London Lavender

CHAPTER XXV

IN WHICH WE MAKE THE MISTAKE OF PREFERRING "RICH EYES" TO COMFORT, AND TASTE THE QUESTIONABLE PLEASURES OF A MINUTE REPUBLIC

We made an excursion or so, but not with any avidity; the sea was too good to leave, and it was the sea that we had come all this way to enjoy, as one cannot enjoy it at home except on days that are so few and far between as by their very rarity to make for misgivings rather than delight. It was also so hot that to be in the train at all was a distress, while to be in the train in the middle hours was martyrdom; and to be in a strange town in the middle hours was discomfort too. But as it seemed wrong to be so near Ravenna and not see it, we made a great effort and were away before seven one lovely morning. It was a day of interesting sights and associations; but how the call of the placid, wet exhilarating Adriatic sounded in our ears the while!

Ravenna has had two immense losses: first the sea, which gradually withdrew from the town centuries ago; and then the Pinetum, which, after centuries of existence, was burned down not many years since. The nearness of such a forest must have both sweetened and cooled the city; to-day its heat can be pitiless.

The two lodestars of Ravenna are the exile poets Dante and Byron—but Dante, of course, far outshines that other. Byron is an accident here; Dante gives Ravenna most of its lustre, for here he made his home for many years after Florence turned him forth; here he wrote most of the "Divine Comedy"; here he died. We saw his tomb, and afterwards we saw his bones in their wooden coffin in the library of the old Camaldulensian monastery of Classe, now a civic building with an immense collection of Dante literature. Here, too, we were shown by the custodian a little illuminated Book of Hours that belonged to Mary Queen of Scots, and is as pretty as a Kate Greenaway calendar and indeed rather like one; but how it came to be at Ravenna, I cannot say. And where it ought to be, were there a general restitution of foreign treasures to their rightful situations, I cannot say either.

One other thing we saw in this museum—the bedstead on which Garibaldi's wife, Anita, died in 1849, during the flight from the Austrians; and a few minutes later we saw a little company of Garibaldi's veterans, lame and decrepit, place a wreath on the patriot's statue, just by the Hotel Byron, amid apathy which would be striking anywhere, but among Italians was astounding. Not a soul but ourselves and some errand boys watched or followed.

We had lunch at the Hotel Byron, in a vast salon, on the polished floor of which I seemed to hear his capricious lordship's club foot; for this was his home for two years, in 1819-1821, when it was called the Palazzo Rasponi, and here he consoled himself with his large, blonde, stupid Guiccioli; here he wrote myriad letters to Murray; and here Shelley stayed with him and despatched that amusing missive to Thomas Love Peacock, detailing not only the spoiled poet's extraordinary habits but also his extraordinary house-mates. "Lord Byron gets up at two. I get up, quite contrary to my usual custom, but one must sleep or die, like Southey's sea-snake in 'Kehama,' at twelve. After breakfast we sit talking till six. From six till eight we gallop through the pine forests which divide Ravenna from the sea; we then come home and dine, and sit up gossiping till six in the morning. I don't suppose this will kill me in a week or fortnight, but I shall not try it longer. Lord B.'s establishment consists, besides servants, of ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it.... After I have sealed my letter, I find that my enumeration of the animals in this Circean Palace was defective, and that in a material point. I have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks, two guinea hens, and an Egyptian crane. I wonder who all these animals were before they were changed into these shapes." Odd to have this letter in one's mind in this now highly respectable building, where the only animals are men, women, and waiters.

For the rest, I think now of Ravenna chiefly as a city of mosaic churches under a sky of brass, and wonder and wonder how—even with the Pinetum and the abounding Guiccioli—Byron can have been willing to stay there so long.

We returned from the little wayside station of Classe, a mile or so outside Ravenna, in order to visit the vast deserted fane of Sant' Apollinaris in Classe Fuori, which rears its huge bulk from the plain like a mammoth. This basilica was built in the sixth century and seems likely to stand for fourteen centuries more, if permitted to; it is empty and forlorn, with a wretched old custodian to open the doors upon its lost magnificence, for though the mosaics remain, our friend Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta of Rimini carried off its marble in 1449. Past this church rode Byron almost daily on his way to the pine forest.

On another day we drove from Rimini to San Marino—a day ill-spent indeed, for the sun shone, and our backs were to the sea all the way there, and returning it was too late for bathing. Why does one do these things? In England one can resist the deadly lure of the excursion; but abroad, no.

San Marino means two horses and a carriage with an awning—in our case two carriages with awnings and four horses, at twenty-five lire the carriage. And for what? For a long, dull, dusty drive between vineyards to a baking rock and back again. This rock is the centre of the republic of San Marino, and I do not deny that its little city is piled bravely upon it; but the wise traveller will permit the camera to make the journey for him. Having left Rimini at seven we were there by half-past ten, and we had not been within the gates twenty minutes before I found one of the drivers and told him that we would return at once. Idle breath! No one returns at once, or does anything at once, in these parts. Impossible, he said. The horses were worn out with the journey. The sun was too powerful. We could leave at three—not a moment sooner. Here then we remained, bound to this blistering crag, like so many Prometheus's, for four hours; while the sea sparkled for us only ten miles away. As a matter of fact, we could have got off earlier had I known and insisted. It was not the fatigue of the horses, it was not the heat, that detained us; but one of the drivers was courting a San Marino girl.

I warn all intending visitors to San Marino that after having bought some of its absurd postage-stamps, on the sale of which it subsists, and attempted to eat its inferior food, there is, in hot weather, nothing whatever to do. To climb to the citadel is too exhausting; to explore the public buildings is impossible, after Rimini's cathedral, for if there is one more ridiculous thing than another it is a toy republic. San Marino once belonged to Urbino, and, declining to be joined to the Papal states in 1631, it has remained independent. The population is about ten thousand, chiefly peasants, who scratch the rock with hoes and breed cattle, and the Government consists of a Grand Council of sixty life members, of which a third are nobles, while a smaller Supreme Council of twelve are chosen from these. You see them on the picture post-cards, which compete with the stamps for the money of the stranger, and it is a few minutes' beguilement to endeavour to set the point of a pin between the nobles and the others.

So what did we do? We sat on a little balcony of the inn, overlooking a tiny piazza, and watched such life as the place has, which became almost galvanic when, after a terrible cracking of whips, a mule rounded the corner dragging behind it a water-cart, and all the republicans swarmed about this cart with vessels in which to carry off the precious fluid at so much a litre.

That was the last of our follies. For the rest of the time we were in Rimini we made Rimini suffice—bathing or watching the sea and its serene yellow sails all the day, and afterwards taking short lazy walks in the cool of the evening—now beside the river, from the bridge to the harbour mouth and back again, past all the activities of this little port of fishermen; now round the walls of the town; now in the by-streets; and now down to the sea again, after dinner, to see the moon and perhaps hear a little music.

Except for mosquito bites we all kept well, in spite of the heat and in defiance of the prophecies of many friends, who took the gloomiest views of Italian drinking water. But the mosquitoes! There is no preparation against mosquitoes sold by Italian chemists that we did not rub on our luckless skins; yet all in vain. We came at last to believe that it is an Italian form of humour, this preparation, under the name of preventives, of expensive delicacies dear to the mosquito palate—an Italian joke against the English. Be that as it may, nothing did any good; while as for the little cones which we burned at night, filling the room with a thick aromatic smoke guaranteed to disgust these insects more than anything else, I used to wake up and hear them drawing great draughts of it into their lungs as if it were ozone.

CHAPTER XXVI

IN WHICH TWO MODERN LOVERS LAY THEIR CASES BEFORE ME AND I DO NOTHING FOR EITHER

I have had two lovers to see me: such different ones too. The first was Dollie Heathcote, very nervous—for him; which means that his eyeglass dropped ten times in a quarter of an hour instead of only five times. If he would wear a cord this would not matter; but as he has an objection to do so, a great deal of his time is spent on the floor, which, in one so thoughtful of the knees of his trousers, is a curious anomaly.

"Look here, Mr. Falconer," said Dollie, "you know the world and you're married. What do you advise me to do? Do you think I'm really a marrying man?"

"Not impetuously," I replied.

"Oh," he said, "no rotting. You see, it's like this. I'm awfully keen on Ann and she's keen on me, I believe, but I've had a bit of a facer lately. There's my brother Dick, for example, a much better sort than I am—much steadier and domesticated and all that—well, he's just left his wife for no other reason than because he's tired of her. Whether there's anyone else, I don't know; fellows at the Club tell me there always is. But Dick swears there isn't. Anyway, he's gone. That's one thing. Another thing is that I had a fearful jaw the other day from an old aunt of mine who says it's the cruellest and wickedest thing there is to be engaged to a girl for a long time and not marry her; because the girl's losing the best years of her life. That set me thinking, because don't you see there's always the possibility that Ann, although she doesn't mind knocking about with me, might, if she were free, meet some other Johnnie whom she would want to marry at once."

"How would you like to see her doing that?" I asked.

"Oh, I couldn't stand it," said Dollie.

"Then why don't you marry now?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "for one thing, Ann doesn't seem to want to, and for another, I don't much want to myself."

"But you're so keen on her, you say," I remarked.

"Yes, of course I am. But the word husband's so stuffy."

I groaned for the younger generation.

"Yes," he went on, "I'm glad you agree with me. And there's something so ghastly in the thought of settling down, don't you know."

"Well, that's what so many people like—the settlement of it. But look at your friend Farrar, he's not exactly a home-bird, yet he and his wife seem very happy, and they lead, married, very much the same life that you do, unmarried."

"That's true," said Dollie. "But he's Farrar, and I'm not. I'm another Johnnie altogether—the sort that's ever so much happier engaged than he will be when he's married; and so's Ann, I believe; but the silly thing about it is that we're only so happy now because the idea is we're going to be married—otherwise she wouldn't be allowed to go about with me at all. Isn't that what you call a bally paradox? But anyhow, what do you advise?"

"Suppose I were to say," I replied, "that my advice to you was to marry at once."

He started nervously. "Oh, I say," he said. "Not really. But that would be awfully risky, you know. Look at poor old Dick—suppose I got tired like that too? And it's not impossible, you know. Why, I was awfully fond of Naomi once, and then you remember Miss Verity. I was fearfully gone there for a while. Do you really think I ought to make the plunge?"

"Then suppose," I said, "that my advice was, go to Ann and say that you have realized that you don't love her enough"—he started nervously again—"and wish to break off your engagement."

"Oh, but," he said, "I don't. I should be miserable without her. And so would she."

"Well," I said, "since no practical advice would meet your views, as I suspected, the only thing I can give is a sermon, or address, on the dangers of the new cult of diversion which deprives the character of any intensity, and leave you to draw the right moral. But I'm not going to do that. You are both obviously very weak in what the phrenologists call philo-progenitiveness. If you could only develope that bump the problem would solve itself. That, however, is a counsel of perfection. My advice, then, is this: in the words of an illustrious statesman, cultivate an attitude of expectant hesitancy."

Dollie looked very blank.

"Put in another way," I said, "wait and see."

"Oh, I say," he said, "no chaff!"

"But I really mean it," I said.

"Honour bright?" he asked.

"Absolutely," I said.

"Thanks awfully," he replied, shaking my hand. "Tophole. That's a great load off my mind."

I was glad to see him go.

The bore about the people who ask for advice is that they never tell everything; and it is just the reservations that make the case complex.

The second lover was poor Spanton.

"How's Nancy?" I asked.

His face fell. "As a matter of fact," he said, "I wanted to see you about Nancy. She has broken off our engagement. I had her letter this morning, and of course I went down at once to put the matter right. You see, she has been away on a visit and must have come under some foolish influence. She's a very impressionable girl. I couldn't get her to admit this, but I'm sure it's the case. Nothing that I said was any good. For the moment she is out of her mind, I think. She simply refused to discuss it, merely saying that she had discovered that she did not feel for me as deeply as she ought to if we were to marry. So absurd to talk like that at her age and with her inexperience, when, as I told her, I had deliberately chosen her—picked her out from all the other girls I knew."

Luckily he sprang up at this moment and began to pace about, or he would have seen my face.

"I went on to remind her," he continued, "of the campaign we had planned for ourselves—my great social amelioration programme—and showed her how she was breaking faith not only with me, but with the country, the race. Useless. She merely repeated her original phrase like a parrot. I left her and appealed to Mr. Freeland, but he said he should not interfere. Nancy was old enough to know. Don't worry her now, he said: give her another week's holiday. I saw Mrs. Freeland, who is, of course, as you must have noticed, desperately out of date; and she, too, declined to fight for me. She was very sorry, she said, and hoped that Nancy knew her own mind; but how much better to discover a mistake early rather than late! You know how people always say this, and when it is a mistake I agree with them; but this is not a mistake, but the simulacrum of a mistake. How can Nancy know her own mind when she has not got one? She is a dear, sweet girl, and I was devoted to her—am devoted to her—but she has no mind. It was I who was to give her that."

What was I to say to him? Was I to say—what was of course evident to anyone but himself—that she had found some simple fellow on her own level whom she liked better? Was I to say, "You silly young ass, you deserve to lose her for not taking her as she was and loving that, instead of playing the dictator and unsexing her? For the best thing in the world is a pretty, affectionate girl true to her nature, and the silliest thing is a pretty, affectionate girl pretending to be something she is not."

Either of these speeches I might have made, but instead I sympathized with him and advised him to wait a little longer before confessing complete failure.

"No," he said; "her attitude was final. I don't feel as if I could reopen the matter. All those laughing sisters, too."

(I liked to hear that human note.)

"No, I shall go abroad for a while and then gather up the fragments and begin again. But of course I shan't marry now. That's the end of women for me."

And with these words, which the ironical gods must be so tired of hearing, he strode away.

It was, I must admit, a little to my relief. It is difficult to take these perplexities of other persons seriously. One somehow has the feeling that one's own wedding should be the last.

Spanton does not admit that he has been in any way to blame about Nancy. He is still the same ardent futurist, unshaken in anything but woman's stability (in which, however, of course; he never had much belief); yet, none the less, when we were on a motor bus the other day, bowling down the Hampstead Road like an avalanche, I saw a wistful expression come into his face as he watched two lovers on the seat in front of us. They were quite common, from the superior point of view, he a shop assistant or clerk and she a clerk or shop assistant, and her engagement ring was only a pearl surrounded by five little turquoises; but they were as near as possible to each other, and one happiness did for both, and the only words I caught were his, in a lull in the racket made by our terrible vehicle, when he finished a sentence by saying, "And of course I shall have to obey you then." A sickening sentiment for Spanton to hear, yet none the less, although a spasm crossed his face, it did not kill the wistful look.

What I am now wondering is whether he has learnt anything from what has happened. Because, of course, many of us learn so badly, and Spanton is so lacking in humility, which is the seed-of-learning's most fruitful soil. That Nancy has made no mistake, I feel convinced; nor will any bitterness be hers. There she is fortunate. One of the hardest things in life, and for women, is that it is only by failing to

CHAPTER XXVII

IN WHICH A COMPANY OF INTELLIGENT AND FOR THE MOST PART CONCEITED MEN MEET MORE THAN THEIR MATCH

I still tingle with mortification over an experience at Dabney's last evening, the only satisfaction being that others tingle with me. We were talking of the supernatural—that unprofitable but endlessly alluring theme—and most of us had cited an instance, without, however, producing much effect. Among the strangers to me was a little man with an anxious white face, whom Rudson-Wayte had brought, and he watched each speaker with the closest attention, but said nothing. Then Dabney, wishing to include him in the talk, turned to him and asked if he had no experience to relate, no story that contained an inexplicable element.

He thought a moment. "Well," he said, "not a story in the ordinary sense of the word: nothing, that is, from hearsay, like most of your examples. Truth, I always hold, is not only vastly stranger than fiction, but also vastly more interesting. I could tell you an occurrence which happened to me personally, and which oddly enough completed itself only this afternoon."

We begged him to begin.

"A year or two ago," he said, "I was in rooms in Great Ormond Street—an old house on the Holborn side. The bedroom walls had been distempered by a previous tenant, but the place was damp and great patches of discoloration had broken out. One of these—as indeed often happens—was exactly like a human face; but more faithfully and startlingly like than is customary. Lying in bed in the morning, putting off getting up, I used to watch it and watch it, and gradually I came to think of it as real—as my fellow-lodger, in fact. The odd thing was that while the patches on the walls grew larger and changed their contours, this never did. It remained identically the same.

"While there, I had a very bad attack of influenza, with complications, and all day long I had nothing to do but read or meditate, and it was then that this face began to get a firmer hold of me. It grew more and more real and remarkable. I may say that it dominated my thoughts day and night. There was a curious turn to the nose, and the slant of the forehead was unique. It was, in fact, full of individuality: the face of a man apart, a man in a thousand.

"Well, I got better, but the face still controlled me. I found myself searching the streets for one like it. Somewhere, I was convinced, the real man must exist, and him I must meet. Why, I had no notion: I only knew that he and I were in some way linked by fate. I frequented places where men congregate in large numbers—political meetings, football matches, the railway stations when the suburban trains pour forth their legions on the City in the morning, and receive them again in the evening. But all in vain. I had never before realized as I then did how many different faces of man there are and how few. For all differ, and yet, classified, they belong to only as many groups as you can count on your hands.

"The search became a mania with me. I neglected everything else. I stood at busy corners watching the crowd until people thought me crazy, and the police began to know me and be suspicious. Women I never glanced at: men, men, men, all the time."

He passed his hand wearily over his brow. "And then," he continued, "at last I saw him. He was in a taxi driving east along Piccadilly. I turned and ran beside it for a little way and then saw an empty one coming. 'Follow that taxi,' I gasped, and leaped in. The driver managed to keep it in sight and it took us to Charing Cross. I rushed on to the platform and found my man with two ladies and a little girl. They were going to France by the 2.20. I hung about to try and get a word with him, but in vain. Other friends had joined the party, and they moved to the train in a solid body.

"I hastily purchased a ticket to Folkestone, hoping that I should catch him on the boat before it sailed; but at Folkestone he got on board before me with his friends, and they disappeared into a large private saloon, several cabins thrown into one. Evidently he was a man of wealth.

"Again I was foiled; but I determined to cross too, feeling certain that when the voyage had begun he would leave the ladies and come out for a stroll on the deck. I had only just enough for the single fare to Boulogne, but nothing could shake me now. I took up my position opposite the saloon door and waited. After half an hour the door opened and he came out, but with the little girl. My heart beat so that it seemed to shake the boat more than the propeller. There was no mistaking the face—every line was the same. He glanced at me and moved towards the companion-way for the upper deck. It was now or never, I felt.

"'Excuse me,' I stammered, 'but do you mind giving me your card? I have a very important reason for wishing to communicate with you.'

"He seemed to be astonished, as indeed well he might; but he complied. With extreme deliberation he took out his case and handed me his card and hurried on with the little girl. It was clear that he thought me a lunatic and considered it wiser to humour me than not.

"Clutching the card I hurried to a deserted corner of the ship and read it. My eyes dimmed; my head swam; for on it were the words: Mr. Ormond Wall, with an address at Pittsburg, U.S.A. I remember no more until I found myself in a hospital at Boulogne. There I lay in a broken condition for some weeks, and only a month ago did I return."

He was silent.

We looked at him and at one another and waited. All the other talk of the evening was nothing compared with the story of the little pale man.

"I went back," he resumed after a moment or so, "to Great Ormond Street and set to work to discover all I could about this American in whose life I had so mysteriously intervened. I wrote to Pittsburg; I wrote to American editors; I cultivated the society of Americans in London; but all that I could find out was that he was a millionaire with English parents who had resided in London. But where? To that question I received no answer.

"And so the time went on until yesterday morning. I had gone to bed more than usually tired and slept till late. When I woke the sun was streaming in the room. As I always do, I looked at once at the wall on which the face is to be seen. I rubbed my eyes and sprang up in alarm. It was only faintly visible. Last night it had been as clear as ever—almost I could hear it speak. And now it was but a ghost of itself.

"I got up dazed and dejected and went out. The early editions of the evening papers were already out, and on the contents bill I saw, 'American Millionaire's Motor Accident.' You must all of you have seen it. I bought it and read at once what I knew I should read. Mr. Ormond Wall, the Pittsburg millionaire and party, motoring from Spezzia to Pisa, had come into collision with a wagon and were overturned; Mr. Wall's condition was critical.

"I went back to my room still dazed, and sat on the bed looking with unseeing eyes at the face on the wall. And even as I looked, suddenly it completely disappeared.

"Later I found that Mr. Wall had succumbed to his injuries at what I take to be that very moment."

Again he was silent.

"Most remarkable," we said; "most extraordinary," and so forth, and we meant it too.

"Yes," said the stranger. "There are three extraordinary, three most remarkable, things about my story. One is that it should be possible for the discoloration in a lodging-house in London not only to form the features of a gentleman in America, but to have this intimate association with his existence. It will take Science some time to explain that. Another is that that gentleman's name should bear any relation to the spot on which his features were being so curiously reproduced by some mysterious agency. Is it not so?"

We agreed with him, and our original discussion on supernatural manifestations set in again with increased excitement, during which the narrator of the amazing experience rose and said good-night. Just as he was at the door, one of the company—I rejoice to think it was Spanton—recalled us to the cause of our excited debate by asking him, before he left, what he considered the third extraordinary thing in connection with his deeply interesting story. "You said three things, you know," Spanton reminded him.

"Oh, the third thing," he said, as he opened the door, "I was forgetting that. The third extraordinary thing about the story is that I made it up about half an hour ago. Good-night, again."

After coming to our senses we looked round for Rudson-Wayte, who had brought this snake to bite our bosoms, but he too had disappeared.

CHAPTER XXVIII

IN WHICH WE LOSE A FEW CENTURIES AND FIND A LIVING-PICTURE BY SIR DAVID WILKIE

The Director in his search for primitive English music had tidings of two old Morris dancers in an Oxfordshire village, survivals from the past when the whole of that county fostered the art, and he took me to see them. Never have I spent a more curious evening.

We left the train at Bicester late on a golden afternoon, and were driven to a little hamlet a few miles distant where the old fellows lived. They were brothers: one a widower of seventy, still lissom, and the other a bachelor of sixty-seven, bent and stiff; and with them when we arrived was another elderly man, a little their junior, blowing and beating away at his pipe and tabor as though dear life depended upon it.

Unfamiliar music these ancient instruments give forth, and I defy anyone hearing it to keep his feet still. They are not the drum and fife by any means, although those are the nearest things to them to-day, nor are they like the old magic drum and pipes of the "Punch and Judy" man (never to be heard again, alas, with a beating heart); but something between the two, with a suggestion of rollick or even madness added. I heard the sounds while we were still approaching the cottage and had no notion what they were; and the strangeness of their melody was increased by the player's total disregard of our entry, although it was a tune that might have ended anywhere. The pipe and tabor have now passed into the limbo of musical archaisms, but it was absurd to allow them to do so. There are certain effects on the stage that no other instruments could so well achieve, and their invitation to the dance is in a simpler way not less commanding than Weber's.

The old fellow played both instruments simultaneously; his left hand at once fingering the three holes of the pipe and supporting the string to which the tabor was suspended, while his right held the little stick with which he unceasingly beat it. For the twain are never separated.

Upon his stopping at last—and I for one could have heard him, uninterfering, for hours—we had a little talk as to his repertory and so forth, until, having changed their boots, the venerable capering brethren were ready. The elder one, Eli, was bright of eye and still very light on his feet; but the younger, Jack, creaked a little. Eli had a gentle smile ever on his curved lips, and as he danced his eyes looked into the past; Jack kept a fixed unseeing gaze on the musician. Together, or alone, they went through several of the old favourites—"Shepherds, Hey," "Maid of the Mill," "Old Mother Oxford," "Step back," "Lumps of Plum-pudding," "Green Garters"—and it was strange to sit in that little, flagged Oxfordshire kitchen, with its low ceiling and smoky walls, and watch these simple movements and hear those old tunes. More than strange; for as they continued, and the pipe and tabor continued, I became conscious of a new feeling. For the Morris dance is like nothing else. It is as different from the old English dance as that is different from the steps of the corps de ballet. It is the simplest thing there is, the most naïve. Or, if you are in that mood, it is the most stupid; jigging rather than dancing, and very monotonous. But after a little while it begins to cast its spell, in which monotony plays no small part, and one comes in time to hope that nothing will ever happen to interrupt it and force one back into real life again.

The feeling became positively uncanny when old Jack, the bent one, jigging alone, still with his eyes fixed on the musician, but seeing nothing nearer than 1870, began to touch his body here and there in the course of the movements of the dance, every touch having a profound mystical meaning, of which he knew nothing, that probably dated from remotest times, when these very steps were part of a religious or ecstatic celebration of fecundity. Odd sight for a party of twentieth century dilettanti in an Oxfordshire kitchen!

The occasion was not only curious but pathetic too; one saw after a while not these dancers, so old and past the joy of life, but the dancers as once they were, when, forty years ago, they would set out in a team every Whitsuntide, six in all, to dance the Morris in other villages, and sleep in a barn all so jolly, and drink the good ale provided by the farmers, and each strive to be the most agile and untiring for the sake of a pair of pretty Oxfordshire eyes.

Forty years ago!

Asked if there were any others who still remembered the steps, they said no. "We be the last, us be," said Eli, in his soft, melancholy voice. "All the others be dead."

The brothers described, each fortifying the other and helped by the promptings and leading questions of the Director, the ritual of the Morris as they remembered it. A lamb would be led about by a shepherd, and behind this lamb they danced. At night the lamb was killed and the joints distributed. Most was eaten, but portions were buried in the fields. Why, the old men had no notion; they had never heard. But the Director knew, although he did not explain.

For upwards of an hour these energetic enthusiasts continued to dance, sometimes without a hitch, and then again with hesitations and arguments as to the next step or movement. What thoughts were theirs, I wondered. Since he had last danced Eli had married, had had children, had seen his children grow up and his wife die. Yet I am certain that as he skipped and capered on those flagstones in the cottage where he was born, his personality was that rather of a young man than an old. And then the music stopped and he ceased to wave his handkerchief and spring from foot to foot, and he sank into a chair and the light left his face and wistful old age settled over it again.

I congratulated him on his sprightliness, and again asked his age, to make sure.

"Seventy," he said. "I shall be seventy-one in July if I live. If I live," he added, after a while.

"Of course you'll live," I said. "You're good for many years yet and many more dances."

He shook his head.

That he thinks of his end a good deal, I am sure; but never morbidly, or with any affectation of sadness, but with the peasant's quiet acceptance of the fact. All his life he has been a tiller of the soil: the same soil, year after year, turning it afresh, sowing it afresh, gathering the harvest afresh, and then beginning all over again—the best school for patience and acceptivity.

And so, after some ale had been brought, we said good-night and drove away, for Oxford and London again, or, in other words, for the twentieth century.

CHAPTER XXIX

IN WHICH NAOMI COMMUNICATES A TREMENDOUS PIECE OF NEWS, AND "PLACIDA" FIGHTS IT OUT WITH "LAVENDER" AND LOSES

Naomi was very quiet at breakfast and, I thought, very beautiful. She startled me, afterwards, as I stood at the window, watching the rain, by asking quietly, "Which would you like, Kent, dear, a girl or a boy?"

I had a moment's giddiness, but did not show it.

"I almost said 'Both,'" I replied.

"I shouldn't mind," she said. "But in case I disappoint you to that extent, which do you prefer?"

"I would like it to be what you want," I said. "But little girls are rather nice, and biggish girls are rather nice, and a daughter to walk about with when one is white-haired—but erect, of course—is something to look forward to. But you?"

"Oh yes," said Naomi, "I would like a girl."

"Then let it be a girl," I replied.

How differently things happen in novels and in life. Had I been a husband in a novel or a play I should have been thunderstruck that anything of this kind could possibly be happening; while my poor wife would have crimsoned and hid her face on my shoulder. As it was, we both laughed a little and I stroked her pretty head; and then she sat down to add up some accounts and I went to the Zoo. But underneath we were as conscious of the epoch-making moment as any of the husbands in the novels who, try as they may, cannot succeed in anticipating these somewhat trite events.

A few days later we began seriously to consider the question of names. I found on a bookstall a little pocket encyclopædia which gave two of its precious pages to columns and columns of girls' names in small print, in alphabetical order. Some of these names I will admit were outside the domain of practical politics. Jezebel, for example. No child of mine shall ever be called Jezebel, nor do I care much for Judith; although Judy I think pretty. But Naomi would have a boy rather than call her daughter Judy. Privately I may say that I believe that Naomi wants a boy; I believe that all women would like their babies to be sons. But she pretends that her wishes coincide with mine, and, after all, a girl is the next thing to a boy.

Beginning at the wrong end, our first duty was to examine the claims of Zoë, but that did not take long. No child of ours, we decided, should have a name that carried a diæresis with it. That is an axiom. Zoë therefore went.

"Zena?" I said.

"Certainly not," replied Naomi.

The only Y's were Yseult and Yvonne, but these were useless, as we intend never to live in Kensington. Winifred we also dismissed and Wilhelmina.

"How about Victoria?" I said.

But Naomi remained firm.

I dwelt fondly on Virginia. Miss Virginia Falconer sounds distinguished.

Naomi, however, was against it.

I like Veronica too, but not so well as Virginia. The other V's were negligible—Vashti and Vesta; but I affected to put in a plea for Volumnia.

"I could never nurse a Volumnia," said Naomi. "It is so immense. It also sounds like a steamer."

"Still," I said, "there ought to be a Volumnia Falconer, just to cheer up the birth announcements in the Times. Think of the double portions of samples that you would receive! To call a child Volumnia is as useful as having twins."

"I don't like it; but if you really want the samples you could call the child Volumnia in the Times and then change the name. A Times announcement is not binding," were Naomi's astonishing words: her first appearance as a profound strategist!

"If you talk like that," I said, "and the child takes after you, we had better call her Portia at once, or Christabel."

And so we explored the alphabet, rejecting name after name for the most curious reasons. This one because Naomi was at school with a girl named like that whom she did not like; that one because some public bête noire had it; a third because it was too Jewish; another because it was too scriptural, and Naomi had herself suffered for that; a fifth because it would not go with Falconer; and many because they smacked of the stage.

In the end we found ourselves with two names about as different as they could be, over the merits of which we were obliged to fight. These were Placida and Lavender. Lavender was Naomi's choice; Placida was mine.

"Placida is charming," Naomi said, "but if names, as they say, have an influence on character, won't she be a little too quiet?"

"Can she be?" I replied.

"Well, it would be dreadful if it meant loss of spirit. Meekness is so unattractive."

"She'd inherit the earth," I said.

"Oh no," exclaimed Naomi, "don't let her do that! I would like Placida," Naomi went on, "if it could dominate her character only in her very early days."

"And nights," I added hastily.

"Yes, and nights. But after that? Should a name be so descriptive? Suppose she became a terrible romp?"

"I hope so," I said. "Then there will be piquancy of contrast added, and she will be the more likely to attract the millionaire whom all good fathers hope to descry on the horizon."

"Don't be foolish," said Naomi. "You will be furious when she falls in love, and unbearable when she is engaged."

"Very well, then," I said; "Lavender. But we can't call her Lavender. It's too artificial. Its special charm is that it's such a beautiful word. We can think of her as Lavender, but call her something else. What shall that be?"

"Nan," said Naomi, by an inspiration; and so it was settled.

CHAPTER XXX

IN WHICH WE JOURNEY TO THE NORTH BY NEFARIOUS MEANS, AND NAOMI AND I STUMBLE UPON A PRECISELY SIMILAR FEELING

Naomi's old school friendship with Mrs. Farrar, who is the daughter of the Rector of Winfield, is ripening into a new intimacy, into which I am being drawn. Not unwillingly; for although she is rather a slangy, frivolous young woman, she is very fresh and impulsive and genuine, and I have long given up that wish (with which most of us begin life) that every candidate for friendship should conform to one's own standards.

Farrar, I confess, is not exciting; but it is not unamusing to watch the mental and physical processes of a young man who has been brought up never to know the meaning of hunger or thirst, except as the prelude to their agreeable gratification, or to do a day's work beyond fiddling with a defective motor-engine, or walking miles in pursuit of a rubber-cored ball. He is not offensively selfish in his idleness, and has a ready hand for subscription-hunters. In fact, he is really very generous, although, of course, not thoughtful enough. He distributes the kind of presents, for example, that cause servants to give notice: silver chafing-dishes, patent foot warmers—things like that. Generosity, however, is far from being all, and indeed it may be and often is merely the selfish man's device to be spared worry. It could not save Farrar from Spanton, who would say that the Farrar lily cannot long continue to toil not, neither to spin, in a community such as ours. Times are changing; and though I doubtless shall see little of the social revolution, for things move slowly in England, it will come.

Something, of course, must be done to make these young people responsible; for nothing does it now. They are anti-social to the roots, if they only knew it. Their one desire is to enjoy themselves, which they do in a curious monotonous way that to the ordinary domesticated observer seems to be singularly like discomfort. Their first essential for enjoyment is to get away from home as much as possible, and to reduce to a minimum the responsibility of home. There are therefore no children, although there is youth, vigour, and wealth. Some day they may settle down and have perhaps two, but preferably one; but not yet. To-day they are too keen on moving about, and Gwendolen is too keen on doing everything that Farrar does. She is, in short, a good fellow; and these female good fellows are becoming a danger to the State.

After much mild opposition on my part, we consented to join the Farrars in a motor trip to Winfield. I did not want to go, for several reasons. I like my hearth; I like my habits; I dislike motor-cars; I dislike strange inn beds. I was not prepared for four or five days' racing through this green England in company so limited in imagination. But when I found that Farrar and his wife always sat in front, I relented a little, for it would mean that Naomi and I had the inside wholly to ourselves. I hazarded the stipulation that we should make it a rule on desirable occasions to offer lifts on the road; but Farrar asked me not to press it. It would not work, he said. And I now agree with him, for, as a matter of fact, you can't do things like that in a motor. Motors refuse to stop quickly enough. There can be only one mind in a motor, and that is the driver's, and the driver's is stunned or dulled by his office. Hence, just as one always overshoots the prettiest cottages and gardens and the most beautiful by-roads, so one has long passed the unhappy footsore pedestrian before the impulse to pick him up can be communicated to the man at the wheel; and of course in a motor there is no going back.

As a matter of fact, we did chance to assist one man in this way, but he came up to us when we were stopping for a sandwich on the roadside. That is to say, he overtook us and caught us off our guard: a tall lean man with a stubble on his chin and an air still slightly rakish in spite of travel-stains and weariness. He asked how far it was to Birmingham, and told us that he was an actor and had heard of a travelling company with whom, before a long illness, he had been associated, and he was walking to Birmingham hoping it might find room for him.

Gwendolen came inside and the histrion (as I am sure he would love best to be called) rode beside Farrar in silence. But when he said good-bye he wrung my hand under the impression that I was the owner of the car, and drew me aside to mention the fact that the loan of half a crown for two days would be an incalculable boon. Poor fellow, he looked so fragile and empty that I made the sum a good deal larger, and pressed him not to be so hasty in returning it; and he promised he would not.

"I could wish sometimes," he said brokenly, with his hat in his hand, as we parted, "that the Great Prompter would ring down the curtain!"

"Hullo!" said Farrar, as I rejoined them, "been biting your ear, eh? That's what always comes of this lift business. How much did he bite it for?"

"Only half a crown," I said, and spent the next hour wondering why it is that one is so terrified of letting a man of the world think one a human being.

We reached Winfield for lunch in Canon Frome's hospitable rectory, and at tea-time strolled over to see some friends of the Fromes named Harberton, who live in a very charming house amid a thick shrubbery: one of those secure and serene houses that are found only in England, a perfect backwater in the stream of industry and ambition. Harberton is a man of about my own age, a dilettante with literary tastes and some reputation as the editor of Boswell. His wife is much younger—a beautiful woman with very quick sympathies and understanding. Not particularly clever herself, but stimulating others to their best. She has three children, all girls, and when we arrived the whole family was under a cedar about a tea-table. Some white pigeons fluttered on the roof and a spaniel regained its feet with extreme deliberateness and walked slowly to meet and investigate us. The lawn was like velvet: too soft for any game.

Looking at it all I could not help wondering how my young friend Spanton would snort at it. Nothing but leisure and culture here, he would say. No progress. Dead languages, belles-lettres. Everything that is retrograde.

And yet surely there must be, even in a new England of intense socialistic activity, some oases such as this, where ancient peace reigns and children are being thoughtfully brought up to be old-fashioned—as I am sure these three little girls will be. Let there be here and there tiny spots of ointment among the flies!

Mrs. Harberton is all right, of course: she is a mother, and an influence; but as to how far it would be possible to defend Harberton against the Spantons I cannot say. His class doubtless will be put upon its trial before long, just as the Farrars will. You may be very charming and distinguished and all that, the Spantons will say, but what are you doing for your country and your kind? You are living on dividends earned by other people's labour. That has got to stop. You have got to disgorge and labour yourself. What will you do? What could Harberton do? What could I do?

It is funny that I should thus bracket myself with Harberton, for that night Naomi told me that he reminded her not a little of me.

"That's odd," I said, "for Mrs. Harberton reminds me rather of you."

CHAPTER XXXI

IN WHICH WE MEET A WARDEN AND HER CHARGES, AND HEAR TWO OR THREE STORIES OF STORMY VOYAGES ON LIFE'S WATERS BEFORE HAVEN WAS REACHED

Two pretty maids having arrived, one to take away the tea and the other to be with the little girls, Mr. Harberton suggested that we should go and see the Warden. This he said with a slight smile that made the invitation very pleasant, and I joined Mrs. Harberton with thoughts of Trollope in my head and visions of the white-haired president of a college. Judge, then, of my surprise when a little shy woman met us not far from the gate and we were introduced to Miss Mitt, the Warden of the Pink Almshouses. Again I anticipated wrongly, for instead of the rose-tinted building which these words led me to expect, I found a very beautiful edifice in grey stone with a long, warmly-tiled roof, the founder of which was a Mrs. Pink, a friend of Mrs. Harberton.

There are beautiful almshouses all over England, and someone ought to write a book describing them, especially as almshouse architecture is almost the best indigenous domestic architecture that we have. Such temptations as beset modern architects when they build private houses seem for the most part to be absent when they build almshouses. Another triumph for humility, perhaps. For the time being even the most ambitious designer, remembering the purpose of the building, is forced to be simple.

The most amusing almshouse I know is at Chichester, where, under one great dark red roof with pretty dormers in it, dwell several old ladies, each in her own apartments, like an undergraduate or a nun, with a nurse at one end of the central passage and a chapel at the other. But I like the more usual plan better—the row of tiny domiciles like a terrace for fairy godmothers, the little gardens, the muslin blinds, and all the evidences of security. Such a building was that which a young architect in a soft flannel collar (as I guess) had put up for Mrs. Harberton with Mrs. Pink's legacy.

Mrs. Pink's almshouses are all that she would have desired: a long, low façade with two wings at right angles and a flagged garden in the intervening space. Quite a suggestion of "The Harbour of Refuge," but no harm in that. By using old materials the architect had prevented any appearance of crudity, and creepers were already high on the walls. There are thirteen little houses under this long roof, three in each wing and seven in the main building, of which the Warden's house is the middle one. The twelve old women have to be either spinsters or widows and to be fifty-five or over, and it makes not the faintest difference whether or not they have ever been in receipt of parish relief. Each has ten shillings a week, light, and coal. On this allowance they find their own meals and dress; but in both respects they are often a little helped out by other friends or their own relations.

That anyone meeting Miss Mitt, in London, say, would guess her to be the Warden of twelve pernickety old women, is unlikely; and this not because London seldom or never estimates provincials at their true worth, but because she was so small and unobtrusive. But in her own abode of authority there was no doubt, for, though still small and unobtrusive, she wore there, on her brow, the sign manual of responsibility and control. I had a long talk with her about her duties and difficulties.

"I love the work," she said, "but it's not too easy. I'm not complaining, you know. I don't think things ought to be easy."

"Why ever not?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't know," she said, "but I've always had that feeling ever since I was a child."

Of course she had, poor little Nonconformist, or, shall I say, poor little Anglo-Saxon?

"Lotus-eating would give you a terrible stomach-ache," I said, "wouldn't it?"

And the plucky little creature had the hardihood to reply, "I hope so."

What can you do with people like this? and England is full of them. Suspicion of happiness is in our blood.

"Tell me about the old pests," I said.

"Oh no, Mr. Falconer," she replied, "they're not old pests. They're dears. Only now and then, as old people will, they have troublesome ways. I really believe that the worst of all is jealousy. It makes it so difficult for me to be quite open, and I hate not to be. If I show a little more attention to one than another I'm sure to hear about it or notice the effects of it."

"Ah, jealousy!" I said. "That's the real blot on mankind. You know the origin of it, of course. The good God first made man, and then, as you remember, He extracted woman from man's side. He was so much occupied in gazing at this new work of His hand, so suddenly thought of and created, that He forgot that the aperture was not closed, and before He could close it a little poisonous reptile had crept in. It has been there ever since, and no human blood is free from it. Look how much of it Cain at once inherited!"

"Oh dear, how terrible!" said Miss Mitt. "And is that really true?" and she clicked her tongue. "Well, there's plenty of it here. I can do with their ordinary tantrums and their ailments and their grumblings: but it is so hard to have to keep away from the nicer ones because the others can't bear it, and to have to do things surreptitiously."

I asked her which were the worse, the single or the married women. She was forced to give the palm to the single. "I suppose," she said, "it's because the married ones have been married and are therefore—therefore——" Here she was at a loss.

I helped her out. "—are therefore," I said, "more inured to trouble and vexations."

"Yes," Miss Mitt agreed, "if you don't mind my thinking so."

"Men are a nuisance, aren't they?" I said.

"Oh dear, I didn't mean exactly that. Not exactly," said the little Warden. "What I meant was that married women understand give-and-take better than the others who have lived alone. But you mustn't think that all the single ones are cross, or all the widows are always good tempered. It isn't so. This one, for example"—and she knocked at a door—"is the sweetest spinster you could wish to meet. Her name is Selina Still. Isn't that pretty?"

Miss Still let us in—a little grey woman. Her room was a marvel of radiant precision. "Mr. Falconer has come from London all the way in a motor-car," said Miss Mitt.

"It's very wonderful," said the little grey woman. "But I should be frightened to go in one;" and indeed, how could a Selina Still be in a motor-car? It would be a sin against Nature.

The others now joined us, and Farrar laughed at the notion of fear. "What about flying, then?" he asked.

"Oh," said Miss Still very solemnly, "I think this flying's dreadful, and I don't believe it's going to last. For I can't help feeling there's One above Who won't much longer brook those things getting so near Him."

Miss Still expressed a wish to see London again, but did not expect to. She was last there in 1860, when she was a lady's maid. Her two most prized recollections were the Crystal Palace and Spurgeon's preaching.

Next to Selina Still lived Gipsy Woods, who must in her long-ago youth have been a beauty. Her mother had named her Gipsy for her black eyes. She was now nearing eighty, and was very rheumatic. She had married a gentleman—that is to say, one who would walk about as if he had money in his pockets and do no work, while she was toiling day and night bringing up eleven children. For her belief was that so long as you kept a roof over your head nothing else matters, and that is what she always told the children. She had twins when she was fifty-one, and brought them up too! Her husband disappeared, and most of the children dropped away, and a few years ago she had to go into hospital because her legs were so bad; and when she came out the people in the house where she had a room had vanished with all her few things, and had it not been for these almshouses she would be in the union.

Quite a typical story, this, not only as illustrating the wife's dogged courage and the husband's unthrift, but also the uselessness of so many children. It would seem indeed to be the exception rather than the rule to find sons and daughters of the poor growing up to help their parents, poverty being so hard put to it to provide any spring-board from which to take off for a better position.

Apropos of twins, another of the old ladies who was not otherwise interesting, a mournful body in black, with pink cotton wool in her ears which gave her head the appearance, seen hurriedly, of being hollow, boasted of having had "two couple of twins twice." This works out, if we are exact in the use of the word twin, to eight at a birth or sixteen in all. But she meant only that she had had four altogether. I congratulated her on her achievement, but she was apathetic about it. "Mrs. Nottidge," she said, "the wife of the landlord of the 'Jolly Bricklayers,' had triplets and got the Queen's bounty." The heroine of the twins, the Warden told us, liked to keep a bottle of gin, which was always referred to tactfully as medicine. It was supplied to her by a neighbouring lady who once sent a pound of tea in the same basket, and the gin bottle breaking, the tea was saturated. An ordinary person would merely have deplored a loss; but this recipient was more resourceful. She dried the tea in the oven and found it vastly improved for its drenching. That old women like a drop of something strong in the teacup, we all know; but here is possibly an idea for the tea trade which might enormously increase its profits. When consuming her gin in a more normal manner, Miss Mitt told us, the old lady always stirred it with a sprig of rue. It made it "healthier."

At No. 8 was Martha Drax. Mrs. Drax was now nearing seventy, and all the time that she could spare from her household duties she devoted to meditating upon a letter to the King. Not that she was exactly mad—although this occupation might suggest it—but a little enfeebled in intellect, as indeed all poor old women have every right to be, considering what most of them go through in their long lives of penury and struggle; but in her case there was more than enough reason. Martha's story was this:

As a girl in service she had become engaged to the son of the local baker. All had gone well until they took a day's holiday to visit a seaside resort, where he became wholly and dangerously intoxicated, and so terrified her that she broke off the match. He did all he could to win her again, but in vain; and after some years he married another girl from the same place, a big, strong creature who was cook to the doctor. They lived in the village, where the man worked as a gardener and attended the same chapel as Martha, who also had remained there, although only too eager to get away, tethered to it by an epileptic brother and bedridden mother, on whom she had to wait. At last the dislike of seeing the man and his wife together so told upon her that she left chapel and began to go to church; the man himself she avoided, exchanging the time of day with him when they met, but no more, and though not jealous of his wife, she intensely resented her.

So things went on for sixteen years, when she was at last able to leave the village and take service in a neighbouring town, and cease to be reminded of the man's existence.

One evening, two years after, there was a knock at the back door, and when she went to it there he was. His wife had been dead six months; he was very lonely and unhappy; he had never really loved anyone but Martha, and would she marry him now? Partly from the suddenness of the shock; partly from a feeling that here was the finger of Fate; not a little from pleasurable excitement and pride to think of the power she exerted; and partly, in her own words, because "it seemed more natural like to die a married woman," she consented. "The thought," to quote her again, "of his coming back after all those years and saying he had never wanted anybody else took my breath away, and made it impossible to say no."

Anyway, they were married, only for her at once to discover that her husband was a secret drinker of the worst kind, and had been so for years. He made no disguise of it to her, and even told her that his first wife had helped to keep it dark by locking him in the house till the orgy was over and then thrashing him with his own leather belt—a feat to which Martha refers in envious admiration, for she is a little meek woman. She had no power to cope with the situation, and her husband became worse. The secret was a secret no longer; he lost his work, and, during a period of distress, died of pneumonia three years after his second marriage.

Martha, who was now a woman of over fifty, went back to service and became housekeeper to a country clergyman, an old bachelor, where for two weeks she was in transports of delight, only to be plunged in misery and anxiety by the discovery that her new master also was a drunkard, and that the real reason of her engagement to him was to assist in keeping this fact from the parish. This, with the assistance of a curate, she did her best to accomplish; the poor old gentleman during his periodical outbreaks was confined as much as possible to one room. Again and again she made up her mind to run away, but she was restrained, partly by pity for her employer, who, when not in his cups, was the sweetest of characters, and partly from the knowledge that her age was a bad one for re-engagement. The clergyman, who knew all about his unfortunate malady, further enlisted her sympathies by telling her that it was after his wife's death that he had begun to give way.

For seven years the deception was maintained, when one day the scandal could be hidden no longer; the parish rose, the Bishop interfered, and the unhappy invalid was removed to closer restraint. Martha for a while lived on her savings, such as they were, and assistance from the clergyman's friends, who knew how hard she had toiled to preserve his good name, and then Mrs. Pink's almshouses being set up in her neighbourhood, she entered that haven, and is now in security for the rest of her days.

She is perfectly sane except for the obsession that it is her duty to write to the King, calling upon him to prohibit the sale of alcohol anywhere in England, and so save millions of homes. But although she is convinced that a letter sent to the King always gets to him and cannot fail of its purpose, the missive has never gone, for the simple reason that she cannot compose it to her satisfaction, being too little of a scholar, and she will not allow anyone else to write it for her. It is because of vicarious assistance in such matters that similar letters have not had the desired effect, and she will not prejudice her case in that way. Such is the life story of Martha Drax at No. 8.

I came away, again wondering what Spanton would say of all this serenity and comfort. Foolish sentimentalism, probably. Wanton and anti-social waste of money to cosset these old, unproductive women. Let the back-numbers either perish or look after themselves. And so on. But to talk like that is to disregard human nature and the kindlier feelings. A state that deliberately refused the responsibilities of protecting and caring for its old might achieve miracles of scientific housing, profit-sharing, and so forth; but it would be fossilized at the core. Sentiment and emotion cannot be left out.

CHAPTER XXXII

IN WHICH I AT LAST BECOME ACQUAINTED WITH THE TOP-FLOOR-FRONT, AND HEAR HIS ROMANTIC STORY

It was just as I was putting away my book, quite late, that Miss Laura knocked at the door to say that Mr. Carstairs, the gentleman on the top floor, who had been ill for some days, had asked if I would be so good as to pay him a short visit. This seemed to me odd, for beyond exchanging "good morning" now and then, we had never spoken; but it was not a request that I could disregard, and up I went.

The old gentleman was in bed, and as he lay there, gaunt and grey, with his hollow cheeks and bright eyes and pointed beard, he was like nothing in the world but Don Quixote. With a courteous movement he motioned me to a chair, and then thanked me for having compassion on a stranger's whim.

For a while after this there was silence, and I had an opportunity of noticing how bare was his room of all but necessities, although those seemed of the best. There were no pictures.

"I asked you to come," Mr. Carstairs began, "because I had a bad night last night and I have had a bad day. This you may think but a poor reason," he continued, in his quiet, cultured voice, smiling faintly, "and to you, who are well and strong, it is inadequate. But to me, who am dying, it is justification for any eccentricity. I liked you directly I saw you, and it pains me to think that I have taken no steps to cultivate the acquaintance of yourself and your wife; but I have long got out of the way of making overtures of friendship, and to occupy rooms in the same house is not one of the best passports to a good understanding."

He lay back exhausted and began to cough. I looked among the bottles for a lenitive and found only an empty one. Asking him if there was another, I understood him to say it was in the cupboard by the window; and to this I hurried. But no sooner was my hand on the handle than his face underwent a terrifying transformation, and he half-sprang from bed crying, "Not there! Not there!"

I came hurriedly from the door, and he quieted down and directed me to a cupboard on the other side. Now what Bluebeard's closet was this? I wondered (with Mrs. Wiles). I was soon to know.

"I throw myself on your good nature," he resumed, "because I am in extremis and have no friend within call. It is extremely improbable that I shall get well from this attack. You see, for one thing I am a good age, and for another I have very little to live for, and therefore am not likely to make a fight of it."

I murmured the usual things.

"No," he said, "there's very little in it. If I recover it is only for a brief while, with impaired strength. If I were younger and happier even that would be worth having; but really one may as well die to-day as to-morrow. It's got to be."

This is a form of fatalism with which I am as fit to grapple as a seamstress with a cuttlefish, so I said nothing.

"Your kindness in coming up," he continued, "leads me to ask you to be kinder still and administer my effects. They are few enough. I want everything to go to the National Art Collections Fund. It sounds simple, but there is this complication, that the name by which I am known is not my real name; and my real name, although it is bound to come out, I want to be still suppressed in connection with myself. I die as John Carstairs."

My face, no doubt, indicated some perplexity, for he went on.

"You will understand only if I tell you the whole story; but first I must confess that I am one of the most notorious of living thieves—perhaps almost the most famous of all, in this country—who have never been found out. When I die the secret must of necessity be in part discovered. I look to you to help me so that my name and the theft are kept distinct."

I said nothing for a little while, but merely pondered on the accidents of life in general, and in particular that accident which had led me to 7 Primrose Terrace, Regent's Park, to a respectable-looking house kept by refined twins, in which I was to live beneath a dying brigand and be forced into the position of his executor.

"Does the prospect alarm you?" he asked.

"Well," I said, "to be frank, it is not what I should have asked for. But," I added hastily, "you may continue your instructions: that is, if you are really certain that there is no one but myself to help you. Have you no lawyer?"

"A lawyer witnessed my will quite recently," he said. "It is in order. You will perhaps go to him for its execution."

"And what about your next-door neighbour, Spanton?" I said.

He smiled grimly.

"Then Lacey, the best of men and the most ingenious and helpful?"

"Yes," he said, "I thought of Lacey. But he has too much to do; and I was afraid he might be too clever. He is impulsive. This topic is so delicate that impulse might ruin it. So," he smiled humorously, "I had your name put in the document."

"Kismet," I replied; but Heaven knows I wished myself downstairs with my door carefully locked. I neither wanted to hear his story nor administer his ill-gotten estate. The whole thing was absurd. The chance of passing fellow-lodgers on the stairs and having the misfortune to appear benevolent and virtuous to their defective vision ought not to be permitted to lead to such embroilments as this. But I have ever been weak and acquiescent; and when I looked at his melancholy, wasted features, what else could I do? A dying Don Quixote—who would not be foolish for him?

When I agreed he gave a great sigh of relief—probably at once the most tragic and satisfactory sound I shall ever hear—and held out his long, bony hand.

"You can take it without fear," he said, smiling again; "when I said I was a thief I did not say all. There is such a thing as stealing your own. But listen. The story briefly is this: I was a well-to-do business man, unmarried and not very sociable. That was twenty and more years ago. Then a serious crisis came in my life of which I need say nothing, and I decided suddenly to leave civilization completely and begin all over afresh where the conditions were simpler. There was no disgraceful element in the matter. An event occurred which led to complete disillusionment setting in; I developed acute misanthropy and realized that England and I were incompatible. That is all. Many men—and perhaps many women—must have been through a similar experience; but not all are as free as I was to act.

"I laid my plans very carefully. I converted a sufficient amount of stock into cash; I made my will, leaving everything to the establishment of a certain kind of night refuge in London for the homeless, wherever they were most needed; and then I disappeared. This was not difficult. I took a passage to America. Between Liverpool and Queenstown I shaved off my long beard and moustache and changed my clothes. At Queenstown I left my stateroom, after depositing a last letter on the table, and went ashore among a crowd of other passengers. There I took train at once and was soon in London again, where I shipped for Australia and the South Seas. Meanwhile, that had happened on the steamer which I had foreseen. My stateroom was not opened until some hours after the vessel was on her way to America, and the contents of the letter there led people to assume that I had jumped overboard. I was therefore dead. A sufficient time having elapsed, the courts officially presumed my death, my estate was wound up, and I was a thing of the past. Any reasonably careful man can disappear still, in spite of Marconi and all the other modern obstacles, provided he has not committed a crime. And it was easier then."