The Best British Short Stories of 1922 (page 4)

breaking heart: “You mean it?”

“I’ve got to,” she explained. She cried easily. “Dearie, you’ll leave peaceably? You won’t make a row? Now, for my sake! To oblige me! While you’re out to-day I’ll pack your suit-case and give it to the hall-porter for you to call for. Shall I, Charlie? Kiss me, dear. Don’t take your latch-key. Good-bye. You’ve been awfully decent to me. We’ll part friends, shall us?”

He kissed her, and went out to work, speaking no more. He had said all the things in his heart during the hours of that sleepless dawn. She knew how he loved her … though possibly she didn’t quite believe. He realised her position acutely, perhaps more acutely than his own. She had to live. And yet….

He had taken his latch-key the same as usual, and he found himself at the end of the day, going the same as usual to the tiny flat that was home if ever there was any place called home. He let himself in noiselessly. The little hall was dark. He stood in a corner against the coat cupboard. The flat was silent. He stood there a long while without moving and a clock chimed seven. He heard her singing–

“I’m for ever blowing bubbles….
Lal-la! la! la!… la! la! la!…”

She would be in her bedroom, sitting before the mirror in her diaphanous underwear, touching up her face. The pauses in the song made him see her…. Now she was using the eyebrow pencil…. The song went on and broke again; now she would be half turning from the mirror, curved on the gilt chair as he had so often seen her, hand-glass in hand, looking at the back of her head, and her eyelashes, and her profile, fining away all hard edges of rouge and lipstick. He felt quite peaceful as he imaged her.

Peace was shattered at a blast by the ringing of the front door bell. Then light streamed from the opened bedroom door, was switched off, and Kitty ran into the darkish hall. She clicked on the light by the front door, opened the door, and the big man came in.

He kissed her on the mouth.

Then Charlie stepped from beside the coat cupboard, suddenly as though some strong spring which held him there had been released, and the strong spring was in his tense body alone. For the first time in his life he felt all steel and wire and whipcord, and many fires. He threw himself on the intruder and fought for his woman.

Kitty did not scream. She knew better.

“Oh Charlie!” she panted. “For —- sake go! Go! I can’t have a row here. Oh, Charlie, be a good boy, do.”

“He _shall_ go,” said the other man.

He was a big man; and still young and lithe. Kitty opened the front door, whispering: “Oh, Charlie! Oh! Charlie!” and the man pushed Charlie out. The lift was not working at the moment, the landing was quiet, there was not a soul on the stairway beside the liftshaft when the man flung Charlie headlong down the first flight and broke him on the unyielding stone.

Charlie heard his own spine crack; but as the other, scared and pale, reached him, he heard something else also; the voice of Kitty, who stood above them, looking down, sobbing: “I c-c-can’t have a row here. It’d break me. Oh! Charlie! Oh Charlie! If you love me, go away!”

Charlie loved Kitty very much. “My back’s broken,” he whispered to the enemy bending over him. “But if you get me under the armpits, lift me down the stairs, and put me into the street, and if the hall-porter sees us go out tell him I’m dead drunk—-“

The man lifted him as instructed, an arm round him, just under the shoulder-blades and armpits. Below he could feel the crumpled weight sway and sag. He tried to be merciful in his handling. “D-d-do you no g-g-good,” he faltered as he lifted Charlie downstairs, “t-to get me into a mess. I’m sorry. D-d-didn’t mean…. But I’ve got a wife and don’t want hell raised…. You asked for it…. I’m sorry. I’m sorry….” When they reached the ground floor the single-handed porter was just carrying a passenger in the lift to the floor above, so they got unobserved into the street, a quietish street, a cul-de-sac.

“Take me a f-f-few d-d-doors off, and put me down,” said Charlie, and the sweat of pain ran down his face, but when the man had put him down against some area railings, and laid him straight, he was comfortable.

The other man simply vanished.

A taxi-driver found Charlie by-and-by, and the police fetched an ambulance and took him to the hospital, and in a white bed he lay sleepily, revealing nothing, all that night. But they found, searching for an address in his pockets, the address of his family, and they sent a message to his wife.

His wife received it early the next morning, and first she sent Maud for Uncle Henry and Aunt, who found that all was turning out as they prophesied, save for the slight deviation of Charlie’s accident.

“They don’t say exactly how bad he is?” said Uncle Henry. “Ah! but he was well enough to send for you! He knows which side his bread’s buttered. Yes! we shall have Master Charles creeping back again, very thankful to be in his home with every comfort, nursed by you; and I will give him the worse talking to be has ever had in his life!”

“And if he’s ill he can’t prevent the Vicar visiting him too,” said Aunt.

So Charlie’s wife set out to do her duty.

But still earlier that morning, instructed by the tremendous peace which was stealing over him that time was short, Charlie was making his first request. Would they please ring up _Shaftesbury_ 84 to ask for “Kitty” and tell her “Charlie” just wanted to see her very urgently for a few minutes at once, but not to be frightened, for everything would be perfectly all right?

Pending her arrival, which in a faltering voice over the phone she promised as soon as possible, Charlie asked the kindly Sister who was hovering near to help him die:

“Sister, when a friend of mine comes in, a young lady who isn’t used to–to seeing–things, if I go off suddenly as it were-what I’m afraid of is, she may be afraid if there’s any kind of struggle–I saw a fellow die once and he gave a sort of rattle–well, will you just pull the bed-clothes up over me, so that she doesn’t see?”

Kitty came in, wearing, perhaps incidentally, perhaps by some grace of kindness, the woollen frock, and she crept, shaking, round the screen, and stood beside Charlie, and said, “Oh Charlie! Oh Charlie!” opening his closing eyes.

“Kitty!” he smiled, “sing ‘Bubbles.'”

The look Sister–who had taken her right in–gave her, pried Kitty’s trembling mouth open like a crowbar, and leaning against Charlie’s cot she sang–

“When shadows creep,
When I’m asleep,
To lands of hope I stray,
Then at daybreak, when I awake….”

The Sister drew the bed-clothes shadily round Charlie’s face.

“… My blue bird flutters away,
I’m forever blowing bubbles….
Pretty bubbles in the air….”

Just then the good woman was brought into the ward, bearing with her messages from Maud worthy of Little Eva herself; and full of holy forgiveness; and at edge of the screen Sister met her.

“His wife?” said Sister. “A moment too late. I am sorry.” The good woman was looking at the bad woman by the bed, so Sister made a vague explanation.

“He just wanted a song,” she said.

A HEDONIST

By JOHN GALSWORTHY

(From _Pears’ Annual_ and _The Century Magazine_)

1921

Rupert K. Vaness remains freshly in my mind because he was so fine and large, and because he summed up in his person and behavior a philosophy which, budding before the war, hibernated during that distressing epoch, and is now again in bloom.

He was a New-Yorker addicted to Italy. One often puzzled over the composition of his blood. From his appearance, it was rich, and his name fortified the conclusion. What the K. stood for, however, I never learned; the three possibilities were equally intriguing. Had he a strain of Highlander with Kenneth or Keith; a drop of German or Scandinavian with Kurt or Knut; a blend of Syrian or Armenian with Kahalil or Kassim? The blue in his fine eyes seemed to preclude the last, but there was an encouraging curve in his nostrils and a raven gleam in his auburn hair, which, by the way, was beginning to grizzle and recede when I knew him. The flesh of his face, too, had sometimes a tired and pouchy appearance, and his tall body looked a trifle rebellious within his extremely well-cut clothes; but, after all, he was fifty-five. You felt that Vaness was a philosopher, yet he never bored you with his views, and was content to let you grasp his moving principle gradually through watching what he ate, drank, smoked, wore, and how he encircled himself with the beautiful things and people of this life. One presumed him rich, for one was never aware of money in his presence. Life moved round him with a certain noiseless ease or stood still at a perfect temperature, like the air in a conservatory round a choice blossom which a draught might shrivel.

This image of a flower in relation to Rupert K. Vaness pleases me, because of that little incident in Magnolia Gardens, near Charleston, South Carolina.

Vaness was the sort of a man of whom one could never say with safety whether he was revolving round a beautiful young woman or whether the beautiful young woman was revolving round him. His looks, his wealth, his taste, his reputation, invested him with a certain sun-like quality; but his age, the recession of his locks, and the advancement of his waist were beginning to dim his lustre, so that whether he was moth or candle was becoming a moot point. It was moot to me, watching him and Miss Sabine Monroy at Charleston throughout the month of March. The casual observer would have said that she was “playing him up,” as a young poet of my acquaintance puts it; but I was not casual. For me Vaness had the attraction of a theorem, and I was looking rather deeply into him and Miss Monroy.

That girl had charm. She came, I think, from Baltimore, with a strain in her, they said, of old Southern French blood. Tall and what is known as willowy, with dark chestnut hair, very broad, dark eyebrows, very soft, quick eyes, and a pretty mouth,–when she did not accentuate it with lip-salve,–she had more sheer quiet vitality than any girl I ever saw. It was delightful to watch her dance, ride, play tennis. She laughed with her eyes; she talked with a savouring vivacity. She never seemed tired or bored. She was, in one hackneyed word, attractive. And Vaness, the connoisseur, was quite obviously attracted. Of men who professionally admire beauty one can never tell offhand whether they definitely design to add a pretty woman to their collection, or whether their dalliance is just matter of habit. But he stood and sat about her, he drove and rode, listened to music, and played cards with her; he did all but dance with her, and even at times trembled on the brink of that. And his eyes, those fine, lustrous eyes of his, followed her about.

How she had remained unmarried to the age of twenty-six was a mystery till one reflected that with her power of enjoying life she could not yet have had the time. Her perfect physique was at full stretch for eighteen hours out of the twenty-four every day. Her sleep must have been like that of a baby. One figured her sinking into dreamless rest the moment her head touched the pillow, and never stirring till she sprang up into her bath.

As I say, for me Vaness, or rather his philosophy, _erat demonstrandum_. I was philosophically in some distress just then. The microbe of fatalism, already present in the brains of artists before the war, had been considerably enlarged by that depressing occurrence. Could a civilization, basing itself on the production of material advantages, do anything but insure the desire for more and more material advantages? Could it promote progress even of a material character except in countries whose resources were still much in excess of their population? The war had seemed to me to show that mankind was too combative an animal ever to recognize that the good of all was the good of one. The coarse-fibred, pugnacious, and self-seeking would, I had become sure, always carry too many guns for the refined and kindly.

The march of science appeared, on the whole, to be carrying us backward. I deeply suspected that there had been ages when the populations of this earth, though less numerous and comfortable, had been proportionately healthier than they were at present. As for religion, I had never had the least faith in Providence rewarding the pitiable by giving them a future life of bliss. The theory seemed to me illogical, for the more pitiable in this life appeared to me the thick-skinned and successful, and these, as we know, in the saying about the camel and the needle’s eye, our religion consigns wholesale to hell. Success, power, wealth, those aims of profiteers and premiers, pedagogues and pandemoniacs, of all, in fact, who could not see God in a dewdrop, hear Him in distant goat-bells, and scent Him in a pepper-tree, had always appeared to me akin to dry rot. And yet every day one saw more distinctly that they were the pea in the thimblerig of life, the hub of a universe which, to the approbation of the majority they represented, they were fast making uninhabitable. It did not even seem of any use to help one’s neighbors; all efforts at relief just gilded the pill and encouraged our stubbornly contentious leaders to plunge us all into fresh miseries. So I was searching right and left for something to believe in, willing to accept even Rupert K. Vaness and his basking philosophy. But could a man bask his life right out? Could just looking at fine pictures, tasting rare fruits and wines, the mere listening to good music, the scent of azaleas and the best tobacco, above all the society of pretty women, keep salt in my bread, an ideal in my brain? Could they? That’s what I wanted to know.

Every one who goes to Charleston in the spring, soon or late, visits Magnolia Gardens. A painter of flowers and trees, I specialize in gardens, and freely assert that none in the world is so beautiful as this. Even before the magnolias come out, it consigns the Boboli at Florence, the Cinnamon Gardens of Colombo, Concepcion at Malaga, Versailles, Hampton Court, the Generaliffe at Granada, and La Mortola to the category of “also ran.” Nothing so free and gracious, so lovely and wistful, nothing so richly coloured, yet so ghostlike, exists, planted by the sons of men. It is a kind of paradise which has wandered down, a miraculously enchanted wilderness. Brilliant with azaleas, or magnolias, it centres round a pool of dreamy water, overhung by tall trunks wanly festooned with the grey Florida moss. Beyond anything I have ever seen, it is otherworldly. And I went there day after day, drawn as one is drawn in youth by visions of the Ionian Sea, of the East, or the Pacific Isles. I used to sit paralysed by the absurdity of putting brush to canvas in front of that dream-pool. I wanted to paint of it a picture like that of the fountain, by Helleu, which hangs in the Luxembourg. But I knew I never should.

I was sitting there one sunny afternoon, with my back to a clump of azaleas, watching an old coloured gardener–so old that he had started life as an “owned” negro, they said, and certainly still retained the familiar suavity of the old-time darky–I was watching him prune the shrubs when I heard the voice of Rupert K. Vaness say, quite close:

“There’s nothing for me but beauty, Miss Monroy.”

The two were evidently just behind my azalea clump, perhaps four yards away, yet as invisible as if in China.

“Beauty is a wide, wide word. Define it, Mr. Vaness.”

“An ounce of fact is worth a ton of theory: it stands before me.”

“Come, now, that’s just a get-out. Is beauty of the flesh or of the spirit?”

“What is the spirit, as you call it? I’m a pagan.”

“Oh, so am I. But the Greeks were pagans.”

“Well, spirit is only the refined side of sensuous appreciations.”

“I wonder!”

“I have spent my life in finding that out.”

“Then the feeling this garden rouses in me is purely sensuous?”

“Of course. If you were standing there blind and deaf, without the powers of scent and touch, where would your feeling be?”

“You are very discouraging, Mr. Vaness.” “No, madam; I face facts. When I was a youngster I had plenty of fluffy aspiration towards I didn’t know what; I even used to write poetry.”

“Oh! Mr. Vaness, was it good?”

“It was not. I very soon learned that a genuine sensation was worth all the uplift in the world.”

“What is going to happen when your senses strike work?”

“I shall sit in the sun and fade out.”

“I certainly do like your frankness.”

“You think me a cynic, of course; I am nothing so futile, Miss Sabine. A cynic is just a posing ass proud of his attitude. I see nothing to be proud of in my attitude, just as I see nothing to be proud of in the truths of existence.”

“Suppose you had been poor?”

“My senses would be lasting better than they are, and when at last they failed, I should die quicker, from want of food and warmth, that’s all.”

“Have you ever been in love, Mr. Vaness?”

“I am in love now.”

“And your love has no element of devotion, no finer side?”

“None. It wants.”

“I have never been in love. But, if I were, I think I should want to lose myself rather than to gain the other.”

“Would you? Sabine, _I am in love with you_.”

“Oh! Shall we walk on?”

I heard their footsteps, and was alone again, with the old gardener lopping at his shrubs.

But what a perfect declaration of hedonism! How simple and how solid was the Vaness theory of existence! Almost Assyrian, worthy of Louis Quinze!

And just then the old negro came up.

“It’s pleasant settin’,” he said in his polite and hoarse half-whisper; “dar ain’t no flies yet.”

“It’s perfect, Richard. This is the most beautiful spot in the world.”

“Such,” he answered, softly drawling. “In deh war-time de Yanks nearly burn deh house heah–Sherman’s Yanks. Such dey did; po’ful angry wi’ ol’ massa dey was, ’cause he hid up deh silver plate afore he went away. My ol’ fader was de factotalum den. De Yanks took ‘m, suh; dey took ‘m, and deh major he tell my fader to show ‘m whar deh plate was. My ol’ fader he look at ‘m an’ say: ‘Wot yuh take me foh? Yuh take me foh a sneakin’ nigger? No, sub, you kin du wot yuh like wid dis chile; he ain’t goin’ to act no Judas. No, suh!’ And deh Yankee major he put ‘m up ag’in’ dat tall live-oak dar, an’ he say: ‘Yuh darn ungrateful nigger! I’s come all dis way to set yuh free. Now, whar’s dat silver plate, or I shoot yuh up, such!’ ‘No, suh,’ says my fader; ‘shoot away. I’s neber goin’ t’ tell.’ So dey begin to shoot, and shot all roun’ ‘m to skeer ‘m up. I was a li’l boy den, an’ I see my ol’ fader wid my own eyes, suh, standin’ thar’s bold’s Peter. No, suh, dey didn’t neber git no word from him. He loved deh folk heah; such he did, suh.”

The old man smiled, and in that beatific smile I saw not only his perennial pleasure in the well-known story, but the fact that he, too, would have stood there, with the bullets raining round him, sooner than betray the folk he loved.

“Fine story, Richard; but–very silly, obstinate old man, your father, wasn’t he?”

He looked at me with a sort of startled anger, which slowly broadened into a grin; then broke into soft, hoarse laughter.

“Oh, yes, suh, sueh; berry silly, obstinacious ol’ man. Yes, suh indeed.” And he went off cackling to himself. He had only just gone when I heard footsteps again behind my azalea clump, and Miss Monroy’s voice.

“Your philosophy is that of faun and nymph. Can you play the part?”

“Only let me try.” Those words had such a fevered ring that in imagination I could see Vaness all flushed, his fine eyes shining, his well-kept hands trembling, his lips a little protruded.

There came a laugh, high, gay, sweet.

“Very well, then; catch me!” I heard a swish of skirts against the shrubs, the sound of flight, an astonished gasp from Vaness, and the heavy _thud, thud_ of his feet following on the path through the azalea maze. I hoped fervently that they would not suddenly come running past and see me sitting there. My straining ears caught another laugh far off, a panting sound, a muttered oath, a far-away “_Cooee!_” And then, staggering, winded, pale with heat and vexation, Vaness appeared, caught sight of me, and stood a moment. Sweat was running down his face, his hand was clutching at his side, his stomach heaved–a hunter beaten and undignified. He muttered, turned abruptly on his heel, and left me staring at where his fastidious dandyism and all that it stood for had so abruptly come undone.

I know not how he and Miss Monroy got home to Charleston; not in the same car, I fancy. As for me, I travelled deep in thought, aware of having witnessed something rather tragic, not looking forward to my next encounter with Vaness.

He was not at dinner, but the girl was there, as radiant as ever, and though I was glad she had not been caught, I was almost angry at the signal triumph of her youth. She wore a black dress, with a red flower in her hair, and another at her breast, and had never looked so vital and so pretty. Instead of dallying with my cigar beside cool waters in the lounge of the hotel, I strolled out afterward on the Battery, and sat down beside the statue of a tutelary personage. A lovely evening; from some tree or shrub close by emerged an adorable faint fragrance, and in the white electric light the acacia foliage was patterned out against a thrilling, blue sky. If there were no fireflies abroad, there should have been. A night for hedonists, indeed!

And suddenly, in fancy, there came before me Vaness’s well-dressed person, panting, pale, perplexed; and beside him, by a freak of vision, stood the old darky’s father, bound to the live-oak, with the bullets whistling past, and his face transfigured. There they stood alongside the creed of pleasure, which depended for fulfilment on its waist measurement; and the creed of love, devoted unto death!

“Aha!” I thought, “which of the two laughs _last_?”

And just then I saw Vaness himself beneath a lamp, cigar in mouth, and cape flung back so that its silk lining shone. Pale and heavy, in the cruel white light, his face had a bitter look. And I was sorry–very sorry, at that moment for Rupert K. Vaness.

THE BAT AND BELFRY INN

By ALAN GRAHAM

(From _The Story-Teller_)

1922

It was the maddest and most picturesque hotel at which we have ever stopped. Tony and I were touring North Wales. We had left Llandudno that morning in the twoseater, lunched at Festiniog, and late in the afternoon were trundling down a charming valley with the reluctant assistance of a road whose surface, if it ever had possessed such an asset, had long since vanished. On rounding one of the innumerable hairpin bends on our road, there burst upon us the most gorgeous miniature scene that we had ever encountered. I stopped the car almost automatically.

“Oh, George, what a charming hotel!” exclaimed Tony. “Let’s stop and have tea.”

Tony, I should mention, is my wife. She is intensely practical.

I had not noticed the hotel, for before us the valley opened out into a perfect stage setting. From the road the land fell sharply a hundred feet to a rocky mountain stream, the rustle of whose water came up to us faintly like the music heard in a sea-shell. Beyond rose hills–hill upon hill lit patchily by the sun, so that their contours were a mingling of brilliant purple heather, red-brown bracken, and indigo shadow. Far down the valley the stream glinted, mirror-like, through a veil of trees.

And Tony spoke of tea!

I dragged my eyes from the magnet of the view and found that I had stopped the car within a few yards of a little hotel that must have been planted there originally by someone with a soul. It lay by the open roadside five miles from anywhere. It was built of the rough grey-green stone of the district, but it was rescued from the commonplace by its leaded windows, the big old beams that angled across its white plastered gables, and by the clematis and late tea roses that clung about its porch.

I could hardly blame Tony for her materialism. The hotel blended admirably with its surroundings. There was nothing about it of the beerhouse-on-the-mountain-top so dear to the German mind. It looked quiet, refined and restful, and one felt instinctively that it would be managed in a fashion in keeping with all about it.

“By Jove, Tony!” I said, as I drew up to the clematis-covered porch, “we might do worse than stop here for a day or two.”

“We’ll have tea anyhow, and see what we think of it.” I clattered over the red-tiled floor, and when my eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light that contrasted so well with the sunshine without, found myself in a small sunshiny room, with a low ceiling, oak-rafted, some comfortable chairs, an old eight-day clock stopped at ten-thirty-five, and a man.

He was a long thin man, clean-shaven, wearing an old shooting coat and a pair of shabby grey flannel trousers. He smoked a pipe and read in a book. At my entrance he did not look up, and I set him down as a guest in the hotel.

One side of the room was built of obscured glass panes, with an open square in the middle and a ledge upon which rested several suggestive empty glasses, so I crossed to this hospitable-looking gap, and tapped upon the ledge. Several repetitions bringing no response, I turned to the only living creature who appeared to be available.

“Can you tell me, sir, if we can have tea in the hotel,” I asked.

The long man started, looked up, closed his book, and jumped to his feet as if galvanized to life.

“Of course, of course, of course,” he cried hastily, and added, as by an afterthought, “of course.”

I may have shown a natural surprise at this almost choral response, for he pulled himself together and became something more explicit.

“I’ll see to it at once,” he said hurriedly. “I’m–I’m the proprietor, you know. You won’t mind if we’re–if we’re a little upset. You see, I–I’ve just moved in. Left me by an uncle, you know, an uncle in Australia. I’ll see to it at once. Anything you would like–specially fancy? Bread and butter now, or cake perhaps? Will you take a seat–two seats.” (Tony had followed me in). “And look at yesterday’s paper. Oh yes, you can have tea–of course, of course, of course. Of—-“

His words petered out, as he clattered off down a like-flagged passage. I looked at Tony and raised my eyebrows.

“Seems a trifle mad,” I said.

“How delightfully cool,” said she, looking round the old-fashioned room appraisingly, “and so clean! I think we’ll stop.”

“Let’s have tea before we decide,” I suggested. “The proprietor is distinctly eccentric, to say the least of it.”

“He looked quite a superior man. I thought,” said Tony. “Not the least like a Welshman.”

Tony herself comes from far north of the Tweed.

The hotel was small, and the kitchen, apparently, not far away, for we could not avoid hearing sounds of what appeared to be a heated argument coming from the direction in which mine host had vanished. We were used to heated arguments in the hotels at which we had put up, but they had invariably taken place in Welsh, whereas this one was undoubtedly in English. Snatches of it reached our ears.

“… haven’t the pluck of a rabbit, Bill.”

“… all very well, but—-“

“I’m not afraid, I’ll—-“

Then our host returned.

“It’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming,” he said, his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, jingling loose change in a manner that suggested agitation.

He stood looking down at us as though we were something he didn’t quite know what to do with, and then an idea seemed to strike him, and be vanished for a moment to reappear almost immediately in the square gap of the bar window.

“Have a drink while you’re waiting?” he asked, much more naturally.

I looked at my watch. It was half-past four. Very free-and-easy with the licensing laws, I thought.

“I thought six o’clock was opening time?” I said.

The thin man was overcome with confusion. His face flushed red, he shut the window down with a bang, and a moment after came round to us again.

“Awfully sorry,” he stammered apologetically. “Might get the house a bad name. Deuced inconsiderate of–of my uncle not to leave me a book of the rules. Very bad break, that–what?”

Evidently Tony was not so much impressed by the eccentricities of our host as was I. She approved of the hotel and its situation, and had made up her mind to stop. I could tell it by her face as she addressed the proprietor.

“Have you accommodation if we should make up our minds to stay here for a few days?” she asked.

“Stay here? You want to stay?” he repeated, consternation written large all over his face. “Good G—- I mean certainly, of course, of course.”

He bolted down the passage like a rabbit, and we heard hoarse whispering from the direction in which he had gone.

“Dotty?” I suggested.

“Not a bit of it,” retorted Tony. “Nervous because he is new to his job, but very anxious to be obliging. We shall do splendidly here.”

I shrugged my shoulders and said no more, because I know Tony. I have been married to her for years and years.

Light steps upon the tiles heralded something new–different, but equally surprising.

“Tea is served, madam, if you will step this way.”

She was the apotheosis of all waitresses. Her frock was black, but it was of silk and finely cut. Her apron, of coarse white cotton, was grotesque against it. She had neat little feet encased in high-heeled shoes, and her stockings were of silk. Her common cap that she wore sat coquettishly on her dark curls, and her face was charming, though petrified in that unnatural expression of distance which, as a rule, only the very best menials can attain.

There were no other guests in the coffee-room, and this marvel of maids devoted the whole of her attention to us, standing over us like a column of ice which thawed only to attend upon our wants. There was no getting past her veil of reticence. Tony tried her with questions, but “Yes, madam,” “No, madam,” and “Certainly, madam,” appeared the sum of her vocabulary. Yet when we sent her to the kitchen for more hot water, we were conscious of a whispering and giggling which assured us that off the stage she could thaw.

“We must stay a day or two,” said Tony. “I’m dying to paidle in that burn.”

“My dear, how often have you promised me that you would never subject me to Scotch after we were married!” I protested.

“When I see a burn I e’en must juist paidle in it,” retorted Tony, deliberately forswearing herself. “So we’ll book that room.”

At that moment the celestial waitress returned with the hot water, and Tony made known her determination. I drive the car, but Tony supplies the driving-power.

“Certainly, madam. I shall speak to Mr. Gunthorpe.” Quickly she returned.

“Number ten is vacant. The boots and chambermaid are both away at a sheep-trial, but we expect them back any moment. I shall show you the room, madam, and if you will leave the car, sir, until the boots returns—-“

“That will be all right. No hurry, no hurry.”

While we were examining our bedroom and finding it all that could be desired, I heard a car draw up before the hotel, and the sound of voices in conversation. A few minutes later, on going downstairs, I made the acquaintance of the boots. He was obviously awaiting me by my car, and touched his forelock in a manner rarely seen off the stage. He wore khaki cord breeches with leather leggings, a striped shirt open at the neck, and chewed a straw desperately. In no other respect did he resemble the boots of an out-of-the-way hotel.

“Garage round this way, sir,” he said, guiding me to my destination, which, I found, already contained a two-seater of the same make as my own.

“Ripping little car, eh?” said the boots, chewing vigorously at his straw as he stood, his hands deep in what are graphically known as “go-to-hell” pockets and his legs well straddled. “Hop over anything, what? Topping weather we’re having–been like this for weeks. If you don’t mind, old chap, you might wiggle her over this way a bit. Something else might blow in, eh?”

I looked at this latest manifestation with undisguised astonishment, but he was imperturbable, and merely chewed his straw with renewed energy.

“That’s the stuff, old lad,” he said, as I laid the car in position. “What now? Shall I give you a hand up with the trunk, or will you hump it yourself? Don’t mind me a bit. I’m ready for anything.”

He looked genial, but I found him familiar, so with a curt:

“Take it to number ten,” I strode off to overtake Tony, whom I saw half-way down a rough path that led to her beloved “burn.”

“I’ve seen the chambermaid,” she said, when I overtook her. “Such a pretty girl, but very shy and unsophisticated. Quite a girl, but wears a wedding-ring.”

I watched Tony “paidling” for some time, but as the amusement consisted mainly of getting her under-apparel wet, I grew tired of it, and climbed back to the hotel.

The bar-window was open once more in the little lounge, and Mr. Gunthorpe was behind, his arms resting upon the ledge.

“Have a drink?” he said, as I entered. “It’s all right now. The balloon’s gone up.”

I looked at my watch. It was after six o’clock.

“I’ll have a small Scotch and soda,” I decided.

“This is on the house,” said the eccentric landlord.

He produced two glasses and filled them, and I noticed that he took money from his pocket and placed it in the till.

“Well, success to the new management!” I said, raising my glass to his.

“Cheerio, and thank you,” said he, smiling genially upon me.

He seemed to me more self-possessed and less eccentric than he had appeared upon our arrival. I determined to draw him out.

“It’s funny that an Australian should have owned an hotel away up in the Welsh hills,” I hazarded. “Did he die recently?”

“Australia? You must have misunderstood me,” said Mr. Gunthorpe with a hunted look in his eyes. “Very likely–very likely I said Ostend.”

“Ostend? Well, possibly I did,” I agreed, feeling certain that I had made no mistake. “Had he a hotel there as well?”

“Yes, yes. Of course, of course, of course,” agreed the landlord, largely redundant.

“And are you running that as well?”

“Heaven forbid!” he exclaimed, with a shudder. “You see … this–this is just a small legacy. It’ll be all right by and by. All right, all right. Let’s have another drink.”

“With me,” I insisted.

“Not at all, not at all. On the house. All for the good of the house. Come along, Bob, have a drink!”

It was the boots who had now entered, and he strolled up to the bar with all the self-possession of a welcome guest.

“Just a spot of Scotch, old thing!” he said brightly. “It’s a hard life. Shaking down good and comfy, laddie?”–this last to me. “Ask for anything you fancy. It doesn’t follow you’ll get it, but if we have it, it’s yours. Tinkle, tinkle; crash, crash!” With this unusual toast he raised his glass and drained it.

“Have another,” he said. “Three Scotches, Boniface.”

I protested. This was too hot and fast for me altogether. Besides, I did not fancy being indebted to this somewhat overwhelming boots. My protest was of no avail. The glasses were filled while yet the words were upon my lips. I thought of Tony, and trembled. Common decency would force me to stand still another round before I could cry a halt.

“All well in the buttery?” asked the boots, in a confidential tone of the landlord.

“The banquet is in preparation,” replied the latter. “Everything is in train.”

“Heaven grant that it comes out of train reasonably, laddie,” said boots fervently. “But you know Molly. I wouldn’t trust an ostrich to her cooking. Here’s hoping for the best.”

He drained his glass again, and this time I managed to get a show. “Three more whiskies, please landlord,” and Tony in clear view cut up into nice squares by the little leaded panes. I got mine absorbed just in time, and was on the doorstep to meet her, draggle-skirted and untidy, but enthusiastic about her “burn.” She broke her vows three times on the way up to number ten, and excused her lapses on the ground that the “burn” was the perfect image of one near a place she called “Pairth.”

When she rang for hot water to wash away the traces of her ablutions in the burn, I had my first view of the chambermaid. I found her even more ravishing than the waitress downstairs, and with the additional advantage that she was not stand-offish–indeed, she was a giggler. She giggled at my slightest word, and Tony altered her first impression and dubbed her a forward hussy. Personally, I liked the girl, though she broke all precedent by attending upon us in a silk blouse and a tailor-made tweed skirt.

When I wandered downstairs before dinner I came upon her again, this time unmistakably in the arms of the ubiquitous boots. I had walked innocently into a small sitting-room where a lamp already shone, and I came upon the romantic picture unexpectedly. With a murmured word of inarticulate apology I made to retire.

“It’s all right, old fruit, don’t hurry away,” said boots affably. “Awfully sorry, and all that. Quite forgot it was a public room, don’t you know.”

The chambermaid giggled once more and bolted, straightening her cap as she went.

“You don’t mind, do you?” continued boots, making a clumsy show of trimming the lamp. “Warm is the greeting when seas have rolled between us. Perhaps not quite that, but you see the idea, eh?”

He would doubtless have said more, being evidently of a cheery nature, had not the waitress of the afternoon appeared in the doorway, her face as frozen as a mask of ice.

“Bob–kennel!” she said sharply, and held the door wide.

The cheeriness vanished and the boots followed it through the open doorway.

“I trust you will excuse him, sir,” said the waitress deferentially. “He is just a little deranged, but quite harmless. We employ him out of charity, sir.”

I may have been mistaken, but a sound uncommonly like the chambermaid’s giggle came to me from the passage without.

The sound of a car stopping outside the hotel drew me to the window as the waitress left me, and I was in time to see an old gentleman with a long white beard step from the interior of a Daimler landaulette, the door of which was held open by a dignified chauffeur, whose attire seemed to consist mainly of brass buttons.

A consultation evidently took place in the smoking-room or bar between this patriarch and the proprietor, and then I heard agitated voices in the passage without.

“It’s a blinking invasion,” said Mr. Gunthorpe. “I tell you we can’t do it. Good heavens, they threaten to stop a month if they are comfortable.”

“Don’t worry then, old bean. They won’t stop long.” This in the voice of boots.

“And they want special diet. Old girl can’t eat meat. Suffers from a duodenal ulcer. I tell you, we got quick intimate! We can’t do it, Molly.”

“Fathead, of course we can. I’ll concoct her something the like of which her what-you-may-call-it has never before tackled. Run along, Bill, and be affable.”

“Shall I stand them a drink?”–Mr. Gunthorpe again.

“Do, old bean. I’ll come and have one, too,” said boots.

“You won’t, Bob. You’ll see to the chauffeur and the car, _and_ the luggage.”

“Hang the luggage! I’ll stand the chauffeur a drink.”

Then the female voice spoke warningly.

“You’ve had enough drinks already, both of you,” it said. “You ought to bear in mind that you’re not running the hotel just for your two selves.”

“It’s all right, old girl. There’s plenty for everybody. Cellar’s full of it.”

The voices died away, and I strolled out into the bar once more. Mr. Gunthorpe was being affable, according to instructions, to the old gentleman, while an old lady in a bonnet looked on piercingly.

“Quite all right about the diet,” the landlord was saying as I entered. “We make a specialty of special diets. In fact, our ordinary diet is a special diet. Certainly, of course. We’ve got mulligatawny soup, sardines, roast beef, trifle and gorgonzola cheese. Perhaps you’ll have a drink while you wait?”

“Certainly not, sir,” replied the old gentleman testily. “You seem to be unable to comprehend. My wife has a duodenal ulcer, sir. Had it for fourteen years in September, and you talk to me of mulligatawny soup.”

“I quite understand, of course, of course,” replied Mr. Gunthorpe urbanely. “Everything of a–an irritating character will be left out of the–“

“Then it won’t be mulligatawny soup, you fool!” exploded the old lady, whose pressure I had seen rising for some time.

“Certainly not, madam. Of course, indubitably. We’ll call it beef-tea, and it will never know.”

“What will never know?” asked the old gentleman, with an air of puzzlement.

“Madam’s duodenal ulcer, sir,” replied the landlord, with a deferential bow, dedicated, doubtless, to that organ.

Each separate hair in the old gentleman’s beard began to curl and coil with the electricity of exasperation, and at every moment I expected to see sparks fly out from it. The old lady folded her hands across her treasure, and looked daggers at the landlord.

“How far is it to the nearest hotel, John?” she demanded acidly.

“Too far to go to-night, Mary. I’m afraid we must put up with this–this sanatorium,” replied her husband.

As a diversion I demanded an appetizer–a gin and bitters.

Mr. Gunthorpe’s face lit up and he bolted behind the bar.

“Certainly, of course. Have it with me!” he exclaimed eagerly, his eyes full of gratitude for the diversion.

I had the greatest difficulty in paying for our two drinks, for of course Mr. Gunthorpe would not let me drink alone, and I was equally insistent that the house had done enough for me.

“Then we must have another,” he declared, as the only way out of the difficulty.

Fortunately for me, Tony appeared on the scene, clothed and in her right mind, speaking once more the English language, and I contrived to avoid further stimulation. Mr. Gunthorpe looked at me reproachfully as I moved off with my wife. I could see that he dreaded further interrogation on the subject of diets.

Nothing further of moment occurred before dinner. Tony and I went out and admired the wonderful view in the dim half-light, and just as the midges got the better of us–even my foul old pipe did not give us the victory–the gong sounded for dinner and covered our retreat.

It was the maddest dinner in which I have ever participated. Three tables were laid in the little coffee-room, and, as Tony and I were the first to put in an appearance, I had the curiosity to look at the bill of fare at the first table I came to.

“This way, sir, if you please,” said the chilling voice of our exemplary waitress.

Already I had deciphered “beef-tea” and “steamed sole” on the card, and concluded that the table was reserved for the duodenal ulcer. At the table to which we were conducted I found “mulligatawny soup” figuring on the menu, and I wondered.

The old lady and gentleman were ushered to their seats by the boots, now smartly dressed in striped trousers and black coat and waistcoat. I say “smartly,” because the clothes were of good material, and the wearer looked easily the best-clad man in the hotel.

The two places laid at the third table were taken by a boy and girl of such youthful appearance that both Tony and I were astonished to find them living alone in an hotel. The boy might have been fifteen and the girl twelve at the most; but that they were overwhelmingly at home in their surroundings was quickly manifest, as was the fact that they were brother and sister. This latter fact was evidenced by the manner in which the boy bullied the girl, and contradicted her at every opportunity.

There was something of a strained wait when all of us had taken our places. I saw the old gentleman, eye-glasses on the tip of his nose, studying the bill of fare intently. Then he turned to his wife.

“Minced chicken and rice–peptonized,” he said suspiciously. “Did you ever hear of such a dish, Mary?”

“Never. But nothing would surprise me in this place,” replied his wife, looking round the room with a censorious eye that even included the innocent Tony and myself.

The two children chuckled. They wore an air of expectancy such as I have noticed in my nephews and nieces when I have been inveigled into taking them to Maskelyne’s show. They seemed on very intimate terms with the waitress, and the mere sight of the boots sent them into fits of suppressed chuckling. He, standing by the sideboard, napkin over arm, added to their hilarity by winking violently at regular intervals. Catching my eye upon him, he crossed to our table.

“Everything all right, eh?” he said, glancing over the lay-out of our table.

“Everything–except that so far we have had no food,” I replied.

“It’s the soup,” he said, leaning confidentially to my ear. “The cat fell into it, and they’re combing it out of her fur. Have a drink while you wait? No! All right, old thing. I dare say you know best when you’ve had enough. Shut up, you kids! Don’t you see you’re irritating the old boy.”

This in a hoarse aside to the children at the next table. It made them giggle the more.

“Surely they are very young to be stopping here alone!” said Tony, with a touch of her national inquisitiveness.

“Very sad case, madam,” replied the boots. “We found them here when we came. You know–wrapped in a blanket on the doorstep. Not quite, perhaps, but you see the idea. Sort of wards of the hotel.”

He was interrupted by the entrance of the waitress with soup. She gave him a frozen glance and a jerk of the head, and he vanished to the kitchen, to return with more soup, and at last we got a start on our meal. The soup was good notwithstanding the story of the cat. It really was mulligatawny. There was no doubt about that.

The old couple were not so well satisfied. They sipped a little, had a whispered consultation, and beckoned the boots.

“Waiter, why do you call this beef-tea?” demanded the old gentleman.

“You can’t have me there, my lad,” retorted boots cheerily. “From the Latin beef, beef and tea, tea–beef-tea. Take a spoonful of tea and a lump of beef, shake well together, simmer gently till ready, and serve with a ham-frill.”

The old gentleman’s face showed deep purple against his white whiskers, and the waitress left our table hurriedly, hustled the boots from the room, and crossed to the old couple. I could not hear all she said, but I understood that the boots was liable to slight delusions, but quite harmless. The beef-tea was the best that could be prepared on such short notice, and so on.

It was the main course of the meal that brought the climax. It was roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, excellently cooked, and, so far as we were concerned, efficiently served. The irrepressible boots had, however, by this time drifted back to duty. I saw him bear plates to the old people’s table containing a pale mess which I rightly concluded was the “minced chicken and rice–peptonized,” already referred to by the old gentleman. The couple eyed it suspiciously while their attendant hovered near, apparently awaiting the congratulations which were bound to follow the consumption of the dish.

“John, it’s beef!” screamed the old lady, starting to her feet and spluttering.

“Damme, so it is!” confirmed her husband, after a bare mouthful. “Hi, you–scoundrel, poisoner, assassin–send the manager here at once.”

He waved his napkin in fury, and boots cocked an eye at him curiously.

“Won’t you have another try?” he urged. “Be sporty about it. Hang it, it looks like chopped chicken, and it is chopped. I chopped it myself. Have another try. You’ll believe it in time if you persevere. It’s the first step that counts, you know. I used to be able to say that in French, but–“

He only got so far because the old gentleman had been inarticulate with rage.

“Fetch the manager, and don’t dare utter another word, confound you!” he shouted.

A few moments later our friend Mr. Gunthorpe entered. His eyes were bright, and a satisfied smile rested on his lips.

“Good evening, sir,” he began affably. “I believe you sent for me. I hope everything is to your taste?”

“Everything is nothing of the sort, sir!” retorted the old gentleman. “You have attempted a gross fraud upon us, sir. I find on the menu, chicken, and it is nothing more nor less than chopped beef. And ‘peptonized’–peptonized be hanged, sir! It’s no more peptonized than my hat!”

“Well, sir, as for your hat I can say nothing, but–“

“None of your insolence, sir. I insist on having this–filth taken away and something suitable put before us. My wife has possessed a duodenal ulcer for fourteen years come September, and–“

“Be hanged to your duodenal ulcer! As this isn’t its birthday, why should it have a blinking banquet. Let it take pot-luck with the rest of us.”

A sudden burst of uncontrollable laughter made me turn sharply, to find that the reserve had fallen from our chilly waitress, who was vainly endeavouring to smother her laughter in her professional napkin.

“Oh, Bill!” she cried, “you’ve done it now. The game’s up.”

The old lady and gentleman arose in outraged dignity and started to leave the room, when a diversion was caused by the entrance of a pleasant-faced lady in hat and cloak. I had been semi-conscious for some moments of a motor-engine running at the hotel door.

“Oh, Mr. Gunthorpe, what luck!” cried the newcomer. “I’ve collected a full staff, and brought them all up from Dolgelly with me, look you.”

“Thank heaven!” exclaimed the proprietor. “As soon as your barmaid is on her job we’ll drink all their healths. I hope you won’t be annoyed, Miss Jones, but I fear, I very greatly fear, you will lose a couple of likely customers at dawn or soon after. Here they are. Perhaps you can still pacify them. I can’t.”

Miss Jones turned to the old couple, who were waiting for the doorway to clear, with a disarming and conciliatory smile.

“I hope you will make allowances,” she said, with a musical Welsh intonation. “I am the manageress, and everything is at sixes and sevens, look you. This morning I had trouble with the staff, and just to annoy me they all cleared off together. I had to leave the hotel to see what I could find in Dolgelly. Mr. Gunthorpe and the other guests in the hotel very kindly offered to see to things while I was away, and I’m sure they have done their best, indeed.”

“Done their best to poison us, certainly,” growled the old gentleman. “My wife has a duo–“

“That’s all right, old chap,” interrupted Mr. Gunthorpe. “Miss Jones is an expert in those things. She’ll feed it the proper tack, believe me. Give her a chance, and don’t blame her for our shortcomings.”

By this time the whole mock staff had taken the stage–waitress, boots, chambermaid, and a pleasant-faced lady of matronly appearance who, I learnt, was Mrs. Gunthorpe and the mother of the two children of whom we had been told such a harrowing history.

“And just think, dear,” said Tony, smiling at me across the table. “The boots and the chambermaid are on their honeymoon. He is a journalist.”

“How do you know all this?” I demanded suspiciously.

“I wormed the whole thing out of the chambermaid at the very beginning,” said Tony. “I didn’t tell you because I thought it would be more fun.”

Miss Jones succeeded in pacifying the old couple somehow–mainly, I think, by promises of a new regime–and we left them in the coffee-room looking almost cheerful.

Tony and I went out to talk in the moonlight, while I smoked an after-dinner cigar. We were gone for some time, and on our return decided to go straight upstairs to bed. I noticed that lights still burned in the coffee-room, and heard the sound of voices from that direction. Thinking that some late guests had arrived during our absence, I had the curiosity to glance round the door. The whole of our late staff sat round a table, on which were arrayed much food and several gilt-topped bottles.

“Come along. Do join us!” cried Mr. Gunthorpe, sighting us at once.

“Come and celebrate the end of this bat in the belfry sort of management,” added boots, holding high a sparkling glass.

It ended in _Tony_ and I being dragged into the celebration, and _that_ ended in quite a late sitting.

Tony and I lingered on for over a week at the Bat and Belfry Inn, as we all called it, and so, strange to say, did the duodenal couple, whom, indeed, we left there, special-dieting to their hearts’ content.

THE LIE

By HOLLOWAY HORN

(From _The Blue Magazine_ and _Harper’s Bazar_)

1922

The hours had passed with the miraculous rapidity which tinctures time when one is on the river, and now overhead the moon was a gorgeous yellow lantern in a greyish purple sky.

The punt was moored at the lower end of Glover’s Island on the Middlesex side, and rose and fell gently on the ebbing tide.

A girl was lying back amidst the cushions, her hands behind her head, looking up through the vague tracery of leaves to the soft moonlight. Even in the garish day she was pretty, but in that enchanting dimness she was wildly beautiful. The hint of strength around her mouth was not quite so evident perhaps. Her hair was the colour of oaten straw in autumn and her deep blue eyes were dark in the gathering night.

But despite her beauty, the man’s face was averted from her. He was gazing out across the smoothly-flowing water, troubled and thoughtful. A good-looking face, but not so strong as the girl’s in spite of her prettiness, and enormously less vital.

Ten minutes before he had proposed to her and had been rejected.

It was not the first time, but he had been very much more hopeful than on the other occasions.

The air was softly, embracingly warm that evening. Together they had watched the lengthening shadows creep out across the old river. And it was spring still, which makes a difference. There is something in the year’s youth–the sap is rising in the plants–something there is, anyway, beyond the sentimentality of the poets. And overhead was the great yellow lantern gleaming at them through the branches with ironic approval.

But, in spite of everything, she had shaken her head and all he received was the maddening assurance that she “liked” him.

“I shall never marry,” she had concluded. “Never. You know why.”

“Yes, I know,” the man said miserably. “Carruthers.”

And so he was looking out moodily, almost savagely, across the water when the temptation came to him.

He would not have minded quite so much if Carruthers had been alive, but he was dead and slept in the now silent Salient where a little cross marked his bed. Alive one could have striven against him, striven desperately, although Carruthers had always been rather a proposition. But now it seemed hopeless–a man cannot strive with a memory. It was not fair–so the man’s thoughts were running. He had shared Carruthers’ risks, although he had come back. This persistent and exclusive devotion to a man who would never return to her was morbid. Suddenly, his mind was made up.

“Olive,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied quietly.

“What I am going to tell you I do for both our sakes. You will probably think I’m a cad, but I’m taking the risk.” He was sitting up but did not meet her eyes.

“What on earth are you talking about?” she demanded.

“You know that–apart from you–Carruthers and I were pals?”

“Yes,” she said wondering. And suddenly she burst out petulantly. “What is it you want to say?”

“He was no better than other men,” he replied bluntly. “It is wrong that you should sacrifice your life to a memory, wrong that you should worship an idol with feet of clay.”

“I loath parables,” she said coldly. “Will you tell me exactly what you mean about feet of clay?” The note in her voice was not lost on the man by her side.

“I don’t like telling you–under other conditions I wouldn’t. But I do it for both our sakes.”

“Then, for goodness sake, do it!”

“I came across it accidentally at the Gordon Hotel at Brighton. He stayed there, whilst he was engaged to you, with a lady whom he described as Mrs. Carruthers. It was on his last leave.”

“Why do you tell me this?” she asked after a silence; her voice was low and a little husky.

“Surely, my dear, you must see. He was no better than other men. The ideal you have conjured up is no ideal. He was a brave soldier, a darned brave soldier, and–until we both fell in love with you–my pal. But it is not fair that his memory should absorb you. It’s–it’s unnatural.”

“I suppose you think I should be indignant?” There was no emotion of any kind in her voice.

“I simply want you to see that your idol has feet of clay,” he said, with the stubbornness of a man who feels he is losing.

“What has that to do with it? You know I loved him.”

“Other girls have loved—-” he said bitterly.

“And forgotten? Yes, I know,” she interrupted him. “But I do not forget, that is all.”

“But after what I have told you. Surely—-“

“You see I knew,” she said, even more quietly than before.

“You–knew?”

“Yes. It was I who was with him. It was his last leave,” she added thoughtfully.

And only the faint noise of the water and the wistful wind in the trees overhead broke the silence.

A GIRL IN IT

By ROWLAND KENNEY

(From _The New Age_)

1922

I was just cooking a couple of two-eyed steaks when Black Mick walked in, and, noting the look in his eyes and being for some reason in an expansive mood, I offered him a sit down. After comparing notes on the various possibilities of the district with regard to job-getting, we turned on to a discussion of the relative moralities of begging and stealing. But in this, I found, Mick was not vitally interested–both were too deeply immoral for him to touch. For Mick was a worker. He liked work. Vagrancy to him made no appeal. To “settle down” was his one definite desire. But jobs refused to hold him, and the road gripped him in spite of himself. So the problem presented itself to him in an abstract way only; to me there was a real–but let that go.

Mick’s respectability was uncanny. He could speculate on these things as if they were matters affecting none of us there. In that fourpenny doss-house he remained as aloof as a god, and in some vague way the calmness of the man in face of this infringing realism for a time repelled me.

We cleaned up my packet to the last shred and crumb, and I found a couple of fag ends in my pocket. We smoked silently. Mick’s manner gradually affected me. We became somehow mentally detached from the place in which we sat. We were in a corner of the room, at the end of the longest table, and so incurious about the rest of the company that neither of us knew whether there were two or twenty men there. For a while Mick was absorbed in his smoke, and then I saw him slowly turn his head to the door. It was a languid movement. His dark eyes were half veiled as he watched for the entrance of someone who fumbled at the latch. Then, in an instant, as the face of the newcomer thrust forward, Black Mick’s whole personality seemed to change. His eyelids lifted, showing great, glowing eyes staring from a cold set face. His back squared, and the table, clamped to the floor, creaked protestingly as his sprawled legs were drawn up and the knees pressed against the under part. A second only he stared, then slung himself full forward.

The newcomer was a live man, quicker than Mick. The recognition between the two was apparently mutual; for as Mick vaulted the table the other rushed forward, grabbed the poker from the grate, and got home on Mick’s head with it. Before I could get near enough to grip, the door again banged and our visitor had disappeared.

“There was a girl in it,” said Mick to me when we took the road together a fortnight later, and that was as far as he got in explanation. It was enough. I could read men a little. To Mick women–all women–were sacred creatures. In the scheme of nature woman was good and man was evil. Passion was a male attribute, an evil fire that scorched and burned and rendered impotent the protesting innocence of hapless femininity….

So we tramped. One public works after the other we made, always with the same result–no chance of a take-on. Often we got a lift in food, ale, or even cash from some gang where one of us was known, but that was all. Everywhere the reply to our request for a job was the same: Full Up. And then we made Liverpool.

My favourite kip in Liverpool was Bevington House in the Scotland Road district, but on this occasion I had news that Twinetoes, an old mate of mine, had taken in that night at a private doss-house, and the probability was that he would not only give us a lift but would be able to tell us pretty accurately what was the state of the labour market.

It was a rotten kip. Four men were squabbling over the frying pan when we entered, and over against the far wall sat an old crone, crooning an Irish song. The men were of the ordinary dock rat type, scraggily built, unshaven, with cunning, shifty eyes. The woman had an old browned-green kerchief round her head, and a ragged shawl drawn tightly round her breasts. One side of her face had evidently been burned some time, and the eye on that side ran continually.

“Got any money, dearie?” she said to Mick.

“No, mother,” Mick replied, gently taking her hand. “Is there a fellow here called Twinetoes?”

“No blurry use t’me if no money,” and she went on with her damnable singing, like a lost soul wailing for its natural hell.

The Boss came in from the kitchen. “Twinetoes? Damned funny moniker! Never ‘eerd it,” he said. “But there’s a bloke asleep upstairs as calls ‘isself Brum. Mebbe it’s ‘im.”

It was. Twinetoes lay in his navvy clobber on a dirty bed, drunk, dead to the world. We could not rouse him.

“What a kennel!” said Mick. “There’s a smell about it I don’t like.” There was a smell; not the common musty smell of cheap doss-houses, something much worse than that….

“You pay your fourpence and takes your choice,” I said, with an intended grandiloquent sweep of my hand towards the dozen derelict beds. We selected two that lay in an alcove at the end of the room farthest from the door, and turned in. In a few minutes we were both asleep.

Suddenly I awoke. A clock outside struck one. There was no sound in the room but the now subdued snoring of Twinetoes. I was at once wide awake, but I lay quite still, breathing as naturally as possible, keeping my eyes more than half closed, for I felt some sinister presence in the room. A new pollution affected the atmosphere. Bending over me was the old crone. Downstairs she had seemed aimless, shapeless, almost helpless, an object of disgusting pitifulness. Now, dark as it was, and unexpected as was the visit, I could at once see that she was as active and alert as a monkey.

On going to bed I had put my boots under my pillow, and thrown my coat over me, keeping the cuff of one sleeve in my hand. A practised claw slipped under my head and deftly fingered the insides of my boots: Blank. The coat pockets were next examined: Blank. Still I dog-slept. The wrinkled lips were now working angrily, churning up two specks of foam that shone white in the corners of the mouth. The running eye rained tears of rage down her left cheek; and the other one glowed and dulled, a winking red spark in the gloom, as she looked quickly up and down the bed. Her left hand hung down by her side, the arm tense. Then, as she slipped her right hand under the clothes in an effort to go over the rest of me, I gave a half turn and a low sleep moan to warn her off. At once the left hand shot up over my head, the lean fingers clutching a foot of lead pipe. Again I tried to appear sound asleep. With eyes tight shut I lay still. I dared not move. One glimpse of that tortured face had shown me that I could hope for nothing; the utter folly of mercy or half measures was fully understood. Yet, effort was impossible. I was simply and completely afraid.

The lead pipe did not, however, meet my skull. Hearing a slight scuffle, I peeped out to find that there were now two figures in the gloom. The Boss had crept up, seized the hag’s left arm, and was pointing to the door. She held back, and in silent pantomime showed that Mick had not been gone over yet. With her free hand she gathered her one skirt over her dirty, skinny knees and danced with rage by the side of my bed. She looked like the parody of some carrion creature seen in the nightmare of a starving man. The most terrible thing about her was her amazing silence; the mad dance of her stockinged feet on the bare boards made no sound.

The Boss loosened his hold on her wrist, but took away the lead pipe from her, and she slipped over to Mick. Again those skinny claws went through their evolutions with uncanny silence and effect, whilst I lay, every muscle taut, ready to spring up if occasion required. My nerve had returned, and now that the piece of lead pipe was in the hands of the less fiendish partner of this strange concern, I was ready to wade in. But she found nothing, and Mick slept on. We were too poor to rob; but this only enraged her the more. Her fingers twisted themselves into the shawl at her breast, and she silently but vehemently spat at Mick’s head as she moved away.

For half an hour I tried in vain to sleep, and then the Boss again appeared. This time he bore a huge bulk of patched and soiled canvas, part of an old sail, which he hung from the ceiling across the middle of the room, thus shutting off Twinetoes, Mick and myself from that part where was the door on to the stairs. He was not noisy, but he made no attempt to keep the previous death stillness of the house.

As the Boss descended the stairs, a surprising thing happened–and Mick awoke. Girlish laughter rippled up the stairs! “God Almighty,” said Mick, “what’s that?”

Again it came, and with it the gurgling of the old woman. It was impossible and incredible, that mingling in the fetid air of those two sounds, as if the babble of clear spring water had suddenly broken into and merged with the turgid roll of a city sewer. Mick sat up. “But this is bloody!” he said.

“Wait,” was all I replied.

We waited. Mick slipped out of bed, carefully opened his knife and made a few judicious slits in the veiling canvas. My senses had become abnormally acute. I seemed to hear every shade of sound within and without the house. I could sense, I imagined, the very positions in which sat the persons in the kitchen below. Even Twinetoes was affected by the tense atmosphere. He murmured in his sleep and seemed somewhat sobered, for his limbs took more natural positions on the bed. The darkness was no longer a bar to vision. By now I could see quite clearly; and so, I believe, could Mick.

The old woman was mumbling to the girl. “‘S aw ri’, mi dear. ‘Av’ a drink o’ this. W’ll fix y’up aw ri’.”

She had again dropped into the low uncertain voice of aimless senility. The girl remained silent. Glasses clinked. The Boss, I could hear, walked up and down the kitchen, busy with some final work of the night. A confused murmur came from another corner; but I could not distinguish the words: The dock rats were apparently discussing something.

Again that ripple of sound ascended the stairs, but this time there was an added note of apprehension. It broke very faintly but pitifully, before dying away to the sound of light footsteps. Half a dozen stairs were pressed, then came a stumble and a girlish “A-ah.” She recovered herself as the hateful voice from behind said, “Aw ri’, m’dear,” and older, surer feet felt the stairs and pushed on behind the girl. Through the veiling canvas and the old walls I seemed to see the pair ascending. A few seconds more, and a slight farm rounded the jamb of the door. The girl’s eyes blinked in the walled twilight of the room. She hesitated on the threshold, but only for a second. The touch of a following frame impelled her forward. Her uncertain foot caught against a bed leg and a white hand gripped the steadying rail. Long-nailed claws laced themselves in the fingers of her other hand and the old woman half drew, half twisted her into sitting down on the edge of the bed. They began to talk quietly. I examined them more closely….

The old crone still played the part of ancient childhood, mumbling words of little import and obscenely fingering the girl’s arms, head, and waist. Some instinct led her to veil her eyes from the girl, for from those differing orbs gleamed all the wickedness of her mangled and distorted soul. Fountains rained from her left eye, whilst the right again held that sinister glow. The girl was half drunk, and, I fancied, drugged. She swayed slightly where she sat.

She wore a small hat of a dark velvety material; a white, loose blouse, and what seemed a dark blue skirt. Round her neck hung an old-fashioned link of coral beads. Her brow was low but broad, and her hair, brushed back from the forehead, was bunched large behind, but not below, the head. Her roving eyes, gradually overcoming the clinging gloom of the place, were dark brown and unnaturally bright. Half open in an empty smile, her lips disclosed white but somewhat irregular teeth. Seen plainly in such surroundings, she was–to me–a pitiable and undesirable creature. I did not like the looks of her now. The mental image formed on the sound of her laughter was infinitely preferable to the sight of her. She was, I fancied, some servant girl of a romantic nature. I was right. “I don’t care,” she was saying, “I’ll never go back. Trust me. Had enough. Slavey for four bob a week. ‘Taint good enough. They said if I couldn’t be in by arf past nine I’d find the door locked. And I did! They c’n keep it locked.”

“‘S aw ‘ri’. You go t’sleep ‘ere wi’ me. W’ll put yo’ t’ ri’s. Y’ll ‘av’ a luvly dress t’morro’, an’ a go’ time. Wait t’l y’see the young man we’ll find y’ t’morro’. Now go t’bed.” Those twining fingers ceased toying with the girl’s hair and deftly slipped a protecting hook from an all-too-easy eye in the back of the girl’s blouse.

“Three years I’ve been a slavey for those stuck-up pigs,” said the girl in a subdued mutter, and then she went on to recount, quaintly and in a half incoherent jumble, the salient facts of her life. I glanced at Mick. He was leaning forward, peering through another slit. His face had its old set look; stern, condemnatory. Twice I had had to reach out and grip his wrist. He wanted to interfere; I was waiting–I knew not for what.

As the muttering proceeded, the busy fingers of the old woman loosened the clothes of the indifferent girl, who soon stood swaying by the side of the bed in her chemise. Deftly the dirty quilt was slipped back and the girlish form rolled into the creaking bed. The muttering went on for a few minutes whilst the old woman sat watching the flushed face and the tumbled hair on the pillow. The girl’s right arm was thrown carelessly abroad over the quilt, the shoulder gleaming white in the deeper shadow thrown by the old woman who sat with her back to us, looking down intently at this waiting morsel of humanity. If we had not seen her before, we could have imagined her to be praying.

Mick, for the first time since their entry into the room, suddenly looked over at me. The same thoughts must have flashed through both our brains. What was wrong? Was anything wrong? Surely the affair was quite simple; and the canvas screen, violated by Mick’s knife, had expressed the needed attempt at decency.

The muttering died down and the room was hushed to strained silence–to be broken soon by a furtive pad on the stairs. Mick and I were again alert, staring through the canvas slits. The Boss now appeared, followed by one of the dock rats. They glanced at the bed and then looked enquiringly at the old woman.

“Ol’ Soloman sh’d fork out a termer for this,” she said in low but clear tones. “But it’s got to be a proper job.” Then, to the Boss, and pointing to the screen, indicating the position of our beds: “You lamming idiot! Didn’t I tell yo’? Yo’ sh’d a took their bits an’ outed ‘m.”

The dock rat was tip-toeing about the bed, like a starved rodent outside a wire-screened piece of food. His glance shifted from that gleaming shoulder hunched up over the slim neck to the heavy face of the Boss and then to the old woman, returning quickly to the form on the bed.

“Oo’s goin’ t’do it?” asked the old crone of the Boss. “You or Bill?” and she drew down the clothes, exposing the limp sprawled limbs of the sleeping girl. The Boss did not reply. He simply took a half-stride back, away from the bed. The dock rat’s eyes gleamed: he had noted the movement. He ceased his tip-toeing about and looked at the Boss. “What’s my share?”

“Blimy! Your share?” returned the Boss in a hoarse whisper. Then, pointing to the waiting, half-naked form: “That!”

In their contemplation of their victim they were so absorbed that they apparently forgot entirely the three of us bedded on the other side of the hanging sail. Mick and I were staggered. We looked at each other, realising at the self-same instant the whole purpose of this curious conference. By some subtle and secret processes of the mind again there seemed to be a change in the atmosphere of the room. Its sordid dinginess was no longer present to our consciousness. There was new life, heart, and vigour and, in some curious way, our mentalities seemed merged together. No longer puzzled, we were vibrant with a common purpose. I was angry and disgusted; Mick was moved to the inmost sanctuary of his Celtic being. He manifested the last degree of outrage and insult, of agonised anger. For the moment we were cleansed of all the pettiness and grossness common to manhood, inspired only with a new-born worship of the inviolable right of the individual to the disposal of its own tokens of affection and life.

And this new spirit of ours pervaded the room. The girl moaned in her drunken sleep. Twinetoes turned restlessly in bed, and the lines of his face sharpened and deepened. Something was killing the poison in both. Even the trio about the girl were momentarily moved by some new sensation.

Mick’s accustomed recklessness of action was gone, he was cool and prepared to be calculating. We slipped on our boots and I moved over to Twinetoes’ bed. I touched his arm. Mumbling curses he opened his eyes. “It’s Mac,” I whispered, leaning over and looking steadyingly into his face.

“Wot the ‘ell….” he began, but I managed to silence him. Once accustomed to the gloom, his eyes took in the strangeness of the situation and, painfully swallowing the foul nausea of his drunk, he calmly and quietly pulled on his boots.

The old woman had again covered up the still sleeping girl and engaged the Boss in a wrangle about money. “You’ll bloody well swing yet,” said the Boss irrelevantly.

“Mebbe; but that don’t alter it. I wants my full share ‘n I means to ‘av’ it.”

Dispassionately, the dock rat eyed them both and hoped for the best for himself. We had ceased to exist for them. “Goin’?” asked the dock rat as the others moved towards the stairs. They looked at him, but did not reply. So far as we were aware, though we had forgotten the entire world outside that room, there had been complete silence downstairs; but now we could hear movement. The other dock rats were evidently awake and waiting. As the foot of the Boss fell on the top stair, the spell seemed to fall from Mick. He glared fixedly at the dock rat who stood by the girl’s bed. “I’ll tear his guts out,” said Mick with appalling certainty of tone.

The old woman heard it. The lead pipe again in her fist, like a cornered rat she whipped round. Mick did not wait; full at the canvas he sprang. His Irish impulsiveness overcame caution, and in a moment he was wrapped in the hanging sail, the old woman battering the bellying folds. The dock rat’s head was knocking at the wall, Twinetoes cursing rhythmically and shutting off his breath with fingers of steel. My left eye was half closed and the Boss’s knuckles were bleeding. The girl, awake and utterly confounded, blinked foolishly and silently, weakly trying to fix her eyes on some definite point in the tangled thread of palpitating life that surged about her.

“Look out! Drop him!” I shouted to Twinetoes as I swung in, furious but with some care, to the face of the Boss. Twinetoes did not heed; he staggered across the room under a blow from one of the new arrivals; but he did not loose his hold. He was a hefty man, entirely reliable, indeed almost happy in such an affair. As number two dock rat tried to follow up his blow, Twinetoes swung number one round in his way; then, changing his hold, taking both the man’s shoulders in his hands, he drew back his head as a snake does and butted his man clean over one of the beds…. His face a pitiful pulp, number one was definitely out of it.

Ordinarily, the Boss would have been much too much for me; but now fate favoured me. He was considerably perturbed about the possible outcome of the row and its effect on his business; I was intent only on the fight. With a clean left-hand cut I drove him over, tore a quilt from a bed and flung it over his dazed head, then swung round to where the lead pipe was still flailing. I was concerned for Mick. Seizing the old woman’s shoulders I flung her back from Mick and the sail. He would have cleared himself, but his legs were somehow mixed up with the foot of the bed, and she occupied his attention too much. The hag raised the lead and rushed, and for the only time in my life I hit a woman. Without hesitancy or compunction, only revolted at the thought of such contact with such matter, I smashed her down. The Boss and Mick freed themselves together and embraced each other willingly. Twinetoes was playing skittles with the remaining dock rats. There was surprisingly little noise. No one shouted. There was no howling hounding on of each other. All but the girl were absorbed in the immediate business of giving or warding off of blows.

“Dress, quick!” I said to the girl.

The fight had shifted to the centre, and her bed had remained unmoved, herself unmolested. In wondering silence she obeyed. “Quicker! Quicker!” I enjoined, with a new brutal note in my voice. The reaction had set in. I could cheerfully have shoved her down the stairs and flung her garments after her.

The kip was hidden away in a dark alley, the history and reputation of which were shudderingly doubtful, but there were police within dangerous hailing distance. The girl’s lips began to quiver. Supposing she broke down and raised the court by hysterical howling! “Don’t breathe a sound, or we’ll leave you to it,” I threatened. She shrank back, gave a low moan, and clutched my coat. I tore her hand loose and turned away in time to floor the Boss by an easy blow on his left ear. The fight was finished.

We wasted no time but descended the stairs and passed out through the court into the street. There were signs of life in the gloomy court, though no one spoke or molested us; the street was dead silent. Mick’s arms and shoulders were a mass of bruises from the lead pipe, but his face was clear. Twinetoes was all right, he said, but craving for a wet. I alone showed evidence of the struggle; my eye was unsightly and painful, and my left wrist was slightly sprained. The girl sobbed quietly. “Oh! Oh!” she cried repeatedly, “whatever’s to become of me!”

She irritated me. “Shut up!” I said at last, “_You_’ll be all right.” She snuffled unceasingly. I looked across at Mick–she walked between us, Twinetoes on my right–and at once I saw the outcome of it all. “Stop it, blast you!” I shook her shoulder. “My pal is the best, biggest fool that ever raised a fist. He’s silly enough for anything decent,” and then, with the voice of conviction born of absolute certainty of mind: “He’ll never chuck you over. He’ll marry you sometime, you fool!”

And he did.

THE BACKSTAIRS OF THE MIND

By ROSAMOND LANGBRIDGE

(From _The Manchester Guardian_)

1922

Patrick Deasey described himself as a “philosopher, psychologist, and humorist.” It was partly because Patrick delighted in long words, and partly to excuse himself for being full of the sour cream of an inhuman curiosity. His curiosity, however, did not extend itself to science and _belles lettres_; it concerned itself wholly with the affairs of other people. At first, when Deasey retired from the police force with a pension and an heiress with three hundred pounds, and time hung heavy on his hands, he would try to satisfy this craving through the medium of a host of small flirtations with everybody’s maid. In this way he could inform himself exactly how many loaves were taken by the Sweeneys for a week’s consumption, as compared with those which were devoured by all the Cassidys; for whom the bottles at the Presbytery went in by the back door; and what was the real cause of the quarrel between the twin Miss McInerneys.

But these were but blackbird-scratchings, as it were, upon the deep soil of the human heart. What Deasey cared about was what he called “the secrets of the soul.”

“Never met a man,” he was wont to say, “with no backstairs to his mind! And the quieter, decenter, respectabler, innocenter a man looked–like enough!–the darker those backstairs!”

It was up these stairs he craved to go. To ring at the front door of ordinary intercourse was not enough for him. When Deasey invested his wife’s money in a public-house he developed a better plan. It was the plan which made him ultimately describe himself as a humorist. He would wait until the bar was deserted by all but the one lingering victim whom his trained eye had picked out. Then, rolling that same eye about him, as though to make quite sure no other living creature was in sight, he would gently close the door of the bar-parlour, pick up a tumbler, breathe on it, polish the breath, lean one elbow on the bar, look round him once again, and, setting the whisky-bottle betwixt his customer and himself, with a nod which said “Help yourself,” he would lean forward, with the soft indulgent grin of the human man-of-the-world, and begin:

“Now, don’t distress yourself, me dear man, but as between frien’s, certain delicate little–facts–in your past life have come inadvertently to me hearing.”

Sometimes he would allude to a “certain document,” or “incriminating facts,” or “certain letters”–he would ring the changes on these three, according to the sex and temperament with which he had to deal. But always, whatever the words, whatever the nature or sex, the shot would tell. First came the little start, the straightened figure, the pallor or flush, the shamed and suddenly-lit eyes, and then–

“Who told you, Mr. Deasey, sir?” Or “Where did you get the letter?”

“Ah, now, that would be telling!” Deasey would make reply. “But ’twas from a _certain person_ whom, perhaps, we need not name!” Then the whiskey-bottle would move forward, like a pawn in chess, and the next soothing words would be, “Help yourself now–don’t be shy, me dear man! And–your secret is safe with me!”

Forthwith the little skeleton in that man’s cupboard would lean forward and press upon the door, until at last the door flew open and a bone or two, and sometimes the whole skeleton, would rattle out upon the floor.

He had played this game so often, that, almost at first sight he could classify his dupes under the three heads into which he had divided them: Those who demanded with violent threats–(which melted like snow before the sunshine of John Jamieson) the letter, or the name of the informant; those who asked, after a gentle sip or two how the letter had come into his hands, and those who asked immediately if the letter hadn’t been destroyed. As a rule, from the type that demanded the letter back, he only caught sight of the tip of the secret’s ears. From those–they were nearly always the women–who swiftly asked if he hadn’t destroyed the letters, he caught shame-faced gleams of the truth.

But those who asked between pensive sips, how the facts or the letter had come his way, these were the ones who yielded Deasey the richest harvest of rattling skeleton bones.

Indeed, it was curiously instructive how John Jamieson laid down a causeway of gleaming stepping-stones, so that Deasey might cross lightly over the turgid waters of his victims’ souls. At the words, accompanied by John Jamieson–“A certain dark page of your past history–help yourself, me boy!–has been inadvertently revealed to me, but is for ever sacred in me breast!”–it was strange to see how, from the underworld of the man’s mind, there would trip out the company of misshapen hobgoblins and gnomes which had been locked away in darkness, maybe, this many a year.

“Well–how would I get the time to clane the childer and to wash their heads, and I working all the day at curing stinkin’ hides! ‘Twas Herself should have got it, and Herself alone!”…

Or–

“No, I never done it, for all me own mother sworn I did. I only give the man a little push–that way!–and he fell over on the side, and busted all his veins!”

Or–

“Well, an’ wouldn’t you draw two pinsions yourself, Mr. Deasey, if you’d a wife with two han’s like a sieve for yellow gold!”

But there were some confessions, haltingly patchy and inadequate, but hauntingly suggestive, which Deasey could neither piece out on the spot, nor yet unravel in the small hours of the night. There was one of this nature which troubled his rest long:

“Well, the way of it was, you see, he put it up the chimbley, but when the chimbley-sweepers come he transferred it in his weskit to my place, and I dropped it down the well. They found it when they let the bucket down, but I wasn’t his accomplice at all, ’twas only connivance with me!”

When he had spoken of the chimney and the well Deasey concluded at once it was a foully murdered corpse. But then, again, you could not well conceal a corpse in someone’s waistcoat; and gold coins would melt or be mislaid amongst the loose bricks of a sooty chimney. Deasey had craved for corpses, but nothing so grim as that had risen to his whisky-bait until he tried the same old game on Mrs. Geraghty. What subtle instinct was it that had prompted him to add to the first unvarying words: “But all that is now past and over, and safe beneath the mouldering clay!”

At these last words, the Widow Geraghty knew well, the barrier was down that fences off one human soul from another; all the same, she shook her trembling head when Deasey drew the cork. At her refusal Deasey was struck with the most respectful compassion; until that hour he had never known one single lacerated soul decline this consolation.

“And to look at me!” she wept forthwith, “would you think I could shed a drop of ruddy gore?”

“No, ma’am,” returned Deasey. “To look at you, ye’d think ma’am ye could never kill a fly!”

And respectfully he passed the peppermints.

“Sometimes,” the widow muttered, “I hears it, and it bawling in me dreams o’ night. And the two bright eyes of it, and the little clay cold feet!” Deasey knew what was coming now, and he twitched in every vein. And she so white-haired and so regular at church: and the black bonnet on the head of her, an’ all! “It was the only little one she had,” went on the widow, bowed almost to the bar by shame, “and it always perched up on her knee, and taking food from her mouth, and she nursing it agin her face. But I had bad teeth in me head, and I couldn’t get my rest, with the jaws aching, and all the whiles it screeching with the croup. ‘Twould madden you!”

“All the same,” Deasey whispered, “maybe it wasn’t your fault: ’twas maybe your man egged you on to do the shameful deed—-“

“It was so,” said the widow. “‘Let you get up and cut its throat,’ says he, ‘and then we will be shut of the domned screechin’ thing.'” “Then you got the knife, ma’am,” prompted Deasey. “It was the bread-knife,” she answered, “with the ugly notches in the blade,–and I stole in the back way to her place in the dead hours of the night–and I had me apron handy for to quench the cries; and when I c’ot it be the throat didn’t it look up at me with the two bright, innocent eyes!”

“And what’d you do with the body?” he asked.

“I dug a grave in the shine of the moon,” she answered. “And I put it in by the two little cold grey feet—-“

This touch of the grey feet laid a spell on Deasey’s hankering morbidity.

“_What turned the feet grey_?” he whispered.

“Nature, I s’pose!” replied the white-haired widow. She drew her shawl about her shrinking form before she turned away.

“‘Twas never found out, from that hour to this, who done it!” muttered the Widow Geraghty, “but, may the Divvle skelp me if I touch one drop of chucken-tea again!”

THE BIRTH OF A MASTERPIECE

By LUCAS MALET

(From The _Story-Teller_)

1922

Looking back on it from this distance of time–it began in the early and ended in the middle eighties–I see the charm of ingenuous youth stamped on the episode, the touching glamour of limitless faith and expectation. We were, the whole little band of us, so deliciously self-sufficient, so magnificently critical of established reputations in contemporary letters and art. We sniffed and snorted, noses in air, at popular idols, while ourselves weighted down with a cargo of guileless enthusiasm only asking opportunity to dump itself at an idol’s feet. We ached to burn incense before the altar of some divinity; but it must be a divinity of our own discovering, our own choosing. We scorned to acclaim ready-made, second-hand goods. Then we encountered Pogson–Heber Pogson. Our fate, and even more, perhaps, his fate, was henceforth sealed.

He was a large, sleek, pink creature, slow and rare of movement, from much sitting bulky, not to say squashy, in figure, mild-eyed, slyly jovial and–for no other word, to my mind, so closely fits his attitude–resigned. A positive glutton of books, he read as instinctively, almost as unconsciously, as other men breathe. But he not only absorbed. He gave forth and that copiously, with taste, with discrimination, now and again with startlingly eloquent flights and witty sallies. His memory was prodigious. The variety and vivacity of his conversation, the immense range of subjects he brilliantly laboured, when in the vein, remain with me as simply marvellous. With us he mostly was in the vein. And, vanity apart, we must have composed a delightful audience, generously censer-swinging. No man of even average feeling but would be moved by such fresh, such spontaneous admiration! Thus, if our divinity melodiously piped, we did very radiantly dance to his piping.

Oh! Heber Pogson enjoyed it. Never tell me he didn’t revel in those highly articulate evenings of monologue, gasconade, heated yet brotherly argument, lasting on to midnight and after, every bit as much as we did! Anyhow at first. Later he may have had twinges, been sensible of strain; though never, I still believe, a very severe one. In any case, Nature showed herself his friend–his saviour, if also, in some sort, his executioner. When the strain tended to become distressing, for him personally, very simply and cleverly, she found a way out.

A background of dark legend only brought the steady glow of his–and our–present felicity into richer relief. We gathered hints of, caught in passing smiling allusion to, straitened and impecunious early years. He had endured a harsh enough apprenticeship to the profession of letters in its least satisfactory, because most ephemeral, form–namely journalism, and provincial journalism at that. This must have painfully cribbed and confined his free-ranging spirit. We were filled by reverent sympathy for the trials and deprivations of his past. But at the period when the members–numbering a dozen, more or less–of our devoted band trooped up from Chelsea and down from the Hampstead heights to worship in the studio-library of the Church Street, Kensington, house, Pogson was lapped in a material well-being altogether sufficient. He treated us, his youthful friends and disciples, to very excellent food and drink; partaking of these himself, moreover, with evident readiness and relish. Those little “help-yourselves,” stand-up suppers in the big, quiet, comfortably warmed and shaded room revealed in him no ascetic tendency, though, I hasten to add, no tendency to unbecoming excess. Such hospitality testified to the soundness of Pogson’s existing financial position; as did his repeated assertions that now, at last–praise heaven–he had leisure to do worthy and abiding work, work through which he could freely express his personality, express in terms of art his judgments upon, and appreciations of, the human scene.

We listened breathless, nodding exuberant approval. For weren’t we ourselves, each and all of us, mightily in love with art and with the human scene? And hadn’t we, listening thus breathlessly to our amazing master, the enchanting assurance that we were on the track of a masterpiece? Not impossibly a whole gallery of masterpieces, since Heber Pogson had barely touched middle age as yet. For him there still was time. Fiction, we gathered to be the selected medium. He not only meant to write, but was actually now engaged in writing, a novel during those withdrawn and sacred morning hours when we were denied admittance to his presence. We previsaged something tremendous, poetic yet fearlessly modern, fixed on the bedrock of realism, a drama and a vision wide, high, deep, spectacular yet subtle as life itself. Let his confreres, French and Russian–not to mention those merely British born–look to their laurels, when Heber Pogson blossomed into print! And–preciously inspiring thought–he was our Pogson. He inalienably