No one ever knew how it happened. Close to the village there is a lock, and by the lock is what is called a hook—a horseshoe of water running round from a point above it, and, after making a vast circuit, emerging at a point below. For the most part this hook is shallow, but in places it is deep as the wells described by Herodotus. At six o’clock on the following morning, Abednego, who was fond of the water, repaired to a remote part of the hook. Five minutes after Harry Jermyn also proceeded to the bathing place. He must, however, have selected a spot out of sight of the “Colonel,” for that gentleman was unfortunately drowned without Jermyn’s even having seen him. A certain mark was discovered round Abednego’s throat, but the coroner very sagely informed the jury that with that they had nothing to do—it might be a mark of long-standing. Mr. Jermyn volunteered evidence as to having seen nobody in the vicinity of the hook. Verdict in accordance with such evidence as was produced—“Accidental death.”
Six months afterwards the famous case of Jermyn v. Jermyn, Smith, Jones, and Another was heard, which, as the public will recollect, resulted in a verdict for the husband, who is now a prematurely aged and curiously reticent man—the inheritor of a baronetcy and fifty thousand pounds a year.
XI.
A MAN OF GENIUS.
Felix Carter was always on the look out for unappreciated genius, the which, when discovered, he would clothe, feed, and house until the time came—as it invariably did come—when he found out that the gold was tinsel. He never for one moment suspected that he himself was the happy possessor of that divine endowment which he so reverenced in others. And yet his friends all swore that if any man ever were gifted with genius, Felix Carter was that individual. He was a sort of artistic Admirable Crichton. He painted exquisite pictures. He had written three novels. Plays of his had been produced with success. And he played the violin like a very Paganini. Acquaintances spoke of him as being eccentric. But every man is accounted eccentric whose talents cover a wide area and whose heart is abnormally large.
Play writing, novel spinning, and violin practice Felix regarded as recreations. His real profession was that of an artist. And his big bachelor establishment in a North Western suburb of London will be remembered as the scene of some brilliant receptions, at not a few of which Carter’s latest Man of Genius would put in an appearance, to the great surprise of guests, who very properly refused to see any merit whatever in his utterances. Sometimes three or four undesirable pensioners would be quartered on the establishment. And although Carter’s friends deplored the circumstance, not one of them dare remonstrate. He was the victim of perpetual disappointment in his protégés, but would resent any interference with his practical philanthropy.
One of Carter’s Men of Genius lived with him and on him for a period of more than six months. It was amusing always to hear his enthusiasm over this big, blotchy-faced loafer. He bored all his friends by a description of his first meeting him, of his desire to see him again, and of the happy coincidence of their second encounter. Carter was greatly given to prowling about unknown London for the purpose of picking up “effects.” He knew the opium-smoking quarter. He had been in a thieves’ kitchen, and he knew his way to the most disreputable common lodging-houses in the metropolis. He occasionally dropped in at the “White Elephant,” a public-house situated in a slum off Fleet Street, where every night in the week a discussion took place on the events of the day. This discussion was carried on in a hall at the back of the “White Elephant,” and was mainly contributed to by subsidized speakers whose feats of oratory were intended to encourage the ambitious vestryman who smoked his pipe there, or the occasional young barrister who dropped in upon his way to or from the Temple. But the audience generally was made up of solicitors’ clerks, solicitors who had been struck off the Rolls, with here and there a fiery disciple of Bradlaugh from the unsavoury fastnesses of Clerkenwell. It was in this resort that Carter first saw and admired Joseph Addison, the large and very loathsome person who eventually shared his home.
“I tell you,” he would say, “Joseph is the most wonderful chap. By Jove, sir, you should have heard the way he pegged into those Radicals. He made them squirm. I wish old Gladstone had been there to hear him, upon my soul I do.”
Unfortunately it happened that late one night Felix encountered his paragon lying asleep under a bench in St. James’s Park. It is more than probable that the creature was drunk after a day of successful sponging. But his admirer only saw a man full of gifts and faculties suffering from cold and hunger.
“By Gad, old boy,” he said in describing the scene, “I could have cried to see a man, who could talk Sir William Harcourt’s head off, perishing for want of a penny roll.”
So Addison was treated as reverently as if he had been his great namesake, was made free of Carter’s house, was introduced to his studio friends, and was generally rendered a great deal more comfortable than he deserved to be. His appearance was sadly against him. His eyes were shifty and blood-shot; his bushy black whiskers were never submitted to the torture of the comb; his finger nails were invariably dirty, and his expression was that of effrontery struggling with awkwardness. His clothes of seedy black vainly endeavouring to conceal an unwashed shirt seemed as if they had been persistently slept in, and his eyeglass depending from a white string completed the picture of a rakish adventurer.