The Black Poodle, and Other Tales

by F. Anstey

'I never intended to go as far as that,' he said, rather pettishly, and without any sign of gratitude for my offer; 'I don't care about actually dying, if she could only be made to believe I had died that would be quite enough for me. I could live on here, happy in the thought that I was saved from her scorn. But how can she be made to believe it?—that's the point.'

'Precisely,' I said. 'You can hardly write yourself and inform her that you died on the voyage. You might do this, though: sail to England as you propose, and go to see her under another name, and break the sad intelligence to her.'

'Why, to be sure, I might do that!' he said, with some animation; 'I should certainly not be recognised—she can have no photograph of me, for I have never been photographed. And yet—no,' he added, with a shudder, 'it is useless. I can't do it; I dare not trust myself under that roof! I must find some other way. You have given me an idea. Listen,' he said, after a short pause: 'you seem to take an interest in me; you are going to London; the Catafalques live there, or near it, at some place called Parson's Green. Can I ask a great favour of you—would you very much mind seeking them out yourself as a fellow-voyager of mine? I could not expect you to tell a positive untruth on my account—but if, in the course of an interview with Chlorine, you could contrive to convey the impression that I died on my way to her side, you would be doing me a service I can never repay!'

'I should very much prefer to do you a service that you could repay,' was my very natural rejoinder.

'She will not require strict proof,' he continued eagerly; 'I could give you enough papers and things to convince her that you come from me. Say you will do me this kindness!'

I hesitated for some time longer, not so much, perhaps, from scruples of a conscientious kind as from a disinclination to undertake a troublesome commission for an entire stranger—gratuitously. But McFadden pressed me hard, and at length he made an appeal to springs in my nature which are never touched in vain, and I yielded.

When we had settled the question in its financial aspect, I said to McFadden, 'The only thing now is—how would you prefer to pass away? Shall I make you fall over and be devoured by a shark? That would be a picturesque end—and I could do myself justice over the shark? I should make the young lady weep considerably.'

'That won't do at all!' he said irritably; 'I can see from her face that Chlorine is a girl of a delicate sensibility, and would be disgusted by the idea of any suitor of hers spending his last cohesive moments inside such a beastly repulsive thing as a shark. I don't want to be associated in her mind with anything so unpleasant. No, sir; I will die—if you will oblige me by remembering it—of a low fever, of a non-infectious type, at sunset, gazing at her portrait with my fading eyesight and gasping her name with my last breath. She will cry more over that!'

'I might work it up into something effective, certainly,' I admitted; 'and, by the way, if you are going to expire in my state-room, I ought to know a little more about you than I do. There is time still before the tender goes; you might do worse than spend it in coaching me in your life's history.'

He gave me a few leading facts, and supplied me with several documents for study on the voyage; he even abandoned to me the whole of his travelling arrangements, which proved far more complete and serviceable than my own.