The Times Red Cross Story Book / by Famous Novelists Serving in His Majesty's Forces

by Various

IV

Cold spray flying over his face aroused Walking Moose at last from his drugged sleep. For a little while he lay still, too shocked and bewildered by the quaking of the wet rock on which he lay and the roar and thunder in his ears, to think or move. He saw something pale, wide, and alive close in front and curving above him. He put out his right hand and felt cold, dripping rock behind him. He put out his left hand. Here was more wet rock—and there the sharp edge of it—and space—within a few inches of his side. He sat upright, and as he gazed he remembered the liquor he had taken from the hands of Never Sleep.

“This is the work of that old man!” he exclaimed. He stood up on the narrow ledge and raised his hand to the dim-lit, flying arc. It was struck down, and his face was dashed with bubbling water. Then horror seized him, and he leaned weakly against the dripping rock—for he realised that he was behind the Veil of Flying Water, hemmed in—in a deathtrap.

Walking Moose soon regained his usual composure. He stood with his back to the dripping rock, his feet firmly set on the quaking ledge, and gazed calmly at the roof and wall of thin, hissing water. He thought of the girl to whom he had given the name of Shining Star; but in a second he put that hateful vision from him. The spray came up from the boiling cauldron under the ledge and drenched him. He stared with dull interest at the arching water, and at last decided that the pale radiance that lit it was that of the moon. So the time must be early night. Suddenly he was aware of something foreign on the luminous front of his prison. It was a slender line of blackness, sharply curved, that struck the veil, vanished, and struck again on a level with his eyes. Spray flew when it touched. He leaned forward and put out his right hand. The thing was of twisted leather.

He shot out his hand and gripped the line firmly. He pulled it towards him. It came half-way, seeming to be slack only at one end; then it began to straighten and draw strongly outward and upward. He advanced to the very edge of the rocky shelf, still gripping the rope with his right hand. He stood on tiptoe. Then he grasped the rope with both hands and sprang through the roof of falling water.

When Walking Moose felt the solid rocks under his feet he loosed the grip of his fingers and fell forward, exhausted. Then the girl whom he had named Shining Star knelt beside him and raised his head against her shoulder.

The Mohawk chief, recovered from his fall, looked out upon them from the bushes. Then he turned and went back to his own country, cursing a magic that had not been foretold by the medicine-men.

“Bill Bailey”
By Ian Hay
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

I
THE COMING OF “BILL BAILEY”

FOR SALE.—A superb 3-seated Diablement-Odorant Touring Car, 12-15 h.-p., 1907 model, with Cape-cart hood, speedometer, spare wheel, fanfare horn, and lamps complete. Body French-grey picked out with red. Cost £350. Will take——

The sum which the vendor was prepared to take was so startling, that to mention it would entirely spoil the symmetry of the foregoing paragraph. It is therefore deleted. The advertisement concluded by remarking that the car was as good as new, and added darkly that the owner was going abroad.

Such was the official title and description of the car. After making its acquaintance we devised for ourselves other and shorter terms of designation. I used to refer to it as My Bargain. Mr. Gootch, our local cycle-agent and petrol-merchant, dismissed it gloomily as “one of them owe-seven Oderongs.” My daughter (hereinafter termed The Gruffin) christened it “Bill Bailey,” because it usually declined to come home; and the title was adopted with singular enthusiasm and unanimity by subsequent passengers.

I may preface this narrative by stating that until I purchased Bill Bailey my experience of motor mechanics had been limited to a motor-bicycle of antique design, which had been sold me by a distant relative of my wife’s. This stately but inanimate vehicle I rode assiduously for something like two months, buoyed up by the not unreasonable hope that one day, provided I pedalled long enough and hard enough, the engine would start. I was doomed to disappointment; and after removing the driving-belt and riding the thing for another month or so as an ordinary bicycle, mortifying my flesh and enlarging my heart in the process, I bartered my unresponsive steed—it turned the scale at about two hundredweight—to Mr. Gootch, in exchange for a set of new wheels for the perambulator. Teresa—we called it Teresa after our first cook, who on receiving notice invariably declined to go—was immediately put into working order by Mr. Gootch, who, I believe, still wins prizes with her at reliability trials.

To return to Bill Bailey. I had been coquetting with the idea of purchasing a car for something like three months, and my wife had definitely made up her mind upon the subject for something like three years, when the advertisement already quoted caught my eye on the back of an evening paper. The car was duly inspected by the family en bloc, in its temporary abiding-place at a garage in distant Surbiton. What chiefly attracted me was the price. My wife’s fancy was taken by the French-grey body picked out with red, and the favourable consideration of The Gruffin was secured by the idea of a speedometer reeling off its mile per minute. The baby’s interest was chiefly centred in the fanfare horn.

My young friend, Andy Finch—one of those fortunate people who feel competent to give advice upon any subject under the sun—obligingly offered to overhaul the engine and bearings and report upon their condition. His report was entirely favourable, and the bargain was concluded.

Next day, on returning home from the City, I found the new purchase awaiting me in the coach-house. It was a two-seated affair, with a precarious-looking arrangement like an iron camp-stool—known, I believe, as a spider-seat—clamped on behind. A general survey of the car assured me that the lamps, speedometer, spare wheel, and other extra fittings had not been abstracted for the benefit of the gentleman who had gone abroad; and I decided there and then to take a holiday next day and indulge the family with an excursion.

II
THE PROVING OF “BILL BAILEY”

Where I made my initial error was in permitting Andy Finch to come round next morning. Weakly deciding that I might possibly be able to extract a grain or two of helpful information from the avalanche of advice which would descend upon me, I agreed to his proposal that he should come and assist me to “start her up.”

Andy arrived in due course, and proceeded to run over the car’s points in a manner which at first rather impressed me. Hitherto I had contented myself with opening a sort of oven door in the dish-cover arrangement which concealed the creature’s works from view, and peering in with an air of intense wisdom, much as a diffident amateur inspects a horse’s mouth. After that I usually felt the tyres, in search of spavins and curbs. Andy began by removing the dish-cover bodily—I learned for the first time that it was called the bonnet,—and then proceeded to tear up the boards on the floor of the car. This done, a number of curious and mysterious objects were exposed to view for the first time, with the functions and shortcomings of each of which I was fated to become severally and monotonously familiar.

Having completed his observations, Andy suggested a run along the road. I did not know then, as I know now, that his knowledge of automobilism was about on a par with my own; otherwise I would not have listened with such respect or permitted him to take any further liberties with the mechanism. However, I knew no better, and this is what happened.

I had better describe the results in tabular form:—

12.15. Andy performs a feat which he describes as “tickling the carburetter.”

12.16-12.20. Andy turns the handle in front.

12.20-12.25. I turn the handle in front.

12.25-12.30. Andy turns the handle in front.

12.30-12.45. Adjournment to the dining-room sideboard.

12.45-12.50. Andy turns the handle in front.

12.50-12.55. I turn the handle in front.

12.55-1. Andy turns the handle in front and I tickle the carburetter.

1-1.5. I turn the handle in front and Andy tickles the carburetter.

At 1.5 Andy announced that there was one infallible way to start a refractory car, and that was to let it run down hill under its own momentum, and then suddenly let the clutch in. I need hardly say that my residence lies in a hollow. However, with the assistance of The Gruffin, we manfully trundled our superb 1907 Diablement-Odorant out of the coach-house, and pushed it up the hill without mishap, if I except two large dents in the back of the body, caused by the ignorance of my daughter that what looks like solid timber may after all be only hollow aluminium.

We then turned the car, climbed on board, and proceeded to descend the hill by the force of gravity. Bill Bailey I must say travelled beautifully, despite my self-appointed chauffeur’s efforts to interfere with his movements by stamping on pedals and manipulating levers. Absorbed with these exercises, Andy failed to observe the imminence of our destination, and we reached the foot of the hill at a good twenty-five miles an hour, the back wheels locked fast by a belated but whole-hearted application of the hand-brake. However, the collision with the confines of my estate was comparatively gentle, and we soon disentangled the head-light from the garden hedge.

The engine still failed to exhibit any signs of life.

At this point my wife, who had been patiently sitting in the hall wearing a new motor-bonnet for the best part of two hours, came out and suggested that we should proclaim a temporary truce and have lunch.

At 2.30 we returned to the scene of operations. Having once more tickled the now thoroughly depressed carburetter to the requisite pitch of hilarity, Andy was on the point of resuming operations with the starting-handle, when I drew his attention to a small stud-like affair sliding across a groove in the dash-board.

“I think,” I remarked, “that that is the only thing on the car which you haven’t fiddled with as yet. Supposing I push it across?”

Andy, I was pleased to observe, betrayed distinct signs of confusion. Recovering quickly, he protested that the condemned thing was of no particular use, but I could push it across if I liked.

I did so. Next moment, after three deafening but encouraging backfires, Bill Bailey’s engine came to life with a roar, and the car proceeded rapidly backwards down the road, Andy, threaded through the spare wheel like a camel in a needle’s eye, slapping down pedals with one hand and clutching at the steering-gear with the other.

“Who left the reverse in?” he panted, when the car had at length been brought to a standstill and the engine stopped.

No explanation was forthcoming, but I observed the scared and flushed countenance of my daughter peering apprehensively round the coach-house door, and drew my own conclusions.

Since Bill Bailey was obviously prepared to atone for past inertia by frenzied activity, our trial trip now came within the sphere of possibility. My wife had by this time removed her bonnet, and flatly declined to accompany us, alleging somewhat unkindly that she was expecting friends to tennis at the end of the week. The Gruffin, however, would not be parted from us, and presently Bill Bailey, with an enthusiastic but incompetent chauffeur at the wheel, an apprehensive proprietor holding on beside him, and a touzled long-legged hoyden of twelve clinging grimly to the spider-seat behind, clanked majestically out of the garden gate and breasted the slope leading to the main road.

Victory at last! This was life! This was joy! I leaned back and took a full breath. The Gruffin, protruding her unkempt head between mine and Andy’s, shrieked out a hope that we might encounter a load of hay en route. It was so lucky, she said. She was not disappointed.

From the outset it was obvious that the money expended upon the fanfare horn had been thrown away. No fanfare could have advertised Bill Bailey’s approach more efficaciously than Bill himself. He was his own trumpeter. Whenever we passed a roadside cottage we found frantic mothers garnering stray children into doorways, what time the fauna of the district hastily took refuge in ditches or behind hedges.

Still, all went well, as they say in reporting railway disasters, until we had travelled about four miles, when the near-side front wheel settled down with a gentle sigh upon its rim, and the tyre assumed a plane instead of a cylindrical surface. Ten minutes’ strenuous work with a pump restored it to its former rotundity, and off we went again at what can only be described as a rattling pace.

After another mile or so I decided to take the helm myself, not because I thought I could drive the car well, but because I could not conceive how any one could drive it worse than Andy.

I was wrong.

Still, loads of hay are proverbially soft; and since the driver of this one continued to slumber stertorously upon its summit even after the shock of impact, we decided not to summon a fellow-creature from dreamland for the express purpose of distressing him with unpleasant tidings on the subject of the paint on his tail-board. So, cutting loose from the wreck, we silently stole away, if the reader will pardon the expression.

It must have been about twenty minutes later, I fancy, that the gear-box fell off. Personally I should never have noticed our bereavement, for the din indigenous to Bill Bailey’s ordinary progress was quite sufficient to allow a margin for such extra items of disturbance as the sudden exposure of the gear-wheels. A few jets of a black and glutinous compound, which I afterwards learned to recognise as gear-oil, began to spout up through cracks in the flooring, but that was all. It was The Gruffin who, from her retrospective coign of vantage in the spider-seat, raised the alarm of a heavy metallic body overboard. We stopped the car, and the gear-box was discovered in a disintegrated condition a few hundred yards back; but as none of us was capable of restoring it to its original position, and as Bill Bailey appeared perfectly prepared to do without it altogether, we decided to go on in statu quo.

The journey, I rejoice to say, was destined not to conclude without witnessing the final humiliation and exposure of Andy Finch. We had pumped up the leaky tyre three times in about seven miles, when Andy, struck by a brilliant idea, exclaimed:

“What mugs we are! What is the good of a Stepney wheel if you don’t use it?”

A trifle ashamed of our want of resource, we laboriously detached the Stepney from its moorings and trundled it round to the proper side of the car. I leaned it up against its future partner and then stepped back and waited. So did Andy. The Gruffin, anxious to learn, edged up and did the same.

There was a long pause.

“Go ahead,” I said encouragingly, as my young friend merely continued to regard the wheel with a mixture of embarrassment and malevolence. “I want to see how these things are put on.”

“It’s quite easy,” said Andy desperately. “You just hold it up against the wheel and clamp it on.”

“Then do it,” said I.

“Yes, do it!” said my loyal daughter ferociously. With me she was determined not to spare the malefactor.

A quarter of an hour later we brought out the pump, and I once more inflated the leaky tyre, while Andy endeavoured to replace the Stepney wheel in its original resting-place beside the driver’s seat. Even now the tale of his incompetence was not complete.

“This blamed Stepney won’t go back into its place,” he said plaintively. “I fancy one of the clip things must have dropped off. It’s rather an old-fashioned pattern, this of yours. I think we had better carry it back loose. After all,” he added almost tearfully, evading my daughter’s stony eye, “it doesn’t matter how you carry the thing, so long——”

He withered and collapsed. Ultimately we drove home with The Gruffin wearing the Stepney wheel round her waist, lifebuoy fashion. On reaching home I sent for Mr. Gootch to come and take Bill Bailey away and put him into a state of efficiency. Then I explained to Andy, during a most consoling ten minutes, exactly what I thought of him as a mechanic, a chauffeur, and a fellow-creature.

III
THE PASSING OF “BILL BAILEY”

It is a favourite maxim of my wife’s that any woman can manage any man, provided she takes the trouble to thoroughly understand him. (The italics and split infinitive are hers.) This formula, I soon found, is capable of extension to the relations existing between a motor-car and its owners. Bill Bailey and I soon got to understand one another thoroughly. He was possessed of what can only be described as an impish temperament. He seemed to know by instinct what particular idiosyncrasy of his would prove most exasperating at a given moment, and he varied his répertoire accordingly. On the other hand, he never wasted his energies upon an unprofitable occasion. For instance, he soon discovered that I had not the slightest objection to his back-firing in a quiet country road. Consequently he reserved that stunning performance for a crowded street full of nervous horses. He nearly always broke down when I took critical or expert friends for an outing; and the only occasions which ever roused him to high speed were those upon which I was driving alone, having dispatched the rest of the family by train to ensure their safe arrival.

Gradually I acquired a familiarity with most of the complaints from which Bill Bailey suffered—and their name was legion, for they were many—together with the symptoms which heralded their respective recurrences. In this connection I should like to set down, for the benefit of those who may at any time find themselves in a similar position, a few of the commonest causes of cessation of activity in a motor-car, gradual or instantaneous, temporary or permanent:—

A. Breakdowns on the part of the engine. These may be due to—

(1) Absence of petrol. (Usually discovered after the entire car has been dismantled.)

(2) Presence of a foreign body. E.g., a Teddy Bear in the water-pump. (How it got there I cannot imagine. The animal was a present from the superstitious Gruffin, and in the rôle of Mascot adorned the summit of the radiator. It must have felt dusty or thirsty, and dropped in one day when the cap was off.)

(3) Things in their wrong places. E.g., water in the petrol-tank and petrol in the water-tank. This occurred on the solitary occasion upon which I entrusted The Gruffin with the preparation of the car for an afternoon’s run.

(4) Loss of some essential portion of the mechanism. (E.g., the carburetter.) A minute examination of the road for a few hundred yards back will usually restore it.

B. Intermediate troubles.

By this I mean troubles connected with the complicated apparatus which harnesses the engine to the car—the clutch, the gears, the driving-shaft, etc. Of these it is sufficient to speak briefly.

(1) The Clutch. This may either refuse to go in or refuse to come out. In the first case the car cannot be started, and in the second it cannot be stopped. The former contingency is humiliating, the latter expensive.

(2) The Gears. These have a habit of becoming entangled with one another. Persons in search of a novel sensation are recommended to try getting the live axle connected simultaneously with the top speed forward and the reverse.

(3) The Driving-Shaft. The front end of this is comparatively intelligible, but the tail is shrouded in mystery. It merges into a thing called the Differential. I have no idea what this is. It is kept securely concealed in a sort of Bluebeard’s chamber attached to the back-axle. Inquiries of mine as to its nature and purpose were always greeted by Mr. Gootch with amused contempt or genuine alarm, according as I merely displayed curiosity on the subject, or expressed a desire to have the axle laid bare.

C. Trouble with the car. (With which is incorporated trouble with the brakes and steering apparatus.)

It must not be imagined that the car will necessarily go because the engine is running. One of the wheels may refuse to go round, possibly because—

(1) You have omitted to take the brake off.

(2) Something has gone wrong with the differential. (I have no further comment to offer on this head.)

(3) It has just dropped off. (N.B. This only happened once.)

After a time, then, I was able not merely to foretell the coming of one of Bill Bailey’s periods of rest from labour, but to diagnose the cause and make up a prescription.

If the car came to a standstill for no outwardly perceptible reason, I removed the bonnet and took a rapid inventory of Bill’s most vital organs, sending The Gruffin back along the road at the same time, with instructions to retrieve anything of a metallic nature which she might discover there.

When Bill Bailey without previous warning suddenly charged a hedge or passing pedestrian, or otherwise exhibited a preference for the footpath as opposed to the roadway, I gathered that the steering-gear had gone wrong again. The Gruffin, who had developed an aptness for applied mechanics most unusual in her sex, immediately produced from beneath the seat a suit of blue overalls of her own construction, of which she was inordinately proud—I hope I shall be able to dress her as cheaply in ten years’ time—and proceeded to squirm beneath the car. Here, happy as a queen, she lay upon her back on the dusty road, with oil and petrol dripping in about equal proportions into her wide grey eyes and open mouth, adjusting a bit of chronically refractory worm-and-wheel gear which I, from reasons of embonpoint and advancing years, found myself unable to reach.

Finally, if my nose was assailed by a mingled odour of blistering paint, melted indiarubber, and frizzling metal, I deduced that the cooling apparatus had gone wrong, and that the cylinders were red-hot. The petrol tap was hurriedly turned off, and The Gruffin and I retired gracefully, but without undue waste of time, to a distance of about fifty yards, where we sat down behind the highest and thickest wall available, and waited for a fall of temperature, a conflagration, or an explosion, as the case might be.

---

Bill Bailey remained in my possession for nearly two years. During that time he covered three thousand miles, consumed more petrol and oil than I should have thought possible, ran through two sets of tyres, and cost a sum of money in repairs which would have purchased a small steam yacht.

There were moments when I loved him like a brother; others, more frequent, when he was an offence to my vision. The Gruffin, on the other hand, having fallen in love with him on sight, worshipped him with increasing ardour and true feminine perversity the dingier and more repulsive he grew.

Not that we had not our great days. Once we overtook and inadvertently ran over a hen—an achievement which, while it revolted my humanitarian instincts and filled the radiator with feathers, struck me as dirt cheap at half a crown. Again, there was the occasion upon which we were caught in a police-trap. Never had I felt so proud of Bill Bailey as when I stood in the dock listening to a policeman’s Homeric description of our flight, over a measured quarter of a mile. At the end of the recital, despite my certain knowledge that Bill’s limit was about twenty-three miles an hour, I felt that I must in common fairness enter him at Brooklands next season. The Gruffin, who came to see me through, afterwards assured her mother that I thanked the Magistrate who fined me and handed my accusing angel five shillings.

But there was another side to the canvas. Many were the excursions upon which we embarked, only to tramp home in the rain at the end of the day, leaving word at Mr. Gootch’s to send out and tow Bill Bailey home. Many a time, too, have Bill and I formed the nucleus of an interested crowd in a village street, Bill inert and unresponsive, while I, perspiring vigorously and studiously ignoring inquiries as to whether I could play “The Merry Widow Waltz,” desolately turned the starting-handle, to evoke nothing more than an inferior hurdy-gurdy melody syncopated by explosions at irregular intervals. Once, too, when in a fit of overweening presumption I essayed to drive across London, we broke down finally and completely exactly opposite “The Angel” at Islington, where Bill Bailey, with his back wheels locked fast in some new and incomprehensible manner,—another vagary of the differential, I suppose,—despite the urgent appeals of seven policemen, innumerable errand-boys, and the drivers, conductors, and passengers of an increasing line of London County Council electric tramcars, stood his ground in the fairway for nearly a quarter of an hour. Finally, he was lifted up and carried bodily, by a self-appointed Committee of Public Safety, to the side of the road, to be conveyed home in a trolley.

But all flesh is as grass. Bill Bailey’s days drew to an end. The French-grey in his complexion was becoming indistinguishable from the red; his joints rattled like dry bones; his fanfare horn was growing asthmatic. Old age was upon him, and I, with the ingratitude of man to the faithful servant who has outlived his period of usefulness, sold him to Mr. Gootch for fifteen sovereigns and a small lady’s bicycle.

Only The Gruffin mourned his passing. She said little, but accepted the bicycle (which I had purchased for her consolation) with becoming meekness.

At ten o’clock on the night before Bill Bailey’s departure—he was to be sent for early in the morning—the nurse announced with some concern that Miss Alethea (The Gruffin) was not in her bed. She was ultimately discovered in the coach-house, attired in a pink dressing-gown and bath slippers. She was kneeling with her arms round as much of Bill Bailey as they could encompass; her long hair flowed and rippled over his scratched and dinted bonnet; and she was crying as if her very heart would break.

IV
“BILL BAILEY” COMES AGAIN

A year later I bought a new car. It possessed four cylinders and an innumerable quantity of claims to perfection. The engine would start at the pressure of a button; the foot-brake and accelerator never became involved in an unholy alliance; it could climb any hill; and outlying portions of its anatomy adhered faithfully to the parent body. Pedestrians and domestic animals no longer took refuge in ditches at our approach. On the contrary, we charmed them like Orpheus with his lute; for the sound of our engine never rose above a sleek and comfortable purr, while the note of the horn suggested the first three bars of “Onward, Christian Soldiers!”

My wife christened the new arrival The Greyhound, but The Gruffin, faithful to the memory of the late lamented Bill Bailey, never referred to it as anything but The Egg-Boiler. This scornful denotation found some justification in the car’s ornate nickel-plated radiator, whose curving sides and domed top made up a far-away resemblance to the heavily patented and highly explosive contrivance which daily terrorised our breakfast-table.

Of Bill Bailey’s fate we knew little, but since Mr. Gootch once informed us with some bitterness that he had had to sell him to a Scotchman, we gathered that, for once in his life, our esteemed friend had “bitten off more than he could chew.”

The Greyhound, though a sheer delight as a vehicle, was endowed with somewhat complicated internal mechanism, and I was compelled in consequence to retain the services of a skilled chauffeur, a Mr. Richards, who very properly limited my dealings with the car to ordering it round when I thought I should be likely to get it. Consequently my connection with practical mechanics came to an end, and henceforth I travelled with my friends in the back seat, The Gruffin keeping Mr. Richards company in front, and goading that exclusive and haughty menial to visible annoyance by her supercilious attitude towards the new car.

Finally we decided on a motor trip to Scotland. There was a luggage-carrier on the back of the car which was quite competent to contain my wife’s trunk and my own suit-case. The Gruffin, who was not yet of an age to trouble about her appearance, carried her batterie de toilette in a receptacle of her own, which shared the front seat with its owner, and served the additional purpose of keeping The Gruffin’s slim person more securely wedged therein.

We joined the car at Carlisle, and drove the first day to Stirling. On the second the weather broke down, and we ploughed our way through Perth and the Pass of Killiecrankie to Inverness in a blinding Scotch mist. The Greyhound behaved magnificently, and negotiated the Spittal of Glenshee and other notorious nightmares of the bad hill-climber in a manner which caused me to refer slightingly to what might have happened had we entrusted our fortunes to Bill Bailey. The Gruffin tossed back to me over her shoulder a recommendation to touch wood.

Next day broke fine and clear, and we rose early, for we intended to run right across Scotland. I ate a hearty breakfast, inwardly congratulating myself upon not having to accelerate its assimilation by performing calisthenic exercises upon a starting-handle directly afterwards. At ten o’clock The Greyhound slid round to the hotel door, and we embarked upon our journey. Infatuated by long immunity from disaster, I dispatched a telegram to an hotel fifty miles away, ordering luncheon at a meticulously definite hour, and another to our destination—a hospitable shooting-box on the west coast—mentioning the exact moment at which we might be expected.

Certainly we were “asking for it,” as my Cassandra-like offspring did not fail to remark. But for a while Fate answered us according to our folly. We arrived at our luncheon hotel ten minutes before my advertised time, an achievement which pleased me so much that I wasted some time in exhibiting the engine to the courtly and venerable brigand who owned the hotel, with the result that we got away half an hour late. But what was half an hour to The Greyhound?

Blithely we sped across the endless moor beneath the September sun. The road, straight and undulating, ran ahead of us like a white tape laid upon the heather. The engine purred contentedly, and Mr. Richards, lolling back in his seat, took a patronising survey of the surrounding landscape. Evidently he rejoiced, in his benign and lofty fashion, to think how this glittering vision was brightening the dull lives of the grouse and sheep. Certainly the appearance of The Greyhound did him credit. Not a speck of mud defiled its body; soot and oil were nowhere obtrusive. Bill Bailey had been wont, during periods of rest outside friends’ front doors, to deposit a small puddle of some black and greasy liquid upon the gravel. The Greyhound was guilty of no such untidiness. Mr. Richards, to quote his own respectfully satirical words, preferred using his oil to oil the car instead of gentlemen’s front drives. Under his administration my expenditure on lubricants alone had shrunk to half of what it had been in Bill Bailey’s time.

But economy can be pushed to excess. Even as I dozed in the back seat, sleepily observing The Gruffin’s flying mane and wondering whether we ought not shortly to get out the Thermos containing our tea, there came a grating, crackling sound. The Greyhound gave a swerve which nearly deposited its occupants in a peat-hag; and after one or two zigzag and epileptic gambols came to a full stop.

“Steering-gear gone wrong, Richards?” I inquired.

“I don’t think so, sir,” replied Mr. Richards easily. “Seems to me it was a kind of a side sl—— Get out, sir! Get out, mum! The dam thing’s afire!”

We cooled the fervid glowing of the back-axle with a patent fire-extinguisher, and sat down gloomily to survey the wreck. Economy is the foundation of riches, but you must discriminate in your choice of economies. Axle-grease should not be included in the list. Mr. Richards, whether owing to a saving disposition or an æsthetic desire to avoid untidy drippings, had omitted—so we afterwards discovered—to lubricate the back-axle or differential for several weeks, with the result that the bearings of the off-side back wheel had “seized,” and most of the appurtenances thereof had fused into a solid immovable mass.

We sat in the declining rays of the sun and regarded The Greyhound. The brass-work still shone, and the engine was in beautiful running order; but the incontrovertible and humiliating fact remained that we were ten miles from the nearest dwelling and The Greyhound’s career as a medium of transport was temporarily closed. Even the biting reminder of The Gruffin that we could still employ it to boil eggs in failed to cheer us.

Restraining an impulse to give Mr. Richards a month’s warning on the spot, I conferred with my wife and daughter. We might possibly be picked up by a passing car, but the road was a lonely one and the contingency unlikely. We must walk. Accordingly we sat down to a hasty tea, prepared directly afterwards to tramp on towards our destination.

The wind had dropped completely, and the silence that lay upon the sleepy, sunny moor was almost uncanny. Imbued with a gentle melancholy, my wife and I partook of refreshment in chastened silence. Suddenly, as The Gruffin (considerably more cheerful than I had seen her for some days) was passing up her cup for the third time, a faint and irregular sound came pulsing and vibrating across the moor. It might have been the roar of a battle far away. One could almost hear the popping of rifles, the clash of steel, and the shrieks of the wounded. Presently the noise increased in intensity and volume. It appeared to come from beyond a steep rise in the long straight road behind us. We pricked up our ears. I became conscious of a vague sense of familiarity with the phenomenon. The air seemed charged with some sympathetic influence.

“What is that noise, Richards?” I said.

“I rather think, sir,” replied Mr. Richards, peering down the road, “that it might be some kind of a——”

Suddenly I was aware of a distinct rise of temperature in the neighbourhood of my left foot. My daughter, with face flushed and lips parted, was gazing feverishly down the road. An unheeded Thermos flask, held limply in her hand, was directing a stream of scalding tea down my leg. Before I could expostulate she wheeled round upon me, and I swear there were tears in her eyes.

“It’s Bill!” she shrieked. “Bill Bailey! My Bill!”

She was right. As she spoke a black object appeared upon the crown of the hill, and, incredible to relate, Bill Bailey, puffing, snorting, reeking, jingling, back-firing, came lumbering down the slope, in his old hopeless but irresistible fashion, right upon our present encampment.

His lamps and Stepney wheel were gone, his back tyres were solid, and his erstwhile body of French-grey was now decked out in a rather blistered coat of that serviceable red pigment which adorns most of the farmers’ carts in the Highlands. But his voice was still unmistakably the voice of Bill Bailey.

He was driven by a dirty-faced youth in a blue overall, who presented the appearance of one who acts as general factotum in a country establishment which supports two or three motors and generates its own electric light. By his side sat a patriarchal old gentleman with a white beard, in tweeds, hobnail boots, and a deerstalker cap—obviously a head ghillie of high and ancient lineage.

The spider-seat at the back was occupied, in the fullest sense of the word, by a dead stag about the size of a horse, lashed to this, its temporary catafalque, with innumerable ropes.

The old gentleman was politeness itself, and on hearing of our plight placed himself and Bill Bailey unreservedly at our disposal. His master, The M‘Shin of Inversneishan, would be proud to house us for the night, and the game-car should convey us to the hospitable walls of Inversneishan forthwith. Tactfully worded doubts upon our part as to Bill’s carrying capacity—we did not complicate matters by explaining upon what good authority we spoke—were waved aside with a Highlander’s indifference to mere detail. The car was a grand car, and the Castle was no distance at all. Mr. Richards alone need be jettisoned. He could remain with The Greyhound all night, and on the morrow succour should be sent him.

Mr. Richards, utterly demoralised by his recent fall from the summit of autocracy, meekly assented, and presently Bill Bailey, packed like the last ’bus on a Saturday night, staggered off upon his homeward way. My wife and I shared the front seat with the oleaginous youth in the overall, while the patriarchal ghillie hung on precariously behind, locked in the embrace of the dead stag. How or where The Gruffin travelled I do not know. She may have perched herself upon some outlying portion of the stag, or she may have attached herself to Bill Bailey’s back-axle by her hair and sash, and been towed home. Anyhow, when, two hours later, Bill Bailey, swaying beneath his burden and roaring like a Bull of Bashan, drew up with all standing at the portals of Inversneishan Castle, it was The Gruffin who, unkempt, scarlet, but triumphant, rang the bell and bearded the butler while my wife and I uncoiled ourselves from intimate association with the chauffeur, the ghillie, and the stag.

Next morning, in returning thanks for the princely manner in which our involuntary host had entertained us, I retailed to him the full story of our previous acquaintance with Bill Bailey. I further added, with my daughter’s hot hand squeezing mine in passionate approval, an intimation that if ever Bill should again come into the market I thought I could find a purchaser for him.

He duly came back to us, at a cost of five pounds and his sea-passage, a few months later, and we have had him ever since.

Such is the tale of Bill Bailey. To-day he stands in a corner of my coach-house, an occupier of valuable space, a stumbling-block to all and sundry, and a lasting memorial to the omnipotence of human—especially feminine—sentiment.

Life-Like
By Martin Swayne
Royal Army Medical Corps

Colonel Wedge was a quiet, genial bachelor. If there was anything that seemed to distinguish him from the familiar type of retired officer, it was his great breadth of shoulder. He was well over fifty, but still vigorous and active. On the day after his arrival in Paris, whither he had come on a week’s visit, he breakfasted at nine and spent the morning in visiting some public places of interest. He lunched at a restaurant near the Porte St. Martin, where he found himself in a typically Parisian atmosphere, and after smoking a cigar began to stroll idly along the streets. Chance directed his steps in a northerly direction, and about three in the afternoon he found himself in the Montmartre district.

He walked along in a casual manner, his hands clasped behind his back, watching everything with infinite relish. While passing up a side street his eye fell on a flamboyant advertisement outside a cinematograph show. The Colonel was not averse to cinematograph shows, and it struck him that here, perhaps, he might see something out of the ordinary. The poster was certainly lurid. It represented a man being attacked by snakes, and Wedge understood enough French to read the statement underneath that the representation was absolutely life-like, and that the death-agony was a masterpiece of acting.

“Rattlesnakes,” reflected the Colonel, eyeing the poster. “It’s wonderful what they do in the way of films nowadays. Of course, they’ve taken out the poison glands.”

He stood for a short time studying the poster, which was extremely realistic, and then decided to enter. He went up to the ticket-office, which stood on the pavement, and paid the entrance fee. It was obvious that the establishment was not of the first order. A couple of rickety wine-shops flanked it one on either side, and the ticket-office was apparently an old sentry-box with a hole cut in the back.

Wedge took his ticket and glanced up the street. It was a day of brilliant sunshine. At the far end of the narrow road there was a glimpse of the white domes of the Sacré Cœur, standing on its rising ground and looking like an Oriental palace. Only a few people were about, and the wine-shops were empty.

A shaft of sunlight fell on the poster of the man fighting with rattlesnakes, and the Colonel looked at it again. It attracted him in some mysterious way, probably because physical problems interested him.

“Seems to be in a kind of pit,” he thought. “Otherwise he could run for it. It is certainly life-like.”

He turned away, ticket in hand. A man standing before a faded plush curtain beckoned to him, and Wedge passed from the bright light of day into the darkness behind the curtain.

He could see nothing. Someone took his arm and led him forward. The Colonel blinked, but the darkness was complete. Somewhere on his left he could hear the familiar clicking of a cinematograph.

The hand on his arm piloted him gently along, and he had the impression of walking in a curve. But it seemed an intolerably long curve. Since he could not speak French, he was unable to ask how much farther he had to go. He felt vaguely that people were round him, close to him, and naturally concluded he was passing down the room where the performance was being held.

But where was the screen?

He could not see a ray of light. Heavy, impenetrable darkness was before him, and seemed to press on his eyelids like a cloth. Suddenly the hand on his arm was lifted. Wedge stopped, blinking.

“Look here,” he said, with a feeling of irritation, “where am I?”

There was no answer. He waited, listening. He could hear nothing. The clicking of the cinematograph was no longer audible.

Deeply perplexed, he held out his arms before him and took a step forward. His outstretched foot descended on—nothing.

Wedge fell forward and downwards with a sharp cry. His fall was brief, but it seemed endless to him. He landed, sprawling, on something soft. Before he could move he was caught and held down with his face pressed against the soft mass that felt like a heap of pillows. A suffocating, pungent odour assailed his nostrils, and gradually consciousness slipped away.

When Colonel Wedge came to his senses he found himself in a small room lit by an oil-lamp hung against the wall. He was lying on a heap of mattresses, bound hand and foot. At first he stared vaguely upwards. Directly overhead was a circular mark in the ceiling. The sound of voices struck on his ears, and, looking round, he saw a group of men talking at a table near by.

With startling suddenness memory came back. He glanced up at the ceiling. There was no doubt that the circular mark was the outline of the trap-door through which he had fallen. He did not attempt to struggle, but lay passively searching in his mind for some explanation of his position.

The men at the table were talking in loud voices, but they spoke in French. He could not understand what they said.

He looked round at them. Five of them—there were half a dozen—were roughly dressed, with blue or red handkerchiefs knotted round their throats; but one of them was of a different type, and looked like a prosperous business man. He was the spokesman and leader of the group, and Wedge noticed that he had a peculiarly evil, energetic type of face. He spoke rapidly, occasionally nodding towards the heap of mattresses and employing violent gestures. From time to time he thumped the table before him. Finally he rose and crossed the room.

“My name is Dance,” he said. He stuck the cigar he was smoking into the corner of his mouth and went on speaking between his teeth. “I’m an Englishman by birth, and wonderfully fond of my fellow-countrymen. That’s why you are here. You’re just the man I was wanting, and when I saw you looking at that poster I could have hugged myself. What did you think of it? Good, eh? Sorry you didn’t see the film.”

He chuckled to himself.

Wedge looked at him steadily and made no reply. The other shrugged his shoulders and turned away. Some further discussion followed, and then all six left the room.

Wedge waited until the sound of their footsteps had died away in the passage without, and then raised himself. Owing to the way in which he was bound he could not stand up. He looked around keenly. There was only one door and no window. The walls were of rough brick, and it was clear the place was a kind of cellar. Save for the table and chairs there was no furniture. The stone floor was damp, and from one dark corner Wedge could hear the trickling of water. After the first scrutiny of his prison he lay back again on the mattresses and tried to think. He could hear no sound of the traffic or footsteps from the road, and guessed that it would be useless to shout. Save for the trickle of water and the occasional hissing and spurting of the lamp, the place was absolutely silent.

The atmosphere was thick and close. The flame of the lamp grew smaller and smaller, and finally expired. Wedge lay in the darkness, open-eyed, listening to the beating of his heart. He was thirsty. His throat was dry and his head ached, and the cords round his wrists and feet bit into the flesh. He made several powerful attempts to burst them, but in vain.

For what purpose did they want him? If it was simply a question of robbery, why was he kept prisoner? An eternity seemed to pass. In despair, he tried to sleep. But the question as to why he was in this prison repeated itself and made sleep impossible.

Wedge was a man of tried courage, but there was something sinister in his position that caused disagreeable thrills to pass down his back. The trap-door, the chloroform, the cords, the group of evil-looking men were not reassuring incidents. Moreover, the isolation in complete darkness with the monotonous trickling of water unnerved him.

An hour went by, and he made another violent attempt to release himself. His breath came in gasps. Before his shut eyes he saw sheets of red flame. But his efforts were useless. Thoroughly exhausted he lay still again, staring upwards.

Owing to some trick of vision, possibly because the strong sunlight had intensified the colouring of the poster while he was studying it, he saw a shadowy picture of the man fighting for his life in the pit full of rattlesnakes hovering before him in the darkness. He thought grimly that it would be some time before he would have the pleasure of seeing the representation of that film—perhaps never. The latter event was more likely. It was not probable that they would let him go free, because his freedom would mean their arrest.

“Wedge, turning as it moved, always faced it” (page 81).

“They want me for some purpose,” he muttered. “But what it is, Heaven knows. It can’t be simple robbery. There’s no point in murdering me. I’m not a person of any importance, so I don’t see where the object of kidnapping comes in. Their game beats me, unless they’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

A step outside interrupted his reflections. He heard the door open. Something that sounded like a plate was put on the floor, and the steps retreated down the passage. After a few minutes they became audible again, and a light showed in the doorway. A man appeared holding a candle. Colonel Wedge realised that it was the intention of his captors that he should take some nourishment, and decided that to do so would be the wisest course. There was no reason why he should weaken himself by abstinence.

He submitted to being fed by his jailer, and eagerly drank the harsh red wine that was offered to him. When the meal was finished he was left alone again, but the candle was put on the table. By watching its rate of decrease in length Wedge gained some idea of the passage of time. By a calculation based on the number of his heart-beats, which were normally sixty to the minute, he deduced that the candle would last for about four hours. As a matter of fact, Wedge’s deduction was wrong. The candle burned for three hours. Wedge was unaware that his heart was beating eighty to the minute.

Months seemed to elapse before the candle shot up in a last flare. The Colonel stared at the walls, at the rough, unfaced bricks, at the trap-door in the ceiling. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He sat up at intervals and looked round him. He rolled from one side to another. But nothing helped to make the time pass more quickly, and when he was left again in darkness he felt for the first time in his life how easy it would be to go mad.

The tramp of feet roused him from a drowsy, half-conscious condition. The door was flung open and a lantern shone in Wedge’s eyes. The men who had sat at the table had returned. Two of them cut the cords round his ankles and pulled him on to his feet. He stood with difficulty, for his legs were numb.

The man Dance, who had previously spoken to him, whose evil face had made an impression on the Colonel’s mind, sat down at the table, and Wedge was placed before him.

“Speak no French?” he inquired.

“No.”

The man nodded, and played with a thick gold ring on one of his fingers. His eyes were fixed on the Colonel’s face.

“What am I here for?” asked Wedge, quietly.

“You’ll see soon.”

“Do you want my money?”

“We’ve taken that already.”

They looked at each other steadily. The others in the cellar shuffled uneasily. They did not seem to be so certain of themselves as the man at the table.

“You’re an English officer, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve seen some fighting?”

The Colonel shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. He refused to submit to a cross-examination at the hands of this scoundrel.

“All right,” said the other. “Don’t get angry. I promise you that you’ll see some more fighting before you die.”

Something in the man’s expression made Wedge take a quick step towards the table.

“What do you mean? Are you going to kill me?”

There was no answer, but the silence was enough. Wedge relaxed his attitude slowly.

“Is it money you need?” he asked, after a pause.

“What’s the good of offering us money? Once you got out of this place, you would give us away to the police. Yes, we need money, but not from you.”

One thought dominated Wedge’s mind. It was clear that the situation did not demand any unnecessary heroism. If anything could effect his escape he was perfectly justified in making use of it.

“I will give you a thousand pounds, and will promise not to put the affair in the hands of the police,” he said.

“He offers money, and gives his word of honour to say nothing to the police!” exclaimed the other, looking at the men behind Wedge.

There was an outburst of violent opposition. They were wildly excited. They were all round Wedge, shouting and gesticulating and brandishing their fists in his face. He stood impassively in the centre of them with his hands bound. What was this riot? Why did the eyes of these men shine so strangely?

“Two thousand,” he said steadily.

“Impossible!” The man at the table jumped up. “This is only a waste of time.”

He caught up the lantern and went out. The others, pushing Wedge before them, followed. They passed through a long stone corridor, down some narrow steps, and stopped before an iron door. Wedge heard the fumbling of keys, the creak of a rusty lock, and the door swung open. The interior was dark.

Dance stood by the door, holding the lantern aloft. In obedience to a brief command Wedge’s hands were released.

“Hand him the club.”

A stout cudgel of twisted wood, with a heavy nobbed end, was thrust into his hands. But Wedge was a man of action, and he saw in a flash that if he was to escape from his unknown fate the opportunity had come. They were trying to push him through the door into the dark interior.

“Vite! Il est dangereux!” exclaimed the man with the lantern.

But Wedge was too quick. He swung the club swiftly round, and the lantern fell, smashed to atoms. In a moment he was seized by half a dozen hands. He fought powerfully, but they hung on to him grimly, and little by little he was thrust forward. He had not enough space to use the club. He dropped it and used his fists, and more than once struck the stone walls in the confusion of the struggle in the dark. Then someone got hold of his throat, while the others fastened on his arms, and he was thrown backwards. He heard the clang of the iron door and lay gasping on the floor.

A blinding white light suddenly shone down on him. He staggered to his feet and looked round, shading his eyes with his hands from the dazzling glare. He was in a circular space bounded by smooth white walls. The floor was sanded. Above him burned half a dozen arc-lamps, whose brilliant rays were reflected directly downwards by polished metal discs. The upper part of the place was in shadow, but he could make out an iron balcony running partly round the wall, about fifteen feet above the sanded floor.

Colonel Wedge went to the wall and began to examine its surface. It was smooth, and seemed made of painted iron. The outline of the door through which he had been flung was visible on one side, but directly opposite there was the outline of another door. He went towards it. It was also made of iron like the surrounding structure, and apparently opened outwards. He pushed at it, but it was shut.

A sound of something falling on the floor made him turn. The wooden cudgel had been thrown down from the iron platform above. Looking up, he could dimly see a number of faces staring down at him, and also a couple of box-like instruments, one at either end of the platform. It was difficult to see clearly, for the light of the arc-lamps was intense. He stared up, shielding his eyes, and then suddenly he saw what they were. A couple of cinematograph machines were trained on the floor below!

It was not until then that Wedge fully realised his position. The picture of the man fighting the rattlesnakes was suddenly explained. He remembered the pit. He walked to the centre and stood with clenched fists. Here was the pit. Extremely life-like!

He stooped and picked up the cudgel. At any rate, whatever he had to face, he would make a fight for it.

Mechanically he found himself watching the second door. It was through that door that the menace of death would come.

Up on the platform they were whispering together.

His brain was clear, and he felt calm. He knew that whatever came out from behind that door would have the intention to kill. And he knew, also, that it was not the wish of the onlookers that he should triumph. It would not be a fair fight. In the moments of suspense he wondered in a kind of deliberate, leisurely way what was coming. They would not repeat the rattlesnake picture. That had already had its victim. In this arena one man had acted the part of fear with marvellous realism—perhaps others as well.

Cudgel in hand, ready and braced, with his free hand at his moustache, Colonel Wedge waited, his eyes fixed on the door.

“Ah, I think you understand now,” said a voice out of the shadows above. “We hope that this will make a fine film, the finest of this series that we have done yet.”

Wedge did not move a muscle.

“We rely on you to do your best for us.”

Somewhere at the bottom of his heart the Colonel registered a vow that if he ever got out of that place alive he would kill Dance.

A chuckle followed and then silence, except for the sizzling of the arc-lamps.

Then he heard a sound of clicking. The cinematograph machines had begun.

“Ready?”

Wedge took his breath slowly. The door was opening.

He saw a gap of blackness widening in the white circular wall. The hand that was at his moustache fell to his side. The cudgel rose a trifle, and the muscles of his right arm stiffened. Inch by inch, without a creak, the door swung outwards until it stood widely open.

For a few seconds nothing appeared. The suspense was becoming unendurable, and Wedge had just made up his mind to approach when he saw an indistinct form moving in the background of the shadowy interior, and next moment a big yellow beast slipped out and stood blinking in the strong light. He recognised the flat diamond head and tufted ears in a moment. The door clanged behind it.

“Puma,” he muttered, with his eyes on the brute, and a spark of hope glowed in his heart. There were worse brutes to face single-handed than pumas, and he knew something of the capriciousness of the animal. It was just possible——

His thoughts ceased abruptly. The beast was moving. It slunk on its belly to the wall, and began to walk slowly round and round. Wedge, turning as it moved, always faced it. It quickened its pace into a trot, and as it ran it looked only occasionally at the man in the centre. It seemed more interested in the wall. At times it stretched its head and peered upwards.

In its lean white jaw and yellow eyes there was no message of hatred for the moment. Suddenly it stopped and listened. The clicking of the cinematograph had attracted it. It stood up against the wall, clawing at the paint. Then it squatted on its haunches, with its back to Wedge, and blinked up at the platform overhead.

The heavy fetid odour of the beast filled the air. Wedge relaxed himself a little, but the puma heard the movement, for it looked round swiftly. It behaved as if it had seen him for the first time, and began to pace round and round again, eyeing him. It came to a halt near the door from which it had emerged, and lay down flat, with its paws outstretched, watching Wedge. He caught the sheen of its eyes. He remained still, for at the slightest movement the brute quivered.

As yet he could read nothing vindictive in its look, but he knew that at any moment it might change into a raging, snarling demon and spring. Being a believer in the idea that animals are in some way conscious of the emotional state in others and act accordingly, he tried to banish all sense of fear and all sense of ill-will from his mind, and look at it calmly and indifferently.

The puma, with its fore-paws extended on the sand and its head raised, blinked lazily at him. It seemed half asleep by its attitude. Sometimes the brilliant eyes were almost shut.

“Mordieu!” said a voice above. “He wants rousing.”

In a flash the animal was on its feet, rigid and glaring up. Apparently the platform overhead roused its anger. Its tail began to whip from side to side, and its lip lifted at one corner in a vicious snarl, uncovering the white fang.

A clamour of voices broke out. The whole aspect of the beast changed. Its eyes blazed. It stooped on its belly, glaring upwards. Was it possible it recognised an old enemy amongst the spectators?

Wedge waited anxiously, and the sweat began to break out on his brow.

With bared claws, the animal crouched, still looking upwards. It seemed to have forgotten Wedge. The men were shouting at it and stamping with their feet on the iron floor of the platform. The beast put one paw out and crept forward. The muscles rippled and bulged under the skin.

“It’s going to spring,” thought Wedge. “But it’s not looking at me.”

Slowly step by step the beast advanced. It passed scarcely two feet away from Wedge, and went on without looking at him. When it was almost directly under the platform it stopped and snarled upwards.

Then someone threw a lighted match on its back, and straightway it became transformed into the devil-cat of tradition.

Wedge was never quite clear as to its movements after that, for it flashed round the arena like a streak of yellow lightning He raised his club, but the brute was not after him. It went twice, and then a third time, round the white walls, and stopped for an instant, taut and low on the sandy floor. And then it shot up in a magnificent leap towards the shadows above the arc-lamps.

The shouts from the platform ceased suddenly, and then a wild hubbub broke out.

Wedge heard the rattling and scraping of the beast’s claws against the railings above and a shriek of terror. There was a stampede of feet. A loud series of snarls followed and the sound of a body falling heavily.

Wedge stood for a moment dazed. Then he dashed across to the door through which the beast had entered, and flung all his weight against it. He tried again and again with all the weight of his powerful shoulders. It yielded with a crash, and he fell flat into the cage on the other side, amongst the foul straw.

He was up in an instant. By the light of the arc-lamps in the arena he could make out that the cage had an iron grating on one side closed by a bolt. He thrust his hand through the bars and worked back the bolt. Next moment he was out of the cage and running down a dark stone corridor, cudgel in hand, and determined to brain anyone who stood in his path. At the top of a flight of steps he came to a door barred from the inside. He flung aside the fastenings and staggered out into the sweet night air.

When the police raided the cellars under the cinematograph show a few hours later, led by Wedge, they found the puma asleep in its open cage, and above, on the iron platform, all that was left of Mr. Dance, inventor and producer of life-like films.

It was not until daylight came that Wedge discovered they had blackened his eyebrows and drawn disfiguring lines across his face.

Lame Dogs
By Cosmo Hamilton
Royal Naval Air Service

The sun fell straightly upon a great golden cornfield. Already the sickle had been at work upon its edges, and tall bundles, among whose feet the vermilion poppy peeped, stood head-to-head at regular distances. Among the ripe heads of the uncut corn the intermittent puffs of a soft August breeze whispered, offering congratulations and perhaps condolences—congratulations mostly, because what is there more beautiful and right in all the year’s usefulness than the glorious fulfilment of the spring’s green promise?

All the hours of a busy morning had been marked off melodiously by the old clock of an older church which stood with maternal dignity among gravestones several fields away. It wanted only a few moments to the hour of one. A brawny son of the soil, tanned of face, neck, and arms, who had been working in the angle of the field nearest the road, had just laid down his sickle and his crooked stick.

He was hot, but satisfied. He was also sharp-set, and very ready for the dinner that awaited him, with beer, at his cottage on the outskirts of the village. He sang, quietly and monotonously, in a typical burring way, a song which was written in praise of boiled beef and carrots. And while he sang he dabbed his face and neck with a startling handkerchief of red and yellow.

Swallows, flying high, skimmed the air playfully. Flocks of sparrows moved quickly among the standing corn, no longer frightened by the tin with stones in it, that was rattled by a slow-footed boy in the distance. They were eager to get their fill of stolen fruits before their natural enemies removed it from their beaks. The air was alive with the glimmering heat, and the shadows of the trees were almost straight.

One sounded, and before the bell’s reverberations had blown away, a note of discord in the delicious harmony was struck by the sudden appearance of a man, who leaned on the white gate which divided the field from the road.

He was a short, slight, odd-looking creature, dressed in clothes that were rather too smart, and a green dump hat a little the worse for wear. His clean-shaven face, mobile and curiously lined, was pale and a little pinched, and the whole limp appearance of the man showed that he was only just recovering from an illness. Across one shoulder a knapsack was slung, and behind his left ear there rested a cigarette. A pearl was stuck in a rather loud tie, and there was a large ring on one of his little fingers.

There was something both comic and pathetic In the figure, and everything that was peculiarly the very antithesis of the exquisite rural surroundings. The initials “R. D.” were stencilled on the knapsack, and they stood for Richard Danby, a name that was well known in towns, but wholly unknown among cornfields and under the blue, unsmoked sky.

Danby, who had gladly leaned on the gate to rest, watched the big, muscular man for a moment, with eyes in which there was admiration, and listened to the unmusical rendering of a song which had trickled, note by note, into the country from London, with amusement. He then adopted an air of forced cheerfulness and clapped his hands.

“Bravo!” he said. “Bravo!”

Peter Pippard turned slowly, antagonistically.

“Eh?” he said.

The little man waved his ringed hand.

“I said ’Bravo’—well rendered. What is it? An aria from Faust, or a little thing of your own?”

The big man was puzzled and surprised.

“Eh?” he said again.

Danby was not to be beaten. There was something in his manner which showed that he was in the habit of addressing himself to audiences and talking for effect.

“How delightful,” he continued, with fluent insincerity, “to find a peasant in song! A merry heart wags all the day. Who wouldn’t be happy among the golden corn, in touch with Nature, with the field-bugs gambolling over one’s back!”

“Eh?”

Danby laughed.

“You find me a little flowery; I am flying too high for you. I am indulging in aeroplanics. I’ll come down to the good red earth. Marnin’, matey. How’s t’crops?”

The imitation of the country accent was ridiculously exaggerated. The farm-hand examined the town man searchingly and suspiciously.

“Eh?” he said again.

“Beat again!” said Danby, with a shriek of laughter.

Pippard went closer, but slowly.

“Want onythin’, mister?” he asked.

“No. Oh Lord, no! I only want to get some other word out of you than ‘eh.’”

“Oh,” said Pippard.

“Thanks. Thanks most awfully. Now we’re moving.... Well, how’s the corn? It looks fine and fat.”

“Ah,” said Pippard, grinning broadly and affectionately.

The little man bowed. He seemed to be saying things which would arouse laughter among an invisible audience.

“Again I thank you. Yes, very fine and fat. You’ve been punching out and giving them thick ears. What?”

The examination was continued.

“You doan’t seem ter be talkin’ sense, mister.”

Another shriek of laughter disturbed the characteristic peacefulness.

“Congratulations! You’ve discovered me. How can I talk sense when I’m trying to be sociable? You don’t object to a little bright conversation, do you?”

“Noa.”

“Well, we’ll cut generalities and come to facts. How’s the twins?”

“Ain’t got no twins.”

“Nonsense! I don’t believe it. A great, big, brawny fellow like you. I take it you’ve got some nippers?”

Pippard chuckled. “Three girls and two boys.”

“Ah, that’s something like! Again congratulations! It’s very kind of you to ask me to come over. Since you’re so pressing, I think I will.” He climbed over the gate a little painfully and walked jauntily into the field.

The farm-hand broke into a laugh. “Ah reckon as ’ow you’re a funny man, ain’t you?”

The little man became suddenly serious, so suddenly and so eagerly serious, that if Pippard had been endowed with the first glimmerings of psychology, he would have been startled and a little nervous. “Are you joking, or do you mean it? Is it possible that I make you laugh? Is it possible?”

“The very sight o’ you gives me a ticklin’ inside,” was the reply.

Danby seized the brawny and surprised hand and wrung it warmly. “God bless you, dear old Hodge!” he said hoarsely. “God bless you!” Then he laughed merrily. “You make me feel like an attack of bronchitis.”

The feeble joke went home. Pippard roared. “There you goes agin,” he said. “What are yer, mister? A hartist?”

“An artist? Oh, dear no. Oh, God bless me, no! I’m an artiste.”

“What’s the difference, any’ow?”

If the little man had asked for his cue, he could not have got it more readily. “An artist earns his bread-and-butter by putting paint on canvas, and an artiste gets an occasional dish of tripe and onions by putting paint on his face.”

“Ah reckon as ’ow you’re an artiste, mister, although Ah can’t see no paint on yer face.”

“I washed over twelve months ago,” said Danby sadly. “Oh, by the way, am I trespassing?”

“Well, it all depends on wot ye’re a-goin’ ter do.”

“Eat, old boy. If you’ve no objection I’m going to spread out my hors d’œuvres and pâté de foie gras, and lunch al-fresco.”

“Don’t onderstand a blame wurd,” said Pippard, grinning.

“Putting it in plain English, I’m going to wrestle with half a loaf of bread and two slices of cold ham. Will you join me? Do.” The invitation was made eagerly. “Stay here and let me hear you laugh. It does me more good than a whole side of streaky bacon.”

Pippard scratched his head doubtfully. “Well, Ah told th’ old ’ooman as ’ow Ah’d be wome for dinner,” he said.

“The old woman must not be disappointed. Do you pass a pub on your way home?”

“Can’t go anywhere from ’ere without passin’ a poob.”

Danby squeezed a shilling into the great sun-tanned fist.

“Well, call in and get a drink.”

“Thankee, Ah doan’t mind if Ah do.”

“Drink to my health. I don’t suppose you want a drink more than I want health.” He walked round the farm-labourer admiringly. He looked like a smooth-haired terrier who had suddenly met a St. Bernard. “My word, I’d give something to be a man like you. What muscle, what bones, what a back! What a hand! It’s as big as a leg of mutton. Do you ever get tired of being healthy? Do you ever wake up in the morning and say: ‘O Lord, I’m still as strong as an ox—why can’t I get a nice thumping headache to keep me in bed?’”

It was altogether too much for the man who rose with the sun and went to bed with the sun and worked out in the fields all day long; the big, simple, healthy, natural man, whose life was a series of seasons, to whom there was no tragedy except bad weather, and a lack of work and wages. This odd little creature, who said unexpected things as though he meant them, and asked funny questions seriously, was “a comic”—such a man as the clown who came with the circus twice a year, and played the fool in the big tent which was pitched on the green and lighted with flares of gas. Pippard laughed so loudly that he scared the eager sparrows.

“There you go,” he said. “Ah reckon as ’ow you was born funny.”

Danby eyed him keenly and wistfully. “Are you laughing at me?” he asked. “Me?”

“Laffin’? Why, you’d make an old sow laff.”

“You amaze me,” said Danby. He gave the man another shilling. “Get further drinks on your way back. You’re—you’re a pink pill for pale people, old boy.”

“Ah must go,” said Pippard reluctantly.

“Yes, you trudge off to the old woman and get your dinner. I’ll drink your health in a glass of water and a tabloid.”

Pippard got into his coat and re-lit a short black clay.

“Well, good day, and thankee.”

“Good day, and thank you.” Danby held out his hand. It was thin and pale. It was grasped and shaken monstrously. “That’s right—hurt it. Go on; hurt it. You make me feel almost manly.... Good day and good luck! My love to the old woman and the kids, and the rabbit, and the old dog, and granny.”

Laughing again, the big man marched off, made small work of the gate, and trudged away. Danby followed him up to the gate, and stood watching him curiously and admiringly, and as he watched he spoke his thoughts aloud.

“Good day, giant,” he said. “Good day, simple son of the soil, who eats hearty, drinks like a fish, and digests everything. Good-bye, man who knows nothing, and doesn’t want to know anything. I’d give ten years of my life for five of yours any day. Well, well.”

He turned with a sigh, took off his hat and hung it on a twig of the hedge, and then divested himself of his knapsack. This he unstrapped, and, taking out a napkin, spread it with a certain neatness on the grass, and set upon it a loaf, a piece of Cheddar cheese, a lettuce, and several slices of ham wrapped in paper, a knife and fork. To this not unappetising meal he added a large green bottle of water.

“Ah!” he said. A sudden thought struck him. He put his finger and thumb into a waistcoat pocket, and brought out a small bottle of tabloids. He swallowed one with many grimaces and much effort. He sighed again and sat down. He looked with feigned interest at the eatables in front of him for several minutes. He then shook his head and gave an expressive gesture. “No,” he said aloud, in order that he might not feel quite so lonely. “No, not hungry. Beautiful food, clean napkin, lettuce washed in the brook, no appetite—not one faint semblance of a twist!”

It appeared from the startled flight of a thrush from the hedge that R. D. was not to be lonely after all. Another person bent over the gate, and looked into the cornfield, seemed perfectly satisfied, and climbed over. “This is all right,” she said. “Carlton, S.W. Oh!”

The exclamation was involuntary. The girl caught sight of the man and pulled up short.

Danby sprang to his feet. The girl was pretty; and although her once smart clothes were shabby, and her shoes very much the worse for wear, she looked a nice, honest, frank creature, aglow with health and youth and optimism. Danby caught up his hat, put it on, and took it off again in his best society manner.

“No intrusion,” he said. “Just a little al-fresco lunch, nothing more.”

The girl smiled. Her teeth were very small and white and regular. “That was my idea,” she said. “Not in the way, I hope?”

“Oh, please,” replied Danby. “The sight of some one eating may inspire me and give me the much-desired appetite.”

A ringing laugh was caught up by the gentle breeze.

“I should like to be able to eat enough to starve mine. Good morning!”

“Good morning!” said Danby. He bowed again, and hung his hat back on the twig. He was not a little disappointed. He had hoped for conversation and companionship. He sat down, but with interested eyes watched the girl unpack her luncheon quickly and deftly. She had no napkin. She spread her bread and meat on a sheet of newspaper, and cleaned her knife by thrusting it into the earth and wiping it on the grass. He noticed that her shoes were very dusty, and came to the conclusion that she had walked some distance. He was right. He caught her eye and looked away quickly.

“I beg pardon!” he said.

“Granted, I’m sure.” Danby’s manners were excellent.

“You haven’t got such a thing as a pinch of salt, I suppose?”

“I can oblige you with all the condiments, including a little A1 sauce.”

The girl laughed again. It was a charming laugh. “Oh, I can do without that,” she said.

Danby, only too glad of an excuse to be of use, scrambled to his feet and made his way across the golden stubble to the girl’s side. In his hand he held a small tobacco-tin. He opened it and held it out.

“Navy-cut?” she said, with wide-eyed surprise.

“An old ‘Dreadnought’ turned into a merchant ship. It’s quite clean.”

“Oh, thanks most awfully!” She helped herself to salt.

“Not at all,” said Danby. “Any little thing like that.... Good day!”

“Good day!” she said.

But Danby did not move. The girl’s kind heart was reflected in her blue eyes. Never in his life had he needed sympathy and companionship so desperately. He felt that even his long-lost appetite would return if she were to invite him to eat with her.

She too was lonely, although her indomitable courage did not permit her to own it, even to herself. There was, too, something about the little man that was very attractive, something which made her feel sorry for him. She wished that he would ask her if he might join her and bring his own food. What was it about him which reminded her of some one she had seen before?

“Rather nice here, isn’t it?” she said.

He replied quickly, eagerly.

“Charming!” he said. “So sylvan.”

“So whater?”

“Sylvan. French for rustic.”

“Oh, French!”

“Yes; I beg your pardon.”

“Good day!” she said.

“Good day!” he replied.

He returned reluctantly to his pitch. He felt that he deserved his dismissal. It was a very foolish thing to have shown that he was something of a scholar. Evidently she considered that he was putting on side.

He sat down and made a sandwich. He felt that he could eat it with some enjoyment if he were seated on the other side of her square of newspaper. As it was....

The girl gave a short laugh.

“I’m afraid I’m a great nuisance,” she began apologetically.

“Not at all. Far from it.” There was another chance, then.

“You haven’t got such a thing as a touch of mustard, I suppose?”

“Oh yes, I have. Almost quite fresh.”

He got up again, and carried a little cold-cream pot with him.

“Oh, thank you!” She took the pot and gazed at its label, with raised eyebrows.

“It’s a has-been,” he said hastily. “I’m a bit of an engineer. Everything comes in useful.”

“Oh—thanks frightfully.” She helped herself.

“Honoured and delighted.” He remained standing over her.

She looked up.

“Anything I can do for you, now?”

“Yes, if you would. When you came here you said something about Carlton Hotel.”

“Oh, that was a poor attempt at wit.”

Danby’s hand went up to his tie. It was extraordinary how nervous he felt these days.

“Don’t think me intrusive, but suppose we imagine that this is the Carlton Hotel, and that all the tables are full except one.”

“Well?”

“Well, in that case, as you and I both wish to lunch, it would be very natural for us to be put at the same table, wouldn’t it? Do you take me?”

The girl laughed heartily.

“Come on, then. Two’s company.”

“How kind you are!” said Danby. “It will give me an appetite for the first time for months.” He hurried to his belongings and brought them back. “I know this is very irregular, our not having been introduced, but I don’t think under the circumstances it will cause a scandal in high life.”

“No, nor a paragraph in the weeklies.”

Danby respread his napkin and arranged his things on it. A sudden unexpected sensation of high spirits infected him.

He adopted what he considered to be the manner of a man of the world.

“Waitah, waitah!” he called, shooting his cuffs. “Great heaven, where’s that waitah! I shall really have to lodge a complaint with the manager. Hi! you in last week’s shirt, her ladyship and I have been waiting here for five minutes and no one’s been near us. It’s a disgrace. Don’t stand gaping there, sir, with a Swiss grin. Alley-vous ang. Gettey-vous gone toute suite, and bringey moi le menu. Verfluchtes, geschweinhund!” He waved the imaginary waiter away. “Pray pardon my heat, Lady Susan.”

The girl was intensely amused.

“Oh, certainly, Lord Edmund,” she replied, assuming an elaborately refined accent.

Danby kept it up.

“Do you find the glare of the electric light too much for you? Shall I complain about the orchestra?”

“One must endure these things in these places, your lordship. Were you riding in the Row this morning?”

“Yaas.” Danby twirled an imaginary moustache. “I had a canter. My mare cast a shoe—sixteen buttons. I rode her so hard that she strained her hemlock. She’s a good little mare. Has fourteen hands, and plenty of action. She’s a bit of a roarer, but then her mother was ridden by a Cabinet Minister.”

“You haven’t taken to a car, then?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve got one Fit and two Damlers. The annoying thing is, I’ve just lost my chauffeur.”

“Oh, really? How?”

“He dropped an oath into the petrol-tank and was seen no more.”

“What an absurdly careless person!”

Danby dropped acting, and eyed the girl keenly.

“I say,” he exclaimed, “that was good!”

“So’s that ham,” said the girl involuntarily.

Instantly Danby’s fork prodded the best piece.

“Have some. Do!”

“Sure you can spare it?”

“It would be a pity to waste it. I can’t tackle more than one slice.”

The girl held out a slice of bread.

“Haven’t seen ham for ten days,” she said simply. “It’s an awfully odd thing.”

“What? The ham?”

“No; your face.”

Danby laughed.

“You’re not the first who’s thought so.”

“And your voice is familiar, too,” said the girl.

Danby pretended to misunderstand. She had provided him with a chance he simply could not resist.

“Familiar? Oh, don’t say that. I thought I was behaving like an undoubted gentleman—one of the old régime.”

The girl examined the little man with a sudden touch of excitement.

“Look here,” she said. “Tell me the truth. Haven’t you been a picture-postcard?”

“Yes,” said Danby bitterly, “oh dear, yes! A year ago I was to be found in all the shops, between Hackenschmidt and the German Emperor.”

“I’ve got it!” she cried. “I know you.”

“No, you don’t,” said Danby.

“I do. I recognise you.”

“I think not. No one could recognise me now.”

“But I do. You’re Dick Danby—the Dick Danby. The famous Dick Danby. The Dick Danby who used to set all London laughing, who played Widow Twankey at Drury Lane, and topped the bill at the Tivoli and the Pav.”

The little man’s thin pale hands went up to his face.

“Oh, don’t!” he said, bursting into tears. “I can’t bear it.”

For a moment the girl was not sure whether this unexpected emotion was not part of the celebrated funny man’s comic method. She was about to laugh, when she found that Danby’s shoulders were shaking with very real and very terrible sobs. She was intensely surprised and upset and touched. She had never seen a man cry before. She put a soft hand on his arm.

“Oh, Mr. Danby,” she said, “what is it—what’s the matter?”

“Haven’t you heard? Dick Danby’s done for—gone under—gone phut. Dick Danby that was; Dick Danby that is no more. Dick Danby, that used to make ’em laugh, is a broken man. Oh, my God!”

“He came forward with a life-like walk and smile. ‘Oh, how do you do, my dear Mrs. Richmansworth?’ he said” (page 95).

“Oh, don’t go on like that!” said the girl brokenly. “You’ll make me cry if you do. What’s happened, Mr. Danby?”

The little man shook himself angrily. He was ashamed of himself. He didn’t know that he had become so weak, so unstrung, so little master of himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve never cried before. It was your recognising me. I didn’t think any one could recognise me as I am now. It was overwork, overstrain, three halls a night—I couldn’t stand it. I tried to struggle on, but it was no use. I earned my living as a funny man. Can you imagine what it means to a funny man to find that his jokes don’t go? Can you imagine what it meant for me to stand waiting in the wings for my number to go up, trembling all over with fear and fright, and then to face the public that used to roar with delight, and get a few scattered hands? Oh, those awful nights! The crowd, no longer my friends, who struck matches and talked. The look of pity on the face of the conductor, and the few words from the stage door when I crept away: ‘Never mind, Mr. Danby; can’t always expect to knock ’em, y’know.’ Do you wonder that I fretted myself into an illness? Do you wonder that I’ve been creeping about the country, afraid to face the managers? I’m done. I’m a funny man gone unfunny. I’m the Dick Danby that can’t get his laughs.”

The girl listened to this painful confession with intense sympathy. She too had earned a hard living on the music-hall stage. She too knew what it was to fail in her anxious endeavour to win applause. She too was at that moment tramping to London in search of work, with only a few shillings between the lodging-house and the Salvation Army shelter. There was something very different between her case and Richard Danby’s. She was an insignificant member of a large army of music-hall artistes whose place was always at the very beginning or the very end of the programme. When she had the good fortune to be in work, her salary was a bare living wage, and it was only by stinting herself of the few luxuries of life that she could put by a few pounds for a rainy day. Dick Danby’s case was utterly—almost ludicrously—different. His salary for years had been large enough to take her breath away. He had earned more in a week than she had earned in a year. His health had broken down, and his nerves and confidence had left him, but, at any rate, he was not faced, or likely to be faced, with starvation and the Embankment, and other terrors that were unmentionable.

“Don’t take it to heart, Mr. Danby,” she said cheerily. “You’ll get better, never fear, and knock ’em again. And, until then, you can be a country gentleman, and enjoy yourself. Think of all the money you’ve made!”

Danby gave a curious little laugh.

“And spent,” he said. “Money? Oh, yes, I made money—money to burn—and I burnt it—in the usual way. I thought my day would go on for ever, but, like other thoughtless fools, I made a mistake. It came to a sudden end.”

“But—but you don’t mean to tell me that you haven’t saved, Mr. Danby?”

“Saved?” Danby laughed again. “Have you ever heard that the word ‘save’ isn’t in the dictionary of the men who earn their living behind the footlights? I’ve got just enough left to keep me on the road till the end of the summer.”

“And then?”

“And then—the workhouse or the prison.”

“Never, never!” cried the girl. “Never!”

A great thrill ran through the little man’s veins. The emphatic cry was the best thing he had heard for many long, depressing months. The fact that it came from a shabby girl who might be in a worse plight than himself did not seem to matter.

“But what am I to do?” he asked.

The girl did not hesitate.

“Go back to the halls with new and better turns,” she said strongly.

Danby shuddered, and went back, snail-like, into his shell.

“I couldn’t. I couldn’t face ’em. Who’d have me now?”

“The Coliseum; the Hippodrome.”

“They’d never look at me. Me? They only want good stuff—first-rate stuff—all stars.”

“But you are a star!”

“A fallen star. No; it’s the workhouse for me. I’m a ‘has-been,’ a waster.”

“Who will be again,” said the girl. “Mr. Danby, I know you, and what you’re capable of. I’ve been in the same bill with you, and you haven’t begun to show ’em what you can do yet.”

Danby looked at this girl, whose young voice quivered with confidence, with a new interest.

“You in the same bill with me!”

“Yes. You’ve never heard of the Sisters Ives?”

Danby wrinkled up his forehead.

“The Sisters Ives? Fanny and Emily Ives?”

“I’m Fanny. Emily’s dead. We did pretty well together, but somehow—I dunno, I don’t seem to catch on alone. I’m tramping back to London.” She was unable to keep her resolutely cheerful voice quite steady, or prevent her smiling mouth from trembling.

Danby bent forward and caught Fanny’s hand, and held it warmly.

“Oh, my dear,” he said. “My dear.”

There was no longer any need for society manners between these two, nor introductions nor small-talk. They had become brother and sister—two human beings on the same hard road.

“So we’re both of us lame dogs, eh?” he said.

“Yes,” said Fanny, “but not too lame to give each other a hand over the stile. I’m not going to give up barking, and you’re not, either.”

“I’ve got no bark left in me,” said Danby sadly. “Not even a growl.”

The girl sprang to her feet. Her young body seemed to be alight with energy.

“Don’t talk nonsense, Mr. Danby!” she said. “Cock up your tail, go springy on your feet, and come back to London, and give ’em a bit of the old. D’you mean to tell me that you can’t remember the knack you had of doing the blear-eyed major?”

Danby was beginning to feel horribly excited. His depression seemed to be lifting like a mist.

“I can remember nothing,” he said irritably. “I tell you I’m no good. I’ve lost my pluck!” He said these things merely in the hope that they might be denied.

“Go on. Pluck! You only want a shove. I’m not going to have any of that sort of thing, believe me. You’ve got to wake up, you have. You’ve got to be brought in from grass and stuck into harness again. Now, no nonsense. I’m the great B. P., I am, for the time being. Now, then, on you come. The blear-eyed major, quick. We’ll take the song for sung. Come to the patter!”

Danby’s fingers twitched, and already he had flung out his chest and squared his shoulders.

“I—I can’t,” he said.

“You shall!” said Fanny.

“But—but what about make-up?”

Fanny nearly gave a shout of triumph. It had got as far as make-up. She was winning!

“Make-up!” she scoffed. “A great artiste wants no make-up!”

“But I must have a moustache. I never did the major without something to twirl.”

Fanny’s quick hands were up to her hair.

“Here you are,” she said, holding out a curl. “Bit of my extra. Go on now. Get it up.”

Danby caught it, and laughed. He was shaking with excitement.

“You—you inspire me,” he said. “You—fill me with new life. How can I stick it on? I know. Mustard!”

He rushed to the cold-cream pot, put his fingers into it, rubbed the thick yellow stuff on his upper lip, and stuck on the curl. Then he seized his hat, cocked it on at an angle of forty-five, buttoned up his coat, and strutted about like an irascible bantam cock.

“Armay? Armay? My dear lady, we have no Armay! It was taken over by a lawyer as a hobby. It’s a joke, a bad joke, at which nobody laughs. When you ask about the Armay you go back to the days of my youth, when I was in the 45th—a deuce of a feller too, I give you my word. We officers of Her Majesty’s British Armay were fine fellows, handsome dorgs, my dear lady; and I think I may say I am the last of the fruitay old barkers who could make love as well as they could fight. Oh, l’amour, l’amour! Do you kiss?”

There was in this rapidly touched-in sketch something of portraiture which was not spoilt by the banality of the patter. It was, perhaps, the portrait of the stage-major, but it was the portrait of a man who might conceivably have lived even for the strong note of caricature.

Fanny danced with delight, and clapped her hands until they smarted.

“Hot stuff, Mr. Danby; very hot stuff!”

“No; it’s rotten. Hopeless. You’d better give me up!” Danby, still afraid to believe in himself, took off the impromptu moustache and unbuttoned his coat.

“Give you up! I’ll see you further. Now, then. The woman turn. Quick. You were a scream as a woman, Mr. Danby dear.”

“The woman! How can I?” He looked round for his properties—wig, bonnet, dress, umbrella, little dog. His hands fluttered impotently.

Fanny was ready for him—ready for anything. She was playing the angel, the Florence Nightingale. She was bringing back a human being to life, to a sense of responsibility, to a realisation of power, putting him on his feet again. She intended to win.

“Here you are,” she said. “Get into this.”

With quick, deft fingers she undid her belt and some hooks, slipped her skirt down, stepped out of it, and threw it at him. In her short, striped petticoat she looked younger and prettier and more honest than ever.

Danby gave a gurgle of excitement.

“Oh!” he said. “Oh, Miss Ives, you—you beat me, you——” He got into the skirt.

“That’s the notion,” she said. “Now get into this.” She had whipped off her hat and held it out.

Danby took it. If Pippard had caught sight of him as he stood among the stubble in a skirt beneath his coat he would have fallen into what might turn out to be a dangerous fit of laughter.

“But how about hair?” asked Danby. “Oh, I know.”

It was an inspiration. He darted to the nearest rick, plucked out a handful of golden corn, twisted it into a sort of halo, put it on turbanwise, and placed the hat on top. The effect was excellent; but it was the expression of the little actor’s face which did more to put before his audience of one the garrulous, spiteful, prying woman than the skirt and hat put together.

He came forward with a life-like walk and smile.

“Oh, how do you do, my dear Mrs. Richmansworth?” he said. “I’m afraid I’m a little late, but I only just remembered that it’s the third Thursday. I see you’ve got a new knocker. It represents a gargoyle, or a Chinese god, does it not? Or is it a fancy portrait of your husband? How is dear Mr. Richmansworth? Better! Ah, I wish I could say the same for mine. My husband.... But there; the least said the soonest mended. I see that you’ve been having some coal in to-day. Isn’t it dreadful how coal has risen? I don’t call it coal now—I call it yeast. My husband.... But let us talk of pleasant things. I see that you’ve lost your next-door neighbour. She was a good woman, and a great personal friend of mine; but I must say, in all fairness and in very truth, that she won’t be missed, for her tongue was bitter and her words poison. No, thank you! I will not take tea. I was foolish enough to drink a cup at Mrs. Snodgrass’s; and although I don’t wish to go into details, I might just as well have swallowed a cannon-ball. I’m that swollen, I could hardly put my gloves on. I think it’s called gastritis.”

Fanny roared with delight. The absurd patter was said with an unmistakable touch of humour which would have appealed irresistibly to any music-hall audience.

“Good old Dick Danby!” she cried. “It’s a case of six weeks at the Coliseum and fifteen on the road, with a star line on the bills. Give me my skirt.”

“I beg your pardon!” He got out of it quickly. “Oh, if only I dared! If only I had the pluck to face my friends in front again! ‘Return of Mr. Richard Danby,’ eh?”

“That’s it! It’s a cert.! It’s fine! You’re up to your best form. You only want a couple of good songs, and your face will gleam again in all the shop windows.”

Danby put his trembling hands on the girl’s shoulders.

“Oh, Miss Ives! Oh, Fanny, you’re better than all the medicine. You’re a lady doctor—a hospital of lady doctors. You’ve bucked me up. You’ve given me back my pluck. Come on—to London—to London!”

“Yes,” cried Fanny, “to London!”

Danby ran to his knapsack and began to pack it feverishly. The colour had returned to his face. His eyes were alight. He laughed as he packed. They both laughed; and when, a few minutes later, they faced each other again, ready for the road, they both looked as if a fairy had touched them with her wand.

“Your sister’s dead,” said Danby, “and you’re down on your luck. Join forces with me, and we’ll do a turn together—this turn, this story, just as we’ve done it here, and we’ll call it ‘Lame Dogs.’”

Fanny’s tears started to her eyes.

“Oh, Mr. Danby, do you mean that?”

Danby almost shouted with excitement.

“Mean it? I never meant anything so seriously in my life. Dick Danby and Fanny Ives at ten o’clock nightly. That’s what I mean, my dear. You’ve done it. You’ve helped a lame dog over a stile. In future, I won’t work only for myself. I’ll work for you too. Little Dick Danby’s on his feet again. Little Dick Danby’s believed in. He’s come face to face with Miss Fanny Hope Faith Charity Ives, and he won’t let her go. Is it a contract?”

Fanny tried to take the outstretched hand. She tried to speak, and failed. Danby bent down and put his lips on her sleeve. Then he led her to the stile, helped her over, and together they took the road which led to London.

The Silver Thaw
By R. E. Vernede
Rifle Brigade

A silver thaw had set in. The icy rain fell so suddenly and so quickly that Masson felt his car skid on what had been a dry—almost a dusty—high-road before he was well aware of the cause. Two minutes later the imperative necessity of pulling up became apparent, and he came to a stop at the end of a hundred yards’ slide.

“If it had been downhill,” he thought to himself, “the depreciation on this particular four and a half horse-power de Dion would have been considerable. I suppose I’m in luck.”

The luck, on second thoughts, was of a very dubious kind. A mist, following on the break of the frost, had already obscured the beauty of the night; the roadway seemed absolutely deserted, and the nearest approach to a village was, as Masson guessed, some five miles off. His lamps, shining upon what might have been a frozen canal between two high hedges, showed that he could as well have been twenty miles from a village for all chance he had of getting there either on foot or on wheels. Pulling out his watch, he found the time to be ten o’clock. He had been about half an hour on the road. Calculating that he had done some twelve miles, and that there were fifty separating the place he had dined at from the place he had intended to reach, he was still thirty-eight miles from the latter.

“No London for me to-night,” he said, turning up his coat-collar. “This thaw may turn to rain and it may not. The point is, what am I to do if it doesn’t?” He stood up in the car to prospect.

An answer came in lights that glowed yellow through the mist, from some house evidently that stood a little off the road to the left. They had been hidden until that moment by the hedge, and seemed all the nearer now for their suddenness. They meant shelter from that icy drip, possibly a bed for the night. There was no resisting the prospect. Masson climbed gingerly down, commended the car to Providence, and made for a white gate in the hedge that seemed to indicate the entrance to the drive. His fingers were so numbed that he could scarcely unlatch it.

Any one who has tried the business of walking in what is called—romantically enough—a silver thaw will know that romance is the last thing that occupies the mind of a person so engaged. The constant striving to remain perpendicular, the grovelling with unseizable earth forced upon a man who has sat down upon it with an unexpectedness that is outside all experience, the doubts as to whether any material progress can be made except on all fours, combine to keep the attention fixed upon practical things. Add the darkness of a clouded winter sky, a gathering mist, and a path—if it could be called a path—at once barely visible and totally unknown, and it will be clear that a man encountering these difficulties will be justified in wishing romance to the deuce. Masson wished it further before he had done with it that night.

The only warning that he had before he was plunged into it, willy-nilly, was the sound of a whistle, as of some one expressing surprise, from the high-road he had left. He imagined that it proceeded from some yokel who had come upon the deserted de Dion, and he sincerely hoped that the yokel would not have the time or inclination to overhaul its machinery. For a moment, indeed, with some of the yearning instinct of the motorist for his car, he thought of returning to it and warning the yokel off. The very act of trying to come to a decision, however, made his heels go from under him, and when he had got them under control again the decision was formed. It was to reach the house—or congeal.

Another five minutes’ skidding and he reached it. The back of it apparently, for there was no door. The result of a polite hail was that a window was opened from overhead, and a voice—a girl’s voice—said:

“Is it you?” She said it in a whisper, only just audible.

“Who?” returned Masson, a little surprised.

It was not, perhaps, an intelligent question, but it did not seem to justify what followed. The window was shut with a little shriek, and a pair—or two pairs—of sturdy arms closed about Masson’s body. It did not require so much force as was used to bring him to the ground, his antagonist or antagonists on top of him. He explained as much with some warmth as he lay there, but only had the satisfaction of hearing one of the men say to the other—there were two, it seemed: “You tak’ un by the lags, Mr. Board, and ef ’e tries kicken’, Ah’ll gi’e un a jog in the belly.”

“Right y’are, Jenkins.... Now, sir, gently, if you please.”

The last words were addressed to Masson, and he guessed, from the tone of reluctant respect, that the speaker was some house-servant. Probably the butler.

“All right,” he said. “Only, if you’re going to carry me, for Heaven’s sake be careful. If you drop me, it’s murder, mind. You’ll be hanged for it.”

“No fear, sir,” said Mr. Board genially. “We won’t hurt you, never fear. What the squire’ll do is another matter, sir, as I dessay you guess. Ready, Jenkins?”

“Ah,” said Jenkins, and moved forward with Masson’s head. Mr. Board followed with his legs. In this manner, and with an unpleasant feeling that one or other of them would certainly slip, Masson made his untriumphal procession into the house.

He was dumped, brutally by Jenkins, respectfully by Mr. Board, on the Turkey-carpet of what—so far as he could see for the sudden glare of lights—was the large and armoured hall of a manor-house.

He lay for a moment on the Turkey-carpet with closed eyes. When he looked up there was a tall and irascible old gentleman standing over him with a heavy riding-whip.

“Stand him on his feet, Jenkins, and you stand by the door, Board, and see that he don’t make a rush. Now, sir”—the old gentleman addressed himself to Masson with a most threatening countenance—“you’re going to elope with my daughter—eh, what?”

Masson stared. “Going to elope with your daughter? Might I ask—can you explain to me what the meaning of this assault on me by your servants—I presume they’re your servants—means?”

“You might,” said the old gentleman caustically. “They had their orders, sir, from me, to bring you in neck and crop, sir—neck and crop, by gad! You didn’t expect that when you came sneaking round here after my daughter—eh, what?” He thrashed the air significantly. “Any excuse to offer before——”

Masson backed away a little towards a light but solid chair that stood near. It might serve as a weapon if this old madman attacked.

Mr. Board—a middle-aged man, unmistakably the butler—put his back against the hall door and stood rubbing his hands. Jenkins, a gaitered person, choked a guffaw. It seemed to Masson that, with three able-bodied persons opposed to him, he had better try the discreet before the valorous part.

“It seems to me,” he said, raising his voice a little, “that the excuse should be offered to me. I can only imagine you’re labouring under some delusion——”

“Ha!” said the old gentleman.

“Which I am quite willing to help to clear, so far as I am concerned. I haven’t the least idea what you mean by accusing me of sneaking round after your daughter. I have never set eyes on your daughter. I don’t know who she is or who you are. I came here off the high-road—perhaps I ought to say I’m motoring to London—because the roads are so slippery I couldn’t get on. Seeing your lights, I thought I could get some assistance here.”

“That’s why you went round to the back of the house, eh?”

“My dear sir,” said Masson impatiently, “are you aware that it’s a pitch-dark night, that the back and the front of your house are equally strange to me, that the mistake I made in going to the back instead of the front is the kind of mistake any stranger trying to get here would make?”

He spoke with a good deal of indignation, by no means soothed to hear Jenkins snigger: “He, he! that’s a good un. Et was all along of a mistake. He, he!” and the squire’s reply, snorted insultingly:

“Look here, my young man, I knew you were a rogue. I didn’t know you were a cur too. Likely story, ain’t it? Motoring, eh? Never seen my daughter. What? Never seen John Clifton o’ the King’s Arms neither, I dare say? Well, I have. John Clifton knows me, and he knows I’ve got him in my pocket. So when you went and ordered a horse and trap for ten o’clock to-night, mentioning—hang your impudence—that you might be wanting it for a young lady you were going to elope with, John Clifton, he came round to me. ‘He’ll be waiting about ten-thirty to-night, under missy’s window. That’s the arrangement, squire.’ John Clifton told me that. ‘Ten-thirty,’ said he, and, by gad, ten-thirty it is.”

“I’ve never heard of John Clifton in my life,” said Masson soothingly.

“Stick to your lie,” snorted the squire.

“Stick to your mulish idiocy,” returned Masson, equally enraged; “only, if you want to avoid making a drivelling fool of yourself, send for your daughter. I imagine she’ll be able to inform you that you’ve made a mistake, so far as I’m concerned.”

Whether the squire, thus braved, would have proceeded at once to carry out the intention his hands, twitching at the whip, suggested, Masson hardly knew. At that moment an elderly lady opened a door at the far end of the hall and entered.

“Oh, Reginald!” she cried.

“What is it?” asked the squire, turning at her.

“Is this the young man?”

“Is this the——” the squire choked. “No, it isn’t. This is the young man who swears he isn’t the young man. That’s who this young man is. Wants me to call Judith down to verify him. I’ll be——”

“Merely in justice to the young lady,” said Masson scornfully, as the squire stopped for breath.

“Perhaps——” said the elderly lady, in a deprecating voice. “Possibly, Reginald, it would be fairer. You have never seen the young man before, have you? Judith——”

“Judith’s a minx!” said the squire furiously.

“But she has never told a lie,” said the elderly lady.

“Call her!” The squire rumbled the order, and the elderly lady fled. “Judith, my dear, Judith!” Masson could hear her twittering to her charge as he leaned on the back of the chair which was to have served him for a weapon in case the squire had proceeded to extremities. He supposed the matter was now as good as ended, and could afford a smile at the disappointed expression of Jenkins, who was evidently the squire’s principal backer in the scheme of force majeure. Mr. Board, indeed, had allowed a sigh, as of relief, to escape him at the new turn of affairs, and was for leaving his post at the door.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay there?” said the squire sharply; and, observing Masson’s smile, “Don’t you imagine, my fine fellow, that you’ve escaped your thrashing yet. Ha!”

The last word was an acknowledgment of his daughter’s arrival under the wing of the elderly lady. Masson looked at the girl with interest. She was tall and slender—a pretty girl. There was, Masson judged, some grounds for the squire’s suspicions, for she was dressed for out of doors, in hat and furs, and seemed pale and upset. She avoided Masson’s eyes.

“Masson looked about him wildly.... ‘My name is Henry,’ he explained—‘Henry Masson’” (page 101).

“You wanted me, father,” she said.

“No, I didn’t; confound it!” said the squire rudely. “It was your aunt wanted you. This rogue”—he indicated Masson with his riding-whip—“wants to save his skin; says he isn’t your man. Ha! What do you say?”

Masson waited in all serenity for her reply. She seemed to hesitate and gulp for words. It was excusable, Masson thought. The old curmudgeon had frightened the wits half out of her.

“What do you say?” roared the squire, again.

She twisted her hands together, took a step forward, and, in a trembling voice, addressing Masson:

“Oh, Dick!” she said fondly.

Masson became aware that the dropping of a pin might have been audible but for Mr. Board’s respectful sigh of dismay at the door. For a second he doubted his full possession of his senses.

“What did you say?” he stammered.

“Oh, Dick! Why, why did you come? I wish——” she burst into gentle sobs.

Masson looked about him wildly. He felt a mere fool.

“My name is Henry,” he explained—“Henry Masson.”

“Just so,” said the squire grimly. “Martha, take Judith upstairs! Send her to bed. Quickly now; no talking. Now, sir” (to Masson as the door closed upon the two ladies), “are you going to take your thrashing standing up or lying down?” He had recovered his self-possession, and it was Masson who felt his leaving him. Only for a moment, however. Then, “Standing up,” he said, and gave Jenkins, as that individual advanced to collar him, a kick that brought him to the ground. He seized the momentary advantage to dodge the squire’s whip and to give a swing of the chair into Mr. Board’s bread-basket. Mr. Board fell back—unfortunately, against the hall door, which was against Masson’s chance of escaping. It is probable that the next five minutes offered as good an exhibition of rough-and-tumble fighting as the hall of the manor-house had ever been privileged to witness. Only superior agility enabled Masson to keep his end up, for, though Mr. Board’s attack was reluctant, it was not devoid of cunning, and both the squire and Jenkins were bulls for fierceness. Indeed, Masson, panting hard, was having his chair wrenched from him by the latter, while he dodged the squire’s attempts to clinch, when he felt the other door, through which the ladies had vanished, scrape his back. It gave him an idea, and he acted on it. Letting Jenkins have the chair at full grip, which sent him staggering backwards, Masson butted the squire, turned the handle, and was through. He hung on to the handle desperately, feeling for a key. There was none. The opposition forces had got their hold, and were forcing the door open.

It was at this crisis that the elderly lady again made her appearance. She came bustling into Masson’s back, crying aloud, “She’s gone! She’s gone with the other young man! Oh, dear” (as she perceived Masson), “what is happening? Where is my brother?”

“In there,” said Masson, and let go.

“Reginald!” she cried, as the squire came bouncing through. “Stop! It’s not this young man. It’s another young man; and Judith’s gone. She got out of her bedroom window, and they’re driving off now!”

“What?” cried the squire.

“Perhaps,” said Masson politely, “you will now believe what I said.”

He might as well have addressed the walls for all the attention he received. The squire had no sooner grasped the new situation than he was foaming for the front door, giving directions at the top of his voice.

“Put in the mare, Jenkins. Saddle Black Beauty. Tell the boy to ride for the police. Drat and confound this——”

Masson gathered that the squire’s broken sentences signified that he had stepped out into the ice-paved night, with the inevitable results. However, he must have picked himself up, for his halloaing grew fainter.

“But how it will all end, Heaven only knows,” said the elderly lady to Masson, in a despairing way.

“I’m afraid you’re right,” said Masson. “Good evening, madam.”

The hall door was open, his late antagonists had disappeared, but since there was no knowing when they would return, or in what frame of mind, it was not wise to lose an opportunity. Stepping out into the darkness, Masson found that the silver thaw had turned to rain, and that the path, though slippery in parts, was safety itself to what it had been. He followed the winding drive until he came to the white gate and the road beyond. There, unnoticed, it seemed, and untouched, stood his car by the side of the road. He started it and moved on at a moderate pace. A couple of minutes later he neared two figures going at a plodding canter in the light of his lamps. The one that led was tall and large. “The squire,” thought Masson, and hooted vigorously.

“A hundred pounds if you’ll give me a lift,” cried the squire. “I want to catch up a horse and trap—just ahead. Won’t take you three minutes. A hundred pounds! Come!”

“For mercy’s sake, sir, do!” said the other—Mr. Board, it was clear. Neither of the two seemed to know whom they were addressing; or else they had forgotten the events of the evening, which hardly seemed possible.

“I’m afraid—very sorry—but I can’t stop,” said Masson politely. He bore them no grudge, on the whole; but, having witnessed the squire in the fulness of his raging, he felt no desire to cumber himself with him any more. It would be conniving at manslaughter. “Quite impossible,” he repeated, as he whizzed by them.

He put on speed, turned a bend of the highway a minute and a half later, and pulled up just in time to avoid not mere connivance, but actual committal of manslaughter. For there, in the very centre of the road, was the horse and trap which the others were so anxious to come up with. Only it was no longer a horse and trap united, but a horse and a trap quite separate entities—of which, moreover, the trap lay on one side, minus a wheel and with broken shafts.

So much Masson’s lights showed him as he came to a stop just in time. A little shriek that arose at the same moment from the bank at the side of the road revealed more.

“Oh, Dick, is it—father?”

“No,” said Mr. Masson. With every wish to be neutral in this family affair, he could not resist giving so much consolation. A young man, who had, it seemed, been divided between soothing the author of the little shriek and holding on to the frightened horse—not altogether a simple division of labour—came forward at this. “Excuse me, sir,” he said to Masson: “I don’t know who you are, but——”

“Oh, Dick, it’s the other young man—Mr.—Mr. Henry.” The squire’s daughter spoke from the bank.

“Henry Masson,” said that gentleman; “not Dick! I should have been obliged,” he continued, with a good deal of urbanity, “if you could have mentioned that fact half an hour ago.” He bore the squire’s daughter no grudge, on the whole, but he felt that he was entitled to that small piece of irony at least. It was not altogether amusing to be “the other young man.”

The young man—the real Dick—had apparently received only a partial account of the evening’s proceedings.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” he said frankly. “I know something went wrong up at the house—Judy was telling me just as our horse came down—confound that ice thaw! The squire mistook you for me, didn’t he?”

“Well,” said Masson, “the squire couldn’t very well help making the mistake when——” A fierce bellowing not far in the rear interrupted him. “That is the squire, I suppose,” he went on. “I passed him a couple of minutes ago. He seemed anxious to come up with you.”

“Good heavens!” said the young man. “Look here, sir. I don’t know if you know the state of affairs. This lady and I wish to get married. You see what’s happened? Cart smashed. If you could give us a lift——”

He spoke very pleasantly and yet earnestly. Masson bore no grudge against him. As he hesitated, the squire’s daughter came from the hedge bank, where she had been sitting, into the light of his lamps.

“You will forgive me, won’t you?” she said winningly. “It was my only chance of getting away. I was frantic.” She looked very piteous and pretty in the light of the lamps. “You will, won’t you?” she repeated.

“Certainly,” said Masson; “there’s nothing to forgive. Pray get in. I ought to think myself lucky to have been the young man, if it was only for ten minutes.”

“Come, Dick—quick!” cried the squire’s daughter.

The young man let the horse go and climbed into the car.

“Just in time, I think,” he said, as Masson backed a little and slipped the car past the fallen trap to a loud chorus of “Stop, you rogue!”

“Good night, squire!” they all cried, as they went ahead through the thin, falling rain.

Later on, when Masson accepted an invitation to be best man at the wedding of Mr. Richard Castle with Miss Judith Trelawney, he realised that he had not come so badly out of that silver thaw. He felt magnanimous, in fact.

Carnage
By Compton Mackenzie
Royal Navy

I am not a man naturally fond of adventure, but on the contrary have preserved from earliest youth an ambition to stay at home and watch from a sunny window-seat the orderly course of humanity along an orderly street.

Fortune, however, by depriving my parents of everything except myself, and myself of everything except a flute, made me a raggle-taggle wanderer, dependent for my livelihood on the charms of music.

Ignorant of luxury through the exigencies of a nomadic existence, I owned nevertheless a very fastidious taste which often led me to despise the miseries of my situation—so much so that I believe I would rather a thousand times depend on the hard ground than sacrifice my sensibility in the endurance of an uncongenial bedfellow.

So much by way of explaining the following adventure, which was actually produced by my inability to suffer a common hardship of the wanderer’s lot.

On a December dusk of the year 1753, I found myself, with apparently no prospect of a lodging, on a bleak high-road in the middle of Cornwall. What horrid impulse took me to that barbarous peninsula, I cannot now recall exactly; but probably my journey was connected with some roadside rumour of prosperity to be found in the West of England at the holiday season.

My first experience of Cornish hospitality was not happy; for, having begun to flute merrily in the yard of an outlying farmhouse, the savage owner loosed a pair of lean hounds, who followed me with a very odious barking nearly half a mile along the road. I was determined to avoid such places in future, and to keep my breath for a town, where the amenity of a closer social intercourse might have evolved a more generous spirit among the inhabitants.

With gloomy thoughts I trudged on, without a glimpse of any village or hamlet, or even of an isolated dwelling such as I had lately tried.

The night was coming up fast behind me, and I was already pondering the imminent extinction of my life’s flame in the wind-swept bogs on either side of the path, when I came suddenly on a small inn, not visible before on account of the road’s curve and a clump of firs shorn and blistered by the prevailing wind.

Here I asked for a bed; but on being informed that I must share it with a degraded idiot whom I perceived slobbering in a corner of the taproom, I scorned the accommodation and inquired the distance and direction of the nearest village.

“There’s no village for another five mile or more,” said the landlord. “What’s your trade, master?”

I did not wish to gratify the bumpkin’s curiosity; but reflecting that I might hear of a junketing in the neighbourhood, told him I was a musician.

“Then why don’t ’ee make for Cannebrake?” he asked.

“Cannebrake?” I exclaimed. “How on earth shall I make for a place of whose existence I am only this moment aware?”

“Never heard of Cannebrake o’ the Starlings?” he exclaimed. “Why, ’tis a famous place here around, and the old lord he might be proud to listen to a parcel o’ music. Come, I’ll show ’ee the road.”

A burst of gibberish from the idiot made up my mind, and I hurried after the landlord, who with much circumlocution described my route. I left him by the inn door, and when I turned once or twice to wave a farewell, saw him still standing there, a white patch in the fading light.

I passed, according to his directions, a dry tree, a slab of granite shaped like an elephant’s back, and a stretch of waste water stuck here and there with withered reeds like an old brush, until I reached a tall Celtic cross that leaned very forbiddingly towards the path. Here a side track dipped down from the main road to a valley whose ample vegetation contrasted strangely with the barren moors above. My path was soon overarched with trees. A smell of damp woodland pervaded its gloom, and my footsteps were muffled by the drift of wet leaves. Had it not been for the deep ruts into which from time to time I slipped, I should have concluded I had missed the path and was penetrating towards the heart of a forest.

I emerged from the avenue at last; though by now it was so dark that only the fresher air and the rasping of my feet on stones told me I was again in open country. But it was impossible to advance, and I was beginning to regret the inn and rail at myself for objecting to the idiot’s company, when I saw above a black hill-top the yellow rim of the full moon, whose light, increasing every moment, was presently strong enough to show me I was not fifty yards from the great gates of Cannebrake.

Yet I was half afraid to set them creaking in the silence, so menacing were they between their tall stone pillars, so complete was the absence of any welcome.

I have often had occasion to visit the seats of the nobility and gentry in more civilised corners of England, and the air of abandonment that surrounded the entrance of Cannebrake did not seem to consort with the traditions of any famous or honoured name.

The very moonlight in that hollow was tainted with a miasma, setting no clear contrasts of shadow and silver, robbing the pillars of all solidity and giving the landscape the tremulous outlines of a half-remembered dream.

I had never before experienced the sensation of absolute decay. I had been affected by the fall of autumn leaves from dripping branches, by the melting of ice on warm winter mornings; but here dissolution was silent, without a curlew’s cry or lisp of withered grass to mark its accomplishment.

At last, by an effort of common sense, I pushed the gates ajar, and the creaking of them, as they swung back upon their hinges, followed me up the moss-grown drive with a wailful indignation.

The shrubbery planted round the gates did not extend far, and the drive soon unfolded its direction, running straight and bare over a wide, undulating grassland populated with the shadowy forms of cattle, to the doors of Cannebrake—a long, low building of the undistinguished architecture which I had already learned to associate with Cornish houses.

I stood awhile contemplating the mansion that seemed impalpable in the webs of the moon.

There was neither barking of dogs nor any sign of human life until I observed the shadow of a man carrying from room to room of the second story a circle of candlelight increasing and diminishing with each entrance and exit. I supposed it to be a servant’s nightly round of inspection, and, assured of the existence of life within, moved across to the heavily nailed door.

I would have pulled at once the great iron bell-chain, had it not been for a strange disinclination to destroy the quiet with so wild a sound. As it was, I stood there holding my breath, I believe, while I deciphered the coat-of-arms above the door—a medley of Turks’ heads and birds.

Then, with the slight knowledge of French gleaned on my wanderings, I fell to translating the motto of the family, “Aux amis l’amour, aux ennemis la mort.”

Notwithstanding the pledge of this sentiment in stone, I could not spur myself into arousing the inmates; but as there was a rank growth of grass between the drive and the house itself, I availed myself of its quiet to crawl round and peer unheard into the windows on the ground floor.

On a closer view of the window to the right of the door, I saw glinting on the darkness of heavy curtains a thin line of light. Without more ado I pulled out my flute and started “Come, Lasses and Lads.”

This harmless old air seemed to produce a most distressing effect upon the inmates, for the curtains were immediately flung back and an elderly gentleman, with wig all awry and hands tugging at his stock, stared out into the night as if afraid of hell.

I tapped gently with my flute upon the lattice, and in response to my knocking, but with evident dismay, my listener was persuaded to throw it open.

Whether the sight of him pale and horror-struck had led me to expect a timid inquiry as to my business, I do not know, but I doubt if I ever heard so deep a voice from any human creature before. It rumbled like a bull’s and, I vow, alarmed me more than the music of my instrument had alarmed its owner.

A horrid stream of blasphemies heralded his demand to know my business.

“My name, my lord, is Tripconey—Peter Tripconey, a flute-player, and your lordship’s very humble, obedient servant to command.”

This frank avowal had the effect of slightly mitigating his wrath, and he was pleased to ask me what I did in his park at such an ungodly hour.

“Indeed, my lord, I was sent here.”

“Sent here, you vagabond? By whom?”

“By an inn-keeper who plies a poor trade on the desolate moors adjacent to your lordship’s estate.”

He seemed relieved by my information, and was gracious enough to ask if I could play any sea-songs. I answered I could play and sing the “Ballad of the Golden Vanity” and many more besides, as well as any man alive.

“Hark ’ee, Cynthia,” he said, turning to address another inmate. “There’s a musician outside. Shall we have him in, girl? Shall we have a merry-making? The poor wretch looks as if a good supper would do him no harm. Hi, sirrah, can you eat?” he asked, turning round again to me.

I assured him I had a very tolerable appetite, and he bade me ring the bell forthwith, vowing he would give me bed and board for a night’s music. I made haste to obey his orders, and when I stepped into the great hall, lighted by a score of candles and the blaze of a gigantic fire roaring on the hearth, was glad I had done so.

His lordship with much condescension presented me to his daughter, the Honourable Miss Cynthia Starling, who received me with the courtesy it delights a woman of rank to exercise. In the presence of this lovely creature I threw off every evil foreboding, and made haste to entertain the noble company with as much wit as I could command. I may say I was very successful.

His lordship laughed very heartily at all my sallies, and once or twice I plainly detected a faint smile pass over the classic features of the honourable and handsome young woman.

His lordship excused himself from joining me at supper, pointing out with much intelligence that, having already dined, a second meal so soon after the other would be likely to injure his night’s rest. I cordially agreed with him, and drank his health in a pint bumper of a very level and solid old Burgundy. His lordship was pleased to acknowledge my toast, and indeed went so far as to drink prosperity to the humble flute-player sheltered by his hospitable roof.

When I had eaten as much as I wanted, my host called out in his great voice for the butler, whom I disliked at first sight. He was a tall, thin man, with pouched eyes and an unnaturally sleek face the colour of tallow. His hands were hairy, blue with gunpowder, and criss-crossed with livid scars.

However, I soon forgot him in racking my memory for the old sea-tunes which his lordship wished to hear. The latter sat upright in the ingle, beating time to the choruses with his ebony cane, or rather crutched-stick, which he leaned upon very heavily in his walk, being, as I supposed, a sufferer from the gout. The crutch itself was very massive and bound with gold bands.

I also played some polite melodies for the pleasure of her ladyship, which she commended very earnestly; but when she had wished us a good night and retired to her chamber, my Lord Cannebrake set out to curse all love-songs and country dances, and bade me get back immediately to the sea-tunes which he loved so well.

Presently he called for the butler, Springle, and to my surprise, and I may add profound vexation, invited him to take a chair by the fire and join in the choruses. I was shocked to see the familiar way in which this fellow treated his master, and, for my own part, was quick to put the insolent rogue in his place as often as I could, thus showing him very plainly how I esteemed his presumption.

One or two of my hits went very well with his lordship; and though Mr. Springle snarled at me from his chair, I was not at all afraid to bait him whenever the circumstances of the conversation gave me an opportunity.

“Springle,” said his lordship after a round of tunes, “Mr. Tripconey must whet his whistle. Bring in another bottle of Burgundy and warm me a noggin of rum.”

I was amazed to hear a nobleman favour the plebeian beverage of rum, and still more deeply amazed to hear his butler answer him very saucily, “Aye, aye,” without offering to move himself.

“Get up, you impudent swab!” bellowed Lord Cannebrake. “What! Disobey orders, would you, you dog! You whimpering, sneering, dirty ship’s steward.”

Mr. Springle, perceiving he had made too free with his master’s affableness, rose at once and slunk from the hall.

My Lord Cannebrake growled to himself awhile, and then sat moodily silent, staring into the fire.

I seized the occasion of the butler’s absence to ask him point blank why the first sounds of my flute had alarmed him so violently. “For,” said I, “there is nothing surprising at this jolly season of the year, when waits and mummers are abroad, in hearing the sound of music by night.”

“Did I look frightened, eh?” asked his lordship. “Hah, and I was frightened, woundily frightened. I come, sir, of a plaguy old family, and I live in a plaguy old house, and I’ve inherited very little else but a plaguy crew of ghosts.”

“And you mistook me for one of ’em?” I laughed.

“We Starlings,” he went on, “like most old families, have our omens and death cries and what not, and it has always been accounted very ill work for a Starling to hear a starling’s whistle.”

I was somewhat put about to learn that my playing had been mistaken for a vulgar bird’s whistle, but, concealing my annoyance very genteely, laughed the matter off.

“‘Springle,’ his lordship gasped. ‘Springle, I’ve killed him, ha’n’t I?’” (page 113).

“Indeed, my lord, I believe that is the first time that ever my flute was taken for a bird.”

“Yes,” he murmured, more to himself than to me, “yes, I heard that whistle forty days out from Sierra Leone, and the next day we was flinging half-cooked niggers into the sea and——”

He stopped suddenly and looked me full in the face, but I thought his mind was wandering and paid small attention to his wild words.

“And I heard it again when we were careening in the Pearl Islands off Panama just before I was took with Yellow Jack, but I’ve never heard it since till to-night. Ecod, I don’t like being my Lord Cannebrake, with ghosts thick as seagulls round about. I was happier before; I was happier in the pleasant Isle of Thanet with the sea-wind singing day and night round my cottage. I used to do nothing mostly, except sight the craft beating round the Foreland, and think of ’em so white and handsome in the Downs, a-stroking all the while my little daughter’s light-brown hair. And now look at me, stuck in a low, dirty swamp ten miles from the sound of breakers, wi’ nothing to think of but ghosts. That’s bad for a man who, mark you, was a-seafaring once. But there came an ague and took one; and another broke his neck out hunting; and the third, he fell into the pool fishing for carp; and so I became Lord Cannebrake.”

I was at a loss to know why this elderly nobleman honoured me with his confidence, but ascribed it to the influence of the old sea-songs and my own insignificance, for I doubt he never thought me a person of much importance, and he went on with his monologue without seeming to expect any comment from me.

“Then there’s Cynthia. Cannebrake’s no place for a high-spirited young woman. London’s the place for her, where she can meet women of quality and learn the ways of fashion. She’s a sweet maid. I never knew a sweeter. But what’s to become of her, buried alive, in a manner of speaking, and like to grow into a mumbling, fumbling old maid with nothing to watch all her life but the sun’s rise and set, and winter coming in cold, and the spring-time rain, and a few flowers of summer?”

Here I made bold to offer a suggestion that he should go back to the Isle of Thanet.

“Ah, why don’t I, Mr. Flute-player? I’ll tell you why,” and he leaned over, whispering in my ear:

“Because I dare not. Because I lived a vile, bad life when I was young, and I’m afraid. That’s a terrible thing for you to ponder, Mr. Tripconey—an old man living alone in a dip of these wild moors—afraid. Listening to the clock tick-ticking, and all the time fast afraid. You’ve seen me, white and shaking, when you tapped on the window: me—Captain Starling—afraid.”

Springle’s entrance with rum enough for half a dozen put an end to further reminiscence.

“Why, Conrad,” said his lordship, “why, Conrad, boy, I see you’ve set a glass for yourself. That was thoughtful of you, Conrad.”

Then suddenly the old man’s fury broke out—very terrible.

“And so you’d make a nincompoop of me before my guests, would you? Below deck, you swab!” he roared, and, picking up one of the heavy cut-glass goblets, flung it between the butler’s legs as he hurried from the hall. Lord Cannebrake laughed and made me fill up my glass, while he poured out for himself an extra strong allowance of rum.

“Master Springle thinks he can do as he likes because I give him a moderate amount of freedom, seeing that we were shipmates once.”

“It is indeed a condescension on your side, my lord, for which the fellow shows himself monstrous ungrateful. I drink your lordship’s very good health.”

He acknowledged the compliment by draining his glass to me, and I could not forbear my admiration to see how he poured the fiery liquor down his throat at a single gulp. I myself, a timid drinker, could never have survived the quarter of it sipped slowly. When he had put down his glass I saw that he was sniffing the air as a stag sniffs for water.

“Tell me,” he demanded, “can you smell sea-water?”

So unusual a question put me in some confusion, for if I laughed it aside I would have seemed to suspect him of drunkenness. I determined therefore to humour his fancy, and told him very gravely that I could not smell sea-water.

“I doubt it’s my fancy,” he muttered. “Or rum. Rum more likely.” With which he gulped down a second glass even stronger than the former. All at once a horrid cry rang through the house. The long-drawn echo of it froze my blood and set my glass clinking against the decanter in a tumult of apprehension.

“What’s that?” gasped his lordship. And here let me assure you, he looked as much alarmed as myself. I threw a glance up to the gallery, expecting to see her ladyship in bed-gown peering over the balustrade. But there was nothing.

Then Springle, his face as livid as the criss-cross scars on his hand, burst into the hall.

“Cap’n Starling! Cap’n Starling!” he cried.

“Aye, aye,” muttered my lord in the dead voice of profoundest agitation.

“Cap’n Starling!” moaned the butler.

“Eh, what!” exclaimed his master. “Who the plague are you calling ’cap’n’? Ha’n’t you learned ’tis ‘my lord’ nowadays?”

“To blazes wi’ lords,” chattered Springle. “Sea-lords and land-lords. Here’s Cap’n Swall walking up the path to this house.”

“Cap’n Swall?” repeated his lordship. “Cap’n Swall? Here, give me the rum, my handsome.”

He drained the glass a third time, which seemed to calm his excitement.

“This ain’t a fancy of yours, Conrad?”

“No fancy, my lord. I seed him quite plain and the stars a-shining through his wicked bow legs as he come down the slope. But let him come!” Springle almost screamed. “Let the swab come! We’re too many for him, with pleasant talk of old ships and a knife that goes in easy and quick like.”

I confess I was amazed by the coolness with which the rascal proposed to murder a fellow-creature, and was relieved to hear his lordship discourage the notion.

“None of that,” he commanded. “None of that. If ’tis Matthew Swall, ’tis him; and maybe there’s a reckoning, and maybe there isn’t, but none of that. If ’tis man to man, him and me, ’tis out in the moonlight with ship’s cutlasses and you and Mr. Tripconey here to see fair play. So drink the rum, you cowardly dog, and stand by.”

Springle swallowed the spirit, and the three of us waited in silence till there came a ringing peal from the great bell, a peal that echoed jangling and clanging through Cannebrake of the Starlings.

“Must I let him in, cap’n?” whispered Springle.

There was a tap-tap on the lattice, but when we turned towards the sound the curtains were close drawn and we knew the man outside could not see us.

“Let him in,” said his lordship, standing up very stern.

Conrad moved sideways to the door, and what with the way he kept twitching his hairy hands, and what with his chestnut-brown suit and his manner of walking, I could not help comparing him to a large crab.

Captain Swall followed the servant into his master’s presence. He was a short, thickset, squab-nosed man, much weather-beaten, and wearing a soiled blue coat trimmed with gold lace frayed and tarnished. In his right hand he carried a cocked beaver hat, in the other a pistol. Flinging down the hat, he went with outstretched palm right up to Lord Cannebrake, saying:

“Well, if this don’t beat pay-day. Messmate, how are ye? Lord Cannebrake now, ain’t it? And here’s Conrad Springle and a bottle of rum and Matthew Swall of the Happy Return, and—why, bless me,” he added, catching sight of me, “here’s a strange face after all.”

His lordship never offered to present me, but, coming sharp to the point, said:

“I thought you were dead, Matthew.”

“I know ye did, Dicky. Nor more isn’t that very astonishing seeing as I thought I were dead myself. It was a cunning move of yourn, Dicky, that ’ere sheering off in Jamestown. It was a clever trick, when you thought you’d quit being a gentleman of fortune, to leave me laying low with Yellow Jack, and not a single golden George to so much as spit on, not a single golden George to get me clear of Virginia and the tobacco planters. And I was took, Dicky. I was took all right and sold five hundred miles up country, to a Frenchman whose throat I slit so as he died quicker nor ever you’d think a man could die.”

“Mr. Tripconey,” said his lordship to me, “I think you’ll find your bedroom prepared. Springle, show Mr. Tripconey to his chamber.”

The butler, with many a backward glance to where the two sea-captains sat facing one another in the firelight, led me up the wide stairs and parted from me by the door of my room without so much as a good night.

Now whether the wicked flavour of Captain Swall’s conversation had fascinated my imagination, or whether the Burgundy had fired my blood with an inquisitiveness foreign to my nature, I do not know, but for the life of me I could not help wondering how it fared with the party downstairs. I resented being shut up out of sight and sound in this gaunt bedchamber; and at last, no longer able to bear my ignorance, I snuffed the candle and crept barefooted along the black corridor as far as the opening to the hall. Here, by kneeling close to the wall and peering through the balustrade, I could see and hear all that was happening below. I ran but small risk of discovery; for, as I reasoned, it would be easy to gain my room noiselessly while any one from below was ascending the stairs.

Lord Cannebrake and his visitor were still seated facing one another, while Springle was standing, well out of the way of both, at the farther end of the hall.

“But I don’t want to fight, Dicky,” Captain Swall was saying. “I done with fighting long ago. This here pop I holds in my hand so pretty, that’s not for fighting; that’s for protection, Dicky, in case you was to leave me once again on a lee-shore. No, I don’t want no revenge nor nothing, Dicky. But seeing as how I’m tired of roaming, and finds it dull at the Prospect of Whitby down by Wapping Stairs, I’ve a mind to sling my hammock in Cannebrake.”

“So you think you’re going to live at my expense, do you?” asked his lordship grimly. “But you’re not. I don’t feed ruffians like you, Matthew Swall.”

“Turned pious, have ye?” sneered the other. “Took to religion, maybe? Changed the name of your ship? That’s a main unlucky thing to do, and by——” He swore an abominable oath. “By—— it won’t go down with me, not with old Matthew. Springle, my lad, it looks as if you was ship’s cook aboard here. Let’s see the quality of your beef.”

I could not help feeling greatly delighted by Mr. Springle’s discomfiture as he stood there in a fine quandary.

“What! Mutiny, Conrad?” the captain went on, as the butler made no offer to move. “You was quicker at obeying orders in the old days, Conrad. You was a long way more spry arter I sarved you with your six dozen lashes. You become quite a handy lad arter that. Quick and handy with that ’ere clasp-knife of yourn, Conrad, when you done for the crew of the True Love what was lying on their backs off Calabar a-waiting for you to obey orders. Come, look alive, my lad, or you’ll find yourself in Bodmin Gaol, and ’tis Cap’n Swall who says so.”

Springle, cowed by the fierce intruder, gave up defiance and went to fetch the victuals.

“That’s a nice little place Conrad’s got himself,” continued Swall, with one eye cocked very wickedly at Lord Cannebrake.

“Do you want to be my butler?” demanded the latter.

“No, I wouldn’t rob Conrad. There’s room for both of us. Maybe you’ve got a snug little cabin somewhere between decks, a snug little berth where you and me and Conrad ’ll be able to talk over old times and old ships. Better you and I should talk over ’em quiet and comfortable and snug like, with the rum going round as it ought to in a genelman’s country house. Better nor talking over ’em at the Old Bailey. Why, you’ve a darter, haven’t you, Dicky? What ’ud she say if she went for a cruise down the river one lovely morning in the summer-time, and seed her father, black as a crow, swinging in the wind at Execution Dock?”

“You won’t blackmail me,” said my lord.

“Blackmail, is it? By the Lord,” shouted Captain Swall, “Black Flag’s more the lay.”

“Be careful, Matthew. You know I’m a hot-blooded man. You know I won’t stand too much.”

“Aye, by the plague, and you know mine, Dick Starling, and it ain’t lost nothing these twenty years of waiting. Look ’ee here, it comes to this. You’ve got a darter. Well.” Again he swore that fearful oath. “If you don’t give me your darter—for I won’t be put off with no fine words after Jamestown, Dicky; I’ll have something of yours as you vally—I’ll have your young maid, or you swing for piracy.”

But even while he threatened, shaking the pistol, Lord Cannebrake struck hard with his stick and Captain Swall fell forward among the glasses on the table.

“Springle,” his lordship gasped. “Springle, I’ve killed him, ha’n’t I?”

Then I saw that the butler was standing in the corner, a plate of beef in his hand. He came forward and, setting down the plate, shook the sprawling figure.

“Aye, aye, he’s dead as his beef,” said Springle.

“We’ll bury the body quick, Conrad. Wait. I’ll see he has no friends outside.”

I could not help wondering at the old nobleman’s pluck as I saw him move towards the door, and thought of him marching round that desolate house with Heaven knows how many bloodthirsty enemies ambushed in the shadows.

When his master had left the hall, Springle shook the body more roughly, and to my horror, for I thought him stone dead, Captain Swall muttered thickly:

“Curse you, Dicky, you nearly done for me a second time, but you’ll pay—you’ll pay.”

“Look ’ee here, Cap’n Swall,” said Springle, turning the wounded man over and staring into his eyes. “Two’s company at Cannebrake, but three ain’t. You sent me off for beef. You had me flogged once. You’ve run aground, Cap’n Swall.”

Here the fiend caught his enemy by the throat, and, as he squeezed the life out of the thickset man, spoke through clenched teeth:

“You’re making port at last, Cap’n Swall. I’ll lay Davy Jones is about signalling your sperrit now.”

I suppose I should have interrupted the man’s villainy, but by this time, between cramp and terror, I could do nothing but lie quaking on the cold floor of the gallery.

Lord Cannebrake came back in a minute or two.

“He’s dead?”

“Dead,” said the murderer.

“And nobody will know,” said his lordship, with a sigh of relief.

“Not if I don’t peach.”

“What d’ye mean?”

“Why, just this here, my lord. I’m tired of being butler. I wants promotion. I reckon you’ll sign some sort of a parlez-vous as’ll ensure my promotion.”

Lord Cannebrake seemed stricken by his servant’s treachery.

“Are you going to turn against me, Conrad?”

“You’ve been a fool,” said the latter—“a fool for twenty years. Afraid o’ what I might say about the Jolly Roger. What could I ha’ done, a pore ignorant seaman? What was my word against Lord Cannebrake’s? You might ha’ cut me adrift long ago. But now you can’t. Now things is different. Here’s murder stepped in on my side.”

“Aye, it has!” I shouted, springing up. “Black-hearted, cold murder; but it’s you, Mr. Springle, that’s the murderer. My lord, my lord, he strangled Captain Swall when you were outside. That villain there—that ruffian——”

In my bare feet, and waving my flute, I came dancing down the stairs—a ludicrous figure, I dare swear, but jubilant at having outwitted the butler.

He had his knife out in a flash, and I owed my life to his lordship, who, without a thought of the scandal, picked up the dead man’s pistol and shot his servant through the back, so that he fell huddled at the foot of the staircase.

Then Lord Cannebrake and I looked at each other with two bodies between us.

“Her ladyship?” I said.

“We’ll have to tell her.”

I felt sorry for the old man who had kept his secret so many years. But the hall was now running with Conrad’s blood, and I thought we should do well enough to escape the law.

Her ladyship came along the gallery, very pale and beautiful.

“What is it, father? I heard a shot.”

“A bad night’s work, my lady-love,” said the father gently. “But Mr. Tripconey here has saved Cannebrake.”

“And his lordship has saved me,” I cried.

“Then we should all be grateful,” said my lady, very calm.

I slept prodigious little that night, and blistered my hands so that I couldn’t play my flute for a week; but I was always sure for many a year of a hearty welcome at Cannebrake of the Starlings.

The Bronze Parrot
By R. Austin Freeman
Royal Army Medical Corps

The Reverend Deodatus Jawley had just sat down to the gate-legged table on which lunch was spread and had knocked his knee, according to his invariable custom, against the sharp corner of the seventh leg.

“I wish you would endeavour to be more careful, Mr. Jawley,” said the rector’s wife. “You nearly upset the mustard-pot, and these jars are exceedingly bad for the leg.”

“Oh, that’s of no consequence, Mrs. Bodley,” the curate replied cheerfully.

“I don’t agree with you at all,” was the stiff rejoinder.

“It doesn’t matter, you know, so long as the skin isn’t broken,” Mr. Jawley persisted with an ingratiating smile.

“I was referring to the leg of the table,” Mrs. Bodley corrected frostily.

“Oh, I beg your pardon!” said the curate, and, blushing like a Dublin Bay prawn, he abandoned himself in silence to the consideration of the numerical ratios suggested by five mutton chops and three prospective consumers. The problem thus presented was one of deep interest to Mr. Jawley, who had a remarkably fine appetite for such an exceedingly small man, and he awaited its solution with misgivings born of previous disappointments.

“I hope you are not very hungry, Mr. Jawley,” said the rector’s wife.

“Er—no—er—not unusually so,” was the curate’s suave and casuistical reply. The fact is that he was always hungry, excepting after the monthly tea-meetings.

“Because,” pursued Mrs. Bodley, “I see that Walker has only cooked five chops; and yours looks rather a small one.”

“Oh, it will be quite sufficient, thank you,” Mr. Jawley hastened to declare; adding, a little unfortunately, perhaps: “Amply sufficient for any moderate and temperate person.”

The Reverend Augustus Bodley emerged from behind the Church Times and directed a suspicious glance at his curate; who, becoming suddenly conscious of the ambiguity of his last remark, blushed crimson and cut himself a colossal slice of bread. There was an uncomfortable silence which lasted some minutes, and was eventually broken by Mrs. Bodley.

“I want you to go into Dilbury this afternoon, Mr. Jawley, and execute a few little commissions.”

“Certainly, Mrs. Bodley. With pleasure,” said the curate.

“I want you to call and see if Miss Gosse has finished my hat. If she has, you had better bring it with you. She is so unreliable, and I want to wear it at the Hawley-Jones’s garden party to-morrow. If it isn’t finished, you must wait until it is. Don’t come away without it.”

“No, Mrs. Bodley, I will not. I will be extremely firm.”

“Mind you are. Then I want you to go to Minikin’s and get two reels of whitey-brown thread, four balls of crochet cotton, and eight yards of lace insertion—the same kind as I had last week. And Walker tells me that she has run out of black-lead. You had better bring two packets; and mind you don’t put them in the same pocket with the lace insertion. Oh, and as you are going to the oil-shop, you may as well bring a jar of mixed pickles. And then you are to go to Dumsole’s and order a fresh haddock—perhaps you could bring that with you, too—and then to Barber’s and tell them to send four pounds of dessert pears, and be sure they are good ones and not over-ripe. You had better select them and see them weighed yourself.”

“I will. I will select them most carefully,” said the curate, inwardly resolving not to trust to mere external appearances, which are often deceptive.

“Oh, and by the way, Jawley,” said the rector, “as you are going into the town, you might as well take my shooting-boots with you, and tell Crummell to put a small patch on the soles and set up the heels. It won’t take him long. Perhaps he can get them done in time for you to bring them back with you. Ask him to try.”

“I will, Mr. Bodley,” said the curate. “I will urge him to make an effort.”

“And as you are going to Crummell’s,” said Mrs. Bodley, “I will give you my walking shoes to take to him. They want soling and heeling, and tell him he is to use better leather than he did last time.”

Half an hour later Mr. Jawley passed through the playground appertaining to the select boarding-academy maintained by the Reverend Augustus Bodley. He carried a large and unshapely newspaper parcel, despite which he walked with the springy gait of a released schoolboy. As he danced across the desert expanse, his attention was arrested by a small crowd of the pupils gathered significantly around two larger boys whose attitudes suggested warlike intentions; indeed, even as he stopped to observe them, one warrior delivered a tremendous blow which expended itself on the air within a foot of the other combatant’s nose.

“Oh! fie!” exclaimed the scandalised curate. “Joblett! Joblett! Do you realise that you nearly struck Byles? That you might actually have hurt him?”

“I meant to hurt him,” said Joblett.

“You meant to! Oh, but how wrong! How unkind! Let me beg you—let me entreat you to desist from these discreditable acts of violence.”

He stood awhile gazing with an expression of pained disapproval at the combatants, who regarded him with sulky grins. Then, as the hostilities seemed to be—temporarily—suspended, he walked slowly to the gate. He was just pocketing the key when an extremely somnolent pear impinged on the gate-post and sprinkled him with disintegrated fragments. He turned, wiping his coat-skirt with his handkerchief, and addressed the multitude, who all, oddly enough, happened to be looking in the opposite direction.

“That was very naughty of you. Very naughty. Someone must have thrown that pear. I won’t tempt you to prevarication by asking who? But pears don’t fly of themselves—especially sleepy ones.”

With this he went out of the gate, followed by an audible snigger which swelled, as he walked away, into a yell of triumph.

The curate tripped blithely down the village street, clasping his parcel and scattering smiles of concentrated amiability broadcast among the villagers. As he approached the stile that guarded the footpath to Dilbury, his smile intensified from mere amiability to positive affection. A small lady—a very small lady, in fact—was standing by the stile, resting a disproportionate basket on the lower step; and we may as well admit, at once and without circumlocution, that this lady was none other than Miss Dorcas Shipton and the prospective Mrs. Jawley.

The curate changed over his parcel to hold out a welcoming hand.

“Dorcas, my dear!” he exclaimed. “What a lucky chance that you should happen to come this way!”

“It isn’t chance,” the little lady replied. “I heard Mrs. Bodley say that she would ask you to go into Dilbury; so I determined to come and speed you on your journey” (the distance to Dilbury was about three and a half miles) “and see that you were properly equipped. Why did not you bring your umbrella?”

Mr. Jawley explained that the hat, the boots, the fresh haddock, and the mixed pickles would fully occupy his available organs of prehension.

“That is true,” said Dorcas. “But I hope you are wearing your chest-protector and those cork soles that I gave you.”

Mr. Jawley assured her that he had taken these necessary precautions.

“And have you rubbed your heels well with soap?”

“Yes,” replied the curate. “Thoroughly—most thoroughly. They are a little sticky at present, but I shall feel the benefit as I go on. I have obeyed your instructions to the letter.”

“That is right, Deodatus,” said Miss Dorcas; “and as you have been so good, you shall have a little reward.”

She lifted the lid of the basket and took out a small paper bag, which she handed to him with a fond smile. The curate opened the bag and peered in expectantly.

“Ha!” he exclaimed. “Bull’s-eyes! How nice! How good of you, Dorcas! And how discriminating!” (Bull’s-eyes were his one dissipation.) “Won’t you take one?”

“No, thank you,” replied Dorcas. “I mustn’t go into the cottages smelling of peppermint.”

“Why not?” asked Deodatus. “I often do. I think the poor creatures rather enjoy the aroma—especially the children.”

But Dorcas was adamant; and after some further chirping and twittering, the two little people exchanged primly affectionate farewells, and the curate, having popped a bull’s-eye into his mouth, padded away along the footpath, sucking joyously.

It is needless to say that Mrs. Bodley’s hat was not finished. The curate had unwisely executed all his other commissions before calling on the milliner: had ordered the pears, and even tested the quality of one or two samples; had directed the cobbler to send the rector’s boots to the hat-shop; and had then collected the lace, black-lead, cotton, pickles, and the fresh haddock, and borne them in triumph to the abode of Miss Gosse. It appeared that the hat would not be ready until seven o’clock in the evening. But it also appeared that tea would be ready in a few minutes. Accordingly the curate remained to partake of that meal in the workroom, in company with Miss Gosse and her “hands”; and having been fed to bursting-point with French rolls and cake, left his various belongings and went forth to while away the time and paint the town of Dilbury—not exactly red, but a delicate and attenuated pink.

After an hour or so of rambling about the town, the curate’s errant footsteps carried him down to the docks, where he was delighted with the spectacle of a military transport, just home from West Africa, discharging her passengers. The khaki-clad warriors trooped down the gang-planks and saluted him with cheerful greetings as he sat on a bollard and watched them. One even inquired if his—Mr. Jawley’s—mother knew he was out; which the curate thought very kind and attentive of him. But what thrilled him most was the appearance of the chaplain; a fine, portly churchman with an imposing, coppery nose, who was so overjoyed at the sight of his native land that he sang aloud. Mr. Jawley was deeply affected.

When the soldiers had gone, he slowly retraced his steps towards the gates; but he had hardly gone twenty yards when his eye was attracted by a small object lying in the thick grass that grew between the irregular paving-stones of the quay. He stooped to pick it up and uttered an exclamation of delight. It was a tiny effigy of a parrot, quaintly wrought in bronze and not more than two and a half inches high including the pedestal on which it stood. A perforation through the eyes had furnished the means of suspension, and a strand of silken thread yet remained, to show, by its frayed ends, how the treasure had been lost.

Mr. Jawley was charmed. It was such a dear little parrot, so quaint, so naïve. He was a simple man, and small things gave him pleasure; and this small thing pleased him especially. The better to examine his find, he seated himself on a nice, clean white post and proceeded to polish the little effigy with his handkerchief, having previously moistened the latter with his tongue. The polishing improved its appearance wonderfully, and he was inspecting it complacently when his eye lighted on a chalked inscription on the pavement. The writing was upside-down as he sat, but he had no difficulty in deciphering the words “Wet paint.”

He rose hastily and examined the flat top of the post. There is no need to go into details. Suffice it to say that anyone looking at that post could have seen that some person had sat on it. Mr. Jawley moved away with an angry exclamation. It was very annoying. But that did not justify the expressions that he used; which were not only out of character with his usual mild demeanour but unsuitable to his cloth, even if that cloth happened to be—but again we say there is no need to go into details. Still frowning irritably, he strode out through the dock gates and up the High Street on his way to Miss Gosse’s establishment. As he was passing the fruiterer’s shop, Mr. Barber, the proprietor, ran out.

“Good evening, Mr. Jawley. About those pears that you ordered of my young man. You’d better not have those, sir. Let me send you another kind.”

“Why?” asked the curate.

“Well, sir, those pears, to be quite candid, are not very good——”

“I don’t care whether they are good or bad,” interrupted Mr. Jawley. “I am not going to eat them,” and he stamped away up the High Street, leaving the fruiterer in a state of stupefaction. But he did not proceed directly to the milliner’s. Some errant fancy impelled him to turn up a side-street and make his way towards the waterside portion of the town; and it was, in fact, nearly eight o’clock when he approached Miss Gosse’s premises (now closed for the night) and rang the bell. The interval, however, had not been entirely uneventful. A blue mark under the left eye and a somewhat battered and dusty condition of hat and clothing seemed reminiscent of recent and thrilling experiences; and the satisfied grin that he bestowed on the astonished caretaker suggested that those experiences, if strenuous, had not been wholly unpleasurable.

The shades of night had fallen on the village of Bobham when Mr. Jawley appeared in the one and only street. He carried, balanced somewhat unsteadily on his head, a large cardboard box, but was otherwise unencumbered. The box had originally been of a cubical form, but now presented a slightly irregular outline and from one corner a thin liquid dripped on Mr. Jawley’s shoulder, diffusing an aroma of vinegar and onions with an added savour that was delicate and fish-like. Up the empty street the curate strode with a martial air, and having picked up the box—for the thirteenth time—just outside the gate, entered the rectory, deposited his burden on the drawing-room sofa, and went up to his room. He required no supper. For once in a way he was not hungry. He had, in fact, taken a little refreshment in town; and whelks are a very satisfying food, if you only take enough of them.

In his narrow and bumpy bed the curate lay wakeful and wrapped in pleasing meditation. Now his thoughts strayed to the little bronze parrot, which he had placed, after a final polish, on the mantelpiece; and now, in delightful retrospection, he recalled the incidents of his little jaunt. There was, for instance, the slightly intoxicated marine with whom he had enjoyed a playful interview in Mermaid Street. Gleefully he reconstituted the image of that warrior as he had last seen him sitting in the gutter attending to his features with a reddened handkerchief. And there was the overturned whelk-stall and the two bluejackets outside the “Pope’s Head.” He grinned at the recollection. And yet there were grumblers who actually complained of the dulness of the clerical life!

Again he recalled the pleasant walk home across the darkening fields, the delightful rest by the wayside (on the cardboard box), and the pleasantries that he had exchanged with a pair of rustic lovers—who had told him that “he ought to be ashamed of himself; a gentleman and a minister of religion, too!” He chuckled aloud as he thought of their bucolic irritation and his own brilliant repartee.

But at this moment his meditations were broken into by a very singular interruption. From the neighbourhood of the mantelpiece there issued a voice—a very strange voice, deep, buzzing, resonant, chanting a short sentence, framed of yet more strange and unfamiliar words:

“Donköh e didi mä tūm. On esse?”

This astounding phrase rang out in the little room with a deep, booming emphasis on the “tūm,” and an interrogative note on the two final words. There followed an interval of intense silence, and then, from some distance, as it seemed, came the tapping of drums, imitating, most curiously, the sound and accent of the words; “tūm,” for instance, being rendered by a large drum of deep, cavernous tone.

Mr. Jawley listened with a pleased and interested smile. After a short interval, the chant was repeated, and again, like a far-away echo, the drums performed their curious mimicry of speech. Mr. Jawley was deeply interested. After a dozen or so of repetitions, he found himself able to repeat, with a fair accent, the mysterious sentence, and even to imitate the tapping and booming of the drums.

But after all you can have too much of a good thing; and when the chant had continued to recur, at intervals of about ten seconds, for a quarter of an hour, Mr. Jawley began to feel bored.

“There!” said he, “that’ll do,” and he composed himself for slumber. But the invisible chanter, ignoring his remark, continued the performance da capo and ad lib.—in fact, ad nauseam. Then Mr. Jawley became annoyed. First he sat up in bed and made what he considered appropriate comments on the performance, with a few personal references to the performer; and then, as the chant still continued with the relentless persistence of a chapel bell, he sprang out and strode furiously over to the mantelpiece.

“Shut up!” he roared, shaking his fist at the invisible parrot; and, strange to say, both the chant and the drumming ceased forthwith. There are some forms of speech, it would seem, that require no interpreter.

When Mr. Jawley entered the breakfast-room on the following morning, the rector’s wife was in the act of helping her husband to a devilled kidney, but she paused in the occupation to greet the curate with a stony stare. Mr. Jawley sat down and knocked his knee as usual, but commented on the circumstance in terms which were not at all usual. The rector stared aghast and Mrs. Bodley exclaimed in shrill accents: “Mr. Jawley, how dare——”

At this point she paused, having caught the curate’s eye. A deathly silence ensued, during which Mr. Jawley glared at a solitary boiled egg. Suddenly he snatched up a knife, and with uncanny dexterity, decapitated the egg with a single stroke. Then he peered curiously into the disclosed cavity. Now if there was one thing that Mr. Jawley hated more than another, it was an underdone egg; and as his eye encountered a yellow spheroid floating in a clear liquid, he frowned ominously.

“Raw, by Gosh!” he exclaimed hoarsely; and plucking the egg from its calyx, he sent it hurtling across the room. For several seconds the rector stared, silent and open-mouthed, at his curate; then, following his wife’s gaze, he stared at the wall, on the chrysanthemum paper of which appeared a new motive uncontemplated by the designer. And meanwhile, Mr. Jawley reached across the table and stuck a fork into the devilled kidney.

When the rector looked round and discovered his loss, he essayed some spluttered demands for an explanation. But since the organs of speech are associated with the act of mastication, the curate was not in a position to answer him. His eyes, however, were disengaged at the moment, and some compelling quality in them caused the rector and his wife to rise from their chairs and back cautiously towards the door. Mr. Jawley nodded them out blandly; and being left in possession, proceeded to fill himself a cup of tea, and another of coffee, cleared the dish, emptied the toast-rack, and having disposed of these trifles, concluded a Gargantuan repast by crunching up the contents of the sugar-basin. Never had he enjoyed such a breakfast, and never had he felt so satisfied and joyous.

Having wiped his smiling lips on the table-cloth, he strolled out into the playground, where the boys were waiting to be driven in to lessons. At the moment of his appearance, Messrs. Joblett and Byles were in the act of resuming adjourned hostilities. The curate strode through the ring of spectators and beamed on the combatants with ferocious benevolence. His arrival had produced a brief armistice, but as he uttered no protests, the battle was resumed with a tentative prod on the part of Joblett.

The curate grinned savagely. “That isn’t the way, Joblett,” he exclaimed. “Kick him, man. Kick him in the stomach.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” said Joblett, regarding his preceptor with saucer-eyes. “Did you say kick him?”

“Yes,” roared the curate. “In the stomach. Like this!”

He backed a few paces, and fixing a glittering eye on Byles’s abdomen, rushed forward, and, flinging his right foot back until it was almost visible over his shoulder, let out a tremendous kick. But Byles’s stomach was not there. Neither was Byles, which, of course, follows. The result was that Mr. Jawley’s foot, meeting with no resistance, flew into space, carrying Mr. Jawley’s centre of gravity with it.

When the curate scrambled to his feet and glared balefully around, the playground was empty. A frantic crowd surged in through the open house door, while stragglers hurriedly climbed over the walls.

Mr. Jawley laughed hoarsely. It was time to open school, but at the moment he was not studiously inclined. Letting himself out by the gate, he strolled forth into the village and sauntered up the street. And here it was, just opposite the little butcher’s shop, that he encountered the village atheist. Now this philosopher—who, it is needless to say, was a cobbler by profession—had a standing and perennial joke, which was to greet the curate with the words: “How do, Jawley?” and thereby elicit a gracious “Good morning, Mr. Pegg” and a polite touch of the hat. He proceeded this morning to utter the invariable formula, cocking his eye at the expectant butcher. But the anticipated response came not. Instead, the curate turned on him suddenly and growled:

“Say ‘sir,’ you vermin, when you speak to your betters.”

The astounded cobbler was speechless for a moment. But only for a moment.

“What!” he exclaimed, “me say ‘sir’ to a sneakin’ little sky-pilot, what——”

Here Mr. Jawley turned and stepped lightly over to the shop. Reaching in through the open front, he lifted a cleaver from its nail, and swinging it high above his head, rushed with a loud yell at the offending cobbler. But Mr. Pegg was not without presence of mind—which, in this case, connoted absence of body. Before you could say “wax,” he had darted into his house, bolted the door, and was looking down with bulging eyes from the first-floor window on the crown of the curate’s hat.

Meanwhile the butcher had emerged angrily from his shop and approached the curate from behind.

“Here,” he exclaimed gruffly, “what are you doing with that chop——” Here he paused suddenly as Mr. Jawley turned his head, and he continued with infinite suavity:

“Could you, sir, manage to spare that cleaver? If you would be so kind——”

Mr. Jawley uttered a sulky growl and thrust the great chopper into its owner’s hands; then, as the butcher turned away, he gave a loud laugh, on which the tradesman cleared his threshold at a single bound and slammed the half-door behind him. But a terrified backward glance showed him the curate’s face wreathed in smiles, and another glance made him aware of the diminutive figure of Miss Dorcas Shipton approaching up the street.

The curate ran forward to meet her, beaming with affection. But he didn’t merely beam. Not at all. The sound of his greeting was audible even to Mr. Pegg, who leaned out of window, with eyes that bulged more than ever.

“Really, Deodatus!” exclaimed the scandalised Miss Dorcas. “What can you be thinking about, in such a pub——” Her remonstrances were cut short at this point by fresh demonstrations, which caused the butcher to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand and Mr. Pegg to gasp with fresh amazement.

“Pray, pray remember yourself, Deodatus!” exclaimed the blushing Dorcas, wriggling, at length, out of his too-affectionate grasp. “Besides,” she added with a sudden strategic inspiration, “you surely ought to be in school at this time.”

“That is of no consequence, darling,” said Jawley, advancing on her with open arms; “old Bod can look after the whelps.”

“Oh, but you mustn’t neglect your duties, Deodatus,” said Miss Dorcas, still backing away. “Won’t you go in, just to please me?”

“Certainly, my love, if you wish it,” replied Jawley, with an amorous leer. “I’ll go at once—but I must have just one more,” and again the village street rang with a sound as of the popping of a ginger-beer cork.

As he approached the school, Mr. Jawley became aware of the familiar and distasteful roar of many voices. Standing in the doorway, he heard Mr. Bodley declare with angry emphasis that he “would not have this disgraceful noise,” and saw him slap the desk with his open hand; whereupon nothing in particular happened excepting an apparently preconcerted chorus as of many goats. Then Mr. Jawley entered and looked round; and in a moment the place was wrapped in a silence like that of an Egyptian tomb.

Space does not allow of our recording in detail the history of the next few days. We may, however, say in general terms that there grew up in the village of Bobham a feeling of universal respect for the diminutive curate, not entirely unmixed with superstitious awe. Rustics, hitherto lax in their manners, pulled off their hats like clockwork at his approach; Mr. Pegg, abandoning the village street, cultivated a taste for footpaths, preferably remote and unobstructed by trees; the butcher fell into the habit of sending gratuitous sweetbreads to the Rectory, addressed to Mr. Jawley; and even the blacksmith, when he had recovered from his black eye, adopted a suave and conciliatory demeanour.

The rector’s wife alone cherished a secret resentment (though outwardly attentive in the matter of devilled kidneys and streaky bacon), and urged the rector to get rid of his fire-eating subordinate; but her plans failed miserably. It is true that the rector did venture tentatively to open the subject to the curate, who listened with a lowering brow and sharpened a lead pencil with a colossal pocket-knife that he had bought at a ship-chandler’s in Dilbury. But the conclusion was never reached. Distracted, perhaps, by Mr. Jawley’s inscrutable manner, the rector became confused, and, to his own surprise, found himself urging the curate to accept an additional twenty pounds a year—an offer which Mr. Jawley immediately insisted on having in writing.

The only person who did not share the universal awe was Miss Dorcas; for she, like the sundial, “numbered only the sunny hours.” But she respected him more than any, and, though dimly surprised at the rumours of his doings, gloried in secret over his prowess.

Thus the days rolled on, and Mr. Jawley put on flesh visibly. Then came the eventful morning when, on scanning the rector’s Times, his eye lighted on an advertisement in the Personal Column:

“Ten Pounds Reward.—Lost: a small bronze effigy of a parrot on a square pedestal; the whole two and a half inches high. The above Reward will be paid on behalf of the owner by the Curator of the Ethnographical Department of the British Museum, who has a photograph and description of the object.”

Now Mr. Jawley had become deeply attached to the parrot. But after all, it was only a pretty trifle, and ten pounds was ten pounds. That very afternoon, the Curator found himself confronted by a diminutive clergyman of ferocious aspect, and hurriedly disgorged ten sovereigns after verifying the description; and to this day he is wont to recount, as an instance of the power of money, the remarkable change for the better in the clergyman’s manners when the transaction was completed.

It was late in the afternoon when Mr. Jawley reappeared in the village of Bobham. He carried a gigantic paper parcel under one arm, and his pockets bulged so that he appeared to suffer from some unclassified deformity. At the stile, he suddenly encountered Mr. Pegg, who prepared for instant flight and was literally stupefied when the curate lifted his hat and graciously wished him “good evening.” But Mr. Pegg was even more stupefied when, a few minutes later, he saw the curate seated on a doorstep, with the open parcel on his knees, and a mob of children gathered around him. For Mr. Jawley, with the sunniest of smiles, was engaged in distributing dolls, peg-tops, skipping-ropes, and little wooden horses to a running accompaniment of bull’s-eyes, brandy-balls, and other delicacies, which he produced from inexhaustible pockets. He even offered Mr. Pegg himself a sugar-stick, which the philosophic cordwainer accepted with a polite bow and presently threw over a wall. But he pondered deeply on this wonder, and is probably pondering still, in common with the other inhabitants of Bobham.

But though, from that moment, Mr. Jawley became once more the gentlest and most amiable of men, the prestige of his former deeds remained; reverential awe attended his footsteps abroad, devilled kidneys and streaky bacon were his portion at home; until such time as Miss Dorcas Shipton underwent a quieter metamorphosis and became Mrs. Deodatus Jawley. And thereafter he walked, not only amidst reverence and awe, but also amidst flowers and sunshine.

---

Postscript.—The curious who would know more about the parrot may find him on his appropriate shelf in the West African Section, and read the large descriptive label which sets forth his history.

“Bronze-gold weight in the form of a parrot. This object was formerly the property of the great Ashanti war Chief, Amankwa Tia, whose clan totem was a parrot. It was worn by him, attached to his wrist, as an amulet or charm, and when on a campaign a larger copy of it, of gilded wood, was carried by the chief herald, who preceded him and chanted his official motto. It may be explained here that each of the Ashanti generals had a distinguishing motto, consisting of a short sentence, which was called out before him by his heralds when on the march, and repeated, with remarkably close mimicry, by the message drums. Thus, when several bodies of troops were marching through the dense forest, their respective identities were made clear to one another by the sound of the chant on the drums. Amankwa Tia’s motto was: ‘Donköh e didi mä tūm. On esse?’ Which may be translated: ‘(Foreign) Slaves revile me. Why?’ A somewhat meaningless sentence, but having, perhaps, a sinister significance.”

The Forbidden Woman
By Warwick Deeping
Royal Army Medical Corps

Hilary Blake went down through the tangled shrubs of the garden that was half a wilderness, and a strange, white awe was on his face.

Twice he paused, turned, and looked back. She was still there on the terrace, set high against the sunset—a strange, wet sunset, in which streaks of opalescent blue showed dimly through a vaporous glow of scarlet and gold. Queer, slate-coloured clouds sailed low down across the sky. The far woods were the colour of amethyst. But Judith of the terrace was outlined against a clear breadth of gold. She was watching him, and he could imagine the provoking set of her head, and that enigmatic smile of hers that made men wonder.

She had been strangely kind to him that evening, and the fire of her beauty was in his blood.

How was it that she had been a young widow these five years, and that no man had won her a second time? She was proud, with a vague, elusive pride, a pride that baffled and kept men at a distance. And yet it had seemed to him that there was a great sadness behind those eyes, a dread of something, a loneliness that waxed impatient. Sudden silences would fall on her. He had found her looking at him in a queer and tragic way, as though she saw some shadow of fate falling between them.

A spray of syringa brushed across his face as he walked on down the tangled path. It was wet and fragrant, and, with sudden exultation, he crushed it against his mouth. The smell of it was of June and of her.

He went on, head in air, marvelling at all the tangle of chances that had brought this great thing to him. A year ago he had been Captain Blake, of the 7th Foot, leading redcoats by the Canadian lakes. He remembered that letter coming to him, that letter that told him how two deaths had made him Blake of Brackenhurst Manor. There had been that wild dinner in that block-house by the lakes, when all the fine fellows had drunk to Blake of Brackenhurst, and Red Eagle and his “braves” had gone mad with fire-water and set the store-house alight by shooting into the thatch. He had not seen Brackenhurst since he was a boy. He had come to it a little elated, and he had discovered her.

“Good evening, Captain Blake.”

Hilary had just let the wicket-gate clash behind him. He turned sharply.

An old yew threw a deep shade here, shutting off the sunset, and, leaning against the fence under it, Hilary saw a big man in a long green coat, buff riding-breeches and top boots. He wore a black, unpowdered wig under his three-cornered hat, and this dark wig set off the sallow and impassive breadth of a face that showed to the world a laconic arrogance. He had a little book of fishing flies in his hands, and as he played with it casually his eyes looked at Hilary Blake with an ironical insolence that was but half veiled.

Blake hardly knew the man, save by sight and reputation. He was Sir Royce Severn, of Moor Hall, a man with a mystery round him and more duels to his credit than his neighbours cared to mention. In fact, there was a sort of dread of him dominating the neighbourhood. He lived practically alone at Moor Hall, up yonder against the northern sky, a grim, secretive sort of creature who rode, and shot, and fished alone.

“Good evening to you,” and Blake’s eyes added, “What may you be doing outside Judith Strange’s garden fence?”

The man seemed to have been waiting for that challenging look in the other’s eyes. He gave a queer and almost noiseless laugh, and put his fly-book away in his pocket. A heavy hunting-crop hung on the fence. Sir Royce Severn tucked it with a certain cynical ostentation under his arm.

“I think we are strangers, Captain Blake.”

“I think we are, sir.”

“My way is your way for a mile or so. Do you take the path through the park?”

“I do.”

He moved on, and the man in green set himself beside him. The sunset was on their faces, and up yonder Judith of the Terrace still stood outlined against a glow of gold.

Blake saw his companion look steadily towards her, and there was something in that look that made his blood simmer.

“Mrs. Judith stays out late on so damp an evening.”

“And what is it to you if she does, my friend,” said Blake’s eyes.

The man in green laughed, that quiet, threatening laugh of his.

“You come here very often, Captain Blake.”

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“I said, you come here very often. You are new to these parts; I know them better than you do.”

A cold anger began to stir in Hilary Blake.

“My business is my own, Sir Royce Severn. Pray leave it at that.”

The other answered him sharply.

“I deny that, Captain Blake; I deny that flatly. It is my business to tell you that Judith Strange is a dangerous woman.”

The path had reached a spot where great oaks were gathered together, casting a half gloom over the grass. Under their canopies the stormy sky showed yellow and red.

Blake stopped dead and faced the man in green.

“I think, sir, you are a little mad—or very insolent.”

“I am neither the one nor the other.”

“You will leave a certain name untouched in my presence.”

He saw two like points of light shine out in the other’s eyes.

“That is the language that all of them have used, Captain Blake. Your good cousin talked like that, sir, though what right he had to mouth such heroics only his own silly conceit could tell. I have heard a great deal of such talk”—he shrugged and laughed—“it never moved me one iota.”

Blake stared at him.

“Moved you, sir! What cause was there for you to be moved—one way or the other? Save that if you spoke lightly of a lady it was right that some man should smite you on the mouth.”

“That no man has ever done.”

“Indeed!”

“I speak of Judith Strange as I please.”

“I think not, sir.”

“Captain Blake, you have never seen me handle a sword or mark my man with a pistol.”

He drew himself up, squaring his shoulders; and his arrogant face was a threat, a face that loomed big and white and fanatical under the gloom of the trees.

Blake’s eyes grew dangerous.

“Come out into the open, sir. What is at the bottom of all this boasting?”

Sir Royce Severn bowed to him.

“Captain Blake, let me suggest to you that you go no more to Judith Strange’s house.”

“Let me suggest, sir, that you mind your own business.”

“Judith Strange is my business.”

The younger man took a step forward, and his left arm went up. Severn’s hunting-crop whirled suddenly, and struck Blake’s fist so that one of the knucklebones cracked. The pain of it made Blake stride to and fro, biting his lips.

“You fiend!”

Severn laughed.

“You cannot hurt me, my friend. I never met a cock yet who could face me in the pit. Judith Strange, Captain Blake, is to be my wife, and I have a sort of jealousy in me that is dangerous to calves. I say what I please about the woman I mean to marry.”

Blake’s face had gone dead white, but not with physical pain.

“I don’t take you, sir.”

“Oh, come, sir, come. You appear to know very little about women. Judith Strange would flirt on her wedding morning. But I, Captain Blake, want no youngsters playing round the woman I mean to marry. If moths come to my candle, pff, I snuff them out. Only twice, sir, have men dared to fight with me. They did not need a second dose.”

He tucked his hunting-crop under his arm, took off his hat ironically, and left Blake standing.

For the moment Hilary Blake’s anger had died out of him. He saw Sir Royce Severn disappear among the trees, and felt himself a fool for having ridden the high horse. The man had had the laugh of him. It was all natural, and logical enough.

Sir Royce Severn could be accused of neither madness nor insolence if he resented another man paying court to the woman who was to be his wife.

But Judith! And that wet sunset, and the walk upon the terrace, that leave-taking, the brushing of the syringa across his mouth! A flare of pain rushed through him. He thought of the exultation of an hour ago, of the wonder of joy that had been in his heart.

Had she been playing with him, fooling him? What was he to believe?

He was lost in the chaos of his own emotions, of love, anger, scorn, hate, shame, and savage regret. He would go back and hear the truth from her own lips. But no, the laughter of a coquette would be too bitter for him to bear. Great God! was she that heartless thing? Why should he believe this man’s word against her, throw over all that was sacred because of Severn’s confident sneers?

Hilary turned, and began to walk back along the path, staring at the ground in front of him, forgetting his bruised hand. The splendour was dying in the west, and a blue twilight flowing into the valleys; the hills looked black and cold.

“Hilary!”

She had come on him suddenly out of the twilight, and the red brocade dress that she was wearing seemed to catch the last rays of the sunset, and to glow amid the gloom. She was breathing fast as though she had been running, and he could see the rising and falling of her breast.

Hilary had stopped dead, his head held high.

“Mrs. Judith!”

But that haughty poise of his was no more than hoar frost on a sunny morning.

She came close to him till he saw the shine in her eyes, the proud rage of her white throat, and the way that glowing red brocade swayed up and down below a smother of white lace. Even the lover in him had guessed her capable of great passion, but now that he saw the full flare thereof he stood silent and astonished.

“That brute was waiting for you. I had looked for it. That is why I stayed upon the terrace. I knew that it must happen some day soon.”

“Sir Royce Severn?”

Her passion did not give him time to speak.

“So, Hilary Blake, he has frozen or frightened you—after his fashion! You hold your head high and look at me with haughty eyes! Must I defend myself, I, who have never justified myself to any man? By Heaven, why should I stoop to defend myself before any man? Why? Even before you!”

“‘Judith, I will break this fate of yours.’ He drew closer, but she put him back with her hands” (page 130).

Her whole figure seemed to glow in the twilight like metal at red heat, but her face was a stark white, her eyes challenged him.

He drew his breath in deeply, for this tempest of passion played upon the half-smothered fire in him like the wind.

“Judith, what have I said yet?”

“Ah, say it; let us have it spoken. Then I, too, will speak.”

He looked at her, and a sudden generous shame smote him.

“No, by Heaven!”

She beat her hands together.

“Yes, by Heaven! But I can guess what Severn said: that I am to be his wife, that I have played with men——”

His silence answered her.

“He lied. Do you hear, he lied. My God, how I hate that man!”

She stood very still a moment, but it was the stillness of a wrath that found nothing strong enough to carry it to self-expression.

“Listen. For five years—ever since my husband died—this man has persecuted me. ‘Judith, marry me,’ he has asked, month by month, but I know that I hated him from the first, and I did not hide my hate. But he is a devil, that man; he seemed to thrive on the ‘Nays’ I gave him, and he came and quarrelled month by month, by way of making love. I forbade him the house. He laughed, and said: ‘Be sure that I shall not let you marry another man. I shall scare them away, or kill them if they refuse to be scared.’ And he was as good as his word. Men sought me; I did not seek them, nor did I love any of those who came to me to make love. What did it matter? Each man dropped away in turn, and came no more. Three were cowards; two fought Royce Severn and were wounded; he swore that he would kill them the next time, and they took him at his word. Love was not worth the risk! Then he would waylay me somewhere, and be smooth, and courteous, and sneering. ‘Judith,’ he would say, ‘no man will put me out of his path. You will marry me—or remain a widow.’ And when I threatened to go away—marry, to spite him—he threatened in return. ‘My dear, I shall follow you. And if you trick me, by marrying, you will be a widow again within a month.’”

Strange as the tale sounded, Blake knew that it was the truth, and a fierce exultation woke in him. If she had not cared, would she have told him this?

“The man is mad!”

“Mad, yes, but most accursedly logical in his madness. The Severns have been like that. Sometimes I feel that I shall take his life, or that he will take mine.”

Blake took a step towards her.

“Judith, am I no more than the other men, the cowards, and the two who would not dare the uttermost?”

“I shall not answer you.”

“By Heaven, you must! Why, even if you have no love for me, shall I slink away and not fight for the right to be near you! There is a devil in me that can match the devil in Royce Severn.”

She gave a queer, inarticulate cry, and the fire died out of her eyes.

“No, no; that is why I followed you to-night. Hilary, I knew that you were not like those others.”

“You knew that! Then——”

“No, no; listen. I have a feeling in me sometimes that I am a woman who is fatal to men—fatal to those who love me. A month ago I might not have cared, but now I care too much. Hilary, promise never to see me again.”

He gave a grim yet exultant laugh.

“That is impossible. Judith, I will break this fate of yours.”

He drew closer, but she put him back with her hands.

“No, no; have I not told you that this man is a devil? No one in these parts would dare to cross him. He can shoot as no mortal man should shoot, and they say that the best French swordsmen could not touch him. It is death.”

He drew himself up, and his eyes smiled suddenly.

“If it be death, well, what of that! My love is greater than Severn’s love. I, too, can use foil or pistol, and a cavalry sabre is like neither of these. I shall fight this man.”

She stood white and mute a moment, her hands hanging limply. Then suddenly her hands were upon his shoulders, her passionate face looking into his.

“Hilary, oh, my dear! No, no; I cannot bear it. Go away, leave me. I shall have your blood upon my hands, and then I think I shall go mad.”

He caught her and held her.

“Judith, I cannot leave you. So I must kill Severn.”

“But he——”

“Dear, the man is mortal. I say, I shall kill him.”

“Yet, if you kill him——”

He lifted her face to his.

“Well, I might have to go over the water for a while. But I should come back.”

“Hilary!”

He felt all the woman in her stirring in his arms.

“Hilary, I should be with you then, not here. Oh, if it were possible!”

“Dear, is this the truth?”

“The uttermost truth, the very heart of my heart.”

He looked at her, very dearly, and then kissed her upon the mouth.

“So be it. Go back, my beloved. I have work to do.”

He had to free himself, almost by force, for her dread returned.

“No, no; I shall never see you again.”

“I swear that you shall. Dear heart, let me go.”

He put her hands aside very gently.

“Judith, go home and wait. By morning I may have news for you.”

In half an hour Blake was on the edge of the moor, walking as though for a wager. A mere cart track led over the moor to Moor Hall, and on either side of it were stretched masses of whin and heather. A moon was just rising, and all the countryside was spread below, the distant cliffs drawing a black outline about the glimmer of the sea. But Blake was watching the cart track in front of him.

He had cut an oak sapling with his clasp-knife in one of the park plantations so that he should have something to match against Royce Severn’s hunting-crop.

Blake had guessed that he might catch his man on the homeward road, and catch him he did, just where the track turned eastwards over the ridge of the moor. Fifty paces ahead of him Blake saw a black figure rise against the sky-line, almost between him and the rising moon.

“Sir Royce Severn.”

The black figure paused, and waited there against the steel-grey sky.

“Who’s there?”

The moonlight showed him Hilary Blake.

“Ah, Captain Blake, come to apologise so soon!”

“No, sir, only to tell you that you are a liar.”

He could not see Severn’s face, for he had his back turned towards the moon.

“So you do not believe me, Captain Blake?”

“No, I do not, sir; or I should not have turned so far out of my way to call you a liar and a coward.”

Both men felt that it had come, that they were like dogs doomed to be at each other’s throats, but Severn strolled forward with a casual air, flicking his hunting-crop to and fro as though he were beating time to a piece of music. And that arrogant self-confidence of his fooled him. He had to do with an athlete that night, a man who had matched himself to run and leap against Indians, and not with some heavy squireling or town gallant out of condition with drink and cards. For Blake took a standing leap at Severn, covered ten foot of ground at the spring, and got such a blow home as sent the big man sprawling.

Blake was on him, and had wrenched the hunting-crop away. He broke it across his knee, and threw the pieces into a furze bush.

“If you want a broken fist, sir, I have an oak sapling that will wipe out that blow you gave me two hours ago.”

But Severn was up, in far too wild a rage for sticks or fisticuffs.

“Fool, I should have warned you with a sword-prick through the arm, but now, by the woman I mean to marry, I will kill you.”

“Leave it at that!”

“Choose your weapons. I’ll meet you with whatever you please.”

Blake smiled over set teeth.

“I claim cavalry sabres. I have two. You shall have your choice.”

Severn snarled at him.

“You prefer being slashed to pricked, eh? Very good. One second each will serve. At six to-morrow morning.”

“When you please.”

Severn became suddenly and splendidly polite.

“Captain Blake, it will be a pleasure. What do you say to that little field at the back of the fir plantation on the main road down yonder? You know it?”

“Yes.”

“At six, then. I have a friend at my house who will act for me. I shall be happy to choose one of your sabres. I wish you a very good night.”

His politeness had thinned to an ironical and sneering playfulness, but Blake had been born with a stiff back. Yet he saw how Royce Severn had trodden on the courage of those other men, and half cowed them before they had crossed swords.

“It is a pretty thing, a cavalry sabre, sir. May you, too, pass a good night. I shall go home and get some sleep.”

And so they parted.

Hilary Blake turned back for Brackenhurst, and in half an hour found himself standing in the brick porch of Colonel Maundrell’s house at the end of Brackenhurst village. The colonel’s old soldier-servant answered his knock.

“Is your master in, Thomas?”

“Sure, sir; he is in.”

“And alone?”

“And alone, sir.”

Colonel Maundrell was sitting at the open window of his library that looked towards the sea.

Two candles in silver candlesticks stood on the oak table, and their pale light seemed to mingle with the moonlight that streamed in at the window. The old soldier with the hawk’s beak of a nose and the iron-grey head had been sitting there thinking.

Directly the door had closed and the sound of Thomas’s footsteps could be heard departing, Blake told his business.

“Colonel, I want you to second me. I fight Royce Severn at six to-morrow morning.”

The old soldier sat forward in his chair. Then, after a moment’s silence, “Curse Royce Severn.”

He rose, and drawing himself to his full height, looked searchingly at Blake from under his straight grey eyebrows.

“What has made you quarrel with Royce Severn?”

“A love affair, sir.”

Maundrell pulled out his tortoise-shell snuff-box and took snuff vigorously.

“So you want to marry Judith Strange. I know how Severn has persecuted her. It is a pity someone has not shot the beast; I have thought of doing it myself. But do you know what you are doing, Blake?”

“I am going to marry Judith Strange.”

“Yes, yes; all very well that. But this man Severn can shoot and fence like the devil himself. He is the coolest and most deadly beast when there is fighting afoot. Who has the choice of weapons?”

“I have, sir; I have chosen cavalry sabres.”

The colonel threw up his right hand with a stiff gesture of delight.

“Sabres? excellent! Severn’s love is the foil. There are some men, Blake, who can never take kindly to sabre play, just as some men would rather be slashed than pinked through the liver. Sabres: excellent!”

He walked up and down, limping slightly, from an old wound that he had got at Fontenoy.

“Where do we meet, lad?”

“In the little meadow behind the fir plantation above Gaymer’s farm.”

“At six?”

“At six. I take the sabres. Severn has his choice. A friend is to second him.”

“I know that friend of his. A little brown beast of a French fencing-master. Sabres: excellent! Look you, lad, speed is the great thing against a man like Severn. Go at it, like a cavalry charge. I have known good swordsmen knocked over by mere slashing boys in a cavalry charge. It is no use playing the cunning game with Royce Severn.”

“Thank you, sir. I am out to kill him in the first thirty seconds. I know something about sabres.”

The colonel came and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Blake, you had better sleep here. Go up and get those sabres now it is dark.”

“That is an idea, sir. I want to pack a valise, and get all the money I have in the house. I will ride my black horse down here and stable him for the night.”

“Lad, you don’t contemplate dying! That’s the spirit.”

“If I have to go, sir, I’ll not leave Severn alive behind me. Judith shall be free.”

It was a cloudless June morning when Hilary Blake and Colonel Maundrell got on their horses and took the lane that led round the back of the village past the mill.

Blake’s Canadian campaigning had hardened him, and he had slept for three hours. He carried a leather valise strapped to his saddle. The colonel had the sabres wrapped in a black cloth under his arm. Mists still hung about the valleys, and they could not see the sea.

They passed Gaymer’s farm and came to the fir plantation. It was black, and still, and secret, and gloom hung within the crowded trunks like a curtain. A rough gate opened through a ragged hedge. They dismounted, and leading their horses, disappeared into the wood.

Judith Strange had not slept, for a man had come riding late up the drive between the old oaks, and had left a letter with the major domo, and galloped away again as though fearful of being called back. The letter had been sealed with red wax, and Judith had broken the seal and read the letter by candle-light in the long parlour.

“Judith,—I love you. I fight Severn to-morrow morning, and you shall be free. Do not try to come between us, for you will fail.

“Hilary Blake.”

She had turned the letter over in her hands, and her gaze had rested on the red wax of the seal she had broken. The colour of blood! She had been seized by a foreboding of evil, by the thought that this thing was prophetic, that to-morrow the man who loved her might be dead.

She fought against this dread in her own heart, but she did not sleep. Her servants were a-bed; the candles had burnt out in the long parlour, and the full moon shone over the sea.

Judith had stepped through the open window on to the terrace, and she walked to and fro there in the moonlight, feeling that she was helpless to hinder the workings of her own fate.

Then she rebelled, thrust her forebodings aside, and refused to believe in her own fears.

She returned to the house, found a little hand-lamp burning in the panelled hall, and taking it went up the broad stairs to her room at the end of the long gallery. There was a valise under the bed. She pulled it out, and began to fill it with clothes, and to collect her jewellery and store it away in a rosewood case bound with brass. Nor did she forget the guineas she kept in the secret drawer of her bureau.

Then she dressed herself as for a journey, with a kind of tenderness towards herself and towards her love, putting on one of her red brocades and a black beaver hat with black feather. She looked long at herself in her glass, touching her black hair with her fingers, on which she had thrust the most precious of her rings. Emeralds and rubies glittered in the lamplight, and her eyes were almost as feverish as the precious stones.

She sat down in a chair by one of the windows and waited. Hours passed; the dawn showed in the east; the lamp had burnt all its oil, and had flickered out. The silence was utter. An anguish of restlessness returned.

A clock struck five. She rose, passed out of the room, down the dim stairs, and through the long parlour on to the terrace. The freshness of the dawn was there, and the birds were awake in the thickets. She began to walk up and down, up and down over the stone flags, with the heavy mists lying in the valleys below, and the sea hidden by a great grey pall.

The boom of a gun came from the sea. It was some fog-bound ship firing a signal.

The clock in the turret struck six. A gardener appeared upon the terrace, saw Judith walking there, stared, and slunk away. She was conscious of a strange oppression at the heart, a sudden spasmodic quickening of her suspense. She could walk no longer, but sat down on the dew-wet parapet and waited.

Suddenly the mist lifted. The great trees in the park seemed to shake themselves free of their white shrouds. The vapour drifted away like smoke; the grass slopes and hollows showed a glittering greyish green.

Judith stood up, her eyes dark and big in a pale face, for far away, over yonder, something moved amid the trees. She pressed her hands over her bosom and waited. And then she saw a galloping horse, and a man bending forward in the saddle, a little figure, distant in the morning light.

Which was it? She strained her eyes, but could not satisfy her suspense. Twice had Royce Severn ridden to her in just such a fashion, to make mocking love to her and to tell her that he had left a rival cowed and beaten.

Suddenly her heart leapt in her. The man had galloped near; he had seen the figure on the terrace; he waved his hat.

She gave a strange cry, ran to the terrace steps and down them to the path that led through the wilderness.

They met where a climbing rose trailed in the branches of a half-dead almond tree. Blake had left his horse at the wicket-gate.

She saw the grim radiance of his face.

“Hilary!”

“I have killed Royce Severn.”

She swayed forward, and he had her in his arms.

“Oh, my beloved, you are as white as death.”

“Dear, I have suffered.”

He kissed her.

“Judith, you are free. But this man’s blood——”

She clung to him.

“Let us go away, let us go away together. Yes, I have money, and my jewels, and my valise packed. I will order the coach. They cannot harm you, Hilary, for killing him, and yet——”

He looked in her eyes and understood.

“Dear, we will leave the thought of it behind us. Come, there is no time to lose. We can make Rye town before noon.”

They went up the terrace steps hand in hand.

Eliza and the Special
By Barry Pain
Royal Naval Air Service

“Eliza!” I said, after we had retired to the drawing-room, as we almost always do after our late dinner nowadays, unless of course the lighting of an extra fire is involved, “Eliza, I have this afternoon come to rather an important decision. I must ask you to remember the meaning of the word decision. It means that a thing is decided. It may be perfectly natural to you to beg me not to risk the exposure to the weather, and the possible attacks by criminals or German spies, but where my conscience has spoken I am, so to speak, adamant, (if you would kindly cease playing with the cat, you would be able to pay more attention to what I am saying). What I want you to realise is that no entreaties or arguments can possibly move me. This nation is at present plunged——”

“By the way,” said Eliza, “you don’t mind my interrupting, but I’ve just thought of it. Miss Lakers says she can’t think why you don’t offer yourself as a special, and I don’t see why you shouldn’t, either.”

“This, Eliza,” I said, “is one of the most extraordinary coincidences that have befallen me in the whole course of my life. If an author were to put such a thing in a book, every reader would remark on its improbability. But the fact remains—at the very moment when you spoke I was on the point of telling you that I had decided to become a special constable.”

“That’s all right, then,” said Eliza. “I’ll tell Miss Lakers. Wonder you didn’t think of it before. Anything in the evening paper to-night?”

“You are hardly taking my decision in the way that might have been expected,” I said. “However, we will let that pass. We must now take the necessary steps.”

“What do you mean?” said Eliza. “You just go to the station and——”

“I was not thinking of that. There is this question of exposure to the weather. A warm waistcoat—sufficiently low at the back to give protection to the kidneys—is, I understand, essential. We must also procure a flask.”

“Well, I shouldn’t if I were you. If you take whiskey when you’re on duty, and then anything happens, you only put yourself in the wrong.”

“I had forgotten my cocoa flask” (page 139).

“My dear Eliza,” I said, “I was not dreaming of taking stimulants while on duty. Afterwards, perhaps, in moderation, but not during. I was referring to one of those flasks which keep soup or cocoa hot for a considerable period. This question of exposure to the weather is rather more serious than you seem to——”

“Oh, that kind of flask! Well, that’s different. And do be more careful when you’re uncrossing your legs. You as near as possible kicked the cat that time.”

As I told her, she had quite failed to grasp the situation or to take a proper interest in it. Her reply, that I was too funny, simply had no bearing on the subject.

---

I am not a snob. Far from it. But I do think that in the special constabulary a little more regard might be paid to social status. I was required for certain hours of the night to guard a small square building connected with the waterworks. It was in a desperately lonely spot, fully a hundred yards from the main road and approached by a footpath across a desolate field. I make no complaint as to that. Unless a man has pretty good nerves he had better not become a special constable. But I do complain, and with good reason, that in this task I was associated with Hopley.

Hopley is a plumber, in quite a small way. Some ten or twelve years ago, when I was merely an employee of the firm in which I am now a partner, I gave Hopley some work. At the time of taking the order he called me “sir,” and was most respectful. Later, he used very coarse language, and said he should not leave my kitchen until the account had been settled. I remember this because it was the last time that I had to pawn my watch.

Fortunately, Hopley seemed to have forgotten the incident and to have forgotten me. On the other hand he seemed quite oblivious of the fact that there was any social barrier between us. He always addressed me as an equal, and even as an intimate friend. Making allowances for the unusual circumstances, the nation being at war, I did not put him back in his place. But after all, I ask myself, was it necessary? With a little more organisation it would not have happened.

I will admit that I found him useful at drill and generally tried to be next him. He seemed to know about drill, and gave me the required pull or push which makes so much difference.

But when we two were guarding that building I found him most depressing. He took a pessimistic view of the situation. He said that any special who was put to guard a waterworks was practically sentenced to death, because the Germans had got the position of every waterworks in the kingdom charted, and the Zeppelins had their instructions. Then he talked over the invasion of England, and the murder of a special constable, and told ghost stories. By day I could see, almost before Eliza pointed it out, that an incendiary bomb would do more active work in a gasometer than in a reservoir. But in the darkness of the small hours I am—well, distinctly less critical.

And I may add that the only mistake we have made yet was entirely due to Hopley. It was a nasty, foggy night and I saw a shadowy form approaching. I immediately went round to the other side of the building to report to Hopley, and he said that this was just the sort of night the Germans would choose for some of their dirty work. It was he who instructed me about taking cover and springing out at the last minute. We sprang simultaneously, Hopley on one side and myself on the other, and if it had been anybody but Eliza we should have made a smart job of it. I had forgotten my cocoa flask and Eliza was bringing it to the place where I was posted. This was unfortunate for Hopley, as she hit him in the face with the flask. I think that I personally must have slipped on a banana-skin, or it may have been due to the sudden surprise at hearing Eliza’s voice. Eliza said she was sorry about Hopley’s nose, but that we really ought not to play silly jokes like that when on duty, because we might possibly frighten somebody.

The other night I was discussing with Hopley the possibility of my being made a sergeant.

“Not a chance,” he said. “No absolute earthly, old sport.” And then he passed his hand in a reflective way over his nose. “But if only your missus could have joined,” he said, “she’d have been an inspector by now.”

The Probation of Jimmy Baker
By Albert Kinross
Army Service Corps