Chapter V (5)

“O!” she said, “this is a sad regale! Sure, sir, does the climate of Abyssinia breed no hotter than Leicestershire Quakers? Why, I have heard a lion roar fiercer in a caravan. Now, pray, Sir Richard, put off your civilities, and give us news instead of lessons. They say there is a form of lawless possession in the women of the country you visited.”

“It is very true there is, madam. It is called the _Tigrétier_—a seizure of uncontrollable vanity, during which the victim is so self-centred that she is unable to attend to the interests, or even to distinguish the sexes of those about her. She will, for instance, surround herself with a circle of male admirers, assuming all the time, apparently, that they are the gossips of her own sex, with whom, like a decent woman, she would wont ordinarily, of course, to consort in private.”

The Fair cried out, “Enough! Your stories are the most intolerable stuff, sir. I wish Mr. Bruce joy of your return, as I hear you are not to remain in England.”

Then she turned her shoulder to him, her flush deepening to fire; and Sir Richard, bowing and moving away, fell into conversation with one or two of his acquaintances. Presently, looking up, he was surprised to see the room near empty. Goldenlocks had, in fact, issued her wilful mandate, and her court was dismissing itself.

The explorer was pressing out after the rest, when a maidservant touched his sleeve, and begged him to return to her lady, who desired a word with him. Sir Richard acquiesced immediately. He found the Fair standing solitary by her dressing-table, frowning, her head bent, her fingers plucking at a wisp of lace. Her hair, still undressed, hung down deep over her shoulders, mantling them with heavy gold, like a priest’s chasuble.

“Did you seek my acquaintance, sir,” she said imperatively, “with the sole purpose to insult me?”

“Nay, madam,” he answered, as cool as tempered steel; “but because you was described to me as the one woman in London that I might not marry, if I had the will to.”

“Why not?” was on the tip of her tongue; he saw it there. But she caught at herself, and answered, “So, sir, like sour reynard, I suppose, you would spite what you found it useless to covet.”

“_I_ covet, madam!” he said, in a tone of astonishment. “_I_ aspire to wrest this wealth and beauty from a hundred worthier candidates! Believe me, my ambition halted far short of such attainment.”

Her lips smiled, despite herself. What were the value, she suddenly thought, in a world of suitors that did not include this shagg’d and rugged Jeremiah? Her speech fell as caressing as the sound of water in a wood.

“Yet you confess to some ambition?” she murmured.

“True,” he answered; “the virtuoso’s.”

She lifted her beautiful brows.

“I will be candid, madam,” he said. “I have the collector’s itch. Whithersoever I visit, I lay my toll on the most characteristic productions of the tribes—robes, carvings, implements of war—even scalps. Madam, madam, you must surely be of the sun children! Your hair is the most lovely thing! I would give my soul—more, I would give a thousand pounds to possess it.”

“I see, sir,” she said; “to carry your conquest at your belt.”

“Nay,” he answered, with feigned eagerness. “Not a soul need know. The thing is done constantly. You have but to subscribe to the fashion of powder, and you gain a novel beauty, and I a secret I swear to hold inviolate.”

“O!” she said softly “This is Samson come with the shears to turn the tables on poor Delilah!”

And on the instant she flashed out, breaking upon him in a storm of passion. That he dared, that he dared, on no warrant but his reputation for inhumanity, so to outrage and insult her.

“Go, sir!” she cried. “Return to your Nubians and Dacoits—to countries where head-hunting is considered an honourable proof of manliness!”

He stood, as outwardly insensate as a bull.

“Then you decline to deal?”

Her only answer was to throw herself into a chair, and to abandon herself to incomprehensible weeping. But even her sobs seemed to make no soft impression on him. He took a step nearer to her, and spoke in the same civil and measured tone he had maintained throughout.

“Take care, madam. I never yet set my will upon a capture that in the long run escaped me.”

She checked her tears, to look up at him with a little furious laugh.

“Poor boaster!” she said. “I think, perhaps, that recounting of your Tigrétier hath infected you with it.”

“By my beard, madam,” said he, “I will make that hair my own!”

“See,” she cried jeeringly, “how a boaster swears by what he has not!”

Sir Richard felt to his chin.

“That is soon remedied,” said he. “And so, till my oath is redeemed, to consign my razors to rust!” And with these words, bowing profoundly, he turned and left the room.

Shortly after this he sailed to rejoin his expedition, and was not again in England during a period of eighteen months.

At the end of that time, being once more in London, he devoted himself—his affairs having now been ordered with the view to his permanent residence in the country—to some guarded inquiries about the Fair with Golden Hair. For some days, the season of the town being inauspicious, he was unable to discover anything definite about her. And then, suddenly, the news which he sought and desired came in a clap.

He was walking, one day, down a street of poor and genteel houses, when he saw her before him. He stood transfixed. There was no doubting his own eyesight. It was she: tall, slender, crowned with her accustomed glory, the flower of her beauty a little wan, as if seen by moonlight. But what confounded him was her condition. Her dress was mean, her gloves mended; every tag of cheap ribbon which hung upon her seemed the label to a separate tragedy. Thus he saw her again, the Fair with Golden Hair; but how deposed and fallen from her insolent estate!

She mounted a step to a shabby door. While she stood there, waiting to be admitted, an old jaunty cavalier came ruffling it down the street, accosted her, and accompanied her within. She might have glanced at Avenant without recognizing him. The rough dark beard he wore was his sufficient disguise.

Sir Richard made up his mind on the spot, and acted promptly. Having no intention to procure himself a notoriety in this business, he rigidly eschewed personal inquiry, and employed an official informer, at a safe figure, to ferret out the truth for him. This, epitomized, discovered itself as follows:—

Cytherea—Venus Calva—Madonna of the magic girdle, who had once reigned supreme between wealth and loveliness, who had once eaten hearts raw for breakfast, feeding her roses as vampires do, was desolate and impoverished—and even, perhaps, hungry. A scoundrelly guardian had eloped with trust funds: the crash had followed at a blow. Robbed of her recommendation to respect; deposed, at once, from the world’s idolatry to its vicious solicitation, she had fled, with her hair and her poor derided virtue, into squalid oblivion; that, at least, she hoped. But, alas for the fateful recoils on Vanity! She drives with a tight rein; and woe to her if the rein snap! A certain libidinous and crafty nobleman, of threescore or so years, had secured, in the days of the Fair’s prosperity, some little bills of paper bearing that beauty’s signature. These he had politicly withheld himself from negotiating, on the mere chance that they might serve him some day for a means to humiliate one who, in the arrogance of her power, had scoffed at his amatory, and perfectly honourable, addresses. That precaution had justified itself. The peer was now come to woo again, and less scrupulously, with his hand on a paper weapon, one stroke from which alone was needed to give the Fair’s poor drabbled fortune its quietus. She was at bay, between ruin and dishonour.

Sir Richard came immediately to a resolve, and lost no time in giving it effect. He wrote a formal note to the Fair, recalling himself courteously to her remembrance, reminding her of his original offer, and renewing it in so many words. He would do himself the honour, he said, to wait upon her for her answer on such and such a day.

To this he received no reply; nor, perhaps, expected one. He went, nevertheless, to his self-made appointment with the imperturbable confidence of a strong man.

Passing, on his way, by a perruquier’s, he checked himself, and stood for some moments at gaze in a motionless reverie. Then he entered the shop, made a purchase, and, going to a barber’s, caused himself to be shorn, shaved, and restored to the conventional aspect. Thus conditioned, he knocked at the Fair’s door, and was ushered up—bawled up, rather, by a slattern landlady—into her presence.

She rose to face him as he entered. She had his letter in her hand. Her beautiful hair, jealous, it seemed, to withdraw itself from the curioso’s very appraisement, was gathered into and concealed under a cap. Her features, thus robbed of their dazzling frame, looked curiously, sadly childish and forlorn. There were dark marks round her eyes—the scarce dissipated clouds of recent tears. Who can tell what emotions, at sight of this piteous, hard-driven loveliness, stirred the heart of the man opposite, and were repressed by his iron will?

“This letter, sir,” said the Fair, holding out the paper in a hand which shook a little. “I have tacitly permitted you to presume a right to a personal answer to that which it proposes, because such a course appeared to me the least compromising. I cannot write my name, sir, nowdays—as scandal doubtless hath informed you—but Fortune will be using it to my discredit.”

Sir Richard bowed.

“There is this difference only, madam: _my_ word is the bond of a gentleman. I vowed you secrecy.”

“That is to assume, on your part,” she said quietly, “a confidentialness which, in its insult to misfortune, is at least not the _act_ of a gentleman. Moreover, a gentleman, surely, had not taken advantage of circumstances to propose to destitution what affluence had once refused him.”

“Beware, madam!” said Avenant. “Pride must make some sacrifices to virtue. If, in renewing a pure business offer, I, a simple instrument in the hands of Providence, give you an opportunity to maintain that priceless possession unimpaired, would it not be the truer self-respect to secure your honour at whatever cost to your sentiments?”

“I thank you, sir,” she said. “I have not forgotten, nor forgotten to resent, my self-constituted Mentor. I will assure him that, for the matter of my virtue, it is safe in my hands, though I have to arm those against myself.”

“Good heavens, madam!” cried Avenant. “You are not at that resource?”

“Give yourself no concern, sir,” she answered coldly. “The moral I learned of your insult, was to save myself in its despite.”

His deep eyes glowed upon her.

“You have sold your hair?” he said.

“Yes,” she answered; “to pay my debts. ’Twas your letter decided me.”

“At a thousand pounds?”

“At a hundred.”

Then she added, as if irresistibly, because she was still little more than a child, “And now, sir, how is the boaster vindicated? But your oath, I perceive, still goes beardless.”

“Within the hour only,” said he; and, thrusting his hand into his breast, he drew out the long tresses of the Fair With Golden Hair.

She stared, amazed a moment; then threw herself upon her knees by a chair, weeping and crying out—

“O, I hate you, I hate you!”

He strode, and stood over her.

“I saw them through a window as I came. How could I mistake them? There is not their like in the world. But now, my oath redeemed, it is for you to say if I am to destroy them.”

“O, my hair!” she wept; “my one beauty!”

“I have staked all on this,” he cried. “If your hair was your one beauty, my beard alone redeemed me from appalling ugliness by so much as it hid of me. Well, I have lost on both counts, if the net result is your hatred.”

She looked up, with drowned bewildered eyes, and held out her hand blindly.

“Give me back my hair,” she said, “and you shall have the hundred pounds.”

“Nay, sweet Delilah,” quoth he; “for that would be to return you your strength, and I want you weak.”

Her arm dropped to her side.

“That you may insult me with impunity!” she said bitterly.

“Ah, Delilah!” he cried; “is it so bad, that the offer of my hand and heart is an insult to a woman?”

She sank back, sitting on her heels. From under her cap, fallen awry, curled shavings of gold hung out—the residue of a squandered wealth. Her eyes were wide with amazement.

“So bad?” she whispered. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

He was not a conformable wooer. The love-wise sex shall say if he was a diplomatic one. He threw himself on his knees beside the Fair, seized her in his bear-like grip, and kissed her lips.

“Now,” he said, “it is neck or nothing. None but a parson can wipe out the stain. Hate me now, and put Love to bed for by and by.”

She smiled suddenly—like the rainbow; like an angel.

“Yes,” she said, “if you insist. But the poor thing has slept so long in my heart, that it would fain wake up at last, and confess itself.”

The peer took his settlement with a very bad grace; but he had to take it, and there was an end of him.

“Avenant,” whispered the Fair, on the evening of their wedding day, “I have been vain, spoiled, perhaps untruthful. But I wished to tell you—you can put me to sleep on the middle shelf of your cupboard.”

“It has been converted into a closet for skeletons,” he said. “I was a bachelor then.”

THE LOST NOTES

The faculty of music is generally, I believe, inimical to the development of all the other faculties. Sufficient to itself is the composing gift. There was scarcely ever yet a born musician, I do declare, who, outside his birthright, was not a born ass. I say it with the less irreverence, because my uncle was patently one of the rare exceptions which prove the rule. He knew his Shakespeare as well as his musical-glasses—better than, in fact; for he was a staunch Baconian. This was all the odder because—as was both early and late impressed upon me—he had a strong sense of humour. Perhaps an eternal study of the hieroglyphics of the leger lines was responsible for his craze; for craze I still insist it was, in spite of the way he took to convince me of the value of cryptograms. I was an obstinate pupil, I confess, and withstood to the end the fire of all the big guns which he—together with my friend, Chaunt, who was in the same line—brought to bear upon me.

Well, I was honest, at least; for I was my uncle’s sole provisional legatee, and heir presumptive to whatever small fortune he had amassed during his career. And day by day, as the breach between us widened, I saw my prospect of the succession attenuating, and would not budge from my position. No, Shakespeare was Shakespeare, I said, and Bacon, Bacon; and not all the cyphers in the world should convince me that any profit was to be gained by either imagining or unravelling a single one of them.

“What, no profit!” roared my uncle. “But I will persuade you, young man, of your mistake before I’m done with you. Hum-ti-diddledidee! No profit, hey? H’m—well!”

Then I saw that the end was come. And, indeed, it was an open quarrel between us, and I was forbidden to call upon him again.

I was sorry for this, because, in his more frolicsome and uncontroversial moments, he was a genial companion, unless or until one inadvertently touched on _the_ theme, when at once he exploded. Professionally, he _could_ be quite a rollicking blade, and his settings of plantation songs were owned to be nothing less than lyric inspirations. Pantomime, too, in the light of his incidental music, had acquired something more than a classical complexion; and, in the domain of knockabout extravaganza, not only did the score of “The Girl who Knew a Thing or Two” owe to him its most refined numbers, but also the libretto, it was whispered, its best Attic _bonnes-bouches_.

However, all that good company I must now forgo—though Chaunt tried vainly to heal the breach between us—and in the end the old man died, without any visible relenting towards me.

I felt his loss pretty keenly, though it is no callousness in me to admit that our long separation had somewhat dulled the edge of my attachment. I expected, of course, no testamentary consideration from him, and was only more surprised than uplifted to receive one morning a request from his lawyers to visit them at my convenience. So I went, soberly enough, and introduced myself.

“No,” said the partner to whom I was admitted, in answer to a question of mine: “I am not in a position to inform you who is the principal beneficiary under our friend’s will. I can only tell you—what a few days before his death he confided to us, and what, I think, under the circumstances, you are entitled to learn—that he had quite recently, feeling his end approaching, realized on the bulk of his capital, converted the net result into a certain number—five, I think he mentioned—of Bank of England notes, and… burned ’em, for all we know to the contrary.”

“Burned them!” I murmured aghast.

“I don’t say so,” corrected the lawyer drily. “I only say, you know, that we are not instructed to the contrary. Your uncle” (he coughed slightly) “had his eccentricities. Perhaps he swallowed ’em; perhaps gave ’em away at the gate. Our dealings are, beyond yourself, solely with the residuary legatee, who is, or was, his housekeeper. For her benefit, moreover, the furniture and effects of our late client are to be sold, always excepting a few more personal articles, which, together with a sealed enclosure, we are desired to hand over to you.”

He signified, indeed, my bequest as he spoke. It lay on a table behind him: A bound volume of minutes of the Baconian Society; a volume of Ignatius Donnelly’s Great Cryptogram; a Chippendale tea-caddy (which, I was softened to think, the old man had often known me to admire); a large piece of foolscap paper twisted into a cone, and a penny with which to furnish myself with a mourning ring out of a cracker.

I blushed to my ears, regarding the show; and then, to convince this person of my good-humoured sanity, giggled like an idiot. He did not even smile in reply, the self-important ass, but, with a manner of starchy condescension, as to a wastrel who was getting all his deserts, rose from his chair, unlocked a safe, took an ordinary sealed envelope from it, handed it to me, and informed me that, upon giving him a receipt, I was at liberty to remove the lot.

“Thanks,” I said, grinding my astral teeth. “Am I to open this in your presence?”

“Quite inessential,” he answered; and, upon ascertaining that I should like a cab called, sent for one.

“Good morning,” he said, when at last it was announced (he had not spoken a word in the interval): “I wish you good morning,” in the morally patronizing tone of a governor discharging a prisoner.

I responded coldly; tried, for no reason at all, to look threatening; failed utterly, and went out giggling again. Quite savagely I threw my goods upon the seat, snapped out my address, closed the apron upon my abasement, and sat slunk into the cavity behind, like a salted and malignant snail.

Presently I thumped the books malevolently. The dear old man was grotesque beyond reason. Really he needn’t have left life cutting a somersault, as it were.

But, as I cooled outwardly, a warmer thought would intrude. It drew, somehow, from the heart of that little enclosure lying at the moment in my pocket. It was ridiculous, of course, to expect anything of it but some further development of a rather unkind jest. My uncle’s professional connexion with burlesque had rather warped, it would appear, his sense of humour. Still, I could not but recall that story of the conversion of his capital into notes: and an envelope——!

Bah! (I wriggled savagely). It was idiotic beyond measure so to flatter myself. Our recent relations had precluded for ever any such possibility. The holocaust, rather! The gift to a chance passer-by, as suggested by that fool of a lawyer! I stared out of the window, humming viciously, and telling myself it was only what I ought to expect; that such a vagary was distinctly in accordance with the traditions of low comedy. It will be observed that I was very contemptuous of buffoonery as a profession. Paradoxically, a joke is never played so low as when it is played on our lofty selves.

Nevertheless, I was justified, it appeared. It may be asked, Why did I not at once settle the matter by opening the envelope in the cab? Well, I just temporized with my gluttony, till, like the greedy boy, I could examine my box in private—only to find that the rats had devoured all my cake. It was not till I was shut into my sitting-room that I dared at length to break the seal, and to withdraw——

Even as it came out, with no suggestion of a reassuring crackle, I realized my fate. And this was it: please to examine it carefully—

[IMAGE: images/img_197.jpg, “Musical notes”]

Now, what do you make of it? “_Ex nihilo nihil fit_,” I think you will say with me. It was literally thus, carefully penned in the middle of a single sheet of music-paper—a phrase, or _motif_, I suppose it would be called—an undeveloped memorandum, in fact—nothing else whatever. I let the thing drop from my hand.

No doubt there was some capping jest here, some sneer, some vindictive sarcasm. I was not musician enough to tell, even had I had spirit for the endeavour. It was unworthy, at least, of the old man—much more, or less, than I deserved. I had been his favourite once. Strange how the _idée fixe_ could corrode an otherwise tractable reason. In justice to myself I must insist that quite half my disappointment was in the realization that such dislike, due to such a trifle, could have come to usurp the old affection.

By and by I rose dismally, and carried the jest to the piano. (Half a crown a day my landlady exacted from me, if I so much as thumped on the old wreck with one finger, which was the extent of my talent.) Well, I was reckless, and the theme appeared ridiculously simple. But I could make nothing of it—not though Mrs. Dexter came up in the midst, and congratulated me on my performance.

When she was gone I took the thing to my chair again, and resumed its study despondently. And presently Chaunt came in.

“Hullo!” he said: “how’s the blooming legatee?”

“Pretty blooming, thanks,” I said. “Would you like to speculate in my reversion? Half a crown down to Mrs. Dexter, and the use of the tin kettle for the day.”

“Done,” he said, “so far as the piano’s concerned. Let’s see what you’ve got there.”

He had known of my prospective visit to the lawyers, and had dropped in to congratulate me on _that_ performance. I acquainted him with the result; showed him the books, and the tea-caddy, and the penny, and the remnants of foolscap—finally, handed him the crowning jest for inspection.

“Pretty thin joke, isn’t it?” I growled dolefully. “Curse the money, anyhow! But I didn’t think it of the old man. I suppose you can make no more of that than I can?”

He was squinting at the paper as he held it up, and rubbing his jaw, stuck out at an angle, grittily.

“H’m!” he said, quite suddenly, “I’d go out for a walk and revive myself, if I were you. I intend to hold you to that piano, for my part; and you wouldn’t be edified.”

“No,” I said: “I’ve had enough of music for a lifetime or so! I fancy I’ll go, if you won’t think me rude.”

“On the contrary,” he murmured, in an absorbed way; and I left him.

I took a longish spin, and returned, on the whole refreshed, in a couple of hours. He was still there; but he had finished, it appeared, with the piano.

“Well,” he said, rising and yawning, “you’ve been a deuce of a time gone; but here you are”—and he held out to me indifferently a little crackling bundle.

Without a word I took it from his hand—parted, stretched, and explored it.

“Good God!” I gasped: “five notes of a thousand apiece!”

He was rolling a cigarette.

“Yes,” he drawled, “that’s the figure, I believe.”

“For me?”

“For you—from your uncle.”

“But—how?”

He lighted, took a serene puff or two, drew the _jest_ from his pocket, and, throwing it on a chair, “You’ll have to allow some value to cryptograms at last,” he said, and sat down to enjoy himself.

“Chaunt!”

“O,” he said, “it was a bagatelle. An ass might have brayed it out at sight.”

“Please, I am something less than an ass. Please will you interpret for me?” I said humbly.

He neighed out—I beg _his_ pardon—a great laugh at last.

“O,” he cried: “your uncle was true blue; he stuck to his guns; but I never really supposed he meant to disinherit you, Johnny. You always had the first place in his heart, for all your obstinacy. He took his own way to convince you, that was all. Pretty poor stuff it is, I’m bound to confess; but enough to run _your_ capacities to extinction. Here, hand it over.”

“Don’t be hard on me,” I protested, giving him the paper. “If I’m all that you say, it was as good as cutting me off with a penny.”

“No,” he answered: “because he knew very well that you’d apply to me to help you out of the difficulty.”

“Well, help me,” I said, “and, in the matter of Bacon, I’ll promise to be a fool convinced against my will.”

“No doubt,” he answered drily, and came and sat beside me. “Look here,” he said; and I looked:—

[IMAGE: images/img_200.jpg, “Musical notes”]

“You know your notes, anyhow,” said he. “Well, you’ve only got to read off these into their alphabetical equivalents, and cut the result into perfectly obvious lengths. It’s child’s play so far; and, indeed, in everything, unless this rum-looking metronome beat, or whatever it may be, bothers you for a moment.”

He put his finger on the crazy device perched up independently in the left-hand corner; and then came down to the lines again.

“Let that be for the moment,” said he. “It don’t much signify, after all. How do these notes go? that’s the main question. Read ’em off.”

I spelt them out, following his finger: “b a c e f d e c a d e c.”

“That’s a good boy,” he said. “And now, what are these things beyond, that have run off the lines, so to speak?”

“What are they? Why, I don’t see what they can be but notes.”

“Exactly. Five notes.”

I stared at the bundle in my hand, and then up at Chaunt.

“O-o-o-o!” I exclaimed.

He uttered a loud ironic laugh. “Well,” he said: “what does ‘b a c e f d e c a d e c’ spell?”

I scratched my nose. “You tell me, please.”

“O Jerusalem!” he cried, and took his pencil to the line, thus: b a c | e f | d e | c a d e | c—

“Well?” he said again.

I shook my head.

He positively stamped. “Listen here,” he cried: “‘bac ef de cad-e c’—_don’t_ you see?”

“No.”

“O, you ineffable ass! ‘Back of the caddy’ (that’s to say the tea-caddy; there it is), ‘see’—see what? What follows? Why, five notes, don’t they? ‘Back of the caddy see five notes’—and there _they_ are.”

I sank in a heap in my chair. Light had dawned on me. “And you found ’em there, I suppose?” I murmured—“behind a false back or something?”

He nodded. “You’re getting on.”

“And, please, what’s the thing at the top?” I continued faintly. “Let me get it all over at once.”

“Ah!” he said: “there’s a trifle more ingenuity in that, perhaps. What is it, to begin with? A demisemiquaver balanced on the top of an M Y, eh?”

“So it appears to me.”

“To any one. Don’t be frightened. Try it every way round, and conclude with this: ‘On the top of M Y’—that is to say, ‘_on_ M Y,’ which is _my_, ‘a demisemiquaver’: or, shorn of all superfluities (he pencilled it down), thus: ‘on my demisemiquaver.’ Now apply the same process.”

I looked; pondered; felt myself instantly and brilliantly inspired; seized the pencil from him, and ticked off the measurements:—

“On my demise | mi | q | u | av | er.”

“Exactly,” said Chaunt, rising with the air of an at-length-released martyr, and proceeding to roll another cigarette: “‘On my demise, my cue you have here.’ ’Pon my word, without irreverence, it’s worthier of the composer of ‘Say, den, Julius, whar yo’ walkin’ roun’?’ than of the author of ‘Some Unnoticed Sides of Bacon.’ But all one can say is that he adapted himself to the intellectual measure of his legatee. Have you got a match?”

I must end, I am really ashamed to say, with this. Anyhow, in one way my uncle was triumphant: I was convinced, at last and at least, of _a_ value in cryptograms.

THE UNLUCKIEST MAN IN THE WORLD

He was nicknamed, ironically, Carabas—a sort of French equivalent for Fortunatus—the only title by which I ever knew him. Perhaps the underlying sympathy which impelled the jest reconciled him to its mockery; for there is, after all, an acute distinction in being the unluckiest man in the world. Somebody says somewhere that it is better to “lead” in hell than be a super in heaven. There came a time, I think, when Carabas would have resented good fortune as an outrage. It would have broken his record, and made him commonplace at a blow. As with Hawthorne’s young woman who was bred and throve on poisons, a normal dietary would have been fatal to him. Carabas was nurtured on ill-luck.

I made his acquaintance at Verey’s in Montreux. It was for ever Carabas here and Carabas there, and, sometimes, in badinage, M. le Marquis; for the fellow was always in huge request for his capability and good-humour. There was a great deal of commiseration being shown for him when I first arrived. Latterly he had drawn a prize ticket—for thirty thousand francs, I think it was—in some State lottery. But, alas! a few days before the declaration of the winning numbers, he had parted with his voucher for a trifle over cost price. We got up a consolation subscription for him in the hotel—relatively, quite a respectable little sum—which, with effusive thanks, he deposited in the Bureau de Secours Mutuels. The bank stopped payment almost at once, and Carabas lost his nest-egg, with a prospect of future “calls” from the parent cuckoo.

After that, we abandoned him to his Nemesis. We had recognized finally, I suppose, that vails to him meant nothing but tips to his evil destiny, to whom, as to a rapacious head-waiter, they all accrued. And so he himself was convinced with us. He showed himself neither surprised nor aggrieved; but remained the sunniest fatalist, with just a touch of wistfulness, which Nature had ever produced out of a union between Candour and Philosophy.

I don’t know what his official position was. I don’t think he knew himself. He wore a plain peaked cap, and a sleeved waistcoat with brass buttons, and was, loosely, jackal to the tremendous concierge whose bullion took the costly glass tabernacle in the hall with splendour. Carabas himself was not at all a figure of splendour. He was small, and placable in expression, with smiling cheeks, mobile lips, pencilled over by a tiny black moustache, and strength visible in nothing but his eyes. They were his vouchers of distinction above the common brand.

One thing certain about him was that he was an accomplished linguist; a second, that, for all his unspoiledness, he had a large experience of man, and (notably) womankind; a third, that his courage was equal to his good temper; a fourth, that, with every natural claim to consideration, his pride halted at no service, whether of skill or complaisance, which an unscrupulous management could exact of him; a fifth and last, that he permitted his employers so to presume upon his reputation for successlessness, as to accept from them, in reward for his many accomplishments, wages which would have been cheap to inefficiency. His own material welfare, indeed, seemed always the thing remotest from his interests. To be helpful to others was the sum of his morality.

I never could satisfy myself as to his nationality. Once—as one might ask him anything without offence—I put the question to him. To my secret surprise, he seemed to hesitate a perceptible moment before he answered, with a smiling shrug of his shoulders—

“Cosmopolitan, monsieur; a foundling of Fortune.”

“We should do very well, then,” I answered, “to claim you for England.”

Was it fancy on my part that his pleasant face paled a little? “As to that,” he said, “I know nothing.”

“You have never been in England?”

He made no reply, but began bustling over some incoming luggage, calling to the porters at the lift; and in a moment he left me.

The next day he was taken ill. The reversion of a service of raw oysters, supplied to the guests at table d’hôte, had found its way to the supper-table of the staff. Carabas detested oysters, but his gallantry to the fair sex was proverbial, and Ninette, the prettiest of _filles de cuisine_, sat next to him. She extracted a single “bivalve” from her half-dozen, and put it on his plate, moueing at him ravishingly.

“Love conquers everything, M. Carabas,” she said; “even the antipathies of the stomach. I will not believe in your protestations unless you eat this for my sake.”

He swallowed it at a gulp, and—it was a bad oyster, the only doubtful one in the whole consignment. Later, he was very sick; and afterwards ill for four days. Ninette cried, and then laughed, and congratulated herself on her escape. But as for the hotel, it was disconsolate in the temporary loss of its Carabas.

For my part, I was even particularly conscious of a vague discomfort in his absence. Somehow a certain personal responsibility which I had undertaken seemed to weigh upon me the more heavily for it. It was not that Carabas could have lightened, by any conceivable means, my burden. It was just a sense of moral support withdrawn at a critical moment. It was as if the knees of my conscience were weak, owing to something having gone wrong with my backbone. But I will explain.

Mr. G——, a very famous lawyer in our own country, had brought his family, a son and daughter, to holiday in Lucerne. The boy was a conceited and susceptible youth; to the lady I was—engaged.

There seems no reason why impressionability should spell obstinacy; yet very often it does. Young Miller (so I will call him) having invited himself, at the Schweitzerhof, into the toils of a siren—a patently showy and dubious one—resisted all the efforts of his family to help him out. Baffled, but resolute, the father thereupon shifted the scene to Montreux, where they were no sooner arrived than he was summoned home on business at a moment’s notice. In the meanwhile, to me (hastily called from Paris, where it had been arranged I was to join the party on its homeward journey), was assigned the unenviable and impossible task of safeguarding the family interests. Miller had positively refused to accompany his father home, then or thereafter, until his absurd “honour,” as he called his fatuity, was vindicated. It would never do to abandon the wretched infant in the wilderness. He had his independence, and was a desirable _parti_. Hence my promotion to an utterly fictitious authority.

I knew, naturally, how it would be; and so it turned out. The head was no sooner withdrawn, than Mademoiselle Celestine—privately advised, of course, of the fact—arrived at Verey’s. Here, then, was defiance unequivocal—naked and unashamed, I might have said, and been nearer the truth of the case. For mademoiselle’s charms were opulent, and she made no secret of them. One would have thought a schoolboy might have seen through that rouge and enamel, through the crude pencilling on those eyelashes, through all that self-advertising display. I will not dwell upon its details, because their possessor made, after all, only a summer nightmare for us, and was early discomfited. She served, at best, for foil to a brighter soul; and such is her present use in the context.

From the outset there was no finesse, no pretence of propitiation in her tactics. She understood that it was a matter of now or never with her quarry, and aimed to bring him down sitting. A woman, even the best of her sex, never gives “law” in these matters. She goes out to kill.

The two together formed an opposition camp—quite flagrantly, out in the sunlight. I thought sometimes the boy looked unhappy; but the witch would never let me have _him_ to myself, and I could not manœuvre _her_ from under his guns. I would never have scrupled to roll her in the mud, could I once have got her alone. But she was too cunning for that; and, as for her companion, his warfare was, after all, an honourable warfare. And all the time I had my own particular Campaspe to safeguard, to console, to squire through the odious notoriety which her brother’s infatuation had conferred upon us all.

It was Carabas, of course, who in the end procured us a way, his own, out of the difficulty. The scandal being common property, there was no need for him to affect an ignorance of it. Yet we never knew, until the moment of his decision, how it had been occupying his mind from the beginning, or how, quietly and unobtrusively, he had been studying to qualify himself as our advocate. “_Our_ advocate,” I say; but I knew his brief was for the bright eyes of Campaspe. _He_ struck for the credit of the hotel, he declared; and mam’selle was associated with the best of that. Anyhow he struck, and daringly.

He had risen from his bed on the fourth day, as smiling, as complaisant as ever. His presence, like a genial thaw, ameliorated the little winter of our discontent. We greeted his reappearance with effusion, and dated, from the moment of it, our restoration to the social sanities.

It was a dusk, warm evening. The peaks of the Dent du Midi, thrust into a dewy sky, had been slowly cooling from pink to pearl-ash, like ingots of white-hot steel. Everything seemed one harmony of colour, except our thoughts, Campaspe’s and mine, as we strolled in the deserted garden. The Celestine and her victim had been out boating on the lake. We met them, unexpectedly returning. Mademoiselle was eating cherries out of a bag, and daintily spitting the stones right and left as she advanced. I don’t know how we should have faced the contretemps; I had no time, indeed, at the moment, to form a decision, before Carabas came softly and swiftly from a leafy ambush, and took command of the occasion.

We all, I believe, instinctively recognized it for a critical one. Mademoiselle’s bosom, though she laughed musically (she had managed to preserve, it must be owned, the unspoiled voice of a _séductrice_) began to rise and fall in spasms. The portier addressed her without a moment’s hesitation.

“I take the liberty to inform madame that she is in danger.”

She gave a little gasp.

“But is this comedy or melodrama?” she cried vehemently.

“That is,” said Carabas, “as madame shall decide. I have the plot up my sleeve.”

“The plot!” she echoed, and fell staring at him; and then furiously from him to us.

“Go on,” she said. “I know very well who has instigated you to this.”

She checked herself, and, smiling, put out a hand towards her companion, as if to ask, or give, reassurance. But I noticed, already to my satisfaction, that the boy did not respond. As for us, we were in complete darkness.

“I obey, madame,” said Carabas. “This plot is told in a word. There was once in Paris a certain notorious _courtisane et joueuse_. Will madame desire her name?—_à bon entendeur demi-mot_. One night this lady’s husband, a Corsican, from whom she was separated on an honourable allowance, visited, purely by accident, her establishment. There was a fine scene, and he wounded her severely. She was forced by the police to prosecute him, and the jury, amidst the plaudits of the public, gave their verdict—against madame. But, triumphant there, the husband’s vengeance was whetted rather than assuaged. He would throw himself upon the suffrages of his countrymen in a more drastic vindication of his honour. She had disguised herself—her name—had fled. He devoted himself to the business of pursuit. At length he believed he had traced her to an hotel in Territet.”

Carabas shrugged his shoulders and his lips, stuck out his arms at right angles with his body, stiff from the elbow, and came to a significant stop. I declare I pitied the adventuress. Every expression but that of panic seemed eliminated from her face at a touch. She looked old and haggard; and then, as if conscious of her self-betrayal, collapsed in a moment, dropping her bag of cherries.

“I am not very well,” she stammered; “the night air tries me.” She turned lividly upon the portier: “Par pitié, monsieur! C’est pour me prevenir que vous etes venu, non pour me trahir?”

Without waiting for his answer, she gathered herself together, literally, folding her train about her arm; made a desperate effort at self-command; wrenched out a smile, and went off, quavering a little airy chansonnette. But, after a few steps, despite her royal amplitude she was running. Carabas, very pale but self-possessed, picked up the bag, found one cherry in it, put it in his mouth abstractedly, and—

“My God!” cried Miller hoarsely.

Carabas jumped, and gulped.

“A thousand devils!” he cried. “You made me swallow the stone, monsieur.”

The boy was in a fever of agitation.

“Is she really that—that sort?” he said.

My Campaspe fell upon his neck.

“O, my dear, O, my dear, I am so sorry!” she sobbed.

He put her roughly, but not unkindly, away.

“I’m—I’m going back to England—to the governor,” he said.

“Carabas,” I demanded privately, as we returned to the hotel, “is it a fact that——?”

“The husband is here? No, monsieur; it is not a fact.”

“But——”

“It was a _cause célèbre_. I was confident I recognized madame from the published prints. For the rest, it was just a chance shot; but it hit the mark.”

“Carabas, you are wonderful; and we shall not forget.”

Miller was as good as his word. With characteristic disregard for any but his own interests, he was gone the next morning, without sign or message, leaving us to wobble in his backwash of scandal, and to get out of it as best we could. His flight, of course, threw open all the doors of gossip. My business in Paris being unfinished, I had to go; but first I did my best to provide against unpleasantnesses by confiding Campaspe to the care of the least slanderous _dame de compagnie_ I could find. I am afraid, nevertheless, she had but a poor time of it.

A week later I received a letter from Mr. G——, who in the interval had returned to Montreux.

“All is happily over with all,” he wrote: “with the exception, that is to say, of poor Carabas, who is to undergo an operation for appendicitis. It appears that a cherry-stone, which he swallowed unwittingly, did the business. The management (OWLS!) demur to the expense. I have insisted (FOOLS!) upon undertaking it upon my own account. We owe much to him; and so do they (IDIOTS!). But they don’t understand how to pay your debts is very often the best foresight.”

It was a case of pitch and toss. For days, it appeared, Carabas’s life hung in the balance. In the meanwhile, I was enabled to rejoin Mr. G—— and his daughter at Montreux, and to take my share in the nursing. Between gratitude and indignation, we rather claimed Carabas among us. Campaspe the poor fellow simply adored. Once, when he fancied himself losing hold, he confided to her, while we stood by, some main incidents in his life. I retail them here, in an abbreviated form.

CARABAS’S STORY

“There is no doubt,” he said “that as truly as some men are born without a palate, so some men are born without luck. It is no use trying to remedy the deficiency; it is well, rather, to study to reconcile oneself to it.

“I was born in an English village, of naturalized Huguenot parents. When I was nineteen, I fell passionately in love. I had for a rival a youth very strong and unscrupulous. One day he persuaded me to bathe with him in the river, then swollen with floods. In mid-stream he pounced upon me, and strove to bear me under. I struggled desperately—it was of no avail. Death thundered in my ears; the water enwrapped and proceeded to swallow me. The last thing I saw was a figure gesticulating and shouting on the bridge a little way above; then consciousness fled, and I sank. I came to myself, stranded somewhere in a dark channel. A mad face was bending over me. I knew it—it was that of the miller. I had been carried into his race, and, just short of the wheel, he had caught and dragged me to shore. He was a drunkard, of that I was aware; and he was now quite demented.

“‘Mordieu!’ he said, ‘I see what you’ve come for, and the devil shan’t call twice for his own.’

“I understood instantly. He meant himself to go with me into the water—to join issues with the devil who had called for him, and have a fine frolic into eternity with his visitor. Terror lent me strength. I caught at a post, and, as he leaned down, shot my whole body at him like a spring. He went over with a splash, and I heard the wheel hitch, then begin to turn again, chewing its prey. O, my friends, what a situation! I lay like one damned, a thousand dreadful reflections mastering me. I should be accused, if caught, of murdering this man. That terror quite devoured the other, and increased with every moment that I lay. Darkness came upon me, and then I rose and fled. I thought of nothing but to escape; and so, stealing always by night, I reached London.

“Now, I will tell you the irony of this destiny. Many weeks later I read, by chance, in a newspaper, how my rival had been granted your Royal Humane Society’s testimonial, on the evidence of a casual spectator, for a brave but unsuccessful attempt to _save me_ from drowning; and how the little pretty romance had terminated with his marriage to the admiring object of our two regards. So I was dead; and, as long as I lay in my nameless grave—for my body, it appeared, had never been recovered—the ghost of my fear was laid. I do not complain, therefore. Yet—ah, mademoiselle, most condescending of sympathizers!—_she_ had been very dear to me.”

Here Carabas found it necessary to console my Campaspe before he could go on.

“I obtained work—under an assumed name, of course—and for many years found at least a living in that immense capital. I had an aptitude for languages, which was my great good fortune; yet prosperity never more than looked at me through the window. What then? I could keep body and soul together. Ill-luck is too mean a spirit for Death to patronize. Many a time has the great Angel turned his back disdainfully on the other’s spiteful hints. He will not claim me, I believe, until he sees him asleep, or tired of persecuting me.

“One day I was travelling on your underground railway. I had for companion in my compartment a single individual. He jumped out at the Blackfriars station, leaving a handbag on the seat. At the moment the train moved off I noticed this, seized it, and leaned with it out of the window, with a purpose to shout to its owner. I saw him in the distance, hurriedly returning. The train gathered speed; I saw he could never reach me in time, and I flung the bag upon the platform. Instantly I perceived him leap, and jerk his arm across his eyes; and on the same moment a terrible explosion occurred.

“Stunned, but unhurt, I had fallen back, when, in a flash, the full horror of my situation burst upon me. It was the time of the dynamite scares, and—ah, mon Dieu, mam’selle! your quick wit has already perceived my misfortune.

“The train had stopped; the place was full of smoke; the hubbub of a great tumult sounded in my ears. The owner of the infernal machine was certainly destroyed in his own trap; I, at the same time, had as certainly thrown the bag. No evidence to exonerate me was now possible. Without an instant’s consideration, I opened the door upon the line, slipped out, closed it, and raced for my life through the smoke to the next station. I was successful in gaining its platform without exciting observation. News of the catastrophe had already been passed on, so that I was able, mingling with a frenzied crowd, to make my way to the streets. But panic was in my feet, and all reason had fled from my brain. I felt only that to remain in London would be to find myself, sooner or later, the most execrated of human monstrosities, on the scaffold. There and then I effaced myself for the second time, hurried to the docks, and procured a post as steward on an out-going steamer. I have never been in England since. I now give monsieur the explanation he once asked for, secure in the thought that, as ill-luck has at last conceded to me the ministrations of this dear angel of a mademoiselle, his persecution must be nearing its end before the approach of the only foe he dreads. I leave it to monsieur, if he likes, to vindicate my name.”

As he finished, Mr. G——, whose face had been wonderfully kindling towards the end, bent over the bed.

“This must not be, Carabas,” he said. “The man, the dynamiter, confessed the whole truth before he died.”

Carabas sprang up.

“Monsieur!” he cried.

“I am a lawyer,” said Mr. G——; “I was connected with the case. The man confessed, I say. If I had only known that—Carabas! Carabas! you were the one witness we wanted, and could not find!”

Campaspe knelt down, and put a pitiful young arm round the shoulders of the unluckiest man in the world.

“Not only we now,” she said softly, “but others also, it seems, owe you a great debt, dear Carabas. We shall all be unable to pay it if you die. If—if I give you a kiss, will you live to return it to me on my wedding day?”

“Mademoiselle!” cried Carabas, radiant. “You shame ill-luck; you shame even Death. See how they turn and go out by the door! Vouchsafe me that dear mascot, and I swear I will live for ever.”

He is now, and has been for long, our most loved and trusted servant, with an iron constitution, and, what is best, an unshakable conviction that the circumstances which led him on to his present position were, after all, the kindest of luck in disguise.

JACK THE SKIPPER

“Will you favour me by looking at it, young gentleman?” said the petitioner.

_It_ was a most curious little model, which the petitioner had taken reverently out of a handbag. He was a hungry, eager-looking man, in a battered bowler, shabby frockcoat, and a primordial “comforter” which might have been made for Job.

Mr. Edward Cantle, busy at his desk, paid no attention.