"I got hold of a milk-cart with a sharpened horse, and drove to Knype. Horse fell once, but he picked himself up again. Cost me a sovereign. Only just caught the train. Shouldn't have caught it if they hadn't sent off the Birmingham part before the London part. I was astonished, I can tell you, not to find you at Euston. Went to the hotel. Found 'em all waiting, of course, and practically weeping over a telegram from you. However, I soon arranged things. Had to buy a crutch.... Here, boy, lift!" They were in the hotel.

On a bed all Arthur's finest clothes were laid out. The famous trunk was at the foot of the bed.

"Quick!"

"But look here!" Arthur remonstrated. "It's after two now."

"Well, if it is? We've got till three. I've arranged with the mandarin chap for a quarter to three."

"I thought these things couldn't occur after two o'clock—by law."

"That's what's the matter with you," said Simeon; "you think too much. The two o'clock law was altered years ago. Had anything to eat?" He was helping Arthur with buttons.

"No."

"I expected not. Here! Swallow this whisky."

"Not I!" Arthur protested in a startled tone.

"Why not?"

"Because I shall have to kiss her after the ceremony."

"Bosh!" said Simeon. "Drink it. Besides, there's no kissing in a Registry Office. You're thinking of a church. I wish you wouldn't think so much. Here! Now the necktie, you cuckoo!"

In three minutes they were driving rapidly through the London mist towards the other sex, and in a quarter of an hour there was one bachelor the less in this vale of tears.



THE WIDOW OF THE BALCONY

I

They stood at the window of her boudoir in the new house which Stephen Cheswardine had recently bought at Sneyd. The stars were pursuing their orbits overhead in a clear dark velvet sky, except to the north, where the industrial fires and smoke of the Five Towns had completely put them out. But even these distant signs of rude labour had a romantic aspect, and did not impair the general romance of the scene. Charlie had loved her; he loved her still; and she gave him odd minutes of herself when she could, just to keep him alive. Moreover, there was the log fire richly crackling in the well-grate of the boudoir; there was the feminineness of the boudoir (dimly lit), and the soft splendour of her gown, and behind all that, pervading the house, the gay rumour of the party. And in front of them the window-panes, and beyond the window-panes the stars in their orbits. Doubtless it was such influences which, despite several degrees of frost outside, gave to Charlie Woodruff's thoughts an Italian, or Spanish, turn. He said:

"Stephen ought to have this window turned into a French window, and build you a balcony. It could easily be done. Just the view for a balcony. You can see Sneyd Lake from here." (You could. People were skating on it.)

He did not add that you could see the Sneyd Golf Links from there, and vice versa. I doubt if the idea occurred to him, but as he was an active member of the Sneyd Golf Club it would certainly have presented itself to him in due season.

"What a lovely scheme!" Vera exclaimed enthusiastically.

It appealed to her. It appealed to all that was romantic in her bird-like soul. She did not see the links; she did not see the lake; she just saw herself in exquisite frocks, lightly lounging on the balcony in high summer, and dreaming of her own beauty.

"And have a striped awning," she said.

"Yes," he said. "Make Stephen do it."

"I will," she said.

At that moment Stephen came in, with his bald head and his forty years.

"I say!" he demanded. "What are you up to?"

"We were just watching the skaters," said Vera.

"And the wonders of the night," said Charlie, chuckling characteristically. He always laughed at himself. He was a philosopher. He and Stephen had been fast friends from infancy.

"Well, you'd just better skate downstairs," said Stephen. (No romance in Stephen! He was netting a couple of thousand a year out of the manufacture of toilet-sets, in all that smoke to the north. How could you expect him to be romantic?)

"Charlie was saying how nice it would be for me to have a French window here, and a marble balcony," Vera remarked. It had not taken her long to think of marble. "You must do it for me, Steve."

"Bosh!" said Stephen. "That's just like you, Charlie. What an ass you are!"

"Oh, but you must!" said Vera, in that tone which meant business, and which also meant trouble for Stephen.

"She's come," Stephen announced curtly, determined to put trouble off.

"Oh, has she?" cried Vera. "I thought you said she wouldn't."

"She hesitated, because she was afraid. But she's come after all," Stephen answered.

"What fun!" Vera murmured.

And ran off downstairs back again into the midst of the black coats and the white toilettes and the holly-clad electricity of her Christmas gathering.

II

The news that she had come was all over the noisy house in a minute, and it had the astonishing effect of producing what might roughly be described as a silence. It stopped the reckless waltzing of the piano in the drawing-room; it stopped the cackle incident to cork-pool in the billiard-room; it even stopped a good deal of the whispering under the Chinese lanterns beneath the stairs and in the alcove at the top of the stairs. What it did not stop was the consumption of mince-pies and claret-cup in the small breakfast-room; people mumbled about her between munches.

She, having been sustained with turkey and beer in the kitchen, was led by the backstairs up to Vera's very boudoir, that being the only suitable room. And there she waited. She was a woman of about forty-five; fat, unfair (in the physical sense), and untidy. Of her hands the less said the better. She had probably never visited a professional coiffeur in her life. Her form was straitly confined in an atrocious dress of linsey-woolsey, and she wore an apron that was neither white nor black. Her boots were commodious. After her meal she was putting a hat-pin to a purpose which hat-pins do not usually serve. She gained an honest living by painting green leaves on yellow wash-basins in Stephen's renowned earthenware manufactory. She spoke the dialect of the people. She had probably never heard of Christian Science, bridge, Paquin, Panhard, Father Vaughan, the fall of consols, osprey plumes, nor the new theology. Nobody in the house knew her name; even Stephen had forgotten it. And yet the whole house was agog concerning her.

The fact was that in the painting-shops of the various manufactories where she had painted green leaves on yellow wash-basins (for in all her life she had done little else) she possessed a reputation as a prophet, seer, oracle, fortune-teller—what you will. Polite persons would perhaps never have heard of her reputation, the toiling millions of the Five Towns being of a rather secretive nature in such matters, had not the subject of fortune-telling been made prominent in the district by the celebrated incident of the fashionable palmist. The fashionable palmist, having thriven enormously in Bond Street, had undertaken a tour through the provinces and had stopped several days at Hanbridge (our metropolis), where he had an immense vogue until the Hanbridge police hit on the singular idea of prosecuting him for an unlawful vagabond. Stripped of twenty pounds odd in the guise of a fine and costs, and having narrowly missed the rigours of our county jail, that fashionable palmist and soothsayer had returned to Bond Street full of hate and respect for Midland justice, which fears not and has a fist like a navvy's. The attention of the Five Towns had thus been naturally drawn to fortune-telling in general. And it was deemed that in securing a local celebrity (quite an amateur, and therefore, it was uncertainly hoped, on the windy side of the law) for the diversion of his Christmas party Stephen Cheswardine had done a stylish and original thing.

Of course no one in the house believed in fortune-telling. Oh no! But as an amusement it was amusing. As fun, it was fun. She did her business with tea-leaves: so the tale ran. This was not considered to be very distinguished. A crystal, or even cards, or the anatomy of a sacrificed fowl, would have been better than tea-leaves; tea-leaves were decidedly lower class. And yet, despite these drawbacks, when the question arose who should first visit the witch of Endor, there was a certain hesitation.

"You go!"

"No, you go."

"Oh! I'm not going," (a superior laugh), etc.

At last it was decided that Jack Hall and Cissy Woodruff (Charlie's much younger sister), the pair having been engaged to be married for exactly three days, should make the first call. They ascended, blushing and brave. In a moment Jack Hall descended alone, nervously playing with the silk handkerchief that was lodged in his beautiful white waistcoat. The witch of Endor had informed him that she never received the two sexes together, and had expelled him. This incident greatly enhanced the witch's reputation. Then Stephen happened to mention that he had heard that the woman's mother, and her grandmother before her, had been fortune-tellers. Somehow that statement seemed to strike everybody full in the face; it set a seal on the authority of the witch, made her genuine. And an uncanny feeling seemed to spread through the house as the house waited for Cissy to reappear.

"She's very good," said Cissy, on emerging. "She told me all sorts of things."

A group formed at the foot of the stairs.

"What did she tell you?"

"Well, she said I must expect a very important letter in a few days, and much would depend on it, and next year there will be a big removal, and a large lumbering piece of furniture, and I shall go a journey over water. It's quite right, you know. I suppose the letter's from grandma; I hope it is, anyway. And if we go to France—"

Thenceforward the witch without a name held continuous receptions in the boudoir, and the boudoir gradually grew into an abode of mystery and strangeness, hypnotizing the entire house. People went thither; people came back; and those who had not been pictured to themselves something very incantatory, and little by little they made up their minds to go. Some thought the woman excellent, others said it was all rot. But none denied that it was interesting. None could possibly deny that the fortune-telling had killed every other diversion provided by the hospitable Stephen and Vera (except the refreshments). The most scornful scoffers made a concession and kindly consented to go to the boudoir. Stephen went. Charlie went. Even the Mayor of Hanbridge went (not being on the borough Bench that night).

But Vera would not go. A genuine fear was upon her. Christmases had always been unlucky for her peace of mind. And she was highly superstitious. Yet she wanted to go; she was burning to go, all the while assuring her guests that nothing would induce her to go. The party drew to a close, and pair by pair the revellers drove off, or walked, into the romantic night. Then Stephen told Vera to give the woman half-a-sovereign and let her depart, for it was late. And in paying the half-sovereign to the woman Vera was suddenly overcome by temptation and asked for her fortune. The woman's grimy simplicity, her smiling face, the commonness of her teapot, her utter unlikeness to anything in the first act of Macbeth, encouraged Vera to believe in her magic powers. Vera's hand trembled as, under instructions, she tipped the tea-leaves into the saucer.

"Ay!" said the witch, in broadest Staffordshire, running her objectionable hand up and down the buttons of her linsey-woolsey bodice, and gently agitating the saucer. "Theer's a widder theer." [There's a widow there.] "Yo'll be havin' a letter, or it mit be a talligram—"

Vera wouldn't hear any more. Her one fear in life was the fear of Stephen's death (though she did console Charlie with nice smiles and lots of tete-a-tete), and here was this fiendish witch directly foreseeing the dreadful event.

III

Every day for many days Stephen expected to have to take part in a pitched battle about the proposed balcony. The sweet enemy, however, did not seem to be in fighting form. It is true that she mentioned the balcony, but she mentioned it in quite a reasonable spirit. Astounding as the statement may appear to any personal acquaintance of Vera's, Vera showed a capacity to perceive that there were two sides to the question. When Stephen pointed out that balconies were unsuited to the English climate, she almost agreed. When he said that balconies were dangerous and that to have a safe one would necessitate the strengthening of the wall, she merely replied, with wonderful meekness, that she only weighed seven stone twelve. When he informed her that the breakfast-room, already not too light, was underneath the proposed balcony, which would further darken it, she kept an angelic silence. And when he showed her that the view from the proposed balcony would in any case be marred by the immense pall of Five Towns smoke to the south, she still kept an angelic silence.

Stephen could not understand it.

Nor was this all. She became extraordinarily solicitous for his welfare, especially in the matter of health. She wrapped him up when he went out, and unpacked him when he came in. She cautioned him against draughts, overwork, microbes, and dietary indiscretions. Thanks to regular boxing exercise, his old dyspepsia had almost entirely disappeared, but this did not prevent her from watching every mouthful that vanished under the portals of his moustache. And she superintended his boxing too. She made a point of being present whenever he and Charlie boxed, and she would force Charlie to cease fighting at the oddest moments. She was flat against having a motor-car; she compelled Stephen to drive to the station in the four-wheeler instead of in the high dogcart. Indeed, from the way she guarded him, he might have been the one frail life that stood between England and anarchy.

And she was always so kind, in a rather melancholy, resigned, wistful fashion.

No. Stephen could not understand it.

There came a time when Stephen could neither understand it nor stand it. And he tried to worm out of her her secret. But he could not. The fascinating little liar stoutly stuck to it that nothing was the matter with her, and that she had nothing on her mind. Stephen knew differently. He consulted Charlie Woodruff. She had not made a confidant of Charlie. Charlie was exactly as much in the dark as Stephen. Then Stephen (I regret to have to say it) took to swearing. For instance, he swore when she hid all his thin socks and so obliged him to continue with his thick ones. And one day he swore when, in answer to his query why she was pale, she said she didn't know.

He thus, without expecting to do so, achieved a definite climax.

For she broke out. She ceased in half a second to be pale. She gave him with cutting candour all that had been bottled up in her entrancing bosom. She told him that the witch had foreseen her a widow (which was the same thing as prophesying his death), and that she had done, and was doing, all that the ingenuity of a loving heart could suggest to keep him alive in spite of the prediction, but that, in face of his infamous brutality, she should do no more; that if he chose to die and leave her a widow he might die and leave her a widow for all she cared; in brief, that she had done with him.

When she had become relatively calm Stephen addressed her calmly, and even ingratiatingly.

"I'm sorry," he said, and added, "but you know you did say that you were hiding nothing from me."

"Of course," she retorted, "because I was." Her arguments were usually on this high plane of logic.

"And you ought not to be so superstitious," Stephen proceeded.

"Well," said she, with truth, "one never knows." And she wiped away a tear and showed the least hint of an inclination to kiss him. "And anyhow my only anxiety was for you."

"Do you really believe what that woman said?" Stephen asked.

"Well," she repeated, "one never knows."

"Because if you do, I'll tell you something."

"What?" Vera demanded.

At this juncture Stephen committed an error of tactics. He might have let her continue in the fear of his death, and thus remained on velvet (subject to occasional outbreaks) for the rest of his life. But he gave himself utterly away.

"She told me I should live till I was ninety," said he. "So you can't be a widow for quite half a century, and you'll be eighty yourself then."

IV

Within twenty-four hours she was at him about the balcony.

"The summer will be lovely," she said, in reply to his argument about climate.

"Rubbish," she said, in reply to his argument about safety.

"Who cares for your old breakfast-room?" she said, in reply to his argument about darkness at breakfast.

"We will have trees planted on that side—big elms," she said, in reply to his argument about the smoke of the Five Towns spoiling the view.

Whereupon Stephen definitely and clearly enunciated that he should not build a balcony.

"Oh, but you must!" she protested.

"A balcony is quite impossible," said Stephen, with his firmest masculinity.

"You'll see if it's impossible," said she, "when I'm that widow."

The curious may be interested to know that she has already begun to plant trees.



THE CAT AND CUPID

I

The secret history of the Ebag marriage is now printed for the first time. The Ebag family, who prefer their name to be accented on the first syllable, once almost ruled Oldcastle, which is a clean and conceited borough, with long historical traditions, on the very edge of the industrial, democratic and unclean Five Towns. The Ebag family still lives in the grateful memory of Oldcastle, for no family ever did more to preserve the celebrated Oldcastilian superiority in social, moral and religious matters over the vulgar Five Towns. The episodes leading to the Ebag marriage could only have happened in Oldcastle. By which I mean merely that they could not have happened in any of the Five Towns. In the Five Towns that sort of thing does not occur. I don't know why, but it doesn't. The people are too deeply interested in football, starting prices, rates, public parks, sliding scales, excursions to Blackpool, and municipal shindies, to concern themselves with organists as such. In the Five Towns an organist may be a sanitary inspector or an auctioneer on Mondays. In Oldcastle an organist is an organist, recognized as such in the streets. No one ever heard of an organist in the Five Towns being taken up and petted by a couple of old ladies. But this may occur at Oldcastle. It, in fact, did.

The scandalous circumstances which led to the disappearance from the Oldcastle scene of Mr Skerritt, the original organist of St Placid, have no relation to the present narrative, which opens when the ladies Ebag began to seek for a new organist. The new church of St Placid owed its magnificent existence to the Ebag family. The apse had been given entirely by old Caiaphas Ebag (ex-M.P., now a paralytic sufferer) at a cost of twelve thousand pounds; and his was the original idea of building the church. When, owing to the decline of the working man's interest in beer, and one or two other things, Caiaphas lost nearly the whole of his fortune, which had been gained by honest labour in mighty speculations, he rather regretted the church; he would have preferred twelve thousand in cash to a view of the apse from his bedroom window; but he was man enough never to complain. He lived, after his misfortunes, in a comparatively small house with his two daughters, Mrs Ebag and Miss Ebag. These two ladies are the heroines of the tale.

Mrs Ebag had married her cousin, who had died. She possessed about six hundred a year of her own. She was two years older than her sister, Miss Ebag, a spinster. Miss Ebag was two years younger than Mrs Ebag. No further information as to their respective ages ever leaked out. Miss Ebag had a little money of her own from her deceased mother, and Caiaphas had the wreck of his riches. The total income of the household was not far short of a thousand a year, but of this quite two hundred a year was absorbed by young Edith Ebag, Mrs Ebag's step-daughter (for Mrs Ebag had been her husband's second choice). Edith, who was notorious as a silly chit and spent most of her time in London and other absurd places, formed no part of the household, though she visited it occasionally. The household consisted of old Caiaphas, bedridden, and his two daughters and Goldie. Goldie was the tomcat, so termed by reason of his splendid tawniness. Goldie had more to do with the Ebag marriage than anyone or anything, except the weathercock on the top of the house. This may sound queer, but is as naught to the queerness about to be unfolded.

II

It cannot be considered unnatural that Mrs and Miss Ebag, with the assistance of the vicar, should have managed the affairs of the church. People nicknamed them "the churchwardens," which was not quite nice, having regard to the fact that their sole aim was the truest welfare of the church. They and the vicar, in a friendly and effusive way, hated each other. Sometimes they got the better of the vicar, and, less often, he got the better of them. In the choice of a new organist they won. Their candidate was Mr Carl Ullman, the artistic orphan.

Mr Carl Ullman is the hero of the tale. The son of one of those German designers of earthenware who at intervals come and settle in the Five Towns for the purpose of explaining fully to the inhabitants how inferior England is to Germany, he had an English mother, and he himself was violently English. He spoke English like an Englishman and German like an Englishman. He could paint, model in clay, and play three musical instruments, including the organ. His one failing was that he could never earn enough to live on. It seemed as if he was always being drawn by an invisible string towards the workhouse door. Now and then he made half a sovereign extra by deputizing on the organ. In such manner had he been introduced to the Ebag ladies. His romantic and gloomy appearance had attracted them, with the result that they had asked him to lunch after the service, and he had remained with them till the evening service. During the visit they had learnt that his grandfather had been Court Councillor in the Kingdom of Saxony. Afterwards they often said to each other how ideal it would be if only Mr Skerritt might be removed and Carl Ullman take his place. And when Mr Skerritt actually was removed, by his own wickedness, they regarded it as almost an answer to prayer, and successfully employed their powerful interest on behalf of Carl. The salary was a hundred a year. Not once in his life had Carl earned a hundred pounds in a single year. For him the situation meant opulence. He accepted it, but calmly, gloomily. Romantic gloom was his joy in life. He said with deep melancholy that he was sure he could not find a convenient lodging in Oldcastle. And the ladies Ebag then said that he must really come and spend a few days with them and Goldie and papa until he was "suited." He said that he hated to plant himself on people, and yielded to the request. The ladies Ebag fussed around his dark-eyed and tranquil pessimism, and both of them instantly grew younger—a curious but authentic phenomenon. They adored his playing, and they were enchanted to discover that his notions about hymn tunes agreed with theirs, and by consequence disagreed with the vicar's. In the first week or two they scored off the vicar five times, and the advantage of having your organist in your own house grew very apparent. They were also greatly impressed by his gentleness with Goldie and by his intelligent interest in serious questions.

One day Miss Ebag said timidly to her sister: "It's just six months to-day."

"What do you mean, sister?" asked Mrs Ebag, self-consciously.

"Since Mr Ullman came."

"So it is!" said Mrs Ebag, who was just as well aware of the date as the spinster was aware of it.

They said no more. The position was the least bit delicate. Carl had found no lodging. He did not offer to go. They did not want him to go. He did not offer to pay. And really he cost them nothing except laundry, whisky and fussing. How could they suggest that he should pay? He lived amidst them like a beautiful mystery, and all were seemingly content. Carl was probably saving the whole of his salary, for he never bought clothes and he did not smoke. The ladies Ebag simply did what they liked about hymn-tunes.

III

You would have thought that no outsider would find a word to say, and you would have been mistaken. The fact that Mrs Ebag was two years older than Miss and Miss two years younger than Mrs Ebag; the fact that old Caiaphas was, for strong reasons, always in the house; the fact that the ladies were notorious cat-idolaters; the fact that the reputation of the Ebag family was and had ever been spotless; the fact that the Ebag family had given the apse and practically created the entire church; all these facts added together did not prevent the outsider from finding a word to say.

At first words were not said; but looks were looked, and coughs were coughed. Then someone, strolling into the church of a morning while Carl Ullman was practising, saw Miss Ebag sitting in silent ecstasy in a corner. And a few mornings later the same someone, whose curiosity had been excited, veritably saw Mrs Ebag in the organ-loft with Carl Ullman, but no sign of Miss Ebag. It was at this juncture that words began to be said.

Words! Not complete sentences! The sentences were never finished. "Of course, it's no affair of mine, but—" "I wonder that people like the Ebags should—" "Not that I should ever dream of hinting that—" "First one and then the other—well!" "I'm sure that if either Mrs or Miss Ebag had the slightest idea they'd at once—" And so on. Intangible gossamer criticism, floating in the air!

IV

One evening—it was precisely the first of June—when a thunderstorm was blowing up from the south-west, and scattering the smoke of the Five Towns to the four corners of the world, and making the weathercock of the house of the Ebags creak, the ladies Ebag and Carl Ullman sat together as usual in the drawing-room. The French window was open, but banged to at intervals. Carl Ullman had played the piano and the ladies Ebag—Mrs Ebag, somewhat comfortably stout and Miss Ebag spare—were talking very well and sensibly about the influence of music on character. They invariably chose such subjects for conversation. Carl was chiefly silent, but now and then, after a sip of whisky, he would say "Yes" with impressiveness and stare gloomily out of the darkening window. The ladies Ebag had a remarkable example of the influence of music on character in the person of Edith Ebag. It appeared that Edith would never play anything but waltzes—Waldteufel's for choice—and that the foolish frivolity of her flyaway character was a direct consequence of this habit. Carl felt sadly glad, after hearing the description of Edith's carryings-on, that Edith had chosen to live far away.

And then the conversation languished and died with the daylight, and a certain self-consciousness obscured the social atmosphere. For a vague rumour of the chatter of the town had penetrated the house, and the ladies Ebag, though they scorned chatter, were affected by it; Carl Ullman, too. It had the customary effect of such chatter; it fixed the thoughts of those chatted about on matters which perhaps would not otherwise have occupied their attention.

The ladies Ebag said to themselves: "We are no longer aged nineteen. We are moreover living with our father. If he is bedridden, what then? This gossip connecting our names with that of Mr Ullman is worse than baseless; it is preposterous. We assert positively that we have no designs of any kind on Mr Ullman."

Nevertheless, by dint of thinking about that gossip, the naked idea of a marriage with Mr Ullman soon ceased to shock them. They could gaze at it without going into hysterics.

As for Carl, he often meditated upon his own age, which might have been anything between thirty and forty-five, and upon the mysterious ages of the ladies, and upon their goodness, their charm, their seriousness, their intelligence and their sympathy with himself.

Hence the self-consciousness in the gloaming.

To create a diversion Miss Ebag walked primly to the window and cried:

"Goldie! Goldie!"

It was Goldie's bedtime. In summer he always strolled into the garden after dinner, and he nearly always sensibly responded to the call when his bed-hour sounded. No one would have dreamed of retiring until Goldie was safely ensconced in his large basket under the stairs.

"Naughty Goldie!" Miss Ebag said, comprehensively, to the garden.

She went into the garden to search, and Mrs Ebag followed her, and Carl Ullman followed Mrs Ebag. And they searched without result, until it was black night and the threatening storm at last fell. The vision of Goldie out in that storm desolated the ladies, and Carl Ullman displayed the nicest feeling. At length the rain drove them in and they stood in the drawing-room with anxious faces, while two servants, under directions from Carl, searched the house for Goldie.

"If you please'm," stammered the housemaid, rushing rather unconventionally into the drawing-room, "cook says she thinks Goldie must be on the roof, in the vane."

"On the roof in the vane?" exclaimed Mrs Ebag, pale. "In the vane?"

"Yes'm."

"Whatever do you mean, Sarah?" asked Miss Ebag, even paler.

The ladies Ebag were utterly convinced that Goldie was not like other cats, that he never went on the roof, that he never had any wish to do anything that was not in the strictest sense gentlemanly and correct. And if by chance he did go on the roof, it was merely to examine the roof itself, or to enjoy the view therefrom out of gentlemanly curiosity. So that this reference to the roof shocked them. The night did not favour the theory of view-gazing.

"Cook says she heard the weather-vane creaking ever since she went upstairs after dinner, and now it's stopped; and she can hear Goldie a-myowling like anything."

"Is cook in her attic?" asked Mrs Ebag.

"Yes'm."

"Ask her to come out. Mr Ullman, will you be so very good as to come upstairs and investigate?"

Cook, enveloped in a cloak, stood out on the second landing, while Mr Ullman and the ladies invaded her chamber. The noise of myowling was terrible. Mr Ullman opened the dormer window, and the rain burst in, together with a fury of myowling. But he did not care. It lightened and thundered. But he did not care. He procured a chair of cook's and put it under the window and stood on it, with his back to the window, and twisted forth his body so that he could spy up the roof. The ladies protested that he would be wet through, but he paid no heed to them.

Then his head, dripping, returned into the room. "I've just seen by a flash of lightning," he said in a voice of emotion. "The poor animal has got his tail fast in the socket of the weather-vane. He must have been whisking it about up there, and the vane turned and caught it. The vane is jammed."

"How dreadful!" said Mrs Ebag. "Whatever can be done?"

"He'll be dead before morning," sobbed Miss Ebag.

"I shall climb up the roof and release him," said Carl Ullman, gravely.

They forbade him to do so. Then they implored him to refrain. But he was adamant. And in their supplications there was a note of insincerity, for their hearts bled for Goldie, and, further, they were not altogether unwilling that Carl should prove himself a hero. And so, amid apprehensive feminine cries of the acuteness of his danger, Carl crawled out of the window and faced the thunder, the lightning, the rain, the slippery roof, and the maddened cat. A group of three servants were huddled outside the attic door.

In the attic the ladies could hear his movements on the roof, moving higher and higher. The suspense was extreme. Then there was silence; even the myowling had ceased. Then a clap of thunder; and then, after that, a terrific clatter on the roof, a bounding downwards as of a great stone, a curse, a horrid pause, and finally a terrific smashing of foliage and cracking of wood.

Mrs Ebag sprang to the window.

"It's all right," came a calm, gloomy voice from below. "I fell into the rhododendrons, and Goldie followed me. I'm not hurt, thank goodness! Just my luck!"

A bell rang imperiously. It was the paralytic's bell. He had been disturbed by these unaccustomed phenomena.

"Sister, do go to father at once," said Mrs Ebag, as they both hastened downstairs in a state of emotion, assuredly unique in their lives.

V

Mrs Ebag met Carl and the cat as they dripped into the gas-lit drawing-room. They presented a surprising spectacle, and they were doing damage to the Persian carpet at the rate of about five shillings a second; but that Carl, and the beloved creature for whom he had dared so much, were equally unhurt appeared to be indubitable. Of course, it was a miracle. It could not be regarded as other than a miracle. Mrs Ebag gave vent to an exclamation in which were mingled pity, pride, admiration and solicitude, and then remained, as it were, spellbound. The cat escaped from those protecting arms and fled away. Instead of following Goldie, Mrs Ebag continued to gaze at the hero.

"How can I thank you!" she whispered.

"What for?" asked Carl, with laconic gloom.

"For having saved my darling!" said Mrs Ebag. And there was passion in her voice.

"Oh!" said Carl. "It was nothing!"

"Nothing?" Mrs Ebag repeated after him, with melting eyes, as if to imply that, instead of being nothing, it was everything; as if to imply that his deed must rank hereafter with the most splendid deeds of antiquity; as if to imply that the whole affair was beyond words to utter or gratitude to repay.

And in fact Carl himself was moved. You cannot fall from the roof of a two-story house into a very high-class rhododendron bush, carrying a prize cat in your arms, without being a bit shaken. And Carl was a bit shaken, not merely physically, but morally and spiritually. He could not deny to himself that he had after all done something rather wondrous, which ought to be celebrated in sounding verse. He felt that he was in an atmosphere far removed from the commonplace.

He dripped steadily on to the carpet.

"You know how dear my cat was to me," proceeded Mrs Ebag. "And you risked your life to spare me the pain of his suffering, perhaps his death. How thankful I am that I insisted on having those rhododendrons planted just where they are—fifteen years ago! I never anticipated—"

She stopped. Tears came into her dowager eyes. It was obvious that she worshipped him. She was so absorbed in his heroism that she had no thought even for his dampness. As Carl's eyes met hers she seemed to him to grow younger. And there came into his mind all the rumour that had vaguely reached him coupling their names together; and also his early dreams of love and passion and a marriage that would be one long honeymoon. And he saw how absurd had been those early dreams. He saw that the best chance of a felicitous marriage lay in a union of mature and serious persons, animated by grave interests and lofty ideals. Yes, she was older than he. But not much, not much! Not more than—how many years? And he remembered surprising her rapt glance that very evening as she watched him playing the piano. What had romance to do with age? Romance could occur at any age. It was occurring now. Her soft eyes, her portly form, exuded romance. And had not the renowned Beaconsfield espoused a lady appreciably older than himself, and did not those espousals achieve the ideal of bliss? In the act of saving the cat he had not been definitely aware that it was so particularly the cat of the household. But now, influenced by her attitude and her shining reverence, he actually did begin to persuade himself that an uncontrollable instinctive desire to please her and win her for his own had moved him to undertake the perilous passage of the sloping roof.

In short, the idle chatter of the town was about to be justified. In another moment he might have dripped into her generous arms ... had not Miss Ebag swept into the drawing-room!

"Gracious!" gasped Miss Ebag. "The poor dear thing will have pneumonia. Sister, you know his chest is not strong. Dear Mr Ullman, please, please, do go and—er—change."

He did the discreet thing and went to bed, hot whisky following him on a tray carried by the housemaid.

VI

The next morning the slightly unusual happened. It was the custom for Carl Ullman to breakfast alone, while reading The Staffordshire Signal. The ladies Ebag breakfasted mysteriously in bed. But on this morning Carl found Miss Ebag before him in the breakfast-room. She prosecuted minute inquiries as to his health and nerves. She went out with him to regard the rhododendron bushes, and shuddered at the sight of the ruin which had saved him. She said, following famous philosophers, that Chance was merely the name we give to the effect of laws which we cannot understand. And, upon this high level of conversation, she poured forth his coffee and passed his toast.

It was a lovely morning after the tempest.

Goldie, all newly combed, and looking as though he had never seen a roof, strolled pompously into the room with tail unfurled. Miss Ebag picked the animal up and kissed it passionately.

"Darling!" she murmured, not exactly to Mr Ullman, nor yet exactly to the cat. Then she glanced effulgently at Carl and said, "When I think that you risked your precious life, in that awful storm, to save my poor Goldie?... You must have guessed how dear he was to me?... No, really, Mr Ullman, I cannot thank you properly! I can't express my—"

Her eyes were moist.

Although not young, she was two years younger. Her age was two years less. The touch of man had never profaned her. No masculine kiss had ever rested on that cheek, that mouth. And Carl felt that he might be the first to cull the flower that had so long waited. He did not see, just then, the hollow beneath her chin, the two lines of sinew that, bounding a depression, disappeared beneath her collarette. He saw only her soul. He guessed that she would be more malleable than the widow, and he was sure that she was not in a position, as the widow was, to make comparisons between husbands. Certainly there appeared to be some confusion as to the proprietorship of this cat. Certainly he could not have saved the cat's life for love of two different persons. But that was beside the point. The essential thing was that he began to be glad that he had decided nothing definite about the widow on the previous evening.

"Darling!" said she again, with a new access of passion, kissing Goldie, but darting a glance at Carl.

He might have put to her the momentous question, between two bites of buttered toast, had not Mrs Ebag, at the precise instant, swum amply into the room.

"Sister! You up!" exclaimed Miss Ebag.

"And you, sister!" retorted Mrs Ebag.

VII

It is impossible to divine what might have occurred for the delectation of the very ancient borough of Oldcastle if that frivolous piece of goods, Edith, had not taken it into her head to run down from London for a few days, on the plea that London was too ridiculously hot. She was a pretty girl, with fluffy honey-coloured hair and about thirty white frocks. And she seemed to be quite as silly as her staid stepmother and her prim step-aunt had said. She transformed the careful order of the house into a wild disorder, and left a novel or so lying on the drawing-room table between her stepmother's Contemporary Review and her step-aunt's History of European Morals. Her taste in music was candidly and brazenly bad. It was a fact, as her elders had stated, that she played nothing but waltzes. What was worse, she compelled Carl Ullman to perform waltzes. And one day she burst into the drawing-room when Carl was alone there, with a roll under her luscious arm, and said:

"What do you think I've found at Barrowfoot's?"

"I don't know," said Carl, gloomily smiling, and then smiling without gloom.

"Waldteufel's waltzes arranged for four hands. You must play them with me at once."

And he did. It was a sad spectacle to see the organist of St Placid's galloping through a series of dances with the empty-headed Edith.

The worst was, he liked it. He knew that he ought to prefer the high intellectual plane, the severe artistic tastes, of the elderly sisters. But he did not. He was amazed to discover that frivolity appealed more powerfully to his secret soul. He was also amazed to discover that his gloom was leaving him. This vanishing of gloom gave him strange sensations, akin to the sensations of a man who, after having worn gaiters into middle-age, abandons them.

After the Waldteufel she began to tell him all about herself; how she went slumming in the East End, and how jolly it was. And how she helped in the Bloomsbury Settlement, and how jolly that was. And, later, she said:

"You must have thought it very odd of me, Mr Ullman, not thanking you for so bravely rescuing my poor cat; but the truth is I never heard of it till to-day. I can't say how grateful I am. I should have loved to see you doing it."

"Is Goldie your cat?" he feebly inquired.

"Why, of course?" she said. "Didn't you know? Of course you did! Goldie always belonged to me. Grandpa bought him for me. But I couldn't do with him in London, so I always leave him here for them to take care of. He adores me. He never forgets me. He'll come to me before anyone. You must have noticed that. I can't say how grateful I am! It was perfectly marvellous of you! I can't help laughing, though, whenever I think what a state mother and auntie must have been in that night!"

Strictly speaking, they hadn't a cent between them, except his hundred a year. But he married her hair and she married his melancholy eyes; and she was content to settle in Oldcastle, where there are almost no slums. And her stepmother was forced by Edith to make the hundred up to four hundred. This was rather hard on Mrs Ebag. Thus it fell out that Mrs Ebag remained a widow, and that Miss Ebag continues a flower uncalled. However, gossip was stifled.

In his appointed time, and in the fulness of years, Goldie died, and was mourned. And by none was he more sincerely mourned than by the aged bedridden Caiaphas.

"I miss my cat, I can tell ye!" said old Caiaphas pettishly to Carl, who was sitting by his couch. "He knew his master, Goldie did! Edith did her best to steal him from me when you married and set up house. A nice thing considering I bought him and he never belonged to anybody but me! Ay! I shall never have another cat like that cat."

And this is the whole truth of the affair.



THE FORTUNE TELLER

I

The prologue to this somewhat dramatic history was of the simplest. The affair came to a climax, if one may speak metaphorically, in fire and sword and high passion, but it began like the month of March. Mr Bostock (a younger brother of the senior partner in the famous firm of Bostocks, drapers, at Hanbridge) was lounging about the tennis-court attached to his house at Hillport. Hillport has long been known as the fashionable suburb of Bursley, and indeed as the most aristocratic quarter strictly within the Five Towns; there certainly are richer neighbourhoods not far off, but such neighbourhoods cannot boast that they form part of the Five Towns—no more than Hatfield can boast that it is part of London. A man who lives in a detached house at Hillport, with a tennis-court, may be said to have succeeded in life. And Mr Bostock had succeeded. A consulting engineer of marked talent, he had always worked extremely hard and extremely long, and thus he had arrived at luxuries. The chief of his luxuries was his daughter Florence, aged twenty-three, height five feet exactly, as pretty and as neat as a new doll, of expensive and obstinate habits. It was Florence who was the cause of the episode, and I mention her father only to show where Florence stood in the world. She ruled her father during perhaps eleven months of the year. In the twelfth month (which was usually January—after the Christmas bills) there would be an insurrection, conducted by the father with much spirit for a time, but ultimately yielding to the forces of the government. Florence had many admirers; a pretty woman, who habitually rules a rich father, is bound to have many admirers. But she had two in particular; her cousin, Ralph Martin, who had been apprenticed to her father, and Adam Tellwright, a tile manufacturer at Turnhill.

These four—the father and daughter and the rivals—had been playing tennis that Saturday afternoon. Mr Bostock, though touching on fifty, retained a youthful athleticism; he looked and talked younger than his years, and he loved the society of young people. If he wandered solitary and moody about the tennis-court now, it was because he had a great deal on his mind besides business. He had his daughter's future on his mind.

A servant with apron-strings waving like flags in the breeze came from the house with a large loaded tea-tray, and deposited it on a wicker table on the small lawn at the end of the ash court. The rivals were reclining in deck chairs close to the table; the Object of Desire, all in starched white, stood over the table and with quick delicious movements dropped sugar and poured milk into tinkling porcelain.

"Now, father," she called briefly, without looking up, as she seized the teapot.

He approached, gazing thoughtfully at the group. Yes, he was worried. And everyone was secretly worried. The situation was exceedingly delicate, fragile, breakable. Mr Bostock looked uneasily first at Adam Tellwright, tall, spick and span, self-confident, clever, shining, with his indubitable virtues mainly on the outside. If ever any man of thirty-two in all this world was eligible, Adam Tellwright was. Decidedly he had a reputation for preternaturally keen smartness in trade, but in trade that cannot be called a defect; on the contrary, if a man has virtues, you cannot precisely quarrel with him because they happen to be on the outside; the principal thing is to have virtues. And then Mr Bostock looked uneasily at Ralph Martin, heavy, short, dark, lowering, untidy, often incomprehensible, and more often rude; with virtues concealed as if they were secret shames. Ralph was capricious. At moments he showed extraordinary talent as an engineer; at others he behaved like a nincompoop. He would be rich one day; but he had a formidable temper. The principal thing in favour of Ralph Martin was that he and Florence had always been "something to each other." Indeed of late years it had been begun to be understood that the match was "as good as arranged." It was taken for granted. Then Adam Tellwright had dropped like a bomb into the Bostock circle. He had fallen heavily and disastrously in love with the slight Florence (whom he could have crushed and eaten). At the start his case was regarded as hopeless, and Ralph Martin had scorned him. But Adam Tellwright soon caused gossip to sing a different tune, and Ralph Martin soon ceased to scorn him. Adam undoubtedly made a profound impression on Florence Bostock. He began by dazzling her, and then, as her eyes grew accustomed to the glare, he gradually showed her his good qualities. Everything that skill and tact could do Tellwright did. The same could not be said of Ralph Martin. Most people had a vague feeling that Ralph had not been treated fairly. Mr Bostock had this feeling. Yet why? Nothing had been settled. Florence's heart was evidently still open to competition, and Adam Tellwright had a perfect right to compete. Still, most people sympathized with Ralph. But Florence did not. Young girls are like that.

Now the rivals stood about equal. No one knew how the battle would go. Adam did not know. Ralph did not know. Florence assuredly did not know. Mr Bostock was quite certain, of a night, that Adam would win, but the next morning he was quite certain that his nephew would win.

No wonder that the tea-party, every member of it tremendously preoccupied by the great battle, was not distinguished by light and natural gaiety. Great battles cannot be talked about till they are over and the last shot fired. And it is not to be expected that people should be bright when each knows the others to be deeply preoccupied by a matter which must not even be mentioned. The tea-party was self-conscious, highly. Therefore, it ate too many cakes and chocolate, and forgot to count its cups of tea. The conversation nearly died of inanition several times, and at last it actually did die, and the quartette gazed in painful silence at its corpse. Anyone who has assisted at this kind of a tea-party will appreciate the situation. Why, Adam Tellwright himself was out of countenance. To his honour, it was he who first revived the corpse. A copy of the previous evening's Signal was lying on an empty deck-chair. It had been out all night, and was dampish. Tellwright picked it up, having finished his tea, and threw a careless eye over it. He was determined to talk about something.

"By Jove!" he said. "That Balsamo johnny is coming to Hanbridge!"

"Yes, didn't you know?" said Florence, agreeably bent on resuscitating the corpse.

"What! The palmistry man?" asked Mr Bostock, with a laugh.

"Yes." And Adam Tellwright read: "'Balsamo, the famous palmist and reader of the future, begs to announce that he is making a tour through the principal towns, and will visit Hanbridge on the 22nd inst., remaining three days. Balsamo has thousands of testimonials to the accuracy of his predictions, and he absolutely guarantees not only to read the past correctly, but to foretell the future. Address: 22 Machin Street, Hanbridge. 10 to 10. Appointment advisable in order to avoid delay.' There! He'll find himself in prison one day, that gentleman will!"

"It's astounding what fools people are!" observed Mr Bostock.

"Yes, isn't it!" said Adam Tellwright.

"If he'd been a gipsy," said Ralph Martin, savagely, "the police would have had him long ago." And he spoke with such grimness that he might have been talking of Adam Tellwright.

"They say his uncle and his grandfather before him were both thought-readers, or whatever you call it," said Florence.

"Do they?" exclaimed Mr Bostock, in a different tone.

"Oh!" exclaimed Adam, also in a different tone.

"I wonder whether that's true!" said Ralph Martin.

The rumour that Balsamo's uncle and grandfather had been readers of the past and of the future produced of course quite an impression on the party. But each recognized how foolish it was to allow oneself to be so impressed in such an illogical manner. And therefore all the men burst into violent depreciation of Balsamo and of the gulls who consulted him. And by the time they had done with Balsamo there was very little left of him. Anyhow, Adam Tellwright's discovery in the Signal had saved the tea-party from utter fiasco.

II

No. 22 Machin Street, Hanbridge, was next door to Bostock's vast emporium, and exactly opposite the more exclusive, but still mighty, establishment of Ephraim Brunt, the greatest draper in the Five Towns. It was, therefore, in the very heart and centre of retail commerce. No woman who respected herself could buy even a sheet of pins without going past No. 22 Machin Street. The ground-floor was a confectioner's shop, with a back room where tea and Berlin pancakes were served to the elite who had caught from London the fashion of drinking tea in public places. By the side of the confectioner's was an open door and a staircase, which led to the first floor and the other floors. A card hung by a cord to a nail indicated that Balsamo had pitched his moving tent for a few days on the first floor, in a suite of offices lately occupied by a solicitor. Considering that the people who visit a palmist are just as anxious to publish their doings as the people who visit a pawnbroker—and no more—it might be thought that Balsamo had ill-chosen his site. But this was not so. Balsamo, a deep student of certain sorts of human nature, was perfectly aware that, just as necessity will force a person to visit a pawnbroker, so will inherited superstition force a person to visit a palmist, no matter what the inconveniences. If he had erected a wigwam in the middle of Crown Square and people had had to decide between not seeing him at all and running the gauntlet of a crowd's jeering curiosity, he would still have had many clients.

Of course when you are in love you are in love. Anything may happen to you then. Most things do happen. For example, Adam Tellwright found himself ascending the stairs of No. 22 Machin Street at an early hour one morning. He was, I need not say, mounting to the third floor to give an order to the potter's modeller, who had a studio up there. Still he stopped at the first floor, knocked at a door labelled "Balsamo," hesitated, and went in. I need not say that this was only fun on his part. I need not say that he had no belief whatever in palmistry, and was not in the least superstitious. A young man was seated at a desk, a stylish young man. Adam Tellwright smiled, as one who expected the stylish young man to join in the joke. But the young man did not smile. So Adam Tellwright suddenly ceased to smile.

"Are you Mr Balsamo?" Adam inquired.

"No. I'm his secretary."

His secretary! Strange how the fact that Balsamo was guarded by a secretary, and so stylish a secretary, affected the sagacious and hard-headed Adam!

"You wish to see him?" the secretary demanded coldly.

"I suppose I may as well," said Adam, sheepishly.

"He is disengaged, I think. But I will make sure. Kindly sit down."

Down sat Adam, playing nervously with his hat, and intensely hoping that no other client would come in and trap him.

"Mr Balsamo will see you," said the secretary, emerging through a double black portiere. "The fee is a guinea."

He resumed his chair and drew towards him a book of receipt forms.

A guinea!

However, Adam paid it. The receipt form said: "Received from Mr —— the sum of one guinea for professional assistance.—Per Balsamo, J.H.K.," and a long flourish. The words "one guinea" were written. Idle to deny that this receipt form was impressive. As Adam meekly followed "J.H.K." in to the Presence, he felt exactly as if he was being ushered into a dentist's cabinet. He felt as though he had been caught in the wheels of an unstoppable machine and was in vague but serious danger.

The Presence was a bold man, with a flowing light brown moustache, blue eyes, and a vast forehead. He wore a black velvet coat, and sat at a small table on which was a small black velvet cushion. There were two doors to the rooms, each screened by double black portieres, and beyond a second chair and a large transparent ball, such as dentists use, there was no other furniture.

"Better give me your hat," said the secretary, and took it from Adam, who parted from it reluctantly, as if from his last reliable friend. Then the portieres swished together, and Adam was alone with Balsamo.

Balsamo stared at him; did not even ask him to sit down.

"Why do you come to me? You don't believe in me," said Balsamo, curtly. "Why waste your money?"

"How can I tell whether I believe in you or not," protested Adam Tellwright, the shrewd man of business, very lamely. "I've come to see what you can do."

Balsamo snapped his fingers.

"Sit down then," said he, "and put your hands on this cushion. No!—palms up!"

Balsamo gaped at them a long time, rubbing his chin. Then he rose, adjusted the transparent glass ball so that the light came through it on to Adam's hands, sat down again and resumed his stare.

"Do you want to know everything?" he asked.

"Yes—of course."

"Everything?"

"Yes." A trace of weakness in this affirmative.

"Well, you mustn't expect to live much after fifty-two. Look at the line of life there." He spoke in such a casual, even antipathetic tone that Adam was startled.

"You've had success. You will have it continuously. But you won't live long."

"What have I to avoid?" Adam demanded.

"Can't avoid your fate. You asked me to tell you everything."

"Tell me about my past," said Adam, feebly, the final remnant of shrewdness in him urging him to get the true measure of Balsamo before matters grew worse.

"Your past?" Balsamo murmured. "Keep your left hand quite still, please. You aren't married. You're in business. You've never thought of marriage—till lately. It's not often I see a hand like yours. Your slate is clean. Till lately you never thought of marriage."

"How lately?"

"Who can say when the idea of marriage first came to you? You couldn't say yourself. Perhaps about three months ago. Yes—three months. I see water—you have crossed the sea. Is all this true?"

"Yes," admitted Adam.

"You're in love, of course. Did you know you have a rival?"

"Yes." Once more Adam was startled.

"Is he fair? No, he's not fair. He's dark. Isn't he?"

"Yes."

"Ah! The woman. Uncertain, uncertain. Mind you I never undertake to foretell anything; all I guarantee is that what I do foretell will happen. Now, you will be married in a year or eighteen months." Balsamo stuck his chin out with the gesture of one who imparts grave news; then paused reflectively.

"Whom to?"

"Ah! There are two women. One fair, one dark. Which one do you prefer?"

"The dark one," Adam replied in spite of himself.

"Perhaps the fair one has not yet come into your life? No. But she will do."

"But which shall I marry?"

"Look at that line. No, here! See how indistinct and confused it is. Your destiny is not yet settled. Frankly, I cannot tell you with certainty. No one can go in advance of destiny. Ah! Young man, I sympathize with you."

"Then, really you can't tell me."

"Listen! I might help you. Yes, I might help you."

"How?"

"The others will come to me."

"What others?"

"Your rival. And the woman you love."

"And then?"

"What is not marked on your hand may be very clearly marked on theirs. Come to me again."

"How do you know they will come? They both said they should not."

"You said you would not. But you are here. Rely on me. They will come. I might do a great deal for you. Of course it will cost you more. One lives in a world of money, and I sell my powers, like the rest of mankind. I am proud to do so."

"How much will it cost?"

"Five pounds. You are free to take it or leave it, naturally."

Adam Tellwright put his hand in his pocket.

"Have the goodness to pay my secretary," Balsamo stopped him icily.

"I beg pardon," said Adam, out of countenance.

"Of course if they do not come the money will be returned. Now, before you go, you might tell me all you know about him, and about her. All. Omit nothing. It is not essential, but it might help me. There is a chance that it might make things clearer than they otherwise could be. The true palmist never refuses any aid."

And Adam thereupon went into an elaborate account of Florence Bostock and Ralph Martin. He left out nothing, not even that Ralph had a wart on his chin, and had once broken a leg; nor that Florence had once been nearly drowned in a swimming-bath in London.



III

It was the same afternoon.

Balsamo stared calmly at a young dark-browed man who had entered his sanctuary with much the same air as a village bumpkin assumes when he is about to be shown the three-card trick on a race-course. Balsamo did not even ask him to sit down.

"Why do you come to me? You don't believe in me," said Balsamo, curtly. "Why waste your half-sovereign?"

Ralph Martin, not being talkative, said nothing.

"However!" Balsamo proceeded. "Sit down, please. Let me look at your hands. Ah! yes! Do you want to know anything?"

"Yes, of course."

"Everything?"

"Certainly."

"Let me advise you, then, to give up all thoughts of that woman."

"What woman?"

"You know what woman. She is a very little woman. Once she was nearly drowned—far from here. You've loved her for a long time. You thought it was a certainty. And upon my soul you were justified in thinking so—almost! Look at that line. But it isn't a certainty. Look at that line!"

Balsamo gazed at him coldly, and Ralph Martin knew not what to do or to say. He was astounded; he was frightened; he was desolated. He perceived at once that palmistry was after all a terrible reality.

"Tell me some more," he murmured.

And so Balsamo told him a great deal more, including full details of a woman far finer than Florence Bostock, whom he was destined to meet in the following year. But Ralph Martin would have none of this new woman. Then Balsamo said suddenly:

"She is coming. I see her coming."

"Who?"

"The little woman. She is dressed in white, with a gold-and-white sunshade, and yellow gloves and boots, and she has a gold reticule in her hand. Is that she?"

Ralph Martin admitted that it was she. On the other hand, Balsamo did not admit that he had seen her an hour earlier and had made an appointment with her.

There was a quiet knock on the door. Ralph started.

"You hear," said Balsamo, quietly, "I fear you will never win her."

"You said just now positively that I shouldn't," Ralph exclaimed.

"I did not," said Balsamo. "I would like to help you. I am very sorry for you. It is not often I see a hand like yours. I might be able to help you; the destiny is not yet settled."

"I'll give you anything to help me," said Ralph.

"It will be a couple of guineas," said Balsamo.

"But what guarantee have I?" Ralph asked rudely, when he had paid the money—to Balsamo, not to the secretary. Such changes of humour were characteristic of him.

"None!" said Balsamo, with dignity, putting the sovereigns on the table. "But I am sorry for you. I will tell you what you can do. You can go behind those curtains there"—he pointed to the inner door—"and listen to all that I say."

A proposal open to moral objections! But when you are in the state that Ralph Martin was in, and have experienced what he had just experienced, your out-look upon morals is apt to be disturbed.



IV

"Young lady," Balsamo was saying. "Rest assured that I have not taken five shillings from you for nothing. Your lover has a wart on his chin."

Daintiness itself sat in front of him, with her little porcelain hands lying on the black cushion. And daintiness was astonished into withdrawing those hands.

"Please keep your hands still," said Balsamo, firmly, and proceeded: "But you have another lover, older, who has recently come into your life. Fair, tall. A successful man who will always be successful. Is it not so?"

"Yes," a little voice muttered.

"You can't make up your mind between them? Answer me."

"No."

"And you wish to learn the future. I will tell you—you will marry the fair man. That is your destiny. And you will be very happy. You will soon perceive the bad qualities of the one with the wart. He is a wicked man. I need not urge you to avoid him. You will do so."

"A bad man!"

"A bad man. You see there are two sovereigns lying here. That man has actually tried to bribe me to influence you in his favour?"

"Ralph?"

"Since you mention his Christian name, I will mention his surname. It is written here. Martin."

"He can't have—possibly—"

Balsamo strode with offended pride to the portiere, and pulled it away, revealing Mr Ralph Martin, who for the second time that afternoon knew not what to say or to do.

"I tell you—" Ralph began, as red as fire.

"Silence, sir! Let this teach you not to try to corrupt an honest professional man! Surely I had amply convinced you of my powers! Take your miserable money!" He offered the miserable money to Ralph, who stuck his hands in his pockets, whereupon Balsamo flung the miserable money violently on to the floor.

A deplorable scene followed, in which the presence of Balsamo did not prevent Florence Bostock from conveying clearly to Ralph what she thought of him. They spoke before Balsamo quite freely, as two people will discuss maladies before a doctor. Ralph departed first; then Florence. Then Balsamo gathered up the sovereigns. He had honestly earned Adam's fiver, and since Ralph had refused the two pounds—"I have seen their hands," said Balsamo the next day to Adam Tellwright. "All is clear. In a month you will be engaged to her."

"A month?"

"A month. I regret that I had a painful scene with your rival. But of course professional etiquette prevents me from speaking of that. Let me repeat, in a month you will be engaged to her."

This prophecy came true. Adam Tellwright, however, did not marry Florence Bostock. One evening, in a secluded corner at a dance, Ralph Martin, without warning, threw his arms angrily, brutally, instinctively round Florence's neck and kissed her. It was wrong of him. But he conquered her. Love is like that. It hides for years, and then pops out, and won't be denied. Florence's engagement to Adam was broken. She married Ralph. She knew she was marrying a strange, dark-minded man of uncertain temper, but she married him.

As for the unimpeachable Adam, he was left with nothing but the uneasy fear that he was doomed to die at fifty-two. His wife (for he got one, and a good one) soon cured him of that.



THE LONG-LOST UNCLE

On a recent visit to the Five Towns I was sitting with my old schoolmaster, who, by the way, is much younger than I am after all, in the bow window of a house overlooking that great thoroughfare, Trafalgar Road, Bursley, when a pretty woman of twenty-eight or so passed down the street. Now the Five Towns contains more pretty women to the square mile than any other district in England (and this statement I am prepared to support by either sword or pistol). But do you suppose that the frequency of pretty women in Hanbridge, Bursley, Knype, Longshaw and Turnhill makes them any the less remarked? Not a bit of it. Human nature is such that even if a man should meet forty pretty women in a walk along Trafalgar Road from Bursley to Hanbridge, he will remark them all separately, and feel exactly forty thrills. Consequently my ever-youthful schoolmaster said to me:

"Good-looking woman that, eh, boy? Married three weeks ago," he added.

A piece of information which took the keen edge off my interest in her.

"Really!" I said. "Who is she?"

"Married to a Scotsman named Macintyre, I fancy."

"That tells me nothing," I said. "Who was she?"

"Daughter of a man named Roden."

"Not Herbert Roden?" I demanded.

"Yes. Art director at Jacksons, Limited."

"Well, well!" I exclaimed. "So Herbert Roden's got a daughter married. Well, well! And it seems like a week ago that he and his uncle—you know all about that affair, of course?"

"What affair?"

"Why, the Roden affair!"

"No," said my schoolmaster.

"You don't mean to say you've never—"

Nothing pleases a wandering native of the Five Towns more than to come back and find that he knows things concerning the Five Towns which another man who has lived there all his life doesn't know. In ten seconds I was digging out for my schoolmaster one of those family histories which lie embedded in the general grey soil of the past like lumps of quartz veined and streaked with the precious metal of passion and glittering here and there with the crystallizations of scandal.

"You could make a story out of that," he said, when I had done talking and he had done laughing.

"It is a story," I replied. "It doesn't want any making."

And this is just what I told him. I have added on a few explanations and moral reflections—and changed the names.

I

Silas Roden, commonly called Si Roden—Herbert's uncle—lived in one of those old houses at Paddock Place, at the bottom of the hill where Hanbridge begins. Their front steps are below the level of the street, and their backyards look out on the Granville Third Pit and the works of the Empire Porcelain Company. 11 was Si's own house, a regular bachelor's house, as neat as a pin, and Si was very proud of it and very particular about it. Herbert, being an orphan, lived with his uncle. He would be about twenty-five then, and Si fifty odd. Si had retired from the insurance agency business, and Herbert, after a spell in a lawyer's office, had taken to art and was in the decorating department at Jackson's. They had got on together pretty well, had Si and Herbert, in a grim, taciturn, Five Towns way. The historical scandal began when Herbert wanted to marry Alice Oulsnam, an orphan like himself, employed at a dress-maker's in Crown Square, Hanbridge.

"Thou'lt marry her if thou'st a mind," said Si to Herbert, "but I s'll ne'er speak to thee again."

"But why, uncle?"

"That's why," said Si.

Now if you have been born in the Five Towns and been blessed with the unique Five Towns mixture of sentimentality and solid sense, you don't flare up and stamp out of the house when a well-to-do and childless uncle shatters your life's dream. You dissemble. You piece the dream together again while your uncle is looking another way. You feel that you are capable of out-witting your uncle, and you take the earliest opportunity of "talking it over" with Alice. Alice is sagacity itself.

Si's reasons for objecting so politely to the projected marriage were various. In the first place he had persuaded himself that he hated women. In the second place, though in many respects a most worthy man, he was a selfish man, and he didn't want Herbert to leave him, because he loathed solitude. In the third place—and here is the interesting part—he had once had an affair with Alice's mother and had been cut out: his one deviation into the realms of romance—and a disastrous one. He ought to have been Alice's father, and he wasn't. It angered him, with a cold anger, that Herbert should have chosen just Alice out of the wealth of women in the Five Towns. Herbert was unaware of this reason at the moment.

The youth was being driven to the conclusion that he would be compelled to offend his uncle after all, when Alice came into two thousand two hundred pounds from a deceased relative in Cheshire. The thought of this apt legacy does good to my soul. I love people to come into a bit of stuff unexpected. Herbert instantly advised her to breathe not a word of the legacy to anyone. They were independent now, and he determined that he would teach his uncle a lesson. He had an affection for his uncle, but in the Five Towns you can have an affection for a person, and be extremely and justly savage against that person, and plan cruel revenges on that person, all at the same time.

Herbert felt that the legacy would modify Si's attitude towards the marriage, if Si knew of it. Legacies, for some obscure and illogical cause, do modify attitudes towards marriages. To keep a penniless dressmaker out of one's family may be a righteous act. But to keep a level-headed girl with two thousand odd of her own out of one's family would be the act of an insensate fool. Therefore Herbert settled that Si should not know of the legacy. Si should be defeated without the legacy, or he should be made to suffer the humiliation of yielding after being confronted with the accomplished fact of a secret marriage. Herbert was fairly sure that he would yield, and in any case, with a couple of thousand at his wife's back, Herbert could afford to take the risks of war.

So Herbert, who had something of the devil in him, approached his uncle once more, with a deceitful respect, and he was once more politely rebuffed—as indeed he had half hoped to be. He then began his clandestine measures—measures which culminated in him leaving the house one autumn morning dressed in a rather stylish travelling suit.

The tramcar came down presently from Hanbridge. Not one of the swift thunderous electrical things that now chase each other all over the Five Towns in every direction at intervals of about thirty seconds; but the old horse-car that ran between Hanbridge and Bursley twice an hour and no oftener, announcing its departure by a big bell, and stopping at toll-gates with broad eaves, and climbing hills with the aid of a tip-horse and a boy perched on the back thereof. That was a calm and spacious age.

Herbert boarded the car, and raised his hat rather stiffly to a nice girl sitting in a corner. He then sat down in another corner, far away from her. Such is the capacity of youth for chicane! For that nice girl was exactly Alice, and her presence on the car was part of the plot. When the car arrived at Bursley these monsters of duplicity descended together, and went to a small public building and entered therein, and were directed to an official and inhospitable room which was only saved from absolute nakedness by a desk, four Windsor chairs, some blotting-paper, pens, ink and a copy of Keats's Directory of the Five Towns. An amiable old man received them with a perfunctory gravity, and two acquaintances of Herbert's strolled in, blushing. The old man told everybody to sit down, asked them questions of no spiritual import, abruptly told them to stand up, taught them to say a few phrases, in the tone of a person buying a ha'-porth of tin-tacks, told them to sit down, filled a form or two, took some of Herbert's money, and told them that that was all, and that they could go. So they went, secretly surprised. This was the august ritual, and this the imposing theatre, provided by the State in those far-off days for the solemnizing of the most important act in a citizen's life. It is different now; the copy of Keats's Directory is a much later one.

Herbert thanked his acquaintances, who, begging him not to mention it, departed.

"Well, that's over!" breathed Herbert with a sigh of relief. "It's too soon to go back. Let us walk round by Moorthorne."

"I should love to!" said Alice.

It was a most enjoyable walk. In the heights of Moorthorne they gradually threw off the depressing influence of those four Windsor chairs, and realized their bliss. They reached Paddock Place again at a quarter to one o'clock, which, as they were a very methodical and trustworthy pair, was precisely the moment at which they had meant to reach it. The idea was that they should call on Si and announce to him, respectfully: "Uncle, we think it only right to tell you that we are married. We hope you will not take it ill, we should like to be friends." They would then leave the old man to eat the news with his dinner. A cab was to be at the door at one o'clock to carry them to Knype Station, where they would partake of the wedding breakfast in the first-class refreshment room, and afterwards catch the two-forty to Blackpool, there to spend a honeymoon of six days.

This was the idea.

Herbert was already rehearsing in his mind the exact tone in which he should say to Si: "Uncle, we think it only right—" when, as they approached the house, they both saw a white envelope suspended under the knocker of the door. It was addressed to "Mr Herbert Roden," in the handwriting of Silas. The moment was dramatic. As they had not yet discussed whether correspondence should be absolutely common property, Alice looked discreetly away while Herbert read: "Dear nephew, I've gone on for a week or two on business, and sent Jane Sarah home. Her's in need of a holiday. You must lodge at Bratt's meantime. I've had your things put in there, and they've gotten the keys of the house.—Yours affly, S. Roden." Bratt's was next door but one, and Jane Sarah was the Roden servant, aged fifty or more.

"Well, I'm—!" exclaimed Herbert.

"Well, I never!" exclaimed Alice when she had read the letter. "What's the meaning—?"

"Don't ask me!" Herbert replied.

"Going off like this!" exclaimed Alice.

"Yes, my word!" exclaimed Herbert.

"But what are you to do?" Alice asked.

"Get the key from Bratt's, and get my box, if he hasn't had it carried in to Bratt's already, and then wait for the cab to come."

"Just fancy him shutting you out of the house like that, and no warning!" Alice said, shocked.

"Yes. You see he's very particular about his house. He's afraid I might ruin it, I suppose. He's just like an old maid, you know, only a hundred times worse." Herbert paused, as if suddenly gripped in a tremendous conception. "I have it!" he stated positively. "I have it! I have it!"

"What?" Alice demanded.

"Suppose we spend our honeymoon here?"

"In this house?"

"In this house. It would serve him right."

Alice smiled humorously. "Then the house wouldn't get damp," she said. "And there would be a great saving of expense. We could buy those two easy-chairs with what we saved."

"Exactly," said Herbert. "And after all, seaside lodgings, you know.... And this house isn't so bad either."

"But if he came back and caught us?" Alice suggested.

"Well, he couldn't eat us!" said Herbert.

The clear statement of this truth emboldened Alice. "And he'd no right to turn you out!" she said in wifely indignation.

Without another word Herbert went into Bratt's and got the keys. Then the cab came up with Alice's luggage lashed to the roof, and the driver, astounded, had to assist in carrying it into Si's house. He was then dismissed, and not with a bouncing tip either. We are in the Five Towns. He got a reasonable tip, no more. The Bratts, vastly intrigued, looked inconspicuously on.

Herbert banged the door and faced Alice in the lobby across her chief trunk. The honeymoon had commenced.

"We'd better get this out of the way at once," said Alice the practical.

And between them they carried it upstairs, Alice, in the intervals of tugs, making favourable remarks about the cosiness of the abode.

"This is uncle's bedroom," said Herbert, showing the front bedroom, a really spacious and dignified chamber full of spacious and dignified furniture, and not a pin out of place in it.

"What a funny room!" Alice commented. "But it's very nice."

"And this is mine," said Herbert, showing the back bedroom, much inferior in every way.

When the trunk had been carried into the front bedroom, Herbert descended for the other things, including his own luggage; and Alice took off her hat and jacket and calmly laid them on Silas's ample bed, gazed into all Silas's cupboards and wardrobes that were not locked, patted her hair in front of Silas's looking-glass, and dropped a hairpin on Silas's floor.

She then kneeled down over her chief trunk, and the vision of her rummaging in the trunk in his uncle's bedroom was the most beautiful thing that Herbert had ever seen. Whether it was because the light caught her brown hair, or because she seemed so strange there and yet so deliciously at home, or because—Anyhow, she fished a plain white apron out of the trunk and put it on over her grey dress. And the quick, graceful, enchanting movements with which she put the apron on—well, they made Herbert feel that he had only that moment begun to live. He walked away wondering what was the matter with him. If you imagine that he ran up to her and kissed her you imagine a vain thing; you do not understand that complex and capricious organism, the masculine heart.

The wedding breakfast consisted of part of a leg of mutton that Jane Sarah had told the Bratts they might have, pikelets purchased from a street hawker, coffee, scrambled eggs, biscuits, butter, burgundy out of the cellar, potatoes out of the cellar, cheese, sardines, and a custard that Alice made with custard-powder. Herbert had to go out to buy the bread, the butter, the sardines and some milk; when he returned with these purchases, a portion of the milk being in his breast pocket, Alice checked them, and exhibited a mild surprise that he had not done something foolish, and told him to clear out of "her kitchen."

Her kitchen was really the back kitchen or scullery. The proper kitchen had always been used as a dining-room. But Alice had set the table in the parlour, at the front of the house, where food had never before been eaten. At the first blush this struck Herbert as sacrilege; but Alice said she didn't like the middle room, because it was dark and because there was a china pig on the high mantelpiece; and really Herbert could discover no reason for not eating in the parlour. So they ate in the parlour. Before the marvellous repast was over Alice had rearranged all the ornaments and chairs in that parlour, turned round the carpet, and patted the window curtains into something new and strange. Herbert frequently looked out of the window to see if his uncle was coming.

"Pity there's no dessert," said Herbert. It was three o'clock, and the refection was drawing to a reluctant close.

"There is a dessert," said Alice. She ran upstairs, and came down with her little black hand-bag, out of which she produced three apples and four sponge-cakes, meant for the railway journey. Amazing woman! Yet in resuming her seat she mistook Herbert's knee for her chair. Amazing woman! Intoxicating mixture of sweet confidingness and unfailing resource. And Si had wanted to prevent Herbert from marrying this pearl!

"Now I must wash up!" said she.

"I'll run out and telegraph to Jane Sarah to come back at once. I expect she's gone to her sister's at Rat Edge. It's absurd for you to be doing all the work like this." Thus Herbert.

"I can manage by myself till to-morrow," Alice decided briefly.

Then there was a rousing knock at the door, and Alice sprang up, as it were, guiltily. Recovering herself with characteristic swiftness, she went to the window and spied delicately out.

"It's Mrs Bratt," she whispered. "I'll go."

"Shall I go?" Herbert asked.

"No—I'll go," said Alice.

And she went—apron and all.

Herbert overheard the conversation.

"Oh!" Exclamation of feigned surprise from Mrs Bratt.

"Yes?" In tones of a politeness almost excessive.

"Is Mr Herbert meaning to come to our house to-night? That there bedroom's all ready."

"I don't think so," said Alice. "I don't think so."

"Well, miss—"

"I'm Mrs Herbert Roden," said Alice, primly.

"Oh! I beg pardon, miss—Mrs, that is—I'm sure. I didn't know—"

"No," said Alice. "The wedding was this morning."

"I'm sure I wish you both much happiness, you and Mr Herbert," said Mrs Bratt, heartily. "If I had but known—"

"Thank you," said Alice, "I'll tell my husband."

And she shut the door on the entire world.



II

One evening, after tea, by gaslight, Herbert was reading the newspaper in the parlour at Paddock Place, when he heard a fumbling with keys at the front door. The rain was pouring down heavily outside. He hesitated a moment. He was a brave man, but he hesitated a moment, for he had sins on his soul, and he knew in a flash who was the fumbler at the front door. Then he ran into the lobby, and at the same instant the door opened and his long-lost uncle stood before him, a living shower-bath, of which the tap could not be turned off.

"Well, uncle," he stammered, "how are—"

"Nay, my lad," Si stopped him, refusing his hand. "I'm too wet to touch. Get along into th' back kitchen. If I mun make a pool I'll make it there. So thou's taken possession o' my house!"

"Yes, uncle. You see—"

They were now in the back kitchen, or scullery, where a bright fire was burning in a small range and a great kettle of water singing over it.

"Run and get us a blanket, lad," said Si, stopping Herbert again, and turning up the gas.

"A blanket?"

"Ay, lad! A blanket. Art struck?"

When Herbert returned with the blanket Silas was spilling mustard out of the mustard tin into a large zinc receptacle which he had removed from the slop-stone to a convenient place on the floor in front of the fire. Silas then poured the boiling water from the kettle into the receptacle, and tested the temperature with his finger.

"Blazes!" he exclaimed, shaking his finger. "Fetch us the whisky, lad."

When Herbert returned a second time, Uncle Silas was sitting on a chair wearing merely the immense blanket, which fell gracefully in rich folds around him to the floor. From sundry escaping jets of steam Herbert was able to judge that the zinc bath lay concealed somewhere within the blanket. Si's clothes were piled on the deal table.

"I hanna' gotten my feet in yet," said Si. "They're resting on th' edge. But I'll get 'em in in a minute. Oh! Blazes! Here! Mix us a glass o' that, hot. And then get out that clothes-horse and hang my duds on it nigh th' fire."

Herbert obeyed, as if in a dream.

"I canna do wi' another heavy cowd [cold] at my time o' life, and there's only one way for to stop it. There! That'll do, lad. Let's have a look at thee."

Herbert perched himself on a corner of the table. The vivacity of Silas astounded him.

"Thou looks older, nephew," said Silas, sipping at the whisky, and smacking his lips grimly.

"Do I? Well, you look younger, uncle, anyhow. You've shaved your beard off, for one thing."

"Yes, and a pretty cold it give me, too! I'd carried that beard for twenty year."

"Then why did you cut it off?"

"Because I had to, lad. But never mind that. So thou'st taken possession o' my house?"

"It isn't your house any longer, uncle," said Herbert, determined to get the worst over at once.

"Not my house any longer! Us'll see whether it inna' my house any longer."

"If you go and disappear for a twelvemonth and more, uncle, and leave no address, you must take the consequence. I never knew till after you'd gone that you'd mortgaged this house for four hundred pounds to Callear, the fish-dealer."

"Who towd thee that?"

"Callear told me."

"Callear had no cause to be uneasy. I wrote him twice as his interest 'ud be all right when I come back."

"Yes, I know. But you didn't give any address. And he wanted his money back. So he came to me."

"Wanted his money back!" cried Silas, splashing about in the hidden tub and grimacing. "He had but just lent it me."

"Yes, but Tomkinson, his landlord, died, and he had the chance of buying his premises from the executors. And so he wanted his money back."

"And what didst tell him, lad?"

"I told him I would take a transfer of the mort-gage."

"Thou! Hadst gotten four hundred pounds i' thy pocket, then?"

"Yes. And so I took a transfer."

"Bless us! This comes o'going away! But where didst find th' money?"

"And what's more," Herbert continued, evading the question, "as I couldn't get my interest I gave you notice to repay, uncle, and as you didn't repay—"

"Give me notice to repay! What the dev—? You hadna' got my address."

"I had your legal address—this house, and I left the notice for you in the parlour. And as you didn't repay I—I took possession as mortgagee, and now I'm—I'm foreclosing."

"Thou'rt foreclosing!"

Silas stood up in the tub, staggered, furious, sweating. He would have stepped out of the tub and done something to Herbert had not common prudence and the fear of the blanket falling off restrained his passion. There was left to him only one thing to do, and he did it. He sat down again.

"Bless us!" he repeated feebly.

"So you see," said Herbert.

"And thou'st been living here ever since—alone, wi' Jane Sarah?"

"Not exactly," Herbert replied. "With my wife."

Fully emboldened now, he related to his uncle the whole circumstances of his marriage.

Whereupon, to his surprise, Silas laughed hilariously, hysterically, and gulped down the remainder of the whisky.

"Where is her?" Silas demanded.

"Upstairs."

"I' my bedroom, I lay," said Silas.

Herbert nodded. "May be."

"And everything upside down!" proceeded Uncle Silas.

"No!" said Herbert. "We've put all your things in my old room."

"Have ye! Ye're too obliging, lad!" growled Silas. "And if it isn't asking too much, where's that china pig as used to be on the chimney-piece in th' kitchen there? Her's smashed it, eh?"

"No," said Herbert, mildly. "She's put it away in a cupboard. She didn't like it."

"Ah! I was but wondering if ye'd foreclosed on th' pig too."

"Possibly a few things are changed," said Herbert. "But you know when a woman takes into her head—"

"Ay, lad! Ay, lad! I know! It was th' same wi' my beard. It had for go. Thou'st under the domination of a woman, and I can sympathize wi' thee."

Herbert gave a long, high whistle.

"So that's it?" he exclaimed. And he suddenly felt as if his uncle was no longer an uncle but a brother.

"Yes," said Silas. "That's it. I'll tell thee. Pour some more hot water in here. Dost remember when th' Carl Rosa Opera Company was at Theatre Royal last year? I met her then. Her was one o' Venus's maidens i' th' fust act o' Tannhaeuser, and her was a bridesmaid i' Lohengrin, and Siebel i' Faust, and a cigarette girl i' summat else. But it was in Tannhaeuser as I fust saw her on the stage, and her struck me like that." Silas clapped one damp hand violently on the other. "Miss Elsa Venda was her stage name, but her was a widow, Mrs Parfitt, and had bin for ten years. Seemingly her husband was of good family. Finest woman I ever seed, nephew. And you'll say so. Her'd ha' bin a prima donna only for jealousy. Fust time I spoke to her I thought I should ha' fallen down. Steady with that water. Dost want for skin me alive? Yes, I thought I should ha' fallen down. They call'n it love. You can call it what ye'n a mind for call it. I nearly fell down."