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The Simpkins Plot

by George A. Birmingham · English · Gutenberg #19586 · 466,058 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Simpkins Plot

Author: George A. Birmingham


        
Release date: October 19, 2006 [eBook #19586]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

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THE SIMPKINS PLOT

by

G. A. Birmingham







[Frontispiece: "No thanks.  No tea for me."]




T. Nelson & Sons
London and Edinburgh
Paris: 189, rue Saint-Jacques
Leipzig: 35-37 Koeningstrasse




TO

R. H.

IN MEMORY OF MANY SUMMER EVENINGS WHEN WE DRIFTED HOME, UNTROUBLED BY
THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF SIMPKINS.




THE SIMPKINS PLOT.


CHAPTER I.

The platform at Euston was crowded, and the porters' barrows piled high
with luggage.  During the last week in July the Irish mail carries a
heavy load of passengers, and for the twenty minutes before its
departure people are busy endeavouring to secure their own comfort and
the safety of their belongings.  There are schoolboys, with
portmanteaux, play-boxes, and hand-bags, escaping home for the summer
holidays.  There are sportsmen, eager members of the Stock Exchange or
keen lawyers, on their way to Donegal or Clare for fishing.  There are
tourists, the holders of tickets which promise them a round of visits
to famous beauty spots.  There are members of the House of Lords, who
have accomplished their labours as legislators--and their wives,
peeresses, who have done their duty by the London season--on their way
back to stately mansions in the land from which they draw their
incomes.  Great people these in drawing-rooms or clubs; greater still
in the remote Irish villages which their names still dominate; but not
particularly great on the Euston platform, for there is little respect
of persons there as the time of the train's departure draws near.  A
porter pushed his barrow, heavy with trunks and crowned with gun-cases,
against the legs of an earl, who swore.  A burly man, red faced and
broad shouldered, elbowed a marchioness who, not knowing how to swear
effectively, tried to wither him with a glance.  She failed.  The man
who had jostled her had small reverence for rank or title.  He was,
besides, in a hurry, and had no time to spend in apologising to great
ladies.

Sir Gilbert Hawkesby was one of his Majesty's judges.  He had won his
position by sheer hard work and commanding ability.  He had not stopped
in his career to soothe the outraged dignity of those whom he pushed
aside; and he had no intention now of delaying his progress along the
railway platform to explain to a marchioness why he had jostled her.
It was only by a vigorous use of his elbows that he could make his way;
and it ought to have been evident, even to a peeress, that he meant to
go from one end of the train to the other.  His eyes glanced sharply
right and left as he pushed on.  He peered through the windows of the
carriages.  He scanned each figure in the crowd.  At last he caught
sight of a lady standing beside the bookstall.  She wore a long grey
cloak and a dark travelling-hat.  She stooped over the books and papers
on the stall before her; and her face, in profile as Sir Gilbert saw
it, was lit by the flaring gas above her head.  Having caught sight of
her, the judge pushed on even more vigorously than before.

"Here I am, Milly," he said.  "I said I'd be in time to see you off,
and I am; but owing to--"

The lady at the bookstall turned and looked at him.  She flushed
suddenly, and then as suddenly grew pale.  She raised her hand
hurriedly and pulled her veil over her face.  Sir Gilbert stared at her
in amazement.  Then his face, too, changed colour.

"I--I beg your pardon," he said; "I mistook you for my niece.  It's
quite inconceivable to me how I--a most remarkable likeness.  I'm
astonished that I didn't notice it before.  The fact is--under the
circumstances--"

Sir Gilbert was acutely uncomfortable.  Never in the course of a long
career at the bar had he felt so hopelessly embarrassed.  On no
occasion in his life, so far as he could remember, had he been reduced
to stammering incoherences.  It had not occurred to him to apologise to
the jostled marchioness a few minutes before.  He was now anxious to
abase himself before the lady at the bookstall.

"I sincerely beg your pardon," he said.  "I should not have dreamed for
a moment of intruding myself on you if I had known.  I ought to have
recognised you.  I can't understand--"

The lady laid down the book she held in her hand, and turned her back
on Sir Gilbert.  She crossed the platform, and entered a carriage
without looking back.  Sir Gilbert stood stiff and awkward beside the
bookstall.

"It's a most extraordinary likeness," he muttered.  "I can't understand
why I didn't notice it before.  I can't have ever really looked at her."

Then, avoiding the carriage which the lady had entered, he walked
further along the platform.  He was much less self-assertive in his
progress.  He threaded his way instead of elbowing it through the
crowd.  The most fragile peeress might have jostled him, and he would
not have resented it.

"Uncle Gilbert!  Is that you?  I was afraid you were going to be late."

The judge turned quickly.  A lady, another lady, leaned out of the
window of a first-class compartment and greeted him.  He stared at her.
The likeness was less striking now when he looked at his niece's full
face; but it was there, quite unmistakable; a sufficient excuse for the
blunder he had made.

"Ah, Milly," he said; "you really are Milly, aren't you?  I've just had
a most extraordinary encounter with your double.  It's a most
remarkable coincidence; quite the thing for one of your novels.  By the
way, how's the new one getting on?"

"Which one?  I'm just correcting a set of proofs, and I'm deep in the
plot of another.  That's what's taking me over to Ireland.  I thought
I'd told you."

"Yes, yes; local colour you said in your letter.  Studying the wild
Hibernian on his native soil; but really, Milly, when you've heard my
story you won't want to go to Ireland for wild improbabilities.
But I can't tell you now.  There isn't time.  We'll meet in
Bally-what-do-you-call-it next week."

"And you'll stay with me, Uncle Gilbert, won't you?  The house I've
taken appears to be a perfect barrack.  According to the agent, there
are any amount of spare bedrooms."

"No," said the judge; "I've taken rooms at the hotel.  The fact is,
Milly, when I'm fishing I like to rough it a bit.  Besides, I should
only be in your way.  You'll be working tremendously hard."

Neither excuse expressed Sir Gilbert's real reason for refusing his
niece's invitation.  He did not like roughing it, and he did not think
it the least likely that his presence in the house would interfere with
her work.  On the contrary, her work was likely to interfere with his
comfort.  He was fond of his niece, but he disliked her habit of
reading passages from her MSS. aloud in the evenings.  She was very
much absorbed in her novel-writing, and took her work with a
seriousness which struck the judge as ridiculous.

"I'll dine with you occasionally," he said, "but I shall put up at the
hotel.  By the way, Milly, am I your tenant or are you mine?  I left
all the arrangements in your hands."

"I took the house and the fishing," she said.  "The agent man wouldn't
let one without the other; but you have to pay most of the rent.  The
salmon are the really valuable part of the property, it appears."

"All right," said Sir Gilbert; "so long as the fishing is good I won't
quarrel with you over my share of the rent.  The house would only have
been a nuisance to me.  I should have had to bring over servants, and
that would have worried your aunt.  Ah!  Your time's up, I see.
Good-bye, Milly, good-bye.  Take care of yourself, and don't get mixed
up with shady people in your search for originality.  I'll start this
day week as soon as ever I get your aunt settled down at Bournemouth."

Millicent King, Sir Gilbert Hawkesby's niece, was a young woman of some
little importance in the world.  The patrons of the circulating
libraries knew her as Ena Dunkeld, and shook their heads over her.  The
gentlemen who add to the meagre salaries they earn in Government
offices by writing reviews knew her under both her names, for no
literary secrets are hid from them.  They praised her novels publicly,
and in private yawned over her morality.   Many people, her aunt Lady
Hawkesby among them, very strongly disapproved of her novels.  Certain
problems, so these ladies maintained, ought to be discussed only in
scientific books, labelled "poison" for the safety of the public, and
ought never to be discussed at all by young women.  Millicent King,
rendered obstinate by these criticisms, plunged deeper and deeper into
a kind of mire which, after a time, she began to dislike very much.
She had in reality simple tastes of a domestic kind, and might have
been very happy sewing baby clothes if she had married a peaceable man
and kept out of literary society.  Fortunately, or unfortunately--the
choice of the adverb depends upon the views taken of the value of
detailed analysis of marriage problems--Miss King had not come across
any man of a suitable kind who wanted to marry her.  She had, on the
other hand, met a large number of people who praised, and a few who
abused her.  She liked the flattery, and was pleased to be pointed out
as a person of importance.  She regarded the abuse as a tribute to the
value of her work, knowing that all true prophets suffer under the evil
speaking of a censorious world.  Latterly she had begun to consider
whether she might not secure the praise, without incurring the blame,
by writing novels of a different kind.  With a view to perfecting a new
story of adventure and perfectly respectable love, she determined to
isolate herself for a couple of months.  As certain Irishmen played a
part in her story, she fixed upon Connacht as the place of her
retirement, intending to study the romantic Celt on his native soil.  A
house advertised in the columns of _The Field_ seemed to offer her the
opportunity she desired.  She took it and the fishing attached to it;
having bargained with her uncle, Sir Gilbert Hawkesby, that she was to
be relieved of the duty of catching salmon, and that he should pay a
considerable part of the heavy rent demanded by the local agent.




CHAPTER II.

These are a few things better managed in Ireland than in England, and
one of them is the starting of important railway trains.  The
departure, for instance, of the morning mail from the Dublin terminus
of the Midland and Great Western Railway is carried through, day after
day, with dignity.  The hour is an early one, 7 a.m.; but all the chief
officiate of the company are present, tastefully dressed.  There is no
fuss.  Passengers know that it is their duty to be at the station not
later than a quarter to seven.  If they have any luggage they arrive
still earlier, for the porters must not be hustled.  At ten minutes to
seven the proper officials conduct the passengers to their carriages
and pen them in.  Lest any one of independent and rebellious spirit
should escape, and insist on loitering about the platform, the doors of
the compartments are all locked.  No Irishman resents this treatment.
Members of a conquered race, they are meek, and have long ago given up
the hope of being able to resist the mandates of official people.

Strangers, Englishmen on tour, are easily recognised by their
self-assertive demeanour and ill-bred offences against the solemn
etiquette of the railway company.  Since it is impossible to teach
these people manners or meekness, the guards and porters treat them, as
far as possible, with patient forbearance.  They must, of course, be
got into the train, but the doors of their compartments are not locked.
It has been found by experience that English travellers object to being
imprisoned without trial, and quote regulations of the Board of Trade
forbidding the locking of both doors of a railway carriage.  There is
nothing to be gained by a public wrangle with an angry Englishman.  He
cannot be got to understand that laws, those of the Board of Trade or
any other, are not binding on Irish officials.  There is only one way
of treating him without loss of dignity, and that is to give in to him
at once, with a shrug of the shoulders.

Thus, Miss King, entering upon the final stage of her journey to
Ballymoy, reaped the benefit of belonging to a conquering and imperial
race.  She was, indeed, put into her compartment, a first-class one,
ten minutes before the train started; but her door, alone of all the
doors, was left unlocked.  The last solemn minutes before the departure
of the train passed slowly.  Grave men in uniform paraded the platform,
glancing occasionally at their watches.  The engine-driver watched from
his cabin for the waving of the green flag which would authorise him to
push over his levers and start the train.  The great moment had almost
arrived.  The guard held his whistle to his lips, and had the green
flag ready to be unfurled, in his left hand.  Then a totally
unexpected, almost an unprecedented, thing occurred.  A passenger
walked into the station and approached the train with the evident
intention of getting into it.  He was a clergyman, shabbily dressed,
imperfectly shaved, red-haired, and wearing a red moustache.  He
carried a battered Gladstone bag in one hand.  The guard glanced at him
and then distended his cheeks with air, meaning to blow his whistle.

"Hold on a minute," said the clergyman.  "I'm thinking of travelling by
this train."

The audacity of this statement shook the self-possession of the guard.

"Can't wait," he said.  "Time's up.  You ought to have been here
sooner."

To say this he was obliged to take the whistle from his lips; and the
engine-driver, who had a strict sense of duty, was unable to start.

"As a matter of fact," said the clergyman, "I'm not only here soon
enough, I'm an hour and a half too soon.  The train I intended to catch
is the next one."

The guard put his whistle to his lips again.

"If you blow that thing," said the clergyman, "before I'm in the train,
I'll take an action against the company for assault and battery."

The guard hesitated.  He did not see how such an action could be
sustained in court; but he felt the necessity of thinking over his
position carefully before running any risks.  The law, especially in
Ireland, is a curious thing, and no wise man entangles himself with it
if he can help it.  Railway guards are all wise men, otherwise they
would not have risen to their high positions.

"Now that I am here," said the clergyman, "I may as well go by this
train.  Excuse me one moment; I want to get a few newspapers."

This was gross impertinence, and the guard was in no mood to stand it.
He blew his whistle.  The engine shrieked excitedly, and the train
started with a violent jerk.

The clergyman seized a handful of newspapers from the bookstall.
Clinging to them and his bag he ran across the platform.  He tried the
doors of two third-class compartments as they passed him, and found
them locked.  He happened next upon that which was occupied by Miss
King, opened the door, and tumbled in.

"I've only got a third-class ticket," he said cheerfully; "but I shall
travel first class the whole way now, and I shan't pay a penny of
excess fare."

"Won't they make you?" said Miss King.

She realised that she had found an unexpectedly early opportunity of
studying the peculiarities of the Irish character, and determined to
make the most of it.

"Certainly not," said the clergyman.  "The position is this.  I have a
through ticket--I bought it yesterday--which entitles me to travel on
this railway to Donard.  If the doors of all the third-class carriages
are locked when I arrive at the station, I take it that the company
means me to travel first class.  Their own action is a clear indication
of their intention.  There isn't a jury in Ireland would give it
against me, even if the case came into court, which, of course, it
won't."

"I'm going to Donard, too," said Miss King.

"Are you?  It's a wretched hole of a place.  I don't advise you to stop
there long."

"I'm not staying there at all.  I'm driving straight on to Ballymoy."

"If you're at all familiar with Ballymoy, I expect you've heard of me.
My name's Meldon, the Reverend J. J. Meldon, B.A.  I was curate of
Ballymoy once, and everybody who was there in my time will be talking
about me still.  I'm going back there now for a holiday."

"But I'm quite a stranger," said Miss King.  "I've never been in
Ballymoy."

Meldon glanced at the bag which lay on the seat before her.  There was
no label on it, but it bore the initials M. K. in gold letters on its
side.

"I suppose," he said, "that you're not by any chance a sister or a
niece of Major Kent's?"

"No.  I'm not.  I don't even know Major Kent.  My name is King.
Millicent King."

A clergyman is, necessarily, more or less educated.  Mr. Meldon had
proclaimed himself a bachelor of arts.  It was natural to suppose that
he would have known the name, even the real name, of a famous living
novelist.  Apparently he did not.  Miss King felt a little disappointed.

"I daresay," said Meldon, without showing any signs of being impressed,
"that you're going to stop with the Resident Magistrate."

"No," said Miss King decisively.

"You don't look like the sort of person who'd be going on a visit to
the rectory."

Miss King was handsomely dressed.  She appeared to be a lady of high
fashion; not at all likely to be an inmate of the shabby little rectory
at Ballymoy.  She shook her head.  Then, because she did not like being
cross-questioned, she put an end to the conversation by opening her bag
and taking out a bundle of typewritten papers.  She was quite prepared
to study Mr. Meldon as a type, but she saw no reason why Mr. Meldon
should study her.  He appeared to be filled with an ill-bred curiosity
which she determined not to satisfy.

Meldon did not seem to resent her silence in the least.  He leaned back
in his seat and unfolded one of the papers he had snatched from the
bookstall.  It was a London evening paper of the day before, and
contained a full account of the last scene of a sensational trial which
had occupied the attention of the public for some time.  A Mrs. Lorimer
was charged with the murder of her husband.  Her methods, if she had
done the deed, were cold-blooded and abominable; but she was a young
and good-looking woman, and the public was very anxious that she should
be acquitted.  The judge, Sir Gilbert Hawkesby, summed up very strongly
against her; but the jury, after a prolonged absence from court, found
her "not guilty."  The paper published a portrait of Mrs. Lorimer, at
which Meldon glanced.  Suddenly his face assumed an expression of great
interest.  He studied the portrait carefully, and then looked at Miss
King.  She sat at the other end of the carriage, and he saw her face in
profile as she bent over her papers.  Mrs. Lorimer's side face was
represented in the picture; and she, too, was bending over something.
Meldon laid down the paper and took up another, this time an Irish
morning paper.  It contained an interview with Mrs. Lorimer, secured by
an enterprising reporter after the trial.  Meldon read this, and then
turned to the magazine page and studied the picture of the lady which
appeared there.  In it Mrs. Lorimer wore a hat, and it was again her
side face which was represented.  Meldon looked from it to Miss King.
The likeness was quite unmistakable.  He took up a third paper, a
profusely illustrated penny daily.  He found, as he expected, a picture
of Mrs. Lorimer.  This was a full-length portrait, but the face came
out clearly.  Meldon took up the Irish paper again, and re-read very
carefully the interview with the reporter on the evening of the trial.
Then he folded up all three papers and leaned over towards Miss King.

"You must excuse me," he said, "if I didn't recognise you just now.
You put me out by giving your name as Miss King.  I'm much more
familiar with your other name.  Everybody is, you know."

Miss King was mollified by the apology.  She looked up from her papers
and smiled.

"How did you find me out?" she asked.

"By your picture in the papers," he said.  "If you'll allow me to say
so, it's a particularly good likeness and well reproduced.  Of course,
in your case, they'd take particular care not to print the usual kind
of smudge."

Miss King was strongly inclined to ask for the papers.  Her portrait
had, she knew, appeared in the _Illustrated London News_ and in two
literary journals.  She did not know that it had been reproduced in the
daily press.  The news excited and pleased her greatly.  She had a
short struggle with herself, in which self-respect triumphed.  She did
not ask for the papers, but assumed an air of bored indifference.

"They're always publishing my photograph," she said.  "I can't imagine
why they do it."

"I quite understand now," said Meldon, "why you're going down to
Ballymoy.  You couldn't go to a better place for privacy and quiet;
complete quiet.  I'm sure you want it."

"Yes," said Miss King.  "I feel that I do.  Now that you know who I am,
you will understand.  I chose Ballymoy because it seemed so very remote
from everywhere."

She did not think it necessary to mention that she wanted to study the
Irish character.  Now that Meldon was talking in an interesting way she
felt inclined to encourage him to reveal himself.

"Quite right.  It is.  I don't know a remoter place.  Nobody will know
you there, and if anybody guesses, I'll make it my business to put them
off the scent at once.  But there'll be no necessity for that.  There
isn't a man in the place will connect Miss King with the other lady.
All the same, I don't think I'd stop too long at Doyle's hotel if I
were you.  Doyle is frightfully curious about people."

"I'm not stopping there," said Miss King.  "I have taken a house."

"What house?  I know Ballymoy pretty well, and there isn't a house in
it you could take furnished, except the place that belonged to old Sir
Giles Buckley."

"I've taken that for two months," said Miss King.

Meldon whistled softly.  He was surprised.  Ballymoy House, even if let
at a low rent, is an expensive place to live in.

"My servants went down there yesterday," said Miss King.  She opened
her bag and groped among the contents as she spoke.

"Would you be very much shocked if I smoked a cigarette?" she asked.

"Not in the least," said Meldon.  "I smoke myself."

"I was afraid--being a clergyman--you are a clergyman, aren't you?
Some people are so prejudiced against ladies smoking."

"I'm not," said Meldon.  "I'm remarkably free from prejudices of any
kind.  I pride myself on being open-minded.  My wife doesn't smoke, but
that's merely because she doesn't like it.  If she did, I shouldn't
make the slightest objection.  All the same, you oughtn't to go puffing
cigarettes about the streets of Ballymoy.  The Major's a bit
old-fashioned in some ways, and I don't expect Doyle is accustomed to
see ladies smoking.  You'll have to be very careful.  If you start
people talking they may find out who you are, and then there will
certainly be unpleasantness."

"Would they disapprove of me?"

"Almost sure to.  We Irish have the name of being a wild lot, I know;
but--well, if you don't mind my saying so, most of us would be rather
shy of you.  I don't mind you myself in the least, of course.  I'm not
that kind of man.  Still, your reputation!  You've been a good deal in
the papers, haven't you?"

Miss King, curiously enough, seemed pleased at this account of her
reputation.  It is gratifying to a novelist to be famous, and even
notoriety is pleasant.  She felt that, having braved the censure of
Lady Hawkesby, she could afford to despise the morality of the people
of Ballymoy.

"The Major?" she said.  "You've mentioned him once or twice.  What sort
of man is he?  Does my work shock him?"

"I expect it does," said Meldon.  "I haven't seen him for some time,
and so we haven't discussed you.  But from what I know of him I should
say that your work, as you call it, will shock him frightfully.  You
can't altogether blame him.  He's a bachelor, and has very strict ideas
about a wife's duty to her husband."

Miss King was moved by a desire to startle Meldon.  She was really
engaged on quite an innocent novel, but she chose to pretend that she
was going on in her old way.

"What will he say," she said, "when he finds out that I'm going on with
my work under his very eyes, so to speak, in Ballymoy?"

Meldon sat up suddenly.

"You don't mean that?  Surely you can't intend--"

"Now you're shocked," said Miss King, "and you said you wouldn't be."

"I am a little.  I didn't think I could be.  But I am.  I never
imagined--"

"But that's exactly what I'm going to Ballymoy for.  I want complete
quiet in a lonely place where I shan't be disturbed."

"Of course, it's no business of mine," said Meldon.  "But don't you
think that perhaps you've done enough?"

"No.  I have a great deal to do yet.  If it were simply a question of
earning money--"

Meldon looked at her.  She was very well dressed.  The bag which lay
open at her side was fitted with silver-topped bottles.  Her cigarette
case appeared to be of gold.  She was travelling first class.  She had
taken Ballymoy House for two months.  He was quite ready to believe
that she did not want money.

"Do you mean to say that you're doing it simply for amusement?" he
asked.

"No.  Not amusement."  Her voice dropped to a kind of solemn whisper.
"For the love of my art."

Miss King took herself very seriously indeed, and was accustomed to
talk a good deal about her art.  Literary people who might have known
better, and critics who certainly did know better, encouraged her.
They also talked about her art.

"Of course, if you look at it that way," said Meldon, "there's no more
to be said; but you mustn't expect me to help you."

"You!"

"No.  As a clergyman I can't possibly do it.  Nor will the Major,
unless he's greatly changed.  I don't expect Doyle will either.  He's
president of the local branch of the League, but I'm sure he draws the
line at--"

"But I don't want any of you to help me.  Why should I?"

"I'm glad to hear that, at all events," said Meldon.  "For, unless
under very exceptional circumstances, I couldn't conscientiously assist
you in any way."

"You said just now," said Miss King, "that you had no prejudices, and
that nothing shocked you."

"Very few things do," said Meldon.  "In fact I can't recollect ever
having been shocked before; but this idea is a little new to me.  I
candidly confess that I never--hullo!  We're slowing down into a
station.  Now I expect there'll be trouble about my ticket."

There was--considerable trouble.  But Meldon emerged from it
victoriously.  He flatly refused to move from the carriage in which he
sat.  The guard, the station-master, a ticket-collector, and four
porters gathered round the door and argued with him.  Meldon argued
fluently with them.  In the end they took his name and address,
threatening him with prosecution.  Then, because the train was a mail
train and obliged to go on, the guard blew his whistle and Meldon was
left in peace.

"It's a nuisance," he said to Miss King, "being worried by those men.
I wanted to send a telegram, but I couldn't.  If I'd ventured out of
the carriage they'd never have let me back again.  The Major won't be
expecting me till the next train.  I only caught this one by accident."

"By accident?"

"Yes.  The fact is I was up early this morning, wakened by my little
daughter, a baby not quite two years old yet.  I told you I was
married, didn't I?  The poor child was upset by the journey from
England, and didn't sleep properly.  When she had me wakened I thought
I might as well get up.  I intended to stroll up towards the station
quietly.  I walked rather faster than I meant to, and when I got within
about three hundred yards of the station I discovered that I might just
catch this train by running; so, of course, I ran.  I'm very glad I did
now.  If I hadn't I shouldn't have met you."

"What did you do with the baby?"

"I didn't drop her on the way, if that's what you're thinking of.  I'm
not that kind of man at all, and I am particularly fond of the child.
I scarcely ever complain when she keeps me awake at night, though many
men I know would want to smother her.  She and my wife are stopping
with my mother-in-law in Rathmines.  I'm going down for a fortnight's
yachting with the Major.  I might persuade him to give you a day's
sailing, perhaps, if he doesn't find out who you are, and we succeed in
keeping it dark about your going on with your work.  I daresay it would
cheer you up to go out on the bay.  I expect you find your work pretty
trying."

"It is very trying.  I often feel completely exhausted at the end of
the day."

"Nerve strain," said Meldon.  "I don't wonder.  It's a marvel how you
stand it."

"Then I can't sleep," said Miss King.  "Often I can't sleep for two or
three nights together."

"It surprises me to hear that you ever sleep at all.  Don't they haunt
you?  I've always heard--"

"My people?"

"Yes, your people, if that's what you call them.  I'd have thought
they'd never have let you alone."

"Some of them do haunt me.  I often cry when I think of them.  It's
very foolish, of course; but in spite of myself I cry."

"Then why on earth do you go on with it?"

"It's my art," said Miss King.

"I'm not an artist myself," said Meldon, "in any sense of the word, so
I can't exactly enter into your feelings; but I should say, speaking as
a complete outsider, that the proper thing for you would be to drop the
whole thing, take to smoking a pipe instead of those horrid scented
cigarettes, drink a bottle of porter before you go to bed, and then
sleep sound."

Miss King sighed.  There was something in the ideal which Meldon set
before her which was very attractive.  The details she ignored.
Bottled porter was not a drink she cared for, and no woman, however
emancipated, likes a pipe.  In spite of the satisfaction she found in
her literary success, there was in her a desire for quiet and restful
ways of life.  There was no doubt that she would sleep sounder at night
if she lived simply, somewhere in the country, and forgot the
excitements of the novelist's art.  Meldon, indeed, did not seem to
enjoy absolutely unbroken rest at night; but Miss King's imagination,
although she wrote improper novels, did not insist on representing a
baby as an inevitable part of domesticated life.  She got no further
than the dream of a peaceful house, with the figure of an inoffensive
husband somewhere in the background.




CHAPTER III.

Meldon stretched himself in a deep chair and lit his pipe.  He had
dined to his own satisfaction, eating with an appetite whetted by the
long drive from the railway station.  He had before him a clear
fortnight's holiday, and intended to enjoy it to the full.  Major
Kent's house was comfortable; his tobacco, which Meldon smoked, was
good; his yacht, the _Spindrift_, lay ready for a cruise.

"To-morrow," he said, "I shall stroll round and see my old friends.
I'm bound to do that; and, in point of fact, I want to.  It's three
years since I left, and I'm longing for a look at Doyle and the rest of
them.  The next day, if the weather is any way moderate, we can go
sailing.  I suppose Ballymoy isn't much changed.  I shall find every
one exactly as I left them.  Things don't alter much in places like
this where you take life easy."

"The place is changed," said Major Kent; "changed for the worse.  You'd
hardly know it."

"Nothing has happened to Doyle, I hope.  I'd be sorry if poor Doyle had
taken to drink, or gone bankrupt, or got married, or anything of that
sort.  I always liked Doyle."

"Doyle," said the Major sadly, "is suffering like everybody else."

"New priest?"

"No.  Father Morony's alive still."

"They're not piling on the rates under the pretence of getting a water
supply, or running schemes of technical education, or giving
scholarships in the new university, are they?  Doyle would have more
sense than to allow them to break out into any reckless waste of public
money."

"No."

"Then what's the matter with you?  I've noticed that you're looking
pretty glum ever since I arrived.  Let's have the trouble, whatever it
is.  I have a fortnight before me, and I need scarcely say, Major, that
if I can set things right in the place, I don't mind sacrificing my
holiday in the least.  I'm quite prepared to turn to and straighten out
any tangle that may have arisen since I left."

"I'm sure you'd do your best, J. J."--the Major dropped naturally into
his old way of addressing his friend by his initials--"but I don't
think you can help us this time."

Major Kent sighed heavily and struck a match.  His pipe had gone out.

"I certainly can't," said Meldon, "if you won't tell me what it is that
troubles you."

"It's that damned Simpkins," said the Major.

"Simpkins may or may not be damned hereafter," said Meldon.  "I offer
no opinion on that point until I hear who he is and what he's done.  He
can't be damned yet, assuming him to be still alive.  That's an
elementary theological truth which you ought to know; and, in fact,
must know.  It will be a great deal more satisfactory to me if you use
language accurately.  Say that 'damnable Simpkins' if you're quite sure
he deserves it; but don't call him damned until he is."

"He does deserve it."

"If he does," said Meldon--"I'm not, of course, certain yet that he
does--but if he does, I'll do my best to see that he gets it; but I
won't act in the dark.  I have a sense of justice and a conscience, and
I absolutely decline to persecute and harry a man simply because you
don't like him.  Who is this Simpkins?  Is he any kind of government
inspector?"

"He's an agent that they've sent down here to manage the Buckley
estates."

"Well, I don't see anything wrong about that.  I suppose there must be
an agent.  I could understand Doyle objecting to him on the ground of
his profession.  Doyle is the President of the League, and, of course,
he's _ex officio_ obliged to dislike land agents passionately; but I
didn't expect you to take that line, Major.  You're a loyalist.  At
least you used to be when I was here, and it's just as plainly your
duty to support agents as it is Doyle's to abuse them."

"I don't object to him because he's an agent," said Major Kent.  "I
object to him because he's a meddlesome ass, and keeps the whole place
in continual hot water."

"Very well.  That's a distinct and definite charge.  If you can prove
it, I'll take the matter up and deal with the man.  Pass the tobacco."

Meldon filled and lit his pipe.  Then he got up and walked across to
Major Kent's writing-table.  He chose out a pen, took a quantity of
notepaper and a bottle of ink.  With them he returned to his armchair
and sat down.  He put the ink-bottle on the arm of the chair and,
crossing his legs, propped the paper on his knee.

"Do be careful, J. J.," said the Major.  "You'll certainly upset that
ink-bottle, and this is a new carpet."

"We are engaged now," said Meldon, "on a serious investigation.  You
have demanded that a certain man should be punished in a perfectly
frightful manner.  I've agreed to carry out your wishes, _if_--mark my
words--if he deserves it.  You ought not to be thinking of carpets or
ink-bottles.  Your mind ought to be concentrated on a single effort to
tell the truth.  It's not such an easy thing to tell the truth as you
think.  Lots of men try to and fail.  In fact, I'm not sure that any
man could tell the truth unless he's had some training in metaphysics
and theology.  When I was in college I took honours in logic--"

"You've often mentioned that to me before," said the Major.  "It's one
of the things about you that I have most firmly fixed in my mind."

"And I won a prize for proving the accuracy of the Thirty-nine
Articles.  Consequently, I may say, without boasting, that I'm more or
less of an expert in the matter of truth.  My mind is trained.  Yours,
of course, isn't.  That's why I'm trying to help you to tell the truth.
But I won't--in fact, I can't--go on helping you if you wander off on
to side issues about ink-bottles and carpets."

He waved his hand oratorically as he spoke, and tipped the ink-bottle
off the arm of the chair.

"There," said the Major, "I knew you'd do that."

"Never mind," said Meldon.  "I have a pencil in my pocket.  I'll work
with it."

The Major seized the blotting-paper from his writing-table and went
down on his knees on the carpet.

"When you've finished making that mess worse than it is," said Meldon,
"and covering your own fingers all over with ink in such a way that it
will take days of careful rubbing with pumice-stone to get them clean,
perhaps you'll go on telling me why you call this fellow Simpkins a
meddlesome ass.  I was up early this morning, owing to the baby's being
restless during the night.  Did I mention to you that she's got
whooping-cough?  Well, she has, and it takes her in the form of a rapid
succession of fits, beginning at 10 p.m. and lasting till eight the
next morning.  That was what happened last night, so, as you'll readily
understand, I want to get to bed in good time to-night.  It may, it
probably will, take hours to drag your grievance out of you, and I
don't see any use in wasting time at the start."

"I paid twenty guineas for that carpet," said the Major.  "It's a
Persian one."

"Has that anything to do with Simpkins?  Did he force you to buy the
carpet, or did he try to prevent you?"

"No, he didn't.  I wouldn't let the beast inside this house."

"Very well then.  Don't go on about the carpet.  Tell me plainly and
straightforwardly why you call Simpkins a meddlesome ass."

"Because he pokes his nose into everybody's business," said the Major,
"and won't let people alone."

Meldon took a note on a sheet of paper.

"Good," he said.  "Simpkins--meddlesome ass--pokes his nose into
everybody's business.  Now, who is everybody?"

"Who is what, J. J.?"

"Who is everybody?  That's plain enough, isn't it?  For instance, are
you everybody?"

"No, I'm not.  How could I be?"

"Then I take it that Simpkins has not poked his nose into your
business.  Is Doyle everybody?"

"He _has_ poked his nose into my business."

"Be careful now, Major.  You're beginning to contradict yourself.  What
business of yours has he poked his nose into?  Was it the carpet?"

"No.  I told you he had nothing to do with the carpet.  He made a
beastly fuss about my fishing in the river above the bridge.  He
threatened to prosecute me."

"He may have been perfectly justified in that," said Meldon.  "What
right have you to fish in the upper part of the river?"

"I always fished there.  I've fished there for thirty years and more."

"These questions of fishing rights," said Meldon, "are often extremely
complicated.  There may very well be something to be said on both
sides.  I don't think I can proceed to deal with Simpkins in the way
you suggest, unless he has done something worse than interfere with
your fishing.  What else have you got against him?"

"He tried to stir up the dispensary doctor to prosecute Doyle on
account of the insanitary condition of some of his houses."

"I expect he was perfectly right there," said Meldon.  "From what I
recollect of those houses that Doyle lets I should say that he richly
deserves prosecution."

"Nobody was ever ill in the houses," said the Major.  "There hasn't
been a case of typhoid in the town as long as I can remember."

"That's not the point," said Meldon.  "You're looking at the matter in
the wrong way altogether.  There never is typhoid anywhere until you
begin to be sanitary.  The absence of typhoid simply goes to show that
sanitation has been entirely neglected.  That's probably one of
Simpkins' strongest points."

"If that's so, we'd be better without sanitation."

"Certainly not," said Meldon.  "You might just as well say that we'd be
better without matches because children never died of eating the heads
off them before they were invented.  Which reminds me that I caught the
baby in the act of trying to swallow a black-headed pin the other day;
and that, of course, would have been a great deal worse than getting
whooping-cough.  The thing had been stuck into the head of a woolly
bear by way of an eye.  She pulled it out, which I think shows
intelligence, and--"

"I thought you said, J. J., that you wanted to get through with this
enquiry and go to bed."

"I do," said Meldon.  "But I naturally expected you'd take some
interest in the mental development of my baby.  After all, she's your
godchild.  You wouldn't have liked it if she'd swallowed that pin.
However, if you don't care to hear about her, I won't force her on your
attention.  Go on about Doyle and the drains.  What happened?"

"The doctor refused to act, of course," said the Major.

"Naturally," said Meldon; "he didn't care about bringing typhoid into
the town."

"You'd have thought Simpkins would have dropped it then, but he didn't.
He reported the doctor to the Board of Guardians for neglect of duty."

"We're getting on," said Meldon, taking a note on a fresh sheet of
paper.  "You started out to prove that Simpkins is a meddlesome ass.
You've got half way.  He's certainly an ass.  Didn't he know that Doyle
was chairman of the Board of Guardians?"

"He must have known that, of course."

"Then he's an ass.  No one who wasn't an ass could possibly expect
Doyle to pass a vote of censure on the doctor for not prosecuting him
about his drains.  You needn't elaborate that point further.  I admit
it.  But I don't see yet that you've proved any actual malice.  Lots of
quite good men are asses, and mean to do what's right.  Simpkins may
have been acting from a mistaken sense of duty."

"He wasn't.  He was acting from a fiendish delight in worrying
peaceable people."

"Prove that," said Meldon, "and I'll make the man sorry for himself.
There's no crime I know more detestable than nagging and worrying with
the intention of making other people uncomfortable.  In a properly
civilised society men who do that would be hanged."

"I wish Simpkins was hanged."

"Prove your point," said Meldon, "and I'll see that he is hanged, or at
all events killed in some other way."

"There's no use talking that way, J. J.  You can't go out and murder
the man."

"It won't be murder in this case," said Meldon.  "It will be a
perfectly just execution, and I shan't do it myself.  I'm a clergyman,
and not an executioner.  But I'll see that it's done once I'm perfectly
satisfied that he deserves it."

"He had a row with the rector at a vestry meeting," said the Major,
"about the heating of the church."

"That settles it," said Meldon.  "I ask for nothing more.  The man
who's capable of annoying the poor old rector, who has chronic
bronchitis and must keep the church up to a pretty fair temperature--"

"What Simpkins said was that the church wasn't hot enough."

"It's all the same," said Meldon.  "The point is that he worried the
rector, who's not physically strong enough to bear it, and who
certainly does not deserve it.  I didn't mind his attacking you or
Doyle.  You can both hit back, and if you were any good would have hit
back long ago in a way which Simpkins would have disliked intensely.
But a clergyman is different.  He can't defend himself.  He is obliged,
by the mere fact of being a clergyman, to sit down under every species
of insult which any ill-conditioned corner-boy chooses to sling at him.
There was a fellow in my parish, when I first went there, who thought
he'd be perfectly safe in ragging me because he knew I was a parson.
No later than this morning a horrid rabble of railway porters, and
people of that sort, tried to bully me, because, owing to their own
ridiculous officiousness, I was forced to travel first class on a
third-class ticket.  They thought they could do what they liked with
impunity when they saw I was a clergyman.  You don't know how common
that kind of anti-clerical spirit is.  Simpkins is evidently swelled
out with it.  It's going now, like an epidemic.  Look at France and
Italy.  The one chance we have of keeping Ireland free from it is to
isolate each case the moment it appears.  By far the wisest thing we
can do is to have Simpkins killed at once."

"I don't quite see how you are going to manage it, J. J., without being
hanged yourself."

"Is he a married man?"

"No, he isn't."

"Then the matter's perfectly simple.  I don't think I mentioned to you,
Major, that I travelled down in the train to-day with a professional
murderess."

"Do try to talk sense, J. J."

"Her speciality is husbands," said Meldon.  "I don't know exactly how
many she has done for in her time, but there must be several.  She said
their ghosts haunted her at night, and that sometimes she couldn't
sleep on account of them."

"I suppose," said Major Kent, "that it amuses you to babble like an
idiot in an asylum."

"It doesn't amuse me in the least.  I feel desperately depressed when I
think of those poor fellows lying in their graves with ounces and
ounces of strychnine in their stomachs.  That's not the kind of thing I
consider amusing, though you may.  Miss King doesn't consider it
amusing either.  She said she often cries when she thinks of her
victims, and very often she can't sleep at night."

"Miss King!" said the Major.  "That's the name of the lady who has
taken Ballymoy House for the summer."

"Exactly.  The lady whom I propose to marry to your friend Simpkins."

"Good Lord!  J. J.  Why?  What has the poor woman done?"

"It's not so much what she has done," said Meldon, "that makes me think
she'd be a suitable match for Simpkins.  It's what she will do.  She'll
murder him."

"Nonsense."

"It's not nonsense.  She will.  She told me herself that she has come
to Ballymoy for the express purpose of murdering another husband.  She
said she wanted quiet and security from interruption in order to go on
with her work."

"You're going mad, J. J.; stark mad.  I'm sorry for you."

"I got into the carriage with her this morning by the merest accident,"
said Meldon.  "If the baby hadn't got whooping-cough a fortnight ago,
and kept me awake all night, I shouldn't have caught the early train.
I didn't mean to catch it.  Directly I looked at her I saw that she was
a remarkable woman.  You've not seen her yet?"

"No," said the Major, "I haven't, and I don't particularly want to."

"Her face seemed more or less familiar to me," said Meldon.  "You'll
recognise it, too, when you see it.  Or more probably you won't.  I
suppose you still read nothing but _The Times_, and it doesn't publish
the portraits of celebrities."

"Is Miss King a celebrity?  I never heard of her."

"Not under that name; but when I mention that her real name is Mrs.
Lorimer, you'll remember all about her."

"The woman who was tried the other day for murdering her husband, and
got off."

"Precisely," said Meldon.  "I happened, by the merest chance, to have
five portraits of her in three different papers.  I compared them
carefully with Miss King, and I haven't the slightest doubt that she's
the same woman."

"You're probably quite mistaken," said the Major.  "Those pictures in
the daily papers are never the least like the person they're supposed
to represent."

"I might have been mistaken, though I very seldom am; but in this case
I certainly was not.  She seemed quite pleased when I said I recognised
her, and told me frankly that she had murdered several husbands, and
hoped to live to murder many more.  I urged her to give it up.  Being a
clergyman I was bound to do that.  But it wasn't the least use.  She
said it was her art; and you know, Major, when people start talking
about art, it simply means that they are dead to all sense of morality.
It doesn't in the least matter what the art is.  The effect is always
the same.  That's the reason I've made up my mind not to allow my
daughter to learn drawing.  I won't have her moral sense blunted while
she's young.  I don't deny that pictures and books and music are great
things in their way, but a simple sense of right and wrong, of truth
and falsehood, are much more important.  I'm sure you agree with me in
that."

"I wish to goodness you had some sense of right and wrong yourself."

"I have," said Meldon, "If I hadn't I should simply enjoy myself during
this holiday, as I'm quite entitled to do.  Instead of which I mean to
devote my time to the troublesome task of marrying Simpkins, whom I
don't know at all, to a lady whom I have only seen once.  If I hadn't a
remarkably pushing sort of a conscience I wouldn't sacrifice myself in
that way."

"She won't marry Simpkins," said the Major.

"Oh yes, she will.  I don't anticipate any difficulty about that part
of the programme."

"Wait till you've seen Simpkins.  Wait till you've talked to him.  No
woman would marry Simpkins."

"Miss King will," said Meldon.  "She wants a man on whom to practise
her art, and she'll be all the better pleased if he's a particularly
undesirable kind of beast.  She won't find herself regretting him
afterwards.  Now that we have that settled, Major, I think I'll dodge
off to bed.  I don't mind confessing to you that I'm just as glad that
I shan't have the baby in her little cot beside me.  I'm extremely fond
of the child, but she's a little trying at night; the fits of coughing
come on at such frequent intervals."




CHAPTER IV.

Major Kent, like most men who lead an open-air life, had a healthy
appetite at breakfast-time.  His table was always well supplied with
eggs, bacon, and, when possible, fish.  In honour of Meldon's visit, he
had a cold ham on the sideboard, and a large dish of oatmeal porridge.
He was a man of primitive hospitality, and he surveyed the feast with
an air of proud satisfaction while he waited for his guest.  He had to
wait for a quarter of an hour, and his glow of pleasure was beginning
to give way to a feeling of irritation when Meldon burst into the room.

"This place," he said, by way of apology for his unpunctuality, "is
certainly the sleepiest in the world.  I had forgotten how sleepy it
is.  I didn't so much as turn round in bed for nine solid hours, and I
assure you I never felt less inclined to get up in my life.  I daresay
I'll get over it in a day or two; but just at present I feel that the
night wasn't long enough."

"Have some breakfast," said the Major, "and then you can go to sleep
again."

Meldon helped himself to porridge and milk.

"No, I can't," he said.  "I've too much to do."

He worked through a helping of bacon and eggs.  Then he attacked the
cold ham.

"There's nothing," he said, "like a good breakfast when you have a hard
day's work before you.  I expect to be pretty busy, and I'll hardly be
in for lunch.  I suppose you've no objection to my making myself a few
sandwiches before I start?  I may pick up a meal somewhere in the
course of the day, but I may not.  It's always well to be on the safe
side."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to marry Simpkins to Miss King, of course.  I thought we
settled that last night."

"Don't keep up that joke, J. J.  It was all very well pulling my leg
last night, and I didn't mind it a bit; but a thing like that gets to
be stale the next morning."

"There's no joke that I can see," said Meldon.  "If you read the papers
with any sort of attention lately, you'd understand that Mrs. Lorimer
is the last woman in the world who can be regarded as comic."

"We weren't talking about Mrs. Lorimer."

"Yes, we were.  We were talking about Miss King, and she is Mrs.
Lorimer; although at present she prefers to be called Miss King.  I
think she's quite right.  It would be extremely bad taste to go on
using poor Lorimer's name after what she did to him.  He wouldn't like
it.  You wouldn't like it yourself, Major, if she'd killed you."

"I don't know that she did kill him," said the Major.  "Even supposing
that you're right in identifying the two women--which of course you're
not--you'd still have no earthly right to assume that Mrs. Lorimer is a
murderess.  The jury found her innocent."

"Of course it did.  Any jury would.  She's a most attractive-looking
woman.  You'd have found her innocent yourself if you'd been on that
jury."

"I would not."

"Yes, you would.  I've seen her, remember.  You haven't, so you can't
possibly tell what you'd have done."

"I don't see," said the Major, "that her being good-looking proves that
she murdered her husband."

"No, it doesn't, but it accounts for the jury letting her off.  The
evidence was amply sufficient for a conviction, and the judge summed up
dead against her.  And any way it doesn't matter to us about the
evidence, for she owned up to me in the train.  I told her I'd keep her
secret for her, and I don't intend to tell anybody except you.  Apart
from her feelings altogether it wouldn't suit us for the story to get
out in Ballymoy.  Simpkins would be choked off at once if he knew it.
Men have such a ridiculous prejudice against marrying a woman with any
sort of past."

"I don't think Simpkins would mind," said the Major, "if he thought she
had any money.  That's the kind of beast he is."

"She has plenty," said Meldon, "Lorimer's, I daresay.  At least she
looks as if she had plenty, and that's the same thing in this case.  If
Simpkins marries her, it's extremely unlikely that he'll live long
enough to find out whether she really has a large fortune, or is simply
spending her capital."

After breakfast Major Kent returned to the subject of Miss King.

"I suppose," he said, "that you're absolutely certain that you've got a
hold of the right woman?  You couldn't be making any sort of mistake?"

"I told you last night that I was certain, and I gave you my reasons;
pretty convincing ones I imagine--the sort of reasons that would be
conclusive to any man at all accustomed to criminal investigation.  I
don't myself see how you can get behind the portrait and the lady's own
confession."

"You couldn't possibly have mistaken about that, could you?  I mean she
couldn't have been confessing anything else which you could have taken
up to mean murder?"

"No, she couldn't.  In the first place, it isn't at all likely that
there would be two attractive-looking lady criminals, travelling about
in trains at the same time, both wanting to confess what they had done.
In the second place, her crime must have been pretty serious, for she
was particularly anxious to find out whether it was likely to shock
you."

"Me?"

"Yes, you.  She mentioned you by name, and asked particularly whether
you'd be likely to be shocked, when you found out who she was.  Now, if
she had simply been slipping trifling articles off shop counters into
her muff, she wouldn't have expected you to be shocked.  That's what
makes me say her crime was a serious one."

"Still," said the Major, "even supposing she really was afraid of
shocking me; though I can't see how she came to consider me at all--"

"She did.  You may take that for certain."

"There are other things besides murder that I should strongly
disapprove of."

"You're thinking of divorce court proceedings now.  But she's not that
sort of woman at all.  I had every opportunity of studying her
character in the train, and I'm certain that she wouldn't mix herself
up with anything of a disreputable kind.  Whatever poor Lorimer may
have had to complain of--and I don't in the least deny that he had a
grievance--he'd have been the last man to accuse her of anything of
_that_ sort.  I never met a woman who impressed me more strongly as
being thoroughly respectable."

"Come now, J. J.  Murder!  Surely murder--"

"Not when treated as an art.  De Quincey wrote an essay on the subject.
If you'd read it, you'd know better than to mix up artistic murder with
the commonplace assassinations of the ordinary burglar.  You might just
as well say that Beethoven is the same sort of person as the Italian
organ-grinder who plays abominable tunes under your window, in the hope
of your giving him twopence to go away."

"Nothing you've said so far," said the Major, "convinces me in the
least that your identification of the lady is certain, or even likely
to be right."

"I knew you'd be sceptical.  You always are sceptical about anything
the least out of the common; so while I was shaving this morning I
arranged the evidence in such a way that you can't possibly escape from
it.  In the first place, there are the portraits.  I don't dwell on
them because you haven't seen Miss King, and so they won't--for the
present--carry much weight with you.  In the second place, there is her
confession.  You choose to consider that I was mistaken about that, and
that Miss King was really confessing something of quite a different
kind.  I say nothing about the improbability of my being mistaken in a
perfectly simple matter.  I simply leave the confession on one side,
and offer you corroborative evidence of a quite unmistakable
description.  Here's a copy of a Dublin paper.  I put it in my pocket
on purpose to show it to you.  I suppose you'll believe what you see
printed in a newspaper?"

"It depends very much what it is.  I don't believe everything I see in
papers."

"That, if you'll excuse my saying so, seems to me to be carrying your
habit of scepticism to the verge of actual mania.  I don't think you
ought to adopt that kind of attitude, Major.  If you had been trained
in theology, or even secular metaphysics, it might be excusable; though
then, of course, you wouldn't do it.  But in a simple and almost
entirely uneducated country gentleman like you, it's simply grotesque."

"Go on about the newspaper, J. J."

"Here it is for you; but I don't see that it's much use giving it to
you if your mind is made up beforehand to disbelieve every word that's
in it."

He took a newspaper from his pocket and handed it to Major Kent,
indicating with his thumb a column on the middle page.

"The Lorimer Case.  Judge's Charge to the Jury.  Acquittal.

"Scene outside the Court.  Enthusiasm of the Crowd.  A Demonstration."

The Major read aloud the heavily-leaded lines which filled half the
column.

"Skip that part," said Meldon.  "The cheers don't matter to us, though
I daresay Miss King enjoyed them at the time.  Go on to the bottom of
the next column where you see the words 'An Interview' in large print."

"Our representative," read the Major, "called this evening at Mrs.
Lorimer's hotel.  He was at once shown up to her sitting-room, where he
found her--"

"Go on," said Meldon; "that part about her being cool and
unembarrassed, and the next bit about her wearing a well-cut grey
travelling-dress, isn't important; though, as a matter of fact, her
dress was grey."

The Major skipped a paragraph, and then began to read again.

"'I always felt quite certain,' said Mrs. Lorimer, in reply to a
question asked by our representative, 'about what the jury's verdict
would be.  I have perfect confidence in the commonsense and justice of
Englishmen.  In fact, I had all my arrangements made, through my
solicitors, for my movements after the trial.  I have taken a house in
a very quiet neighbourhood, where I shall be free from all inquisitive
publicity.'"

"There," said Meldon, "those are almost the exact words Miss King used
to me in the train."

The Major went on, reading aloud.

"'May I ask,' said our representative, 'in what part of the country--?'
'No,' said Mrs. Lorimer, smiling.  'You may not ask that; or, if you
do, I shall not answer you.  But you may do this for me, if you like.
You may tell the hall porter to order a cab for me, a four-wheeler.  I
have a good deal of luggage.'"

"She had," said Meldon; "I saw it when we got out at Dunbeg station,
and it wasn't all there, for one of her trunks had got lost on the way."

"'Our representative,' read the Major, 'shook hands with Mrs. Lorimer
as she entered the cab.  The order given to the driver was Euston
station.  Thus a lady of great personal charm, whose terrible
experience has for some weeks focussed the attention of the civilised
world upon the affairs of her private life passes--'"

"You needn't go on," said Meldon.  "The rest of the article is mere
piffle.  The essential part is what you've read out, and I imagine it
ought to pretty well clinch the matter.  She drove to Euston, intending
to travel from that station to some very quiet neighbourhood in which
she had taken a house beforehand.  Now where could you possibly find a
quieter neighbourhood than this?"

"I don't see that you've proved your point, J. J.  There are a lot of
other places for which you might start from Euston."

"Not so many quiet neighbourhoods.  Think of where the London and
North-Western Railway runs.  Lancashire!  You wouldn't call Bolton a
quiet neighbourhood, I suppose.  North Wales!  You know what it is at
this season of the year, thick with holiday people.  No.  You may take
it for certain that if she left Euston she came to Ireland.  Now all
English people head straight for the west as soon as they land in this
country, especially those who have any kind of a past that they are
anxious to keep dark.  Dublin and Wicklow are just as thick with people
as England is.  Nobody ever stops half-way across the country.
Besides, there wasn't another woman in the train with me who could
possibly have been Mrs. Lorimer."

Major Kent rose from his chair and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

"I don't suppose, J. J., that it's any use telling you that you're
going to make an ass of yourself."

"Not a bit, because it isn't true.  I'm going to proceed in the most
circumspect and cautious manner.  Not that I'm the least afraid of
making an ass of myself.  I should never do that under any
circumstances.  But because I have a conscience and I am afraid of
doing a grave injustice, I am going to convince myself first of all
that this fellow Simpkins really deserves to be killed.  I admit the
force of all you said about him last night, especially that part about
the heating of the church; but it's a serious thing to condemn a man to
death.  It's a thing that you can't undo again once you've done it.  I
must see the man myself before I take any further steps."

"You can't have him here, J. J.  He's a horrid little cad, and I won't
have him inside this house."

"I'm not asking you to, at present.  Later on if it becomes necessary
in the interests of justice to patch up some appearance of a
reconciliation between you and him I shall, of course, ask him here;
but in the meanwhile--"

"You may entertain him yourself, if you do."

"I may.  But that won't deter me from doing my duty.  You haven't had
the education in philosophy and literature, Major, that you ought to
have had; but the years that you spent in the army ought to have taught
you that no amount of unpleasantness should prevent a man doing his
duty.  I thought that was one of the things which military life
impressed on me.  Suppose now that it was your duty to stand in a pool
of water on a wintry night looking out for the approaching army of a
powerful enemy.  You wouldn't like doing it because you'd know that
you'd have a cold in your head next day which would probably last you
for the rest of that particular campaign.  But would you allow that
fact to interfere with your duty?  I'll give you credit, Major, for not
even considering your own comfort in the matter.  You'd stand in the
pool.  You wouldn't so much as splash about, and when your feet got wet
you'd bear it without grumbling.  Why can't you admit that I am
actuated by the same sort of motives in doing my duty?"

"But is it your duty?  I can't see, really, that there's any need for
you to mix yourself up in it at all."

"It is my duty," said Meldon, "for several reasons.  In the first place
you are my friend, and you've always been kind to me; so it's plainly
my duty to do you a good turn when I can.  Next, I liked what I saw of
Miss King.  I'm convinced that she's in earnest about her art, and is
really working at it simply for art's sake and not from any selfish
motives.  Therefore, as an educated man, it's my duty to help her if I
can, without outraging my own conscience or acting in any way
unsuitable for a clergyman.  Assuming Simpkins to be the kind of man
you describe, it is a public duty, the duty of every good citizen, to
put him out of the world altogether.  He's nothing but a nuisance here,
and he can't be really happy.  I imagine that even for his own sake
he'd be a great deal better dead.  He may not see that himself, but
it's very likely to be true.  What's the use of his dragging out a
miserable existence in a place where he is getting more and more
unpopular every year?  He can't like it.  Where does he live?"

"He lives," said Major Kent, "in that little house just beyond the
police barrack."

"That won't save him," said Meldon.  "Miss King would laugh at our
police after slipping through the fingers of the Scotland Yard
authorities, and any way he'd have to go and live with her once they're
married.  I'll call there."

"At this time of day," said the Major, "he'll probably be in his
office, next to Doyle's hotel."

"I'll leave a card at his house first," said Meldon.  "It's only civil.
Then I'll go on to the office.  I suppose you can send me in, Major?
I'll walk back.  I wouldn't like to keep your horse in town all day.  I
shall probably be a long time.  I can't scamp the business, you know.
I must thoroughly investigate Simpkins.  After that, I'll look in and
have a chat with Doyle."




CHAPTER V.

Mr. Eustace St. Clair Simpkins preferred to have his letters addressed
"E. St. Clair-Simpkins, Esq.," as if his second Christian name were
part of his surname.  He belonged by birth to the _haute aristocratie_,
and believed that the use of a hyphen made this fact plain to the
members of the middle classes with whom he came in contact.  He was a
man of thirty-five years of age, but looked slightly older, because his
hair was receding rapidly from the left side of his forehead.  He had
enjoyed, for a time, the education afforded by one of the greatest of
the English public schools; but at the age of sixteen, being then
classed with boys so small that he looked ridiculous among them, he was
removed at the special request of the headmaster.  A private tutor,
heavily paid, took him in hand, but was no more successful with him
than the schoolmasters had been.  At the age of eighteen he was found
unfit to pass any of the examinations which open the way to gentlemanly
employment.  Various jobs were found for him by his desponding parents,
but on every occasion he was returned to them politely.  He drifted at
last into an Irish land-agent's office.  Mr. Tempest was a successful
man of business, and managed estates in various parts of the country
from his Dublin office.  He was under an obligation to a London
solicitor, whose wife was the sister of Mrs. Simpkins, the mother of
Eustace St. Clair.  He felt that he could not very well refuse to give
the young man such a chance as a clerkship afforded.  Things went on
fairly satisfactorily until Mr. Simpkins conceived the idea of marrying
his employer's daughter.  He reasoned, quite rightly, that Miss
Tempest, being an only child, was likely to have a substantial fortune.
Mr. Tempest, unimpressed by the hyphened St. Clair, was unwilling to
allow the courtship to proceed.  He sent Mr. Simpkins down to Ballymoy,
and charged him with the management of such parts of the Buckley estate
as were not already sold to tenants.

Mr. Simpkins, for the first time in his life, felt that he had found a
position which really suited him.  There was very little work to do.
He received the ground rents of the town of Ballymoy; saw that Ballymoy
House was kept in repair and the grounds in tolerable order; and let
the fishing of the river every year by means of advertisements in
sporting papers.  Many men would have found the life dull, but Mr.
Simpkins had a busy and vigorous mind of a sort not uncommon among
incompetent people.  By temperament he was a reformer of minor abuses,
and Ballymoy afforded him an almost unique opportunity for the exercise
of his powers.  There were, of course, difficulties.  The inhabitants
of Ballymoy, long unaccustomed to the presence of a reformer amongst
them, had drifted into quiet, easy ways of living.  Mr. Simpkins, who
was not lacking in a certain quality of quiet persistence, troubled
every one with fine impartiality, and became exceedingly unpopular in
Ballymoy.  The Resident Magistrate hated being obliged to enforce
unnecessary laws such as that which forbids cyclists to ride on
footpaths, and that which ordains the carrying of lighted lanterns on
carts at night.  The postman, at the other end of the official scale,
liked loitering on his rounds, and had adopted a pleasant habit of
handing on letters to any wayfarer who might be supposed to be
proceeding in the direction of the place to which the letters were
addressed.  Every one with a public duty of any sort to perform was
stimulated by Mr. Simpkins, and consequently came to hate him.

After a while Mr. Doyle, on whom, as chief citizen, the duty naturally
devolved, got up a petition to Mr. Tempest.  The necessity for removing
Mr. Simpkins was presented in the strongest terms.  Mr. Tempest, who
was a man of wide experience and kindly heart, sympathised with Mr.
Doyle and the others who signed the petition, but he did not recall Mr.
Simpkins.  He knew of no place in Ireland further from Dublin than
Ballymoy is; and it appeared to him above all things desirable to keep
Mr. Simpkins at a distance.  It was better, in his opinion, that
Ballymoy should suffer, than that his own house should be haunted on
Sundays and his office disorganised on week-days by Mr. Simpkins.  He
acknowledged the receipt of the Ballymoy petition, and promised,
mendaciously, to consider the matter.

Meldon drove into Ballymoy on the first morning of his holiday, and
went straight to Mr. Simpkins' house.  He left a card there, and then
walked on to the office.  Mr. Simpkins was in the office, and Meldon
greeted him with a warmth which seemed actually affectionate.  Mr.
Simpkins was surprised, and rubbed his hand, which had been hurt by the
hearty way in which Meldon shook it.

"Is there," he asked, in a puzzled tone, "anything that I can do for
you?"

"Nothing," said Meldon; "nothing whatever.  If there was I'm sure you'd
do it, and I shouldn't hesitate to ask you.  But there isn't.  I simply
called in to have a chat.  You won't mind if I smoke, will you?"

"I never smoke in my office," said Simpkins.  "I dislike free and easy
and slipshod ways of doing business."

Meldon filled and lit his pipe.

"You're perfectly right," he said.  "There's nothing impresses the
intelligent stranger so unfavourably as the smell of tobacco in an
office when he comes into it in the hope of doing business with a
competent man.  I wish you would impress your idea on that subject, and
I may say a good many other subjects, on the people of this town.  They
are lamentably deficient in what I may call the etiquette of commercial
life; and yet all these little points count for a lot.  You and I know
that."

Simpkins hesitated.  He was at first inclined to be angry.  Meldon was
smoking vigorously, and his tobacco was of the kind described as
"full-flavoured."  But the remarks about the etiquette of business were
certainly sound.  Mr. Simpkins really believed that he had a mission to
teach manners and method to the people of Ballymoy.

"Would you mind telling me," he said at last, "who you are?"

"Not in the least," said Meldon; "I shall be quite pleased.  At the
same time I think I ought to point out to you that, if you'd been on
speaking terms with Major Kent, you'd have heard all about me weeks
ago, and very likely would have been asked to dinner to meet me last
night.  Why have you quarrelled with the poor Major?  He's a nice
enough sort of man, and most people find him easy enough to get on
with."

"It was he who quarrelled with me.  I had no intention--"

"So it was.  I remember that now; something about fishing, wasn't it?
Curious how people will lose their tempers about ridiculous little
trifles.  That's the worst of places like this.  The people who have
never lived anywhere else become irritable and take offence about
nothing, simply because their minds are cut off from wider interests.
You and I, now, know that no fish in the world, however large, is worth
fighting about.  We wouldn't, either of us, mind a bit if some other
fellow came along and hooked the whale which we had marked down as our
private prey."

Simpkins was puzzled again.  The doctrine about fishing rights struck
him as slightly socialistic.  It might possibly be applicable in the
case of whales, but society could scarcely survive as an organised
whole if many men regarded the possession of salmon as of no
importance.  At the same time he was pleased; it gratified him
immensely to be hailed as a fellow citizen of a larger world.

"Would you mind," he said, speaking in quite a friendly tone, "telling
me your name?"

"Not in the least," said Meldon.  "I said so before.  As a matter of
fact, so far from having any wish to conceal my name from you, I went
round to your house before I called here and left my card on you.
You'll find it there when you get back.  I always like to be strict in
the observance of the rules of civilised society.  I particularly
dislike the slack ways into which people in places like this are
inclined to drift.  I must say for the Major, he's not as bad as the
rest in that respect.  He always dresses for dinner."

"So do I."

"I'm glad to hear it.  That ought to be a bond of union between you and
the Major.  You must be the only two men in Ballymoy who do.  By the
way, have you met Miss King?"

"No.  She arrived yesterday, I hear; but I haven't seen her."

"You ought to go up and call on her at once.  You'll like her, I'm
sure.  She's very good-looking."

He paused for a moment.  The announcement did not seem to excite
Simpkins' interest.  He was, indeed, not of the temperament which is
strongly moved by beauty or personal charm.

"She's also very rich," said Meldon.

"I thought she must be pretty well off when she took Ballymoy House."

"She is.  And what's more, she's uncommonly well connected.  Her uncle
is an earl.  I forget at this moment what his exact title is; but I
know he's an earl, and I have it on very good authority that he's
likely to be made a marquis quite soon."

He paused, and was gratified to observe that Simpkins appeared to be
greatly interested by this information about Miss King.  He pursued his
advantage at once.

"I shall call on her myself," he said, "though there's not really much
use in my making myself agreeable to her.  I'm married already.  The
Major would have told you that, too, if you'd been on speaking terms
with him.  You really must make it up with the Major, Simpkins.  I hope
to see a good deal of you while I'm in Ballymoy, and it will be most
inconvenient for me if you won't speak to the Major while I'm staying
in his house."

"Did you say that you knew Miss King?"

"Not intimately," said Meldon; "at least not very intimately.  I
travelled down in the train with her yesterday, and we had a pleasant
chat together.  If I wasn't married already--but there's no use talking
about that.  And I don't for a moment suppose that the Major will care
about having a try.  He's a confirmed old bachelor.  Though it would be
a right good thing for him if he did.  Miss King must have a whole pot
of money, and she looks to me the sort of woman whom it would be quite
easy to marry.  I'm afraid I must be going now.  I'm so glad I caught
you, Simpkins.  I've heard a lot about you during the short time I've
been in Ballymoy; and I may say, without the least wish to flatter,
that I was most anxious to meet you.  Good-bye, and be sure to call on
Miss King.  It's a pity to think of that poor girl all alone in a great
barrack of a place like Ballymoy House, without a civilised creature to
speak to."

Meldon left the Office very well satisfied with himself.  He went next
into the hotel.  The day was hot, and there was very little going on in
the town.  The streets were almost empty, for the country people were
busy on their farms.  The hotel appeared to be entirely deserted.  The
waiter had left the coffee room, and gone to visit a friend in the
police barrack.  The barmaid, after finishing one penny novel, had gone
into the shop next door to borrow another from the milliner.  Meldon
penetrated to the kitchen, and found an untidy maid asleep, very
uncomfortably, on an upright chair.  She woke with a start when he
banged a frying-pan against the front of the oven.

"I hope I haven't startled you," he said politely.  "I shall be greatly
obliged if you will tell me where Mr. Doyle is to be found."

"He's within in his own room; and what's more, the doctor's along with
him, and he did say that nobody was to be let next or nigh him by
reason of his being busy."

"If he's busy," said Meldon, "he's the only man in Ballymoy that is,
excepting myself; and any way that prohibition doesn't apply to me.
I'm an old friend.  I'll just step in and see him.  You needn't
announce me.  If you like you can go to sleep again; but if I were you
I'd be beginning to get the dinner.  It's near twelve o'clock."

"Is it, then?"

"It is.  Is your name Bridget or Mary?"

"It's Sabina they call me."

"You're not a bad-looking girl, Sabina; and if you'd attend to your
business instead of going to sleep in the middle of the day, you might
die a rich woman yet."

"I would not, then.  How would the like of me be rich?"

"You certainly won't be," said Meldon, "if you don't do your work."

"The potatoes is in the pot," said Sabina.

"They may be; but Mr. Doyle will be looking for more than potatoes at
dinner time.  He doesn't look as if he lived entirely on potatoes."

Sabina grinned.  Doyle was a portly man.

"It won't take me long to fry a couple of rashers," she said, "once the
grease is hot."

"And is fried bacon and potatoes all you're going to give the poor man?
What wages does he pay you?"

"Six pounds."

"Very well.  Now listen to me, Sabina.  You put your back into it and
cook the man a decent dinner.  Give him soup, and then a nicely done
chop with a dish of spinach and some fried potatoes.  After that a
sweet omelette--"

"Glory be to God!" said Sabina.

"And then a little savoury, tomato and olives, beaten to a cream, with
the yolk of a hard-boiled egg served up on toast, cut into dice."

"Arrah, what talk!" said Sabina.

"Get him accustomed to that sort of dinner for three weeks or a month,
and then ask him for a rise in your wages.  He'll give it to you."

"He would not."

"He would.  Any man would.  The mistake you make is half-starving him.
That makes his temper bad, and--"

"I wouldn't say then that ever I heard a cross word out of his mouth,"
said Sabina, "unless it might be when he'd be talking of Mr. Simpkins
or the like."

"I suppose he swears then," said Meldon.

"He does terrible."

"I don't wonder.  I never swear myself.  Being a clergyman, I can't, of
course.  But from what I've seen of Mr. Simpkins, and from what I've
heard about him, I should think he'd make most men swear.  Do you know
him at all intimately, Sabina?"

"I do not; but the girl that's with him beyond in the house is a cousin
of my own, and I hear her talking about him.  She does be saying that
the like of him for nonsensical goings on she never seen.  She--"

"Thank you," said Meldon.  "I don't want to hear your cousin's views of
Mr. Simpkins' domestic arrangements.  She's red-haired, if she's the
girl that opened the door to me a while ago, and I never knew one of
her colour that spoke the truth."

Sabina was loyal to her family.  She resented Meldon's remark.

"If you were to put me on my oath," she said, "I wouldn't call the hair
that's on your own head black, nor yet yellow."

"My hair," said Meldon, "is what's called auburn; and in any case I
have more strength of character than to be driven into untruthfulness
by the colour of my hair.  Did you say it was Dr. O'Donoghue was inside
with Mr. Doyle?"

"It is," said Sabina.

"I suppose, now, he isn't particularly fond of Mr. Simpkins either."

Sabina grinned broadly.

"From the pleasant way in which you're smiling," said Meldon, "I think
I may take it for granted that Dr. O'Donoghue wouldn't go far out of
his way to find out exactly the kind of medicine that would cure Mr.
Simpkins if by any chance he happened to fall sick."

"He would not.  But they do say he'd poison him if he got the chance."

"I don't want him to do that.  I should be very sorry if he did.  All I
want to be sure of is that the doctor wouldn't put himself out to cure
Mr. Simpkins if anybody else poisoned him."

"The Lord save us!" said Sabina.  "Is it murder you're thinking of?"

"It is not," said Meldon.  "Don't get any foolish idea of that kind
into your head.  I'm not a murderer.  I'm merely putting what is called
a supposititious case, with a view to finding out what Dr. O'Donoghue's
real feelings are.  I don't suppose you know what a supposititious case
is?"

"I do not.  It was a backward place where I was reared, and I wasn't
kept to school regular; and what's more, the Irish wasn't taught in
them times."

"It wouldn't have helped you much if it was," said Meldon.  "A
supposititious case is the same thing, very nearly, as a hypothetical
proposition.  It consists of two parts, a protasis and an apodosis.
For instance--"

"It's laughing at me you are."

"It is not, but trying to educate you a little.  For instance, I should
be putting a hypothetical case if I were to say, 'Supposing you cooked
the dinner I described every day for Mr. Doyle--'"

"I couldn't do it then, for I wouldn't be fit."

"That's exactly what makes it a supposititious case," said Meldon.
"Now perhaps you'll understand that I don't intend to poison Mr.
Simpkins myself."

"Nor the doctor won't do it for you," said Sabina.

"You said a minute ago that he would."

"He would not, for he's a nice gentleman, as simple and innocent as a
child, only an odd time when his temper would be riz."

"Any way he won't be asked to.  Good-bye, Sabina.  I'll look in and see
you next time I'm passing.  Don't let that red-haired cousin of yours
be putting phosphorous paste, or any of those patent rat poisons, into
Mr. Simpkins' food.  She'll get herself into trouble if she does."




CHAPTER VI.

Meldon opened the door of Mr. Doyle's private sitting-room without
knocking and walked in.  The hotel keeper and Dr. O'Donoghue were sitting
at opposite ends of the table, with a bottle of whisky and a jug of water
between them.  Doyle, who was placed with his back to the door, spoke
without looking round.

"Didn't I tell you, Sabina Gallagher," he said, "that if you came into
this room, interrupting me and the doctor, I'd cut the two ears off you,
and send you back to your mother with them in a box in the well of the
car?  Did I tell you that or did I not?  And now nothing will do you but
to fling open the door as if the Lord-Lieutenant and the rest of them
playboys beyond in Dublin Castle was--"

The expression of Dr. O'Donoghue's face made Mr. Doyle pause.  He turned
and saw Meldon standing on the threshold.

"Be damn!" he said, "if it isn't Mr. Meldon.  The Major was telling me
last week he was expecting you.  You're looking well, so you are.
England agrees with you."

"I can't say as much for you," said Meldon.  "You're getting fat.  You
ought to take more exercise.  Why don't you start a golf links?  It would
do you all the good in the world, and be an attraction to the hotel
besides."

"If I'm putting on flesh," said Doyle, "it's a queer thing, for the
life's fair tormented out of me."

"Simpkins, I suppose," said Meldon.

"The same," said Doyle.  "The like of that man for making trouble in a
place I never seen; no, nor nobody else."

"I hear," said Meldon, "that the doctor's thinking of poisoning him."

"Whoever told you that told you a lie," said Dr. O'Donoghue; "not but
what--"

"Myself and the doctor," said Doyle, "was making up plans when you come
in on us.  We was thinking of what you might call an ambuscade, worked so
as we'd get the better of him without his being able to take the law of
us; and he's mighty fond of the law, that same gentleman--too fond."

"If I can be of any help to you," said Meldon, "you can count on me.  I
have a good deal of natural talent for ambuscades.  Trot out the details
of your scheme, and I'll be able to tell you in two words whether it's
workable or not."

"They do say," said Doyle, "that he has the fishing let to an English
gentleman; and he's mighty particular about preserving it.  Now the
doctor here has the name of being a good fisherman."

"If he goes poaching," said Meldon, "he'll get the worst of it.  The
Major appears to have tried that on, and he simply made things unpleasant
for himself, without annoying Simpkins in the least."

"It's not poaching we're thinking of," said Doyle; "but--you know I'm a
magistrate these times, on account of being the Chairman of the Urban
Council."

"I know that; but if you're thinking of dragging up Simpkins before the
Petty Sessions on a bogus charge, you may as well put the idea out of
your head at once.  It won't work.  You'll have the Major on the Bench
with you, and though he doesn't like the man, I don't think he'd commit
him to prison for cruelty to children, or breaking windows while under
the influence of drink, or anything of that sort, unless he'd really done
it."

"I wouldn't do the like," said Doyle, "and no more would the doctor."

"Our plan," said the doctor, "is to get a salmon, a large salmon."

"Poach it?" said Meldon.

"No; buy it.  Doyle would buy it.  Then he'd give it to me in the
presence of several witnesses--"

"Sabina would do for one," said Meldon, "She's a most intelligent girl,
and I'm sure she'd swear anything afterwards that she was wanted to."

"She wouldn't have to swear anything but the truth," said Doyle.

"Of course not," said Meldon.  "But lots of people won't do even that."

"I'd go up the river," said Dr. O'Donoghue, "and I'd take my rod and
landing-net and the salmon with me, and I'd sit down on the bank and
wait."

"Simpkins," said Doyle, "does be walking up along the river every
evening, so the doctor wouldn't be there for very long before he'd be
caught."

"I see," said Meldon.  "The idea would be for Simpkins to prosecute the
doctor for poaching that salmon, and then to trot out Sabina in court to
prove--"

"Sabina and the rest of the witnesses," said Doyle.  "We'd have plenty."

"It's not a bad ambuscade at all," said Meldon.

"The Major," said Doyle, "would talk straight to him off the Bench, the
way he'd feel small; and I'd have a word or two myself to say to him
after the Major was done.  And the police would be standing round smiling
like--"

"I can't imagine anything more unpleasant," said Meldon, "than being
grinned at by a policeman.  All the same, I think it will be better not
to catch him in that ambuscade."

"And why not?" said Doyle.

"The fact is," said Meldon, "I'm thinking of dealing with the man myself,
and I'd rather he was left entirely in my hands for the present."

"Be damn!" said Doyle, "but I wouldn't ask better than just for yourself
to take in hand and hunt him out of the place altogether."

"It's you could do it," said Dr. O'Donoghue.

"It is," said Doyle.  "Divil the better man at devising of ambuscades
ever I come across, and I've known some in my day that you might call
gladiators."

"I'm not precisely a professional gladiator," said Meldon modestly; "but
I've studied strategy a little in my time, and I rather think I'll get
the better of Mr. Simpkins.  I suppose now you would not object to
attending his funeral?"

"I would not," said Doyle, "if so be there was no risk of my being hanged
for any share I might have in bringing the same about."

"There's not the least chance of that," said Meldon.  "You won't have to
do anything except refrain from making a public fool of the man with any
kind of tricks about salmon for the next fortnight."

"What is it you're thinking of doing?" asked Doyle.

"The doctor," said Meldon, "will of course have to sign the death
certificate."

"I'll do that," said Dr. O'Donoghue, "as soon as ever you satisfy me that
the man's dead.  If there isn't a hole drilled in his skull with a
bullet, I'll say it's heart failure that finished him.  After the way he
behaved to me, I can't be expected to make a _post mortem_ of him.  I
daresay the Major was telling you what he did."

"I hear he wanted you to put some ridiculous sanitary act in force
against poor Doyle.  That, of course, was quite intolerable."

"There was worse besides that," said Dr. O'Donoghue gloomily.

"He had it put out against the doctor," said Doyle, "that old Biddy
Finnegan died for the want of proper medical attendance, and her a woman
of near ninety, that was bound to die any way, and would have died
sooner, most likely, if the doctor hadn't let her alone the way he did."

"That old woman," said the doctor, "wasn't neglected.  She had a bottle
by her, when she died, that I sent out to her less than a week before,
and she hadn't the half of it drunk.  What's more, I wouldn't have minded
a bit if Simpkins had had any right to be interfering; but he hadn't.
Thady Flanagan--that's married to old Biddy's grand-daughter--was
contented enough with the way she died, and asked me civilly would I have
any objection to his taking home the half-bottle of medicine for the use
of one of his own children.  What I say is, that if the woman's own
relations had no complaint to make, what business had Simpkins to be
putting in his oar?  What aggravated me was that kind of gratuitous and
unnecessary interfering."

"I quite see your point," said Meldon.  "It's--"

"You've only heard the half of it," said Doyle.  "The doctor's backward
in telling you, and small blame to him; but Simpkins wrote off to the
Local Government Board, preferring a lot of charges against the doctor,
and against myself as Chairman of the Board of Guardians--things you'd
wonder any man would have the face to say."

"What happened?" said Meldon.

"We've quietened them down for the present," said Doyle, "but there was a
lot of talk of a sworn enquiry.  And what did Simpkins do it for if it
wasn't just the delight he takes in destroying the peace of the town?
You know very well, Mr. Meldon, the way we all pulled together here,
Catholics and Protestants, and never had any bad feeling.  And where's
the good of bringing in the Local Government Board to be stirring up
strife among us?  But that's not all he did, nor the half or it.  He
wrote a letter last October to the Inspector-General of the Police,
complaining of the sergeant beyond, that he wasn't doing his duty."

"I wouldn't expect you to be taking the part of the police," said Meldon.
"You always went in for being a strong Nationalist."

"And so I am," said Doyle.  "And so's the doctor.  In a general way there
isn't two men in Ireland that hates the police worse than the doctor and
myself; but the sergeant was a decent, poor man, with a long family
dependent on him, and I never heard tell of his doing any harm to any
one."

"Perhaps," said Meldon, "that was the reason Mr. Simpkins complained of
him.  After all, Doyle, we must be reasonable.  What are the police for,
if it isn't to do harm to people--objectionable people?  A policeman who
never injures anybody isn't worth his keep.  If what you say about the
sergeant is true, or anything like true, Simpkins was evidently perfectly
justified in acting as he did."

"You won't say that," said Doyle, "when you hear the way it happened.
There's two apple trees in the garden at the back of the house Simpkins
lives in."

"I remember them," said Meldon; "but there never were any apples on them
in my time."

"There were apples on them last year," said Doyle, "however they came
there.  Simpkins did be saying it was on account of the way he pruned the
trees; but he'd be talking a long time before I'd believe the like of
that.  Any way, the apples were there, and a good many of them.  I didn't
see them myself, but they tell me there might have been up to ten stone
altogether.  Well, one night the half of them was gone.  The gossures
from about the town had them ate."

"Of course they had," said Meldon.  "What would you expect?"

"What nobody would expect," said Doyle, "was the temper Simpkins was in
in the morning.  He was up and down, in and out of the police barrack,
cursing all sorts.  Well, the sergeant came out and looked at the trees,
and he asked Simpkins did he have the apples counted before they were
took, and would he be prepared to swear to them if so be that the police
found them for him.  You'd think that would have pacified him, but it
didn't.  So the sergeant, who wanted to do the best he could for the
peace of the town, went down to the house again after he had his dinner
ate, and two constables along with him, and asked the girl that does be
with Mr. Simpkins--"

"Sabina's red-haired cousin," said Meldon.

"Asked her," said Doyle, "was there ever a boy about the place at night;
which of course there wasn't, her being a respectable girl that wasn't
keeping company with any boy, unless it might be walking out now and then
of a Sunday with Jamesy Carroll.  Believe you me, it took the sergeant
all he knew to quieten down her mother that was over at the barracks
asking for the name of the villain that was taking away her daughter's
character.  That night the rest of the apples was took, and Simpkins was
fit to be put in the asylum in the morning.  He said the sergeant was an
incompetent jackass.--Wasn't them the words he used, doctor?"

"And others along with them," said Dr. O'Donoghue.

"The sergeant, being a man who'd always kept himself to himself and
didn't mix with bad company, wasn't going near the house while the like
of that language was going on.  But he sent down the whole of the four
constables to look at the apple trees; which they did.  But Simpkins got
worse instead of better.  He wrote off a note to the District Inspector
complaining of the sergeant.  But the D.I. had more sense than to take
any notice, knowing well that if there's an apple in the place the
gossures will get it, and small blame to them."

"Sensible man," said Meldon.

"When Simpkins got no satisfaction out of him," said Doyle, "he wrote to
the County Inspector.  I can tell you he took mighty little by that.  It
was a week after, or maybe more, when he got an answer back.  It was
Sabina Gallagher told me what was in it, having got it out of her cousin,
that's servant to Simpkins and seen the letter, so I know what I'm
telling you is the truth.  The County Inspector said that if there was
boycotting in the place, or cattle driving, or any kind of lawlessness,
he'd be quick enough to have extra police drafted in and a baton charge
up and down upon the streets of the town; but that he wasn't going to
upset the policy of the Government, and maybe have questions asked about
him in Parliament, for the sake of a few shillings' worth of apples.
You'd think that would have been enough for Simpkins, but it wasn't.  He
wrote another letter, up to Dublin Castle, to the Inspector-General of
Police, no less, and the end of it, was that the sergeant was moved out
of this."

"Poor fellow," said Meldon.  "Did he mind much?"

"He did not then, for they sent him to a better station.  It was only
last week they moved him, there being a lot of enquiries to be gone
through that occupied them the whole of the winter and the spring.  The
doctor and myself is thinking of getting up a subscription to present him
with an illuminated address on account of the way he conducted himself to
the satisfaction of the inhabitants of this town while he was in it, and
as a protest against the underhand way that Simpkins went about trying to
injure him and take the bread out of the mouth of his children."

"I'll see that the Major subscribes to that," said Meldon.

"Tell Mr. Meldon," said Doyle, "what it was you were saying ought to be
on the address."

"It isn't worth speaking about," said the doctor modestly.

"You'd better tell me," said Meldon.  "If I'm to be responsible for
revenging the wrongs of the community on Simpkins, I ought to be well up
in every detail of what's going on."

"It was nothing but just an idea that came across my mind," said the
doctor.

"It may be only that," said Meldon, "but it may be more.  The proper
person to judge of its importance is me.  You must have frequently
observed, doctor, that the man to whom an idea occurs is not by any means
the best judge of its value.  Sometimes he thinks too much of it.  Take
Galileo, for instance.  He hit upon the fact that the earth goes round
the sun, and it struck him as immensely important.  He gassed on about it
until everybody got so tired of the subject that the authorities had to
put him in prison and keep him there until he said it wasn't true, and
that he'd stop writing books to say it was.  As a matter of fact it was
true, but it didn't matter.  We'd all be doing exactly the same things we
are doing to-day if he had never made his beastly telescope.  On the
other hand, men who get a hold of really important ideas often think very
little of them.  Look, for example, at the case of the man who first
thought of collecting a lot of people together and making them pass a
unanimous resolution.  He didn't even take the trouble to patent the
process, and now there's no record left of when and where he hit upon his
idea.  And yet, where would we all be without unanimous resolutions?
Doyle will tell you that government couldn't be carried on and
civilisation would practically become extinct.  It may be the same with
this idea of yours, and I've no doubt that I'll be able to judge if you
tell me what it is."

"He was thinking," said Doyle, "of having a picture of an apple tree in
the top left-hand corner of the address with apples on it, and the same
tree in the top right-hand corner with no apples.  He says it would be
agreeable to the sergeant."

"I don't think much of that," said Meldon.  "It strikes me as a poor
idea, for three reasons.  In the first place, you'll not be able to get
an artist who can draw the apple trees so that any ordinary man could
recognise them.  I know what I'm talking about, for apple trees
necessarily come a good deal into ecclesiastical art, the kind of art I'm
most familiar with.  I give you my word that the most of them might as
well be elms, and I've seen lots that look like Florence Court yews.  As
a general rule, you wouldn't have a ghost of a notion what they were
meant for if it wasn't for Eve and the serpent.  In the next place, I
don't think the sergeant would care for it.  The whole business must be
painful to him, and he won't care to be obliged every day of his life to
be staring at something that would remind him of Simpkins.  In the third
place, it would almost certainly irritate Simpkins when he heard of it."

"It's that," said Doyle, "that we were hoping it might do."

"Well, then, you may put the idea out of your heads.  I can't have
Simpkins irritated at present.  It's of the utmost possible importance
that he should be lulled into a sense of security.  I can't deal with him
if his suspicions are aroused in the slightest.  I've been with him
myself this morning, lulling him."

"Were you, then?" said Doyle.

"I was, and I think I may say that for the immediate present he's lulled."

"And how did you like him?" said Doyle.

"My feelings don't matter," said Meldon.  "As a matter of fact, judging
from a single interview, I should say he was a pleasant enough,
straightforward sort of man who is trying to do what is right."

"If he tried less," said Doyle, "he'd get on better."

"Quite so.  And you mustn't think that I'm going to allow my personal
feelings to interfere with my action in the matter.  The Major is my
friend, and I have a great regard for the poor old rector, in spite of
his suffering from bronchitis.  Also I like the people of Ballymoy, and
I'm ready to help them in any way I can.  So, whatever opinion I have
formed of Simpkins, I'm going to deal with him precisely as if he were my
personal enemy."

"What do you mean to do to him?" said the doctor.  "You were speaking
this minute of a _post mortem_."

"It won't come to that," said Meldon, "unless you boggle over the death
certificate.  But the precise details of my scheme I must keep to myself
for the present, merely saying that I shall be severe with him.  I
couldn't, in fact, be severer if I caught him throwing stones at my
infant daughter."

"Is that the one the Major stood for?" said Doyle.  "He was talking to me
about her.  A fine child she is by all accounts."

"She was a fine child," said Meldon, "until she got the whooping-cough.
Since then she's been wakeful at night.--By the way, doctor, what do you
think is the proper way to feed a child that has the whooping-cough?  At
the present time she's living chiefly on a kind of yellow drink made up
out of a powdery stuff out of a tin which tastes like biscuits when it's
dry.  Would you say now that was a good food for her?"

"You can rear a child," said the doctor, "whether it has the
whooping-cough or not, on pretty near anything, so long as you give it
enough of whatever it is you do give it."

"I'm glad to hear you say that," said Meldon; "for my wife has a notion
that food ought to be weighed out by ounces, so that the child wouldn't
get too much at a time."

"Did she get that out of a book?"

"She did--a little book with a pink cover on it.  Do you know it?"

"I do not; but if I were you I'd burn it."

"I did," said Meldon.  "I burned it before it was a week in the house.
If I hadn't been a good-tempered man, I'd have burned the baby along with
it.  She spent the whole of four nights crying, and that was before she
got the whooping-cough, so there was no excuse for her."

"It was hunger ailed her then," said the doctor.

"It was," said Meldon.  "I found that out afterwards, for she stopped
crying as soon as ever she got enough to eat.  If I'd allowed her to be
brought up on the principles laid down in that book her temper would have
been ruined for life, and she'd have been a nuisance to every one she
came across."

"I wouldn't wonder," said Doyle, "but it might be according to that book
that Simpkins was reared.  It would be hard to account for the kind of
man he is any other way."

"It might be that," said the doctor; "but I'd say myself it's more likely
to be the want of beating when he was young that's the matter with him."

"Will you stay and have a bit of dinner now you're here, Mr. Meldon?"
said Doyle.  "I wouldn't like your temper would be destroyed for the want
of what I'd be glad to give you."

Meldon looked at his watch.

"Thank you," he said, "I will.  It's one o'clock, and Sabina ought to
have the bacon ready by now if she started cooking it the time I told
her."




CHAPTER VII.

Ballymoy House, save for the occasional presence of a fishing tenant,
has been unoccupied for years.  Two men are employed to keep the
grounds tidy, and Mr. Simpkins does his best to see that the work is
done.  But in spite of his exertions the place is in a condition of
disorder.  There is long grass where there ought to be trim lawns; wild
growths of brambles in nooks originally dedicated to rose gardening;
and a general air of exuberance about the trees and shrubs.  Miss King
found all this very charming.  She took a walk round the pleasure
grounds on the evening of her arrival, and felt that she had happened
upon the Irish demesne of her dreams--a region of spacious
dilapidation, exquisite natural beauty, romantic possibilities, and an
inexhaustible supply of local colour; a place very different indeed
from the trim Thames-side villas in which she generally spent her
summer holidays.  Her maid unpacked a large box of requisites for the
country life supplied by the Stores, and came, at the bottom of it,
upon a very gay hammock made of green and scarlet strings.  Miss King
was delighted with its appearance, and the promise it gave of luxurious
rest.  After breakfast next morning she summoned the two gardeners to
her presence, and gave orders that the hammock should be securely hung
in a shady place.  The men were unaccustomed to hammocks, but with the
help of some advice from the maid, they tied it to two trees in a
corner of what had once been a tennis court.  They were so pleased with
it that they stood looking at it with great appreciation until Miss
King came out at about twelve o'clock.  She brought with her a bundle
of manuscript and a fountain pen, intending to work into her new novel
a description of Ballymoy House and the demesne.

The men watched her settle herself, and then came forward cautiously
and asked if there was anything they could do for her.  Miss King
suggested that they should go away and do their work.  They went
obediently, but returned in a few minutes with two scythes.

"If it's pleasing to your ladyship," said the elder of the two, "I was
thinking of cutting the grass beyond, while the weather's fine, and
we'd have a chance of getting the hay saved without rain."

Miss King was not very well pleased.  She would have preferred to be
left alone, in order that she might enjoy thoroughly the picturesque
dilapidation she wished to describe.  But she did not see her way to
forbid the cutting of the grass.  The two men sharpened their scythes
noisily and mowed down several swathes of long grass.  Miss King
watched them, mildly interested.  At the end of five minutes they
stopped mowing and whetted their scythes again.  Then they sat down,
lit their pipes, and looked at Miss King.  She busied herself with her
papers, and made some corrections with the fountain pen.  When their
pipes were about half smoked, the men rose, whetted their scythes for
the third time, and mowed again.  Miss King stopped writing and watched
them.  The day grew hotter, and the spells of mowing became shorter.
Miss King gave up the attempt to write, and lay dreamily gazing at the
men, roused to active consciousness now and then by the rasp of the
hones against the scythe blades.  At one o'clock the men, guessing it
to be dinnertime, stopped pretending to work and went away.  A few
minutes later Miss King, feeling the need of luncheon, disentangled
herself from the hammock, bundled her papers together, and went into
the house.

At two o'clock the men, carrying their scythes, returned to the tennis
court, which was nearly half mowed.  At half-past two Miss King joined
them, and climbed as gracefully as she could into the hammock.  She
brought a book with her this time instead of her manuscript.  The
afternoon was hotter than the morning had been, and there was a very
soothing sound of bees among the branches of the trees.  Miss King, who
had eaten her luncheon with a good appetite, went to sleep.  The two
gardeners, after a short consultation, sat down under a tree and
smoked.  At half-past three Meldon arrived.

"You seem," he said to the men, "to be taking things pretty easy.  Are
you supposed to be mowing that lawn, or is Mr. Simpkins paying you to
cut the legs off any tiger or other wild beast that comes up with the
idea of devouring Miss King in her sleep?"

The men grinned pleasantly, and put their pipes in their pockets.

"It's how we didn't like to be disturbing the young lady," said the
elder of the two men, "and her lying there quiet and innocent, maybe
tired out, the creature, with the way she's been travelling to and fro."

"Isn't it Callaghan your name is?" said Meldon.

"It is.  Glory be to God! but it's wonderful the way you'd know me, Mr.
Meldon, and you out of the place these three years."

"Send that other man away," said Meldon, "and listen to me while I
speak to you."

"Mickey," said Callaghan to his fellow-labourer, "let you be off with
you and get the potatoes earthed up beyond in the garden.  It's
wonderful, so it is, the way you'd take a delight in sitting there all
day and not doing a hand's turn."

Mickey went off, still grinning.  He had no intention of earthing up
the potatoes.  Digging is hard work, not to be lightly undertaken on a
hot afternoon.  Meldon watched him out of sight, and then turned to
Callaghan.

"I'm speaking confidentially to you," he said, "and I hope that nothing
I say will--"

"Take care," said Callaghan, "that you wouldn't wake herself, talking
so loud and all."

Meldon looked at Miss King.

"She seems pretty sound," he said, speaking more softly.

"It's tired she is, the creature,", said Callaghan.  "It would be a
shame to wake her, though I wouldn't care myself for the notion of
sleeping in one of them new-fashioned beds."

"What I want to say to you is this," said Meldon.  "You know Mr.
Simpkins, of course?"

"I do."

"Is he a particular friend of yours?"

"He is not," said Callaghan.  "The Lord forgive me for saying the like!
but I hate him worse than I do the devil."

"I thought you probably would," said Meldon, "and I don't wonder at it.
Any man who works the sort of way you were working when I arrived would
be pretty sure to hate Simpkins."

"Since ever he come to the place," said Callaghan, "there's been
neither peace nor quiet in it.  There doesn't a day pass but he's up
here asking why this isn't done, and what's the matter with the other
thing, and whether I couldn't manage to settle up some contraption or
other.  Many's the time I've said to myself it would be better for me
to starve out on the bog beyond than to have the life plagued out of me
listening to the way he does be talking."

"I expect," said Meldon, "that he's simply trying to make you do your
work, and a hard job he has of it."

"Any way, it's what I'm not accustomed to; and what's more, won't
stand."

"You'll have to stand it for a while more, any way.  That's what I want
to impress on your mind.  I can't have a word said against Mr.
Simpkins, in the presence of Miss King."

"The young lady there?"

"Yes, that exact young lady.  She's a stranger in these parts, and
you're more or less responsible for the opinions she forms of the
people she comes across.  It's to you she'll be looking for guidance
when she's in a difficulty and wants information about any one."

"She will, of course.  Why wouldn't she?  Amn't I old enough to be her
father and the father of a dozen more like her?"

"Exactly," said Meldon.  "So when she consults you about Mr. Simpkins
you'll say all the good you can of him, and you'll praise him up to the
servants in the house in such a way that they'll repeat what you've
said to her."

"Would you have me tell what isn't true?"

"I would."

"Well, then, I'll not do it.  I've more respect for myself, let alone
the young lady, than to do the like."

"Don't take that tone with me," said Meldon, "for I'll not stand it.
There isn't a man in Ireland this minute that has a greater respect for
the truth than I have.  It's a good thing--one of the best things there
is--in its proper place.  But there's no bigger mistake than to suppose
that because a thing is good in one place at one time, it must
necessarily be good everywhere and always.  Take the case of bottled
porter.  You're not a teetotaller, are you?"

"I was one time," said Callaghan, "after the mission there did be going
round the country last spring.  They had me pledged before I rightly
understood what it was they were doing; but, thanks be to God, I'm
through with it now, and can take a drop of drink as well as another."

"Very well.  Then you'll appreciate what I say about bottled porter.
It's a good thing when you have it in a tumbler, and the tumbler in
your hand, and you thirsty."

"It is."  Callaghan spoke with conviction.  He was thirsty at the
moment, and he had some hope that Meldon might possibly have the bottle
of which he spoke in his pocket.  He was disappointed when Meldon went
on with his speech.

"But it's not a good thing when somebody jogs your elbow and spills the
whole of it over the legs of your trousers.  Now it's exactly the same
with truth.  It's all right under certain circumstances.  It's one of
the worst things going when it's told to the wrong man at the wrong
time.  You follow me so far, I hope.  Very well.  Now I want to make it
plain to you that the truth about Mr. Simpkins must not be told to Miss
King.  I expect he'll be up to call on her tomorrow or next day, and
it's most important that she should not be prejudiced against him."

"Have you a match made up between them?" asked Callaghan.

"I have."

"And why couldn't you have said so before?  If that's the way of it, it
isn't likely I'd be saying a word that would turn her against the man
that's laid down for her to marry.  There was a friend of my own one
time that had a match made up for his son with a girl that had a good
fortune.  But there was only one leg on her, and he was terrible feared
that the boy'd never take her if he found it out.  There wasn't one in
the place, only myself, that knew the way the girl was on account of
her father living away beyond the bog.  Do you think I said the word?
I did not.  And the boy was well enough pleased at the latter end."

"In this particular case," said Meldon, "you'll have to do rather more
than keep your mouth shut.  Simpkins' legs are all right, of course,
but--"

"He has the divil of a long tongue."

"Well, don't dwell on his tongue when you're talking about him to Miss
King."

"Beyond saying an odd time that he's a pleasant-spoken gentleman, I
will not."

"That's right," said Meldon.  "I shall rely absolutely on you.  And you
are to let me know from time to time how they get on together when he
comes up here to visit her."

"If there's any impropriety of conduct between them," said Callaghan,
"I'll speak to your reverence."

"Don't misunderstand me," said Meldon.  "I don't want to interfere with
their love-making.  The more of that they do, the better I'll be
pleased.  Even if they run rather into extremes--"

"It's what I won't be a party to," said Callaghan; "I don't hold with
them ways, and the clergy is against them, all but yourself; and you
ought to be ashamed to be encouraging the like."

"You don't in the least understand the situation," said Meldon.  "Mr.
Simpkins and Miss King are both English, and in England they manage
these things quite differently from the way we do here."

"Well, it's yourself ought to know about that, seeing that you're a
Protestant."

"It's not so much a question of religion," said Meldon.  "It's
temperament.  I don't suppose you understand what that means; but the
fact is, that an Englishwoman wouldn't marry a man who hadn't been
making love to her off and on for at least a week.  If he hadn't got
her thoroughly accustomed to his occasionally squeezing her hand, and
offering to pick flowers for her, and picking up anything she dropped
about, and--  But I needn't go into details.  The fact is, that if he
hadn't made love to her pretty violently, she wouldn't consider it
decent to marry him.  That's the sort of people the English are."

"They're queer," said Callaghan, "and that's a fact."

"They are," said Meldon.  "But we've simply got to take them as we find
them.  There's no use our trying to teach them better ways, for they
wouldn't listen to us.  I'm telling you all this so that you won't be
shocked if you happen to see Simpkins kissing Miss King.  It's no
affair of yours, to start with; and, in the second place, there's no
point in comparative ethnology so firmly established as the fact that
morality is quite a different thing among different peoples.  What
would be wrong for you and me may be, and is, perfectly right for Miss
King and Simpkins.  I needn't go into that more fully.  All you have to
do is to crack up Simpkins as a first-rate sort of man that any girl
would be lucky if she married; and then let me know how they hit it off
together when they meet."

"I'll do it.  I'd do more than that to oblige your reverence in the
matter of making a match for any boy about the place; for I'm not one
to spoil his chances on a boy, not if I hated him worse than I do
Simpkins."

"Very well.  Now I want to speak a few words to Miss King, but it won't
do for me to wake her up.  She wouldn't like it; and what's more, she
might suspect that we'd been talking together about her.  I'll go back
to the house and walk over here across the lawn.  I'll signal to you as
soon as I'm ready to start, and then you go over and wake Miss King."

"I wouldn't like to do it.  I'd be ashamed, for fear she might think I
was taking a liberty."

"I don't want you to go and shake her," said Meldon, "or pour cold
water over her, or anything of that sort.  Just take your scythe over
close to where she is, and as soon as ever I give the signal, you begin
to scrape the blade of it with your stone and whistle a tune at the
same time as loud as you can."

"'The Wearing of the Green,' or the like?"

"Not 'The Wearing of the Green.'  It's a melancholy, soothing sort of
tune which would probably only make her sleep sounder.  Whistle a good
lively jig."

"I will," said Callaghan.

Meldon walked away.  When he reached the house he stood on the top step
of the flight which leads to the hall door and waved his pocket
handkerchief.  Callaghan picked up his scythe cautiously, and went on
tip-toe across to Miss King's hammock.  He did not wish to disturb her
prematurely.  Then, his hone in one hand and his scythe in the other,
he stood and watched Meldon, The handkerchief waved again, and Meldon
started walking briskly across the lawn.  The hone rasped harshly
against the scythe blade, and "The Irish Washerwoman" rang out shrilly.
Miss King woke with a start.  Callaghan turned away from her, and still
whistling vigorously, began to mow.  Meldon hurried forward.

"How do you do, Miss King?" he said.  "I happened to be passing the
gate and I just called in to see how you are getting on, and to see
whether there is anything I can do for you."

Miss King blinked, got her feet out of the hammock, sat up, and shook
hands with Meldon.

"It's very kind of you.  Won't you come inside and have some tea, or
shall I get them to bring it out here?"

"No, thanks.  No tea for me.  I haven't time to stay; and besides, I've
had luncheon with Mr. Doyle.  You know what that means."

"No," said Miss King.  "I don't."

"Well, I needn't go into details," said Meldon; "but as a matter of
fact when you've lunched with Mr. Doyle you don't want anything more to
drink for a long time.  By the way, you're not looking out for a cook
just at present, are you?"

"No, I'm not.  What made you think I was?"

"People generally are," said Meldon.  "In fact, I've hardly ever met
any one who wasn't.  I happen just now to know of a really excellent
girl, called Sabina.  With a little training she'd make a first-rate
cook.  She's first cousin to the red-haired girl who's with Mr.
Simpkins.  That's a recommendation in itself."

"Is it?  Who is Mr. Simpkins?  Oh, of course, he's the man from whom I
took the house."

"A capital fellow," said Meldon; "young, strong, and vigorous.  The
sort of man," he sank his voice impressively, "that it would take a lot
to kill."

Miss King seemed moderately interested.

"But why do you think," she said, "that his servant's first cousin--"

"Sabina is her name," said Meldon.  "It's a very attractive name, isn't
it?"

"Yes.  But why do you think it likely that Mr. Simpkins' servant's
first cousin can cook?"

"He's a most particular man," said Meldon; "fidgety to a degree about
having everything quite right, always worrying the life out of his
servants, which is excellent for them, of course; but, well, if he was
married"--he sank his voice again--"I expect his wife would consider
herself quite justified in killing him.  I daresay he'll be up to call
on you this afternoon."

"If he's as bad as that," said Miss King, "I had better go in and tidy
my hair before he comes."

"Perhaps you had," said Meldon.

"You're very rude," said Miss King.

She smiled as she spoke, blushed slightly, and then looking at Meldon
from under her eyelashes, said,--

"Come now, tell me the truth.  Am I an absolute fright?"

Most men would have attempted a pretty speech of some sort.  Many men
would have responded to Miss King's eyes with a glance of admiration.
She had very fine eyes, and a singularly attractive way of looking out
of the corners of them.  Miss King was, in fact, a little tired of her
own company, and would have liked to hear Meldon say something pleasant
about her appearance.  She would have enjoyed herself very well if he
had attempted some slight flirtation with her.  But he snubbed her
severely.

"I told you yesterday," he said, "that I'm a married man.  I have a
daughter two years old, and I'm a clergyman.  I really can't allow
you--"

The soft look vanished in an instant from Miss King's eyes.  They
flashed fiercely.  Her face became suddenly crimson.

"You are outrageous," she said.  "How dare you suggest--?  How dare you
even think--?"

She sprang to her feet and started at a rapid pace towards the house.
Her head was poised defiantly.  Meldon, though he could only see her
back, felt certain that her chin was in the air.  Callaghan, who had
retired with his scythe to the middle of the lawn, stopped mowing and
stared after Miss King.  Then he laid down his scythe and approached
Meldon.

"Were you telling her," he asked, "of the match you had laid out for
her?"

"No," said Meldon, with a broad smile, "I wasn't."

"From the look of her," said Callaghan, "I thought maybe you might."

"Well, I wasn't.  All I was trying to make plain to her was that she
couldn't marry me."

"I'd say," said Callaghan, "that she seen that plain enough, however it
was that you put it to her."

"I thought it better to make it quite clear at once," said Meldon.
"She was looking at me in a kind of way you'd hardly understand."

"I might, then," said Callaghan, still grinning.

"You would not," said Meldon.  "You told me a moment ago that the
priests wouldn't let you!"

"There's many a thing," said Callaghan, "that the clergy might not
approve of, but--"

"Any how," said Meldon, "it was that kind of way she looked at me, and
I thought it better to put a stop to it at once."

"You're right there; and it's no more than what I'd expect of you."

"I don't think you quite grasp my point yet," said Meldon.  "In a
general way I shouldn't mind her looking at me any way she liked.  I
might have enjoyed it, if she'd done it well, as I expect she could.
But under the existing circumstances I had to stop her; because, if she
took to looking at me like that, she'd look quite another way at Mr.
Simpkins, and then he wouldn't be inclined to marry her."

"You're dead set on that match," said Callaghan.

"I am.  It's most important that it should come off."

"She's a fine girl," said Callaghan.  "She's too good for the like of
Simpkins.  He'll be tormenting her the way he does be tormenting
everybody about the place."

"Believe you me," said Meldon, "she'll know how to manage him."

"She might," said Callaghan.  "By the looks of her, when she left you
this minute, I wouldn't say but she might."




CHAPTER VIII.

It was eight o'clock, and the evening was deliciously warm.  Major Kent
and Meldon sat in hammock chairs on the gravel outside Portsmouth
Lodge.  They had dined comfortably, and their pipes were lit.  For a
time neither of them spoke.  Below them, beyond the wall which bounded
the lawn, lay the waters of the bay, where the _Spindrift_, Major
Kent's yacht, hung motionless over her mooring-buoy.  The eyes of both
men were fixed on her.

"I feel," said Meldon at last, "like the village blacksmith."

"There are four in Ballymoy," said the Major.  "Reilly is the man who
works for me.  If you feel like him, I'm sorry for you.  He's generally
drunk at this hour."

"I refer," said Meldon, "to Longfellow's village blacksmith.  You're
not a highly-educated man, I know, but I thought you'd have heard of
him.

  "'The muscles of his brawny arms
    Were strong as iron bands.'

It's a poem which most people learn while at school.  I am sometimes
tempted to think that you never were at school."

"I don't see, J. J., that your muscles are anything particular to
swagger about."

"I wasn't referring to my muscles," said Meldon.  "The resemblance I
speak of lies in the fact that I've 'earned my night's repose.'  The
village blacksmith felt that he deserved his after listening to his
daughter singing in the local church choir.  I've undergone an even
severer nerve strain.  I've practically arranged the marriage between
Simpkins and the murderess."

"I wish very much that I knew exactly what you've been doing all day,
J. J.  I always feel nervous when you go out alone.  I never know--"

"I'll give you an exact account of my proceedings, if you like.  First,
I had a personal interview with Simpkins; and I may as well say at once
that I was on the whole favourably impressed by him.  I don't mean to
say that he ought not to be killed, but merely that if left to myself I
would not go out of my way to kill him.  I next talked the matter over
with Doyle and Dr. O'Donoghue.  I found that they quite agreed with
you; and the doctor is prepared to sign the death certificate as soon
as Miss King--who will then, of course, be Mrs. Simpkins--has finished
him off.  I then called at Ballymoy House and arranged with Callaghan,
the gardener, to keep me informed of the progress of events.  Finally,
I interviewed Miss King herself.  I was unfortunately obliged to offend
her a little, and I expect she won't care about talking to me for the
next few days."

"Did you allude to the trial?"

"No.  And she wouldn't have minded in the least if I had.  She's quite
frank with me in talking about her art.  The fact is, she wanted to
flirt with me, and of course I couldn't have that."

"Are you sure of that, J. J.?  It seems to me very unlikely that a lady
of that sort would want to flirt with a clergyman."

"I'm not exactly an ordinary clergyman," said Meldon, "and she
certainly did want to flirt with me.  I could see it by the expression
of her eye.  Any man who knows anything about women gets into the way
of judging them very largely by the expression of their eyes.  You find
after a little practice that you are able to tell with almost absolute
certainty what their intentions are; and there was no mistake about
Miss King's this afternoon."

"I'm glad," said the Major, "that you went away at once."

"I didn't," said Meldon.  "It was she who went away.  I hurt her
feelings by telling her plainly that I was a married man.  She flew
into a temper and pranced off."

"She must be a very--"

"No, she's not--not in the least.  It was simply a case of what Virgil
calls 'spretae injuria formae.'"

"Talk English," said Major Kent.  "You know I don't understand Latin."

"Never mind," said Meldon; "you wouldn't understand it a bit better if
I put it into English.  You haven't the necessary experience.  And in
any case it doesn't in the least matter.  The important thing for you
to get a hold of is that the marriage is arranged, and unless something
quite unforeseen turns up it will come off.  I told Simpkins that she
had a large fortune and was the niece of an earl.  Those facts, in
addition to her personal charm, will, I imagine, bring him rapidly up
to the scratch.  I can do no more for the present.  That's why I said I
was like the blacksmith and had earned my night's repose."

"It's early yet," said the Major.  "I seldom turn in before eleven.
But, of course, you can go off at once if you like."

"When I quoted that line about the night's repose," said Meldon, "I was
speaking figuratively.  I haven't the least intention of going to bed
at this hour.  I don't suppose the original blacksmith did either, even
if he was feeling a bit upset about the choir.  What I really meant was
that I am quite entitled now to have a couple of days off in the
_Spindrift_."

"I'm glad to hear you say that," said the Major.  "I was afraid you
were going to spend your whole holiday running backwards and forwards
between this and Ballymoy."

"I can't take a regular cruise," said Meldon.  "I absolutely must be
back here the day after to-morrow.  No matter how carefully you arrange
things, there's always a risk of something going wrong.  Quite a
trifling accident might upset the entire plan, and I ought to be on the
spot to straighten things out directly they begin to get into a tangle."

Major Kent made no answer.  He sat smoking until his pipe went out.
Then for a while he sat with the empty pipe in his mouth, sucking at it
as if it were still alight.  He was thinking deeply.  The evening
darkened slowly, and a faint breeze stole in from the sea.

"Every prospect of a fine day to-morrow," said Meldon.

The Major took no notice of the remark.  Meldon filled a fresh pipe,
and watched the _Spindrift_ tugging at her moorings as the breeze
freshened or died and the tide caught her.

"J. J.," said the Major at last, speaking very solemnly, "I'd rather
you didn't."

"Didn't what?"

"I know you enjoy this sort of thing, and I don't want to spoil your
holiday.  I'd like you to have a really good time, but I wish you'd hit
on some other amusement."

"Try and be a little more explicit, Major.  I'm a quick-witted man, and
I can generally guess at your meaning, no matter how you wrap it up in
paraphrases, but this time I really can't.  The only amusement I've
proposed so far is a short trip in your yacht.  I suppose you don't
grudge me that?"

"You know very well I don't, J. J.  But I wish you wouldn't play these
tricks with Simpkins.  He's a man I don't like."

"You told me that last night," said Meldon, "and I agreed at once to
have him murdered."

"Of course I know that you like talking in that sort of way, and I
don't mind it a bit.  It's your way of making jokes, and you don't mean
any harm by what you say; but I'd really rather not be mixed up with
Simpkins even by way of a joke.  I don't like the man at all."

"Don't repeat that again," said Meldon.  "I quite believe you.  And as
for the murder of Simpkins being a joke, I assure you it's nothing of
the sort.  I may be flippant--several people have called me
flippant--but I draw the line at making jokes about murder.  It's a
serious subject.  In fact I've more than once hesitated about going
into this business at all.  It's mainly for your sake that I'm doing
it."

"Then don't do it," said the Major.  "I know quite well that you don't
mean a word you say, but--"

"I mean it all.  Am I the kind of man who says what he doesn't mean?
Come now, Major; you've known me a good many years, and we've been in
some tight places together.  Have you ever heard me say a thing I
didn't mean?"

"To be quite candid," said the Major, "I have, once or twice."

"You're entirely mistaken.  You have not.  And in any case I mean what
I say now.  Do you really suppose that I'd have spent the whole of this
hot day fagging up and down the roads about Ballymoy if I wasn't in
earnest about what I was at?"

"But you don't.  You can't think that this lady--Miss King or whatever
her name is--will really murder Simpkins?"

"She'll try to if she marries him.  I can't be absolutely certain that
she'll succeed, but I think it's very likely that she will.  She's had
a lot of practice, and by her own account she's been unusually
successful."

"That's all rot, of course," said the Major.  "Murder isn't committed
in that sort of way.  No woman would deliberately with her eyes open--"

"Did Mrs. Lorimer murder her husband by accident, or did she intend to
do it and plan the whole thing out beforehand?"

"I don't know."

"You do know.  You read the evidence and you read the judge's charge,
and you know as well as I do that she proceeded in the most deliberate
way possible."

"It looked like it," said the Major.  "I must say it looked like it."

"Very well.  Is Miss King Mrs. Lorimer, or is she not?"

"I don't know."

"I proved to you yesterday evening that she is.  I proved it in a way
that left no possible room for doubt in your mind, if you are honest
with yourself and look facts plainly in the face.  I am not going into
the proof again, because it's a very exhausting thing and I've had a
hard day.  Besides, if it didn't convince you the first time, it
wouldn't the second.  Trains of reasoning aren't like advertisements.
You come to believe that a certain kind of pill will prevent your going
bald because you've seen statements to that effect ten thousand times.
It's the cumulative weight of repeated assertion which compels belief
in that case.  But the kind of belief which depends on reasoning is
quite different.  If you've the sort of intellect which cannot grasp
the proof which Euclid gives of one of his propositions, no number of
repetitions of it will help you in the least.  That's a curious
psychological law, but it is a law.  Therefore it would be the merest
waste of time for me to demonstrate to you again that Mrs. Lorimer and
Miss King are the same person.  I pass on to the next stage in our
enquiry.  Will Miss King murder her next husband?"

"If she's Mrs. Lorimer," said the Major, "and if Mrs. Lorimer
murdered--"

"There are no 'ifs' about the matter," said Meldon; "she unquestionably
will.  She told me so herself, and whatever else she is she's a woman
of her word.  There remains now only one question, Who is her next
husband to be?  And the answer to that may be given in two
syllables--Simpkins."

"If you really believe all that," said the Major, "and--"

"I do," said Meldon.

"Then you're going to commit a horrible crime, and I insist on your
stopping at once."

"I can't stop it now.  I've set the thing going, and it can't be
stopped.  You might have stopped it yesterday, but you're too late now.
I'm sorry for poor Simpkins myself.  I thought him a decent enough sort
of man."

"He's a cad."

"There you are again.  In one breath you try to stop me, and in the
very next breath you urge me strongly to go on.  Which do you mean?
Not that it matters, for the thing is as good as done now.  Still you
ought to try and cultivate the habit of definitely making up your mind,
and then sticking to it.  You said yesterday distinctly, and so far I
could judge sincerely, that you wished Simpkins was dead.  Now you
pretend that it's a shock to you to hear that he's going to be killed.
That's what I call vacillation, and you ought to be ashamed of it."

Major Kent sighed heavily.

"There's no use my talking," he said, "but you'll get yourself into
trouble some day with these jokes of yours."

"Major," said Meldon, "I've absolutely no patience with you.  You're
back again at that joke theory of yours, after I've spent half the
evening explaining to you that this isn't a joking matter at all.  I
must decline to discuss the matter any further.  We'll talk of
something else.  I was speaking to O'Donoghue to-day about the proper
way of feeding the child when it has whoping-cough.  He says it ought
to be given as much as it wants to eat of any ordinary kind of food.
I'm inclined to agree with him.  Now what is your opinion?"

"I suppose you're thinking of your own child?"

"Yes, I am.  And don't forget that she's not merely my child.  She's
also your god-child."

"Well, I gave her a silver mug.  Didn't I?"

"You did.  A capital mug, large and heavy.  She'll be very grateful to
you for that mug some day; though, up to the present, all she has done
to it is to dint its side one day by dropping it against the corner of
the fender when it was given her to play with.  You did your duty in
the matter of a mug, and I'm not suggesting for a moment that you
should give her another.  When I reminded you that you are her
god-father, I merely wanted to suggest that you ought to take some
little interest in her health and education."

"But I don't know what babies ought to eat."

"What you really mean is that you don't care.  You're so wrapped up in
this miserable local squabble with Simpkins about a salmon that you've
lost all interest in the wider subjects which are occupying the
attention of the world."

"Come now, J. J.  Your baby--she's a very nice baby and all that.  But
really--"

"I won't talk about her any more if she bores you.  I thought, and
hoped, that she might interest you.  That's the reason I started her as
a topic of conversation.  As she doesn't, I'll drop her again, at once.
But what am I to do?  I began this evening with a literary allusion,
and found that you'd never heard of Longfellow's 'Village Blacksmith.'
That wasn't a very encouraging start, you'll admit.  Last night I tried
you with art, and all you did was to mix it up with morality, which, as
everybody knows, is a perfectly hopeless thing to do.  The ancient
Hebrews had more sense.  They were specialists in morality, and they
absolutely forbade art.  Whereas the Greeks, who were artists, went in
for a thoroughly immoral kind of life.  Finding that you were totally
indifferent to the metaphysics of the aesthetic, I offered you an
interesting chain of abstract reasoning.  What was the result?  You
were absolutely unable to follow me.  I then threw out some hints which
might have led to an interesting psychological discussion, but you
didn't know what I meant.  This evening I touched on one of the great
principles which must guide us in the consideration of the whole
feminist question--"

"That was when you talked about judging Miss King's intentions by the
look of her eyes," said the Major.

"Yes; it was.  And so far as I can recollect, all you did was to grin
in a futile and somewhat vulgar way.  Finally, I tried to talk to you
about child culture, which is one of the most important problems of our
day; a problem which is occupying the attention of statesmen,
philanthropists, philosophers, doctors, and teachers of every kind,
from kindergarten mistresses to university professors.  I began in
quite a simple way with a question about the food of an infant.  We
might, if you had taken the subject up at all warmly, have got on to
the endowment of motherhood, nature study, medical examination of
schools, the boarding-out of workhouse children, religious education,
boy scouts, eugenics, and a lot of other perfectly fascinating topics.
But what do you do?  You say frankly and shamelessly that you know
nothing at all about the matter."

"But I really do not know how to feed babies.  What was the use of
pretending that I do?"

"Is there--to get back to the point from which I started--is there any
subject that you do know anything about besides politics and polo
ponies?"

"I'm afraid not, J. J., except the yacht.  I do know something about
her."

"Then," said Meldon, "we'll discuss her.  I expect we'll come to an end
of her soon, but we can at all events decide where we'll go to-morrow."

The yacht turned out to be a more fruitful subject than Meldon
expected.  The Major had made some alterations in her trim, which led
to an animated discussion.  He also had a plan for changing her from a
cutter into a yawl, and Meldon was quite ready to argue out the points
of advantage and disadvantage in each rig.  It was half-past eleven
o'clock before they parted for the night, and even then they had not
decided where to go next day.




CHAPTER IX.

It was the evening of the second day of the _Spindrift's_ cruise.  The
wind, which had come fresh from the east in the morning, followed the
sun round in its course, blowing gently from the south at mid-day, and
breathing very faintly from the west in the evening.  After sunset it
died away completely.  The whole surface of the bay lay calm, save here
and there where some chance movement of the air ruffled a tiny patch of
water; or where, at the corners of the islands and in very narrow
channels, the inward drawing of the tide marked long, curved lines and
illusive circles on the oily sea.  The _Spindrift_ was poised
motionless on the surface of the water, borne slowly, almost
imperceptibly, forward by the sweep of the tide.  Her mainsail, boomed
out, hung in loose folds.  The sheet, freed from all strain, was borne
down by its own weight, until the slack of it dipped in the water.
Terns and gulls, at lazy rest, floated close to the yacht's side.  Long
rows of dark cormorants, perched on rocky points, strained their necks
and peered at her.  Innumerable jelly-fish spread and sucked together
again their transparent bodies, reaching down and round about them with
purple feelers.  Now and then some almost imperceptible breath of wind
swayed the yacht's boom slowly forward against the loose runner and the
stay, lifted the dripping sheet from the water, and half bellied the
sail.  Then the _Spindrift_ would press forward, her spars creaking
slightly, tiny ripples playing round her bows, a double line of oily
bubbles in her wake.  Again the impulse would fail her, and she would
lie still among the palpitating jellyfish, perfectly reflected in the
water beneath her; but carried steadily on by the silent shoreward
swelling of the tide.

Major Kent sat at the tiller smoking.  He was in that mood of vacant
obliviousness of the ordinary affairs of life which long drifting on
calm seas induces.  The helplessness of man in a sailing-ship, when the
wind fails him, begets a kind of fatalistic acceptance of the
inevitable, which is the nearest thing to peace that any of us ever
attain.  Indeed to drift along the tide is peace, and no conviction of
the inevitableness of the worries which lurk in ambush for us on the
land has any power to break the spell.

Meldon lay stretched on the deck outside the combing of the cockpit.
Nirvana had no attraction for him.  He resented forced inactivity as an
unendurable wrong.  Instead of smoking with half-closed eyes, he peered
eagerly forward under the sail.  He noted everything--the floating
gulls and puffins, the stiff, wild-eyed cormorants, the jelly-fish, the
whirling eddies of the tide.  As the yacht drifted on, or was driven
forward by the occasional faint puffs of air, he hissed through his
teeth in the way known to sailors as whistling for a breeze.  He gazed
long and steadily at the beach beyond the _Spindrift's_ moorings.

"I think," he said at last, "that there is a man on the shore, and he
looks to me very much as if he was waiting for us."

Major Kent made no answer.  His feeling was that the man who waited
might be left to wait without speculation about his purpose.  Guessing
at the possible business of an unknown and distant man is a form of
mental exertion very distasteful to any one who has entered into the
calm joy of drifting home after sunset.  But Meldon was a man of
incurably active mind.  He was deeply interested in the solitary figure
on the beach.  The yacht was borne very slowly on, and it became
possible at last to distinguish the figure of the waiter more clearly.

"He looks to me," said Meldon a few minutes later, "very like that
fellow Callaghan, the Ballymoy House gardener."

There was another pause.  A puff of wind, the last vital rally of the
expiring breeze, carried the _Spindrift_ forward till the punt at her
moorings lay almost under her bow.

"It is Callaghan," said Meldon, "and there's only one thing which can
possibly bring him here at this hour.  Something of real importance
must have happened between Simpkins and Miss King.  I wonder what it
is."

"Catch the punt, J. J., and haul her aft till you get a hold of the
buoy.  If we drift past we'll never get back again.  There's barely
steerage way on the boat this minute."

Meldon stepped forward.  There was a noise of straining ropes and
splashing.   Then he stood upright and pulled the buoy on board.

"Unless something exceptionally interesting has occurred," said Meldon,
"I can't understand Callaghan waiting for us like this.  Perhaps
they've got engaged."

"Nonsense," said the Major; "how could they in two days?  Let go the
peak halyards, and take a pull on the topping lift."

The sail came slowly down.  Major Kent and Meldon leaned across the
gaff and dragged at the folds of it.  Callaghan hailed the yacht from
the shore.

"Hold on," said Meldon.  "Keep what you've got to say till I come to
you.  I can't have the details of an interesting love affair shouted
across a stretch of water."

The sails were made up and the yacht safely moored.  Meldon hustled
Major Kent into the punt, and pulled rapidly for the beach.  The punt's
keel grated on the gravel.  Meldon seized the painter in his hand and
leaped ashore.

"Now," he said to Callaghan, "trot out your news.  Have they got
engaged?"

"They have not," said Callaghan.

"Then I suppose there must have been what you call impropriety of
conduct.  If so--"

"There has not," said Callaghan.

"That's just as well; for if there had been, I should have had to ask
you to wait before giving me details until the Major had gone a good
bit of the way home.  He's an unmarried man, and I don't think it would
be good for him to--"

"There was no impropriety of conduct that I seen," said Callaghan.

"Well, it can't be helped.  I should have been glad, of course, to hear
that Simpkins had been pushing his way on a bit, holding her hand or
something of that kind.  I suppose, now, if anything of the sort
occurred you'd be sure to have seen it."

"Don't I tell you there wasn't," said Callaghan; "nor there couldn't
have been, for Simpkins wasn't near the place since the afternoon you
was in it yourself."

"What!  Do you mean to say--?"

"He was in it the once," said Callaghan, "not long after you leaving,
and barring that she gave him a cup of tea there was nothing passed
between them, and I wouldn't say he was there half an hour."

"Do you hear that, Major?  That silly ass Simpkins has actually flung
away a priceless opportunity.  He hasn't been near her."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Major Kent.  "Perhaps now you'll stop your
foolish games."

"Could she have gone out to meet him anywhere?" said Meldon to
Callaghan.

"She could not.  It wouldn't be possible for her to do the like
unbeknown to me, for I had my eye on her."

"All day?"

"After what your reverence was saying to me I'd have been afraid to let
her out of my sight."

"Very well, Callaghan, you can go home.  I shall have to think the
matter over.  I don't deny that I'm disappointed.  I thought when I saw
you standing there on the shore that you'd have had some definite news
for me."

"I was up at the Major's house searching for you," said Callaghan, "and
when you weren't within I took a look round and I seen the yacht coming
in on the tide, so I thought it would save me a journey to-morrow if I
waited for you."

"Quite right," said Meldon.  "It's not your fault nothing has happened,
and I don't blame you in the least.  Good-night."

Callaghan shambled off along the beach.  The Major and Meldon, who
carried the punt's oars, struck across the fields towards Portsmouth
Lodge.

"I can't understand it at all," said Meldon.  "After what I said to
Simpkins I simply can't understand his neglecting his opportunities
like this.  You'd think from the way he's behaving that he doesn't want
to be married at all."

"Perhaps he doesn't," said the Major.  "Any way, you can do no more
than you've done.  You may as well drop it now, and have the rest of
your holiday in peace."

"The fact is," said Meldon, "I ought not to have gone away and left
them.  I had no business to take that cruise in the _Spindrift_.  If
I'd been here--"

"I don't see what you could have done.  If the fellow doesn't want the
girl, how could you force him to go and marry her?  Any way, it's a
good job for Miss King that he hasn't."

"If I'd been here--" said Meldon, and then paused.

"What would you have done?"

"I'd have done what I'm going to do now that I'm back."

"And what's that?"

"Throw them together," said Meldon.  "Insist on his being constantly
with her until he begins to appreciate her charm.  I defy any one, any
one who's not already married, to resist Miss King if she looks at him
out of the corners of her eyes as she did at me the other day."

"She won't do that," said the Major.  "No woman would, once she had
seen Simpkins."

"Oh, she'll do it all right.  Don't you fret about that.   All I have
to do is to give her a proper opportunity by throwing them together a
bit."

"I don't quite see how you're going to do that if Simpkins won't go
near her."

"You wouldn't see, of course.  Indeed you couldn't, because I don't
quite know myself yet how it is to be managed.  I shall have to think
it all over very carefully.  I may have to spend the greater part of
the night considering the matter; but one thing you may be quite
confident about, Major, and that is that when I say they are to be
thrown together, they will be thrown together.  I shall make such
arrangements that Simpkins simply won't be able to escape, however hard
he tries."

Meldon was not obliged to spend a sleepless night devising meetings
between Simpkins and Miss King.  He put the oars into the coach-house
as soon as he reached Portsmouth Lodge, and then settled down with a
pipe on a hammock-chair outside the door.  He was ready with a
practical suggestion by the time Major Kent had finished dressing for
dinner.  Being too wise to propose a difficult matter to a hungry man,
he waited until the meal was nearly over before he said anything to his
friend.

"Major," he said, "to-morrow is Sunday, and I think it would be a
capital thing if you introduced yourself to Miss King after church.
You could waylay her just outside the porch, and tell her who you are.
I've talked to her a good deal about you, so she'll know you directly
she hears your name."

"I don't think I'll do that, J. J.," said the Major.  "From what you've
told me about her I don't think she's the kind of woman I'd care about.
I think I'll keep clear of her as much as I can."

"I told you," said Meldon, "that she was good-looking and had pleasant
manners when not irritated.  I don't see what objection you can have to
her."

"I wasn't thinking about her appearance or her manners.  They may be
all right, but if what you said is true and she really--"

"Don't be narrow-minded, Major.  I hate that kind of pharisaical
bigotry.  The fact that Mrs. Lorimer behaved as she did is no reason in
the world why you should cut the poor woman.  It's a well-known fact
that people who are really much worse than she is are freely received
into the best society; and, in any case, the latest systems of morality
are quite changing the view that we used to take about murder.  Take
Nietzsche, for instance--"

"Who's Nietzsche?"

"He's a philosopher," said Meldon, "or rather he was, for he's dead
now.  He divided all morality into two kinds--slave morality, which he
regards as despicable, and master morality, which is of the most
superior possible kind."

"Still--I don't know anything about the man you mention, but I suppose
even he would have drawn the line at murder."

"Not at all.  Master morality, which, according to his system, is the
best kind, consists entirely of being the sort of man who is able to
get into a position to bully other people.  Slave morality, on the
other hand, consists in having the kind of temperament which submits to
being bullied, and pretends to think it a fine thing to suffer.  Now
murder, as any one can see, is simply an extreme form of bullying; and
therefore a successful murderer, according to Nietzsche's philosophy,
is the finest kind of man there is.  Whereas his victims, the late
Lorimer, for instance, are mere slaves, and therefore thoroughly
despicable.  You follow me so far, I suppose?"

"No, I don't.  If any man says what you say that fellow says--"

"Nietzsche doesn't actually say all that," said Meldon.  "He hadn't a
sufficiently logical mind to work out his philosophy to its ultimate
practical conclusions, but you may take my word for it that I've given
you the gist of his system."

"Then he ought to have been hanged."

"I daresay he ought," said Meldon.  "I need scarcely say I don't agree
with him.  But that's not the point.  As a matter of fact, so far from
being hanged or incurring any kind of odium, his system is quite the
most popular there is at present.  London is full of young men in
large, round spectacles, and scraggy women who haven't succeeded in
getting married--the leaders of modern thought, you'll observe,
Major--every one of whom is deeply attached to Nietzsche.  You can't,
without labelling yourself a hopeless reactionary, fly right in the
face of cultured society by refusing to associate with Miss King."

"I won't mix myself up with--"

"Come now, Major, that sort of attitude would have been all very well
fifty years ago, but it won't do now.  You simply can't shut yourself
up and say that you won't speak to any one who doesn't agree with you
in every opinion you have.  As a matter of fact, you associate freely
with lots of people who differ from you in religion and politics far
more fundamentally than poor Miss King does.  You can't refuse to know
her simply because she accepts a system of philosophy which you never
heard of till this minute, and even now don't thoroughly understand in
spite of all I've told you about it."

"In any case," said the Major, "I don't like women who flirt.  And you
told me yourself that she tried to flirt with you."

"Ah," said Meldon, "now we're getting at your real reasons.  I thought
you couldn't be in earnest about the Nietzschean philosophy.  That was
merely an excuse.  What you're really afraid of is that Miss King might
marry you.  I don't blame you for being a little cautious about that,
knowing what you do about the fate of her former husbands.  At the same
time I may point out--"

"I'm not the least afraid of her marrying me.  She won't get the
chance."

"Then why do you say you object to her flirting?"

"Because I do object to it.  I don't like that kind of woman."

"Do you mean to say, Major, that a girl isn't to be allowed to make
eyes at the man she's going to marry?"

"I don't say anything of the sort.  Of course, if she's going to marry
a man--but really, J. J., I don't know anything about these things."

"Then don't talk about them.  You may take my word for it, Major, that
Miss King is perfectly justified in being as nice as ever she can to
Simpkins."

"I never said anything about Simpkins.  As far as I can make out she
isn't particularly nice to Simpkins."

"No, she isn't, so far; but that's only because she hasn't had a fair
chance.  When we get them out together in the _Spindrift_--"

"What?"

"When we get the two of them out together in the _Spindrift_," said
Meldon, speaking slowly and distinctly, "you'll see that she'll make
herself perfectly fascinating--not to you or me, but to Simpkins."

"Leaving Miss King out of the question," said the Major, "I'd like you
to be perfectly clear about this.  I won't--"

"Before we go on to Simpkins," said Meldon, "we must settle definitely
about Miss King.  Is it understood that you catch her after church
tomorrow and invite her out for a sail with us in the _Spindrift_?"

"No; I won't.  I wouldn't in any case; but if Simpkins--"

"I'm not going on to Simpkins yet.  I must finish Miss King first.
You've given your reasons for not making her acquaintance, and I've
shown you that they are utterly feeble and won't hold water for a
minute.  If you've no other objection, then I think, as a
straightforward man, you are bound to admit you are in the wrong and do
what you ought to have been ready to do without all this arguing."

"To oblige you," said the Major, "and because I want you to have a
pleasant holiday now you're here, I will ask Miss King out with us
once.  But I won't ask Simpkins.  The man is a horrid bounder, who
makes himself objectionable to everybody, and I won't ask him."

"Nobody wants you to ask him.  I'll ask him."

"That will be just the same thing.  Once for all, J. J., I won't have
that man on board my boat."

"I don't think," said Meldon, "that you are behaving with quite your
usual fairness, Major.  You don't like Simpkins.  I am not going into
the reasons for your dislike.  They may be sound, or they may be the
reverse.  I simply state the fact that you don't get on with the man.
Very well.  I don't get on with Miss King.  I told you the other day
that I offended her, and she was what I should call extremely rude to
me afterwards.  But do I bring that up as a reason why you should not
take her for a sail in the _Spindrift_?  Certainly not.  It won't, as a
matter of fact, be particularly pleasant for me having to sit in the
same boat all day with a young woman who won't speak to me; but I'm
prepared to sacrifice myself and do it.  And you ought to be ready to
do the same thing in the case of Simpkins."

"I'm not," said the Major.  "I can't and won't have Simpkins."

"My dear Major, don't you see that your quarrel with Simpkins is one of
the strongest points in the whole plan?  He won't speak to you when he
sees that you dislike him.  Miss King won't speak to me.  What will the
consequence be?  Why, of course, they'll be thrown together.  They must
talk to each other, and that's exactly what we want them to do.  If
Simpkins was a friend of yours, and if Miss King was particularly fond
of me, there'd be no use our taking them out at all.  They wouldn't be
obliged to talk to each other."

"If you've finished your dinner, J. J., we may as well go into the next
room and smoke.  I don't see that there's any use going on with this
conversation."

"There isn't; not the least.  But you'll do me the justice, Major, to
admit that it wasn't I who insisted on it.  I could perfectly well have
arranged the matter in two sentences, but you would argue with me about
every single thing I said."

Major Kent rose and opened the door for his friend.  They went together
into the study and sat down.  The Major, after a few preliminary
excuses, took the two copies of _The Times_, which had arrived by post
whilst he was out in the _Spindrift_.  He settled down to the leading
articles with a comfortable sense that he was doing his duty.  Meldon
wandered round the room looking for something to read.  He found a new
book on boat-building which promised to be interesting.  Unfortunately
it turned out to be highly technical, and therefore dull.  It dropped
from his knees.  He nodded, took the pipe from his mouth, lay back
comfortably, and went to sleep.  Major Kent satisfied himself that the
English navy, though in some ways the best in the world, was in other
respects inefficient and utterly useless as a national defence.  Then,
at about ten o'clock, he too went asleep.  A few minutes later he began
to snore, and the noise he made woke Meldon.  He felt for his pipe,
filled and lit it.  He sat gazing at Major Kent for a quarter of an
hour, then he coughed loudly.  The Major woke with a start.

"It's a remarkable thing," said Meldon, "how sleepy two days on the sea
make one.  I had a nap myself.  You were sound and snoring."

"It's early yet," said the Major, glancing at the clock.  "I seldom
turn in before eleven."

"I'm going to turn in now," said Meldon.  "I'd be better in bed, for I
can't sleep here with the way you're snoring.  I just woke you up to
say that I'll get a hold of Simpkins some time to-morrow and settle
things with him.  I daresay, after the way he has behaved to the poor
old rector, that he'll be ashamed to come to church, but I'll look him
up afterwards.  You'll be responsible for Miss King."

"I can't argue any more to-night," said the Major, yawning; "but don't
you go to bed under the impression that I'm going to have Simpkins in
the yacht, for I'm not."

"I don't want to argue either, but I'll just say one word to you before
I go: one word that I'd like to have imprinted on your mind during the
night.  You won't mind listening to one word, will you?"

"Not if it's only one."

"It is literally and simply one.  Duty."

"Duty!" said the Major, sitting up.

"Yes, duty.  You're an Englishman, Major, at least by descent, and you
know that there's one appeal which is never made in vain to Englishmen,
and that is the appeal to duty.  Wasn't that the meaning of the signal
Nelson hoisted just before he asked Hardy to kiss him!  And what did
Hardy do?  Kissed him at once, though he can't possibly have liked it."

"I think you've got the story wrong somewhere, J. J.  As well as I
recollect--"

"I may be inaccurate in some of the details," said Meldon, "but the
broad principle is as I state it; and I put it to you now, Major,
before I say good-night, will you or will you not respond to the
appeal?  Remember Trafalgar and the old _Victory_.  You're a military
man, of course, but you must have some respect for Nelson."

"I have.  But I don't see how duty comes in in this case.  Oh, J. J.!
I wish you'd go to bed and stop talking."

"I will.  I want to.  I'm absolutely dropping off to sleep, but I can't
go till I've explained to you where your duty lies.  Here is the town
of Ballymoy groaning under an intolerable tyranny.  Doyle's life is a
burden to him.  O'Donoghue can't sleep at night for fear of a Local
Government Board enquiry.  The police are harried in the discharge of
their duties.  The rector's bronchitis is intensified to a dangerous
extent.  Sabina Gallagher's red-haired cousin, whose name I've not yet
been able to discover, is perfectly miserable.  Poor old Callaghan, who
means well, though he has a most puritanical dread of impropriety, is
worn to a shadow.  It rests with you whether this state of things is to
continue or not.  You and, so far as I can see at present, you alone,
are in a position to arrange for the downfall of Simpkins.  Is it or is
it not your duty, your simple duty, to do what you can, even at the
cost of some little temporary inconvenience to yourself?"

"If I thought all that--" said the Major.  "But I'm much too sleepy to
think."

"You're not asked to think," said Meldon.  "Whatever thinking has to be
done I'll do myself.  You have to act, or rather in this case to permit
me to act."

"I expect you'll act, as you call it, whether I permit you or not."

"Of course I will," said Meldon.  "But I'd rather have your permission.
I'd rather you didn't shatter the ideal I've always had of you as a
duty-loving Englishman."

"All right," said the Major wearily.  "Do what you like, but for
goodness' sake go to bed and stop talking."

"Good-night," said Meldon.  "If you find yourself inclined to change
your mind before morning, just murmur over to yourself, 'England
expects every man to do his duty.'  That will stiffen your back."




CHAPTER X.

Major Kent came down to breakfast next morning in a frock coat and a
white waistcoat.  His silk hat, carefully brushed and glossy, lay on
the hall table with a pair of pale grey kid gloves beside it.  Meldon,
who was a little late for breakfast, paused in the hall and looked at
the hat.  Entering the dining-room he took a long stare at his friend.

"Major," he said, "you're a wonderful man.  I had forgotten how
wonderful you are.  Now that I am getting to know you again I am struck
dumb with absolute amazement."

The Major was uneasily conscious that his attire was in strong contrast
to Meldon's shabby jacket and wrinkled trousers.

"I don't suppose," said Meldon, "that there's another man in the whole
world who could go on dressing himself up like that Sunday after Sunday
in a place like Ballymoy.  However, the habit will turn out beneficial
for once.  I expect you'll produce an excellent effect on Miss King."

"I was thinking over that plan of yours last night," said the Major,
"and--"

"I was under the impression that I distinctly told you not to think.
There's not the slightest necessity for you to exert yourself in that
way; and besides, so far as I know, you invariably think wrong.
However, if you really have thought, you'd better get the result off
your chest at once."

"It occurred to me--" said the Major.

"That's not quite the same thing as thinking.  I don't blame you so
much, now that I know that the thing, whatever it is, merely occurred
to you.  No man can be held responsible for the things that occur to
him.  There was one of the ancient Egyptian hermits who made a very
sensible remark on that subject.  You'll find it in Migne's 'Patrologia
Latina,' in the volume which contains the 'Verba Seniorum.'  I can't
quote the exact words at the moment, but they are to this effect: 'If
you can't stop the wind from blowing, neither can you prevent evil
thoughts from entering your mind.'  I daresay the thing that occurred
to you wasn't actually evil in the sense which the hermit meant, but it
is pretty sure to have been foolish; and that, for all practical
purposes, is the same thing.  By the way, this is excellent bacon;
quite the best I've tasted for a long time.  Does Doyle supply it?"

"No; I get it down from Dublin.  But about that plan of yours.  It
occurs to me that Miss King is not likely to be in church."

"Of course she'll be in church.  Why shouldn't she?"

"Well, if she's a disciple of that man you were speaking about last
night, she can hardly be what's generally called a Christian, can she?"

"Of course not.  But she'll come to church just the same."

"But surely--  Not if she doesn't believe in Christianity?"

"My dear Major! your ideas in some respects are extraordinarily
primitive.  The less anybody likes Christianity for himself, the more
sure he is that it's an excellent religion for other people.  That's
the reason you find statesmen all over the world supporting whatever
Church is uppermost at the moment in the particular country they happen
to be dealing with.  Look at the history of Ireland, for instance.  For
a century and a half British statesmen steadily fatted up our church.
Now they are dropping any plums that they can spare--Congested
Districts Boards and such things--into the mouths of the Roman Catholic
bishops.  Do you suppose they care a pin for either?  Not they.  All
they want is to strengthen up some form of religion which will keep the
people quiet.  They think that Christianity is an excellent thing for
everybody they have to govern, though they take jolly good care not to
act on it themselves.  In just the same way you'll see that Miss King
will be in church to-day.  As a follower of Nietzsche she doesn't
herself accept the ethics of Christianity, but she'll consider it her
duty to encourage everybody else to accept them, and the only practical
way she has of doing that is to attend church regularly."

"You're preaching to-day, aren't you, J. J.?"

"Yes, I am.  I promised the poor old rector that I would do all I could
to help him while I'm here.  Why do you ask?"

"I was wondering," said the Major, "if you were going to give us that
doctrine out of the pulpit."

"Well, I'm not.  You ought to know, Major, that my sermons are always
strictly practical, and deal entirely with matters of pressing local
importance: the ordinary difficulties and dangers of the people I'm
preaching to.  There won't be any statesmen in church to-day, so
there'd be no point in my explaining that theory.  If I'm ever asked to
preach before the House of Commons I shall give it to them."

This account of Meldon's theory of sermons made the Major a little
nervous.  He asked his next question anxiously.

"Are you going to be personal, J. J.?  I hope not."

"I can't preach the whole sermon to you beforehand, Major; but I don't
mind telling you that it will deal with the vice of squabbling which I
find rampant in small communities.  I shan't, of course, mention you
and Simpkins; or, for the matter of that, Doyle and O'Donoghue, though
it wouldn't matter much if I did mention them.  Being Roman Catholics,
they won't be there to object."

"The sermon will be personal, then?"

"No, it won't.  I shan't even allude to the subject of fishing.  I
shall preach in such a way as to get at everybody who has ever
quarrelled with anybody else.  After listening to what I say, you will
be much more inclined to take Simpkins out in the _Spindrift_."

Meldon's sermon was all that he boasted.  He chose as his text a verse
out of the Book of Proverbs which compares any one who meddles
unnecessarily with strife to a man who takes a dog by the ears.  He
spoke feelingly, from what appeared to be the recollection of
unpleasant experience, of the way in which spirited dogs behave when
any one takes them forcibly by the ears.  He explained in a short
parenthesis the best way of dealing with dog-fights.  He also described
in simple language the consequences which result from being
bitten--consequences which range from hydrophobia and tetanus down to
simple blood-poisoning.  Then he passed on to show that human bites,
inflicted, so he said, oftener with the tongue than with the teeth,
were far more dangerous than those of dogs.  The congregation became
greatly interested at this point, and allowed themselves to be swept
forward by a violent sophism which carried the preacher far beyond the
original statement of Solomon.  All quarrelling, not merely interfering
with existing quarrels of long standing, was denounced in forcible
language.  Major Kent felt uncomfortable; then, as the preacher worked
himself up, resentful.  Finally, he was cowed.  Meldon seized the
psychological moment and closed his discourse with a quotation from the
poetry of Dr. Watts.  He made a remarkably apposite citation of the
well-known lines which exonerate dogs, bears, and lions from any blame
when they bark, bite, growl, or fight, and emphasised the entirely
different position of the human race.

Major Kent, bruised by the vigour of his friend's eloquence, accosted
Miss King in the church porch after service; apologised for not having
formally called on her; and invited her to go yachting with him next
day in the _Spindrift_.  Miss King accepted the invitation, and then,
worked up perhaps to an unusual pitch of friendliness by the sermon,
asked the Major to go back to Ballymoy House with her for luncheon.
Meldon appeared from the door of the vestry room and urged the Major to
accept the invitation.

"As I expected," he said, "Simpkins wasn't in church.--How do you do,
Miss King?  I'm glad you and the Major have made friends.  You're sure
to like each other.--So I shall have to go round to his house and look
him up.  I daresay he'll give me a bite to eat; and if he doesn't,
Doyle will.  You will of course accept"--he appeared to be addressing
Major Kent--"Miss King's invitation.  I'll call round for you at about
four.  I daresay Miss King will give us both a cup of tea.  You drive
her home in your trap, Major.  I can walk down to Simpkins' house quite
easily."

Meldon, carrying his hat in one hand, strode off in the direction of
Mr. Simpkins' house.  Miss King looked at Major Kent.

"You see it's all settled for you," she said.  "You'll have to come
back with me."

"I suppose I had better," said the Major.  Then after a pause he added,
"Of course I'm delighted to, and it's very kind of you to ask me."

Simpkins was stretched in a hammock chair reading a novel when Meldon
found him.  He received a severe lecture for not attending church,
which seemed to surprise him a good deal, especially as his absence was
attributed by Meldon to shame and a consciousness of guilt, feelings
from which Simpkins had never in his life suffered.  Then--and this
seemed to astonish him still more--he was warmly invited to go for a
day's yachting in the _Spindrift_.

"I didn't hear," he said doubtfully, "that Major Kent was going away."

"He isn't," said Meldon.  "Don't I tell you he's giving a picnic in his
yacht?"

"Are you sure he wants me?"

"Certain.  He sent you an invitation, which is a plain proof that he
wants you.  He would have delivered it himself, only that Miss King
caught him after church and carried him off to luncheon.  But I have
one of his cards with me, and if you insist on everything being done in
the most accurate and correct possible manner, I'll leave it on the
umbrella stand in your hall as I go out."

Meldon had provided himself with a few of the Major's visiting cards
before leaving Portsmouth Lodge in the morning.  He was a man who
prided himself on leaving nothing to chance.  Since it was just
possible that the cards might turn out to be useful, he had put a few
in his pocket.

"In fact," he went on, "to prevent any possible mistake or
misunderstanding I may as well hand it over to you at once."  He
produced a card, slightly crumpled and a good deal soiled, from his
waistcoat pocket, and laid it on Simpkins' knee.  Simpkins looked at it
doubtfully, took it up in his hand, and examined both sides of it.
Then he spoke slowly.

"I think you know," he said; "in fact, I've told you myself, that the
Major and I aren't on very good terms.  I was obliged to speak to him
rather strongly about the way he used to fish in a part of the river--"

"I know all about that; you needn't go into it again.  It's entirely
over and done with.  An era of peace is beginning to dawn.  After
listening to my sermon this morning--it's a great pity for your own
sake that you weren't in church, Simpkins--the Major finds himself in a
position to forget the past and to start fresh.  His attitude now--very
largely owing to my sermon--is that of the dove which came to the ark
with an olive leaf plucked off in its mouth."

Simpkins was not apparently prepared to accept the olive leaf.  He
asked Meldon whether that dove was the text of his sermon.

"No, it wasn't.  I might have alluded to it, but I didn't.  I might
have explained, if I'd thought of it at the time--in fact, I will
explain to you now.  The dove is of all birds the most peaceful and the
least inclined to quarrel with other birds.  You'd know that by the
soothing way it coos, and also by the colour of its breast.  Tennyson,
the poet, notes the fact that the peculiar bluey shade of its feathers
arouses feelings of affection in people who weren't thinking of
anything of the sort before they saw it.  I'm not prepared to assert
that positively myself, but I shouldn't wonder if there was something
in the idea.  Then the olive branch is the regular, recognised symbol
of peace.  The reason of that is that oil is got out of olives, and oil
is one of the most soothing things there is.  Of course, you get oil
from other sources too--from whales, for instance; but the olive branch
is chosen as a symbol because it's such a much more convenient thing to
carry about than a whale is.  No explorer, when meeting a savage tribe
with which he doesn't want to fight, could possibly wave a whale, even
if he had one with him--and he wouldn't be likely to, unless he was
exploring the polar regions--whereas he can wave an olive branch, and
always does.  That's the reason the olive branch and not the whale is
chosen as the symbol of peace.  You'll be able to realise now how
extraordinarily peaceable the Major is when I compare him to a dove
with an olive leaf in his mouth."

"If," said Simpkins, who had only partially followed the reasoning
about the dove and the olive--"if the Major apologises for the way he
spoke, I'm quite ready--"

"He doesn't actually apologise," said Meldon.  "You can hardly expect
that of him.  I think myself he's going as far as can reasonably be
expected of him when he asks you out for a day's yachting.  Very few
men would do as much; and I may say to you, Simpkins, that if you'd
been in church to-day and heard my sermon, you wouldn't be inclined now
to stand out for an apology.  You would, in fact, most likely be
looking out for an olive leaf and a dove of your own to carry to the
Major."

"But he was entirely in the wrong about the fishing.  I admitted all
along that he was perfectly entitled to fish below the bridge, but he
insisted---"

"Quite so," said Meldon.  "That's my exact point.  Any fool can
apologise when he's been in the right.  That gives him such a
comfortable sense of superiority that he doesn't a bit mind grovelling
before the other fellow.  What is totally impossible is to apologise
when you're in the wrong.  You must be able to realise that."

"I'm not at all sure," said Simpkins, "that I ought to accept the
invitation.  Major Kent's hostility to me has been most marked.
Everybody about the place has noticed it."

"Unless you're perfectly sure that you ought not to accept the
invitation," said Meldon, "I think you'd better give yourself the
benefit of the doubt.  It will be a most enjoyable expedition.  Miss
King is coming.  By the way, I hope you haven't quarrelled with Miss
King in any way?"

"No, I haven't.  Why should I?"

"I'm glad to hear it, I was afraid perhaps you and she might have
fallen out over something.  But if you haven't, why didn't you go near
her for the last two days?"

"I was there on Thursday afternoon.  I can't with any decency call on
her every day in the week."

"Oh yes, you can; and, if you mean to marry her, you ought to.  Believe
me, there's nothing estranges a woman's affection so rapidly as that
kind of studied neglect.  She can't call on you, you know, without
putting herself in a wholly false position."

"I haven't quite made up my mind about marrying her."

"Oh, well, the day in the _Spindrift_ will do that for you.  There's
something very exhilarating, Simpkins, about a fresh sea breeze.  It
simply sweeps away all hesitation, and renders you capable of marrying
almost any one.  That's the reason why sailors are famous for having a
wife in every port they call at, and why nobody blames them for it.
Exposed, as they necessarily are, to the sea air at its purest, they
simply can't help themselves.  They become exaggeratedly uxorious
without in the least meaning to."

"Besides," said Simpkins, "I've no reason to suppose that Miss King
would marry me."

"Have you any reason to suppose she won't?"

"No.  I've only seen her once, you know."

"Then I think it extremely likely that she will.  Everybody knows that
most people do things not so much because they want to as because they
haven't any reason for refusing.  Take the average party, for
instance--tea party, tennis party, garden party, or dinner party.  How
many men go to parties because they want to?  Not one in a hundred.
The other ninety-nine go simply because there's no available reason for
not going.  It's just the same with marrying.  Unless you give Miss
King some good reason for refusing you, she'll marry you as soon as
ever you ask her.  And if I were you I'd ask her to-morrow.  We'll land
on an island for luncheon.  The Major and I will slip off by ourselves
and give you your opportunity."

"I'm not sure--"

"Come now, Simpkins, have you anything against the girl?  Has anybody
been circulating stories about her of any sort?  I know this is a
gossipy sort of place, and--"

"Oh no; it's simply that I don't know her."

"If that's all," said Meldon, "a day in the _Spindrift_ will set it
right.  You'll be surprised how intimate you become with a person when
you're sitting for hours crammed up against him or her in the cockpit
of a five-ton yacht.  By the time you've disentangled her twice from
the mainsheet, with the Major swearing all the time, and been obliged
to haul her up to windward whenever the boat goes about and she gets
left with her head down on the lee side, you get to feel as if you'd
known her intimately for years.  By the way, what time do you lunch?"

"Half-past one," said Simpkins.  "Will you--"

"Thanks," said Meldon; "I will, if you're quite sure there's enough for
two.  I'm due at Miss King's at four.  The Major's there.  Miss King
asked him to luncheon with her.  But you needn't mind.  He hasn't the
least notion of marrying her or anybody else.  You can come with me in
the afternoon if you like.  In fact, I think it would be a very good
plan if you did.  I'll clear the Major out of the way at once, and then
you can have a good innings.  If you play your cards properly to-day,
you'll certainly be in a position to propose to her to-morrow."

At four o'clock Meldon led the rather embarrassed Simpkins up to
Ballymoy House.  Miss King and Major Kent were sitting together on the
lawn, and were apparently getting on very well indeed.  The greeting
between Mr. Simpkins and the Major was constrained and cold.  Miss King
seemed to feel that the situation demanded tact.  She suggested
ordering tea at once, and having it out of doors.

"Not for us, thanks," said Meldon.  "The Major and I must be off at
once.  We haven't a moment to delay."

Major Kent looked surprised, and seemed inclined to ask questions.  He
resented the arrival of Simpkins, but he did not want to leave Miss
King so soon.

"I said this morning," said Meldon, "that we'd stop for tea; but since
then I find that I'm tied--in fact, we're both tied--to a most
important engagement, and must absolutely run if we are to be in time.
Come along, Major."  He seized him by the arm as he spoke.  "Good-bye,
Miss King.  Good-bye, Simpkins.  We'll see you both at Portsmouth Lodge
at ten to-morrow morning."

"I suppose, J. J.," said the Major, when Meldon, reaching the highroad,
slackened his pace--"I suppose that I'm being hustled about like this
so that Simpkins can have Miss King all to himself, but--"

"Exactly," said Meldon.  "I may tell you, Major, that I now look upon
Simpkins as practically a dead man.  I don't see how he can possibly
escape."

"What I was going to say," said the Major, "is that I think you are
mistaken about Miss King.  She doesn't seem to me the least like a
criminal."

"Of course not.  She wouldn't be the successful murderess she is if she
hadn't the manners and appearance of a very gentle and gracious lady.
That's what gives her the pull she has when it comes to the verdict of
a jury.  You ought to know, Major, that the old Bill Sykes sort of
criminal, the brutalised-looking man with a huge jaw and a low
forehead, is quite out of date now.  No one gets himself up in that
style who means to go in for serious crime.  In a book published the
other day there was a composite photograph made up of the faces of
fifty or sixty criminals of the most extreme kind.  I assure you that
the net result was an uncommonly good-looking man.  That shows you the
truth of what I'm saying."

"In any case, J. J., setting aside her personal appearance and manner--"

"Your impression of her personal appearance.  I wasn't taken in by it."

"She isn't the sort of woman you said she was.  She'd never heard of
that philosopher of yours."

"Do you mean to say that she denied ever having heard the name of
Nietzsche?"

"Not exactly.  The fact is that I couldn't recollect his name, but I
gave her a sketch of his doctrines--"

"I don't expect she recognised your sketch.  You were probably grossly
inaccurate."

"I gave her almost word for word what you said last night about murder
being a very virtuous thing and bullying being the highest form of
morality."

"Even so I don't expect she recognised it.  You see I had to paraphrase
the whole thing to bring it down to the level of your understanding.
If you'd been in a position to quote a phrase or two, like Herren
Morale, for instance, she'd have recognised the system at once, even
without the name of Nietzsche."

"I couldn't do that, of course."

"Now I come to think of it, I don't suppose she'd have owned up to
Nietzsche in any case.  She'd have been bound to deny any knowledge of
the system.  You see she doesn't know that I've told you who she really
is.  She probably distrusts you as a magistrate.  After the brutal way
in which Sir Gilbert Hawkesby summed up against her, she would
naturally be a bit shy of any one occupying any sort of judicial
position.  Of course if she knew that you were keenly interested in the
death of Simpkins it would have been different.  She'd have spoken
quite openly to you then."

"I don't believe she'll kill Simpkins."

"She will if she marries him.  Not that Simpkins is a particularly
objectionable man in my opinion.  I rather like him myself.  But Miss
King lives for her art, and once Simpkins proposes to her his fate is
sealed."

"She did mention her art once or twice," said the Major.  "Now that you
remind me of it, I distinctly recollect her saying that it was the
great thing in her life."

"There you are then.  Perhaps now you'll believe me for the future, and
not be starting miserable, sceptical objections to every word I say.
What did you say when she talked to you about her art?  Did you
cross-question her about what it was?"

"No, I didn't.  I wasn't thinking of your absurd theories when I was
talking to her.  I thought she meant painting, or something of that
sort.  I felt sorry for her, J. J.  She seems to me to have a very
lonely kind of life."

"Of course she does--in the intervals."

"What?"

"There are intervals, of course.  Miss King isn't the sort of woman to
form an intimacy with another man until she is really a widow.  It's
quite natural that she should feel lonely just now, for instance.  The
mere absence of the excitement she's been accustomed to for so long
would have a depressing effect on her."




CHAPTER XI.

Meldon was a man who liked to get the full possible measure of
enjoyment out of his holidays.  He counted the hours of daylight which
he spent in bed as wasted, and although always late for breakfast, was
generally up and active before any other member of the Major's
household.  On Monday morning he got out of bed at half-past five and
went down to the sea to bathe.  He wore nothing except his pyjamas and
an old pair of canvas shoes, and so was obliged to go back to his
bedroom again after his swim.  As he passed Major Kent's door he
hammered vigorously on it with his fist.  When he thought he had made
noise enough to awaken his friend, he turned the handle of the door,
put his head into the room, and shouted,--

"Splendid day.  Absolutely the best possible; first-rate sailing
breeze, and no prospect of rain."

Major Kent growled in reply.

"What's that you say?"

"Confound you, J. J.  Get out of that.  What's the good of waking me at
this hour?"

Meldon opened the door a little wider and stepped into the room.

"I thought you'd like to know about the weather," he said.  "It's
extremely important for us to secure a really first-rate day.  If it
turned out that we could do nothing but lollop about half a mile from
the shore in a dead calm, poor Simpkins wouldn't have a chance; or if--"

"Go away, J. J."

"And if it were to come on a downpour of rain, his spirits would be so
damped that he'd never get himself worked up to the pitch of--"

"I suppose I may as well get up," said the Major despairingly.

"Not the least necessity for that," said Meldon.  "You can sleep for
another hour and a half at least.  It can't be more than half-past six,
and allowing time for the most elaborate toilet you can possibly want
to make, you needn't get up till eight.  I should say myself that you'd
sleep much more comfortably now you know that the day is going to be
fine.  Nothing interferes with slumber more radically than any anxiety
of mind."

The weather was all that Meldon said it was; but his satisfaction with
it turned out to be ill-founded.  It was based on a miscalculation.
What seemed to him a desirable sailing breeze was a cause of grave
discomfort to half the party.

Simpkins began to give way in less than an hour.  He yawned, pulled
himself together, and then yawned again.  After that he ceased to take
any active part in the conversation.  Then Miss King began to lose
colour.  Meldon, who was sitting forward with his legs dangling over
the combing of the cockpit, winked at Major Kent.  The Major,
uncomfortably aware of the feelings of his guests, scowled at Meldon.
The nearest island on which it was possible to land was still some way
off.  He foresaw a period of extreme unpleasantness.  Meldon winked
again, and mouthed the word "Ilaun More" silently.  It was the name of
the nearest island, and he meant to suggest to the Major that it would
be very desirable to go no further.  He might, without giving offence,
have said all he wanted to say out loud.  Simpkins had reached a stage
of his malady in which it was impossible for him to listen
intelligently to anything, and Miss King would have rejoiced to hear of
a prospect of firm land.

The _Spindrift_, which had been thrashing her way into the teeth of the
wind, was allowed to go free, and reached swiftly towards Ilaun More.
The change of motion completely finished Simpkins, but the period of
his extreme misery was short.  The yacht rounded up into the wind in a
sheltered bay, and Meldon let go the anchor.  The boom, swinging
rapidly from side to side, swept Simpkins' hat (a stiff-brimmed straw
hat) into the sea.  He made no effort to save it; but the Major,
grabbing the boat-hook, got hold of it just before it floated beyond
reach, and drew it, waterlogged and limp, into the boat.  Simpkins
expressed no gratitude.  Meldon hauled the punt alongside, and asked
Miss King if she would like to go ashore.  She assented with a feeble
smile.  There was no use consulting Simpkins.  His wishes were taken
for granted, and he was deposited, with great difficulty, in the bow of
the punt.  Meldon rowed them ashore.  He gave his arm to Miss King and
led her up to a dry rock, on which she sat down.  He went back to the
punt again, straightened out Simpkins, hauled him up, and set him down
beside Miss King.  Then he rowed back to the _Spindrift_ in the punt.

"This," said the Major angrily, "is a nice kind of party.  You might
have had more sense, J. J., than to invite people of that sort out in
the _Spindrift_."

"You're very unreasonable," said Meldon.  "I thought you'd have found
the keenest delight in watching the sufferings of Simpkins.  If I had
an enemy in the world--I'm thankful to say I haven't--but if I had,
there's nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see him enduring
the agony that Simpkins has just been through.  But that's the worst of
you.  I arrange these little surprises for you, hoping to see your face
light up with a smile of gratification, and all I get in return is
growls and grumbles."

Major Kent grinned.

"That's better," said Meldon.  "I'm glad to see that you're capable of
getting some good out of an innocent pleasure, even if you have to wait
till somebody points out to you what it is you ought to enjoy."

"Any way, J. J., this will put a stopper on your plan.  There'll be no
love-making to-day."

"On the contrary," said Meldon, "I expect we've laid the foundation of
a deep and enduring affection.  There's nothing draws people together
more than a common misfortune."

"But you can't expect a woman to take to a man when she sees him in the
state Simpkins was in when we were on the reach towards the island."

"Not if she's all right herself," said Meldon; "but when she's in the
state Miss King was in she's past noticing anybody's complexion.  The
only emotion Miss King could possibly have felt, the only emotion of a
spiritual kind, was a bitter hatred of you and me; and that, of course,
would make her feel a strong affection for Simpkins.  On the whole,
Major, we may congratulate ourselves on our success so far.  Just put
the luncheon basket into the punt, will you?  They'll be as hungry as
wolves in another half-hour.  Simpkins is beginning to buck up already.
Look at him."

Simpkins was staggering towards his hat, which Meldon had left lying at
the place where the punt landed.

"I expect," said the Major, "that he feels as if the sun on the back of
his head would upset him again.  It must be pretty hot in there where
they're sheltered from the wind."

"We'll give him a drop of whisky," said Meldon, "and set him on his
feet properly.  Get in, Major."

"I'm not at all sure that I'm going ashore.  I think I'd be more
comfortable where I am.  Simpkins is bad enough when he's healthy, but
in the condition he's in now I simply couldn't stand him at all.
Besides, I don't think Miss King would like us to land.  It doesn't
seem to me quite fair to go spying on a woman when she's sick.  She'd
rather be left alone for a while, till she recovers her ordinary
colour.  I felt very sorry for her on the boat, and if I could have
done anything--"

"That sort of sympathy and delicacy of feeling is all very fine, Major;
but I tell you plainly that if it leads to your refusing to give the
poor girl any lunch she won't appreciate it."

"Couldn't you land the luncheon basket and then come back here?"

"Certainly not.  Then _I_ should get no luncheon.  I don't shrink from
sacrifice in a good cause, Major, whenever sacrifice is necessary; but
I see no point in starving myself merely to satisfy your ridiculous
ideas of chivalry."

"Well, then, you go and give them their lunch, and leave me here."

"That's the worst plan you've suggested yet," said Meldon.  "If I go
without you I shall be a damper on the whole proceedings.  A third
person on these occasions always finds the greatest difficulty in not
being in the way, whereas if you come we can stroll off together after
lunch under pretext of searching for lobsters or something of that
kind, and leave the happy couple together."

"Happy couple!" said the Major.  "They look it."

"Get into the punt at once," said Meldon, "and don't try to be
sarcastic.  Nothing is less becoming to you.  Your proper part in life
is that of the sober, well-intentioned, somewhat thick-headed, bachelor
uncle.  You do that excellently; but the moment you try to be clever
you give yourself away piteously."

"Your own part, I suppose, J. J., is that of irresponsible buffoon."

"No; it's not.  What I do best is just what I'm doing--arranging things
for other people, so that difficulties and unpleasantness disappear,
and life looks bright again."

Major Kent had provided an excellent luncheon for the party, and Miss
King had revived rapidly since she landed.  She allowed herself to be
persuaded to drink some weak whisky and water.  Afterwards she ate cold
chicken with a good appetite.  Poor Simpkins was less fortunate.  He
insisted on wearing his damp hat, and could not be persuaded to eat
anything except biscuits.  Meldon, who was most anxious to restore him
to a condition of vigour, pressed a tomato on him; but the result was
unfortunate.  After eating half of it, Simpkins turned his back even on
the biscuit tin.  He refused to smoke after lunch, although the Major
and Meldon lit their pipes in an encouraging way quite close to him,
and Miss King appeared to find pleasure in a cigarette.  The situation
was not promising; but Meldon was a man of unquenchable hope.  Seizing
a moment when Miss King was looking in another direction, he winked
violently at Major Kent.  The Major was extremely comfortably seated
with his back against a rock, and was enjoying himself.  The
_Spindrift_ lay secure at her anchor.  The sun shone pleasantly.  An
after luncheon pipe is a particularly enjoyable one, and Miss King was
talking in a very charming way, besides looking pretty.  The Major was
disinclined to move, and although he guessed at the meaning of Meldon's
wink, he deliberately ignored it.  Meldon winked again.  Then he rose
to his feet, shook himself, and looked round him.

"I think, Major," he said, "that if we mean to catch any lobsters
to-day, we ought to be starting."

The Major grunted.

"Lobsters!  Can we catch lobsters here?" said Miss King.  "I should
like to help.  I have never caught a lobster."

"It's not exactly a sport for ladies," said Meldon.  "The lobster is an
ugly fish to tackle unless you are accustomed to him.  Besides, we
shall have to take off our shoes and stockings."

"But I only mean to look on.  I shouldn't run any risks."

She had in her mind at the moment a scene in her new novel into which
lobster fishing, as practised in the west of Ireland, might be
introduced with great effect.  The idea that there was some risk about
the sport added to its value for her purpose.  She foresaw the
possibility of vividly picturesque descriptions of bare-limbed,
sun-tanned muscular folk plunging among weedy rocks, or spattered with
yellow spume, staggering shorewards under a load of captured lobsters.
But Meldon was most unsympathetic.

"Besides," he said, "the chief haunt of the lobsters is at the other
side of the island, quite a long way off."

"I should like the walk," said Miss King, "and I'm sure there's a
charming view."

"It's very rough," said Meldon, "and you'd get your feet wet."

He nudged the Major as he spoke.  It did not seem fair that the making
of all the excuses should be left to him.

"I really believe," said Miss King, "that you don't want me to go with
you, Mr. Meldon.  It's most unkind of you.  I'm beginning to think that
you don't like me.  You said something quite rude to me the other day,
and I don't believe half you're saying to me now.--It's not dangerous
to catch lobsters, is it, Major Kent?"

The Major felt Meldon's eye on him.  He was also aware that Miss King
was looking at him appealingly.

"No," he said; "at least, not very; not if you're careful about the way
you take hold of them."

"And I shouldn't get my feet wet, should I? not very wet?"

"No," said the Major, "or you might, of course.  There's a sort of pool
at the other side of the island, and if you walked through it--; but
then you could go round it."

"There now," said Miss King.  "I knew you were only making excuses, Mr.
Meldon."

"I was," said Meldon.  "I may as well own up to it that I was.  My real
reason for not wishing you to come with us--"

He edged over to where Simpkins was sitting, and kicked him sharply in
the ribs.  It was, after all, Simpkins' business to make some effort to
retain Miss King.

"My real reason," he said, "though I didn't like to mention it before,
is that there's a dead sheep on the other side of the island, just
above the lobster bed.  It's a good deal decayed, and the sea-gulls
have been picking at it."

Miss King shuddered.

"Is there a dead sheep, Major Kent?" she asked.

"I don't know," said the Major.  "I haven't been on this island for
years; and I don't believe you have either, J. J."

"Dr. O'Donoghue told me about it yesterday," said Meldon.  "He said it
was a most disgusting sight.  I don't think you'd like it, Miss King.
I don't like telling you about it.  I'm sure a glance at it would upset
you again--after this morning, you know."

Miss King was evidently annoyed by this allusion to her sea sickness,
but she was not inclined to give up her walk.

"Couldn't we go somewhere else for lobsters," she said; "somewhere a
good way off 

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