Here and Hereafter

"Now, don't talk nonsense."

"Nonsense, man? Considering I constructed the menu myself, I—"

"Yes, but the people. Look at that lot just come in."

"My poor lost sheep, I'll tell you just two things. Firstly, we are eccentric millionaires. Secondly, you will be seated at lunch between Colonel Harriet Stokes, of the Salvation Army, and Miss Paul, a manicure lady."

"Let me out. This is a nightmare."

"No, it's a fact, and I'll prove it to you by introducing to your kind attention Mr Pudbrook, the editor of Happy Homes. He somewhat interferes with your profession by giving remedies for black-heads and indigestion in his paper on alternate weeks. But don't let that prejudice you against him."

Certainly, the "lot" to which Sir Edwin referred looked strange enough in their present entourage. Mr Timbs wore a complete suit of black broadcloth, alleviated by new brown shoes, white socks, and a very large crimson silk handkerchief. His expression combined curiously the confident and the furtive. Those in his immediate neighbourhood were conscious of a blended fragrance of benzine and yellow soap. A white-faced woman with big eyes, severely uniformed, was in conversation with him, and Mr Timbs was choosing his language with unusual care. Miss Edith Stunt, the Suffragette, had faced meetings in Trafalgar Square, and had nothing more to fear. Her fanatical eyes looked round eagerly for an opportunity to say a good word. At present Duncan Garth was talking to Mrs Gust, a nicely-dressed lady, slightly mad. The death of her husband under treatment had not shaken her faith in Christian Science, any more than his life had shaken her belief in matrimony. Garth himself had discovered her, and had directed that she should be of the party.

Miss Vera Paul, the manicurist, was talking to Ferguson. She was a remarkably pretty girl, but there were many others who wished to speak to Ferguson. He handed her over to Mrs Pringle, and promised her that she should be next to him at luncheon. The Unconquerable Belgian bore down on Ferguson, carrying in his hand a copy of the menu, with which Ferguson had thoughtfully provided him. He tapped it with a heavy finger and said plaintively: "You excuse me. I cannot eat moch this food." Ferguson's suggestion of a porter-house steak was accepted. At the same moment Timbs approached him with care, as of one who stalked big game.

"You'll keep your eye on me, sir," said Timbs. "You told me it was strite, and it's to you I looks. I don't want to do anything I didn't ought."

"My dear chap," said Ferguson, with candour, "we want you to do the things you didn't ought."

Timbs would have pursued the conversation, but he was put aside by Miss Edith Stunt, who wished to know if she would have an opportunity to say a few words to the company. And she was put aside by Harriet Stokes, who wished to know if she could send round a collecting-card. And Harriet Stokes was obliterated by Mr Pudbrook, who wished to know if he could get a few words on private business with Mr Garth.

Then came the arrival of the last guest. Mr Eustace Richards made a splendid entrance; he was a quarter of an hour late and gracefully apologetic. "An unexpected rehearsal, my dear fellow," he said to Garth in a clearly-articulated whisper that carried to every part of the room, "Royal command for next Friday. Quite unexpected. Gratifying, eh?"

The big folding-doors opened. Ferguson flew around with his plan of the table, showing people where they were to sit. So far Mr Eustace Richards had hardly glanced at the company. He did not look much at the audience when he was acting, and he was almost always acting. But now he murmured to Garth: "My dear fellow, you warned me—but what have you done?"

"Don't quite know yet," said Garth, drily.

Mr Ferguson had his own little suite of rooms at the house in Park Lane. He dined at his club that night, and was back again by nine o'clock to check once more some figures of considerable importance. The work only took him a few minutes, and he was just finishing it when Duncan Garth entered, wearing the dinner-jacket and black tie of the domestic life.

"Hallo!" said Ferguson. "Thought you were dining at the Silchesters'."

"So I was," said Garth, dejectedly, "but I didn't." He selected a cigar from his secretary's cabinet.

"Cheaper for you, anyhow," said Ferguson. "His Grace meant to borrow money to-night."

"I'm not a fool," said Garth, wearily, "and I'm not lending money to the Duke of Silchester. How did you think it went this afternoon?"

"What? The lunch? Of course it was very, very funny."

"Or slightly tragic," said Garth, as he took an easy-chair. "Put people into new circumstances and you can always judge them. I've got a low opinion of the human race to-night, Fergy."

"But there were nice points," said Ferguson. "I like the self-centred, complete indifference of our friend Renard. He's a headless Hercules. I mean, his head is the only thing against him. It's a loss, too, that is easily excused. You saw how Lady Longshore, and Mrs Pringle, and Colonel Harriet Stokes of the Salvation Army were anxious to please that lump of beef."

"Of course I saw it. That's one of the reasons why I call the thing a tragedy. By the way, you can go over our list and draw a line through the Archdeacon and his wife."

"Certainly," said Ferguson. "Might one ask why?"

"Because I hate the type," said Garth. "Miss Bostock's father was a curate, had been at college with the Archdeacon, and knew him fairly well. Mrs Pringle snubbed Miss Bostock. She was afraid she could not remember all the curates that her husband might have happened to meet. She also snubbed Pudbrook. When she saw the nature of the party she would have left but for Lady Longshore, who, to do her credit, does not care one curse about anybody on this earth or elsewhere. She was almost affectionate to Timbs when Lady Longshore repeated his stories. She was quite nice to your manicurist girl. She recognised the charm of the Unconquerable Belgian. But she snubbed Miss Bostock and she snubbed Pudbrook. She admits the hopeless and snubs the hopeful. She is a mixture of the coward and the bully. I don't like it, and I've no more to do with it. Strike them off, Fergy. I shall feel happier when it's done."

Ferguson took down an alphabetical list, turned up the letter "P," and put a black ink cross where it was required. "I wonder what this has cost you," he said cheerfully.

"You paid the bill. Nothing, anyhow."

"The Salvationist got a subscription, and so did Mrs Gust. The Suffragette also hit you. I think you have promised to be manicured. Mr Pudbrook owns half his paper, and the printer owns the other half. They are not doing too well, and they are thinking of a limited company. You know best how far you have come into it. Eustace Richards, in spite of his jabber, has done no good with his last two things. He stayed with you for some time. If he was not suggesting that you should release him from the people who are financing him at present, then, of course, it's my mistake."

"You're a clear-sighted chap," said Garth, "and you've mentioned nothing which is very far out. There are even some things which you might have mentioned and have omitted. They don't really matter. I've done what was wanted. I've even shown Lady Longshore how to make the money she wants. But that's not what's worrying me."

"Give it a name," said Ferguson.

The door opened. "A young person of the name of Bostock wishes to see you, sir," said the butler. "I have told her that you are not in the habit of seeing people at this time of the evening, but she seemed rather pressing."

"In here, please," said Garth.

"Let's see," said Ferguson, "Miss Bostock left before the show was over."

"She did," said Garth; "and I want to know why."

In the meantime the butler had returned to Miss Bostock with a totally different manner. So far as the rules went, he had made no mistake, but there were exceptions, of course. On sight, Miss Bostock was a young person. On further investigation she was a young lady whom Mr Duncan Garth wished to see, and that made a difference.

She entered the room with perfect composure, wearing the same clothes that she had worn at the luncheon-party.

"Perhaps I shouldn't have come," she said, "but there are things I want to say. I want to know why you did that."

"You'll sit down, won't you?" said Garth. "What is it precisely we are talking about?"

"Why did you give that luncheon? Why did you make me come to it? I refused at first, you know. Then Mr Ferguson came to see me and persuaded me. He told me the Archdeacon was coming, and that seemed like a mutual acquaintance. I think if he had been there he wouldn't have been as rude to me as his wife was. I dare say, if I had told her I was a general servant, she would have been as sweet to me as she was to that half-drunken crossing-sweeper, or that Belgian brute, or some of the other people whom you ought not to have asked me to meet."

"Yes," said Mr Ferguson, cheerfully. "Lady Longshore also is very unconventional, isn't she?"

"I'm not speaking about that," said Miss Bostock, doggedly. "The rudeness of that lady to me is a small personal matter easily forgotten. It's the ghastly humiliation of the whole thing that makes me sick and savage."

There was a moment's silence. "Ferguson," said Garth, "there was that letter."

"Yes," said Ferguson, "I'll see to it," and passed out of the room.

"Now, then," said Garth. "What's the trouble, Miss Bostock?"

"The trouble is that the whole of us were merely a show got up for your amusement. You gave us a lunch that we might make fools of ourselves. Fish out of water are very absurd, aren't they? But it's cruel to take them out of water and to watch them dying, all the same. That luncheon-party was the most brutal thing done in London to-day, and you were the brute who did it. What harm was I doing? Why did you drag me into it?"

"Five or six weeks ago," said Garth, "I met you for the first time. It was in the post-office. You asked me if I'd got any eyes in my head."

"I remember now," said Miss Bostock. "I ought not to have said it. I think the tick of the telegraph gets on my nerves. You were not the first, too, and the notices were up clear enough. Still, why couldn't you have reported me? That would have been the right way to punish me."

"No," said Garth, "I did not want to punish you. I distinctly liked the spirit and the temper with which you spoke to me. You will understand, perhaps, that I get rather too much of the other kind of thing. I had no wish whatever to humiliate you. I did wish to amuse myself. You may be glad to hear that I have not done it. Is there anything I can do?"

"Nothing now," said the girl, contemptuously.

"I think there is," said Garth, and rang the bell. He sent the servant to fetch Mr Ferguson.

"I say, Ferguson," said Garth, "can you tell me what the price of that luncheon was?"

"Eight shillings a head, exclusive of the wine, of course."

"Let me see, Miss Bostock," said Garth, "I think you drank water."

"Yes, yes, I see it now," said Miss Bostock, eagerly. She fumbled clumsily at her pocket, and produced an emaciated purse. She took out half a sovereign. "There is your money. Can you give me change?"

Garth did not carry money. Ferguson handed Garth a florin, and Garth gravely handed it to Miss Bostock.

"Now I can breathe again," she said. "I am going now. Good-night."

Garth followed her out, along the corridor and into the hall. Servants were waiting at the door. A sign from Garth dismissed them. As he held the door open for her, she turned to him, hesitated, and then spoke.

"I thought at lunch to-day that the doctor was the only gentleman there. I—I am not so sure about it."

"If I were ten years younger," said Garth, "I think I should ask you to marry me. Good-night."

He stood watching her as she passed down the steps into Park Lane.

POST-MORTEM

I

After dining for the last time at his club, Evan Hurst returned at once to his flat in Jermyn Street. The greater part of his arrangements had already been made, and most of his things packed; but there were still a few details to settle, and he was to leave for the north early on the following morning.

Yet when he entered his room he did not proceed at once to letter-writing or to business of any kind. He flung himself down in an easy-chair. He felt unaccountably tired. All day he had had business to attend to, necessary no doubt for the carrying out of his somewhat wild and romantic scheme, none the less wearisome to a man of poetical temperament and of poor physique. He was a man of slight build, with fair and rather fluffy hair, a pretty, thin-lipped mouth, and plaintive blue eyes. To the world in general his lot would have seemed a fairly easy one. He had sufficient means of his own; and no one in any way depended upon him. His volume of poems, Under the Sea, published a year or two before, had excited a great deal of public attention and some controversy; what had seemed genius to one critic had seemed insanity to another. He was not unpopular at his club although he was thought to be slightly ridiculous. It was not supposed that he had any trouble of any kind. Women, of whom in his poems he wrote with such knowledge and such fervency, had never really come much into his life.

As he lay there and smoked endless cigarettes, he admitted the truth to himself. It was vanity that was at the root of it. He had seen the talented and remarkable Evan Hurst dwindling down into nobody again. Once it was supposed that Evan Hurst was dead, dead by his own act, and leaving such strange communications behind him, interest would revive. People would speak again of Under the Sea, his unpublished poems would be produced, and there would be obituary notices. There would be, for a while at least, breathless interest in the poet and the suicide, and he, alive and not dead, under another name and acting another part, would read and enjoy it all. To carry out his scheme meant many sacrifices, but the fascination of it was too strong for him, and the success of it seemed to be certain.

His sensations were really very much those of a man who actually knows that he is about to die. He had withdrawn a large balance from his bank and transferred it to another bank in the name which he now intended to take, but it was essential if Evan Hurst were to die that he should leave money behind him. That money he willingly sacrificed. It was enough if he retained for his new incarnation sufficient for a reasonable livelihood. It annoyed him far more to think that he must leave also his books, the collections, the furniture and the treasures of his Jermyn Street flat. They had all come together slowly, and all represented in a way his individuality. The scattering of them by public auction would be like the disintegration of death. He could imagine already the notice in the catalogue of a second-hand bookseller offering that exquisitely-bound set of Huysman's works, "containing the book-plate of the late Evan Hurst." There were prints and engravings that from long affection and study had given him almost a feeling as if he had had a part in their creation. The Durer, a splendid impression, would fetch fifty pounds at least. Men at the club would remember this evening. They would recall that Evan Hurst was there only a few days before his death, and that even then they had remarked how gloomy and silent he seemed to be.

He laughed bitterly and aloud, flung down his cigarette and passed into his bedroom. There for a while he packed energetically, but soon he had to stop for a feeling of intense and almost painful weariness came over him again. After all there would be time to finish the packing in the morning. He decided to go to bed.

On the following afternoon he left King's Cross for Salsay on the Yorkshire coast.

II

Salsay is a small fishing village that has not yet suffered from the curse of popularity. Evan Hurst put up at the one hotel in the place and constituted its one permanent visitor. Occasionally a commercial traveller would arrive one day and leave on the next, and would talk as much as possible to Evan Hurst. Evan Hurst, in return, would talk as little as possible, consistent with bare politeness, to the commercial traveller. Every morning he bathed from the shore before breakfast at a point at some considerable distance from the village. Here there was a small cave in the cliffs, a useful shelter if rain came on, and useful to Evan Hurst for other purposes; for it was here that gradually, bit by bit, he collected the slender outfit with which he was to begin the world in his new character on the day that Evan Hurst was supposed to commit suicide. His plan was simplicity itself. He would go out to bathe as usual, and he would not return. His clothes would be found on the shore, and in the pocket of his coat there would be a letter to the landlord of the hotel leaving no doubt whatever as to his intentions. In the meantime, in a little cave, he would have altered his appearance, put on different clothes, and from there struck out for the nearest railway station. In the evening he would be in Dover, and next day in Paris, without one tie left between what he had once been and what he was now going to be.

He looked forward to the change with pleasurable excitement. It was something more than vanity after all. As Evan Hurst he had begun in a rôle which he was not competent to sustain; to have continued in it would have been to disappoint the public opinion of him. In a new part he could write as he liked; act as he liked; talk as he liked. There would be no preconceived opinion of him in the world; it would be all for him to make with the benefit of his experience of his past blunders.

He took immense care with the composition of that brief letter to the landlord. It ran as follows:—

He did not quite like it now that he had finished it. The way in which he had introduced the title of his book seemed to him to be a little on the cheap side, but at any rate it was a letter which would call for a good deal of comment. He promised himself much amusing and interesting reading when the English papers reached Paris a few days later.

The morning came at last; grey, overcast, and misty, and more likely to turn to great heat than to rain. Evan Hurst looked at himself in the glass and laughed. He had spent some hours in his room the night before dyeing his fluffy hair. Unquestionably it was an improvement to his appearance. There was no danger that it would be observed on his leaving the hotel; for he wore his towels slung round his neck, and a broad-brimmed straw hat. As he walked towards the cave he now felt an unaccountable nervousness. True, but few people went that way, and even if they entered the cave his store of clothes was so carefully hidden that it was unlikely that anybody would find them. Still, there was just a chance, and it would be maddening if just at the last some trifle occurred to balk his scheme. He breathed a sigh of relief when he found everything just as he had left it. In less than half an hour the change was complete; the clothes of that fluffy poet, Evan Hurst, were disposed with a careful carelessness on the rocks above high-water mark, with the letter to the landlord in the pocket of the coat, and Evan Hurst, in his new incarnation, strode away in a blue serge suit, black felt hat, and black boots, carrying a small bag, which contained a change of linen and the articles of his toilet. The rest of his luggage was to be purchased in London.

For the first mile or so his way lay along the beach, and he was careful to walk on the sand, where, in half an hour, the sea would obliterate his footprints. His feelings were at first those of amusement. In every little detail of his clothes he was so different from what he had ever been before. He speculated whether he would not perforce become quite a different kind of man under the clothes' influence. Already he felt himself a stouter person, readier to tackle the world and deal with it properly. His satisfaction was intense. He was still meditating on the subject when he reached the path up the cliffs; a perfectly easy and safe path with a few low rocks between him and it. As he clambered over the rocks, inconvenienced by the bag that he was carrying, he slipped and fell, and lay quite still.

The hours passed, and now the sun blazed. The waves had already touched one of the black boots. They crept up to the head and came back with a pinky stain. At last, when the figure was fully covered, it gave a sudden and ungainly movement, and for a little while floated with arms and legs shot out queerly like the limbs of a starfish. The black felt hat had drifted far away, and tossed about on the waves with absurdity. Then, slowly, the figure disappeared from sight.

THE GIRL WITH THE BEAUTIFUL HAIR

There once was a girl who had very long and very beautiful hair.

(As long as yours? Much longer and much more beautiful. And if you interrupt me again, I will stop this story, empty you out of the hammock, tie you to a tree, and teach you as much as I can remember of the French gender rules. Very well, then.)

As I was saying—there once was a girl who had very long and very beautiful hair, and she knew it. Her sisters, who were as plain-spoken as sisters generally are, were in the habit of saying that she was a perfect peacock. Her hair was very much the colour of a chestnut, and she took the greatest possible care of it. It was a rule of life with her, when she had nothing else to do, to brush her hair. Frequently also she brushed it when she had other things to do. She never would have it cut. She even refused a lock of it to her own mother. When she went out for walks with her sisters she listened attentively as people passed her, because sometimes they said things about her hair which she liked very much. Then she would try not to look pleased, and when a girl who is really pleased tries to look as if she did not care, she looks perfectly horrid. Her sisters remarked upon it.

Her father, who was a good and wise man, explained to her how wicked vanity was, especially vanity about one's hair. He showed her that personal attractions, especially if connected in any way with the hair, were worthless as compared with the intellectual and moral attributes. On the other hand, her mother took her to a photographer's and had her taken in fourteen different positions, and they all made such beautiful pictures that the photographer nearly committed suicide because he was not allowed to exhibit them in his shop window.

She reached the age at which every good Christian girl wishes to have long dresses and do her hair up into a lump, but this girl (whose name was Elsa, of course) would not have her hair done up, and stamped with her foot and was rude to the governess. In the end, of course, Elsa had to submit, for it is very wicked for girls of a certain age to wear their hair down. But she became extremely ingenious. She had ways of doing that hair so that it would not stop up, but tumbled down unexpectedly and caused great admiration. She would then pretend to be confused and embarrassed. Now, when a girl who is not in the least confused and embarrassed tries to look so, she looks simply silly. Her sisters told her so. Every single girl friend she had, and many who were only acquaintances, had seen that hair in its native glory. Some of these raved about it to Elsa's sisters, and were surprised that the sisters did not share their enthusiasm.

"She has such a lot of it," the friends would say.

"She thinks such a lot of it," the sisters would answer.

Now, Elsa and her sisters were not the only girls in the world, and they did not know all the rest; consequently a girl called Kate came to them as something of a novelty. As she was called Kate, she was, of course, quite good. Katherine may be proud, and Kitty may be frivolous, but Kate is solid. If you ask me if Kate is clever, I reply that she is a good housekeeper. If you ask me if she is pretty, I change the subject rapidly. There was nothing dazzling about this Kate. She was just Kate.

It is a sad truth that it is the people who are naturally the nicest to look at who take the greatest trouble to look nice. The woman who, so far as her face is concerned, makes the best of a bad job, is very rare. Kate was not a beauty, but she was sensible and resigned. She dressed herself very quickly in things that wore well. It was her boast that she could do her hair without a looking-glass, and everybody who saw her hair believed it. But as it happened, when Kate met Elsa, a change came over her.

"Your hair is perfectly divine," she said to Elsa.

Elsa tried to be politely bored.

"So kind of you to say so," she said. "I get frightfully sick of my old wig myself. It's an endless bother."

"And you do it so beautifully," said Kate. "I do wish you'd give me some idea for my hair, so that it wouldn't look awful."

"It isn't awful at all," said Elsa, politely. "I don't think I should change the way of doing it if I were you."

Then she went into elaborate technical details and showed Kate that the thing was bad and that improvement was impossible. Of course, she did not use these words, and was sweetly delicate about it.

Now, that night, as Elsa was having her own hair brushed, a horrible suspicion came over her. She put it aside as a thing perfectly absurd. It might have been a trick of the looking-glass. It might have been her own imagination. It did not keep her awake for a moment. But next morning one of her sisters came into her room, looked at her, and said: "What an idiot you were to have your hair cut!"

"I have not had it cut," said Elsa, furiously. "It's the same as it always was."

"Rubbish," said the sister. "It's three inches shorter at least."

"It's not," said Elsa; "and I wish you'd go away. I can't get on properly while you're hanging about talking."

The sister went away, and Elsa flew to the looking-glass. The cold morning light confirmed her suspicions of the night before. Her sister was perfectly right. Elsa's hair was undoubtedly three inches shorter.

That afternoon Elsa secretly and surreptitiously went to a great hair specialist. She had seen his advertisement, and she felt that here she might at any rate know the worst. He looked at her hair and said that it had become shorter from a shrinkage in the cells, owing to undue epithelial activity of the cranium. It was as well that she came to him when she did. As it was, if she would rub in a little of his relaxative she would have nothing to fear. He then sold her a fourpenny pot of pomatum for three guineas, washed his hands, and went home to tea.

But the pomatum was quite ineffectual. Every day her hair seemed to be a little shorter and a little thinner. This was particularly the case when she had been behaving like a peacock or like a spiteful cat. It reached a point when all her friends who met her exclaimed: "Why, Elsa, what on earth have you done with your hair?"

Then she would smile sweetly and say: "Brushed it. What did you think?" But inwardly she was a mad woman.

About this time she saw the advertisement of the Indian hair doctor, and she thought she could but try. I do not think the man was really Indian, I know he was not really a doctor, and I fancy he did not know much about hair. But he said that Elsa's case was extremely grave, and that in another week she would have been entirely bald. She must take a course of scalp friction; twelve applications for three guineas the application. She took them; and at the end of the course her hair was nearly all gone, her temper was quite gone, her money was almost gone, and she did not want to see anybody or to do anything except die.

And then unwittingly she did what was best for herself. To escape the sweet sympathy of her friends and relations she went away all by herself to live in a little cottage in a forest. It is good for a girl who has been seeing too many people to live all by herself for a while. It is good for a girl who has been long in a crowded town to go away into the forest solitude. Your soul must go to the cleaner, just like your gloves.

Now that there was no one to sympathise with her loss, and no one to attract by her beautiful hair even if she had still had it, she could begin to think of other things. And she thought about squirrels, and nuts, and blackberries, and sunsets, and streams that made silvery lines down the green hillsides. And every morning she went all by herself to a cottage two miles off and fetched milk for herself.

The old woman who kept the cows at this cottage was tall and old and always polite, but also she was always very sad. She had the face of one who never ceased to suffer. After Elsa had been two months in her cottage she suddenly saw that this woman had always looked really sad. The sadness of other people had never mattered to her in the least before; but now one day she asked the old woman why this was, and if there were anything that she might do for her.

Then the old woman said: "I have a daughter and she was very beautiful. None that saw her ever forgot how beautiful she was. And she fell ill of a strange disease so that her whole face became loathesome. No one but I can bear to look on her, lest their dreams should be haunted for ever."

"And she lives here, this poor daughter of yours?" asked Elsa.

"Yes; she lies in the room upstairs. They tell me that she will now soon be dead."

"I will come up and talk to her," said Elsa, "and help to nurse her, for you must often be away on your farm."

"No," said the old woman, "that is too much for you to do. I tell you that no one but myself can bear it. You must not see her."

"Look," said Elsa. And then she took off the big kerchief that she always wore over her head. "I had pretty hair once," she said, "and I have lost it all. I can bear anything, and I want to help you."

Then Elsa went upstairs into a room which was darkened, and even in that dim light she could see that this old woman's daughter, who was once very beautiful, had now become painful to behold. Elsa was frightened, but tried not to show it, and a girl who is frightened and tries not to show it, very frequently does not look nearly such a fool as she thinks. She remained there a long time, and when she came out her face was quite white, and she wanted to go back to her cottage and cry.

But every day after that until the end came she went to see the sick girl who loved and adored her. And the end came one afternoon quite quietly. And the old woman did not weep at that time, but she blessed Elsa and went out, for the cows were waiting to be milked, and that must not be left.

Next morning when Elsa awoke it was very late, and the sun was streaming into her room. For a while she lay with her eyes closed, thinking over all that had happened. Each visit to the sick girl had been a separate terror to her, but now she grieved that the girl was dead, and wondered in her mind if there were none other for whom she might find something to do.

At last, since it was a shame to lie so late, she got up, and, behold, masses of beautiful chestnut-coloured hair fell far down over her white shoulders! She rubbed her eyes and said that she must be dreaming. But no, it had really happened. Her mirror echoed the truth. The glory of her pretty head had come back to it as strangely as it had gone. So that afternoon she mused what she would do as, sitting in the garden of her cottage, she made a wreath of white lilies.

And the next day she left her cottage in the wood and went back to her own home; and her sisters were all delighted to see her, and praised her beautiful hair, and were glad that it had grown again so quickly. Yet one of them said secretly to another: "Now she will be as vain and horrible as ever."

But, as it happened, she was not vain and horrible; she was really quite nice, so that the prince who married her loved her as much for the sweetness of her heart as for her angel's face and her beautiful long hair.

THE WIDOWER

The decision of Edward Morris to marry again was one of the few practical things of his record. He had married first at the age of eighteen without the knowledge of his parents. His wife died two years later. He had no children by her. At her death he was desolate.

He was as desolate, that is, as one can be at twenty. He was free from the annoying minor-poet habit of advertising his afflictions, but it was quite clear to himself that there was nothing more left. Yet it is idle for a man to say he will stop when Nature, his proprietor, says that he will go on. There is no comedy at ninety, and there is no tragedy at twenty. After he had deposited the remains of his wife in Brompton cemetery—she had a strong aversion to cremation and inwardly believed that it destroyed the immortal soul—he went off into the country, selecting a village where he knew nobody. Here he learned by heart considerable portions of the poems of Heine, neglected to return the call of the rector, and bored himself profusely. It must not be understood that he resented the boredom. That was what life was to be in future, a continuous dreariness. After a brief stay in the village he went off to Paris to study art. At the time when he thought of giving himself to music all noticed his ability in painting. When he took to art they remembered that he had musical talent. A year later, when he returned to England to live the life of a hermit, to teach in song what he had learned in sorrow, some said that he was a lost artist, and some that he was a lost musician, and others that he was a well-defined case of dilettantism. It is, however, difficult to be a hermit in London. London has many tentacles; it puts them out and draws you into the liveliest part of itself. A claim of relationship, an old friendship, a piece of medical advice, a chance meeting—anything may become a tentacle. Almost before he knows it the misanthropical hermit is dragged from his shell and is writing that he has much pleasure in accepting her very kind invitation for the thirteenth, and wonders if that man in Sackville Street will be able to make him some evening clothes in time, his others being not so much clothes as a relic of those pre-hermit days when his wife, his only love, still lived and took him out to dinners, and would have the glass down in the hansoms. The thought that he resented this last action at the time saddens him, but the acceptance is posted. He is drawn into the vortex.

Once in, Edward Morris had to explain to himself how he got there. Nobody else wanted any explanation. Nobody else knew that the first time he took his hostess in to dinner he looked down the long table towards his host's right hand and remembered. His explanation to himself was that he did it to avoid comment. One could not wear one's heart on one's coat sleeve. One must go somewhere and must do something. One must unfortunately live, even when the savour of life has gone. So he lived, and in living the savour of life came back again.

It was on a muggy December evening that he accompanied Lady Marchsea and her eminent husband to a first-night performance. When the eminent man was grumbling at the draught, and Lady Marchsea was, with justification, admiring herself, her dress, and everything that was hers, Edward Morris looked up. Out of the gloom of the box above him a brown-faced girl with dark eyes, her chin leaning on her white gloves, bent forward and looked down.

Yet it was not till the end of the first act that he asked who she was and was told that she was nobody, but was apparently with the Martins, who were very, very dear friends, and would Mr Morris take her round? That was the beginning of it, and the end of it was his engagement to Adela Constantia Graham, who was nobody. Everybody who knew Adela Constantia knew that it was an excellent thing for her—a much wealthier man than she had any reason to expect. Everyone who knew Edward Morris knew that it was the best thing for him. "Ballast," said Lady Marchsea, emphatically, "that is what marriage means to a man like Edward Morris. He needs ballast; something to make him concentrate himself and trust himself; something to encourage him and urge him on."

Her notions of the general uses of ballast were vague, but her conviction was sincere that Edward Morris, happily re-married, would achieve something in one, or possibly in all, of the arts. Her eminent husband said: "Nice sort of man, but no good really." But still he paid for the dinner-service with the sanctifying mark on the bottom of all the plates, which they forwarded to Edward Morris a short time before the wedding—the wedding which never took place.

About a week before the date fixed for that wedding it occurred to Edward Morris in a moment of leisure—he was naturally very busy at the time—that his first wife had been a jealous woman, and he wondered what she would have thought and said if she had been alive. He could laugh at the illogicality. If she had been alive there would have been nothing to think or to say. The haunting face with the chin pressed on the white gloves against the darkness at the back of the box would have been merely a face and nothing more, and would not have haunted. He collected his old love-letters and burned them. Other little relics of his first wife he gathered together, had them placed in a box and deposited at his bankers. The old life was done; the new life was beginning. Yet one night as he stood in a darkened room with Adela Constantia in his arms the door opened with a little quick click some few inches. She stepped back from him, thinking it was a servant, and he turned white, thinking, in a moment of madness, that it was someone else; then he went to the door and opened it wider. No one was there.

The position of the widower who marries again is irritating to him if he be, as Edward Morris was, a man of nice feeling. He has to say, and to believe, that he loves as he never loved in his life before. Scraps of used romance must be whipped up out of his respectable past to set against the virginal fervour of the young woman who has just begun to love him. Yet he feels that all this is an insult to the dead—to the woman who loved him before. A man of the world has a happy habit of forgetting and of ignoring. He may marry for the second or third time quite easily. He takes nothing too seriously. He may order a new overcoat, but he does not feel that the coat will be worthless unless he swears and tries to believe that he never wore a coat like that before. Morris, however, was a sentimentalist, and so he became irritated with himself. The next step inevitably followed. He became irritated with his dead wife. She had got her cold arms round his neck and was dragging him down and holding him back from the joyful development of his life.

When in London it was his custom to visit her grave in Brompton cemetery at regular intervals, once every month. During his engagement to Adela Constantia he made up his mind that this regular visit must be dropped. Some arrangement could be made to have the grave kept in decent order, but he could not go near it again. He remembered having been told a story of a widower who married again and went hand-in-hand with his second wife to stand by the grave of the first. It had been told him as something pathetic. He had never been able to see in it anything but a subject for a humorous paper; Guy de Maupassant would have done wonders with it. He settled the day when the last visit should be made. He selected an appropriate wreath, in which everlastings and dead leaves were symbolically interwoven. But that afternoon more than ever before his hatred to his dead wife grew within him. He recollected her strange belief with regard to cremation. Fire destroyed everything, even the immortal soul, and it seemed as if fire destroyed love too. He remembered that he had burnt her letters. As he drove down Regent Street an old friend, a man whom he had not seen for some time, recognised him. He stopped the cab and his friend came up.

"Why do I never see you now?" said the friend. "But of course I know. Very much engaged aren't you? (That's not bad for an impromptu, by the way.) I suppose you are going there now?"

"No," said Morris, "as a matter of fact I am not."

"Well, you are evidently going somewhere, and you carry a big box with you with a florist's label on it, so all I can say is that if you are not going there you ought to be."

Edward Morris laughed, and to laugh was the last touch of horror.

"Well," the friend said, "if you are really not going to see Miss Graham I have no scruples in annexing you. Come round to the club for a game of billiards."

"Thanks," said Morris, "I am afraid I am very busy this afternoon."

However, he let himself be persuaded. The box containing the wreath was left in the charge of the hall-porter at the club. On the following day Morris despatched the wreath to Brompton cemetery by a messenger-boy, where the symbolical offering was deposited on the grave of Charles Ernest Jessop, who died at the age of two and a half, and of whose death or previous existence Morris was unaware. Messenger-boys are so careless. Morris never even attempted to visit the cemetery again. It was not only anger, it was not only hatred; it was also fear that kept him away. He was assured in his own mind that the dead woman was awake again and was watching him jealously.

The moment when he had just awoken from sleep was always a horrible one for him. The fear of the dead woman was in his mind then and nothing else was very clear. He left the electric light on all night and, as a rule, slept fairly well and without any haunting or painful dreams. But the moment of waking was always a trial. He kept on expecting to see something that he never did see. He would not have wondered if, as he awoke, someone had touched his hand, or the electric light had been suddenly switched off.

Of course everybody noticed that he looked wretchedly ill. Adela Constantia was in despair about his health. There were things about him which were very queer; that he did not like dark rooms. That when he was talking to her he would suddenly look over his shoulder—at nothing. The comforting doctor told her that Morris has been very busy indeed with the preparation for his married life and, the doctor added, a lot of worry upsets the nerves. This is quite true.

On his wedding morning he certainly looked much fitter to be buried than to be married. His best man gave him champagne and told him to hold his head up more. The bride made an adorable and pathetic figure; a beautiful young girl is always a pathetic figure on her wedding-morning. Her sisters fluttered around her, ready to cry at the right moments. Her father looked a little nervous and elated. He had had quite a long talk with Lady Marchsea, whose husband was kept away by the toothache. The ceremony went with its customary brilliance until that point when the bridegroom was required to say: "I, Edward, take thee, Adela Constantia." He said this in a loud voice, but he did not say "Adela Constantia"; he gave another name. There was a moment's pause, and while everybody was looking at everybody he fainted and fell.

At the inquest it was found that the blow on the head from the sharp edge of the stone step satisfactorily accounted for the death. All the evening papers had readable paragraphs headed "Tragic End to a Fashionable Wedding Ceremony."

And Adela Constantia married somebody else.

And the dead woman went to sleep again.

THE UNFINISHED GAME

At Tanslowe, which is on the Thames, I found just the place that I wanted. I had been born in the hotel business, brought up in it, and made my living at it for thirty years. For the last twenty I had been both proprietor and manager, and had worked uncommonly hard, for it is personal attention and plenty of it which makes a hotel pay. I might have retired altogether, for I was a bachelor with no claims on me and had made more money than enough; but that was not what I wanted. I wanted a nice, old-fashioned house, not too big, in a nice place with a longish slack season. I cared very little whether I made it pay or not. The Regency Hotel at Tanslowe was just the thing for me. It would give me a little to do and not too much. Tanslowe was a village, and though there were two or three public-houses, there was no other hotel in the place, nor was any competition likely to come along. I was particular about that, because my nature is such that competition always sets me fighting, and I cannot rest until the other shop goes down. I had reached a time of life when I did want to rest and did not want any more fighting. It was a free house, and I have always had a partiality for being my own master. It had just the class of trade that I liked—principally gentlefolk taking their pleasure in a holiday on the river. It was very cheap, and I like value for money. The house was comfortable, and had a beautiful garden sloping down to the river. I meant to put in some time in that garden—I have a taste that way.

The place was so cheap that I had my doubts. I wondered if it was flooded when the river rose, if it was dropping to pieces with dry-rot, if the drainage had been condemned, if they were going to start a lunatic asylum next door, or what it was. I went into all these points and a hundred more. I found one or two trifling drawbacks, and one expects them in any house, however good—especially when it is an old place like the Regency. I found nothing whatever to stop me from taking the place.

I bought the whole thing, furniture and all, lock, stock and barrel, and moved in. I brought with me my own head-waiter and my man-cook, Englishmen both of them. I knew they would set the thing in the right key. The head-waiter, Silas Goodheart, was just over sixty, with grey hair and a wrinkled face. He was worth more to me than two younger men would have been. He was very precise and rather slow in his movements. He liked bright silver, clean table-linen, and polished glass. Artificial flowers in the vases on his tables would have given him a fit. He handled a decanter of old port as if he loved it—which, as a matter of fact, he did. His manner to visitors was a perfect mixture of dignity, respect and friendliness. If a man did not quite know what he wanted for dinner, Silas had sympathetic and very useful suggestions. He took, I am sure, a real pleasure in seeing people enjoy their luncheon or dinner. Americans loved him, and tipped him out of all proportion. I let him have his own way, even when he gave the thing away.

"Is the coffee all right here?" a customer asked after a good dinner.

"I cannot recommend it," said Silas. "If I might suggest, sir, we have the Chartreuse of the old French shipping."

I overheard that, but I said nothing. The coffee was extract, for there was more work than profit in making it good. As it was, that customer went away pleased, and came back again and again, and brought his friends too. Silas was really the only permanent waiter. When we were busy I got one or two foreigners from London temporarily. Silas soon educated them. My cook, Timbs, was an honest chap, and understood English fare. He seemed hardly ever to eat, and never sat down to a meal; he lived principally on beer, drank enough of it to frighten you, and was apparently never the worse for it. And a butcher who tried to send him second-quality meat was certain of finding out his mistake.

The only other man I brought with me was young Harry Bryden. He always called me uncle, but as a matter of fact he was no relation of mine. He was the son of an old friend. His parents died when he was seven years old and left him to me. It was about all they had to leave. At this time he was twenty-two, and was making himself useful. There was nothing which he was not willing to do, and he could do most things. He would mark at billiards, and played a good game himself. He had run the kitchen when the cook was away on his holiday. He had driven the station-omnibus when the driver was drunk one night. He understood book-keeping, and when I got a clerk who was a wrong 'un, he was on to him at once and saved me money. It was my intention to make him take his proper place more when I got to the Regency; for he was to succeed me when I died. He was clever, and not bad-looking in a gipsy-faced kind of way. Nobody is perfect, and Harry was a cigarette-maniac. He began when he was a boy, and I didn't spare the stick when I caught him at it. But nothing I could say or do made any difference; at twenty-two he was old enough and big enough to have his own way, and his way was to smoke cigarettes eternally. He was a bundle of nerves, and got so jumpy sometimes that some people thought he drank, though he had never in his life tasted liquor. He inherited his nerves from his mother, but I daresay the cigarettes made them worse.

I took Harry down with me when I first thought of taking the place. He went over it with me and made a lot of useful suggestions. The old proprietor had died eighteen months before, and the widow had tried to run it for herself and made a mess of it. She had just sense enough to clear out before things got any worse. She was very anxious to go, and I thought that might have been the reason why the price was so low.

The billiard-room was an annexe to the house, with no rooms over it. We were told that it wasn't used once in a twelvemonth, but we took a look at it—we took a look at everything. The room had got a very neglected look about it. I sat down on the platform—tired with so much walking and standing—and Harry whipped the cover off the table. "This was the one they had in the Ark," he said.

There was not a straight cue in the rack, the balls were worn and untrue, the jigger was broken. Harry pointed to the board. "Look at that, uncle," he said. "Noah had made forty-eight; Ham was doing nicely at sixty-six; and then the Flood came and they never finished." From neatness and force of habit he moved over and turned the score back. "You'll have to spend some money here. My word, if they put the whole lot in at a florin we're swindled." As we came out Harry gave a shiver. "I wouldn't spend a night in there," he said, "not for a five-pound note."

His nerves always made me angry. "That's a very silly thing to say," I told him. "Who's going to ask you to sleep in a billiard-room?"

Then he got a bit more practical, and began to calculate how much I should have to spend to make a bright, up-to-date billiard-room of it. But I was still angry.

"You needn't waste your time on that," I said, "because the place will stop as it is. You heard what Mrs Parker said—that it wasn't used once in a twelvemonth. I don't want to attract all the loafers in Tanslowe into my house. Their custom's worth nothing, and I'd sooner be without it. Time enough to put that room right if I find my staying visitors want it, and people who've been on the river all day are mostly too tired for a game after dinner."

Harry pointed out that it sometimes rained, and there was the winter to think about. He had always got plenty to say, and what he said now had sense in it. But I never go chopping and changing about, and I had made my mind up. So I told him he had got to learn how to manage the house, and not to waste half his time over the billiard-table. I had a good deal done to the rest of the house in the way of redecorating and improvements, but I never touched the annexe.

The next time I saw the room was the day after we moved in. I was alone, and I thought it certainly did look a dingy hole as compared with the rest of the house. Then my eye happened to fall on the board, and it still showed sixty-six—forty-eight, as it had done when I entered the room with Harry three months before. I altered the board myself this time. To me it was only a funny coincidence; another game had been played there and had stopped exactly at the same point. But I was glad Harry was not with me, for it was the kind of thing that would have made him jumpier than ever.

It was the summer time and we soon had something to do. I had been told that motor-cars had cut into the river trade a good deal; so I laid myself out for the motorist. Tanslowe was just a nice distance for a run from town before lunch. It was all in the old-fashioned style, but there was plenty of choice and the stuff was good; and my wine-list was worth consideration. Prices were high, but people will pay when they are pleased with the way they are treated. Motorists who had been once came again and sent their friends. Saturday to Monday we had as much as ever we could do, and more than I had ever meant to do. But I am built like that—once I am in a shop I have got to run it for all it's worth.

I had been there about a month, and it was about the height of our season, when one night, for no reason that I could make out, I couldn't get to sleep. I had turned in, tired enough, at half-past ten, leaving Harry to shut up and see the lights out, and at a quarter past twelve I was still awake. I thought to myself that a pint of stout and a biscuit might be the cure for that. So I lit my candle and went down to the bar. The gas was out on the staircase and in the passages, and all was quiet. The door into the bar was locked, but I had thought to bring my pass-key with me. I had just drawn my tankard of stout when I heard a sound that made me put the tankard down and listen again.

The billiard-room door was just outside in the passage, and there could not be the least doubt that a game was going on. I could hear the click-click of the balls as plainly as possible. It surprised me a little, but it did not startle me. We had several staying in the house, and I supposed two of them had fancied a game. All the time that I was drinking the stout and munching my biscuit the game went on—click, click-click, click. Everybody has heard the sound hundreds of times standing outside the glass-pannelled door of a billiard-room and waiting for the stroke before entering. No other sound is quite like it.

Suddenly the sound ceased. The game was over. I had nothing on but my pyjamas and a pair of slippers, and I thought I would get upstairs again before the players came out. I did not want to stand there shivering and listening to complaints about the table. I locked the bar, and took a glance at the billiard-room door as I was about to pass it. What I saw made me stop short. The glass panels of the door were as black as my Sunday hat, except where they reflected the light of my candle. The room, then, was not lit up, and people do not play billiards in the dark. After a second or two I tried the handle. The door was locked. It was the only door to the room.

I said to myself: "I'll go on back to bed. It must have been my fancy, and there was nobody playing billiards at all." I moved a step away, and then I said to myself again: "I know perfectly well that a game was being played. I'm only making excuses because I'm in a funk."

That settled it. Having driven myself to it, I moved pretty quickly. I shoved in my pass-key, opened the door, and said "Anybody there?" in a moderately loud voice that sounded somehow like another man's. I am very much afraid that I should have jumped if there had come any answer to my challenge, but all was silent. I took a look round. The cover was on the table. An old screen was leaning against it; it had been put there to be out of the way. As I moved my candle the shadows of things slithered across the floor and crept up the walls. I noticed that the windows were properly fastened, and then, as I held my candle high, the marking-board seemed to jump out of the darkness. The score recorded was sixty-six—forty-eight.

I shut the door, locked it again, and went up to my room. I did these things slowly and deliberately, but I was frightened and I was puzzled. One is not at one's best in the small hours.

The next morning I tackled Silas.

"Silas," I said, "what do you do when gentlemen ask for the billiard-room?"

"Well, sir," said Silas, "I put them off if I can. Mr Harry directed me to, the place being so much out of order."

"Quite so," I said. "And when you can't put them off?"

"Then they just try it, sir, and the table puts them off. It's very bad. There's been no game played there since we came."

"Curious," I said. "I thought I heard a game going on last night."

"I've heard it myself, sir, several times. There being no light in the room, I've put it down to a loose ventilator. The wind moves it and it clicks."

"That'll be it," I said. Five minutes later I had made sure that there was no loose ventilator in the billiard-room. Besides, the sound of one ball striking another is not quite like any other sound. I also went up to the board and turned the score back, which I had omitted to do the night before. Just then Harry passed the door on his way from the bar, with a cigarette in his mouth as usual. I called him in.

"Harry," I said, "give me thirty, and I'll play you a hundred up for a sovereign. You can tell one of the girls to fetch our cues from upstairs."

Harry took his cigarette out of his mouth and whistled. "What, uncle!" he said. "Well, you're going it, I don't think. What would you have said to me if I'd asked you for a game at ten in the morning?"

"Ah!" I said, "but this is all in the way of business. I can't see much wrong with the table, and if I can play on it, then other people may. There's a chance to make a sovereign for you anyhow. You've given me forty-five and a beating before now."

"No, uncle," he said, "I wouldn't give you thirty. I wouldn't give you one. The table's not playable. Luck would win against Roberts on it."

He showed me the faults of the thing and said he was busy. So I told him if he liked to lose the chance of making a sovereign he could.

"I hate that room," he said, as we came out. "It's not too clean, and it smells like a vault."

"It smells a lot better than your cigarettes," I said.

For the next six weeks we were all busy, and I gave little thought to the billiard-room. Once or twice I heard old Silas telling a customer that he could not recommend the table, and that the whole room was to be redecorated and refitted as soon as we got the estimates. "You see, sir, we've only been here a little while, and there hasn't been time to get everything as we should like it quite yet."

One day Mrs Parker, the woman who had the Regency before me, came down from town to see how we were getting on. I showed the old lady round, pointed out my improvements, and gave her a bit of lunch in my office.

"Well, now," I said, as she sipped her glass of port afterwards, "I'm not complaining of my bargain, but isn't the billiard-room a bit queer?"

"It surprises me," she said, "that you've left it as it is. Especially with everything else going ahead, and the yard half full of motors. I should have taken it all down myself if I'd stopped. That iron roof's nothing but an eyesore, and you might have a couple of beds of geraniums there and improve the look of your front."

"Let's see," I said. "What was the story about that billiard-room?"

"What story do you mean?" she said, looking at me suspiciously.

"The same one you're thinking of," I said.

"About that man, Josiah Ham?"

"That's it."

"Well, I shouldn't worry about that if I were you. That was all thirty years ago, and I doubt if there's a soul in Tanslowe knows it now. Best forgotten, I say. Talk of that kind doesn't do a hotel any good. Why, how did you come to hear of it?"

"That's just it," I said. "The man who told me was none too clear. He gave me a hint of it. He was an old commercial passing through, and had known the place in the old days. Let's hear your story and see if it agrees with his."

But I had told my fibs to no purpose. The old lady seemed a bit flustered. "If you don't mind, Mr Sanderson, I'd rather not speak of it."

I thought I knew what was troubling her. I filled her glass and my own. "Look here," I said. "When you sold the place to me it was a fair deal. You weren't called upon to go thirty years back, and no reasonable man would expect it. I'm satisfied. Here I am, and here I mean to stop, and twenty billiard-rooms wouldn't drive me away. I'm not complaining. But, just as a matter of curiosity, I'd like to hear your story."

"What's your trouble with the room?"

"Nothing to signify. But there's a game played there and marked there—and I can't find the players, and it's never finished. It stops always at sixty-six—forty-eight."

She gave a glance over her shoulder. "Pull the place down," she said. "You can afford to do it, and I couldn't." She finished her port. "I must be going, Mr Sanderson. There's rain coming on, and I don't want to sit in the train in my wet things. I thought I would just run down to see how you were getting on, and I'm sure I'm glad to see the old place looking up again."

I tried again to get the story out of her, but she ran away from it. She had not got the time, and it was better not to speak of such things. I did not worry her about it much, as she seemed upset over it.

I saw her across to the station, and just got back in time. The rain came down in torrents. I stood there and watched it, and thought it would do my garden a bit of good. I heard a step behind me and looked round. A fat chap with a surly face stood there, as if he had just come out of the coffee-room. He was the sort that might be a gentleman and might not.

"Afternoon, sir," I said. "Nasty weather for motoring."

"It is," he said. "Not that I came in a motor. You the proprietor, Mr Sanderson?"

"I am," I said. "Came here recently."

"I wonder if there's any chance of a game of billiards."

"I'm afraid not," I said. "Table's shocking. I'm having it all done up afresh, and then—"

"What's it matter?" said he. "I don't care. It's something to do, and one can't go out."

"Well," I said, "if that's the case, I'll give you a game, sir. But I'm no flyer at it at the best of times, and I'm all out of practice now."

"I'm no good myself. No good at all. And I'd be glad of the game."

At the billiard-room door I told him I'd fetch a couple of decent cues. He nodded and went in.

When I came back with my cue and Harry's, I found the gas lit and the blinds drawn, and he was already knocking the balls about.

"You've been quick, sir," I said, and offered him Harry's cue. But he refused and said he would keep the one he had taken from the rack. Harry would have sworn if he had found that I had lent his cue to a stranger, so I thought that was just as well. Still, it seemed to me that a man who took a twisted cue by preference was not likely to be an expert.

The table was bad, but not so bad as Harry had made out. The luck was all my side. I was fairly ashamed of the flukes I made, one after the other. He said nothing, but gave a short, loud laugh once or twice—it was a nasty-sounding laugh. I was at thirty-seven when he was nine, and I put on eleven more at my next visit and thought I had left him nothing.

Then the fat man woke up. He got out of his first difficulty, and after that the balls ran right for him. He was a player, too, with plenty of variety and resource, and I could see that I was going to take a licking. When he had reached fifty-one, an unlucky kiss left him an impossible position. But I miscued, and he got going again. He played very, very carefully now, taking a lot more time for consideration than he had done in his previous break. He seemed to have got excited over it, and breathed hard, as fat men do when they are worked up. He had kept his coat on, and his face shone with perspiration.

At sixty-six he was in trouble again; he walked round to see the exact position, and chalked his cue. I watched him rather eagerly, for I did not like the score. I hoped he would go on. His cue slid back to strike, and then dropped with a clatter from his hand. The fat man was gone—gone, as I looked at him, like a flame blown out, vanished into nothing.

I staggered away from the table. I began to back slowly towards the door, meaning to make a bolt for it. There was a click from the scoring-board, and I saw the thing marked up. And then—I am thankful to say—the billiard-room door opened, and I saw Harry standing there. He was very white and shaky. Somehow, the fact that he was frightened helped to steady me.