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Novel Notes

by Jerome K. Jerome · English · Gutenberg #2037 · 398,890 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Novel Notes

Author: Jerome K. Jerome


        
Release date: January 1, 2000 [eBook #2037]
                Most recently updated: December 31, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2037

Credits: Transcribed from the 1893 Leadenhall Press Ltd. edition by David Price


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOVEL NOTES ***





Transcribed from the 1893 Leadenhall Press Ltd. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





NOVEL NOTES


To Big-Hearted, Big-Souled, Big-Bodied friend Conan Doyle




PROLOGUE


Years ago, when I was very small, we lived in a great house in a long,
straight, brown-coloured street, in the east end of London.  It was a
noisy, crowded street in the daytime; but a silent, lonesome street at
night, when the gas-lights, few and far between, partook of the character
of lighthouses rather than of illuminants, and the tramp, tramp of the
policeman on his long beat seemed to be ever drawing nearer, or fading
away, except for brief moments when the footsteps ceased, as he paused to
rattle a door or window, or to flash his lantern into some dark passage
leading down towards the river.

The house had many advantages, so my father would explain to friends who
expressed surprise at his choosing such a residence, and among these was
included in my own small morbid mind the circumstance that its back
windows commanded an uninterrupted view of an ancient and much-peopled
churchyard.  Often of a night would I steal from between the sheets, and
climbing upon the high oak chest that stood before my bedroom window, sit
peering down fearfully upon the aged gray tombstones far below, wondering
whether the shadows that crept among them might not be ghosts--soiled
ghosts that had lost their natural whiteness by long exposure to the
city's smoke, and had grown dingy, like the snow that sometimes lay
there.

I persuaded myself that they were ghosts, and came, at length, to have
quite a friendly feeling for them.  I wondered what they thought when
they saw the fading letters of their own names upon the stones, whether
they remembered themselves and wished they were alive again, or whether
they were happier as they were.  But that seemed a still sadder idea.

One night, as I sat there watching, I felt a hand upon my shoulder.  I
was not frightened, because it was a soft, gentle hand that I well knew,
so I merely laid my cheek against it.

"What's mumma's naughty boy doing out of bed?  Shall I beat him?"  And
the other hand was laid against my other cheek, and I could feel the soft
curls mingling with my own.

"Only looking at the ghosts, ma," I answered.  "There's such a lot of 'em
down there."  Then I added, musingly, "I wonder what it feels like to be
a ghost."

My mother said nothing, but took me up in her arms, and carried me back
to bed, and then, sitting down beside me, and holding my hand in
hers--there was not so very much difference in the size--began to sing in
that low, caressing voice of hers that always made me feel, for the time
being, that I wanted to be a good boy, a song she often used to sing to
me, and that I have never heard any one else sing since, and should not
care to.

But while she sang, something fell on my hand that caused me to sit up
and insist on examining her eyes.  She laughed; rather a strange, broken
little laugh, I thought, and said it was nothing, and told me to lie
still and go to sleep.  So I wriggled down again and shut my eyes tight,
but I could not understand what had made her cry.

Poor little mother, she had a notion, founded evidently upon inborn
belief rather than upon observation, that all children were angels, and
that, in consequence, an altogether exceptional demand existed for them
in a certain other place, where there are more openings for angels,
rendering their retention in this world difficult and undependable.  My
talk about ghosts must have made that foolishly fond heart ache with a
vague dread that night, and for many a night onward, I fear.

For some time after this I would often look up to find my mother's eyes
fixed upon me.  Especially closely did she watch me at feeding times, and
on these occasions, as the meal progressed, her face would acquire an
expression of satisfaction and relief.

Once, during dinner, I heard her whisper to my father (for children are
not quite so deaf as their elders think), "He seems to eat all right."

"Eat!" replied my father in the same penetrating undertone; "if he dies
of anything, it will be of eating."

So my little mother grew less troubled, and, as the days went by, saw
reason to think that my brother angels might consent to do without me for
yet a while longer; and I, putting away the child with his ghostly
fancies, became, in course of time, a grown-up person, and ceased to
believe in ghosts, together with many other things that, perhaps, it were
better for a man if he did believe in.

But the memory of that dingy graveyard, and of the shadows that dwelt
therein, came back to me very vividly the other day, for it seemed to me
as though I were a ghost myself, gliding through the silent streets where
once I had passed swiftly, full of life.

Diving into a long unopened drawer, I had, by chance, drawn forth a dusty
volume of manuscript, labelled upon its torn brown paper cover, NOVEL
NOTES.  The scent of dead days clung to its dogs'-eared pages; and, as it
lay open before me, my memory wandered back to the summer evenings--not
so very long ago, perhaps, if one but adds up the years, but a long, long
while ago if one measures Time by feeling--when four friends had sat
together making it, who would never sit together any more.  With each
crumpled leaf I turned, the uncomfortable conviction that I was only a
ghost, grew stronger.  The handwriting was my own, but the words were the
words of a stranger, so that as I read I wondered to myself, saying: did
I ever think this? did I really hope that? did I plan to do this? did I
resolve to be such? does life, then, look so to the eyes of a young man?
not knowing whether to smile or sigh.

The book was a compilation, half diary, half memoranda.  In it lay the
record of many musings, of many talks, and out of it--selecting what
seemed suitable, adding, altering, and arranging--I have shaped the
chapters that hereafter follow.

That I have a right to do so I have fully satisfied my own conscience, an
exceptionally fussy one.  Of the four joint authors, he whom I call
"MacShaughnassy" has laid aside his title to all things beyond six feet
of sun-scorched ground in the African veldt; while from him I have
designated "Brown" I have borrowed but little, and that little I may
fairly claim to have made my own by reason of the artistic merit with
which I have embellished it.  Indeed, in thus taking a few of his bald
ideas and shaping them into readable form, am I not doing him a kindness,
and thereby returning good for evil?  For has he not, slipping from the
high ambition of his youth, sunk ever downward step by step, until he has
become a critic, and, therefore, my natural enemy?  Does he not, in the
columns of a certain journal of large pretension but small circulation,
call me "'Arry" (without an "H," the satirical rogue), and is not his
contempt for the English-speaking people based chiefly upon the fact that
some of them read my books?  But in the days of Bloomsbury lodgings and
first-night pits we thought each other clever.

From "Jephson" I hold a letter, dated from a station deep in the heart of
the Queensland bush.  "_Do what you like with it, dear boy_," the letter
runs, "_so long as you keep me out of it.  Thanks for your complimentary
regrets, but I cannot share them.  I was never fitted for a literary
career.  Lucky for me, I found it out in time.  Some poor devils don't.
(I'm not getting at you, old man.  We read all your stuff, and like it
very much.  Time hangs a bit heavy, you know, here, in the winter, and we
are glad of almost anything.)  This life suits me better.  I love to feel
my horse between my thighs, and the sun upon my skin.  And there are the
youngsters growing up about us, and the hands to look after, and the
stock.  I daresay it seems a very commonplace unintellectual life to you,
but it satisfies my nature more than the writing of books could ever do.
Besides, there are too many authors as it is.  The world is so busy
reading and writing, it has no time left for thinking.  You'll tell me,
of course, that books are thought, but that is only the jargon of the
Press.  You come out here, old man, and sit as I do sometimes for days
and nights together alone with the dumb cattle on an upheaved island of
earth, as it were, jutting out into the deep sky, and you will know that
they are not.  What a man thinks--really thinks--goes down into him and
grows in silence.  What a man writes in books are the thoughts that he
wishes to be thought to think_."

Poor Jephson! he promised so well at one time.  But he always had strange
notions.




CHAPTER I


When, on returning home one evening, after a pipe party at my friend
Jephson's, I informed my wife that I was going to write a novel, she
expressed herself as pleased with the idea.  She said she had often
wondered I had never thought of doing so before.  "Look," she added, "how
silly all the novels are nowadays; I'm sure you could write one."
(Ethelbertha intended to be complimentary, I am convinced; but there is a
looseness about her mode of expression which, at times, renders her
meaning obscure.)

When, however, I told her that my friend Jephson was going to collaborate
with me, she remarked, "Oh," in a doubtful tone; and when I further went
on to explain to her that Selkirk Brown and Derrick MacShaughnassy were
also going to assist, she replied, "Oh," in a tone which contained no
trace of doubtfulness whatever, and from which it was clear that her
interest in the matter, as a practical scheme, had entirely evaporated.

I fancy that the fact of my three collaborators being all bachelors
diminished somewhat our chances of success, in Ethelbertha's mind.
Against bachelors, as a class, she entertains a strong prejudice.  A
man's not having sense enough to want to marry, or, having that, not
having wit enough to do it, argues to her thinking either weakness of
intellect or natural depravity, the former rendering its victim unable,
and the latter unfit, ever to become a really useful novelist.

I tried to make her understand the peculiar advantages our plan
possessed.

"You see," I explained, "in the usual commonplace novel we only get, as a
matter of fact, one person's ideas.  Now, in this novel, there will be
four clever men all working together.  The public will thus be enabled to
obtain the thoughts and opinions of the whole four of us, at the price
usually asked for merely one author's views.  If the British reader knows
his own business, he will order this book early, to avoid disappointment.
Such an opportunity may not occur again for years."

Ethelbertha agreed that this was probable.

"Besides," I continued, my enthusiasm waxing stronger the more I
reflected upon the matter, "this work is going to be a genuine bargain in
another way also.  We are not going to put our mere everyday ideas into
it.  We are going to crowd into this one novel all the wit and wisdom
that the whole four of us possess, if the book will hold it.  We shall
not write another novel after this one.  Indeed, we shall not be able to;
we shall have nothing more to write.  This work will partake of the
nature of an intellectual clearance sale.  We are going to put into this
novel simply all we know."

Ethelbertha shut her lips, and said something inside; and then remarked
aloud that she supposed it would be a one volume affair.

I felt hurt at the implied sneer.  I pointed out to her that there
already existed a numerous body of specially-trained men employed to do
nothing else but make disagreeable observations upon authors and their
works--a duty that, so far as I could judge, they seemed capable of
performing without any amateur assistance whatever.  And I hinted that,
by his own fireside, a literary man looked to breathe a more sympathetic
atmosphere.

Ethelbertha replied that of course I knew what she meant.  She said that
she was not thinking of me, and that Jephson was, no doubt, sensible
enough (Jephson is engaged), but she did not see the object of bringing
half the parish into it.  (Nobody suggested bringing "half the parish"
into it.  Ethelbertha will talk so wildly.)  To suppose that Brown and
MacShaughnassy could be of any use whatever, she considered absurd.  What
could a couple of raw bachelors know about life and human nature?  As
regarded MacShaughnassy in particular, she was of opinion that if we only
wanted out of him all that _he_ knew, and could keep him to the subject,
we ought to be able to get that into about a page.

My wife's present estimate of MacShaughnassy's knowledge is the result of
reaction.  The first time she ever saw him, she and he got on wonderfully
well together; and when I returned to the drawing-room, after seeing him
down to the gate, her first words were, "What a wonderful man that Mr.
MacShaughnassy is.  He seems to know so much about everything."

That describes MacShaughnassy exactly.  He does seem to know a tremendous
lot.  He is possessed of more information than any man I ever came
across.  Occasionally, it is correct information; but, speaking broadly,
it is remarkable for its marvellous unreliability.  Where he gets it from
is a secret that nobody has ever yet been able to fathom.

Ethelbertha was very young when we started housekeeping.  (Our first
butcher very nearly lost her custom, I remember, once and for ever by
calling her "Missie," and giving her a message to take back to her
mother.  She arrived home in tears.  She said that perhaps she wasn't fit
to be anybody's wife, but she did not see why she should be told so by
the tradespeople.)  She was naturally somewhat inexperienced in domestic
affairs, and, feeling this keenly, was grateful to any one who would give
her useful hints and advice.  When MacShaughnassy came along he seemed,
in her eyes, a sort of glorified Mrs. Beeton.  He knew everything wanted
to be known inside a house, from the scientific method of peeling a
potato to the cure of spasms in cats, and Ethelbertha would sit at his
feet, figuratively speaking, and gain enough information in one evening
to make the house unlivable in for a month.

He told her how fires ought to be laid.  He said that the way fires were
usually laid in this country was contrary to all the laws of nature, and
he showed her how the thing was done in Crim Tartary, or some such place,
where the science of laying fires is alone properly understood.  He
proved to her that an immense saving in time and labour, to say nothing
of coals, could be effected by the adoption of the Crim Tartary system;
and he taught it to her then and there, and she went straight downstairs
and explained it to the girl.

Amenda, our then "general," was an extremely stolid young person, and, in
some respects, a model servant.  She never argued.  She never seemed to
have any notions of her own whatever.  She accepted our ideas without
comment, and carried them out with such pedantic precision and such
evident absence of all feeling of responsibility concerning the result as
to surround our home legislation with quite a military atmosphere.

On the present occasion she stood quietly by while the MacShaughnassy
method of fire-laying was expounded to her.  When Ethelbertha had
finished she simply said:--

"You want me to lay the fires like that?"

"Yes, Amenda, we'll always have the fires laid like that in future, if
you please."

"All right, mum," replied Amenda, with perfect unconcern, and there the
matter ended, for that evening.

On coming downstairs the next morning we found the breakfast table spread
very nicely, but there was no breakfast.  We waited.  Ten minutes went
by--a quarter of an hour--twenty minutes.  Then Ethelbertha rang the
bell.  In response Amenda presented herself, calm and respectful.

"Do you know that the proper time for breakfast is half-past eight,
Amenda?"

"Yes'm."

"And do you know that it's now nearly nine?"

"Yes'm."

"Well, isn't breakfast ready?"

"No, mum."

"Will it _ever_ be ready?"

"Well, mum," replied Amenda, in a tone of genial frankness, "to tell you
the truth, I don't think it ever will."

"What's the reason?  Won't the fire light?"

"Oh yes, it lights all right."

"Well, then, why can't you cook the breakfast?"

"Because before you can turn yourself round it goes out again."

Amenda never volunteered statements.  She answered the question put to
her and then stopped dead.  I called downstairs to her on one occasion,
before I understood her peculiarities, to ask her if she knew the time.
She replied, "Yes, sir," and disappeared into the back kitchen.  At the
end of thirty seconds or so, I called down again.  "I asked you, Amenda,"
I said reproachfully, "to tell me the time about ten minutes ago."

"Oh, did you?" she called back pleasantly.  "I beg your pardon.  I
thought you asked me if I knew it--it's half-past four."

Ethelbertha inquired--to return to our fire--if she had tried lighting it
again.

"Oh yes, mum," answered the girl.  "I've tried four times."  Then she
added cheerfully, "I'll try again if you like, mum."

Amenda was the most willing servant we ever paid wages to.

Ethelbertha said she would step down and light the fire herself, and told
Amenda to follow her and watch how she did it.  I felt interested in the
experiment, and followed also.  Ethelbertha tucked up her frock and set
to work.  Amenda and I stood around and looked on.

At the end of half an hour Ethelbertha retired from the contest, hot,
dirty, and a trifle irritable.  The fireplace retained the same cold,
cynical expression with which it had greeted our entrance.

Then I tried.  I honestly tried my best.  I was eager and anxious to
succeed.  For one reason, I wanted my breakfast.  For another, I wanted
to be able to say that I had done this thing.  It seemed to me that for
any human being to light a fire, laid as that fire was laid, would be a
feat to be proud of.  To light a fire even under ordinary circumstances
is not too easy a task: to do so, handicapped by MacShaughnassy's rules,
would, I felt, be an achievement pleasant to look back upon.  My idea,
had I succeeded, would have been to go round the neighbourhood and brag
about it.

However, I did not succeed.  I lit various other things, including the
kitchen carpet and the cat, who would come sniffing about, but the
materials within the stove appeared to be fire-proof.

Ethelbertha and I sat down, one each side of our cheerless hearth, and
looked at one another, and thought of MacShaughnassy, until Amenda chimed
in on our despair with one of those practical suggestions of hers that
she occasionally threw out for us to accept or not, as we chose.

"Maybe," said she, "I'd better light it in the old way just for to-day."

"Do, Amenda," said Ethelbertha, rising.  And then she added, "I think
we'll always have them lighted in the old way, Amenda, if you please."

Another time he showed us how to make coffee--according to the Arabian
method.  Arabia must be a very untidy country if they made coffee often
over there.  He dirtied two saucepans, three jugs, one tablecloth, one
nutmeg-grater, one hearthrug, three cups, and himself.  This made coffee
for two--what would have been necessary in the case of a party, one dares
not think.

That we did not like the coffee when made, MacShaughnassy attributed to
our debased taste--the result of long indulgence in an inferior article.
He drank both cups himself, and afterwards went home in a cab.

He had an aunt in those days, I remember, a mysterious old lady, who
lived in some secluded retreat from where she wrought incalculable
mischief upon MacShaughnassy's friends.  What he did not know--the one or
two things that he was _not_ an authority upon--this aunt of his knew.
"No," he would say with engaging candour--"no, that is a thing I cannot
advise you about myself.  But," he would add, "I'll tell you what I'll
do.  I'll write to my aunt and ask her."  And a day or two afterwards he
would call again, bringing his aunt's advice with him; and, if you were
young and inexperienced, or a natural born fool, you might possibly
follow it.

She sent us a recipe on one occasion, through MacShaughnassy, for the
extermination of blackbeetles.  We occupied a very picturesque old house;
but, as with most picturesque old houses, its advantages were chiefly
external.  There were many holes and cracks and crevices within its
creaking framework.  Frogs, who had lost their way and taken the wrong
turning, would suddenly discover themselves in the middle of our dining-
room, apparently quite as much to their own surprise and annoyance as to
ours.  A numerous company of rats and mice, remarkably fond of physical
exercise, had fitted the place up as a gymnasium for themselves; and our
kitchen, after ten o'clock, was turned into a blackbeetles' club.  They
came up through the floor and out through the walls, and gambolled there
in their light-hearted, reckless way till daylight.

The rats and mice Amenda did not object to.  She said she liked to watch
them.  But against the blackbeetles she was prejudiced.  Therefore, when
my wife informed her that MacShaughnassy's aunt had given us an
infallible recipe for their annihilation, she rejoiced.

We purchased the materials, manufactured the mixture, and put it about.
The beetles came and ate it.  They seemed to like it.  They finished it
all up, and were evidently vexed that there was not more.  But they did
not die.

We told these facts to MacShaughnassy.  He smiled, a very grim smile, and
said in a low tone, full of meaning, "Let them eat!"

It appeared that this was one of those slow, insidious poisons.  It did
not kill the beetle off immediately, but it undermined his constitution.
Day by day he would sink and droop without being able to tell what was
the matter with himself, until one morning we should enter the kitchen to
find him lying cold and very still.

So we made more stuff and laid it round each night, and the blackbeetles
from all about the parish swarmed to it.  Each night they came in greater
quantities.  They fetched up all their friends and relations.  Strange
beetles--beetles from other families, with no claim on us whatever--got
to hear about the thing, and came in hordes, and tried to rob our
blackbeetles of it.  By the end of a week we had lured into our kitchen
every beetle that wasn't lame for miles round.

MacShaughnassy said it was a good thing.  We should clear the suburb at
one swoop.  The beetles had now been eating this poison steadily for ten
days, and he said that the end could not be far off.  I was glad to hear
it, because I was beginning to find this unlimited hospitality expensive.
It was a dear poison that we were giving them, and they were hearty
eaters.

We went downstairs to see how they were getting on.  MacShaughnassy
thought they seemed queer, and was of opinion that they were breaking up.
Speaking for myself, I can only say that a healthier-looking lot of
beetles I never wish to see.

One, it is true, did die that very evening.  He was detected in the act
of trying to make off with an unfairly large portion of the poison, and
three or four of the others set upon him savagely and killed him.

But he was the only one, so far as I could ever discover, to whom
MacShaughnassy's recipe proved fatal.  As for the others, they grew fat
and sleek upon it.  Some of them, indeed, began to acquire quite a
figure.  We lessened their numbers eventually by the help of some common
oil-shop stuff.  But such vast numbers, attracted by MacShaughnassy's
poison, had settled in the house, that to finally exterminate them now
was hopeless.

I have not heard of MacShaughnassy's aunt lately.  Possibly, one of
MacShaughnassy's bosom friends has found out her address and has gone
down and murdered her.  If so, I should like to thank him.

I tried a little while ago to cure MacShaughnassy of his fatal passion
for advice-giving, by repeating to him a very sad story that was told to
me by a gentleman I met in an American railway car.  I was travelling
from Buffalo to New York, and, during the day, it suddenly occurred to me
that I might make the journey more interesting by leaving the cars at
Albany and completing the distance by water.  But I did not know how the
boats ran, and I had no guide-book with me.  I glanced about for some one
to question.  A mild-looking, elderly gentleman sat by the next window
reading a book, the cover of which was familiar to me.  I deemed him to
be intelligent, and approached him.

"I beg your pardon for interrupting you," I said, sitting down opposite
to him, "but could you give me any information about the boats between
Albany and New York?"

"Well," he answered, looking up with a pleasant smile, "there are three
lines of boats altogether.  There is the Heggarty line, but they only go
as far as Catskill.  Then there are the Poughkeepsie boats, which go
every other day.  Or there is what we call the canal boat."

"Oh," I said.  "Well now, which would you advise me to--"

He jumped to his feet with a cry, and stood glaring down at me with a
gleam in his eyes which was positively murderous.

"You villain!" he hissed in low tones of concentrated fury, "so that's
your game, is it?  I'll give you something that you'll want advice
about," and he whipped out a six-chambered revolver.

I felt hurt.  I also felt that if the interview were prolonged I might
feel even more hurt.  So I left him without a word, and drifted over to
the other end of the car, where I took up a position between a stout lady
and the door.

I was still musing upon the incident, when, looking up, I observed my
elderly friend making towards me.  I rose and laid my hand upon the door-
knob.  He should not find me unprepared.  He smiled, reassuringly,
however, and held out his hand.

"I've been thinking," he said, "that maybe I was a little rude just now.
I should like, if you will let me, to explain.  I think, when you have
heard my story, you will understand, and forgive me."

There was that about him which made me trust him.  We found a quiet
corner in the smoking-car.  I had a "whiskey sour," and he prescribed for
himself a strange thing of his own invention.  Then we lighted our
cigars, and he talked.

"Thirty years ago," said he, "I was a young man with a healthy belief in
myself, and a desire to do good to others.  I did not imagine myself a
genius.  I did not even consider myself exceptionally brilliant or
talented.  But it did seem to me, and the more I noted the doings of my
fellow-men and women, the more assured did I become of it, that I
possessed plain, practical common sense to an unusual and remarkable
degree.  Conscious of this, I wrote a little book, which I entitled _How
to be Happy, Wealthy, and Wise_, and published it at my own expense.  I
did not seek for profit.  I merely wished to be useful.

"The book did not make the stir that I had anticipated.  Some two or
three hundred copies went off, and then the sale practically ceased.

"I confess that at first I was disappointed.  But after a while, I
reflected that, if people would not take my advice, it was more their
loss than mine, and I dismissed the matter from my mind.

"One morning, about a twelvemonth afterwards, I was sitting in my study,
when the servant entered to say that there was a man downstairs who
wanted very much to see me.

"I gave instructions that he should be sent up, and up accordingly he
came.

"He was a common man, but he had an open, intelligent countenance, and
his manner was most respectful.  I motioned him to be seated.  He
selected a chair, and sat down on the extreme edge of it.

"'I hope you'll pard'n this intrusion, sir,' he began, speaking
deliberately, and twirling his hat the while; 'but I've come more'n two
hundred miles to see you, sir.'

"I expressed myself as pleased, and he continued: 'They tell me, sir, as
you're the gentleman as wrote that little book, _How to be Happy,
Wealthy, and Wise_."

He enumerated the three items slowly, dwelling lovingly on each.  I
admitted the fact.

"'Ah, that's a wonderful book, sir,' he went on.  'I ain't one of them as
has got brains of their own--not to speak of--but I know enough to know
them as has; and when I read that little book, I says to myself, Josiah
Hackett (that's my name, sir), when you're in doubt don't you get addling
that thick head o' yours, as will only tell you all wrong; you go to the
gentleman as wrote that little book and ask him for his advice.  He is a
kind-hearted gentleman, as any one can tell, and he'll give it you; and
_when_ you've got it, you go straight ahead, full steam, and don't you
stop for nothing, 'cause he'll know what's best for you, same as he knows
what's best for everybody.  That's what I says, sir; and that's what I'm
here for.'

"He paused, and wiped his brow with a green cotton handkerchief.  I
prayed him to proceed.

"It appeared that the worthy fellow wanted to marry, but could not make
up his mind _whom_ he wanted to marry.  He had his eye--so he expressed
it--upon two young women, and they, he had reason to believe, regarded
him in return with more than usual favour.  His difficulty was to decide
which of the two--both of them excellent and deserving young
persons--would make him the best wife.  The one, Juliana, the only
daughter of a retired sea-captain, he described as a winsome lassie.  The
other, Hannah, was an older and altogether more womanly girl.  She was
the eldest of a large family.  Her father, he said, was a God-fearing
man, and was doing well in the timber trade.  He asked me which of them I
should advise him to marry.

"I was flattered.  What man in my position would not have been?  This
Josiah Hackett had come from afar to hear my wisdom.  He was willing--nay,
anxious--to entrust his whole life's happiness to my discretion.  That he
was wise in so doing, I entertained no doubt.  The choice of a wife I had
always held to be a matter needing a calm, unbiassed judgment, such as no
lover could possibly bring to bear upon the subject.  In such a case, I
should not have hesitated to offer advice to the wisest of men.  To this
poor, simple-minded fellow, I felt it would be cruel to refuse it.

"He handed me photographs of both the young persons under consideration.
I jotted down on the back of each such particulars as I deemed would
assist me in estimating their respective fitness for the vacancy in
question, and promised to carefully consider the problem, and write him
in a day or two.

"His gratitude was touching.  'Don't you trouble to write no letters,
sir,' he said; 'you just stick down "Julia" or "Hannah" on a bit of
paper, and put it in an envelope.  I shall know what it means, and that's
the one as I shall marry.'

"Then he gripped me by the hand and left me.

"I gave a good deal of thought to the selection of Josiah's wife.  I
wanted him to be happy.

"Juliana was certainly very pretty.  There was a lurking playfulness
about the corners of Juliana's mouth which conjured up the sound of
rippling laughter.  Had I acted on impulse, I should have clasped Juliana
in Josiah's arms.

"But, I reflected, more sterling qualities than mere playfulness and
prettiness are needed for a wife.  Hannah, though not so charming,
clearly possessed both energy and sense--qualities highly necessary to a
poor man's wife.  Hannah's father was a pious man, and was 'doing well'--a
thrifty, saving man, no doubt.  He would have instilled into her lessons
of economy and virtue; and, later on, she might possibly come in for a
little something.  She was the eldest of a large family.  She was sure to
have had to help her mother a good deal.  She would be experienced in
household matters, and would understand the bringing up of children.

"Julia's father, on the other hand, was a retired sea-captain.  Seafaring
folk are generally loose sort of fish.  He had probably been in the habit
of going about the house, using language and expressing views, the
hearing of which could not but have exercised an injurious effect upon
the formation of a growing girl's character.  Juliana was his only child.
Only children generally make bad men and women.  They are allowed to have
their own way too much.  The pretty daughter of a retired sea-captain
would be certain to be spoilt.

"Josiah, I had also to remember, was a man evidently of weak character.
He would need management.  Now, there was something about Hannah's eye
that eminently suggested management.

"At the end of two days my mind was made up.  I wrote 'Hannah' on a slip
of paper, and posted it.

"A fortnight afterwards I received a letter from Josiah.  He thanked me
for my advice, but added, incidentally, that he wished I could have made
it Julia.  However, he said, he felt sure I knew best, and by the time I
received the letter he and Hannah would be one.

"That letter worried me.  I began to wonder if, after all, I had chosen
the right girl.  Suppose Hannah was not all I thought her!  What a
terrible thing it would be for Josiah.  What data, sufficient to reason
upon, had I possessed?  How did I know that Hannah was not a lazy, ill-
tempered girl, a continual thorn in the side of her poor, overworked
mother, and a perpetual blister to her younger brothers and sisters?  How
did I know she had been well brought up?  Her father might be a precious
old fraud: most seemingly pious men are.  She may have learned from him
only hypocrisy.

"Then also, how did I know that Juliana's merry childishness would not
ripen into sweet, cheerful womanliness?  Her father, for all I knew to
the contrary, might be the model of what a retired sea-captain should be;
with possibly a snug little sum safely invested somewhere.  And Juliana
was his only child.  What reason had I for rejecting this fair young
creature's love for Josiah?

"I took her photo from my desk.  I seemed to detect a reproachful look in
the big eyes.  I saw before me the scene in the little far-away home when
the first tidings of Josiah's marriage fell like a cruel stone into the
hitherto placid waters of her life.  I saw her kneeling by her father's
chair, while the white-haired, bronzed old man gently stroked the golden
head, shaking with silent sobs against his breast.  My remorse was almost
more than I could bear.

"I put her aside and took up Hannah--my chosen one.  She seemed to be
regarding me with a smile of heartless triumph.  There began to take
possession of me a feeling of positive dislike to Hannah.

"I fought against the feeling.  I told myself it was prejudice.  But the
more I reasoned against it the stronger it became.  I could tell that, as
the days went by, it would grow from dislike to loathing, from loathing
to hate.  And this was the woman I had deliberately selected as a life
companion for Josiah!

"For weeks I knew no peace of mind.  Every letter that arrived I dreaded
to open, fearing it might be from Josiah.  At every knock I started up,
and looked about for a hiding-place.  Every time I came across the
heading, 'Domestic Tragedy,' in the newspapers, I broke into a cold
perspiration.  I expected to read that Josiah and Hannah had murdered
each other, and died cursing me.

"As the time went by, however, and I heard nothing, my fears began to
assuage, and my belief in my own intuitive good judgment to return.
Maybe, I had done a good thing for Josiah and Hannah, and they were
blessing me.  Three years passed peacefully away, and I was beginning to
forget the existence of the Hacketts.

"Then he came again.  I returned home from business one evening to find
him waiting for me in the hall.  The moment I saw him I knew that my
worst fears had fallen short of the truth.  I motioned him to follow me
to my study.  He did so, and seated himself in the identical chair on
which he had sat three years ago.  The change in him was remarkable; he
looked old and careworn.  His manner was that of resigned hopelessness.

"We remained for a while without speaking, he twirling his hat as at our
first interview, I making a show of arranging papers on my desk.  At
length, feeling that anything would be more bearable than this silence, I
turned to him.

"'Things have not been going well with you, I'm afraid, Josiah?' I said.

"'No, sir,' he replied quietly; 'I can't say as they have, altogether.
That Hannah of yours has turned out a bit of a teaser.'

"There was no touch of reproach in his tones.  He simply stated a
melancholy fact.

"'But she is a good wife to you in other ways,' I urged.  'She has her
faults, of course.  We all have.  But she is energetic.  Come now, you
will admit she's energetic.'

"I owed it to myself to find some good in Hannah, and this was the only
thing I could think of at that moment.

"'Oh yes, she's that,' he assented.  'A little too much so for our sized
house, I sometimes think.'

"'You see,' he went on, 'she's a bit cornery in her temper, Hannah is;
and then her mother's a bit trying, at times.'

"'Her mother!' I exclaimed, 'but what's _she_ got to do with you?'

"'Well, you see, sir,' he answered, 'she's living with us now--ever since
the old man went off.'

"'Hannah's father!  Is he dead, then?'

"'Well, not exactly, sir,' he replied.  'He ran off about a twelvemonth
ago with one of the young women who used to teach in the Sunday School,
and joined the Mormons.  It came as a great surprise to every one.'

"I groaned.  'And his business,' I inquired--'the timber business, who
carries that on?'

"'Oh, that!' answered Josiah.  'Oh, that had to be sold to pay his
debts--leastways, to go towards 'em.'

"I remarked what a terrible thing it was for his family.  I supposed the
home was broken up, and they were all scattered.

"'No, sir,' he replied simply, 'they ain't scattered much.  They're all
living with us.'

"'But there,' he continued, seeing the look upon my face; 'of course, all
this has nothing to do with you sir.  You've got troubles of your own, I
daresay, sir.  I didn't come here to worry you with mine.  That would be
a poor return for all your kindness to me.'

"'What has become of Julia?' I asked.  I did not feel I wanted to
question him any more about his own affairs.

"A smile broke the settled melancholy of his features.  'Ah,' he said, in
a more cheerful tone than he had hitherto employed, 'it does one good to
think about _her_, it does.  She's married to a friend of mine now, young
Sam Jessop.  I slips out and gives 'em a call now and then, when Hannah
ain't round.  Lord, it's like getting a glimpse of heaven to look into
their little home.  He often chaffs me about it, Sam does.  "Well, you
_was_ a sawny-headed chunk, Josiah, _you_ was," he often says to me.
We're old chums, you know, sir, Sam and me, so he don't mind joking a bit
like.'

"Then the smile died away, and he added with a sigh, 'Yes, I've often
thought since, sir, how jolly it would have been if you could have seen
your way to making it Juliana.'

"I felt I must get him back to Hannah at any cost.  I said, 'I suppose
you and your wife are still living in the old place?'

"'Yes,' he replied, 'if you can call it living.  It's a hard struggle
with so many of us.'

"He said he did not know how he should have managed if it had not been
for the help of Julia's father.  He said the captain had behaved more
like an angel than anything else he knew of.

"'I don't say as he's one of your clever sort, you know, sir,' he
explained.  'Not the man as one would go to for advice, like one would to
you, sir; but he's a good sort for all that.'

"'And that reminds me, sir,' he went on, 'of what I've come here about.
You'll think it very bold of me to ask, sir, but--'

"I interrupted him.  'Josiah,' I said, 'I admit that I am much to blame
for what has come upon you.  You asked me for my advice, and I gave it
you.  Which of us was the bigger idiot, we will not discuss.  The point
is that I did give it, and I am not a man to shirk my responsibilities.
What, in reason, you ask, and I can grant, I will give you.'

"He was overcome with gratitude.  'I knew it, sir,' he said.  'I knew you
would not refuse me.  I said so to Hannah.  I said, "I will go to that
gentleman and ask him.  I will go to him and ask him for his advice."'

"I said, 'His what?'

"'His advice,' repeated Josiah, apparently surprised at my tone, 'on a
little matter as I can't quite make up my mind about.'

"I thought at first he was trying to be sarcastic, but he wasn't.  That
man sat there, and wrestled with me for my advice as to whether he should
invest a thousand dollars which Julia's father had offered to lend him,
in the purchase of a laundry business or a bar.  He hadn't had enough of
it (my advice, I mean); he wanted it again, and he spun me reasons why I
should give it him.  The choice of a wife was a different thing
altogether, he argued.  Perhaps he ought _not_ to have asked me for my
opinion as to that.  But advice as to which of two trades a man would do
best to select, surely any business man could give.  He said he had just
been reading again my little book, _How to be Happy_, etc., and if the
gentleman who wrote that could not decide between the respective merits
of one particular laundry and one particular bar, both situate in the
same city, well, then, all he had got to say was that knowledge and
wisdom were clearly of no practical use in this world whatever.

"Well, it did seem a simple thing to advise a man about.  Surely as to a
matter of this kind, I, a professed business man, must be able to form a
sounder judgment than this poor pumpkin-headed lamb.  It would be
heartless to refuse to help him.  I promised to look into the matter, and
let him know what I thought.

"He rose and shook me by the hand.  He said he would not try to thank me;
words would only seem weak.  He dashed away a tear and went out.

"I brought an amount of thought to bear upon this thousand-dollar
investment sufficient to have floated a bank.  I did not mean to make
another Hannah job, if I could help it.  I studied the papers Josiah had
left with me, but did not attempt to form any opinion from them.  I went
down quietly to Josiah's city, and inspected both businesses on the spot.
I instituted secret but searching inquiries in the neighbourhood.  I
disguised myself as a simple-minded young man who had come into a little
money, and wormed myself into the confidence of the servants.  I
interviewed half the town upon the pretence that I was writing the
commercial history of New England, and should like some particulars of
their career, and I invariably ended my examination by asking them which
was their favourite bar, and where they got their washing done.  I stayed
a fortnight in the town.  Most of my spare time I spent at the bar.  In
my leisure moments I dirtied my clothes so that they might be washed at
the laundry.

"As the result of my investigations I discovered that, so far as the two
businesses themselves were concerned, there was not a pin to choose
between them.  It became merely a question of which particular trade
would best suit the Hacketts.

"I reflected.  The keeper of a bar was exposed to much temptation.  A
weak-minded man, mingling continually in the company of topers, might
possibly end by giving way to drink.  Now, Josiah was an exceptionally
weak-minded man.  It had also to be borne in mind that he had a shrewish
wife, and that her whole family had come to live with him.  Clearly, to
place Josiah in a position of easy access to unlimited liquor would be
madness.

"About a laundry, on the other hand, there was something soothing.  The
working of a laundry needed many hands.  Hannah's relatives might be used
up in a laundry, and made to earn their own living.  Hannah might expend
her energy in flat-ironing, and Josiah could turn the mangle.  The idea
conjured up quite a pleasant domestic picture.  I recommended the
laundry.

"On the following Monday, Josiah wrote to say that he had bought the
laundry.  On Tuesday I read in the _Commercial Intelligence_ that one of
the most remarkable features of the time was the marvellous rise taking
place all over New England in the value of hotel and bar property.  On
Thursday, in the list of failures, I came across no less than four
laundry proprietors; and the paper added, in explanation, that the
American washing industry, owing to the rapid growth of Chinese
competition, was practically on its last legs.  I went out and got drunk.

"My life became a curse to me.  All day long I thought of Josiah.  All
night I dreamed of him.  Suppose that, not content with being the cause
of his domestic misery, I had now deprived him of the means of earning a
livelihood, and had rendered useless the generosity of that good old sea-
captain.  I began to appear to myself as a malignant fiend, ever
following this simple but worthy man to work evil upon him.

"Time passed away, however; I heard nothing from or of him, and my burden
at last fell from me.

"Then at the end of about five years he came again.

"He came behind me as I was opening the door with my latch-key, and laid
an unsteady hand upon my arm.  It was a dark night, but a gas-lamp showed
me his face.  I recognised it in spite of the red blotches and the bleary
film that hid the eyes.  I caught him roughly by the arm, and hurried him
inside and up into my study.

"'Sit down,' I hissed, 'and tell me the worst first.'

"He was about to select his favourite chair.  I felt that if I saw him
and that particular chair in association for the third time, I should do
something terrible to both.  I snatched it away from him, and he sat down
heavily on the floor, and burst into tears.  I let him remain there, and,
thickly, between hiccoughs, he told his tale.

"The laundry had gone from bad to worse.  A new railway had come to the
town, altering its whole topography.  The business and residential
portion had gradually shifted northward.  The spot where the bar--the
particular one which I had rejected for the laundry--had formerly stood
was now the commercial centre of the city.  The man who had purchased it
in place of Josiah had sold out and made a fortune.  The southern area
(where the laundry was situate) was, it had been discovered, built upon a
swamp, and was in a highly unsanitary condition.  Careful housewives
naturally objected to sending their washing into such a neighbourhood.

"Other troubles had also come.  The baby--Josiah's pet, the one bright
thing in his life--had fallen into the copper and been boiled.  Hannah's
mother had been crushed in the mangle, and was now a helpless cripple,
who had to be waited on day and night.

"Under these accumulated misfortunes Josiah had sought consolation in
drink, and had become a hopeless sot.  He felt his degradation keenly,
and wept copiously.  He said he thought that in a cheerful place, such as
a bar, he might have been strong and brave; but that there was something
about the everlasting smell of damp clothes and suds, that seemed to sap
his manhood.

"I asked him what the captain had said to it all.  He burst into fresh
tears, and replied that the captain was no more.  That, he added,
reminded him of what he had come about.  The good-hearted old fellow had
bequeathed him five thousand dollars.  He wanted my advice as to how to
invest it.

"My first impulse was to kill him on the spot.  I wish now that I had.  I
restrained myself, however, and offered him the alternative of being
thrown from the window or of leaving by the door without another word.

"He answered that he was quite prepared to go by the window if I would
first tell him whether to put his money in the Terra del Fuego Nitrate
Company, Limited, or in the Union Pacific Bank.  Life had no further
interest for him.  All he cared for was to feel that this little nest-egg
was safely laid by for the benefit of his beloved ones after he was gone.

"He pressed me to tell him what I thought of nitrates.  I replied that I
declined to say anything whatever on the subject.  He assumed from my
answer that I did not think much of nitrates, and announced his intention
of investing the money, in consequence, in the Union Pacific Bank.

"I told him by all means to do so, if he liked.

"He paused, and seemed to be puzzling it out.  Then he smiled knowingly,
and said he thought he understood what I meant.  It was very kind of me.
He should put every dollar he possessed in the Terra del Fuego Nitrate
Company.

"He rose (with difficulty) to go.  I stopped him.  I knew, as certainly
as I knew the sun would rise the next morning, that whichever company I
advised him, or he persisted in thinking I had advised him (which was the
same thing), to invest in, would, sooner or later, come to smash.  My
grandmother had all her little fortune in the Terra del Fuego Nitrate
Company.  I could not see her brought to penury in her old age.  As for
Josiah, it could make no difference to him whatever.  He would lose his
money in any event.  I advised him to invest in Union Pacific Bank
Shares.  He went and did it.

"The Union Pacific Bank held out for eighteen months.  Then it began to
totter.  The financial world stood bewildered.  It had always been
reckoned one of the safest banks in the country.  People asked what could
be the cause.  I knew well enough, but I did not tell.

"The Bank made a gallant fight, but the hand of fate was upon it.  At the
end of another nine months the crash came.

"(Nitrates, it need hardly be said, had all this time been going up by
leaps and bounds.  My grandmother died worth a million dollars, and left
the whole of it to a charity.  Had she known how I had saved her from
ruin, she might have been more grateful.)

"A few days after the failure of the Bank, Josiah arrived on my doorstep;
and, this time, he brought his families with him.  There were sixteen of
them in all.

"What was I to do?  I had brought these people step by step to the verge
of starvation.  I had laid waste alike their happiness and their
prospects in life.  The least amends I could make was to see that at all
events they did not want for the necessities of existence.

"That was seventeen years ago.  I am still seeing that they do not want
for the necessities of existence; and my conscience is growing easier by
noticing that they seem contented with their lot.  There are twenty-two
of them now, and we have hopes of another in the spring.

"That is my story," he said.  "Perhaps you will now understand my sudden
emotion when you asked for my advice.  As a matter of fact, I do not give
advice now on any subject."

* * * * *

I told this tale to MacShaughnassy.  He agreed with me that it was
instructive, and said he should remember it.  He said he should remember
it so as to tell it to some fellows that he knew, to whom he thought the
lesson should prove useful.




CHAPTER II


I can't honestly say that we made much progress at our first meeting.  It
was Brown's fault.  He would begin by telling us a story about a dog.  It
was the old, old story of the dog who had been in the habit of going
every morning to a certain baker's shop with a penny in his mouth, in
exchange for which he always received a penny bun.  One day, the baker,
thinking he would not know the difference, tried to palm off upon the
poor animal a ha'penny bun, whereupon the dog walked straight outside and
fetched in a policeman.  Brown had heard this chestnut for the first time
that afternoon, and was full of it.  It is always a mystery to me where
Brown has been for the last hundred years.  He stops you in the street
with, "Oh, I must tell you!--such a capital story!"  And he thereupon
proceeds to relate to you, with much spirit and gusto, one of Noah's best
known jokes, or some story that Romulus must have originally told to
Remus.  One of these days somebody will tell him the history of Adam and
Eve, and he will think he has got hold of a new plot, and will work it up
into a novel.

He gives forth these hoary antiquities as personal reminiscences of his
own, or, at furthest, as episodes in the life of his second cousin.  There
are certain strange and moving catastrophes that would seem either to
have occurred to, or to have been witnessed by, nearly every one you
meet.  I never came across a man yet who had not seen some other man
jerked off the top of an omnibus into a mud-cart.  Half London must, at
one time or another, have been jerked off omnibuses into mud-carts, and
have been fished out at the end of a shovel.

Then there is the tale of the lady whose husband is taken suddenly ill
one night at an hotel.  She rushes downstairs, and prepares a stiff
mustard plaster to put on him, and runs up with it again.  In her
excitement, however, she charges into the wrong room, and, rolling down
the bedclothes, presses it lovingly upon the wrong man.  I have heard
that story so often that I am quite nervous about going to bed in an
hotel now.  Each man who has told it me has invariably slept in the room
next door to that of the victim, and has been awakened by the man's yell
as the plaster came down upon him.  That is how he (the story-teller)
came to know all about it.

Brown wanted us to believe that this prehistoric animal he had been
telling us about had belonged to his brother-in-law, and was hurt when
Jephson murmured, _sotto voce_, that that made the twenty-eighth man he
had met whose brother-in-law had owned that dog--to say nothing of the
hundred and seventeen who had owned it themselves.

We tried to get to work afterwards, but Brown had unsettled us for the
evening.  It is a wicked thing to start dog stories among a party of
average sinful men.  Let one man tell a dog story, and every other man in
the room feels he wants to tell a bigger one.

There is a story going--I cannot vouch for its truth, it was told me by a
judge--of a man who lay dying.  The pastor of the parish, a good and
pious man, came to sit with him, and, thinking to cheer him up, told him
an anecdote about a dog.  When the pastor had finished, the sick man sat
up, and said, "I know a better story than that.  I had a dog once, a big,
brown, lop-sided--"

The effort had proved too much for his strength.  He fell back upon the
pillows, and the doctor, stepping forward, saw that it was a question
only of minutes.

The good old pastor rose, and took the poor fellow's hand in his, and
pressed it.  "We shall meet again," he gently said.

The sick man turned towards him with a consoled and grateful look.

"I'm glad to hear you say that," he feebly murmured.  "Remind me about
that dog."

Then he passed peacefully away, with a sweet smile upon his pale lips.

Brown, who had had his dog story and was satisfied, wanted us to settle
our heroine; but the rest of us did not feel equal to settling anybody
just then.  We were thinking of all the true dog stories we had ever
heard, and wondering which was the one least likely to be generally
disbelieved.

MacShaughnassy, in particular, was growing every moment more restless and
moody.  Brown concluded a long discourse--to which nobody had listened--by
remarking with some pride, "What more can you want?  The plot has never
been used before, and the characters are entirely original!"

Then MacShaughnassy gave way.  "Talking of plots," he said, hitching his
chair a little nearer the table, "that puts me in mind.  Did I ever tell
you about that dog we had when we lived in Norwood?"

"It's not that one about the bull-dog, is it?" queried Jephson anxiously.

"Well, it was a bull-dog," admitted MacShaughnassy, "but I don't think
I've ever told it you before."

We knew, by experience, that to argue the matter would only prolong the
torture, so we let him go on.

"A great many burglaries had lately taken place in our neighbourhood," he
began, "and the pater came to the conclusion that it was time he laid
down a dog.  He thought a bull-dog would be the best for his purpose, and
he purchased the most savage and murderous-looking specimen that he could
find.

"My mother was alarmed when she saw the dog.  'Surely you're not going to
let that brute loose about the house!' she exclaimed.  'He'll kill
somebody.  I can see it in his face.'

"'I want him to kill somebody,' replied my father; 'I want him to kill
burglars.'

"'I don't like to hear you talk like that, Thomas,' answered the mater;
'it's not like you.  We've a right to protect our property, but we've no
right to take a fellow human creature's life.'

"'Our fellow human creatures will be all right--so long as they don't
come into our kitchen when they've no business there,' retorted my
father, somewhat testily.  'I'm going to fix up this dog in the scullery,
and if a burglar comes fooling around--well, that's _his_ affair.'

"The old folks quarrelled on and off for about a month over this dog.  The
dad thought the mater absurdly sentimental, and the mater thought the dad
unnecessarily vindictive.  Meanwhile the dog grew more ferocious-looking
every day.

"One night my mother woke my father up with: 'Thomas, there's a burglar
downstairs, I'm positive.  I distinctly heard the kitchen door open.'

"'Oh, well, the dog's got him by now, then,' murmured my father, who had
heard nothing, and was sleepy.

"'Thomas,' replied my mother severely, 'I'm not going to lie here while a
fellow-creature is being murdered by a savage beast.  If you won't go
down and save that man's life, I will.'

"'Oh, bother,' said my father, preparing to get up.  'You're always
fancying you hear noises.  I believe that's all you women come to bed
for--to sit up and listen for burglars.'  Just to satisfy her, however,
he pulled on his trousers and socks, and went down.

"Well, sure enough, my mother was right, this time.  There _was_ a
burglar in the house.  The pantry window stood open, and a light was
shining in the kitchen.  My father crept softly forward, and peeped
through the partly open door.  There sat the burglar, eating cold beef
and pickles, and there, beside him, on the floor, gazing up into his face
with a blood-curdling smile of affection, sat that idiot of a dog,
wagging his tail.

"My father was so taken aback that he forgot to keep silent.

"'Well, I'm--,' and he used a word that I should not care to repeat to
you fellows.

"The burglar, hearing him, made a dash, and got clear off by the window;
and the dog seemed vexed with my father for having driven him away.

"Next morning we took the dog back to the trainer from whom we had bought
it.

"'What do you think I wanted this dog for?' asked my father, trying to
speak calmly.

"'Well,' replied the trainer, 'you said you wanted a good house dog.'

"'Exactly so,' answered the dad.  'I didn't ask for a burglar's
companion, did I?  I didn't say I wanted a dog who'd chum on with a
burglar the first time he ever came to the house, and sit with him while
he had supper, in case he might feel lonesome, did I?'  And my father
recounted the incidents of the previous night.

"The man agreed that there was cause for complaint.  'I'll tell you what
it is, sir,' he said.  'It was my boy Jim as trained this 'ere dawg, and
I guess the young beggar's taught 'im more about tackling rats than
burglars.  You leave 'im with me for a week, sir; I'll put that all
right.'

"We did so, and at the end of the time the trainer brought him back
again.

"'You'll find 'im game enough now, sir,' said the man.  ''E ain't what I
call an intellectual dawg, but I think I've knocked the right idea into
'im.'

"My father thought he'd like to test the matter, so we hired a man for a
shilling to break in through the kitchen window while the trainer held
the dog by a chain.  The dog remained perfectly quiet until the man was
fairly inside.  Then he made one savage spring at him, and if the chain
had not been stout the fellow would have earned his shilling dearly.

"The dad was satisfied now that he could go to bed in peace; and the
mater's alarm for the safety of the local burglars was proportionately
increased.

"Months passed uneventfully by, and then another burglar sampled our
house.  This time there could be no doubt that the dog was doing
something for his living.  The din in the basement was terrific.  The
house shook with the concussion of falling bodies.

"My father snatched up his revolver and rushed downstairs, and I followed
him.  The kitchen was in confusion.  Tables and chairs were overturned,
and on the floor lay a man gurgling for help.  The dog was standing over
him, choking him.

"The pater held his revolver to the man's ear, while I, by superhuman
effort, dragged our preserver away, and chained him up to the sink, after
which I lit the gas.

"Then we perceived that the gentleman on the floor was a police
constable.

"'Good heavens!' exclaimed my father, dropping the revolver, 'however did
you come here?'

"''Ow did _I_ come 'ere?' retorted the man, sitting up and speaking in a
tone of bitter, but not unnatural, indignation.  'Why, in the course of
my dooty, that's 'ow _I_ come 'ere.  I see a burglar getting in through
the window, so I just follows and slips in after 'im.'

"'Did you catch him?' asked my father.

"'Did I catch 'im!' almost shrieked the man.  ''Ow could I catch 'im with
that blasted dog of yours 'olding me down by the throat, while 'e lights
'is pipe and walks out by the back door?'

"The dog was for sale the next day.  The mater, who had grown to like
him, because he let the baby pull his tail, wanted us to keep him.  The
mistake, she said, was not the animal's fault.  Two men broke into the
house almost at the same time.  The dog could not go for both of them.  He
did his best, and went for one.  That his selection should have fallen
upon the policeman instead of upon the burglar was unfortunate.  But
still it was a thing that might have happened to any dog.

"My father, however, had become prejudiced against the poor creature, and
that same week he inserted an advertisement in _The Field_, in which the
animal was recommended as an investment likely to prove useful to any
enterprising member of the criminal classes."

MacShaughnassy having had his innings, Jephson took a turn, and told us a
pathetic story about an unfortunate mongrel that was run over in the
Strand one day and its leg broken.  A medical student, who was passing at
the time, picked it up and carried it to the Charing Cross Hospital,
where its leg was set, and where it was kept and tended until it was
quite itself again, when it was sent home.

The poor thing had quite understood what was being done for it, and had
been the most grateful patient they had ever had in the hospital.  The
whole staff were quite sorry when it left.

One morning, a week or two later, the house-surgeon, looking out of the
window, saw the dog coming down the street.  When it came near he noticed
that it had a penny in its mouth.  A cat's-meat barrow was standing by
the kerb, and for a moment, as he passed it, the dog hesitated.

But his nobler nature asserted itself, and, walking straight up to the
hospital railings, and raising himself upon his hind legs, he dropped his
penny into the contribution box.

MacShaughnassy was much affected by this story.  He said it showed such a
beautiful trait in the dog's character.  The animal was a poor outcast,
vagrant thing, that had perhaps never possessed a penny before in all its
life, and might never have another.  He said that dog's penny seemed to
him to be a greater gift than the biggest cheque that the wealthiest
patron ever signed.

The other three were very eager now to get to work on the novel, but I
did not quite see the fairness of this.  I had one or two dog stories of
my own.

I knew a black-and-tan terrier years ago.  He lodged in the same house
with me.  He did not belong to any one.  He had discharged his owner (if,
indeed, he had ever permitted himself to possess one, which is doubtful,
having regard to his aggressively independent character), and was now
running himself entirely on his own account.  He appropriated the front
hall for his sleeping-apartment, and took his meals with the other
lodgers--whenever they happened to be having meals.

At five o'clock he would take an early morning snack with young Hollis,
an engineer's pupil, who had to get up at half-past four and make his own
coffee, so as to be down at the works by six.  At eight-thirty he would
breakfast in a more sensible fashion with Mr. Blair, on the first floor,
and on occasions would join Jack Gadbut, who was a late riser, in a
devilled kidney at eleven.

From then till about five, when I generally had a cup of tea and a chop,
he regularly disappeared.  Where he went and what he did between those
hours nobody ever knew.  Gadbut swore that twice he had met him coming
out of a stockbroker's office in Threadneedle Street, and, improbable
though the statement at first appeared, some colour of credibility began
to attach to it when we reflected upon the dog's inordinate passion for
acquiring and hoarding coppers.

This craving of his for wealth was really quite remarkable.  He was an
elderly dog, with a great sense of his own dignity; yet, on the promise
of a penny, I have seen him run round after his own tail until he didn't
know one end of himself from the other.

He used to teach himself tricks, and go from room to room in the evening,
performing them, and when he had completed his programme he would sit up
and beg.  All the fellows used to humour him.  He must have made pounds
in the course of the year.

Once, just outside our door, I saw him standing in a crowd, watching a
performing poodle attached to a hurdy-gurdy.  The poodle stood on his
head, and then, with his hind legs in the air, walked round on his front
paws.  The people laughed very much, and, when afterwards he came amongst
them with his wooden saucer in his mouth, they gave freely.

Our dog came in and immediately commenced to study.  In three days _he_
could stand on his head and walk round on his front legs, and the first
evening he did so he made sixpence.  It must have been terribly hard work
for him at his age, and subject to rheumatism as he was; but he would do
anything for money.  I believe he would have sold himself to the devil
for eightpence down.

He knew the value of money.  If you held out to him a penny in one hand
and a threepenny-bit in the other, he would snatch at the threepence, and
then break his heart because he could not get the penny in as well.  You
might safely have left him in the room with a leg of mutton, but it would
not have been wise to leave your purse about.

Now and then he spent a little, but not often.  He was desperately fond
of sponge-cakes, and occasionally, when he had had a good week, he would
indulge himself to the extent of one or two.  But he hated paying for
them, and always made a frantic and frequently successful effort to get
off with the cake and the penny also.  His plan of operations was simple.
He would walk into the shop with his penny in his mouth, well displayed,
and a sweet and lamblike expression in his eyes.  Taking his stand as
near to the cakes as he could get, and fixing his eyes affectionately
upon them, he would begin to whine, and the shopkeeper, thinking he was
dealing with an honest dog, would throw him one.

To get the cake he was obliged, of course, to drop the penny, and then
began a struggle between him and the shopkeeper for the possession of the
coin.  The man would try to pick it up.  The dog would put his foot upon
it, and growl savagely.  If he could finish the cake before the contest
was over, he would snap up the penny and bolt.  I have known him to come
home gorged with sponge-cakes, the original penny still in his mouth.

So notorious throughout the neighbourhood did this dishonest practice of
his become, that, after a time, the majority of the local tradespeople
refused to serve him at all.  Only the exceptionally quick and
able-bodied would attempt to do business with him.

Then he took his custom further afield, into districts where his
reputation had not yet penetrated.  And he would pick out shops kept by
nervous females or rheumatic old men.

They say that the love of money is the root of all evil.  It seemed to
have robbed him of every shred of principle.

It robbed him of his life in the end, and that came about in this way.  He
had been performing one evening in Gadbut's room, where a few of us were
sitting smoking and talking; and young Hollis, being in a generous mood,
had thrown him, as he thought, a sixpence.  The dog grabbed it, and
retired under the sofa.  This was an odd thing for him to do, and we
commented upon it.  Suddenly a thought occurred to Hollis, and he took
out his money and began counting it.

"By Jove," he exclaimed, "I've given that little beast
half-a-sovereign--here, Tiny!"

But Tiny only backed further underneath the sofa, and no mere verbal
invitation would induce him to stir.  So we adopted a more pressing plan,
and coaxed him out by the scruff of his neck.

He came, an inch at a time, growling viciously, and holding Hollis's half-
sovereign tight between his teeth.  We tried sweet reasonableness at
first.  We offered him a sixpence in exchange; he looked insulted, and
evidently considered the proposal as tantamount to our calling him a
fool.  We made it a shilling, then half-a-crown--he seemed only bored by
our persistence.

"I don't think you'll ever see this half-sovereign again, Hollis," said
Gadbut, laughing.  We all, with the exception of young Hollis, thought
the affair a very good joke.  He, on the contrary, seemed annoyed, and,
taking the dog from Gadbut, made an attempt to pull the coin out of its
mouth.

Tiny, true to his life-long principle of never parting if he could
possibly help it, held on like grim death, until, feeling that his little
earnings were slowly but surely going from him, he made one final
desperate snatch, and swallowed the money.  It stuck in his throat, and
he began to choke.

Then we became seriously alarmed for the dog.  He was an amusing chap,
and we did not want any accident to happen to him.  Hollis rushed into
his room and procured a long pair of pincers, and the rest of us held the
little miser while Hollis tried to relieve him of the cause of his
suffering.

But poor Tiny did not understand our intentions.  He still thought we
were seeking to rob him of his night's takings, and resisted vehemently.
His struggles fixed the coin firmer, and, in spite of our efforts, he
died--one more victim, among many, to the fierce fever for gold.

* * * * *

I dreamt a very curious dream about riches once, that made a great
impression upon me.  I thought that I and a friend--a very dear
friend--were living together in a strange old house.  I don't think
anybody else dwelt in the house but just we two.  One day, wandering
about this strange old rambling place, I discovered the hidden door of a
secret room, and in this room were many iron-bound chests, and when I
raised the heavy lids I saw that each chest was full of gold.

And, when I saw this, I stole out softly and closed the hidden door, and
drew the worn tapestries in front of it again, and crept back along the
dim corridor, looking behind me, fearfully.

And the friend that I had loved came towards me, and we walked together
with our hands clasped.  But I hated him.

And all day long I kept beside him, or followed him unseen, lest by
chance he should learn the secret of that hidden door; and at night I lay
awake watching him.

But one night I sleep, and, when I open my eyes, he is no longer near me.
I run swiftly up the narrow stairs and along the silent corridor.  The
tapestry is drawn aside, and the hidden door stands open, and in the room
beyond the friend that I loved is kneeling before an open chest, and the
glint of the gold is in my eyes.

His back is towards me, and I crawl forward inch by inch.  I have a knife
in my hand, with a strong, curved blade; and when I am near enough I kill
him as he kneels there.

His body falls against the door, and it shuts to with a clang, and I try
to open it, and cannot.  I beat my hands against its iron nails, and
scream, and the dead man grins at me.  The light streams in through the
chink beneath the massive door, and fades, and comes again, and fades
again, and I gnaw at the oaken lids of the iron-bound chests, for the
madness of hunger is climbing into my brain.

Then I awake, and find that I really am hungry, and remember that in
consequence of a headache I did not eat any dinner.  So I slip on a few
clothes, and go down to the kitchen on a foraging expedition.

It is said that dreams are momentary conglomerations of thought, centring
round the incident that awakens us, and, as with most scientific facts,
this is occasionally true.  There is one dream that, with slight
variations, is continually recurring to me.  Over and over again I dream
that I am suddenly called upon to act an important part in some piece at
the Lyceum.  That poor Mr. Irving should invariably be the victim seems
unfair, but really it is entirely his own fault.  It is he who persuades
and urges me.  I myself would much prefer to remain quietly in bed, and I
tell him so.  But he insists on my getting up at once and coming down to
the theatre.  I explain to him that I can't act a bit.  He seems to
consider this unimportant, and says, "Oh, that will be all right."  We
argue for a while, but he makes the matter quite a personal one, and to
oblige him and get him out of the bedroom I consent, though much against
my own judgment.  I generally dress the character in my nightshirt,
though on one occasion, for Banquo, I wore pyjamas, and I never remember
a single word of what I ought to say.  How I get through I do not know.
Irving comes up afterwards and congratulates me, but whether upon the
brilliancy of my performance, or upon my luck in getting off the stage
before a brickbat is thrown at me, I cannot say.

Whenever I dream this incident I invariably wake up to find that the
bedclothes are on the floor, and that I am shivering with cold; and it is
this shivering, I suppose, that causes me to dream I am wandering about
the Lyceum stage in nothing but my nightshirt.  But still I do not
understand why it should always be the Lyceum.

Another dream which I fancy I have dreamt more than once--or, if not, I
have dreamt that I dreamt it before, a thing one sometimes does--is one
in which I am walking down a very wide and very long road in the East End
of London.  It is a curious road to find there.  Omnibuses and trams pass
up and down, and it is crowded with stalls and barrows, beside which men
in greasy caps stand shouting; yet on each side it is bordered by a strip
of tropical forest.  The road, in fact, combines the advantages of Kew
and Whitechapel.

Some one is with me, but I cannot see him, and we walk through the
forest, pushing our way among the tangled vines that cling about our
feet, and every now and then, between the giant tree-trunks, we catch
glimpses of the noisy street.

At the end of this road there is a narrow turning, and when I come to it
I am afraid, though I do not know why I am afraid.  It leads to a house
that I once lived in when a child, and now there is some one waiting
there who has something to tell me.

I turn to run away.  A Blackwall 'bus is passing, and I try to overtake
it.  But the horses turn into skeletons and gallop away from me, and my
feet are like lead, and the thing that is with me, and that I cannot see,
seizes me by the arm and drags me back.

It forces me along, and into the house, and the door slams to behind us,
and the sound echoes through the lifeless rooms.  I recognise the rooms;
I laughed and cried in them long ago.  Nothing is changed.  The chairs
stand in their places, empty.  My mother's knitting lies upon the
hearthrug, where the kitten, I remember, dragged it, somewhere back in
the sixties.

I go up into my own little attic.  My cot stands in the corner, and my
bricks lie tumbled out upon the floor (I was always an untidy child).  An
old man enters--an old, bent, withered man--holding a lamp above his
head, and I look at his face, and it is my own face.  And another enters,
and he also is myself.  Then more and more, till the room is thronged
with faces, and the stair-way beyond, and all the silent house.  Some of
the faces are old and others young, and some are fair and smile at me,
and many are foul and leer at me.  And every face is my own face, but no
two of them are alike.

I do not know why the sight of myself should alarm me so, but I rush from
the house in terror, and the faces follow me; and I run faster and
faster, but I know that I shall never leave them behind me.

* * * * *

As a rule one is the hero of one's own dreams, but at times I have dreamt
a dream entirely in the third person--a dream with the incidents of which
I have had no connection whatever, except as an unseen and impotent
spectator.  One of these I have often thought about since, wondering if
it could not be worked up into a story.  But, perhaps, it would be too
painful a theme.

I dreamt I saw a woman's face among a throng.  It is an evil face, but
there is a strange beauty in it.  The flickering gleams thrown by street
lamps flash down upon it, showing the wonder of its evil fairness.  Then
the lights go out.

I see it next in a place that is very far away, and it is even more
beautiful than before, for the evil has gone out of it.  Another face is
looking down into it, a bright, pure face.  The faces meet and kiss, and,
as his lips touch hers, the blood mounts to her cheeks and brow.  I see
the two faces again.  But I cannot tell where they are or how long a time
has passed.  The man's face has grown a little older, but it is still
young and fair, and when the woman's eyes rest upon it there comes a
glory into her face so that it is like the face of an angel.  But at
times the woman is alone, and then I see the old evil look struggling
back.

Then I see clearer.  I see the room in which they live.  It is very poor.
An old-fashioned piano stands in one corner, and beside it is a table on
which lie scattered a tumbled mass of papers round an ink-stand.  An
empty chair waits before the table.  The woman sits by the open window.

From far below there rises the sound of a great city.  Its lights throw
up faint beams into the dark room.  The smell of its streets is in the
woman's nostrils.

Every now and again she looks towards the door and listens: then turns to
the open window.  And I notice that each time she looks towards the door
the evil in her face shrinks back; but each time she turns to the window
it grows more fierce and sullen.

Suddenly she starts up, and there is a terror in her eyes that frightens
me as I dream, and I see great beads of sweat upon her brow.  Then, very
slowly, her face changes, and I see again the evil creature of the night.
She wraps around her an old cloak, and creeps out.  I hear her footsteps
going down the stairs.  They grow fainter and fainter.  I hear a door
open.  The roar of the streets rushes up into the house, and the woman's
footsteps are swallowed up.

Time drifts onward through my dream.  Scenes change, take shape, and
fade; but all is vague and undefined, until, out of the dimness, there
fashions itself a long, deserted street.  The lights make glistening
circles on the wet pavement.  A figure, dressed in gaudy rags, slinks by,
keeping close against the wall.  Its back is towards me, and I do not see
its face.  Another figure glides from out the shadows.  I look upon its
face, and I see it is the face that the woman's eyes gazed up into and
worshipped long ago, when my dream was just begun.  But the fairness and
the purity are gone from it, and it is old and evil, as the woman's when
I looked upon her last.  The figure in the gaudy rags moves slowly on.
The second figure follows it, and overtakes it.  The two pause, and speak
to one another as they draw near.  The street is very dark where they
have met, and the figure in the gaudy rags keeps its face still turned
aside.  They walk together in silence, till they come to where a flaring
gas-lamp hangs before a tavern; and there the woman turns, and I see that
it is the woman of my dream.  And she and the man look into each other's
eyes once more.

* * * * *

In another dream that I remember, an angel (or a devil, I am not quite
sure which) has come to a man and told him that so long as he loves no
living human thing--so long as he never suffers himself to feel one touch
of tenderness towards wife or child, towards kith or kin, towards
stranger or towards friend, so long will he succeed and prosper in his
dealings--so long will all this world's affairs go well with him; and he
will grow each day richer and greater and more powerful.  But if ever he
let one kindly thought for living thing come into his heart, in that
moment all his plans and schemes will topple down about his ears; and
from that hour his name will be despised by men, and then forgotten.

And the man treasures up these words, for he is an ambitious man, and
wealth and fame and power are the sweetest things in all the world to
him.  A woman loves him and dies, thirsting for a loving look from him;
children's footsteps creep into his life and steal away again, old faces
fade and new ones come and go.

But never a kindly touch of his hand rests on any living thing; never a
kindly word comes from his lips; never a kindly thought springs from his
heart.  And in all his doings fortune favours him.

The years pass by, and at last there is left to him only one thing that
he need fear--a child's small, wistful face.  The child loves him, as the
woman, long ago, had loved him, and her eyes follow him with a hungry,
beseeching look.  But he sets his teeth, and turns away from her.

The little face grows thin, and one day they come to him where he sits
before the keyboard of his many enterprises, and tell him she is dying.
He comes and stands beside the bed, and the child's eyes open and turn
towards him; and, as he draws nearer, her little arms stretch out towards
him, pleading dumbly.  But the man's face never changes, and the little
arms fall feebly back upon the tumbled coverlet, and the wistful eyes
grow still, and a woman steps softly forward, and draws the lids down
over them; then the man goes back to his plans and schemes.

But in the night, when the great house is silent, he steals up to the
room where the child still lies, and pushes back the white, uneven sheet.

"Dead--dead," he mutters.  Then he takes the tiny corpse up in his arms,
and holds it tight against his breast, and kisses the cold lips, and the
cold cheeks, and the little, cold, stiff hands.

And at that point my story becomes impossible, for I dream that the dead
child lies always beneath the sheet in that quiet room, and that the
little face never changes, nor the limbs decay.

I puzzle about this for an instant, but soon forget to wonder; for when
the Dream Fairy tells us tales we are only as little children, sitting
round with open eyes, believing all, though marvelling that such things
should be.

Each night, when all else in the house sleeps, the door of that room
opens noiselessly, and the man enters and closes it behind him.  Each
night he draws away the white sheet, and takes the small dead body in his
arms; and through the dark hours he paces softly to and fro, holding it
close against his breast, kissing it and crooning to it, like a mother to
her sleeping baby.

When the first ray of dawn peeps into the room, he lays the dead child
back again, and smooths the sheet above her, and steals away.

And he succeeds and prospers in all things, and each day he grows richer
and greater and more powerful.




CHAPTER III


We had much trouble with our heroine.  Brown wanted her ugly.  Brown's
chief ambition in life is to be original, and his method of obtaining the
original is to take the unoriginal and turn it upside down.

If Brown were given a little planet of his own to do as he liked with, he
would call day, night, and summer, winter.  He would make all his men and
women walk on their heads and shake hands with their feet, his trees
would grow with their roots in the air, and the old cock would lay all
the eggs while the hens sat on the fence and crowed.  Then he would step
back and say, "See what an original world I have created, entirely my own
idea!"

There are many other people besides Brown whose notion of originality
would seem to be precisely similar.

I know a little girl, the descendant of a long line of politicians.  The
hereditary instinct is so strongly developed in her that she is almost
incapable of thinking for herself.  Instead, she copies in everything her
elder sister, who takes more after the mother.  If her sister has two
helpings of rice pudding for supper, then she has two helpings of rice
pudding.  If her sister isn't hungry and doesn't want any supper at all,
then she goes to bed without any supper.

This lack of character in the child troubles her mother, who is not an
admirer of the political virtues, and one evening, taking the little one
on her lap, she talked seriously to her.

"Do try to think for yourself," said she.  "Don't always do just what
Jessie does, that's silly.  Have an idea of your own now and then.  Be a
little original."

The child promised she'd try, and went to bed thoughtful.

Next morning, for breakfast, a dish of kippers and a dish of kidneys were
placed on the table, side by side.  Now the child loved kippers with an
affection that amounted almost to passion, while she loathed kidneys
worse than powders.  It was the one subject on which she did know her own
mind.

"A kidney or a kipper for you, Jessie?" asked the mother, addressing the
elder child first.

Jessie hesitated for a moment, while her sister sat regarding her in an
agony of suspense.

"Kipper, please, ma," Jessie answered at last, and the younger child
turned her head away to hide the tears.

"You'll have a kipper, of course, Trixy?" said the mother, who had
noticed nothing.

"No, thank you, ma," said the small heroine, stifling a sob, and speaking
in a dry, tremulous voice, "I'll have a kidney."

"But I thought you couldn't bear kidneys," exclaimed her mother,
surprised.

"No, ma, I don't like 'em much."

"And you're so fond of kippers!"

"Yes, ma."

"Well, then, why on earth don't you have one?"

"'Cos Jessie's going to have one, and you told me to be original," and
here the poor mite, reflecting upon the price her originality was going
to cost her, burst into tears.

* * * * *

The other three of us refused to sacrifice ourselves upon the altar of
Brown's originality.  We decided to be content with the customary
beautiful girl.

"Good or bad?" queried Brown.

"Bad," responded MacShaughnassy emphatically.  "What do you say,
Jephson?"

"Well," replied Jephson, taking the pipe from between his lips, and
speaking in that soothingly melancholy tone of voice that he never
varies, whether telling a joke about a wedding or an anecdote relating to
a funeral, "not altogether bad.  Bad, with good instincts, the good
instincts well under control."

"I wonder why it is," murmured MacShaughnassy reflectively, "that bad
people are so much more interesting than good."

"I don't think the reason is very difficult to find," answered Jephson.
"There's more uncertainty about them.  They keep you more on the alert.
It's like the difference between riding a well-broken, steady-going hack
and a lively young colt with ideas of his own.  The one is comfortable to
travel on, but the other provides you with more exercise.  If you start
off with a thoroughly good woman for your heroine you give your story
away in the first chapter.  Everybody knows precisely how she will behave
under every conceivable combination of circumstances in which you can
place her.  On every occasion she will do the same thing--that is the
right thing.

"With a bad heroine, on the other hand, you can never be quite sure what
is going to happen.  Out of the fifty or so courses open to her, she may
take the right one, or she may take one of the forty-nine wrong ones, and
you watch her with curiosity to see which it will be."

"But surely there are plenty of good heroines who are interesting," I
said.

"At intervals--when they do something wrong," answered Jephson.  "A
consistently irreproachable heroine is as irritating as Socrates must
have been to Xantippe, or as the model boy at school is to all the other
lads.  Take the stock heroine of the eighteenth-century romance.  She
never met her lover except for the purpose of telling him that she could
not be his, and she generally wept steadily throughout the interview.  She
never forgot to turn pale at the sight of blood, nor to faint in his arms
at the most inconvenient moment possible.  She was determined never to
marry without her father's consent, and was equally resolved never to
marry anybody but the one particular person she was convinced he would
never agree to her marrying.  She was an excellent young woman, and
nearly as uninteresting as a celebrity at home."

"Ah, but you're not talking about good women now," I observed.  "You're
talking about some silly person's idea of a good woman."

"I quite admit it," replied Jephson.  "Nor, indeed, am I prepared to say
what is a good woman.  I consider the subject too deep and too
complicated for any mere human being to give judgment upon.  But I _am_
talking of the women who conformed to the popular idea of maidenly
goodness in the age when these books were written.  You must remember
goodness is not a known quantity.  It varies with every age and every
locality, and it is, generally speaking, your 'silly persons' who are
responsible for its varying standards.  In Japan, a 'good' girl would be
a girl who would sell her honour in order to afford little luxuries to
her aged parents.  In certain hospitable islands of the torrid zone the
'good' wife goes to lengths that we should deem altogether unnecessary in
making her husband's guest feel himself at home.  In ancient Hebraic
days, Jael was accounted a good woman for murdering a sleeping man, and
Sarai stood in no danger of losing the respect of her little world when
she led Hagar unto Abraham.  In eighteenth-century England, supernatural
stupidity and dulness of a degree that must have been difficult to
attain, were held to be feminine virtues--indeed, they are so still--and
authors, who are always among the most servile followers of public
opinion, fashioned their puppets accordingly.  Nowadays 'slumming' is the
most applauded virtue, and so all our best heroines go slumming, and are
'good to the poor.'"

"How useful 'the poor' are," remarked MacShaughnassy, somewhat abruptly,
placing his feet on the mantelpiece, and tilting his chair back till it
stood at an angle that caused us to rivet our attention upon it with
hopeful interest.  "I don't think we scribbling fellows ever fully grasp
how much we owe to 'the poor.'  Where would our angelic heroines and our
noble-hearted heroes be if it were not for 'the poor'?  We want to show
that the dear girl is as good as she is beautiful.  What do we do?  We
put a basket full of chickens and bottles of wine on her arm, a fetching
little sun-bonnet on her head, and send her round among the poor.  How do
we prove that our apparent scamp of a hero is really a noble young man at
heart?  Why, by explaining that he is good to the poor.

"They are as useful in real life as they are in Bookland.  What is it
consoles the tradesman when the actor, earning eighty pounds a week,
cannot pay his debts?  Why, reading in the theatrical newspapers gushing
accounts of the dear fellow's invariable generosity to the poor.  What is
it stills the small but irritating voice of conscience when we have
successfully accomplished some extra big feat of swindling?  Why, the
noble resolve to give ten per cent of the net profits to the poor.

"What does a man do when he finds himself growing old, and feels that it
is time for him to think seriously about securing his position in the
next world?  Why, he becomes suddenly good to the poor.  If the poor were
not there for him to be good to, what could he do?  He would be unable to
reform at all.  It's a great comfort to think that the poor will always
be with us.  They are the ladder by which we climb into heaven."

There was silence for a few moments, while MacShaughnassy puffed away
vigorously, and almost savagely, at his pipe, and then Brown said: "I can
tell you rather a quaint incident, bearing very aptly on the subject.  A
cousin of mine was a land-agent in a small country town, and among the
houses on his list was a fine old mansion that had remained vacant for
many years.  He had despaired of ever selling it, when one day an elderly
lady, very richly dressed, drove up to the office and made inquiries
about it.  She said she had come across it accidentally while travelling
through that part of the country the previous autumn, and had been much
struck by its beauty and picturesqueness.  She added she was looking out
for some quiet spot where she could settle down and peacefully pass the
remainder of her days, and thought this place might possibly prove to be
the very thing for her.

"My cousin, delighted with the chance of a purchaser, at once drove her
across to the estate, which was about eight miles distant from the town,
and they went over it together.  My cousin waxed eloquent upon the
subject of its advantages.  He dwelt upon its quiet and seclusion, its
proximity--but not too close proximity--to the church, its convenient
distance from the village.

"Everything pointed to a satisfactory conclusion of the business.  The
lady was charmed with the situation and the surroundings, and delighted
with the house and grounds.  She considered the price moderate.

"'And now, Mr. Brown,' said she, as they stood by the lodge gate, 'tell
me, what class of poor have you got round about?'

"'Poor?' answered my cousin; 'there are no poor.'

"'No poor!' exclaimed the lady.  'No poor people in the village, or
anywhere near?'

"'You won't find a poor person within five miles of the estate,' he
replied proudly.  'You see, my dear madam, this is a thinly populated and
exceedingly prosperous county: this particular district especially so.
There is not a family in it that is not, comparatively speaking, well-to-
do.'

"'I'm sorry to hear that,' said the lady, in a tone of disappointment.
'The place would have suited me so admirably but for that.'

"'But surely, madam,' cried my cousin, to whom a demand for poor persons
was an entirely new idea, 'you don't mean to say that you _want_ poor
people!  Why, we've always considered it one of the chief attractions of
the property--nothing to shock the eye or wound the susceptibilities of
the most tender-hearted occupant.'

"'My dear Mr. Brown,' replied the lady, 'I will be perfectly frank with
you.  I am becoming an old woman, and my past life has not, perhaps, been
altogether too well spent.  It is my desire to atone for the--er--follies
of my youth by an old age of well-doing, and to that end it is essential
that I should be surrounded by a certain number of deserving poor.  I had
hoped to find in this charming neighbourhood of yours the customary
proportion of poverty and misery, in which case I should have taken the
house without hesitation.  As it is, I must seek elsewhere.'

"My cousin was perplexed, and sad.  'There are plenty of poor people in
the town,' he said, 'many of them most interesting cases, and you could
have the entire care of them all.  There'd be no opposition whatever, I'm
positive.'

"'Thank you,' replied the lady, 'but I really couldn't go as far as the
town.  They must be within easy driving distance or they are no good.'

"My cousin cudgelled his brains again.  He did not intend to let a
purchaser slip through his fingers if he could help it.  At last a bright
thought flashed into his mind.  'I'll tell you what we could do,' he
said.  'There's a piece of waste land the other end of the village that
we've never been able to do much with, in consequence of its being so
swampy.  If you liked, we could run you up a dozen cottages on that,
cheap--it would be all the better their being a bit ramshackle and
unhealthy--and get some poor people for you, and put into them.'

"The lady reflected upon the idea, and it struck her as a good one.

"'You see,' continued my cousin, pushing his advantage, 'by adopting this
method you would be able to select your own poor.  We would get you some
nice, clean, grateful poor, and make the thing pleasant for you.'

"It ended in the lady's accepting my cousin's offer, and giving him a
list of the poor people she would like to have.  She selected one
bedridden old woman (Church of England preferred); one paralytic old man;
one blind girl who would want to be read aloud to; one poor atheist,
willing to be converted; two cripples; one drunken father who would
consent to be talked to seriously; one disagreeable old fellow, needing
much patience; two large families, and four ordinary assorted couples.

"My cousin experienced some difficulty in securing the drunken father.
Most of the drunken fathers he interviewed upon the subject had a rooted
objection to being talked to at all.  After a long search, however, he
discovered a mild little man, who, upon the lady's requirements and
charitable intentions being explained to him, undertook to qualify
himself for the vacancy by getting intoxicated at least once a week.  He
said he could not promise more than once a week at first, he
unfortunately possessing a strong natural distaste for all alcoholic
liquors, which it would be necessary for him to overcome.  As he got more
used to them, he would do better.

"Over the disagreeable old man, my cousin also had trouble.  It was hard
to hit the right degree of disagreeableness.  Some of them were so very
unpleasant.  He eventually made choice of a decayed cab-driver with
advanced Radical opinions, who insisted on a three years' contract.

"The plan worked exceedingly well, and does so, my cousin tells me, to
this day.  The drunken father has completely conquered his dislike to
strong drink.  He has not been sober now for over three weeks, and has
lately taken to knocking his wife about.  The disagreeable fellow is most
conscientious in fulfilling his part of the bargain, and makes himself a
perfect curse to the whole village.  The others have dropped into their
respective positions and are working well.  The lady visits them all
every afternoon, and is most charitable.  They call her Lady Bountiful,
and everybody blesses her."

Brown rose as he finished speaking, and mixed himself a glass of whisky
and water with the self-satisfied air of a benevolent man about to reward
somebody for having done a good deed; and MacShaughnassy lifted up his
voice and talked.

"I know a story bearing on the subject, too," he said.  "It happened in a
tiny Yorkshire village--a peaceful, respectable spot, where folks found
life a bit slow.  One day, however, a new curate arrived, and that woke
things up considerably.  He was a nice young man, and, having a large
private income of his own, was altogether a most desirable catch.  Every
unmarried female in the place went for him with one accord.

"But ordinary feminine blandishments appeared to have no effect upon him.
He was a seriously inclined young man, and once, in the course of a
casual conversation upon the subject of love, he was heard to say that he
himself should never be attracted by mere beauty and charm.  What would
appeal to him, he said, would be a woman's goodness--her charity and
kindliness to the poor.

"Well, that set the petticoats all thinking.  They saw that in studying
fashion plates and practising expressions they had been going upon the
wrong tack.  The card for them to play was 'the poor.'  But here a
serious difficulty arose.  There was only one poor person in the whole
parish, a cantankerous old fellow who lived in a tumble-down cottage at
the back of the church, and fifteen able-bodied women (eleven girls,
three old maids, and a widow) wanted to be 'good' to him.

"Miss Simmonds, one of the old maids, got hold of him first, and
commenced feeding him twice a day with beef-tea; and then the widow
boarded him with port wine and oysters.  Later in the week others of the
party drifted in upon him, and wanted to cram him with jelly and
chickens.

"The old man couldn't understand it.  He was accustomed to a small sack
of coals now and then, accompanied by a long lecture on his sins, and an
occasional bottle of dandelion tea.  This sudden spurt on the part of
Providence puzzled him.  He said nothing, however, but continued to take
in as much of everything as he could hold.  At the end of a month he was
too fat to get through his own back door.

"The competition among the women-folk grew keener every day, and at last
the old man began to give himself airs, and to make the place hard for
them.  He made them clean his cottage out, and cook his meals, and when
he was tired of having them about the house, he set them to work in the
garden.

"They grumbled a good deal, and there was a talk at one time of a sort of
a strike, but what could they do?  He was the only pauper for miles
round, and knew it.  He had the monopoly, and, like all monopolises, he
abused his position.

"He made them run errands.  He sent them out to buy his 'baccy,' at their
own expense.  On one occasion he sent Miss Simmonds out with a jug to get
his supper beer.  She indignantly refused at first, but he told her that
if she gave him any of her stuck-up airs out she would go, and never come
into his house again.  If she wouldn't do it there were plenty of others
who would.  She knew it and went.

"They had been in the habit of reading to him--good books with an
elevating tendency.  But now he put his foot down upon that sort of
thing.  He said he didn't want Sunday-school rubbish at his time of life.
What he liked was something spicy.  And he made them read him French
novels and seafaring tales, containing realistic language.  And they
didn't have to skip anything either, or he'd know the reason why.

"He said he liked music, so a few of them clubbed together and bought him
a harmonium.  Their idea was that they would sing hymns and play high-
class melodies, but it wasn't his.  His idea was--'Keeping up the old
girl's birthday' and 'She winked the other eye,' with chorus and skirt
dance, and that's what they sang.

"To what lengths his tyranny would have gone it is difficult to say, had
not an event happened that brought his power to a premature collapse.
This was the curate's sudden and somewhat unexpected marriage with a very
beautiful burlesque actress who had lately been performing in a
neighbouring town.  He gave up the Church on his engagement, in
consequence of his _fiancee's_ objection to becoming a minister's wife.
She said she could never 'tumble to' the district visiting.

"With the curate's wedding the old pauper's brief career of prosperity
ended.  They packed him off to the workhouse after that, and made him
break stones."

* * * * *

At the end of the telling of his tale, MacShaughnassy lifted his feet off
the mantelpiece, and set to work to wake up his legs; and Jephson took a
hand, and began to spin us stories.

But none of us felt inclined to laugh at Jephson's stories, for they
dealt not with the goodness of the rich to the poor, which is a virtue
yielding quick and highly satisfactory returns, but with the goodness of
the poor to the poor, a somewhat less remunerative investment and a
different matter altogether.

For the poor themselves--I do not mean the noisy professional poor, but
the silent, fighting poor--one is bound to feel a genuine respect.  One
honours them, as one honours a wounded soldier.

In the perpetual warfare between Humanity and Nature, the poor stand
always in the van.  They die in the ditches, and we march over their
bodies with the flags flying and the drums playing.

One cannot think of them without an uncomfortable feeling that one ought
to be a little bit ashamed of living in security and ease, leaving them
to take all the hard blows.  It is as if one were always skulking in the
tents, while one's comrades were fighting and dying in the front.

They bleed and fall in silence there.  Nature with her terrible club,
"Survival of the Fittest"; and Civilisation with her cruel sword, "Supply
and Demand," beat them back, and they give way inch by inch, fighting to
the end.  But it is in a dumb, sullen way, that is not sufficiently
picturesque to be heroic.

I remember seeing an old bull-dog, one Saturday night, lying on the
doorstep of a small shop in the New Cut.  He lay there very quiet, and
seemed a bit sleepy; and, as he looked savage, nobody disturbed him.
People stepped in and out over him, and occasionally in doing so, one
would accidentally kick him, and then he would breathe a little harder
and quicker.

At last a passer-by, feeling something wet beneath his feet, looked down,
and found that he was standing in a pool of blood, and, looking to see
where it came from, found that it flowed in a thick, dark stream from the
step on which the dog was lying.

Then he stooped down and examined the dog, and the dog opened its eyes
sleepily and looked at him, gave a grin which may have implied pleasure,
or may have implied irritation at being disturbed, and died.

A crowd collected, and they turned the dead body of the dog over on its
side, and saw a fearful gash in the groin, out of which oozed blood, and
other things.  The proprietor of the shop said the animal had been there
for over an hour.

I have known the poor to die in that same grim, silent way--not the poor
that you, my delicately-gloved Lady Bountiful and my very excellent Sir
Simon DoGood, know, or that you would care to know; not the poor who
march in processions with banners and collection-boxes; not the poor that
clamour round your soup kitchens and sing hymns at your tea meetings; but
the poor that you don't know are poor until the tale is told at the
coroner's inquest--the silent, proud poor who wake each morning to
wrestle with Death till night-time, and who, when at last he overcomes
them, and, forcing them down on the rotting floor of the dim attic,
strangles them, still die with their teeth tight shut.

There was a boy I came to know when I was living in the East End of
London.  He was not a nice boy by any means.  He was not quite so clean
as are the good boys in the religious magazines, and I have known a
sailor to stop him in the street and reprove him for using indelicate
language.

He and his mother and the baby, a sickly infant of about five months old,
lived in a cellar down a turning off Three Colt Street.  I am not quite
sure what had become of the father.  I rather think he had been
"converted," and had gone off round the country on a preaching tour.  The
lad earned six shillings a week as an errand-boy; and the mother stitched
trousers, and on days when she was feeling strong and energetic would
often make as much as tenpence, or even a shilling.  Unfortunately, there
were days when the four bare walls would chase each other round and
round, and the candle seem a faint speck of light, a very long way off;
and the frequency of these caused the family income for the week to
occasionally fall somewhat low.

One night the walls danced round quicker and quicker till they danced
away altogether, and the candle shot up through the ceiling and became a
star and the woman knew that it was time to put away her sewing.

"Jim," she said: she spoke very low, and the boy had to bend over her to
hear, "if you poke about in the middle of the mattress you'll find a
couple of pounds.  I saved them up a long while ago.  That will pay for
burying me.  And, Jim, you'll take care of the kid.  You won't let it go
to the parish."

Jim promised.

"Say 'S'welp me Gawd,' Jim."

"S'welp me Gawd, mother."

Then the woman, having arranged her worldly affairs, lay back ready, and
Death struck.

Jim kept his oath.  He found the money, and buried his mother; and then,
putting his household goods on a barrow, moved into cheaper
apartments--half an old shed, for which he paid two shillings a week.

For eighteen months he and the baby lived there.  He left the child at a
nursery every morning, fetching it away each evening on his return from
work, and for that he paid fourpence a day, which included a limited
supply of milk.  How he managed to keep himself and more than half keep
the child on the remaining two shillings I cannot say.  I only know that
he did it, and that not a soul ever helped him or knew that there was
help wanted.  He nursed the child, often pacing the room with it for
hours, washed it, occasionally, and took it out for an airing every
Sunday.

Notwithstanding all which care, the little beggar, at the end of the time
above mentioned, "pegged out," to use Jimmy's own words.

The coroner was very severe on Jim.  "If you had taken proper steps," he
said, "this child's life might have been preserved."  (He seemed to think
it would have been better if the child's life had been preserved.
Coroners have quaint ideas!)  "Why didn't you apply to the relieving
officer?"

"'Cos I didn't want no relief," replied Jim sullenly.  "I promised my
mother it should never go on the parish, and it didn't."

The incident occurred, very luckily, during the dead season, and the
evening papers took the case up, and made rather a good thing out of it.
Jim became quite a hero, I remember.  Kind-hearted people wrote, urging
that somebody--the ground landlord, or the Government, or some one of
that sort--ought to do something for him.  And everybody abused the local
vestry.  I really think some benefit to Jim might have come out of it all
if only the excitement had lasted a little longer.  Unfortunately,
however, just at its height a spicy divorce case cropped up, and Jim was
crowded out and forgotten.

I told the boys this story of mine, after Jephson had done telling his,
and, when I had finished, we found it was nearly one o'clock.  So, of
course, it was too late to do any more work to the novel that evening.




CHAPTER IV


We held our next business meeting on my houseboat.  Brown was opposed at
first to my going down to this houseboat at all.  He thought that none of
us should leave town while the novel was still on hand.

MacShaughnassy, on the contrary, was of opinion that we should work
better on a houseboat.  Speaking for himself, he said he never felt more
like writing a really great work than when lying in a hammock among
whispering leaves, with the deep blue sky above him, and a tumbler of
iced claret cup within easy reach of his hand.  Failing a hammock, he
found a deck chair a great incentive to mental labour.  In the interests
of the novel, he strongly recommended me to take down with me at least
one comfortable deck chair, and plenty of lemons.

I could not myself see any reason why we should not be able to think as
well on a houseboat as anywhere else, and accordingly it was settled that
I should go down and establish myself upon the thing, and that the others
should visit me there from time to time, when we would sit round and
toil.

This houseboat was Ethelbertha's idea.  We had spent a day, the summer
before, on one belonging to a friend of mine, and she had been enraptured
with the life.  Everything was on such a delightfully tiny scale.  You
lived in a tiny little room; you slept on a tiny little bed, in a tiny,
tiny little bedroom; and you cooked your little dinner by a tiny little
fire, in the tiniest little kitchen that ever you did see.  "Oh, it must
be lovely, living on a houseboat," said Ethelbertha, with a gasp of
ecstasy; "it must be like living in a doll's house."

Ethelbertha was very young--ridiculously young, as I think I have
mentioned before--in those days of which I am writing, and the love of
dolls, and of the gorgeous dresses that dolls wear, and of the
many-windowed but inconveniently arranged houses that dolls inhabit--or
are supposed to inhabit, for as a rule they seem to prefer sitting on the
roof with their legs dangling down over the front door, which has always
appeared to me to be unladylike: but then, of course, I am no authority
on doll etiquette--had not yet, I think, quite departed from her.  Nay,
am I not sure that it had not?  Do I not remember, years later, peeping
into a certain room, the walls of which are covered with works of art of
a character calculated to send any aesthetic person mad, and seeing her,
sitting on the floor, before a red brick mansion, containing two rooms
and a kitchen; and are not her hands trembling with delight as she
arranges the three real tin plates upon the dresser?  And does she not
knock at the real brass knocker upon the real front door until it comes
off, and I have to sit down beside her on the floor and screw it on
again?

Perhaps, however, it is unwise for me to recall these things, and bring
them forward thus in evidence against her, for cannot she in turn laugh
at me?  Did not I also assist in the arrangement and appointment of that
house beautiful?  We differed on the matter of the drawing-room carpet, I
recollect.  Ethelbertha fancied a dark blue velvet, but I felt sure,
taking the wall-paper into consideration, that some shade of terra-cotta
would harmonise best.  She agreed with me in the end, and we manufactured
one out of an old chest protector.  It had a really charming effect, and
gave a delightfully warm tone to the room.  The blue velvet we put in the
kitchen.  I deemed this extravagance, but Ethelbertha said that servants
thought a lot of a good carpet, and that it paid to humour them in little
things, when practicable.

The bedroom had one big bed and a cot in it; but I could not see where
the girl was going to sleep.  The architect had overlooked her
altogether: that is so like an architect.  The house also suffered from
the inconvenience common to residences of its class, of possessing no
stairs, so that to move from one room to another it was necessary to
burst your way up through the ceiling, or else to come outside and climb
in through a window; either of which methods must be fatiguing when you
come to do it often.

Apart from these drawbacks, however, the house was one that any doll
agent would have been justified in describing as a "most desirable family
residence"; and it had been furnished with a lavishness that bordered on
positive ostentation.  In the bedroom there was a washing-stand, and on
the washing-stand there stood a jug and basin, and in the jug there was
real water.  But all this was as nothing.  I have known mere ordinary,
middle-class dolls' houses in which you might find washing-stands and
jugs and basins and real water--ay, and even soap.  But in this abode of
luxury there was a real towel; so that a body could not only wash
himself, but wipe himself afterwards, and that is a sensation that, as
all dolls know, can be enjoyed only in the very first-class
establishments.

Then, in the drawing-room, there was a clock, which would tick just so
long as you continued to shake it (it never seemed to get tired); also a
picture and a piano, and a book upon the table, and a vase of flowers
that would upset the moment you touched it, just like a real vase of
flowers.  Oh, there was style about this room, I can tell you.

But the glory of the house was its kitchen.  There were all things that
heart could desire in this kitchen, saucepans with lids that took on and
off, a flat-iron and a rolling-pin.  A dinner service for three occupied
about half the room, and what space was left was filled up by the stove--a
_real_ stove!  Think of it, oh ye owners of dolls' houses, a stove in
which you could burn real bits of coal, and on which you could boil real
bits of potato for dinner--except when people said you mustn't, because
it was dangerous, and took the grate away from you, and blew out the
fire, a thing that hampers a cook.

I never saw a house more complete in all its details.  Nothing had been
overlooked, not even the family.  It lay on its back, just outside the
front door, proud but calm, waiting to be put into possession.  It was
not an extensive family.  It consisted of four--papa, and mamma, and
baby, and the hired girl; just the family for a beginner.

It was a well-dressed family too--not merely with grand clothes outside,
covering a shameful condition of things beneath, such as, alas! is too
often the case in doll society, but with every article necessary and
proper to a lady or gentleman, down to items that I could not mention.
And all these garments, you must know, could be unfastened and taken off.
I have known dolls--stylish enough dolls, to look at, some of them--who
have been content to go about with their clothes gummed on to them, and,
in some cases, nailed on with tacks, which I take to be a slovenly and
unhealthy habit.  But this family could be undressed in five minutes,
without the aid of either hot water or a chisel.

Not that it was advisable from an artistic point of view that any of them
should.  They had not the figure that looks well in its natural
state--none of them.  There was a want of fulness about them all.
Besides, without their clothes, it might have been difficult to
distinguish the baby from the papa, or the maid from the mistress, and
thus domestic complications might have arisen.

When all was ready for their reception we established them in their home.
We put as much of the baby to bed as the cot would hold, and made the
papa and mamma comfortable in the drawing-room, where they sat on the
floor and stared thoughtfully at each other across the table.  (They had
to sit on the floor because the chairs were not big enough.)  The girl we
placed in the kitchen, where she leant against the dresser in an attitude
suggestive of drink, embracing the broom we had given her with maudlin
affection.  Then we lifted up the house with care, and carried it
cautiously into another room, and with the deftness of experienced
conspirators placed it at the foot of a small bed, on the south-west
corner of which an absurdly small somebody had hung an absurdly small
stocking.

To return to our own doll's house, Ethelbertha and I, discussing the
subject during our return journey in the train, resolved that, next year,
we ourselves would possess a houseboat, a smaller houseboat, if possible,
than even the one we had just seen.  It should have art-muslin curtains
and a flag, and the flowers about it should be wild roses and forget-me-
nots.  I could work all the morning on the roof, with an awning over me
to keep off the sun, while Ethelbertha trimmed the roses and made cakes
for tea; and in the evenings we would sit out on the little deck, and
Ethelbertha would play the guitar (she would begin learning it at once),
or we could sit quiet and listen to the nightingales.

For, when you are very, very young you dream that the summer is all sunny
days and moonlight nights, that the wind blows always softly from the
west, and that roses will thrive anywhere.  But, as you grow older, you
grow tired of waiting for the gray sky to break.  So you close the door
and come in, and crouch over the fire, wondering why the winds blow ever
from the east: and you have given up trying to rear roses.

I knew a little cottage girl who saved up her money for months and months
so as to buy a new frock in which to go to a flower-show.  But the day of
the flower-show was a wet day, so she wore an old frock instead.  And all
the fete days for quite a long while were wet days, and she feared she
would never have a chance of wearing her pretty white dress.  But at last
there came a fete day morning that was bright and sunny, and then the
little girl clapped her hands and ran upstairs, and took her new frock
(which had been her "new frock" for so long a time that it was now the
oldest frock she had) from the box where it lay neatly folded between
lavender and thyme, and held it up, and laughed to think how nice she
would look in it.

But when she went to put it on, she found that she had out-grown it, and
that it was too small for her every way.  So she had to wear a common old
frock after all.

Things happen that way, you know, in this world.  There were a boy and
girl once who loved each other very dearly.  But they were both poor, so
they agreed to wait till he had made enough money for them to live
comfortably upon, and then they would marry and be happy.  It took him a
long while to make, because making money is very slow work, and he
wanted, while he was about it, to make enough for them to be very happy
upon indeed.  He accomplished the task eventually, however, and came back
home a wealthy man.

Then they met again in the poorly-furnished parlour where they had
parted.  But they did not sit as near to each other as of old.  For she
had lived alone so long that she had grown old-maidish, and she was
feeling vexed with him for having dirtied the carpet with his muddy
boots.  And he had worked so long earning money that he had grown hard
and cold like the money itself, and was trying to think of something
affectionate to say to her.

So for a while they sat, one each side of the paper "fire-stove
ornament," both wondering why they had shed such scalding tears on that
day they had kissed each other good-bye; then said "good-bye" again, and
were glad.

There is another tale with much the same moral that I learnt at school
out of a copy-book.  If I remember rightly, it runs somewhat like this:--

Once upon a time there lived a wise grasshopper and a foolish ant.  All
through the pleasant summer weather the grasshopper sported and played,
gambolling with his fellows in and out among the sun-beams, dining
sumptuously each day on leaves and dew-drops, never troubling about the
morrow, singing ever his one peaceful, droning song.

But there came the cruel winter, and the grasshopper, looking around, saw
that his friends, the flowers, lay dead, and knew thereby that his own
little span was drawing near its close.

Then he felt glad that he had been so happy, and had not wasted his life.
"It has been very short," said he to himself; "but it has been very
pleasant, and I think I have made the best use of it.  I have drunk in
the sunshine, I have lain on the soft, warm air, I have played merry
games in the waving grass, I have tasted the juice of the sweet green
leaves.  I have done what I could.  I have spread my wings, I have sung
my song.  Now I will thank God for the sunny days that are passed, and
die."

Saying which, he crawled under a brown leaf, and met his fate in the way
that all brave grasshoppers should; and a little bird that was passing by
picked him up tenderly and buried him.

Now when the foolish ant saw this, she was greatly puffed up with
Pharisaical conceit.  "How thankful I ought to be," said she, "that I am
industrious and prudent, and not like this poor grasshopper.  While he
was flitting about from flower to flower, enjoying himself, I was hard at
work, putting by against the winter.  Now he is dead, while I am about to
make myself cosy in my warm home, and eat all the good things that I have
been saving up."

But, as she spoke, the gardener came along with his spade, and levelled
the hill where she dwelt to the ground, and left her lying dead amidst
the ruins.

Then the same kind little bird that had buried the grasshopper came and
picked her out and buried her also; and afterwards he composed and sang a
song, the burthen of which was, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may."  It
was a very pretty song, and a very wise song, and a man who lived in
those days, and to whom the birds, loving him and feeling that he was
almost one of themselves, had taught their language, fortunately
overheard it and wrote it down, so that all may read it to this day.

Unhappily for us, however, Fate is a harsh governess, who has no sympathy
with our desire for rosebuds.  "Don't stop to pick flowers now, my dear,"
she cries, in her sharp, cross tones, as she seizes our arm and jerks us
back into the roadway; "we haven't time to-day.  We will come back again
to-morrow, and you shall pick them then."

And we have to follow her, knowing, if we are experienced children, that
the chances are that we shall never come that way to-morrow; or that, if
we do, the roses will be dead.

Fate would not hear of our having a houseboat that summer,--which was an
exceptionally fine summer,--but promised us that if we were good and
saved up our money, we should have one next year; and Ethelbertha and I,
being simple-minded, inexperienced children, were content with the
promise, and had faith in its satisfactory fulfilment.

As soon as we reached home we informed Amenda of our plan.  The moment
the girl opened the door, Ethelbertha burst out with:--"Oh! can you swim,
Amenda?"

"No, mum," answered Amenda, with entire absence of curiosity as to why
such a question had been addressed to her, "I never knew but one girl as
could, and she got drowned."

"Well, you'll have to make haste and learn, then," continued Ethelbertha,
"because you won't be able to walk out with your young man, you'll have
to swim out.  We're not going to live in a house any more.  We're going
to live on a boat in the middle of the river."

Ethelbertha's chief object in life at this period was to surprise and
shock Amenda, and her chief sorrow that she had never succeeded in doing
so.  She had hoped great things from this announcement, but the girl
remained unmoved.  "Oh, are you, mum," she replied; and went on to speak
of other matters.

I believe the result would have been the same if we had told her we were
going to live in a balloon.

I do not know how it was, I am sure.  Amenda was always most respectful
in her manner.  But she had a knack of making Ethelbertha and myself feel
that we were a couple of children, playing at being grown up and married,
and that she was humouring us.

Amenda stayed with us for nearly five years--until the milkman, having
saved up sufficient to buy a "walk" of his own, had become
practicable--but her attitude towards us never changed.  Even when we
came to be really important married people, the proprietors of a
"family," it was evident that she merely considered we had gone a step
further in the game, and were playing now at being fathers and mothers.

By some subtle process she contrived to imbue the baby also with this
idea.  The child never seemed to me to take either of us quite seriously.
She would play with us, or join with us in light conversation; but when
it came to the serious affairs of life, such as bathing or feeding, she
preferred her nurse.

Ethelbertha attempted to take her out in the perambulator one morning,
but the child would not hear of it for a moment.

"It's all right, baby dear," explained Ethelbertha soothingly.  "Baby's
going out with mamma this morning."

"Oh no, baby ain't," was baby's rejoinder, in effect if not in words.
"Baby don't take a hand in experiments--not this baby.  I don't want to
be upset or run over."

Poor Ethel!  I shall never forget how heart-broken she was.  It was the
want of confidence that wounded her.

But these are reminiscences of other days, having no connection with the
days of which I am--or should be--writing; and to wander from one matter
to another is, in a teller of tales, a grievous sin, and a growing custom
much to be condemned.  Therefore I will close my eyes to all other
memories, and endeavour to see only that little white and green houseboat
by the ferry, which was the scene of our future collaborations.

Houseboats then were not built to the scale of Mississippi steamers, but
this boat was a small one, even for that primitive age.  The man from
whom we hired it described it as "compact."  The man to whom, at the end
of the first month, we tried to sub-let it, characterised it as "poky."
In our letters we traversed this definition.  In our hearts we agreed
with it.

At first, however, its size--or, rather, its lack of size--was one of its
chief charms in Ethelbertha's eyes.  The fact that if you got out of bed
carelessly you were certain to knock your head against the ceiling, and
that it was utterly impossible for any man to put on his trousers except
in the saloon, she regarded as a capital joke.

That she herself had to take a looking-glass and go upon the roof to do
her back hair, she thought less amusing.

Amenda accepted her new surroundings with her usual philosophic
indifference.  On being informed that what she had mistaken for a linen-
press was her bedroom, she remarked that there was one advantage about
it, and that was, that she could not tumble out of bed, seeing there was
nowhere to tumble; and, on being shown the kitchen, she observed that she
should like it for two things--one was that she could sit in the middle
and reach everything without getting up; the other, that nobody else
could come into the apartment while she was there.

"You see, Amenda," explained Ethelbertha apologetically, "we shall really
live outside."

"Yes, mum," answered Amenda, "I should say that would be the best place
to do it."

If only we could have lived more outside, the life might have been
pleasant enough, but the weather rendered it impossible, six days out of
the seven, for us to do more than look out of the window and feel
thankful that we had a roof over our heads.

I have known wet summers before and since.  I have learnt by many bitter
experiences the danger and foolishness of leaving the shelter of London
any time between the first of May and the thirty-first of October.
Indeed, the country is always associate in my mind with recollections of
long, weary days passed in the pitiless rain, and sad evenings spent in
other people's clothes.  But never have I known, and never, I pray night
and morning, may I know again, such a summer as the one we lived through
(though none of us expected to) on that confounded houseboat.

In the morning we would be awakened by the rain's forcing its way through
the window and wetting the bed, and would get up and mop out the saloon.
After breakfast I would try to work, but the beating of the hail upon the
roof just over my head would drive every idea out of my brain, and, after
a wasted hour or two, I would fling down my pen and hunt up Ethelbertha,
and we would put on our mackintoshes and take our umbrellas and go out
for a row.  At mid-day we would return and put on some dry clothes, and
sit down to dinner.

In the afternoon the storm generally freshened up a bit, and we were kept
pretty busy rushing about with towels and cloths, trying to prevent the
water from coming into the rooms and swamping us.  During tea-time the
saloon was usually illuminated by forked lightning.  The evenings we
spent in baling out the boat, after which we took it in turns to go into
the kitchen and warm ourselves.  At eight we supped, and from then until
it was time to go to bed we sat wrapped up in rugs, listening to the
roaring of the thunder, and the howling of the wind, and the lashing of
the waves, and wondering whether the boat would hold out through the
night.

Friends would come down to spend the day with us--elderly, irritable
people, fond of warmth and comfort; people who did not, as a rule, hanker
after jaunts, even under the most favourable conditions; but who had been
persuaded by our silly talk that a day on the river would be to them like
a Saturday to Monday in Paradise.

They would arrive soaked; and we would shut them up in different bunks,
and leave them to strip themselves and put on things of Ethelbertha's or
of mine.  But Ethel and I, in those days, were slim, so that stout,
middle-aged people in our clothes neither looked well nor felt happy.

Upon their emerging we would take them into the saloon and try to
entertain them by telling them what we had intended to do with them had
the day been fine.  But their answers were short, and occasionally
snappy, and after a while the conversation would flag, and we would sit
round reading last week's newspapers and coughing.

The moment their own clothes were dry (we lived in a perpetual atmosphere
of steaming clothes) they would insist upon leaving us, which seemed to
me discourteous after all that we had done for them, and would dress
themselves once more and start off home, and get wet again before they
got there.

We would generally receive a letter a few days afterwards, written by
some relative, informing us that both patients were doing as well as
could be expected, and promising to send us a card for the funeral in
case of a relapse.

Our chief recreation, our sole consolation, during the long weeks of our
imprisonment, was to watch from our windows the pleasure-seekers passing
by in small open boats, and to reflect what an awful day they had had, or
were going to have, as the case might be.

In the forenoon they would head up stream--young men with their
sweethearts; nephews taking out their rich old aunts; husbands and wives
(some of them pairs, some of them odd ones); stylish-looking girls with
cousins; energetic-looking men with dogs; high-class silent parties; low-
class noisy parties; quarrelsome family parties--boatload after boatload
they went by, wet, but still hopeful, pointing out bits of blue sky to
each other.

In the evening they would return, drenched and gloomy, saying
disagreeable things to one another.

One couple, and one couple only, out of the many hundreds that passed
under our review, came back from the ordeal with pleasant faces.  He was
rowing hard and singing, with a handkerchief tied round his head to keep
his hat on, and she was laughing at him, while trying to hold up an
umbrella with one hand and steer with the other.

There are but two explanations to account for people being jolly on the
river in the rain.  The one I dismissed as being both uncharitable and
improbable.  The other was creditable to the human race, and, adopting
it, I took off my cap to this damp but cheerful pair as they went by.
They answered with a wave of the hand, and I stood looking after them
till they disappeared in the mist.

I am inclined to think that those young people, if they be still alive,
are happy.  Maybe, fortune has been kind to them, or maybe she has not,
but in either event they are, I am inclined to think, happier than are
most people.

Now and again, the daily tornado would rage with such fury as to defeat
its own purpose by prematurely exhausting itself.  On these rare
occasions we would sit out on the deck, and enjoy the unwonted luxury of
fresh air.

I remember well those few pleasant evenings: the river, luminous with the
drowned light, the dark banks where the night lurked, the storm-tossed
sky, jewelled here and there with stars.

It was delightful not to hear for an hour or so the sullen thrashing of
the rain; but to listen to the leaping of the fishes, the soft swirl
raised by some water-rat, swimming stealthily among the rushes, the
restless twitterings of the few still wakeful birds.

An old corncrake lived near to us, and the way he used to disturb all the
other birds, and keep them from going to sleep, was shameful.  Amenda,
who was town-bred, mistook him at first for one of those cheap alarm
clocks, and wondered who was winding him up, and why they went on doing
it all night; and, above all, why they didn't oil him.

He would begin his unhallowed performance about dusk, just as every
respectable bird was preparing to settle down for the night.  A family of
thrushes had their nest a few yards from his stand, and they used to get
perfectly furious with him.

"There's that fool at it again," the female thrush would say; "why can't
he do it in the daytime if he must do it at all?"  (She spoke, of course,
in twitters, but I am confident the above is a correct translation.)

After a while, the young thrushes would wake up and begin chirping, and
then the mother would get madder than ever.

"Can't you say something to him?" she would cry indignantly to her
husband.  "How do you think the children can get to sleep, poor things,
with that hideous row going on all night?  Might just as well be living
in a saw-mill."

Thus adjured, the male thrush would put his head over the nest, and call
out in a nervous, apologetic manner:--

"I say, you know, you there, I wish you wouldn't mind being quiet a bit.
My wife says she can't get the children to sleep.  It's too bad, you
know, 'pon my word it is."

"Gor on," the corncrake would answer surlily.  "You keep your wife
herself quiet; that's enough for you to do."  And on he would go again
worse than before.

Then a mother blackbird, from a little further off, would join in the
fray.

"Ah, it's a good hiding he wants, not a talking to.  And if I was a cock,
I'd give it him."  (This remark would be made in a tone of withering
contempt, and would appear to bear reference to some previous
discussion.)

"You're quite right, ma'am," Mrs. Thrush would reply.  "That's what I
tell my husband, but" (with rising inflection, so that every lady in the
plantation might hear) "_he_ wouldn't move himself, bless you--no, not if
I and the children were to die before his eyes for want of sleep."

"Ah, he ain't the only one, my dear," the blackbird would pipe back,
"they're all alike"; then, in a voice more of sorrow than of anger:--"but
there, it ain't their fault, I suppose, poor things.  If you ain't got
the spirit of a bird you can't help yourself."

I would strain my ears at this point to hear if the male blackbird was
moved at all by these taunts, but the only sound I could ever detect
coming from his neighbourhood was that of palpably exaggerated snoring.

By this time the whole glade would be awake, expressing views concerning
that corncrake that would have wounded a less callous nature.

"Blow me tight, Bill," some vulgar little hedge-sparrow would chirp out,
in the midst of the hubbub, "if I don't believe the gent thinks 'e's a-
singing."

"'Tain't 'is fault," Bill would reply, with mock sympathy.  "Somebody's
put a penny in the slot, and 'e can't stop 'isself."

Irritated by the laugh that this would call forth from the younger birds,
the corncrake would exert himself to be more objectionable than ever,
and, as a means to this end, would commence giving his marvellous
imitation of the sharpening of a rusty saw by a steel file.

But at this an old crow, not to be trifled with, would cry out angrily:--

"Stop that, now.  If I come down to you I'll peck your cranky head off, I
will."

And then would follow silence for a quarter of an hour, after which the
whole thing would begin again.




CHAPTER V


Brown and MacShaughnassy came down together on the Saturday afternoon;
and, as soon as they had dried themselves, and had had some tea, we
settled down to work.

Jephson had written that he would not be able to be with us until late in
the evening, and Brown proposed that we should occupy ourselves until his
arrival with plots.

"Let each of us," said he, "sketch out a plot.  Afterwards we can compare
them, and select the best."

This we proceeded to do.  The plots themselves I forget, but I remember
that at the subsequent judging each man selected his own, and became so
indignant at the bitter criticism to which it was subjected by the other
two, that he tore it up; and, for the next half-hour, we sat and smoked
in silence.

When I was very young I yearned to know other people's opinion of me and
all my works; now, my chief aim is to avoid hearing it.  In those days,
had any one told me there was half a line about myself in a newspaper, I
should have tramped London to obtain that publication.  Now, when I see a
column headed with my name, I hurriedly fold up the paper and put it away
from me, subduing my natural curiosity to read it by saying to myself,
"Why should you?  It will only upset you for the day."

In my cubhood I possessed a friend.  Other friends have come into my life
since--very dear and precious friends--but they have none of them been to
me quite what this friend was.  Because he was my first friend, and we
lived together in a world that was much bigger than this world--more full
of joy and of grief; and, in that world, we loved and hated deeper than
we love and hate in this smaller world that I have come to dwell in
since.

He also had the very young man's craving to be criticised, and we made it
our custom to oblige each other.  We did not know then that what we
meant, when we asked for "criticism," was encouragement.  We thought that
we were strong--one does at the beginning of the battle, and that we
could bear to hear the truth.

Accordingly, each one pointed out to the other one his errors, and this
task kept us both so busy that we had never time to say a word of praise
to one another.  That we each had a high opinion of the other's talents I
am convinced, but our heads were full of silly saws.  We said to
ourselves: "There are many who will praise a man; it is only his friend
who will tell him of his faults."  Also, we said: "No man sees his own
shortcomings, but when these are pointed out to him by another he is
grateful, and proceeds to mend them."

As we came to know the world better, we learnt the fallacy of these
ideas.  But then it was too late, for the mischief had been done.

When one of us had written anything, he would read it to the other, and
when he had finished he would say, "Now, tell me what you think of
it--frankly and as a friend."

Those were his words.  But his thoughts, though he may not have known
them, were:--

"Tell me it is clever and good, my friend, even if you do not think so.
The world is very cruel to those that have not yet conquered it, and,
though we keep a careless face, our young hearts are scored with
wrinkles.  Often we grow weary and faint-hearted.  Is it not so, my
friend?  No one has faith in us, and in our dark hours we doubt
ourselves.  You are my comrade.  You know what of myself I have put into
this thing that to others will be but an idle half-hour's reading.  Tell
me it is good, my friend.  Put a little heart into me, I pray you."

But the other, full of the lust of criticism, which is civilisation's
substitute for cruelty, would answer more in frankness than in
friendship.  Then he who had written would flush angrily, and scornful
words would pass.

One evening, he read me a play he had written.  There was much that was
good in it, but there were also faults (there are in some plays), and
these I seized upon and made merry over.  I could hardly have dealt out
to the piece more unnecessary bitterness had I been a professional
critic.

As soon as I paused from my sport he rose, and, taking his manuscript
from the table, tore it in two, and flung it in the fire--he was but a
very young man, you must remember--and then, standing before me with a
white face, told me, unsolicited, his opinion of me and of my art.  After
which double event, it is perhaps needless to say that we parted in hot
anger.

I did not see him again for years.  The streets of life are very crowded,
and if we loose each other's hands we are soon hustled far apart.  When I
did next meet him it was by accident.

I had left the Whitehall Rooms after a public dinner, and, glad of the
cool night air, was strolling home by the Embankment.  A man, slouching
along under the trees, paused as I overtook him.

"You couldn't oblige me with a light, could you, guv'nor?" he said.  The
voice sounded strange, coming from the figure that it did.

I struck a match, and held it out to him, shaded by my hands.  As the
faint light illumined his face, I started back, and let the match fall:--

"Harry!"

He answered with a short dry laugh.  "I didn't know it was you," he said,
"or I shouldn't have stopped you."

"How has it come to this, old fellow?" I asked, laying my hand upon his
shoulder.  His coat was unpleasantly greasy, and I drew my hand away
again as quickly as I could, and tried to wipe it covertly upon my
handkerchief.

"Oh, it's a long, story," he answered carelessly, "and too conventional
to be worth telling.  Some of us go up, you know.  Some of us go down.
You're doing pretty well, I hear."

"I suppose so," I replied; "I've climbed a few feet up a greasy pole, and
am trying to stick there.  But it is of you I want to talk.  Can't I do
anything for you?"

We were passing under a gas-lamp at the moment.  He thrust his face
forward close to mine, and the light fell full and pitilessly upon it.

"Do I look like a man you could do anything for?" he said.

We walked on in silence side by side, I casting about for words that
might seize hold of him.

"You needn't worry about me," he continued after a while, "I'm
comfortable enough.  We take life easily down here where I am.  We've no
disappointments."

"Why did you give up like a weak coward?" I burst out angrily.  "You had
talent.  You would have won with ordinary perseverance."

"Maybe," he replied, in the same even tone of indifference.  "I suppose I
hadn't the grit.  I think if somebody had believed in me it might have
helped me.  But nobody did, and at last I lost belief in myself.  And
when a man loses that, he's like a balloon with the gas let out."

I listened to his words in indignation and astonishment.  "Nobody
believed in you!" I repeated.  "Why, _I_ always believed in you, you know
that I--"

Then I paused, remembering our "candid criticism" of one another.

"Did you?" he replied quietly, "I never heard you say so.  Good-night."

In the course of our Strandward walking we had come to the neighbourhood
of the Savoy, and, as he spoke, he disappeared down one of the dark
turnings thereabouts.

I hastened after him, calling him by name, but though I heard his quick
steps before me for a little way, they were soon swallowed up in the
sound of other steps, and, when I reached the square in which the chapel
stands, I had lost all trace of him.

A policeman was standing by the churchyard railings, and of him I made
inquiries.

"What sort of a gent was he, sir?" questioned the man.

"A tall thin gentleman, very shabbily dressed--might be mistaken for a
tramp."

"Ah, there's a good many of that sort living in this town," replied the
man.  "I'm afraid you'll have some difficulty in finding him."

Thus for a second time had I heard his footsteps die away, knowing I
should never listen for their drawing near again.

I wondered as I walked on--I have wondered before and since--whether Art,
even with a capital A, is quite worth all the suffering that is inflicted
in her behalf--whether she and we are better for all the scorning and the
sneering, all the envying and the hating, that is done in her name.

Jephson arrived about nine o'clock in the ferry-boat.  We were made
acquainted with this fact by having our heads bumped against the sides of
the saloon.

Somebody or other always had their head bumped whenever the ferry-boat
arrived.  It was a heavy and cumbersome machine, and the ferry-boy was
not a good punter.  He admitted this frankly, which was creditable of
him.  But he made no attempt to improve himself; that is, where he was
wrong.  His method was to arrange the punt before starting in a line with
the point towards which he wished to proceed, and then to push hard,
without ever looking behind him, until something suddenly stopped him.
This was sometimes the bank, sometimes another boat, occasionally a
steamer, from six to a dozen times a day our riparian dwelling.  That he
never succeeded in staving the houseboat in speaks highly for the man who
built her.

One day he came down upon us with a tremendous crash.  Amenda was walking
along the passage at the moment, and the result to her was that she
received a violent blow first on the left side of her head and then on
the right.

She was accustomed to accept one bump as a matter of course, and to
regard it as an intimation from the boy that he had come; but this double
knock annoyed her: so much "style" was out of place in a mere ferry-boy.
Accordingly she went out to him in a state of high indignation.

"What do you think you are?" she cried, balancing accounts by boxing his
ears first on one side and then on the other, "a torpedo!  What are you
doing here at all?  What do you want?"

"I don't want nothin'," explained the boy, rubbing his head; "I've
brought a gent down."

"A gent?" said Amenda, looking round, but seeing no one.  "What gent?"

"A stout gent in a straw 'at," answered the boy, staring round him
bewilderedly.

"Well, where is he?" asked Amenda.

"I dunno," replied the boy, in an awed voice; "'e was a-standin' there,
at the other end of the punt, a-smokin' a cigar."

Just then a head appeared above the water, and a spent but infuriated
swimmer struggled up between the houseboat and the bank.

"Oh, there 'e is!" cried the boy delightedly, evidently much relieved at
this satisfactory solution of the mystery; "'e must ha' tumbled off the
punt."

"You're quite right, my lad, that's just what he did do, and there's your
fee for assisting him to do it."  Saying which, my dripping friend, who
had now scrambled upon deck, leant over, and following Amenda's excellent
example, expressed his feelings upon the boy's head.

There was one comforting reflection about the transaction as a whole, and
that was that the ferry-boy had at last received a fit and proper reward
for his services.  I had often felt inclined to give him something
myself.  I think he was, without exception, the most clumsy and stupid
boy I have ever come across; and that is saying a good deal.

His mother undertook that for three-and-sixpence a week he should "make
himself generally useful" to us for a couple of hours every morning.

Those were the old lady's very words, and I repeated them to Amenda when
I introduced the boy to her.

"This is James, Amenda," I said; "he will come down here every morning at
seven, and bring us our milk and the letters, and from then till nine he
will make himself generally useful."

Amenda took stock of him.

"It will be a change of occupation for him, sir, I should say, by the
look of him," she remarked.

After that, whenever some more than usually stirring crash or
blood-curdling bump would cause us to leap from our seats and cry: "What
on earth has happened?"  Amenda would reply: "Oh, it's only James, mum,
making himself generally useful."

Whatever he lifted he let fall; whatever he touched he upset; whatever he
came near--that was not a fixture--he knocked over; if it was a fixture,
it knocked _him_ over.  This was not carelessness: it seemed to be a
natural gift.  Never in his life, I am convinced, had he carried a
bucketful of anything anywhere without tumbling over it before he got
there.  One of his duties was to water the flowers on the roof.
Fortunately--for the flowers--Nature, that summer, stood drinks with a
lavishness sufficient to satisfy the most confirmed vegetable toper:
otherwise every plant on our boat would have died from drought.  Never
one drop of water did they receive from him.  He was for ever taking them
water, but he never arrived there with it.  As a rule he upset the pail
before he got it on to the boat at all, and this was the best thing that
could happen, because then the water simply went back into the river, and
did no harm to any one.  Sometimes, however, he would succeed in landing
it, and then the chances were he would spill it over the deck or into the
passage.  Now and again, he would get half-way up the ladder before the
accident occurred.  Twice he nearly reached the top; and once he actually
did gain the roof.  What happened there on that memorable occasion will
never be known.  The boy himself, when picked up, could explain nothing.
It is supposed that he lost his head with the pride of the achievement,
and essayed feats that neither his previous training nor his natural
abilities justified him in attempting.  However that may be, the fact
remains that the main body of the water came down the kitchen chimney;
and that the boy and the empty pail arrived together on deck before they
knew they had started.

When he could find nothing else to damage, he would go out of his way to
upset himself.  He could not be sure of stepping from his own punt on to
the boat with safety.  As often as not, he would catch his foot in the
chain or the punt-pole, and arrive on his chest.

Amenda used to condole with him.  "Your mother ought to be ashamed of
herself," I heard her telling him one morning; "she could never have
taught you to walk.  What you want is a go-cart."

He was a willing lad, but his stupidity was super-natural.  A comet
appeared in the sky that year, and everybody was talking about it.  One
day he said to me:--

"There's a comet coming, ain't there, sir?"  He talked about it as though
it were a circus.

"Coming!" I answered, "it's come.  Haven't you seen it?"

"No, sir."

"Oh, well, you have a look for it to-night.  It's worth seeing."

"Yees, sir, I should like to see it.  It's got a tail, ain't it, sir?"

"Yes, a very fine tail."

"Yees, sir, they said it 'ad a tail.  Where do you go to see it, sir?"

"Go!  You don't want to go anywhere.  You'll see it in your own garden at
ten o'clock."

He thanked me, and, tumbling over a sack of potatoes, plunged head
foremost into his punt and departed.

Next morning, I asked him if he had seen the comet.

"No, sir, I couldn't see it anywhere."

"Did you look?"

"Yees, sir.  I looked a long time."

"How on earth did you manage to miss it then?" I exclaimed.  "It was a
clear enough night.  Where did you look?"

"In our garden, sir.  Where you told me."

"Whereabouts in the garden?" chimed in Amenda, who happened to be
standing by; "under the gooseberry bushes?"

"Yees--everywhere."

That is what he had done: he had taken the stable lantern and searched
the garden for it.

But the day when he broke even his own record for foolishness happened
about three weeks later.  MacShaughnassy was staying with us at the time,
and on the Friday evening he mixed us a salad, according to a recipe
given him by his aunt.  On the Saturday morning, everybody was, of
course, very ill.  Everybody always is very ill after partaking of any
dish prepared by MacShaughnassy.  Some people attempt to explain this
fact by talking glibly of "cause and effect."  MacShaughnassy maintains
that it is simply coincidence.

"How do you know," he says, "that you wouldn't have been ill if you
hadn't eaten any?  You're queer enough now, any one can see, and I'm very
sorry for you; but, for all that you can tell, if you hadn't eaten any of
that stuff you might have been very much worse--perhaps dead.  In all
probability, it has saved your life."  And for the rest of the day, he
assumes towards you the attitude of a man who has dragged you from the
grave.

The moment Jimmy arrived I seized hold of him.

"Jimmy," I said, "you must rush off to the chemist's immediately.  Don't
stop for anything.  Tell him to give you something for colic--the result
of vegetable poisoning.  It must be something very strong, and enough for
four.  Don't forget, something to counteract the effects of vegetable
poisoning.  Hurry up, or it may be too late."

My excitement communicated itself to the boy.  He tumbled back into his
punt, and pushed off vigorously.  I watched him land, and disappear in
the direction of the village.

Half an hour passed, but Jimmy did not return.  No one felt sufficiently
energetic to go after him.  We had only just strength enough to sit still
and feebly abuse him.  At the end of an hour we were all feeling very
much better.  At the end of an hour and a half we were glad he had not
returned when he ought to have, and were only curious as to what had
become of him.

In the evening, strolling through the village, we saw him sitting by the
open door of his mother's cottage, with a shawl wrapped round him.  He
was looking worn and ill.

"Why, Jimmy," I said, "what's the matter?  Why didn't you come back this
morning?"

"I couldn't, sir," Jimmy answered, "I was so queer.  Mother made me go to
bed."

"You seemed all right in the morning," I said; "what's made you queer?"

"What Mr. Jones give me, sir: it upset me awful."

A light broke in upon me.

"What did you say, Jimmy, when you got to Mr. Jones's shop?" I asked.

"I told 'im what you said, sir, that 'e was to give me something to
counteract the effects of vegetable poisoning.  And that it was to be
very strong, and enough for four."

"And what did he say?"

"'E said that was only your nonsense, sir, and that I'd better have
enough for one to begin with; and then 'e asked me if I'd been eating
green apples again."

"And you told him?"

"Yees, sir, I told 'im I'd 'ad a few, and 'e said it served me right, and
that 'e 'oped it would be a warning to me.  And then 'e put something
fizzy in a glass and told me to drink it."

"And you drank it?"

"Yees, sir."

"It never occurred to you, Jimmy, that there was nothing the matter with
you--that you were never feeling better in your life, and that you did
not require any medicine?"

"No, sir."

"Did one single scintilla of thought of any kind occur to you in
connection with the matter, Jimmy, from beginning to end?"

"No, sir."

People who never met Jimmy disbelieve this story.  They argue that its
premises are in disaccord with the known laws governing human nature,
that its details do not square with the average of probability.  People
who have seen and conversed with Jimmy accept it with simple faith.

The advent of Jephson--which I trust the reader has not entirely
forgotten--cheered us up considerably.  Jephson was always at his best
when all other things were at their worst.  It was not that he struggled
in Mark Tapley fashion to appear most cheerful when most depressed; it
was that petty misfortunes and mishaps genuinely amused and inspirited
him.  Most of us can recall our unpleasant experiences with amused
affection; Jephson possessed the robuster philosophy that enabled him to
enjoy his during their actual progress.  He arrived drenched to the skin,
chuckling hugely at the idea of having come down on a visit to a
houseboat in such weather.

Under his warming influence, the hard lines on our faces thawed, and by
supper time we were, as all Englishmen and women who wish to enjoy life
should be, independent of the weather.

Later on, as if disheartened by our indifference, the rain ceased, and we
took our chairs out on the deck, and sat watching the lightning, which
still played incessantly.  Then, not unnaturally, the talk drifted into a
sombre channel, and we began recounting stories, dealing with the gloomy
and mysterious side of life.

Some of these were worth remembering, and some were not.  The one that
left the strongest impression on my mind was a tale that Jephson told us.

I had been relating a somewhat curious experience of my own.  I met a man
in the Strand one day that I knew very well, as I thought, though I had
not seen him for years.  We walked together to Charing Cross, and there
we shook hands and parted.  Next morning, I spoke of this meeting to a
mutual friend, and then I learnt, for the first time, that the man had
died six months before.

The natural inference was that I had mistaken one man for another, an
error that, not having a good memory for faces, I frequently fall into.
What was remarkable about the matter, however, was that throughout our
walk I had conversed with the man under the impression that he was that
other dead man, and, whether by coincidence or not, his replies had never
once suggested to me my mistake.

As soon as I finished, Jephson, who had been listening very thoughtfully,
asked me if I believed in spiritualism "to its fullest extent."

"That is rather a large question," I answered.  "What do you mean by
'spiritualism to its fullest extent'?"

"Well, do you believe that the spirits of the dead have not only the
power of revisiting this earth at their will, but that, when here, they
have the power of action, or rather, of exciting to action?  Let me put a
definite case.  A spiritualist friend of mine, a sensible and by no means
imaginative man, once told me that a table, through the medium of which
the spirit of a friend had been in the habit of communicating with him,
came slowly across the room towards him, of its own accord, one night as
he sat alone, and pinioned him against the wall.  Now can any of you
believe that, or can't you?"

"I could," Brown took it upon himself to reply; "but, before doing so, I
should wish for an introduction to the friend who told you the story.
Speaking generally," he continued, "it seems to me that the difference
between what we call the natural and the supernatural is merely the
difference between frequency and rarity of occurrence.  Having regard to
the phenomena we are compelled to admit, I think it illogical to
disbelieve anything we are unable to disprove."

"For my part," remarked MacShaughnassy, "I can believe in the ability of
our spirit friends to give the quaint entertainments credited to them
much easier than I can in their desire to do so."

"You mean," added Jephson, "that you cannot understand why a spirit, not
compelled as we are by the exigencies of society, should care to spend
its evenings carrying on a laboured and childish conversation with a room
full of abnormally uninteresting people."

"That is precisely what I cannot understand," MacShaughnassy agreed.

"Nor I, either," said Jephson.  "But I was thinking of something very
different altogether.  Suppose a man died with the dearest wish of his
heart unfulfilled, do you believe that his spirit might have power to
return to earth and complete the interrupted work?"

"Well," answered MacShaughnassy, "if one admits the possibility of
spirits retaining any interest in the affairs of this world at all, it is
certainly more reasonable to imagine them engaged upon a task such as you
suggest, than to believe that they occupy themselves with the performance
of mere drawing-room tricks.  But what are you leading up to?"

"Why, to this," replied Jephson, seating himself straddle-legged across
his chair, and leaning his arms upon the back.  "I was told a story this
morning at the hospital by an old French doctor.  The actual facts are
few and simple; all that is known can be read in the Paris police records
of sixty-two years ago.

"The most important part of the case, however, is the part that is not
known, and that never will be known.

"The story begins with a great wrong done by one man unto another man.
What the wrong was I do not know.  I am inclined to think, however, it
was connected with a woman.  I think that, because he who had been
wronged hated him who had wronged him with a hate such as does not often
burn in a man's brain, unless it be fanned by the memory of a woman's
breath.

"Still that is only conjecture, and the point is immaterial.  The man who
had done the wrong fled, and the other man followed him.  It became a
point-to-point race, the first man having the advantage of a day's start.
The course was the whole world, and the stakes were the first man's life.

"Travellers were few and far between in those days, and this made the
trail easy to follow.  The first man, never knowing how far or how near
the other was behind him, and hoping now and again that he might have
baffled him, would rest for a while.  The second man, knowing always just
how far the first one was before him, never paused, and thus each day the
man who was spurred by Hate drew nearer to the man who was spurred by
Fear.

"At this town the answer to the never-varied question would be:--

"'At seven o'clock last evening, M'sieur.'

"'Seven--ah; eighteen hours.  Give me something to eat, quick, while the
horses are being put to.'

"At the next the calculation would be sixteen hours.

"Passing a lonely chalet, Monsieur puts his head out of the window:--

"'How long since a carriage passed this way, with a tall, fair man
inside?'

"'Such a one passed early this morning, M'sieur.'

"'Thanks, drive on, a hundred francs apiece if you are through the pass
before daybreak.'

"'And what for dead horses, M'sieur?'

"'Twice their value when living.'

"One day the man who was ridden by Fear looked up, and saw before him the
open door of a cathedral, and, passing in, knelt down and prayed.  He
prayed long and fervently, for men, when they are in sore straits, clutch
eagerly at the straws of faith.  He prayed that he might be forgiven his
sin, and, more important still, that he might be pardoned the
consequences of his sin, and be delivered from his adversary; and a few
chairs from him, facing him, knelt his enemy, praying also.

"But the second man's prayer, being a thanksgiving merely, was short, so
that when the first man raised his eyes, he saw the face of his enemy
gazing at him across the chair-tops, with a mocking smile upon it.

"He made no attempt to rise, but remained kneeling, fascinated by the
look of joy that shone out of the other man's eyes.  And the other man
moved the high-backed chairs one by one, and came towards him softly.

"Then, just as the man who had been wronged stood beside the man who had
wronged him, full of gladness that his opportunity had come, there burst
from the cathedral tower a sudden clash of bells, and the man, whose
opportunity had come, broke his heart and fell back dead, with that
mocking smile still playing round his mouth.

"And so he lay there.

"Then the man who had done the wrong rose up and passed out, praising
God.

"What became of the body of the other man is not known.  It was the body
of a stranger who had died suddenly in the cathedral.  There was none to
identify it, none to claim it.

"Years passed away, and the survivor in the tragedy became a worthy and
useful citizen, and a noted man of science.

"In his laboratory were many objects necessary to him in his researches,
and, prominent among them, stood in a certain corner a human skeleton.  It
was a very old and much-mended skeleton, and one day the long-expected
end arrived, and it tumbled to pieces.

"Thus it became necessary to purchase another.

"The man of science visited a dealer he well knew--a little parchment-
faced old man who kept a dingy shop, where nothing was ever sold, within
the shadow of the towers of Notre Dame.

"The little parchment-faced old man had just the very thing that Monsieur
wanted--a singularly fine and well-proportioned 'study.'  It should be
sent round and set up in Monsieur's laboratory that very afternoon.

"The dealer was as good as his word.  When Monsieur entered his
laboratory that evening, the thing was in its place.

"Monsieur seated himself in his high-backed chair, and tried to collect
his thoughts.  But Monsieur's thoughts were unruly, and inclined to
wander, and to wander always in one direction.

"Monsieur opened a large volume and commenced to read.  He read of a man
who had wronged another and fled from him, the other man following.
Finding himself reading this, he closed the book angrily, and went and
stood by the window and looked out.  He saw before him the sun-pierced
nave of a great cathedral, and on the stones lay a dead man with a
mocking smile upon his face.

"Cursing himself for a fool, he turned away with a laugh.  But his laugh
was short-lived, for it seemed to him that something else in the room was
laughing also.  Struck suddenly still, with his feet glued to the ground,
he stood listening for a while: then sought with starting eyes the corner
from where the sound had seemed to come.  But the white thing standing
there was only grinning.

"Monsieur wiped the damp sweat from his head and hands, and stole out.

"For a couple of days he did not enter the room again.  On the third,
telling himself that his fears were those of a hysterical girl, he opened
the door and went in.  To shame himself, he took his lamp in his hand,
and crossing over to the far corner where the skeleton stood, examined
it.  A set of bones bought for three hundred francs.  Was he a child, to
be scared by such a bogey!

"He held his lamp up in front of the thing's grinning head.  The flame of
the lamp flickered as though a faint breath had passed over it.

"The man explained this to himself by saying that the walls of the house
were old and cracked, and that the wind might creep in anywhere.  He
repeated this explanation to himself as he recrossed the room, walking
backwards, with his eyes fixed on the thing.  When he reached his desk,
he sat down and gripped the arms of his chair till his fingers turned
white.

"He tried to work, but the empty sockets in that grinning head seemed to
be drawing him towards them.  He rose and battled with his inclination to
fly screaming from the room.  Glancing fearfully about him, his eye fell
upon a high screen, standing before the door.  He dragged it forward, and
placed it between himself and the thing, so that he could not see it--nor
it see him.  Then he sat down again to his work.  For a while he forced
himself to look at the book in front of him, but at last, unable to
control himself any longer, he suffered his eyes to follow their own
bent.

"It may have been an hallucination.  He may have accidentally placed the
screen so as to favour such an illusion.  But what he saw was a bony hand
coming round the corner of the screen, and, with a cry, he fell to the
floor in a swoon.

"The people of the house came running in, and lifting him up, carried him
out, and laid him upon his bed.  As soon as he recovered, his first
question was, where had they found the thing--where was it when they
entered the room? and when they told him they had seen it standing where
it always stood, and had gone down into the room to look again, because
of his frenzied entreaties, and returned trying to hide their smiles, he
listened to their talk about overwork, and the necessity for change and
rest, and said they might do with him as they would.

"So for many months the laboratory door remained locked.  Then there came
a chill autumn evening when the man of science opened it again, and
closed it behind him.

"He lighted his lamp, and gathered his instruments and books around him,
and sat down before them in his high-backed chair.  And the old terror
returned to him.

"But this time he meant to conquer himself.  His nerves were stronger
now, and his brain clearer; he would fight his unreasoning fear.  He
crossed to the door and locked himself in, and flung the key to the other
end of the room, where it fell among jars and bottles with an echoing
clatter.

"Later on, his old housekeeper, going her final round, tapped at his door
and wished him good-night, as was her custom.  She received no response,
at first, and, growing nervous, tapped louder and called again; and at
length an answering 'good-night' came back to her.

"She thought little about it at the time, but afterwards she remembered
that the voice that had replied to her had been strangely grating and
mechanical.  Trying to describe it, she likened it to such a voice as she
would imagine coming from a statue.

"Next morning his door remained still locked.  It was no unusual thing
for him to work all night and far into the next day, so no one thought to
be surprised.  When, however, evening came, and yet he did not appear,
his servants gathered outside the room and whispered, remembering what
had happened once before.

"They listened, but could hear no sound.  They shook the door and called
to him, then beat with their fists upon the wooden panels.  But still no
sound came from the room.

"Becoming alarmed, they decided to burst open the door, and, after many
blows, it gave way, and they crowded in.

"He sat bolt upright in his high-backed chair.  They thought at first he
had died in his sleep.  But when they drew nearer and the light fell upon
him, they saw the livid marks of bony fingers round his throat; and in
his eyes there was a terror such as is not often seen in human eyes."

* * * * *

Brown was the first to break the silence that followed.  He asked me if I
had any brandy on board.  He said he felt he should like just a nip of
brandy before going to bed.  That is one of the chief charms of Jephson's
stories: they always make you feel you want a little brandy.




CHAPTER VI


"Cats," remarked Jephson to me, one afternoon, as we sat in the punt
discussing the plot of our novel, "cats are animals for whom I entertain
a very great respect.  Cats and Nonconformists seem to me the only things
in this world possessed of a practicable working conscience.  Watch a cat
doing something mean and wrong--if ever one gives you the chance; notice
how anxious she is that nobody should see her doing it; and how prompt,
if detected, to pretend that she was not doing it--that she was not even
thinking of doing it--that, as a matter of fact, she was just about to do
something else, quite different.  You might almost think they had a soul.

"Only this morning I was watching that tortoise-shell of yours on the
houseboat.  She was creeping along the roof, behind the flower-boxes,
stalking a young thrush that had perched upon a coil of rope.  Murder
gleamed from her eye, assassination lurked in every twitching muscle of
her body.  As she crouched to spring, Fate, for once favouring the weak,
directed her attention to myself, and she became, for the first time,
aware of my presence.  It acted upon her as a heavenly vision upon a
Biblical criminal.  In an instant she was a changed being.  The wicked
beast, going about seeking whom it might devour, had vanished.  In its
place sat a long-tailed, furry angel, gazing up into the sky with an
expression that was one-third innocence and two-thirds admiration of the
beauties of nature.  What was she doing there, did I want to know?  Why,
could I not see, playing with a bit of earth.  Surely I was not so evil-
minded as to imagine she wanted to kill that dear little bird--God bless
it.

"Then note an old Tom, slinking home in the early morning, after a night
spent on a roof of bad repute.  Can you picture to yourself a living
creature less eager to attract attention?  'Dear me,' you can all but
hear it saying to itself, 'I'd no idea it was so late; how time does go
when one is enjoying oneself.  I do hope I shan't meet any one I
know--very awkward, it's being so light.'

"In the distance it sees a policeman, and stops suddenly within the
shelter of a shadow.  'Now what's he doing there,' it says, 'and close to
our door too?  I can't go in while he's hanging about.  He's sure to see
and recognise me; and he's just the sort of man to talk to the servants.'

"It hides itself behind a post and waits, peeping cautiously round the
corner from time to time.  The policeman, however, seems to have taken up
his residence at that particular spot, and the cat becomes worried and
excited.

"'What's the matter with the fool?' it mutters indignantly; 'is he dead?
Why don't he move on, he's always telling other people to.  Stupid ass.'

"Just then a far-off cry of 'milk' is heard, and the cat starts up in an
agony of alarm.  'Great Scott, hark at that!  Why, everybody will be down
before I get in.  Well, I can't help it.  I must chance it.'

"He glances round at himself, and hesitates.  'I wouldn't mind if I
didn't look so dirty and untidy,' he muses; 'people are so prone to think
evil in this world.'

"'Ah, well,' he adds, giving himself a shake, 'there's nothing else for
it, I must put my trust in Providence, it's pulled me through before:
here goes.'

"He assumes an aspect of chastened sorrow, and trots along with a demure
and saddened step.  It is evident he wishes to convey the idea that he
has been out all night on work connected with the Vigilance Association,
and is now returning home sick at heart because of the sights that he has
seen.

"He squirms in, unnoticed, through a window, and has just time to give
himself a hurried lick down before he hears the cook's step on the
stairs.  When she enters the kitchen he is curled up on the hearthrug,
fast asleep.  The opening of the shutters awakes him.  He rises and comes
forward, yawning and stretching himself.

"'Dear me, is it morning, then?' he says drowsily.  'Heigh-ho!  I've had
such a lovely sleep, cook; and such a beautiful dream about poor mother.'

"Cats! do you call them?  Why, they are Christians in everything except
the number of legs."

"They certainly are," I responded, "wonderfully cunning little animals,
and it is not by their moral and religious instincts alone that they are
so closely linked to man; the marvellous ability they display in taking
care of 'number one' is worthy of the human race itself.  Some friends of
mine had a cat, a big black Tom: they have got half of him still.  They
had reared him from a kitten, and, in their homely, undemonstrative way,
they liked him.  There was nothing, however, approaching passion on
either side.

"One day a Chinchilla came to live in the neighbourhood, under the charge
of an elderly spinster, and the two cats met at a garden wall party.

"'What sort of diggings have you got?' asked the Chinchilla.

"'Oh, pretty fair.'

"'Nice people?'

"'Yes, nice enough--as people go.'

"'Pretty willing?  Look after you well, and all that sort of thing?'

"'Yes--oh yes.  I've no fault to find with them.'

"'What's the victuals like?'

"'Oh, the usual thing, you know, bones and scraps, and a bit of
dog-biscuit now and then for a change.'

"'Bones and dog-biscuits!  Do you mean to say you eat bones?'

"'Yes, when I can get 'em.  Why, what's wrong about them?'

"'Shade of Egyptian Isis, bones and dog-biscuits!  Don't you ever get any
spring chickens, or a sardine, or a lamb cutlet?'

"'Chickens!  Sardines!  What are you talking about?  What are sardines?'

"'What are sardines!  Oh, my dear child (the Chinchilla was a lady cat,
and always called gentlemen friends a little older than herself 'dear
child'), these people of yours are treating you just shamefully.  Come,
sit down and tell me all about it.  What do they give you to sleep on?'

"'The floor.'

"'I thought so; and skim milk and water to drink, I suppose?'

"'It _is_ a bit thin.'

"'I can quite imagine it.  You must leave these people, my dear, at
once.'

"'But where am I to go to?'

"'Anywhere.'

"'But who'll take me in?'

"'Anybody, if you go the right way to work.  How many times do you think
I've changed my people?  Seven!--and bettered myself on each occasion.
Why, do you know where I was born?  In a pig-sty.  There were three of
us, mother and I and my little brother.  Mother would leave us every
evening, returning generally just as it was getting light.  One morning
she did not come back.  We waited and waited, but the day passed on and
she did not return, and we grew hungrier and hungrier, and at last we lay
down, side by side, and cried ourselves to sleep.

"'In the evening, peeping through a hole in the door, we saw her coming
across the field.  She was crawling very slowly, with her body close down
against the ground.  We called to her, and she answered with a low
"crroo"; but she did not hasten her pace.

"'She crept in and rolled over on her side, and we ran to her, for we
were almost starving.  We lay long upon her breasts, and she licked us
over and over.

"'I dropped asleep upon her, and in the night I awoke, feeling cold.  I
crept closer to her, but that only made me colder still, and she was wet
and clammy with a dark moisture that was oozing from her side.  I did not
know what it was at that time, but I have learnt since.

"'That was when I could hardly have been four weeks old, and from that
day to this I've looked after myself: you've got to do that in this
world, my dear.  For a while, I and my brother lived on in that sty and
kept ourselves.  It was a grim struggle at first, two babies fighting for
life; but we pulled through.  At the end of about three months, wandering
farther from home than usual, I came upon a cottage, standing in the
fields.  It looked warm and cosy through the open door, and I went in: I
have always been blessed with plenty of nerve.  Some children were
playing round the fire, and they welcomed me and made much of me.  It was
a new sensation to me, and I stayed there.  I thought the place a palace
at the time.

"'I might have gone on thinking so if it had not been that, passing
through the village one day, I happened to catch sight of a room behind a
shop.  There was a carpet on the floor, and a rug before the fire.  I had
never known till then that there were such luxuries in the world.  I
determined to make that shop my home, and I did so.'

"'How did you manage it?' asked the black cat, who was growing
interested.

"'By the simple process of walking in and sitting down.  My dear child,
cheek's the "Open sesame" to every door.  The cat that works hard dies of
starvation, the cat that has brains is kicked downstairs for a fool, and
the cat that has virtue is drowned for a scamp; but the cat that has
cheek sleeps on a velvet cushion and dines on cream and horseflesh.  I
marched straight in and rubbed myself against the old man's legs.  He and
his wife were quite taken with what they called my "trustfulness," and
adopted me with enthusiasm.  Strolling about the fields of an evening I
often used to hear the children of the cottage calling my name.  It was
weeks before they gave up seeking for me.  One of them, the youngest,
would sob herself to sleep of a night, thinking that I was dead: they
were affectionate children.

"'I boarded with my shopkeeping friends for nearly a year, and from them
I went to some new people who had lately come to the neighbourhood, and
who possessed a really excellent cook.  I think I could have been very
satisfied with these people, but, unfortunately, they came down in the
world, and had to give up the big house and the cook, and take a cottage,
and I did not care to go back to that sort of life.

"'Accordingly I looked about for a fresh opening.  There was a curious
old fellow who lived not far off.  People said he was rich, but nobody
liked him.  He was shaped differently from other men.  I turned the
matter over in my mind for a day or two, and then determined to give him
a trial.  Being a lonely sort of man, he might make a fuss over me, and
if not I could go.

"'My surmise proved correct.  I have never been more petted than I was by
"Toady," as the village boys had dubbed him.  My present guardian is
foolish enough over me, goodness knows, but she has other ties, while
"Toady" had nothing else to love, not even himself.  He could hardly
believe his eyes at first when I jumped up on his knees and rubbed myself
against his ugly face.  "Why, Kitty," he said, "do you know you're the
first living thing that has ever come to me of its own accord."  There
were tears in his funny little red eyes as he said that.

"'I remained two years with "Toady," and was very happy indeed.  Then he
fell ill, and strange people came to the house, and I was neglected.
"Toady" liked me to come up and lie upon the bed, where he could stroke
me with his long, thin hand, and at first I used to do this.  But a sick
man is not the best of company, as you can imagine, and the atmosphere of
a sick room not too healthy, so, all things considered, I felt it was
time for me to make a fresh move.

"'I had some difficulty in getting away.  "Toady" was always asking for
me, and they tried to keep me with him: he seemed to lie easier when I
was there.  I succeeded at length, however, and, once outside the door, I
put sufficient distance between myself and the house to ensure my not
being captured, for I knew "Toady" so long as he lived would never cease
hoping to get me back.

"'Where to go, I did not know.  Two or three homes were offered me, but
none of them quite suited me.  At one place, where I put up for a day,
just to see how I liked it, there was a dog; and at another, which would
otherwise have done admirably, they kept a baby.  Whatever you do, never
stop at a house where they keep a baby.  If a child pulls your tail or
ties a paper bag round your head, you can give it one for itself and
nobody blames you.  "Well, serve you right," they say to the yelling
brat, "you shouldn't tease the poor thing."  But if you resent a baby's
holding you by the throat and trying to gouge out your eye with a wooden
ladle, you are called a spiteful beast, and "shoo'd" all round the
garden.  If people keep babies, they don't keep me; that's my rule.

"'After sampling some three or four families, I finally fixed upon a
banker.  Offers more advantageous from a worldly point of view were open
to me.  I could have gone to a public-house, where the victuals were
simply unlimited, and where the back door was left open all night.  But
about the banker's (he was also a churchwarden, and his wife never smiled
at anything less than a joke by the bishop) there was an atmosphere of
solid respectability that I felt would be comforting to my nature.  My
dear child, you will come across cynics who will sneer at respectability:
don't you listen to them.  Respectability is its own reward--and a very
real and practical reward.  It may not bring you dainty dishes and soft
beds, but it brings you something better and more lasting.  It brings you
the consciousness that you are living the right life, that you are doing
the right thing, that, so far as earthly ingenuity can fix it, you are
going to the right place, and that other folks ain't.  Don't you ever let
any one set you against respectability.  It's the most satisfying thing I
know of in this world--and about the cheapest.

"'I was nearly three years with this family, and was sorry when I had to
go.  I should never have left if I could have helped it, but one day
something happened at the bank which necessitated the banker's taking a
sudden journey to Spain, and, after that, the house became a somewhat
unpleasant place to live in.  Noisy, disagreeable people were continually
knocking at the door and making rows in the passage; and at night folks
threw bricks at the windows.

"'I was in a delicate state of health at the time, and my nerves could
not stand it.  I said good-bye to the town, and making my way back into
the country, put up with a county family.

"'They were great swells, but I should have preferred them had they been
more homely.  I am of an affectionate disposition, and I like every one
about me to love me.  They were good enough to me in their distant way,
but they did not take much notice of me, and I soon got tired of
lavishing attentions on people that neither valued nor responded to them.

"'From these people I went to a retired potato merchant.  It was a social
descent, but a rise so far as comfort and appreciation were concerned.
They appeared to be an exceedingly nice family, and to be extremely fond
of me.  I say they "appeared" to be these things, because the sequel
proved that they were neither.  Six months after I had come to them they
went away and left me.  They never asked me to accompany them.  They made
no arrangements for me to stay behind.  They evidently did not care what
became of me.  Such egotistical indifference to the claims of friendship
I had never before met with.  It shook my faith--never too robust--in
human nature.  I determined that, in future, no one should have the
opportunity of disappointing my trust in them.  I selected my present
mistress on the recommendation of a gentleman friend of mine who had
formerly lived with her.  He said she was an excellent caterer.  The only
reason he had left her was that she expected him to be in at ten each
night, and that hour didn't fit in with his other arrangements.  It made
no difference to me--as a matter of fact, I do not care for these
midnight _reunions_ that are so popular amongst us.  There are always too
many cats for one properly to enjoy oneself, and sooner or later a rowdy
element is sure to creep in.  I offered myself to her, and she accepted
me gratefully.  But I have never liked her, and never shall.  She is a
silly old woman, and bores me.  She is, however, devoted to me, and,
unless something extra attractive turns up, I shall stick to her.

"'That, my dear, is the story of my life, so far as it has gone.  I tell
it you to show you how easy it is to be "taken in."  Fix on your house,
and mew piteously at the back door.  When it is opened run in and rub
yourself against the first leg you come across.  Rub hard, and look up
confidingly.  Nothing gets round human beings, I have noticed, quicker
than confidence.  They don't get much of it, and it pleases them.  Always
be confiding.  At the same time be prepared for emergencies.  If you are
still doubtful as to your reception, try and get yourself slightly wet.
Why people should prefer a wet cat to a dry one I have never been able to
understand; but that a wet cat is practically sure of being taken in and
gushed over, while a dry cat is liable to have the garden hose turned
upon it, is an undoubted fact.  Also, if you can possibly manage it, and
it is offered you, eat a bit of dry bread.  The Human Race is always
stirred to its deepest depths by the sight of a cat eating a bit of dry
bread.'

"My friend's black Tom profited by the Chinchilla's wisdom.  A catless
couple had lately come to live next door.  He determined to adopt them on
trial.  Accordingly, on the first rainy day, he went out soon after lunch
and sat for four hours in an open field.  In the evening, soaked to the
skin, and feeling pretty hungry, he went mewing to their door.  One of
the maids opened it, he rushed under her skirts and rubbed himself
against her legs.  She screamed, and down came the master and the
mistress to know what was the matter.

"'It's a stray cat, mum,' said the girl.

"'Turn it out,' said the master.

"'Oh no, don't,' said the mistress.

"'Oh, poor thing, it's wet,' said the housemaid.

"'Perhaps it's hungry,' said the cook.

"'Try it with a bit of dry bread,' sneered the master, who wrote for the
newspapers, and thought he knew everything.

"A stale crust was proffered.  The cat ate it greedily, and afterwards
rubbed himself gratefully against the man's light trousers.

"This made the man ashamed of himself, likewise of his trousers. 'Oh,
well, let it stop if it wants to,' he said.

"So the cat was made comfortable, and stayed on.

"Meanwhile its own family were seeking for it high and low.  They had not
cared over much for it while they had had it; now it was gone, they were
inconsolable.  In the light of its absence, it appeared to them the one
thing that had made the place home.  The shadows of suspicion gathered
round the case.  The cat's disappearance, at first regarded as a mystery,
began to assume the shape of a crime.  The wife openly accused the
husband of never having liked the animal, and more than hinted that he
and the gardener between them could give a tolerably truthful account of
its last moments; an insinuation that the husband repudiated with a
warmth that only added credence to the original surmise.

"The bull-terrier was had up and searchingly examined.  Fortunately for
him, he had not had a single fight for two whole days.  Had any recent
traces of blood been detected upon him, it would have gone hard with him.

"The person who suffered most, however, was the youngest boy.  Three
weeks before, he had dressed the cat in doll's clothes and taken it round
the garden in the perambulator.  He himself had forgotten the incident,
but Justice, though tardy, was on his track.  The misdeed was suddenly
remembered at the very moment when unavailing regret for the loss of the
favourite was at its deepest, so that to box his ears and send him, then
and there, straight off to bed was felt to be a positive relief.

"At the end of a fortnight, the cat, finding he had not, after all,
bettered himself, came back.  The family were so surprised that at first
they could not be sure whether he was flesh and blood, or a spirit come
to comfort them.  After watching him eat half a pound of raw steak, they
decided he was material, and caught him up and hugged him to their
bosoms.  For a week they over-fed him and made much of him.  Then, the
excitement cooling, he found himself dropping back into his old position,
and didn't like it, and went next door again.

"The next door people had also missed him, and they likewise greeted his
return with extravagant ebullitions of joy.  This gave the cat an idea.
He saw that his game was to play the two families off one against the
other; which he did.  He spent an alternate fortnight with each, and
lived like a fighting cock.  His return was always greeted with
enthusiasm, and every means were adopted to induce him to stay.  His
little whims were carefully studied, his favourite dishes kept in
constant readiness.

"The destination of his goings leaked out at length, and then the two
families quarrelled about him over the fence.  My friend accused the
newspaper man of having lured him away.  The newspaper man retorted that
the poor creature had come to his door wet and starving, and added that
he would be ashamed to keep an animal merely to ill-treat it.  They have
a quarrel about him twice a week on the average.  It will probably come
to blows one of these days."

Jephson appeared much surprised by this story.  He remained thoughtful
and silent.  I asked him if he would like to hear any more, and as he
offered no active opposition I went on.  (Maybe he was asleep; that idea
did not occur to me at the time.)

I told him of my grandmother's cat, who, after living a blameless life
for upwards of eleven years, and bringing up a family of something like
sixty-six, not counting those that died in infancy and the water-butt,
took to drink in her old age, and was run over while in a state of
intoxication (oh, the justice of it! ) by a brewer's dray.  I have read
in temperance tracts that no dumb animal will touch a drop of alcoholic
liquor.  My advice is, if you wish to keep them respectable, don't give
them a chance to get at it.  I knew a pony--But never mind him; we are
talking about my grandmother's cat.

A leaky beer-tap was the cause of her downfall.  A saucer used to be
placed underneath it to catch the drippings.  One day the cat, coming in
thirsty, and finding nothing else to drink, lapped up a little, liked it,
and lapped a little more, went away for half an hour, and came back and
finished the saucerful.  Then sat down beside it, and waited for it to
fill again.

From that day till the hour she died, I don't believe that cat was ever
once quite sober.  Her days she passed in a drunken stupor before the
kitchen fire.  Her nights she spent in the beer cellar.

My grandmother, shocked and grieved beyond expression, gave up her barrel
and adopted bottles.  The cat, thus condemned to enforced abstinence,
meandered about the house for a day and a half in a disconsolate,
quarrelsome mood.  Then she disappeared, returning at eleven o'clock as
tight as a drum.

Where she went, and how she managed to procure the drink, we never
discovered; but the same programme was repeated every day.  Some time
during the morning she would contrive to elude our vigilance and escape;
and late every evening she would come reeling home across the fields in a
condition that I will not sully my pen by attempting to describe.

It was on Saturday night that she met the sad end to which I have before
alluded.  She must have been very drunk, for the man told us that, in
consequence of the darkness, and the fact that his horses were tired, he
was proceeding at little more than a snail's pace.

I think my grandmother was rather relieved than otherwise.  She had been
very fond of the cat at one time, but its recent conduct had alienated
her affection.  We children buried it in the garden under the mulberry
tree, but the old lady insisted that there should be no tombstone, not
even a mound raised.  So it lies there, unhonoured, in a drunkard's
grave.

I also told him of another cat our family had once possessed.  She was
the most motherly thing I have ever known.  She was never happy without a
family.  Indeed, I cannot remember her when she hadn't a family in one
stage or another.  She was not very particular what sort of a family it
was.  If she could not have kittens, then she would content herself with
puppies or rats.  Anything that she could wash and feed seemed to satisfy
her.  I believe she would have brought up chickens if we had entrusted
them to her.

All her brains must have run to motherliness, for she hadn't much sense.
She could never tell the difference between her own children and other
people's.  She thought everything young was a kitten.  We once mixed up a
spaniel puppy that had lost its own mother among her progeny.  I shall
never forget her astonishment when it first barked.  She boxed both its
ears, and then sat looking down at it with an expression of indignant
sorrow that was really touching.

"You're going to be a credit to your mother," she seemed to be saying
"you're a nice comfort to any one's old age, you are, making a row like
that.  And look at your ears flopping all over your face.  I don't know
where you pick up such ways."

He was a good little dog.  He did try to mew, and he did try to wash his
face with his paw, and to keep his tail still, but his success was not
commensurate with his will.  I do not know which was the sadder to
reflect upon, his efforts to become a creditable kitten, or his foster-
mother's despair of ever making him one.

Later on we gave her a baby squirrel to rear.  She was nursing a family
of her own at the time, but she adopted him with enthusiasm, under the
impression that he was another kitten, though she could not quite make
out how she had come to overlook him.  He soon became her prime
favourite.  She liked his colour, and took a mother's pride in his tail.
What troubled her was that it would cock up over his head.  She would
hold it down with one paw, and lick it by the half-hour together, trying
to make it set properly.  But the moment she let it go up it would cock
again.  I have heard her cry with vexation because of this.

One day a neighbouring cat came to see her, and the squirrel was clearly
the subject of their talk.

"It's a good colour," said the friend, looking critically at the supposed
kitten, who was sitting up on his haunches combing his whiskers, and
saying the only truthfully pleasant thing about him that she could think
of.

"He's a lovely colour," exclaimed our cat proudly.

"I don't like his legs much," remarked the friend.

"No," responded his mother thoughtfully, "you're right there.  His legs
are his weak point.  I can't say I think much of his legs myself."

"Maybe they'll fill out later on," suggested the friend, kindly.

"Oh, I hope so," replied the mother, regaining her momentarily dashed
cheerfulness.  "Oh yes, they'll come all right in time.  And then look at
his tail.  Now, honestly, did you ever see a kitten with a finer tail?"

"Yes, it's a good tail," assented the other; "but why do you

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