors of acute dementia.' Acute dementia! Oh, Hetty! Oh, heavens!
+What have I done to deserve such a blow as this?"
+
+He laid his face between his hands once more, and sobbed like a
+broken-hearted child for a few minutes. Then he turned accidentally
+towards his tumbled manuscript. "No, no," he said to himself,
+reassuringly; "I can't be going mad. My brain was never clearer in my
+life. I couldn't have done a piece of good work like that, bristling
+with equations and figures and formulas, if my head was really giving
+way. I seemed to grasp the subject as I never grasped it in my life
+before. I never worked so well at Cambridge; this is a discovery, a
+genuine discovery. It's impossible that a man who was going mad could
+ever see anything so visibly and distinctly as I see that universal
+principle. Let's look again at what Prang has to say upon that subject."
+
+He turned over the volume a few pages further, and glanced lightly at
+the contents at the head of each chapter, till at last a few words in
+the title struck his eye, and he hurried on to the paragraph they
+indicated, with feverish eagerness. As he did so, these were the words
+which met his bewildered gaze.
+
+"In certain cases, especially among men of unusual intelligence and high
+attainments, the exaltation of incipient madness takes rather the guise
+of a scientific or philosophic enthusiasm. Instead of imagining himself
+the possessor of untold wealth, or the absolute despot of a servile
+people, the patient deludes himself with the belief that he has made a
+great discovery or lighted upon a splendid generalization of the deepest
+and most universal importance. He sees new truths crowding upon him
+with the most startling and vivid objectivity. He perceives intimate
+relations of things which he never before suspected. He destroys at one
+blow the Newtonian theory of gravitation; he discovers obvious flaws in
+the nebular hypothesis of Laplace; he gives a scholar's-mate to Kant in
+the very fundamental points of the 'Critique of Pure Reason.' The more
+serious the attack, the more utterly convinced is the patient of the
+exceptional clearness of his own intelligence at that particular moment.
+He writes pamphlets whose scientific value he ridiculously
+over-estimates; and he is sure to be very angry with any one who tries
+rationally to combat his newly found authority. Mathematical reasoners
+are specially liable to this form of incipient mental disease, which,
+when combined with the facial distortions already alluded to in a
+previous section, is peculiarly apt to terminate in acute dementia."
+
+"Acute dementia again!" Arthur Greatrex cried with a gesture of horror,
+flinging the book from him as if it were a poisonous serpent. "Acute
+dementia, acute dementia, acute dementia; nothing but acute dementia
+ahead of me, whichever way I happen to turn. Oh, this is too horrible! I
+shall never be able to marry Hetty! And yet I shall never be able to
+break it to Hetty! Great heavens, that such a phantom as this should
+have risen between me and paradise only since this very morning!"
+
+In his agony he caught up the papers on which he had written the rough
+draft of his grand discovery, and crumpled them up fiercely in his
+fingers. "The cursed things!" he groaned between his teeth, tossing them
+with a gesture of impatient disgust into the waste-paper basket; "how
+could I ever have deluded myself into thinking I had hit off-hand upon a
+grand truth which had escaped such men as Helmholtz, and Mayer, and
+Joule, and Thomson! The thing's preposterous upon the very face of it; I
+must be going mad, indeed, ever to have dreamt of it!"
+
+He took up his candle once more, kissed the portrait in the broken frame
+with intense fervour a dozen times over, and then went up gloomily into
+his own bedroom. There he did not attempt to undress, but merely pulled
+off his boots, lay down in his clothes upon the bed, and hastily blew
+out the candle. For a long time he lay tossing and turning in
+unspeakable terror; but at last, after perhaps two hours or so, he fell
+into a troubled sleep, and dreamed a hideous nightmare, in which
+somebody or other in shadowy outlines was trying perpetually to tear him
+away by main force from poor pale and weeping Hetty.
+
+It was daylight when Arthur woke again, and he lay for some time upon
+his bed, thinking over his last night's scare, which seemed much less
+serious, as such things always do, now that the sun had risen upon it.
+After a while his mind got round to the energy question; and, as he
+thought it over once more, the conviction forced itself afresh upon him
+that he was right upon the matter after all, and that if he was going
+mad there was at least method in his madness. So firmly was he convinced
+upon this point now (though he recognized that that very certainty might
+be merely a symptom of his coming malady) that he got up hurriedly,
+before the lodging-house servant came to clean up his little
+sitting-room, so as to rescue his crumpled foolscap from the waste-paper
+basket. After that, a bath and breakfast almost made him laugh at his
+evening terrors.
+
+All the morning Arthur Greatrex sat down at his table again, working in
+the algebraical calculations which he had omitted from his paper
+overnight, and finishing it in full form as if for presentation to a
+learned society. But he did not mean now to offer it to any society: he
+had a far deeper and more personal interest in the matter at present
+than that. He wanted to settle first of all the question whether he was
+going mad or not. Afterwards, there would be plenty of time to settle
+such minor theoretical problems as the general physical constitution of
+the universe.
+
+As soon as he had finished his calculations he took the paper in his
+hands, and went out with it to make two calls on scientific
+acquaintances. The first man he called upon was that distinguished
+specialist, Professor Linklight, one of the greatest authorities of his
+own day on all questions of molecular physics. Poor man! he is almost
+forgotten now, for he died ten years ago; and his scientific reputation
+was, after all, of that flashy sort which bases itself chiefly upon
+giving good dinners to leading fellows of the Royal Society. But fifteen
+years ago Professor Linklight, with his cut-and-dried dogmatic notions,
+and his narrow technical accuracy, was universally considered the
+principal physical philosopher in all England. To him, then, Arthur
+Greatrex--a far deeper and clearer thinker--took in all humility the
+first manuscript of his marvellous discovery; not to ask him whether it
+was true or not, but to find out whether it was physical science at all
+or pure insanity. The professor received him kindly; and when Arthur,
+who had of course his own reasons for attempting a little modest
+concealment, asked him to look over a friend's paper for him, with a
+view to its presentation to the Royal Society, he cheerfully promised to
+do his best. "Though you will admit, my dear Mr. Greatrex," he said with
+his blandest smile, "that your friend's manuscript certainly does not
+err on the side of excessive brevity." From Linklight's, Arthur walked
+on tremulously to the house of another great scientific magnate, Dr.
+Warminster, of being the first living authority on the treatment of the
+insane in the United Kingdom. Before Dr. Warminster, Arthur made no
+attempt to conceal his apprehensions. He told out all his symptoms and
+fears without reserve, even exaggerating them a little, as a man is
+prone to do through over-anxiety not to put too favourable a face upon
+his own ailments. Dr. Warminster listened attentively and with a
+gathering interest to all that Arthur told him, and at the end of his
+account he shook his head gloomily, and answered in a very grave and
+sympathetic tone.
+
+"My dear Greatrex," he said gently, holding his arm with a kindly
+pressure, "I should be dealing wrongly with you if I did not candidly
+tell you that your case gives ground for very serious apprehensions. You
+are a young man, and with steady attention to curative means and
+surroundings, it is possible that you may ward off this threatened
+danger. Society, amusement, relaxation, complete cessation of scientific
+work, absence, as far as possible, of mental anxiety in any form, may
+enable you to tide over the turning point. But that there is danger
+threatened, it would be unkind and untrue not to warn you. It is very
+unusual for a patient to consult us in person about these matters. More
+often it is the friends who notice the coming change; but, as you ask me
+directly for an opinion, I can't help telling you that I regard your
+case as not without real cause for the strictest care and for a
+preventive regimen."
+
+Arthur thanked him for the numerous directions he gave as to things
+which should be done or things which should be avoided, and hurried out
+into the street with his brain swimming and reeling. "Absence of mental
+anxiety!" he said to himself bitterly. "How calmly they talk about
+mental anxiety! How can I possibly be free from anxiety when I know I
+may go mad at any moment, and that the blow would kill Hetty outright?
+For myself, I should not care a farthing; but for Hetty! It is too
+terrible."
+
+He had not the heart to call at the Aburys' that afternoon, though he
+had promised to do so; and he tortured himself with the thought that
+Hetty would think him neglectful. He could not call again while the
+present suspense lasted; and if his worst fears were confirmed he could
+never call again, except once, to take leave of Hetty for ever. For,
+deeply as Arthur Greatrex loved her, he loved her too well ever to dream
+of marrying her if the possible shadow of madness was to cloud her
+future life with its perpetual presence. Better she should bear the
+shock, even if it killed her at once, than that both should live in
+ceaseless apprehension of that horrible possibility, and should become
+the parents of children upon whom that hereditary curse might rest for a
+lifetime, reflecting itself back with the added sting of conscientious
+remorse on the father who had brought them into the world against his
+own clear judgment of right and justice.
+
+Next morning Arthur went round once more to Professor Linklight's. The
+professor had promised to read through the paper immediately, and give
+his opinion of its chances for presentation to the Royal Society. He was
+sitting at his breakfast-table, in his flowered dressing-gown and
+slippers, when Arthur called upon him, and, with a cup of coffee in one
+hand, was actually skimming the last few pages through his critical
+eyeglass as his visitor entered.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Greatrex!" he said, with one of his most gracious
+smiles, indicative of the warm welcome attended by acknowledged wisdom
+towards rising talent. "You see I have been reading your friend's paper,
+as I promised. Well, my dear sir, not to put too fine a point upon it,
+it won't hold water. In fact, it's a mere rigmarole. Excuse my asking
+you, Greatrex, but have you any idea, my dear fellow, whether your
+friend is inclined to be a little cracky?"
+
+Arthur swallowed a groan with the greatest difficulty, and answered in
+as unconcerned a tone as possible, "Well, to tell you the truth, Mr.
+Linklight, some doubts _have_ been cast upon his perfect sanity."
+
+"Ah, I should have thought so," the professor went on in his airiest
+manner; "I should have thought so. The fact is, this paper is fitter for
+the _Transactions_ of the Colney Hatch Academy than for those of the
+Royal Society. It has a delusive outer appearance of physical thinking,
+but there's no real meaning in it of any sort. It's gassy,
+unsubstantial, purely imaginative." And the professor waved his hand in
+the air to indicate its utter gaseousness. "If you were to ask my own
+opinion about it, I should say it's the sort of thing that might be
+produced by a young man of some mathematical training with a very
+superficial knowledge of modern physics, just as he was on the point of
+lapsing into complete insanity. It's the maddest bit of writing that has
+ever yet fallen under my critical notice."
+
+"Your opinion is of course conclusive," Arthur answered with unfeigned
+humility, his eyes almost bursting with the tears he would not let come
+to the surface. "It will be a great disappointment to my friend, but I
+have no doubt he will accept your verdict."
+
+"Not a bit of it, my dear sir," the professor put in quickly. "Not a bit
+of it. These crazy fellows always stick to their own opinions, and think
+you a perfect fool for disagreeing with them. Mark my words, Mr.
+Greatrex, your friend will still go on believing, in spite of
+everything, that his roundabout reasoning upon that preposterous
+square-root-of-Pi theorem is sound mathematics."
+
+And Arthur, looking within, felt with a glow of horror that the theorem
+in question seemed to him at that moment more obviously true and certain
+in all its deductions than it had ever done before since the first day
+that he conceived it. How very mad he must be after all.
+
+He thanked Professor Linklight as well as he was able for his kindness
+in looking over the paper, and groped his way blindly through the
+passage to the front door and out into the square. Thence he staggered
+home wearily, convinced that it was all over between him and Hetty, and
+that he must make up his mind forthwith to his horrible destiny.
+
+If he had only known at that moment that forty years earlier Professor
+Linklight had used almost the same words about Young's theory of
+undulations, and had since used them about every new discovery from that
+day to the one on which he then saw him, he might have attached less
+importance than he actually did to this supposed final proof of his own
+insanity.
+
+As Arthur entered his lodgings he hung his hat up on the stand in the
+passage. There was a little strip of mirror in the middle of the stand,
+and glancing at it casually he saw once more that awful face--his
+own--distorted and almost diabolical, which he had learnt so soon to
+hate instinctively as if it were a felon's and a murderer's. He rushed
+away wildly into his little sitting-room, and flung his manuscript on
+the table, almost without observing that his friend Freeling, the rising
+physiologist, was quietly seated on the sofa opposite.
+
+"What's this, Arthur?" Freeling asked, taking it up carelessly and
+glancing at the title. "You don't mean to say that you've finally
+written out that splendid idea of yours about the interrelations of
+energy?"
+
+"Yes, I have, Harry: I have, and I wish to heaven I hadn't, for it's all
+mad and silly and foolish and meaningless!"
+
+"If it is, then I'm mad too, my dear fellow, for I think it's the most
+convincing thing in physics I ever listened to. Let me have the
+manuscript to look over, and see how you've worked out those beautiful
+calculations about the square root of Pi, will you?"
+
+"Take the thing, for heaven's sake, and leave me, Harry, for if I'm not
+left alone I shall break down and cry before you." And as he spoke he
+buried his head in his arm and sobbed like a woman.
+
+Dr. Freeling knew Arthur was in love, and was aware that people
+sometimes act very unaccountably under such circumstances; so he did the
+wisest thing to be done then and there: he grasped his friend's arm
+gently with his hand, spoke never a word, and, taking up his hat and
+the manuscript, walked quietly out into the passage. Then he told the
+landlady to make Mr. Greatrex a strong cup of tea, with a dash of brandy
+in it, and turned away, leaving Arthur to solitude and his own
+reflections.
+
+That evening's post brought Arthur Greatrex two letters, which finally
+completed his utter prostration. The first he opened was from Dr. Abury.
+He broke the envelope with a terrible misgiving, and read the letter
+through with a deepening and sickening feeling of horror. It was not he
+alone, then, who had distorted the secret of his own incipient insanity.
+Dr. Abury's practised eye had also detected the rising symptoms. The
+doctor wrote kindly and with evident grief; but there was no mistaking
+the firm purport of his intentions. Conferring this morning with his
+professional friend Warminster, a case had been mentioned to him,
+without a name, which he at once recognized as Arthur's. He recalled
+certain symptoms he had himself observed, and his suspicions were thus
+vividly aroused. Happening accidentally to follow Arthur in the street
+he was convinced that his surmise was correct, and he thought it his
+duty both to inform Arthur of the danger that encompassed him, and to
+assure him that, deeply as it grieved him to withdraw the consent he had
+so gladly given, he could not allow his only daughter to marry a man
+bearing on his face the evident marks of an insane tendency. The letter
+contained much more of regret and condolence; but that was the pith that
+Arthur Greatrex picked out of it all through the blinding tears, that
+dimmed his vision.
+
+The second letter was from Hetty. Half guessing its contents, he had
+left it purposely till the last, and he tore it open now with a fearful
+sinking feeling in his bosom. It was indeed a heart-broken,
+heart-breaking letter. What could be the secret which papa would not
+tell her? Why had not Arthur come yesterday? Why could she never marry
+him? Why was papa so cruel as not to tell her the reason? He couldn't
+have done anything in the slightest degree dishonourable, far less
+anything wicked: of that she felt sure; but, if not, what could be this
+horrible, mysterious, unknown barrier that was so suddenly raised
+between them? "Do write, dearest Arthur, and relieve me from this
+terrible, incomprehensible suspense; do let me know what has happened to
+make papa so determined against you. I could bear to lose you--at least
+I could bear it as other women have done--but I can't bear this awful
+uncertainty, this awful doubt as to your love or your constancy. For
+heaven's sake, darling, send me a note somehow! send me a line to tell
+me you love me. Your heart-broken
+
+  "HETTY."
+
+Arthur took his hat, and, unable to endure this agony, set out at once
+for the Aburys'. When he reached the door, the servant who answered his
+ring at the bell told him he could not see the doctor; he was engaged
+with two other doctors in a consultation about Miss Hetty. What was the
+matter with Miss Hetty, then? What, didn't he know that? Oh, Miss Hetty
+had had a fit, and Dr. Freeling and Dr. MacKinlay had been called in to
+see her. Arthur did not wait for a moment, but walked upstairs
+unannounced, and into the consulting room.
+
+Was it a very serious matter? Yes, Freeling answered, very serious. It
+seemed Miss Abury had had a great shock--a great shock to her
+affections--which, he added in a lower voice, "you yourself can perhaps
+best explain to me. She will certainly have a long illness. Perhaps she
+may never recover."
+
+"Come out into the conservatory, Harry," said Arthur to his friend. "I
+can tell you there what it is all about."
+
+In a few words Arthur told him the nature of the shock, but without
+describing the particular symptoms on which the opinion of his supposed
+approaching insanity was based. Freeling listened with an incredulous
+smile, and at the end he said to his friend gently, "My dear Arthur, I
+wish you had told me all this before. If you had done so, we might have
+saved Miss Abury a shock which may perhaps be fatal. You are no more
+going mad than I am; on the contrary, you're about the sanest and most
+clear-headed fellow of my acquaintance. But these mad-doctors are always
+finding madness everywhere. If you had come to me and told me the
+symptoms that troubled you, I should soon have set you right again in
+your own opinion. To have gone to Warminster was most unfortunate, but
+it can't be helped now. What we have to do at present is to take care of
+Miss Abury."
+
+Arthur shook his head sadly. "Ah," he said, "you don't know the real
+gravity of the symptoms I am suffering from. I shall tell you all about
+them some other time. However, as you say, what we have to think about
+now is Hetty. Can you let me see her? I am sure if I could see her it
+would reassure her and do her good."
+
+Dr. Abury was at first very unwilling to let Arthur visit Hetty, who was
+now lying unconscious on the sofa in her own boudoir; but Freeling's
+opinion that it might possibly do her good at last prevailed with him,
+and he gave his permission grudgingly.
+
+Arthur went into the room silently and took his seat beside the low
+couch where the motherless girl was lying. Her face was very white, and
+her hands pale and bloodless. He took one hand in his: the pulse was
+hardly perceptible. He laid it down upon her breast, and leaned back to
+watch for any sign of returning life in her pallid cheek and closed
+eyelids.
+
+For hours and hours he sat there watching, and no sign came. Dr. Abury
+sat at the bottom of the couch, watching with him; and as they watched,
+Arthur felt from time to time that his face was again twitching
+horribly. However, he had only thoughts for one thing now: would Hetty
+die or would she recover? The servants brought them a little cake and
+wine. They sat and drank in silence, looking at one another, but each
+absorbed in his own thoughts, and speaking never a word for good or
+evil.
+
+At last Hetty's eyes opened. Arthur noticed the change first, and took
+her hand in his gently. Her staring gaze fell upon him for a moment, and
+she asked feebly, "Arthur, Arthur, do you still love me?"
+
+"Love you, Hetty? With all my heart and soul, as I have always loved
+you!"
+
+She smiled, and said nothing. Dr. Abury gave her a little wine in a
+teaspoon, and she drank it quietly. Then she shut her eyes again, but
+this time she was sleeping.
+
+All night Arthur watched still by the bedside where they put her a
+little later, and Dr. Abury and a nurse watched with him. In the morning
+she woke slightly better, and when she saw Arthur still there, she
+smiled again, and said that if he was with her, she was happy. When
+Freeling came to inquire after the patient, he found her so much
+stronger, and Arthur so worn with fear and sleeplessness, that he
+insisted upon carrying off his friend in his brougham to his own house,
+and giving him a slight restorative. He might come back at once, he
+said; but only after he had had a dose of mixture, a glass of brandy and
+seltzer, and at least a mouthful of something for breakfast.
+
+As Freeling was drawing the cork of the seltzer, Arthur's eye happened
+to light on a monkey, which was chained to a post in the little area
+plot outside the consulting-room. Arthur was accustomed to see monkeys
+there, for Freeling often had invalids from the Zoo to observe side by
+side with human patients; but this particular monkey fascinated him even
+in his present shattered state of nerves, because there was a something
+in its face which seemed strangely and horribly familiar to him. As he
+looked, he recognized with a feeling of unspeakable aversion what it was
+of which the monkey reminded him. It was making a series of hideous and
+apparently mocking grimaces--the very self-same grimaces which he had
+seen on his own features in the mirror during the last day or two!
+Horrible idea! He was descending to the level of the very monkeys!
+
+The more he watched, the more absolutely identical the two sets of
+grimaces appeared to him to be. Could it be fancy or was it reality? Or
+might it be one more delusion, showing that his brain was now giving way
+entirely? He rubbed his eyes, steadied his attention, and looked again
+with the deepest interest. No, he could not be mistaken. The monkey was
+acting in every respect precisely as he himself had acted.
+
+"Harry," he said, in a low and frightened tone, "look at this monkey. Is
+he mad? Tell me."
+
+"My dear Arthur," replied his friend, with just a shade of expostulation
+in his voice, "you have really got madness on the brain at present. No,
+he isn't mad at all. He's as sane as you are, and that's saying a good
+deal, I can assure you."
+
+"But, Harry, you can't have seen what he's doing. He's grimacing and
+contorting himself in the most extraordinary fashion."
+
+"Well, monkeys often do grimace, don't they?" Harry Freeling answered
+coolly. "Take this brandy and you'll soon feel better."
+
+"But they don't grimace like this one," Arthur persisted.
+
+"No, not like this one, certainly. That's why I've got him here. I'm
+going to operate upon him for it under chloroform, and cure him
+immediately."
+
+Arthur leaped from his seat like one demented. "Operate upon him, cure
+him!" he cried hastily. "What on earth do you mean, Harry?"
+
+"My dear boy, don't be so excited," said Freeling. "This suspense and
+sleeplessness have been too much for you. This is antivivisection
+carried _ad absurdum_. You don't mean to say you object to operations
+upon a monkey for his own benefit, do you? If I don't cut a nerve,
+tetanus will finally set in, and he'll die of it in great agony. Drink
+off your brandy, and you'll feel better after it."
+
+"But, Harry, what's the matter with the monkey? For heaven's sake, tell
+me!"
+
+Harry Freeling looked at his friend for the first time a little
+suspiciously. Could Warminster be right after all, and could Arthur
+really be going mad? It was so ridiculous of him to get into such a
+state of flurry about the ailments of a tame monkey, and at such a
+moment, too! "Well," he answered slowly, "the monkey has got facial
+distortions due to a slight local paralysis of the inhibitory nerves
+supplied to the buccal and pharyngeal muscles, with a tendency to end in
+tetanus. If I cut a small ganglion behind the ear, and exhibit santonin,
+the muscles will be relaxed; and though they won't act so freely as
+before, they won't jerk and grimace any longer."
+
+"Does it ever occur in human beings?" Arthur asked eagerly.
+
+"Occur in human beings? Bless my soul, yes! I've seen dozens of cases.
+Why, goodness gracious, Arthur, it's positively occurring in your own
+face at this very moment!"
+
+"I know it is," Arthur answered in an agony of suspense. "Do you think
+this twitching of mine is due to a local paralysis of the inhibitories,
+such as you speak of?"
+
+"Excuse my laughing, my dear fellow; you really do look so absurdly
+comical. No, I don't think anything about it. I know it is."
+
+"Then you believe Warminster was wrong in taking it for a symptom of
+incipient insanity?"
+
+It was Freeling's turn now to jump up in surprise. "You don't mean to
+tell me, Arthur, that that was the sole ground on which that old fool,
+Warminster, thought you were going crazy?"
+
+"He didn't see it himself," answered Arthur, with a sigh of unspeakable
+relief. "I only described it to him, and he drew his inference from what
+I told him. But the real question is this, Harry: Do you feel quite sure
+that there's nothing more than that the matter with me?"
+
+"Absolutely certain, my dear fellow. I can cure you in half an hour.
+I've done it dozens of times before, and know the thing as well as you
+know an ordinary case of scarlet fever."
+
+Arthur sighed again. "And perhaps," he said bitterly, "this terrible
+mistake may cost dear Hetty her life!"
+
+He drank off the brandy, ate a few mouthfuls of food as best he might,
+and hastened back to the Aburys'. When he got there he learned from the
+servant that Hetty was at least no worse; and with that negative comfort
+he had for the moment to content himself.
+
+Hetty's illness was long and serious; but before it was over Freeling
+was able to convince Dr. Abury of his own and his colleague's error, and
+to prove by a simple piece of surgery that Arthur's hideous grimaces
+were due to nothing worse than a purely physical impediment. The
+operation was quite a successful one; but though Greatrex's face has
+never since been liable to these curious contortions, the consequent
+relaxation of the muscles has given his features that peculiarly calm
+and almost impassive expression which everybody must have noticed upon
+them at the present day, even in moments of the greatest animation. The
+difficulty was how to break the cause of the temporary mistake to Hetty,
+and this they were unable to do until she was to a great extent
+convalescent. When once the needful explanation was over, and Arthur
+was able once more to kiss her with perfect freedom from any tinge of
+suspicion on her part, he felt that his paradise was at last attained.
+
+A few days before the deferred date fixed for their wedding, Freeling
+came into the doctor's drawing-room, where Hetty and Arthur were sitting
+together, and threw a letter with a French official stamp on its face
+down upon the table. "There," he said, "I find all the members of the
+Acad�mie des Sciences at Paris are madmen also!"
+
+Hetty smiled faintly, and said with a little earnestness in her tone,
+"Ah, Dr. Freeling, that subject has been far too serious a one for both
+of us to make it pleasant jesting."
+
+"Oh, but look here, Miss Abury," said Freeling; "I have to apologise to
+Arthur for a great liberty I have ventured to take, and I think it best
+to begin by explaining to you wherein it consisted. The fact is, before
+you were ill, Arthur had just written a paper on the interrelations of
+energy, which he showed to that pompous old nincompoop, Professor
+Linklight. Well, Linklight being one of those men who can never see an
+inch beyond his own nose, had the incomprehensible stupidity to tell him
+there was nothing in it. Thereupon your future husband, who is a modest
+and self-depreciating sort of fellow, was minded to throw it
+incontinently into the waste-paper basket. But a friend of his, Harry
+Freeling, who flatters himself that he can see an inch or two beyond his
+own nose, read it over, and recognized that it was a brilliant
+discovery. So what does he go and do--here comes in the apologetic
+matter--but get this memoir quietly translated into French, affix a
+motto to it, put it in an envelope, and send it in for the gold medal
+competition of the Acad�mie. Strange to say, the members of the Acad�mie
+turned out to be every bit as mad as the author and his friend; for I
+have just received this letter, addressed to Arthur at my house (which I
+have taken the further liberty of opening), and it informs me that the
+Acad�mie decrees its gold medal for physical discovery to M. Arthur
+Greatrex, of London, which is a subject of congratulation for us three,
+and a regular slap in the face for pompous old Linklight."
+
+Hetty seized Freeling's two hands in hers. "You have been our good
+genius, Dr. Freeling," she said with brimming eyes. "I owe Arthur to
+you; and Arthur owes me to you; and now we both owe you this. What can
+we ever do to thank you sufficiently?"
+
+Since those days Hetty and Arthur have long been married, and Dr.
+Greatrex's famous work (in its enlarged form) has been translated into
+all the civilized languages of the world, as well as into German; but to
+this moment, happy as they both are, you can read in their faces the
+lasting marks of that one terrible anxiety. To many of their friends it
+seemed afterwards a mere laughing matter; but to those two, who went
+through it, and especially to Arthur Greatrex, it is a memory too
+painful to be looked back upon even now without a thrill of terrible
+recollection.
+
+
+
+
+_MR. CHUNG._
+
+
+The first time I ever met poor Chung was at one of Mrs. Bouverie
+Barton's Thursday evening receptions in Eaton Place. Of course you know
+Mrs. Bouverie Barton, the cleverest literary hostess at this moment
+living in London. Herself a well-known novelist, she collects around her
+all the people worth knowing, at her delightful At Homes; and whenever
+you go there you are sure to meet somebody whose acquaintance is a
+treasure and an acquisition for your whole after life.
+
+Well, it so happened on one of those enjoyable Thursday evenings that I
+was sitting on the circular ottoman in the little back room with Miss
+Amelia Hogg, the famous woman's-rights advocate. Now, if there is a
+subject on earth which infinitely bores me, that subject is woman's
+rights; and if there is a person on earth who can make it absolutely
+unendurable, that person is Miss Amelia Hogg. So I let her speak on
+placidly in her own interminable manner about the fortunes of the
+Bill--she always talks as though her own pet Bill were the only Bill now
+existing on this sublunary planet--and while I interposed an occasional
+"Indeed" or "Quite so" for form's sake, I gave myself up in reality to
+digesting the conversation of two intelligent people who sat back to
+back with us on the other side of the round ottoman.
+
+"Yes," said one of the speakers, in a peculiarly soft silvery voice
+which contrasted oddly with Miss Hogg's querulous treble, "his loss is a
+very severe one to contemporary philosophy. His book on the "Physiology
+of Perception" is one of the most masterly pieces of analytic work I
+have ever met with in the whole course of my psychological reading. It
+was to me, I confess, who approached it fresh from the school of
+Schelling and Hegel, a perfect revelation of _� posteriori_ thinking. I
+shall never cease to regret that he did not live long enough to complete
+the second volume."
+
+Just at this point Miss Hogg had come to a pause in her explanation of
+the seventy-first clause of the Bill, and I stole a look round the
+corner to see who my philosophic neighbour might happen to be. An Oxford
+don, no doubt, I said to myself, or a young Cambridge professor, freshly
+crammed to the throat with all the learning of the Moral Science Tripos.
+
+Imagine my surprise when, on glancing casually at the silvery-voiced
+speaker, I discovered him to be a full-blown Chinaman! Yes, a
+yellow-skinned, almond-eyed, Mongolian-featured Chinaman, with a long
+pigtail hanging down his back, and attired in the official amber silk
+robe and purple slippers of a mandarin of the third grade, and the
+silver button. My curiosity was so fully aroused by this strange
+discovery that I determined to learn something more about so curious a
+product of an alien civilization; and therefore, after a few minutes, I
+managed to give Miss Amelia Hogg the slip by drawing in young Harry
+Farquhar the artist at the hundred-and-twentieth section, and making my
+way quietly across the room to Mrs. Bouverie Barton.
+
+"The name of that young Chinaman?" our hostess said in answer to my
+question. "Oh, certainly; he is Mr. Chung, of the Chinese Legation. A
+most intelligent and well-educated young man, with a great deal of taste
+for European literature. Introduce you?--of course, this minute." And
+she led the way back to where my Oriental phenomenon was still sitting,
+deep as ever in philosophical problems with Professor Woolstock, a
+spectacled old gentleman of German aspect, who was evidently pumping him
+thoroughly with a view to the materials for Volume Forty of his
+forthcoming great work on "Ethnical Psychology."
+
+I sat by Mr. Chung for the greater part of what was left of that
+evening. From the very first he exercised a sort of indescribable
+fascination over me. His English had hardly a trace of foreign accent,
+and his voice was one of the sweetest and most exquisitely modulated
+that I have ever heard. When he looked at you, his deep calm eyes
+bespoke at once the very essence of transparent sincerity. Before the
+evening was over, he had told me the whole history of his education and
+his past life. The son of a well-to-do Pekin mandarin, of distinctly
+European tastes, he had early passed all his examinations in China, and
+had been selected by the Celestial Government as one of the first batch
+of students sent to Europe to acquire the tongues and the sciences of
+the Western barbarians. Chung's billet was to England; and here, or in
+France, he had lived with a few intervals ever since he first came to
+man's estate. He had picked up our language quickly; had taken a degree
+at London University; and had made himself thoroughly at home in English
+literature. In fact, he was practically an Englishman in everything but
+face and clothing. His naturally fine intellect had assimilated European
+thought and European feeling with extraordinary ease, and it was often
+almost impossible in talking with him to remember that he was not one of
+ourselves. If you shut your eyes and listened, you heard a pleasant,
+cultivated, intelligent young Englishman; when you opened them again, it
+was always a fresh surprise to find yourself conversing with a genuine
+yellow-faced pig-tailed Chinaman, in the full costume of the peacock's
+feather.
+
+"You could never go back to live in China?" I said to him inquiringly
+after a time. "You could never endure life among your own people after
+so long a residence in civilized Europe?"
+
+"My dear sir," he answered with a slight shudder of horror, "you do not
+reflect what my position actually is. My Government may recall me any
+day. I am simply at their mercy, and I must do as I am bidden."
+
+"But you would not like China," I put in.
+
+"Like it!" he exclaimed with a gesture which for a Chinaman I suppose
+one must call violent. "I should abhor it. It would be a living death.
+You who have never been in China can have no idea of what an awful
+misfortune it would be for a man who has acquired civilized habits and
+modes of thought to live among such a set of more than medi�val
+barbarians as my countrymen still remain at the present day. Oh no; God
+grant I may never have to return there permanently, for it would be more
+than I could endure. Even a short visit to Pekin is bad enough; the
+place reeks of cruelty, jobbery, and superstition from end to end; and I
+always breathe more freely when I have once more got back on to the deck
+of a European steamer that flies the familiar British flag."
+
+"Then you are not patriotic," I ventured to say.
+
+"Patriotic!" he replied with a slight curl of the lip; "how can a man be
+patriotic to such a mass of corruption and abomination as our Chinese
+Government? I can understand a patriotic Russian, a patriotic Egyptian,
+nay, even a patriotic Turk; but a patriotic Chinaman--why, the very
+notion is palpably absurd. Listen, my dear sir; you ask me if I could
+live in China. No, I couldn't; and for the best of all possible
+reasons--they wouldn't let me. You don't know what the furious prejudice
+and blind superstition of that awful country really is. Before I had
+been there three months they would accuse me either of foreign
+practices or, what comes to much the same thing, of witchcraft; and
+they would put me to death by one of their most horrible torturing
+punishments--atrocities which I could not even mention in an English
+drawing-room. That is the sort of Damocles' sword that is always hanging
+over the head of every Europeanized Chinaman who returns against his own
+free will to his native land."
+
+I was startled and surprised. It seemed so natural and simple to be
+talking under Mrs. Bouverie Barton's big chandelier with this
+interesting young man, and yet so impossible for a moment to connect him
+in thought with all the terrible things that one had read in books about
+the prisons and penal laws of China. That a graduate of London
+University, a philosopher learned in all the political wisdom of
+Ricardo, Mill, and Herbert Spencer, should really be subject to that
+barbaric code of abominable tortures, was more than one could positively
+realize. I hesitated a moment, and then I said, "But of course they will
+never recall you."
+
+"I trust not," he said quietly; "I pray not. Very likely they will let
+me stop here all my lifetime. I am an assistant interpreter to the
+Embassy, in which capacity I am useful to Pekin; whereas in any home
+appointment I would of course be an utter failure, a manifest
+impossibility. But there is really no accounting for the wild vagaries
+and caprices of the Vermilion Pencil. For aught I know to the contrary,
+I might even be recalled to-morrow. If once they suspect a man of
+European sympathies, their first idea is to cut off his head. They
+regard it as you would regard the first plague-spot of cholera or
+small-pox in a great city."
+
+"Heaven forbid that they should ever recall you," I said earnestly; for
+already I had taken a strong fancy to his strange phenomenon of Western
+education grafted on an immemorial Eastern stock; and I had read enough
+of China to know that what he said about his probable fate if he
+returned there permanently was nothing more than the literal truth. The
+bare idea of such a catastrophe was too horrible to be realized for a
+moment in Eaton Place.
+
+As we drove home in our little one-horse brougham that evening, my wife
+and Effie were very anxious to learn what manner of man my Chinese
+acquaintance might really be; and when I told them what a charming
+person I had found him, they were both inclined rather to laugh at me
+for my enthusiastic description. Effie, in particular, jeered much at
+the notion of an intelligent and earnest-minded Chinaman. "You know,
+Uncle darling," she said in her bewitching way, "all your geese are
+always swans. Every woman you meet is absolutely beautiful, and every
+man is perfectly delightful--till Auntie and I have seen them."
+
+"Perfectly true, Effie," I answered; "it is an amiable weakness of mine,
+after all."
+
+However, before the week was out Effie and Marian between them would
+have it that I must call upon Chung and ask him to dine with us at
+Kensington Park Terrace. Their curiosity was piqued, for one thing; and
+for another thing, they thought it rather the cheese in these days of
+expansive cosmopolitanism to be on speaking terms with a Chinese
+_attach�_. "Japanese are cheap," said Effie, "horribly cheap of late
+years--a perfect drug in the market; but a Chinaman is still, thank
+Heaven, at a social premium." Now, though I am an obedient enough
+husband, as husbands go, I don't always accede to Marian's wishes in
+these matters; but everybody takes it for granted that Effie's will is
+law. Effie, I may mention parenthetically, is more than a daughter to
+us, for she is poor Tom's only child; and of course everybody connected
+with dear Tom is doubly precious to us now, as you may easily imagine.
+So when Effie had made up her mind that Chung was to dine with us, the
+thing was settled; and I called at his rooms and duly invited him, to
+the general satisfaction of everybody concerned.
+
+The dinner was a very pleasant one, and, for a wonder, Effie and Marian
+both coincided entirely in my hastily formed opinion of Mr. Chung. His
+mellow silvery voice, his frank truthful manner, his perfect freedom
+from self-consciousness, all pleased and impressed those stern critics,
+and by the end of the evening they were both quite as much taken with
+his delightful personality as I myself had originally been. One link
+leads on to another; and the end of it all was that when we went down
+for our summer villeggiatura to Abbot's Norbury, nothing would please
+Marian but that Mr. Chung must be invited down as one of our party. He
+came willingly enough, and for five or six weeks we had as pleasant a
+time together as any four people over spent. Chung was a perfect
+encyclop�dia of information, while his good humour and good spirits
+never for a moment failed him under any circumstances whatsoever.
+
+One day we had made up a little private picnic to Norbury Edge, and were
+sitting together after luncheon under the shade of the big ash tree,
+when the conversation happened to turn by accident on the small feet of
+Chinese ladies. I had often noticed that Chung was very reticent about
+China; he did not like talking about his native country; and he was most
+pleased and most at home when we treated him most like a European born.
+Evidently he hated the provincialism of the Flowery Land, and loved to
+lose his identity in the wider culture of a Western civilization.
+
+"How funny it will be," said Effie, "to see Mrs. Chung's tiny feet when
+you bring her to London. I suppose one of these days, on one of your
+flying visits to Pekin, you will take to yourself a wife in your
+country?"
+
+"No," Chung answered, with quiet dignity; "I shall never marry--that I
+have quite decided in my own mind."
+
+"Oh, don't say that," Marian put in quickly; "I hate to hear men say
+they'll never marry. It is such a terrible mistake. They become so
+selfish, and frumpish, and old-bachelorish." Dear Marian has a high
+idea of the services she has rendered to society in saving her own
+fortunate husband from this miserable and deplorable condition.
+
+"Perhaps so," Chung replied quietly. "No doubt what you say is true as a
+rule. But, for my own part, I could never marry a Chinawoman; I am too
+thoroughly Europeanized for that; we should have absolutely no tastes or
+sympathies in common. You don't know what my countrywomen are like, Mrs.
+Walters."
+
+"Ah, no," said my wife contemplatively; "I suppose your people are all
+heathens. Why, goodness gracious, Mr. Chung, if it comes to that, I
+suppose really you are a heathen yourself!"
+
+Chung parried the question gracefully. "Don't you know," said he, "what
+Lord Chesterfield answered to the lady who asked him what religion he
+professed? 'Madam, the religion to which all wise men belong.' 'And what
+is that?' said she. 'Madam, no wise man ever says.'"
+
+"Never mind Lord Chesterfield," said Effie, smiling, "but let us come
+back to the future Mrs. Chung. I'm quite disappointed you won't marry a
+Chinawoman; but at any rate I suppose you'll marry somebody?"
+
+"Well, not a European, of course," Marian put in.
+
+"Oh, of course not," Chung echoed with true Oriental imperturbability.
+
+"Why _of course_?" Effie asked half unconsciously; and yet the very
+unconsciousness with which she asked the question showed in itself that
+she instinctively felt the gulf as much as any of us. If Chung had been
+a white man instead of a yellow one, she would hardly have discussed the
+question at issue with so much simplicity and obvious innocence.
+
+"Well, I will tell you why," Chung answered. "Because, even supposing
+any European lady were to consent to become my wife--which is in the
+first place eminently improbable--I could never think of putting her in
+the terribly false position that she would have to occupy under
+existing circumstances. To begin with, her place in English society
+would be a peculiar and a trying one. But that is not all. You must
+remember that I am still a subject of the Chinese Empire, and a member
+of the Chinese Civil Service. I may any day be recalled to China, and of
+course--I say 'of course' this time advisedly--it would be absolutely
+impossible for me to take an English wife to Pekin with me. So I am
+placed in this awkward dilemma. I would never care to marry anybody
+except a European lady; and to marry a European lady would be an act of
+injustice to her which I could never dream of committing. But
+considering the justifiable contempt which all Europeans rightly feel
+for us poor John Chinamen, I don't think it probable in any case that
+the temptation is at all likely to arise. And so, if you please, as the
+newspapers always put it, 'the subject then dropped.'"
+
+We all saw that Chung was in earnest as to his wish that no more should
+be said about the matter, and we respected his feelings accordingly; but
+that evening, as we sat smoking in the arbour after the ladies had
+retired, I said to him quietly, "Tell me, Chung, if you really dislike
+China so very much, and are so anxious not to return there, why don't
+you throw off your allegiance altogether, become a British subject, and
+settle down among us for good and all?"
+
+"My dear fellow," he said, smiling, "you don't think of the
+difficulties, I may say the impossibilities, in the way of any such plan
+as you propose. It is easy enough for a European to throw off his
+nationality whenever he chooses; it is a very different thing for an
+Asiatic to do so. Moreover, I am a member of a Legation. My Government
+would never willingly let me become a naturalized Englishman; and if I
+tried to manage it against their will they would demand my extradition,
+and would carry their point, too, as a matter of international courtesy,
+for one nation could never interfere with the accredited representative
+of another, or with any of his suite. Even if I were to abscond and get
+rid of my personality altogether, what would be the use of it? Nobody in
+England could find any employment for a Chinaman. I have no property of
+my own; I depend entirely upon my salary for support; my position is
+therefore quite hopeless. I must simply let things go their own way, and
+trust to chance not to be recalled to Pekin."
+
+During all the rest of Chung's visit we let him roam pretty much as he
+liked about the place, and Effie and I generally went with him. Of
+course we never for a moment fancied it possible that Effie could
+conceivably take a fancy to a yellow man like him; the very notion was
+too preposterously absurd. And yet, just towards the end of his stay
+with us, it began to strike me uneasily that after all even a Chinaman
+is human. And when a Chinaman happens to have perfect manners, noble
+ideas, delicate sensibility, and a chivalrous respect for English
+ladies, it is perhaps just within the bounds of conceivability that at
+some odd moments an English girl might for a second partially forget his
+oblique eyelids and his yellow skin. I was sometimes half afraid that it
+might be so with Effie; and though I don't think she would ever herself
+have dreamed of marrying such a man--the physical barrier between the
+races is far too profound for that--I fancy she occasionally pitied poor
+Chung's loneliness with that womanly pity which so easily glides into a
+deeper and closer sentiment. Certainly she felt his isolation greatly,
+and often hoped he would never really be obliged to go back for ever to
+that hateful China.
+
+One lovely summer evening, a few days before Chung's holiday was to end,
+and his chief at the Embassy expected him back again, Marian and I had
+gone out for a stroll together, and in coming home happened to walk
+above the little arbour in the shrubbery by the upper path. A seat let
+into the hedge bank overhung the summer-house, and here we both sat down
+silently to rest after our walking. As we did so, we heard Chung's voice
+in the arbour close below, so near and so clear that every word was
+quite distinctly audible.
+
+"For the last time in England," he was saying, with a softly regretful
+cadence in his tone, as we came upon him.
+
+"The _last_ time, Mr. Chung!" The other voice was Effie's. "What on
+earth do you mean by that?"
+
+"What I say, Miss Walters. I am recalled to China; I got the letters of
+recall the day before yesterday."
+
+"The day before yesterday, and you never told us! Why didn't you let us
+know before?"
+
+"I did not know you would interest yourselves in my private affairs."
+
+"Mr. Chung!" There was a deep air of reproach in Effie's tone.
+
+"Well, Miss Walters, that is not quite true. I ought not to have said it
+to friends so kind as you have all shown yourselves to be. No; my real
+reason was that I did not wish to grieve you unnecessarily, and even now
+I would not have done so, only----"
+
+"Only----?"
+
+At this moment I for my part felt we had heard too much. I blushed up to
+my eyes at the thought that we should have unwittingly played the spy
+upon these two innocent young people. I was just going to call out and
+rush down the little path to them; but as I made a slight movement
+forward, Marian held my wrist with an imploring gesture, and earnestly
+put her finger on my lips. I was overborne, and I regret to say I
+stopped and listened. Marian did not utter a word, but speaking rapidly
+on her fingers, as we all had learnt to do for poor Tom, she said
+impressively, "For God's sake, not a sound. This is serious. We must and
+ought to hear it out." Marian is a very clever woman in these matters;
+and when she thinks anything a point of duty to poor Tom's girl, I
+always give way to her implicitly. But I confess I didn't like it.
+
+"Only----?" Effie had said.
+
+"Only I felt compelled to now. I could not leave without telling you how
+deeply I had appreciated all your kindness."
+
+"But, Mr. Chung, tell me one thing," she asked earnestly; "why have they
+recalled you to Pekin?"
+
+"I had rather not tell you."
+
+"I insist."
+
+"Because they are displeased with my foreign tastes and habits, which
+have been reported to them by some of my fellow-_attach�s_."
+
+"But, Mr. Chung, Uncle says there is no knowing what they will do to
+you. They may kill you on some absurd charge or other of witchcraft or
+something equally meaningless."
+
+"I am afraid," he answered imperturbably, "that may be the case. I don't
+mind at all on my own account--we Chinese are an apathetic race, you
+know--but I should be sorry to be a cause of grief to any of the dear
+friends I have made in England."
+
+"Mr. Chung!" This time the tone was one of unspeakable horror.
+
+"Don't speak like that," Chung said quickly. "There is no use in taking
+trouble at interest. I may come to no harm; at any rate, it will not
+matter much to any one but myself. Now let us go back to the house. I
+ought not to have stopped here with you so long, and it is nearly dinner
+time."
+
+"No," said Effie firmly; "we will not go back. I must understand more
+about this. There is plenty of time before dinner: and if not, dinner
+must wait."
+
+"But, Miss Walters, I don't think I ought to have brought you out here,
+and I am quite sure I ought not to stay any longer. Do return. Your Aunt
+will be annoyed."
+
+"Bother Aunt! She is the best woman in the world, but I must hear all
+about this. Mr. Chung, why don't you say you won't go, and stay in
+England in spite of them?"
+
+Nobody ever disobeys Effie, and so Chung wavered visibly. "I will tell
+you why," he answered slowly; "because I cannot. I am a servant of the
+Chinese Government, and if they choose to recall me, I must go."
+
+"But they couldn't enforce their demand."
+
+"Yes, they could. Your Government would give me up."
+
+"But Mr. Chung, couldn't you run away and hide for a while, and then
+come out again, and live like an Englishman?"
+
+"No," he answered quietly; "it is quite impossible. A Chinaman couldn't
+get work in England as a clerk or anything of that sort, and I have
+nothing of my own to live upon."
+
+There was a silence of a few minutes. Both were evidently thinking it
+out. Effie broke the silence first.
+
+"Oh, Mr Chung, do you think they will really put you to death?"
+
+"I don't think it; I know it."
+
+"You know it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Again a silence, and this time Chung broke it first. "Miss Effie," he
+said, "one Chinaman more or less in the world does not matter much, and
+I shall never forgive myself for having been led to grieve you for a
+moment, even though this is the last time I shall be able to speak to
+you. But I see you are sorry for me, and now--Chinaman as I am, I must
+speak out--I can't leave you without having told you all I feel. I am
+going to a terrible end, and I know it--so you will forgive me. We shall
+never meet again, so what I am going to say need never cause you any
+embarrassment in future. That I am recalled does not much trouble me;
+that I am going to die does not much trouble me; but that I can never,
+could never possibly have called you my wife, troubles me and cuts me to
+the very quick. It is the deepest drop in my cup of humiliation."
+
+"I knew it," said Effie, with wonderful composure.
+
+"You knew it?"
+
+"Yes, I knew it. I saw it from the second week you were here; and I
+liked you for it. But of course it was impossible, so there is nothing
+more to be said about it."
+
+"Of course," said Chung. "Ah, that terrible _of course_! I feel it; you
+feel it; we all feel it; and yet what a horrible thing it is. I am so
+human in everything else, but there is that one impassable barrier
+between us, and I myself cannot fail to recognize it. I could not even
+wish you to feel that you could marry a Chinaman."
+
+At that moment--for a moment only--I almost felt as if I could have said
+to Effie, "Take him!" but the thing was too impossible--a something
+within us rises against it--and I said nothing.
+
+"So now," Chung continued, "I must go. We must both go back to the
+house. I have said more than I ought to have said, and I am ashamed of
+myself for having done so. Yet, in spite of the measureless gulf that
+parts us, I felt I could not return to China without having told you.
+Will you forgive me?"
+
+"I am glad you did," said Effie; "it will relieve you."
+
+She stood a minute irresolute, and then she began again: "Mr. Chung, I
+am too horrified to know what I ought to do. I can't grasp it and take
+it all in so quickly. If you had money of your own, would you be able to
+run away and live somehow?"
+
+"I might possibly," Chung answered, "but not probably. A Chinaman, even
+if he wears European clothing, is too marked a person ever to escape.
+The only chance would be by going to Mauritius or California, where I
+might get lost in the crowd."
+
+"But, Mr. Chung, I have money of my own. What can I do? Help me, tell
+me. I can't let a fellow-creature die for a mere prejudice of race and
+colour. If I were your wife it would be yours. Isn't it my duty?"
+
+"No," said Chung. "It is more sacrifice than any woman ought to make for
+any man. You like me, but that is all."
+
+"If I shut my eyes and only heard you, I think I could love you."
+
+"Miss Effie," said Chung suddenly, "this is wrong, very wrong of me. I
+have let my weakness overcome me. I won't stop any longer. I have done
+what I ought not to have done, and I shall go this minute. Just once,
+before I go, shut your eyes and let me kiss the tips of your fingers.
+Thank you. No, I will not stop," and without another word he was gone.
+
+Marian and I stared at one another in blank horror. What on earth was to
+be done? All solutions were equally impossible. Even to meet Chung at
+dinner was terrible. We both knew in our heart of hearts that if Chung
+had been an Englishman, remaining in heart and soul the very self-same
+man he was, we would willingly have chosen him for Effie's husband. But
+a Chinaman! Reason about the prejudice as you like, there it is, a thing
+not to be got over, and at bottom so real that even the very notion of
+getting over it is terribly repugnant to our natural instincts. On the
+other hand, was poor Chung, with his fine delicate feelings, his
+courteous manners, his cultivated intellect, his English chivalry, to go
+back among the savage semi-barbarians of Pekin, and to be put to death
+in Heaven knows what inhuman manner for the atrocious crime of having
+outstripped his race and nation? The thing was too awful to contemplate
+either way.
+
+We walked home together without a word. Chung had taken the lower path;
+we took the upper one and followed him at a distance. Effie remained
+behind for a while in the summer-house. I don't know how we managed to
+dress for dinner, but we did somehow; and when we went down into the
+little drawing-room at eight o'clock, we were not surprised to hear that
+Miss Effie had a headache and did not want any dinner that evening. I
+was more surprised, however, when, shortly before the gong sounded, one
+of the servants brought me a little twisted note from Chung, written
+hurriedly in pencil, and sent, she said, by a porter from the railway
+station. It ran thus:--
+
+     "DEAR MR. WALTERS,
+
+     "Excuse great haste. Compelled to return to town immediately. Shall
+     write more fully to-morrow. Just in time to catch up express.
+
+  "Yours ever,
+  "CHUNG."
+
+Evidently, instead of returning to the house, he had gone straight to
+the station. After all, Chung had the true feelings of a gentleman. He
+could not meet Effie again after what had passed, and he cut the Gordian
+knot in the only way possible.
+
+Effie said nothing to us, and we said nothing to Effie, except to show
+her Chung's note next morning in a casual, off-hand fashion. Two days
+later a note came for us from the Embassy in Chung's pretty incisive
+handwriting. It contained copious excuses for his hasty departure, and a
+few lines to say that he was ordered back to China by the next mail,
+which started two days later. Marian and I talked it all over, but we
+could think of nothing that could be of any use; and after all, we said
+to one another, poor Chung might be mistaken about the probable fate
+that was in store for him.
+
+"I don't think," Effie said, when we showed her the letter, "I ever met
+such a nice man as Mr. Chung. I believe he is really a hero." We
+pretended not to understand what she could mean by it.
+
+The days went by, and we went back again to the dull round of London
+society. We heard nothing more of Chung for many weeks; till at last one
+morning I found a letter on the table bearing the Hong Kong postmark. I
+opened it hastily. As I supposed, it was a note from Chung. It was
+written in a very small hand on a tiny square of rice-paper, and it ran
+as follows:--
+
+  "Thien-Shan Prison, Pekin, Dec. 8.
+
+"MY DEAR FRIEND,
+
+     "Immediately on my return here I was arrested on a charge of
+     witchcraft, and of complicity with the Foreign Devils to introduce
+     the Western barbarism into China. I have now been in a loathsome
+     prison in Pekin for three weeks, in the midst of sights and sounds
+     which I dare not describe to you. Already I have suffered more than
+     I can tell; and I have very little doubt that I shall be brought to
+     trial and executed within a few weeks. I write now begging you not
+     to let Miss Effie hear of this, and if my name happens to be
+     mentioned in the English papers, to keep my fate a secret from her
+     as far as possible. I trust to chance for the opportunity of
+     getting this letter forwarded to Hong Kong, and I have had to write
+     it secretly, for I am not allowed pen, ink, or paper. Thank you
+     much for your very great kindness to me. I am not sorry to die, for
+     it is a mistake for a man to have lived outside the life of his own
+     people, and there was no place left for me on earth. Good-bye.
+
+  "Ever yours gratefully,
+  "CHUNG."
+
+The letter almost drove me wild with ineffectual remorse and regret. Why
+had I not tried to persuade Chung to remain in England? Why had I not
+managed to smuggle him out of the way, and to find him some kind of
+light employment, such as even a Chinaman might easily have performed?
+But it was no use regretting now. The impassable gulf was fixed between
+us; and it was hardly possible even then to realize that this amiable
+young student, versed in all the science and philosophy of the
+nineteenth century, had been handed over alive to the tender mercies of
+a worse than medi�val barbarism and superstition. My heart sank within
+me, and I did not venture to show the letter even to Marian.
+
+For some weeks the days passed heavily indeed. I could not get Chung out
+of my mind, and I saw that Effie could not either. We never mentioned
+his name; but I noticed that Effie had got from Mudie's all the books
+about China that she could hear of, and that she was reading up with a
+sort of awful interest all the chapters that related to Chinese law and
+Chinese criminal punishments. Poor child, the subject evidently
+enthralled her with a terrible fascination; and I feared that the
+excitement she was in might bring on a brain fever.
+
+One morning, early in April, we were all seated in the little
+breakfast-room about ten o'clock, and Effie had taken up the outside
+sheet of the _Times_, while I was engaged in looking over the telegrams
+on the central pages. Suddenly she gave a cry of horror, flung down the
+paper with a gesture of awful repugnance, and fell from her chair as
+stiff and white as a corpse. I knew instinctively what had happened, and
+I took her up in my arms and carried her to her room. After the doctor
+had come, and Effie had recovered a little from the first shock, I took
+up the paper from the ground where it lay and read the curt little
+paragraph which contained the news that seemed to us so terrible:--
+
+"The numerous persons who made the acquaintance of Chung Fo Tsiou, late
+assistant interpreter to the Chinese Embassy in London, will learn with
+regret that this unfortunate member of the Civil Service has been
+accused of witchcraft and executed at Pekin by the frightful Chinese
+method known as the Heavy Death. Chung Fo Tsiou was well known in London
+and Paris, where he spent many years of his official life, and attracted
+some attention by his natural inclination to European society and
+manners."
+
+Poor Chung! His end was too horrible for an English reader even to hear
+of it. But Effie knew it all, and I did not wonder that the news should
+have affected her so deeply.
+
+Effie was some weeks ill, and at first we almost feared her mind would
+give way under the pressure. Not that she had more than merely liked
+poor Chung, but the sense of horror was too great for her easily to cast
+it off. Even I myself did not sleep lightly for many and many a day
+after I heard the terrible truth. But while Effie was still ill, a
+second letter reached us, written this time in blood with a piece of
+stick, apparently on a scrap of coarse English paper, such as that which
+is used for wrapping up tobacco. It was no more than this:--
+
+     "Execution to-day. Keep it from Miss Effie. Cannot forgive myself
+     for having spoken to her. Will you forgive me? It was the weakness
+     of a moment: but even Chinamen have hearts. I could not die without
+     telling her.--CHUNG."
+
+I showed Effie the scrap afterwards--it had come without a line of
+explanation from Shanghao--and she has kept it ever since locked up in
+her little desk as a sacred memento. I don't doubt that some of these
+days Effie will marry; but as long as she lives she will bear the
+impress of what she has suffered about poor Chung. An English girl could
+not conceivably marry a Chinaman; but now that Chung is dead, Effie
+cannot help admiring the steadfastness, the bravery, and the noble
+qualities of her Chinese lover. It is an awful state of things which
+sometimes brings the nineteenth century and primitive barbarism into
+such close and horrible juxtaposition.
+
+
+
+
+_THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE._
+
+
+Walter Dene, deacon, in his faultless Oxford clerical coat and broad
+felt hat, strolled along slowly, sunning himself as he went, after his
+wont, down the pretty central lane of West Churnside. It was just the
+idyllic village best suited to the taste of such an idyllic young curate
+as Walter Dene. There were cottages with low-thatched roofs, thickly
+overgrown with yellow stonecrop and pink house-leek; there were
+trellis-work porches up which the scented dog-rose and the fainter
+honeysuckle clambered together in sisterly rivalry; there were pargeted
+gable-ends of Elizabethan farmhouses, quaintly varied with black oak
+joists and moulded plaster panels. At the end of all, between an avenue
+of ancient elm trees, the heavy square tower of the old church closed in
+the little vista--a church with a round Norman doorway and dog-tooth
+arches, melting into Early English lancets in the aisle, and finishing
+up with a great Decorated east window by the broken cross and yew tree.
+Not a trace of Perpendicularity about it anywhere, thank goodness: "for
+if it were Perpendicular," said Walter Dene to himself often, "I really
+think, in spite of my uncle, I should have to look out for another
+curacy."
+
+Yes, it was a charming village, and a charming country; but, above all,
+it was rendered habitable and pleasurable for a man of taste by the
+informing presence of Christina Eliot. "I don't think I shall propose
+to Christina this week after all," thought Walter Dene as he strolled
+along lazily. "The most delightful part of love-making is certainly its
+first beginning. The little tremor of hope and expectation; the
+half-needless doubt you feel as to whether she really loves you; the
+pains you take to pierce the thin veil of maidenly reserve; the triumph
+of detecting her at a blush or a flutter when she sees you coming--all
+these are delicate little morsels to be rolled daintily on the critical
+palate, and not to be swallowed down coarsely at one vulgar gulp. Poor
+child, she is on tenter-hooks of hesitation and expectancy all the time,
+I know; for I'm sure she loves me now, I'm sure she loves me; but I must
+wait a week yet: she will be grateful to me for it hereafter. We mustn't
+kill the goose that lays the golden eggs; we mustn't eat up all our
+capital at one extravagant feast, and then lament the want of our
+interest ever afterward. Let us live another week in our first fool's
+paradise before we enter on the safer but less tremulous pleasures of
+sure possession. We can enjoy first love but once in a lifetime; let us
+enjoy it now while we can, and not fling away the chance prematurely by
+mere childish haste and girlish precipitancy." Thinking which thing,
+Walter Dene halted a moment by the churchyard wall, picked a long spray
+of scented wild thyme from a mossy cranny, and gazed into the blue sky
+above at the graceful swifts who nested in the old tower, as they curved
+and circled through the yielding air on their evenly poised and powerful
+pinions.
+
+Just at that moment old Mary Long came out of her cottage to speak with
+the young parson. "If ye plaze, Maister Dene," she said in her native
+west-country dialect, "our Nully would like to zee 'ee. She's main ill
+to-day, zur, and she be like to die a'most, I'm thinking."
+
+"Poor child, poor child," said Walter Dene tenderly. "She's a dear
+little thing, Mrs. Long, is your Nellie, and I hope she may yet be
+spared to you. I'll come and see her at once, and try if I can do
+anything to ease her."
+
+He crossed the road compassionately with the tottering old grandmother,
+giving her his helping hand over the kerbstone, and following her with
+bated breath into the close little sick-room. Then he flung open the
+tiny casement with its diamond-leaded panes, so as to let in the fresh
+summer air, and picked a few sprigs of sweet-briar from the porch, which
+he joined with the geranium from his own button-hole to make a tiny
+nosegay for the bare bedside. After that, he sat and talked awhile
+gently in an undertone to pale, pretty little Nellie herself, and went
+away at last promising to send her some jelly and some soup immediately
+from the vicarage kitchen.
+
+"She's a sweet little child," he said to himself musingly, "though I'm
+afraid she's not long for this world now; and the poor like these small
+attentions dearly. They get them seldom, and value them for the sake of
+the thoughtfulness they imply, rather than for the sake of the mere
+things themselves. I can order a bottle of calf's-foot at the grocer's,
+and Carter can set it in a mould without any trouble; while as for the
+soup, some tinned mock-turtle and a little fresh stock makes a really
+capital mixture for this sort of thing. It costs so little to give these
+poor souls pleasure, and it is a great luxury to oneself undeniably.
+But, after all, what a funny trade it is to set an educated man to do!
+They send us up to Oxford or Cambridge, give us a distinct taste for
+�schylus and Catullus, Dante and Milton, Mendelssohn and Chopin, good
+claret and _olives farcies_, and then bring us down to a country
+village, to look after the bodily and spiritual ailments of rheumatic
+old washerwomen! If it were not for poetry, flowers, and Christina, I
+really think I should succumb entirely under the infliction."
+
+"He's a dear, good man, that he is, is young passon," murmured old Miry
+Long as Walter disappeared between the elm trees; "and he do love the
+poor and the zick, the same as if he was their own brother. God bless
+his zoul, the dear, good vulla, vor all his kindness to our Nully."
+
+Halfway down the main lane Walter came across Christina Eliot. As she
+saw him she smiled and coloured a little, and held out her small gloved
+hand prettily. Walter took it with a certain courtly and graceful
+chivalry. "An exquisite day, Miss Eliot," he said; "such a depth of
+sapphire in the sky, such a faint undertone of green on the clouds by
+the horizon, such a lovely humming of bees over the flickering hot
+meadows! On days like this, one feels that Schopenhauer is wrong after
+all, and that life is sometimes really worth living."
+
+"It seems to me often worth living," Christina answered; "if not for
+oneself, at least for others. But you pretend to be more of a pessimist
+than you really are, I fancy, Mr. Dene. Any one who finds so much beauty
+in the world as you do can hardly think life poor or meagre. You seem to
+catch the loveliest points in everything you look at, and to throw a
+little literary or artistic reflection over them which makes them even
+lovelier than they are in themselves."
+
+"Well, no doubt one can increase one's possibilities of enjoyment by
+carefully cultivating one's own faculties of admiration and
+appreciation," said the curate thoughtfully; "but, after all, life has
+only a few chapters that are thoroughly interesting and enthralling in
+all its history. We oughtn't to hurry over them too lightly, Miss Eliot;
+we ought to linger on them lovingly, and make the most of their
+potentialities; we ought to dwell upon them like "linked sweetness long
+drawn out." It is the mistake of the world at large to hurry too rapidly
+over the pleasantest episodes, just as children pick all the plums at
+once out of the pudding. I often think that, from the purely selfish and
+temporal point of view, the real value of a life to its subject may be
+measured by the space of time over which he has managed to spread the
+enjoyment of its greatest pleasures. Look, for example, at poetry, now."
+
+A faint shade of disappointment passed across Christina's face as he
+turned from what seemed another groove into that indifferent subject;
+but she answered at once, "Yes, of course one feels that with the higher
+pleasures at least; but there are others in which the interest of plot
+is greater, and then one looks naturally rather to the end. When you
+begin a good novel, you can't help hurrying through it in order to find
+out what becomes of everybody at last."
+
+"Ah, but the highest artistic interest goes beyond mere plot interest. I
+like rather to read for the pleasure of reading, and to loiter over the
+passages that please me, quite irrespective of what goes before or what
+comes after; just as you, for your part, like to sketch a beautiful
+scene for its own worth to you, irrespective of what may happen to the
+leaves in autumn, or to the cottage roof in twenty years from this. By
+the way, have you finished that little water-colour of the mill yet?
+It's the prettiest thing of yours I've ever seen, and I want to look how
+you've managed the light on your foreground."
+
+"Come in and see it," said Christina. "It's finished now, and, to tell
+you the truth, I'm very well pleased with it myself."
+
+"Then I know it must be good," the curate answered; "for you are always
+your own harshest critic." And he turned in at the little gate with her,
+and entered the village doctor's tiny drawing-room.
+
+Christina placed the sketch on an easel near the window--a low window
+opening to the ground, with long lithe festoons of faint-scented jasmine
+encroaching on it from outside--and let the light fall on it aslant in
+the right direction. It was a pretty and a clever sketch certainly, with
+more than a mere amateur's sense of form and colour; and Walter Dene,
+who had a true eye for pictures, could conscientiously praise it for its
+artistic depth and fulness. Indeed, on that head at least, Walter Dene's
+veracity was unimpeachable, however lax in other matters; nothing on
+earth would have induced him to praise as good a picture or a sculpture
+in which he saw no real merit. He sat a little while criticizing and
+discussing it, suggesting an improvement here or an alteration there,
+and then he rose hurriedly, remembering all at once his forgotten
+promise to little Nellie. "Dear me," he said, "your daughter's picture
+has almost made me overlook my proper duties, Mrs. Eliot. I promised to
+send some jelly and things at once to poor little Nellie Long at her
+grandmother's. How very wrong of me to let my natural inclinations keep
+me loitering here, when I ought to have been thinking of the poor of my
+parish!" And he went out with just a gentle pressure on Christina's
+hand, and a look from his eyes that her heart knew how to read aright at
+the first glance of it.
+
+"Do you know, Christie," said her father, "I sometimes fancy when I hear
+that new parson fellow talk about his artistic feelings, and so on, that
+he's just a trifle selfish, or at least self-centred. He always dwells
+so much on his own enjoyment of things, you know."
+
+"Oh no, papa," cried Christina warmly. "He's anything but selfish, I'm
+sure. Look how kind he is to all the poor in the village, and how much
+he thinks about their comfort and welfare. And whenever he's talking
+with one, he seems so anxious to make you feel happy and contented with
+yourself. He has a sort of little subtle flattery of manner about him
+that's all pure kindliness; and he's always thinking what he can say or
+do to please you, and to help you onward. What you say about his
+dwelling on enjoyment so much is really only his artistic sensibility.
+He feels things so keenly, and enjoys beauty so deeply, that he can't
+help talking enthusiastically about it even a little out of season. He
+has more feelings to display than most men, and I'm sure that's the
+reason why he displays them so much. A ploughboy could only talk
+enthusiastically about roast beef and dumplings; Mr. Dene can talk about
+everything that's beautiful and sublime on earth or in heaven."
+
+Meanwhile, Walter Dene was walking quickly with his measured tread--the
+even, regular tread of a cultivated gentleman--down the lane toward the
+village grocer's, saying to himself as he went, "There was never such a
+girl in all the world as my Christina. She may be only a country
+surgeon's daughter--a rosebud on a hedgerow bush--but she has the soul
+and the eye of a queen among women for all that. Every lover has
+deceived himself with the same sweet dream, to be sure--how
+over-analytic we have become nowadays, when I must needs half argue
+myself out of the sweets of first love!--but then they hadn't so much to
+go upon as I have. She has a wonderful touch in music, she has an
+exquisite eye in painting, she has an Italian charm in manner and
+conversation. I'm something of a connoisseur, after all, and no more
+likely to be deceived in a woman than I am in a wine or a picture. And
+next week I shall really propose formally to Christina, though I know by
+this time it will be nothing more than the merest formality. Her eyes
+are too eloquent not to have told me that long ago. It will be a
+delightful pleasure to live for her, and in order to make her happy. I
+frankly recognize that I am naturally a little selfish--not coarsely and
+vulgarly selfish; from that disgusting and piggish vice I may
+conscientiously congratulate myself that I'm fairly free; but still
+selfish in a refined and cultivated manner. Now, living with Christina
+and for Christina will correct this defect in my nature, will tend to
+bring me nearer to a true standard of perfection. When I am by her side,
+and then only, I feel that I am thinking entirely of her, and not at all
+of myself. To her I show my best side; with her, that best side would
+be always uppermost. The companionship of such a woman makes life
+something purer, and higher, and better worth having. The one thing that
+stands in our way is this horrid practical question of what to live
+upon. I don't suppose Uncle Arthur will be inclined to allow me
+anything, and I can't marry on my own paltry income and my curacy only.
+Yet I can't bear to keep Christina waiting indefinitely till some
+thick-headed squire or other chooses to take it into his opaque brain to
+give me a decent living."
+
+From the grocer's the curate walked on, carrying the two tins in his
+hand, as far as the vicarage. He went into the library, sat down by his
+own desk, and rang the bell. "Will you be kind enough to give those
+things to Carter, John?" he said in his bland voice; "and tell her to
+put the jelly in a mould, and let it set. The soup must be warmed with a
+little fresh stock, and seasoned. Then take them both, with my
+compliments, to old Mary Long the washerwoman, for her grandchild. Is my
+uncle in?"
+
+"No, Master Walter," answered the man--he was always "Master Walter" to
+the old servants at his uncle's--"the vicar have gone over by train to
+Churminster. He told me to tell you he wouldn't be back till evening,
+after dinner."
+
+"Did you see him off, John?"
+
+"Yes, Master Walter. I took his portmantew to the station."
+
+"This will be a good chance, then," thought Walter Dene to himself.
+"Very well, John," he went on aloud: "I shall write my sermon now. Don't
+let anybody come to disturb me."
+
+John nodded and withdrew. Walter Dene locked the door after him
+carefully, as he often did when writing sermons, and then lit a cigar,
+which was also a not infrequent concomitant of his exegetical labours.
+After that he walked once or twice up and down the room, paused a
+moment to look at his parchment-covered Rabelais and Villon on the
+bookshelf, peered out of the dulled glass windows with the crest in
+their centre, and finally drew a curious bent iron instrument out of his
+waistcoat pocket. With it in his hands, he went up quietly to his
+uncle's desk, and began fumbling at the lock in an experienced manner.
+As a matter of fact, it was not his first trial of skill in
+lock-picking; for Walter Dene was a painstaking and methodical man, and
+having made up his mind that he would get at and read his uncle's will,
+he took good care to begin by fastening all the drawers in his own
+bedroom, and trying his prentice hand at unfastening them again in the
+solitude of his chamber.
+
+After half a minute's twisting and turning, the wards gave way gently to
+his dexterous pressure, and the lid of the desk lay open before him.
+Walter Dene took out the different papers one by one--there was no need
+for hurry, and he was not a nervous person--till he came to a roll of
+parchment, which he recognized at once as the expected will. He unrolled
+it carefully and quietly, without any womanish trembling or
+excitement--"thank Heaven," he said to himself, "I'm above such nonsense
+as that"--and sat down leisurely to read it in the big, low,
+velvet-covered study chair. As he did so, he did not forget to lay a
+notched foot-rest for his feet, and to put the little Japanese dish on
+the tiny table by his side to hold his cigar ash. "And now," he said,
+"for the important question whether Uncle Arthur has left his money to
+me, or to Arthur, or to both of us equally. He ought, of course, to
+leave at least half to me, seeing I have become a curate on purpose to
+please him, instead of following my natural vocation to the Bar; but I
+shouldn't be a bit surprised if he had left it all to Arthur. He's a
+pig-headed and illogical old man, the vicar; and he can never forgive
+me, I believe, because, being the eldest son, I wasn't called after him
+by my father and mother. As if that was my fault! Some people's ideas
+of personal responsibility are so ridiculously muddled."
+
+He composed himself quietly in the arm-chair, and glanced rapidly at the
+will through the meaningless preliminaries till he came to the
+significant clauses. These he read more carefully. "All my estate in the
+county of Dorset, and the messuage or tenement known as Redlands, in the
+parish of Lode, in the county of Devon, to my dear nephew, Arthur Dene,"
+he said to himself slowly: "Oh, this will never do." "And I give and
+bequeath to my said nephew, Arthur Dene, the sum of ten thousand pounds,
+three per cent. consolidated annuities, now standing in my name."--"Oh
+this is atrocious, quite atrocious! What's this?" "And I give and
+bequeath to my dear nephew, Walter Dene, the residue of my personal
+estate"--"and so forth. Oh no. That's quite sufficient. This must be
+rectified. The residuary legatee would only come in for a few hundreds
+or so. It's quite preposterous. The vicar was always an ill-tempered,
+cantankerous, unaccountable person, but I wonder he has the face to sit
+opposite me at dinner after that."
+
+He hummed an air from Schubert, and sat a moment looking thoughtfully at
+the will. Then he said to himself quietly, "The simplest thing to do
+would be merely to scrape out or take out with chemicals the name
+Arthur, substituting the name Walter, and _vice vers�_. That's a very
+small matter; a man who draws as well as I do ought to be able easily to
+imitate a copying clerk's engrossing hand. But it would be madness to
+attempt it now and here; I want a little practice first. At the same
+time, I mustn't keep the will out a moment longer than is necessary; my
+uncle may return by some accident before I expect him; and the true
+philosophy of life consists in invariably minimizing the adverse
+chances. This will was evidently drawn up by Watson and Blenkiron, of
+Chancery Lane. I'll write to-morrow and get them to draw up a will for
+me, leaving all I possess to Arthur. The same clerk is pretty sure to
+engross it, and that'll give me a model for the two names on which I can
+do a little preliminary practice. Besides, I can try the stuff Wharton
+told me about, for making ink fade on the same parchment. That will be
+killing two birds with one stone, certainly. And now if I don't make
+haste I shan't have time to write my sermon."
+
+He replaced the will calmly in the desk, fastened the lock again with a
+delicate twirl of the pick, and sat down in his arm-chair to compose his
+discourse for to-morrow's evensong. "It's not a bad bit of rhetoric," he
+said to himself as he read it over for correction, "but I'm not sure
+that I haven't plagiarized a little too freely from Montaigne and dear
+old Burton. What a pity it must be thrown away upon a Churnside
+congregation! Not a soul in the whole place will appreciate a word of
+it, except Christina. Well, well, that alone is enough reward for any
+man." And he knocked off his ash pensively into the Japanese ash-pan.
+
+During the course of the next week Walter practised diligently the art
+of imitating handwriting. He got his will drawn up and engrossed at
+Watson and Blenkiron's (without signing it, _bien entendu_); and he
+spent many solitary hours in writing the two names "Walter" and "Arthur"
+on the spare end of parchment, after the manner of the engrossing clerk.
+He also tested the stuff for making the ink fade to his own perfect
+satisfaction. And on the next occasion when his uncle was safely off the
+premises for three hours, he took the will once more deliberately from
+the desk, removed the obnoxious letters with scrupulous care, and wrote
+in his own name in place of Arthur's, so that even the engrossing clerk
+himself would hardly have known the difference. "There," he said to
+himself approvingly, as he took down quiet old George Herbert from the
+shelf and sat down to enjoy an hour's smoke after the business was over,
+"that's one good deed well done, anyhow. I have the calm satisfaction of
+a clear conscience. The vicar's proposed arrangement was really most
+unfair; I have substituted for it what Aristotle would have rightly
+called true distributive justice. For though I've left all the property
+to myself, by the unfortunate necessity of the case, of course I won't
+take it all. I'll be juster than the vicar. Arthur shall have his fair
+share, which is more, I believe, than he'd have done for me; but I hate
+squalid money-grubbing. If brothers can't be generous and brotherly to
+one another, what a wretched, sordid little life this of ours would
+really be!"
+
+Next Sunday morning the vicar preached, and Walter sat looking up at him
+reflectively from his place in the chancel. A beautiful clear-cut face,
+the curate's, and seen to great advantage from the doctor's pew, set off
+by the white surplice, and upturned in quiet meditation towards the
+elder priest in the pulpit. Walter was revolving many things in his
+mind, and most of all one adverse chance which he could not just then
+see his way to minimize. Any day his uncle might take it into his head
+to read over the will and discover the--ah, well, the rectification.
+Walter was a man of too much delicacy of feeling even to think of it to
+himself as a fraud or a forgery. Then, again, the vicar was not a very
+old man after all; he might live for an indefinite period, and Christina
+and himself might lose all the best years of their life waiting for a
+useless person's natural removal. What a pity that threescore was not
+the utmost limit of human life! For his own part, like the Psalmist,
+Walter had no desire to outlive his own highest tastes and powers of
+enjoyment. Ah, well, well, man's prerogative is to better and improve
+upon nature. If people do not die when they ought, then it becomes
+clearly necessary for philosophically minded juniors to help them on
+their way artificially.
+
+It was an ugly necessity, certainly; Walter frankly recognized that fact
+from the very beginning, and he shrank even from contemplating it; but
+there was no other way out of the difficulty. The old man had always
+been a selfish bachelor, with no love for anybody or anything on earth
+except his books, his coins, his garden, and his dinner; he was growing
+tired of all except the last; would it not be better for the world at
+large, on strict utilitarian principles, that he should go at once?
+True, such steps are usually to be deprecated; but the wise man is a law
+unto himself, and instead of laying down the wooden, hard-and-fast lines
+that make conventional morality so much a rule of thumb, he judges every
+individual case on its own particular merits. Here was Christina's
+happiness and his own on the one hand, with many collateral advantages
+to other people, set in the scale against the feeble remnant of a
+selfish old man's days on the other. Walter Dene had a constitutional
+horror of taking life in any form, and especially of shedding blood; but
+he flattered himself that if anything of the sort became clearly
+necessary, he was not the man to shrink from taking the needful measures
+to ensure it, at any sacrifice of personal comfort.
+
+All through the next week Walter turned over the subject in his own
+mind; and the more he thought about it, the more the plan gained in
+definiteness and consistency as detail after detail suggested itself to
+him. First he thought of poison. That was the cleanest and neatest way
+of managing the thing, he considered; and it involved the least
+unpleasant consequences. To stick a knife or shoot a bullet into any
+sentient creature was a horrid and revolting act; to put a little
+tasteless powder into a cup of coffee and let a man sleep off his life
+quietly was really nothing more than helping him involuntarily to a
+delightful euthanasia. "I wish any one would do as much for me at his
+age, without telling me about it," Walter said to himself seriously. But
+then the chances of detection would be much increased by using poison,
+and Walter felt it an imperative duty to do nothing which would expose
+Christina to the shock of a discovery. She would not see the matter in
+the same practical light as he did; women never do; their morality is
+purely conventional and a wise man will do nothing on earth to shake it.
+You cannot buy poison without the risk of exciting question. There
+remained, then, only shooting or stabbing. But shooting makes an awkward
+noise, and attracts attention at the moment; so the one thing possible
+was a knife, unpleasant as that conclusion seemed to all his more
+delicate feelings.
+
+Having thus decided, Walter Dene proceeded to lay his plans with
+deliberate caution. He had no intention whatsoever of being detected,
+though his method of action was simplicity itself. It was only bunglers
+and clumsy fools who got caught; he knew that a man of his intelligence
+and ability would not make such an idiot of himself as--well, as common
+ruffians always do. He took his old American bowie-knife, bought years
+ago as a curiosity, out of the drawer where it had lain so long. It was
+very rusty, but it would be safer to sharpen it privately on his own
+hone and strop than to go asking for a new knife at a shop for the
+express purpose of enabling the shopman afterwards to identify him. He
+sharpened it for safety's sake during sermon-hour in the library, with
+the door locked as usual. It took a long time to get off all the rust,
+and his arm got quickly tired. One morning as he was polishing away at
+it, he was stopped for a moment by a butterfly which flapped and
+fluttered against the dulled window-panes. "Poor thing," he said to
+himself, "it will beat its feathery wings to pieces in its struggles;"
+and he put a vase of Venetian glass on top of it, lifted the sash
+carefully, and let the creature fly away outside in the broad sunshine.
+At the same moment the vicar, who was strolling with his King Charlie on
+the lawn, came up and looked in at the window. He could not have seen in
+before, because of the dulled and painted diamonds.
+
+"That's a murderous-looking weapon, Wally," he said, with a smile, as
+his glance fell upon the bowie and hone. "What do you use it for?"
+
+"Oh, it's an American bowie," Walter answered carelessly. "I bought it
+long ago for a curiosity, and now I'm sharpening it up to help me in
+carving that block of walnut wood." And he ran his finger lightly along
+the edge of the blade to test its keenness. What a lucky thing that it
+was the vicar himself, and not the gardener! If he had been caught by
+anybody else the fact would have been fatal evidence after all was over.
+"M�fiez-vous des papillons," he hummed to himself, after B�ranger, as he
+shut down the window. "One more butterfly, and I must give up the game
+as useless."
+
+Meanwhile, as Walter meant to make a clean job of it--hacking and hewing
+clumsily was repulsive to all his finer feelings--he began also to study
+carefully the anatomy of the human back. He took down all the books on
+the subject in the library, and by their aid discovered exactly under
+which ribs the heart lay. A little observation of the vicar, compared
+with the plates in Quain's "Anatomy," showed him precisely at what point
+in his clerical coat the most vulnerable interstice was situated. "It's
+a horrid thing to have to do," he thought over and over again as he
+planned it, "but it's the only way to secure Christina's happiness." And
+so, by a certain bright Friday evening in August, Walter Dene had fully
+completed all his preparations.
+
+That afternoon, as on all bright afternoons in summer, the vicar went
+for a walk in the grounds, attended only by little King Charlie. He was
+squire and parson at once in Churnside, and he loved to make the round
+of his own estate. At a certain gate by Selbury Copse the vicar always
+halted to rest awhile, leaning on the bar and looking at the view across
+the valley. It was a safe and lonely spot. Walter remained at home (he
+was to take the regular Friday evensong) and went into the study by
+himself. After a while he took his hat, not without trembling, strolled
+across the garden, and then made the short cut through the copse, so as
+to meet the vicar by the gate. On his way he heard the noise of the
+Dennings in the farm opposite, out rabbit-shooting with their guns and
+ferrets in the warren. His very soul shrank within him at the sound of
+that brutal sport. "Great heavens!" he said to himself, with a shudder;
+"to think how I loathe and shrink from the necessity of almost
+painlessly killing this one selfish old man for an obviously good
+reason, and those creatures there will go out massacring innocent
+animals with the aid of a hideous beast of prey, not only without
+remorse, but actually by way of amusement! I thank Heaven I am not even
+as they are." Near the gate he came upon his uncle quietly and
+naturally, though it would be absurd to deny that at that supreme moment
+even Walter Dene's equable heart throbbed hard, and his breath went and
+came tremulously. "Alone," he thought to himself, "and nobody near; this
+is quite providential," using even then, in thought, the familiar
+phraseology of his profession.
+
+"A lovely afternoon, Uncle Arthur," he said as composedly as he could,
+accurately measuring the spot on the vicar's coat with his eye
+meanwhile. "The valley looks beautiful in this light."
+
+"Yes, a lovely afternoon, Wally, my boy, and an exquisite glimpse down
+yonder into the churchyard."
+
+As he spoke, Walter half leaned upon the gate beside him, and adjusted
+the knife behind the vicar's back scientifically. Then, without a word
+more, in spite of a natural shrinking, he drove it home up to the haft,
+with a terrible effort of will, at the exact spot on the back that the
+books had pointed out to him. It was a painful thing to do, but he did
+it carefully and well. The effect of Walter Dene's scientific prevision
+was even more instantaneous than he had anticipated. Without a single
+cry, without a sob or a contortion, the vicar's lifeless body fell over
+heavily by the side of the gate. It rolled down like a log into the dry
+ditch beneath. Walter knelt trembling on the ground close by, felt the
+pulse for a moment to assure himself that his uncle was really dead, and
+having fully satisfied himself on this all-important point, proceeded to
+draw the knife neatly out of the wound. He had let it fall in the body,
+in order to extricate it more easily afterward, and not risk pulling it
+out carelessly so as to get himself covered needlessly by tell-tale
+drops of blood, like ordinary clumsy assassins. But he had forgotten to
+reckon with little King Charlie. The dog jumped piteously upon the body
+of his master, licked the wound with his tongue, and refused to allow
+Walter to withdraw the knife. It would be unsafe to leave it there, for
+it might be recognized. "Minimize the adverse chances," he muttered
+still; but there was no inducing King Charlie to move. A struggle might
+result in getting drops of blood upon his coat, and then, great heavens,
+what a terrible awakening for Christina! "Oh, Christina, Christina,
+Christina," he said to himself piteously, "it is for you only that I
+could ever have ventured to do this hideous thing." The blood was still
+oozing out of the narrow slit, and saturating the black coat, and Walter
+Dene with his delicate nerves could hardly bear to look upon it.
+
+At last he summoned up resolution to draw out the knife from the ugly
+wound, in spite of King Charlie, and as he did so, oh, horror! the
+little dog jumped at it, and cut his left fore-leg against the sharp
+edge deep to the bone. Here was a pretty accident indeed! If Walter Dene
+had been a common heartless murderer he would have snatched up the
+knife immediately, left the poor lame dog to watch and bleed beside his
+dead master, and skulked off hurriedly from the mute witness to his
+accomplished crime. But Walter was made of very different mould from
+that; he could not find it in his heart to leave a poor dumb animal
+wounded and bleeding for hours together, alone and untended. Just at
+first, indeed, he tried sophistically to persuade himself his duty to
+Christina demanded that he should go away at once, and never mind the
+sufferings of a mere spaniel; but his better nature told him the next
+moment that such sophisms were indefensible, and his humane instincts
+overcame even the profound instinct of self-preservation. He sat down
+quietly beside the warm corpse. "Thank goodness," he said, with a slight
+shiver of disgust, "I'm not one of those weak-minded people who are
+troubled by remorse. They would be so overcome by terror at what they
+had done that they would want to run away from the body immediately, at
+any price. But I don't think I _could_ feel remorse. It is an incident
+of lower natures--natures that are capable of doing actions under one
+set of impulses, which they regret when another set comes uppermost in
+turn. That implies a want of balance, an imperfect co-ordination of
+parts and passions. The perfect character is consistent with itself;
+shame and repentance are confessions of weakness. For my part, I never
+do anything without having first deliberately decided that it is the
+best or the only thing to do; and having so done it, I do not draw back
+like a girl from the necessary consequences of my own act. No fluttering
+or running away for me. Still, I must admit that all that blood does
+look very ghastly. Poor old gentleman! I believe he really died almost
+without knowing it, and that is certainly a great comfort to one under
+the circumstances."
+
+He took King Charlie tenderly in his hands, without touching the wounded
+leg, and drew his pocket handkerchief softly from his pocket. "Poor
+beastie," he said aloud, holding out the cut limb before him, "you are
+badly hurt, I'm afraid; but it wasn't my fault. We must see what we can
+do for you." Then he wrapped the handkerchief deftly around it, without
+letting any blood show through, pressed the dog close against his
+breast, and picked up the knife gingerly by the reeking handle. "A fool
+of a fellow would throw it into the river," he thought, with a curl of
+his graceful lip. "They always dredge the river after these incidents. I
+shall just stick it down a hole in the hedge a hundred yards off. The
+police have no invention, dull donkeys; they never dredge the hedges."
+And he thrust it well down a disused rabbit burrow, filling in the top
+neatly with loose mould.
+
+Walter Dene meant to have gone home quietly and said evensong, leaving
+the discovery of the body to be made at haphazard by others, but this
+unfortunate accident to King Charlie compelled him against his will to
+give the first alarm. It was absolutely necessary to take the dog to the
+veterinary at once, or the poor little fellow might bleed to death
+incontinently. "One's best efforts," he thought, "are always liable to
+these unfortunate _contretemps_. I meant merely to remove a superfluous
+person from an uncongenial environment; yet I can't manage it without at
+the same time seriously injuring a harmless little creature that I
+really love." And with one last glance at the lifeless thing behind him,
+he took his way regretfully along the ordinary path back towards the
+peaceful village of Churnside.
+
+Halfway down the lane, at the entrance to the village, he met one of his
+parishioners. "Tom," he said boldly, "have you seen anything of the
+vicar? I'm afraid he's got hurt somehow. Here's poor little King Charlie
+come limping back with his leg cut."
+
+"He went down the road, zur, 'arf an hour zince, and I arn't zeen him
+afterwards."
+
+"Tell the servants at the vicarage to look around the grounds, then; I'm
+afraid he has fallen and hurt himself. I must take the dog at once to
+Perkins's, or else I shall be late for evensong."
+
+The man went off straight toward the vicarage, and Walter Dene turned
+immediately with the dog in his arms into the village veterinary's.
+
+
+II.
+
+The servants from the vicarage were not the first persons to hit upon
+the dead body of the vicar. Joe Harley, the poacher, was out
+reconnoitring that afternoon in the vicar's preserves; and five minutes
+after Walter Dene had passed down the far side of the hedge, Joe Harley
+skulked noiselessly from the orchard up to the cover of the gate by
+Selbury Copse. He crept through the open end by the post (for it was
+against Joe's principles under any circumstances to climb over an
+obstacle of any sort, and so needlessly expose himself), and he was just
+going to slink off along the other hedge, having wires and traps in his
+pocket, when his boot struck violently against a soft object in the
+ditch underfoot. It struck so violently that it crushed in the object
+with the force of the impact; and when Joe came to look at what the
+object might be, he found to his horror that it was the bruised and
+livid face of the old parson. Joe had had a brush with keepers more than
+once, and had spent several months of seclusion in Dorchester Gaol; but,
+in spite of his familiarity with minor forms of lawlessness, he was
+moved enough in all conscience by this awful and unexpected discovery.
+He turned the body over clumsily with his hands, and saw that it had
+been stabbed in the back once only. In doing so he trod in a little
+blood, and got a drop or two on his sleeve and trousers; for the pool
+was bigger now, and Joe was not so handy or dainty with his fingers as
+the idyllic curate.
+
+It was an awful dilemma, indeed, for a confirmed and convicted poacher.
+Should he give the alarm then and there, boldly, trusting to his
+innocence for vindication, and helping the police to discover the
+murderer? Why, that would be sheer suicide, no doubt; "for who but would
+believe," he thought, "'twas me as done it?" Or should he slink away
+quietly and say nothing, leaving others to find the body as best they
+might? That was dangerous enough in its way if anybody saw him, but not
+so dangerous as the other course. In an evil hour for his own chances
+Joe Harley chose that worse counsel, and slank off in his familiar
+crouching fashion towards the opposite corner of the copse.
+
+On the way he heard John's voice holloaing for his master, and kept
+close to the hedge till he had quite turned the corner. But John had
+caught a glimpse of him too, and John did not forget it when, a few
+minutes later, he came upon the horrid sight beside the gate of Selbury
+Copse.
+
+Meanwhile Walter had taken King Charlie to the veterinary's, and had his
+leg bound and bandaged securely. He had also gone down to the church,
+got out his surplice, and begun to put it on in the vestry for evensong,
+when a messenger came at hot haste from the vicarage, with news that
+Master Walter must come up at once, for the vicar was murdered.
+
+"Murdered!" Walter Dene said to himself slowly half aloud; "murdered!
+how horrible! Murdered!" It was an ugly word, and he turned it over with
+a genuine thrill of horror. That was what they would say of him if ever
+the thing came to be discovered! What an inappropriate classification!
+
+He threw aside the surplice, and rushed up hurriedly to the vicarage.
+Already the servants had brought in the body, and laid it out in the
+clothes it wore, on the vicar's own bed. Walter Dene went in,
+shuddering, to look at it. To his utter amazement, the face was battered
+in horribly and almost unrecognizably by a blow or kick! What could that
+hideous mutilation mean? He could not imagine. It was an awful mystery.
+Great heavens! just fancy if any one were to take it into his head that
+he, Walter Dene, had done _that_--had kicked a defenceless old gentleman
+brutally about the face like a common London ruffian! The idea was too
+horrible to be borne for a moment. It unmanned him utterly, and he hid
+his face between his two hands and sobbed aloud like one broken-hearted.
+"This day's work has been too much for my nerves," he thought to himself
+between the sobs; "but perhaps it is just as well I should give way now
+completely."
+
+That night was mainly taken up with the formalities of all such cases;
+and when at last Walter Dene went off, tired and nerve-worn, to bed,
+about midnight, he could not sleep much for thinking of the mystery. The
+murder itself didn't trouble him greatly; that was over and past now,
+and he felt sure his precautions had been amply sufficient to protect
+him even from the barest suspicion; but he couldn't fathom the mystery
+of that battered and mutilated face! Somebody must have seen the corpse
+between the time of the murder and the discovery! Who could that
+somebody have been? and what possible motive could he have had for such
+a horrible piece of purposeless brutality?
+
+As for the servants, in solemn conclave in the hall, they had
+unanimously but one theory to account for all the facts: some poacher or
+other, for choice Joe Harley, had come across the vicar in the copse,
+with gun and traps in hand. The wretch had seen he was discovered, had
+felled the poor old vicar by a blow in the face with the butt-end of
+his rifle, and after he fell, fainting, had stabbed him for greater
+security in the back. That was such an obvious solution of the
+difficulty, that nobody in the servants' hall had a moment's hesitation
+in accepting it.
+
+When Walter heard next morning early that Joe Harley had been arrested
+overnight, on John's information, his horror and surprise at the news
+were wholly unaffected. Here was another new difficulty, indeed. "When I
+did the thing," he said to himself, "I never thought of that
+possibility. I took it for granted it would be a mystery, a problem for
+the local police (who, of course, could no more solve it than they could
+solve the _pons-asinorum_), but it never struck me they would arrest an
+innocent person on the charge instead of me. This is horrible. It's so
+easy to make out a case against a poacher, and hang him for it, on
+suspicion. One's whole sense of justice revolts against the thing. After
+all, there's a great deal to be said in favour of the ordinary
+commonplace morality: it prevents complications. A man of delicate
+sensibilities oughtn't to kill anybody; he lets himself in for all kinds
+of unexpected contingencies, without knowing it."
+
+At the coroner's inquest things looked very black indeed for Joe Harley.
+Walter gave his evidence first, showing how he had found King Charlie
+wounded in the lane; and then the others gave theirs, as to the search
+for and finding of the body. John in particular swore to having seen a
+man's back and head slinking away by the hedge while they were looking
+for the vicar; and that back and head he felt sure were Joe Harley's. To
+Walter's infinite horror and disgust, the coroner's jury returned a
+verdict of wilful murder against the poor poacher. What other verdict
+could they possibly have given in accordance with such evidence?
+
+The trial of Joe Harley for the wilful murder of the Reverend Arthur
+Dene was fixed for the next Dorchester Assizes. In the interval, Walter
+Dene, for the first time in his placid life, knew what it was to undergo
+a mental struggle. Whatever happened, he could not let Joe Harley be
+hanged for this murder. His whole soul rose up within him in loathing
+for such an act of hideous injustice. For though Walter Dene's code of
+morality was certainly not the conventional one, as he so often boasted
+to himself, he was not by any means without any code of morals of any
+sort. He could commit a murder where he thought it necessary, but he
+could not let an innocent man suffer in his stead. His ethical judgment
+on that point was just as clear and categorical as the judgment which
+told him he was in duty bound to murder his uncle. For Walter did not
+argue with himself on moral questions: he perceived the right and
+necessary thing intuitively; he was a law to himself, and he obeyed his
+own law implicitly, for good or for evil. Such men are capable of
+horrible and diabolically deliberate crimes; but they are capable of
+great and genuine self-sacrifices also.
+
+Walter made no secret in the village of his disinclination to believe in
+Joe Harley's guilt. Joe was a rough fellow, he said, certainly, and he
+had no objection to taking a pheasant or two, and even to having a free
+fight with the keepers; but, after all, our game laws were an outrageous
+piece of class legislation, and he could easily understand how the poor,
+whose sense of justice they outraged, should be so set against them. He
+could not think Joe Harley was capable of a detestable crime. Besides,
+he had seen him himself within a few minutes before and after the
+murder. Everybody thought it such a proof of the young parson's generous
+and kindly disposition; he had certainly the charity which thinketh no
+evil. Even though his own uncle had been brutally murdered on his own
+estate, he checked his natural feelings of resentment, and refused to
+believe that one of his own parishioners could have been guilty of the
+crime. Nay, more, so anxious was he that substantial justice should be
+done the accused, and so confident was he of his innocence, that he
+promised to provide counsel for him at his own expense; and he provided
+two of the ablest barristers on the Western circuit.
+
+Before the trial, Walter Dene had come, after a terrible internal
+struggle, to an awful resolution. He would do everything he could for
+Joe Harley; but if the verdict went against him, he was resolved, then
+and there, in open court, to confess, before judge and jury, the whole
+truth. It would be a horrible thing for Christina; he knew that; but he
+could not love Christina so much, "loved he not honour more;" and
+honour, after his own fashion, he certainly loved dearly. Though he
+might be false to all that all the world thought right, it was ingrained
+in the very fibre of his soul to be true to his own inner nature at
+least. Night after night he lay awake, tossing on his bed, and picturing
+to his mind's eye every detail of that terrible disclosure. The jury
+would bring in a verdict of guilty: then, before the judge put on his
+black cap, he, Walter, would stand up, and tell them that he could not
+let another man hang for his crime; he would have the whole truth out
+before them; and then he would die, for he would have taken a little
+bottle of poison at the first sound of the verdict. As for
+Christina--oh, Christina!--Walter Dene could not dare to let himself
+think upon that. It was horrible; it was unendurable; it was torture a
+thousand times worse than dying: but still, he must and would face it.
+For in certain phases, Walter Dene, forger and murderer as he was, could
+be positively heroic.
+
+The day of the trial came, and Walter Dene, pale and haggard with much
+vigil, walked in a dream and faintly from his hotel to the court-house.
+Everybody present noticed what a deep effect the shock of his uncle's
+death had had upon him. He was thinner and more bloodless than usual,
+and his dulled eyes looked black and sunken in their sockets. Indeed, he
+seemed to have suffered far more intensely than the prisoner himself,
+who walked in firmer and more erect, and took his seat doggedly in the
+familiar dock. He had been there more than once before, to say the
+truth, though never before on such an errand. Yet mere habit, when he
+got there, made him at once assume the hang-dog look of the consciously
+guilty.
+
+Walter sat and watched and listened, still in a dream, but without once
+betraying in his face the real depth of his innermost feelings. In the
+body of the court he saw Joe's wife, weeping profusely and
+ostentatiously, after the fashion considered to be correct by her class;
+and though he pitied her from the bottom of his heart, he could only
+think by contrast of Christina. What were that good woman's fears and
+sorrows by the side of the grief and shame and unspeakable horror he
+might have to bring upon his Christina? Pray Heaven the shock, if it
+came, might kill her outright; that would at least be better than that
+she should live long years to remember. More than judge, or jury, or
+prisoner, Walter Dene saw everywhere, behind the visible shadows that
+thronged the court, that one persistent prospective picture of
+heart-broken Christina.
+
+The evidence for the prosecution told with damning force against the
+prisoner. He was a notorious poacher; the vicar was a game-preserver. He
+had poached more than once on the ground of the vicarage. He was shown
+by numerous witnesses to have had an animus against the vicar. He had
+been seen, not in the face, to be sure, but still seen and recognized,
+slinking away, immediately after the fact, from the scene of the murder.
+And the prosecution had found stains of blood, believed by scientific
+experts to be human, on the clothing he had worn when he was arrested.
+Walter Dene listened now with terrible, unabated earnestness, for he
+knew that in reality it was he himself who was upon his trial. He
+himself, and Christina's happiness; for if the poacher were found
+guilty, he was firmly resolved, beyond hope of respite, to tell all, and
+face the unspeakable.
+
+The defence seemed indeed a weak and feeble theory. Somebody unknown had
+committed the murder, and this somebody, seen from behind, had been
+mistaken by John for Joe Harley. The blood-stains need not be human, as
+the cross-examination went to show, but were only known by
+counter-experts to be mammalian--perhaps a rabbit's. Every poacher--and
+it was admitted that Joe was a poacher--was liable to get his clothes
+blood-stained. Grant they were human, Joe, it appeared, had himself once
+shot off his little finger. All these points came out from the
+examination of the earlier witnesses. At last, counsel put the curate
+himself into the box, and proceeded to examine him briefly as a witness
+for the defence.
+
+Walter Dene stepped, pale and haggard still, into the witness-box. He
+had made up his mind to make one final effort "for Christina's
+happiness." He fumbled nervously all the time at a small glass phial in
+his pocket, but he answered all questions without a moment's hesitation,
+and he kept down his emotions with a wonderful composure which excited
+the admiration of everybody present. There was a general hush to hear
+him. Did he see the prisoner, Joseph Harley, on the day of the murder?
+Yes, three times. When was the first occasion? From the library window,
+just before the vicar left the house. What was Joseph Harley then doing?
+Walking in the opposite direction from the copse. Did Joseph Harley
+recognize him? Yes, he touched his hat to him. When was the second
+occasion? About ten minutes later, when he, Walter, was leaving the
+vicarage for a stroll. Did Joseph Harley then recognize him? Yes, he
+touched his hat again, and the curate said, "Good morning, Joe; a fine
+day for walking." When was the third time? Ten minutes later again, when
+he was returning from the lane, carrying wounded little King Charlie.
+Would it have been physically possible for the prisoner to go from the
+vicarage to the spot where the murder was committed, and back again, in
+the interval between the first two occasions? It would not. Would it
+have been physically possible for the prisoner to do so in the interval
+between the second and third occasions? It would not.
+
+"Then in your opinion, Mr. Dene, it is physically impossible that Joseph
+Harley can have committed this murder?"
+
+"In my opinion, it is physically impossible."
+
+While Walter Dene solemnly swore amid dead silence to this treble lie,
+he did not dare to look Joe Harley once in the face; and while Joe
+Harley listened in amazement to this unexpected assistance to his
+case--for counsel, suspecting a mistaken identity, had not questioned
+him too closely on the subject--he had presence of mind enough not to
+let his astonishment show upon his stolid features. But when Walter had
+finished his evidence in chief, he stole a glance at Joe; and for a
+moment their eyes met. Then Walter's fell in utter self-humiliation; and
+he said to himself fiercely, "I would not so have debased and degraded
+myself before any man to save my own life--what is my life worth me,
+after all?--but to save Christina, to save Christina, to save Christina!
+I have brought all this upon myself for Christina's sake."
+
+Meanwhile, Joe Harley was asking himself curiously what could be the
+meaning of this new move on parson's part. It was deliberate perjury,
+Joe felt sure, for parson could not have mistaken another person for him
+three times over; but what good end for himself could parson hope to
+gain by it? If it was he who had murdered the vicar (as Joe strongly
+suspected), why did he not try to press the charge home against the
+first person who happened to be accused, instead of committing a
+distinct perjury on purpose to compass his acquittal? Joe Harley, with
+his simple everyday criminal mind, could not be expected to unravel the
+intricacies of so complex a personality as Walter Dene's. But even
+there, on trial for his life, he could not help wondering what on earth
+young parson could be driving at in this business.
+
+The judge summed up with the usual luminously obvious alternate
+platitudes. If the jury thought that John had really seen Joe Harley,
+and that the curate was mistaken in the person whom he thrice saw, or
+was mistaken once only out of the thrice, or had miscalculated the time
+between each occurrence, or the time necessary to cover the ground to
+the gate, then they would find the prisoner guilty of wilful murder. If,
+on the other hand, they believed John had judged hastily, and that the
+curate had really seen the prisoner three separate times, and that he
+had rightly calculated all the intervals, then they would find the
+prisoner not guilty. The prisoner's case rested entirely upon the
+_alibi_. Supposing they thought there was a doubt in the matter, they
+should give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt. Walter noticed that
+the judge said in every other case, "If you believe the witness
+So-and-so," but that in his case he made no such discourteous
+reservation. As a matter of fact, the one person whose conduct nobody
+for a moment dreamt of calling in question was the real murderer.
+
+The jury retired for more than an hour. During all that time two men
+stood there in mortal suspense, intent and haggard, both upon their
+trial, but not both equally. The prisoner in the dock fixed his arms in
+a dogged and sullen attitude, the colour half gone from his brown cheek,
+and his eyes straining with excitement, but showing no outward sign of
+any emotion except the craven fear of death. Walter Dene stood almost
+fainting in the body of the court, his bloodless fingers still fumbling
+nervously at the little phial, and his face deadly pale with the awful
+pallor of a devouring horror. His heart scarcely beat at all, but at
+each long slow pulsation he could feel it throb distinctly within his
+bosom. He saw or heard nothing before him, but kept his aching eyes
+fixed steadily on the door by which the jury were to enter. Junior
+counsel nudged one another to notice his agitation, and whispered that
+that poor young curate had evidently never seen a man tried for his life
+before.
+
+At last the jury entered. Joe and Walter waited, each in his own manner,
+breathless for the verdict. "Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty
+or not guilty of wilful murder?" Walter took the little phial from his
+pocket, and held it carefully between his finger and thumb. The awful
+moment had come; the next word would decide the fate of himself and
+Christina. The foreman of the jury looked up solemnly, and answered with
+slow distinctness, "Not guilty." The prisoner leaned back vacantly, and
+wiped his forehead; but there was an awful cry of relief from one mouth
+in the body of the court, and Walter Dene sank back into the arms of the
+bystanders, exhausted with suspense and overcome by the reaction. The
+crowd remarked among themselves that young Parson Dene was too
+tender-hearted a man to come into court at a criminal trial. He would
+break his heart to see even a dog hanged, let alone his
+fellow-Christians. As for Joe Harley, it was universally admitted that
+he had had a narrow squeak of it, and that he had got off better than he
+deserved. The jury gave him the benefit of the doubt.
+
+As soon as all the persons concerned had returned to Churnside, Walter
+sent at once for Joe Harley. The poacher came to see him in the vicarage
+library. He was elated and coarsely exultant with his victory, as a
+relief from the strain he had suffered, after the manner of all vulgar
+natures.
+
+"Joe," said the clergyman slowly, motioning him into a chair at the
+other side of the desk, "I know that after this trial Churnside will not
+be a pleasant place to hold you. All your neighbours believe, in spite
+of the verdict, that you killed the vicar. I feel sure, however, that
+you did not commit this murder. Therefore, as some compensation for the
+suffering of mind to which you have been put, I think it well to send
+you and your wife and family to Australia or Canada, whichever you like
+best. I propose also to make you a present of a hundred pounds, to set
+you up in your new home."
+
+"Make it five hundred, passon," Joe said, looking at him significantly.
+
+Walter smiled quietly, and did not flinch in any way. "I said a
+hundred," he continued calmly, "and I will make it only a hundred. I
+should have had no objection to making it five, except for the manner in
+which you ask it. But you evidently mistake the motive of my gift. I
+give it out of pure compassion for you, and not out of any other feeling
+whatsoever."
+
+"Very well, passon," said Joe sullenly, "I accept it."
+
+"You mistake again," Walter went on blandly, for he was himself again
+now. "You are not to accept it as terms; you are to thank me for it as a
+pure present. I see we two partially understand each other; but it is
+important you should understand me exactly as I mean it. Joe Harley,
+listen to me seriously. I have saved your life. If I had been a man of a
+coarse and vulgar nature, if I had been like you in a similar
+predicament, I would have pressed the case against you for obvious
+personal reasons, and you would have been hanged for it. But I did not
+press it, because I felt convinced of your innocence, and my sense of
+justice rose irresistibly against it. I did the best I could to save
+you; I risked my own reputation to save you; and I have no hesitation
+now in telling you that to the best of my belief, if the verdict had
+gone against you, the person who really killed the vicar, accidentally
+or intentionally, meant to have given himself up to the police, rather
+than let an innocent man suffer."
+
+"Passon," said Joe Harley, looking at him intently, "I believe as
+you're tellin' me the truth. I zeen as much in that person's face afore
+the verdict."
+
+There was a solemn pause for a moment; and then Walter Dene said slowly,
+"Now that you have withdrawn your claim as a claim, I will stretch a
+point and make it five hundred. It is little enough for what you have
+suffered. But I, too, have suffered terribly, terribly."
+
+"Thank you, passon," Joe answered. "I zeen as you were turble anxious."
+
+There was again a moment's pause. Then Walter Dene asked quietly, "How
+did the vicar's face come to be so bruised and battered?"
+
+"I stumbled up agin 'im accidental like, and didn't know I'd kicked 'un
+till I'd done it. Must 'a been just a few minutes after you'd 'a left
+'un."
+
+"Joe," said the curate in his calmest tone, "you had better go; the
+money will be sent to you shortly. But if you ever see my face again, or
+speak or write a word of this to me, you shall not have a penny of it,
+but shall be prosecuted for intimidation. A hundred before you leave,
+four hundred in Australia. Now go."
+
+"Very well, passon," Joe answered; and he went.
+
+"Pah!" said the curate with a face of disgust, shutting the door after
+him, and lighting a perfumed pastille in his little Chinese porcelain
+incense-burner, as if to fumigate the room from the poacher's offensive
+presence. "Pah! to think that these affairs should compel one to
+humiliate and abase one's self before a vulgar clod like that! To think
+that all his life long that fellow will virtually know--and
+misinterpret--my secret. He is incapable of understanding that I did it
+as a duty to Christina. Well, he will never dare to tell it, that's
+certain, for nobody would believe him if he did; and he may congratulate
+himself heartily that he's got well out of this difficulty. It will be
+the luckiest thing in the end that ever happened to him. And now I hope
+this little episode is finally over."
+
+When the Churnside public learned that Walter Dene meant to carry his
+belief in Joe Harley's innocence so far as to send him and his family at
+his own expense out to Australia, they held that the young parson's
+charity and guilelessness was really, as the doctor said, almost
+Quixotic. And when, in his anxiety to detect and punish the real
+murderer, he offered a reward of five hundred pounds from his own pocket
+for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the
+criminal, the Churnside people laughed quietly at his extraordinary
+childlike simplicity of heart. The real murderer had been caught and
+tried at Dorchester Assizes, they said, and had only got off by the skin
+of his teeth because Walter himself had come forward and sworn to a
+quite improbable and inconclusive alibi. There was plenty of time for
+Joe to have got to the gate by the short cut, and that he did so
+everybody at Churnside felt morally certain. Indeed, a few years later a
+blood-stained bowie-knife was found in the hedge not far from the scene
+of the murder, and the gamekeeper "could almost 'a took his Bible oath
+he'd zeen just such a knife along o' Joe Harley."
+
+That was not the end of Walter Dene's Quixotisms, however. When the will
+was read, it turned out that almost everything was left to the young
+parson; and who could deserve it better, or spend it more charitably?
+But Walter, though he would not for the world seem to cast any slight or
+disrespect upon his dear uncle's memory, did not approve of customs of
+primogeniture, and felt bound to share the estate equally with his
+brother Arthur. "Strange," said the head of the firm of Watson and
+Blenkiron to himself, when he read the little paragraph about this
+generous conduct in the paper; "I thought the instructions were to leave
+it to his nephew Arthur, not to his nephew Walter; but there, one
+forgets and confuses names of people that one does not know so easily."
+"Gracious goodness!" thought the engrossing clerk; "surely it was the
+other way on. I wonder if I can have gone and copied the wrong names in
+the wrong places?" But in a big London business, nobody notes these
+things as they would have been noted in Churnside; the vicar was always
+a changeable, pernickety, huffy old fellow, and very likely he had had a
+reverse will drawn up afterwards by his country lawyer. All the world
+only thought that Walter Dene's generosity was really almost ridiculous,
+even in a parson. When he was married to Christina, six months
+afterwards, everybody said so charming a girl was well mated with so
+excellent and admirable a husband.
+
+And he really did make a very tender and loving husband and father.
+Christina believed in him always, for he did his best to foster and keep
+alive her faith. He would have given up active clerical duty if he
+could, never having liked it (for he was above hypocrisy), but Christina
+was against the project, and his bishop would not hear of it. The Church
+could ill afford to lose such a man as Mr. Dene, the bishop said, in
+these troubled times; and he begged him as a personal favour to accept
+the living of Churnside, which was in his gift. But Walter did not like
+the place, and asked for another living instead, which, being of less
+value--"so like Mr. Dene to think nothing of the temporalities,"--the
+bishop even more graciously granted. He has since published a small
+volume of dainty little poems on uncut paper, considered by some critics
+as rather pagan in tone for a clergyman, but universally allowed to be
+extremely graceful, the perfection of poetical form with much delicate
+mastery of poetical matter. And everybody knows that the author is
+almost certain to be offered the first vacant canonry in his own
+cathedral. As for the little episode, he himself has almost forgotten
+all about it; for those who think a murderer must feel remorse his whole
+life long, are trying to read their own emotional nature into the wholly
+dispassionate character of Walter Dene.
+
+
+
+
+_AN EPISODE IN HIGH LIFE._
+
+
+Sir Henry Vardon, K.C.B., electrician to the Admiralty, whose title, as
+everybody knows, was gazetted some six weeks since, is at this moment
+the youngest living member of the British knighthood. He is now only
+just thirty, and he has obtained his present high distinction by those
+remarkable inventions of his in the matter of electrical signalling and
+lighthouse arrangements which have been so much talked about in _Nature_
+this year, and which gained him the gold medal of the Royal Society in
+1881. Lady Vardon is one of the youngest and prettiest hostesses in
+London, and if you would care to hear the history of their courtship
+here it is.
+
+When Harry Vardon left Oxford, only seven years ago, none of his friends
+could imagine what he meant by throwing up all his chances of University
+success. The son of a poor country parson in Devonshire, who had
+strained his little income to the uttermost to send him to college,
+Vardon of Magdalen had done credit to his father and himself in all the
+schools. He gained the best demyship of his year; got a first in
+classical mods.; and then unaccountably took to reading science, in
+which he carried everything before him. At the end of his four years, he
+walked into a scientific fellowship at Balliol as a matter of course;
+and then, after twelve months' residence, he suddenly surprised the
+world of Oxford by accepting a tutorship to the young Earl of Surrey,
+at that time, as you doubtless remember, a minor, aged about sixteen.
+
+But Harry Vardon had good reasons of his own for taking this tutorship.
+Six months after he became a fellow of Balliol, the old vicar had died
+unexpectedly, leaving his only other child, Edith, alone and unprovided
+for, as was indeed natural; for the expenses of Harry's college life had
+quite eaten up the meagre savings of twenty years at Little Hinton. In
+order to provide a home for Edith, it was necessary that Harry should
+find something or other to do which would bring in an immediate income.
+School-mastering, that refuge of the destitute graduate, was not much to
+his mind; and so when the senior tutor of Boniface wrote a little note
+to ask whether he would care to accept the charge of a cub nobleman, as
+he disrespectfully phrased it, Harry jumped at the offer, and took the
+proposed salary of 400_l_. a year with the greatest alacrity. That would
+far more than suffice for all Edith's simple needs, and he himself could
+live upon the proceeds of his fellowship, besides finding time to
+continue his electrical researches. For I will not disguise the fact
+that Harry only accepted the cub nobleman as a stop-gap, and that he
+meant even then to make his fortune in the end by those splendid
+electrical discoveries which will undoubtedly immortalize his name in
+future ages.
+
+It was summer term when the appointment was made; and the Surrey people
+(who were poor for their station) had just gone down to Colyford Abbey,
+the family seat, in the valley of the Axe near Seaton. You have visited
+the house, I dare say--open to visitors every Tuesday, when the family
+is absent--a fine somewhat modernized mansion, with some good
+perpendicular work about it still, in spite of the havoc wrought in it
+by Inigo Jones, who converted the chapel and refectory of the old
+Cistercians into a banqueting-hall and ballroom for the first Lord
+Surrey of the present creation. It was lovely weather when Harry Vardon
+went down there; and the Abbey, and the terrace, and the park, and the
+beautiful valley beyond were looking their very best. Harry fell in love
+with the view at once, and almost fell in love with the inmates too at
+the first glance.
+
+Lady Surrey, the mother, was sitting on a garden seat in front of the
+house as the carriage which met him at Colyford station drove up to the
+door. She was much younger and more beautiful than Harry had at all
+expected. He had pictured the dowager to himself as a stately old lady
+of sixty, with white hair and a grand manner; instead of which he found
+himself face to face with a well-preserved beauty of something less than
+forty, not above medium height, and still strikingly pretty in a
+round-faced, mature, but very delicate fashion. She had wavy chestnut
+hair, regular features, an exquisite set of pearly teeth, full cheeks
+whose natural roses were perhaps just a trifle increased by not wholly
+ungraceful art, and above all a lovely complexion quite unspoilt as yet
+by years. She was dressed as such a person should be dressed, with no
+affectation of girlishness, but in the style that best shows off ripe
+beauty and a womanly figure. Harry was always a very impressionable
+fellow; and I really believe that if Lady Surrey had been alone he would
+have fallen over head and ears in love with her at first sight.
+
+But there was something which kept him from falling in love at once with
+Lady Surrey, and that was the girl who sat half reclining on a
+tiger-skin at her feet, with a little sketching tablet on her lap. He
+could hardly take full stock of the mother because he was so busy
+looking at the daughter as well. I shall not attempt to describe Lady
+Gladys Durant; all pretty girls fall under one of some half-dozen heads,
+and description at best can really do no more than classify them. Lady
+Gladys belonged to the tall and graceful aristocratic class, and she was
+a good specimen of the type at seventeen. Not that Harry Vardon fell in
+love with her at once; he was really in the pleasing condition of
+Captain Macheath, too much engaged in looking at two pretty women to be
+capable even mentally of making a choice between them. Mother and
+daughter were both almost equally beautiful, each in her own distinct
+style.
+
+The countess half rose to greet him--it is condescension on the part of
+a countess to notice the tutor at all, I believe; but though I am no
+lover of lords myself, I will do the Durants the justice to say that
+their treatment of Harry was always the very kindliest that could
+possibly be expected from people of their ideas and traditions.
+
+"Mr. Vardon?" she said interrogatively, as she held out her hand to the
+new tutor. Harry bowed assent. "I'm glad you have such a lovely day to
+make your first acquaintance with Colyford. It's a pretty place, isn't
+it? Gladys, this is Mr. Vardon, who is kindly going to take charge of
+Surrey for us."
+
+"I'm afraid you don't know what you're going to undertake," said Gladys,
+smiling and holding out her hand. "He's a dreadful pickle. Do you know
+this part of the world before, Mr. Vardon?"
+
+"Not just hereabouts," Harry answered; "my father's parish was in North
+Devon, but I know the greater part of the county very well."
+
+"That's a good thing," said Gladys quickly; "we're all Devonshire people
+here, and we believe in the county with all our hearts. I wish Surrey
+took his title from it. It's so absurd to take your title from a place
+you don't care about only because you've got land there. I love
+Devonshire people best of any."
+
+"Mr. Vardon would probably like to see his rooms," said the countess.
+"Parker, will you show him up?"
+
+The rooms were everything that Harry could wish. There was a prettily
+furnished sitting-room for himself on the front, looking across the
+terrace, with a view of the valley and the sea in the distance; there
+was a study next door, for tutor and pupil to work in; there was a
+cheerful little bedroom behind; and downstairs at the back there was the
+large bare room for which Harry had specially stipulated, wherein to put
+his electrical apparatus, for he meant to experiment and work busily at
+his own subject in his spare time. There was a special servant, too,
+told off to wait upon him; and altogether Harry felt that if only the
+social position could be made endurable, he could live very comfortably
+for a year or two at Colyford Abbey.
+
+There are some men who could never stand such a life at all. There are
+others who can stand it because they can stand anything. But Harry
+Vardon belonged to neither class. He was one of those who feel at home
+in most places, and who can get on in all society alike. In the first
+place, he was one of the handsomest fellows you ever saw, with large
+dark eyes, and that particular black moustache that no woman can ever
+resist. Then again he was tall and had a good presence, which impressed
+even those most dangerous of critics for a private tutor, the footmen.
+Moreover, he was clever, chatty, and agreeable; and it never entered
+into his head that he was not conferring some distinction upon the
+Surrey family by consenting to be teacher to their young
+lordling--which, indeed, was after all the sober fact.
+
+The train was in a little before seven, and there was a bit of a drive
+from the station, so that Harry had only just had time to dress for
+dinner when the gong sounded. In the drawing-room he met his future
+pupil, a good-looking, high-spirited, but evidently lazy boy of sixteen.
+The family was alone, so the earl took down his mother, while Harry gave
+his arm to Lady Gladys. Before dinner was over, the new tutor had taken
+the measure of the trio pretty accurately. The countess was clever, that
+was certain; she took an interest in books and in art, and she could
+talk lightly but well upon most current topics in the easy sparkling
+style of a woman of the world. Gladys was clever too, though not booky;
+she was full of sketching and music, and was delighted to hear that
+Harry could paint a little in water-colours, besides being the owner of
+a good violin. As to the boy, his fancy clearly ran for the most part to
+dogs, guns, and cricket; and indeed, though he was no doubt a very
+important person as a future member of the British legislature, I think
+for the purposes of the present story, which is mainly concerned with
+Harry Vardon's fortunes, we may safely leave him out of consideration.
+Harry taught him as much as he could be induced to learn for an hour or
+two every morning, and looked after him as far as possible when he was
+anywhere within hearing throughout the rest of the day; but as the lad
+was almost always out around the place somewhere with a gamekeeper or a
+stable-boy, he hardly entered practically into the current of Harry's
+life at all, outside the regular hours of study. As a matter of fact, he
+never learnt much from anybody or did anything worth speaking of; but he
+has since married a Birmingham heiress with a million or so of her own,
+and is now one of the most rising young members of the House of Lords.
+
+After dinner, the countess showed Harry her excellent collection of
+Bartolozzis, and Harry, who knew something about them, showed the
+countess that she was wrong as to the authenticity of one or two among
+them. Then Gladys played passably well, and he sang a duet with her, in
+a way that made her feel a little ashamed of her own singing. And lastly
+Harry brought down his violin, at which the countess smiled a little,
+for she thought it audacious on the first evening; but when he played
+one of his best pieces she smiled again, for she had a good ear and a
+great deal of taste. After which they all retired to bed, and Gladys
+remarked to her maid, in the privacy of her own room, that the new tutor
+was a very pleasant man, and quite a relief after such a stick as Mr.
+Wilkinson.
+
+At breakfast next morning the party remained unchanged, but at lunch the
+two younger girls appeared upon the scene, with their governess, Miss
+Martindale. Though very different in type from Gladys, Ethel Martindale
+was in her way an equally pretty girl. She was small and _mignonne_,
+with delicate little hands, and a light pretty figure, not too slight,
+but very gracefully proportioned. Her cheeks and chin were charmingly
+dimpled, and her complexion was just of that faintly-dark tinge that one
+sees so often combined with light-brown hair and eyes in the moorland
+parts of Lancashire. Altogether, she was a perfect foil to Gladys, and
+it would have been difficult for almost any man as he sat at that table
+to say which of the three, mother, daughter, or governess, was really
+the prettiest. For my own part, I give my vote unreservedly for the
+countess, but then I am getting somewhat grizzled now and have long been
+bald; so my liking turns naturally towards ripe beauty. I hate your
+self-conscious chits of seventeen, who can only chat and giggle; I like
+a woman who has something to say for herself. But Harry was just turned
+twenty-three, and perhaps his choice might, not unnaturally, have gone
+otherwise.
+
+The governess talked little at lunch, and seemed altogether a rather
+subdued and timid girl. Harry noticed with pain that she appeared half
+afraid of speaking to anybody, and also that the footmen made a marked
+distinction between their manner to him and their manner to her. He
+would have liked once or twice to kick the fellows for their insolence.
+After lunch, Gladys and the little ones went for a stroll down towards
+the river, and Harry followed after with Miss Martindale.
+
+"Do you come from this part of England?" he asked.
+
+"No," answered Ethel, "I come from Lancashire. My father was rector of a
+small parish on the moors."
+
+Harry's heart smote him. It might have been Edith. What a little turn of
+chance had made all the difference! "My father was a parson too," he
+said, and then checked himself for the half-disrespectful word, "but he
+lived down here in Devonshire. Do you like Colyford?"
+
+"Oh yes,--the place, very much. There are delightful rambles, and Lady
+Gladys and I go out sketching a great deal. And it's a delightful
+country for flowers."
+
+The place, but not the life, thought Harry. Poor child, it must be very
+hard for her.
+
+"Mr. Vardon, come on here, I want you," called out Gladys from the
+little stone bridge. "You know everything. Can you tell me what this
+flower is?" and she held out a long spray of waving green-stuff.
+
+"Caper spurge," said Harry, looking at it carelessly.
+
+"Oh no," Miss Martindale put in quickly, "Portland spurge, surely."
+
+"So it is," Harry answered, looking closer. "Then you are a bit of a
+botanist, Miss Martindale?"
+
+"Not a botanist, but very fond of the flowers."
+
+"Miss Martindale's always picking lots of ugly things and bringing them
+home," said Gladys laughingly; "aren't you, dear?"
+
+Ethel smiled and nodded. So they went on past the bridge and out upon
+the opposite side, and back again by the little white railings into the
+park.
+
+For the next three months Harry enjoyed himself in a busy way immensely.
+Every morning he had his three hours' teaching, and every afternoon he
+went a walk, or fished in the river, or worked at his electrical
+machines. To the household at the Abbey such a man was a perfect
+godsend. For he was a versatile fellow, able to turn his hand to
+anything, and the Durants lived in a very quiet way, and were glad of
+somebody to keep the house lively. The money was all tied up till the
+boy came of age, and even then there wouldn't be much of it. Surrey had
+been sent to Eton for a month or two and then removed, by request, to
+prevent more violent measures; after which he was sent to two or three
+other schools, always with the same result. So he was brought home again
+and handed over to the domestic persuasion of a private tutor. The only
+thing that kept him moderately quiet was the possibility of running
+around the place with the keepers; and the only person who ever taught
+him anything was Harry Vardon, though even he, I must admit, did not
+succeed in impressing any very valuable lessons upon the lad's volatile
+brain. The countess saw few visitors, and so a man like Harry was a real
+acquisition to the little circle. He was perpetually being wanted by
+everybody, everywhere, and at the end of three months he was simply
+indispensable.
+
+Lady Surrey was always consulting him as to the proper place to plant
+the new wellingtonias, the right aspect for deodars, the best plan for
+mounting water-colours, and the correct date of all the neighbouring
+churches. It was so delightful to drive about with somebody who really
+understood the history and geology and antiquities of the county, she
+said; and she began to develop an extraordinary interest in prehistoric
+arch�ology, and to listen patiently to Harry's disquisitions on the
+difference between long barrows and round barrows, or on the true nature
+of the earthworks that cap the top of Membury Hill. Harry for his part
+was quite ready to discourse volubly on all these subjects, for it was
+his hobby to impart information, whereof he had plenty; and he liked
+knocking about the country, examining castles or churches, and laying
+down the law about matters architectural with much authority to two
+pretty women. The countess even took an interest in his great electrical
+investigation, and came into his workshop to hear all about the uses of
+his mysterious batteries. As for Lady Gladys, she was for ever wanting
+Mr. Vardon's opinion about the exact colour for that shadow by the
+cottage, Mr. Vardon's aid in practising that difficult bit of Chopin,
+Mr. Vardon's counsel about the decorative treatment of the
+passion-flower on that lovely piece of crewel-work. Indeed, contrary to
+Miss Martindale's express admonition, and all the dictates of propriety,
+she was always running off to Harry's little sitting-room to ask his
+advice about five hundred different things, five hundred times in every
+twenty-four hours.
+
+There was only one person in the household who seemed at all shy of
+Harry, and that was Miss Martindale. Do what he could, he could never
+get her to feel at home with him. She seemed always anxious to keep out
+of his way, and never ready to join in any of his plans. This was
+annoying, because Harry really liked the poor girl and felt sorry for
+her lonely position. But as she would have nothing to say to him, why,
+there was nothing else to be done; so he contented himself with being as
+polite to her as possible, while respecting her evident wish to be let
+alone.
+
+One afternoon, when the four had been out for a drive together to visit
+the old ruins near Cowhayne, and Harry had been sketching with Gladys
+and lecturing to the countess to his heart's content, he was sitting on
+the bench by the red cedars, when to his surprise he saw the governess
+strolling carelessly across the terrace towards him. "Mr. Vardon," she
+said, standing beside the bench, "I want to say something to you. You
+mustn't mind my saying it, but I feel it is part of my duty. Do you
+think you ought to pay so much attention to Gladys? You and I come into
+a family of this sort on peculiar terms, you know. They don't think we
+are quite the same sort of human beings as themselves. Now, I'm half
+afraid--I don't like to say so, but I think it better I should say it
+than my lady--I'm half afraid that Gladys is getting her head too much
+filled with you. Whatever she does, you are always helping her. She is
+for ever running off to see you about something or other. She is very
+young; she meets very few other men; and you have been extremely
+attentive to her. But when people like these admit you into their
+family, they do so on the tacit understanding that you will not do what
+they would call abusing the position. To-day, I half fancied that my
+lady looked at you once or twice when you were talking to Gladys, and I
+thought I would try to be brave enough to speak to you about it. If _I_
+don't, I think _she_ will."
+
+"Really, Miss Martindale," said Harry, rising and walking by her side
+towards the laburnum alley, "I'm very glad you have unburdened your mind
+about this matter. For myself, you know, I don't acknowledge the
+obligation. I should marry any girl I liked, if she would have _me_,
+whatever her artificial position might be; and I should never let any
+barriers of that sort stand in my way. But I don't know that I have the
+slightest intention of ever trying to marry Lady Gladys or anybody else
+of the sort; so while I remain undecided on that point, I shall do as
+you wish me. By the way, it strikes me now that you have been trying to
+keep her away from me as much as possible."
+
+"As part of my duty, I think I ought to do so. Yes."
+
+"Well, you may rely upon it, I will give you no more cause for anxiety,"
+said Harry; "so the less we say about it the better. What a lovely
+sunset, and what a glorious colour on the cliffs at Axmouth!" And he
+walked down the alley with her two or three times, talking about various
+indifferent subjects. Somehow he had never managed to get on so well
+with her before. She was a very nice girl, he thought, really a very
+nice girl; what a pity she would never take any notice of him in any
+way! However, he enjoyed that quiet half-hour immensely, and was quite
+sorry when Lady Surrey came out a little later and joined them, exactly
+as if she wanted to interrupt their conversation. But what a beautiful
+woman Lady Surrey was too, as she came across the lawn just then in her
+garden hat and the pale blue Umritzur shawl thrown loosely across her
+shapely shoulders! By Jove, she was as handsome a woman, after all, as
+he had ever seen.
+
+After dinner that evening Lady Surrey sent Gladys off to Miss
+Martindale's room on some small pretext, and then put Harry down on the
+sofa beside her to help in arranging those interminable ferns of hers.
+Evening dress suited the countess best, and she knew it. She was looking
+even more beautiful than before, with her hair prettily dressed, and the
+little simple turquoise necklet setting off her white neck; and she
+talked a great deal to Harry, and was really very charming. No more
+fascinating widow, he thought, to be found anywhere within a hundred
+miles. At last she stopped, leaning over the ferns, and sat back a
+little on the sofa, half fronting him. "Mr. Vardon," she said suddenly,
+"there is something I wish to speak to you about, privately."
+
+"Certainly," said Harry, half expecting the topic.
+
+"Do you know, I think you ought not to pay such marked attention to Lady
+Gladys. Two or three times I have fancied I noticed it, and have meant
+to mention it to you, but I thought it might be unnecessary. On many
+accounts, however, I think it is best not to let it pass any longer. The
+difference of station----"
+
+"Excuse me," said Harry, "I'm sorry to differ from you, but I don't
+acknowledge differences of station."
+
+"Well," said the countess, in a conciliatory tone, "under certain
+circumstances that may be perfectly correct. A young man in your
+position and with your talents has of course the whole world before
+him. He can make himself whatever he pleases. I don't think, Mr. Vardon,
+I have ever under-estimated the worth of brains. I do feel that
+knowledge and culture are much greater things after all than mere
+position. Now, in justice to me, don't you think I do?"
+
+Harry looked at her--she was really a very beautiful woman--and then
+said, "Yes, I think you have certainly better and more rational tastes
+than most other people circumstanced as you are."
+
+"I'm so glad you do," the countess answered, heartily. "I don't care for
+a life of perfect frivolity and fashion, such as one gets in London. If
+it were not for Gladys's sake I sometimes think I would give it up
+entirely. Do you know, I often wish my life had been cast very
+differently--cast among another set of people from the people I have
+always mixed among. Whenever I meet clever people--literary people and
+scholars--I always feel so sorry I haven't moved all my life in their
+world. From one point of view, I quite recognize what you said just now,
+that these artificial distinctions should not exist between people who
+are really equals in intellect and culture."
+
+"Naturally not," said Harry, to whom this proposition sounded like a
+familiar truism.
+
+"But in Lady Gladys's case, I feel I ought to guard her against seeing
+too much of anybody in particular just at present. She is only
+seventeen, and she is of course impressionable. Now, you know a great
+many mothers would not have spoken to you as I do; but I like you, Mr.
+Vardon, and I feel at home with you. You will promise me not to pay so
+much attention to Gladys in future, won't you?"
+
+As she looked at him full in the face with her beautiful eyes, Harry
+felt he could just then have promised her anything. "Yes," he said, "I
+will promise."
+
+"Thank you," said the countess, looking at him again; "I am very much
+obliged to you." And then for a moment there was an awkward pause, and
+they both looked full into one another's eyes without saying a word.
+
+In a minute the countess began again, and said a good many things about
+what a dreadful waste of life people generally made; and what a
+privilege it was to know clever people; and what a reality and purpose
+there was in their lives. A great deal of this sort she said, and in a
+low pleasant voice. And then there was another awkward pause, and they
+looked at one another once more.
+
+Harry certainly thought the countess very beautiful, and he liked her
+very much. She was really kind-hearted and friendly; she was interested
+in the subjects that pleased him; and she was after all a pretty woman,
+still young as men count youth, and very agreeable--nay, anxious to
+please. And then she had said what she said about the artificiality of
+class distinctions so markedly and pointedly, with such a commentary
+from her eyes, that Harry half fancied--well, I don't quite know what he
+fancied. As he sat there beside her on the sofa, with the ferns before
+him, looking straight into her eyes, and she into his, it must be clear
+to all my readers that if he had any special proposition to make to her
+on any abstract subject of human speculation, the time had obviously
+arrived to make it. But something or other inscrutable kept him back.
+"Lady Surrey----" he said, and the words stuck in his throat.
+
+"Yes," she answered softly. "Shall ... shall we go on with the ferns?"
+Lady Surrey gave a little short breath, brought back her eyes from
+dreamland, and turned with a sudden smile back to the portfolio. For the
+rest of the evening, the candid historian must admit that they both felt
+like a pair of fools. Conversation lagged, and I don't think either of
+them was sorry when the time came for retiring.
+
+It is useless for the clumsy male psychologist to pretend that he can
+see into the heart of a woman, especially when the normal action of said
+heart is complicated by such queer conventionalities as that of a
+countess who feels a distinct liking for her son's tutor: but if I may
+venture to attempt that impossible feat of clairvoyance without rebuke,
+I should be inclined to diagnose Lady Surrey's condition as she lay
+sleepless for an hour or so on her pillow that night somewhat as
+follows. She thought that Harry Vardon was really a very clever and a
+very pleasant fellow. She thought that men in society were generally
+dreadfully empty-headed and horribly vain. She thought that the
+importance of disparity in age had, as a rule, been immensely overrated.
+She thought that rank was after all much less valuable than she used to
+think it when first she married poor dear Surrey, who was really the
+kindest of men, and a thorough gentleman, but certainly not at all
+brilliant. She thought that a young man of Harry's talent might, if well
+connected, get into Parliament and rise, like Beaconsfield, to any
+position. She thought he was very frank, and open, and gentlemanly; and
+very handsome too. She thought he had half hesitated whether he should
+propose to her or not, and had then drawn back because he was not
+certain of the consequences. She thought that if he had proposed to
+her--well, perhaps--why, yes, she might even possibly have accepted him.
+She thought he would probably propose in earnest, before long, as soon
+as he saw that she was not wholly averse to his attentions. She thought
+in that case she might perhaps provisionally accept him, and get him to
+try what he could do in the way of obtaining some sort of position--she
+didn't exactly know what--where he could more easily marry her with the
+least possible shock to the feelings of society. And she thought that
+she really didn't know before for twenty years at least how great a
+goose she positively was.
+
+Next morning, after breakfast, Lady Surrey sent for Gladys to come to
+her in her boudoir. Then she put her daughter in a chair by the window,
+drew her own close to it, laid her hand kindly on her shoulder--she was
+a nice little woman at heart, was the countess--and said to her gently,
+"My dear Gladys, there's a little matter I want to talk to you about.
+You are still very young, you know, dear; and I think you ought to be
+very careful about not letting your feelings be played upon in any way,
+however unconsciously. Now, you walk and talk a great deal too much,
+dear, with Mr. Vardon. In many ways, it would be well that you should.
+Mr. Vardon is very clever, and very well informed, and a very
+instructive companion. I like you to talk to intelligent people, and to
+hear intelligent people talk; it gives you something that mere books can
+never give. But you know, Gladys, you should always remember the
+disparity in your stations. I don't deny that there's a great deal in
+all that sort of thing that's very conventional and absurd, my dear; but
+still, girls are girls, and if they're thrown too much with any one
+young man"--Lady Surrey was going to add, "especially when he's handsome
+and agreeable," but she checked herself in time--"they're very apt to
+form an affection for him. Of course I'm not suggesting that you're
+likely to do anything of the sort with Mr. Vardon--I don't for a moment
+suppose you would--but a girl can never be too careful. I hope you know
+your position too well;" here Lady Surrey was conscious of certain
+internal qualms; "and indeed whether it was Mr. Vardon or anybody else,
+you are much too young to fill your head with such notions at your age.
+Of course, if some really good offer had been made to you even in your
+first season--say Lord St. Ives or Sir Montague--I don't say it might
+not have been prudent to accept it; but under ordinary circumstances, a
+girl does best to think as little as possible about such things until
+she is twenty at least. However, I hope in future you'll remember that I
+don't wish you to be quite so familiar in your intercourse with Mr.
+Vardon."
+
+"Very well, mamma," said Gladys quietly, drawing herself up; "I have
+heard what you want to say, and I shall try to do as you wish. But I
+should like to say something in return, if you'll be so kind as to
+listen to me."
+
+"Certainly, darling," Lady Surrey answered, with a vague foreboding of
+something wrong.
+
+"I don't say I care any more for Mr. Vardon than for anybody else; I
+haven't seen enough of him to know whether I care for him or not. But if
+ever I _do_ care for anybody, it will be for somebody like him, and not
+for somebody like Lord St. Ives or Monty Fitzroy. I don't like the men I
+meet in town; they all talk to us as if we were dolls or babies. I don't
+want to marry a man who says to himself, as Surrey says already, 'Ah, I
+shall look out for some rich girl or other and make her a countess, if
+she's a good girl, and if she suits me.' I'd rather have a man like Mr.
+Vardon than any of the men we ever meet in London."
+
+"But, my darling," said Lady Surrey, quite alarmed at Gladys' too
+serious tone, "surely there are gentlemen quite as clever and quite as
+intellectual as Mr. Vardon."
+
+"Mamma!" cried Gladys, rising, "do you mean to say Mr. Vardon is not a
+gentleman?"
+
+"Gladys, Gladys! sit down, dear. Don't get so excited. Of course he is.
+I trust I have as great a respect as anybody for talent and culture. But
+what I meant to say was this--can't you find as much talent and culture
+among people of our own station as--as among people of Mr. Vardon's?"
+
+"No," said Gladys shortly.
+
+"Really, my dear, you are too hard upon the peerage."
+
+"Well, mamma, can you mention any one that we know who is?" asked the
+peremptory girl.
+
+"Not exactly in our own set," said Lady Surrey hesitatingly; "but surely
+there must be _some_."
+
+"I don't know them," Gladys replied quietly, "and till I _do_ know them,
+I shall remain of my own opinion still. If you wish me not to see so
+much of Mr. Vardon, I shall try to do as you say; but if I happen to
+like any particular person, whether he's a peer or a ploughboy, I can't
+help liking him, so there's an end of it." And Gladys kissed her mother
+demurely on the forehead, and walked with a stately sweep out of the
+room.
+
+"It's perfectly clear," said Lady Surrey to herself, "that that girl's
+in love with Mr. Vardon, and what on earth I'm to do about it is to me a
+mystery." And indeed Lady Surrey's position was by no means an easy one.
+On the one hand, she felt that whatever she herself, who was a person of
+mature years, might happen to do, it would be positively wicked in her
+to allow a young girl like Gladys to throw herself away on a man in
+Harry Vardon's position. Without any shadow of an _arri�re pens�e_, that
+was her genuine feeling as a mother and a member of society. But then,
+on the other hand, how could she oppose it, if she really ever thought
+herself, even conditionally, of marrying Harry Vardon? Could she endure
+that her daughter should think she had acted as her rival? Could she
+press the point about Harry's conventional disadvantages, when she
+herself had some vague idea that if Harry offered himself as Gladys'
+step-father, she would not be wholly disinclined to consider his
+proposal? Could she set it down as a crime in her daughter to form the
+very self-same affection which she herself had well-nigh formed?
+Moreover, she couldn't help feeling in her heart that Gladys was right,
+after all; and that the daughter's defiance of conventionality was
+implicitly inherited from the mother. If she had met Harry Vardon twenty
+years ago, she would have thought and spoken much like Gladys; in fact,
+though she didn't speak, she thought so, very nearly, even now. I am
+sorry that I am obliged to write out these faint outlines of ideas in
+all the brutal plainness of the English language as spoken by men; I
+cannot give all those fine shades of unspoken reservations and womanly
+self-deceptive subterfuges by which the poor little countess half
+disguised her own meaning even from herself; but at least you will not
+be surprised to hear that in the end she lay down on the little couch in
+the corner, covered her face with chagrin and disappointment, and had a
+good cry. Then she got up an hour later, washed her eyes carefully to
+take off the redness, put on her pretty dove-coloured morning gown with
+the lace trimming--she looked charming in lace--and went down smiling to
+lunch, as pleasant and cheery a little widow of thirty-seven as ever you
+would wish to see. Upon my soul, Harry Vardon, I really almost think you
+will be a fool if you don't finally marry the countess!
+
+"Gladys," said little Lord Surrey to his sister that evening, when she
+came into his room on her way upstairs to bed--"Gladys, it's my opinion
+you're getting too sweet on this fellow Vardon."
+
+"I shall be obliged, Surrey, if you'll mind your own business, and allow
+me to mind mine."
+
+"Oh, it's no use coming the high and mighty over me, I can tell you, so
+don't you try it on. Besides, I have something I want to speak to you
+about particularly. It's my opinion also that my lady's doing the very
+same thing."
+
+"What nonsense, Surrey!" cried Gladys, colouring up to her eyebrows in a
+second: "how dare you say such a thing about mamma?" But a light broke
+in upon her suddenly all the same, and a number of little unnoticed
+circumstances flashed back at once upon her memory with a fresh flood of
+meaning.
+
+"Nonsense or not, it's true, I know; and what I want to say to you is
+this--If old Vardon's to marry either of you, it ought to be you,
+because that would save mamma at any rate from making a fool of herself.
+As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather neither of you did; for I don't see
+why either of you should want to marry a beggarly fellow of a
+tutor"--Gladys' eyes flashed fire--"though Vardon's a decent enough chap
+in his way, if that was all; but at any rate, as one or other of you's
+cock-sure to do it, I don't want him for a step-father. So you see, as
+far as that goes, I back the filly. Now, say no more about it, but go to
+bed like a good girl, and mind, whatever you do, you don't forget to say
+your prayers. Good night, old girl."
+
+"I wouldn't marry a fellow like Surrey," said Gladys to herself, as she
+went upstairs, "no, not if he was the premier duke of England!"
+
+For the next three weeks there was such a comedy of errors and
+cross-purposes at Colyford Abbey as was never seen before anywhere
+outside of one of Mr. Gilbert's clever extravaganzas. Lady Surrey tried
+to keep Gladys in every possible way out of Harry's sight; while her
+brother tried in every possible way to throw them together. Gladys on
+her part half avoided him, and yet grew somewhat more confidential than
+ever whenever she happened to talk with him. Harry did not feel quite so
+much at home as before with Lady Surrey; he had an uncomfortable sense
+that he had failed to acquit himself as he ought to have done; while
+Lady Surrey had a half suspicion that she had let him see her unfledged
+secret a little too early and too openly. The natural consequence of all
+this was that Harry was cast far more than before upon the society of
+Ethel Martindale, with whom he often strolled about the shrubbery till
+very close upon the dressing gong. Ethel did not come down to
+dinner--she dined with the little ones at the family luncheon; and that
+horrid galling distinction cut Harry to the quick every night when he
+left her to go in. Every day, too, it began to dawn upon him more
+clearly that the vague reason which had kept him back from proposing to
+Lady Surrey on that eventful night was just this--that Ethel Martindale
+had made herself a certain vacant niche in his unfurnished heart. She
+was a dear, quiet, unassuming little girl, but so very graceful, so very
+tender, so very womanly, that she crept into his affections unawares
+without possibility of resistance. The countess was a beautiful and
+accomplished woman of the world, with a real heart left in her still,
+but not quite the sort of tender, shrinking, girlish heart that Harry
+wanted. Gladys was a lovely girl with stately manners and a wonderfully
+formed character, but too great and too redolent of society for Harry.
+He admired them both, each in her own way, but he couldn't possibly have
+lived a lifetime with either. But Ethel, dear, meek, pretty, gentle
+little Ethel--well, there, I'm not going to repeat for you all the
+raptures that Harry went into over that perennial and ever rejuvenescent
+theme. For, to tell you the truth, about three weeks after the night
+when Harry did _not_ propose to the countess, he actually _did_ propose
+to Ethel Martindale. And Ethel, after many timid protests, after much
+demure self-depreciation and declaration of utter unworthiness for such
+a man--which made Harry wild with indignation--did finally let him put
+her little hand to his lips, and whispered a sort of broken and blushing
+"Yes."
+
+What a fool he had been, he thought that evening, to suppose for half a
+second that Lady Surrey had ever meant to regard him in any other light
+than as her son's tutor. He hated himself for his own nonsensical
+vanity. Who was he that he should fancy all the women in England were in
+love with him?
+
+Next morning's _Times_ contained that curious announcement about its
+being the intention of the Government to appoint an electrician to the
+Admiralty, and inviting applications from distinguished men of science.
+Now Harry, young as he was, had just perfected his great system of the
+double-revolving commutator and back-action rheostat (Patent Office, No.
+18,237,504), and had sent in a paper on the subject which had been read
+with great success at the Royal Society. The famous Professor Brusegay
+himself had described it as a remarkable invention, likely to prove of
+immense practical importance to telegraphy and electrical science
+generally. So when Harry saw the announcement that morning, he made up
+his mind to apply for the appointment at once; and he thought that if he
+got it, as the salary was a good one, he might before long marry Ethel,
+and yet manage to keep Edith in the same comfort as before.
+
+Lady Surrey saw the paragraph too, and had her own ideas about what it
+might be made to do. It was the very opening that Harry wanted, and if
+he got it, why then no doubt he might make the proposal which he
+evidently felt afraid to make, poor fellow, in his present position. So
+she went into her boudoir immediately after breakfast, and wrote two
+careful and cautiously worded little notes. One was to Dr. Brusegay,
+whom she knew well, mentioning to him that her son's tutor was the
+author of that remarkable paper on commutators, and that she thought he
+would probably be admirably fitted for the post, but that on that point
+the Professor himself was the best judge; the other was to her cousin,
+Lord Ardenleigh, who was a great man in the government of the day,
+suggesting casually that he should look into the claims of her friend,
+Mr. Vardon, for this new place at the Admiralty. Two nicer little notes,
+written with better tact and judgment, it would be difficult to find.
+
+At that very moment Harry was also sitting down in his own room, after
+five minutes' consultation with Ethel, to make formal application for
+the new post. And after lunch the same day he spoke to Lady Surrey upon
+the subject.
+
+"There is one special reason," he said, "why I should like to get this
+post, and I think I ought to let you know it now." Poor little Lady
+Surrey's heart fluttered like a girl's. "The fact is, I am anxious to
+obtain a position which would enable me to marry." ("How very bluntly he
+puts it," said the countess to herself.) "I ought to tell you, I think,
+that I have proposed to Miss Martindale, and she has accepted me."
+
+Miss Martindale! Great heavens, how the room reeled round the poor
+little woman, as she stood with her hand on the table, trying to balance
+herself, trying to conceal her shame and mortification, trying to look
+as if the announcement did not concern her in any way. Poor, dear, good
+little countess; from my heart I pity you. Miss Martindale! why, she had
+never even thought of _her_. A mere governess, a nobody; and Harry
+Vardon, with his magnificent intellect and splendid prospects, was going
+to throw himself away on that girl! She could hardly control herself to
+answer him, but with a great effort she gulped down her feelings, and
+remarked that Ethel Martindale was a very good girl, and would doubtless
+make an admirable wife. And then she walked quietly out of the room,
+stepped up the stairs somewhat faster, rushed into her boudoir,
+double-locked the door, and burst into a perfect flood of hot scalding
+tears. At that moment she began to realize the fact that she had in
+truth liked Harry Vardon much more than a little.
+
+By-and-by she got up, went over to her desk, took out the two unposted
+notes, tore them into fragments, and then carefully burnt them up piece
+by piece, in a perfect holocaust of white paper. What a wicked
+vindictive little countess! Was she going to spoil these two young
+people's lives, to throw every possible obstacle in the way of their
+marriage? Not a bit of it. As soon as her eyes allowed her, she sat down
+and wrote two more notes, a great deal stronger and better than before;
+for this time she need not fear the possibility of after reflections
+from an unkind world. She said a great deal in a casual half-hinting
+fashion about Harry's merits, and remarked upon the loss that she should
+sustain in the removal of such a tutor from Lord Surrey; but she felt
+that sooner or later his talents must get him a higher recognition, and
+she hoped Dr. Brusegay and her cousin would use their influence to
+obtain him the appointment. Then she went downstairs feeling like a
+Christian martyr, kissed and congratulated Ethel, talked gaily about
+Bartolozzi to Harry, and tried to make believe that she took the
+engagement as a matter of course. Nothing in fact, as she remarked to
+Gladys, could possibly be more suitable. Gladys bit her tongue, and
+answered shortly that she didn't herself perceive any special natural
+congruity about the match, but perhaps her mother was better informed on
+the subject.
+
+Now, we all know that in the matter of public appointment anything like
+backstairs influence or indirect canvassing is positively fatal to the
+success of a candidate. Accordingly, it may surprise you to learn that
+when Professor Brusegay (who held the appointment virtually in his
+hands) opened his letters next morning he said to his wife, "Why, Maria,
+that young fellow Vardon who wrote that astonishingly clever paper on
+commutators, you know, is tutor at Lady Surrey's, and she wants him to
+get this place at the Admiralty. We must really see what we can do about
+it. Lady Surrey is such a very useful person to know, and besides it's
+so important to keep on good terms with her, for the Paulsons would be
+absolutely intolerable if we hadn't its acquaintance in the peerage to
+play off against their Lord Poodlebury." And when the Professor shortly
+afterwards mentioned Harry's name to Lord Ardenleigh, his lordship
+remarked immediately, "Why, bless my soul, that's the very man Amelia
+wrote to me about. He shall have the place, by all means." And they
+both wrote back nice little notes to Lady Surrey, to say that she might
+consider the matter settled, but that she mustn't mention it to Harry
+until the appointment was regularly announced. Anything so remarkable in
+this age of purity I for my part have seldom heard of.
+
+Lady Surrey never did mention the matter to Harry from that day to this;
+and Sir Henry Vardon, K.C.B., does not for a moment imagine even now
+that he owes his advancement to anything but his own native merits. He
+married Ethel shortly after, and a prettier or more blushing bride you
+never saw. Lady Surrey has been their best friend in society, and still
+sighs occasionally when she sees Harry a great magnate in his way, and
+thinks of the narrow escape he had that night at Colyford. As to Gladys,
+she consistently refused several promising heirs, at least twenty
+younger sons, and a score or so of wealthy young men whose papas were
+something in the City, her first five seasons; and then, to Lord
+Surrey's horror, she married a young Scotchman from Glasgow, who was
+merely a writer for some London paper, and had nothing on earth but a
+head on his shoulders to bless himself with. His lordship himself
+"bagged an heiress" as he expressively puts it, with several thousands a
+year of her own, and is now one of the most respected members of his
+party, who may be counted upon always to vote straight, and never to
+have any opinions of his own upon any subject except the improvement of
+the British racehorse. He often wishes Gladys had taken his advice and
+married Vardon, who is at least in respectable society, instead of that
+shock-headed Scotch fellow--but there, the girl was always full of
+fancies, and never would behave like other people.
+
+For myself, I am a horrid radical, and republican, and all that sort of
+thing, and have a perfectly rabid hatred of titles and so forth, don't
+you know?--but still, on the first day when Ethel went to call on the
+countess dowager after Harry was knighted, I happened to be present
+(purely on business), and heard her duly announced as "Lady Vardon:" and
+I give you my word of honour I could not find it in my heart to grudge
+the dear little woman the flush of pride that rose upon her cheek as she
+entered the room for the first time in her new position. It was a
+pleasure to me (who know the whole story) to see Lady Surrey kiss the
+little ex-governess warmly on her cheek and say to her, "My dear Lady
+Vardon, I am so glad, so very very glad." And I really believe she meant
+it. After all, in spite of her little weakness, there is a great deal of
+human nature left in the countess.
+
+
+
+
+_MY NEW YEARS EVE AMONG THE MUMMIES._
+
+
+I have been a wanderer and a vagabond on the face of the earth for a
+good many years now, and I have certainly had some odd adventures in my
+time; but I can assure you, I never spent twenty-four queerer hours than
+those which I passed some twelve months since in the great unopened
+Pyramid of Abu Yilla.
+
+The way I got there was itself a very strange one. I had come to Egypt
+for a winter tour with the Fitz-Simkinses, to whose daughter Editha I
+was at that precise moment engaged. You will probably remember that old
+Fitz-Simkins belonged originally to the wealthy firm of Simkinson and
+Stokoe, worshipful vintners; but when the senior partner retired from
+the business and got his knighthood, the College of Heralds opportunely
+discovered that his ancestors had changed their fine old Norman name for
+its English equivalent some time about the reign of King Richard I.; and
+they immediately authorized the old gentleman to resume the patronymic
+and the armorial bearings of his distinguished forefathers. It's really
+quite astonishing how often these curious coincidences crop up at the
+College of Heralds.
+
+Of course it was a great catch for a landless and briefless barrister
+like myself--dependent on a small fortune in South American securities,
+and my precarious earnings as a writer of burlesque--to secure such a
+valuable prospective property as Editha Fitz-Simkins. To be sure, the
+girl was undeniably plain; but I have known plainer girls than she was,
+whom forty thousand pounds converted into My Ladies: and if Editha
+hadn't really fallen over head and ears in love with me, I suppose old
+Fitz-Simkins would never have consented to such a match. As it was,
+however, we had flirted so openly and so desperately during the
+Scarborough season, that it would have been difficult for Sir Peter to
+break it off: and so I had come to Egypt on a tour of insurance to
+secure my prize, following in the wake of my future mother-in-law, whose
+lungs were supposed to require a genial climate--though in my private
+opinion they were really as creditable a pair of pulmonary appendages as
+ever drew breath.
+
+Nevertheless, the course of our true love did not run so smoothly as
+might have been expected. Editha found me less ardent than a devoted
+squire should be; and on the very last night of the old year she got up
+a regulation lovers' quarrel, because I had sneaked away from the boat
+that afternoon, under the guidance of our dragoman, to witness the
+seductive performances of some fair Ghaw�zi, the dancing girls of a
+neighbouring town. How she found it out heaven only knows, for I gave
+that rascal Dimitri five piastres to hold his tongue: but she did find
+it out somehow, and chose to regard it as an offence of the first
+magnitude: a mortal sin only to be expiated by three days of penance and
+humiliation.
+
+I went to bed that night, in my hammock on deck, with feelings far from
+satisfactory. We were moored against the bank at Abu Yilla, the most
+pestiferous hole between the cataracts and the Delta. The mosquitoes
+were worse than the ordinary mosquitoes of Egypt, and that is saying a
+great deal. The heat was oppressive even at night, and the malaria from
+the lotus beds rose like a palpable mist before my eyes. Above all, I
+was getting doubtful whether Editha Fitz-Simkins might not after all
+slip between my fingers. I felt wretched and feverish: and yet I had
+delightful interlusive recollections, in between, of that lovely little
+Gh�ziyah, who danced that exquisite, marvellous, entrancing, delicious,
+and awfully oriental dance that I saw in the afternoon.
+
+By Jove, she _was_ a beautiful creature. Eyes like two full moons; hair
+like Milton's Penseroso; movements like a poem of Swinburne's set to
+action. If Editha was only a faint picture of that girl now! Upon my
+word, I was falling in love with a Gh�ziyah!
+
+Then the mosquitoes came again. Buzz--buzz--buzz. I make a lunge at the
+loudest and biggest, a sort of prima donna in their infernal opera. I
+kill the prima donna, but ten more shrill performers come in its place.
+The frogs croak dismally in the reedy shallows. The night grows hotter
+and hotter still. At last, I can stand it no longer. I rise up, dress
+myself lightly, and jump ashore to find some way of passing the time.
+
+Yonder, across the flat, lies the great unopened Pyramid of Abu Yilla.
+We are going to-morrow to climb to the top; but I will take a turn to
+reconnoitre in that direction now. I walk across the moonlit fields, my
+soul still divided between Editha and the Gh�ziyah, and approach the
+solemn mass of huge, antiquated granite-blocks standing out so grimly
+against the pale horizon. I feel half awake, half asleep, and altogether
+feverish: but I poke about the base in an aimless sort of way, with a
+vague idea that I may perhaps discover by chance the secret of its
+sealed entrance, which has ere now baffled so many pertinacious
+explorers and learned Egyptologists.
+
+As I walk along the base, I remember old Herodotus's story, like a page
+from the "Arabian Nights," of how King Rhampsinitus built himself a
+treasury, wherein one stone turned on a pivot like a door; and how the
+builder availed himself of this his cunning device to steal gold from
+the king's storehouse. Suppose the entrance to the unopened Pyramid
+should be by such a door. It would be curious if I should chance to
+light upon the very spot.
+
+I stood in the broad moonlight, near the north-east angle of the great
+pile, at the twelfth stone from the corner. A random fancy struck me,
+that I might turn this stone by pushing it inward on the left side. I
+leant against it with all my weight, and tried to move it on the
+imaginary pivot. Did it give way a fraction of an inch? No, it must have
+been mere fancy. Let me try again. Surely it is yielding! Gracious
+Osiris, it has moved an inch or more! My heart beats fast, either with
+fever or excitement, and I try a third time. The rust of centuries on
+the pivot wears slowly off, and the stone turns ponderously round,
+giving access to a low dark passage.
+
+It must have been madness which led me to enter the forgotten corridor,
+alone, without torch or match, at that hour of the evening; but at any
+rate I entered. The passage was tall enough for a man to walk erect, and
+I could feel, as I groped slowly along, that the wall was composed of
+smooth polished granite, while the floor sloped away downward with a
+slight but regular descent. I walked with trembling heart and faltering
+feet for some forty or fifty yards down the mysterious vestibule: and
+then I felt myself brought suddenly to a standstill by a block of stone
+placed right across the pathway. I had had nearly enough for one
+evening, and I was preparing to return to the boat, agog with my new
+discovery, when my attention was suddenly arrested by an incredible, a
+perfectly miraculous fact.
+
+The block of stone which barred the passage was faintly visible as a
+square, by means of a struggling belt of light streaming through the
+seams. There must be a lamp or other flame burning within. What if this
+were a door like the outer one, leading into a chamber perhaps
+inhabited by some dangerous band of outcasts? The light was a sure
+evidence of human occupation: and yet the outer door swung rustily on
+its pivot as though it had never been opened for ages. I paused a moment
+in fear before I ventured to try the stone: and then, urged on once more
+by some insane impulse, I turned the massive block with all my might to
+the left. It gave way slowly like its neighbour, and finally opened into
+the central hall.
+
+Never as long as I live shall I forget the ecstasy of terror,
+astonishment, and blank dismay which seized upon me when I stepped into
+that seemingly enchanted chamber. A blaze of light first burst upon my
+eyes, from jets of gas arranged in regular rows tier above tier, upon
+the columns and walls of the vast apartment. Huge pillars, richly
+painted with red, yellow, blue, and green decorations, stretched in
+endless succession down the dazzling aisles. A floor of polished syenite
+reflected the splendour of the lamps, and afforded a base for red
+granite sphinxes and dark purple images in porphyry of the cat-faced
+goddess Pasht, whose form I knew so well at the Louvre and the British
+Museum. But I had no eyes for any of these lesser marvels, being wholly
+absorbed in the greatest marvel of all: for there, in royal state and
+with mitred head, a living Egyptian king, surrounded by his coiffured
+court, was banqueting in the flesh upon a real throne, before a table
+laden with Memphian delicacies!
+
+I stood transfixed with awe and amazement, my tongue and my feet alike
+forgetting their office, and my brain whirling round and round, as I
+remember it used to whirl when my health broke down utterly at Cambridge
+after the Classical Tripos. I gazed fixedly at the strange picture
+before me, taking in all its details in a confused way, yet quite
+incapable of understanding or realizing any part of its true import. I
+saw the king in the centre of the hall, raised on a throne of granite
+inlaid with gold and ivory; his head crowned with the peaked cap of
+Rameses, and his curled hair flowing down his shoulders in a set and
+formal frizz. I saw priests and warriors on either side, dressed in the
+costumes which I had often carefully noted in our great collections;
+while bronze-skinned maids, with light garments round their waists, and
+limbs displayed in graceful picturesqueness, waited upon them, half
+nude, as in the wall paintings which we had lately examined at Karnak
+and Syene. I saw the ladies, clothed from head to foot in dyed linen
+garments, sitting apart in the background, banqueting by themselves at a
+separate table; while dancing girls, like older representatives of my
+yesternoon friends, the Ghaw�zi, tumbled before them in strange
+attitudes, to the music of four-stringed harps and long straight pipes.
+In short, I beheld as in a dream the whole drama of everyday Egyptian
+royal life, playing itself out anew under my eyes, in its real original
+properties and personages.
+
+Gradually, as I looked, I became aware that my hosts were no less
+surprised at the appearance of their anachronistic guest than was the
+guest himself at the strange living panorama which met his eyes. In a
+moment music and dancing ceased; the banquet paused in its course, and
+the king and his nobles stood up in undisguised astonishment to survey
+the strange intruder.
+
+Some minutes passed before any one moved forward on either side. At last
+a young girl of royal appearance, yet strangely resembling the Gh�ziyah
+of Abu Yilla, and recalling in part the laughing maiden in the
+foreground of Mr. Long's great canvas at the previous Academy, stepped
+out before the throng.
+
+"May I ask you," she said in Ancient Egyptian, "who you are, and why you
+come hither to disturb us?"
+
+I was never aware before that I spoke or understood the language of the
+hieroglyphics: yet I found I had not the slightest difficulty in
+comprehending or answering her question. To say the truth, Ancient
+Egyptian, though an extremely tough tongue to decipher in its written
+form, becomes as easy as love-making when spoken by a pair of lips like
+that Pharaonic princess's. It is really very much the same as English,
+pronounced in a rapid and somewhat indefinite whisper, and with all the
+vowels left out.
+
+"I beg ten thousand pardons for my intrusion," I answered
+apologetically; "but I did not know that this Pyramid was inhabited, or
+I should not have entered your residence so rudely. As for the points
+you wish to know, I am an English tourist, and you will find my name
+upon this card;" saying which I handed her one from the case which I had
+fortunately put into my pocket, with conciliatory politeness. The
+princess examined it closely, but evidently did not understand its
+import.
+
+"In return," I continued, "may I ask you in what august presence I now
+find myself by accident?"
+
+A court official stood forth from the throng, and answered in a set
+heraldic tone: "In the presence of the illustrious monarch, Brother of
+the Sun, Thothmes the Twenty-seventh, king of the Eighteenth Dynasty."
+
+"Salute the Lord of the World," put in another official in the same
+regulation drone.
+
+I bowed low to his Majesty, and stepped out into the hall. Apparently my
+obeisance did not come up to Egyptian standards of courtesy, for a
+suppressed titter broke audibly from the ranks of bronze-skinned
+waiting-women. But the king graciously smiled at my attempt, and turning
+to the nearest nobleman, observed in a voice of great sweetness and
+self-contained majesty: "This stranger, Ombos, is certainly a very
+curious person. His appearance does not at all resemble that of an
+Ethiopian or other savage, nor does he look like the pale-faced sailors
+who come to us from the Achaian land beyond the sea. His features, to be
+sure, are not very different from theirs; but his extraordinary and
+singularly inartistic dress shows him to belong to some other barbaric
+race."
+
+I glanced down at my waistcoat, and saw that I was wearing my tourist's
+check suit, of grey and mud colour, with which a Bond Street tailor had
+supplied me just before leaving town, as the latest thing out in fancy
+tweeds. Evidently these Egyptians must have a very curious standard of
+taste not to admire our pretty and graceful style of male attire.
+
+"If the dust beneath your Majesty's feet may venture upon a suggestion,"
+put in the officer whom the king had addressed, "I would hint that this
+young man is probably a stray visitor from the utterly uncivilized lands
+of the North. The head-gear which he carries in his hand obviously
+betrays an Arctic habitat."
+
+I had instinctively taken off my round felt hat in the first moment of
+surprise, when I found myself in the midst of this strange throng, and I
+was standing now in a somewhat embarrassed posture, holding it awkwardly
+before me like a shield to protect my chest.
+
+"Let the stranger cover himself," said the king.
+
+"Barbarian intruder, cover yourself," cried the herald. I noticed
+throughout that the king never directly addressed anybody save the
+higher officials around him.
+
+I put on my hat as desired. "A most uncomfortable and silly form of
+tiara indeed," said the great Thothmes.
+
+"Very unlike your noble and awe-spiring mitre, Lion of Egypt," answered
+Ombos.
+
+"Ask the stranger his name," the king continued.
+
+It was useless to offer another card, so I mentioned it in a clear
+voice.
+
+"An uncouth and almost unpronounceable designation truly," commented his
+Majesty to the Grand Chamberlain beside him. "These savages speak
+strange languages, widely different from the flowing tongue of Memnon
+and Sesostris."
+
+The chamberlain bowed his assent with three low genuflexions. I began to
+feel a little abashed at these personal remarks, and I _almost_ think
+(though I shouldn't like it to be mentioned in the Temple) that a blush
+rose to my cheek.
+
+The beautiful princess, who had been standing near me meanwhile in an
+attitude of statuesque repose, now appeared anxious to change the
+current of the conversation. "Dear father," she said with a respectful
+inclination, "surely the stranger, barbarian though he be, cannot relish
+such pointed allusions to his person and costume. We must let him feel
+the grace and delicacy of Egyptian refinement. Then he may perhaps carry
+back with him some faint echo of its cultured beauty to his northern
+wilds."
+
+"Nonsense, Hatasou," replied Thothmes XXVII. testily. "Savages have no
+feelings, and they are as incapable of appreciating Egyptian sensibility
+as the chattering crow is incapable of attaining the dignified reserve
+of the sacred crocodile."
+
+"Your Majesty is mistaken," I said, recovering my self-possession
+gradually and realizing my position as a free-born Englishman before the
+court of a foreign despot--though I must allow that I felt rather less
+confident than usual, owing to the fact that we were not represented in
+the Pyramid by a British Consul--"I am an English tourist, a visitor
+from a modern land whose civilization far surpasses the rude culture of
+early Egypt; and I am accustomed to respectful treatment from all other
+nationalities, as becomes a citizen of the First Naval Power in the
+World."
+
+My answer created a profound impression. "He has spoken to the Brother
+of the Sun," cried Ombos in evident perturbation. "He must be of the
+Blood Royal in his own tribe, or he would never have dared to do so!"
+
+"Otherwise," added a person whose dress I recognized as that of a
+priest, "he must be offered up in expiation to Amon-Ra immediately."
+
+As a rule I am a decently truthful person, but under these alarming
+circumstances I ventured to tell a slight fib with an air of nonchalant
+boldness. "I am a younger brother of our reigning king," I said without
+a moment's hesitation; for there was nobody present to gainsay me, and I
+tried to salve my conscience by reflecting that at any rate I was only
+claiming consanguinity with an imaginary personage.
+
+"In that case," said King Thothmes, with more geniality in his tone,
+"there can be no impropriety in my addressing you personally. Will you
+take a place at our table next to myself, and we can converse together
+without interrupting a banquet which must be brief enough in any
+circumstances? Hatasou, my dear, you may seat yourself next to the
+barbarian prince."
+
+I felt a visible swelling to the proper dimensions of a Royal Highness
+as I sat down by the king's right hand. The nobles resumed their places,
+the bronze-skinned waitresses left off standing like soldiers in a row
+and staring straight at my humble self, the goblets went round once
+more, and a comely maid soon brought me meat, bread, fruits, and date
+wine.
+
+All this time I was naturally burning with curiosity to inquire who my
+strange hosts might be, and how they had preserved their existence for
+so many centuries in this undiscovered hall; but I was obliged to wait
+until I had satisfied his Majesty of my own nationality, the means by
+which I had entered the Pyramid, the general state of affairs throughout
+the world at the present moment, and fifty thousand other matters of a
+similar sort. Thothmes utterly refused to believe my reiterated
+assertion that our existing civilization was far superior to the
+Egyptian; "because," said he, "I see from your dress that your nation is
+utterly devoid of taste or invention;" but he listened with great
+interest to my account of modern society, the steam-engine, the
+Permissive Prohibitory Bill, the telegraph, the House of Commons, Home
+Rule, and the other blessings of our advanced era, as well as to a brief
+_r�sum�_ of European history from the rise of the Greek culture to the
+Russo-Turkish war. At last his questions were nearly exhausted, and I
+got a chance of making a few counter inquiries on my own account.
+
+"And now," I said, turning to the charming Hatasou, whom I thought a
+more pleasing informant than her august papa, "I should like to know who
+_you_ are."
+
+"What, don't you know?" she cried with unaffected surprise. "Why, we're
+mummies."
+
+She made this astounding statement with just the same quiet
+unconsciousness as if she had said, "we're French," or "we're
+Americans." I glanced round the walls, and observed behind the columns,
+what I had not noticed till then--a large number of empty mummy-cases,
+with their lids placed carelessly by their sides.
+
+"But what are you doing here?" I asked in a bewildered way.
+
+"Is it possible," said Hatasou, "that you don't really know the object
+of embalming? Though your manners show you to be an agreeable and
+well-bred young man, you must excuse my saying that you are shockingly
+ignorant. We are made into mummies in order to preserve our immortality.
+Once in every thousand years we wake up for twenty-four hours, recover
+our flesh and blood, and banquet once more upon the mummied dishes and
+other good things laid by for us in the Pyramid. To-day is the first day
+of a millennium, and so we have waked up for the sixth time since we
+were first embalmed."
+
+"The _sixth_ time?" I inquired incredulously. "Then you must have been
+dead six thousand years."
+
+"Exactly so."
+
+"But the world has not yet existed so long," I cried, in a fervour of
+orthodox horror.
+
+"Excuse me, barbarian prince. This is the first day of the three
+hundred and twenty-seven thousandth millennium."
+
+My orthodoxy received a severe shock. However, I had been accustomed to
+geological calculations, and was somewhat inclined to accept the
+antiquity of man; so I swallowed the statement without more ado.
+Besides, if such a charming girl as Hatasou had asked me at that moment
+to turn Mohammedan, or to worship Osiris, I believe I should
+incontinently have done so.
+
+"You wake up only for a single day and night, then?" I said.
+
+"Only for a single day and night. After that, we go to sleep for another
+millennium."
+
+"Unless you are meanwhile burned as fuel on the Cairo Railway," I added
+mentally. "But how," I continued aloud, "do you get these lights?"
+
+"The Pyramid is built above a spring of inflammable gas. We have a
+reservoir in one of the side chambers in which it collects during the
+thousand years. As soon as we awake, we turn it on at once from the tap,
+and light it with a lucifer match."
+
+"Upon my word," I interposed, "I had no notion you Ancient Egyptians
+were acquainted with the use of matches."
+
+"Very likely not. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Cephrenes,
+than are dreamt of in your philosophy,' as the bard of Phil� puts it."
+
+Further inquiries brought out all the secrets of that strange
+tomb-house, and kept me fully interested till the close of the banquet.
+Then the chief priest solemnly rose, offered a small fragment of meat to
+a deified crocodile, who sat in a meditative manner by the side of his
+deserted mummy-case, and declared the feast concluded for the night. All
+rose from their places, wandered away into the long corridors or
+side-aisles, and formed little groups of talkers under the brilliant
+gas-lamps.
+
+For my part, I scrolled off with Hatasou down the least illuminated of
+the colonnades, and took my seat beside a marble fountain, where several
+fish (gods of great sanctity, Hatasou assured me) were disporting
+themselves in a porphyry basin. How long we sat there I cannot tell, but
+I know that we talked a good deal about fish, and gods, and Egyptian
+habits, and Egyptian philosophy, and, above all, Egyptian love-making.
+The last-named subject we found very interesting, and when once we got
+fully started upon it, no diversion afterwards occurred to break the
+even tenour of the conversation. Hatasou was a lovely figure, tall,
+queenly, with smooth dark arms and neck of polished bronze: her big
+black eyes full of tenderness, and her long hair bound up into a bright
+Egyptian headdress, that harmonized to a tone with her complexion and
+her robe. The more we talked, the more desperately did I fall in love,
+and the more utterly oblivious did I become of my duty to Editha
+Fitz-Simkins. The mere ugly daughter of a rich and vulgar brand-new
+knight, forsooth, to show off her airs before me, when here was a
+Princess of the Blood Royal of Egypt, obviously sensible to the
+attentions which I was paying her, and not unwilling to receive them
+with a coy and modest grace.
+
+Well, I went on saying pretty things to Hatasou, and Hatasou went on
+deprecating them in a pretty little way, as who should say, "I don't
+mean what I pretend to mean one bit;" until at last I may confess that
+we were both evidently as far gone in the disease of the heart called
+love as it is possible for two young people on first acquaintance to
+become. Therefore, when Hatasou pulled forth her watch--another piece of
+mechanism with which antiquaries used never to credit the Egyptian
+people--and declared that she had only three more hours to live, at
+least for the next thousand years, I fairly broke down, took out my
+handkerchief, and began to sob like a child of five years old.
+
+Hatasou was deeply moved. Decorum forbade that she should console me
+with too much _empressement_; but she ventured to remove the
+handkerchief gently from my face, and suggested that there was yet one
+course open by which we might enjoy a little more of one another's
+society. "Suppose," she said quietly, "you were to become a mummy. You
+would then wake up, as we do, every thousand years; and after you have
+tried it once, you will find it just as natural to sleep for a
+millennium as for eight hours. Of course," she added with a slight
+blush, "during the next three or four solar cycles there would be plenty
+of time to conclude any other arrangements you might possibly
+contemplate, before the occurrence of another glacial epoch."
+
+This mode of regarding time was certainly novel and somewhat bewildering
+to people who ordinarily reckon its lapse by weeks and months; and I had
+a vague consciousness that my relations with Editha imposed upon me a
+moral necessity of returning to the outer world, instead of becoming a
+millennial mummy. Besides, there was the awkward chance of being
+converted into fuel and dissipated into space before the arrival of the
+next waking day. But I took one look at Hatasou, whose eyes were filling
+in turn with sympathetic tears, and that look decided me. I flung
+Editha, life, and duty to the dogs, and resolved at once to become a
+mummy.
+
+There was no time to be lost. Only three hours remained to us, and the
+process of embalming, even in the most hasty manner, would take up fully
+two. We rushed off to the chief priest, who had charge of the particular
+department in question. He at once acceded to my wishes, and briefly
+explained the mode in which they usually treated the corpse.
+
+That word suddenly aroused me. "The corpse!" I cried; "but I am alive.
+You can't embalm me living."
+
+"We can," replied the priest, "under chloroform."
+
+"Chloroform!" I echoed, growing more and more astonished: "I had no idea
+you Egyptians knew anything about it."
+
+"Ignorant barbarian!" he answered with a curl of the lip; "you imagine
+yourself much wiser than the teachers of the world. If you were versed
+in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, you would know that chloroform is
+one of our simplest and commonest an�sthetics."
+
+I put myself at once under the hands of the priest. He brought out the
+chloroform, and placed it beneath my nostrils, as I lay on a soft couch
+under the central court. Hatasou held my hand in hers, and watched my
+breathing with an anxious eye. I saw the priest leaning over me, with a
+clouded phial in his hand, and I experienced a vague sensation of
+smelling myrrh and spikenard. Next, I lost myself for a few moments, and
+when I again recovered my senses in a temporary break, the priest was
+holding a small greenstone knife, dabbled with blood, and I felt that a
+gash had been made across my breast. Then they applied the chloroform
+once more; I felt Hatasou give my hand a gentle squeeze; the whole
+panorama faded finally from my view; and I went to sleep for a seemingly
+endless time.
+
+When I awoke again, my first impression led me to believe that the
+thousand years were over, and that I had come to life once more to feast
+with Hatasou and Thothmes in the Pyramid of Abu Yilla. But second
+thoughts, combined with closer observation of the surroundings,
+convinced me that I was really lying in a bedroom of Shepheard's Hotel
+at Cairo. An hospital nurse leant over me, instead of a chief priest;
+and I noticed no tokens of Editha Fitz-Simkins's presence. But when I
+endeavoured to make inquiries upon the subject of my whereabouts, I was
+peremptorily informed that I mustn't speak, as I was only just
+recovering from a severe fever, and might endanger my life by talking.
+
+Some weeks later I learned the sequel of my night's adventure. The
+Fitz-Simkinses, missing me from the boat in the morning, at first
+imagined that I might have gone ashore for an early stroll. But after
+breakfast time, lunch time, and dinner time had gone past, they began to
+grow alarmed, and sent to look for me in all directions. One of their
+scouts, happening to pass the Pyramid, noticed that one of the stones
+near the north-east angle had been displaced, so as to give access to a
+dark passage, hitherto unknown. Calling several of his friends, for he
+was afraid to venture in alone, he passed down the corridor, and through
+a second gateway into the central hall. There the Fellahin found me,
+lying on the ground, bleeding profusely from a wound on the breast, and
+in an advanced stage of malarious fever. They brought me back to the
+boat, and the Fitz-Simkinses conveyed me at once to Cairo, for medical
+attendance and proper nursing.
+
+Editha was at first convinced that I had attempted to commit suicide
+because I could not endure having caused her pain, and she accordingly
+resolved to tend me with the utmost care through my illness. But she
+found that my delirious remarks, besides bearing frequent reference to a
+princess, with whom I appeared to have been on unexpectedly intimate
+terms, also related very largely to our _casus belli_ itself, the
+dancing girls of Abu Yilla. Even this trial she might have borne,
+setting down the moral degeneracy which led me to patronize so degrading
+an exhibition as a first symptom of my approaching malady: but certain
+unfortunate observations, containing pointed and by no means flattering
+allusions to her personal appearance--which I contrasted, much to her
+disadvantage, with that of the unknown princess--these, I say, were
+things which she could not forgive; and she left Cairo abruptly with her
+parents for the Riviera, leaving behind a stinging note, in which she
+denounced my perfidy and empty-heartedness with all the flowers of
+feminine eloquence. From that day to this I have never seen her.
+
+When I returned to London and proposed to lay this account before the
+Society of Antiquaries, all my friends dissuaded me on the ground of its
+apparent incredibility. They declare that I must have gone to the
+Pyramid already in a state of delirium, discovered the entrance by
+accident, and sunk exhausted when I reached the inner chamber. In
+answer, I would point out three facts. In the first place, I undoubtedly
+found my way into the unknown passage--for which achievement I
+afterwards received the gold medal of the Soci�t�e Kh�diviale, and of
+which I retain a clear recollection, differing in no way from my
+recollection of the subsequent events. In the second place, I had in my
+pocket, when found, a ring of Hatasou's, which I drew from her finger
+just before I took the chloroform, and put into my pocket as a keepsake.
+And in the third place, I had on my breast the wound which I saw the
+priest inflict with a knife of greenstone, and the scar may be seen on
+the spot to the present day. The absurd hypothesis of my medical
+friends, that I was wounded by falling against a sharp edge of rock, I
+must at once reject as unworthy a moment's consideration.
+
+My own theory is either that the priest had not time to complete the
+operation, or else that the arrival of the Fitz-Simkins' scouts
+frightened back the mummies to their cases an hour or so too soon. At
+any rate, there they all were, ranged around the walls undisturbed, the
+moment the Fellahin entered.
+
+Unfortunately, the truth of my account cannot be tested for another
+thousand years. But as a copy of this book will be preserved for the
+benefit of posterity in the British Museum, I hereby solemnly call upon
+Collective Humanity to try the veracity of this history by sending a
+deputation of arch�ologists to the Pyramid of Abu Yilla, on the last day
+of December, Two thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven. If they do
+not then find Thothmes and Hatasou feasting in the central hall exactly
+as I have described, I shall willingly admit that the story of my New
+Year's Eve among the Mummies is a vain hallucination, unworthy of
+credence at the hands of the scientific world.
+
+
+
+
+_THE FOUNDERING OF THE "FORTUNA."_
+
+
+I.
+
+I am going to spin you the yarn of the foundering of the _Fortuna_
+exactly as an old lake captain on a Huron steamer once span it for me by
+Great Manitoulin Island. It is a strange and a weird story; and if I
+can't give you the dialect in which he told it, you must forgive an
+English tongue its native accent for the sake of the curious Yankee tale
+that underlies it.
+
+Captain Montague Beresford Pierpoint was hardly the sort of man you
+would have expected to find behind the counter of a small shanty bank at
+Aylmer's Pike, Colorado. There was an engaging English frankness, an
+obvious honesty and refinement of manner about him, which suited very
+oddly with the rough habits and rougher western speech of the mining
+population in whose midst he lived. And yet, Captain Pierpoint had
+succeeded in gaining the confidence and respect of those strange
+outcasts of civilization by some indescribable charm of address and some
+invisible talisman of quiet good-fellowship, which caused him to be more
+universally believed in than any other man whatsoever at Aylmer's Pike.
+Indeed, to say so much is rather to underrate the uniqueness of his
+position; for it might, perhaps, be truer to say that Captain Pierpoint
+was the only man in the place in whom any one believed at all in any
+way. He was an honest-spoken, quiet, unobtrusive sort of man, who walked
+about fearlessly without a revolver, and never gambled either in mining
+shares or at poker; so that, to the simple-minded, unsophisticated
+rogues and vagabonds of Aylmer's Pike, he seemed the very incarnation of
+incorruptible commercial honour. They would have trusted all their
+earnings and winnings without hesitation to Captain Pierpoint's bare
+word; and when they did so, they knew that Captain Pierpoint had always
+had the money forthcoming, on demand, without a moment's delay or a
+single prevarication.
+
+Captain Pierpoint walked very straight and erect, as becomes a man of
+conspicuous uprightness; and there was a certain tinge of military
+bearing in his manner which seemed at first sight sufficiently to
+justify his popular title. But he himself made no false pretences upon
+that head; he freely acknowledged that he had acquired the position of
+captain, not in her Britannic Majesty's Guards, as the gossip of
+Aylmer's Pike sometimes asserted, but in the course of his earlier
+professional engagements as skipper of a Lake Superior grain-vessel.
+Though he hinted at times that he was by no means distantly connected
+with the three distinguished families whose names he bore, he did not
+attempt to exalt his rank or birth unduly, admitting that he was only a
+Canadian sailor by trade, thrown by a series of singular circumstances
+into the position of a Colorado banker. The one thing he really
+understood, he would tell his mining friends, was the grain-trade on the
+upper lakes; for finance he had but a single recommendation, and that
+was that if people trusted him he could never deceive them.
+
+If any man had set up a bank in Aylmer's Point with an iron strong-room,
+a lot of electric bells, and an obtrusive display of fire-arms and
+weapons, it is tolerably certain that that bank would have been promptly
+robbed and gutted within its first week of existence by open violence.
+Five or six of the boys would have banded themselves together into a
+body of housebreakers, and would have shot down the banker and burst
+into his strong-room, without thought of the electric bells or other
+feeble resources of civilization to that end appointed. But when a
+quiet, unobtrusive, brave man, like Captain Montague Pierpoint, settled
+himself in a shanty in their midst, and won their confidence by his
+straightforward honesty, scarcely a miner in the lot would ever have
+dreamt of attempting to rob him. Captain Pierpoint had not come to
+Aylmer's Pike at first with any settled idea of making himself the
+financier of the rough little community; he intended to dig on his own
+account, and the _r�le_ of banker was only slowly thrust upon him by the
+unanimous voice of the whole diggings. He had begun by lending men money
+out of his own pocket--men who were unlucky in their claims, men who had
+lost everything at monte, men who had come penniless to the Pike, and
+expected to find silver growing freely and openly on the surface. He had
+lent to them in a friendly way, without interest, and had been forced to
+accept a small present, in addition to the sum advanced, when the tide
+began to turn, and luck at last led the penniless ones to a remunerative
+placer or pocket. Gradually the diggers got into the habit of regarding
+this as Captain Pierpoint's natural function, and Captain Pierpoint,
+being himself but an indifferent digger, acquiesced so readily that at
+last, yielding to the persuasion of his clients, he put up a wooden
+counter, and painted over his rough door the magnificent notice,
+"Aylmer's Pike Bank: Montague Pierpoint, Manager." He got a large iron
+safe from Carson City, and in that safe, which stood by his own bedside,
+all the silver and other securities of the whole village were duly
+deposited. "Any one of the boys could easily shoot me and open that safe
+any night," Captain Pierpoint used to say pleasantly; "but if he did,
+by George! he'd have to reckon afterwards with every man on the Pike;
+and I should be sorry to stand in his shoes--that I would, any time."
+Indeed, the entire Pike looked upon Captain Pierpoint's safe as "Our
+Bank;" and, united in a single front by that simple social contract,
+they agreed to respect the safe as a sacred object, protected by the
+collective guarantee of three hundred mutually suspicious
+revolver-bearing outcasts.
+
+However, even at Aylmer's Pike, there were degrees and stages of
+comparative unscrupulousness. Two men, new-comers to the Pike, by name
+Hiram Coffin and Pete Morris, at last wickedly and feloniously conspired
+together to rob Captain Pierpoint's bank. Their plan was simplicity
+itself. They would go at midnight, very quietly, to the Captain's house,
+cut his throat as he slept, rob the precious safe, and ride off straight
+for the east, thus getting a clear night's start of any possible
+pursuer. It was an easy enough thing to do; and they were really
+surprised in their own minds that nobody else had ever been cute enough
+to seize upon such an obvious and excellent path to wealth and security.
+
+The day before the night the two burglars had fixed upon for their
+enterprise, Captain Pierpoint himself appeared to be in unusual spirits.
+Pete Morris called in at the bank during the course of the morning, to
+reconnoitre the premises, under pretence of paying in a few dollars'
+worth of silver, and he found the Captain very lively indeed. When Pete
+handed him the silver across the counter, the Captain weighed it with a
+smile, gave a receipt for the amount--he always gave receipts as a
+matter of form--and actually invited Pete into the little back room,
+which was at once kitchen, bedroom, and parlour, to have a drink. Then,
+before Pete's very eyes, he opened the safe, bursting with papers, and
+placed the silver in a bag on a shelf by itself, sticking the key into
+his waistcoat pocket. "He is delivering himself up into our hands,"
+thought Pete to himself, as the Captain poured out two glasses of old
+Bourbon, and handed one to the miner opposite. "Here's success to all
+our enterprises!" cried the Captain gaily. "Here's success, pard!" Pete
+answered, with a sinister look, which even the Captain could not help
+noting in a sidelong fashion.
+
+That night, about two o'clock, when all Aylmer's Pike was quietly
+dreaming its own sordid, drunken dreams, two sober men rose up from
+their cabin and stole out softly to the wooden bank house. Two horses
+were ready saddled with Mexican saddle-bags, and tied to a tree outside
+the digging, and in half an hour Pete and Hiram hoped to find themselves
+in full possession of all Captain Pierpoint's securities, and well on
+their road towards the nearest station of the Pacific Railway. They
+groped along to the door of the bank shanty, and began fumbling with
+their wire picks at the rough lock. After a moment's exploration of the
+wards, Pete Morris drew back in surprise.
+
+"Pard," he murmured in a low whisper, "here's suthin' rather
+extraordinary; this 'ere lock's not fastened."
+
+They turned the handle gently, and found that the door opened without an
+effort. Both men looked at one another in the dim light incredulously.
+Was there ever such a simple, trustful fool as that fellow Pierpoint! He
+actually slept in the bank shanty with his outer door unfastened!
+
+The two robbers passed through the outer room and into the little back
+bedroom-parlour. Hiram held the dark lantern, and turned it full on to
+the bed. To their immense astonishment they found it empty.
+
+Their first impulse was to suppose that the Captain had somehow
+anticipated their coming, and had gone out to rouse the boys. For a
+moment they almost contemplated running away, without the money. But a
+second glance reassured them; the bed had not been slept in. The
+Captain was a man of very regular habits. He made his bed in civilized
+fashion every morning after breakfast, and he retired every evening at a
+little after eleven. Where he could be stopping so late they couldn't
+imagine. But they hadn't come there to make a study of the Captain's
+personal habits, and, as he was away, the best thing they could do was
+to open the safe immediately, before he came back. They weren't
+particular about murder, Pete and Hiram; still, if you _could_ do your
+robbery without bloodshed, it was certainly all the better to do it so.
+
+Hiram held the lantern, carefully shaded by his hand, towards the door
+of the safe. Pete looked cautiously at the lock, and began pushing it
+about with his wire pick; he had hoped to get the key out of Captain
+Pierpoint's pocket, but as that easy scheme was so unexpectedly foiled,
+he trusted to his skill in picking to force the lock open. Once more a
+fresh surprise awaited him. The door opened almost of its own accord!
+Pete looked at Hiram, and Hiram looked at Pete. There was no mistaking
+the strange fact that met their gaze--the safe was empty!
+
+"What on airth do you suppose is the meaning of this, Pete?" Hiram
+whispered hoarsely. But Pete did not whisper; the whole truth flashed
+upon him in a moment, and he answered aloud, with a string of oaths,
+"The Cap'n has gone and made tracks hisself for Madison Dep�t. And he's
+taken every red cent in the safe along with him, too! the mean, low,
+dirty scoundrel! He's taken even my silver that he give me a receipt for
+this very morning!"
+
+Hiram stared at Pete in blank amazement. That such base treachery could
+exist on earth almost surpassed his powers of comprehension; he could
+understand that a man should rob and murder, simply and naturally, as he
+was prepared to do, out of pure, guileless depravity of heart, but that
+a man should plan and plot for a couple of years to impose upon the
+simplicity of a dishonest community by a consistent show of
+respectability, with the ultimate object of stealing its whole wealth at
+one fell swoop, was scarcely within the limits of his narrow
+intelligence. He stared blankly at the empty safe, and whispered once
+more to Pete in a timid undertone, "Perhaps he's got wind of this, and
+took off the plate to somebody else's hut. If the boys was to come and
+catch us here, it 'ud be derned awkward for you an' me, Pete." But Pete
+answered gruffly and loudly, "Never you mind about the plate, pard. The
+Cap'n's gone, and the plate's gone with him; and what we've got to do
+now is to rouse the boys and ride after him like greased lightnin'. The
+mean swindler, to go and swindle me out of the silver that I've been and
+dug out of that there claim yonder with my own pick!" For the sense of
+personal injustice to one's self rises perennially in the human breast,
+however depraved, and the man who would murder another without a scruple
+is always genuinely aghast with just indignation when he finds the
+counsel for the prosecution pressing a point against him with what seems
+to him unfair persistency.
+
+Pete flung his lock-pick out among the agave scrub that faced the bank
+shanty and ran out wildly into the midst of the dusty white road that
+led down the row of huts which the people of Aylmer's Pike
+euphemistically described as the Main Street. There he raised such an
+unearthly whoop as roused the sleepers in the nearest huts to turn over
+in their beds and listen in wonder, with a vague idea that "the Injuns"
+were coming down on a scalping-trail upon the diggings. Next, he hurried
+down the street, beating heavily with his fist on every frame door, and
+kicking hard at the log walls of the successive shanties. In a few
+minutes the whole Pike was out and alive. Unwholesome-looking men, in
+unwashed flannel shirts and loose trousers, mostly barefooted in their
+haste, came forth to inquire, with an unnecessary wealth of expletives,
+what the something was stirring. Pete, breathless and wrathful in the
+midst, livid with rage and disappointment, could only shriek aloud,
+"Cap'n Pierpoint has cleared out of camp, and taken all the plate with
+him!" There was at first an incredulous shouting and crying; then a
+general stampede towards the bank shanty; and, finally, as the truth
+became apparent to everybody, a deep and angry howl for vengeance on the
+traitor. In one moment Captain Pierpoint's smooth-faced villany dawned
+as clear as day to all Aylmer's Pike; and the whole chorus of gamblers,
+rascals, and blacklegs stood awe-struck with horror and indignation at
+the more plausible rogue who had succeeded in swindling even them. The
+clean-washed, white-shirted, fair-spoken villain! they would have his
+blood for this, if the United States Marshal had every mother's son of
+them strung up in a row for it after the pesky business was once fairly
+over.
+
+Nobody inquired how Pete and Hiram came by the news. Nobody asked how
+they had happened to notice that the shanty was empty and the safe
+rifled. All they thought of was how to catch and punish the public
+robber. He must have made for the nearest dep�t, Madison Clearing, on
+the Union Pacific Line, and he would take the first cars east for St.
+Louis--that was certain. Every horse in the Pike was promptly
+requisitioned by the fastest riders, and a rough cavalcade, revolvers in
+hand, made down the gulch and across the plain, full tilt to Madison.
+But when, in the garish blaze of early morning, they reached the white
+wooden dep�t in the valley and asked the ticket-clerk whether a man
+answering to their description had gone on by the east mail at 4.30, the
+ticket-clerk swore, in reply, that not a soul had left the dep�t by any
+train either way that blessed night. Pete Morris proposed to hold a
+revolver to his head and force him to confess. But even that strong
+measure failed to induce a satisfactory retractation. By way of general
+precaution, two of the boys went on by the day train to St. Louis, but
+neither of them could hear anything of Captain Pierpoint. Indeed, as a
+matter of fact, the late manager and present appropriator of the
+Aylmer's Pike Bank had simply turned his horse's head in the opposite
+direction, towards the further station at Cheyenne Gap, and had gone
+westward to San Francisco, intending to make his way back to New York
+_vi�_ Panama and the Isthmus Railway.
+
+When the boys really understood that they had been completely duped,
+they swore vengeance in solemn fashion, and they picked out two of
+themselves to carry out the oath in a regular assembly. Each contributed
+of his substance what he was able; and Pete and Hiram, being more
+stirred with righteous wrath than all the rest put together, were
+unanimously deputed to follow the Captain's tracks to San Francisco, and
+to have his life wherever and whenever they might chance to find him.
+Pete and Hiram accepted the task thrust upon them, _con amore_, and went
+forth zealously to hunt up the doomed life of Captain Montague Beresford
+Pierpoint.
+
+
+II.
+
+Society in Sarnia admitted that Captain Pierpoint was really quite an
+acquisition. An English gentleman by birth, well educated, and of
+pleasant manners, he had made a little money out west by mining, it was
+understood, and had now retired to the City of Sarnia, in the Province
+of Ontario and Dominion of Canada, to increase it by a quiet bit of
+speculative grain trading. He had been in the grain trade already, and
+people on the lake remembered him well; for Captain Pierpoint, in his
+honest, straightforward fashion, disdained the vulgar trickiness of an
+alias, and bore throughout the string of names which he had originally
+received from his godfathers and godmothers at his baptism. A thorough
+good fellow Captain Pierpoint had been at Aylmer's Pike; a perfect
+gentleman he was at Sarnia. As a matter of fact, indeed, the Captain was
+decently well-born, the son of an English country clergyman, educated at
+a respectable grammar school, and capable of being all things to all men
+in whatever station of life it might please Providence to place him.
+Society at Sarnia had no prejudice against the grain trade; if it had,
+the prejudice would have been distinctly self-regarding, for everybody
+in the little town did something in grain; and if Captain Pierpoint
+chose sometimes to navigate his own vessels, that was a fad which struck
+nobody as out of the way in an easy-going, money-getting, Canadian city.
+
+Somehow or other, everything seemed to go wrong with Captain Pierpoint's
+cargoes. He was always losing a scow laden with best fall wheat from
+Chicago for Buffalo; or running a lumber vessel ashore on the shoals of
+Lake Erie; or getting a four-master jammed in the ice packs on the St.
+Clair river: and though the insurance companies continually declared
+that Captain Pierpoint had got the better of them, the Captain himself
+was wont to complain that no insurance could ever possibly cover the
+losses he sustained by the carelessness of his subordinates or the
+constant perversity of wind and waters. He was obliged to take his own
+ships down, he would have it, because nobody else could take them safely
+for him; and though he met with quite as many accidents himself as many
+of his deputies did, he continued to convey his grain in person, hoping,
+as he said, that luck would turn some day, and that a good speculation
+would finally enable him honourably to retrieve his shattered fortunes.
+
+However this might be, it happened curiously enough that, in spite of
+all his losses, Captain Pierpoint seemed to grow richer and richer,
+visibly to the naked eye, with each reverse of his trading efforts. He
+took a handsome house, set up a carriage and pair, and made love to the
+prettiest and sweetest girl in all Sarnia. The prettiest and sweetest
+girl was not proof against Captain Pierpoint's suave tongue and handsome
+house; and she married him in very good faith, honestly believing in him
+as a good woman will in a scoundrel, and clinging to him fervently with
+all her heart and soul. No happier and more loving pair in all Sarnia
+than Captain and Mrs. Pierpoint.
+
+Some months after the marriage, Captain Pierpoint arranged to take down
+a scow or flat-bottomed boat, laden with grain, from Milwaukee for the
+Erie Canal. He took up the scow himself, and before he started for the
+voyage, it was a curious fact that he went in person down into the hold,
+bored eight large holes right through the bottom, and filled each up, as
+he drew out the auger, with a caulked plug made exactly to fit it, and
+hammered firmly into place with a wooden mallet. There was a ring in
+each plug, by which it could be pulled out again without much
+difficulty; and the whole eight were all placed along the gangway of the
+hold, where no cargo would lie on top of them. The scow's name was the
+_Fortuna_: "sit faustum omen et felix," murmured Captain Pierpoint to
+himself; for among his other accomplishments he had not wholly neglected
+nor entirely forgotten the classical languages.
+
+It took only two men and the skipper to navigate the scow; for lake
+craft towed by steam propellers are always very lightly manned: and when
+Captain Pierpoint reached Milwaukee, where he was to take in cargo, he
+dismissed the two sailors who had come with him from Sarnia, and
+engaged two fresh hands at the harbour. Rough, miner-looking men they
+were, with very little of the sailor about them; but Captain Pierpoint's
+sharp eye soon told him they were the right sort of men for his purpose,
+and he engaged them on the spot, without a moment's hesitation. Pete and
+Hiram had had some difficulty in tracking him, for they never thought he
+would return to the lakes, but they had tracked him at last, and were
+ready now to take their revenge.
+
+They had disguised themselves as well as they were able, and in their
+clumsy knavery they thought they had completely deceived the Captain.
+But almost from the moment the Captain saw them, he knew who they were,
+and he took his measures accordingly. "Stupid louts," he said to
+himself, with the fine contempt of an educated scoundrel for the
+unsophisticated natural ruffian: "here's a fine chance of killing two
+birds with one stone!" And when the Captain said the word "killing," he
+said it in his own mind with a delicate sinister emphasis which meant
+business.
+
+The scow was duly loaded, and with a heavy cargo of grain aboard, she
+proceeded to make her way slowly, by the aid of a tug, out of Milwaukee
+Harbour.
+
+As soon as she was once clear of the wharf, and while the busy shipping
+of the great port still surrounded them on every side, Captain Pierpoint
+calmly drew his revolver, and took his stand beside the hatches. "Pete
+and Hiram," he said quietly to his two assistants, "I want to have a
+little serious talk with you two before we go any further."
+
+If he had fired upon them outright instead of merely calling them by
+their own names, the two common conspirators could not have started more
+unfeignedly, or looked more unspeakably cowed, than they did at that
+moment. Their first impulse was to draw their own revolvers in return;
+but they saw in a second that the Captain was beforehand with them, and
+that they had better not try to shoot him before the very eyes of all
+Milwaukee.
+
+"Now, boys," the Captain went on steadily, with his finger on the
+trigger and his eye fixed straight on the men's faces, "we three quite
+understand one another. I took your savings for reasons of my own; and
+you have shipped here to-day to murder me on the voyage. But I
+recognized you before I engaged you: and I have left word at Milwaukee
+that if anything happens to me on this journey, you two have a grudge
+against me, and must be hanged for it. I've taken care that if this scow
+comes into any port along the lakes without me aboard, you two are to be
+promptly arrested." (This was false, of course; but to Captain Pierpoint
+a small matter like that was a mere trifle.) "And I've shipped myself
+along with you, just to show you I'm not afraid of you. But if either of
+you disobeys my orders in anything for one minute, I shoot at once, and
+no jury in Canada or the States will touch a hair of my head for doing
+it. I'm a respectable shipowner and grain merchant, you're a pair of
+disreputable skulking miners, pretending to be sailors, and you've
+shipped aboard here on purpose to murder and rob me. If _you_ shoot
+_me_, it's murder: if _I_ shoot _you_, it's justifiable homicide. Now,
+boys, do you understand that?"
+
+Pete looked at Hiram and was beginning to speak, when the captain
+interrupted him in the calm tone of one having authority. "Look here,
+Pete," he said, drawing a chalk line amidships across the deck; "you
+stand this side of that line, and you stand there, Hiram. Now, mind, if
+either of you chooses to step across that line or to confer with the
+other, I shoot you, whether it's here before all the eyes of Milwaukee,
+or alone in the middle of Huron. You must each take your own counsel,
+and do as you like for yourselves. But I've got a little plan of my own
+on, and if you choose willingly to help me in it, your fortune's made.
+Look at the thing, squarely, boys; what's the use of your killing me?
+Sooner or later you'll get hung for it, and it's a very unpleasant
+thing, I can assure you, hanging." As the Captain spoke, he placed his
+unoccupied hand loosely on his throat, and pressed it gently backward.
+Pete and Hiram shuddered a little as he did so. "Well, what's the good
+of ending your lives that way, eh? But I'm doing a little speculative
+business on these lakes, where I want just such a couple of men as you
+two--men that'll do as they're told in a matter of business and ask no
+squeamish questions. If you care to help me in this business, stop and
+make your fortunes; if you don't, you can go back to Milwaukee with the
+tug."
+
+"You speak fair enough," said Pete, dubitatively; "but you know, Cap'n,
+you ain't a man to be trusted. I owe you one already for stealing my
+silver."
+
+"Very little silver," the Captain answered, with a wave of the hand and
+a graceful smile. "Bonds, United States bonds and greenbacks most of it,
+converted beforehand for easier conveyance by horseback. These, however,
+are business details which needn't stand in the way between you and me,
+partner. I always was straightforward in all my dealings, and I'll come
+to the point at once, so that you can know whether you'll help me or
+not. This scow's plugged at bottom. My intention is, first, to part the
+rope that ties us to the tug; next, to transfer the cargo by night to a
+small shanty I've got on Manitoulin Island; and then to pull the plugs
+and sink the scow on Manitoulin rocks. That way I get insurance for the
+cargo and scow, and carry on the grain in the slack season. If you
+consent to help me unload, and sink the ship, you shall have half
+profits between you; if you don't, you can go back to Milwaukee like a
+couple of fools, and I'll put into port again to get a couple of
+pluckier fellows. Answer each for yourselves. Hiram, will you go with
+me?"
+
+"How shall I know you'll keep your promise?" asked Hiram.
+
+"For the best of all possible reasons," replied the Captain, jauntily;
+"because, if I don't, you can inform upon me to the insurance people."
+
+In Hiram Coffin's sordid soul there was a moment's turning over of the
+chances; and then greed prevailed over revenge, and he said,
+grudgingly--
+
+"Well, Cap'n, I'll go with you."
+
+The Captain smiled the smile of calm self-approbation, and turned half
+round to Pete.
+
+"And you?" he asked.
+
+"If Hiram goes, I go too," Pete answered, half hoping that some chance
+might occur for conferring with his neighbour on the road, and following
+out their original conspiracy. But Captain Pierpoint had been too much
+for him: he had followed the excellent rule "_divide et impera_" and he
+remained clearly master of the situation.
+
+As soon as they were well outside Milwaukee Harbour, the tug dragged
+them into the open lake, all unconscious of the strange scene that had
+passed on the deck so close to it; and the oddly mated crew made its
+way, practically alone, down the busy waters of Lake Michigan.
+
+Captain Pierpoint certainly didn't spend a comfortable time during his
+voyage down the lake, or through the Straits of Mackinaw. To say the
+truth, he could hardly sleep at all, and he was very fagged and weary
+when they arrived at Manitoulin Island. But Pete and Hiram, though they
+had many chances of talking together, could not see their way to kill
+him in safety; and Hiram at least, in his own mind, had come to the
+conclusion that it was better to make a little money than to risk one's
+neck for a foolish revenge. So in the dead of night, on the second day
+out, when a rough wind had risen from the north, and a fog had come over
+them, the Captain quietly began to cut away at the rope that tied them
+to the tug. He cut the rope all round, leaving a sound core in the
+centre; and when the next gust of wind came, the rope strained and
+parted quite naturally, so that the people on the tug never suspected
+the genuineness of the transaction. They looked about in the fog and
+storm for the scow, but of course they couldn't find her, for Captain
+Pierpoint, who knew his ground well, had driven her straight ashore
+before the wind and beached her on a small shelving cove on Manitoulin
+Island. There they found five men waiting for them, who helped unload
+the cargo with startling rapidity, for it was all arranged in sacks, not
+in bulk, and a high slide fixed on the gangway enabled them to slip it
+quickly down into an underground granary excavated below the level of
+the beach. After unloading, they made their way down before the breeze
+towards the jagged rocks of Manitoulin.
+
+It was eleven o'clock on a stormy moonlight night when the _Fortuna_
+arrived off the jutting point of the great island. A "black squall," as
+they call it on the lakes, was blowing down from the Sault Ste. Marie.
+The scow drove about aimlessly, under very little canvas, and the boat
+was ready to be lowered, "in case," the Captain said humorously, "of any
+accident." Close to the end of the point the Captain ordered Pete and
+Hiram down into the hold. He had shown them beforehand the way to draw
+the plugs, and had explained that the water would rise very slowly, and
+they would have plenty of time to get up the companion-ladder long
+before there was a foot deep of water in the hold. At the last moment
+Pete hung back a little. The Captain took him quietly by the shoulders,
+and, without an oath (an omission which told eloquently on Pete), thrust
+him down the ladder, and told him in his calmest manner to do his duty.
+Hiram held the light in his hand, and both went down together into the
+black abyss. There was no time to be lost; they were well off the point,
+and in another moment the wreck would have lost all show of reasonable
+probability.
+
+As the two miners went down into the hold, Captain Pierpoint drew
+quietly from his pocket a large hammer and a packet of five-inch nails.
+They were good stout nails, and would resist a considerable pressure. He
+looked carefully down into the hold, and saw the two men draw the first
+plug. One after another he watched them till the fourth was drawn, and
+then he turned away, and took one of the nails firmly between his thumb
+and forefinger.
+
+Next week everybody at Sarnia was grieved to hear that another of
+Captain Pierpoint's vessels had gone down off Manitoulin Point in that
+dreadful black squall on Thursday evening. Both the sailors on board had
+been drowned, but the Captain himself had managed to make good his
+escape in the jolly boat. He would be a heavy loser, it was understood,
+on the value of the cargo, for insurance never covers the loss of grain.
+Still, it was a fortunate thing that such a delightful man as the
+Captain had not perished in the foundering of the _Fortuna_.
+
+
+III.
+
+Somehow, after that wreck, Captain Pierpoint never cared for the water
+again. His nerves were shattered, he said, and he couldn't stand danger
+as he used to do when he was younger and stronger. So he went on the
+lake no more, and confined his attention more strictly to the "futures"
+business. He was a thriving and prosperous person, in spite of his
+losses; and the underwriters had begun to look a little askance at his
+insurances even before this late foundering case. Some whispered
+ominously in underwriting circles that they had their doubts about the
+_Fortuna_.
+
+One summer, a few years later, the water on Lake Huron sank lower than
+it had ever been known to sink before. It was a very dry season in the
+back country, and the rivers brought down very diminished streams into
+the great basins. Foot by foot, the level of the lake fell slowly, till
+many of the wharves were left high and dry, and the vessels could only
+come alongside in very few deep places. Captain Pierpoint had suffered
+much from sleeplessness, combined with Canadian ague, for some years
+past, but this particular summer his mind was very evidently much
+troubled. For some unaccountable reason, he watched the falling of the
+river with the intensest anxiety, and after it had passed a certain
+point, his interest in the question became painfully keen. Though the
+fever and the ague gained upon him from day to day, and his doctor
+counselled perfect quiet, he was perpetually consulting charts, and
+making measurements of the configuration which the coast had now
+reached, especially at the upper end of Lake Huron. At last, his mind
+seemed almost to give way, and weak and feverish as he was, he insisted,
+the first time for many seasons, that he must take a trip upon the
+water. Remonstrance was quite useless; he would go on the lake again, he
+said, if it killed him. So he hired one of the little steam pleasure
+yachts which are always to let in numbers at Detroit, and started with
+his wife and her brother, a young surgeon, for a month's cruise into
+Lake Superior.
+
+As the yacht neared Manitoulin Island, Captain Pierpoint insisted upon
+being brought up on deck in a chair--he was too ill to stand--and swept
+all the coast with his binocular. Close to the point, a flat-topped
+object lay mouldering in the sun, half out of water, on the shoals by
+the bank. "What is it, Ernest?" asked the Captain, trembling, of his
+brother-in-law.
+
+"A wreck, I should say," the brother-in-law answered, carelessly. "By
+Jove, now I look at it with the glass, I can read the name, '_Fortuna_,
+Sarnia.'"
+
+Captain Pierpoint seized the glass with a shaking hand, and read the
+name on the stern, himself, in a dazed fashion. "Take me downstairs," he
+said feebly, "and let me die quietly; and for Heaven's sake, Ernest,
+never let _her_ know about it all."
+
+They took him downstairs into the little cabin, and gave him quinine;
+but he called for brandy. They let him have it, and he drank a glassful.
+Then he lay down, and the shivering seized him; and with his wife's hand
+in his, he died that night in raving delirium, about eleven. A black
+squall was blowing down from the Sault Ste. Marie; and they lay at
+anchor out in the lake, tossing and pitching, opposite the green
+mouldering hull of the _Fortuna_.
+
+They took him back and buried him at Sarnia; and all the world went to
+attend his funeral, as of a man who died justly respected for his wealth
+and other socially admired qualities. But the brother-in-law knew there
+was a mystery somewhere in the wreck of the _Fortuna_; and as soon as
+the funeral was over, he went back with the yacht, and took its skipper
+with him to examine the stranded vessel. When they came to look at the
+bottom, they found eight holes in it. Six of them were wide open; one
+was still plugged, and the remaining one had the plug pulled half out,
+inward, as if the persons who were pulling it had abandoned the attempt
+for the fear of the rising water. That was bad enough, and they did not
+wonder that Captain Pierpoint had shrunk in horror from the revealing of
+the secret of the _Fortuna_.
+
+But when they scrambled on the deck, they discovered another fact which
+gave a more terrible meaning to the dead man's tragedy. The covering of
+the hatchway by the companion-ladder was battened down, and nailed from
+the side with five-inch nails. The skipper loosened the rusty iron with
+his knife, and after a while they lifted the lid off, and descended
+carefully into the empty hold below. As they suspected, there was no
+damaged grain in it; but at the foot of the companion-ladder, left
+behind by the retreating water, two half-cleaned skeletons in sailor
+clothes lay huddled together loosely on the floor. That was all that
+remained of Pete and Hiram. Evidently the Captain had nailed the hatch
+down on top of them, and left them there terror-stricken to drown as the
+water rushed in and rose around them.
+
+For a while the skipper and the brother-in-law kept the dead man's
+secret; but they did not try to destroy or conceal the proofs of his
+guilt, and in time others visited the wreck, till, bit by bit, the
+horrible story leaked out in its entirety. Nowadays, as you pass the
+Great Manitoulin Island, every sailor on the lake route is ready to tell
+you this strange and ghastly yarn of the foundering of the _Fortuna_.
+
+
+
+
+_THE BACKSLIDER._
+
+
+There was much stir and commotion on the night of Thursday, January the
+14th, 1874, in the Gideonite Apostolic Church, number 47, Walworth Lane,
+Peckham, S.E. Anybody could see at a glance that some important business
+was under consideration; for the Apostle was there himself, in his chair
+of presidency, and the twelve Episcops were there, and the forty-eight
+Presbyters, and a large and earnest gathering of the Gideonite laity. It
+was only a small bare school-room, fitted with wooden benches, was that
+headquarters station of the young Church; but you could not look around
+it once without seeing that its occupants were of the sort by whom great
+religious revolutions may be made or marred. For the Gideonites were one
+of those strange enthusiastic hole-and-corner sects that spring up
+naturally in the outlying suburbs of great thinking centres. They gather
+around the marked personality of some one ardent, vigorous,
+half-educated visionary; and they consist for the most part of
+intelligent, half-reasoning people, who are bold enough to cast
+overboard the dogmatic beliefs of their fathers, but not so bold as to
+exercise their logical faculty upon the fundamental basis on which the
+dogmas originally rested. The Gideonites had thus collected around the
+fixed centre of their Apostle, a retired attorney, Murgess by name,
+whose teaching commended itself to their groping reason as the pure
+outcome of faithful Biblical research; and they had chosen their name
+because, though they were but three hundred in number, they had full
+confidence that when the time came they would blow their trumpets, and
+all the host of Midian would be scattered before them. In fact, they
+divided the world generally into Gideonite and Midianite, for they knew
+that he that was not with them was against them. And no wonder, for the
+people of Peckham did not love the struggling Church. Its chief doctrine
+was one of absolute celibacy, like the Shakers of America; and to this
+doctrine the Church had testified in the Old Kent Road and elsewhere
+after a vigorous practical fashion that roused the spirit of
+South-eastern London into the fiercest opposition. The young men and
+maidens, said the Apostle, must no longer marry or be given in marriage;
+the wives and husbands must dwell asunder; and the earth must be made as
+an image of heaven. These were heterodox opinions, indeed, which
+South-eastern London could only receive with a strenuous counterblast of
+orthodox brickbats and sound Anglican road metal.
+
+The fleece of wool was duly laid upon the floor; the trumpet and the
+lamp were placed upon the bare wooden reading desk; and the Apostle,
+rising slowly from his seat, began to address the assembled Gideonites.
+
+"Friends," he said, in a low, clear, impressive voice, with a musical
+ring tempering its slow distinctness, "we have met together to-night to
+take counsel with one another upon a high matter. It is plain to all of
+us that the work of the Church in the world does not prosper as it might
+prosper were the charge of it in worthier hands. We have to contend
+against great difficulties. We are not among the rich or the mighty of
+the earth; and the poor whom we have always with us do not listen to us.
+It is expedient, therefore, that we should set some one among us aside
+to be instructed thoroughly in those things that are most commonly
+taught among the Midianites at Oxford or Cambridge. To some of you it
+may seem, as it seemed at first to me, that such a course would involve
+going back upon the very principles of our constitution. We are not to
+overcome Midian by our own hand, nor by the strength of two and thirty
+thousand, but by the trumpet, and the pitcher, and the cake of barley
+bread. Yet, when I searched and inquired after this matter, it seemed to
+me that we might also err by overmuch confidence on the other side. For
+Moses, who led the people out of Egypt, was made ready for the task by
+being learned in all the learning of the Egyptians. Daniel, who
+testified in the captivity, was cunning in knowledge, and understanding
+science, and instructed in the wisdom and tongue of the Chaldeans. Paul,
+who was the apostle of the Gentiles, had not only sat at the feet of
+Gamaliel, but was also able from their own poets and philosophers to
+confute the sophisms and subtleties of the Grecians themselves. These
+things show us that we should not too lightly despise even worldly
+learning and worldly science. Perhaps we have gone wrong in thinking too
+little of such dross, and being puffed up with spiritual pride. The
+world might listen to us more readily if we had one who could speak the
+word for us in the tongues understanded of the world."
+
+As he paused, a hum of acquiescence went round the room.
+
+"It has seemed to me, then," the Apostle went on, "that we ought to
+choose some one among our younger brethren, upon whose shoulders the
+cares and duties of the Apostolate might hereafter fall. We are a poor
+people, but by subscription among ourselves we might raise a sufficient
+sum to send the chosen person first to a good school here in London, and
+afterwards to the University of Oxford. It may seem a doubtful and a
+hazardous thing thus to stake our future upon any one young man; but
+then we must remember that the choice will not be wholly or even mainly
+ours; we will be guided and directed as we ever are in the laying on of
+hands. To me, considering this matter thus, it has seemed that there is
+one youth in our body who is specially pointed out for this work. Only
+one child has ever been born into the Church: he, as you know, is the
+son of brother John Owen and sister Margaret Owen, who were received
+into the fold just six days before his birth. Paul Owen's very name
+seems to many of us, who take nothing for chance but all things for
+divinely ordered, to mark him out at once as a foreordained Apostle. Is
+it your wish, then, Presbyter John Owen, to dedicate your only son to
+this ministry?"
+
+Presbyter John Owen rose from the row of seats assigned to the
+forty-eight, and moved hesitatingly towards the platform. He was an
+intelligent-looking, honest-faced, sunburnt working man, a mason by
+trade, who had come into the Church from the Baptist society; and he was
+awkwardly dressed in his Sunday clothes, with the scrupulous clumsy
+neatness of a respectable artisan who expects to take part in an
+important ceremony. He spoke nervously and with hesitation, but with all
+the transparent earnestness of a simple, enthusiastic nature.
+
+"Apostle and friends," he said, "it ain't very easy for me to
+disentangle my feelin's on this subjec' from one another. I hope I ain't
+moved by any worldly feelin', an' yet I hardly know how to keep such
+considerations out, for there's no denyin' that it would be a great
+pleasure to me and to his mother to see our Paul becomin' a teacher in
+Israel, and receivin' an education such as you, Apostle, has pinted out.
+But we hope, too, we ain't insensible to the good of the Church and the
+advantage that it might derive from our Paul's support and preachin'. We
+can't help seein' ourselves that the lad has got abilities; and we've
+tried to train him up from his youth upward, like Timothy, for the
+furtherance of the right doctrine. If the Church thinks he's fit for the
+work laid upon him, his mother and me'll be glad to dedicate him to the
+service."
+
+He sat down awkwardly, and the Church again hummed its approbation in a
+suppressed murmur. The Apostle rose once more, and briefly called on
+Paul Owen to stand forward.
+
+In answer to the call, a tall, handsome, earnest-eyed boy advanced
+timidly to the platform. It was no wonder that those enthusiastic
+Gideonite visionaries should have seen in his face the visible stamp of
+the Apostleship. Paul Owen had a rich crop of dark-brown glossy and
+curly hair, cut something after the Florentine Cinque-cento fashion--not
+because his parents wished him to look artistic, but because that was
+the way in which they had seen the hair dressed in all the sacred
+pictures that they knew; and Margaret Owen, the daughter of some
+Wesleyan Spitalfields weaver folk, with the imaginative Huguenot blood
+still strong in her veins, had made up her mind ever since she became
+Convinced of the Truth (as their phrase ran) that her Paul was called
+from his cradle to a great work. His features were delicately chiselled,
+and showed rather natural culture, like his mother's, than rough
+honesty, like John Owen's, or strong individuality, like the masterful
+Apostle's. His eyes were peculiarly deep and luminous, with a far-away
+look which might have reminded an artist of the central boyish figure in
+Holman Hunt's picture of the Doctors in the Temple. And yet Paul Owen
+had a healthy colour in his cheek and a general sturdiness of limb and
+muscle which showed that he was none of your nervous, bloodless, sickly
+idealists, but a wholesome English peasant boy of native refinement and
+delicate sensibilities. He moved forward with some natural hesitation
+before the eyes of so many people--ay, and what was more terrible, of
+the entire Church upon earth; but he was not awkward and constrained in
+his action like his father. One could see that he was sustained in the
+prominent part he took that morning by the consciousness of a duty he
+had to perform and a mission laid upon him which he must not reject.
+
+"Are you willing, my son Paul," asked the Apostle, gravely, "to take
+upon yourself the task that the Church proposes?"
+
+"I am willing," answered the boy in a low voice, "grace preventing me."
+
+"Does all the Church unanimously approve the election of our brother
+Paul to this office?" the Apostle asked formally; for it was a rule with
+the Gideonites that nothing should be done except by the unanimous and
+spontaneous action of the whole body, acting under direct and immediate
+inspiration; and all important matters were accordingly arranged
+beforehand by the Apostle in private interviews with every member of the
+Church individually, so that everything that took place in public
+assembly had the appearance of being wholly unquestioned. They took
+counsel first with one another, and consulted the Scripture together;
+and when all private doubts were satisfied, they met as a Church to
+ratify in solemn conclave their separate conclusions. It was not often
+that the Apostle did not have his own way. Not only had he the most
+marked personality and the strongest will, but he alone also had Greek
+and Hebrew enough to appeal always to the original word; and that
+mysterious amount of learning, slight as it really was, sufficed almost
+invariably to settle the scruples of his wholly ignorant and pliant
+disciples. Reverence for the literal Scripture in its primitive language
+was the corner-stone of the Gideonite Church; and for all practical
+purposes, its one depositary and exponent for them was the Apostle
+himself. Even the Rev. Albert Barnes's Commentary was held to possess an
+inferior authority.
+
+"The Church approves," was the unanimous answer.
+
+"Then, Episcops, Presbyters, and brethren," said the Apostle, taking up
+a roll of names, "I have to ask that you will each mark down on this
+paper opposite your own names how much a year you can spare of your
+substance for six years to come as a guarantee fund for this great work.
+You must remember that the ministry of this Church has cost you nothing;
+freely I have received and freely given; do you now bear your part in
+equipping a new aspirant for the succession to the Apostolate."
+
+The two senior Episcops took two rolls from his hand, and went round the
+benches with a stylographic pen (so strangely do the ages
+mingle--Apostles and stylographs) silently asking each to put down his
+voluntary subscription. Meanwhile the Apostle read slowly and reverently
+a few appropriate sentences of Scripture. Some of the richer
+members--well-to-do small tradesmen of Peckham--put down a pound or even
+two pounds apiece; the poorer brethren wrote themselves down for ten
+shillings or even five. In the end the guarantee list amounted to
+195_l_. a year. The Apostle reckoned it up rapidly to himself, and then
+announced the result to the assembly, with a gentle smile relaxing his
+austere countenance. He was well pleased, for the sum was quite
+sufficient to keep Paul Owen two years at school in London and then send
+him comfortably if not splendidly to Oxford. The boy had already had a
+fair education in Latin and some Greek, at the Birkbeck Schools; and
+with two years' further study he might even gain a scholarship (for he
+was a bright lad), which would materially lessen the expense to the
+young Church. Unlike many prophets and enthusiasts, the Apostle was a
+good man of business; and he had taken pains to learn all about these
+favourable chances before embarking his people on so very doubtful a
+speculation.
+
+The Assembly was just about to close, when one of the Presbyters rose
+unexpectedly to put a question which, contrary to the usual practice,
+had not already been submitted for approbation to the Apostle. He was a
+hard-headed, thickset, vulgar-looking man, a greengrocer at Denmark
+Hill, and the Apostle always looked upon him as a thorn in his side,
+promoted by inscrutable wisdom to the Presbytery for the special purpose
+of keeping down the Apostle's spiritual pride.
+
+"One more pint, Apostle," he said abruptly, "afore we close. It seems to
+me that even in the Church's work we'd ought to be business-like. Now,
+it ain't business-like to let this young man, Brother Paul, get his
+eddication out of us, if I may so speak afore the Church, on spec. It's
+all very well our sayin' he's to be eddicated and take on the
+Apostleship, but how do we know but what when he's had his eddication he
+may fall away and become a backslider, like Demas and like others among
+ourselves that we could mention? He may go to Oxford among a lot of
+Midianites, and them of the great an' mighty of the earth too, and how
+do we know but what he may round upon the Church, and go back upon us
+after we've paid for his eddication? So what I want to ask is just this,
+can't we bind him down in a bond that if he don't take the Apostleship
+with the consent of the Church when it falls vacant he'll pay us back
+our money, so as we can eddicate up another as'll be more worthy?"
+
+The Apostle moved uneasily in his chair; but before he could speak, Paul
+Owen's indignation found voice, and he said out his say boldly before
+the whole assembly, blushing crimson with mingled shame and excitement
+as he did so. "If Brother Grimshaw and all the brethren think so ill of
+me that they cannot trust my honesty and honour," he said, "they need
+not be at the pains of educating me. I will sign no bond and enter into
+no compact. But if you suppose that I will be a backslider, you do not
+know me, and I will confer no more with you upon the subject."
+
+"My son Paul is right," the Apostle said, flushing up in turn at the
+boy's audacity; "we will not make the affairs of the Spirit a matter for
+bonds and earthly arrangements. If the Church thinks as I do, you will
+all rise up."
+
+All rose except Presbyter Grimshaw. For a moment there was some
+hesitation, for the rule of the Church in favour of unanimity was
+absolute; but the Apostle fixed his piercing eyes on Job Grimshaw, and
+after a minute or so Job Grimshaw too rose slowly, like one compelled by
+an unseen power, and cast in his vote grudgingly with the rest. There
+was nothing more said about signing an agreement.
+
+
+II.
+
+Meenie Bolton had counted a great deal upon her visit to Oxford, and she
+found it quite as delightful as she had anticipated. Her brother knew
+such a nice set of men, especially Mr. Owen, of Christchurch. Meenie had
+never been so near falling in love with anybody in her life as she was
+with Paul Owen. He was so handsome and so clever, and then there was
+something so romantic about this strange Church they said he belonged
+to. Meenie's father was a country parson, and the way in which Paul
+shrank from talking about the rector, as if his office were something
+wicked or uncanny, piqued and amused her. There was an heretical tinge
+about him which made him doubly interesting to the Rector's daughter.
+The afternoon water party that eventful Thursday, down to Nuneham, she
+looked forward to with the deepest interest. For her aunt, the
+Professor's wife, who was to take charge of them, was certainly the most
+delightful and most sensible of chaperons.
+
+"Is it really true, Mr. Owen," she said, as they sat together for ten
+minutes alone after their picnic luncheon, by the side of the weir under
+the shadow of the Nuneham beeches--"is it really true that this Church
+of yours doesn't allow people to marry?"
+
+Paul coloured up to his eyes as he answered, "Well, Miss Bolton, I don't
+know that you should identify me too absolutely with my Church. I was
+very young when they selected me to go to Oxford, and my opinions have
+decidedly wavered a good deal lately. But the Church certainly does
+forbid marriage. I have always been brought up to look upon it as
+sinful."
+
+Meenie laughed aloud; and Paul, to whom the question was no laughing
+matter, but a serious point of conscientious scruple, could hardly help
+laughing with her, so infectious was that pleasant ripple. He checked
+himself with an effort, and tried to look serious. "Do you know," he
+said, "when I first came to Christchurch, I doubted even whether I ought
+to make your brother's acquaintance because he was a clergyman's son. I
+was taught to describe clergymen always as priests of Midian." He never
+talked about his Church to anybody at Oxford, and it was a sort of
+relief to him to speak on the subject to Meenie, in spite of her
+laughing eyes and undisguised amusement. The other men would have
+laughed at him too, but their laughter would have been less sympathetic.
+
+"And do you think them priests of Midian still?" asked Meenie.
+
+"Miss Bolton," said Paul suddenly, as one who relieves his overburdened
+mind by a great effort, "I am almost moved to make a confidante of you."
+
+"There is nothing I love better than confidences," Meenie answered; and
+she might truthfully have added, "particularly from you."
+
+"Well, I have been passing lately through a great many doubts and
+difficulties. I was brought up by my Church to become its next Apostle,
+and I have been educated at their expense both in London and here. You
+know," Paul added with his innate love of telling out the whole truth,
+"I am not a gentleman; I am the son of poor working people in London."
+
+"Tom told me who your parents were," Meenie answered simply; "but he
+told me, too, you were none the less a true gentleman born for that; and
+I see myself he told me right."
+
+Paul flushed again--he had a most unmanly trick of flushing up--and
+bowed a little timid bow. "Thank you," he said quietly. "Well, while I
+was in London I lived entirely among my own people, and never heard
+anything talked about except our own doctrines. I thought our Apostle
+the most learned, the wisest, and the greatest of men. I had not a doubt
+about the absolute infallibility of our own opinions. But ever since I
+came to Oxford I have slowly begun to hesitate and to falter. When I
+came up first, the men laughed at me a good deal in a good-humoured way,
+because I wouldn't do as they did. Then I thought myself persecuted for
+the truth's sake, and was glad. But the men were really very kind and
+forbearing to me; they never argued with me or bullied me; they
+respected my scruples, and said nothing more about it as soon as they
+found out what they really were. That was my first stumbling-block. If
+they had fought me and debated with me, I might have stuck to my own
+opinions by force of opposition. But they turned me in upon myself
+completely by their silence, and mastered me by their kindly
+forbearance. Point by point I began to give in, till now I hardly know
+where I am standing."
+
+"You wouldn't join the cricket club at first, Tom says."
+
+"No, I wouldn't. I thought it wrong to walk in the ways of Midian. But
+gradually I began to argue myself out of my scruples, and now I
+positively pull six in the boat, and wear a Christchurch ribbon on my
+hat. I have given up protesting against having my letters addressed to
+me as Esquire (though I have really no right to the title), and I nearly
+went the other day to have some cards engraved with my name as 'Mr. Paul
+Owen.' I am afraid I'm backsliding terribly."
+
+Meenie laughed again. "If that is all you have to burden your conscience
+with," she said, "I don't think you need spend many sleepless nights."
+
+"Quite so," Paul answered, smiling; "I think so myself. But that is not
+all. I have begun to have serious doubts about the Apostle himself and
+the whole Church altogether. I have been three years at Oxford now; and
+while I was reading for Mods, I don't think I was so unsettled in my
+mind. But since I have begun reading philosophy for my Greats, I have
+had to go into all sorts of deep books--Mill, and Spencer, and Bain, and
+all kinds of fellows who really think about things, you know, down to
+the very bottom--and an awful truth begins to dawn upon me, that our
+Apostle is after all only a very third-rate type of a thinker. Now that,
+you know, is really terrible."
+
+"I don't see why," Meenie answered demurely. She was beginning to get
+genuinely interested.
+
+"That is because you have never had to call in question a cherished and
+almost ingrown faith. You have never realized any similar circumstances.
+Here am I, brought up by these good, honest, earnest people, with their
+own hard-earned money, as a pillar of their belief. I have been taught
+to look upon myself as the chosen advocate of their creed, and on the
+Apostle as an almost divinely inspired man. My whole life has been bound
+up in it; I have worked and read night and day in order to pass high and
+do honour to the Church; and now what do I begin to find the Church
+really is? A petty group of poor, devoted, enthusiastic, ignorant
+people, led blindly by a decently instructed but narrow-minded teacher,
+who has mixed up his own headstrong self-conceit and self-importance
+with his own peculiar ideas of abstract religion." Paul paused, half
+surprised at himself, for, though he had doubted before, he had never
+ventured till that day to formulate his doubts, even to himself, in such
+plain and straightforward language.
+
+"I see," said Meenie, gravely; "you have come into a wider world; you
+have mixed with wider ideas; and the wider world has converted you,
+instead of your converting the world. Well, that is only natural. Others
+beside you have had to change their opinions."
+
+"Yes, yes; but for me it is harder--oh! so much harder."
+
+"Because you have looked forward to being an Apostle?"
+
+"Miss Bolton, you do me injustice--not in what you say, but in the tone
+you say it in. No, it is not the giving up of the Apostleship that
+troubles me, though I did hope that I might help in my way to make the
+world a new earth; but it is the shock and downfall of their hopes to
+all those good earnest people, and especially--oh! especially, Miss
+Bolton, to my own dear father and mother." His eyes filled with tears as
+he spoke.
+
+"I can understand," said Meenie, sympathetically, her eyes dimming a
+little in response. "They have set their hearts all their lives long on
+your accomplishing this work, and it will be to them the disappointment
+of a cherished romance."
+
+They looked at one another a few minutes in silence.
+
+"How long have you begun to have your doubts?" Meenie asked after the
+pause.
+
+"A long time, but most of all since I saw you. It has made me--it has
+made me hesitate more about the fundamental article of our faith. Even
+now, I am not sure whether it is not wrong of me to be talking so with
+you about such matters."
+
+"I see," said Meenie, a little more archly; "it comes perilously
+near----" and she broke off, for she felt she had gone a step too far.
+
+"Perilously near falling in love," Paul continued boldly, turning his
+big eyes full upon her. "Yes, perilously near."
+
+Their eyes met; Meenie's fell; and they said no more. But they both felt
+they understood one another. Just at that moment the Professor's wife
+came up to interrupt the _t�te-�-t�te_; "for that young Owen," she said
+to herself, "is really getting quite too confidential with dear Meenie."
+
+That same evening Paul paced up and down his rooms in Peckwater with all
+his soul strangely upheaved within him and tossed and racked by a dozen
+conflicting doubts and passions. Had he gone too far? Had he yielded
+like Adam to the woman who beguiled him? Had he given way like Samson to
+the snares of Delilah? For the old Scripture phraseology and imagery, so
+long burned into his very nature, clung to him still in spite of all his
+faltering changes of opinion. Had he said more than he thought and felt
+about the Apostle? Even if he was going to revise his views, was it
+right, was it candid, was it loyal to the truth, that he should revise
+them under the biassing influence of Meenie's eyes? If only he could
+have separated the two questions--the Apostle's mission, and the
+something which he felt growing up within him! But he could not--and, as
+he suspected, for a most excellent reason, because the two were
+intimately bound up in the very warp and woof of his existence. Nature
+was asserting herself against the religious asceticism of the Apostle;
+it could not be so wrong for him to feel those feelings that had
+thrilled every heart in all his ancestors for innumerable generations.
+
+He was in love with Meenie: he knew that clearly now. And this love was
+after all not such a wicked and terrible feeling; on the contrary, he
+felt all the better and the purer for it already. But then that might
+merely be the horrible seductiveness of the thing. Was it not always
+typified by the cup of Circe, by the song of the Sirens, by all that was
+alluring and beautiful and hollow? He paced up and down for half an
+hour, and then (he had sported his oak long ago) he lit his little
+reading lamp and sat down in the big chair by the bay window. Running
+his eyes over his bookshelf, he took out, half by chance, Spencer's
+"Sociology." Then, from sheer weariness, he read on for a while, hardly
+heeding what he read. At last he got interested, and finished a chapter.
+When he had finished it, he put the book down, and felt that the
+struggle was over. Strange that side by side in the same world, in the
+same London, there should exist two such utterly different types of man
+as Herbert Spencer and the Gideonite Apostle. The last seemed to belong
+to the sixteenth century, the first to some new and hitherto uncreated
+social world. In an age which produced thinkers like that, how could he
+ever have mistaken the poor, bigoted, narrow, half-instructed Apostle
+for a divinely inspired teacher! So far as Paul Owen was concerned, the
+Gideonite Church and all that belonged to it had melted utterly into
+thin air.
+
+Three days later, after the Eights in the early evening, Paul found an
+opportunity of speaking again alone with Meenie. He had taken their
+party on to the Christchurch barge to see the race, and he was strolling
+with them afterwards round the meadow walk by the bank of the Cherwell.
+Paul managed to get a little in front with Meenie, and entered at once
+upon the subject of his late embarrassments.
+
+"I have thought it all over since, Miss Bolton," he said--he half
+hesitated whether he should say "Meenie" or not, and she was half
+disappointed that he didn't, for they were both very young, and very
+young people fall in love so unaffectedly--"I have thought it all over,
+and I have come to the conclusion that there is no help for it: I must
+break openly with the Church."
+
+"Of course," said Meenie, simply. "That I understood."
+
+He smiled at her ingenuousness. Such a very forward young person! And
+yet he liked it. "Well, the next thing is, what to do about it. You see,
+I have really been obtaining my education, so to speak, under false
+pretences. I can't continue taking these good people's money after I
+have ceased to believe in their doctrines. I ought to have faced the
+question sooner. It was wrong of me to wait until--until it was forced
+upon me by other considerations."
+
+This time it was Meenie who blushed. "But you don't mean to leave Oxford
+without taking your degree?" she asked quickly.
+
+"No, I think it will be better not. To stop here and try for a
+fellowship is my best chance of repaying these poor people the money
+which I have taken from them for no purpose."
+
+"I never thought of that," said Meenie. "You are bound in honour to pay
+them back, of course."
+
+Paul liked the instantaneous honesty of that "of course." It marked the
+naturally honourable character; for "of course," too, they must wait to
+marry (young people jump so) till all that money was paid off.
+"Fortunately," he said, "I have lived economically, and have not spent
+nearly as much as they guaranteed. I got scholarships up to a hundred a
+year of my own, and I only took a hundred a year of theirs. They offered
+me two hundred. But there's five years at a hundred, that makes five
+hundred pounds--a big debt to begin life with."
+
+"Never mind," said Meenie. "You will get a fellowship, and in a few
+years you can pay it off."
+
+"Yes," said Paul, "I can pay it off. But I can never pay off the hopes
+and aspirations I have blighted. I must become a schoolmaster, or a
+barrister, or something of that sort, and never repay them for their
+self-sacrifice and devotion in making me whatever I shall become. They
+may get back their money, but they will have lost their cherished
+Apostle for ever."
+
+"Mr. Owen," Meenie answered solemnly, "the seal of the Apostolate lies
+far deeper than that. It was born in you, and no act of yours can shake
+it off."
+
+"Meenie," he said, looking at her gently, with a changed
+expression--"Meenie, we shall have to wait many years."
+
+"Never mind, Paul," she replied, as naturally as if he had been Paul to
+her all her life long, "I can wait if you can. But what will you do for
+the immediate present?"
+
+"I have my scholarship," he said; "I can get on partly upon that; and
+then I can take pupils; and I have only one year more of it."
+
+So before they parted that night it was all well understood between them
+that Paul was to declare his defection from the Church at the earliest
+opportunity; that he was to live as best he might till he could take his
+degree; that he was then to pay off all the back debt; and that after
+all these things he and Meenie might get comfortably married whenever
+they were able. As to the Rector and his wife, or any other parental
+authorities, they both left them out in the cold as wholly as young
+people always do leave their elders out on all similar occasions.
+
+"Maria's a born fool!" said the Rector to his wife a week after Meenie's
+return; "I always knew she was a fool, but I never knew she was quite
+such a fool as to permit a thing like this. So far as I can get it out
+of Edie, and so far as Edie can get it out of Meenie, I understand that
+she has allowed Meenie to go and get herself engaged to some Dissenter
+fellow, a Shaker, or a Mormon, or a Communist, or something of the sort,
+who is the son of a common labourer, and has been sent up to Oxford, Tom
+tells me, by his own sect, to be made into a gentleman, so as to give
+some sort or colour of respectability to their absurd doctrines. I shall
+send the girl to town at once to Emily's, and she shall stop there all
+next season, to see if she can't manage to get engaged to some young man
+in decent society at any rate."
+
+
+III.
+
+When Paul Owen returned to Peckham for the long vacation, it was with a
+heavy heart that he ventured back slowly to his father's cottage.
+Margaret Owen had put everything straight and neat in the little living
+room, as she always did, to welcome home her son who had grown into a
+gentleman; and honest John stood at the threshold beaming with pleasure
+to wring Paul's hand in his firm grip, just back unwashed from his day's
+labour. After the first kissings and greetings were over, John Owen said
+rather solemnly, "I have bad news for you, Paul. The Apostle is sick,
+even unto death."
+
+When Paul heard that, he was sorely tempted to put off the disclosure
+for the present; but he felt he must not. So that same night, as they
+sat together in the dusk near the window where the geraniums stood, he
+began to unburden his whole mind, gently and tentatively, so as to spare
+their feelings as much as possible, to his father and mother. He told
+them how, since he went to Oxford, he had learned to think somewhat
+differently about many things; how his ideas had gradually deepened and
+broadened; how he had begun to inquire into fundamentals for himself;
+how he had feared that the Gideonites took too much for granted, and
+reposed too implicitly on the supposed critical learning of their
+Apostle. As he spoke his mother listened in tearful silence; but his
+father murmured from time to time, "I was afeard of this already, Paul;
+I seen it coming, now and again, long ago." There was pity and regret in
+his tone, but not a shade of reproachfulness.
+
+At last, however, Paul came to speak, timidly and reservedly, of Meenie.
+Then his father's eye began to flash a little, and his breath came
+deeper and harder. When Paul told him briefly that he was engaged to
+her, the strong man could stand it no longer. He rose up in righteous
+wrath, and thrust his son at arm's length from him. "What!" he cried
+fiercely, "you don't mean to tell me you have fallen into sin and looked
+upon the daughters of Midian! It was no Scriptural doubts that druv you
+on, then, but the desire of the flesh and the lust of the eyes that has
+lost you! You dare to stand up there, Paul Owen, and tell me that you
+throw over the Church and the Apostle for the sake of a girl, like a
+poor miserable Samson! You are no son of mine, and I have nothin' more
+to say to you."
+
+But Margaret Owen put her hand on his shoulder and said softly, "John,
+let us hear him out." And John, recalled by that gentle touch, listened
+once more. Then Paul pleaded his case powerfully again. He quoted
+Scripture to them; he argued with them, after their own fashion, and
+down to their own comprehension, text by text; he pitted his own
+critical and exegetical faculty against the Apostle's. Last of all, he
+turned to his mother, who, tearful still and heart-broken with
+disappointment, yet looked admiringly upon her learned, eloquent boy,
+and said to her tenderly, "Remember, mother, you yourself were once in
+love. You yourself once stood, night after night, leaning on the gate,
+waiting with your heart beating for a footstep that you knew so well.
+You yourself once counted the days and the hours and the minutes till
+the next meeting came." And Margaret Owen, touched to the heart by that
+simple appeal, kissed him fervently a dozen times over, the hot tears
+dropping on his cheek meanwhile; and then, contrary to all the rules of
+their austere Church, she flung her arms round her husband too, and
+kissed him passionately the first time for twenty years, with all the
+fervour of a floodgate loosed. Paul Owen's apostolate had surely borne
+its first fruit.
+
+The father stood for a moment in doubt and terror, like one stunned or
+dazed, and then, in a moment of sudden remembrance, stepped forward and
+returned the kiss. The spell was broken, and the Apostle's power was no
+more. What else passed in the cottage that night, when John Owen fell
+upon his knees and wrestled in spirit, was too wholly internal to the
+man's own soul for telling here. Next day John and Margaret Owen felt
+the dream of their lives was gone; but the mother in her heart rejoiced
+to think her boy might know the depths of love, and might bring home a
+real lady for his wife.
+
+On Sunday it was rumoured that the Apostle's ailment was very serious;
+but young Brother Paul Owen would address the Church. He did so, though
+not exactly in the way the Church expected. He told them simply and
+plainly how he had changed his views about certain matters; how he
+thanked them from his heart for the loan of their money (he was careful
+to emphasize the word _loan_), which had helped him to carry on his
+education at Oxford; and how he would repay them the principal and
+interest, though he could never repay them the kindness, at the earliest
+possible opportunity. He was so grave, so earnest, so transparently
+true, that, in spite of the downfall of their dearest hopes, he carried
+the whole meeting with him, all save one man. That man was Job Grimshaw.
+Job rose from his place with a look of undisguised triumph as soon as
+Paul had finished, and, mounting the platform quietly, said his say.
+
+"I knew, Episcops, Presbyters, and Brethren," he began, "how this 'ere
+young man would finish. I saw it the day he was appinted. He's flushing
+up now the same as he flushed up then when I spoke to him; and it ain't
+sperritual, it's worldly pride and headstrongness, that's what it is.
+He's had our money, and he's had his eddication, and now he's going to
+round on us, just as I said he would. It's all very well talking about
+paying us back: how's a young man like him to get five hundred pounds, I
+should like to know. And if he did even, what sort o' repayment would
+that be to many of the brethren, who've saved and scraped for five year
+to let him live like a gentleman among the great and the mighty o'
+Midian? He's got his eddication out of us, and he can keep that whatever
+happens, and make a living out of it, too; and now he's going back on
+us, same as I said he would, and, having got all he can out of the
+Church, he's going to chuck it away like a sucked orange. I detest such
+backsliding and such ungratefulness."
+
+Paul's cup of humiliation was full, but he bit his lip till the blood
+almost came, and made no answer.
+
+"He boasted in his own strength," Job went on mercilessly, "that he
+wasn't going to be a backslider, and he wasn't going to sign no bond,
+and he wasn't going to confer with us, but we must trust his honour and
+honesty, and such like. I've got his very words written down in my
+notebook 'ere; for I made a note of 'em, foreseeing this. If we'd 'a'
+bound him down, as I proposed, he wouldn't 'a' dared to go backsliding
+and rounding on us, and making up to the daughters of Midian, as I don't
+doubt but what he's been doing." Paul's tell-tale face showed him at
+once that he had struck by accident on the right chord. "But if he ever
+goes bringing a daughter of Midian here to Peckham," Job continued,
+"we'll show her these very notes, and ask her what she thinks of such
+dishonourable conduct. The Apostle's dying, that's clear; and before he
+dies I warrant he shall know this treachery."
+
+Paul could not stand that last threat. Though he had lost faith in the
+Apostle as an Apostle, he could never forget the allegiance he had once
+borne him as a father, or the spell which his powerful individuality had
+once thrown around him as a teacher. To have embittered that man's dying
+bed with the shadow of a terrible disappointment would be to Paul a
+lifelong subject of deep remorse. "I did not intend to open my mouth in
+answer to you, Mr. Grimshaw," he said (for the first time breaking
+through the customary address of Brother), "but I pray you, I entreat
+you, I beseech you, not to harass the Apostle in his last moments with
+such a subject."
+
+"Oh yes, I suppose so," Job Grimshaw answered maliciously, all the
+ingrained coarseness of the man breaking out in the wrinkles of his
+face. "No wonder you don't want him enlightened about your goings on
+with the daughters of Midian, when you must know as well as I do that
+his life ain't worth a day's purchase, and that he's a man of
+independent means, and has left you every penny he's got in his will,
+because he believes you're a fit successor to the Apostolate. I know it,
+for I signed as a witness, and I read it through, being a short one,
+while the other witness was signing. And you must know it as well as I
+do. I suppose you don't think he'll make another will now; but there's
+time enough to burn that one anyhow."
+
+Paul Owen stood aghast at the vulgar baseness of which this lewd fellow
+supposed him capable. He had never thought of it before; and yet it
+flashed across his mind in a moment how obvious it was now. Of course
+the Apostle would leave him his money. He was being educated for the
+Apostolate, and the Apostolate could not be carried on without the
+sinews of war. But that Job Grimshaw should think him guilty of angling
+for the Apostle's money, and then throwing the Church overboard--the
+bare notion of it was so horrible to him that he could not even hold up
+his head to answer the taunt. He sat down and buried his crimson face
+in his hands; and Job Grimshaw, taking up his hat sturdily, with the air
+of a man who has to perform an unpleasant duty, left the meeting-room
+abruptly without another word.
+
+There was a gloomy Sunday dinner that morning in the mason's cottage,
+and nobody seemed much inclined to speak in any way. But as they were in
+the midst of their solemn meal, a neighbour who was also a Gideonite
+came in hurriedly. "It's all over," he said, breathless--"all over with
+us and with the Church. The Apostle is dead. He died this morning."
+
+Margaret Owen found voice to ask, "Before Job Grimshaw saw him?"
+
+The neighbour nodded, "Yes."
+
+"Thank heaven for that!" cried Paul. "Then he did not die
+misunderstanding me!"
+
+"And you'll get his money," added the neighbour, "for I was the other
+witness."
+
+Paul drew a long breath. "I wish Meenie was here," he said. "I must see
+her about this."
+
+
+IV.
+
+A few days later the Apostle was buried, and his will was read over
+before the assembled Church. By earnest persuasion of his father, Paul
+consented to be present, though he feared another humiliation from Job
+Grimshaw. But two days before he had taken the law into his own hands,
+by writing to Meenie, at her aunt's in Eaton Place; and that very
+indiscreet young lady, in response, had actually consented to meet him
+in Kensington Gardens alone the next afternoon. There he sat with her on
+one of the benches by the Serpentine, and talked the whole matter over
+with her to his heart's content.
+
+"If the money is really left to me," he said, "I must in honour refuse
+it. It was left to me to carry on the Apostolate, and I can't take it on
+any other ground. But what ought I to do with it? I can't give it over
+to the Church, for in three days there will be no Church left to give it
+to. What shall I do with it?"
+
+"Why," said Meenie, thoughtfully, "if I were you I should do this.
+First, pay back everybody who contributed towards your support in full,
+principal and interest; then borrow from the remainder as much as you
+require to complete your Oxford course; and finally, pay back all that
+and the other money to the fund when you are able, and hand it over for
+the purpose of doing some good work in Peckham itself, where your Church
+was originally founded. If the ideal can't be fulfilled, let the money
+do something good for the actual."
+
+"You are quite right, Meenie," said Paul, "except in one particular. I
+will not borrow from the fund for my own support. I will not touch a
+penny of it, temporarily or permanently, for myself in any way. If it
+comes to me, I shall make it over to trustees at once for some good
+object, as you suggest, and shall borrow from them five hundred pounds
+to repay my own poor people, giving the trustees my bond to repay the
+fund hereafter. I shall fight my own battle henceforth unaided."
+
+"You will do as you ought to do, Paul, and I am proud of it."
+
+So next morning, when the meeting took place, Paul felt somewhat happier
+in his own mind as to the course he should pursue with reference to Job
+Grimshaw.
+
+The Senior Episcop opened and read the last will and testament of Arthur
+Murgess, attorney-at-law. It provided in a few words that all his
+estate, real and personal, should pass unreservedly to his friend, Paul
+Owen, of Christchurch, Oxford. It was whispered about that, besides the
+house and grounds, the personalty might be sworn at �8000, a vast sum to
+those simple people.
+
+When the reading was finished, Paul rose and addressed the assembly. He
+told them briefly the plan he had formed, and insisted on his
+determination that not a penny of the money should be put to his own
+uses. He would face the world for himself, and thanks to their kindness
+he could face it easily enough. He would still earn and pay back all
+that he owed them. He would use the fund, first for the good of those
+who had been members of the Church, and afterwards for the good of the
+people of Peckham generally. And he thanked them from the bottom of his
+heart for the kindness they had shown him.
+
+Even Job Grimshaw could only mutter to himself that this was not
+sperritual grace, but mere worldly pride and stubbornness, lest the lad
+should betray his evil designs, which had thus availed him nothing. "He
+has lost his own soul and wrecked the Church for the sake of the money,"
+Job said, "and now he dassn't touch a farden of it."
+
+Next John Owen rose and said slowly, "Friends, it seems to me we may as
+well all confess that this Church has gone to pieces. I can't stop in it
+myself any longer, for I see it's clear agin nature, and what's agin
+nature can't be true." And though the assembly said nothing, it was
+plain that there were many waverers in the little body whom the affairs
+of the last week had shaken sadly in their simple faith. Indeed, as a
+matter of fact, before the end of the month the Gideonite Church had
+melted away, member by member, till nobody at all was left of the whole
+assembly but Job Grimshaw.
+
+"My dear," said the Rector to his wife a few weeks later, laying down
+his _Illustrated_, "this is really a very curious thing. That young
+fellow Owen, of Christchurch, that Meenie fancied herself engaged to,
+has just come into a little landed property and eight or nine thousand
+pounds on his own account. He must be better connected than Tom
+imagines. Perhaps we might make inquiries about him after all."
+
+The Rector did make inquiries in the course of the week, and with such
+results that he returned to the rectory in blank amazement. "That
+fellow's mad, Amelia," he said, "stark mad, if ever anybody was. The
+leader of his Little Bethel, or Ebenezer, or whatever it may be, has
+left him all his property absolutely, without conditions; and the idiot
+of a boy declares he won't touch a penny of it, because he's ceased to
+believe in their particular shibboleth, and he thinks the leader wanted
+him to succeed him. Very right and proper of him, of course, to leave
+the sect if he can't reconcile it with his conscience, but perfectly
+Quixotic of him to give up the money and beggar himself outright. Even
+if his connection was otherwise desirable (which it is far from being),
+it would be absurd to think of letting Meenie marry such a ridiculous
+hair-brained fellow."
+
+Paul and Meenie, however, went their own way, as young people often
+will, in spite of the Rector. Paul returned next term to Oxford,
+penniless, but full of resolution, and by dint of taking pupils managed
+to eke out his scholarship for the next year. At the end of that time he
+took his first in Greats, and shortly after gained a fellowship. From
+the very first day he began saving money to pay off that dead weight of
+five hundred pounds. The kindly ex-Gideonites had mostly protested
+against his repaying them at all, but in vain: Paul would not make his
+entry into life, he said, under false pretences. It was a hard pull, but
+he did it. He took pupils, he lectured, he wrote well and vigorously for
+the press, he worked late and early with volcanic energy; and by the end
+of three years he had not only saved the whole of the sum advanced by
+the Gideonites, but had also begun to put away a little nest-egg
+against his marriage with Meenie. And when the editor of a great morning
+paper in London offered him a permanent place upon the staff, at a large
+salary, he actually went down to Worcestershire, saw the formidable
+Rector himself in his own parish, and demanded Meenie outright in
+marriage. And the Rector observed to his wife that this young Owen
+seemed a well-behaved and amiable young man; that after all one needn't
+know anything about his relations if one didn't like; and that as Meenie
+had quite made up her mind, and was as headstrong as a mule, there was
+no use trying to oppose her any longer.
+
+Down in Peckham, where Paul Owen lives, and is loved by half the poor of
+the district, no one has forgotten who was the real founder of the
+Murgess Institute, which does so much good in encouraging thrift, and is
+so admirably managed by the founder and his wife. He would take a house
+nowhere but at Peckham, he said. To the Peckham people he owed his
+education, and for the Peckham people he would watch the working of his
+little Institute. There is no better work being done anywhere in that
+great squalid desert, the east and south-east of London; there is no
+influence more magnetic than the founder's. John and Margaret Owen have
+recovered their hopes for their boy, only they run now in another and
+more feasible direction; and those who witness the good that is being
+done by the Institute among the poor of Peckham, or who have read that
+remarkable and brilliant economical work lately published on "The Future
+of Co-operation in the East End, by P. O.," venture to believe that
+Meenie was right after all, and that even the great social world itself
+has not yet heard the last of young Paul Owen's lay apostolate.
+
+
+
+
+_THE MYSTERIOUS OCCURRENCE IN PICCADILLY._
+
+
+I.
+
+I really never felt so profoundly ashamed of myself in my whole life as
+when my father-in-law, Professor W. Bryce Murray, of Oriel College,
+Oxford, sent me the last number of the Proceedings of the Society for
+the Investigation of Supernatural Phenomena. As I opened the pamphlet, a
+horrible foreboding seized me that I should find in it, detailed at full
+length, with my name and address in plain printing (not even asterisks),
+that extraordinary story of his about the mysterious occurrence in
+Piccadilly. I turned anxiously to page 14, which I saw was neatly folded
+over at the corner; and there, sure enough, I came upon the Professor's
+remarkable narrative, which I shall simply extract here, by way of
+introduction, in his own admirable and perspicuous language.
+
+"I wish to communicate to the Society," says my respected relation, "a
+curious case of wraiths or doubles, which came under my own personal
+observation, and for which I can vouch on my own authority, and that of
+my son-in-law, Dr. Owen Mansfield, keeper of Accadian Antiquities at the
+British Museum. It is seldom, indeed, that so strange an example of a
+supernatural phenomenon can be independently attested by two trustworthy
+scientific observers, both still living.
+
+"On the 12th of May, 1873--I made a note of the circumstance at the
+time, and am therefore able to feel perfect confidence as to the strict
+accuracy of my facts--I was walking down Piccadilly about four o'clock
+in the afternoon, when I saw a simulacrum or image approaching me from
+the opposite direction, exactly resembling in outer appearance an
+undergraduate of Oriel College, of the name of Owen Mansfield. It must
+be carefully borne in mind that at this time I was not related or
+connected with Mr. Mansfield in any way, his marriage with my daughter
+having taken place some eleven months later: I only knew him then as a
+promising junior member of my own College. I was just about to approach
+and address Mr. Mansfield, when a most singular and mysterious event
+took place. The simulacrum appeared spontaneously to glide up towards me
+with a peculiarly rapid and noiseless motion, waved a wand or staff
+which it bore in its hands thrice round my head, and then vanished
+hastily in the direction of an hotel which stands at the corner of
+Albemarle Street. I followed it quickly to the door, but on inquiry of
+the porter, I learned that he himself had observed nobody enter. The
+simulacrum seems to have dissipated itself or become invisible suddenly
+in the very act of passing through the folding glass portals which give
+access to the hotel from Piccadilly.
+
+"That same evening, by the last post, I received a hastily-written note
+from Mr. Mansfield, bearing the Oxford postmark, dated Oriel College, 5
+p.m., and relating the facts of an exactly similar apparition which had
+manifested itself to him, with absolute simultaneity of occurrence. On
+the very day and hour when I had seen Mr. Mansfield's wraith in
+Piccadilly, Mr. Mansfield himself was walking down the Corn Market in
+Oxford, in the direction of the Taylor Institute. As he approached the
+corner, he saw what he took to be a vision or image of myself, his
+tutor, moving towards him in my usual leisurely manner. Suddenly, as he
+was on the point of addressing me with regard to my Aristotle lecture
+the next morning, the image glided up to him in a rapid and evasive
+manner, shook a green silk umbrella with a rhinoceros-horn handle three
+times around his head, and then disappeared incomprehensibly through the
+door of the Randolph Hotel. Returning to college in a state of
+breathless alarm and surprise, at what he took to be an act of incipient
+insanity or extreme inebriation on my part, Mr. Mansfield learnt from
+the porter, to his intense astonishment, that I was at that moment
+actually in London. Unable to conceal his amazement at this strange
+event, he wrote me a full account of the facts while they were still
+fresh in his memory: and as I preserve his note to this day, I append a
+copy of it to my present communication, for publication in the Society's
+Transactions.
+
+"There is one small point in the above narrative to which I would wish
+to call special attention, and that is the accurate description given by
+Mr. Mansfield of the umbrella carried by the apparition he observed in
+Oxford. This umbrella exactly coincided in every particular with the one
+I was then actually carrying in Piccadilly. But what is truly
+remarkable, and what stamps the occurrence as a genuine case of
+supernatural intervention, is the fact that _Mr. Mansfield could not
+possibly ever have seen that umbrella in my hands, because I had only
+just that afternoon purchased it at a shop in Bond Street_. This, to my
+mind, conclusively proves that no mere effort of fancy or visual
+delusion based upon previous memories, vague or conscious, could have
+had anything whatsoever to do with Mr. Mansfield's observation at least.
+It was, in short, distinctly an objective apparition, as distinguished
+from a mere subjective reminiscence or hallucination."
+
+As I laid down the Proceedings on the breakfast table with a sigh, I
+said to my wife (who had been looking over my shoulder while I read):
+"Now, Nora, we're really in for it. What on earth do you suppose I'd
+better do?"
+
+Nora looked at me with her laughing eyes laughing harder and brighter
+than ever. "My dear Owen," she said, putting the Proceedings promptly
+into the waste paper basket, "there's really nothing on earth possible
+now, except to make a clean breast of it."
+
+I groaned. "I suppose you're right," I answered, "but it's a precious
+awkward thing to have to do. However, here goes." So I sat down at once
+with pen, ink, and paper at my desk, to draw up this present narrative
+as to the real facts about the "Mysterious Occurrence in Piccadilly."
+
+
+II.
+
+In 1873 I was a fourth-year man, going in for my Greats at the June
+examination. But as if Aristotle and Mill and the affair of Corcyra were
+not enough to occupy one young fellow's head at the age of twenty-three,
+I had foolishly gone and fallen in love, undergraduate fashion, with the
+only really pretty girl (I insist upon putting it, though Nora has
+struck it out with her pen) in all Oxford. She was the daughter of my
+tutor, Professor Bryce Murray, and her name (as the astute reader will
+already have inferred) was Nora.
+
+The Professor had lost his wife some years before, and he was left to
+bring up Nora by his own devices, with the aid of his sister, Miss Lydia
+Amelia Murray, the well-known advocate of female education, woman's
+rights, anti-vaccination, vegetarianism, the Tichborne claimant, and
+psychic force. Nora, however, had no fancy for any of these multifarious
+interests of her aunt's: I have reason to believe she takes rather after
+her mother's family: and Miss Lydia Amelia Murray early decided that she
+was a girl of no intellectual tastes of any sort, who had better be
+kept at school at South Kensington as much as possible. Especially did
+Aunt Lydia hold it to be undesirable that Nora should ever come in
+contact with that very objectionable and wholly antagonistic animal, the
+Oriel undergraduate. Undergraduates were well known to laugh openly at
+woman's rights, to devour underdone beefsteaks with savage persistence,
+and to utter most irreverent and ribald jests about psychic force.
+
+Still, it is quite impossible to keep the orbit of a Professor's
+daughter from occasionally crossing that of a stray meteoric
+undergraduate. Nora only came home to Oxford in vacation time: but
+during the preceding Long I had stopped up for the sake of pursuing my
+Accadian studies in a quiet spot, and it was then that I first quite
+accidentally met Nora. I was canoeing on the Cherwell one afternoon,
+when I came across the Professor and his daughter in a punt, and saw the
+prettiest girl in all Oxford actually holding the pole in her own pretty
+little hands, while that lazy old man lolled back at his ease with a
+book, on the luxurious cushions in the stern. As I passed the punt, I
+capped the Professor, of course, and looking back a minute later I
+observed that the pretty daughter had got her pole stuck fast in the
+mud, and couldn't, with all her force, pull it out again. In another
+minute she had lost her hold of it, and the punt began to drift of
+itself down the river towards Iffley.
+
+Common politeness naturally made me put back my canoe, extricate the
+pole, and hand it as gracefully as I could to the Professor's daughter.
+As I did so, I attempted to raise my straw hat cautiously with one hand,
+while I gave back the pole with the other: an attempt which of course
+compelled me to lay down my paddle on the front, of the canoe, as I
+happen to be only provided with two hands, instead of four like our
+earlier ancestors. I don't know whether it was my instantaneous
+admiration for Nora's pretty blush, which distracted my attention from
+the purely practical question of equilibrium, or whether it was her own
+awkwardness and modesty in taking the pole, or finally whether it was my
+tutor's freezing look that utterly disconcerted me, but at any rate,
+just at that moment, something unluckily (or rather luckily) caused me
+to lose my balance altogether. Now, everybody knows that a canoe is very
+easily upset: and in a moment, before I knew exactly where I was, I
+found the canoe floating bottom upward about three yards away from me,
+and myself standing, safe and dry, in my tutor's punt, beside his pretty
+blushing daughter. I had felt the canoe turning over as I handed back
+the pole, and had instinctively jumped into the safer refuge of the
+punt, which saved me at least the ignominy of appearing before Miss Nora
+Murray in the ungraceful attitude of clambering back, wet and dripping,
+into an upset canoe.
+
+The inexorable logic of facts had thus convinced the Professor of the
+impossibility of keeping all undergraduates permanently at a safe
+distance: and there was nothing open for him now except resignedly to
+acquiesce in the situation so created for him. However much he might
+object to my presence, he could hardly, as a Christian and a gentleman,
+request me to jump in and swim after my canoe, or even, when we had at
+last successfully brought it alongside with the aid of the pole, to seat
+myself once more on the soaking cushions. After all, my mishap had come
+about in the endeavour to render him a service: so he was fain with what
+grace he could to let me relieve his daughter of the pole, and punt him
+back as far as the barges, with my own moist and uncomfortable bark
+trailing casually from the stern.
+
+As for Nora, being thus thrown unexpectedly into the dangerous society
+of that gruesome animal, the Oriel undergraduate, I think I may venture
+to say (from my subsequent experience) that she was not wholly disposed
+to regard the creature as either so objectionable or so ferocious as she
+had been previously led to imagine. We got on together so well that I
+could see the Professor growing visibly wrathful about the corners of
+the mouth: and by the time we reached the barges, he could barely be
+civil enough to say Good morning to me when we parted.
+
+An introduction, however, no matter how obtained, is really in these
+matters absolutely everything. As long as you don't know a pretty girl,
+you don't know her, and you can't take a step in advance without an
+introduction. But when once you _do_ know her, heaven and earth and
+aunts and fathers may try their hardest to prevent you, and yet whatever
+they try they can't keep you out. I was so far struck with Nora, that I
+boldly ventured whenever I met her out walking with her father or her
+aunt, to join myself to the party: and though they never hesitated to
+show me that my presence was not rapturously welcomed, they couldn't
+well say to me point-blank, "Have the goodness, Mr. Mansfield, to go
+away and not to speak to me again in future." So the end of it was, that
+before the beginning of October term, Nora and I understood one another
+perfectly, and had even managed, in a few minutes' _t�te-�-t�te_ in the
+parks, to whisper to one another the ingenuous vows of sweet seventeen
+and two-and-twenty.
+
+When the Professor discovered that I had actually written a letter to
+his daughter, marked "Private and Confidential," his wrath knew no
+bounds. He sent for me to his rooms, and spoke to me severely. "I've
+half a mind, Mansfield," he said, "to bring the matter before a college
+meeting. At any rate, this conduct must not be repeated. If it is,
+Sir,"--he didn't finish the sentence, preferring to terrify me by the
+effective figure of speech which commentators describe as an
+aposiopesis: and I left him with a vague sense that if it _was_ repeated
+I should probably incur the penalties of _pr�munire_ (whatever they may
+be), or be hanged, drawn, and quartered, with my head finally stuck as
+an adornment on the acute wings of the Griffin, _vice_ Temple Bar
+removed.
+
+Next day, Nora met me casually at a confectioner's in the High, where I
+will frankly confess that I was engaged in experimenting upon the
+relative merits of raspberry cream and lemon water ices. She gave me her
+hand timidly, and whispered to me half under her breath, "Papa's so
+dreadfully angry, Owen, and I'm afraid I shall never be able to meet you
+any more, for he's going to send me back this very afternoon to South
+Kensington, and keep me away from Oxford altogether in future." I saw
+her eyes were red with crying, and that she really thought our little
+romance was entirely at an end.
+
+"My darling Nora," I replied in an undertone, "even South Kensington is
+not so unutterably remote that I shall never be able to see you there.
+Write to me whenever you are able, and let me know where I can write to
+you. My dear little Nora, if there were a hundred papas and a thousand
+Aunt Lydias interposed in a square between us, don't you know we should
+manage all the same to love one another and to overcome all
+difficulties?"
+
+Nora smiled and half cried at once, and then discreetly turned to order
+half a pound of glac� cherries. And that was the last that I saw of her
+for the time at Oxford.
+
+During the next term or two, I'm afraid I must admit that the relations
+between my tutor and myself were distinctly strained, so much so as
+continually to threaten the breaking out of open hostilities. It wasn't
+merely that Nora was in question, but the Professor also suspected me of
+jeering in private at his psychical investigations. And if the truth
+must be told, I will admit that his suspicions were not wholly without
+justification. It began to be whispered among the undergraduates just
+then that the Professor and his sister had taken to turning
+_planchettes_, interrogating easy-chairs, and obtaining interesting
+details about the present abode of Shakespeare or Milton from
+intelligent and well-informed five-o'clock tea-tables. It had long been
+well known that the Professor took a deep interest in haunted houses,
+considered that the portents recorded by Livy must have something in
+them, and declared himself unable to be sceptical as to facts which had
+convinced such great men as Plato, Seneca, and Samuel Johnson. But the
+table-turning was a new fad, and we noisy undergraduates occasionally
+amused ourselves by getting up an amateur _s�ance_, in imitation of the
+Professor, and eliciting psychical truths, often couched in a
+surprisingly slangy or even indecorous dialect, from a very lively
+though painfully irreverent spirit, who discoursed to us through the
+material intervention of a rickety what-not. However, as the only
+mediums we employed were the very unprofessional ones of two plain
+decanters, respectively containing port and sherry, the Professor (who
+was a teetotaler, and who paid five guineas a _s�ance_ for the services
+of that distinguished psychical specialist, Dr. Grade) considered the
+interesting results we obtained as wholly beneath the dignity of
+scientific inquiry. He even most unworthily endeavoured to stifle
+research by gating us all one evening when a materialized spirit,
+assuming the outer form of the junior exhibitioner, sang a comic song of
+the period in a loud voice with the windows open, and accompanied itself
+noisily with a psychical tattoo on the rickety what-not. The Professor
+went so far as to observe sarcastically that our results appeared to him
+to be rather spirituous than spiritual.
+
+On May 11, 1873 (I will endeavour to rival the Professor in accuracy and
+preciseness), I got a short note from dear Nora, dated from South
+Kensington, which I, too (though not from psychical motives), have
+carefully preserved. I will not publish it, however, either here or in
+the Society's Proceedings, for reasons which will probably be obvious to
+any of my readers who happen ever to have been placed in similar
+circumstances themselves. Disengaging the kernel of fact from the
+irrelevant matter in which it was imbedded, I may state that Nora wrote
+me somewhat to this effect. She was going next day to the Academy with
+the parents of some schoolfellow; could I manage to run up to town for
+the day, go to the Academy myself, and meet her "quite accidentally, you
+know, dear," in the Water-colour room about half-past eleven?
+
+This was rather awkward; for next day, as it happened, was precisely the
+Professor's morning for the Herodotus lecture; but circumstances like
+mine at that moment know no law. So I succeeded in excusing myself from
+attendance somehow or other (I hope truthfully) and took the nine a.m.
+express up to town. Shortly after eleven I was at the Academy, and
+waiting anxiously for Nora's arrival. That dear little hypocrite, the
+moment she saw me approach, assumed such an inimitable air of infantile
+surprise and innocent pleasure at my unexpected appearance that I
+positively blushed for her wicked powers of deception.
+
+"_You_ here, Mr. Mansfield!" she cried in a tone of the most apparently
+unaffected astonishment, "why, I thought it was full term time; surely
+you ought to be up at Oriel."
+
+"So I am," I answered, "officially; but in my private capacity I've come
+up for the day to look at the pictures."
+
+"Oh, how nice!" said that shocking little Nora, with a smile that was
+childlike and bland. "Mr. Mansfield is such a great critic, Mrs.
+Worplesdon; he knows all about art, and artists, and so on. He'll be
+able to tell us which pictures we ought to admire, you know, and which
+aren't worth looking at. Mr. Worplesdon, let me introduce you; Mrs.
+Worplesdon--Miss Worplesdon. How very lucky we should have happened to
+come across you, Mr. Mansfield!"
+
+The Worplesdons fell immediately, like lambs, into the trap so
+ingenuously spread for them. Indeed, I have always noticed that
+ninety-nine per cent. of the British public, when turned into an
+art-gallery, are only too glad to accept the opinion of anybody
+whatsoever, who is bold enough to have one, and to express it openly.
+Having thus been thrust by Nora into the arduous position of critic by
+appointment to the Worplesdon party, I delivered myself _ex cathedr�_
+forthwith upon the merits and demerits of the entire exhibition; and I
+was so successful in my critical views that I not only produced an
+immense impression upon Mr. Worplesdon himself, but also observed many
+ladies in the neighbourhood nudge one another as they gazed intently
+backward and forward between wall and catalogue, and heard them whisper
+audibly among themselves, "A gentleman here says the flesh tones on that
+shoulder are simply marvellous;" or, "That artist in the tweed suit
+behind us thinks the careless painting of the ferns in the foreground
+quite unworthy of such a colourist as Daubiton." So highly was my
+criticism appreciated, in fact, that Mr. Worplesdon even invited me to
+lunch with Nora and his party at a neighbouring restaurant, where I
+spent the most delightful hour I had passed for the last half-year, in
+the company of that naughty mendacious little schemer.
+
+About four o'clock, however, the Worplesdons departed, taking Nora with
+them to South Kensington; and I prepared to walk back in the direction
+of Paddington, meaning to catch an evening train, and return to Oxford.
+I was strolling in a leisurely fashion along Piccadilly towards the
+Park, and looking into all the photographers' windows, when suddenly an
+awful apparition loomed upon me--the Professor himself, coming round the
+corner from Bond Street, folding up a new rhinoceros-handled umbrella as
+he walked along. In a moment I felt that all was lost. I was up in town
+without leave; the Professor would certainly see me and recognize me; he
+would ask me how and why I had left the University, contrary to rules;
+and I must then either tell him the whole truth, which would get Nora
+into a fearful scrape, or else run the risk of being sent down in
+disgrace, which might prevent me from taking a degree, and would at
+least cause my father and mother an immense deal of unmerited trouble.
+
+Like a flash of lightning, a wild idea shot instantaneously across my
+brain. Might I pretend to be my own double? The Professor was profoundly
+superstitious on the subject of wraiths, apparitions, ghosts,
+brain-waves, and supernatural appearances generally; if I could only
+manage to impose upon him for a moment by doing something outrageously
+uncommon or eccentric, I might succeed in stifling further inquiry by
+setting him from the beginning on a false track which he was naturally
+prone to follow. Before I had time to reflect upon the consequences of
+my act, the wild idea had taken possession of me, body and soul, and had
+worked itself out in action with all the rapidity of a mad impulse. I
+rushed frantically up to the Professor, with my eyes fixed in a vacant
+stare on a point in space somewhere above the tops of the chimney-pots:
+I waved my stick three times mysteriously around his head; and then,
+without giving him time to recover from his surprise or to address a
+single word to me, I bolted off in a Red Indian dance to the nearest
+corner.
+
+There was an hotel there, which I had often noticed before, though I had
+never entered it; and I rushed wildly in, meaning to get out as best I
+could when the Professor (who is very short-sighted) had passed on along
+Piccadilly in search of me. But fortune, as usual, favoured the bold.
+Luckily, it was a corner house, and, to my surprise, I found when I got
+inside it, that the hall opened both ways, with a door on to the side
+street. The porter was looking away as I entered; so I merely ran in of
+one door and out of the other, never stopping till I met a hansom, into
+which I jumped and ordered the man to drive to Paddington. I just caught
+the 4.35 to Oxford, and by a little over six o'clock I was in my own
+rooms at Oriel.
+
+It was very wrong of me, indeed; I acknowledge it now; but the whole
+thing had flashed across my undergraduate mind so rapidly that I carried
+it out in a moment, before I could at all realize what a very foolish
+act I was really committing. To take a rise out of the Professor, and to
+save Nora an angry interview, were the only ideas that occurred to me at
+the second: when I began to reflect upon it afterwards, I was conscious
+that I had really practised a very gross and wicked deception. However,
+there was no help for it now; and as I rolled along in the train to
+Oxford, I felt that to save myself and Nora from utter disgrace, I must
+carry the plot out to the end without flinching. It then occurred to me
+that a double apparition would be more in accordance with all recognized
+principles of psychical manifestation than a single one. At Reading,
+therefore, I regret to say, I bought a pencil, and a sheet of paper, and
+an envelope; and before I reached Oxford station, I had written to the
+Professor what I now blush to acknowledge as a tissue of shocking
+fables, in which I paralleled every particular of my own behaviour to
+him by a similar imaginary piece of behaviour on his part to me, only
+changing the scene to Oxford. It was awfully wrong, I admit. At the
+time, however, being yet but little more than a schoolboy, after all, I
+regarded it simply in the light of a capital practical joke. I informed
+the Professor gravely how I had seen him at four o'clock in the Corn
+Market, and how astonished I was when I found him waving his green silk
+umbrella three times wildly, around my head.
+
+The moment I arrived at Oxford, I dashed up to college in a hansom, and
+got the Professor's address in London from the porter. He had gone up to
+town for the night, it seemed, probably to visit Nora, and would not be
+back in college till the next morning. Then I rushed down to the
+post-office, where I was just in time (with an extra stamp) to catch the
+last post for that night's delivery. The moment the letter was in the
+box, I repented, and began to fear I had gone too far: and when I got
+back to my own rooms at last, and went down late for dinner in hall, I
+confess I trembled not a little, as to the possible effect of my quite
+too bold and palpable imposition.
+
+Next morning by the second post I got a long letter from the Professor,
+which completely relieved me from all immediate anxiety as to his
+interpretation of my conduct. He rose to the fly with a charming
+simplicity which showed how delighted he was at this personal
+confirmation of all his own most cherished superstitions. "My dear
+Mansfield," his letter began, "now hear what, at the very self-same hour
+and minute, happened to me in Piccadilly." In fact, he had swallowed the
+whole thing entire, without a single moment's scepticism or hesitation.
+
+From what I heard afterwards, it was indeed a lucky thing for me that I
+had played him this shocking trick, for Nora believes he was then
+actually on his way to South Kensington on purpose to forbid her most
+stringently from holding any further communication with me in any way.
+But as soon as this mysterious event took place, he began to change his
+mind about me altogether. So remarkable an apparition could not have
+happened except for some good and weighty reason, he argued: and he
+suspected that the reason might have something to do with my intentions
+towards Nora. Why, when he was on his way to warn her against me, should
+a vision, bearing my outer and bodily shape, come straight across his
+path, and by vehement signs of displeasure, endeavour to turn him from
+his purpose, unless it were clearly well for Nora that my attentions
+should not be discouraged?
+
+From that day forth the Professor began to ask me to his rooms and
+address me far more cordially than he used to do before: he even, on the
+strength of my singular adventure, invited me to assist at one or two of
+his psychical _s�ances_. Here, I must confess, I was not entirely
+successful: the distinguished medium complained that I exerted a
+repellent effect upon the spirits, who seemed to be hurt by my want of
+generous confidence in their good intentions, and by my suspicious habit
+of keeping my eyes too sharply fixed upon the legs of the tables. He
+declared that when I was present, an adverse influence seemed to pervade
+the room, due, apparently, to my painful lack of spiritual sympathies.
+But the Professor condoned my failure in the regular psychical line, in
+consideration of my brilliant success as a beholder of wraiths and
+visions. After I took my degree that summer, he used all his influence
+to procure me the post of keeper of the Accadian Antiquities at the
+Museum, for which my previous studies had excellently fitted me: and by
+his friendly aid I was enabled to obtain the post, though I regret to
+say that, in spite of his credulity in supernatural matters, he still
+refuses to believe in the correctness of my conjectural interpretation
+of the celebrated Amalekite cylinders imported by Mr. Ananias, which I
+have deciphered in so very simple and satisfactory a manner. As
+everybody knows, my translation may be regarded as perfectly certain, if
+only one makes the very modest assumption that the cylinders were
+originally engraved upside down by an Aztec captive, who had learned
+broken Accadian, with a bad accent, from a Chinese exile, and who
+occasionally employed Egyptian hieroglyphics in incorrect senses, to
+piece out his own very imperfect idiom and doubtful spelling of the
+early Babylonian language. The solitary real doubt in the matter is
+whether certain extraordinary marks in the upper left-hand corner of the
+cylinder are to be interpreted as accidental scratches, or as a picture
+representing the triumph of a king over seven bound prisoners, or,
+finally, as an Accadian sentence in cuneiforms which may be translated
+either as "To the memory of Om the Great," or else as "Pithor the High
+Priest dedicates a fat goose to the family dinner on the 25th of the
+month of mid winter." Every candid and unprejudiced mind must admit that
+these small discrepancies or alternatives in the opinions of experts can
+cast no doubt at all upon the general soundness of the method employed.
+But persons like the Professor, while ready to accept any evidence at
+all where their own prepossessions are concerned, can never be induced
+to believe such plain and unvarnished statements of simple scientific
+knowledge.
+
+However, the end of it all was that before I had been a month at the
+Museum, I had obtained the Professor's consent to my marriage with Nora:
+and as I had had Nora's own consent long before, we were duly joined
+together in holy matrimony early in October at Oxford, and came at once
+to live in Hampstead. So, as it turned out, I finally owed the sweetest
+and best little wife in all Christendom to the mysterious occurrence in
+Piccadilly.
+
+
+
+
+_CARVALHO._
+
+
+I.
+
+The first time I ever met Ernest Carvalho was just before the regimental
+dance at Newcastle. I had ridden up the Port Royal mountains that same
+morning from our decaying sugar estate in the Liguanca plain, and I was
+to stop in cantonments with the Major's wife, fat little Mrs. Venn, who
+had promised my mother that she would undertake to _chaperon_ me to this
+my earliest military party. I won't deny that I looked forward to it
+immensely, for I was then a girl of only eighteen, fresh out from school
+in England, where I had been living away from our family ever since I
+was twelve years old. Dear mamma was a Jamaican lady of the old school,
+completely overpowered by the ingrained West Indian indolence; and if I
+had waited to go to a dance till I could get her to accompany me, I
+might have waited till Doomsday, or probably later. So I was glad enough
+to accept fat little Mrs. Venn's proffered protection, and to go up the
+hills on my sure-footed mountain pony; while Isaac, the black
+stable-boy, ran up behind me carrying on his thick head the small
+portmanteau that contained my plain white ball-dress.
+
+As I went up the steep mountain-path alone--for ladies ride only with
+such an unmounted domestic escort in Jamaica--I happened to overtake a
+tall gentleman with a handsome rather Jewish face and a pair of
+extremely lustrous black eyes, who was mounted on a beautiful chestnut
+mare just in front of me. The horse-paths in the Port Royal mountains
+are very narrow, being mere zigzag ledges cut half-way up the
+precipitous green slopes of fern and club-moss, so that there is seldom
+room for two horses to pass abreast, and it is necessary to wait at some
+convenient corner whenever you see another rider coming in the opposite
+direction. At the first opportunity the tall Jewish-looking gentleman
+drew aside in such a corner, and waited for me to pass. "Pray don't
+wait," I said, as soon as I saw what he meant; "your horse will get up
+faster than my pony, and if I go in front I shall keep you back
+unnecessarily."
+
+"Not at all," he answered, raising his hat gracefully; "you are a
+stranger in the hills, I see. It is the rule of these mountain-paths
+always to give a lady the lead. If I go first and my mare breaks into a
+canter on a bit of level, your pony will try to catch her up on the
+steep slopes, and that is always dangerous."
+
+Seeing he did not intend to move till I did, I waived the point at last
+and took the lead. From that moment I don't know what on earth came over
+my lazy old pony. He refused to go at more than a walk, or at best a
+jog-trot, the whole way to Newcastle. Now the rise from the plain to the
+cantonments is about four thousand feet, I think (I am a dreadfully bad
+hand at remembering figures), and the distance can't be much less, I
+suppose, than seven miles. During all that time you never see a soul,
+except a few negro pickaninnies playing in the dustheaps, not a human
+habitation, except a few huts embowered in mangoes, hibiscus-bushes, and
+tree-ferns. At first we kept a decorous silence, not having been
+introduced to one another; but the stranger's mare followed close at my
+pony's heels, pull her in as he would, and it seemed really too
+ridiculous to be solemnly pacing after one another, single file, in
+this way for a couple of hours, without speaking a word, out of pure
+punctiliousness. So at last we broke the ice, and long before we got to
+Newcastle we had struck up quite an acquaintance with one another. It is
+wonderful how well two people can get mutually known in the course of
+two hours' _t�te-�-t�te_, especially under such peculiar circumstances.
+You are just near enough to one another for friendly chat, and yet not
+too near for casual strangers. And then Isaac with the portmanteau
+behind was quite sufficient escort to satisfy the _convenances_. In
+England, one's groom would have to be mounted, which always seems to me,
+in my simplicity, a distinction without a difference.
+
+Mr. Carvalho was on his way up to Newcastle on the same errand as
+myself, to go to the dance. He might have been twenty, I suppose; and,
+to a girl of eighteen, boys of twenty seem quite men already. He was a
+clerk in a Government Office in Kingston, and was going to stop with a
+sub at Newcastle for a week or two, on leave. I did not know much about
+men in those days, but I needed little knowledge of the subject to tell
+me that Ernest Carvalho was decidedly clever. As soon as the first chill
+wore off our conversation, he kept me amused the whole way by his bright
+sketchy talk about the petty dignitaries of a colonial capital. There
+was his Excellency for the time being, and there was the Right Reverend
+of that day, and there was the Honourable Colonial Secretary, and there
+was the Honourable Director of Roads, and there were a number of other
+assorted Honourables, whose queer little peculiarities he hit off
+dexterously in the quaintest manner. Not that there was any unkindly
+satire in his brilliant conversation; on the contrary, he evidently
+liked most of the men he talked about, and seemed only to read and
+realize their characters so thoroughly that they spoke for themselves in
+his dramatic anecdotes. He appeared to me a more genial copy of
+Thackeray in a colonial society, with all the sting gone, and only the
+skilful delineation of men and women left. I had never met anybody
+before, and I have never met anybody since, who struck me so
+instantaneously with the idea of innate genius as Ernest Carvalho.
+
+"You have been in England, of course," I said, as we were nearing
+Newcastle.
+
+"No, never," he answered; "I am a Jamaican born and bred, I have never
+been out of the island."
+
+I was surprised, for he seemed so different from any of the young
+planters I had met at our house, most of whom had never opened a book,
+apparently, in the course of their lives, while Mr. Carvalho's talk was
+full of indefinite literary flavour. "Where were you educated, then?" I
+asked.
+
+"I never was educated anywhere," he answered, laughing. "I went to a
+small school at Port Antonio during my father's life, but for the most
+part I have picked up whatever I know (and that's not much) wholly by
+myself. Of course French, like reading and writing, comes by nature, and
+I got enough Spanish to dip into Cervantes from the Cuban refugees.
+Latin one has to grind up out of books, naturally; and as for Greek, I'm
+sorry to say I know very little, though, of course, I can spell out
+Homer a bit, and even �schylus. But my hobby is natural science, and
+there a fellow has to make his own way here, for hardly anything has
+been done at the beasts and the flowers in the West Indies yet. But if I
+live, I mean to work them up in time, and I've made a fair beginning
+already."
+
+This reasonable list of accomplishments, given modestly, not boastfully,
+by a young man of twenty, wholly self-taught, fairly took my breath
+away. I was inspired at once with a secret admiration for Mr. Carvalho.
+He was so handsome and so clever that I think I was half-inclined to
+fall in love with him at first sight. To say the truth, I believe almost
+all love _is_ love at first sight; and for my own part, I wouldn't give
+you a thank-you for any other kind.
+
+"Here we must part," he said, as we reached a fork in the narrow path
+just outside the steep hog's back on which Newcastle stands, "unless you
+will allow me to see you safely as far as Mrs. Venn's. The path to the
+right leads to the Major's quarters; this on the left takes me to my
+friend Cameron's hut. May I see you to the Major's door?"
+
+"No, thank you," I answered decidedly; "Isaac is escort enough. We shall
+meet again this evening."
+
+"Perhaps then," he suggested, "I may have the pleasure of a dance with
+you. Of course it's quite irregular of me to ask you now, but we shall
+be formally introduced no doubt to-night, and I'm afraid if you lunch at
+the Venns' your card will be filled up by the 99th men before I can edge
+myself in anywhere for a dance. Will you allow me?"
+
+"Certainly," I said; "what shall it be? The first waltz?"
+
+"You are very kind," he answered, taking out a pencil. "You know my
+name--Carvalho; what may I put down for yours? I haven't heard it yet."
+
+"Miss Hazleden," I replied, "of Palmettos."
+
+Mr. Carvalho gave a little start of surprise. "Miss Hazleden of
+Palmettos," he said half to himself, with a rather pained expression.
+"Miss Hazleden! Then, perhaps, I'd better--well, why not? why not,
+indeed? Palmettos--Yes, I will." Turning to me, he said, louder, "Thank
+you; till this evening, then;" and, raising his hat, he hurried sharply
+round the corner of the hill.
+
+What was there in my name, I wondered, which made him so evidently
+hesitate and falter?
+
+Fat little Mrs. Venn was very kind, and not a very strict _chaperon_,
+but I judged it best not to mention to her this romantic episode of the
+handsome stranger. However, during the course of lunch, I ventured
+casually to ask her husband whether he knew of any family in Jamaica of
+the name of Carvalho.
+
+"Carvalho," answered the Major, "bless my soul, yes. Old settled family
+in the island; Jews; live down Savannah-la-Mar way; been here ever since
+the Spanish time; doocid clever fellows, too, and rich, most of them."
+
+"Jews," I thought; "ah, yes, Mr. Carvalho had a very handsome Jewish
+type of face and dark eyes; but, why, yes, surely I heard him speak
+several times of having been to church, and once of the Cathedral at
+Spanish Town. This was curious."
+
+"Are any of them Christians?" I asked again.
+
+"Not a man," answered the Major; "not a man, my dear. Good old Jewish
+family; Jews in Jamaica never turn Christians; nothing to gain by it."
+
+The dance took place in the big mess-room, looking out on the fan-palms
+and tree-ferns of the regimental garden. It was a lovely tropical night,
+moonlight of course, for all Jamaican entertainments are given at full
+moon, so as to let the people who ride from a distance get to and fro
+safely over the breakneck mountain horse-paths. The windows, which open
+down to the ground, were flung wide for the sake of ventilation; and
+thus the terrace and garden were made into a sort of vestibule where
+partners might promenade and cool themselves among the tropical flowers
+after the heat of dancing. And yet, I don't know how it is, though the
+climate is so hot in Jamaica, I never danced anywhere so much or felt
+the heat so little oppressive.
+
+Before the first waltz, Mr. Carvalho came up, accompanied by my old
+friend Dr. Wade, and was properly introduced to me. By that time my card
+was pretty full, for of course I was a belle in those days, and being
+just fresh out from England was rather run after. But I will confess
+that I had taken the liberty of filling in three later waltzes
+(unasked) with Mr. Carvalho's name, for I knew by his very look that he
+could waltz divinely, and I do love a good partner. He did waltz
+divinely, but at the end of the dance I was really afraid he didn't mean
+to ask me again. When he did, a little hesitatingly, I said I had still
+three vacancies, and found he had not yet asked anybody else. I enjoyed
+those four dances more than any others that evening, the more so,
+perhaps, as I saw my cousin, Harry Verner of Agualta, was dying with
+jealousy because I danced so much with Mr. Carvalho.
+
+I must just say a word or two about Harry Verner. He was a planter _pur
+sang_, and Agualta was one of the few really flourishing sugar estates
+then left on the island. Harry was, therefore, naturally regarded as
+rather a catch; but, for my part, I could never care for any man who has
+only three subjects of conversation--himself, vacuum-pan sugar, and the
+wickedness of the French bounty system, which keeps the poor planter out
+of his own. So I danced away with Mr. Carvalho, partly because I liked
+him just a little, you know, but partly, also, I will frankly admit,
+because I saw it annoyed Harry Verner.
+
+At the end of our fourth dance, I was strolling with Mr. Carvalho among
+the great bushy poinsettias and plumbagos on the terrace, under the
+beautiful soft green light of that tropical moon, when Harry Verner came
+from one of the windows directly upon us. "I suppose you've forgotten,
+Edith," he said, "that you're engaged to me for the next lancers. Mr.
+Carvalho, I know you are to dance with Miss Wade; hadn't you better go
+and look for your partner?"
+
+He spoke pointedly, almost rudely, and Mr. Carvalho took the hint at
+once. As soon as he was gone, Harry turned round to me fiercely and said
+in a low angry voice, "You shall not dance this lancers, you shall sit
+it out with me here in the garden; come over to the seat in the far
+corner."
+
+He led me resistlessly to the seat, away from the noise of the
+regimental band and the dancers, and then sat himself down at the far
+end from me, like a great surly bear that he was.
+
+"A pretty fool you've been making of yourself to-night, Edith," he said
+in a tone of suppressed anger, "with that fellow Carvalho. Do you know
+who he is, miss? Do you know who he is?"
+
+"No," I answered faintly, fearing he was going to assure me that my
+clever new acquaintance was a notorious swindler or a runaway
+ticket-of-leave man.
+
+"Well, then, I'll tell you," he cried angrily. "I'll tell you. He's a
+coloured man, miss! that's what he is."
+
+"A coloured man?" I exclaimed in surprise; "why, he's as white as you
+and I are, every bit as white, Harry."
+
+"So he may be, to look at," answered my cousin; "but a brown man's a
+brown man, all the same, however much white blood he may have in him;
+you can never breed the nigger out. Confound his impudence, asking you
+to dance four times with him in a single evening! You, too, of all girls
+in the island! Confound his impudence! Why, his mother was a slave girl
+once on Palmettos estate!"
+
+"Oh, Harry, you don't mean to say so," I cried, for I was West Indian
+enough in my feelings to have a certain innate horror of coloured blood,
+and I was really shocked to think I had been so imprudent as to dance
+four times with a brown man.
+
+"Yes, I do mean it, miss," he answered; "an octaroon slave girl, and
+Carvalho's her son by old Jacob Carvalho, a Jew merchant at the back of
+the island, who was fool enough to go and actually marry her. So now you
+see what a pretty mess you've gone and been and made of it. We shall
+have it all over Kingston to-morrow, I suppose, that Miss Hazleden, a
+Hazleden and a Verner, has been flirting violently with a bit of
+coloured scum off her own grandfather's estate at Palmettos. A nice
+thing for the family, indeed!"
+
+"But, Harry," I said, pleading, "he's such a perfect gentleman in his
+manners and conversation, so very much superior to a great many Jamaican
+young men."
+
+"Hang it all, miss," said Harry--he used a stronger expression, for he
+was not particular about swearing before ladies, but I won't transcribe
+all his oaths--"hang it all, that's the way of you girls who have been
+to England. If I had fifty daughters I'd never send one of 'em home, not
+I. You go over there, and you get enlightened, as you call it, and you
+learn a lot of radical fal-lal about equality and a-man-and-a-brother,
+and all that humbug: and then you come back and despise your own people,
+who are gentlemen and the sons of gentlemen for fifty generations, from
+the good old slavery days onward. I wish we had them here again, I do,
+and I'd tie up that fellow Carvalho to a horse-post and flog him with a
+cow-hide within an inch of his life."
+
+I was too much accustomed to Harry's manners to make any protest against
+this vigorous suggestion of reprisals. I took his arm quietly. "Let us
+go back into the ballroom, Harry," I said as persuasively as I was able,
+for I loathed the man in my heart, "and for heaven's sake don't make a
+scene about it. If there is anything on earth I detest, it's scenes."
+
+Next morning I felt rather feverish, and dear fat little Mrs. Venn was
+quite frightened about me. "If you go down again to Liguanca with this
+fever on you, my dear," she said, "you'll get yellow Jack as soon as you
+are home again. Better write and ask your mamma to let you stop a
+fortnight with us here."
+
+I consented, readily enough, for, of course, no girl of eighteen ever in
+her heart objects to military society, and the 99th were really very
+pleasant well-intentioned young fellows. But I made up my mind that if I
+stayed I would take particular care to see no more of Mr. Carvalho. He
+was very clever, very fascinating, very nice, but then--he was a brown
+man! That was a bar that no West Indian girl could ever be expected to
+get over.
+
+As ill-luck would have it, however--I write as I then felt--about three
+days after, Mrs. Venn said to me, "I've invited Mr. Cameron, one of our
+sub-lieutenants, to dine this evening, and I've had to invite his guest,
+young Carvalho, as well. By the way, Edie, if I were you, I wouldn't
+talk quite so much as you did the other evening to Mr. Carvalho. You
+know, dear, though he doesn't look it, he's a brown man."
+
+"I didn't know it," I answered, "till the end of the evening, and then
+Harry Verner told me. I wouldn't have danced with him more than once if
+I'd known it."
+
+"Wonderful how that young fellow has managed to edge himself into
+society," said the major, looking up from his book; "devilish odd. Son
+of old Jacob Carvalho: Jacob left him all his coin, not very much;
+picked up his ABC somewhere or other; got into Government service; asked
+to Governor's dances; goes everywhere now. Can't understand it."
+
+"Well, my dear," says Mrs. Venn, "why do we ask him ourselves?"
+
+"Because we can't help it," says the major, testily. "Cameron goes and
+picks him up; ought to be in the Engineers, Cameron; too doocid clever
+for the line and for this regiment. Always picks up some astronomer
+fellow, or some botanist fellow, or some fellow who understands
+fortification or something. Competitive examination's ruin of the
+service. Get all sorts of people into the regiment now. Believe Cameron
+himself lives upon his pay almost, hanged if I don't."
+
+That evening, Mr. Carvalho came, and I liked him better than ever. Mr.
+Cameron, who was a brother botanist and a nice ingenuous young
+Highlander, made him bring his portfolio of Jamaica ferns and flowers,
+the loveliest things I ever saw--dried specimens and water-colour
+sketches to accompany them of the plants themselves as they grew
+naturally. He told us all about them so enthusiastically, and of how he
+used to employ almost all his holidays in the mountains hunting for
+specimens. "I'm afraid the fellows at the office think me a dreadful
+muff for it," he said, "but I can't help it, it's born in me. My mother
+is a descendant of Sir Hans Sloane's, who lived here for several
+years--the founder of the British Museum, you know--and all her family
+have always had a taste for bush, as the negroes call it. You know, a
+good many mulatto people have the blood of able English families in
+their veins, and that accounts, I believe, for their usual high average
+of general intelligence."
+
+I was surprised to hear him speak so unaffectedly of his ancestry on the
+wrong side of the house, for most light coloured people studiously avoid
+any reference to their social disabilities. I liked him all the better,
+however, for the perfect frankness with which he said it. If only he
+hadn't been a brown man, now! But there, you can't get over those
+fundamental race prejudices.
+
+Next morning, as the Major and I were out riding, we came again across
+Mr. Cameron and Mr. Carvalho. Fate really seemed determined to throw us
+together. We were going to the Fern Walk to gather gold and silver
+ferns, and Mr. Carvalho was bound in the same direction, to look for
+some rare hill-top flowers. At the Walk we dismounted, and, while the
+two officers went hunting about among the bush, Mr. Carvalho and I sat
+for a while upon a big rock in the shade of a mountain palm. The
+conversation happened to come round to somewhat the same turn as it had
+taken the last evening.
+
+"Yes," said Mr Carvalho, in answer to a question of mine, "I do think
+that mulattos and quadroons are generally cleverer than the average run
+of white people. You see, mixture of race evidently tends to increase
+the total amount of brain power. There are peculiar gains of brain on
+the one side, and other peculiar gains, however small, on the other; and
+the mixture, I fancy, tends to preserve or increase both. That is why
+the descendants of Huguenots in England, and the descendants of Italians
+in France, show generally such great ability."
+
+"Then you yourself ought to be an example," I said, "for your name seems
+to be Spanish or Portuguese."
+
+"Spanish and Jewish," he answered, laughing, "though I didn't mean to
+give a side-puff to myself. Yes, I am of very mixed race indeed. On my
+father's side I am Jewish, though of course the Jews acknowledge nobody
+who isn't a pure-blooded descendant of Abraham in both lines; and for
+that reason I have been brought up a Christian. On my mother's side I am
+partly negro, partly English, partly Haitian French, and, through the
+Sloanes, partly Dutch as well. So you see I am a very fair mixture."
+
+"And that accounts," I said, "for your being so clever."
+
+He blushed and bowed a little demure bow, but said nothing.
+
+It's no use fighting against fate, and during all that fortnight I did
+nothing but run up against Mr. Carvalho. Wherever I went, he was sure to
+be; wherever I was invited, he was invited to meet me. The fact is, I
+had somehow acquired the reputation of being a clever girl, and, as Mr.
+Cameron was by common consent the clever man of his regiment, it was
+considered proper that he (and by inference his guest) should be always
+asked to entertain me. The more I saw of Mr. Carvalho the better I liked
+him. He was so clever, and yet so simple and unassuming, that one
+couldn't help admiring and sympathizing with him. Indeed, if he hadn't
+been a brown man, I almost think I should have fallen in love with him
+outright.
+
+At the end of a fortnight I went back to Palmettos. A few days after,
+who should come to call but old General Farquhar, and with him, of all
+men in the world, Mr. Carvalho! Mamma was furious. She managed to be
+frigidly polite as long as they stopped, but when they were gone she
+went off at once into one of her worst nervous crisises (that's not the
+regular plural, I'm sure, but no matter). "I know his mother when she
+was a slave of your grandfather's," she said; "an upstanding proud
+octaroon girl, who thought herself too good for her place because she
+was nearly a white woman. She left the estate immediately after that
+horrid emancipation, to keep a school of brown girls in Kingston. And
+then she had the insolence to go and get actually married at church to
+old Jacob Carvalho! Just like those brown people. Their grandmothers
+never married." For poor mamma always made it a subject of reproach
+against the respectable coloured folk that they tried to live more
+decently and properly than their ancestors used to do in slavery times.
+
+Mr. Carvalho never came to Palmettos again, but whenever I went to
+Kingston to dances I met him, and in spite of mamma I talked to him too.
+One day I went over to a ball at Government House, and there I saw both
+him and Harry Verner. For the first time in my life I had two proposals
+made me, and on the same night. Harry Verner's came first.
+
+"Edie," he said to me, between the dances, as we were strolling out in
+the gardens, West Indian fashion, "I often think Agualta is rather
+lonely. It wants a lady to look after the house, while I'm down looking
+after the cane pieces. We made the best return in sugar of any estate on
+the island, last year, you know; but a man can't subsist entirely on
+sugar. He wants sympathy and intellectual companionship." (This was
+quite an effort for Harry.) "Now, I've not been in a hurry to get
+married. I've waited till I could find some one whom I could thoroughly
+respect and admire as well as love. I've looked at all the girls in
+Jamaica, before making my choice, and I've determined not to be guided
+by monetary considerations or any other considerations except those of
+the affections and of real underlying goodness and intellect. I feel
+that you are the one girl I have met who is far and away my superior in
+everything worth living for, Edie; and I'm going to ask you whether you
+will make me proud and happy for ever by becoming the mistress of
+Agualta."
+
+I felt that Harry was really conceding so very much to me, and honouring
+me so greatly by offering me a life partnership in that flourishing
+sugar-estate, that it really went to my heart to have to refuse him. But
+I told him plainly I could not marry him because I did not love him.
+Harry seemed quite surprised at my refusal, but answered politely that
+perhaps I might learn to love him hereafter, that he would not be so
+foolish as to press me further now, and that he would do his best to
+deserve my love in future. And with that little speech he led me back to
+the ballroom, and handed me over to my next partner.
+
+Later on in the evening, Mr. Carvalho too, with an earnest look in his
+handsome dark eyes, asked leave to take me for a few turns in the
+garden. We sat down on a bench under the great mango tree, and he began
+to talk to me in a graver fashion than usual.
+
+"Your mother was annoyed, I fear, Miss Hazleden," he said, "that I
+should call at Palmettos."
+
+"To tell you the truth," I answered, "I think she was."
+
+"I was afraid she would be--I knew she would be, in fact; and for that
+very reason I hesitated to do it, as I hesitated to dance with you the
+first time I met you, as soon as I knew who you really were. But I felt
+I ought to face it out. You know by this time, no doubt, Miss Hazleden,
+that my mother was once a slave on your grandfather's estate. Now, it is
+a theory of mine--a little Quixotic, perhaps, but still a theory of
+mine--that the guilt and the shame of slavery lay with the slave-owners
+(forgive me if I must needs speak against your own class), and not with
+the slaves or their descendants. We have nothing on earth to be ashamed
+of. Thinking thus, I felt it incumbent upon me to call at Palmettos,
+partly in defence of my general principles, and partly also because I
+wished to see whether you shared your mother's ideas on that subject."
+
+"You were quite right in what you did, Mr. Carvalho," I answered; "and I
+respect you for the boldness with which you cling to what you think your
+duty."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Hazleden," he answered, "you are very kind. Now, I wish
+to speak to you about another and more serious question. Forgive my
+talking about myself for a moment; I feel sure you have kindly
+interested yourself in me a little. I too am proud of my birth, in my
+way, for I am the son of an honest able man and of a tender true woman.
+I come on one side from the oldest and greatest among civilized races,
+the Jews; and on the other side from many energetic English, French, and
+Dutch families whose blood I am vain enough to prize as a precious
+inheritance even though it came to me through the veins of an octaroon
+girl. I have lately arrived at the conclusion that it is not well for me
+to remain in Jamaica. I cannot bear to live in a society which will not
+receive my dear mother on the same terms as it receives me, and will not
+receive either of us on the same terms as it receives other people. We
+are not rich, but we are well enough off to go to live in England; and
+to England I mean soon to go."
+
+"I am glad and sorry to hear it," I said. "Glad, because I am sure it is
+the best thing for your own happiness, and the best opening for your
+great talents; sorry, because there are not many people in Jamaica
+whose society I shall miss so much."
+
+"What you say encourages me to venture a little further. When I get to
+England, I intend to go to Cambridge, and take a degree there, so as to
+put myself on an equality with other educated people. Now, Miss
+Hazleden, I am going to ask you something which is so great a thing to
+ask that it makes my heart tremble to ask it. I know no man on earth,
+least of all myself, dare think himself fit for you, or dare plead his
+own cause before you without feeling his own unworthiness and pettiness
+of soul beside you. Yet just because I know how infinitely better and
+nobler and higher you are than I am, I cannot resist trying, just once,
+whether I may not hope that perhaps you will consider my appeal, and
+count my earnestness to me for righteousness. I have watched you and
+listened to you and admired you till in spite of myself I have not been
+able to refrain from loving you. I know it is madness; I know it is
+yearning after the unattainable; but I cannot help it. Oh, don't answer
+me too soon and crush me, but consider whether perhaps in the future you
+might not somehow at some time think it possible."
+
+He leaned forward towards me in a supplicating attitude. At that moment
+I loved him with all the force of my nature. Yet I dared not say so. The
+spectre of the race-prejudice rose instinctively like a dividing wall
+between my heart and my lips. "Mr. Carvalho," I said, "take me back to
+my seat. You must not talk so, please."
+
+"One minute, Miss Hazleden," he went on passionately; "one minute, and
+then I will be silent for ever. Remember, we might live in England, far
+away from all these unmeaning barriers. I do not ask you to take me now,
+and as I am; I will do all I can to make myself more worthy of you. Only
+let me hope; don't answer me no without considering it. I know how
+little I deserve such happiness; but if you will take me, I will live
+all my life for no other purpose than to make you see that I am striving
+to show myself grateful for your love. Oh, Miss Hazleden, do listen to
+me."
+
+I felt that in another moment I should yield; I could have seized his
+outstretched hands then, and told him that I loved him, but I dared not.
+"Mr. Carvalho," I said, "let us go back now. I will write to you
+to-morrow." He gave me his arm with a deep breath, and we went back
+slowly to the music.
+
+"Edith," said my mother sharply, when I got home that night, "Harry has
+been here, and I know two things. He has proposed to you and you have
+refused him, I'm certain of that; and the other thing is, that young
+Carvalho has been insolent enough to make you an offer."
+
+I said nothing.
+
+"What did you answer him?"
+
+"That I would reply by letter."
+
+"Sit down, then, and write as I tell you."
+
+I sat down mechanically. Mamma began dictating. I cried as I wrote, but
+I wrote it. I know now how very shameful and wrong it was of me; but I
+was only eighteen, and I was accustomed to do as mamma told me in
+everything. She had a terrible will, you know, and a terrible temper.
+
+"'Dear Mr. Carvalho' (you'd better begin so, or he'll know I dictated
+it),--'I was too much surprised at your strange conduct last night to
+give you an answer immediately. On thinking it over, I can only say I am
+astonished you should have supposed such a thing as you suggested lay
+within the bounds of possibility. In future, it will be well that we
+should avoid one another. Our spheres are different. Pray do not repeat
+your mistake of last evening.--Yours truly, E. Hazleden.' Have you put
+all that down?"
+
+"Mamma," I cried, "it is abominable. It isn't true. I can't sign it."
+
+"Sign it," said my mother, briefly.
+
+I took the pen and did so. "You will break my heart, mamma," I said.
+"You will break my heart and kill me."
+
+"It shall go first thing to-morrow," said my mother, taking no notice of
+my words. "And now, Edith, you shall marry Harry Verner."
+
+
+II.
+
+Seven years are a large slice out of one's life, and the seven years
+spent in fighting poor dear mamma over that fixed project were not happy
+ones. But on that point nothing on earth would bend me. I would not
+marry Harry Verner. At last, after poor mamma's sudden death, I thought
+it best to sell the remnant of the estate for what it would fetch, and
+go back to England. I was twenty-five then, and had slowly learnt to
+have a will of my own meanwhile. But during all that time I hardly ever
+heard again of Ernest Carvalho. Once or twice, indeed, I was told he had
+taken a distinguished place at Cambridge, and had gone to the bar in the
+Temple; but that was all.
+
+A month or two after my return to London my aunt Emily (who was not one
+of the West Indian side of the house) managed to get me an invitation to
+Mrs. Bouverie Barton's. Of course you know Mrs. Bouverie Barton, the
+famous novelist, whose books everybody talks about. Well, Mrs. Barton
+lives in Eaton Place, and gives charming Thursday evening receptions,
+which are the recognized rendezvous of all literary and artistic London.
+If there is a celebrity in town, from Paris or Vienna, Timbuctoo or the
+South Sea Islands, you are sure to meet him in the little back
+drawing-room at Eaton Place. The music there is always of the best, and
+the conversation of the cleverest. But what pleased me most on that
+occasion was the fact that Mr. Gerard Llewellyn, the author of that
+singular book "Peter Martindale," was to be the lion of the party on
+this particular Thursday. I had just been reading "Peter
+Martindale"--who had not, that season? for it was the rage of the
+day--and I had never read any novel before which so impressed me by its
+weird power, its philosophical insight, and its transparent depth of
+moral earnestness. So I was naturally very much pleased at the prospect
+of seeing and meeting so famous a man as Mr. Gerard Llewellyn.
+
+When we entered Mrs. Bouverie Barton's handsome rooms, we saw a great
+crowd of people whom even the most unobservant stranger would instantly
+have recognized as out of the common run. There was the hostess herself,
+with her kindly smile and her friendly good-humoured manner, hardly, if
+at all, concealing the profound intellectual strength that lay latent in
+her calm grey eyes. There were artistic artists and rugged artists;
+satirical novelists and gay novelists; heavy professors and deep
+professors--every possible representative of "literature, science, and
+art." At first, I was put off with introductions to young poetasters,
+and gentlemen with an interest in cuneiform inscriptions; but I had
+quite made up my mind to get a talk with Mr. Gerard Llewellyn; and to
+Mr. Gerard Llewellyn our hostess at last promised to introduce me. She
+crossed the room in search of him near the big fireplace.
+
+A tall, handsome young man, with long moustache and beard, and piercing
+black eyes, stood somewhat listlessly leaning against the mantelshelf,
+and talking with an even, brilliant flow to a short, stout,
+Indian-looking gentleman at his side. I knew in a moment that the short
+stout gentleman must be Mr. Llewellyn, for in the tall young man, in
+spite of seven years and the long moustaches, I recognized at once
+Ernest Carvalho.
+
+But to my surprise Mrs. Bouverie Barton brought the tall young man, and
+not his neighbour, across the room with her. She must have made a
+mistake, I thought. "Mr. Carvalho," she said, "I want you to come and be
+introduced to the lady on the ottoman. Miss Hazleden, Mr. Carvalho!"
+
+"I have met Mr. Carvalho long ago in Jamaica," I said warmly, "but I am
+very glad indeed to meet him here again. However, I hardly expected to
+see him here this evening."
+
+"Indeed," said Mrs. Barton, with some surprise in her tone; "I thought
+you asked to be introduced to the author of 'Peter Martindale.'"
+
+"So I did," I answered; "but I understood his name was Llewellyn."
+
+"Oh!" said Ernest Carvalho, quickly, "that is only my _nom de plume_.
+But the authorship is an open secret now, and I suppose Mrs. Barton
+thought you knew it."
+
+"It is a happy chance, at any rate, Mr. Carvalho," I said, "which has
+thrown us two again together."
+
+He bowed gravely and with dignity. "You are very kind to say so," he
+said. "It is always a pleasure to meet old acquaintances from Jamaica."
+
+My heart beat violently. There was a studied coldness in his tone, I
+thought, and no wonder; but if I had been in love with Ernest Carvalho
+before, I felt a thousand more times in love with him now as he stood
+there in his evening dress, a perfect English gentleman. He looked so
+kinglike with his handsome, slightly Jewish features, his piercing black
+eyes, his long moustaches, and his beautiful delicate thin-lipped mouth.
+There was such an air of power in his forehead, such a speaking evidence
+of high culture in his general expression. And then, he had written
+"Peter Martindale!" Why, who else could possibly have written it? I
+wondered at my own stupidity in not having guessed the authorship at
+once. But, most terrible of all, I had probably lost his love for ever.
+I might once have called Ernest Carvalho my husband, and I had utterly
+alienated him by a single culpable act of foolish weakness.
+
+"You are living in London, now?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," he answered, "we have a little home of our own in Kensington. I
+am working on the staff of the _Morning Detonator_."
+
+"Mrs. Carvalho is here this evening," said Mrs. Bouverie Barton. "Do you
+know her? I suppose you do, of course."
+
+Mrs. Carvalho! As I heard the name, I was conscious of a deep but rapid
+thud, thud, thud in my ear, and after a moment it struck me that the
+thud came from the quick beating of my own heart. Then Ernest Carvalho
+was married!
+
+"No," he said in reply, seeing that I did not answer immediately. "Miss
+Hazleden has never met her, I believe; but I shall be happy to introduce
+her;" and he turned to a sofa where two or three ladies were chatting
+together, a little in the corner.
+
+A very queenly old lady, with snow-white hair, prettily covered in part
+by a dainty and becoming lace cap, held out her small white hand to me
+with a gracious smile. "My mother," Ernest Carvalho said quietly; and I
+took the proffered hand with a warmth that must have really surprised
+the slave-born octaroon. The one thought that was uppermost in my mind
+was just this, that after all Ernest Carvalho was not married. Once more
+I heard the thud in my ear, and nothing else.
+
+As soon as I could notice anybody or anything except myself, I began to
+observe that Mrs. Carvalho was very handsome. She was rather dark, to be
+sure, but less so than many Spanish or Italian ladies I had seen; and
+her look and manner were those of a Louis Quinze marquise, with a
+distinct reminiscence of the stately old Haitian French politeness. She
+could never have had any education except what she had picked up for
+herself; but no one would suspect the deficiency now, for she was as
+clever as all half-castes, and had made the best of her advantages
+meanwhile, such as they were. When she talked about the literary London
+in which her son lived and moved, I felt like the colonial-bred
+ignoramus I really was; and when she told me they had just been to visit
+Mr. Fradelli's new picture at the studio, I was positively too ashamed
+to let her see that I had never in my life heard of that famous painter
+before. To think that that queenly old lady was still a slave girl at
+Palmettos when my poor dear mother was a little child! And to think,
+too, that my own family would have kept her a slave all her life long,
+if only they had had the power! I remembered at once with a blush what
+Ernest Carvalho had said to me the last time I saw him, about the people
+with whom the guilt and shame of slavery really rested.
+
+I sat, half in a maze, talking with Mrs. Carvalho all the rest of that
+evening. Ernest lingered near for a while, as if to see what impression
+his mother produced upon me, but soon went off, proudly I thought, to
+another part of the room, where he got into conversation with the German
+gentleman who wore the big blue wire-guarded spectacles. Yet I fancied
+he kept looking half anxiously in our direction throughout the evening,
+and I was sure I saw him catch his mother's eye furtively now and again.
+As for Mrs. Carvalho, she made a conquest of me at once, and she was
+evidently well pleased with her conquest. When I rose to leave, she took
+both my hands in hers, and said to me warmly, "Miss Hazleden, we shall
+be so pleased to see you whenever you like to come, at Merton Gardens."
+Had Ernest ever told her of his proposal? I wondered.
+
+Mrs. Bouverie Barton was very kind to me. She kept on asking me to her
+Thursday evenings, and there time after time I met Ernest Carvalho. At
+first, he seldom spoke to me much, but at last, partly because I always
+talked so much to his mother perhaps, he began to thaw a little, and
+often came up to me in quite a friendly way. "We have left Jamaica and
+all that behind, Miss Hazleden," he said once, "and here in free England
+we may at least be friends." Oh, how I longed to explain the whole truth
+to him, and how impossible an explanation was. Besides, he had seen so
+many other girls since, and very likely his boyish fancy for me had long
+since passed away altogether. You can't count much on the love-making of
+eighteen and twenty.
+
+Mrs. Carvalho asked me often to their pretty little house in Merton
+Gardens, and I went; but still Ernest never in any way alluded to what
+had passed. Months went by, and I began to feel that I must crush that
+little dream entirely out of my heart--if I could. One afternoon I went
+in to Mrs. Carvalho's for a cup of five-o'clock tea, and had an
+uninterrupted _t�te-�-t�te_ with her for half an hour. We had been
+exchanging small confidences with one another for a while, and after a
+pause the old lady laid her gentle hand upon my head and stroked back my
+hair in such a motherly fashion. "My dear child," she said,
+half-sighing, "I do wish my Ernest would only take a fancy to a sweet
+young girl like you."
+
+"Mr. Carvalho does not seem quite a marrying man," I answered, forcing a
+laugh; "I notice he seldom talks to ladies, but always to men, and those
+of the solemnest."
+
+"Ah, my dear, he has had a great disappointment, a terrible
+disappointment," said the mother, unburdening herself. "I can tell you
+all about it, for you are a Jamaican born, and though you are one of the
+'proud Palmettos' people you are not full of prejudices like the rest of
+them, and so you will understand it. Before we left Jamaica he was in
+love with a young lady there; he never told me her name, and that is the
+one secret he has ever kept from me. Well, he talked to her often, and
+he thought she was above the wicked prejudices of race and colour; she
+seemed to encourage him and to be fond of his society. At last he
+proposed to her. Then she wrote him a cruel, cruel letter, a letter that
+he never showed me, but he told me what was in it; and it drove him away
+from the island immediately. It was a letter full of wicked reproaches
+about our octaroon blood, and it broke his heart with the shock of its
+heartlessness. He has never cared for any woman since."
+
+"Then does he love her still?" I asked, breathless.
+
+"How can he? No! but he says he loves the memory of what he once thought
+her. He has seen her since, somewhere in London, and spoken to her; but
+he can never love her again. Yet, do you know, I feel sure he cannot
+help loving her in spite of himself; and he often goes out at night, I
+am sure, to watch her door, to see her come in and out, for the sake of
+the love he once bore her. My Ernest is not the sort of man who can love
+twice in a lifetime."
+
+"Perhaps," I said, colouring, "if he were to ask her again she might
+accept him. Things are so different here in England, and he is a famous
+man now."
+
+Mrs. Carvalho shook her head slowly. "Oh no!" she answered; "he would
+never importune or trouble her. Though she has rejected him, he is too
+loyal to the love he once bore her, too careful of wounding her feelings
+or even her very prejudices, ever to obtrude his love again upon her
+notice. If she cannot love him of herself and for himself,
+spontaneously, he would not weary her out with oft asking. He will never
+marry now; of that I am certain."
+
+My eyes filled with tears. As they did so, I tried to brush them away
+unseen behind my fan, but Mrs. Carvalho caught my glance, and looked
+sharply through me with a sudden gleam of discovery. "Why," she said,
+very slowly and distinctly, with a pause and a stress upon each word, "I
+believe it must have been you yourself, Miss Hazleden." And as she spoke
+she held her open hand, palm outward, stretched against me with a
+gesture of horror, as one might shrink in alarm from a coiled
+rattlesnake.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Carvalho," I cried, clasping my hands before her, "do hear
+me, I entreat you; do let me explain to you how it all happened."
+
+"There is no explanation possible," she answered sternly. "Go. You have
+wrecked a life that might otherwise have been happy and famous, and then
+you come to a mother with an explanation!"
+
+"That letter was not mine," I said boldly; for I saw that to put the
+truth shortly in that truest and briefest form was the only way of
+getting her to listen to me now.
+
+She sank back in a chair and folded her hands faintly one above the
+other. "Tell me it all," she said in a weak voice. "I will hear you."
+
+So I told her all. I did not try to extenuate my own weakness in writing
+from my mother's dictation; but I let her see what I had suffered then
+and what I had suffered since. When I had finished, she drew me towards
+her gently, and printed one kiss upon my forehead. "It is hard to
+forget," she said softly, "but you were very young and helpless, and
+your mother was a terrible woman. The iron has entered into your own
+soul too. Go home, dear, and I will see about this matter."
+
+We fell upon one another's necks, the Palmettos slave-girl and I, and
+cried together glad tears for ten minutes. Then I wiped my red eyes dry,
+covered them with a double fold of my veil, and ran home hurriedly in
+the dusk to auntie's. It was such a terrible relief to have got it all
+over.
+
+That evening, about eleven o'clock, auntie had gone to bed, and I was
+sitting up by myself, musing late over the red cinders in the little
+back drawing-room grate. I felt as though I couldn't sleep, and so I was
+waiting up till I got sleepy. Suddenly there came a loud knock and a
+ring at the bell, after which Amelia ran in to say that a gentleman
+wanted to see me in the dining-room on urgent business, and would I
+please come down to speak with him immediately. I knew at once it was
+Ernest.
+
+The moment I entered the room, he never said a word, but he took my two
+hands eagerly in his, and then he kissed me fervently on the lips half a
+dozen times over. "And now, Edith," he said, "we need say no more about
+the past, for my mother has explained it all to me; we will only think
+about the future."
+
+I have no distinct recollection what o'clock it was before Ernest left
+that evening; but I know auntie sent down word twice to say it was high
+time I went to bed, and poor Amelia looked awfully tired and very
+sleepy. However, it was settled then and there that Ernest and I should
+be married early in October.
+
+A few days later, after the engagement had been announced to all our
+friends, dear Mrs. Bouverie Barton paid me a congratulatory call. "You
+are a very lucky girl, my dear," she said to me kindly. "We are half
+envious of you; I wish we could find another such husband as Mr.
+Carvalho for my Christina. But you have carried off the prize of the
+season, and you are well worthy of him. It is a very great honour for
+any girl to win and deserve the love of such a man as Ernest Carvalho."
+
+Will you believe it, so strangely do one's first impressions and early
+ideas about people cling to one, that though I had often felt before how
+completely the tables had been turned since we two came to England, it
+had not struck me till that moment that in the eyes of the world at
+large it was Ernest who was doing an honour to me and not I who was
+doing an honour to Ernest. I felt ashamed to think that Mrs. Bouverie
+Barton should see instinctively the true state of the case, while I, who
+loved and admired him so greatly, should have let the shadow of that old
+prejudice stand even now between me and the lover I was so proud to own.
+But when I took dear old Mrs. Carvalho's hand in mine the day of our
+wedding, and kissed her, and called her mother for the first time, I
+felt that I had left the guilt and shame of slavery for ever behind me,
+and that I should strive ever after to live worthily of Ernest
+Carvalho's love.
+
+
+
+
+_PAUSODYNE:_
+
+A GREAT CHEMICAL DISCOVERY.
+
+
+Walking along the Strand one evening last year towards Pall Mall, I was
+accosted near Charing Cross Station by a strange-looking, middle-aged
+man in a poor suit of clothes, who surprised and startled me by asking
+if I could tell him from what inn the coach usually started for York.
+
+"Dear me!" I said, a little puzzled. "I didn't know there was a coach to
+York. Indeed, I'm almost certain there isn't one."
+
+The man looked puzzled and surprised in turn. "No coach to York?" he
+muttered to himself, half inarticulately. "No coach to York? How things
+have changed! I wonder whether nobody ever goes to York nowadays!"
+
+"Pardon me," I said, anxious to discover what could be his meaning;
+"many people go to York every day, but of course they go by rail."
+
+"Ah, yes," he answered softly, "I see. Yes, of course, they go by rail.
+They go by rail, no doubt. How very stupid of me!" And he turned on his
+heel as if to get away from me as quickly as possible.
+
+I can't exactly say why, but I felt instinctively that this curious
+stranger was trying to conceal from me his ignorance of what a railway
+really was. I was quite certain from the way in which he spoke that he
+had not the slightest conception what I meant, and that he was doing
+his best to hide his confusion by pretending to understand me. Here was
+indeed a strange mystery. In the latter end of this nineteenth century,
+in the metropolis of industrial England, within a stone's-throw of
+Charing Cross terminus, I had met an adult Englishman who apparently did
+not know of the existence of railways. My curiosity was too much piqued
+to let the matter rest there. I must find out what he meant by it. I
+walked after him hastily, as he tried to disappear among the crowd, and
+laid my hand upon his shoulder, to his evident chagrin.
+
+"Excuse me," I said, drawing him aside down the corner of Craven Street;
+"you did not understand what I meant when I said people went to York by
+rail?"
+
+He looked in my face steadily, and then, instead of replying to my
+remark, he said slowly, "Your name is Spottiswood, I believe?"
+
+Again I gave a start of surprise. "It is," I answered; "but I never
+remember to have seen you before."
+
+"No," he replied dreamily; "no, we have never met till now, no doubt;
+but I knew your father, I'm sure; or perhaps it may have been your
+grandfather."
+
+"Not my grandfather, certainly," said I, "for he was killed at
+Waterloo."
+
+"At Waterloo! Indeed! How long since, pray?"
+
+I could not refrain from laughing outright. "Why, of course," I
+answered, "in 1815. There has been nothing particular to kill off any
+large number of Englishmen at Waterloo since the year of the battle, I
+suppose."
+
+"True," he muttered, "quite true; so I should have fancied." But I saw
+again from the cloud of doubt and bewilderment which came over his
+intelligent face that the name of Waterloo conveyed no idea whatsoever
+to his mind.
+
+Never in my life had I felt so utterly confused and astonished. In
+spite of his poor dress, I could easily see from the clear-cut face and
+the refined accent of my strange acquaintance that he was an educated
+gentleman--a man accustomed to mix in cultivated society. Yet he clearly
+knew nothing whatsoever about railways, and was ignorant of the most
+salient facts in English history. Had I suddenly come across some Caspar
+Hauser, immured for years in a private prison, and just let loose upon
+the world by his gaolers? or was my mysterious stranger one of the Seven
+Sleepers of Ephesus, turned out unexpectedly in modern costume on the
+streets of London? I don't suppose there exists on earth a man more
+utterly free than I am from any tinge of superstition, any lingering
+touch of a love for the miraculous; but I confess for a moment I felt
+half inclined to suppose that the man before me must have drunk the
+elixir of life, or must have dropped suddenly upon earth from some
+distant planet.
+
+The impulse to fathom this mystery was irresistible. I drew my arm
+through his. "If you knew my father," I said, "you will not object to
+come into my chambers and take a glass of wine with me."
+
+"Thank you," he answered half suspiciously; "thank you very much. I
+think you look like a man who can be trusted, and I will go with you."
+
+We walked along the Embankment to Adelphi Terrace, where I took him up
+to my rooms, and seated him in my easy-chair near the window. As he sat
+down, one of the trains on the Metropolitan line whirred past the
+Terrace, snorting steam and whistling shrilly, after the fashion of
+Metropolitan engines generally. My mysterious stranger jumped back in
+alarm, and seemed to be afraid of some immediate catastrophe. There was
+absolutely no possibility of doubting it. The man had obviously never
+seen a locomotive before.
+
+"Evidently," I said, "you do not know London. I suppose you are a
+colonist from some remote district, perhaps an Australian from the
+interior somewhere, just landed at the Tower?"
+
+"No, not an Austrian"--I noted his misapprehension--"but a Londoner born
+and bred."
+
+"How is it, then, that you seem never to have seen an engine before?"
+
+"Can I trust you?" he asked in a piteously plaintive, half-terrified
+tone. "If I tell you all about it, will you at least not aid in
+persecuting and imprisoning me?"
+
+I was touched by his evident grief and terror. "No," I answered, "you
+may trust me implicitly. I feel sure there is something in your history
+which entitles you to sympathy and protection."
+
+"Well," he replied, grasping my hand warmly, "I will tell you all my
+story; but you must be prepared for something almost too startling to be
+credible."
+
+"My name is Jonathan Spottiswood," he began calmly.
+
+Again I experienced a marvellous start: Jonathan Spottiswood was the
+name of my great-great-uncle, whose unaccountable disappearance from
+London just a century since had involved our family in so much
+protracted litigation as to the succession to his property. In fact, it
+was Jonathan Spottiswood's money which at that moment formed the bulk of
+my little fortune. But I would not interrupt him, so great was my
+anxiety to hear the story of his life.
+
+"I was born in London," he went on, "in 1750. If you can hear me say
+that and yet believe that possibly I am not a madman, I will tell you
+the rest of my tale; if not, I shall go at once and for ever."
+
+"I suspend judgment for the present," I answered. "What you say is
+extraordinary, but not more extraordinary perhaps than the clear
+anachronism of your ignorance about locomotives in the midst of the
+present century."
+
+"So be it, then. Well, I will tell you the facts briefly in as few words
+as I can. I was always much given to experimental philosophy, and I
+spent most of my time in the little laboratory which I had built for
+myself behind my father's house in the Strand. I had a small independent
+fortune of my own, left me by an uncle who had made successful ventures
+in the China trade; and as I was indisposed to follow my father's
+profession of solicitor, I gave myself up almost entirely to the pursuit
+of natural philosophy, following the researches of the great Mr.
+Cavendish, our chief English thinker in this kind, as well as of
+Monsieur Lavoisier, the ingenious French chemist, and of my friend Dr.
+Priestley, the Birmingham philosopher, whose new theory of phlogiston I
+have been much concerned to consider and to promulgate. But the especial
+subject to which I devoted myself was the elucidation of the nature of
+fixed air. I do not know how far you yourself may happen to have heard
+respecting these late discoveries in chemical science, but I dare
+venture to say that you are at least acquainted with the nature of the
+body to which I refer."
+
+"Perfectly," I answered with a smile, "though your terminology is now a
+little out of date. Fixed air was, I believe, the old-fashioned name for
+carbonic acid gas."
+
+"Ah," he cried vehemently, "that accursed word again! Carbonic acid has
+undone me, clearly. Yes, if you will have it so, that seems to be what
+they call it in this extraordinary century; but fixed air was the name
+we used to give it in our time, and fixed air is what I must call it, of
+course, in telling you my story. Well, I was deeply interested in this
+curious question, and also in some of the results which I obtained from
+working with fixed air in combination with a substance I had produced
+from the essential oil of a weed known to us in England as lady's
+mantle, but which the learned Mr. Carl Linn�us describes in his system
+as _Alchemilla vulgaris_. From that weed I obtained an oil which I
+combined with a certain decoction of fixed air into a remarkable
+compound; and to this compound, from its singular properties, I
+proposed to give the name of Pausodyne. For some years I was almost
+wholly engaged in investigating the conduct of this remarkable agent;
+and lest I should weary you by entering into too much detail, I may as
+well say at once that it possessed the singular power of entirely
+suspending animation in men or animals for several hours together. It is
+a highly volatile oil, like ammonia in smell, but much thicker in
+gravity; and when held to the nose of an animal, it causes immediate
+stoppage of the heart's action, making the body seem quite dead for long
+periods at a time. But the moment a mixture of the pausodyne with oil of
+vitriol and gum resin is presented to the nostrils, the animal
+instantaneously revives exactly as before, showing no evil effects
+whatsoever from its temporary simulation of death. To the reviving
+mixture I have given the appropriate name of Anegeiric.
+
+"Of course you will instantly see the valuable medical applications
+which may be made of such an agent. I used it at first for experimenting
+upon the amputation of limbs and other surgical operations. It succeeded
+admirably. I found that a dog under the influence of pausodyne suffered
+his leg, which had been broken in a street accident, to be set and
+spliced without the slightest symptom of feeling or discomfort. A cat,
+shot with a pistol by a cruel boy, had the bullet extracted without
+moving a muscle. My assistant, having allowed his little finger to
+mortify from neglect of a burn, permitted me to try the effect of my
+discovery upon himself; and I removed the injured joints while he
+remained in a state of complete insensibility, so that he could hardly
+believe afterwards in the actual truth of their removal. I felt certain
+that I had invented a medical process of the very highest and greatest
+utility.
+
+"All this took place in or before the year 1781. How long ago that may
+be according to your modern reckoning I cannot say; but to me it seems
+hardly more than a few months since. Perhaps you would not mind telling
+me the date of the current year. I have never been able to ascertain
+it."
+
+"This is 1881," I said, growing every moment more interested in his
+tale.
+
+"Thank you. I gathered that we must now be somewhere near the close of
+the nineteenth century, though I could not learn the exact date with
+certainty. Well, I should tell you, my dear sir, that I had contracted
+an engagement about the year 1779 with a young lady of most remarkable
+beauty and attractive mental gifts, a Miss Amelia Spragg, daughter of
+the well-known General Sir Thomas Spragg, with whose achievements you
+are doubtless familiar. Pardon me, my friend of another age, pardon me,
+I beg of you, if I cannot allude to this subject without emotion after a
+lapse of time which to you doubtless seems like a century, but is to me
+a matter of some few months only at the utmost. I feel towards her as
+towards one whom I have but recently lost, though I now find that she
+has been dead for more than eighty years." As he spoke, the tears came
+into his eyes profusely; and I could see that under the external
+calmness and quaintness of his eighteenth century language and demeanour
+his whole nature was profoundly stirred at the thought of his lost love.
+
+"Look here," he continued, taking from his breast a large, old-fashioned
+gold locket containing a miniature; "that is her portrait, by Mr.
+Walker, and a very truthful likeness indeed. They left me that when they
+took away my clothes at the Asylum, for I would not consent to part with
+it, and the physician in attendance observed that to deprive me of it
+might only increase the frequency and violence of my paroxysms. For I
+will not conceal from you the fact that I have just escaped from a
+pauper lunatic establishment."
+
+I took the miniature which he handed me, and looked at it closely. It
+was the picture of a young and beautiful girl, with the features and
+costume of a Sir Joshua. I recognized the face at once as that of a lady
+whose portrait by Gainsborough hangs on the walls of my uncle's
+dining-room at Whittingham Abbey. It was strange indeed to hear a living
+man speak of himself as the former lover of this, to me, historic
+personage.
+
+"Sir Thomas, however," he went on, "was much opposed to our union, on
+the ground of some real or fancied social disparity in our positions;
+but I at last obtained his conditional consent, if only I could succeed
+in obtaining the Fellowship of the Royal Society, which might, he
+thought, be accepted as a passport into that fashionable circle of which
+he was a member. Spurred on by this ambition, and by the encouragement
+of my Amelia, I worked day and night at the perfectioning of my great
+discovery, which I was assured would bring not only honour and dignity
+to myself, but also the alleviation and assuagement of pain to countless
+thousands of my fellow-creatures. I concealed the nature of my
+experiments, however, lest any rival investigator should enter the field
+with me prematurely, and share the credit to which I alone was really
+entitled. For some months I was successful in my efforts at concealment;
+but in March of this year--I mistake; of the year 1781, I should say--an
+unfortunate circumstance caused me to take special and exceptional
+precautions against intrusion.
+
+"I was then conducting my experiments upon living animals, and
+especially upon the extirpation of certain painful internal diseases to
+which they are subject. I had a number of suffering cats in my
+laboratory, which I had treated with pausodyne, and stretched out on
+boards for the purpose of removing the tumours with which they were
+afflicted. I had no doubt that in this manner, while directly benefiting
+the animal creation, I should indirectly obtain the necessary skill to
+operate successfully upon human beings in similar circumstances. Already
+I had completely cured several cats without any pain whatsoever, and I
+was anxious to proceed to the human subject. Walking one morning in the
+Strand, I found a beggar woman outside a gin-shop, quite drunk, with a
+small, ill-clad child by her side, suffering the most excruciating
+torments from a perfectly remediable cause. I induced the mother to
+accompany me to my laboratory, and there I treated the poor little
+creature with pausodyne, and began to operate upon her with perfect
+confidence of success.
+
+"Unhappily, my laboratory had excited the suspicion of many ill-disposed
+persons among the low mob of the neighbourhood. It was whispered abroad
+that I was what they called a vivisectionist; and these people, who
+would willingly have attended a bull-baiting or a prize fight, found
+themselves of a sudden wondrous humane when scientific procedure was
+under consideration. Besides, I had made myself unpopular by receiving
+visits from my friend Dr. Priestley, whose religious opinions were not
+satisfactory to the strict orthodoxy of St. Giles's. I was rumoured to
+be a philosopher, a torturer of live animals, and an atheist. Whether
+the former accusation were true or not, let others decide; the two
+latter, heaven be my witness, were wholly unfounded. However, when the
+neighbouring rabble saw a drunken woman with a little girl entering my
+door, a report got abroad at once that I was going to vivisect a
+Christian child. The mob soon collected in force, and broke into the
+laboratory. At that moment I was engaged, with my assistant, in
+operating upon the girl, while several cats, all completely
+an�stheticised, were bound down on the boards around, awaiting the
+healing of their wounds after the removal of tumours. At the sight of
+such apparent tortures the people grew wild with rage, and happening in
+their transports to fling down a large bottle of the anegeiric, or
+reviving mixture, the child and the animals all at once recovered
+consciousness, and began of course to writhe and scream with acute pain.
+I need not describe to you the scene that ensued. My laboratory was
+wrecked, my assistant severely injured, and I myself barely escaped with
+my life.
+
+"After this _contretemps_ I determined to be more cautious. I took the
+lease of a new house at Hampstead, and in the garden I determined to
+build myself a subterranean laboratory where I might be absolutely free
+from intrusion. I hired some labourers from Bath for this purpose, and I
+explained to them the nature of my wishes, and the absolute necessity of
+secrecy. A high wall surrounded the garden, and here the workmen worked
+securely and unseen. I concealed my design even from my dear
+brother--whose grandson or great-grandson I suppose you must be--and
+when the building was finished, I sent my men back to Bath, with strict
+injunctions never to mention the matter to any one. A trap-door in the
+cellar, artfully concealed, gave access to the passage; a large oak
+portal, bound with iron, shut me securely in; and my air supply was
+obtained by means of pipes communicating through blank spaces in the
+brick wall of the garden with the outer atmosphere. Every arrangement
+for concealment was perfect; and I resolved in future, till my results
+were perfectly established, that I would dispense with the aid of an
+assistant.
+
+"I was in high spirits when I went to visit my Amelia that evening, and
+I told her confidently that before the end of the year I expected to
+gain the gold medal of the Royal Society. The dear girl was pleased at
+my glowing prospects, and gave me every assurance of the delight with
+which she hailed the probability of our approaching union.
+
+"Next day I began my experiments afresh in my new quarters. I bolted
+myself into the laboratory, and set to work with renewed vigour. I was
+experimenting upon an injured dog, and I placed a large bottle of
+pausodyne beside me as I administered the drug to his nostrils. The
+rising fumes seemed to affect my head more than usual in that confined
+space, and I tottered a little as I worked. My arm grew weaker, and at
+last fell powerless to my side. As it fell it knocked down the large
+bottle of pausodyne, and I saw the liquid spreading over the floor. That
+was almost the last thing that I knew. I staggered toward the door, but
+did not reach it; and then I remember nothing more for a considerable
+period."
+
+He wiped his forehead with his sleeve--he had no handkerchief--and then
+proceeded.
+
+"When I woke up again the effects of the pausodyne had worn themselves
+out, and I felt that I must have remained unconscious for at least a
+week or a fortnight. My candle had gone out, and I could not find my
+tinder-box. I rose up slowly and with difficulty, for the air of the
+room was close and filled with fumes, and made my way in the dark
+towards the door. To my surprise, the bolt was so stiff with rust that
+it would hardly move. I opened it after a struggle, and found myself in
+the passage. Groping my way towards the trap-door of the cellar, I felt
+it was obstructed by some heavy body. With an immense effort, for my
+strength seemed but feeble, I pushed it up, and discovered that a heap
+of sea-coals lay on top of it. I extricated myself into the cellar, and
+there a fresh surprise awaited me. A new entrance had been made into the
+front, so that I walked out at once upon the open road, instead of up
+the stairs into the kitchen. Looking up at the exterior of my house, my
+brain reeled with bewilderment when I saw that it had disappeared almost
+entirely, and that a different porch and wholly unfamiliar windows
+occupied its fa�ade. I must have slept far longer than I at first
+imagined--perhaps a whole year or more. A vague terror prevented me from
+walking up the steps of my own home. Possibly my brother, thinking me
+dead, might have sold the lease; possibly some stranger might resent my
+intrusion into the house that was now his own. At any rate, I thought it
+safer to walk into the road. I would go towards London, to my brother's
+house in St. Mary le Bone. I turned into the Hampstead Road, and
+directed my steps thitherward.
+
+"Again, another surprise began to affect me with a horrible and
+ill-defined sense of awe. Not a single object that I saw was really
+familiar to me. I recognized that I was in the Hampstead Road, but it
+was not the Hampstead Road which I used to know before my fatal
+experiments. The houses were far more numerous, the trees were bigger
+and older. A year, nay, even a few years would not have sufficed for
+such a change. I began to fear that I had slept away a whole decade.
+
+"It was early morning, and few people were yet abroad. But the costume
+of those whom I met seemed strange and fantastic to me. Moreover, I
+noticed that they all turned and looked after me with evident surprise,
+as though my dress caused them quite as much astonishment as theirs
+caused me. I was quietly attired in my snuff-coloured suit of
+small-clothes, with silk stockings and simple buckle shoes, and I had of
+course no hat; but I gathered that my appearance caused universal
+amazement and concern, far more than could be justified by the mere
+accidental absence of head-gear. A dread began to oppress me that I
+might actually have slept out my whole age and generation. Was my Amelia
+alive? and if so, would she be still the same Amelia I had known a week
+or two before? Should I find her an aged woman, still cherishing a
+reminiscence of her former love; or might she herself perhaps be dead
+and forgotten, while I remained, alone and solitary, in a world which
+knew me not?
+
+"I walked along unmolested, but with reeling brain, through streets more
+and more unfamiliar, till I came near the St. Mary le Bone Road. There,
+as I hesitated a little and staggered at the crossing, a man in a
+curious suit of dark blue clothes, with a grotesque felt helmet on his
+head, whom I afterwards found to be a constable, came up and touched me
+on the shoulder.
+
+"'Look here,' he said to me in a rough voice, 'what are you a-doin' in
+this 'ere fancy-dress at this hour in the mornin'? You've lost your way
+home, I take it.'
+
+"'I was going,' I answered, 'to the St. Mary le Bone Road.'
+
+"'Why, you image,' says he rudely, 'if you mean Marribon, why don't you
+say Marribon? What house are you a-lookin' for, eh?'
+
+"'My brother lives,' I replied, 'at the Lamb, near St. Mary's Church,
+and I was going to his residence.'
+
+"'The Lamb!' says he, with a rude laugh; 'there ain't no public of that
+name in the road. It's my belief,' he goes on after a moment, 'that
+you're drunk, or mad, or else you've stole them clothes. Any way, you've
+got to go along with me to the station, so walk it, will you?'
+
+"'Pardon me,' I said, 'I suppose you are an officer of the law, and I
+would not attempt to resist your authority'--'You'd better not,' says
+he, half to himself--'but I should like to go to my brother's house,
+where I could show you that I am a respectable person.'
+
+"'Well,' says my fellow insolently, 'I'll go along of you if you like,
+and if it's all right, I suppose you won't mind standing a bob?'
+
+"'A what?' said I.
+
+"'A bob,' says he, laughing; 'a shillin', you know.'
+
+"To get rid of his insolence for a while, I pulled out my purse and
+handed him a shilling. It was a George II. with milled edges, not like
+the things I see you use now. He held it up and looked at it, and then
+he said again, 'Look here, you know, this isn't good. You'd better come
+along with me straight to the station, and not make a fuss about it.
+There's three charges against you, that's all. One is, that you're
+drunk. The second is, that you're mad. And the third is, that you've
+been trying to utter false coin. Any one of 'em's quite enough to
+justify me in takin' you into custody.'
+
+"I saw it was no use to resist, and I went along with him.
+
+"I won't trouble you with the whole of the details, but the upshot of it
+all was, they took me before a magistrate. By this time I had begun to
+realize the full terror of the situation, and I saw clearly that the
+real danger lay in the inevitable suspicion of madness under which I
+must labour. When I got into the court I told the magistrate my story
+very shortly and simply, as I have told it to you now. He listened to me
+without a word, and at the end he turned round to his clerk and said,
+'This is clearly a case for Dr. Fitz-Jenkins, I think.'
+
+"'Sir,' I said, 'before you send me to a madhouse, which I suppose is
+what you mean by these words, I trust you will at least examine the
+evidences of my story. Look at my clothing, look at these coins, look at
+everything about me.' And I handed him my purse to see for himself.
+
+"He looked at it for a minute, and then he turned towards me very
+sternly. 'Mr. Spottiswood,' he said, 'or whatever else your real name
+may be, if this is a joke, it is a very foolish and unbecoming one. Your
+dress is no doubt very well designed; your small collection of coins is
+interesting and well-selected; and you have got up your character
+remarkably well. If you are really sane, which I suspect to be the case,
+then your studied attempt to waste the time of this court and to make a
+laughing-stock of its magistrate will meet with the punishment it
+deserves. I shall remit your case for consideration to our medical
+officer. If you consent to give him your real name and address, you will
+be liberated after his examination. Otherwise, it will be necessary to
+satisfy ourselves as to your identity. Not a word more, sir,' he
+continued, as I tried to speak on behalf of my story. 'Inspector, remove
+the prisoner.'
+
+"They took me away, and the surgeon examined me. To cut things short, I
+was pronounced mad, and three days later the commissioners passed me for
+a pauper asylum. When I came to be examined, they said I showed no
+recollection of most subjects of ordinary education.
+
+"'I am a chemist,' said I; 'try me with some chemical questions. You
+will see that I can answer sanely enough.'
+
+"'How do you mix a grey powder?' said the commissioner.
+
+"'Excuse me,' I said, 'I mean a chemical philosopher, not an
+apothecary.'
+
+"'Oh, very well, then; what is carbonic acid?'
+
+"'I never heard of it,' I answered in despair. 'It must be something
+which has come into use since--since I left off learning chemistry.' For
+I had discovered that my only chance now was to avoid all reference to
+my past life and the extraordinary calamity which had thus unexpectedly
+overtaken me. 'Please try me with something else.'
+
+"'Oh, certainly. What is the atomic weight of chlorine?'
+
+"I could only answer that I did not know.
+
+"'This is a very clear case,' said the commissioner. 'Evidently he is a
+gentleman by birth and education, but he can give no very satisfactory
+account of his friends, and till they come forward to claim him we can
+only send him for a time to North Street.'
+
+"'For Heaven's sake, gentlemen,' I cried, 'before you consign me to an
+asylum, give me one more chance. I am perfectly sane; I remember all I
+ever knew; but you are asking me questions about subjects on which I
+never had any information. Ask me anything historical, and see whether
+I have forgotten or confused any of my facts."
+
+"I will do the commissioner the justice to say that he seemed anxious
+not to decide upon the case without full consideration. 'Tell me what
+you can recollect,' he said, 'as to the reign of George IV.'
+
+"'I know nothing at all about it,' I answered, terror-stricken, 'but oh,
+do pray ask me anything up to the time of George III.'
+
+"'Then please say what you think of the French Revolution.'
+
+"I was thunderstruck. I could make no reply, and the commissioners
+shortly signed the papers to send me to North Street pauper asylum. They
+hurried me into the street, and I walked beside my captors towards the
+prison to which they had consigned me. Yet I did not give up all hope
+even so of ultimately regaining my freedom. I thought the rationality of
+my demeanour and the obvious soundness of all my reasoning powers would
+suffice in time to satisfy the medical attendant as to my perfect
+sanity. I felt sure that people could never long mistake a man so
+clear-headed and collected as myself for a madman.
+
+"On our way, however, we happened to pass a churchyard where some
+workmen were engaged in removing a number of old tombstones from the
+crowded area. Even in my existing agitated condition, I could not help
+catching the name and date on one mouldering slab which a labourer had
+just placed upon the edge of the pavement. It ran something like this:
+'Sacred to the memory of Amelia, second daughter of the late Sir Thomas
+Spragg, knight, and beloved wife of Henry McAlister, Esq., by whom this
+stone is erected. Died May 20, 1799, aged 44 years.' Though I had
+gathered already that my dear girl must probably have long been dead,
+yet the reality of the fact had not yet had time to fix itself upon my
+mind. You must remember, my dear sir, that I had but awaked a few days
+earlier from my long slumber, and that during those days I had been
+harassed and agitated by such a flood of incomprehensible complications,
+that I could not really grasp in all its fulness the complete isolation
+of my present position. When I saw the tombstone of one whom, as it
+seemed to me, I had loved passionately but a week or two before, I could
+not refrain from rushing to embrace it, and covering the insensible
+stone with my boiling tears. 'Oh, my Amelia, my Amelia,' I cried, 'I
+shall never again behold thee, then! I shall never again press thee to
+my heart, or hear thy dear lips pronounce my name!'
+
+"But the unfeeling wretches who had charge of me were far from being
+moved to sympathy by my bitter grief. 'Died in 1799,' said one of them
+with a sneer. 'Why, this madman's blubbering over the grave of an old
+lady who has been buried for about a hundred years!' And the workmen
+joined in their laughter as my gaolers tore me away to the prison where
+I was to spend the remainder of my days.
+
+"When we arrived at the asylum, the surgeon in attendance was informed
+of this circumstance, and the opinion that I was hopelessly mad thus
+became ingrained in his whole conceptions of my case. I remained five
+months or more in the asylum, but I never saw any chance of creating a
+more favourable impression on the minds of the authorities. Mixing as I
+did only with other patients, I could gain no clear ideas of what had
+happened since I had taken my fatal sleep; and whenever I endeavoured to
+question the keepers, they amused themselves by giving me evidently
+false and inconsistent answers, in order to enjoy my chagrin and
+confusion. I could not even learn the actual date of the present year,
+for one keeper would laugh and say it was 2001, while another would
+confidentially advise me to date my petition to the Commissioners, "Jan.
+1, A.D. one million." The surgeon, who never played me any such pranks,
+yet refused to aid me in any way, lest, as he said, he should strengthen
+me in my sad delusion. He was convinced that I must be an historical
+student, whose reason had broken down through too close study of the
+eighteenth century; and he felt certain that sooner or later my friends
+would come to claim me. He is a gentle and humane man, against whom I
+have no personal complaint to make; but his initial misconception
+prevented him and everybody else from ever paying the least attention to
+my story. I could not even induce them to make inquiries at my house at
+Hampstead, where the discovery of the subterranean laboratory would have
+partially proved the truth of my account.
+
+"Many visitors came to the asylum from time to time, and they were
+always told that I possessed a minute and remarkable acquaintance with
+the history of the eighteenth century. They questioned me about facts
+which are as vivid in my memory as those of the present month, and were
+much surprised at the accuracy of my replies. But they only thought it
+strange that so clever a man should be so very mad, and that my
+information should be so full as to past events, while my notions about
+the modern world were so utterly chaotic. The surgeon, however, always
+believed that my reticence about all events posterior to 1781 was a part
+of my insanity. I had studied the early part of the eighteenth century
+so fully, he said, that I fancied I had lived in it; and I had persuaded
+myself that I knew nothing at all about the subsequent state of the
+world."
+
+The poor fellow stopped a while, and again drew his sleeve across his
+forehead. It was impossible to look at him and believe for a moment that
+he was a madman.
+
+"And how did you make your escape from the asylum?" I asked.
+
+"Now, this very evening," he answered; "I simply broke away from the
+door and ran down toward the Strand, till I came to a place that looked
+a little like St. Martin's Fields, with a great column and some
+fountains, and near there I met you. It seemed to me that the best thing
+to do was to catch the York coach and get away from the town as soon as
+possible. You met me, and your look and name inspired me with
+confidence. I believe you must be a descendant of my dear brother."
+
+"I have not the slightest doubt," I answered solemnly, "that every word
+of your story is true, and that you are really my great-great-uncle. My
+own knowledge of our family history exactly tallies with what you tell
+me. I shall spare no endeavour to clear up this extraordinary matter,
+and to put you once more in your true position."
+
+"And you will protect me?" he cried fervently, clasping my hand in both
+his own with intense eagerness. "You will not give me up once more to
+the asylum people?"
+
+"I will do everything on earth that is possible for you," I replied.
+
+He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it several times, while I felt
+hot tears falling upon it as he bent over me. It was a strange position,
+look at it how you will. Grant that I was but the dupe of a madman, yet
+even to believe for a moment that I, a man of well-nigh fifty, stood
+there in face of my own great-grandfather's brother, to all appearance
+some twenty years my junior, was in itself an extraordinary and
+marvellous thing. Both of us were too overcome to speak. It was a few
+minutes before we said anything, and then a loud knock at the door made
+my hunted stranger rise up hastily in terror from his chair.
+
+"Gracious Heavens!" he cried, "they have tracked me hither. They are
+coming to fetch me. Oh, hide me, hide me, anywhere from these wretches!"
+
+As he spoke, the door opened, and two keepers with a policeman entered
+my room.
+
+"Ah, here he is!" said one of them, advancing towards the fugitive, who
+shrank away towards the window as he approached.
+
+"Do not touch him," I exclaimed, throwing myself in the way. "Every word
+of what he says is true, and he is no more insane than I am."
+
+The keeper laughed a low laugh of vulgar incredulity. "Why, there's a
+pair of you, I do believe," he said. "You're just as mad yourself as
+t'other one." And he pushed me aside roughly to get at his charge.
+
+But the poor fellow, seeing him come towards him, seemed suddenly to
+grow instinct with a terrible vigour, and hurled off the keeper with one
+hand, as a strong man might do with a little terrier. Then, before we
+could see what he was meditating, he jumped upon the ledge of the open
+window, shouted out loudly, "Farewell, farewell!" and leapt with a
+spring on to the embankment beneath.
+
+All four of us rushed hastily down the three flights of steps to the
+bottom, and came below upon a crushed and mangled mass on the spattered
+pavement. He was quite dead. Even the policeman was shocked and
+horrified at the dreadful way in which the body had been crushed and
+mutilated in its fall, and at the suddenness and unexpectedness of the
+tragedy. We took him up and laid him out in my room; and from that room
+he was interred after the inquest, with all the respect which I should
+have paid to an undoubted relative. On his grave in Kensal Green
+Cemetery I have placed a stone bearing the simple inscription, "Jonathan
+Spottiswood. Died 1881." The hint I had received from the keeper
+prevented me from saying anything as to my belief in his story, but I
+asked for leave to undertake the duty of his interment on the ground
+that he bore my own surname, and that no other person was forthcoming to
+assume the task. The parochial authorities were glad enough to rid the
+ratepayers of the expense.
+
+At the inquest I gave my evidence simply and briefly, dwelling mainly
+upon the accidental nature of our meeting, and the facts as to his fatal
+leap. I said nothing about the known disappearance of Jonathan
+Spottiswood in 1781, nor the other points which gave credibility to his
+strange tale. But from this day forward I give myself up to proving the
+truth of his story, and realizing the splendid chemical discovery which
+promises so much benefit to mankind. For the first purpose, I have
+offered a large reward for the discovery of a trap-door in a coal-cellar
+at Hampstead, leading into a subterranean passage and laboratory; since,
+unfortunately, my unhappy visitor did not happen to mention the position
+of his house. For the second purpose, I have begun a series of
+experiments upon the properties of the essential oil of alchemilla, and
+the possibility of successfully treating it with carbonic anhydride;
+since, unfortunately, he was equally vague as to the nature of his
+process and the proportions of either constituent. Many people will
+conclude at once, no doubt, that I myself have become infected with the
+monomania of my miserable namesake, but I am determined at any rate not
+to allow so extraordinary an an�sthetic to go unacknowledged, if there
+be even a remote chance of actually proving its useful nature.
+Meanwhile, I say nothing even to my dearest friends with regard to the
+researches upon which I am engaged.
+
+
+
+
+_THE EMPRESS OF ANDORRA._
+
+
+All the troubles in Andorra arose from the fact that the town clerk had
+views of his own respecting the Holy Roman Empire.
+
+Of course everybody knows that for many centuries the Republic of
+Andorra, situated in an isolated valley among the Pyrenees, has enjoyed
+the noble and inestimable boon of autonomy. Not that the Andorrans have
+been accustomed to call it by that name, because, you see, the name was
+not yet invented; but the thing itself they have long possessed in all
+its full and glorious significance. The ancient constitution of the
+Republic may be briefly described as democracy tempered by stiletto. The
+free and independent citizens did that which seemed right in their own
+eyes; unless, indeed, it suited their convenience better to do that
+which seemed wrong; and, in the latter case, they did it unhesitatingly.
+So every man in Andorra stabbed or shot his neighbour as he willed,
+especially if he suspected his neighbour of a prior intention to stab or
+shoot him. The Republic contained no gallows, capital punishment having
+been entirely abolished, and, for the matter of that, all other
+punishment into the bargain. In short, the town of Andorra was really a
+very eligible place of residence for families or gentlemen, provided
+only they were decently expert in the use of the pistol.
+
+However, in this model little Republic, as elsewhere, society found
+itself ranged under two camps, the Liberal and the Conservative. And
+lest any man should herein suspect the present veracious historian of
+covert satirical intent, or sly allusion to the politics of neighbouring
+States, it may be well to add that there was not much to choose between
+the Liberals and the Conservatives of Andorra.
+
+Now, the town clerk was the acknowledged and ostensible head of the
+Great Liberal Party. His name in full consisted of some twenty
+high-sounding Spanish prenomens, followed by about the same number of
+equally high-sounding surnames; but I need only trouble you here with
+the first and last on the list, which were simply Se�or Don Pedro
+Henriquez. It happened that Don Pedro, being a learned man, took in all
+the English periodicals; and so I need hardly tell you that he was
+thoroughly well up in the Holy Roman Empire question. He could have
+passed a competitive examination on that subject before Mr. Freeman, or
+held a public discussion with Professor Bryce himself. The town clerk
+was perfectly aware that the Holy Roman Empire had come to an end, _pro
+tem._ at least, in the year eighteen hundred and something, when Francis
+the First, Second, or Third, renounced for himself and his heirs for
+ever the imperial Roman title. But the town clerk also knew that the
+Holy Roman Empire had often lain in abeyance for years or even
+centuries, and had afterwards been resuscitated by some Karl (whom the
+wicked call Charlemagne), some Otto, or some Henry the Fowler. And the
+town clerk, a bold and ambitious young man, reflecting on these things,
+had formed a deep scheme in his inmost heart. The deep scheme was after
+this wise.
+
+Why not revive the Holy Roman Empire _in Andorra_?
+
+Nothing could be more simple, more natural, or more in accordance with
+the facts of history. Even Mr. Freeman could have no plausible argument
+to urge against it. For observe how well the scheme hangs together.
+Andorra formed an undoubted and integral portion of the Roman Empire,
+having been included in Region VII., Diocese 13 (Hispania Citerior
+VIII.), under the division of Diocletian. But the Empire having gone to
+pieces at the present day, any fragment of that Empire may re-constitute
+itself the whole; "just as the tentacle of a hydra polype," said Don
+Pedro (who, you know, was a very learned man), "may re-constitute itself
+into a perfect animal, by developing a body, head, mouth, and
+foot-stalk." (This, as you are well aware, is called the Analogical
+Method of Political Reasoning.) Therefore, there was no just cause or
+impediment why Andorra should not set up to be the original and only
+genuine representative of the Holy Roman Empire, all others being
+spurious imitations.--Q. E. D.
+
+The town clerk had further determined in his own mind that he himself
+was the Karl (not Charlemagne) who was destined to raise up this revived
+and splendid Roman Empire. He had already struck coins in imagination,
+bearing on the obverse his image and superscription, and the proud title
+"Imp. Petrus P. F. Aug. Pater Patri�, Cos. XVIII.;" with a reverse of
+Victory crowned, and the legend "Renovatio Romanorum." But this part of
+his scheme he kept as yet deeply buried in the recesses of his own soul.
+
+As regards the details of this C�sarian plan, much diversity of opinion
+existed in the minds of the Liberal leaders. Don Pedro himself, as
+champion of education, proposed that the new Emperor should be elected
+by competitive examination; in which case he felt sure that his own
+knowledge of the Holy Roman Empire would easily place him at the head of
+the list. But his colleague, Don Luis Dacosta, who was the Joseph Hume
+of Andorran politics, rather favoured the notion of sending in sealed
+tenders for executing the office of Sovereign, the State not binding
+itself to accept the lowest or any other tender; and he had himself
+determined to make an offer for wearing the crown at the modest
+remuneration of three hundred pounds per annum, payable quarterly.
+Again, Don Iago Montes, a poetical young man, who believed firmly in
+_prestige_, advocated the idea of inviting the younger son of some
+German Grand-Duke to accept the Imperial Crown, and the faithful hearts
+of a loyal Andorran people. But these minor points could easily be
+settled in the future: and the important object for the immediate
+present, said Don Pedro, was the acceptance _in principle_ of the
+resuscitated Holy Roman Empire.
+
+Don Pedro's designs, however, met with considerable opposition from the
+Conservative party in the Folk Mote. (They called it Folk Mote, and not
+Cortes or Fueros, on purpose to annoy historical critics; and for the
+same reason they always styled their chief magistrate, not the Alcalde,
+but the Burgomaster.) The Conservative leader, Don Juan Pereira (first
+and last names only; intermediate thirty-eight omitted for want of
+space!) wisely observed that the good old constitution had suited our
+fathers admirably; that we did not wish to go beyond the wisdom of our
+ancestors; that young men were apt to prove thoughtless or precipitate;
+and finally that "Nolumus leges Andorr� mutare." Hereupon, Don Pedro
+objected that the growing anarchy of the citizens, whose stabbings were
+increasing by geometrical progression, called for the establishment of a
+strong government, which should curb the lawless habits of the _jeunesse
+dor�e_. But Don Juan retorted that stabbing was a very useful practice
+in its way; that no citizen ever got stabbed unless he had made himself
+obnoxious to a fellow-citizen, which was a gross and indefensible piece
+of incivism; and that stilettos had always been considered extremely
+respectable instruments by a large number of deceased Andorran worthies,
+whose names he proceeded to recount in a long and somewhat tedious
+catalogue. (This, you know, is called the Argument from Authority.) The
+Folk Mote, which consisted of men over forty alone, unanimously adopted
+Don Juan's views, and at once rejected the town clerk's Bill for the
+Resuscitation of the Holy Roman Empire.
+
+Thus driven to extremities, the town clerk determined upon a _coup
+d'�tat_. The appeal to the people alone could save Andorran Society. But
+being as cautious as he was ambitious, he decided not to display his
+hand too openly at first. Accordingly he resolved to elect an Empress to
+begin with; and then, by marrying the Empress, to become
+Emperor-Consort, after which he could easily secure the Imperial crown
+on his own account.
+
+To ensure the success of this excellent notion, Don Pedro trusted to the
+emotions of the populace. The way he did it was simply this.
+
+At that particular juncture, a beautiful young _prima donna_ had lately
+been engaged for the National Italian Opera, Andorra. She was to appear
+as the _Grande Duchesse_ on the very evening after that on which the
+Resuscitation Bill had been thrown out on a third reading. This amiable
+lady bore the name of Signorita Nora Obrienelli. She was of Italian
+parentage, but born in America, where her father, Signor Patricio
+Obrienelli, a banished Neapolitan nobleman and patriot, had been better
+known as Paddy O'Brien; having adopted that disguise to protect himself
+from the ubiquitous emissaries of King Bomba. However, on her first
+appearance upon any stage, the Signorita once more resumed her discarded
+patronymic of Obrienelli; and it is this circumstance alone which has
+led certain scandalous journalists maliciously to assert that her father
+was really an Irish chimney-sweep. But not to dwell on these
+genealogical details, it will suffice to say that Signorita Nora was a
+beautiful young lady with a magnificent soprano voice. The enthusiastic
+and gallant Andorrans were already wild at the mere sight of her
+beauty, and expected great things from her operatic powers.
+
+Don Pedro marked his opportunity. Calling on the _prima donna_ in the
+afternoon, faultlessly attired in frock-coat, chimney-pot, and lavender
+kid gloves, the ambitious politician offered her a bouquet worth at
+least three-and-sixpence, accompanied by a profound bow; and inquired
+whether the title and position of Empress would suit her views.
+
+"Down to the ground, my dear Don Pedro," replied the impulsive actress.
+"The resuscitation of the Holy Roman Empire has long been the dream of
+my existence."
+
+Half an hour sufficed to settle the details. The protocols were signed,
+the engagements delivered, and the fate of Andorra, with that of the
+Holy Roman Empire attached, trembled for a moment in the balance. Don
+Pedro hastily left to organize the _coup d'�tat_, and to hire a special
+body of _claqueurs_ for the occasion.
+
+Evening drew on apace, big with the fate of Pedro and of Rome. The Opera
+House was crowded. Stalls and boxes glittered with the partisans of the
+Liberal leader, the expectant hero of a revived C�sarism. The _claque_
+occupied the pit and gallery. Enthusiasm, real and simulated, knew no
+bounds. Signorita Obrienelli was almost smothered with bouquets; and the
+music of catcalls resounded throughout the house. At length, in the
+second act, when the _prima donna_ entered, crown on head and robes of
+state trained behind, in the official costume of the Grand-Duchess of
+Gerolstein, Don Pedro raised himself from his seat and cried in a loud
+voice, "Long live Nora, Empress of Andorra and of the Holy Roman
+Empire!"
+
+The whole audience rose as one man. "Long live the Empress," re-echoed
+from every side of the building. Handkerchiefs waved ecstatically; women
+sobbed with emotion; old men wept tears of joy that they had lived to
+behold the Renovation of the Romans. In five minutes the revolution was
+a _fait accompli_. Don Juan Pereira obtained early news of the _coup
+d'�tat_, and fled precipitately across the border, to escape the popular
+vengeance--not a difficult feat, as the boundaries of the quondam
+Republic extended only five miles in any direction. Thence the
+broken-hearted old patriot betook himself into France, where he intended
+at first to commit suicide, in imitation of Cato; but on second
+thoughts, he decided to proceed to Guernsey, where he entered into
+negotiations for purchasing Victor Hugo's house, and tried to pose as a
+kind of pendent to that banished poet and politician.
+
+Although this mode of election was afterwards commented upon as informal
+by the European Press, Don Pedro successfully defended it in a learned
+letter to the _Times_, under the signature of "Historicus Secundus," in
+which he pointed out that a similar mode has long been practised by the
+Sacred College, who call it "Electio per Inspirationem."
+
+The very next day, the Bishop of Urgel drove over to Andorra, and
+crowned the happy _prima donna_ as Empress. Great rejoicings immediately
+followed, and the illuminations were conducted on so grand a scale that
+the single tallow-chandler in the town sold out his entire
+stock-in-trade, and many houses went without candles for a whole week.
+
+Of course the first act of the grateful sovereign was to extend her
+favour to Don Pedro, who had been so largely instrumental in placing her
+upon the throne. She immediately created him Chancellor of Andorra and
+Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. The office of town clerk was abolished
+in perpetuity; while an hereditary estate of five acres was conferred
+upon H.E. the Chancellor and his posterity for ever.
+
+Don Pedro had now the long-wished-for opportunity of improving the
+social and political position of that Andorran people whom he had so
+greatly loved. He determined to endow them with Primary Education, a
+National Debt, Free Libraries and Museums, the Income Tax, Female
+Suffrage, Trial by Jury, Permissive Prohibitory Bills, a Plebiscitum, an
+Extradition Treaty, a Magna Charta Association, and all the other
+blessings of modern civilization. By these means he hoped to ingratiate
+himself in the public favour, and thus at length to place himself
+unopposed upon the Imperial and Holy Roman throne.
+
+His first step was the settlement of the Constitution. And as he was
+quite determined in his own mind that the poor little Empress should
+only be a puppet in the hands of her Chancellor, who was to act as Mayor
+of the Palace (observe how well his historical learning stood him in
+good stead on all occasions!), he decided that the revived Empire should
+take the form of a strictly limited monarchy. He had some idea, indeed,
+of proclaiming it as the "Holy Roman Empire (Limited);" but on second
+thoughts it occurred to him that the phrase might be misinterpreted as
+referring to the somewhat exiguous extent of the Andorran territory: and
+as he wished it to be understood that the new State was an aggressive
+Power, which contemplated the final absorption of all the other Latin
+races, he wisely refrained from the equivocal title. However, he settled
+the Constitution on a broad and liberal basis, after the following
+fashion. I quote from his rough draft-sketch, the completed document
+being too long for insertion in full.
+
+"The supreme authority resides in the Sovereign and the Folk Mote. The
+Sovereign reigns, but does not govern (at present). The Folk Mote has
+full legislative and deliberative powers. It consists of fourteen
+members, chosen from the fourteen wards of East and West Andorra.
+(Members for Spain, France, Portugal, and Italy may hereafter be added,
+raising the total complement to eighteen.) The right of voting is
+granted to all persons, male or female, above eighteen years of age. The
+executive power rests with the Chancellor of the Empire, who acts in
+the name of the Sovereign. He possesses a right of veto on all acts of
+the Folk Mote. His office is perpetual. _Vivat Imperatrix!_"
+
+This Constitution was proposed to a Public Assembly or Comitia of the
+Andorran people, and was immediately carried _nem. con._ Enthusiasm was
+the order of the day: Don Pedro was a handsome young man, of personal
+popularity: the ladies of Andorra were delighted with any scheme of
+government which offered them a vote: and the men had all a high opinion
+of Don Pedro's learning. So nobody opposed a single clause of the
+Constitution on any ground.
+
+The next step to be taken consisted in gaining the affections of the
+Empress. But here Don Pedro found to his consternation that he had
+reckoned without his hostess. It is an easy thing to make a revolution
+in the body politic, but it is much more serious to attempt a revolution
+in a woman's heart. Her Majesty's had long been bestowed elsewhere. It
+is true she had encouraged Don Pedro's attentions on his first momentous
+visit, but that might be largely accounted for on political grounds. It
+is true also that she was still quite ready to carry on an innocent
+flirtation with her handsome young Chancellor when he came to deliberate
+upon matters of state, but _that_ she had often done before with the
+lout of an actor who took the part of Fritz. "Prince," she would say,
+with one of her sunny smiles, "do just what you like about the
+Permissive Prohibitory Bill, and let us have a glass of sparkling
+Sillery together in the Council Chamber. You and I are too young, and,
+shall I say, too good-looking, to trouble our poor little heads about
+politics and such rubbish. Youth, after all, is nothing without
+champagne and love!"
+
+And yet her heart--her heart was over the sea. During one of her
+starring engagements among the Central American States, Signorita
+Obrienelli had made the acquaintance of Don Carlos Montillado, eldest
+son of the President of Guatemala. A mutual attachment had sprung up
+between the young couple, and had taken the practical form of bouquets,
+bracelets, and champagne suppers; but, alas! the difference in their
+ranks had long hindered the fulfilment of Don Carlos's anxious vows. His
+Excellency the President constantly declared that nothing could induce
+him to consent to a marriage between his son and a strolling actress--in
+such insolent terms did the wretch allude to the future occupant of an
+Imperial throne! Now, however, all was changed. Fate had smiled upon the
+happy lovers, and Don Carlos was already on his way to Andorra as
+Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from the
+Guatemalan Republic to the renovated Empire. The poor Chancellor
+discovered too late that he had baited a hook for his own destruction.
+
+However, he did not yet despair. To be sure the Empress, young,
+beautiful, and with a magnificent soprano voice, had seated herself
+firmly in the hearts of her susceptible subjects. Besides, her engaging
+manners, marked by all the charming _abandon_ of the stage, allowed her
+to make conquests freely among her lieges, each of whom she encouraged
+in turn, while smiling slily at the discarded rivals. Still, Don Pedro
+took heart once more. "Revolution enthroned her," he muttered between
+his teeth, "and counter-revolution shall disenthrone her yet. These
+silly people will smirk and bow while she pretends to be in love with
+every one of them from day to day; but when once the young Guatemalan
+has carried off the prize they will regret their folly, and turn to the
+Chancellor, whose heart has always been fixed upon the welfare of
+Andorra."
+
+With this object in view, the astute politician worked harder than ever
+for the regeneration of the State. His policy falls under two heads, the
+External and the Internal. Each head deserves a passing mention from the
+laborious historian.
+
+Don Pedro's External Policy consisted in the annexation of France,
+Spain, Portugal, and Italy, and the amalgamation of the Latin races.
+Accordingly, he despatched Ambassadors to the courts of those four
+Powers, informing them that the Holy Roman Empire had been resuscitated
+in Andorra, and inviting them to send in their adhesion to the new
+State. In that case he assured them that each country should possess a
+representative in the Imperial Folk Mote on the same terms as the
+several wards of Andorra itself, and that the settlement of local
+affairs should be left unreservedly to the minor legislatures, while the
+Chancellor of the Empire in person would manage the military and naval
+forces and the general executive department of the whole Confederation.
+As the four Powers refused to take any notice of Don Pedro's manifesto,
+the Chancellor declared to the Folk Mote his determination of treating
+them as recalcitrant rebels, and reducing them by force of arms.
+However, the Andorran army not being thoroughly mobilized, and indeed
+having fallen into a state of considerable demoralization, the ambitious
+prince decided to postpone the declaration of war _sine die_; and his
+Foreign Policy accordingly stood over for the time being.
+
+Don Pedro's Internal Policy embraced various measures of Finance,
+Electoral Law, Public Morals, and Police Regulation.
+
+The financial position of Andorra was now truly deplorable. In addition
+to the expenses of the Imperial Election, and the hire of post-horses
+for the Bishop of Urgel to attend the coronation, it cannot be denied
+that the Empress had fallen into most extravagant habits. She insisted
+upon drinking Veuve Clicquot every day for dinner, and upon ordering
+large quantities of _olives farcies_ and _p�t� de foie gras_, to which
+delicacies she was inordinately attached. She also sent to a Parisian
+milliner for two new bonnets, and had her measure taken for a _poult de
+Lyon_ dress. These expensive tastes, contracted upon the stage, soon
+drained the Andorran Exchequer, and the Folk Mote was at its wits' end
+to devise a Budget. One radical member had even the bad taste to call
+for a return of Her Majesty's millinery bill; but this motion the House
+firmly and politely declined to sanction. At last Don Pedro stepped in
+to solve the difficulty, and proposed an Act for the Inflation of the
+Currency.
+
+Inflation is a very simple financial process indeed. It consists in
+writing on a small piece of white paper, "This is a Dollar," or, "This
+is a Pound," as the case may be, and then compelling your creditors to
+accept the paper as payment in full for the amount written upon its
+face. The scheme met with perfect success, and Don Pedro was much
+bepraised by the press as the glorious regenerator of Andorran Finance.
+
+Among the Chancellor's plans for electoral reform the most important was
+the Bill for the Promotion of Infant Suffrage. Don Pedro shrewdly argued
+that if you wished to be popular in the future, you must enlist the
+sympathies of the rising generation by conferring upon them some signal
+benefit. Hence his advocacy of Infant Suffrage. In his great speech to
+the Folk Mote upon this important measure, he pointed out that the
+brutal doctrine of an appeal to force in the last resort ill befitted
+the nineteenth century. Many infants owned property; therefore they
+ought to be represented. Their property was taxed; no taxation without
+representation; therefore they ought to be represented. Great cruelties
+were often practised upon them by their parents, which showed how futile
+was the argument that their parents vicariously represented them;
+therefore they ought to be directly represented. An honourable member on
+the Opposition side had suggested that dogs were also taxed, and that
+great cruelties were occasionally practised upon dogs. Those facts were
+perfectly true, and he could only say that they proved to him the
+thorough desirability of insuring representation for dogs at some future
+day. But we must not move too fast. He was no hasty radical, no violent
+reconstructionist; he preferred, stone by stone, to build up the sure
+and perfect fabric of their liberties. So he would waive for the time
+being the question concerning the rights of dogs, and only move at
+present the third reading of the Bill for the Promotion of Infant
+Suffrage. A division was hardly necessary. The House passed the Act by a
+majority of twelve out of a total of fourteen members.
+
+The Bills for the Gratuitous Distribution of Lollipops, for the
+Wednesday and Saturday Whole Holidays, and for the Total Abolition of
+Latin Grammar, followed as a matter of course. The minds of the infant
+electors were thus thoroughly enlisted on the Chancellor's side.
+
+As to Moral Regeneration, that was mainly ensured by the Act for the
+Absolute Suppression of the Tea Trade. No man, said the Chancellor, had
+a right to endanger the health and happiness of his posterity by the
+pernicious habit of tea-drinking. Alcohol they had suppressed, and
+tobacco they had suppressed; but tea still remained a plague-spot in
+their midst. It had been proved that tea and coffee contained poisonous
+alkaloid principles, known as theine and caffeine (here the Chancellor
+displayed the full extent of his chemical learning), which were all but
+absolutely identical with the poisonous principles of opium, prussic
+acid, and atheistical literature generally. It might be said that this
+Bill endangered the liberty of the subject. No man had a greater respect
+for the liberty of the subject than he had; he adored, he idolized, he
+honoured with absolute apotheosis the liberty of the subject; but in
+what did it consist? Not, assuredly, in the right to imbibe a venomous
+drug, which polluted the stream of life for future generations, and was
+more productive of manifold diseases than even vaccination itself.
+"Tea," cried the orator passionately, raising his voice till the fresh
+whitewash on the ceiling of the Council Chamber trembled with
+sympathetic emotion; "Tea, forsooth! Call it rather strychnine! Call it
+arsenic! Call it the deadly Upas-tree of Java (_Antiaris toxicaria_,
+Linn�us)"--what prodigious learning!--"which poisons with its fatal
+breath whoever ventures to pass beneath its baleful shadow! I see it
+driving out of the field the harmless chocolate of our forefathers; I
+see it forcing its way into the earliest meal of morning, and the latest
+meal of eve. I see it now once more swarming over the Pyrenees from
+France, with Paris fashions and bad romances, to desecrate the sacred
+hour of five o'clock with its newfangled presence. The infant in arms
+finds it rendered palatable to his tender years by the insidious
+addition of copious milk and sugar; the hallowed reverence of age
+forgets itself in disgraceful excesses at the refreshment-room of
+railway stations. This is the ubiquitous pest which distils its venom
+into every sex and every age! This is the enchanted chalice of the
+Cathaian Circe which I ask you to repel to-day from the lips of the
+young, the pure, and the virtuous!"
+
+It was an able and eloquent effort; but even the Chancellor's powers
+were all but overtasked in so hard a struggle against ignorance and
+prejudice. Unhappily, several of the members were themselves secretly
+addicted to that cup of five o'clock tea to which Don Pedro so feelingly
+alluded. In the end, however, by taking advantage of the temporary
+absence of three senators, who had gone to indulge their favourite vice
+at home, the Bill triumphantly passed its third reading by an
+overwhelming majority of chocolate drinkers, and became forthwith the
+law of the Holy Roman Empire.
+
+Meanwhile Don Carlos Montillado had crossed the stormy seas in safety,
+and arrived by special mule at the city of Andorra. He took up his
+quarters at the Guatemalan Embassy, and immediately sent his card to the
+Empress and the Chancellor, requesting the honour of an early
+interview.
+
+The Empress at once despatched a note requesting Don Carlos to present
+himself without delay in the private drawing-room of the Palace. The
+happy lover and ambassador flew to her side, and for half an hour the
+pair enjoyed the delicious Paradise of a mutual attachment. At the end
+of that period Don Pedro presented himself at the door.
+
+"Your Majesty," he exclaimed in a tone of surprise, "this is a most
+irregular proceeding. His Excellency the Guatemalan Ambassador should
+have called in the first instance upon the Imperial Chancellor."
+
+"Prince," replied the Empress firmly, "I refuse to give you audience at
+present. I am engaged on private business--on _strictly_ private
+business--with his Excellency."
+
+"Excuse me," said the Chancellor blandly, "but I must assure your
+Majesty----"
+
+"Leave the room, Prince," said the Empress, with an impatient gesture.
+"Leave the room at once!"
+
+"Leave the room, fellow, when a lady speaks to you," cried the impetuous
+young Guatemalan, drawing his sword, and pushing Don Pedro bodily out of
+the door.
+
+The die was cast. The Rubicon was crossed. Don Pedro determined on a
+counter-revolution, and waited for his revenge. Nor had he long to wait.
+
+Half an hour later, as Don Carlos was passing out of the Palace on his
+way home to dress for dinner, six stout constables seized him by the
+arms, handcuffed him on the spot, and dragged him off to the Imperial
+prison. "At the suit of his Excellency the Chancellor," they said in
+explanation, and hurried him away without another word.
+
+The Empress was furious. "How dare you?" she shrieked to Don Pedro.
+"What right have you to imprison him--the accredited representative of a
+Foreign Power?"
+
+"Excuse me," answered Don Pedro, in his smoothest tone. "Article 39 of
+the Penal Code enacts that the person of the Chancellor is sacred, and
+that any individual who violently assaults him, with arms in hand, may
+be immediately committed to prison without trial, by her Majesty's
+command. Article 40 further provides that Foreign Ambassadors and other
+privileged persons are not exempt from the penalties of the previous
+Article."
+
+"But, sir," cried the angry little Empress (she was too excited now to
+remember that Don Pedro was a Prince), "I never gave any command to have
+Don Carlos imprisoned. Release him at once, I tell you."
+
+"Your Majesty forgets," replied the Chancellor quietly, "that by Article
+I of the Constitution the Sovereign reigns but does not govern. The
+prerogative is solely exercised through the Chancellor. _L'�tat, c'est
+moi!_" And he struck an attitude.
+
+"So you refuse to let him out!" said the Empress. "Mayn't I marry who I
+like? Mayn't I even settle who shall be my own visitors?"
+
+"Certainly not, your Majesty, if the interests of the State demand that
+it should be otherwise."
+
+"Then I'll resign," shrieked out the poor little Empress, with a burst
+of tears. "I'll withdraw. I'll retire. I'll abdicate."
+
+"By all means," said the Chancellor coolly. "We can easily find another
+Sovereign quite as good."
+
+The shrewd little ex-actress looked hard into Don Pedro's face. She was
+an adept in the art of reading emotions, and she saw at once what Don
+Pedro really wished. In a moment she had changed front, and stood up
+once more every inch an Empress. "No, I won't!" she cried; "I see you
+would be glad to get rid of me, and I shall stop here to baffle and
+thwart you; and I shall marry Carlos; and we shall fight it out to the
+bitter end." So saying, she darted out of the room, red-eyed but
+majestic, and banged the door after her with a slam as she went.
+
+Henceforward it was open war between them. Don Pedro did not dare to
+depose the Empress, who had still a considerable body of partisans
+amongst the Andorran people; but he resolutely refused to release the
+Guatemalan legate, and decided to accept hostilities with the Central
+American Republic, in order to divert the minds of the populace from
+internal politics. If he returned home from the campaign as a successful
+commander, he did not doubt that he would find himself sufficiently
+powerful to throw off the mask, and to assume the Imperial purple in
+name as well as in reality.
+
+Accordingly, before the Guatemalan President could receive the news of
+his son's imprisonment, Don Pedro resolved to prepare for war. His first
+care was to strengthen the naval resources of his country. The
+Opposition--that is to say, the Empress's party--objected that Andorra
+had no seaboard. But Don Pedro at once overruled that objection, by dint
+of several parallel instances. The Province of Upper Canada (now
+Ontario, added the careful historical student) had no seaboard, yet the
+Canadians placed numerous gunboats on the great lakes during the war of
+1812. (What research!) Again, the Nile, the Indus, the Ganges, and many
+other great rivers had been the scene of important naval engagements as
+early as B.C. 1082, which he could show from the evidence of papyri
+now preserved in the British Museum. (What universal knowledge!) The
+objection was frivolous. But, answered the Opposition, Andorra has
+neither lakes nor navigable rivers. This, Don Pedro considered, was mere
+hair-splitting. Perhaps they would tell him next it had no gutters or
+water-butts. Besides, we must accommodate ourselves to the environment.
+(This, you see, conclusively proves that the Chancellor had read Mr.
+Herbert Spencer, and was thoroughly well up in the minuti� of the
+Evolutionist Philosophy.) Had they never looked into their Thucydides?
+Did they not remember the famous _holkos_, or trench, whereby the
+Athenian triremes were lifted across the Isthmus of Corinth? Well, he
+proposed in like manner to order a large number of ironclads from an
+eminent Glasgow firm, to pull them overland up the Pyrenees, and to
+plant them on the mountain tops around Andorra as permanent batteries.
+That was what he meant by adaptation to the environment.
+
+So the order was given to the eminent Glasgow firm, who forthwith
+supplied the Empire with ten magnificent Clyde-built ironclads, having
+14-inch plates, and patent double-security rivets: mounting twelve
+eighty-ton guns apiece, and fitted up with all the latest Woolwich
+improvements. These vessels were then hauled up the mountains, as Don
+Pedro proposed; and there they stood, on the tallest neighbouring
+summits, in very little danger of going to the bottom, as the ironclads
+of other Powers are so apt to do. In return, Don Pedro tendered payment
+by means of five million pounds Inflated Currency, which he assured the
+eminent ship-builders were quite as good as gold, if not a great deal
+better. The firm was at first inclined to demur to this mode of payment;
+but Don Pedro immediately retorted that they did not seem to understand
+the Currency Question: and as this is an imputation which no gentleman
+could endure for a moment, the eminent ship-builders pocketed the
+inflated paper at once, and pretended to think no more about it.
+
+However, there was one man among them who rather mistrusted inflation,
+because, you see, his education had been sadly neglected, especially as
+regards the works of American Political Economists, in which Don Pedro
+was so deeply versed. Now, this ignorant and misguided man went straight
+off to the Stock Exchange with his share of the five millions, and
+endeavoured to negotiate a few hundred thousands for pocket-money. But
+it turned out that all the other Stock Exchange magnates were just as
+ill-informed as himself with respect to inflation and the Currency
+Question at large: and they persisted in declaring that a piece of
+paper is really none the better for having the words "This is a Pound"
+written across its face. So the eminent ship-builder returned home
+disconsolate, and next day instituted proceedings in Chancery against
+the Holy Roman Empire at Andorra for the recovery of five million pounds
+sterling. What came at last of this important suit you shall hear in the
+sequel.
+
+Meanwhile, poor Don Carlos remained incarcerated in the Imperial prison,
+and preparations for war went on with vigour and activity, both in
+Andorra and Guatemala. Naturally, the greatest excitement prevailed
+throughout Europe, and especially in the sympathetic Republic of San
+Marino. Very different views of the situation were expressed by the
+various periodicals of that effusive State. The _Matutinal Agitator_
+declared that Andorra under the Obrienelli dynasty had become a
+dangerously aggressive Power, and that no peace could be expected in
+Europe until the Andorrans had been taught to recognize their true
+position in the scale of nations. The _Vespertinal Sentimentalist_, on
+the other hand, looked upon the Guatemalans as wanton disturbers of the
+public quietude, and considered Andorra in the favourable light of an
+oppressed nationality. The _Hebdomadal Tranquillizer_, which treated
+both sides with contempt--avowing that it held the Andorrans to be
+little better than lawless brigands, in the last stage of bankruptcy;
+and the Guatemalans to be mere drunken half-castes, incapable of attack
+or defence for want of men and money--this lukewarm and mean-spirited
+journal, I say, was treated with universal contumely as a wretched
+time-server, devoid of human sympathies and of proper cosmopolitan
+expansiveness. At length, however, through the good offices of the San
+Marino Government, both Powers were induced to lay aside the thought of
+needless bloodshed, and to discuss the terms of a mutual understanding
+at a Pan-Hispanic Congress to be held in the neutral metropolis of
+Monaco.
+
+Invitations to attend the Congress were issued to all the
+Spanish-speaking nations on both sides of the Atlantic. There were a few
+trifling refusals, it is true, as Spain, Mexico, and the South American
+States declined to send representatives to the proposed meeting: but
+still a goodly array of plenipotentiaries met to discuss the terms of
+peace. Envoys from Andorra, from Guatemala, and from the other Central
+American Republics--one of whom was of course a Chevalier of the Exalted
+Order of the Holy Rose of Honduras, while another represented the latest
+President of Nicaragua--sat down by the side of a coloured marquis from
+San Domingo, and a mulatto general who presented credentials from the
+Republic of Cuba--since unhappily extinct. Thus it will be seen at a
+glance that the Congress wanted nothing which could add to its imposing
+character, either as an International Parliament or as an expression of
+military Pan-Hispanic force. Europe felt instinctively that its
+deliberations were backed up by all the vast terrestrial and naval
+armaments of its constituent Powers.
+
+But while Don Pedro was pulling the wires of the Monaco convention (by
+telegraph) from his headquarters at Andorra--he could not himself have
+attended its meeting, lest his august Sovereign should embrace the
+opportunity of releasing the captive Guatemalan and so stopping his
+hopes of future success--he had to contend at home, not only with the
+covert opposition of the brave little Empress, but also with the open
+rebellion of a disaffected minority. The five wards which constitute
+East Andorra had long been at secret variance with the nine wards of
+West Andorra; and they seized upon this moment of foreign complications
+to organize a Home Rule party, and set on foot a movement of secession.
+After a few months of mere parliamentary opposition, they broke at last
+into overt acts of treason, seized on three of Don Pedro's ironclads,
+and proclaimed themselves a separate government under the title of the
+Confederate Wards of Andorra. This last blow almost broke Don Pedro's
+heart. He had serious thoughts of giving up all for lost, and retiring
+into a monastery for the term of his natural life.
+
+As it happened, however, the Chancellor was spared the necessity for
+that final humiliation, and the Pan-Hispanic Congress was relieved of
+its arduous duties by the sudden intervention of a hitherto passive
+Power. Great Britain woke at last to a sense of her own prestige and the
+necessities of the situation. The Court of Chancery decided that the
+Inflated Currency was not legal tender, and adjudicated the bankrupt
+state of Andorra to the prosecuting creditors, the firm of eminent
+ship-builders at Glasgow. A sheriff's officer, backed by a company of
+British Grenadiers, was despatched to take possession of the territory
+in the name of the assignees, and to repel any attempt at armed
+resistance.
+
+Political considerations had no little weight in the decision which led
+to this imposing military demonstration. It was felt that if we
+permitted Guatemala to keep up a squadron of ironclads in the Caribbean,
+a perpetual menace would overshadow our tenure of Jamaica and Barbadoes:
+while if we suffered Andorra to overrun the Peninsula, our position at
+Gibraltar would not be worth a fortnight's purchase. For these reasons
+the above-mentioned expeditionary force was detailed for the purpose of
+attaching the insolent Empire, liberating the imprisoned Guatemalan, and
+entirely removing the _casus belli_. It was hoped that such prompt and
+vigorous action would deter the Central American States from their
+extensive military preparations, which had already reached to several
+pounds of powder and over one hundred stand of Martini-Henry rifles.
+
+Our demonstration was quite as successful as the "little wars" of Great
+Britain have always been. Don Pedro made some show of resistance with
+his eighty-ton guns; but finding that the contractors had only supplied
+them with wooden bores, he deemed it prudent at length to beat a
+precipitate retreat. As to the poor little Empress, she had long learned
+to regard herself as a cypher in the realm over which she reigned but
+did not govern; and she was therefore perfectly ready to abdicate the
+throne, and resign the crown jewels to the sheriff's officer. She did so
+with the less regret, because the crown was only aluminium, and the
+jewels only paste--being, in fact, the identical articles which she had
+worn in her theatrical character as the Grand-Duchess of Gerolstein. The
+quondam republic was far from rich, and it had been glad to purchase
+these convenient regalia from the property-man at the theatre on the
+eventful morning of the Imperial Coronation.
+
+Don Carlos was immediately liberated by the victorious troops, and
+rushed at once into the arms of his inamorata. The Bishop of Urgel
+married them as private persons on the very same afternoon. The
+ex-Empress returned to the stage, and made her first reappearance in
+London, where the history of her misfortunes, and the sympathy which the
+British nation always extends to the conquered, rapidly secured her an
+unbounded popularity. Don Carlos practised with success on the violin,
+and joined the orchestra at the same house where his happy little wife
+appeared as _prima donna_. Se�or Montillado the elder at first announced
+his intention of cutting off his son with a shilling; but being shortly
+after expelled from the Presidency of the Guatemalan Republic by one of
+the triennial revolutions which periodically diversify life in that
+volcanic state, he changed his mind, took the mail steamer to
+Southampton, and obtained through his son's influence a remunerative
+post as pantaloon at a neighbouring theatre.
+
+The eminent ship-builders took possession of East and West Andorra,
+quelled the insurrectionary movement of the Confederate Wards, and
+brought back the ten ironclads, together with the crown jewels and other
+public effects. On the whole, they rather gained than lost by the
+national bankruptcy, as they let out the conquered territory to the
+Andorran people at a neat little ground-rent of some �20,000 per annum.
+
+Don Pedro fled across the border to Toulouse, where he obtained
+congenial employment as clerk to an avou�. He was also promptly elected
+secretary to the local Academy of Science and Art, a post for which his
+varied attainments fit him in the highest degree. He has given up all
+hopes of the resuscitation of the Holy Roman Empire, and is now engaged
+to a business-like young woman at the Caf� de l'Univers, who will
+effectually cure him of all lingering love for transcendental politics.
+
+Finally, if any hypercritical person ventures to assert that this
+history is based upon a total misconception of the Holy Roman Empire
+question--that I am completely mistaken about Francis II., utterly wrong
+about Otto the Great, and hopelessly fogged about Henry the Fowler--I
+can only answer, that I take these statements as I find them in the
+note-books of Don Pedro, and the printed debates of the Andorran Folk
+Mote. Like a veracious historian, I cannot go beyond my authorities. But
+I think you will agree with me, my courteous reader, that the dogmatic
+omniscience of these historical critics is really beginning to surpass
+human endurance.
+
+
+
+
+_THE SENIOR PROCTOR'S WOOING:_
+
+A TALE OF TWO CONTINENTS.
+
+
+I.
+
+I was positively blinded. I could hardly read the note, a neatly written
+little square sheet of paper; and the words seemed to swim before my
+eyes. It was in the very thick of summer term, and I, Cyril Payne, M.A.,
+Senior Proctor of the University of Oxford, was calmly asked to
+undertake the sole charge for a week of a wild American girl, travelling
+alone, and probably expecting me to run about with her just as foolishly
+as I had done at Nice. There it lay before me, that awful note, in its
+overwhelming conciseness, without hope of respite or interference. It
+was simply crushing.
+
+     "MY DEAR MR. PAYNE,
+
+     "I am coming to Oxford, as you advised me. I shall arrive to-morrow
+     by the 10.15 a.m. train, and mean to stop at the Randolph. I hope
+     you will kindly show me all the lions.
+
+  "Yours very sincerely,
+  "IDA VAN RENSSELAER."
+
+It was dated Tuesday, and this was Wednesday morning. I hadn't opened my
+letters before seeing last night's charges at nine o'clock; and it was
+now just ten. In a moment the full terror of the situation flashed upon
+me. She had started; she was already almost here; there was no
+possibility of telegraphing to stop her; before I could do anything, she
+would have arrived, have taken rooms at the Randolph, and have come
+round in her queer American manner to call upon me. There was not a
+moment to be lost. I must rush down to the station and meet her--in full
+academicals, velvet sleeves and all, for a Proctor must never be seen in
+the morning in mufti. If there had been half an hour more, I could have
+driven round by the Parks and called for my sister Annie, who was
+married to the Rev. Theophilus Sheepshanks, Professor of Comparative
+Osteology, and who might have helped me out of the scrape. But as things
+stood, I was compelled to burst down the High just as I was, hail a
+hansom opposite Queen's, and drive furiously to the station in bare time
+to meet the 10.15 train. At all hazards, Ida Van Rensselaer must not go
+to the Randolph, and must be carried off to Annie's, whether she would
+or not. On the way down I had time to arrange my plan of action; and
+before I reached the station, I thought I saw my way dimly out of the
+awful scrape which this mad Yankee girl had so inconsiderately got me
+into.
+
+I had met Ida Van Rensselaer the winter before at Nice. We stopped
+together at a pension on the Promenade des Anglais; and as I was away
+from Oxford--for even a Proctor must unbend sometimes--and as she was a
+pleasant, lively young person with remarkably fine eyes, travelling by
+herself, I had taken the trouble to instruct her in European scenery and
+European art. She had a fancy for being original, so I took her to see
+Eza, and Roccabrunna, and St. Pons, and all the other queer picturesque
+little places in the Nice district which no American had ever dreamt of
+going to see before: and when Ida went on to Florence, I happened--quite
+accidentally, of course--to turn up at the very same pension three days
+later, where I gave her further lessons in the art of admiring the early
+medi�val masters and the other treasures of Giotto's city. I was a bit
+of a collector myself, and in my rooms at Magdalen I flatter myself that
+I have got the only one genuine Botticelli in a private collection in
+England. In spite of her untamed American savagery, Ida had a certain
+taste for these things, and evidently my lessons gave her the first
+glimpse she had ever had of that real interior Europe whose culture she
+had not previously suspected. It is pleasant to teach a pretty pupil,
+and in the impulse of a weak moment--it was in a gondola at Venice--I
+even told her that she should not leave for America without having seen
+Oxford. Of course I fancied that she would bring a chaperon. Now she had
+taken me at my word, but she had come alone. I had brought it all upon
+myself, undoubtedly; though how the dickens I was ever to get out of it
+I could not imagine.
+
+As I reached the station, the 10.15 was just coming in. I cast a wild
+glance right and left, and saw at least a dozen undergraduates, without
+cap or gown, loitering on the platform in obvious disregard of
+university law. But I felt far too guilty to proctorize them, and I was
+terribly conscious that all their eyes were fixed upon me, as I moved up
+and down the carriages looking for my American friend. She caught my eye
+in a moment, peering out of a second-class window--she had told me that
+she was not well off--and I thought I should have sunk in the ground
+when she jumped lightly out, seized my hand warmly, and cried out quite
+audibly, in her pretty faintly American voice, "My dear Mr. Payne, I am
+so glad you've come to meet me. Will you see after my baggage--no,
+luggage you call it in England, don't you?--and get it sent up to the
+Randolph, please, at once?"
+
+Was ever Proctor so tried on this earth? But I made an effort to smile
+it off. "My sister is so sorry she could not come to meet you, Miss Van
+Rensselaer," I said in my loudest voice, for I saw all those twelve
+sinister undergraduates watching afar off with eager curiosity; "but she
+has sent me down to carry you off in her stead, and she begs you won't
+think of going to the Randolph, but will come and make her house your
+home as long as you stay in Oxford." I flattered myself that the twelve
+odious young men, who were now forming a sort of irregular circle around
+us, would be completely crushed by that masterly stroke: though what on
+earth Annie would say at being saddled with this Yankee girl for a week
+I hardly dared to fancy. For Annie was a Professor's wife: and the
+dignity of a Professor's wife is almost as serious a matter as that of a
+Senior Proctor himself.
+
+Imagine my horror, then, when Ida answered, with her frank smile and
+sunny voice, "Your sister! I didn't know you had a sister. And anyhow, I
+haven't come to see your sister, but yourself. And I'd better go to the
+Randolph straight, I'm sure, because I shall feel more at home there.
+You can come round and see me whenever you like, there; and I mean you
+to show me all Oxford, now I've come here, that's certain."
+
+I glanced furtively at the open-eared undergraduates, and felt that the
+game was really up. I could never face them again. I must resign
+everything, take orders, and fly to a country rectory. At least, I
+thought so on the spur of the moment.
+
+But something must clearly be done. I couldn't stand and argue out the
+case with Ida before those twelve young fiends, now reinforced by a
+group of porters; and I determined to act strategically--that is to say,
+tell a white lie. "You can go to the Randolph, of course, if you wish,
+Miss Van Rensselaer," I said; "will you come and show me which is your
+luggage? Here, you, sir," to one of the porters,--a little angrily, I
+fear,--"come and get this lady's boxes, will you?"
+
+In a minute I had secured the boxes, and went out for a cab. There was
+nothing left but a single hansom. Demoralized as I was, I took it, and
+put Ida inside. "Drive to Lechlade Villa, the Parks," I whispered to the
+cabby--that was Annie's address--and I jumped in beside my torturer. As
+we drove up by the Corn-market, I could see the porters and scouts of
+Balliol and John's all looking eagerly out at the unwonted sight of a
+Senior Proctor in full academicals, driving through the streets of
+Oxford in a hansom cab, with a lady by his side. As for Ida, she
+remained happily unconscious, though I blamed her none the less for it.
+In her native wilds I knew that such vagaries were permitted by the
+rules of society; but she ought surely to have known that in Europe they
+were not admissible.
+
+"Now, Miss Van Rensselaer," I said as we turned the corner of Carfax, "I
+am taking you to my sister's. Excuse my frankness if I tell you that,
+according to English, and especially to Oxford etiquette, it would never
+do for you to go to an hotel. People's sense of decorum would be
+scandalized if they learnt that a lady had come alone to visit the
+Senior Proctor, and was stopping at the Randolph. Don't you see yourself
+how very odd it looks?"
+
+"Well, no," said Ida promptly; "I think you are a dreadfully suspicious
+people: you seem always to credit everybody with the worst motives. In
+America, we think people mean no harm, and don't look after them so
+sharply as you do. But I really can't go to your sister's. I don't know
+her, and I haven't been invited. Does she know I'm coming?"
+
+"Well, I can't say she does," I answered hesitatingly. "You see, your
+letter only reached me half an hour ago, and I had no time to see her
+before I went to meet you."
+
+"Then I certainly won't go, Mr. Payne, that's certain."
+
+"But my dear Miss Van Rensselaer----"
+
+"Not the slightest use, I assure you. I _can't_ go to a house where
+they don't even know I'm coming. Driver, will you go to the Randolph
+Hotel, please?"
+
+I sank back paralyzed and unmanned. This girl was one too many for me.
+"Miss Van Rensselaer," I cried, in a last despairing fit, "do you know
+that as Senior Proctor of the University I have the power to order you
+away from Oxford; and that if I told them at the Randolph not to take
+you in, they wouldn't dare to do it?"
+
+"Well really, Mr. Payne, I dare say you have some extraordinary medi�val
+customs here, but you can hardly mean to send me away again by main
+force. I shall go to the Randolph."
+
+And she went. I had to draw up solemnly at the door, to accompany her to
+the office, and to see her safely provided with a couple of rooms before
+I could get away hastily to the Ancient House of Convocation, where
+public business was being delayed by my absence. As I hurried through
+the Schools Quadrangle, I felt like a convicted malefactor going to face
+his judges, and self-condemned by his very face.
+
+That afternoon, as soon as I had gulped down a choking lunch, I bolted
+down to the Parks and saw Annie. At first I thought it was a hopeless
+task to convince her that Ida Van Rensselaer's conduct was, from an
+American point of view, nothing extraordinary. She persisted in
+declaring that such goings-on were not respectable, and that I was
+bound, as an officer of the University, to remove the young woman at
+once from the eight-mile radius over which my jurisdiction extended. I
+pleaded in vain that ladies in America always travelled alone, and that
+nobody thought anything of it. Annie pertinently remarked that that
+would be excellent logic in New York, but that it was quite
+un-Aristotelian in Oxford. "When your American friends come to Rome,"
+she said coldly--as though I were in the habit of importing Yankee girls
+wholesale--"they must do as Rome does." But when I at last pointed out
+that Ida, as an American citizen, could appeal to her minister if I
+attempted to turn her out, and that we might find ourselves the centre
+of an international quarrel--possibly even a _casus belli_--she finally
+yielded with a struggle. "For the sake of respectability," she said
+solemnly, "I'll go and call on this girl with you; but remember, Cyril,
+I shall never undertake to help you out of such a disgraceful scrape a
+second time." I sneaked out into the garden to wait for her, and felt
+that the burden of a Proctorship was really more than I could endure.
+
+We called duly upon Ida, that very hour, and Ida certainly behaved
+herself remarkably well. She was so charmingly frank and pretty, she
+apologized so simply to Annie for her ignorance of English etiquette,
+and she was so obviously guileless and innocent-hearted in all her talk,
+that even Annie herself--who is, I must confess, a typical don's
+wife--was gradually mollified. To my great surprise, Annie even asked
+her to dinner _en famille_ the same evening, and suggested that I should
+make an arrangement with the Junior Proctor to take my work, and join
+the party. I consented, not without serious misgivings; but I felt that
+if Ida was really going to stop a week, it would be well to put the best
+face upon it, and to show her up in company with Annie as often as
+possible. That might just conceivably take the edge off the keen blade
+of University scandal.
+
+To cut a long story short, Ida did stop her week, and I got through it
+very creditably after all. Annie behaved like a brick, as soon as the
+first chill was over; for though she is married to a professor of dry
+bones (Comparative Osteology sounds very well, but means no more than
+that, when you come to think of it), she is a woman at heart in spite of
+it all. Ida had the most winning, charming, confiding manner; and she
+was so pleased with Oxford, with the colleges, the libraries, the
+gardens, the river, the boats, the medi�val air, the whole place, that
+she quite gained Annie over to her side. Nay, my sister even discovered
+incidentally that Ida had a little fortune of her own, amounting to some
+�300 a year, which, though it doesn't count for much in America, would
+be a neat little sum to a man like myself, in England; and she shrewdly
+observed, in her sensible business-like manner, that it would quite make
+up for the possible loss of my Magdalen fellowship. I am not exactly
+what you call a marrying man--at least, I know I had never got married
+before; but as the week wore on, and I continued boating, flirting, and
+acting showman to Ida, Annie of course always assisting for propriety's
+sake, I began to feel that the Proctor was being conquered by the man. I
+fell most seriously and undoubtedly in love. Ida admired my rooms, was
+charmed with the pretty view from my windows over Magdalen Bridge and
+the beautiful gardens, and criticized my Botticelli with real sympathy.
+I was interested in her; she was so fresh, so real, and so genuinely
+delighted with the new world which opened before her. It was almost her
+first glimpse of the true interior Europe, and she was fascinated with
+it, as all better American minds invariably are when they feel the charm
+of its contrast with their own hurrying, bustling, mushroom world. The
+week passed easily and pleasantly enough; and when it was drawing to an
+end, I had half made up my mind to propose to Ida Van Rensselaer.
+
+The day before she was to leave she told us she would not go out in the
+afternoon; so I determined to stroll down the river to Iffley by myself
+in a "tub dingey"--a small boat with room in it for two, if occasion
+demands. When I reached the Iffley Lock, imagine my horror at seeing Ida
+in the middle of the stream, quietly engaged in paddling herself down
+the river in a canoe. I ran my dingey close beside her, drove her
+remorselessly against the bank, and handed her out on to the meadow,
+before she could imagine what I was driving at.
+
+"Now, Miss Van Rensselaer," I said sternly, "this will never do. By
+herculean efforts Annie and I have got over this week without serious
+scandal; and at the last moment you endeavour to wreck our plans by
+canoeing down the open river by yourself before the eyes of the whole
+University. Everybody will talk about the Senior Proctor's visitor
+having been seen indecorously paddling about in broad daylight in a boat
+of her own."
+
+"I didn't know there was any harm in it," said Ida penitently; for she
+was beginning to understand the real seriousness of University
+etiquette.
+
+"Well," I answered, "it can't be helped now. You must get into my boat
+at once--I'll send one of Salter's men down to fetch your canoe--and we
+must row straight back to Oxford immediately."
+
+She obeyed me mechanically, and I began to pull away for very life.
+"There's nothing for it now," I said pensively, "except to propose to
+you. I half meant to do it before, and now I've quite made up my mind.
+Will you have me?"
+
+Ida looked at me without surprise, but with a little pleasure in her
+face. "What nonsense!" she said quietly. "I knew you were going to
+propose to me this afternoon, and so I came out alone to keep out of
+your way. You haven't had time to make up your mind properly yet."
+
+As I looked at her beautiful calm face and lovely eyes I forgot
+everything. In a moment, I was over head and ears in love again, and
+conscious of nothing else. "Ida," I cried, looking at her steadily,
+"Ida!"
+
+"Now, please stop," said Ida, before I could get any further. "I know
+exactly what you're going to say. You're going to say, 'Ida, I love
+you.' Don't desecrate the verb _to love_ by draggling it more than it
+has already been draggled through all the grammars of every European
+language. I've conjugated _to love_, myself, in English, French,
+German, and Italian; and you've conjugated it in Latin and Greek, and
+for aught I know in Anglo-Saxon and Coptic and Assyrian as well; so now
+let's have done with it for ever, and conjugate some other verb more
+worthy the attention of two rational and original human beings. Can't
+you strike out a line for yourself?"
+
+"You're quite mistaken," I answered curtly, for I wasn't going to be
+browbeaten in that way; "I meant to say nothing of the sort. What I did
+mean to say--and I'll trouble you to listen to it attentively--was just
+this. You seem to me about as well suited to my abstract requirements as
+any other young woman I have ever met: and if you're inclined to take
+me, we might possibly arrange an engagement."
+
+"What a funny man you are!" she went on innocently. "You don't propose
+at all _en r�gle_. I've had twelve men propose to me separately in a
+boat in America, and you make up the baker's dozen: but all the others
+leaned forward lackadaisically, dropped the oars when they were
+beginning to get serious, and looked at me sentimentally; while you go
+on rowing all the time as if there was nothing unusual in it."
+
+"Probably," I suggested, "your twelve American admirers attached more
+importance to the ceremony than I do. But you haven't answered my
+question yet."
+
+"Let me ask you one instead," she said, more seriously. "Do you think
+I'm at all the kind of person for a Senior Proctor's wife? You say I
+suit your abstract requirements, but one can't get married in the
+abstract, you know. Viewed concretely, don't you fancy I'm about the
+most unsuitable helpmate you could possibly light upon?"
+
+"The profound consciousness of that indubitable fact," I replied
+carelessly, "has made me struggle in a hopeless sort of way against the
+irresistible impulse to propose to you ever since I saw you first. But I
+suppose Senior Proctors are much the same as other men. They fly like
+moths about the candle, and can't overcome the temptation of singeing
+their wings."
+
+"If I had any notion of accepting you," said Ida reflectively, "I should
+at least have the consolation of knowing that you didn't make anything
+by your bargain; for my fifteen hundred dollars would just amount to the
+three hundred a year which you would have to give up with your
+fellowship."
+
+"Quite so," I answered; "I see you come of a business-like nation; and
+I, as former bursar of my college, am a man of business myself. So I
+have no reason for concealing from you the fact that I have a private
+income of about four hundred a year, besides University appointments
+worth five hundred more, which would not go with the fellowship."
+
+"Do you really think me sordid enough to care for such considerations?"
+
+"If I did, I wouldn't have taken the trouble to tell you them. I merely
+mentioned the facts for their general interest, and not as bearing on
+the question in hand."
+
+"Well, then, Mr. Payne, you shall have my answer.--No."
+
+"Is it final?"
+
+"Is anything human final, except one's twenty-ninth birthday? I choose
+it to be final for the present, and 'the subject then dropped,' as the
+papers say about debates in Congress. Let us have done now with this
+troublesome verb altogether, and conjugate our return to Oxford instead.
+See what bunches of fritillaries again! I never saw anything prettier,
+except the orange-lilies in New Hampshire. If you like, you may come to
+America next season. You would enjoy our woodlands."
+
+"Where shall I find you?"
+
+"At Saratoga."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Any day from July the first."
+
+"Good," I said, after a moment's reflection. "If I stick to my fancy for
+flying into the candle, you will see me there. If I change my mind, it
+won't matter much to either of us."
+
+So we paddled back to Oxford, talking all the way of indifferent
+subjects, of England and our English villages, and enjoying the peaceful
+greenness of the trees and banks. It was half-past six when we got to
+Salter's barge, and I walked with Ida as far as the Randolph. Then I
+returned to college, feeling very much like an undetected sheep-stealer,
+and had a furtive sort of dinner served up in my own room. Next morning,
+I confess it was with a sigh of relief that Annie and I saw Ida Van
+Rensselaer start from the station _en route_ for Liverpool. It was quite
+a fortnight before I could face my own bulldogs unabashed, and I bowed
+with a wan and guilty smile upon my face whenever any one of those
+twelve undergraduates capped me in the High till the end of term. I
+believe they never missed an opportunity of meeting me if they saw a
+chance open. I was glad indeed when long vacation came to ease me of my
+office and my troubles.
+
+
+II.
+
+Congress Hall in Saratoga is really one of the most comfortable hotels
+at which I ever stopped. Of course it holds a thousand guests, and
+covers an unknown extent of area: it measures its passages by the mile
+and its carpets by the acre. All that goes unsaid, for it is a big
+American hotel; but it is also a very pleasant and luxurious one, even
+for America. I was not sorry, on the second of July, to find myself
+comfortably quartered (by elevator) in room No. 547 on the fifth floor,
+with a gay look-out on Broadway and the Columbia Spring. After ten days
+of dismal rolling on the mid-Atlantic, and a week of hurry and bustle in
+New York, I found it extremely delightful to sit down at my ease in
+summer quarters, on a broad balcony overlooking the leafy promenade, to
+sip my iced cobbler like a prince, and to watch that strange, new, and
+wonderfully holiday life which was unfolding itself before my eyes. Such
+a phantasmagoria of brightly-dressed women in light but costly silks, of
+lounging young men in tweed suits and panama hats, of sulkies,
+carriages, trotting horses, string bands, ice-creams, effervescing
+drinks, cool fruits, green trees, waving bunting, lilac blossoms, roses,
+and golden sunshine I had never seen till then, and shall never see
+again, I doubt me, until I can pay a second visit to Saratoga. It was a
+midsummer saturnalia of strawberries and acacia flowers, gone mad with
+excessive mint julep.
+
+"After all," said I to myself, "even if I don't happen to run up against
+Ida Van Rensselaer, I shall have taken as pleasant a holiday as I could
+easily have found in old Europe. Everybody is tired of Switzerland and
+Italy, so, happy thought, try Saratoga. On the other hand, if Ida keeps
+her tryst, I shall have one more shot at her in the shape of a proposal;
+and then if she really means no, I shall be none the worse off than if I
+had stayed in England." In which happy-go-lucky and philosophic frame of
+mind I sat watching the crowd in the Broadway after dinner, in _utrumque
+paratus_, ready either to marry Ida if she would have me, or to go home
+again in the autumn, a joyous bachelor, if she did not turn up according
+to her promise. A very cold-blooded attitude that to assume towards the
+tender passion, no doubt; but after all, why should a sensible man of
+thirty-five think it necessary to go wild for a year or two like a
+hobbledehoy, and convert himself into a perambulating statue of
+melancholy, simply because one particular young woman out of the nine
+hundred million estimated to inhabit this insignificant planet has
+refused to print his individual name upon her visiting cards? Ida would
+make as good a Mrs. Cyril Payne as any other girl of my acquaintance--no
+doubt; indeed, I am inclined to say, a vast deal a better one; but there
+are more women than five in the world, and if you strike an average I
+dare say most of them are pretty much alike.
+
+As I sat and looked, I could not help noticing the extraordinary
+magnificence of all the _toilettes_ in the promenade. Nowhere in Europe
+can you behold such a republican dead level of reckless extravagance.
+Every woman was dressed like a princess, nothing more and nothing less.
+I began to wonder how poor little Ida, with her simple and tasteful
+travelling gowns, would feel when she found herself cast in the midst of
+these gorgeous silks and these costly satin grenadines. Look, for
+example, at that pair now strolling along from Spring Avenue: a New York
+exquisite in the very coolest of American summer suits, and a New York
+_�l�gante_ (their own word, I assure you) in a splendid but graceful
+grey silk dress, gold bracelet, diamond ear-rings, and every other item
+in her costume of the finest and costliest. What would Ida do in a crowd
+of such women as that?... Why ... gracious heavens! ... can it be?...
+No, it can't.... Yes, it must.... Well, to be sure, it positively
+is--Ida herself!
+
+My first impulse was to lean over the balcony and call out to her, as I
+would have called out to a friend whom I chanced to see passing in
+Magdalen quad. Not an unnatural impulse either, seeing that (in spite of
+my own prevarications to myself) I had after all really come across the
+Atlantic on purpose to see her. But on second thoughts it struck me that
+even Ida might perhaps find such a proceeding a trifle unconventional,
+especially now that she was habited in such passing splendour. Besides,
+what did it all mean? The only rational answer I could give myself, when
+I fairly squared the question, was that Ida must have got suddenly
+married to a wealthy fellow-countryman, and that the exquisite in the
+cool suit was in fact none other than her newly-acquired husband. I had
+thought my philosophy proof against any such small defeats to my
+calculation: but when it actually came to the point, I began to perceive
+that I was after all very unphilosophically in love with Ida Van
+Rensselaer. The merest undergraduate could not have felt a sillier
+flutter than that which agitated both auricles and ventricles of my
+central vascular organ--as a Senior Proctor I must really draw the line
+at speaking outright of my heart. I seized my hat, rushed down the broad
+staircase, and walked rapidly along Broadway in the direction the pair
+had taken. But I could see nothing of them, and I returned to Congress
+Hall in despair.
+
+That night I thought about many things, and slept very little. It came
+home to me somewhat vividly that if Ida was really married I should
+probably feel more grieved and disappointed than a good pessimist
+philosopher ought ever to feel at the ordinary vexatiousness of the
+universe. Next morning, however, I rose early, and breakfasted, not
+without a most unpoetical appetite, on white fish, buckwheat pancakes,
+and excellent watermelon. After breakfast, refreshed by the meal, I
+sallied forth, like a true knight-errant, under the shade of a white
+cotton sun-umbrella instead of a shield, to search for the lady of my
+choice. Naturally, I turned my steps first towards the Springs; and at
+the very second of them all, I luckily came upon Ida and the man in the
+tweed suit, lounging as before, and drinking the waters lazily.
+
+Ida stepped up as if she had fully expected to meet me, extended her
+daintily-gloved hand with the gold bracelet, and said as unconcernedly
+as possible, "You have come two days late, Mr. Payne."
+
+"So it seems," I answered. "_C'est monsieur votre mari?_" And I waved my
+hand interrogatively towards the stranger, for I hardly knew how to word
+the question in English.
+
+"_� Dieu ne plaise!_" she cried heartily, in an undertone, and I felt my
+vascular system once more the theatre of a most unacademical though more
+pleasing palpitation. "Allow me to introduce you. Mr. Payne of Oxford;
+my cousin, Mr. Jefferson Hitchcock."
+
+I charitably inferred that Mr. Hitchcock's early education in modern
+languages had been unfortunately neglected, or else his companion's
+energetic mode of denying her supposed conjugal relation with him could
+hardly have appeared flattering to his vanity.
+
+"My cousin has spoken of you to me, sir," said Mr. Hitchcock solemnly.
+"I understand that you are one of the most distinguished luminaries of
+Oxford College, and I am proud to welcome you as such to our country."
+
+I bowed and laughed--I never feel capable of making any other reply than
+a bow and a laugh to the style of oratory peculiar to American
+gentlemen--and then I turned to Ida. She was looking as pretty, as
+piquante, and as fresh as ever; but what her dress could mean was a
+complete puzzle to me. As she stood, diamonds and all, a jeweller's
+assistant couldn't have valued her at a penny less than six hundred
+pounds. In England such a display in morning dress would have been out
+of taste; but in Saratoga it seemed to be the height of the fashion.
+
+We walked along towards the Grand Union Hotel, where Ida and her cousin
+were staying, and my astonishment grew upon me at every step. However,
+we had so much to say to one another about everything in general, and
+Ida was so unaffectedly pleased at my keeping my engagement, made half
+in joke, that I found no time to unravel the mystery. When we reached
+the great doorway, Ida took leave of me for the time, but made me
+promise to call for her again early the next morning. "Unhappily," she
+said, "I have to go this afternoon to a most tedious party--a set of
+Boston people; you know the style; the best European culture, bottled
+and corked as imported, and let out again by driblets with about as much
+spontaneousness as champagne the second day. But I must fulfil my social
+duties here; no canoeing on the Isis at Saratoga. However, we must see a
+great deal of you now that you've come; so I expect you to call, and
+drive me down to the lake at ten o'clock to-morrow."
+
+"Is that proceeding within the expansive limits of American
+proprieties?" I asked dubiously.
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Hitchcock, answering for her, "this is a land of
+freedom, and every lady can go where she chooses, unmolested by those
+frivolous bonds of conventionality which bind the feet of your European
+women as closely as the cramped shoes of the Chinese bind the feet of
+the celestial females."
+
+Ida smiled at me with a peculiar smile, waved her hand graciously, and
+ran lightly up the stairs. I was left on the piazza with Mr. Jefferson
+Hitchcock. His conversation scarcely struck me as in itself enticing,
+but I was anxious to find out the meaning of Ida's sudden accession to
+wealth, and so I determined to make the best of his companionship for
+half an hour. As a sure high road to the American bosom and safe
+recommendation to the American confidence, I ordered a couple of
+delectable summer beverages (Mr. Hitchcock advised an "eye-opener,"
+which proved worthy of the commendation he bestowed upon it); and we sat
+down on the piazza in two convenient rocking-chairs, under the shade of
+the elms, smoking our havanas and sipping our iced drink. After a little
+preliminary talk, I struck out upon the subject of Ida.
+
+"When I met Miss Van Rensselaer at Nice," I said, "she was stopping at
+a very quiet little _pension_. It is quite a different thing living in a
+palace like this."
+
+"We are a republican nation, sir," answered Mr. Hitchcock, "and we
+expect to be all treated on the equal level of a sovereign people. The
+splendour that you in Europe restrict to princes, we in our country
+lavish upon the humblest American citizen. Miss Van Rensselaer's wealth,
+however, entitles her to mix in the highest circles of even your most
+polished society."
+
+"Indeed?" I said; "I had no idea that she was wealthy."
+
+"No, sir, probably not. Miss Van Rensselaer is a woman of that striking
+originality only to be met with in our emancipated country. She has
+shaken off the trammels of female servitude, and prefers to travel in
+all the simplicity of a humble income. She went to Europe, if I may so
+speak, _incognita_, and desired to hide her opulence from the prying
+gaze of your aristocracy. She did not wish your penniless peers to buzz
+about her fortune. But she is in reality one of our richest heiresses.
+The man who secures that woman as a property, sir, will find himself in
+possession of an income worth as much as one hundred thousand dollars."
+
+Twenty thousand sterling a year! The idea took my breath away, and
+reduced me once more to a state of helpless incapacity. I couldn't talk
+much more small-talk to Mr. Hitchcock, so I managed to make some small
+excuse and returned listlessly to Congress Hall. There, over a luncheon
+of Saddle-Rock oysters (you see I never allow my feelings to interfere
+with my appetite), I decided that I must give up all idea of Ida Van
+Rensselaer.
+
+I have no abstract objection to an income of �20,000 a year; but I could
+not consent to take it from any woman, or to endure the chance of her
+supposing that I had been fortune-hunting. It may be and doubtless is a
+plebeian feeling, which, as Mr. Hitchcock justly hinted, is never shared
+by the younger sons of our old nobility; but I hate the notion of
+living off somebody else's money, especially if that somebody were my
+own wife. So I came to the reluctant conclusion that I must give up the
+idea for ever; and as it would not be fair to stop any longer at
+Saratoga under the circumstances, I made up my mind to start for Niagara
+on the next day but one, after fulfilling my driving engagement with Ida
+the following morning.
+
+Punctually at ten o'clock the next day I found myself in a handsome
+carriage waiting at the doors of the Grand Union. Ida came down to meet
+me splendidly dressed, and looked like a queen as she sat by my side.
+"We will drive to the lake," she said, as she took her seat, "and you
+will take me for a row as you did on the Isis at Oxford." So we whirled
+along comfortably enough over the six miles of splendid avenue leading
+to the lake; and then we took our places in one of the canopied boats
+which wait for hire at the little quay.
+
+I rowed out into the middle of the lake, admiring the pretty wooded
+banks and sandstone cliffs, talking of Saratoga and American society,
+but keeping to my determination in steering clear of all allusions to my
+Oxford proposal. Ida was as charming as ever--more provokingly charming,
+indeed, than even of old, now that I had decided she could not be mine.
+But I stood by my resolution like a man. Clearly Ida was surprised at my
+reticence; and when I told her that my time in America being limited, I
+must start almost at once for Niagara, she was obviously astonished. "It
+is possible to be even _too_ original," she observed shortly. I turned
+the boat and rowed back toward the shore.
+
+As I had nearly reached the bank, Ida jumped up from her seat, and asked
+me suddenly to let her pull for a dozen strokes. I changed places and
+gave her the oars. To my surprise, she headed the boat around, and
+pulled once more for the middle of the lake. When we had reached a point
+at some distance from the shore, she dropped the oars on the thole-pins
+(they use no rowlocks on American lake or river craft), and looked for a
+moment full in my face. Then she said abruptly:--
+
+"If you are really going to leave for Niagara to-morrow, Mr. Payne,
+hadn't we better finish this bit of business out of hand?"
+
+"I was not aware," I answered, "that we had any business transactions to
+settle."
+
+"Why," she said, "I mean this matter of proposing."
+
+I gazed back at her as straight as I dared. "Ida," I said, with an
+attempt at firmness, "I don't mean to propose to you again at all. At
+least, I didn't mean to when I started this morning. I think I thought I
+had decided not."
+
+"Then why did you come to Saratoga?" she asked quickly. "You oughtn't to
+have come if you meant nothing by it."
+
+"When I left England I did mean something," I answered, "but I learned a
+fact yesterday which has altered my intentions." And then I told her
+about Mr. Hitchcock's revelations, and the reflections to which they had
+given rise.
+
+Ida listened patiently to all my faint arguments, for I felt my courage
+quailing under her pretty sympathetic glance, and then she said
+decisively, "You are quite right and yet quite wrong."
+
+"Explain yourself, O Sphinx," I answered, much relieved by her words.
+
+"Why," she said, "you are quite right to hesitate, quite wrong to
+decide. I know you don't want my money; I know you don't like it, even:
+but I ask you to take me in spite of it. Of course that is dreadfully
+unwomanly and unconventional, and so forth, but it is what I ought to
+do.... Listen to me, Cyril (may I call you Cyril?). I will tell you why
+I want you to marry me. Before I went to Europe, I was dissatisfied with
+all these rich American young men. I hated their wealth, and their
+selfishness, and their cheap cynicism, and their trotting horses, and
+their narrow views, and their monotonous tall-talk, all cast in a
+stereotyped American mould, so that whenever I said A, I knew every one
+of them would answer B.
+
+"I went to Europe and I met your English young men, with their drawls,
+and their pigeon-shooting, and their shaggy ulsters, and their
+conventional wit, and their commonplace chaff, and their utter contempt
+for women, as though we were all a herd of marketable animals from whom
+they could pick and choose whichever pleased them best, according to
+their lordly fancy. I would no more give myself up to one of them than I
+would marry my cousin, Jefferson Hitchcock. But when I met you first at
+Nice, I saw you were a different sort of person. You could think and act
+for yourself, and you could appreciate a real living woman who could
+think and act too. You taught me what Europe was like. I only knew the
+outside, you showed me how to get within the husk. You made me admire
+Eza, and Roccabrunna, and Iffley Church. You roused something within me
+that I never felt before--a wish to be a different being, a longing for
+something more worth living for than diamonds and Saratoga. I know I am
+not good enough for you: I don't know enough or read enough or feel
+enough; but I don't want to fall back and sink to the level of New York
+society. So I have a _right_ to ask you to marry me if you will. I don't
+want to be a blue; but I want not to feel myself a social doll. You know
+yourself--I see you know it--that I oughtn't to throw away my chance of
+making the best of what nature I may have in me. I am only a beginner. I
+scarcely half understand your world yet. I can't properly admire your
+Botticellis and your Pinturiccios, I know; but I want to admire, I
+should like to, and I will try. I want you to take me, because I know
+you understand me and would help me forward instead of letting me sink
+down to the petty interests of this American desert. You liked me at
+Nice, you did more than like me at Oxford; but I wouldn't take you then,
+though I longed to say _yes_, because I wasn't quite sure whether you
+really meant it. I knew you liked me for myself, not my money, but I
+left you to come to Saratoga for two things. I wanted to make sure you
+were in earnest, not to take you at a moment of weakness. I said, 'If he
+really cares for me, if he thinks I might become worthy of him, he will
+come and look for me; if not, I must let the dream go.' And then I
+wanted to know what effect my fortune would have upon you. Now you know
+my whole reasons. Why should my money stand in our way? Why should we
+both make ourselves unhappy on account of it? You would have married me
+if I was poor: what good reason have you for rejecting me only because I
+am rich? Whatever my money may do for you (and you have enough of your
+own), it will be nothing to what you can do for me. Will you tell me to
+go and make myself an animated peg for hanging jewellery upon, with such
+a conscious automaton as Jefferson Hitchcock to keep me company through
+life?"
+
+As she finished, flushed, proud, ashamed, but every inch a woman, I
+caught her hand in mine. The utter meanness and selfishness of my life
+burst upon me like a thunderbolt. "Oh, Ida," I cried, "how terribly you
+make me feel my own pettiness and egotism. You are cutting me to the
+heart like a knife. I cannot marry you; I dare not marry you; I must not
+marry you. I am not worthy of such a wife as you. How had I ever the
+audacity to ask you? My life has been too narrow and egoistic and
+self-indulgent to deserve such confidence as yours. I am not good enough
+for you. I really dare not accept it."
+
+"No," she said, a little more calmly, "I hope we are just good enough
+for one another, and that is why we ought to marry. And as for the
+hundred thousand dollars, perhaps we might manage to be happy in spite
+of them."
+
+We had drifted into a little bay, under shelter of a high rocky point. I
+felt a sudden access of insane boldness, and taking both Ida's hands in
+mine, I ventured to kiss her open forehead. She took the kiss quietly,
+but with a certain queenly sense of homage due. "And now," she said,
+shaking off my hands and smiling archly, "let us row back toward
+Saratoga, for you know you have to pack up for Niagara."
+
+"No," I answered, "I may as well put off my visit to the Falls till you
+can accompany me."
+
+"Very well," said Ida quietly, "and then we shall go back to England and
+live near Oxford. I don't want you to give up the dear old University. I
+want you to teach me the way you look at things, and show me how to look
+at them myself. I'm not going to learn any Latin or Greek or stupid
+nonsense of that sort; and I'm not going to join the Women's Suffrage
+Association; but I like your English culture, and I should love to live
+in its midst."
+
+"So you shall, Ida," I answered; "and you shall teach me, too, how to be
+a little less narrow and self-centred than we Oxford bachelors are apt
+to become in our foolish isolation."
+
+So we expect to spend our honeymoon at Niagara.
+
+
+
+
+_THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY._
+
+
+_"Poor little thing," said my strong-minded friend compassionately.
+"Just look at her! Clubfooted. What a misery to herself and others! In a
+well-organized state of society, you know, such poor wee cripples as
+that would be quietly put out of their misery while they were still
+babies."_
+
+_"Let me think," said I, "how that would work out in actual practice.
+I'm not so sure, after all, that we should be altogether the better or
+the happier for it."_
+
+
+I.
+
+They sat together in a corner of the beautiful phalanstery garden, Olive
+and Clarence, on the marble seat that overhung the mossy dell where the
+streamlet danced and bickered among its pebbly stickles; they sat there,
+hand in hand, in lovers' guise, and felt their two bosoms beating and
+thrilling in some strange, sweet fashion, just like two foolish
+unregenerate young people of the old antisocial prephalansteric days.
+Perhaps it was the leaven of their unenlightened ancestors still
+leavening by heredity the whole lump; perhaps it was the inspiration of
+the calm soft August evening and the delicate afterglow of the setting
+sun; perhaps it was the deep heart of man and woman vibrating still as
+of yore in human sympathy, and stirred to its innermost recesses by the
+unutterable breath of human emotion. But at any rate there they sat,
+the beautiful strong man in his shapely chiton, and the dainty fair girl
+in her long white robe with the dark green embroidered border, looking
+far into the fathomless depths of one another's eyes, in silence sweeter
+and more eloquent than many words. It was Olive's tenth-day holiday from
+her share in the maidens' household duty of the community; and Clarence,
+by arrangement with his friend Germain, had made exchange from his own
+decade (which fell on Plato) to this quiet Milton evening, that he might
+wander through the park and gardens with his chosen love, and speak his
+full mind to her now without reserve.
+
+"If only the phalanstery will give its consent, Clarence," Olive said at
+last with a little sigh, releasing her hand from his, and gathering up
+the folds of her stole from the marble flooring of the seat; "if only
+the phalanstery will give its consent! but I have my doubts about it. Is
+it quite right? Have we chosen quite wisely? Will the hierarch and the
+elder brothers think I am strong enough and fit enough for the duties of
+the task? It is no light matter, we know, to enter into bonds with one
+another for the responsibilities of fatherhood and motherhood. I
+sometimes feel--forgive me, Clarence--but I sometimes feel as if I were
+allowing my own heart and my own wishes to guide me too exclusively in
+this solemn question: thinking too much about you and me, about
+ourselves (which is only an enlarged form of selfishness, after all),
+and too little about the future good of the community and--and--"
+blushing a little, for women will be women even in a phalanstery--"and
+of the precious lives we may be the means of adding to it. You remember,
+Clarence, what the hierarch said, that we ought to think least and last
+of our own feelings, first and foremost of the progressive evolution of
+universal humanity."
+
+"I remember, darling," Clarence answered, leaning over towards her
+tenderly; "I remember well, and in my own way, so far as a man can (for
+we men haven't the moral earnestness of you women, I'm afraid, Olive), I
+try to act up to it. But, dearest, I think your fears are greater than
+they need be: you must recollect that humanity requires for its higher
+development tenderness, and truth, and love, and all the softer
+qualities, as well as strength and manliness; and if you are a trifle
+less strong than most of our sisters here, you seem to me at least (and
+I really believe to the hierarch and to the elder brothers too) to make
+up for it, and more than make up for it, in your sweet and lovable inner
+nature. The men of the future mustn't all be cast in one unvarying
+stereotyped mould; we must have a little of all good types combined, in
+order to make a perfect phalanstery."
+
+Olive sighed again. "I don't know," she said pensively. "I don't feel
+sure. I hope I am doing right. In my aspirations every evening I have
+desired light on this matter, and have earnestly hoped that I was not
+being misled by my own feelings; for, oh, Clarence, I do love you so
+dearly, so truly, so absorbingly, that I half fear my love may be taking
+me unwittingly astray. I try to curb it; I try to think of it all as the
+hierarch tells us we ought to; but in my own heart I sometimes almost
+fear that I may be lapsing into the idolatrous love of the old days,
+when people married and were given in marriage, and thought only of the
+gratification of their own personal emotions and affections, and nothing
+of the ultimate good of humanity. Oh, Clarence, don't hate me and
+despise me for it; don't turn upon me and scold me: but I love you, I
+love you, I love you; oh, I'm afraid I love you almost idolatrously!"
+
+Clarence lifted her small white hand slowly to his lips, with that
+natural air of chivalrous respect which came so easily to the young men
+of the phalanstery, and kissed it twice over fervidly with quiet
+reverence. "Let us go into the music-room, Olive dearest," he said as he
+rose; "you are too sad to-night. You shall play me that sweet piece of
+Marian's that you love so much; and that will quiet you, darling, from
+thinking too earnestly about this serious matter."
+
+
+II.
+
+Next day, when Clarence had finished his daily spell of work in the
+fruit-garden (he was third under-gardener to the community), he went up
+to his own study, and wrote out a little notice in due form to be posted
+at dinner-time on the refectory door: "Clarence and Olive ask leave of
+the phalanstery to enter with one another into free contract of holy
+matrimony." His pen trembled a little in his hand as he framed that
+familiar set form of words (strange that he had read it so often with so
+little emotion, and wrote it now with so much: we men are so selfish!);
+but he fixed it boldly with four small brass nails on the regulation
+notice-board, and waited, not without a certain quiet confidence, for
+the final result of the communal council.
+
+"Aha!" said the hierarch to himself with a kindly smile, as he passed
+into the refectory at dinner-time that day, "has it come to that, then?
+Well, well, I thought as much; I felt sure it would. A good girl, Olive:
+a true, earnest, lovable girl: and she has chosen wisely, too; for
+Clarence is the very man to balance her own character as man's and
+wife's should do. Whether Clarence has done well in selecting her is
+another matter. For my own part, I had rather hoped she would have
+joined the celibate sisters, and have taken nurse duty for the sick and
+the children. It's her natural function in life, the work she's best
+fitted for; and I should have liked to see her take to it. But after
+all, the business of the phalanstery is not to decide vicariously for
+its individual members--not to thwart their natural harmless
+inclinations and wishes; on the contrary, we ought to allow every man
+and girl the fullest liberty to follow their own personal taste and
+judgment in every possible matter. Our power of interference as a
+community, I've always felt and said, should only extend to the
+prevention of obviously wrong and immoral acts, such as marriage with a
+person in ill-health, or of inferior mental power, or with a distinctly
+bad or insubordinate temper. Things of that sort, of course, are as
+clearly wicked as idling in work hours or marriage with a first cousin.
+Olive's health, however, isn't really bad, nothing more than a very
+slight feebleness of constitution, as constitutions go with us; and
+Eustace, who has attended her medically from her babyhood (what a dear
+crowing little thing she used to be in the nursery, to be sure), tells
+me she's perfectly fitted for the duties of her proposed situation. Ah
+well, ah well; I've no doubt they'll be perfectly happy; and the wishes
+of the whole phalanstery will go with them, in any case, that's
+certain."
+
+Everybody knew that whatever the hierarch said or thought was pretty
+sure to be approved by the unanimous voice of the entire community. Not
+that he was at all a dictatorial or dogmatic old man; quite the
+contrary; but his gentle kindly way had its full weight with the
+brothers; and his intimate acquaintance, through the exercise of his
+spiritual functions, with the inmost thoughts and ideas of every
+individual member, man or woman, made him a safe guide in all difficult
+or delicate questions, as to what the decision of the council ought to
+be. So when, on the first Cosmos, the elder brothers assembled to
+transact phalansteric business, and the hierarch put in Clarence's
+request with the simple phrase, "In my opinion, there is no reasonable
+objection," the community at once gave in its adhesion, and formal
+notice was posted an hour later on, the refectory door, "The phalanstery
+approves the proposition of Clarence and Olive, and wishes all
+happiness to them and to humanity from the sacred union they now
+contemplate." "You see, dearest," Clarence said, kissing her lips for
+the first time (as unwritten law demanded), now that the seal of the
+community had been placed upon their choice, "you see, there can't be
+any harm in our contract, for the elder brothers all approve it."
+
+Olive smiled and sighed from the very bottom of her full heart, and
+clung to her lover as the ivy clings to a strong supporting oak-tree.
+"Darling," she murmured in his ear, "if I have you to comfort me, I
+shall not be afraid, and we will try our best to work together for the
+advancement and the good of divine humanity."
+
+Four decades later, on a bright Cosmos morning in September, those two
+stood up beside one another before the altar of humanity, and heard with
+a thrill the voice of the hierarch uttering that solemn declaration, "In
+the name of the Past, and of the Present, and of the Future, I hereby
+admit you, Clarence and Olive, into the holy society of Fathers and
+Mothers, of the United Avondale Phalanstery, in trust for humanity,
+whose stewards you are. May you so use and enhance the good gifts you
+have received from your ancestors that you may hand them on, untarnished
+and increased, to the bodies and minds of your furthest descendants."
+And Clarence and Olive answered humbly and reverently, "If grace be
+given us, we will."
+
+
+III.
+
+Brother Eustace, physiologist to the phalanstery, looked very grave and
+sad indeed as he passed from the Mothers' Room into the Conversazione in
+search of the hierarch. "A child is born into the phalanstery," he said
+gloomily; but his face conveyed at once a far deeper and more pregnant
+meaning than his mere words could carry to the ear.
+
+The hierarch rose hastily and glanced into his dark keen eyes with an
+inquiring look. "Not something amiss?" he said eagerly, with an infinite
+tenderness in his fatherly voice. "Don't tell me that, Eustace. Not ...
+oh, not a child that the phalanstery must not for its own sake permit to
+live! Oh, Eustace, not, I hope, idiotic! And I gave my consent too; I
+gave my consent for pretty gentle little Olive's sake! Heaven grant I
+was not too much moved by her prettiness and her delicacy, for I love
+her, Eustace, I love her like a daughter."
+
+"So we all love all the children of the phalanstery Cyriac, we who are
+elder brothers," said the physiologist gravely, half smiling to himself
+nevertheless at this quaint expression of old-world feeling on the part
+even of the very hierarch, whose bounden duty it was to advise and
+persuade a higher rule of conduct and thought than such antique
+phraseology implied. "No, not idiotic; not quite so bad as that, Cyriac;
+not absolutely a hopeless case, but still, very serious and distressing
+for all that. The dear little baby has its feet turned inward. She'll be
+a cripple for life, I fear, and no help for it."
+
+Tears rose unchecked into the hierarch's soft grey eyes. "Its feet
+turned inward," he muttered sadly, half to himself. "Feet turned inward!
+Oh, how terrible! This will be a frightful blow to Clarence and to
+Olive. Poor young things: their first-born, too. Oh, Eustace, what an
+awful thought that, with all the care and precaution we take to keep all
+causes of misery away from the precincts of the phalanstery, such trials
+as this must needs come upon us by the blind workings of the unconscious
+Cosmos! It is terrible, too terrible."
+
+"And yet it isn't all loss," the physiologist answered earnestly. "It
+isn't all loss, Cyriac, heart-rending as the necessity seems to us. I
+sometimes think that if we hadn't these occasional distressful objects
+on which to expend our sympathy and our sorrow, we in our happy little
+communities might grow too smug, and comfortable, and material, and
+earthy. But things like this bring tears into our eyes, and we are the
+better for them in the end, depend upon it, we are the better for them.
+They try our fortitude, our devotion to principle, our obedience to the
+highest and the hardest law. Every time some poor little waif like this
+is born into our midst, we feel the strain of old prephalansteric
+emotions and fallacies of feeling dragging us steadily and cruelly down.
+Our first impulse is to pity the poor mother, to pity the poor child,
+and in our mistaken kindness to let an unhappy life go on indefinitely
+to its own misery and the preventible distress of all around it. We have
+to make an effort, a struggle, before the higher and more abstract pity
+conquers the lower and more concrete one. But in the end we are all the
+better for it: and each such struggle and each such victory, Cyriac,
+paves the way for that final and truest morality when we shall do right
+instinctively and naturally, without any impulse on any side to do wrong
+in any way at all."
+
+"You speak wisely, Eustace," the hierarch answered with a sad shake of
+his head, "and I wish I could feel like you. I ought to, but I can't.
+Your functions make you able to look more dispassionately upon these
+things than I can. I'm afraid there's a great deal of the old Adam
+lingering wrongfully in me yet. And I'm still more afraid there's a
+great deal of the old Eve lingering even more strongly in all our
+mothers. It'll be a long time, I doubt me, before they'll ever consent
+without a struggle to the painless extinction of necessarily unhappy and
+imperfect lives. A long time: a very long time. Does Clarence know of
+this yet?"
+
+"Yes, I have told him. His grief is terrible. You had better go and
+console him as best you can."
+
+"I will, I will. And poor Olive! Poor Olive! It wrings my heart to think
+of her. Of course she won't be told of it, if you can help, for the
+probationary four decades?"
+
+"No, not if we can help it: but I don't know how it can ever be kept
+from her. She _will_ see Clarence, and Clarence will certainly tell
+her."
+
+The hierarch whistled gently to himself. "It's a sad case," he said
+ruefully, "a very sad case; and yet I don't see how we can possibly
+prevent it."
+
+He walked slowly and deliberately into the ante-room where Clarence was
+seated on a sofa, his head between his hands, rocking himself to and fro
+in his mute misery, or stopping to groan now and then in a faint feeble
+inarticulate fashion. Rhoda, one of the elder sisters, held the
+unconscious baby sleeping in her arms, and the hierarch took it from her
+like a man accustomed to infants, and looked ruthfully at the poor
+distorted little feet. Yes, Eustace was evidently quite right. There
+could be no hope of ever putting those wee twisted ankles back straight
+and firm into their proper place again like other people's.
+
+He sat down beside Clarence on the sofa, and with a commiserating
+gesture removed the young man's hands from his pale white face. "My
+dear, dear friend," he said softly, "what comfort or consolation can we
+try to give you that is not a cruel mockery? None, none, none. We can
+only sympathize with you and Olive: and perhaps, after all, the truest
+sympathy is silence."
+
+Clarence answered nothing for a moment, but buried his face once more in
+his hands and burst into tears. The men of the phalanstery were less
+careful to conceal their emotions than we old-time folks in these early
+centuries. "Oh, dear hierarch," he said, after a long sob, "it is too
+hard a sacrifice, too hard, too terrible. I don't feel it for the baby's
+sake: for her 'tis better so: she will be freed from a life of misery
+and dependence; but for my own sake, and oh, above all, for dear
+Olive's. It will kill her, hierarch; I feel sure it will kill her!"
+
+The elder brother passed his hand with a troubled gesture across his
+forehead. "But what else can we do, dear Clarence?" he asked
+pathetically. "What else can we do? Would you have us bring up the dear
+child to lead a lingering life of misfortune, to distress the eyes of
+all around her, to feel herself a useless incumbrance in the midst of so
+many mutually helpful and serviceable and happy people? How keenly she
+would realize her own isolation in the joyous busy labouring community
+of our phalansteries! How terribly she would brood over her own
+misfortune when surrounded by such a world of hearty, healthy,
+sound-limbed, useful persons! Would it not be a wicked and a cruel act
+to bring her up to an old age of unhappiness and imperfection? You have
+been in Australia, my boy, when we sent you on that plant-hunting
+expedition, and you have seen cripples with your own eyes, no doubt,
+which I have never done--thank Heaven!--I who have never gone beyond the
+limits of the most highly civilized Euramerican countries. You have seen
+cripples, in those semi-civilized old colonial societies, which have
+lagged after us so slowly in the path of progress; and would you like
+your own daughter to grow up to such a life as that, Clarence? would you
+like her, I ask you, to grow up to such a life as that?"
+
+Clarence clenched his right hand tightly over his left arm, and answered
+with a groan: "No, hierarch; not even for Olive's sake could I wish for
+such an act of irrational injustice. You have trained us up to know the
+good from the evil, and for no personal gratification of our deepest
+emotions, I hope and trust, shall we ever betray your teaching or depart
+from your principles. I know what it is: I saw just such a cripple once,
+at a great town in the heart of Central Australia--a child of eight
+years old, limping along lamely on her heels by her mother's side: a
+sickening sight: to think of it even now turns the blood in one's
+arteries: and I could never wish Olive's baby to live and grow up to be
+a thing like that. But, oh, I wish to heaven it might have been
+otherwise: I wish to heaven this trial might have been spared us both.
+Oh, hierarch, dear hierarch, the sacrifice is one that no good man or
+woman would wish selfishly to forego; yet for all that, our hearts, our
+hearts are human still; and though we may reason and may act up to our
+reasoning, the human feeling in us--relic of the idolatrous days or
+whatever you like to call it--it will not choose to be so put down and
+stifled: it will out, hierarch, it will out for all that, in real hot,
+human tears. Oh, dear, dear kind father and brother, it will kill Olive:
+I know it will kill her!"
+
+"Olive is a good girl," the hierarch answered slowly. "A good girl, well
+brought up, and with sound principles. She will not flinch from doing
+her duty, I know, Clarence: but her emotional nature is a very delicate
+one, and we have reason indeed to fear the shock to her nervous system.
+That she will do right bravely, I don't doubt: the only danger is lest
+the effort to do right should cost her too dear. Whatever can be done to
+spare her shall be done, Clarence. It is a sad misfortune for the whole
+phalanstery, such a child being born to us as this: and we all
+sympathize with you: we sympathize with you more deeply than words can
+say."
+
+The young man only rocked up and down drearily as before, and murmured
+to himself, "It will kill her, it will kill her! My Olive, my Olive, I
+know it will kill her."
+
+
+IV.
+
+They didn't keep the secret of the baby's crippled condition from Olive
+till the four decades were over, nor anything like it. The moment she
+saw Clarence, she guessed at once with a woman's instinct that something
+serious had happened: and she didn't rest till she had found out from
+him all about it. Rhoda brought her the poor wee mite, carefully wrapped
+after the phalansteric fashion in a long strip of fine flannel, and
+Olive unrolled the piece until she came at last upon the small crippled
+feet, that looked so soft and tender and dainty and waxen in their very
+deformity. The young mother leant over the child a moment in speechless
+misery. "Spirit of Humanity," she whispered at length feebly, "oh give
+me strength to bear this terrible unutterable trial! It will break my
+heart. But I will try to bear it."
+
+There was something so touching in her attempted resignation that Rhoda,
+for the first time in her life, felt almost tempted to wish she had been
+born in the old wicked prephalansteric days, when they would have let
+the poor baby grow up to womanhood as a matter of course, and bear its
+own burden through life as best it might. Presently, Olive raised her
+head again from the crimson silken pillow. "Clarence," she said, in a
+trembling voice, pressing the sleeping baby hard against her breast,
+"when will it be? How long? Is there no hope, no chance of respite?"
+
+"Not for a long time yet, dearest Olive," Clarence answered through his
+tears. "The phalanstery will be very gentle and patient with us, we
+know: and brother Eustace will do everything that lies in his power,
+though he's afraid he can give us very little hope indeed. In any case,
+Olive darling, the community waits for four decades before deciding
+anything: it waits to see whether there is any chance for physiological
+or surgical relief: it decides nothing hastily or thoughtlessly: it
+waits for every possible improvement, hoping against hope till hope
+itself is hopeless. And then, if at the end of the quartet, as I fear
+will be the case--for we must face the worst, darling, we must face the
+worst--if at the end of the quartet it seems clear to brother Eustace,
+and the three assessor physiologists from the neighbouring
+phalansteries, that the dear child would be a cripple for life, we're
+still allowed four decades more to prepare ourselves in: four whole
+decades more, Olive, to take our leave of the darling baby. You'll have
+your baby with you for eighty days. And we must wean ourselves from her
+in that time, darling. We must try to wean ourselves. But oh Olive, oh
+Rhoda, it's very hard: very, very, very hard."
+
+Olive answered not a word, but lay silently weeping and pressing the
+baby against her breast, with her large brown eyes fixed vacantly upon
+the fretted woodwork of the panelled ceiling.
+
+"You mustn't do like that, Olive dear," sister Rhoda said in a
+half-frightened voice. "You must cry right out, and sob, and not
+restrain yourself, darling, or else you'll break your heart with silence
+and repression. Do cry aloud, there's a dear girl: do cry aloud and
+relieve yourself. A good cry would be the best thing on earth for you.
+And think, dear, how much happier it will really be for the sweet baby
+to sink asleep so peacefully than to live a long life of conscious
+inferiority and felt imperfection! What a blessing it is to think you
+were born in a phalansteric land, where the dear child will be happily
+and painlessly rid of its poor little unconscious existence, before it
+has reached the age when it might begin to know its own incurable and
+inevitable misfortune. Oh, Olive, what a blessing that is, and how
+thankful we ought all to be that we live in a world where the sweet pet
+will be saved so much humiliation, and mortification, and misery!"
+
+At that moment, Olive, looking within into her own wicked rebellious
+heart, was conscious, with a mingled glow, half shame, half indignation,
+that so far from appreciating the priceless blessings of her own
+situation, she would gladly have changed places then and there with any
+barbaric woman of the old semi-civilized prephalansteric days. We can so
+little appreciate our own mercies. It was very wrong and anti-cosmic,
+she knew; very wrong, indeed, and the hierarch would have told her so at
+once; but in her own woman's soul she felt she would rather be a
+miserable naked savage in a wattled hut, like those one saw in old books
+about Africa before the illumination, if only she could keep that one
+little angel of a crippled baby, than dwell among all the enlightenment,
+and knowledge, and art, and perfected social arrangements of
+phalansteric England without her child--her dear, helpless, beautiful
+baby. How truly the Founder himself had said, "Think you there will be
+no more tragedies and dramas in the world when we have reformed it,
+nothing but one dreary dead level of monotonous content? Ay, indeed,
+there will; for that, fear not; while the heart of man remains, there
+will be tragedy enough on earth and to spare for a hundred poets to take
+for their saddest epics."
+
+Olive looked up at Rhoda wistfully. "Sister Rhoda," she said in a timid
+tone, "it may be very wicked--I feel sure it is--but do you know, I've
+read somewhere in old stories of the unenlightened days that a mother
+always loved the most afflicted of her children the best. And I can
+understand it now, sister Rhoda; I can feel it here," and she put her
+hand upon her poor still heart. "If only I could keep this one dear
+crippled baby, I could give up all the world beside--except you,
+Clarence."
+
+"Oh, hush, darling!" Rhoda cried in an awed voice, stooping down half
+alarmed to kiss her pale forehead. "You mustn't talk like that, Olive
+dearest. It's wicked; it's undutiful. I know how hard it is not to
+repine and to rebel; but you mustn't, Olive, you mustn't. We must each
+strive to bear our own burdens (with the help of the community), and not
+to put any of them off upon a poor, helpless, crippled little baby."
+
+"But our natures," Clarence said, wiping his eyes dreamily; "our natures
+are only half attuned as yet to the necessities of the higher social
+existence. Of course it's very wrong and very sad, but we can't help
+feeling it, sister Rhoda, though we try our hardest. Remember, it's not
+so many generations since our fathers would have reared the child
+without a thought that they were doing anything wicked--nay, rather,
+would even have held (so powerful is custom) that it was positively
+wrong to save it by preventive means from a certain life of predestined
+misery. Our conscience in this matter isn't yet fully formed. We feel
+that it's right, of course; oh yes, we know the phalanstery has ordered
+everything for the best; but we can't help grieving over it; the human
+heart within us is too unregenerate still to acquiesce without a
+struggle in the dictates of right and reason."
+
+Olive again said nothing, but fixed her eyes silently upon the grave,
+earnest portrait of the Founder over the carved oak mantelpiece, and let
+the hot tears stream their own way over her cold, white, pallid,
+bloodless cheek without reproof for many minutes. Her heart was too full
+for either speech or comfort.
+
+
+V.
+
+Eight decades passed away slowly in the Avondale Phalanstery; and day
+after day seemed more and more terrible to poor, weak, disconsolate
+Olive. The quiet refinement and delicate surroundings of their placid
+life seemed to make her poignant misery and long anxious term of waiting
+only the more intense in its sorrow and its awesomeness. Every day, the
+younger sisters turned as of old to their allotted round of pleasant
+housework; every day the elder sisters, who had earned their leisure,
+brought in their dainty embroidery, or their drawing materials, or their
+other occupations, and tried to console her, or rather to condole with
+her, in her great sorrow. She couldn't complain of any unkindness; on
+the contrary, all the brothers and sisters were sympathy itself; while
+Clarence, though he tried hard not to be _too_ idolatrous to her (which
+is wrong and antisocial, of course), was still overflowing with
+tenderness and consideration for her in their common grief. But all that
+seemed merely to make things worse. If only somebody would have been
+cruel to her; if only the hierarch would have scolded her, or the elder
+sisters have shown any distant coldness, or the other girls have been
+wanting in sisterly sympathy, she might have got angry or brooded over
+her wrongs; whereas, now, she could do nothing save cry passively with a
+vain attempt at resignation. It was nobody's fault; there was nobody to
+be angry with, there was nothing to blame except the great impersonal
+laws and circumstances of the Cosmos, which it would be rank impiety and
+wickedness to question or to gainsay. So she endured in silence, loving
+only to sit with Clarence's hand in hers, and the dear doomed baby lying
+peacefully upon the stole in her lap. It was inevitable and there was no
+use repining; for so profoundly had the phalanstery schooled the minds
+and natures of those two unhappy young parents (and all their compeers),
+that, grieve as they might, they never for one moment dreamt of
+attempting to relax or set aside the fundamental principles of
+phalansteric society in these matters.
+
+By the kindly rule of the phalanstery, every mother had complete freedom
+from household duties for two years after the birth of her child; and
+Clarence, though he would not willingly have given up his own particular
+work in the grounds and garden, spent all the time he could spare from
+his short daily task (every one worked five hours every lawful day, and
+few worked longer, save on special emergencies) by Olive's side. At
+last, the eight decades passed slowly away, and the fatal day for the
+removal of little Rosebud arrived. Olive called her Rosebud because, she
+said, she was a sweet bud that could never be opened into a full-blown
+rose. All the community felt the solemnity of the painful occasion; and
+by common consent the day (Darwin, December 20) was held as an
+intra-phalansteric fast by the whole body of brothers and sisters.
+
+On that terrible morning Olive rose early, and dressed herself carefully
+in a long white stole with a broad black border of Greek key pattern.
+But she had not the heart to put any black upon dear little Rosebud; and
+so she put on her fine flannel wrapper, and decorated it instead with
+the pretty coloured things that Veronica and Philomela had worked for
+her, to make her baby as beautiful as possible on this its last day in a
+world of happiness. The other girls helped her and tried to sustain her,
+crying all together at the sad event. "She's a sweet little thing," they
+said to one another as they held her up to see how she looked. "If only
+it could have been her reception to-day instead of her removal!" But
+Olive moved through them all with stoical resignation--dry-eyed and
+parched in the throat, yet saying not a word save for necessary
+instructions and directions to the nursing sisters. The iron of her
+creed had entered into her very soul.
+
+After breakfast, brother Eustace and the hierarch came sadly in their
+official robes into the lesser infirmary. Olive was there already, pale
+and trembling, with little Rosebud sleeping peacefully in the hollow of
+her lap. What a picture she looked, the wee dear thing, with the
+hothouse flowers from the conservatory that Clarence had brought to
+adorn her, fastened neatly on to her fine flannel robe! The physiologist
+took out a little phial from his pocket, and began to open a sort of
+inhaler of white muslin. At the same moment, the grave, kind old
+hierarch stretched out his hands to take the sleeping baby from its
+mother's arms. Olive shrank back in terror, and clasped the child softly
+to her heart. "No, no, let me hold her myself, dear hierarch," she said,
+without flinching. "Grant me this one last favour. Let me hold her
+myself." It was contrary to all fixed rules; but neither the hierarch
+nor any one else there present had the heart to refuse that beseeching
+voice on so supreme and spirit-rending an occasion.
+
+Brother Eustace poured the chloroform solemnly and quietly on to the
+muslin inhaler. "By resolution of the phalanstery," he said, in a voice
+husky with emotion, "I release you, Rosebud, from a life for which you
+are naturally unfitted. In pity for your hard fate, we save you from the
+misfortune you have never known, and will never now experience." As he
+spoke, he held the inhaler to the baby's face, and watched its breathing
+grow fainter and fainter, till at last, after a few minutes, it faded
+gradually and entirely away. The little one had slept from life into
+death, painlessly and happily, even as they looked.
+
+Clarence, tearful but silent, felt the baby's pulse for a moment, and
+then, with a burst of tears, shook his head bitterly. "It is all over,"
+he cried with a loud cry. "It is all over; and we hope and trust it is
+better so."
+
+But Olive still said nothing.
+
+The physiologist turned to her with an anxious gaze. Her eyes were open,
+but they looked blank and staring into vacant space. He took her hand,
+and it felt limp and powerless. "Great heaven," he cried, in evident
+alarm, "what is this? Olive, Olive, our dear Olive, why don't you
+speak?"
+
+Clarence sprang up from the ground, where he had knelt to try the dead
+baby's pulse, and took her unresisting wrist anxiously in his. "Oh,
+brother Eustace," he cried passionately, "help us, save us; what's the
+matter with Olive? she's fainting, she's fainting! I can't feel her
+heart beat, no, not ever so little."
+
+Brother Eustace let the pale white hand drop listlessly from his grasp
+upon the pale white stole beneath, and answered slowly and distinctly:
+"She isn't fainting, Clarence; not fainting, my dear brother. The shock
+and the fumes of chloroform together have been too much for the action
+of the heart. She's dead too, Clarence; our dear, dear sister; she's
+dead too."
+
+Clarence flung his arms wildly round Olive's neck, and listened eagerly
+with his ear against her bosom to hear her heart beat. But no sound came
+from the folds of the simple black-bordered stole; no sound from
+anywhere save the suppressed sobs of the frightened women who huddled
+closely together in the corner, and gazed horror-stricken upon the two
+warm fresh corpses.
+
+"She was a brave girl," brother Eustace said at last, wiping his eyes
+and composing her hands reverently. "Olive was a brave girl, and she
+died doing her duty, without one murmur against the sad necessity that
+fate had unhappily placed upon her. No sister on earth could wish to die
+more nobly than by thus sacrificing her own life and her own weak human
+affections on the altar of humanity for the sake of her child and of
+the world at large."
+
+"And yet, I sometimes almost fancy," the hierarch murmured with a
+violent effort to control his emotions, "when I see a scene like this,
+that even the unenlightened practices of the old era may not have been
+quite so bad as we usually think them, for all that. Surely an end such
+as Olive's is a sad and a terrible end to have forced upon us as the
+final outcome and natural close of all our modern phalansteric
+civilization."
+
+"The ways of the Cosmos are wonderful," said brother Eustace solemnly;
+"and we, who are no more than atoms and mites upon the surface of its
+meanest satellite, cannot hope so to order all things after our own
+fashion that all its minutest turns and chances may approve themselves
+to us as light in our own eyes."
+
+The sisters all made instinctively the reverential genuflexion. "The
+Cosmos is infinite," they said together, in the fixed formula of their
+cherished religion. "The Cosmos is infinite, and man is but a parasite
+upon the face of the least among its satellite members. May we so act as
+to further all that is best within us, and to fulfil our own small place
+in the system of the Cosmos with all becoming reverence and humility! In
+the name of universal Humanity. So be it."
+
+
+
+
+_OUR SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATIONS ON A GHOST._
+
+
+"Then nothing would convince you of the existence of ghosts, Harry," I
+said, "except seeing one."
+
+"Not even seeing one, my dear Jim," said Harry. "Nothing on earth would
+make me believe in them, unless I were turned into a ghost myself."
+
+So saying, Harry drained his glass of whisky toddy, shook out the last
+ashes from his pipe, and went off upstairs to bed. I sat for a while
+over the remnants of my cigar, and ruminated upon the subject of our
+conversation. For my own part, I was as little inclined to believe in
+ghosts as anybody; but Harry seemed to go one degree beyond me in
+scepticism. His argument amounted in brief to this,--that a ghost was by
+definition the spirit of a dead man in a visible form here on earth; but
+however strange might be the apparition which a ghost-seer thought he
+had observed, there was no evidence possible or actual to connect such
+apparition with any dead person whatsoever. It might resemble the
+deceased in face and figure, but so, said Harry, does a portrait. It
+might resemble him in voice and manner, but so does an actor or a mimic.
+It might resemble him in every possible particular, but even then we
+should only be justified in saying that it formed a close counterpart of
+the person in question, not that it was his ghost or spirit. In short,
+Harry maintained, with considerable show of reason, that nobody could
+ever have any scientific ground for identifying any external object,
+whether shadowy or material, with a past human existence of any sort.
+According to him, a man might conceivably see a phantom, but could not
+possibly know that he saw a ghost.
+
+Harry and I were two Oxford bachelors, studying at the time for our
+degree in Medicine, and with an ardent love for the scientific side of
+our future profession. Indeed, we took a greater interest in comparative
+physiology and anatomy than in physic proper; and at this particular
+moment we were stopping in a very comfortable farm-house on the coast of
+Flintshire for our long vacation, with the special object of observing
+histologically a peculiar sea-side organism, the Thingumbobbum
+Whatumaycallianum, which is found so plentifully on the shores of North
+Wales, and which has been identified by Professor Haeckel with the larva
+of that famous marine ascidian from whom the Professor himself and the
+remainder of humanity generally are supposed to be undoubtedly
+descended. We had brought with us a full complement of lancets and
+scalpels, chemicals and test-tubes, galvanic batteries and
+thermo-electric piles; and we were splendidly equipped for a
+thorough-going scientific campaign of the first water. The farm-house in
+which we lodged had formerly belonged to the county family of the
+Egertons; and though an Elizabethan manor replaced the ancient defensive
+building which had been wisely dismantled by Henry VIII., the modern
+farm-house into which it had finally degenerated still bore the name of
+Egerton Castle. The whole house had a reputation in the neighbourhood
+for being haunted by the ghost of one Algernon Egerton, who was beheaded
+under James II. for his participation, or rather his intention to
+participate, in Monmouth's rebellion. A wretched portrait of the hapless
+Protestant hero hung upon the wall of our joint sitting-room, having
+been left behind when the family moved to their new seat in Cheshire, as
+being unworthy of a place in the present baronet's splendid apartments.
+It was a few remarks upon the subject of Algernon's ghost which had
+introduced the question of ghosts in general; and after Harry had left
+the room, I sat for a while slowly finishing my cigar, and contemplating
+the battered features of the deceased gentleman.
+
+As I did so, I was somewhat startled to hear a voice at my side observe
+in a bland and graceful tone, not unmixed with aristocratic hauteur,
+"You have been speaking of me, I believe,--in fact, I have unavoidably
+overheard your conversation,--and I have decided to assume the visible
+form and make a few remarks upon what seems to me a very hasty decision
+on your friend's part."
+
+I turned round at once, and saw, in the easy-chair which Harry had just
+vacated, a shadowy shape, which grew clearer and clearer the longer I
+looked at it. It was that of a man of forty, fashionably dressed in the
+costume of the year 1685 or thereabouts, and bearing a close resemblance
+to the faded portrait on the wall just opposite. But the striking point
+about the object was this, that it evidently did not consist of any
+ordinary material substance, as its outline seemed vague and wavy, like
+that of a photograph where the sitter has moved; while all the objects
+behind it, such as the back of the chair and the clock in the corner,
+showed through the filmy head and body, in the very manner which
+painters have always adopted in representing a ghost. I saw at once that
+whatever else the object before might be, it certainly formed a fine
+specimen of the orthodox and old-fashioned apparition. In dress,
+appearance, and every other particular, it distinctly answered to what
+the unscientific mind would unhesitatingly have called the ghost of
+Algernon Egerton.
+
+Here was a piece of extraordinary luck! In a house with two trained
+observers, supplied with every instrument of modern experimental
+research, we had lighted upon an undoubted specimen of the common
+spectre, which had so long eluded the scientific grasp. I was beside
+myself with delight. "Really, sir," I said, cheerfully, "it is most kind
+of you to pay us this visit, and I'm sure my friend will be only too
+happy to hear your remarks. Of course you will permit me to call him?"
+
+The apparition appeared somewhat surprised at the philosophic manner in
+which I received his advances; for ghosts are accustomed to find people
+faint away or scream with terror at their first appearance; but for my
+own part I regarded him merely in the light of a very interesting
+phenomenon, which required immediate observation by two independent
+witnesses. However, he smothered his chagrin--for I believe he was
+really disappointed at my cool deportment--and answered that he would be
+very glad to see my friend if I wished it, though he had specially
+intended this visit for myself alone.
+
+I ran upstairs hastily and found Harry in his dressing-gown, on the
+point of removing his nether garments. "Harry," I cried breathlessly,
+"you must come downstairs at once. Algernon Egerton's ghost wants to
+speak to you."
+
+Harry held up the candle and looked in my face with great deliberation.
+"Jim, my boy," he said quietly, "you've been having too much whisky."
+
+"Not a bit of it," I answered, angrily. "Come downstairs and see. I
+swear to you positively that a Thing, the very counterpart of Algernon
+Egerton's picture, is sitting in your easy-chair downstairs, anxious to
+convert you to a belief in ghosts."
+
+It took about three minutes to induce Harry to leave his room; but at
+last, merely to satisfy himself that I was demented, he gave way and
+accompanied me into the sitting-room. I was half afraid that the spectre
+would have taken umbrage at my long delay, and gone off in a huff and a
+blue flame; but when we reached the room, there he was, _in propri�
+person�_, gazing at his own portrait--or should I rather say his
+counterpart?--on the wall, with the utmost composure.
+
+"Well, Harry," I said, "what do you call that?"
+
+Harry put up his eyeglass, peered suspiciously at the phantom, and
+answered in a mollified tone, "It certainly is a most interesting
+phenomenon. It looks like a case of fluorescence; but you say the object
+can talk?"
+
+"Decidedly," I answered, "it can talk as well as you or me. Allow me to
+introduce you to one another, gentlemen:--Mr. Henry Stevens, Mr.
+Algernon Egerton; for though you didn't mention your name, Mr. Egerton,
+I presume from what you said that I am right in my conjecture."
+
+"Quite right," replied the phantom, rising as it spoke, and making a low
+bow to Harry from the waist upward. "I suppose your friend is one of the
+Lincolnshire Stevenses, sir?"
+
+"Upon my soul," said Harry, "I haven't the faintest conception where my
+family came from. My grandfather, who made what little money we have
+got, was a cotton-spinner at Rochdale, but he might have come from
+heaven knows where. I only know he was a very honest old gentleman, and
+he remembered me handsomely in his will."
+
+"Indeed, sir," said the apparition coldly. "_My_ family were the
+Egertons of Egerton Castle, in the county of Flint, Armigeri; whose
+ancestor, Radulphus de Egerton, is mentioned in Domesday as one of the
+esquires of Hugh Lupus, Earl Palatine of Chester. Radulphus de Egerton
+had a son----"
+
+"Whose history," said Harry, anxious to cut short these genealogical
+details, "I have read in the Annals of Flintshire, which lies in the
+next room, with the name you give as yours on the fly-leaf. But it
+seems, sir, you are anxious to converse with me on the subject of
+ghosts. As that question interests us all at present, much more than
+family descent, will you kindly begin by telling us whether you yourself
+lay claim to be a ghost?"
+
+"Undoubtedly I do," replied the phantom.
+
+"The ghost of Algernon Egerton, formerly of Egerton Castle?" I
+interposed.
+
+"Formerly and now," said the phantom, in correction. "I have long
+inhabited, and I still habitually inhabit, by night at least, the room
+in which we are at present seated."
+
+"The deuce you do," said Harry warmly. "This is a most illegal and
+unconstitutional proceeding. The house belongs to our landlord, Mr. Hay:
+and my friend here and myself have hired it for the summer, sharing the
+expenses, and claiming the sole title to the use of the rooms." (Harry
+omitted to mention that he took the best bedroom himself and put me off
+with a shabby little closet, while we divided the rent on equal terms.)
+
+"True," said the spectre good-humouredly; "but you can't eject a ghost,
+you know. You may get a writ of _habeas corpus_, but the English law
+doesn't supply you with a writ of _habeas animam_. The infamous Jeffreys
+left me that at least. I am sure the enlightened nineteenth century
+wouldn't seek to deprive me of it."
+
+"Well," said Harry, relenting, "provided you don't interfere with the
+experiments, or make away with the tea and sugar, I'm sure I have no
+objection. But if you are anxious to prove to us the existence of
+ghosts, perhaps you will kindly allow us to make a few simple
+observations?"
+
+"With all the pleasure in death," answered the apparition courteously.
+"Such, in fact, is the very object for which I've assumed visibility."
+
+"In that case, Harry," I said, "the correct thing will be to get out
+some paper, and draw up a running report which we may both attest
+afterwards. A few simple notes on the chemical and physical properties
+of a spectre will be an interesting novelty for the Royal Society, and
+they ought all to be jotted down in black and white at once."
+
+This course having been unanimously determined upon as strictly regular,
+I laid a large folio of foolscap on the writing-table, and the
+apparition proceeded to put itself in an attitude for careful
+inspection.
+
+"The first point to decide," said I, "is obviously the physical
+properties of our visitor. Mr. Egerton, will you kindly allow us to feel
+your hand?"
+
+"You may _try_ to feel it if you like," said the phantom quietly, "but I
+doubt if you will succeed to any brilliant extent." As he spoke, he held
+out his arm. Harry and I endeavoured successively to grasp it: our
+fingers slipped through the faintly luminous object as though it were
+air or shadow. The phantom bowed forward his head; we attempted to touch
+it, but our hands once more passed unopposed across the whole face and
+shoulders, without finding any trace whatsoever of mechanical
+resistance. "Experience the first," said Harry; "the apparition has no
+tangible material substratum." I seized the pen and jotted down the
+words as he spoke them. This was really turning out a very full-blown
+specimen of the ordinary ghost!
+
+"The next question to settle," I said, "is that of gravity.--Harry, give
+me a hand out here with the weighing-machine.--Mr. Egerton, will you be
+good enough to step upon this board?"
+
+_Mirabile dictu!_ The board remained steady as ever. Not a tremor of the
+steelyard betrayed the weight of its shadowy occupant. "Experience the
+second," cried Harry, in his cool, scientific way: "the apparition has
+the specific gravity of atmospheric air." I jotted down this note also,
+and quietly prepared for the next observation.
+
+"Wouldn't it be well," I inquired of Harry, "to try the weight in vacuo?
+It is possible that, while the specific gravity in air is equal to that
+of the atmosphere, the specific gravity in vacuo may be zero. The
+apparition--pray excuse me, Mr. Egerton, if the terms in which I allude
+to you seem disrespectful, but to call you a ghost would be to prejudge
+the point at issue--the apparition may have no proper weight of its own
+at all."
+
+"It would be very inconvenient, though," said Harry, "to put the whole
+apparition under a bell-glass: in fact, we have none big enough.
+Besides, suppose we were to find that by exhausting the air we got rid
+of the object altogether, as is very possible, that would awkwardly
+interfere with the future prosecution of our researches into its nature
+and properties."
+
+"Permit me to make a suggestion," interposed the phantom, "if a person
+whom you choose to relegate to the neuter gender may be allowed to have
+a voice in so scientific a question. My friend, the ingenious Mr. Boyle,
+has lately explained to me the construction of his air-pump, which we
+saw at one of the Friday evenings at the Royal Institution. It seems to
+me that your object would be attained if I were to put one hand only on
+the scale under the bell-glass, and permit the air to be exhausted."
+
+"Capital," said Harry: and we got the air-pump in readiness accordingly.
+The spectre then put his right hand into the scale, and we plumped the
+bell-glass on top of it. The connecting portion of the arm shone through
+the severing glass, exactly as though the spectre consisted merely of an
+immaterial light. In a few minutes the air was exhausted, and the scales
+remained evenly balanced as before.
+
+"This experiment," said Harry judicially, "slightly modifies the opinion
+which we formed from the preceding one. The specific gravity evidently
+amounts in itself to nothing, being as air in air, and as vacuum in
+vacuo. Jot down the result, Jim, will you?"
+
+I did so faithfully, and then turning to the spectre I observed, "You
+mentioned a Mr. Boyle, sir, just now. You allude, I suppose, to the
+father of chemistry?"
+
+"And uncle of the Earl of Cork," replied the apparition, promptly
+filling up the well-known quotation. "Exactly so. I knew Mr. Boyle
+slightly during our lifetime, and I have known him intimately ever since
+he joined the majority."
+
+"May I ask, while my friend makes the necessary preparations for the
+spectrum analysis and the chemical investigation, whether you are in the
+habit of associating much with--er--well, with other ghosts?"
+
+"Oh yes, I see a good deal of society."
+
+"Contemporaries of your own, or persons of earlier and later dates?"
+
+"Dates really matter very little to us. We may have Socrates and Bacon
+chatting in the same group. For my own part, I prefer modern society--I
+may say, the society of the latest arrivals."
+
+"That's exactly why I asked," said I. "The excessively modern tone of
+your language and idioms struck me, so to speak, as a sort of
+anachronism with your Restoration costume--an anachronism which I fancy
+I have noticed in many printed accounts of gentlemen from your portion
+of the universe."
+
+"Your observation is quite true," replied the apparition. "We continue
+always to wear the clothes which were in fashion at the time of our
+decease; but we pick up from new-comers the latest additions to the
+English language, and even, I may say, to the slang dictionary. I know
+many ghosts who talk familiarly of 'awfully jolly hops,' and allude to
+their progenitors as 'the governor.' Indeed, it is considered quite
+behind the times to describe a lady as 'vastly pretty,' and poor Mr.
+Pepys, who still preserves the antiquated idiom of his diary, is looked
+upon among us as a dreadfully slow old fogey."
+
+"But why, then," said I, "do you wear your old costumes for ever? Why
+not imitate the latest fashions from Poole's and Worth's, as well as the
+latest cant phrase from the popular novels?"
+
+"Why, my dear sir," answered the phantom, "we must have _something_ to
+mark our original period. Besides, most people to whom we appear know
+something about costume, while very few know anything about changes in
+idiom,"--that I must say seemed to me, in passing, a powerful argument
+indeed--"and so we all preserve the dress which we habitually wore
+during our lifetime."
+
+"Then," said Harry irreverently, looking up from his chemicals, "the
+society in your part of the country must closely resemble a fancy-dress
+ball."
+
+"Without the tinsel and vulgarity, we flatter ourselves," answered the
+phantom.
+
+By this time the preparations were complete, and Harry inquired whether
+the apparition would object to our putting out the lights in order to
+obtain definite results with the spectroscope. Our visitor politely
+replied that he was better accustomed to darkness than to the painful
+glare of our paraffin candles. "In fact," he added, "only the strong
+desire which I felt to convince you of our existence as ghosts could
+have induced me to present myself in so bright a room. Light is very
+trying to the eyes of spirits, and we generally take our constitutionals
+between eleven at night and four in the morning, stopping at home
+entirely during the moonlit half of the month."
+
+"Ah, yes," said Harry, extinguishing the candles; "I've read, of course,
+that your authorities exactly reverse our own Oxford rules. You are all
+gated, I believe, from dawn to sunset, instead of from sunset to dawn,
+and have to run away helter-skelter at the first streaks of daylight,
+for fear of being too late for admission without a fine of twopence. But
+you will allow that your usual habit of showing yourselves only in the
+very darkest places and seasons naturally militates somewhat against the
+credibility of your existence. If all apparitions would only follow
+your sensible example by coming out before two scientific people in a
+well-lighted room, they would stand a much better chance of getting
+believed: though even in the present case I must allow that I should
+have felt far more confidence in your positive reality if you'd
+presented yourself in broad daylight, when Jim and I hadn't punished the
+whisky quite as fully as we've done this evening."
+
+When the candles were out, our apparition still retained its
+fluorescent, luminous appearance, and seemed to burn with a faint bluish
+light of its own. We projected a pencil through the spectroscope, and
+obtained, for the first time in the history of science, the spectrum of
+a spectre. The result was a startling one indeed. We had expected to
+find lines indicating the presence of sulphur or phosphorus: instead of
+that, we obtained a continuous band of pale luminosity, clearly pointing
+to the fact that the apparition had no known terrestial element in its
+composition. Though we felt rather surprised at this discovery, we
+simply noted it down on our paper, and proceeded to verify it by
+chemical analysis.
+
+The phantom obligingly allowed us to fill a small phial with the
+luminous matter, which Harry immediately proceeded to test with all the
+resources at our disposal. For purposes of comparison I filled a
+corresponding phial with air from another part of the room, which I
+subjected to precisely similar tests. At the end of half an hour we had
+completed our examination--the spectre meanwhile watching us with
+mingled curiosity and amusement; and we laid our written quantitative
+results side by side. They agreed to a decimal. The table, being
+interesting, deserves a place in this memoir. It ran as follows:--
+
+_Chemical Analysis of an Apparition._
+
+  Atmospheric air       96.45 per cent.
+  Aqueous vapour         2.31   "
+  Carbonic acid          1.08   "
+  Tobacco smoke          0.16   "
+  Volatile alcohol       A trace
+                       ---------
+                       100.00   "
+
+The alcohol Harry plausibly attributed to the presence of glasses which
+had contained whisky toddy. The other constituents would have been
+normally present in the atmosphere of a room where two fellows had been
+smoking uninterruptedly ever since dinner. This important experiment
+clearly showed that the apparition had no proper chemical constitution
+of its own, but consisted entirely of the same materials as the
+surrounding air.
+
+"Only one thing remains to be done now, Jim," said Harry, glancing
+significantly at a plain deal table in the corner, with whose uses we
+were both familiar; "but then the question arises, does this gentleman
+come within the meaning of the Act? I don't feel certain about it in my
+own mind, and with the present unsettled state of public opinion on this
+subject, our first duty is to obey the law."
+
+"Within the meaning of the Act?" I answered; "decidedly not. The words
+of the forty-second section say distinctly 'any _living_ animal.' Now,
+Mr. Egerton, according to his own account, is a ghost, and has been dead
+for some two hundred years or thereabouts: so that we needn't have the
+slightest scruple on _that_ account."
+
+"Quite so," said Harry, in a tone of relief. "Well then, sir," turning
+to the apparition, "may I ask you whether you would object to our
+vivisecting you?"
+
+"Mortuisecting, you mean, Harry," I interposed parenthetically. "Let us
+keep ourselves strictly within the utmost letter of the law."
+
+"Vivisecting? Mortuisecting?" exclaimed the spectre, with some
+amusement. "Really, the proposal is so very novel that I hardly know how
+to answer it. I don't think you will find it a very practicable
+undertaking: but still, if you like, yes, you may try your hands upon
+me."
+
+We were both much gratified at this generous readiness to further the
+cause of science, for which, to say the truth, we had hardly felt
+prepared. No doubt, we were constantly in the habit of maintaining that
+vivisection didn't really hurt, and that rabbits or dogs rather enjoyed
+the process than otherwise; still, we did not quite expect an apparition
+in human form to accede in this gentlemanly manner to a personal request
+which after all is rather a startling one. I seized our new friend's
+hand with warmth and effusion (though my emotion was somewhat checked by
+finding it slip through my fingers immaterially), and observed in a
+voice trembling with admiration, "Sir, you display a spirit of
+self-sacrifice which does honour to your head and heart. Your total
+freedom from prejudice is perfectly refreshing to the anatomical mind.
+If all 'subjects' were equally ready to be vivisected--no, I mean
+mortuisected--oh,--well,--there," I added (for I began to perceive that
+my argument didn't hang together, as "subjects" usually accepted
+mortuisection with the utmost resignation), "perhaps it wouldn't make
+much difference after all."
+
+Meanwhile Harry had pulled the table into the centre of the room, and
+arranged the necessary instruments at one end. The bright steel had a
+most charming and scientific appearance, which added greatly to the
+general effect. I saw myself already in imagination drawing up an
+elaborate report for the Royal Society, and delivering a Croonian
+Oration, with diagrams and sections complete, in illustration of the
+"Vascular System of a Ghost." But alas, it was not to be. A preliminary
+difficulty, slight in itself, yet enormous in its preventive effects,
+unhappily defeated our well-made plans.
+
+"Before you lay yourself on the table," said Harry, gracefully
+indicating that article of furniture to the spectre with his lancet,
+"may I ask you to oblige me by removing your clothes? It is usual in all
+these operations to--ahem--in short, to proceed _in puris naturalibus_.
+As you have been so very kind in allowing us to operate upon you, of
+course you won't object to this minor but indispensable accompaniment."
+
+"Well, really, sir," answered the ghost, "I should have no personal
+objection whatsoever; but I'm rather afraid it can't be done. To tell
+you the truth, my clothes are an integral part of myself. Indeed, I
+consist chiefly of clothes, with only a head and hands protruding at the
+principal extremities. You must have noticed that all persons of my sort
+about whom you have read or heard were fully clothed in the fashion of
+their own day. I fear it would be quite impossible to remove these
+clothes. For example, how very absurd it would be to see the shadowy
+outline of a ghostly coat hanging up on a peg behind a door. The bare
+notion would be sufficient to cast ridicule upon the whole community.
+No, gentlemen, much as I should like to gratify you, I fear the thing's
+impossible. And, to let the whole secret out, I'm inclined to think, for
+my part, that I haven't got any independent body whatsoever."
+
+"But, surely," I interposed, "you must have _some_ internal economy, or
+else how can you walk and talk? For example, have you a heart?"
+
+"Most certainly, my dear sir, and I humbly trust it is in the right
+place."
+
+"You misunderstand me," I repeated: "I am speaking literally, not
+figuratively. Have you a central vascular organ on your left-hand side,
+with two auricles and ventricles, a mitral and a tricuspid valve, and
+the usual accompaniment of aorta, pulmonary vein, pulmonary artery,
+systole and diastole, and so forth?"
+
+"Upon my soul, sir," replied the spectre with an air of bewilderment, "I
+have never even heard the names of these various objects to which you
+refer, and so I am quite unable to answer your question. But if you mean
+to ask whether I have something beating just under my fob (excuse the
+antiquated word, but as I wear the thing in question I must necessarily
+use the name), why then, most undoubtedly I have."
+
+"Will you oblige me, sir," said Harry, "by showing me your wrist? It is
+true I can't _feel_ your pulse, owing to what you must acknowledge as a
+very unpleasant tenuity in your component tissues: but perhaps I may
+succeed in _seeing_ it."
+
+The apparition held out its arm. Harry instinctively endeavoured to
+balance the wrist in his hand, but of course failed in catching it. We
+were both amused throughout to observe how difficult it remained, after
+several experiences, to realize the fact that this visible object had no
+material and tangible background underlying it. Harry put up his
+eyeglass and gazed steadily at the phantom arm; not a trace of veins or
+arteries could anywhere be seen. "Upon my word," he muttered, "I believe
+it's true, and the subject has no internal economy at all. This is
+really very interesting."
+
+"As it is quite impossible to undress you," I observed, turning to our
+visitor, "may I venture to make a section through your chest, in order,
+if practicable, to satisfy myself as to your organs generally?"
+
+"Certainly," replied the good-humoured spectre; "I am quite at your
+service."
+
+I took my longest lancet from its case and made a very neat cut, right
+across the sternum, so as to pass directly through all the principal
+viscera. The effect, I regret to say, was absolutely nugatory. The two
+halves of the body reunited instantaneously behind the instrument, just
+as a mass of mercury reunites behind a knife. Evidently there was no
+chance of getting at the anatomical details, if any existed, underneath
+that brocaded waistcoat of phantasmagoric satin. We gave up the attempt
+in despair.
+
+"And now," said the shadowy form, with a smile of conscious triumph,
+flinging itself easily but noiselessly into a comfortable arm-chair, "I
+hope you are convinced that ghosts really do exist. I think I have
+pretty fully demonstrated to you my own purely spiritual and immaterial
+nature."
+
+"Excuse me," said Harry, seating himself in his turn on the ottoman: "I
+regret to say that I remain as sceptical as at the beginning. You have
+merely convinced me that a certain visible shape exists apparently
+unaccompanied by any tangible properties. With this phenomenon I am
+already familiar in the case of phosphorescent gaseous effluvia. You
+also seem to utter audible words without the aid of a proper larynx or
+other muscular apparatus; but the telephone has taught me that sounds
+exactly resembling those of the human voice may be produced by a very
+simple membrane. You have afforded us probably the best opportunity ever
+given for examining a so-called ghost, and my private conviction at the
+end of it is that you are very likely an egregious humbug."
+
+I confess I was rather surprised at this energetic conclusion, for my
+own faith had been rapidly expanding under the strange experiences of
+that memorable evening. But the visitor himself seemed much hurt and
+distressed. "Surely," he said, "you won't doubt my word when I tell you
+plainly that I am the authentic ghost of Algernon Egerton. The word of
+an Egerton of Egerton Castle was always better than another man's oath,
+and it is so still, I hope. Besides, my frank and courteous conduct to
+you both to-night, and the readiness with which I have met all your
+proposals for scientific examination, certainly entitle me to better
+treatment at your hands."
+
+"I must beg ten thousand pardons," Harry replied, "for the plain
+language which I am compelled to use. But let us look at the case in a
+different point of view. During your occasional visits to the world of
+living men, you may sometimes have travelled in a railway carriage in
+your invisible form."
+
+"I have taken a trip now and then (by a night train, of course), just to
+see what the invention was like."
+
+"Exactly so. Well, now, you must have noticed that a guard insisted from
+time to time upon waking up the sleepy passengers for no other purpose
+than to look at their tickets. Such a precaution might be resented, say
+by an Egerton of Egerton Castle, as an insult to his veracity and his
+honesty. But, you see, the guard doesn't know an Egerton from a Muggins:
+and the mere word of a passenger to the effect that he belongs to that
+distinguished family is in itself of no more value than his personal
+assertion that his ticket is perfectly _en r�gle_."
+
+"I see your analogy, and I must allow its remarkable force."
+
+"Not only so," continued Harry firmly, "but you must remember that in
+the case I have put, the guard is dealing with known beings of the
+ordinary human type. Now, when a living person introduces himself to me
+as Egerton of Egerton Castle, or Sir Roger Tichborne of Alresford, I
+accept his statement with a certain amount of doubt, proportionate to
+the natural improbability of the circumstances. But when a gentleman of
+shadowy appearance and immaterial substance, like yourself, makes a
+similar assertion, to the effect that he is Algernon Egerton who died
+two hundred years ago, then I am reluctantly compelled to acknowledge,
+even at the risk of hurting that gentleman's susceptible feelings, that
+I can form no proper opinion whatsoever of his probable veracity. Even
+men, whose habits and constitution I familiarly understand, cannot
+always be trusted to tell me the truth: and how then can I expect
+implicitly to believe a being whose very existence contradicts all my
+previous experiences, and whose properties give the lie to all my
+scientific conceptions--a being who moves without muscles and speaks
+without lungs? Look at the possible alternatives, and then you will see
+that I am guilty of no personal rudeness when I respectfully decline to
+accept your uncorroborated assertions. You may be Mr. Algernon Egerton,
+it is true, and your general style of dress and appearance certainly
+bears out that supposition; but then you may equally well be his Satanic
+Majesty in person--in which case you can hardly expect me to credit your
+character for implicit truthfulness. Or again, you may be a mere
+hallucination of my fancy: I may be suddenly gone mad, or I may be
+totally drunk,--and now that I look at the bottle, Jim, we must
+certainly allow that we have fully appreciated the excellent qualities
+of your capital Glenlivet. In short, a number of alternatives exist, any
+one of which is quite as probable as the supposition of your being a
+genuine ghost; which supposition I must therefore lay aside as a mere
+matter for the exercise of a suspended judgment."
+
+I thought Harry had him on the hip, there: and the spectre evidently
+thought so too; for he rose at once and said rather stiffly, "I fear,
+sir, you are a confirmed sceptic upon this point, and further argument
+might only result in one or the other of us losing his temper. Perhaps
+it would be better for me to withdraw. I have the honour to wish you
+both a very good evening." He spoke once more with the _hauteur_ and
+grand mannerism of the old school, besides bowing very low at each of us
+separately as he wished us good-night.
+
+"Stop a moment," said Harry rather hastily. "I wouldn't for the world be
+guilty of any inhospitality, and least of all to a gentleman, however
+indefinite in his outline, who has been so anxious to afford us every
+chance of settling an interesting question as you have. Won't you take a
+glass of whisky and water before you go, just to show there's no
+animosity?"
+
+"I thank you," answered the apparition, in the same chilly tone; "I
+cannot accept your kind offer. My visit has already extended to a very
+unusual length, and I have no doubt I shall be blamed as it is by more
+reticent ghosts for the excessive openness with which I have conversed
+upon subjects generally kept back from the living world. Once more,"
+with another ceremonious bow, "I have the honour to wish you a pleasant
+evening."
+
+As he said these words, the fluorescent light brightened for a second,
+and then faded entirely away. A slightly unpleasant odour also
+accompanied the departure of our guest. In a moment, spectre and scent
+alike disappeared; but careful examination with a delicate test
+exhibited a faint reaction which proved the presence of sulphur in small
+quantities. The ghost had evidently vanished quite according to
+established precedent.
+
+We filled our glasses once more, drained them off meditatively, and
+turned into our bedrooms as the clock was striking four.
+
+Next morning, Harry and I drew up a formal account of the whole
+circumstance, which we sent to the Royal Society, with a request that
+they would publish it in their Transactions. To our great surprise, that
+learned body refused the paper, I may say with contumely. We next
+applied to the Anthropological Institute, where, strange to tell, we met
+with a like inexplicable rebuff. Nothing daunted by our double failure,
+we despatched a copy of our analysis to the Chemical Society; but the
+only acknowledgment accorded to us was a letter from the secretary, who
+stated that "such a sorry joke was at once impertinent and undignified."
+In short, the scientific world utterly refuses to credit our simple and
+straightforward narrative; so that we are compelled to throw ourselves
+for justice upon the general reading public at large. As the latter
+invariably peruse the pages of "BELGRAVIA," I have ventured to appeal to
+them in the present article, confident that they will redress our
+wrongs, and accept this valuable contribution to a great scientific
+question at its proper worth. It may be many years before another chance
+occurs for watching an undoubted and interesting Apparition under such
+favourable circumstances for careful observation; and all the above
+information may be regarded as absolutely correct, down to five places
+of decimals.
+
+Still, it must be borne in mind that unless an apparition had been
+scientifically observed as we two independent witnesses observed this
+one, the grounds for believing in its existence would have been next to
+none. And even after the clear evidence which we obtained of its
+immaterial nature, we yet remain entirely in the dark as to its
+objective reality, and we have not the faintest reason for believing it
+to have been a genuine unadulterated ghost. At the best we can only say
+that we saw and heard Something, and that this Something differed very
+widely from almost any other object we had ever seen and heard before.
+To leap at the conclusion that the Something was therefore a ghost,
+would be, I venture humbly to submit, without offence to the Psychical
+Research Society, a most unscientific and illogical specimen of that
+peculiar fallacy known as Begging the Question.
+
+
+
+
+_RAM DAS OF CAWNPORE._
+
+
+We Germans do not spare trouble where literary or scientific work is on
+hand: and so when I was appointed by the University of Breslau to the
+travelling scholarship in the Neo-Sanskritic languages, I made up my
+mind at once to spend the next five years of my life in India. I knew
+already a good deal more Hindi and Urdu than most English officials who
+have spent twenty years in the country; but I was anxious to perfect my
+knowledge by practice on the spot, and to acquire thorough proficiency
+in conversation by intercourse with the people themselves. I therefore
+went out to India at once, and avoiding the great towns, such as
+Calcutta or Allahabad, which have been largely anglicised by residents
+and soldiers, I took up my abode in the little village of Bithoor on the
+Ganges, a few miles from Cawnpore, celebrated as having been the
+residence of the Nana Sahib, whom you English always describe as "the
+most ferocious rebel in the Mutiny." Here I spent four years in daily
+intercourse with the native gentry, whose natural repugnance to
+foreigners I soon conquered by invariable respect for their feelings and
+prejudices. At the end of eighteen months I had so won my way to their
+hearts that the Muhammedans regarded me as scarcely outside the pale of
+Islam, while the Hindoos usually addressed me by the religious title of
+Bhai or brother.
+
+Of course, however, the English officials did not look with any
+favouring eye upon my proceedings, especially as I sometimes felt called
+upon to remonstrate with them upon their hasty and often ignorant method
+of dispensing justice. This coolness towards the authorities increased
+the friendship felt towards me by the native population; and "the
+European Sahib who is not a Feringhee" became a general adviser of many
+among the poorer people in their legal difficulties. I merely mention
+these facts to account for the confidence reposed in me, of which the
+story I am about to relate is a striking example.
+
+I had a syce or groom who passed by the name of Lal Biro. This man was a
+tall, reserved, white-haired old Hindoo, a Jat by caste, but with a
+figure which might have been taken for that of a Brahman. His manner to
+me was always cold and sometimes sullen; and I found it difficult to
+place myself on the same terms with him as with my other servants. One
+dark evening, however, during the cold season, I had driven back from
+Cawnpore with him late at night in a small open trap, and found him far
+more chatty and communicative than usual. When we reached the bungalow,
+we discovered that the lights were out, and the house almost shut up, as
+the servants had fancied that I meant to sleep at the club. Lal Biro
+accordingly came in with me, and helped me to get my supper ready. Then
+at my request he sat down cross-legged near the door and continued to
+give me some reminiscences of the Mutiny which had been interrupted by
+our arrival.
+
+"Yes, Sahib," he said quietly, composing himself on a little mat with a
+respectful inclination of the body; "I am Ram Das of Cawnpore."
+
+I was startled by the confession, for I knew the name of Ram Das as one
+of the most dangerous petty rebels, on whose head Government had fixed a
+large price; but I was gratified by the confidence he reposed in me,
+and I begged him to go on with his story. I write it down now in very
+nearly the literal English equivalent of his exact words.
+
+"Yes, Sahib, it is a long story truly. I will tell you how it all came
+about. I was a cultivator on the uplands there by Cawnpore, and I had a
+nice plot of land in Zameendari near the village there, good land with
+wheat and millet and a little tobacco. My millet was joar, and I got a
+rupee for eighteen seers, good money. I was well-to-do in those days. No
+man in the village but spoke well of Ram Das. I had a wife and three
+children, and a good mud cottage, and I paid my dues regularly to
+Mahadeo, oil and grain, most properly. The Brahmans said I was a most
+pious man, and everybody thought well of me.
+
+"One day Shaikh Ali, a Muhammedan, a landowner from over the river in
+Oude, whom I knew in the bazaar at Cawnpore, he met me near the bridge
+resting. He said to me, 'Well, Ram Das, these are strange things coming
+to pass. They say the sepoys have mutinied at Meerut, and the Feringhees
+are to be driven into the sea.'
+
+"I said, 'That would not do us Hindoos much good. We should fall under
+you Musalmans again, and you would have an emperor at Delhi, and he
+would tax us and trouble us as our fathers tell us the Moguls did before
+the Feringhees came.'
+
+"Shaikh Ali said to me, 'Are you a good man and true?'
+
+"I answered, 'I pay my dues regularly and do poojah, but I don't know
+what you, a Musalman, mean by a good man.'
+
+"'Can you keep counsel against the accursed Feringhees?' said he.
+
+"'That is an easy thing to do,' I answered. 'They tax us, and number us,
+and make our salt dear, and mean to take our daughters away from us, for
+which purpose they have made a census, to see how many young women
+there are of twelve years and upwards. Besides, they slaughter cows the
+same as you do.'
+
+"'Listen to me, Ram Das,' he said, 'and keep your counsel. Do you know
+that they have tried to make all the sepoys lose caste and become like
+dogs and Pariahs, by putting cow's grease on the cartridges?'
+
+"'I know it,' I replied, 'because my brother is a sepoy at Allahabad,
+and he sent me word of it by a son of our neighbour.'
+
+"'Did we Musalmans ever do so?' he asked again.
+
+"'I never heard it,' said I: 'but indeed I am ignorant of all these
+things, for I am not an old man, and I have only heard imperfectly from
+my elders. Still, I don't know that you ever tried to make us lose
+caste.'
+
+"'Well, Ram Das,' said the Shaikh, 'listen to what we propose. The
+sepoys from Meerut have gone to Delhi and have proclaimed the King as
+Emperor. But now the Nana of Bithoor has something to say about it. If
+the Nana were made king, would you fight for him?'
+
+"'Certainly,' said I, 'for he is a Mahratta and a good Hindoo. He should
+by rights be Peshwa of the Mahrattas, and hold power even over your
+emperor at Delhi.'
+
+"'That is quite true,' the Shaikh answered. 'The Peshwa was always the
+right hand and director of the Emperor. If we put the Mogul on the
+throne once more, the Nana would be his real sovereign, and Hindoos and
+Musalmans alike would rejoice in the change.'
+
+"'But suppose we fall out among ourselves!'
+
+"'What does that matter in the end?' he answered. 'Let us first drive
+out the accursed Feringhees, and then, if Allah prosper us, we may
+divide the land as we like between the two creeds. We are all sons of
+the soil, Hindoo and Musalman alike, and we can live together in peace.
+But these hateful Feringhees, they come across the sea, they overrun all
+India, they tax us all alike, they treat your Sindiah and Holkar as they
+treat our Nizam and our king of Oude, they take away our slaves, they
+tax our food, they pollute your sacred rivers, they destroy your castes,
+and as for us, they take their women to picnic in our mosques, as I have
+seen myself at Agra. Shall we not first drive them into the sea?'
+
+"'You say well,' I answered, 'and I shall ask more of this matter at
+Bithoor.'
+
+"That was the first that I heard of it all. Next day, the village was
+all in commotion. It was said that the Nana had called on all good
+Hindoos to help him to clear out the Feringhees. I left my hut and my
+children, and I came to Bithoor here. Then they gave me a rifle, and
+told me I should march with them to Cawnpore to kill the Feringhees.
+There were not many of the dogs, and the gods were on our side; and when
+we had killed them all we should have the whole of India for the
+Hindoos, with no land-tax or salt-tax, and there should be no more
+cattle slaughtered nor no more interference with the pilgrims at
+Hurdwar. It was a grand day that, and the Nana, dressed out in all the
+Peshwa's jewels, looked like a very king.
+
+"Well, we went to Cawnpore and began to besiege the entrenchments which
+Wheeler Sahib had thrown up round the cantonment. We had great guns and
+many men, both sepoys and volunteers. Inside, the Feringhees had only a
+few, and not much artillery. We all thought that the gods had given us
+the Feringhees to slay, and that there would be no more of them left at
+all.
+
+"For twenty days we continued besieging, and the Feringhees got weaker
+and weaker. They had no food, and scarcely any water. At last Wheeler
+Sahib sent to tell the Nana that he would give himself up, if the Nana
+would spare their lives. The Nana was a merciful man, and he said, 'I
+might go on and take the entrenchment, and kill you all if I wished; but
+to save time, because I want to get away and join the others, I will
+let you off.' So he took all the money in the treasury, and the guns,
+and promised to provide boats to take them all down to Allahabad.
+
+"I was standing about near one of our guns that day, when Chunder Lal, a
+Brahman in the Nana's troops, came up to me and said, 'Well, Ram Das,
+what do you think of this?'
+
+"'I think,' said I, 'that it is a sin and a shame, after we have broken
+down the hospital, and starved out the Feringhees, to let them go down
+the river to Allahabad, to strengthen the garrison that pollutes that
+holy city. For I hear that they do all kinds of wrong there, and insult
+the Brahmans, and the bathers, and the sacred fig-tree. And if these men
+go and join them, the garrison will be stronger, and they will be able
+to hold out longer against the people, which may the gods avert!'
+
+"'So I think too, Ram Das,' said he; 'and for my part, I would try to
+prevent their going.'
+
+"A little later, we went down to the river, by the Nana's orders. There
+some men had got boats together, and were putting the Feringhees into
+them. It was getting dark, and we all went down to guard them. A few of
+them had got into the boats; the rest were on the bank. I can see it all
+now: the white men with their proud looks abashed, going meekly into the
+boats, and the women stepping, all afraid and shrinking from the black
+faces--shrinking from us as if we were unclean and they would lose caste
+by touching us. Though they were so frightened, they were proud still.
+Then three guns went off somewhere in the camp. Chunder Lal was near me,
+and he said to me, 'That is the signal for us to fire. The Nana ordered
+me to fire when I heard those guns.' I don't know if it was true:
+perhaps the Nana ordered it, perhaps Chunder Lal told a lie: but I never
+could find out the truth about it, for they blew Chunder Lal from the
+guns at Cawnpore afterwards, and I have never seen the Nana since to
+ask him. At any rate, I levelled my musket and fired. I hit an officer
+Sahib, and wounded him, not mortally. In a moment there was a great
+report, and I looked round, and saw all our men firing. I don't know if
+they had the word of command, but I think not. I think they all saw me
+fire, and fired because I did, and because they thought it a shame to
+let the Feringhees escape; as though the head man of a village should
+entrap a tiger, a man-eater that had killed many cultivators in their
+dal-fields, and then should let it go. If a headman ordered the
+villagers to loose it from the trap, do you think they would obey him?
+No, and if he loosed it himself, they would take muskets and sticks and
+weapons of all kinds, and kill the man-eater at once. That is what we
+did with the Feringhees.
+
+"It was a terrible sight, and I did not like to see it. Some of them
+leapt into the water and were drowned. Others swam away madly, like wild
+fowl, and we shot at them as they swam; and then they dived, and when
+they came up again, we fired at them again, and the water was red with
+their blood. I hit one man on the shoulder, and broke his arm, but still
+he swam on with his other arm, till somebody put a bullet through his
+head, and he sank. I ran into the water, as did many others, and we
+followed them down until all the swimmers were picked off. Some of the
+boats crossed the river: but there was a regiment waiting on the Oude
+shore--some said by accident, others that the Nana had posted it
+there--and the sepoys hacked them all to pieces as they tried to escape.
+It was a dreadful sight, and I am an older man now, and do not like to
+think of it: but I was younger then, and our blood was hot with
+fighting, and we thought we were going to drive the Feringhees out of
+the country, and that the gods would be well pleased with our day's
+work.
+
+"Some boats got away a little way, but they were afterwards sent back.
+The women and children, some of them badly wounded, we took back into
+Cawnpore. We put them in the Bibi's house, near the Assembly Rooms. Then
+in a few days, the others who were sent back from Futteypore arrived,
+and the Nana said, 'What shall I do with them?' Everybody said, 'Shoot
+them:' so we took out all the men the same day and shot them at once.
+The women and children the Nana spared, because he was a humane man; and
+he sent them to the others in the Bibi's house. There they were well
+treated; and though they had not punkahs, and tattis, and cow's flesh,
+as formerly, yet they got better rations than any of the Nana's own
+soldiers: for the Feringhees, like all you Europeans, Sahib, are very
+luxurious, and will not live off rice or dal and a little ghee like
+other people. You have conquered every place in the world, from Ceylon
+to Cashmere, and so you have got luxurious, and live off wheaten bread,
+and cow's flesh, and wine, and many such ungodly things. But the rest of
+the world think it a great thing if they have ghee to their rice.
+
+"After a fortnight the Nana's troops were defeated at Futteypore, and it
+was said that the Feringhee ladies were sending letters to the army.
+Then the Nana was very angry. He said, 'I have spared these women's
+lives, and yet they are sending news to my enemies. I will tell you what
+I will do: I will put them all to death.' So he gave word to have them
+shot. I was one of the guards at the Bibi's house, and I got orders to
+shoot them. Then we all tried to bring them out in front of the house;
+but they would not come; so we had to go in and put an end to them there
+with swords and bayonets. Poor things! they shrieked piteously; and I
+was sorry for them, because they were some of them young and pretty, and
+it is not the women's fault if the Feringhees come here, for the
+Feringhee ladies hate India, and will all go away again across the
+water if they can get a chance. And then there were the children! One
+poor lady clung to my knees and begged hard for her daughter: but I had
+to obey orders, so I cut her down. It was very sad. But then, the
+Feringhee ladies are even prouder than the men, and they hate us
+Hindoos. They would not care if they killed a thousand of us if their
+little fingers ached. Look how they make us salaam, and punish us for
+small faults, and compel us to work punkahs, and to run on foot after
+their carriages, and insult our gods. Ah, they are a cruel, proud race.
+They are lower than the lowest Sudra, and yet they will treat a
+twice-born Brahman like a dog.
+
+"We threw all the bodies into the well at Cawnpore where now they have
+put up an image of one of their gods--a cold, white god, with two
+wings--to avenge their death. Then there was great joy in Cawnpore. We
+had killed the last of the Feringhees, and India should be our own.
+Soon, we might make the Nana into a real Peshwa, and turn against the
+Musalmans, and put down all slaughtering of cattle altogether, as the
+Rani did at Jhansi. We should have no more land-tax to pay, for the
+Musalmans should pay all the taxes, as is just: but the Hindoos should
+have their land for nothing, and live upon chupatties and ghee and honey
+every day. Ah, that was the grandest day that was ever seen in Cawnpore!
+
+"But that was not the end of it. In the mysterious providence of the
+all-wise gods it was otherwise ordained. A few days before all this, I
+was standing about in the bazaar, when I met a jemadar. He said to me,
+'So the Feringhees are marching from Allahabad!'
+
+"'The Feringhees!' I said: 'why, no, we have killed them all off out of
+India, thanks be to the gods. At Delhi they are all killed, and at
+Meerut, and at Cawnpore here, and I believe everywhere but at Allahabad
+and at Calcutta.'
+
+"'Ram Das,' he answered, 'you are a child; you know nothing. Do you
+think the Feringhees are so few? They are swarming across the water like
+locusts across the Ganges. In a few months, they will all come from
+where they have been helping the Sultan of Roum against the other
+Christians, and they will make the whole Doab into a desert, as they
+made Rohilcund in the days of Hostein Sahib.[1] Shall I tell you the
+news from Delhi?'
+
+"'Yes,' I said, 'tell me by all means, for I don't believe the
+Feringhees will ever again hold rule in India, the land of the all-wise
+gods.' In those days, Sahib, I was very foolish. I did not know that the
+Feringhees were in number like the green parrots, and that they could
+send countless shiploads across the water as easily as we could send a
+cargo of dal down the river to Benares.
+
+"'Well, then,' he said, 'Delhi has been besieged, and before long it
+will be taken. And the Feringhees have sent up men from Calcutta who
+have reached Allahabad, and are now on the march for Cawnpore. When they
+come, they will take us all, and kill the Nana, and there will be an end
+of the Hindoos for ever. They are going to make us all into Christians
+by force, baptising us with unclean water, and making Brahmans and
+Pariahs eat together of cow's flesh, and destroying all caste, and
+modesty, and religion altogether.'
+
+"'They will do all these things, doubtless,' I replied, 'if they can
+succeed in catching us: but it is impossible. The Feringhees are but a
+handful: they could never have ruled us if it were not for the sepoys.
+They had all the muskets and the ammunition, and they kept them from us.
+But now that the sepoys have mutinied, the Feringhees are but a few
+officers and half-a-dozen regiments. And I cannot believe that the gods
+would allow men like them, who are worse than Musalmans, and have no
+caste, to conquer us who are the best blood in India, Brahmans, and
+Jats, and Mahrattas.'
+
+"But the jemadar laughed at me. 'I tell you,' he said, 'this rebellion
+is all child's play. For I have myself been across the water once, as an
+officer's servant, and have been to England, and to their great
+town, London. It is so great that a man can hardly walk across it from
+end to end in a day; and if you were to put Allahabad or Cawnpore down
+in its midst, the people would not know that any new thing had come
+about. They have ships in their rivers as thick as the canes in a
+sugar-field; and iron roads with cars drawn by steam horses. They have
+so many men that they could overrun all India as easily as the people of
+Cawnpore could overrun Bihtoor. And so when I hear their guns outside
+the town, I will run away to them, and I advise you to do so too.'
+
+"I didn't believe him at the time; but a few days afterwards, I found
+out that the Feringhees were really marching from Allahabad. And when we
+killed the ladies, they were almost at the door. They fought like
+demons, and we know that the demons must all be on their side. Many
+times we went out to meet them, but in four separate battles they cut
+our men to pieces like sheep. At last, just after we had got rid of the
+ladies, they got to Cawnpore.
+
+"Then there was no end of the confusion. The Nana got frightened, and
+fled away. We blew up the magazine, so that they might not have powder;
+and the Feringhees came at once into the town. There never were people
+so savage or angry. The sight of the well and the Bibi's house seemed to
+drive them wild. They were more like tigers than human beings. Every
+sepoy whom they caught they shot at once for vengeance, because that is
+their religion: and many who were not sepoys, and who had not borne arms
+against them, they shot on false evidence. Every man who had a grudge
+against another told the Feringhees that their enemy had helped to cut
+down the ladies; and the Feringhees were so greedy for blood that they
+believed it all, and shot them down at once. So much blood was never
+shed in Cawnpore: for one life they took ten. Then we knew it was all
+true what the jemadar had said, and that they would take the whole Doab
+back, and put back the land-tax, and the salt-tax; and we thought too
+that they would make us all into Christians; but _that_ they have not
+done, for so long as they get their taxes, and have high pay and good
+bungalows, and cow's flesh and beer, they don't care about, or reverence
+any religion, not even their own. For we Hindoos respect our fakeers,
+and even the Musalmans respect their pirs; but the Feringhees think as
+little of the missionaries as we do ourselves, and care more for dances
+than for their churches. That is why they have not compelled us to
+become Christians.
+
+"All the time the Feringhees were in Cawnpore, I lay hid in the
+jemadar's house. He was a good man, though he had gone over to the
+Feringhees as soon as they came in sight: and nobody suspected his
+house, because he was now on their side, and had given them news of all
+that took place in the town when we killed the officers and the ladies.
+So I was quite safe there, and got dal and water every day, and was in
+no danger at all.
+
+"Presently, the Feringhees moved off again, abandoning Cawnpore, because
+Havelock Sahib, who was the most terrible of their generals, wanted to
+go on to Lucknow. There the Musalmans of Oude had risen and were
+besieging the Presidency, with all the soldiers and officers. I would
+not go to Oude, because I did not care to fight for Musalmans,
+preferring rather to wait the chance of the Nana coming back; for only a
+Mahratta could now recover the kingdom for the Hindoos; and the
+Musalmans are almost as bad as the Feringhees themselves. In a short
+time, however, the Gwalior men came. They were good men, the Gwalior
+men: for though Sindiah, their rajah, had commanded them not to fight,
+they would not desert the other Hindoos, when there were Feringhees to
+be killed: and they disobeyed Sindiah, and rebelled, and so I joined
+them gladly. They pitched only fifteen miles from Cawnpore, and there I
+went out and enlisted with them.
+
+"By-and-by most of the Gwalior men got frightened, and went back again.
+Then things became very bad. A few of us marched southward, and hid in
+the jungles that slope down towards the Jumna. We were very frightened,
+because there are tigers in that jungle: and two Gwalior men were eaten
+by the tigers. But soon some Feringhees from Etawa heard of our being
+there, and they came out to stalk us. It was just like shooting
+_nil-ghae_. They came on horseback, and closed all round the jungle
+where we were. Then they crept on into the jungle, and we crept away
+from them. Every now and then they drove a man into an open space; and
+then they all shouted like fiends, and shot at him. When they hit him
+and rolled him over, they laughed, and shouted louder still. I was
+hidden under some low bushes; and two Feringhees passed close to me, one
+on each side of the bushes; but they did not see me. Soon after, they
+started a man who had been a sepoy, and he ran back towards my bushes. I
+never said a word. Then they all fired at him, and killed him: but one
+bullet hit me on the arm, and went through the flesh of my arm, and
+partly splintered the bone. But still I said nothing. All day long I lay
+moaning to myself very low, and the Feringhees scoured all the jungle,
+and killed everybody but me, and went away saying to themselves that
+they had had a good day's sport. For they hunted us just as if we were
+antelopes.
+
+"I lay for a fortnight, wounded, in the jungle, and had nothing to eat
+but Mahua berries. I was feverish and wandered in my mind: but at the
+end of a fortnight I could crawl out, and managed to drag along my
+wounded arm. Then I went to the nearest village, and gave out that I was
+a cultivator who had been wounded by the Gwalior men in trying to defend
+a _tuhseelie_[2] for the Feringhees. For that, they took great care of
+me, and sent me on to Cawnpore.
+
+"I was not afraid to go back to the town, for my own people would not
+know me again. In that fortnight I had grown from a young man into the
+man you see me; only I was older-looking then than I am now, for I have
+got younger in the Sahib's service. My hair had turned white, and so had
+my beard, which was longer and more matted than before. My forehead was
+wrinkled, and my cheeks had fallen away. As soon as I had got to
+Cawnpore, I went straight to the jemadar's house, to see if he would
+recognize me; but he did not: for even my voice was hoarser and harsher
+than of old, through fever and exposure. So I went and told my story to
+the Feringhee doctor, how I had been wounded in keeping the tuhseelie
+for his people; and he tended my arm, and made it well again. For though
+the Feringhees are savage like tigers to their enemies, if you befriend
+them, they will treat you well. In that they are better than the
+Musalmans.
+
+"Soon after, I went out to the parade ground, because I heard there was
+to be a dreadful sight. They were going to blow the rebels they had
+taken, from the guns. I went out and looked on. Then they took all the
+men, Brahmans and Chumars alike, and broke caste, and tied them each to
+a gun. I could not have done it, though I cut down the Feringhee ladies;
+but they did it, and made a light matter of it. Then they fired the
+guns, and in a whiff their bodies were all blown away utterly, so that
+there was nothing left of them. This they did so as utterly to destroy
+the rebels, leaving neither body nor soul, but annihilating them
+altogether, which is worse than death. They would have done it to me,
+if they had caught me. Do you wonder that I hate the Feringhees, Sahib?
+Why, they did it even to the twice-born Brahmans, let alone a Jat. The
+gods will avenge it on them.
+
+"Then I went out to look at my plot of land. The Feringhees knew of me
+from many traitors, some of whom had given up my name to save themselves
+from being blown away--and no wonder. They had seized my plot, and sold
+it to another man, a zameendar, a Kayath in Cawnpore, who had made money
+by supplying them with food--the curse of all the gods upon him! And as
+for my wife and children, they had gone wandering out, and I have never
+seen them since. My wife was with child, and she went into Cawnpore, and
+thence elsewhere, I know not where, and starved to death, I suppose, or
+died in some other shameful way. But one of my daughters a missionary
+got, and sent her to Meerut to a school; and there they are teaching her
+to be a Christian, and to hate her own gods and her own people, and to
+love the Feringhees who suck the blood of India, and grind down the poor
+with taxes, and dispossess the Thakurs, who ought, of course, by right
+to own the land. This much I learned by inquiring at Cawnpore; but how
+my wife died, or whether they killed her, or what, that I have never
+been able to learn.
+
+"So that was the end of it all. The Nana was hidden away somewhere up
+Nepaul way; and the Feringhees had got back Lucknow; and all over the
+Doab and the Punjab they were established again, and the hopes of the
+people were all broken. And I had lost my land, and my wife, and my
+children, and had nothing to live upon or to live for. And we had not
+driven out the accursed strangers, after all, but on the contrary they
+made themselves stronger than ever, and sent more soldiers, as the
+jemadar had prophesied, and put down the Company, who used to be their
+rajah, and sent up a Maharani instead, who is now Empress of India. And
+they made new taxes and a new census and all sorts of imposts. But since
+that time they have been more afraid of us, and are not so insolent to
+the temples, or the pilgrims, or to the sacred monkeys. And I came to
+Bithoor, and became a syce, and I have been a syce ever since. That is
+all I know about the Mutiny, Sahib."
+
+The old man stopped suddenly, having told all his story in a dull,
+monotonous voice, with little feeling and no dramatic display. I have
+tried to reproduce it just as he said it. There was no passion, no
+fierceness, no cruelty in his manner; but simply a deep, settled,
+uniform tone of hatred to the English. It was the only time I had ever
+heard the story of the Mutiny from a native point of view, and I give it
+as I heard it, without mitigating aught either of its horror or its
+truth.
+
+"And you are not afraid of telling me all this?" I asked.
+
+He shook his head. "The Sahib has a white face," he answered, "but his
+heart is black."
+
+"And the Nana?" I inquired. "Do you know if he is living still?"
+
+His eyes flashed fire for the first time since he had begun. "Ay," he
+cried; "he _is_ living. That I know from many trusty friends. And he
+will come again whenever there is trouble between the Feringhees and the
+other Christians: and then we shall have no quarrelling among ourselves;
+but Sindiah, and Holkar, and the Nizam, and the Oude people, and even
+the Bengalis will rise up together; and we will cut every Feringhee's
+throat in all India, and the gods will give us the land for ever
+after.... Good night, Sahib: my salaam to you." And he glided like a
+serpent from the room.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Warren Hastings.
+
+[2] Village Treasury.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Strange Stories, by Grant Allen
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