Transcribers Notes: Title and Table of Contents added.
[Pg 485]
The Legs of Sister Ursula.
By Rudyard Kipling.
Illustrations by Hal Hurst.
The one man of all men who could have told this tale and lived has long
since gone to his place; and there is no apology for those that would
follow in the footsteps of Lawrence Sterne.
In a nameless city of a land that shall be nameless, a rich man lived
alone. His wealth had bought him a luxurious flat on the fifth floor of
a red-brick mansion, whose grilles were of hammered iron, and whose
halls were of inlaid marble. When he needed attendance, coals, his
letters, a meal, a messenger or a carriage, he pressed an electric
button and his wants were satisfied almost as swiftly as even petulant
wealth could expect. An exceedingly swift lift bore him to and from his
rooms, and in his rooms he had gathered about him all that his eye
desired—books in rich cases with felted hinges, ivories from all the
world, rugs, lamps, cushions, couches, engravings and rings with
engravings upon them, miniatures of pretty women, scientific toys and
china from Persia. He had friends and acquaintances as many as he could
befriend or know; and some said that more than one woman had given him
her whole love. Therefore, he could have lacked nothing whatever.
One day a hot sickness touched him with its finger, and he became no
more than a sick man alone among his possessions, the sport of dreams
and devils and shadows, sometimes a log and sometimes a lunatic crying
in delirium. Before his friends forsook him altogether, as healthy
brutes will forsake the wounded, they saw that he was efficiently
doctored, and the expensive physician who called upon him at first three
times a day, and later only once, caused him to be nursed by a nun.
“Science is good,” said the physician, “but for steady, continuous
nursing, with no science in it, Religion is better—and I know Sister
Ursula.”
So this sick man was nursed by a nun, young and fairly pretty, but,
above all, skilful. When he got better he would give the convent, and
not Sister Ursula, a thankoffering which would be spent among the poor
whom Sister Ursula chiefly attended. At first the man knew nothing of
the nun’s existence—he was in the country beyond all creeds—but later
a white coifed face came and went across his visions, and at last, spent
and broken, he woke to
[Pg 486]
see a very quiet young woman in black moving
about his room. He was too weak to speak: too weak almost to cling to
life any more. In his despair he thought that it was not worth clinging
to; but the woman was at least a woman and alive. The touch of her
fingers in his as she gave him the medicine was warm. She testified to
the existence of a world full of women also alive—the world he was
beginning to disbelieve in. He watched her sitting in the sunshine by
the window, and counted the light creeping down from bead to bead of the
rosary at her waist. They then moved his bed to the window that he might
look down upon the stately avenue that ran by the flat-house, and watch
the people going to and fro about their business. But the change,
instead of
[Pg 487]
cheering, cast him into a deeper melancholy. It was nearly a
hundred feet, sheer drop, to those healthy people walking so fast, and
the mere distance depressed him unutterably. He played with the scores
of visiting-cards that his friends had left for him, and he tried to
play with the knobs of the desk close to the head of his bed, and he was
very, very wretched.
“a hot sickness touched him with its finger.”
One morning he turned his face away from the sunlight and took no
interest in anything, while the hand turned back upon the dial so
swiftly that it almost alarmed the doctor. He said to himself: “Bored,
eh? Yes. You’re just the kind of over-educated, over-refined man that
would drop his hold on life through sheer boredom. You’ve been a most
interesting case so far, and I won’t lose you.” He said to Sister Ursula
that he would send an entirely fresh prescription by his boy, and that
Sister Ursula must give it to the invalid every twenty minutes without
fail. Also, if the man responded, it might be well to talk to him a
little. “He needs cheering up. There is nothing the matter with him now;
but he won’t pick up.”
“sister ursula.”
There can be few points of sympathy between a man born, bred, trained,
and sold for and to the world and a good nun made for the service of
other things. Sister Ursula’s voice was very sweet, but the matter of
her speech did not interest. The invalid lay still, looking out of the
window upon the street all dressed in its Sunday afternoon emptiness.
Then he shut his eyes. The doctor’s boy rang at the door. Sister Ursula
stepped out into the hall, not to disturb the sleeper, and took the
medicine from the boy’s hand. Then the lift shot down again, and even as
she turned the wind of its descent puffed up and blew to the spring-lock
door of the rooms with a click only a little more loud than the leap of
her terrified heart.
Sister Ursula tried the door softly, but rich men with many hundred
pounds worth of bric-à-brac buy themselves very well made doors that
fasten with singularly cunning locks. Then the
[Pg 488]
lift returned with the
boy in charge, and, so soon as his Sunday and rather distracted
attention was drawn to the state of affairs, he suggested that Sister
Ursula should go down to the basement and speak to the caretaker, who
doubtless had a duplicate key. To the basement, therefore, Sister Ursula
went with the medicine-bottle clasped to her breast, and there, among
mops and brooms and sinks and heating pipes, and the termini of all the
electric communications of that many-storied warren, she found, not the
caretaker, but his wife, reading a paper, with her feet on a box of
soap. The caretaker’s wife was Irish, and a Catholic, reverencing the
Church in all its manifestations. She was not only sympathetic, but
polite. Her husband had gone out, and, being a prudent guardian of the
interests confided to him, had locked up all the duplicate keys.
“reading a paper, with her feet on a box of soap.”
“An’ the saints only know whin Mike’ll be back av a Sunday,” she
concluded cheerfully, after a history of Mike’s peculiarities. “He’ll be
afther havin’ supper wid friends.”
“The medicine!” said Sister Ursula, looking at the inscription on the
bottle. “It must begin at twenty minutes past five. There are only ten
minutes now. There must—oh! there must be a way!”
“Give him a double dose next time. The docthor won’t know the differ.”
The convent of Sister Ursula is not modelled after Irish ideals, and the
present duty before its nun was to return to the locked room with the
medicine. Meantime the minutes flew bridleless, and Sister Ursula’s eyes
were full of tears.
“I must get to the room,” she insisted. “Oh, surely, there is a way, any
way!”
[Pg 489]
“There’s wan way,” said the caretaker’s wife, stung to profitable
thought by the other’s distress. “And that’s the way the tenants would
go in case av fire. To be sure now I might send the lift boy.”
“It would frighten him to death. He must not see strangers. What is the
way?”
“If we wint into the cellar an’ out into the area, we’ll find the ground
ends av the fire-eshcapes that take to all the rooms. Go aisy, dear.”
Sister Ursula had gone down the basement steps through the cellar into
the area, and with clenched teeth was looking up the monstrous sheer of
red-brick wall cut into long strips by the lessening perspective of
perpendicular iron ladders. Under each window each ladder opened out
into a little, a very little, balcony. The rest was straighter than a
ship’s mast.
The caretaker’s wife followed, panting; came out into the sunshine, and,
shading her eyes, took stock of the ground.
“He’ll be No. 42 on the Fifth. Thin this ladder goes up to it. Bad luck
to thim, they’ve the eshcapes front an’ back, spoilin’ the look av a
fine house: but it’s all paid for in the rint. Glory be to God, the
avenue’s empty—all but. But it should ha’ been the back—it should ha’
been the back!”
Two children were playing in the gutter. But for these the avenue was
deserted, and the hush of a Sabbath afternoon hung over it all. Sister
Ursula put the medicine-bottle carefully into the pocket of her gown.
Her face was as white as her coif.
“’Tis not for me,” said the caretaker’s wife, shaking her head sadly.
“I’m so’s to be round, or I’d go wid ye. Those ladders do be runnin’
powerful straight up an’ down. ’Tis scandalous to think—but in a fire,
an’ runnin’ wid their night clothes, they’d not stop to think. Go away,
ye two little imps, there! The bottle’s in your pocket? You’ll not lose
good hold av the irons. What is ut?—oh!”
Sister Ursula retreated into the cellar, dropped on her knees, and was
praying—praying as Lady Godiva prayed before she mounted her palfrey.
The caretaker’s wife had barely time to cross herself, and follow her
example, when she was on her feet again, and her feet were on the lowest
rungs of the ladder.
“Hould tight,” said the caretaker’s wife. “Oh, darlint, wait till Mike
comes! Come down, now!—the good angels be wid you. There should have
been a way at the back. Walk tinderly an’ hould tight. Heaven above sind
there’ll be no wind! Oh,
[Pg 490]
why wasn’t his ugly rooms at the back, where
’tis only yards an’ bedroom windows!”
The voice grew fainter and stopped. Sister Ursula was at the level of
the first floor windows when the two children caught sight of her,
raising together a shrill shout. The devil that delights in torturing
good nuns inspired them next to separate and run the one up and the
other down the avenue, yelling, “O—oh! There’s a nun up the
fire-escape! A nun on the fire-escape!” and, since one word at least was
familiar, a score of heads came to windows in the avenue, and were much
interested.
In spite of her prayers, Sister Ursula was not happy. The
medicine-bottle banged and bumped in her pocket as she gripped the iron
bars hand over hand and toiled aloft. “It is for the sake of a life,”
she panted to herself. “It is a good work. He might die if I did not
come. Ah! it is terrible.” A flake of rust from the long disused irons
had fallen on her nose. The rungs were chafing her hands, and the
minutes were flying. The round, red face of the caretaker’s wife grew
smaller and smaller below her, and there was a rumbling of wheels in the
avenue. An idle coachman, drawn by the shouts of the children, had
turned the corner to see what was to be seen. And Sister Ursula climbed
in agony of spirit, the heelless black cloth shoes that nuns wear
slipping on the rungs of the ladder, and all earth reeling a hundred
thousand feet below.
She passed one set of apartments, and they were empty of people, but the
fire, the books on the table, and the child’s toy cast on the hearthrug
showed it was deserted only for a minute. Sister Ursula drew breath on
the balcony, and then hurried upwards. There was iron rust red on both
her hands, the front of her gown was speckled with it, and a reflection
in the stately double window showed a stainless stiff fold of her
head-gear battered down over her eye. Her shoe, yes, the mended one, had
burst at the side near the toe in a generous bulge of white stocking.
She climbed on wearily, for the bottle was swinging again, and in her
ears there came unbidden the nursery refrain that she used to sing to
the little sick children in the hospital at Quebec:
“This is the cow with the crumpled horn.”
Between earth and heaven, it is said, the soul on its upward journey
must pass the buffeting of many evil spirits. There flashed into Sister
Ursula’s mind the remembrance of a picture of a man gazing from the
leads down the side of
[Pg 491]
a house—a wonderful piece of foreshortening
that made one dizzy to see. Where had she seen that picture? Memory,
that works indifferently on earth or in vacuo, told her of a book read
by stealth in her novitiate, such a book as perils body and soul, and
Sister Ursula blushed redder than the brickwork a foot before her nose.
Everything that she had read in or thought about that book raced through
her mind as all his past life does not race through the soul of a
drowning man. It was horrible, most horrible. Then rose a fierce wave of
rage and indignation that she, a sister of irreproachable life and
demeanour (the book had been an indiscretion, long since bitterly
repented of), should be singled out for these humiliating exercises.
There were other nuns of her acquaintance, proud, haughty and
overbearing (her foot slipped here as a reminder against the sin of
hasty judgments, and she felt that it was a small and niggling Justice
that counted offences at such a crisis), and—and thinking too much of
their holiness, to whom this mortification, with all the rust flakes in
bosom and kerchief, would have been salutary and wholesome. But that
she, Sister Ursula, who only desired a quiet life, should climb
fire-escapes in the face of the shameless sun and a watching population!
It was too terrible. None the less she did not come down.
“sister ursula
looked down.”
Praying to be delivered from evil thoughts, praying that the swinging
bottle would not smash itself against the iron ladders, she toiled on.
The second and third flats were empty, and she heard a murmur in the
street; a hum of encouraging tumult, cheerful outcries bidding her go up
higher, and crisp enquiries as to whether this were the end of the
performance. Her Saint—she that had not prevailed against the
Nuns—would not help Sister Ursula, and it came over her, as cold water
slides down the spine, that at her journey’s end she would have
to—go—through—the window. There is no vestibule, portico, or
robing-room at the upper end of a fire-escape. It is designed for such
as move in a hurry, unstudious of the graces, being for the most part
not over-dressed, and yet seeking publicity—that publicity which came
to Sister Ursula unsought. She must go
[Pg 492]
through that window in order to
give her invalid his medicine. Her head must go first, and her feet, and
the bursten shoe, must go last. It was the very breaking point in the
strain, and here her saint, mistaking the needs of the case, sent her a
companion. Her head was level with the window of the fourth story, and
she was rejoicing to find that that also was empty when the door opened,
and there entered a man something elderly, of prominent figure, and
dressed according to the most rigid canons laid down for afternoon
visits. He was millions of leagues removed from Sister Ursula’s
world—this person with the tall silk hat, the long frock-coat, the
light grey trousers, the tiny yellow buttonhole rose, and the marvellous
puffed cravat anchored about with black pearl-headed pins—but an
imperative need for justification was upon her. Her own mission, the
absolute rightness of her own mission, were so clear to herself that she
never doubted anyone might misunderstand when she pointed upwards to the
skies, and the flat above.
“sank panting at the foot of the bed.”
The man, who was in the act of laying his tall hat absently upon the
table, looked up as the shadow took the light, saw the gesture, and
stared. Then his jaw dropped, and his face became ashy-grey. Sister
Ursula had never seen Terror in the flesh, well-dressed and fresh from a
round of calls. She gathered herself up to climb on, but the man within
uttered a cry that even the double windows could not altogether stifle,
and ran round the room in circles as a dog runs seeking a lost glove.
“He is mad,” thought Sister Ursula. “Oh, heavens,
and that is what has driven him mad.”
He was stooping fondly over something that seemed like the coffin of a
little child. Then he rushed directly at the window open-mouthed. Sister
Ursula went upwards and onwards, none the
[Pg 493]
less swiftly because she
heard a muffled oath, the crash of broken glass, and the tinkling of the
broken splinters on the pavestones below. For the second time only in
her career, she looked down—down between the ladder and the wall. A
silk hat was bobbing wildly, as a fishing-float on a troubled stream,
not a dozen rungs beneath, and a voice—the voice of fear—cried
hoarsely, “Where is it? Where is it?” Then went up to the roofs the
roaring and the laughter of a great crowd; yells, cat-calls, ki-yis and
hootings many times multiplied. Her Saint had heard her at last, and
caused Sister Ursula to disregard the pains of going through the window.
Her one desire now was to reach that haven, to jump, dive, leap-frog
through it if necessary, and shut out the unfortunate maniac. It was a
short race, but swift, and Saint Ursula took care of the bottle. A long
course of afternoon calls, with refreshments at clubs in the intervals,
is not such good training as the care of the sick in all weathers for
sprinting over a course laid at ninety degrees. Nor again can the best
of athletes go swiftly up a ladder if he carries a priceless violin in
one hand and its equally priceless bow in his teeth, and handicaps
himself with varnished leather buttoned boots. They climbed, the one
below the other.
“‘open the window!’ roared cott.”
The window at the foot of the invalid’s bed was open. At the next window
was the white face of the invalid. Sister Ursula reached the sash, threw
it up, went through—let no man ask how—shut it gently but with amazing
quickness, and sank panting at the foot of the bed, one hand on the
bottle.
“There was no other way,” she panted. “The door was locked. I could not
help. Oh! He is here!”
The face of Terror in the top hat rose to the window-level inch by inch.
The violin-bow was between his teeth, and his hat hung over one eye in
the fashion of early dawn.
[Pg 494]
“It’s Cott van Cott,” said the invalid, slowly and critically. “He looks
quite an old man. Cott and his Strad. How very bad for the Strad!”
“Open the window. Where is it? Is there a way? Open the window!” roared
Cott, without removing the violin-bow.
Sister Ursula held up one hand warningly as she stooped over the
invalid.
For the second time did Cott van Cott misinterpret the gesture and
heaved himself upward, the violin and the bow clicking and rattling at
every stride. He was fleeing to the leads to save his life and his
violin from death by fire—fire in the basement—and the crowd in the
street roared below him with the roar of a full-fed conflagration.
The invalid fell back on the pillows and wiped his eyes. The hands of
the clock were on the hour appointed for the medicine, lacking only the
thirty seconds necessary for pouring it into a wine-glass. He took it
from Sister Ursula’s hand, still shaking with helpless laughter.
“took one little brass thimble-like thing
from its inside.”
“God bless you, Sister Ursula,” he said. “You’ve saved my life.”
“The medicine was to be given,” she answered simply. “I—I could not
help coming that way.”
“If you only knew,” said the invalid. “If you only knew! I saw it from
out of the windows. Good heavens! the dear old world is just the same as
ever. I must get back to it. I must positively get well and get back.
And, Sister Ursula, do you mind telling me when you’re quite composed
everything that happened between the time the door shut and—and you
came in that way?”
[Pg 495]
After a little Sister Ursula told, and the invalid laughed himself faint
once more. When Sister Ursula re-settled the pillows, her hand fell on
the butt of a revolver that had come from the desk by the head of the
bed. She did not understand what it was, but the sight pained her.
“Wait a minute,” said the invalid, and he took one little brass
thimble-like thing from its inside. “I—I wanted to use it for something
before you went out, but I saw you come up, and I don’t want it any
more. I must certainly get back to the world again. Dear old world! Nice
old world! And Mrs. Cassidy prayed with you in the cellar, did she? And
Van Cott thought it was a fire? Do you know, Sister Ursula, that all
those things would have been impossible on any other planet? I’m going
to get well, Sister Ursula.”
In the long night, Sister Ursula, blushing all over under the eyes of
the night-light, heard him laughing softly in his sleep.
[Pg 496]
emile zola.
[Pg 497]
“Lions in Their Dens.”
VI.—EMILE ZOLA.
By V. R. Mooney. Illustrations by E. M. Jessop.
(With photographs at various ages.)
“M. Zola?”
“No, monsieur, this is not No. 21 bis—this is No. 21.”
By way of justification for the asperity of the tones in which this
reply is given forth the concierge of No. 21 proceeds to inform me that
every one makes the same mistake.
“It is a perpetual procession here,” she goes on. “It is nothing but M.
Zola? M. Zola? M. Zola? without cease. I wish people would learn the
right address.”
Now I at least ought to have known better, for I had visited M. Zola
before, so, feeling rather small, I beat a hurried retreat, and betook
myself to No. 21 bis.
Unlike most Parisians, Zola has a whole house to himself, and, as you
perceive at a glance on entering, a very richly decorated house it is;
tapestries, bronzes, bas-reliefs, sculptures in stone and marble, are
studiously arranged about the hall and the handsome staircase, the
general effect, in the subdued light of windows of stained glass, being
most artistic.
emile zola.
On the first landing, lances and swords and armour of different kinds
shine out from behind tropical plants. On this landing is Zola’s studio,
which is full of indications of his love for the antique—a love that is
not carried to extremes, however, for the high-backed, uncomfortable
chairs of our forefathers, in which so many of his fellow-collectors
find it necessary to seat themselves (or their visitors), are here
replaced by spacious modern armchairs.
I am not kept long waiting.
“Well, I am glad that this is a wet day, or else you would very likely
have regretted losing the opportunity of going to the Bois.”
[Pg 498]
Such are the maitre’s first words after a hearty shake of the hands.
“So you want to know all about me. Now let me see what I can tell you
without repeating myself.”
And Zola sinks down into a small but comfortable armchair, with a small
Turkish inlaid coffee and cigarette stand covered with books on one
side, and on the other an antique wrought iron fender placed in front of
an immense fireplace, and commences placidly the following monologue,
which I give as nearly as possible in his own words.
“My father’s mother was a Corfiote, he himself a Venetian, and my mother
was a Parisian. My father and mother met in Paris, during one of my
father’s numerous visits here in connection with an aqueduct which he
wanted to construct at Aix in Provence. Within a very short time of
their first meeting, they were married. It was a love match. I was born
in Paris, in 1840, and to-day I am, therefore, 53.
(facsimile of m. zola’s handwriting.)
“In 1847 my father died, and left very little behind him, except
lawsuits, which, through inexperience more than anything else, my mother
and grandmother managed to lose.
“My education only then began, but until 12, when I had finally to enter
college, I had it pretty much my own way. That
[Pg 499]
means I worked very
little, and spent most of my time in the open air, running about in our
glorious southern fields, and learning how to love and admire nature.
“At college I studied with varying success.
“What I liked best were mathematics and science. I hated Greek and
Latin.
the staircase.
“It was during the last year of my college life that I made the
acquaintance of two young fellows who may have been instrumental in
making of me what I am now. As we had pretty much the same tastes it was
our passion, whenever we could indulge in it, to run out in the fields,
get on the banks of a stream, and for hours, under the shade of some
tree, read the books of fiction which came to our possession. After each
book had been gone through, we discussed its merits, chapter by chapter,
studied the characters and the plot; all this more from a metaphysical
than a literary point of view.
“I left college in 1848, and came to Paris to get work, in order to help
my mother. I found a situation which I soon had to give up, and, till
1861, I went through all the hardships that a destitute young man can
undergo in Paris.
“Often have I spent in my attic the best part of the day, lying in bed
to keep warm.
[Pg 500]
“Although, as you see, I am better off now, I often look back upon that
time regretting that it cannot return.
“Voyez vous, privations and suffering were my lot, but I had in me the
fire of youth. I had health, hope, unbounded confidence in myself, and
ambition.
“Ah oui! It was a glorious time. I remember how I used to write for
hours and hours in my bed; how everything was then fresh to me, how my
inexperience made me look hopefully forward. Enfin, life seemed
bright, beautiful, and cheerful.
“After all, I really think hope is a higher satisfaction than
possession.
“But I stray from the subject.
“Let me see, you left me in bed trying to get warm, and waiting for
someone to provide the necessary number of coppers for a dinner.
“In 1861, I at last found a sufficiently remunerative situation at
Hachette’s, the publishers.
“I began at 200 francs a month. I did my work so thoroughly that I was
soon raised. After a certain time I was placed in the advertising
department, and there came in contact with the writers and newspaper
men, who, in my first literary efforts, gave me a helping hand.
“During my stay in that office, I never ceased writing.
“You must know that I was all my life a very hard and conscientious
worker.
“After my day’s work at the office, I used to read and write for hours
at home by candlelight. In fact, the habit of writing at night became so
inveterate that, long afterwards, when I had time in the day, I pulled
down the blinds in my room and lit the lamp in order to work.
“Towards this epoch I met my two college friends again. One had gained
some notoriety as a painter, the other was a student at the ecole
polytechnique. We resumed our rambles in the woods and our discussions.
This, I am convinced, was of great use to me, as our different ways of
looking at things enabled me to judge of characters, and to appreciate
differing opinions.
“Before I left college, viz., when I was 17, I had written the ‘Contes
à Ninon.’ These I retouched a little, and determined to try my luck as
a writer with them.
“As usual, with young and unknown writers, publishers received me and
politely returned my manuscript. I tried my employer, but, although he
encouraged me, and showed his sense
[Pg 501]
of appreciation, by giving me a
more responsible position, he refused to publish my story. Finally, I
presented it to Mr. Hetzel, and to my indescribable joy he accepted it.
“The book was very favourably reviewed, but sold very poorly.
“Soon afterwards, I began contributing to the Vie Parisienne and the
Petit Journal, and thus got launched in journalism.
the bedroom.
“As my evenings alone did not enable me to do all the work I had in
hand, I resigned my situation in 1867, and devoted myself exclusively to
literature.
“This did not improve my position, and I was obliged, for a certain
time, to suffer new hardships and privations.
“It is needless to follow my career step by step. You know what I am
now—you see I have succeeded.”
[Pg 502]
“Well, mon cher maitre, not many men can boast of a success equal to
yours. Indeed, there is evidence enough in this very room of that
success.”
“That implies, of course, that you think I have an enormous account at
the bank. You are mistaken. Every centime I get comes from the sale of
my books, the rights of translation, etc. My royalty is 60 centimes per
volume. This brings me about 300,000 francs a year, and I am not a man
to economise. All this furniture, and the articles you see scattered
about, I have slowly accumulated. I began to purchase with the first
economies I ever made.
emile zola.
“This passion which obliged me frequently to change residences in order
to find room for the ever increasing number of objects was acquired by
me through reading Victor Hugo in my childhood. It is not so ardent now,
I regret to say.”
As he got up to show me round, the light fell full on his face. I
thought I noticed a look of melancholy, and made a remark to that
effect.
With a sigh he replied, “Mon cher monsieur, I repeat I always think
with pleasure of my garret. I had then no cares. I was, what I call,
absolutely independent.”
“But in what way are you dependent now?”
“More than you think. I was then my own reader and my only critic. I
lived in my writings, and thought them perfect. Since then I belong to
the public, upon whose judgment my success depends, upon whose
appreciation my reward lies. Do not imagine that I do not frequently
suffer deeply, that I am not wounded, and that I do not feel mortified
and become discouraged by the misinterpretation of my motives. These are
passing clouds, but they are not pleasant, I can assure you.”
As he was unburdening his sorrows, we visited the apartment. It would be
impossible to describe it in the short space of an article, as I must
admit I seldom found such a mass, and at the same time such a variety,
of objects collected.
[Pg 503]
The accompanying photos will be more eloquent than my pen.
Taste presides in everything; choice, disposal, grouping, and colouring.
The southern nature of the host reveals itself in its love for bright
colours, education and refinement in the subdued tones and harmonious
ensemble.
He did not hesitate to show me everything; unfortunately, however, had I
seen less, I would have remembered more.
As we walked back to the studio I returned to the previous subject, and
asked him whether, as was generally supposed, he dashed through his
books after a painstaking preliminary work.
He denied this.
“It is an error; I work very hard.”
“What way do you proceed then, cher maitre?”
“Well, I never prepare a plot. I cannot do it. I have frequently
meditated for hours, buried my head in my hands, closed my eyes, and got
ill over it. But no use. I finally gave it up. What I do is to make
three kinds of studies for each novel. The first I call a sketch, viz.,
I determine the dominant idea of the book, and the elements required to
develop this idea. I also establish certain logical connections between
one series of facts and another. The next dossier contains a study of
the character of each actor in my work. For the principal ones I go even
further. I enquire into the character of both father and mother, their
life, the influence of their mutual relations on the temperament of the
child. The way the latter was brought up, his schooldays, the
surroundings and his associates up to the time I introduce him in my
book. You see, therefore, I sail as close to nature as possible, and
even take into account his personal appearance, health and heredity. My
third preoccupation is to study the surroundings into which I intend to
place my actors, the locality and the spot where certain parts may be
acted. I enquire into the manners, habits, character, language, and even
learn the jargon of the inhabitants of such localities.
“I frequently take pencil sketches and measurement of rooms, and know
exactly how the furniture is placed. Finally, I know the appearance of
such quarters by night and by day. After I have collected laboriously
all this material, I sit down to my work regularly every morning, and do
not write more than three pages of print a day.”
“How long does it take you to produce that?”
“Well, not very long. The subject is so vivid that the work
[Pg 504]proceeds
slowly, but without interruption. In fact, I hardly ever make any
erasures or alterations, and once my sheet is written and laid aside, I
do not look at it again. The next morning I resume the thread, and the
story proceeds to the end by logical progression.
the dining room.
“I work like a mathematician. Before I begin I know into how many
chapters the novel shall be divided. The descriptive parts have an
allotted space, and if they are too long for one chapter
[Pg 505]I terminate
them in another. I try also to give some rest to the mind of the reader,
or rather remove the tension caused by too long and stirring a passage,
by interlarding something which diverts the attention for a time.
emile zola.
“Finally, I repeat, I have no preconceived plot. I do not know at the
beginning of a chapter how it will end. Situations must logically follow
one another, that is all.”
Of course, after this, the conversation rolled on some of his principal
works, particularly “La Terre.”
In reply to the objection taken to that book, one of his arguments is
that progress and science have made of man a being distinct from that of
last century, and insisted that nowadays we must abandon the study of
the metaphysical man of years gone by for an enquiry into the
physiological creature of our days. That is my opinion, and it is in
defence of this conviction that I worked for years.
The next subject upon which I thought I might tackle him was the
“Debacle.”
“How did I prepare my ‘Debacle’? Well, in the same way as all my other
books. You know I went over most of the battlefields described by me.
Moreover, I received innumerable letters on the subject. The most
interesting ones came from the professors of Paris schools, who, being
left without employment, enlisted. These letters, coming from educated
men, contain, without one exception, the same lamentations, and give
similar accounts of privations and suffering. They all describe how for
days they had to go without food, and ragged; and how fast their numbers
were thinned. Each had in his memoirs accounts illustrating the
blundering ignorance of the commanders! I was violently attacked when
the ‘Debacle’ appeared. Everything was criticised as usual, and many
details declared inaccurate. But I ask you whether it is always possible
to be as absolutely accurate in small details in a novel as in a
history?
the drawing room.
[Pg 506]
“Some dates have been misplaced, and some details relating to the colour
of the troopers’ collars were not right; but criticism of such absurd
details cannot affect the treatment and the development of the subject,
and the conclusions arrived at. I am told that Marshal MacMahon is wild
against me, and that he is preparing a reply to my book. It has always
been my object to avoid
[Pg 507]
personalities. I never once accused MacMahon,
but the facts prove that he acted ignorantly. History will be severer,
and when those who write it consult documents as I did, they will not
treat him with the deference I used.
“General Gallifet is also my enemy. Do you know why? Because I have not
mentioned him.”
“How does your ‘Debacle’ sell now, cher maitre?”
study corner.
“Not so well as at the beginning, and the cause of it is the Panama
scandal. When the unscrupulousness of a certain class of men was made
bare, the initiators of the enquiry were accused by a section of the
nation with want of patriotism. Curiously enough, the same accusation
was levelled against my book, therefore, instead of being thanked for
the courage I had of disclosing the evils, I am punished for it. The
same influences acted against me in the last Academy elections. Before
the Panama affair, I was certain to have a chair.”
“Will you continue presenting yourself?”
“Certainly, until I get a seat. There is no reason why I should be
excluded from that body, and if I abstain from presenting my
candidature, it might be construed as an admission on my part that I
considered justified the action of the academicians against me.”
“When is your novel about ‘Lourdes’ going to appear?”
[Pg 508]
“Later than you think. I am working at present at Dr. Pascal, which
closes my series of the Rougon Macquart novels.”
“Would it be indiscreet to ask you what subject you intend treating this
time?”
“No. It will be a philosophical and scientific defence of the principal
work of my life—the twenty volumes of the Rougon Macquarts. You see I
attach the greatest importance to this, and therefore give special
attention to my work, which is meant to be a justification of my
theories and hardiesses. After this I’ll take ‘Lourdes’ in hand.
‘Lourdes’ will be followed by ‘Rome,’ and then by ‘Paris.’ They will
form a triptych.”
emile zola.
“Namely?”
“Well, in the first I shall try to prove that the great scientific
development of our time has inspired hopes in the mind of all classes,
hopes which it has not realised to the satisfaction of the most
impressionable, therefore the most exacting and unreasonable minds. How
such minds have returned with greater conviction to the belief in the
existence of something more powerful than science, a something which can
alleviate the evils from which they suffer, or imagine they do.
“Among these there may even be social philanthropists, who may think
that divine intercession is more efficacious to cure the suffering of
the people than anarchist theories. In my ‘Rome’ I shall treat of the
Neo-Catholicism, with its ambitions, its struggle, etc., as distinct
from the pure religious sentiment of the pilgrims of ‘Lourdes.’
“Finally, in ‘Paris’ I shall endeavour to lay bare the corruption and
vice which devour that city; vice and corruption to which the whole
civilised world brings its share. I need not say that these will be
written in the shape of novels.
“For ‘Lourdes’ I have collected all my material. As you know, I followed
a pilgrimage, and was given the kindest assistance by the clergy, who
allowed me to consult every document in their possession. As usual, I
receive every day letters from laymen and priests, who spontaneously
supply me with information.”
[Pg 509]
Zola thereupon got up, opened a drawer, and showed me piles of such
letters. Among these I read one from a priest, who seemed convinced that
before long Zola would be a convert. I asked him what he had seen at
Lourdes.
“Nothing that I did not expect, considering that before going there I
had had long conversations with eminent specialists in nervous diseases.
I saw cures which would be called extraordinary by such as ignore the
curative power of faith in hysteric complaints and its derivatives. But
I did not see limbs straightened or replaced, nor has any monk or priest
showed me or even alluded to such cures.
“But what struck me was that, contrary to what one is made to expect, I
did not find among the clergy that aggressive and ostentatious
proselytism. Everything is conducted in a dignified, quiet, unassuming
manner.”
Continuing to look among the letters, I picked one from an English lady,
expressing the sincere hope that the “Debacle” would bear fruit, that
the lesson it taught would be a warning to France, and save the nation
from the errors it had fallen into during the Empire.
When I had done, Zola assured me that since the “Debacle” he was happy
to say that he receives numerous such letters from England. This shows
him that the hostile feeling against him tends to disappear.
Before withdrawing, I asked him whether he had heard any more of the
thief who, assuming the title of a journalist, had stolen some of his
bronzes.
With a laugh, Zola replied in the negative, and explained that he had to
thank “Lourdes” for the theft.
“Since it has become known that I prepare that book, the clerical papers
send me their reporters. I receive them without exception. On this
occasion, I was talking to a friend when a card was presented bearing
the title of a small such paper. I requested the servant to show the
bearer in the drawing-room.
“Five minutes later I was with the fellow, who asked a couple of
questions. Instead, however, of waiting for complete information, which
I volunteered to give, he very politely withdrew, and only the next day
did I discover that he had removed valuables for about 700 francs.”
For how long I might have engaged the great and amiable novelist in
conversation I don’t know; but at this point, having listened to him for
more than an hour and a half, I rose to leave.
[Pg 510]
And now that the heavy door has closed behind me, shall I attempt to
compose a picture of Zola as I have seen him there in his room in his
warm, many-pocketed Tyrolese jacket, braided with green, and buttoned up
to the throat? Perhaps it is unnecessary, for his features must by this
time be familiar to almost all.
zola at work.
Like all Southerners, Zola helps out his voice with frequent gestures;
but he has none of the exuberant eloquence of his race. In society he is
still, to a certain degree, and must always remain the victim of
bashfulness; and his one attempt at public speaking was a complete
failure. He has in him nothing of the boulevardier, and he is happy only
when at work. Enforced idleness would mean misery to him.
[Pg 511]
People I Have Never Met.
By Scott Rankin.
RUDYARD KIPLING.
“the light that failed.”
[Pg 512]
An Ethiopian Cricket Match.
By Eden Phillpotts.
Illustrations by Geo. Hutchinson.
After the “Rhine” had been anchored in the harbour of St. Thomas, West
Indies, for the space of two days, our First Officer, more generally
known in these records as the Model Man, received a rather remarkable
communication. It was a letter from a black sportsman, who issued a
challenge to our ship on behalf of a local club. This note reminded the
Model Man of a most successful cricket match in the past, when an eleven
from the “Rhine” was victorious; and it suggested that, during the
present visit of our vessel, a return match might be played. We talked
the matter over, and I said:
“Of course you will accept.”
But the Treasure answered:
“You see there is always one great difficulty with black cricketers.
They have a theory you cannot play the game properly in clothes, and
they get themselves up for a match much the same as we should if we were
going swimming.”
“Why, last time we played,” continued the Model Man, “only one man had
anything you could fairly call raiment. He came on to the pitch with
what he regarded as a pair of cocoanut-fibre trousers, and his team made
him captain upon the strength of them.”
[Pg 513]
I said:
“If they prefer to play undraped, I don’t see that it much matters to
us.”
“as if they were
going in swimming.”
“Not personally, but a mixed audience cannot be expected to stand it,”
replied the Treasure. “We play cricket in St. Thomas upon a very public
and central piece of ground, and, at one time, everybody used to turn
out and watch the matches; but now, owing to the barbarous reasons I
have given you, cricket has fallen into disrepute. Of course, to see an
eleven taking the field in a state of nature makes dead against
civilisation and human progress.”
Finally, the Model Man wrote to say that it would give him great
pleasure to bring a team to the ground upon the following morning if the
local talent promised to wear clothes. “My eleven will absolutely refuse
to play against anybody in the nude,” he wound up.
An hour later a negro in a boat paddled out to us with an answer. He
hailed us, and we asked him if his people would accept our terms.
“Yes, massa, we all put fings on, but we much sooner play cricket
widdout.”
“Nonsense,” shouted back the Model Man. “Cricket is a civilised game,
and must be followed in a civilised way, or not at all. We will be on
the ground at ten o’clock.”
The messenger rowed off, and a great discussion began as to the
constitution of our team. Everybody wanted to go to the match, and sit
in the shade and look on and criticise, but no one much cared about
playing. The Captain of the “Rhine” absolutely refused, to begin with.
He said:
“I would do anything for my officers—anything in reason; but cricket is
out of the question. I shall, however, be on the ground with some
ladies. A good appreciative audience is everything in these cases.
Moreover, I will umpire if the tide turns against us.”
The Treasure only consented to play after much pressure. He said:
“You know what the wicket is like; it’s simply mountainous,
[Pg 514]and black
men have no control over their bowling. For you medium-sized chaps it
may be comparatively safe, but bowling at me is like bowling at a
haystack—you cannot miss. When I go in, the blacks never bother about
the stumps, but just let fly at random on the chance of winging me. Last
match here, I hit their crack fast bowler all over the island, and he
got mad at last, and gave up attempting to bowl me, but just tried to
kill me.”
“You scored off him, though,” said our Fourth Officer, who remembered
the incident.
“nearly knocked a limb off him.”
“I did,” admitted the Treasure. “I slapped one straight back, as hard as
ever I could lay in to it, and he funked it, and tried to get out of the
way and failed. I nearly knocked a limb off him, and then he abandoned
the ball, and went and sulked and chattered to himself in the deep
field.”
The Doctor said it would give him great pleasure to play, but he added
that he should feel very averse to bowling against anybody with nothing
on. Then the Model Man answered:
“You need not fear. The negroes are very particular about pads and such
things. They don’t wear shoes, for nothing could hurt their feet, but
they never dream of batting without leg-guards, because a nigger’s shins
are his weak spot. These fellows are not much good at cricket after you
have once hit them hard. Either they get cross and throw up the whole
thing, and leave the ground and go home to their families, or else they
become frightened and servile. I have known them almost beg for mercy
before each ball.”
“You’ll play, of course,” said the Fourth Officer to me.
“Certainly, if you will,” I answered. Then he replied:
[Pg 515]
“I shall undoubtedly play. I’m not a man who does much with the bat, but
my bowling is rather out of the common. I have a natural leg-break which
baffles fellows frightfully. Why, there was a question raised once about
playing me for my county.”
I did not ask him which county, because one should never goad a willing
horse. The Fourth Officer had been in a thoroughly mendacious vein ever
since we left St. Kitts; the fault grew upon him, and now he began to
utter transparent inaccuracies at all hours, from sheer love of them.
After much argument and conversation, our team was finally selected, the
last man chosen being a black stoker of great size and strength.
“I regard him as a speculation,” explained the Captain of our side;
“either he will get out first ball or make a hundred. There are no
half-measures with him.”
As we approached the ground on the following morning, our Model Man
confided to me a great source of anxiety. This was the fielding. He
said:
“You see, men don’t mind batting, but they get very unsportsmanlike when
it comes to going out into the field. Some actually hide, or pretend
they have engagements; others feign illness and retire; others, again,
salve their miserable consciences by paying a negro a shilling to go and
field for them. I only mention this. I know you’re not the man to do
such things; but, between ourselves, I fear the Doctor is just a sort of
chap to escape fielding. There are others also I must keep an eye upon.
Being captain of a scratch cricket team in the Tropics is no light task,
I can tell you.”
A considerable crowd had gathered to see the conflict. The negroes sat
and lolled round the ground, while, behind them, buggies and horsemen
were drawn up. Conspicuous in that gay throng appeared the Captain of
the “Rhine,” seated on a brown horse, amid female equestrians. Beyond
the audience rose a belt of tamarind and flamboyant trees, the latter
with gigantic green and brown seed-pods hanging from their branches; and
above these woods, sloping upwards to the blue sky, extended the hills,
with winding roads, visible here and there through the foliage that
covered them, and with many a flagstaff and white cottage scattered upon
their sides.
“nibbled the bails.”
The ground itself suggested golf rather than cricket. Here and there a
little dried-up grass occurred, but it collected in lonely tufts,
between which extended great ravines and hillocks and boulders and
[Pg 516]
patches of desolation. Upon a barren spot in the middle, the wickets had
been pitched. When we arrived, they appeared to be an object of no
little interest to sundry goats. These beasts evidently regarding the
stumps as some strange new form of vegetation, sprang up in a single
night from the arid soil, sauntered round them enquiringly, and a shabby
he-goat, braver than his companions, nibbled the bails.
Our opponents, adequately attired, had arrived. They constituted a
motley, good-humoured gathering in all shades. One, John Smith, a genial
hybrid, commanded them, and presently a great shout arose, when it
transpired that he had secured choice of innings. The Doctor said, in a
tone of reproof:
“Hang it, John, you’ve only won the toss. You couldn’t make a bigger row
if you’d won the match.”
john smith.
“Great fing to go in fus, sar,” explained John; “we go in fus now, when
we’s fresh.”
Then the Model Man led out his warriors.
I sauntered across the pitch with the Treasure, and examined its
peculiarities. We were discussing a curious geological formation, midway
between the wickets, when our Fourth Officer approached in some glee at
a great discovery. He had found a little hill, rather wide of the
stumps, [Pg 517]on one side, and he explained that whenever he dropped a ball
on this elevation, he must bowl an Ethiop.
“You see, my natural leg-break will take the ball dead into the wicket
every time,” he said.
We hoped it might be so; and he begged us to keep the thing a profound
secret, because, as he said, if it got about that we were going to
utilise this hill to such an extent, the enemy would probably send out
and have it removed, or alter the pitch.
“driven back a trifle.”
After the goats cleared away, and the juvenile spectators driven back a
trifle, our Model Man arranged his field. More correctly speaking, the
field arranged itself. Indeed, our team hardly proved as amenable as
might have been wished. The Doctor insisted on taking long-leg and
long-oft.
“Why?” asked his Captain, looking rather distrustfully at a buggy with
some red parasols in it, which would be extremely close to the Doctor at
long-leg.
“It isn’t that, old chap,” replied our physician, cheerfully, following
the Model Man’s eye. “In fact, I’m not sure if I even know those girls.
I only suggested a place in the long field because I’m a safe catch.
That’s important.”
So he had his way.
Meantime, the Treasure found some other parasols—white ones—and placed
himself within easy chatting distance. Investigation proved that the
white parasols were protecting the Enchantress and her mother. The Model
Man said that he might just as well be on the ship as there. So he
ordered his man up[Pg 518]
to take the wicket. The Treasure came reluctantly,
and absolutely declined to keep wicket. He declared that it was simple
murder to make a person of his size attempt such a thing on such a
ground.
He led me aside privately, and said:
“Look here, you know that walking-stick of mine, manufactured from a
shark’s backbone—the one you are always worrying me to give you? Well,
I will, when we go back to the ship, if you’ll take the wicket. If you
fall at your post, then your heirs shall have it.”
I closed on this bargain promptly, and while I dressed up in all sorts
of life-saving inventions used at cricket, the Treasure took an
unobtrusive, circuitous route back to the white parasols.
John Smith himself and another negro, who was said to be related to him
by marriage, came in first. They were padded up to the eyes, and
evidently felt the importance of their position. Then a black umpire
said: “Play, gem’men,” and our Fourth Officer started with his
world-famed, natural leg-break. He bowled three wides in succession as a
preliminary. It is not easy to bowl wides underhand, but that Fourth
Officer managed it; and I began to understand why, after all, his county
had determined to struggle along without him.
“What’s the matter, old man?” asked our Captain, who was fielding at
short-slip.
“It’s all right, old chap; you wait,” answered the Fourth Officer, full
of confidence.
“Yes, quite so, but they count one against us every time. I didn’t know
whether you knew it,” explained the Model Man.
Meantime the bowler made further futile attempts to drop the ball upon
the mound he had discovered. At last he actually did do so, but instead
of breaking in and taking a wicket, as we, who were in the secret,
hoped, the batsman got hold of it, and hit it high and hard to long-leg.
All eyes turned to see if the Doctor’s estimate of his own powers at a
catch was justified. But he had disappeared entirely. He had not even
left a substitute. Everybody shouted with dismay, and then the Doctor
suddenly bounded on to the field. He distinctly came out of the buggy,
from between the red parasols. If he had not actually known those girls,
he must have introduced himself, or prevailed upon somebody else to do
so. He tore into the scene of action, looking for the ball.
“It’s in the air, you fool,” yelled a dozen voices. Then it fell within
a yard of the Doctor. A child could have caught it. We were all quite
unsettled. The Model Man said:
[Pg 519]
“I’m not a bit surprised—it’s just what I expected.”
And the Fourth Officer said:
“I don’t really see what good it is my bowling for catches at long-leg
if there’s no long-leg.”
And the Doctor said:
“Wouldn’t have done it for money. Hadn’t the faintest idea you’d
started. I saw you bowling balls all over the place, miles away from the
wicket, and I thought you were merely practising.” Which was rather an
unpleasant thing for the Fourth Officer to hear.
“a black umpire.”
Then the game steadied down and proceeded. Our Captain took the ball,
after the underhand expert had got a few within sight of the wicket, and
so finished his over. The Model Man was much more successful, for he
clean-bowled a negro with his third delivery. It pitched in a sort of
mountain-pass, about ten feet from the wicket; then it branched off to
the right and hit a stone, and came back again, and finally took the off
stump. I don’t see how anybody alive could have played it. The batsman
retired utterly bewildered, and the Model Man assured me he had never
sent down a better ball.
A slogger came in next, and made runs rather rapidly, but nothing much
happened until the Fourth Officer’s third over. Then he fell foul of me,
and took exception to my method of keeping the wicket. He was being hit
about pretty generally, and had become very hot, so, at another time, I
should not have retorted upon him; but, when he spoke, I was hot too,
and being hit about also, so I answered without deliberation. He said:
“Can’t you even try to stump them?”
And I replied:
“I might, if my arms were ten feet long.”
Then he said:
“You’ve had dozens of chances. I always want a wicket-keeper for my
bowling.”
[Pg 520]
Whereupon I answered:
“You want twenty—in a row. One’s no good.”
He said:
“You don’t like standing up to my fast ones, that’s the truth.”
And I responded:
“Oh, bless you, I’d stand up to them all right, if I knew where to
stand. A wicket-keeper’s supposed to keep the wicket, not run all over
the ground after wides.”
“refreshments were being sold.”
During this unseemly argument, the Model Man, the Treasure, and the
Doctor were all having an unpleasantness on their own account. The
Doctor was imploring our Captain to take himself off and let somebody
else bowl. He said: “Can’t you see they’ve collared you? They’ve scored
twenty runs. Don’t think that I want to go on. Far from it. I’m only
speaking for the good of the side.”
But the Model Man refused to leave off bowling for anybody. He
emphatically denied that they had collared him. Then he changed the
subject, and turned upon the Treasure, and asked him where he supposed
he was fielding.
The Treasure answered:
“This is mid-on. I’m all right.”
“You may think it’s mid-on, but it isn’t,” shouted back the worried
Model Man. “I’ve no doubt you’re all right,” he continued, bitterly,
“but you’re no sportsman.”
After twenty more runs had been scored, the Fourth Officer unexpectedly
and frankly admitted that he was not in form. He relinquished the ball,
and said he had the makings of a sunstroke about his head, and went off
to field among a few friends in a patch of shade under a tree, where all
kinds of refreshments were
[Pg 521]
being sold. Then our Captain held a
consultation, and determined to try a complete change in the attack. He
called upon the Doctor and the Treasure, and told them just to bowl
quietly and carefully, and as straight as possible.
The Treasure started with yorkers; which was about the most effective
thing he could have done, for, whenever he got one on the wicket, it
bowled a black man. Two negroes, including the slogger, fell to him in
his first over. Then the Doctor tried his hand, and began by being
absurdly particular about the field. He put five men in the slips, and
then started with terrifically fast full pitches to leg. A good player
would have hit one and all of these right out of the island into the
sea, but the people who were now at the wickets merely got out of the
way, and let the Doctor’s deliveries proceed to the boundary for three
byes each.
Upon this he insulted me, as the Fourth Officer had done before him. He
said:
“Do stand up to them, old man.”
I said:
“Why should I? I’m out to enjoy myself. I’m a human being, not a target.
Besides, long-stop will lose interest in the game if he has nothing to
do.”
“They don’t have long-stops in first-class cricket,” grumbled the
Doctor. “You’ve got no proper pride.”
Then I said:
“Of course, if you are mistaking this display for first-class cricket,
it’s no good arguing with you.”
In his second over the Doctor bowled a shade straighter, and began
knocking the batsmen about, and hurting them and frightening them. If
they had only kept in front of the wicket, and put their bats between
their legs out of the way, they might have been safe enough, but they
dashed nervously about and tried to escape; and the ball would shoot and
hit their toes, or rise and threaten their heads, or break back into
their stomachs. Then the bowler got a man “retired hurt,” and a regular
panic set in.
“I’m keeping down the run-getting, anyhow,” said the elated Doctor.
“Yes, and you’ll have to mend all these local celebrities for nothing
after the match,” replied our Treasure.
The latter had taken several more wickets, and now the score stood at
sixty, with three further blacks to bat. About this time I made an
appeal to the umpire upon a question of stumping a
[Pg 522]
man, but he had his
back turned and was buying a piece of sugarcane. He apologised
profusely. He said:
“I’se too sorry, Massa, jus’ too sorry, but I’se dam
hungry, Sar.”
Hungry! Whoever heard of an umpire being hungry? Thirsty they may be,
and generally are, but hunger is a paltry plea to raise.
Soon afterwards, our black stoker made two brilliant catches, one after
the other, the Treasure quickly bowled their last man, and the innings
closed for seventy-three runs.
“black stoker made two
brilliant catches.”
Then the rival teams scattered through St. Thomas for luncheon, the
spectators dispersed, and the goats had the cricket ground all to
themselves until the afternoon.
Some lively betting took place during our meal. The Model Man was
gloomy, and doubted the ability of his eleven to make the necessary
score on such a wicket; but the Doctor appeared extremely sanguine, and
the Fourth Officer actually guaranteed half the runs himself. He said:
“Though not a finished bat, yet it often happens that I come off with
the willow when I fail with the leather.”
It struck me that if his success with one was proportionate to his
failure with the other, there seemed just reason for hoping he would get
into three figures that afternoon.
Our Captain grew very anxious about the order of going in. Finally, he
determined to start with the black stoker and me. He said:
“You play steadily and cautiously and let him hit. If it chances to be
his day, we may, after all, win with ten wickets in hand. Stranger
things have happened at cricket.”
“Not many,” I replied; “but we will do our best.”
Our best, unfortunately, did not amount to much. The match was resumed
at half-past three, before an increased gathering of onlookers; and
three distinct rounds of applause greeted the gigantic stoker and me as
we marched to the wickets. It proved
[Pg 523]
a fortunate thing that we got the
applause then, because we might have missed it later. My own innings,
for instance, did not afford the smallest loophole for enthusiasm at any
time.
“somewhere in the small ribs.”
The black certainly began well. He hit the first ball he received clean
out of the ground for six runs, but the second ball retaliated and smote
him direfully somewhere in the small ribs. Thereupon, he fell down and
rolled twenty yards to allay the agony, after which he rose up and
withdrew, declaring that he had met his death, and that no power on
earth would induce him to bat again. These negroes never forget an
injury of this kind. If our black stoker lives over to-morrow, he will
probably collect his colleagues from the ship, and row ashore by night
and seek out the local bowler, and make it very unrestful and exciting
for him.
The Model Man now came in, but he had the misfortune to lose my
assistance almost immediately. I was caught at short leg after a patient
innings of ten, slightly marred, however, by about the same number of
chances. The Fourth Officer took my place. He began by nearly running
out his Captain. If point had not stopped to dance and rub his leg, the
wicket must have fallen. Then the new-comer settled down and played with
great care, and irritated the bowlers extremely by giving them advice
and criticising their efforts. Once they sent him so slow a ball that it
never reached the wicket at all. Then our Fourth Officer rushed out and
hit it after it had stopped, and so, rather ingeniously, scored two. It
was a revolutionary sort of stroke, and the umpire said it must not be
counted, but the batsman insisted upon having the runs put down. Of
course, to argue with any umpire is madness. This black one simply
waited for the next over, and then gave our Fourth Officer out “leg
before.” There was a great argument, but the umpire’s ruling had to be
upheld, and the [Pg 524]
batsman retired, declaring that he would never play
cricket with savages again as long as he lived. He said:
“In the first place the ball was a wide, and in the second, after
breaking a yard and a half, it hit my elbow. Then that black ass gives
me out ‘leg before.’ It’s sickening. Emancipation is the biggest error
of the century. I’m going back to the ship.” But he did not. He found
something under a yellow parasol that comforted him.
The Doctor came in next, and hit the first ball he received over the
bowler’s head for three. Encouraged by this success, he ran half across
the ground to the next one, missed it, and would have been stumped under
ordinary circumstances, but the ball, instead of going to the
wicket-keeper, shunted off at a sort of junction, and proceeded to
short-slip. He, desiring the honour of defeating the Doctor, would not
give the ball up, and tried to put the wicket down himself. This the
outraged custodian of the stumps refused to permit, and while they were
wrangling about it, and the rest of the team were screaming directions,
our batsman galloped safely back amidst loud applause.
“there was a great argument.”
We made fifty-eight for four wickets, the Model Man being the next to
succumb. He had performed well, in something approaching style, for
thirty runs. After him came the Treasure. He played forward very tamely
at everything, until a ball suddenly got up and skinned two of his
knuckles. Then he grew excited, and began hitting very hard, and making
runs at a tremendous pace.
Meanwhile the Doctor, finding his wicket still intact, suddenly became
enthusiastic and took extraordinary interest in his innings. Between
each ball he marched about the pitch and grubbed up
[Pg 525]
tufts of grass and
threw away stones, and patted the different elevations and acclivities
with his bat. But he might just as well have patted the Alps, or any
other mountain range. He hit a fast ball straight up into the air, when
only five or six runs were wanted to win the match. It was one of those
awkward, lofty hits that half the field can get to, if they only look
alive. In this case, four negroes were all waiting to secure him, so the
Doctor escaped again. Then, evidently under the impression that he bore
a charmed life, he began taking great liberties, and pulling straight
balls and strolling about out of his ground, and so forth. Finally, amid
some intricate manœuvres, he jumped on to his own wicket, and retired
well pleased with his performance. The Treasure went on hitting and
being hit for a few minutes longer; then he made the winning stroke, and
the contest came to a happy conclusion.
With one or two exceptions, everybody had much enjoyed the match; and
that night, I recollect, we sat and smoked late on the deck of the
“Rhine,” fought our battle once more, explained our theories of cricket
to one another, and agreed that it was a great and grand amusement.
“But,” said the Fourth Officer, “it is not a pastime in which your
nigger will ever excel. He cannot learn the rules, let alone play the
game.”
“No,” I answered, “he does not excel at it, because, ‘unstable as
water,’ the Ethiopian will never excel at anything; but he does quite as
well as one might have expected, and, if he had a better ground, might
play a better game.”
Certainly that cricket ground requires attention. To level it, though
doubtless an engineering feat, should not be impossible. If an
earthquake could be arranged, it might leave a surface for steam rollers
to begin working upon; but no mere patching or tinkering will answer the
purpose. Something definite and drastic and colossal must be done to the
cricket ground we played on at St. Thomas before it can become fairly
worthy of the name.
[Pg 526]
[Pg 527]
My First Book.
By R. M. Ballantyne.
Illustrations by Geo. Hutchinson.
(Photographs by Messrs. Fradelle & Young.)
Having been asked to give some account of the commencement of my
literary career, I begin by remarking that my first book was not a tale
or “story-book,” but a free-and-easy record of personal adventure and
every-day life in those wild regions of North America which are known,
variously, as Rupert’s Land—The Hudson’s Bay Territory—The Nor’ West,
and “The Great Lone Land.”
“where i wrote my first book.”
(A Sketch by the Author.)
The record was never meant to see the light in the form of a book. It
was written solely for the eye of my mother, but, as it may be said that
it was the means of leading me ultimately into the path of my life-work,
and was penned under somewhat peculiar circumstances, it may not be out
of place to refer to it particularly here.
The circumstances were as follows:—
After having spent about six years in the wild Nor’ West, as a servant
of the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company, I found myself, one summer—at the
advanced age of twenty-two—in charge of an outpost on the uninhabited
northern shores of the gulf of St. Lawrence named Seven Islands. It was
a dreary, desolate spot; at that
[Pg 528]
time far beyond the bounds of
civilisation. The gulf, just opposite the establishment, was about fifty
miles broad. The ships which passed up and down it were invisible, not
only on account of distance, but because of seven islands at the mouth
of the bay coming between them and the outpost. My next neighbour, in
command of a similar post up the gulf, was about seventy miles distant.
The nearest house down the gulf was about eighty miles off, and behind
us lay the virgin forests, with swamps, lakes, prairies, and mountains,
stretching away without break right across the continent to the Pacific
Ocean.
mr. ballantyne’s house at harrow.
The outpost—which, in virtue of a ship’s carronade and a flagstaff, was
occasionally styled a “fort”—consisted of four wooden buildings. One of
these—the largest, with a verandah—was the Residency. There was an
offshoot in rear which served as a kitchen. The other houses were a
store for goods wherewith to carry on trade with the Indians, a stable,
and a workshop. The whole population of the establishment—indeed of the
surrounding district—consisted of myself and one man—also a horse! The
horse occupied the stable, I dwelt in the Residency, the rest of the
population lived in the kitchen.
[Pg 529]
There were, indeed, other five men belonging to the establishment, but
these did not affect its desolation, for they were away netting salmon
at a river about twenty miles distant at the time I write of.
My “Friday”—who was a French-Canadian—being cook, as well as
man-of-all-works, found a little occupation in attending to the duties
of his office, but the unfortunate Governor had nothing whatever to do
except await the arrival of Indians, who were not due at that time. The
horse was a bad one, without a saddle, and in possession of a pronounced
backbone. My “Friday” was not sociable. I had no books, no newspapers,
no magazines or literature of any kind, no game to shoot, no boat
wherewith to prosecute fishing in the bay, and no prospect of seeing any
one to speak to for weeks, if not months, to come. But I had pen and
ink, and, by great good fortune, was in possession of a blank paper book
fully an inch thick.
These, then, were the circumstances in which I began my first book.
When that book was finished, and, not long afterwards, submitted to
the—I need hardly say favourable—criticism of my mother, I had not the
most distant idea of taking to authorship as a profession. Even when a
printer-cousin, seeing the MS., offered to print it, and the well-known
Blackwood, of Edinburgh, seeing the book, offered to publish it—and did
publish it—my ambition was still so absolutely asleep that I did not
again put pen to paper in that way for eight years thereafter,
although I might have been encouraged thereto by the fact that this
first book—named “Hudson’s Bay”—besides being a commercial success,
received favourable notice from the press.
It was not until the year 1854 that my literary path was opened up. At
that time I was a partner in the late publishing firm of Constable & Co.
of Edinburgh. Happening one day to meet with the late William Nelson,
publisher, I was asked by him how I should like the idea of taking to
literature as a profession. My answer I forget. It must have been vague,
for I had never thought of the subject before.
“Well,” said he, “what would you think of trying to write a story?”
Somewhat amused, I replied that I did not know what to think, but I
would try if he wished me to do so.
“Do so,” said he, “and go to work at once”—or words to that effect.
[Pg 530]
I went to work at once, and wrote my first story or work of fiction. It
was published in 1855 under the name of “Snowflakes and Sunbeams; or,
The Young Furtraders.” Afterwards the first part of the title was
dropped, and the book is now known as “The Young Furtraders.” From that
day to this I have lived by making story-books for young folk.
the hall.
From what I have said it will be seen that I have never aimed at the
achieving of this position, and I hope that it is not presumptuous in me
to think—and to derive much comfort from the thought—that God led me
into the particular path along which I have walked for so many years.
The scene of my first story was naturally laid in those backwoods with
which I was familiar, and the story itself was founded
[Pg 531]on the
adventures and experiences of myself and my companions. When a second
book was required of me, I stuck to the same regions, but changed the
locality. When casting about in my mind for a suitable subject, I
happened to meet with an old retired “Nor’wester” who had spent an
adventurous life in Rupert’s Land. Among other duties he had been sent
to establish an outpost of the Hudson Bay Company at Ungava Bay, one of
the most dreary parts of a desolate region. On hearing what I wanted he
sat down and wrote a long narrative of his proceedings there, which he
placed at my disposal, and thus furnished me with the foundation of
“Ungava.”
But now I had reached the end of my tether, and when a third story was
wanted I was compelled to seek new fields of adventure in the books of
travellers. Regarding the Southern seas as the most romantic part of the
world—after the backwoods!—I mentally and spiritually plunged into
those warm waters, and the dive resulted in the “Coral Island.”
It now began to be borne in upon me that there was something not quite
satisfactory in describing, expatiating on, and energising in, regions
which one has never seen. For one thing, it was needful to be always
carefully on the watch to avoid falling into mistakes geographical,
topographical, natural-historical, and otherwise.
For instance, despite the utmost care of which I was capable while
studying up for the “Coral Island,” I fell into a blunder through
ignorance in regard to a familiar fruit. I was under the impression that
cocoanuts grew on their trees in the same form as that in which they are
usually presented to us in grocers’ windows—namely, about the size of a
large fist with three spots at one end. Learning from trustworthy books
that at a certain stage of development the nut contains a delicious
beverage like lemonade, I sent one of my heroes up a tree for a nut,
through the shell of which he bored a hole with a penknife. It was not
till long after the story was published that my own brother—who had
voyaged in Southern seas—wrote to draw my attention to the fact that
the cocoanut is nearly as large as a man’s head, and its outer husk is
over an inch thick, so that no ordinary penknife could bore to its
interior! Of course I should have known this, and, perhaps, should be
ashamed of my ignorance, but, somehow, I’m not!
I admit that this was a slip, but such, and other slips, hardly justify
the remark that some people have not hesitated to make, namely, that I
have a tendency to draw the long bow. I feel
[Pg 532]
almost sensitive on this
point, for I have always laboured to be true to nature and to fact even
in my wildest flights of fancy.
This reminds me of the remark made to myself once by a lady in reference
to this same “Coral Island.” “There is one thing, Mr. Ballantyne,” she
said, “which I really find it hard to believe. You make one of your
three boys dive into a clear pool, go to the bottom, and then, turning
on his back, look up and wink and laugh at the other two.”
trophies from mr. ballantyne’s travels.
“No, no, not ‘laugh,’” said I, remonstratively.
“Well, then, you make him smile.”
“Ah, that is true, but there is a vast difference between laughing and
smiling under water. But is it not singular that you should doubt the
only incident in the story which I personally verified? I happened to be
in lodgings at the seaside while writing that story, and, after penning
the passage you refer to, I
[Pg 533]
went down to the shore, pulled off my
clothes, dived to the bottom, turned on my back, and, looking up, I
smiled and winked.”
The lady laughed, but I have never been quite sure, from the tone of
that laugh, whether it was a laugh of conviction or of unbelief. It is
not improbable that my fair friend’s mental constitution may have been
somewhat similar to that of the old woman who declined to believe her
sailor-grandson when he told her he had seen flying-fish, but at once
recognised his veracity when he said he had seen the remains of
Pharaoh’s chariot wheels on the shores of the Red Sea.
the dining room.
Recognising, then, the difficulties of my position, I formed the
resolution to visit—when possible—the scenes in which my stories were
laid; converse with the people who, under modification, were to form the
dramatis personæ of the tales, and, generally, to obtain information
in each case, as far as lay in my power, from the fountain head.
Thus, when about to begin “The Lifeboat,” I went to Ramsgate, and, for
some time, was hand and glove with Jarman, the
[Pg 534]
heroic coxswain of the
Ramsgate boat, a lion-like as well as lion-hearted man, who rescued
hundreds of lives from the fatal Goodwin Sands during his career. In
like manner, when getting up information for “The Lighthouse,” I
obtained permission from the Commissioners of Northern Lights to visit
the Bell Rock Lighthouse, where I hobnobbed with the three keepers of
that celebrated pillar-in-the-sea for three weeks, and read Stevenson’s
graphic account of the building of the structure in the library, or
visitors’ room, just under the lantern. I was absolutely a prisoner
there during those three weeks, for no boats ever came near us, and it
need scarcely be said that ships kept well out of our way. By good
fortune there came on a pretty stiff gale at the time, and Stevenson’s
thrilling narrative was read to the tune of whistling winds and roaring
seas, many of which latter sent the spray right up to the lantern and
caused the building, more than once, to quiver to its foundation.
the study.
In order to do justice to “Fighting the Flames” I careered through the
streets of London on fire-engines, clad in a pea-jacket
[Pg 535]and a black
leather helmet of the Salvage Corps. This, to enable me to pass the
cordon of police without question—though not without recognition, as
was made apparent to me on one occasion at a fire by a fireman
whispering confidentially, “I know what you are, sir, you’re a
hamitoor!”
mr. r. m. ballantyne.
“Right you are,” said I, and moved away in order to change the subject.
It was a glorious experience, by the way, this galloping on fire-engines
through the crowded streets. It had in it much of the excitement of the
chase—possibly that of war—with
[Pg 536]
the noble end in view of saving
instead of destroying life! Such tearing along at headlong speed; such
wild roaring of the firemen to clear the way; such frantic dashing aside
of cabs, carts, ’buses, and pedestrians; such reckless courage on the
part of the men, and volcanic spoutings on the part of the fires! But I
must not linger. The memory of it is too enticing. “Deep Down” took me
to Cornwall, where, over two hundred fathoms beneath the green turf, and
more than half-a-mile out under the bed of the sea, I saw the sturdy
miners at work winning copper and tin from the solid rock, and acquired
some knowledge of their life, sufferings, and toils.
the drawing room.
In the land of the Vikings I shot ptarmigan, caught salmon, and gathered
material for “Erling the Bold.” A winter in Algiers made me familiar
with the “Pirate City.” I enjoyed a fortnight with the hearty
inhabitants of the Gull Lightship off the Goodwin Sands; and went to the
Cape of Good Hope, and up into the interior of the Colony, to spy out
the land and hold intercourse with “The Settler and the
Savage”—although I am bound to confess
[Pg 537]
that, with regard to the
latter, I talked to him only with mine eyes. I also went afloat for a
short time with the fishermen of the North Sea in order to be able to do
justice to “The Young Trawler.”
To arrive still closer at the truth, and to avoid errors, I have always
endeavoured to submit my proof sheets, when possible, to experts and men
who knew the subjects well. Thus, Capt. Shaw, late chief of the London
Fire Brigade, kindly read the proofs of “Fighting the Flames,” and
prevented my getting off the rails in matters of detail, and Sir Arthur
Blackwood, financial secretary to the General Post Office, obligingly
did me the same favour in regard to “Post Haste.”
One other word in conclusion. Always, while writing—whatever might be
the subject of my story—I have been influenced by an undercurrent of
effort and desire to direct the minds and affections of my readers
towards the higher life.
[Pg 538]
Trials And Troubles of an Artist.
By Fred Miller.
Illustrations by E. M. Jessop.
Are any professional men so liable to public insults as painters? Only
last summer a new, and I think unique, type of insult was dropped upon
me. I had a picture in hand, and wanted a bit of background to complete
it. I had seen just the very thing near Twickenham, so, taking my
sketching-box and camp-stool, I trained out, and in due course started
work. Although I was painting by the side of a public road, the traffic
was small and the passers-by few. Still there were passers-by, mostly
children, with their nurses or governesses. I am too used to being
looked at to take any notice of those who try to peep as they pass, and
I soon got quite absorbed in my task. Presently, I was aroused from my
artistic abstraction by a little girl dropping a penny in my box, and
before I had time to explain, expostulate, or thank her, she had run
away. “The world is less hard-hearted than I thought,” was my reflection
as I resumed painting. A little while after this I noticed, during the
pauses of my work, another little girl hovering about
[Pg 539]me in an
undecided sort of way. After a few moments’ indecision, she dropped a
penny in my box and disappeared. “This is encouraging,” I said to
myself, “I shall certainly come here again.”
I resumed my sketch, when presently a young girl with two children came
and stood near me. These were of a different class. There was no
timidity or reticence about them. After standing at my side, and finding
that they could not see to advantage, the three sidled round to the
back, and gradually edged themselves nearer and nearer until they
commanded a satisfactory view of the sketch.
They watched in silence for awhile, and then the girl said—“You ain’t
done much yet. ’Spose you’re going to finish it at ’ome?”
The tone of her voice made me inclined to humour her, so I replied—
“Well, you see, miss, I haven’t taken enough yet. Can’t afford to go
home on twopence.”
“My brother paints. He’s in the sixth standard. I give ’im a box of
paints on his birthday, and he’s going to paint me a picture for my
bedroom.”
The gulf that might have divided us was bridged now, so I got what
satisfaction I could out of her chatter.
[Pg 540]
“I wish I could paint. I’d like to do them tex’s what they gives yer at
Sunday school.”
“Oh, that’s the line you’d like to take up, Julia, is it?”
Another pause.
“D’yer like them paintin’s what they gives yer at the tea grocers? My
brother says ’e’s going to paint them sort when ’e gets them colours
what you squeezes out of tubes; you know, like them ladies’ tormenters,
same as you gets on Bank ’olidays on ’Ampstead ’Eath.”
I wanted to go on with my picture, so I suggested to Julia (I had no
reason to suppose that her name was not Julia) that it was getting near
tea-time.
“Oh, is it,” she said; “come along, Halbert.” Then, turning to me, she
added—“Are yer comin’ to-morrer? I’d like yer to see my brother’s
paintin’s.”
“That depends upon how much I make to-day, Julia,” I answered—“whether
the ‘pitch’ is a good one or not.”
“Oh,” said Julia, thoughtfully; “I’d like yer to come to-morrer,” and
then as she passed she dropped a halfpenny into my box.
On other occasions, when out painting in poor neighbourhoods, my easel,
camp-stool, and self have been used as “home” in games like “Hi-spi-Hoy”
and “Hoop,” and I have, during the progress of my sketch, been more than
once in imminent danger of being carried away, and my kit sent flying,
during a sudden rush of the excited players.
[Pg 541]
But even such an indignity
as this does not touch bottom. Boys have before now made me a “Harbour
of Refuge,” with the poetry left out, and bricks and various missiles
substituted. They have dodged behind me to escape the consequences of
“cheekiness” to bigger boys, and have used my canvas as a screen to
shield off stones.
And what are you to do? Just at that moment, in all likelihood, you are
putting in a crisp, telling touch that will “do the trick,” and if the
news were brought to you that your favourite aunt had fallen downstairs,
it would not be sufficient to make you rise from off your camp-stool.
I was sketching once near a row of those cheap one-storied cottages,
generally called Villa This and Villa That, inhabited by a tribe the
mothers of which seem always to have a baby on hand, and several others
in various stages of development. These children spend most of their
time, so far as I can judge, in hanging about, just outside the front
garden, waiting for something to turn up to amuse them, and I had been
much bothered by their creeping round behind me, or edging closer and
closer to my side, and occasionally shoving each other so as to shake me
or my sketch. I tried to forget them, and maintained a chilling silence.
The numbers, however, kept on increasing, and presently games were
projected in my immediate vicinity, as though I were the centre of
gravity, or the hub of the universe. The climax was reached when a young
nurse, aged seven or thereabouts, with a child just on the brink of
independence in her arms, came up and said—
“D’yer mind me leaving my baby here, while I have a game with the
Tubbses? She’ll be all right if I sit her on your jacket.”
Nice thing when seeking material for a masterpiece for next year’s
Academy to be asked to look after baby!
The remarks made by street loafers and errand-boys, too, who
[Pg 542]stand at
your elbow for half-an-hour at a stretch, are not encouraging, as a
rule. One boy, in what he considers a tone of confidence, will say to
another—
“S’elp me, Bob, aint ’e a doin’ it a fair treat.”
“Carry me out” (it is impossible to write “out” as they pronounce it),
“’Arree, ain’t it fine”
(rising intonation on the “I”)—“I wish I wos a
bloomin’ hartist.”
“Don’t ’e fancy ’isself, just.”
It is difficult to keep quietly on at work with every appearance of
indifference under such circumstances. It is also exasperating to be
called “Matey,” as though you were a pal of theirs, and lived on the
same landing. Yet these are only a few of the indignities with which a
poor artist has to put up.
Who has not, when on a sketching tour, felt the contempt that the
bucolic mind has for a man who, day after day, and week after week, sits
out of doors on his camp-stool, doing his best to catch some of Nature’s
mystery and fleeting beauty, and give it an abiding place on his canvas.
My friend S—— is a big, healthy, bearded fellow, who looks as
though he could pick half-hundred weights up in each hand with the ease
that I pick up my palette. The following dialogue took place on one
occasion between him and an elderly rustic who had been standing
watching him for some time, as he sat by the roadside, painting.
“No offence, sir,” said the agriculturist, “but is anything the matter
wi’ yer?”
“No,” answered S—— “What makes you ask?”
[Pg 543]
“Yer hain’t lame, are yer?”
“Lame! Good gracious, no!”
“You hain’t ’ad a misfortune in any way? The sciatics or lumbager,
that’s kind o’ laid yer by?”
“No, I’m as well as I have always been.”
“An’ yer call yerself a man and can sit theer a doin’ o’ that. Well, I’m
d—— d!”
I never go out sketching without feeling this silent contempt, for it is
only rarely that it finds expression. The remarks made by villagers show
how utterly unable they are to grasp the idea of anyone valuing an
artist’s efforts. The old story of the painter who was asked by the
farmer whose cow he had been drawing, what the said picture might be
worth when finished, is typical.
“Oh, I hope to get thirty pounds for it if it is well hung,” explained
the artist.
“Thutty pound for the mere picture!” cried the old fellow in
astonishment. “Why, I’d sell you the old cow itself for ten.”
A spirit of commiseration underlies a good many of the remarks made by
the bucolic. I went down on one occasion to see a couple of painters who
had taken a small cottage at one and sixpence a week in order to paint
some orchard pictures. When their neighbours, who were farm hands, got
to know them a bit, they were very friendly disposed, and made them
presents of vegetables, and one old fellow who was reputed to have
“saved a
[Pg 544]
smart bit o’ money,” said to one of the “painter chaps,” as
they were called—
“There don’t seem much of a living in your business, sir. I s’pose
trade’s a bit dull with ye, now folks is a spring cleaning. What do yer
say now to paintin’ my cart in yer dinner hour? I shall want it done
afore long, and I’d like to gie ye the job, for a shilling or two down’t
come amiss to any of us. Do it now?”
Another job refused by these same artists was to clean and touch up an
old picture that had been bought for a few shillings at a sale. The old
chap who had purchased it went so far as to offer them a shilling to do
the work, and that offer being declined, he threw in a pint of stout as
an additional inducement.
A friend who had painted a 50 x 40 canvas outside during one summer,
spending some five or six weeks upon it, told me that one old chap, who
looked like a jobbing gardener, used to pass by every day, and
invariably stayed to stare at the work, but always at a respectful
distance, and it was not until the picture was nearly completed that he
broke the silence.
“D’yer moind me ’aving a look at it, sir?”
“Oh, certainly not,” and my friend got off his camp-stool to let the
critic have an uninterrupted view. The subject was a careful study of
wild flowers and herbage, growing in the corner
[Pg 545]
of an orchard. The old
fellow seemed to take the picture in very carefully, and at length said:
“Is it a view in Ireland, sir?”
“View in Ireland! What made you think of that? Don’t you see it’s the
corner of the orchard there, with all the thistles and docks and wild
flowers?”
“Well, to be sure! Fancy anyone a paintin’ them weeds and trumpery!” and
with that cheerless remark the old fellow sheered off.
Sculptors, unlike painters, rarely venture out of their studios, but it
happened that a sculptor came down to spend a few days with us when in a
Norfolk village, and so liked the place that he hired a barn, had a lot
of clay and a turntable sent down, and started modelling a milkmaid. As
the work progressed, it became the talk of the place, and, in due
course, numbers came to see the clay image that my friend was setting up
in the barn. This work did appeal to them. They could see at a glance
what it was meant to represent, and the chorus of approval was loud and
general, except on the part of the village constable. He was a taciturn
man, and used to come and smoke his pipe and preserve a contemptuous
silence. One day he said—
“Are you making that image for a church?”
“No. Why did you think I was?”
“Oh, nothing. Only when I was in London, and that’s a smart while ago, I
worked on a church as was a buildin’, and we had to fix some figures;
only they were made in what we calls Portland cement.”
“Oh, then, you have seen sculpture before?”
[Pg 546]
“Yes, sir, ’tain’t the first time as I’ve seed a graven image, as the
Bible calls ’em. D’yer ever make them figures they puts over doors and
winders of houses?”
“No; I can’t say I do.”
“Did you ever see them two figures in the Lord Mayor’s palace in the
City? You ought to see them, sir. I reckon they’re the best things in
that line you can see anywhere?”
“I’m afraid I don’t remember which figures you refer to.”
“Oh, they ain’t like your work, not a little bit. They’re picked out in
all kinds of colours, and are ever so big. I was thinking they must
represent two of them heathen gods what the Children of Israel fell down
and worshipped. You know the figures I mean?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. Can’t you remember their names?”
“Why, Gog and Magog, aren’t they, sir?”
[Pg 547]
The Brothers’ Agency.
By Do Bahin.
Illustrations by The Misses Hammond.
“she won’t see you.”
“She won’t see you, my boy,” said Grigsby, as I stood on the steps of
the Scandalmongers’ Club waiting for the next West Kensington ’bus;
“she’s doing a roaring trade, and don’t want any more advertisements;
and if she does she’ll put up her own notices, and not use you for
billsticker.”
“Grigsby may not be right this time,” I reflected, as I scaled the ’bus.
“He seldom is! And haven’t I triumphantly interviewed all the most
unmanageable celebrities of the last ten years, from Lord Tennyson to
the Royal baby? I suppose it’s my bland appearance. It lulls suspicion
and excites curiosity. People want to see whether it is possible for any
man to be such a fool as I look. Anyhow, I must go through with it
now, as I’ve let it out to Grigsby.”
The fact is, I was about to try to interview Miss Jenny T. Buller, the
inventress and manager of the “Brothers’ Agency,” perhaps the most
important social factor of the present century. In due course I found
myself opposite a smart-looking house, on whose door-plate was engraved
“The Brothers’ Agency.”
Being taken no doubt for a postulant Brother, I was shown upstairs into
a severe but elegant room, in the middle of which, at a huge desk loaded
with papers, sat a fashionable young lady of the frailest type of
Transatlantic beauty.
“Miss Buller, I believe.”
“You will not suit,” she said, after one short but decisive stare. “You
are not up to our mark.”
“I don’t wish to be a Brother,” I replied.
“Then what do you want?” she answered.
“Miss Buller,” I inquired, as if my life depended on the response, “how
did you ever think of this wonderful scheme?”
[Pg 548]
She laid down her pen, and turned in her chair; and I saw that I had
won.
“I’m tired of writing just now,” she began, “and I don’t mind if I tell
you.
“‘i don’t mind if i tell you.’”
“I found myself obliged to increase my income by some means. I first
thought of starting a servants’ agency; but the inconvenience I
experienced from having no brothers to take me about suggested a novel
idea to me. I was wondering if other girls felt as I did, when it
flashed upon me that young men who, from any reasons, are in want of
money, might let themselves out as brothers to well-to-do damsels
possessing no fraternal relations. I immediately settled to start an
agency for this object—somewhat on the principle of ‘Lady Guides’—the
full title being ‘The agency for supplying Brothers to brotherless
girls, or those with unobliging brothers.’ I resolved to call it shortly
‘The Brothers’ Agency.’ It is a good name, and gives to the undertaking
a kind of monastic flavour that I find is very taking.
“Of course I only began in a small way amongst the men and girls I knew
personally; but my business spread so rapidly that I soon started a
regular office, and issued printed rules.
“I decided that the Brothers should go to their work during the day (as
such relations do), and only be engaged for the evening to escort my
clients, as their sisters, to balls, theatres, etc. I knew that young
men in London society were supposed to let themselves out for dances; so
why not as Brothers?”
“Why not, indeed?” I murmured sympathetically.
“We do not find,” she continued vivaciously, “that it leads to
matrimonial complications, as the men who seek employment as Brothers
are usually so very impecunious that they understand that marriage is
out of the question for them. I was told by my friends, by which I mean
all those who felt themselves privileged to say nasty things to me, that
we should degenerate into a matrimonial agency, but I have not found it
so. On the contrary,
[Pg 549]
every man entering his name on our books, and
every girl engaging a Brother, signs a paper agreeing to pay a large
prohibitive fine should they get engaged to each other during the period
of fraternity. Any man known to be engaged is obliged to take his name
off the books at once, as we find fiancées very prejudiced, and
several unpleasant visits were paid to me at the office. Any man
becoming engaged while fulfilling a contract is liable to instant
dismissal at the employer’s pleasure, it having been found that he
almost invariably becomes remiss and inattentive in his discharge of
duties.
“one sister was seen at the theatre by an old maiden
aunt.”
[Pg 550]
“Of course, till the significance of the title of ‘Brother’ became
generally known in London society, there arose a good deal of scandal
and confusion.
“One sister was seen at the theatre by an old maiden aunt, who had never
heard of the Agency. The young lady offered as an explanation that the
man with her was ‘only engaged for the time,’ which so shocked the poor
old lady that she made a codicil next day to her will reciting her
niece’s misbehaviour and disinheriting her.”
“That kind of misunderstanding,” I said, “can hardly occur any longer.”
“I should think not,” she retorted. “And meantime, thank goodness, the
term ‘Brother’ has put an end to that hackneyed form of refusal, ‘I love
you as a brother.’ The sisters are only allowed to require the attention
of the Brothers for a stated number of nights a week, and the work is
well paid. On the other hand, the sisters escape all the duties they
generally have to perform for their real brothers, such as practising
accompaniments, mending, shopping, or running messages.
“mending.”
“Brothers are engaged by the week; but I always recommend that the same
Brother should not be retained for more than a month, as too long a
service makes them—like old family servants—presume, and fancy
themselves invaluable.”
“And how do you manage about characters?” I here enquired.
“I never,” she said, “consent to act as agent for any man I have not
seen, or to procure a Brother for any girl I have not talked to; and I
study their characters so as to know how any arrangement is likely to
answer. We often have photographs of Brothers ready for engagement—in
fact, those who keep their names permanently on the books usually supply
us with cabinet pictures for reference, and I arrange for interviews as
between mistresses and servants.”
“And what terms are generally asked by the Brothers?” I said.
“These, of course,” she replied, “depend largely on the nature of the
situation, and the qualifications of the Brother.
[Pg 551]Vulgar or
disagreeable girls have to pay very heavily. Families with several girls
are charged more in proportion, as many men object to go where other
Brothers are kept. Some men are willing to go as joint Brother to a
family of girls, but this rarely works well.
“They are paid so much a week, and their theatre money if they have to
escort the lady to the play (like beer money, you know). One man
required his buttonhole bouquets, but I said he was clearly above his
place. We do not arrange any engagements for the summer vacation, as we
have found it too dangerous. I really think,” she added thoughtfully,
“that the best way of explaining our methods to you would be to show
some entries in our books.”
“I should be deeply interested,” I answered, stifling my eagerness, “and
it would be very kind of you.”
She drew a great ledger towards her, and showed me one or two entries.
The first ran as follows:
“‘A Brother, six feet high; dresses well; aristocratic manners; a good
dancer, and knows all the newest steps, including the Pas de Quatre;
obliging, and good-tempered; a teetotaller, and only smokes the best
tobacco. Has the highest credentials from his last place. Available for
“Church Parade” on Sunday, but prefers not to attend church previously,
as he cannot get up so early.’”
“knows all the newest steps.”
“What a paragon!” I exclaimed.
“Ah! but he asks a very large salary,” she rejoined; “he is so much
sought after. This is a less expensive one—
“‘A Brother, aged 27, something in the City; bad figure, but pleasant
smile, and amusing to talk to; slightly provincial, but very highly
educated; most respectable and steady; musical, and a good tennis
player. Very few private engagements, and therefore available most days
of the week. Charges strictly moderate.’”
“We have one man on the books who owns a dogcart,” resumed Miss Buller.
“He is in the Guards, and preferred to earn a little money to being
obliged to leave his regiment. I need hardly say that his charges are
very high.”
[Pg 552]
“Naturally,” I murmured.
“Here is an advertisement addressed to young ladies of a religious turn
of mind:
“‘A young curate, who has a conscientious objection to bazaars, would be
glad to augment his income (the money to be devoted to charitable
objects) by obtaining employment as a Brother. He does not dance
himself, but would give the sanction of his presence to such
entertainments any day except Friday. He is fond of tennis and a good
oar. He will give assistance to any lady district-visiting, or taking a
Sunday-school class in his own parish. He prefers, as the object is a
charitable one, leaving the question of salary to the sister’s own good
feeling.’
“a young curate.”
“You wouldn’t believe,” said Miss Buller, “what a run there is on him;
but I find I can easily supply every kind of variety now. A barrister,
on this next page, suggests that, as he has influential legal
connections, he can generally procure for his sister an excellent place
at the sensational trials that have become so fashionable for ladies to
attend! He commands a huge salary, especially being a gifted
conversationalist, and taking the charge of a dinner table brilliantly;
he has credentials from his last place for being ‘witty without
vulgarity.’”
“And now,” I said, “I should like to see the sort of advertisement used
by ladies needing Brothers, if you would be kind enough to show me one.”
“They are not so interesting,” she replied, “but here is one I received
to-day:
“‘A Brother is required during the hunting season by two sisters. He
must be a good rider, capable of giving a lead, but very obliging, as
two Brothers have been parted with lately, owing to over-excitement in
the field causing them to neglect their sisters. The Brother will be
mounted by the ladies’ parents.’”
“Don’t you find that disputes arise,” I asked, “between Brothers and
their employers? I should have thought the
[Pg 553]
position might become
irksome to a young man, if the sister was unpleasant.”
“Of course,” she answered pensively, “an ill-tempered girl can make
matters very unpleasant; but such people pay very highly, as I pointed
out only yesterday to one of our most promising Brothers. ‘She is rather
a common girl,’ I said, ‘but you know you were very unlucky at Newmarket
lately; and you sit up incessantly playing poker; and if you take my
advice you will make your losses good by sticking to your place. I dare
say the theatres are rather trying, but, on the other hand, as you don’t
go into at all the same society that she does, you are not likely to
meet anyone you know at the parties she takes you to; and, of course, as
her Brother, you need not dance incessantly with her!’ He finally took
my advice.”
“Now that,” I said, in my very stupidest manner, “is one of the
difficulties which has occurred to me. A man who has been engaged as a
Brother finds himself saddled with an undesirable acquaintance after the
engagement is over.”
“an ill-tempered girl can
make matters very unpleasant.”
“I should have thought,” she replied, indignantly, “that you would have
understood that neither the lady nor the Brother are expected to
recognise each other when they meet after the termination of the
engagement.”
“It must be anxious work sometimes,” I remarked, “settling the disputes
that arise.”
“It is, indeed,” said Miss Buller. “One contract on the part of a rising
young artist was actually broken off in the middle because the sister
who had engaged him, an inordinately vain girl, insisted on being
introduced as a central figure into his Academy picture for the year. He
refused, and appealed to me; I supported him; on which the young lady
came to the office and abused us both. My fear now is,” she continued,
“that [Pg 554]
Mr. Whiteley will step in and ‘provide’ Brothers, but I feel sure
that this business could only be managed successfully by a lady. A
dispute arose last week over the question of a Brother being required to
introduce any friends he might meet at a party to his sister. I vetoed
this at once, as real brothers often decline to do this, unless they
consider their sister does them credit. On another occasion a Brother
insisted on smoking a strong cigar in a cab, coming back from the
theatre, saying that he was not accustomed to treat his sisters with
ceremony.”
“That was rude,” I remarked; “but still I pity the men if they are
engaged by very exacting sisters, because, after all, they are not real
brothers.”
“abused us both.”
“Oh,” said Miss Buller, “I admit that sometimes sisters do get
troublesome. One situation I find very hard to fill: the Brothers
complain of its being such a hard place, as the young lady is so
unpopular that no men ever come to speak to her, and her idea of a
Brother is a person who never quits your side in the Row, or elsewhere.
The consequence is, that the wretched Brother never has a moment’s
relaxation. She pays very highly, however. You know, many men stipulate
that, even if fulfilling engagements, they shall be free to attend race
meetings. We are obliged to consider the Brothers, as I assure you the
competition for our best ones is tremendous. They are engaged—like
seats at the theatre—for weeks beforehand. I forgot to mention that
they are paid less highly in the winter than in the Season.”
“You are certainly doing an excellent work,” I exclaimed,
[Pg 555]growing
bolder as I felt my copy was made; “and, if I could hire myself out as
your Brother,”—I paused expressively.
“I guess I don’t need to hire,” she replied gaily, “I find all the
Brothers are willing to take me out for nothing.”
“For love, and not for money,”—I interrupted, bowing.
“When they are disengaged,” she continued, laughingly. “Besides, being
American, I don’t need to call them Brothers.”
“The Brothers have taste!” was my remark; and then I added, “I suppose
the work nearly all falls on your shoulders?”
“‘for love, and not for money,’
—i interrupted.”
“Yes; that is inevitable. Arranging for engagements is nothing, but I
find it necessary to make the Brothers refer all disputes to me, and
delicate points arise. One arose last week, when a lady called upon her
Brother to chastise an erring suitor, who had jilted her. However, I
said at once that this was not included in his duties, as the offence
was prior to his entering on his present Brothership.”
“Well, I think you were quite right,” I said; “but I’m afraid your
position is not so enviable as I fancied at first. I shouldn’t care
myself to settle such delicate points.”
“Nonsense!” she replied, “these are crumpled rose leaves. The agency is
paying splendidly. I am making my fortune, and at the same time
conferring a boon on society. Why there is no longer a dearth of
partners at dances, as most girls bring a Brother. In fact, the agency
is doing so well that I shall soon have to take larger premises.”
“Well, Miss Buller,” I said, taking up my hat, “I hardly know how to
thank you for your courtesy and patience in answering all my questions.
I now thoroughly understand the working of your excellent agency, and I
am sure that it is a scheme that will continue to flourish.”
“Till the Brothers form a Union, and go out on strike,” replied Miss
Buller gaily. “The demand already exceeds the supply!”
[Pg 556]
She rang the bell, and a neat parlourmaid showed me out.
As I walked away, I marvelled that this inspired scheme, which bids fair
to revolutionise modern society, should be the fruit of one mind.
I also thought with pleasure of my next meeting with Grigsby.
[Pg 557]
My Own Murderer.
By E. J. Goodman.
Illustrations by J. Greig.
When I say that my name is Samuel Chillip, of course you will know who I
am. Yes, I am the author—it has been said the famous author—of “The
Poisoned Waterbottle,” “Steeped in Gore,” “The Demon Detective,” and
other highly sensational and blood-curdling stories. But though these
tales of mine have brought me some fame and a fair amount of profit, I
am not particularly proud of them. I really don’t know how I, so to
speak, drifted into crime. I never liked it, and, of course, never
practised it myself. I would much rather have written sentimental or
moral stories, but I seemed somehow fated to turn my attention to fraud
and violence, and I could not get away from such subjects.
“i burn the midnight oil.”
I am a family man with a wife and children, and live the most
domesticated and harmless of lives. I rent a small villa at St. John’s
Wood, and have got a pretty garden, which I cultivate myself. I take my
children out for walks in the Park, and have even been known to nurse
the baby. Never was there a man whose mode of life was so different from
his mode of getting a living. I burn the midnight oil, that is to say, I
do my best work at night. The cares of a large family distract me so
much that I can never concentrate my attention on my plots and
situations in the daytime. It is only when the wife has retired, and the
children, the darlings! are put to bed, that I can sit down quietly and
develop my deeds of darkness.
Nothing out of the usual course had happened on the memorable evening of
which I am about to tell, and which was destined to have so marked an
influence on my literary career. I had had tea with my beloved Seraphina
and our six children at seven o’clock, and afterwards we all sat
[Pg 558]round
the fire, and I told stories—stories not of crime and cruelty, but of
good fairies and enchanted princesses, of boys and girls at school, and
innocent loves and faithful lovers, which always started with “once upon
a time,” and ended with “happy ever after.”
During the evening my little flock gradually melted away till nothing
was left of it but my dear wife and our eldest girl, aged fourteen. At
ten o’clock we supped off cold roast pork and rice pudding, with a
little mild ale as a beverage, and then my beloved ones kissed me,
wished me good night, and left me to my labours.
By half-past ten I was hard at work in my study, deep in the most
critical chapter of my new story, “The Chemist’s Revenge.” I rather
prided myself on the originality of the crime committed in this
thrilling tale. The wicked hero had invented a hideous pill, compounded
of ingredients which would explode within a human body and blow it to
atoms. And now I was approaching the terrible scene in which the fatal
dose was about to be administered to the hapless victim.
It was a quiet night; there was not a breath of wind even to stir the
trees out of doors, and all was still within, save when a coal fell from
the fireplace into the grate and the clock on my mantelpiece chimed the
hour. Midnight had just struck, when my ears were suddenly startled and
my heart set beating by a sound out of doors. It was that of a slow,
heavy step, crunching the gravel of the garden path and coming nearer
and nearer to my door. And then the footsteps ceased, and there was a
knock—a single knock.
If I had made the flesh of my readers to creep in my time, now it was
the turn of my own. No one had ever visited me before by night in this
way. I could not imagine who it could be or what he—for it was the
tread of a man that I had heard—could want.
I turned cold and shivered. But a moment’s thought told me that after
all it might be only a policeman, suspecting burglars, come to inquire
why my light was burning, or it might be a “mistake.”
So I went to the door and opened it without removing the chain.
“Who is there?” I asked.
Then a voice inquired, “Is this Mr. Samuel Chillip’s?” It was a somewhat
hoarse, gruff voice, but its tone was subdued and quiet. It threatened
nothing unpleasant.
“Yes, I am Mr. Chillip,” I said.
“Can I speak with you a moment?”
[Pg 559]
“About what? Who are you?”
“I am a stranger, and I cannot well explain my business here, but it is
important and urgent.”
This was said in so tranquil and respectful a manner as to allay any
apprehension I might have felt, while exciting my curiosity. Still I
hesitated. The stranger might be a beggar. But he anticipated my
thought.
“I have not come to beg,” he said, “or to trouble you in any way. I have
an important communication to make to you, likely to be useful to you in
your occupation, and it must be made at once or it will be too late.”
Here was a mystery equal to many that I myself had invented. What could
it mean? I was eager to know, and alas! let the stranger in.
“who is there?”
He asked me to allow him to accompany me to my study, and I did so.
There was but a dim light in the passage, and it was not till he had
entered my room, and the rays of my lamp had fallen upon him, that I
discovered what manner of man it was that I had rashly admitted.
He was a tall, big man, with a hard, square face, and deep-set,
glittering eyes, and his chin fringed with a round, shaggy beard, while
he was attired in a rough pilot coat, and on his head he wore a
broad-brimmed felt hat. He looked like a seafaring man, and was not a
prepossessing person.
“he was a tall, big man.”
I asked him to take a seat, and seated myself in my round-backed writing
chair beside my desk.
He had taken off his hat, and held it on his knee with his left hand,
[Pg 560]
while the other he buried in his capacious side pocket. I thought he was
going to produce something, but he did not.
He merely opened a conversation, and I may say that the tone of his
voice throughout was always as quiet, as calm, as subdued, as when he
addressed me at the door.
“You are Mr. Samuel Chillip?” he asked, or remarked, again.
I bowed in reply.
“The author of ‘The Poisoned Waterbottle’ and other stories?”
“Yes.”
“Tales of crime?”
“You may call them so.”
“What do you know of crime?”
The question startled me. In the first place, it was an extraordinary
one to ask under the circumstances, and in the next, it was not an easy
one to answer.
“May I inquire,” I said, “why you put this question?”
“Because I wish to know.”
“For what purpose?”
“That you will discover presently.”
The man had evidently an object in view, so I thought I would humour
him.
“I have taken great interest in the subject,” I said, “and have studied
it in books and newspapers and in the courts of justice, and have also
derived a good deal of information from persons who have come in contact
with criminals.”
“Ah! you know nothing of it from personal experience?”
“How do you mean?”
“You never, for instance, saw a murderer?”
“Only in the dock.”
“Would you like to see a murderer?”
“Well,” I replied, with a nervous laugh, “‘like’
is hardly the word. If I happened to come across such an individual, I should feel interested,
no doubt.”
“No doubt,” this strangest of strangers echoed, adding, after a pause,
“and you never saw a murder done?”
“Never.”
“Would you like to see a murder done?”
This gruesome question almost startled me out of my chair.
“Good gracious!” I exclaimed, “certainly not.”
“And yet you write about such things.”
“That is quite a different matter. But you must excuse me
[Pg 561]for saying
that I do not understand the object of these questions. May I ask who
you are?”
“I am a murderer.”
“i am a murderer.”
My visitor said this in the calmest way, as though he were only calling
himself a clerk or a carpenter.
“A murderer?” I gasped rather than asked.
“A murderer in intention only at present. I am going to do a murder, and
I want you to witness it.”
Good heavens! I looked at the stranger; I met his terrible wild eyes,
and in a moment it flashed upon me that I was in the presence of a
madman.
I started from my chair, and was about to rush to the bell and call for
help, but the stranger put his left hand on my shoulder and kept me in
my seat, while he drew his right hand from his coat pocket, and
something glittered in the lamplight. Oh, horror! a bright, new, large,
six-chambered revolver!
“Be still, be silent,” he said, almost in a whisper, “or you are a dead
man.”
“something glittered in the lamplight.”
I need hardly say that I was quiet enough after this, and sat grasping
my chair arms with both hands, and staring at the stranger, perhaps with
my hair standing on end.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” the dreadful man went on, “unless I can get
nobody better to kill. But I mean to kill someone to-night, and I want
you to see me do it. You must come with me out into the streets, and go
about with me until we find somebody worth killing. You must keep very
quiet, utter no cry, give no alarm, excite no suspicion. Otherwise I
shall shoot you dead on the spot. I would not mind killing you, the
author of so many
[Pg 562]
stories of crime, but I would rather slay someone of
higher social position, and leave you to live and record the deed.”
I reflected that I should prefer this arrangement myself, but, still
better, I would rather get out of the whole horrible business
altogether. But the madman, as I regarded him, was imperative.
“Put on your hat and coat and come with me quietly,” he said. “Make no
noise or I fire.”
It was a frightful situation, such as I had never conceived even in my
wildest dreams, but what was I to do? In silence I attired myself for
this terrible expedition. My companion made me precede him to the street
door, opened it himself, and closed it quietly behind us.
Side by side in silence we walked, the maniac keeping half a step in my
rear, and I knew all the while that he had his right hand in his side
pocket. Now and then he indicated the way we should go, and then he led
me across the Regent’s Park, and so through street after street till we
reached Hyde Park Corner. We passed several policemen by the way, but,
unfortunately, none of them suspected or even particularly noticed us. I
dared not give an alarm or attract attention, for did I not know that
that dreadful hand was still in that dreadful side pocket?
Presently my companion paused, and said, as though speaking to himself:
“A member of the Royal Family would be best.”
I was rather glad to hear this, because if he intended that an
illustrious personage should be his victim he was likely to be
disappointed. Royal Highnesses are not usually found walking about in
the neighbourhood of their palaces at two o’clock in the morning.
Thus we rambled to and fro near Buckingham and St. James’s Palaces and
Marlborough House, need I say with no result? Not a single Prince was to
be seen anywhere, and my companion seemed slightly disgusted.
“Hum!” he muttered. “They are hiding. Let us go now to Downing Street.”
He evidently thought that, failing Royalty, his next best course would
be to slay a Cabinet Minister. But neither the Premier nor any of the
Secretaries of State happened to be abroad at that hour.
Our walk down Whitehall proving uneventful, the madman next suggested
that we should “try the Houses of Parliament.” Here the position seemed
more dangerous. The House of
[Pg 563]
Commons could not have long adjourned—it
was in the days of late sittings—and it was quite possible that some
belated M.P. might be on his way home.
Presently, indeed, my companion made a remark that filled me with
horror.
“That looks like one,” he said. “Now steady.”
An elderly, respectable-looking gentleman was approaching us, walking
alone from the direction of the House, and my terrible associate was
standing under a lamp-post still with his hand in his pocket.
“that looks like one.”
My presence of mind together with my faculty of invention, here happily
came to my aid.
“Stay,” I whispered; “mind what you are about, or you will make a
mistake. That is not a member of Parliament. I know him by sight but not
to speak to. He is a retail grocer who keeps a shop in Oxford Street.”
“Are you quite sure?”
“Quite.”
And so the elderly stranger passed us, little guessing what a narrow
escape he had had.
The position was truly appalling. Now we neared the Royal Academy, at
that time still situated in Trafalgar Square, and my would-be murderer
muttered something about “picking off” an R.A. or an Associate. The
wretched creature seemed well up in honorary titles. Next we wandered
along the Strand, and he thought of destroying a distinguished actor,
but the theatrical profession had doubtless long since gone to bed.
Thank goodness he had not gone far
[Pg 564]
into the heart of Clubland, or he
might have found there a victim worthy of his murderous weapon.
On, on he led me, past Temple Bar, not without an eye for wandering
Judges and Queen’s Counsel. Fortunately, at that hour, it was now about
four a.m., the newspapers had all gone to press, and there were no
eminent journalists about. Then he came to St. Paul’s, and talked about
archbishops, bishops and canons, and I almost laughed at the idea of our
meeting a Church dignitary abroad at such a time.
Finally, we got into the heart of the City, and here I felt safe if he
had any designs on the Directors of the Bank of England or members of
the Stock Exchange.
It was in the middle of the deserted road opposite the Mansion House
that he stopped at last, and cast a fond look at the residence of the
Lord Mayor.
“He won’t come out,” he murmured; “none of them will, the cowards. Not
even an alderman.”
“then he came to st. paul’s.”
Then, after looking about him for a time—why, oh! why, were not the
suspicions of some policeman excited by our strange proceedings?—he
suddenly exclaimed, to my great joy:
“I am afraid it is no good. We shall have to give it up for to-night;
they are all in hiding, every one of them. To be sure, I might pick off
some stranger, and take my chance, but it is hardly good enough. I
should waste myself.”
This was the pleasantest speech he had yet made, but his next was not so
agreeable.
“After all,” he said, turning to me, “I don’t think I could get anybody
better than you. You are a rather distinguished novelist, and the fact
that you write stories of crime would make it sound remarkable. What do
you say?”
I was almost too frightened to say anything. I was trembling all over,
for in a moment that dreadful hand might leap out of that dreadful
pocket, and my fate would be sealed. But, happily, my imagination once
more came to my aid.
[Pg 565]
“It is not a bad idea,” I replied; “but I think you could do better.
Don’t be in a hurry—there are plenty of distinguished people about, but
not at so late an hour as when you called on me last night. Come a
little earlier to-night, say at ten o’clock, and we’ll see if we can’t
find a Prince. I know them all by sight, and will point one out to you,
a good one. Of course, if you can’t get anybody better, you can shoot
me.”
“‘thank you,’ he said.”
“Thank you,” he said, and for the first time he drew his hand out of
that horrible pocket of his, and grasped my own. “It is a good idea.
To-night then it shall be, at ten o’clock. Good morning.”
I could hardly believe my senses when I saw the dreadful creature slowly
making his way towards Cheapside. But, indeed, my senses were failing
me. I turned giddy, and staggered against a lamp-post, where presently I
was found by a wandering policeman.
I put my hand to my throat, for I felt choking.
“Stop him, stop him!” I cried. “He has got a revolver—he is a
murderer—he——”
But the miserable constable took no notice of my warning. He only took
me by the arm, and, turning his bull’s eye and a suspicious glance upon
my countenance, said:
“Here, you had better go home quietly, sir. I suppose you have been
dining out rather late. Hi, hansom!”
“you had better go home quietly, sir.”
And he bundled me into a cab, and took my name and address, and the next
moment I was bowling along on my road to St. John’s Wood.
It was nearly six in the morning when I arrived, and, fortunately, no
one heard me when I let myself in with my latch-key.
My wife thought I had only been sitting up extra late at my
[Pg 566]work, and I
told her nothing of my night’s adventure. But I summoned two able-bodied
detectives to my aid, and they agreed to await with me the lunatic’s
second visit. My family supposed that the detectives had come to assist
me in getting up a tale of crime, and I did not undeceive them. So I
despatched them to bed at an earlier hour than usual, on the plea that I
did not wish to be disturbed, and sat with my companions in the study
watching for the madman.
Precisely at ten o’clock there was heard a heavy footstep on the gravel
path without, and once more a knock—a single knock.
“He has come,” we whispered.
We had duly arranged our “plan of campaign,” and now proceeded to carry
it out. The most stalwart of the detectives was to open the front door,
and the other to hide behind it. My post was on the threshold of my
study, where I was to stand as a “reserve.”
The men were wonderfully prompt in executing their operations. The
street door had hardly been opened when there was a scuffle and a heavy
fall, accompanied by much growling and cursing, and then the
unmistakable sound of the snapping of a pair of handcuffs.
“It’s all right,” said the detective who had been behind the door, “we
have got him and his six-shooter too.”
Whereupon he produced the very weapon with which the maniac had
threatened me—the large, bright, new revolver. I identified it at once.
“there was a scuffle.”
“I got it out of his side pocket quick as thought,” said the man.
Good! And now I retired into my study while the other detective brought
the stranger forward.
“What the devil are you fools about?” I heard him cry, as he entered,
handcuffed, at the door.
The sound of his voice startled me. It was not that of my
[Pg 567]visitor the
night before. A single glance showed me that it was quite a different
sort of person.
“Halloa!” I cried, “there is some mistake here. That’s not the lunatic.”
“Lunatic!” exclaimed the captured man, “I should think not indeed. It is
you who are the lunatics. I am a policeman!”
And a policeman he was—in plain clothes. He had come to tell me that
the maniac was dead. He had shot himself almost immediately after
leaving me, and the constable who had put me into a hansom remembered my
words and my name and address. Hence I was now summoned to give evidence
at the inquest.
Of course the policeman was easily pacified, and, indeed, regarded his
rough treatment by two of his own colleagues as a joke rather than
otherwise.
I duly gave evidence at the inquest, but I am sorry to say that when I
told my story it was not listened to quite so gravely as I thought it
ought to have been.
So altogether this adventure rather disgusted me with the occupation I
had hitherto been following, and now, for some time past, instead of
composing tales of crime, I have gone in for writing moral stories for
boys.
“‘no. 16 for an interview.’”
the face at the wicket.
“turning towards me,
telegraphic signals.
colonel p——.
at night.
in the prison yard.
“ghosts.”
