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

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

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

"'Turn it out,' said the master.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, it's a good tail," assented the other; "but why do you do it up over his head?"

"I don't," answered our cat. "It goes that way. I can't make it out. I suppose it will come straight as he gets older."

"It will be awkward if it don't," said the friend.

"Oh, but I'm sure it will," replied our cat. "I must lick it more. It's a tail that wants a good deal of licking, you can see that."

And for hours that afternoon, after the other cat had gone, she sat trimming it; and, at the end, when she lifted her paw off it, and it flew back again like a steel spring over the squirrel's head, she sat and gazed at it with feelings that only those among my readers who have been mothers themselves will be able to comprehend.

"What have I done," she seemed to say—"what have I done that this trouble should come upon me?"

Jephson roused himself on my completion of this anecdote and sat up.

"You and your friends appear to have been the possessors of some very remarkable cats," he observed.

"Yes," I answered, "our family has been singularly fortunate in its cats."

"Singularly so," agreed Jephson; "I have never met but one man from whom I have heard more wonderful cat talk than, at one time or another, I have from you."

"Oh," I said, not, perhaps without a touch of jealousy in my voice, "and who was he?"

"He was a seafaring man," replied Jephson. "I met him on a Hampstead tram, and we discussed the subject of animal sagacity.

"'Yes, sir,' he said, 'monkeys is cute. I've come across monkeys as could give points to one or two lubbers I've sailed under; and elephants is pretty spry, if you can believe all that's told of 'em. I've heard some tall tales about elephants. And, of course, dogs has their heads screwed on all right: I don't say as they ain't. But what I do say is: that for straightfor'ard, level-headed reasoning, give me cats. You see, sir, a dog, he thinks a powerful deal of a man—never was such a cute thing as a man, in a dog's opinion; and he takes good care that everybody knows it. Naturally enough, we says a dog is the most intellectual animal there is. Now a cat, she's got her own opinion about human beings. She don't say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it. The consequence is, we says a cat's got no intelligence. That's where we let our prejudice steer our judgment wrong. In a matter of plain common sense, there ain't a cat living as couldn't take the lee side of a dog and fly round him. Now, have you ever noticed a dog at the end of a chain, trying to kill a cat as is sitting washing her face three-quarters of an inch out of his reach? Of course you have. Well, who's got the sense out of those two? The cat knows that it ain't in the nature of steel chains to stretch. The dog, who ought, you'd think, to know a durned sight more about 'em than she does, is sure they will if you only bark loud enough.

"'Then again, have you ever been made mad by cats screeching in the night, and jumped out of bed and opened the window and yelled at them? Did they ever budge an inch for that, though you shrieked loud enough to skeer the dead, and waved your arms about like a man in a play? Not they. They've turned and looked at you, that's all. "Yell away, old man," they've said, "we like to hear you: the more the merrier." Then what have you done? Why, you've snatched up a hair-brush, or a boot, or a candlestick, and made as if you'd throw it at them. They've seen your attitude, they've seen the thing in your hand, but they ain't moved a point. They knew as you weren't going to chuck valuable property out of window with the chance of getting it lost or spoiled. They've got sense themselves, and they give you credit for having some. If you don't believe that's the reason, you try showing them a lump of coal, or half a brick, next time—something as they know you will throw. Before you're ready to heave it, there won't be a cat within aim.

"'Then as to judgment and knowledge of the world, why dogs are babies to 'em. Have you ever tried telling a yarn before a cat, sir?'

"I replied that cats had often been present during anecdotal recitals of mine, but that, hitherto, I had paid no particular attention to their demeanour.

"'Ah, well, you take an opportunity of doing so one day, sir,' answered the old fellow; 'it's worth the experiment. If you're telling a story before a cat, and she don't get uneasy during any part of the narrative, you can reckon you've got hold of a thing as it will be safe for you to tell to the Lord Chief Justice of England.

"'I've got a messmate,' he continued; 'William Cooley is his name. We call him Truthful Billy. He's as good a seaman as ever trod quarter-deck; but when he gets spinning yarns he ain't the sort of man as I could advise you to rely upon. Well, Billy, he's got a dog, and I've seen him sit and tell yarns before that dog that would make a cat squirm out of its skin, and that dog's taken 'em in and believed 'em. One night, up at his old woman's, Bill told us a yarn by the side of which salt junk two voyages old would pass for spring chicken. I watched the dog, to see how he would take it. He listened to it from beginning to end with cocked ears, and never so much as blinked. Every now and then he would look round with an expression of astonishment or delight that seemed to say: "Wonderful, isn't it!" "Dear me, just think of it!" "Did you ever!" "Well, if that don't beat everything!" He was a chuckle-headed dog; you could have told him anything.

"'It irritated me that Bill should have such an animal about him to encourage him, and when he had finished I said to him, "I wish you'd tell that yarn round at my quarters one evening."

"'Why?' said Bill.

"'Oh, it's just a fancy of mine,' I says. I didn't tell him I was wanting my old cat to hear it.

"'Oh, all right,' says Bill, 'you remind me.' He loved yarning, Billy did.

"'Next night but one he slings himself up in my cabin, and I does so. Nothing loth, off he starts. There was about half-a-dozen of us stretched round, and the cat was sitting before the fire fussing itself up. Before Bill had got fairly under weigh, she stops washing and looks up at me, puzzled like, as much as to say, "What have we got here, a missionary?" I signalled to her to keep quiet, and Bill went on with his yarn. When he got to the part about the sharks, she turned deliberately round and looked at him. I tell you there was an expression of disgust on that cat's face as might have made a travelling Cheap Jack feel ashamed of himself. It was that human, I give you my word, sir, I forgot for the moment as the poor animal couldn't speak. I could see the words that were on its lips: "Why don't you tell us you swallowed the anchor?" and I sat on tenter-hooks, fearing each instant that she would say them aloud. It was a relief to me when she turned her back on Bill.

"'For a few minutes she sat very still, and seemed to be wrestling with herself like. I never saw a cat more set on controlling its feelings, or that seemed to suffer more in silence. It made my heart ache to watch it.

"'At last Bill came to the point where he and the captain between 'em hold the shark's mouth open while the cabin-boy dives in head foremost, and fetches up, undigested, the gold watch and chain as the bo'sun was a- wearing when he fell overboard; and at that the old cat giv'd a screech, and rolled over on her side with her legs in the air.

"'I thought at first the poor thing was dead, but she rallied after a bit, and it seemed as though she had braced herself up to hear the thing out.

"'But a little further on, Bill got too much for her again, and this time she owned herself beat. She rose up and looked round at us: "You'll excuse me, gentlemen," she said—leastways that is what she said if looks go for anything—"maybe you're used to this sort of rubbish, and it don't get on your nerves. With me it's different. I guess I've heard as much of this fool's talk as my constitution will stand, and if it's all the same to you I'll get outside before I'm sick."

"'With that she walked up to the door, and I opened it for her, and she went out.

"'You can't fool a cat with talk same as you can a dog.'"



CHAPTER VII

Does man ever reform? Balzac says he doesn't. So far as my experience goes, it agrees with that of Balzac—a fact the admirers of that author are at liberty to make what use of they please.

When I was young and accustomed to take my views of life from people who were older than myself, and who knew better, so they said, I used to believe that he did. Examples of "reformed characters" were frequently pointed out to me—indeed, our village, situate a few miles from a small seaport town, seemed to be peculiarly rich in such. They were, from all accounts, including their own, persons who had formerly behaved with quite unnecessary depravity, and who, at the time I knew them, appeared to be going to equally objectionable lengths in the opposite direction. They invariably belonged to one of two classes, the low-spirited or the aggressively unpleasant. They said, and I believed, that they were happy; but I could not help reflecting how very sad they must have been before they were happy.

One of them, a small, meek-eyed old man with a piping voice, had been exceptionally wild in his youth. What had been his special villainy I could never discover. People responded to my inquiries by saying that he had been "Oh, generally bad," and increased my longing for detail by adding that little boys ought not to want to know about such things. From their tone and manner I assumed that he must have been a pirate at the very least, and regarded him with awe, not unmingled with secret admiration.

Whatever it was, he had been saved from it by his wife, a bony lady of unprepossessing appearance, but irreproachable views.

One day he called at our house for some purpose or other, and, being left alone with him for a few minutes, I took the opportunity of interviewing him personally on the subject.

"You were very wicked once, weren't you?" I said, seeking by emphasis on the "once" to mitigate what I felt might be the disagreeable nature of the question.

To my intense surprise, a gleam of shameful glory lit up his wizened face, and a sound which I tried to think a sigh, but which sounded like a chuckle, escaped his lips.

"Ay," he replied; "I've been a bit of a spanker in my time."

The term "spanker" in such connection puzzled me. I had been hitherto led to regard a spanker as an eminently conscientious person, especially where the shortcomings of other people were concerned; a person who laboured for the good of others. That the word could also be employed to designate a sinful party was a revelation to me.

"But you are good now, aren't you?" I continued, dismissing further reflection upon the etymology of "spanker" to a more fitting occasion.

"Ay, ay," he answered, his countenance resuming its customary aspect of resigned melancholy. "I be a brand plucked from the burning, I be. There beant much wrong wi' Deacon Sawyers, now."

"And it was your wife that made you good, wasn't it?" I persisted, determined, now that I had started this investigation, to obtain confirmation at first hand on all points.

At the mention of his wife his features became suddenly transformed. Glancing hurriedly round, to make sure, apparently, that no one but myself was within hearing, he leaned across and hissed these words into my ear—I have never forgotten them, there was a ring of such evident sincerity about them—

"I'd like to skin her, I'd like to skin her alive."

It struck me, even in the light of my then limited judgment, as an unregenerate wish; and thus early my faith in the possibility of man's reformation received the first of those many blows that have resulted in shattering it.

Nature, whether human or otherwise, was not made to be reformed. You can develop, you can check, but you cannot alter it.

You can take a small tiger and train it to sit on a hearthrug, and to lap milk, and so long as you provide it with hearthrugs to lie on and sufficient milk to drink, it will purr and behave like an affectionate domestic pet. But it is a tiger, with all a tiger's instincts, and its progeny to the end of all time will be tigers.

In the same way, you can take an ape and develop it through a few thousand generations until it loses its tail and becomes an altogether superior ape. You can go on developing it through still a few more thousands of generations until it gathers to itself out of the waste vapours of eternity an intellect and a soul, by the aid of which it is enabled to keep the original apish nature more or less under control.

But the ape is still there, and always will be, and every now and again, when Constable Civilisation turns his back for a moment, as during "Spanish Furies," or "September massacres," or Western mob rule, it creeps out and bites and tears at quivering flesh, or plunges its hairy arms elbow deep in blood, or dances round a burning nigger.

I knew a man once—or, rather, I knew of a man—who was a confirmed drunkard. He became and continued a drunkard, not through weakness, but through will. When his friends remonstrated with him, he told them to mind their own business, and to let him mind his. If he saw any reason for not getting drunk he would give it up. Meanwhile he liked getting drunk, and he meant to get drunk as often as possible.

He went about it deliberately, and did it thoroughly. For nearly ten years, so it was reported, he never went to bed sober. This may be an exaggeration—it would be a singular report were it not—but it can be relied upon as sufficiently truthful for all practical purposes.

Then there came a day when he did see a reason for not getting drunk. He signed no pledge, he took no oath. He said, "I will never touch another drop of drink," and for twenty-six years he kept his word.

At the end of that time a combination of circumstances occurred that made life troublesome to him, so that he desired to be rid of it altogether. He was a man accustomed, when he desired a thing within his reach, to stretch out his hand and take it. He reviewed the case calmly, and decided to commit suicide.

If the thing were to be done at all, it would be best, for reasons that if set forth would make this a long story, that it should be done that very night, and, if possible, before eleven o'clock, which was the earliest hour a certain person could arrive from a certain place.

It was then four in the afternoon. He attended to some necessary business, and wrote some necessary letters. This occupied him until seven. He then called a cab and drove to a small hotel in the suburbs, engaged a private room, and ordered up materials for the making of the particular punch that had been the last beverage he had got drunk on, six- and-twenty years ago.

For three hours he sat there drinking steadily, with his watch before him. At half-past ten he rang the bell, paid his bill, came home, and cut his throat.

For a quarter of a century people had been calling that man a "reformed character." His character had not reformed one jot. The craving for drink had never died. For twenty-six years he had, being a great man, held it gripped by the throat. When all things became a matter of indifference to him, he loosened his grasp, and the evil instinct rose up within him as strong on the day he died as on the day he forced it down.

That is all a man can do, pray for strength to crush down the evil that is in him, and to keep it held down day after day. I never hear washy talk about "changed characters" and "reformed natures" but I think of a sermon I once heard at a Wesleyan revivalist meeting in the Black Country.

"Ah! my friends, we've all of us got the devil inside us. I've got him, you've got him," cried the preacher—he was an old man, with long white hair and beard, and wild, fighting eyes. Most of the preachers who came "reviving," as it was called, through that district, had those eyes. Some of them needed "reviving" themselves, in quite another sense, before they got clear out of it. I am speaking now of more than thirty years ago.

"Ah! so us have—so us have," came the response.

"And you carn't get rid of him," continued the speaker.

"Not of oursel's," ejaculated a fervent voice at the end of the room, "but the Lord will help us."

The old preacher turned on him almost fiercely:—

"But th' Lord woan't," he shouted; "doan't 'ee reckon on that, lad. Ye've got him an' ye've got ta keep him. Ye carn't get rid of him. Th' Lord doan't mean 'ee to."

Here there broke forth murmurs of angry disapproval, but the old fellow went on, unheeding:—

"It arn't good for 'ee to get rid of him. Ye've just got to hug him tight. Doan't let him go. Hold him fast, and—LAM INTO HIM. I tell 'ee it's good, healthy Christian exercise."

We had been discussing the subject with reference to our hero. It had been suggested by Brown as an unhackneyed idea, and one lending itself, therefore, to comparative freshness of treatment, that our hero should be a thorough-paced scamp.

Jephson seconded the proposal, for the reason that it would the better enable us to accomplish artistic work. He was of opinion that we should be more sure of our ground in drawing a villain than in attempting to portray a good man.

MacShaughnassy thirded (if I may coin what has often appeared to me to be a much-needed word) the motion with ardour. He was tired, he said, of the crystal-hearted, noble-thinking young man of fiction. Besides, it made bad reading for the "young person." It gave her false ideas, and made her dissatisfied with mankind as he really is.

And, thereupon, he launched forth and sketched us his idea of a hero, with reference to whom I can only say that I should not like to meet him on a dark night.

Brown, our one earnest member, begged us to be reasonable, and reminded us, not for the first time, and not, perhaps, altogether unnecessarily, that these meetings were for the purpose of discussing business, not of talking nonsense.

Thus adjured, we attacked the subject conscientiously.

Brown's idea was that the man should be an out-and-out blackguard, until about the middle of the book, when some event should transpire that would have the effect of completely reforming him. This naturally brought the discussion down to the question with which I have commenced this chapter: Does man ever reform? I argued in the negative, and gave the reasons for my disbelief much as I have set them forth here. MacShaughnassy, on the other hand, contended that he did, and instanced the case of himself—a man who, in his early days, so he asserted, had been a scatterbrained, impracticable person, entirely without stability.

I maintained that this was merely an example of enormous will-power enabling a man to overcome and rise superior to the defects of character with which nature had handicapped him.

"My opinion of you," I said, "is that you are naturally a hopelessly irresponsible, well-meaning ass. But," I continued quickly, seeing his hand reaching out towards a complete Shakespeare in one volume that lay upon the piano, "your mental capabilities are of such extraordinary power that you can disguise this fact, and make yourself appear a man of sense and wisdom."

Brown agreed with me that in MacShaughnassy's case traces of the former disposition were clearly apparent, but pleaded that the illustration was an unfortunate one, and that it ought not to have weight in the discussion.

"Seriously speaking," said he, "don't you think that there are some experiences great enough to break up and re-form a man's nature?"

"To break up," I replied, "yes; but to re-form, no. Passing through a great experience may shatter a man, or it may strengthen a man, just as passing through a furnace may melt or purify metal, but no furnace ever lit upon this earth can change a bar of gold into a bar of lead, or a bar of lead into one of gold."

I asked Jephson what he thought. He did not consider the bar of gold simile a good one. He held that a man's character was not an immutable element. He likened it to a drug—poison or elixir—compounded by each man for himself from the pharmacopoeia of all things known to life and time, and saw no impossibility, though some improbability, in the glass being flung aside and a fresh draught prepared with pain and labour.

"Well," I said, "let us put the case practically; did you ever know a man's character to change?"

"Yes," he answered, "I did know a man whose character seemed to me to be completely changed by an experience that happened to him. It may, as you say, only have been that he was shattered, or that the lesson may have taught him to keep his natural disposition ever under control. The result, in any case, was striking."

We asked him to give us the history of the case, and he did so.

"He was a friend of some cousins of mine," Jephson began, "people I used to see a good deal of in my undergraduate days. When I met him first he was a young fellow of twenty-six, strong mentally and physically, and of a stern and stubborn nature that those who liked him called masterful, and that those who disliked him—a more numerous body—termed tyrannical. When I saw him three years later, he was an old man of twenty-nine, gentle and yielding beyond the border-line of weakness, mistrustful of himself and considerate of others to a degree that was often unwise. Formerly, his anger had been a thing very easily and frequently aroused. Since the change of which I speak, I have never known the shade of anger to cross his face but once. In the course of a walk, one day, we came upon a young rough terrifying a small child by pretending to set a dog at her. He seized the boy with a grip that almost choked him, and administered to him a punishment that seemed to me altogether out of proportion to the crime, brutal though it was.

"I remonstrated with him when he rejoined me.

"'Yes,' he replied apologetically; 'I suppose I'm a hard judge of some follies.' And, knowing what his haunted eyes were looking at, I said no more.

"He was junior partner in a large firm of tea brokers in the City. There was not much for him to do in the London office, and when, therefore, as the result of some mortgage transactions, a South Indian tea plantation fell into the hands of the firm, it was suggested that he should go out and take the management of it. The plan suited him admirably. He was a man in every way qualified to lead a rough life; to face a by no means contemptible amount of difficulty and danger, to govern a small army of native workers more amenable to fear than to affection. Such a life, demanding thought and action, would afford his strong nature greater interest and enjoyment than he could ever hope to obtain amid the cramped surroundings of civilisation.

"Only one thing could in reason have been urged against the arrangement, that thing was his wife. She was a fragile, delicate girl, whom he had married in obedience to that instinct of attraction towards the opposite which Nature, for the purpose of maintaining her average, has implanted in our breasts—a timid, meek-eyed creature, one of those women to whom death is less terrible than danger, and fate easier to face than fear. Such women have been known to run screaming from a mouse and to meet martyrdom with heroism. They can no more keep their nerves from trembling than an aspen tree can stay the quivering of its leaves.

"That she was totally unfitted for, and would be made wretched by the life to which his acceptance of the post would condemn her might have readily occurred to him, had he stopped to consider for a moment her feelings in the matter. But to view a question from any other standpoint than his own was not his habit. That he loved her passionately, in his way, as a thing belonging to himself, there can be no doubt, but it was with the love that such men have for the dog they will thrash, the horse they will spur to a broken back. To consult her on the subject never entered his head. He informed her one day of his decision and of the date of their sailing, and, handing her a handsome cheque, told her to purchase all things necessary to her, and to let him know if she needed more; and she, loving him with a dog-like devotion that was not good for him, opened her big eyes a little wider, but said nothing. She thought much about the coming change to herself, however, and, when nobody was by, she would cry softly; then, hearing his footsteps, would hastily wipe away the traces of her tears, and go to meet him with a smile.

"Now, her timidity and nervousness, which at home had been a butt for mere chaff, became, under the new circumstances of their life, a serious annoyance to the man. A woman who seemed unable to repress a scream whenever she turned and saw in the gloom a pair of piercing eyes looking out at her from a dusky face, who was liable to drop off her horse with fear at the sound of a wild beast's roar a mile off, and who would turn white and limp with horror at the mere sight of a snake, was not a companionable person to live with in the neighbourhood of Indian jungles.

"He himself was entirely without fear, and could not understand it. To him it was pure affectation. He had a muddled idea, common to men of his stamp, that women assume nervousness because they think it pretty and becoming to them, and that if one could only convince them of the folly of it they might be induced to lay it aside, in the same way that they lay aside mincing steps and simpering voices. A man who prided himself, as he did, upon his knowledge of horses, might, one would think, have grasped a truer notion of the nature of nervousness, which is a mere matter of temperament. But the man was a fool.

"The thing that vexed him most was her horror of snakes. He was unblessed—or uncursed, whichever you may prefer—with imagination of any kind. There was no special enmity between him and the seed of the serpent. A creature that crawled upon its belly was no more terrible to him than a creature that walked upon its legs; indeed, less so, for he knew that, as a rule, there was less danger to be apprehended from them. A reptile is only too eager at all times to escape from man. Unless attacked or frightened, it will make no onset. Most people are content to acquire their knowledge of this fact from the natural history books. He had proved it for himself. His servant, an old sergeant of dragoons, has told me that he has seen him stop with his face six inches from the head of a hooded cobra, and stand watching it through his eye-glass as it crawled away from him, knowing that one touch of its fangs would mean death from which there could be no possible escape. That any reasoning being should be inspired with terror—sickening, deadly terror—by such pitifully harmless things, seemed to him monstrous; and he determined to try and cure her of her fear of them.

"He succeeded in doing this eventually somewhat more thoroughly than he had anticipated, but it left a terror in his own eyes that has not gone out of them to this day, and that never will.

"One evening, riding home through a part of the jungle not far from his bungalow, he heard a soft, low hiss close to his ear, and, looking up, saw a python swing itself from the branch of a tree and make off through the long grass. He had been out antelope-shooting, and his loaded rifle hung by his stirrup. Springing from the frightened horse, he was just in time to get a shot at the creature before it disappeared. He had hardly expected, under the circumstances, to even hit it. By chance the bullet struck it at the junction of the vertebrae with the head, and killed it instantly. It was a well-marked specimen, and, except for the small wound the bullet had made, quite uninjured. He picked it up, and hung it across the saddle, intending to take it home and preserve it.

"Galloping along, glancing down every now and again at the huge, hideous thing swaying and writhing in front of him almost as if still alive, a brilliant idea occurred to him. He would use this dead reptile to cure his wife of her fear of living ones. He would fix matters so that she should see it, and think it was alive, and be terrified by it; then he would show her that she had been frightened by a mere dead thing, and she would feel ashamed of herself, and be healed of her folly. It was the sort of idea that would occur to a fool.

"When he reached home, he took the dead snake into his smoking-room; then, locking the door, the idiot set out his prescription. He arranged the monster in a very natural and life-like position. It appeared to be crawling from the open window across the floor, and any one coming into the room suddenly could hardly avoid treading on it. It was very cleverly done.

"That finished, he picked out a book from the shelves, opened it, and laid it face downward upon the couch. When he had completed all things to his satisfaction he unlocked the door and came out, very pleased with himself.

"After dinner he lit a cigar and sat smoking a while in silence.

"'Are you feeling tired?' he said to her at length, with a smile.

"She laughed, and, calling him a lazy old thing, asked what it was he wanted.

"'Only my novel that I was reading. I left it in my den. Do you mind? You will find it open on the couch.'

"She sprang up and ran lightly to the door.

"As she paused there for a moment to look back at him and ask the name of the book, he thought how pretty and how sweet she was; and for the first time a faint glimmer of the true nature of the thing he was doing forced itself into his brain.

"'Never mind,' he said, half rising, 'I'll—'; then, enamoured of the brilliancy of his plan, checked himself; and she was gone.

"He heard her footsteps passing along the matted passage, and smiled to himself. He thought the affair was going to be rather amusing. One finds it difficult to pity him even now when one thinks of it.

"The smoking-room door opened and closed, and he still sat gazing dreamily at the ash of his cigar, and smiling.

"One moment, perhaps two passed, but the time seemed much longer. The man blew the gray cloud from before his eyes and waited. Then he heard what he had been expecting to hear—a piercing shriek. Then another, which, expecting to hear the clanging of the distant door and the scurrying back of her footsteps along the passage, puzzled him, so that the smile died away from his lips.

"Then another, and another, and another, shriek after shriek.

"The native servant, gliding noiselessly about the room, laid down the thing that was in his hand and moved instinctively towards the door. The man started up and held him back.

"'Keep where you are,' he said hoarsely. 'It is nothing. Your mistress is frightened, that is all. She must learn to get over this folly.' Then he listened again, and the shrieks ended with what sounded curiously like a smothered laugh; and there came a sudden silence.

"And out of that bottomless silence, Fear for the first time in his life came to the man, and he and the dusky servant looked at each other with eyes in which there was a strange likeness; and by a common instinct moved together towards the place where the silence came from.

"When the man opened the door he saw three things: one was the dead python, lying where he had left it; the second was a live python, its comrade apparently, slowly crawling round it; the third a crushed, bloody heap in the middle of the floor.

"He himself remembered nothing more until, weeks afterwards, he opened his eyes in a darkened, unfamiliar place, but the native servant, before he fled screaming from the house, saw his master fling himself upon the living serpent and grasp it with his hands, and when, later on, others burst into the room and caught him staggering in their arms, they found the second python with its head torn off.

"That is the incident that changed the character of my man—if it be changed," concluded Jephson. "He told it me one night as we sat on the deck of the steamer, returning from Bombay. He did not spare himself. He told me the story, much as I have told it to you, but in an even, monotonous tone, free from emotion of any kind. I asked him, when he had finished, how he could bear to recall it.

"'Recall it!' he replied, with a slight accent of surprise; 'it is always with me.'"



CHAPTER VIII

One day we spoke of crime and criminals. We had discussed the possibility of a novel without a villain, but had decided that it would be uninteresting.

"It is a terribly sad reflection," remarked MacShaughnassy, musingly; "but what a desperately dull place this earth would be if it were not for our friends the bad people. Do you know," he continued, "when I hear of folks going about the world trying to reform everybody and make them good, I get positively nervous. Once do away with sin, and literature will become a thing of the past. Without the criminal classes we authors would starve."

"I shouldn't worry," replied Jephson, drily; "one half mankind has been 'reforming' the other half pretty steadily ever since the Creation, yet there appears to be a fairly appreciable amount of human nature left in it, notwithstanding. Suppressing sin is much the same sort of task that suppressing a volcano would be—plugging one vent merely opens another. Evil will last our time."

"I cannot take your optimistic view of the case," answered MacShaughnassy. "It seems to me that crime—at all events, interesting crime—is being slowly driven out of our existence. Pirates and highwaymen have been practically abolished. Dear old 'Smuggler Bill' has melted down his cutlass into a pint-can with a false bottom. The pressgang that was always so ready to rescue our hero from his approaching marriage has been disbanded. There's not a lugger fit for the purposes of abduction left upon the coast. Men settle their 'affairs of honour' in the law courts, and return home wounded only in the pocket. Assaults on unprotected females are confined to the slums, where heroes do not dwell, and are avenged by the nearest magistrate. Your modern burglar is generally an out-of-work green-grocer. His 'swag' usually consists of an overcoat and a pair of boots, in attempting to make off with which he is captured by the servant-girl. Suicides and murders are getting scarcer every season. At the present rate of decrease, deaths by violence will be unheard of in another decade, and a murder story will be laughed at as too improbable to be interesting. A certain section of busybodies are even crying out for the enforcement of the seventh commandment. If they succeed authors will have to follow the advice generally given to them by the critics, and retire from business altogether. I tell you our means of livelihood are being filched from us one by one. Authors ought to form themselves into a society for the support and encouragement of crime."

MacShaughnassy's leading intention in making these remarks was to shock and grieve Brown, and in this object he succeeded. Brown is—or was, in those days—an earnest young man with an exalted—some were inclined to say an exaggerated—view of the importance and dignity of the literary profession. Brown's notion of the scheme of Creation was that God made the universe so as to give the literary man something to write about. I used at one time to credit Brown with originality for this idea; but as I have grown older I have learned that the theory is a very common and popular one in cultured circles.

Brown expostulated with MacShaughnassy. "You speak," he said, "as though literature were the parasite of evil."

"And what else is she?" replied the MacShaughnassy, with enthusiasm. "What would become of literature without folly and sin? What is the work of the literary man but raking a living for himself out of the dust-heap of human woe? Imagine, if you can, a perfect world—a world where men and women never said foolish things and never did unwise ones; where small boys were never mischievous and children never made awkward remarks; where dogs never fought and cats never screeched; where wives never henpecked their husbands and mothers-in-law never nagged; where men never went to bed in their boots and sea-captains never swore; where plumbers understood their work and old maids never dressed as girls; where niggers never stole chickens and proud men were never sea-sick! where would be your humour and your wit? Imagine a world where hearts were never bruised; where lips were never pressed with pain; where eyes were never dim; where feet were never weary; where stomachs were never empty! where would be your pathos? Imagine a world where husbands never loved more wives than one, and that the right one; where wives were never kissed but by their husbands; where men's hearts were never black and women's thoughts never impure; where there was no hating and no envying; no desiring; no despairing! where would be your scenes of passion, your interesting complications, your subtle psychological analyses? My dear Brown, we writers—novelists, dramatists, poets—we fatten on the misery of our fellow-creatures. God created man and woman, and the woman created the literary man when she put her teeth into the apple. We came into the world under the shadow of the serpent. We are special correspondents with the Devil's army. We report his victories in our three-volume novels, his occasional defeats in our five-act melodramas."

"All of which is very true," remarked Jephson; "but you must remember it is not only the literary man who traffics in misfortune. The doctor, the lawyer, the preacher, the newspaper proprietor, the weather prophet, will hardly, I should say, welcome the millennium. I shall never forget an anecdote my uncle used to relate, dealing with the period when he was chaplain of the Lincolnshire county jail. One morning there was to be a hanging; and the usual little crowd of witnesses, consisting of the sheriff, the governor, three or four reporters, a magistrate, and a couple of warders, was assembled in the prison. The condemned man, a brutal ruffian who had been found guilty of murdering a young girl under exceptionally revolting circumstances, was being pinioned by the hangman and his assistant; and my uncle was employing the last few moments at his disposal in trying to break down the sullen indifference the fellow had throughout manifested towards both his crime and his fate.

"My uncle failing to make any impression upon him, the governor ventured to add a few words of exhortation, upon which the man turned fiercely on the whole of them.

"'Go to hell,' he cried, 'with your snivelling jaw. Who are you, to preach at me? You're glad enough I'm here—all of you. Why, I'm the only one of you as ain't going to make a bit over this job. Where would you all be, I should like to know, you canting swine, if it wasn't for me and my sort? Why, it's the likes of me as keeps the likes of you,' with which he walked straight to the gallows and told the hangman to 'hurry up' and not keep the gentlemen waiting."

"There was some 'grit' in that man," said MacShaughnassy.

"Yes," added Jephson, "and wholesome wit also."

MacShaughnassy puffed a mouthful of smoke over a spider which was just about to kill a fly. This caused the spider to fall into the river, from where a supper-hunting swallow quickly rescued him.

"You remind me," he said, "of a scene I once witnessed in the office of The Daily—well, in the office of a certain daily newspaper. It was the dead season, and things were somewhat slow. An endeavour had been made to launch a discussion on the question 'Are Babies a Blessing?' The youngest reporter on the staff, writing over the simple but touching signature of 'Mother of Six,' had led off with a scathing, though somewhat irrelevant, attack upon husbands, as a class; the Sporting Editor, signing himself 'Working Man,' and garnishing his contribution with painfully elaborated orthographical lapses, arranged to give an air of verisimilitude to the correspondence, while, at the same time, not to offend the susceptibilities of the democracy (from whom the paper derived its chief support), had replied, vindicating the British father, and giving what purported to be stirring midnight experiences of his own. The Gallery Man, calling himself, with a burst of imagination, 'Gentleman and Christian,' wrote indignantly that he considered the agitation of the subject to be both impious and indelicate, and added he was surprised that a paper holding the exalted, and deservedly popular, position of The —- should have opened its columns to the brainless vapourings of 'Mother of Six' and 'Working Man.'

"The topic had, however, fallen flat. With the exception of one man who had invented a new feeding-bottle, and thought he was going to advertise it for nothing, the outside public did not respond, and over the editorial department gloom had settled down.

"One evening, as two or three of us were mooning about the stairs, praying secretly for a war or a famine, Todhunter, the town reporter, rushed past us with a cheer, and burst into the Sub-editor's room. We followed. He was waving his notebook above his head, and clamouring, after the manner of people in French exercises, for pens, ink, and paper.

"'What's up?' cried the Sub-editor, catching his enthusiasm; 'influenza again?'

"'Better than that!' shouted Todhunter. 'Excursion steamer run down, a hundred and twenty-five lives lost—four good columns of heartrending scenes.'

"'By Jove!' said the Sub, 'couldn't have happened at a better time either'—and then he sat down and dashed off a leaderette, in which he dwelt upon the pain and regret the paper felt at having to announce the disaster, and drew attention to the exceptionally harrowing account provided by the energy and talent of 'our special reporter.'"

"It is the law of nature," said Jephson: "we are not the first party of young philosophers who have been struck with the fact that one man's misfortune is another man's opportunity."

"Occasionally, another woman's," I observed.

I was thinking of an incident told me by a nurse. If a nurse in fair practice does not know more about human nature—does not see clearer into the souls of men and women than all the novelists in little Bookland put together—it must be because she is physically blind and deaf. All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; so long as we are in good health, we play our parts out bravely to the end, acting them, on the whole, artistically and with strenuousness, even to the extent of sometimes fancying ourselves the people we are pretending to be. But with sickness comes forgetfulness of our part, and carelessness of the impression we are making upon the audience. We are too weak to put the paint and powder on our faces, the stage finery lies unheeded by our side. The heroic gestures, the virtuous sentiments are a weariness to us. In the quiet, darkened room, where the foot-lights of the great stage no longer glare upon us, where our ears are no longer strained to catch the clapping or the hissing of the town, we are, for a brief space, ourselves.

This nurse was a quiet, demure little woman, with a pair of dreamy, soft gray eyes that had a curious power of absorbing everything that passed before them without seeming to look at anything. Gazing upon much life, laid bare, had given to them a slightly cynical expression, but there was a background of kindliness behind.

During the evenings of my convalescence she would talk to me of her nursing experiences. I have sometimes thought I would put down in writing the stories that she told me, but they would be sad reading. The majority of them, I fear, would show only the tangled, seamy side of human nature, and God knows there is little need for us to point that out to each other, though so many nowadays seem to think it the only work worth doing. A few of them were sweet, but I think they were the saddest; and over one or two a man might laugh, but it would not be a pleasant laugh.

"I never enter the door of a house to which I have been summoned," she said to me one evening, "without wondering, as I step over the threshold, what the story is going to be. I always feel inside a sick-room as if I were behind the scenes of life. The people come and go about you, and you listen to them talking and laughing, and you look into your patient's eyes, and you just know that it's all a play."

The incident that Jephson's remark had reminded me of, she told me one afternoon, as I sat propped up by the fire, trying to drink a glass of port wine, and feeling somewhat depressed at discovering I did not like it.

"One of my first cases," she said, "was a surgical operation. I was very young at the time, and I made rather an awkward mistake—I don't mean a professional mistake—but a mistake nevertheless that I ought to have had more sense than to make.

"My patient was a good-looking, pleasant-spoken gentleman. The wife was a pretty, dark little woman, but I never liked her from the first; she was one of those perfectly proper, frigid women, who always give me the idea that they were born in a church, and have never got over the chill. However, she seemed very fond of him, and he of her; and they talked very prettily to each other—too prettily for it to be quite genuine, I should have said, if I'd known as much of the world then as I do now.

"The operation was a difficult and dangerous one. When I came on duty in the evening I found him, as I expected, highly delirious. I kept him as quiet as I could, but towards nine o'clock, as the delirium only increased, I began to get anxious. I bent down close to him and listened to his ravings. Over and over again I heard the name 'Louise.' Why wouldn't 'Louise' come to him? It was so unkind of her—they had dug a great pit, and were pushing him down into it—oh! why didn't she come and save him? He should be saved if she would only come and take his hand.

"His cries became so pitiful that I could bear them no longer. His wife had gone to attend a prayer-meeting, but the church was only in the next street. Fortunately, the day-nurse had not left the house: I called her in to watch him for a minute, and, slipping on my bonnet, ran across. I told my errand to one of the vergers and he took me to her. She was kneeling, but I could not wait. I pushed open the pew door, and, bending down, whispered to her, 'Please come over at once; your husband is more delirious than I quite care about, and you may be able to calm him.'

"She whispered back, without raising her head, 'I'll be over in a little while. The meeting won't last much longer.'

"Her answer surprised and nettled me. 'You'll be acting more like a Christian woman by coming home with me,' I said sharply, 'than by stopping here. He keeps calling for you, and I can't get him to sleep.'

"She raised her head from her hands: 'Calling for me?' she asked, with a slightly incredulous accent.

"'Yes,' I replied, 'it has been his one cry for the last hour: Where's Louise, why doesn't Louise come to him.'

"Her face was in shadow, but as she turned it away, and the faint light from one of the turned-down gas-jets fell across it, I fancied I saw a smile upon it, and I disliked her more than ever.

"'I'll come back with you,' she said, rising and putting her books away, and we left the church together.

"She asked me many questions on the way: Did patients, when they were delirious, know the people about them? Did they remember actual facts, or was their talk mere incoherent rambling? Could one guide their thoughts in any way?

"The moment we were inside the door, she flung off her bonnet and cloak, and came upstairs quickly and softly.

"She walked to the bedside, and stood looking down at him, but he was quite unconscious of her presence, and continued muttering. I suggested that she should speak to him, but she said she was sure it would be useless, and drawing a chair back into the shadow, sat down beside him.

"Seeing she was no good to him, I tried to persuade her to go to bed, but she said she would rather stop, and I, being little more than a girl then, and without much authority, let her. All night long he tossed and raved, the one name on his lips being ever Louise—Louise—and all night long that woman sat there in the shadow, never moving, never speaking, with a set smile on her lips that made me long to take her by the shoulders and shake her.

"At one time he imagined himself back in his courting days, and pleaded, 'Say you love me, Louise. I know you do. I can read it in your eyes. What's the use of our pretending? We know each other. Put your white arms about me. Let me feel your breath upon my neck. Ah! I knew it, my darling, my love!'

"The whole house was deadly still, and I could hear every word of his troubled ravings. I almost felt as if I had no right to be there, listening to them, but my duty held me. Later on, he fancied himself planning a holiday with her, so I concluded. 'I shall start on Monday evening,' he was saying, and you can join me in Dublin at Jackson's Hotel on the Wednesday, and we'll go straight on.'

"His voice grew a little faint, and his wife moved forward on her chair, and bent her head closer to his lips.

"'No, no,' he continued, after a pause, 'there's no danger whatever. It's a lonely little place, right in the heart of the Galway Mountains—O'Mullen's Half-way House they call it—five miles from Ballynahinch. We shan't meet a soul there. We'll have three weeks of heaven all to ourselves, my goddess, my Mrs. Maddox from Boston—don't forget the name.'

"He laughed in his delirium; and the woman, sitting by his side, laughed also; and then the truth flashed across me.

"I ran up to her and caught her by the arm. 'Your name's not Louise,' I said, looking straight at her. It was an impertinent interference, but I felt excited, and acted on impulse.

"'No,' she replied, very quietly; 'but it's the name of a very dear school friend of mine. I've got the clue to-night that I've been waiting two years to get. Good-night, nurse, thanks for fetching me.'

"She rose and went out, and I listened to her footsteps going down the stairs, and then drew up the blind and let in the dawn.

"I've never told that incident to any one until this evening," my nurse concluded, as she took the empty port wine glass out of my hand, and stirred the fire. "A nurse wouldn't get many engagements if she had the reputation for making blunders of that sort."

Another story that she told me showed married life more lovelit, but then, as she added, with that cynical twinkle which glinted so oddly from her gentle, demure eyes, this couple had only very recently been wed—had, in fact, only just returned from their honeymoon.

They had been travelling on the Continent, and there had both contracted typhoid fever, which showed itself immediately on their home-coming.

"I was called in to them on the very day of their arrival," she said; "the husband was the first to take to his bed, and the wife followed suit twelve hours afterwards. We placed them in adjoining rooms, and, as often as was possible, we left the door ajar so that they could call out to one another.

"Poor things! They were little else than boy and girl, and they worried more about each other than they thought about themselves. The wife's only trouble was that she wouldn't be able to do anything for 'poor Jack.' 'Oh, nurse, you will be good to him, won't you?' she would cry, with her big childish eyes full of tears; and the moment I went in to him it would be: 'Oh, don't trouble about me, nurse, I'm all right. Just look after the wifie, will you?'

"I had a hard time between the two of them, for, with the help of her sister, I was nursing them both. It was an unprofessional thing to do, but I could see they were not well off, and I assured the doctor that I could manage. To me it was worth while going through the double work just to breathe the atmosphere of unselfishness that sweetened those two sick-rooms. The average invalid is not the patient sufferer people imagine. It is a fretful, querulous, self-pitying little world that we live in as a rule, and that we grow hard in. It gave me a new heart, nursing these young people.

"The man pulled through, and began steadily to recover, but the wife was a wee slip of a girl, and her strength—what there was of it—ebbed day by day. As he got stronger he would call out more and more cheerfully to her through the open door, and ask her how she was getting on, and she would struggle to call back laughing answers. It had been a mistake to put them next to each other, and I blamed myself for having done so, but it was too late to change then. All we could do was to beg her not to exhaust herself, and to let us, when he called out, tell him she was asleep. But the thought of not answering him or calling to him made her so wretched that it seemed safer to let her have her way.

"Her one anxiety was that he should not know how weak she was. 'It will worry him so,' she would say; 'he is such an old fidget over me. And I am getting stronger, slowly; ain't I, nurse?'

"One morning he called out to her, as usual, asking her how she was, and she answered, though she had to wait for a few seconds to gather strength to do so. He seemed to detect the effort, for he called back anxiously, 'Are you sure you're all right, dear?'

"'Yes,' she replied, 'getting on famously. Why?'

"'I thought your voice sounded a little weak, dear,' he answered; 'don't call out if it tries you.'

"Then for the first time she began to worry about herself—not for her own sake, but because of him.

"'Do you think I am getting weaker, nurse?' she asked me, fixing her great eyes on me with a frightened look.

"'You're making yourself weak by calling out,' I answered, a little sharply. 'I shall have to keep that door shut.'

"'Oh, don't tell him'—that was all her thought—'don't let him know it. Tell him I'm strong, won't you, nurse? It will kill him if he thinks I'm not getting well.'

"I was glad when her sister came up, and I could get out of the room, for you're not much good at nursing when you feel, as I felt then, as though you had swallowed a tablespoon and it was sticking in your throat.

"Later on, when I went in to him, he drew me to the bedside, and whispered me to tell him truly how she was. If you are telling a lie at all, you may just as well make it a good one, so I told him she was really wonderfully well, only a little exhausted after the illness, as was natural, and that I expected to have her up before him.

"Poor lad! that lie did him more good than a week's doctoring and nursing; and next morning he called out more cheerily than ever to her, and offered to bet her a new bonnet against a new hat that he would race her, and be up first.

"She laughed back quite merrily (I was in his room at the time). 'All right,' she said, 'you'll lose. I shall be well first, and I shall come and visit you.'

"Her laugh was so bright, and her voice sounded so much stronger, that I really began to think she had taken a turn for the better, so that when on going in to her I found her pillow wet with tears, I could not understand it.

"'Why, we were so cheerful just a minute ago,' I said; 'what's the matter?'

"'Oh, poor Jack!' she moaned, as her little, wasted fingers opened and closed upon the counterpane. 'Poor Jack, it will break his heart.'

"It was no good my saying anything. There comes a moment when something tells your patient all that is to be known about the case, and the doctor and the nurse can keep their hopeful assurances for where they will be of more use. The only thing that would have brought comfort to her then would have been to convince her that he would soon forget her and be happy without her. I thought it at the time, and I tried to say something of the kind to her, but I couldn't get it out, and she wouldn't have believed me if I had.

"So all I could do was to go back to the other room, and tell him that I wanted her to go to sleep, and that he must not call out to her until I told him.

"She lay very still all day. The doctor came at his usual hour and looked at her. He patted her hand, and just glanced at the untouched food beside her.

"'Yes,' he said, quietly. 'I shouldn't worry her, nurse.' And I understood.

"Towards evening she opened her eyes, and beckoned to her sister, who was standing by the bedside, to bend down.

"'Jeanie,' she whispered, 'do you think it wrong to deceive any one when it's for their own good?'

"'I don't know,' said the girl, in a dry voice; 'I shouldn't think so. Why do you ask?'

"'Jeanie, your voice was always very much like mine—do you remember, they used to mistake us at home. Jeanie, call out for me—just till—till he's a bit better; promise me.'

"They had loved each other, those two, more than is common among sisters. Jeanie could not answer, but she pressed her sister closer in her arms, and the other was satisfied.

"Then, drawing all her little stock of life together for one final effort, the child raised herself in her sister's arms.

"'Good-night, Jack,' she called out, loud and clear enough to be heard through the closed door.

"'Good-night, little wife,' he cried back, cheerily; 'are you all right?'

"'Yes, dear. Good-night.'

"Her little, worn-out frame dropped back upon the bed, and the next thing I remember is snatching up a pillow, and holding it tight-pressed against Jeanie's face for fear the sound of her sobs should penetrate into the next room; and afterwards we both got out, somehow, by the other door, and rushed downstairs, and clung to each other in the back kitchen.

"How we two women managed to keep up the deceit, as, for three whole days, we did, I shall never myself know. Jeanie sat in the room where her dead sister, from its head to its sticking-up feet, lay outlined under the white sheet; and I stayed beside the living man, and told lies and acted lies, till I took a joy in them, and had to guard against the danger of over-elaborating them.

"He wondered at what he thought my 'new merry mood,' and I told him it was because of my delight that his wife was out of danger; and then I went on for the pure devilment of the thing, and told him that a week ago, when we had let him think his wife was growing stronger, we had been deceiving him; that, as a matter of fact, she was at that time in great peril, and I had been in hourly alarm concerning her, but that now the strain was over, and she was safe; and I dropped down by the foot of the bed, and burst into a fit of laughter, and had to clutch hold of the bedstead to keep myself from rolling on the floor.

"He had started up in bed with a wild white face when Jeanie had first answered him from the other room, though the sisters' voices had been so uncannily alike that I had never been able to distinguish one from the other at any time. I told him the slight change was the result of the fever, that his own voice also was changed a little, and that such was always the case with a person recovering from a long illness. To guide his thoughts away from the real clue, I told him Jeanie had broken down with the long work, and that, the need for her being past, I had packed her off into the country for a short rest. That afternoon we concocted a letter to him, and I watched Jeanie's eyes with a towel in my hand while she wrote it, so that no tears should fall on it, and that night she travelled twenty miles down the Great Western line to post it, returning by the next up-train.

"No suspicion of the truth ever occurred to him, and the doctor helped us out with our deception; yet his pulse, which day by day had been getting stronger, now beat feebler every hour. In that part of the country where I was born and grew up, the folks say that wherever the dead lie, there round about them, whether the time be summer or winter, the air grows cold and colder, and that no fire, though you pile the logs half-way up the chimney, will ever make it warm. A few months' hospital training generally cures one of all fanciful notions about death, but this idea I have never been able to get rid of. My thermometer may show me sixty, and I may try to believe that the temperature is sixty, but if the dead are beside me I feel cold to the marrow of my bones. I could see the chill from the dead room crawling underneath the door, and creeping up about his bed, and reaching out its hand to touch his heart.

"Jeanie and I redoubled our efforts, for it seemed to us as if Death were waiting just outside in the passage, watching with his eye at the keyhole for either of us to make a blunder and let the truth slip out. I hardly ever left his side except now and again to go into that next room, and poke an imaginary fire, and say a few chaffing words to an imaginary living woman on the bed where the dead one lay; and Jeanie sat close to the corpse, and called out saucy messages to him, or reassuring answers to his anxious questions.

"At times, knowing that if we stopped another moment in these rooms we should scream, we would steal softly out and rush downstairs, and, shutting ourselves out of hearing in a cellar underneath the yard, laugh till we reeled against the dirty walls. I think we were both getting a little mad.

"One day—it was the third of that nightmare life, so I learned afterwards, though for all I could have told then it might have been the three hundredth, for Time seemed to have fled from that house as from a dream, so that all things were tangled—I made a slip that came near to ending the matter, then and there.

"I had gone into that other room. Jeanie had left her post for a moment, and the place was empty.

"I did not think what I was doing. I had not closed my eyes that I can remember since the wife had died, and my brain and my senses were losing their hold of one another. I went through my usual performance of talking loudly to the thing underneath the white sheet, and noisily patting the pillows and rattling the bottles on the table.

"On my return, he asked me how she was, and I answered, half in a dream, 'Oh, bonny, she's trying to read a little,' and he raised himself on his elbow and called out to her, and for answer there came back silence—not the silence that is silence, but the silence that is as a voice. I do not know if you understand what I mean by that. If you had lived among the dead as long as I have, you would know.

"I darted to the door and pretended to look in. 'She's fallen asleep,' I whispered, closing it; and he said nothing, but his eyes looked queerly at me.

"That night, Jeanie and I stood in the hall talking. He had fallen to sleep early, and I had locked the door between the two rooms, and put the key in my pocket, and had stolen down to tell her what had happened, and to consult with her.

"'What can we do! God help us, what can we do!' was all that Jeanie could say. We had thought that in a day or two he would be stronger, and that the truth might be broken to him. But instead of that he had grown so weak, that to excite his suspicions now by moving him or her would be to kill him.

"We stood looking blankly in each other's faces, wondering how the problem could be solved; and while we did so the problem solved itself.

"The one woman-servant had gone out, and the house was very silent—so silent that I could hear the ticking of Jeanie's watch inside her dress. Suddenly, into the stillness there came a sound. It was not a cry. It came from no human voice. I have heard the voice of human pain till I know its every note, and have grown careless to it; but I have prayed God on my knees that I may never hear that sound again, for it was the sob of a soul.

"It wailed through the quiet house and passed away, and neither of us stirred.

"At length, with the return of the blood to our veins, we went upstairs together. He had crept from his own room along the passage into hers. He had not had strength enough to pull the sheet off, though he had tried. He lay across the bed with one hand grasping hers."

* * * * *

My nurse sat for a while without speaking, a somewhat unusual thing for her to do.

"You ought to write your experiences," I said.

"Ah!" she said, giving the fire a contemplative poke, "if you'd seen as much sorrow in the world as I have, you wouldn't want to write a sad book."

"I think," she added, after a long pause, with the poker still in her hand, "it can only be the people who have never known suffering who can care to read of it. If I could write a book, I should write a merry book—a book that would make people laugh."



CHAPTER IX

The discussion arose in this way. I had proposed a match between our villain and the daughter of the local chemist, a singularly noble and pure-minded girl, the humble but worthy friend of the heroine.

Brown had refused his consent on the ground of improbability. "What in thunder would induce him to marry her?" he asked.

"Love!" I replied; "love, that burns as brightly in the meanest villain's breast as in the proud heart of the good young man."

"Are you trying to be light and amusing," returned Brown, severely, "or are you supposed to be discussing the matter seriously? What attraction could such a girl have for such a man as Reuben Neil?"

"Every attraction," I retorted. "She is the exact moral contrast to himself. She is beautiful (if she's not beautiful enough, we can touch her up a bit), and, when the father dies, there will be the shop."

"Besides," I added, "it will make the thing seem more natural if everybody wonders what on earth could have been the reason for their marrying each other."

Brown wasted no further words on me, but turned to MacShaughnassy.

"Can you imagine our friend Reuben seized with a burning desire to marry Mary Holme?" he asked, with a smile.

"Of course I can," said MacShaughnassy; "I can imagine anything, and believe anything of anybody. It is only in novels that people act reasonably and in accordance with what might be expected of them. I knew an old sea-captain who used to read the Young Ladies' Journal in bed, and cry over it. I knew a bookmaker who always carried Browning's poems about with him in his pocket to study in the train. I have known a Harley Street doctor to develop at forty-eight a sudden and overmastering passion for switchbacks, and to spend every hour he could spare from his practice at one or other of the exhibitions, having three-pen'orths one after the other. I have known a book-reviewer give oranges (not poisoned ones) to children. A man is not a character, he is a dozen characters, one of them prominent, the other eleven more or less undeveloped. I knew a man once, two of whose characters were of equal value, and the consequences were peculiar."

We begged him to relate the case to us, and he did so.

"He was a Balliol man," said MacShaughnassy, "and his Christian name was Joseph. He was a member of the 'Devonshire' at the time I knew him, and was, I think, the most superior person I have ever met. He sneered at the Saturday Review as the pet journal of the suburban literary club; and at the Athenaeum as the trade organ of the unsuccessful writer. Thackeray, he considered, was fairly entitled to his position of favourite author to the cultured clerk; and Carlyle he regarded as the exponent of the earnest artisan. Living authors he never read, but this did not prevent his criticising them contemptuously. The only inhabitants of the nineteenth century that he ever praised were a few obscure French novelists, of whom nobody but himself had ever heard. He had his own opinion about God Almighty, and objected to Heaven on account of the strong Clapham contingent likely to be found in residence there. Humour made him sad, and sentiment made him ill. Art irritated him and science bored him. He despised his own family and disliked everybody else. For exercise he yawned, and his conversation was mainly confined to an occasional shrug.

"Nobody liked him, but everybody respected him. One felt grateful to him for his condescension in living at all.

"One summer, I was fishing over the Norfolk Broads, and on the Bank Holiday, thinking I would like to see the London 'Arry in his glory, I ran over to Yarmouth. Walking along the sea-front in the evening, I suddenly found myself confronted by four remarkably choice specimens of the class. They were urging on their wild and erratic career arm-in-arm. The one nearest the road was playing an unusually wheezy concertina, and the other three were bawling out the chorus of a music-hall song, the heroine of which appeared to be 'Hemmer.'

"They spread themselves right across the pavement, compelling all the women and children they met to step into the roadway. I stood my ground on the kerb, and as they brushed by me something in the face of the one with the concertina struck me as familiar.

"I turned and followed them. They were evidently enjoying themselves immensely. To every girl they passed they yelled out, 'Oh, you little jam tart!' and every old lady they addressed as 'Mar.' The noisiest and the most vulgar of the four was the one with the concertina.

"I followed them on to the pier, and then, hurrying past, waited for them under a gas-lamp. When the man with the concertina came into the light and I saw him clearly I started. From the face I could have sworn it was Joseph; but everything else about him rendered such an assumption impossible. Putting aside the time and the place, and forgetting his behaviour, his companions, and his instrument, what remained was sufficient to make the suggestion absurd. Joseph was always clean shaven; this youth had a smudgy moustache and a pair of incipient red whiskers. He was dressed in the loudest check suit I have ever seen, off the stage. He wore patent-leather boots with mother-of-pearl buttons, and a necktie that in an earlier age would have called down lightning out of Heaven. He had a low-crowned billycock hat on his head, and a big evil-smelling cigar between his lips.

"Argue as I would, however, the face was the face of Joseph; and, moved by a curiosity I could not control, I kept near him, watching him.

"Once, for a little while, I missed him; but there was not much fear of losing that suit for long, and after a little looking about I struck it again. He was sitting at the end of the pier, where it was less crowded, with his arm round a girl's waist. I crept close. She was a jolly, red- faced girl, good-looking enough, but common to the last degree. Her hat lay on the seat beside her, and her head was resting on his shoulder. She appeared to be fond of him, but he was evidently bored.

"'Don'tcher like me, Joe?' I heard her murmur.

"'Yas,' he replied, somewhat unconvincingly, 'o' course I likes yer.'

"She gave him an affectionate slap, but he did not respond, and a few minutes afterwards, muttering some excuse, he rose and left her, and I followed him as he made his way towards the refreshment-room. At the door he met one of his pals.

"'Hullo!' was the question, 'wot 'a yer done wi' 'Liza?'

"'Oh, I carn't stand 'er,' was his reply; 'she gives me the bloomin' 'ump. You 'ave a turn with 'er.'

"His friend disappeared in the direction of 'Liza, and Joe pushed into the room, I keeping close behind him. Now that he was alone I was determined to speak to him. The longer I had studied his features the more resemblance I had found in them to those of my superior friend Joseph.

"He was leaning across the bar, clamouring for two of gin, when I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned his head, and the moment he saw me, his face went livid.

"'Mr. Joseph Smythe, I believe,' I said with a smile.

"'Who's Mr. Joseph Smythe?' he answered hoarsely; 'my name's Smith, I ain't no bloomin' Smythe. Who are you? I don't know yer.'

"As he spoke, my eyes rested upon a curious gold ring of Indian workmanship which he wore upon his left hand. There was no mistaking the ring, at all events: it had been passed round the club on more than one occasion as a unique curiosity. His eyes followed my gaze. He burst into tears, and pushing me before him into a quiet corner of the saloon, sat down facing me.

"'Don't give me away, old man,' he whimpered; 'for Gawd's sake, don't let on to any of the chaps 'ere that I'm a member of that blessed old waxwork show in Saint James's: they'd never speak to me agen. And keep yer mug shut about Oxford, there's a good sort. I wouldn't 'ave 'em know as 'ow I was one o' them college blokes for anythink.'

"I sat aghast. I had listened to hear him entreat me to keep 'Smith,' the rorty 'Arry, a secret from the acquaintances of 'Smythe,' the superior person. Here was 'Smith' in mortal terror lest his pals should hear of his identity with the aristocratic 'Smythe,' and discard him. His attitude puzzled me at the time, but, when I came to reflect, my wonder was at myself for having expected the opposite.

"'I carn't 'elp it,' he went on; 'I 'ave to live two lives. 'Arf my time I'm a stuck-up prig, as orter be jolly well kicked—'

"'At which times,' I interrupted, 'I have heard you express some extremely uncomplimentary opinions concerning 'Arries.'

"'I know,' he replied, in a voice betraying strong emotion; 'that's where it's so precious rough on me. When I'm a toff I despises myself, 'cos I knows that underneath my sneering phiz I'm a bloomin' 'Arry. When I'm an 'Arry, I 'ates myself 'cos I knows I'm a toff.'

"'Can't you decide which character you prefer, and stick to it?' I asked.

"'No,' he answered, 'I carn't. It's a rum thing, but whichever I am, sure as fate, 'bout the end of a month I begin to get sick o' myself.'

"'I can quite understand it,' I murmured; 'I should give way myself in a fortnight.'

"'I've been myself, now,' he continued, without noticing my remark, 'for somethin' like ten days. One mornin', in 'bout three weeks' time, I shall get up in my diggins in the Mile End Road, and I shall look round the room, and at these clothes 'angin' over the bed, and at this yer concertina' (he gave it an affectionate squeeze), 'and I shall feel myself gettin' scarlet all over. Then I shall jump out o' bed, and look at myself in the glass. "You howling little cad," I shall say to myself, "I have half a mind to strangle you"; and I shall shave myself, and put on a quiet blue serge suit and a bowler 'at, tell my landlady to keep my rooms for me till I comes back, slip out o' the 'ouse, and into the fust 'ansom I meets, and back to the Halbany. And a month arter that, I shall come into my chambers at the Halbany, fling Voltaire and Parini into the fire, shy me 'at at the bust of good old 'Omer, slip on my blue suit agen, and back to the Mile End Road.'

"'How do you explain your absence to both parties?' I asked.

"'Oh, that's simple enough,' he replied. 'I just tells my 'ousekeeper at the Halbany as I'm goin' on the Continong; and my mates 'ere thinks I'm a traveller.'

"'Nobody misses me much,' he added, pathetically; 'I hain't a partic'larly fetchin' sort o' bloke, either of me. I'm sich an out-and- outer. When I'm an 'Arry, I'm too much of an 'Arry, and when I'm a prig, I'm a reg'lar fust prize prig. Seems to me as if I was two ends of a man without any middle. If I could only mix myself up a bit more, I'd be all right.'

"He sniffed once or twice, and then he laughed. 'Ah, well,' he said, casting aside his momentary gloom; 'it's all a game, and wot's the odds so long as yer 'appy. 'Ave a wet?'

"I declined the wet, and left him playing sentimental airs to himself upon the concertina.

"One afternoon, about a month later, the servant came to me with a card on which was engraved the name of 'Mr. Joseph Smythe.' I requested her to show him up. He entered with his usual air of languid superciliousness, and seated himself in a graceful attitude upon the sofa.

"'Well,' I said, as soon as the girl had closed the door behind her, 'so you've got rid of Smith?'

"A sickly smile passed over his face. 'You have not mentioned it to any one?' he asked anxiously.

"'Not to a soul,' I replied; 'though I confess I often feel tempted to.'

"'I sincerely trust you never will,' he said, in a tone of alarm. 'You can have no conception of the misery the whole thing causes me. I cannot understand it. What possible affinity there can be between myself and that disgusting little snob passes my comprehension. I assure you, my dear Mac, the knowledge that I was a ghoul, or a vampire, would cause me less nausea than the reflection that I am one and the same with that odious little Whitechapel bounder. When I think of him every nerve in my body—'

"'Don't think about him any more,' I interrupted, perceiving his strongly- suppressed emotion. 'You didn't come here to talk about him, I'm sure. Let us dismiss him.'

"'Well,' he replied, 'in a certain roundabout way it is slightly connected with him. That is really my excuse for inflicting the subject upon you. You are the only man I can speak to about it—if I shall not bore you?'