CHAPTER VII.
BRIEF RÉSUMÉ OF THE CULPRIT'S CONFESSION.
When you all read this I shall be dead and laughing at you. I have been hung for my own murder. I am Everard G. Roxdal. I am also Tom Peters. We two were one. When I was a young man my moustache and beard wouldn't come. I bought false ones to improve my appearance. One day, after I had become manager of the City and Suburban Bank, I took off my beard and moustache at home, and then the thought crossed my mind that nobody would know me without them. I was another man. Instantly it flashed upon me that if I ran away from the Bank, that other man could be left in London, while the police were scouring the world for a non-existent fugitive. But this was only the crude germ of the idea. Slowly I matured my plan. The man who was going to be left in London must be known to a circle of acquaintance beforehand. It would be easy enough to masquerade in the evenings in my beardless condition, with other disguises of dress and voice. But this was not brilliant enough. I conceived the idea of living with him. It was Box and Cox reversed. We shared rooms at Mrs. Seacon's. It was a great strain, but it was only for a few weeks. I had trick clothes in my bedroom like those of quick-change artistes; in a moment I could pass from Roxdal to Peters and from Peters to Roxdal. Polly had to clean two pairs of boots a morning, cook two dinners, &c., &c. She and Mrs. Seacon saw one or the other of us every moment; it never dawned upon them they never saw us both together. At meals I would not be interrupted, ate off two plates, and conversed with my friend in loud tones. A slight ventriloquial gift enabled me to hold audible conversations with him when he was supposed to be in the bedroom. At other times we dined at different hours. On Sundays he was supposed to be asleep when I was in church. There is no landlady in the world to whom the idea would have occurred that one man was troubling himself to be two (and to pay for two, including washing). I worked up the idea of Roxdal's flight, asked Polly to go with me, manufactured that feminine letter that arrived on the morning of my disappearance. As Tom Peters I mixed with a journalistic set. I had another room where I kept the gold and notes till I mistakenly thought the thing had blown over. Unfortunately, returning from here on the night of my disappearance, with Roxdal's clothes in a bundle I intended to drop into the river, it was stolen from me in the fog, and the man into whose possession it ultimately came appears to have committed suicide, so that his body dressed in my clothes was taken for mine. What, perhaps, ruined me was my desire to keep Clara's love, and to transfer it to the survivor. Everard told her I was the best of fellows. Once married to her, I would not have had much fear. Even if she had discovered the trick, a wife cannot give evidence against her husband, and often does not want to. I made none of the usual slips, but no man can guard against a girl's nightmare after a day up the river and a supper at the Star and Garter. I might have told the judge he was an ass, but then I should have had penal servitude for bank robbery, and that is worse than death. The only thing that puzzles me, though, is whether the law has committed murder or I suicide. What is certain is that I have cheated the gallows.
Santa Claus.
A STORY FOR THE NURSERY.
Although Bob was asleep on the doorstep the children in the passage talked so loudly that they woke him up. They did not mean to do it, for they were nice, clean, handsome children. Bob was always pretty dirty, so nobody knew if he was pretty clean. He was not a dog, though you might think so from his name and the way he was treated. Nobody cared for Bob except Tommy whom he could fight one-hand. The lucky nice clean children had jam to lick, but Bob had only Tommy. Poor Tommy!
Bob sat up on his stony doorstep, drawing his rags around him. His toes were freezing. When you have no boots it is awkward to stamp your feet. That is why they are so cold. Bob's idea of heaven was a place with a fire in it. He lived before Free Education and his ideas were mixed.
Bob heard the children inside talking about Santa Claus and the presents they expected. Bob gathered that he was a kind-hearted old gentleman, and he thought to himself: "If I could find out Santa Claus's address, I'd go and arx 'im for some presents too." So he waited outside, shivering, till a pretty little girl and boy came out, when he said to them: "Please, can you tell me where Santa Claus lives?"
The little girl and boy drew back when he spoke to them, because they had strict orders to keep their pinafores clean. But when they heard his strange question, they looked at each other with large eyes. Then their pretty faces filled with smiling sunshine, and they said: "He lives in the sky. He is a spirit."
Bob's face fell. "Oh, then I carn't call upon 'im," he said. "But 'ow is it I never gets no presents like I 'ears yer say you does?"
"Perhaps you are not a good child," said the little girl gravely.
"Yes, look how you've torn your clothes," said the little boy reprovingly.
"Well, but 'ow is you goin' to get presents from the sky?"
"We hang up our stockings to-night, just before Christmas, and in the night Santa Claus fills them," they explained, and just then the maid came out and led them away.
Now Bob understood. He had never had any stockings in his life. He felt mad to think how much else he had missed through the want of a pair. If he could only get a pair of stockings to hang up, he might be a rich boy and dine off bread and treacle. He wandered through the courts and alleys looking for stockings in the gutters and dustbins. They were not there. Old boots were to be found in abundance though not in couples (which was odd); but Bob soon discovered that people never throw away their stockings. At last he plucked up courage and begged from house to house, but nobody had a pair to spare. What becomes of all the old stockings? Not everybody hoards treasure in them. Bob met plenty of kind hearts; they offered him bread when he asked for a stocking.
At last, weary and footsore, he returned to his doorstep and pondered. He wondered if he could cheat Santa Claus by making a pair out of a piece of newspaper he had picked up. But perhaps Mr. Claus was particular about the material and admitted nothing under cotton. He thought of stepping deeply into the mud and caking a pair, but then he could only remove them at night by brushing them off in little pieces; he feared they would stick too tight to come off whole. He also thought of painting his calves with stripes from "wet paint," on the off chance that Mr. Claus would drop the presents carelessly down along his legs. But he concluded that if Mr. Claus lived in the sky he could look down and see all he was doing. So he began to cry instead.
"What are you crying about?" said a quavering voice, and Bob, startled, became aware of a wretched old creature dining on the doorstep at his side.
AN OLD WOMAN DINING ON THE DOORSTEP.
"I ain't got no stockings," he sobbed in answer.
"Well, I'll give you mine," said his neighbour.
Bob hesitated. The poor old woman looked so brokendown herself, it seemed mean to accept her offer.
"Won't you be cold?" he asked timidly.
"I shan't be warmer," mumbled the old woman. "But then you will."
"No, I won't have them, thank you kindly, mum," said Bob stoutly.
"Then I'll tell you what to do," said the old woman, who was really a fairy, though she had lost both wings—they had been amputated in a surgical operation. "It's easy enough to get stockings if you only know how. Run away now and pick out any person you meet and say, 'I wish that person's stockings were on my feet.' You can only wish once, so be careful, especially, not to wish for a pair of blue stockings, as they won't suit you."
She grinned and vanished. Bob jumped up and was about to wish off the stockings of the first man he met, when a horrible thought struck him. The man had nice clothes and looked rich, but what proof was there he had stockings on? Bob really could not afford to risk wasting his wish. He walked about and looked at all the people—the men with their long trousers, the women with their trailing skirts; and the more he walked, the more grew his doubt and his agony. A terrible scepticism of humanity seized him. They looked very prim and demure without, these men and women, with their varnished boots and their satin gowns, but what if they were all hypocrites, walking about without stockings! Night came on. Half distracted by distrust of his kind, he wandered on to the docks, and there to his joy he saw people coming off a steamer by a narrow plank. As they walked the ladies lifted up their skirts so as not to tumble over them, and he caught several glimpses of dainty stockings. At last he selected a lady with very broad stockings, that looked as if they would hold lots of Mr. Claus's presents, and wished. Instantly he felt very funny about the feet, and the lady wobbled about so in her big boots that she overbalanced herself and fell into the water and was drowned.
Bob ran back to his doorstep, and when it was dark slipped off his stockings carefully and hung them up on the knocker. And—sure enough!—in the morning they were fall of fine cigars and Spanish lace. Bob sold the lace for a penny, but he kept the cigars and smoked the first with his penn'uth of Christmas plum-duff.
Moral:—England expects every man to pay his duty.
A Rose of the Ghetto.
One day it occurred to Leibel that he ought to get married. He went to Sugarman the Shadchan forthwith.
"I have the very thing for you," said the great marriage-broker.
"Is she pretty?" asked Leibel.
"Her father has a boot and shoe warehouse," replied Sugarman enthusiastically.
"Then there ought to be a dowry with her," said Leibel eagerly.
"Certainly a dowry! A fine man like you!"
"How much do you think it would be?"
"Of course it is not a large warehouse; but then you could get your boots at trade price, and your wife's, perhaps, for the cost of the leather."
"When could I see her?"
"I will arrange for you to call next Sabbath afternoon."
"You won't charge me more than a sovereign?"
"Not a groschen more! Such a pious maiden! I'm sure you will be happy. She has so much way-of-the-country [breeding]. And, of course, five per cent on the dowry?"
"H'm! Well, I don't mind!" "Perhaps they won't give a dowry," he thought, with a consolatory sense of outwitting the Shadchan.
On the Saturday Leibel went to see the damsel, and on the Sunday he went to see Sugarman the Shadchan.
"But your maiden squints!" he cried resentfully.
"An excellent thing!" said Sugarman. "A wife who squints can never look her husband straight in the face and overwhelm him. Who would quail before a woman with a squint?"
"I could endure the squint," went on Leibel dubiously, "but she also stammers."
"Well, what is better, in the event of a quarrel? The difficulty she has in talking will keep her far more silent than most wives. You had best secure her while you have the chance."
"But she halts on the left leg," cried Leibel, exasperated.
"Gott in Himmel! Do you mean to say you do not see what an advantage it is to have a wife unable to accompany you in all your goings?"
Leibel lost patience.
"Why, the girl is a hunchback!" he protested furiously.
"My dear Leibel," said the marriage-broker, deprecatingly shrugging his shoulders and spreading out his palms. "You can't expect perfection!"
Nevertheless, Leibel persisted in his unreasonable attitude. He accused Sugarman of wasting his time, of making a fool of him.
"A fool of you!" echoed the Shadchan indignantly, "when I give you a chance of a boot and shoe manufacturer's daughter. You will make a fool of yourself if you refuse. I daresay her dowry would be enough to set you up as a master-tailor. At present you are compelled to slave away as a cutter for thirty shillings a week. It is most unjust. If you only had a few machines you would be able to employ your own cutters. And they can be got so cheap nowadays."
This gave Leibel pause, and he departed without having definitely broken the negotiations. His whole week was befogged by doubt, his work became uncertain, his chalk-marks lacked their usual decision, and he did not always cut his coat according to his cloth. His aberrations became so marked that pretty Rose Green, the sweater's eldest daughter, who managed a machine in the same room, divined, with all a woman's intuition, that he was in love.
"What is the matter?" she said in rallying Yiddish, when they were taking their lunch of bread and cheese and ginger-beer, amid the clatter of machines, whose serfs had not yet knocked off work.
"They are proposing me a match," he answered sullenly.
"A match!" ejaculated Rose. "Thou!" She had worked by his side for years, and familiarity bred the second person singular. Leibel nodded his head, and put a mouthful of Dutch cheese into it.
"With whom?" asked Rose. Somehow he felt ashamed. He gurgled the answer into the stone ginger-beer bottle, which he put to his thirsty lips.
"With Leah Volcovitch!"
"Leah Volcovitch!" gasped Rose. "Leah, the boot and shoe manufacturer's daughter?"
Leibel hung his head—he scarce knew why. He did not dare meet her gaze. His droop said "Yes." There was a long pause.
"And why dost thou not have her?" said Rose. It was more than an enquiry. There was contempt in it, and perhaps even pique.
Leibel did not reply. The embarrassing silence reigned again, and reigned long. Rose broke it at last.
"Is it that thou likest me better?" she asked.
Leibel seemed to see a ball of lightning in the air; it burst, and he felt the electric current strike right through his heart. The shock threw his head up with a jerk, so that his eyes gazed into a face whose beauty and tenderness were revealed to him for the first time. The face of his old acquaintance had vanished—this was a cajoling, coquettish, smiling face, suggesting undreamed-of things.
"Nu, yes," he replied, without perceptible pause.
"Nu, good!" she rejoined as quickly.
And in the ecstasy of that moment of mutual understanding Leibel forgot to wonder why he had never thought of Rose before. Afterwards he remembered that she had always been his social superior.
The situation seemed too dreamlike for explanation to the room just yet. Leibel lovingly passed the bottle of ginger-beer and Rose took a sip, with a beautiful air of plighting troth, understood only of those two. When Leibel quaffed the remnant it intoxicated him. The relics of the bread and cheese were the ambrosia to this nectar. They did not dare kiss—the suddenness of it all left them bashful, and the smack of lips would have been like a cannon-peal announcing their engagement. There was a subtler sweetness in this sense of a secret, apart from the fact that neither cared to break the news to the master-tailor—a stern little old man. Leibel's chalk-marks continued indecisive that afternoon; which shows how correctly Rose had connected them with love.
Before he left that night Rose said to him: "Art thou sure thou wouldst not rather have Leah Volcovitch?"
"Not for all the boots and shoes in the world," replied Leibel vehemently.
"And I," protested Rose, "would rather go without my own than without thee."
The landing outside the workshop was so badly lighted that their lips came together in the darkness.
"Nay, nay, thou must not yet," said Rose. "Thou art still courting Leah Volcovitch. For aught thou knowest, Sugarman the Shadchan may have entangled thee beyond redemption."
"Not so," asserted Leibel. "I have only seen the maiden once."
"Yes. But Sugarman has seen her father several times," persisted Rose. "For so misshapen a maiden his commission would be large. Thou must go to Sugarman to-night, and tell him that thou canst not find it in thy heart to go on with the match."
"Kiss me, and I will go," pleaded Leibel.
"Go, and I will kiss thee," said Rose resolutely.
"And when shall we tell thy father?" he asked, pressing her hand, as the next best thing to her lips.
"As soon as thou art free from Leah."
"But will he consent?"
"He will not be glad," said Rose frankly. "But after mother's death—peace be upon her—the rule passed from her hands into mine."
"Ah, that is well," said Leibel. He was a superficial thinker.
Leibel found Sugarman at supper. The great Shadchan offered him a chair, but nothing else. Hospitality was associated in his mind with special occasions only, and involved lemonade and "stuffed monkeys."
He was very put out—almost to the point of indigestion—to hear of Leibel's final determination, and plied him with reproachful enquiries.
"You don't mean to say that you give up a boot and shoe manufacturer merely because his daughter has round shoulders!" he exclaimed incredulously.
"It is more than round shoulders—it is a hump!" cried Leibel.
"And suppose? See how much better off you will be when you get your own machines! We do not refuse to let camels carry our burdens because they have humps."
"Ah, but a wife is not a camel," said Leibel, with a sage air.
"And a cutter is not a master-tailor," retorted Sugarman.
"Enough, enough!" cried Leibel. "I tell you I would not have her if she were a machine warehouse."
"There sticks something behind," persisted Sugarman, unconvinced.
Leibel shook his head. "Only her hump," he said, with a flash of humour.
"Moses Mendelssohn had a hump," expostulated Sugarman reproachfully.
"Yes, but he was a heretic," rejoined Leibel, who was not without reading. "And then he was a man! A man with two humps could find a wife for each. But a woman with a hump cannot expect a husband in addition."
"Guard your tongue from evil," quoth the Shadchan angrily. "If everybody were to talk like you, Leah Volcovitch would never be married at all."
Leibel shrugged his shoulders, and reminded him that hunchbacked girls who stammered and squinted and halted on left legs were not usually led under the canopy.
"Nonsense! Stuff!" cried Sugarman angrily. "That is because they do not come to me."
"Leah Volcovitch has come to you," said Leibel, "but she shall not come to me." And he rose, anxious to escape.
Instantly Sugarman gave a sigh of resignation. "Be it so! Then I shall have to look out for another, that's all."
"No, I don't want any," replied Leibel quickly.
Sugarman stopped eating. "You don't want any?" he cried. "But you came to me for one?"
"I—I—know," stammered Leibel. "But I've—I've altered my mind."
"One needs Hillel's patience to deal with you!" cried Sugarman. "But I shall charge you all the same for my trouble. You cannot cancel an order like this in the middle! No, no! You can play fast and loose with Leah Volcovitch. But you shall not make a fool of me."
"But if I don't want one?" said Leibel sullenly.
Sugarman gazed at him with a cunning look of suspicion. "Didn't I say there was something sticking behind?"
Leibel felt guilty. "But whom have you got in your eye?" he enquired desperately.
"Perhaps you may have some one in yours!" naïvely answered Sugarman.
Leibel gave a hypocritic long-drawn, "U-m-m-m. I wonder if Rose Green—where I work—" he said, and stopped.
"I fear not," said Sugarman. "She is on my list. Her father gave her to me some months ago, but he is hard to please. Even the maiden herself is not easy, being pretty."
"Perhaps she has waited for some one," suggested Leibel.
Sugarman's keen ear caught the note of complacent triumph.
"You have been asking her yourself!" he exclaimed in horror-stricken accents.
"And if I have?" said Leibel defiantly.
"You have cheated me! And so has Eliphaz Green—I always knew he was tricky! You have both defrauded me!"
"I did not mean to," said Leibel mildly.
"You did mean to. You had no business to take the matter out of my hands. What right had you to propose to Rose Green?"
"I did not," cried Leibel excitedly.
"Then you asked her father!"
"No; I have not asked her father yet."
"Then how do you know she will have you?"
"I—I know," stammered Leibel, feeling himself somehow a liar as well as a thief. His brain was in a whirl; he could not remember how the thing had come about. Certainly he had not proposed; nor could he say that she had.
"You know she will have you," repeated Sugarman, reflectively. "And does she know?"
"Yes. In fact," he blurted out, "we arranged it together."
"Ah! You both know. And does her father know?"
"Not yet."
"Ah! then I must get his consent," said Sugarman decisively.
"I—I thought of speaking to him myself."
"Yourself!" echoed Sugarman, in horror. "Are you unsound in the head? Why, that would be worse than the mistake you have already made!"
"What mistake?" asked Leibel, firing up.
"The mistake of asking the maiden herself. When you quarrel with her after your marriage, she will always throw it in your teeth that you wished to marry her. Moreover, if you tell a maiden you love her, her father will think you ought to marry her as she stands. Still, what is done is done." And he sighed regretfully.
"And what more do I want? I love her."
"You piece of clay!" cried Sugarman contemptuously. "Love will not turn machines, much less buy them. You must have a dowry. Her father has a big stocking—he can well afford it."
Leibel's eyes lit up. There was really no reason why he should not have bread-and-cheese with his kisses.
"Now, if you went to her father," pursued the Shadchan, "the odds are that he would not even give you his daughter—to say nothing of the dowry. After all, it is a cheek of you to aspire so high. As you told me from the first, you haven't saved a penny. Even my commission you won't be able to pay till you get the dowry. But if I go, I do not despair of getting a substantial sum—to say nothing of the daughter."
"Yes, I think you had better go," said Leibel eagerly.
"But if I do this thing for you I shall want a pound more," rejoined Sugarman.
"A pound more!" echoed Leibel, in dismay. "Why?"
"Because Rose Green's hump is of gold," replied Sugarman oracularly. "Also, she is fair to see, and many men desire her."
"But you have always your five per cent on the dowry."
"It will be less than Volcovitch's," explained Sugarman. "You see, Green has other and less beautiful daughters."
"Yes; but then it settles itself more easily. Say five shillings."
"Eliphaz Green is a hard man," said the Shadchan instead.
"Ten shillings is the most I will give!"
"Twelve and sixpence is the least I will take. Eliphaz Green haggles so terribly."
They split the difference, and so eleven and threepence represented the predominance of Eliphaz Green's stinginess over Volcovitch's.
The very next day Sugarman invaded the Green work-room. Rose bent over her seams, her heart fluttering. Leibel had duly apprised her of the roundabout manner in which she would have to be won, and she had acquiesced in the comedy. At the least it would save her the trouble of father-taming.
Sugarman's entry was brusque and breathless. He was overwhelmed with joyous emotion. His blue bandanna trailed agitatedly from his coat-tail.
"At last!" he cried, addressing the little white-haired master-tailor, "I have the very man for you."
"Yes?" grunted Eliphaz, unimpressed. The monosyllable was packed with emotion. It said: "Have you really the face to come to me again with an ideal man?"
"He has all the qualities that you desire," began the Shadchan, in a tone that repudiated the implications of the monosyllable. "He is young, strong, God-fearing—"
"Has he any money?" grumpily interrupted Eliphaz.
"He will have money," replied Sugarman unhesitatingly, "when he marries."
"Ah!" The father's voice relaxed, and his foot lay limp on the treadle. He worked one of his machines himself, and paid himself the wages so as to enjoy the profit. "How much will he have?"
"I think he will have fifty pounds; and the least you can do is to let him have fifty pounds," replied Sugarman, with the same happy ambiguity.
Eliphaz shook his head on principle.
"Yes, you will," said Sugarman, "when you learn how fine a man he is."
The flush of confusion and trepidation already on Leibel's countenance became a rosy glow of modesty, for he could not help overhearing what was being said, owing to the lull of the master-tailor's machine.
"Tell me, then," rejoined Eliphaz.
"Tell me, first, if you will give fifty to a young, healthy, hard-working, God-fearing man, whose idea it is to start as a master-tailor on his own account? And you know how profitable that is!"
"To a man like that," said Eliphaz, in a burst of enthusiasm, "I would give as much as twenty-seven pounds ten!"
Sugarman groaned inwardly, but Leibel's heart leaped with joy. To get four months' wages at a stroke! With twenty-seven pounds ten he could certainly procure several machines, especially on the instalment system. Out of the corners of his eyes he shot a glance at Rose, who was beyond earshot.
"Unless you can promise thirty it is waste of time mentioning his name," said Sugarman.
"Well, well—who is he?"
Sugarman bent down, lowering his voice into the father's ear.
"What! Leibel!" cried Eliphaz, outraged.
"Sh!" said Sugarman, "or he will overhear your delight, and ask more. He has his nose high enough as it is."
"B—b—b—ut," sputtered the bewildered parent, "I know Leibel myself. I see him every day. I don't want a Shadchan to find me a man I know—a mere hand in my own workshop!"
"Your talk has neither face nor figure," answered Sugarman sternly. "It is just the people one sees every day that one knows least. I warrant that if I had not put it into your head you would never have dreamt of Leibel as a son-in-law. Come now, confess."
Eliphaz grunted vaguely, and the Shadchan went on triumphantly. "I thought as much. And yet where could you find a better man to keep your daughter?"
"He ought to be content with her alone," grumbled her father.
Sugarman saw the signs of weakening, and dashed in, full strength. "It's a question whether he will have her at all. I have not been to him about her yet. I awaited your approval of the idea." Leibel admired the verbal accuracy of these statements, which he just caught.
"But I didn't know he would be having money," murmured Eliphaz.
"Of course you didn't know. That's what the Shadchan is for—to point out the things that are under your nose."
"But where will he be getting this money from?"
"From you," said Sugarman frankly.
"From me?"
"From whom else? Are you not his employer? It has been put by for his marriage-day."
"He has saved it?"
"He has not spent it," said Sugarman, impatiently.
"But do you mean to say he has saved fifty pounds?"
"If he could manage to save fifty pounds out of your wages he would be indeed a treasure," said Sugarman. "Perhaps it might be thirty."
"But you said fifty."
"Well, you came down to thirty," retorted the Shadchan. "You cannot expect him to have more than your daughter brings."
"I never said thirty," Eliphaz reminded him. "Twenty-seven ten was my last bid."
"Very well; that will do as a basis of negotiations," said Sugarman resignedly. "I will call upon him this evening. If I were to go over and speak to him now he would perceive you were anxious and raise his terms, and that will never do. Of course, you will not mind allowing me a pound more for finding you so economical a son-in-law?"
"Not a penny more."
"You need not fear," said Sugarman resentfully. "It is not likely I shall be able to persuade him to take so economical a father-in-law. So you will be none the worse for promising."
"Be it so," said Eliphaz, with a gesture of weariness, and he started his machine again.
"Twenty-seven pounds ten, remember," said Sugarman, above the whirr.
Eliphaz nodded his head, whirring his wheelwork louder.
"And paid before the wedding, mind?"
The machine took no notice.
"Before the wedding, mind," repeated Sugarman. "Before we go under the canopy."
"Go now, go now!" grunted Eliphaz, with a gesture of impatience. "It shall be all well." And the white-haired head bowed immovably over its work.
In the evening Rose extracted from her father the motive of Sugarman's visit, and confessed that the idea was to her liking.
"But dost thou think he will have me, little father?" she asked, with cajoling eyes.
"Anyone would have my Rose."
"Ah, but Leibel is different. So many years he has sat at my side and said nothing."
"He had his work to think of; he is a good, saving youth."
"At this very moment Sugarman is trying to persuade him—not so? I suppose he will want much money."
"Be easy, my child." And he passed his discoloured hand over her hair.
Sugarman turned up the next day, and reported that Leibel was unobtainable under thirty pounds, and Eliphaz, weary of the contest, called over Leibel, till that moment carefully absorbed in his scientific chalk-marks, and mentioned the thing to him for the first time. "I am not a man to bargain," Eliphaz said, and so he gave the young man his tawny hand, and a bottle of rum sprang from somewhere, and work was suspended for five minutes, and the "hands" all drank amid surprised excitement. Sugarman's visits had prepared them to congratulate Rose. But Leibel was a shock.
The formal engagement was marked by even greater junketing, and at last the marriage-day came. Leibel was resplendent in a diagonal frock-coat, cut by his own hand, and Rose stepped from the cab a medley of flowers, fairness, and white silk, and behind her came two bridesmaids—her sisters—a trio that glorified the spectator-strewn pavement outside the Synagogue. Eliphaz looked almost tall in his shiny high hat and frilled shirt-front. Sugarman arrived on foot, carrying red-socked little Ebenezer tucked under his arm.
Leibel and Rose were not the only couple to be disposed of, for it was the thirty-third day of the Omer—a day fruitful in marriages.
But at last their turn came. They did not, however, come in their turn, and their special friends among the audience wondered why they had lost their precedence. After several later marriages had taken place, a whisper began to circulate. The rumour of a hitch gained ground steadily, and the sensation was proportionate. And, indeed, the rose was not to be picked without a touch of the thorn.
Gradually the facts leaked out, and a buzz of talk and comment ran through the waiting Synagogue. Eliphaz had not paid up!
At first he declared he would put down the money immediately after the ceremony. But the wary Sugarman, schooled by experience, demanded its instant delivery on behalf of his other client. Hard-pressed, Eliphaz produced ten sovereigns from his trousers' pocket, and tendered them on account. These Sugarman disdainfully refused, and the negotiations were suspended. The bridegroom's party was encamped in one room, the bride's in another, and after a painful delay Eliphaz sent an emissary to say that half the amount should be forthcoming, the extra five pounds in a bright new Bank of England note. Leibel, instructed and encouraged by Sugarman, stood firm.
And then arose a hubbub of voices, a chaos of suggestions; friends rushed to and fro between the camps, some emerging from their seats in the Synagogue to add to the confusion. But Eliphaz had taken his stand upon a rock—he had no more ready money. To-morrow, the next day, he would have some. And Leibel, pale and dogged, clutched tighter at those machines that were slipping away momently from him. He had not yet seen his bride that morning, and so her face was shadowy compared with the tangibility of those machines. Most of the other maidens were married women by now, and the situation was growing desperate. From the female camp came terrible rumours of bridesmaids in hysterics, and a bride that tore her wreath in a passion of shame and humiliation. Eliphaz sent word that he would give an I O U for the balance, but that he really could not muster any more current coin. Sugarman instructed the ambassador to suggest that Eliphaz should raise the money among his friends.
And the short spring day slipped away. In vain the minister, apprised of the block, lengthened out the formulæ for the other pairs, and blessed them with more reposeful unction. It was impossible to stave off the Leibel-Green item indefinitely, and at last Rose remained the only orange-wreathed spinster in the Synagogue. And then there was a hush of solemn suspense, that swelled gradually into a steady rumble of babbling tongues as minute succeeded minute and the final bridal party still failed to appear. The latest bulletin pictured the bride in a dead faint. The afternoon was waning fast. The minister left his post near the canopy, under which so many lives had been united, and came to add his white tie to the forces for compromise. But he fared no better than the others. Incensed at the obstinacy of the antagonists, he declared he would close the Synagogue. He gave the couple ten minutes to marry in or quit. Then chaos came, and pandemonium—a frantic babel of suggestion and exhortation from the crowd. When five minutes had passed, a legate from Eliphaz announced that his side had scraped together twenty pounds, and that this was their final bid.
Leibel wavered; the long day's combat had told upon him; the reports of the bride's distress had weakened him. Even Sugarman had lost his cocksureness of victory. A few minutes more and both commissions might slip through his fingers. Once the parties left the Synagogue it would not be easy to drive them there another day. But he cheered on his man still—one could always surrender at the tenth minute.
At the eighth the buzz of tongues faltered suddenly, to be transposed into a new key, so to speak. Through the gesticulating assembly swept that murmur of expectation which crowds know when the procession is coming at last. By some mysterious magnetism all were aware that the Bride herself—the poor hysteric bride—had left the paternal camp, was coming in person to plead with her mercenary lover.
And as the glory of her and the flowers and the white draperies loomed upon Leibel's vision his heart melted in worship, and he knew his citadel would crumble in ruins at her first glance, at her first touch. Was it fair fighting? As his troubled vision cleared and as she came nigh unto him, he saw to his amazement that she was speckless and composed—no trace of tears dimmed the fairness of her face, there was no disarray in her bridal wreath.
The clock showed the ninth minute.
She put her hand appealingly on his arm, while a heavenly light came into her face—the expression of a Joan of Arc animating her country.
"Do not give in, Leibel," she said. "Do not have me! Do not let them persuade thee. By my life thou must not! Go home!"
"'BY MY LIFE THOU MUST NOT!'"
So at the eleventh minute the vanquished Eliphaz produced the balance, and they all lived happily ever afterwards.
A Double-Barrelled Ghost.
I was ruined. The bank in which I had been a sleeping-partner from my cradle smashed suddenly, and I was exempted from income tax at one fell blow. It became necessary to dispose even of the family mansion and the hereditary furniture. The shame of not contributing to my country's exchequer spurred me to earnest reflection upon how to earn an income, and, having mixed myself another lemon-squash, I threw myself back on the canvas garden-chair, and watched the white, scented wreaths of my cigar-smoke hanging in the drowsy air, and provoking inexperienced bees to settle upon them. It was the sort of summer afternoon on which to eat lotus, and to sip the dew from the lips of Amaryllises; but although I had an affianced Amaryllis (whose Christian name was Jenny Grant), I had not the heart to dally with her in view of my sunk fortunes. She loved me for myself, no doubt, but then I was not myself since the catastrophe; and although she had hastened to assure me of her unchanged regard, I was not at all certain whether I should be able to support a wife in addition to all my other misfortunes. So that I was not so comfortable that afternoon as I appeared to my perspiring valet: no rose in the garden had a pricklier thorn than I. The thought of my poverty weighed me down; and when the setting sun began flinging bars of gold among the clouds, the reminder of my past extravagance made my heart heavier still, and I broke down utterly.
Swearing at the manufacturers of such collapsible garden-chairs, I was struggling to rise when I perceived my rings of smoke comporting themselves strangely. They were widening and curving and flowing into definite outlines, as though the finger of the wind were shaping them into a rough sketch of the human figure. Sprawling amid the ruins of my chair, I watched the nebulous contours grow clearer and clearer, till at last the agitation subsided, and a misty old gentleman, clad in vapour of an eighteenth-century cut, stood plainly revealed upon the sun-flecked grass.
"Good afternoon, John," said the old gentleman, courteously removing his cocked hat.
"Good afternoon!" I gasped. "How do you know my name?"
"Because I have not forgotten my own," he replied. "I am John Halliwell, your great-grandfather. Don't you remember me?"
A flood of light burst upon my brain. Of course! I ought to have recognised him at once from the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, just about to be sold by auction. The artist had gone to full length in painting him, and here he was complete, from his white wig, beautifully frizzled by the smoke, to his buckled shoes, from his knee-breeches to the frills at his wrists.
"Oh! pray pardon my not having recognised you," I cried remorsefully; "I have such a bad memory for faces. Won't you take a chair?"
"Sir, I have not sat down for a century and a half," he said simply. "Pray be seated yourself."
"PRAY BE SEATED YOURSELF," SAID THE GHOST SIMPLY.
Thus reminded of my undignified position, I gathered myself up, and readjusting the complex apparatus, confided myself again to its canvas caresses. Then, grown conscious of my shirt-sleeves, I murmured,—
"Excuse my deshabille. I did not expect to see you."
"I am aware the season is inopportune," he said apologetically. "But I did not care to put off my visit till Christmas. You see, with us Christmas is a kind of Bank Holiday; and when there is a general excursion, a refined spirit prefers its own fireside. Moreover, I am not, as you may see, very robust, and I scarce like to risk exposing myself to such an extreme change of temperature. Your English Christmas is so cold. With the pyrometer at three hundred and fifty, it is hardly prudent to pass to thirty. On a sultry day like this the contrast is less marked."
"I understand," I said sympathetically.
"But I should hardly have ventured," he went on, "to trespass upon you at this untimely season merely out of deference to my own valetudinarian instincts. The fact is, I am a littérateur."
"Oh, indeed," I said vaguely; "I was not aware of it."
"Nobody was aware of it," he replied sadly; "but my calling at this professional hour will, perhaps, go to substantiate my statement."
I looked at him blankly. Was he quite sane? All the apparitions I had ever heard of spoke with some approach to coherence, however imbecile their behaviour. The statistics of insanity in the spiritual world have never been published, but I suspect the percentage of madness is high. Mere harmless idiocy is doubtless the prevalent form of dementia, judging by the way the poor unhappy spirits set about compassing their ends; but some of their actions can only be explained by the more violent species of mania. My great-grandfather seemed to read the suspicion in my eye, for he hastily continued:—
"Of course it is only the outside public who imagine that the spirits of literature really appear at Christmas. It is the annuals that appear at Christmas. The real season at which we are active on earth is summer, as every journalist knows. By Christmas the authors of our being have completely forgotten our existence. As a writer myself, and calling in connection with a literary matter, I thought it more professional to pay my visit during the dog days, especially as your being in trouble supplied me with an excuse for asking permission to go beyond bounds."
"You knew I was in trouble?" I murmured, touched by this sympathy from an unexpected quarter.
"Certainly. And from a selfish point of view I am not sorry. You have always been so inconsiderately happy that I could never find a seemly pretext to get out to see you."
"Is it only when your descendants are in trouble that you are allowed to visit them?" I enquired.
"Even so," he answered. "Of course spirits whose births were tragic, who were murdered into existence, are allowed to supplement the inefficient police departments of the upper globe, and a similar charter is usually extended to those who have hidden treasures on their conscience; but it is obvious that if all spirits were accorded what furloughs they pleased, eschatology would become a farce. Sir, you have no idea of the number of bogus criminal romances tendered daily by those wishing to enjoy the roving license of avenging spirits, for the ex-assassinated are the most enviable of immortals, and cases of personation are of frequent occurrence. Our actresses, too, are always pretending to have lost jewels; there is no end to the excuses. The Christmas Bank Holiday is naturally inadequate to our needs. Sir, I should have been far happier if my descendants had gone wrong; but in spite of the large fortune I had accumulated, both your father and your grandfather were of exemplary respectability and unruffled cheerfulness. The solitary outing I had was when your father attended a séance, and I was knocked up in the middle of the night. But I did not enjoy my holiday in the least; the indignity of having to move the furniture made the blood boil in my veins as in a spirit-lamp, and exposed me to the malicious badinage of my circle on my return. I protested that I did not care a rap; but I was mightily rejoiced when I learnt that your father had denounced the proceedings as a swindle, and was resolved never to invite me to his table again. When you were born I thought you were born to trouble, as the sparks fly upwards from our dwelling-place; but I was mistaken. Up till now your life has been a long summer afternoon."
"Yes, but now the shades are falling," I said grimly. "It looks as if my life henceforwards will be a long holiday—for you."
He shook his wig mournfully.
"No, I am only out on parole. I have had to give my word of honour to try to set you on your legs again as soon as possible."
"You couldn't have come at a more opportune moment," I cried, remembering how he had found me. "You are a good as well as a great-grandfather, and I am proud of my descent. Won't you have a cigar?"
"Thank you, I never smoke—on earth," said the spirit hurriedly, with a flavour of bitter in his accents. "Let us to the point. You have been reduced to the painful necessity of earning your living."
I nodded silently, and took a sip of lemon-squash. A strange sense of salvation lulled my soul.
"How do you propose to do it?" asked my great-grandfather.
"Oh, I leave that to you," I said confidingly.
"Well, what do you say to a literary career?"
"Eh? What?" I gasped.
"A literary career," he repeated. "What makes you so astonished?"
"Well, for one thing it's exactly what Tom Addlestone, the leader-writer of the Hurrygraph, was recommending to me this morning. He said: 'John, my boy, if I had had your advantages ten years ago, I should have been spared many a headache and supplied with many a dinner. It may turn out a lucky thing yet that you gravitated so to literary society, and that so many press men had free passes to your suppers. Consider the number of men of letters you have mixed drinks with! Why, man, you can succeed in any branch of literature you please.'"
My great-grandfather's face was radiant. Perhaps it was only the setting sun that touched it.
"A chip of the old block," he murmured. "That was I in my young days. Johnson, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Burke, Hume, I knew them all—gay dogs, gay dogs! Except that great hulking brute of a Johnson," he added, with a sudden savage snarl that showed his white teeth.
"I told Addlestone that I had no literary ability whatever, and he scoffed at me for my simplicity. All the same, I think he was only poking fun at me. My friends might puff me out to bull-size; but I am only a frog, and I should very soon burst. The public might be cajoled into buying one book; they could not be duped a second time. Don't you think I was right? I haven't any literary ability, have I?"
"Certainly not, certainly not," replied my great-grandfather with an alacrity and emphasis that would have seemed suspicious in a mere mortal. "But it does seem a shame to waste so great an opportunity. The ball that Addlestone waited years for is at your foot, and it is grievous to think that there it must remain merely because you do not know how to kick it."
"Well, but what's a man to do?"
"What's a man to do?" repeated my great-grandfather contemptuously. "Get a ghost, of course."
"By Jove!" I cried with a whistle. "That's a good idea! Addlestone has a ghost to do his leaders for him when he's lazy. I've seen the young fellow myself. Tom pays him six guineas a dozen, and gets three guineas apiece himself. But of course Tom has to live in much better style, and that makes it fair all round. You mean that I am to take advantage of my influence to get some other fellow work, and take a commission for the use of my name? That seems feasible enough. But where am I to find a ghost with the requisite talents?"
"Here," said my great-grandfather.
"What! You?"
"Yes, I," he replied calmly.
"But you couldn't write—"
"Not now, certainly not. All I wrote now would be burnt."
"Then how the devil—?" I began.
"Hush!" he interrupted nervously. "Listen, and I will a tale unfold. It is called The Learned Pig. I wrote it in my forty-fifth year, and it is full of sketches from the life of all the more notable personages of my time, from Lord Chesterfield to Mrs. Thrale, from Peg Woffington to Adam Smith and the ingenious Mr. Dibdin. I have painted the portrait of Sir Joshua quite as faithfully as he has painted mine. Of course much of the dialogue is real, taken from conversations preserved in my note-book. It is, I believe, a complete picture of the period, and being the only book I ever wrote or intended to write, I put my whole self into it, as well as all my friends."
"It must be, indeed, your masterpiece," I cried enthusiastically. "But why is it called The Learned Pig, and how has it escaped publication?"
"You shall hear. The learned pig is Dr. Johnson. He refused to take wine with me. I afterwards learnt that he had given up strong liqueurs altogether, and I went to see him again, but he received me with epigrams. He is the pivot of my book, all the other characters revolving about him. Naturally, I did not care to publish during his lifetime; not entirely, I admit, out of consideration to his feelings, but because foolish admirers had placed him on such a pedestal that he could damn any book he did not relish. I made sure of surviving him, so many and diverse were his distempers; whereas my manuscript survived me. In the moment of death I strove to tell your grandfather of the hiding-place in which I had bestowed it; but I could only make signs to which he had not the clue. You can imagine how it has embittered my spirit to have missed the aim of my life and my due niche in the pantheon of letters. In vain I strove to be registered among the 'hidden treasure' spirits, with the perambulatory privileges pertaining to the class. I was told that to recognise manuscripts under the head of 'treasures' would be to open a fresh door to abuse, there being few but had scribbled in their time and had a good conceit of their compositions to boot. I could offer no proofs of the value of my work, not even printers' proofs, and even the fact that the manuscript was concealed behind a sliding panel availed not to bring it into the coveted category. Moreover, not only did I have no other pretext to call on my descendants, but both my son and grandson were too respectable to be willingly connected with letters and too flourishing to be enticed by the prospects of profit. To you, however, this book will prove the avenue to fresh fortune."
"Do you mean I am to publish it under your name?"
"No, under yours."
"But, then, where does the satisfaction come in?"
"Your name is the same as mine."
"I see; but still, why not tell the truth about it? In a preface, for instance."
"Who would believe it? In my own day I could not credit that Macpherson spoke truly about the way Ossian came into his possession, nor to judge from gossip I have had with the younger ghosts did anyone attach credence to Sir Walter Scott's introductions."
"True," I said musingly. "It is a played-out dodge. But I am not certain whether an attack on Dr. Johnson would go down nowadays. We are aware that the man had porcine traits, but we have almost canonised him."
"The very reason why the book will be a success," he replied eagerly. "I understand that in these days of yours the best way of attracting attention is to fly in the face of all received opinion, and so in the realm of history to whitewash the villains and tar and feather the saints. The sliding panel of which I spoke is just behind the picture of me. Lose no time. Go at once, even as I must."
The shadowy contours of his form waved agitatedly in the wind.
"But how do you know anyone will bring it out?" I said doubtfully. "Am I to haunt the publishers' offices till—"
"No, no, I will do that," he interrupted in excitement. "Promise me you will help me."
"But I don't feel at all sure it stands a ghost of a chance," I said, growing colder in proportion as he grew more enthusiastic.
"It is the only chance of a ghost," he pleaded. "Come, give me your word. Any of your literary friends will get you a publisher, and where could you get a more promising ghost?"
"Oh, nonsense!" I said quietly, unconsciously quoting Ibsen. "There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea."
I was determined to put the matter on its proper footing, for I saw that under pretence of restoring my fortunes he was really trying to get me to pull his chestnuts out of the fire, and I resented the deceptive spirit that could put forward such tasks as favours. It was evident that he cherished a post-mortem grudge against the great lexicographer, as well as a posthumous craving for fame, and wished to use me as the instrument of his reputation and his revenge. But I was a man of the world, and I was not going to be rushed by a mere phantom.
"I don't deny there are plenty of ghosts about," he answered with insinuative deference. "Only will any of the others work for nothing?"
He saw he had scored a point, and his eyes twinkled.
"Yes, but I don't know that I approve of black-legs," I answered sternly. "You are taking the bread and butter out of some honest ghost's mouth."
The corners of his own mouth drooped; his eyes grew misty; he looked fading away. "Most true," he faltered; "but be pitiful. Have you no great-grand-filial feelings?"
"No, I lost everything in the crash," I answered coldly. "Suppose the book's a frost?"
"I shan't mind," he said eagerly.
"No, I don't suppose you would mind a frost," I retorted witheringly. "But look at the chaff you'd be letting me in for. Hadn't you better put off publication for a century or two?"
"No, no," he cried wildly; "our mansion will pass into strange hands. I shall not have the right of calling on the new proprietors."
"Phew!" I whistled; "perhaps that's why you timed your visit now, you artful old codger. I have always heard appearances are deceptive. However, I have ever been a patron of letters; and although I cannot approve of post-mundane malice, and think the dead past should be let bury its dead, still, if you are set upon it, I will try and use my influence to get your book published."
"Bless you!" he cried tremulously, with all the effusiveness natural to an author about to see himself in print, and trembled so violently that he dissipated himself away.
I stood staring a moment at the spot where he had stood, pleased at having out-manœuvred him; then my chair gave way with another crash, and I picked myself up painfully, together with the dead stump of my cigar, and brushed the ash off my trousers, and rubbed my eyes and wondered if I had been dreaming. But no! when I ran into the cheerless dining-room, with its pervading sense of imminent auction, I found the sliding panel behind the portrait by Reynolds, which seemed to beam kindly encouragement upon me, and, lo! The Learned Pig was there in a mass of musty manuscript.
As everybody knows, the book made a hit. The Acadæum was unusually generous in its praise: "A lively picture of the century of farthingales and stomachers, marred only by numerous anachronisms and that stilted air of faked-up archæological knowledge which is, we suppose, inevitable in historical novels. The conversations are particularly artificial. Still, we can forgive Mr. Halliwell a good deal of inaccuracy and inacquaintance with the period, in view of the graphic picture of the literary dictator from the novel point of view of a contemporary who was not among the worshippers. It is curious how the honest, sterling character of the man is brought out all the more clearly from the incapacity of the narrator to comprehend its greatness—to show this was a task that called for no little skill and subtlety. If it were only for this one ingenious idea, Mr. Halliwell's book would stand out from the mass of abortive attempts to resuscitate the past. He has failed to picture the times, but he has done what is better—he has given us human beings who are alive, instead of the futile shadows that flit through the Walhalla of the average historical novel."
All the leading critics were at one as to the cleverness with which the great soul of Dr. Johnson was made to stand out on the background of detraction, and the public was universally agreed that this was the only readable historical novel published for many years, and that the anachronisms didn't matter a pin. I don't know what I had done to Tom Addlestone; but when everybody was talking about me, he went about saying that I kept a ghost. I was annoyed, for I did not keep one in any sense, and I openly defied the world to produce him. Why, I never saw him again myself—I believe he was too disgusted with the fillip he had given Dr. Johnson's reputation, and did not even take advantage of the Christmas Bank Holiday. But Addlestone's libel got to Jenny Grant's ears, and she came to me indignantly, and said: "I won't have it. You must either give up me or the ghost."
"To give up you would be to give up the ghost, darling," I answered soothingly. "But you, and you alone, have a right to the truth. It is not my ghost at all, it is my great-grandfather's."
"Do you mean to say he bequeathed him to you?"
"It came to that."
I then told her the truth, and showed how in any case the profits of my ancestor's book rightfully reverted backwards to me. So we were married on them, and Jenny, fired by my success, tried her hand on a novel, and published it, truthfully enough, under the name of J. Halliwell. She has written all my stories ever since, including this one; which, if it be necessarily false in the letter, is true in the spirit.
Vagaries of a Viscount.
That every man has a romance in his life has always been a pet theory of mine, so I was not surprised to find the immaculate Dorking smoking a clay pipe in Cable Street (late Ratcliff Highway) at half-past eight of a winter's morning. Nor was I surprised to find myself there, because, as a romancer, I have a poetic license to go anywhere and see everything. Viscount Dorking had just come out of an old clo' shop, and was got up like a sailor. Under his arm was a bundle. He lurched against me without recognising me, for I, too, was masquerading in my shabbiest and roughest attire, and the morning was bleak and foggy, the round red sun flaming in the forehead of the morning sky like the eye of a cyclop. But there could be no doubt it was Dorking—even if I had not been acquainted with the sedate Viscount (that paradox of the peerage, whose treatises on pure mathematics were the joy of Senior Wranglers) I should have suspected something shady from the whiteness of my sailor's hands.
Dorking was a dapper little man, almost dissociable from gloves and a chimneypot. The sight of him shambling along like one of the crew of H. M. S. Pinafore gave me a pleasant thrill of excitement. I turned, and followed him along the narrow yellow street. He made towards the Docks, turning down King David Lane. He was apparently without any instrument of protection, though I, for my part, was glad to feel the grasp of the old umbrella that walks always with me, hand in knob. Hard by the Shadwell Basin he came to a halt before a frowsy coffee-house, reflectively removed his pipe from his mouth, and whistled a bar of a once popular air in a peculiar manner. Then he pushed open the bleared glass door, and was lost to view.
After an instant's hesitation I pulled my sombrero over my eyes and strode in after him, plunging into a wave of musty warmth not entirely disagreeable after the frigid street. The boxes were full of queer waterside characters, among whom flitted a young woman robustly beautiful. The Viscount was already smiling at her when I entered. "Bring us the usual," he said, in a rough accent.
"Come along, Jenny, pint and one," impatiently growled a weather-beaten old ruffian in a pilot's cap.
"Pawn your face!" murmured Jenny, turning to me with an enquiring air.
"Pint and one," I said boldly, in as husky a tone as I could squeeze out.
Several battered visages, evidently belonging to habitués of the place, were bent suspiciously in my direction; perhaps because my rig-out, though rough, had no flavour of sea-salt or river-mud, for no one took the least notice of Dorking, except the comely attendant. I waited with some curiosity for my fare, which turned out to be nothing more mysterious than a pint of coffee and one thick slice of bread and butter. Not to appear ignorant of the prices ruling, I tendered Jenny a sixpence, whereupon she returned me fourpence-halfpenny. This appeared to me so ridiculously cheap that I had not the courage to offer her the change as I had intended, nor did she seem to expect it. The pint of coffee was served in one great hulking cup such as Gargantua might have quaffed. I took a sip, and found it of the flavour of chalybeate springs. But it was hot, and I made shift to drink a little, casting furtive glances at Dorking, three boxes off across the gangway.
My gentleman sailor seemed quite at home, swallowing stolidly as though at his own breakfast-table. I grew impatient for him to have done, and beguiled the time by studying a placard on the wall offering a reward for information as to the whereabouts of a certain ship's cook who was wanted for knifing human flesh. And presently, curiously enough, in comes a police-sergeant on this very matter, and out goes Dorking (rather hastily, I thought), with me at his heels.
No sooner had he got round a corner than he started running at a rate that gave me a stitch in the side. He did not stop till he reached a cab-rank. There was only one vehicle on it, and the coughing, red-nosed driver, unpleasantly suggesting a mixture of grog and fog, was climbing to his seat when I came cautiously and breathlessly up, and Dorking was returning to his trousers' pocket a jingling mass of gold and silver coins, which he had evidently been exhibiting to the sceptical cabman. He seemed to walk these regions with the fearlessness of Una in the enchanted forest. I had no resource but to hang on to the rear, despite the alarums of "whip behind," raised by envious and inconsiderate urchins.
And in this manner, defiantly dodging the cabman, who several times struck me unfairly behind his back, I drove through a labyrinth of sordid streets to the Bethnal Green Museum. Here we alighted, and the Viscount strolled about outside the iron railings, from time to time anxiously scrutinising the church clock and looking towards the fountain which only performs in the summer, and was then wearing its winter night-cap. At last, as if weary of waiting, he walked with sudden precipitation towards the turnstile, and was lost to view within. After a moment I followed him, but was stopped by the janitor, who, with an air of astonishment, informed me there was sixpence to pay, it being a Wednesday. I understood at once why the Viscount had selected this day, for there was no one to be seen inside, and it was five minutes ere I discovered him. He was in the National Portrait Gallery, before one of Sir Peter Lely's insipid beauties, which to my surprise he was copying in pencil. Evidently he was trying to while away the time. At eleven o'clock to the second he scribbled something underneath the sketch, folded it up carefully, picked up his bundle and walked unhesitatingly downstairs into the second gallery, where, after glancing about to assure himself that the policeman's head was turned away, he deposited the paper between two bottles of tape-worms, and stole out through the back door. Feverishly seizing the sketch, I followed him, but the policeman's eye was now upon me, and I had to walk with dignified slowness, though I was in agonies lest I should lose my man. My anxiety was justified; when I reached the grounds, the Viscount was nowhere to be seen. I ran hither and thither like a madman, along the back street and about the grounds, hacking my shins against a perambulator, and at last sank upon a frigid garden seat, breathless and exhausted. I now bethought me of the paper clenched in my fist, and, smoothing it out, deciphered these words faintly pencilled beneath a caricature of the Court beauty:—
"Not my fault you missed me. If you are still set on your folly, you will find me lunching at the Chingford Hotel."
I sprang up exultant, new fire in my veins. True, the mystery was darkening, but it was the darkness that precedes the dawn.
"Cherchez la femme!" I muttered, and darting down Three Colts Lane I reached the Junction, only to find the barrier dashed in my face. But half-a-crown drove it back, and I sprang into the guard's van on his very heels. A shilling stifled the oath on his lips, and transferred it to mine when I discovered I had jumped into the Enfield Fast. Before I really got to Chingford it was long past noon. But I found him.
The Viscount was toying with a Chartreuse in the dining-room. The waiters eyed me suspiciously, for I was shabby and dusty and haggard-looking. To my surprise Dorking had doffed the sailor, and wore a loud checked suit! He looked up as I entered, but did not appear to recognise me. There was no one with him. Still I had found him. That was the prime thing.
Becoming conscious I was faint with hunger, I took up the menu, when to my vexation I saw the Viscount pay his bill, and don an overcoat and a billy-cock, and ere I could snatch bite or sup I was striding along the slimy forest paths, among the gaunt, fog-wrapped trees, following the Viscount by his footprints whenever I lost him for a moment among the avenues. Dorking marched with quick, decisive steps. In the heart of the forest, by a great oak, whose roots sprawled in every direction, he came to a standstill. Hidden behind some brushwood, I awaited the sequel with beating heart.
The Viscount took out a great coloured handkerchief, and spread it carefully over the roots of the oak; then he sat down on the handkerchief, and whistled the same bar of the same once popular air he had whistled outside the coffee-house. Immediately a broken-nosed man emerged from behind a bush, and addressed the Viscount. I strained my ears, but could not catch their conversation, but I heard Dorking laugh heartily, as he sprang up and clapped the man on the shoulder. They walked off together.
I was now excited to the wildest degree; I forgot the pangs of baffled appetite; my whole being was strung to find a key to the strange proceedings of the mathematical Viscount. Tracking their double footsteps through the mist, I found them hobnobbing in a public-house on the forest border. After peeping in, I ran round to another door, and stood in an adjoining bar, where, without being seen, I could have a snack of bread and cheese, and hear all.
"Could you bring her round to my house to-night?" said Dorking, in a hoarse whisper. "You shall have the money down."
"Right, sir!" said the man. And then their pewters clinked.
To my chagrin this was all the conversation. The Viscount strode out alone—except for my company. The fog had grown deeper, and I was glad to be conducted to the station. This time we went to Liverpool Street. Dorking lingered at the book-stall, and at last enquired if they had yesterday's Times. Receiving a reply in the negative, he clucked his tongue impatiently. Then, as with a sudden thought, he ran up to the North London Railway book-stall, only to be again disappointed. He took out the great coloured handkerchief, and wiped his forehead. Then he entered into confidential conversation with an undistinguished stranger, fat and foreign, who had been looking eagerly up and down at the extreme end of the platform. Re-descending into the street, he jumped into a Charing Cross 'bus. As he went inside I had no option but to go outside, though the air was yellow and I felt chilled to the bone.
IN CONFIDENTIAL CONVERSATION WITH AN UNDISTINGUISHED FOREIGNER.
Alighting at Charing Cross, he went into the telegraph office, and wrote a telegram. The composition seemed to cause him great difficulty. Standing outside the door, I saw him discard two half-begun forms. When he came out I made a swift calculation of the chances, and determined to secure the two forms, even at the risk of losing him. Neither had an address. One read: "If you are still set on your fol—"; the other: "Come to-night if you are still—" Bolting out with these precious scraps of evidence, that only added fuel to the flame of curiosity that was consuming me, I turned cold to find the Viscount swallowed up in the crowd. After an instant's agonised hesitation, I hailed a hansom, and drove to his flat in Victoria Street. The valet told me the Viscount was ill in bed, and could not see me. I read in his face that it was a lie. I resolved to loiter outside the building till Dorking's return.
I had not long to wait. In less than ten minutes a hansom discharged him at my feet. Had I not been prepared for anything, I should not have recognised him again in his red whiskers, white hat, and blue spectacles. He rang the bell, and enquired of his own valet if Viscount Dorking was at home. The man said he was ill in bed.
"Oh, we'll soon put him on his legs again," interrupted Dorking, with a professional air, and pushed his valet aside. In that moment the solution dawned upon me. Dorking was mad! Nothing but insanity would account for his day's vagaries. I felt it was my duty, as a fellow-creature, to look to him. I followed him, to the open-eyed consternation of the valet. Suddenly he turned upon me, and seized me savagely by the throat. I felt choking. My worst fear was confirmed.
"No further, my man," he cried, flinging me back. "Now go, and tell her ladyship how you have earned your fee!"
"Dorking! are you mad?" I gasped. "Don't you remember me—Mr. Pry—from the Bachelor's Club?"
"Great heavens, Paul!" he cried. Then he fell back on an ottoman, and laughed till the whiskers ran down his sides. He always had a sense of humour, I remembered.
We explained the situation to each other. Dorking had an eccentric aunt who wished to leave her money to him. Suddenly Dorking learnt from his valet, who was betrothed to her ladyship's maid, that she had taken it into her head he could not be so virtuous and so devoted to pure mathematics as he appeared, and so she had commissioned a private detective agency to watch her nephew, and discover how deep the still waters ran. Incensed at the suspicion, he had that day started a course of action calculated to bamboozle the agency, and having no other meaning whatever.
When he caught sight of me gazing at him so curiously he mistook me for one of its minions, and determined to lead me a dance; the mistake was confirmed by my patient obedience to his piping.
The broken-nosed man was an accident. Anticipating his value as a beautiful false clue, Dorking laughed uproariously at the sight of him, and readily agreed to buy a French poodle.