Chapter IV: Preface: The Windows (3)

Here, and so leaning her bare elbows, I saw on most days of the week a slim young woman airing herself--a pale-faced, curling-papered, half-bodiced, unwashed drab of a girl, who would have had shame written across her for any one to read if she had not seemed of all women I have ever seen the least shamefaced. Her brows were as unwritten as a child's, her smile as pure as a seraph's, and her eyes blue, unfaltering and candid. She laughed a greeting, exchanged gossip, did her sewing, watched events, as the case might be, was not conscious of her servitude or anxious to market it. Sometimes she shared her outlook with an old woman--a horrible, greasy go-between, with straggling grey hair and a gin-inflamed face. She chatted with this beldame happily, she cupped her vile old dewlap, or stroked her dishonourable head; sometimes a man in shirt sleeves was with her, treated her familiarly, with rude embraces, with kisses, nudges and leers. She accepted all with good-humour and, really, complete good breeding. She invited nothing, provoked nothing, but resented nothing. It seemed to me as if all these things were indeed nothing to her; that she hardly knew that they were done; as if her soul could render them at their proper worth, transmute them, sherd them off, discard them. It was, then, her surface which took them; what her soul received was a distillation, an essence.

Then one night I had all made plain. She entranced me on a summer night of stillness, under a full yellow moon. I was working late, till past ten, past eleven o'clock, and looking out of my open window suddenly was aware of her at hers. The shutter was down, both wings of it, and she stood hovering, seen at full length, above the street. She! Could this be she? It was so indeed--but she was transfigured, illuminated from within; she rayed forth light. The moon shone full upon her, and revealed her pure form from head to foot swathed in filmy blue--a pale green-blue, the colour of ocean water seen from below. Translucent webbery, whatever it was, it showed her beneath it as bare as Venus was when she fared forth unblemished from the sea. Her pale yellow hair was coiled above her head; her face looked mild and radiant with a health few Londoners know. Her head was bent in a considering way; she stood as one who is about to plunge into deep water, and stands hesitating at the shock. Once or twice she turned her face up, to bathe it in the light. I saw that in it which in human faces I had never seen--communion with things hidden from men, secret knowledge shared with secret beings, assurance of power above our hopes.

Breathless I watched her, the drab of my daily observation, radiant now; then as I watched she stretched out her arms and bent them together like a shield so that her burning face was hidden from me, and without falter or fury launched herself into the air, and dropt slowly down out of my sight.

Exactly so she did it. As we may see a pigeon or chough high on the verge of a sea-cliff float out into the blue leagues of the air, and drift motionless and light--or descend to the sea less by gravity than at will--so did she. There was nothing premeditated, there was nothing determined on: mood was immediately translated into ability--she was at will lighter or heavier than the air. It was so done that here was no shock at all--she in herself foreshadowed the power she had. Rather, it would have been strange to me if, irradiated, transplendent as she was, she had not considered her freedom and on the instant indulged it. I accepted her upon her face value without question--I did not run out to spy upon her. _Ecce unus fortior me!_

In this case, being still new to the life into which I was gradually being drawn, it did not for one moment occur to me to start an adventure of my own. I might have accosted the woman, who was, as the saying goes, anybody's familiar; or I might have spied for another excursion of her spirit, and, with all preparation made, have followed her. But I did neither of these things at the time. I saw her next day leaning bare-elbowed on the ledge of her half-door, her hair in curl-papers, her face the pale unwholesome pinched oval of most London women of her class. Her bodice was pinned across her chest; she was coarse-aproned, new from the wash-tub or the grate. Not a sign upon her but told of her frowsy round. The stale air of foul lodgment was upon her. I found out indeed this much about her ostensible state, that she was the wife of a cab-driver whose name was Ventris. He was an ill-conditioned, sottish fellow who treated her badly, but had given her a child. But he was chiefly on night-work at Euston, and the man whom I had seen familiar with her in the daytime was not he. Her reputation among her neighbours was not good. She was, in fact, no better than she should be--or, as I prefer to put it, no better than she could be.

Yet I knew her, withal, as of the fairy-kind, bound to this earth-bondage by some law of the Universe not yet explored; not pitiable because not self-pitying, and (what is more important) not reprehensible because impossible to be bound, as we are, soul to body. I know that now, but did not know it then; and yet--extraordinary thing--I was never shocked by the contrast between her two states of being. This is to me a clear and certain evidence of their reality--just as it is evidence to me that when, at ten years old, I seemed to see the boy in the wood, I really did see him. An hallucination or a dream upsets your moral balance. The things impressed upon you are abnormal; and the abnormal disturbs you. Now these apparitions did not seem abnormal. I saw nothing wonderful in Mrs. Ventris's act. I was impressed by it, I was excited by it, as I still am by a convulsion of nature--a thunder-storm in the Alps, for instance, a water-spout at sea. Such things hold beauty and terror; they entrance, they appal; but they never shock. They happen, and they are right. I have not seen what people call a ghost, and I have often been afraid lest I should see one. But I know very well that if ever I did I should have no fear. I know very well that a natural fact impresses its conformity with law upon you first and last. It becomes, on the moment of its appearance, a part of the landscape. If it does not, it is an hallucination, or a freak of the imagination, and will shock you. I have much more extraordinary experiences than this to relate, but there will be nothing shocking in these pages--at least nothing which gave me the least sensation of shock. One of them--a thing extraordinary to all--must occupy a chapter by itself. I cannot precisely fit a date to it, though I shall try. And as it forms a whole, having a beginning, a middle and an end, I shall want to depart from my autobiographical plan and put it in as a whole. The reader will please to recollect that it did not work itself out in my consciousness by a flash. The first stages of it came so, in flashes of revelation; but the conclusion was of some years later, when I was older and more established in the world.

* * * * *

But before I embark upon it I should like to make a large jump forward and finish with the young woman of Gaylord's Rents. It was by accident that I happened upon her at her mysteries, at a later day when I was living in London, in Camden Town.

By that time I had developed from a lad of inarticulate mind and unexpressed desires into a sentient and self-conscious being. I was more or less of a man, not only adventurous but bold in the pursuit of adventure. I lived for some two or three years in that sorry quarter of London in complete solitude--"in poverty, total idleness and the pride of literature," like Doctor Johnson, for though I wrote little I read much, and though I wrote little I was most conscious that I was about to write much. It was a period of brooding, of mewing my youth, and whatever facility of imagination and expression I have since attained I owe very much to my hermitage in Albert Street.

If I walked in those days it was by night. London at night is a very different place from the town of business and pleasure of ordinary acquaintance. During the day I fulfilled my allotted hours at the desk; but immediately they were over I returned to my lodgings, got out my books, and sat enthralled until somewhere near midnight. But then, instead of going to bed, I was called by the night, and forth I sallied all agog. I walked the city, the embankment, skirted the parks, unless I were so fortunate as to slip in before gate-shutting. Often I was able to remain in Kensington Gardens till the opening hour. Highgate and its woods, Parliament Hill with its splendid panorama of twinkling beacons and its noble tent of stars, were great fields for me. Hampstead Heath, Wimbledon, even Richmond and Bushey have known me at their most secret hour. Such experiences as I have had of the preternatural will find their place in this book, but not their chronological place, for the simple reason that, as I kept no diary, I cannot remember in what order of time they befell me. But it was on the southern slope of Parliament Hill that I came again upon the fairy-woman of Gaylord's Rents.

I was there at midnight, a mild radiant night of late April. There were sheep at graze there, for though it was darkish under the three-quarter moon, I was used to the dark, and could see them, a woolly mass, quietly feeding close together. I saw no shepherd anywhere; but I remember that his dog sat on his haunches apart, watching them. He was prick-eared, bright-eyed; he grinned and panted intensely. I didn't then know why he was so excited, but very soon I did.

I became aware, gradually, that a woman stood among the sheep. She had not been there when I first saw them, I am sure; nor did I see her approach them or enter their school. Yet there she was in the midst of them, seen now by me as she had evidently been seen for some time by the dog, seen, I suppose, by the sheep--at any rate she stood in the midst of them, as I say, with her hand actually upon the shoulder of one of them--but not feared or doubted by any soul of us. The dog was vividly interested, but did not budge; the sheep went on feeding; I stood bolt upright, watching.

I knew her the moment I saw her. She was the exquisitely formed, slim and glowing creature I had seen before, when she launched herself into the night as a God of Homer--Hermes or Thetis--launched out from Olympus' top into the sea--"[Greek: ex aitheros empese ponto]," and words fail me to describe the perfection of her being, a radiant simulacrum of our own, the inconscient self-sufficiency, the buoyancy and freedom which she showed me. You may sometimes see boys at their maddest tip of expectation stand waiting as she now stood, quivering on the extreme edge of adventure; yet even in their case there is a consciousness of well being, a kind of rolling of anticipation upon the palate, a getting of the flavours beforehand. That involves a certain dissipation of activity; but here all was concentrated. The whole nature of the creature was strung to one issue only, to that point when she could fling headlong into activity--an activity in which every fibre and faculty would be used. A comparison of the fairy-kind with human beings is never successful, because into our images of human beings we always import self-consciousness. They know what they are doing. Fairies do not. But wait a moment; there is a reason. Human creatures, I think, know what they are doing only too well, because performance never agrees with desire. They know what they are doing because it is never exactly what they meant to do, or what they wanted to do. Now, with fairies, desire to do and performance are instinctive and simultaneous. If they think, they think in action. In this they are far more like animals than human creatures, although the form in which they appear to us, their shape and colouring are like ours, enhanced and refined. Here now stood this creature in the semblance of a woman glorified, quivering; and so, perched high on his haunches, sat the shepherd's dog, and no one could look at the two and not see their kinship. _Arriere-pensee_ they had none--and all's said in that. They were shameless, and we are full of shame. There's the difference; and it is a gulf.

After a while of this quivering suspense she gave a low call, a long mellow and tremulous cry which, gentle as it was, startled by its suddenness, as the unexpected call of a water-fowl out of the reeds of a pond makes the heart jump toward the throat. It was like some bird's call, but I know of no bird's with which to get a close comparison. It had the soft quality, soft yet piercing, of a redshank's, but it shuddered like an owl's. And she held it on as an owl does. But it was very musical, soft and open-throated, and carried far. It was answered from a distance, first by a single voice; but then another took it up, and another; and then another. Slowly so the soft night was filled with musical cries which quavered about me as fitfully as fire-flies gleam and glance in all quarters of a garden of olive-trees. It was enchantment to the ear, a ravishing sound; but it was my eyes which claimed me now, for soon I saw them coming from all quarters. Or rather, I saw them there, for I can't say definitely that I saw any one of them on the way. It is truer to say that I looked and they were there. Where had been one were now two. Now two were five; now five were a company; now the company was a host. I have no idea how many there were of them at any time; but when they joined hands and set to whirling in a ring they seemed to me to stretch round Parliament Hill in an endless chain.

How can I be particular about them? They were of both sexes--that was put beyond doubt; they were garbed as the first of them in something translucent and grey. It had been quite easy in the lamplight to see the bare form of the woman whom I first saw in Gaylord's Rents. It was plain to me that her companions were in the same kind of dress. I don't think they had girdles; I think their arms and legs were bare. I should describe the garment as a sleeveless smock to the knees, or perhaps, more justly, as a sack of silky gauze with a hole for the head and two for the arms. That was the effect of it. It hung straight and took the folds natural to it. It was so light that it clung closely to the body where it met the air. What it was made of I have no notion; but it was transparent or nearly so. I am pretty sure that its own colour was grey.

They greeted each other; they flitted about from group to group greeting; and they greeted by touching, sometimes with their hands, sometimes with their cheeks. They neither kissed nor spoke. I never saw them kiss even when they loved--which they rarely did. I saw one greeting between two females. They ran together and stopped short within touching distance. They looked brightly and intently at each other, and leaning forward approached their cheeks till they touched.[2] They touched by the right, they touched by the left. Then they took hands and drew together. By a charming movement of confidence one nestled to the side of the other and resting her head looked up and laughed. The taller embraced her with her arm and held her for a moment. The swiftness of the act and its grace were beautiful to see. Then hand in hand they ran to others who were a little further off. The elder and taller had a wild dark face with stern lips, like a man's; the younger was a beautiful little creature with quick, squirrel's motions. I remember her hair, which looked white in that light, but was no doubt lint colour. It was extremely long, and so fine that it clung to her shoulders and back like a web of thin silk.

[Footnote 2: I argue from this peculiar manner of greeting, which I have observed several times, that these beings converse by contact, as dogs, cats, mice, and other creatures certainly do. I don't say that they have no other means of converse; but I am sure I am exact in saying that they have no articulate speech.]

They began to play very soon with a zest for mere irresponsible movement which I have never seen in my own kind. I have seen young foxes playing, and it was something like that, only incomparably more graceful. Greyhounds give a better comparison where the rippling of the body is more expressive of their speed than the flying of their feet. These creatures must have touched the earth, but their bodies also ran. And just as young dogs play for the sake of activity, without method or purpose, so did these; and just as with young animals the sexes mingle without any hint of sexuality, so did these. If there was love-making I saw nothing of it there. They met on exact equality so far as I could judge, the male not desirous, the female not conscious of being desired.

But it was a mad business under the cloudy moon. It had a dream-like element of riot and wild triumph. I suppose I must have been there for two or three hours, during all which time their swift play was never altogether stopped. There were interludes to be seen, when some three or four grew suddenly tired and fell out. They threw themselves down on the sward and lay panting, beaming, watching the others, or they disappeared into the dark and were lost in the thickets which dot the ground. Then finally I saw the great whirling ring of them form--under what common impulse to frenzy I cannot divine. There was no signal, no preparation, but as if fired in unison they joined hands, and spreading out to a circumference so wide that I could distinguish nothing but a ring of light, they whirled faster and faster till the speed of them sang in my ears like harps, and whirling so, melted away.

Later on and in wilder surroundings than this I saw, and shall relate in its place, a dance of Oreads. It differed in detail from this one, but not, I think, in any essential. This was my first experience of the kind.

QUIDNUNC

I was so fired by that extraordinary adventure, that I think I could have overcome my constitutional timidity and made myself acquainted with the only actor in it who was accessible if I had not become involved in another matter of the sort. But I don't know that I should have helped myself thereby. To the night the things of the night pertain. If I could have had speech with Mrs. Ventris in that season of her radiancy there would have been no harm; but by day she was another creature. Thereby contact was impossible because it would have been horrible. It is true that a certain candour of conduct distinguished her from the frowsy drabs with whom she must have jostled in public-house bars or rubbed elbows at lodging-house doors, a sort of unconsciousness of evil, which I take to have been due to an entire absence of a moral sense. It is probable that she was not a miserable sinner because she did not know what was miserable sin. Heat and cold she knew, hunger and thirst, rage and kindness. She could not be unwomanly because she was not woman, nor good because she could not be bad. But I could have been very bad; and to me she was, luckily, horrible. I could not divorce her two apparent natures, still less my own. We are bound--all of us--by our natures, bound by them and bounded. I could not have touched the pitch she lived with, the pitch of which she was, without defilement. Let me hope that I realised that much. I shall not say how my feet burned to enter that slum of squalor where hovered this bird of the night, unless I add, as I can do with truth, that I did not slake them there. I saw her on and off afterward for a year, perhaps; but tenancies are short in London. There was a flitting during one autumn when I was away on vacation, and I came back to see new faces in the half-doorway and other elbows on the familiar ledge.

But as I have said above, a new affair engrossed me shortly after my night pageant on Parliament Hill. This was concerned with a famous personage whom all knowing London (though I for one had not known it) called Quidnunc.

But before I present to the curious reader the facts of a case which caused so much commotion in distinguished bosoms of the late "eighties," I think I should say that, while I have a strong conviction as to the identity of the person himself, I shall not express it. I accept the doctrine that there are some names not to be uttered. Similarly I shall neither defend nor extenuate; if I throw it out at all it will be as a hint to the judicious, or a clew, if you like, to those who are groping a way in or out of the labyrinth of Being. To me two things are especially absurd: one is that the trousered, or skirted, forms we eat with, walk with, or pass unheeded, are all the population of our world; the other, that these creatures, ostensibly men or women with fancies, hopes, fears, appetites like our own, are necessarily of the same nature as ourselves. If beings from another sphere should, by intention or chance, meet and mingle with us, I don't see how we could apprehend them at all except in our own mode, or unless they were, so to speak, translated into our idiom. But enough of that. The year in which I first met Quidnunc, so far as my memory serves me, was 1886.

* * * * *

I was in those days a student of the law, with chambers in Gray's Inn which I daily attended; but being more interested in palaeography than in modern practice, and intending to make that my particular branch of effort, I spent much of my time at the Public Record Office; indeed, a portion of every working day. The track between R---- Buildings and Rolls Yard must have been sensibly thinned by my foot-soles; there can have been few of the frequenters of Chancery Lane, Bedford Row and the squares of Gray's Inn who were not known to me by sight or concerning whom I had not imagined (or discerned) circumstances invisible to their friends or themselves to account for their acts or appearances. Among these innumerable personages--portly solicitors, dashing clerks, scriveners, racing tipsters, match-sellers, postmen, young ladies of business, young ladies of pleasure, clients descending out of broughams, clients keeping rendezvous in public-houses, and what not--Quidnunc's may well have been one; but I believe that it was in Warwick Court (that passage from Holborn into the Inn) that, quite suddenly, I first saw him, or became aware that I saw him; for being, as he was, to all appearance an ordinary telegraphic messenger, I may have passed him daily for a year without any kind of notice. But on a day in the early spring of 1886--mid-April at a guess--I came upon him in such a way as to remark him incurably. I saw before me on that morning of tender leafage, of pale sunlight and blue mist contending for the day, a strangely assorted pair proceeding slowly toward the Inn. A telegraph boy was one; by his side walked, vehemently explaining, a tall, elderly solicitor--white-whiskered, drab-spatted, frock-coated, eye-glassed, silk-hatted--in every detail the trusted family lawyer. I knew the man by sight, and I knew him by name and repute. He was, let me say--for I withhold his real name--George Lumley Fowkes, of Fowkes, Vizard and Fowkes, respectable head of a more than respectable firm; and here he was, with his hat pushed back from his dewy forehead, tip-toeing, protesting, extenuating to a slip of a lad in uniform. The positions of the odd pair were unaccountably reversed; Jack was better than his master, the deference was from the elder to the brat. The stoop of Fowkes's shoulder, the anxious angle of his head, his care to listen to the little he got--and how little that was I could not but observe--his frequent ejaculations of "God bless my soul!" his deep concern--and the boy's unconcern, curtly expressed, if expressed at all--all this was singular. So much more than singular was it to myself that it enthralled me.

They stopped at the gateway which admits you to Bedford Row to finish their colloquy. The halt was made by Fowkes, barely acquiesced in by his companion. Poor old Fowkes, what with his asthma, the mopping of his head, the flacking of his long fingers, exhibited signals of the highest distress. "I need hardly assure you, sir ..." I heard; and then, "Believe me, sir, when I say...." He was marking time, unhappy gentleman, for with such phrases does the orator eke out his waning substance. The lad listened in a critical, staring mood, and once or twice nodded. While I was wondering how long he was going to put up with it, presently he jerked his head back and showed Fowkes, by the look he gave him, that he had had enough of him. The old lawyer knew it for final, for he straightened his back, then his hat, touched the brim and made a formal bow. "I leave it so, sir," he said; "I am content to leave it so;" and then, with every mark of respect, he went his way into Bedford Row. I noticed that he walked on tiptoe for some yards, and then more quickly, flapping his arms to his sides.

The boy stood thoughtful where he was, communing by the looks of him quite otherwhere, and I had the opportunity to consider him. He appeared to be a handsome, well-built lad of fifteen or so, big for his age, and precocious. By that I mean that his scrutiny of life was mature; that he looked capable, far beyond the warrant of his years. He was ruddy of complexion, freckled, and had a square chin. His eyes were light grey, with dark lashes to them; they were startlingly light and bright for such a sunburnt face, and seemed to glow in it like steady fires. It was in them that resided, that sat, as it were, enthroned, that mature, masterful expression which I never saw before or since in one so young. I have seen the eyes of children look as if they were searching through our world into another; that is almost habitual in children. But here was one, apparently a boy, who seemed to read into our circumstances (as you or I into a well-studied book) as though they held nothing inexplicable, nothing unaccounted for. Beyond these singular two eyes of his, his smiling mouth, with its reminder of archaic statuary, was perhaps his only noticeable feature. He wore the ordinary uniform of a telegraphic messenger, which in those days was grey, with a red line down the trousers and a belt for the tunic. His boots were of the service pattern, so were his ankle-jacks. His hands were not cleaner than they ought to have been, his nails well bitten back. Such was he.

Studying him closely over the top of my newspaper, by-and-by he fixed me with his intent, bright eyes. My heart beat quicker; but when he smiled--like the Pallas of AEgina--I smiled too. Then, without varying his expression, even while he smiled upon me, he vanished.

Vanished! There's no other word for it: he vanished; I did not see him go; I don't know whether he went or where he went. At one moment he was there, smiling at me, looking into my eyes; at the next moment he was not there. That's all there is to say about it. I flashed a glance through the gate into Bedford Row, another up to R---- Buildings, and even ran to the corner which showed me the length and breadth of Field Place. He was not gone any of these ways. These things are certain.

Now for the sequel. Mere fortune led me at four that afternoon into Bedford Row. A note had been put into my hands at the Record Office inviting me to call upon a client whose chambers were in that quarter, and I complied with it directly my work was over. Now as I walked along the Row, the boy of that morning's encounter was going into the entry of the house in which Fowkes and Vizards have their offices. I had just time to recognise him when the double knock announced his errand. I stopped immediately; he delivered in a telegram and came out. I was on the step. Whether he knew me or not he did not look his knowledge. His eyes went through me, his smiling mouth did not smile at me. My heart beat, I didn't know why; but I laughed and nodded. He went his leisurely way and I watched him, this time, almost out of sight. But while I stood so, watching, old Fowkes came bursting out of his office, tears streaming down his face, the telegram in his hand. "Where is he? Where is he?" This was addressed to me. I pointed the way. Old Fowkes saw his benefactor (as I suppose him to have been) and began to run. The lad turned round, saw him coming, waved him away, and then--disappeared. Again he had done it; but old Fowkes, in no way surprised, stood rooted to the pavement with his hands extended so far toward the mystery that I could see two or three inches of bony old wrist beyond his shirt-cuffs. After a while he turned and slowly came back to his chambers. He seemed now not to see me; or he was careless whether I saw him or not. As he entered the doorway he held up the telegram, bent his head and laid a kiss upon the pink paper.

But that is by no means all. Now I come, to the Richborough story, which all London that is as old as I am remembers. That part of London, it may be, will not read this book; or if it does, will not object to the recall of a case which absorbed it in 1886-87. I am not going to be indiscreet. The lady married, and the lady left England. Moreover, naturally, I give no names; but if I did I don't see that there is anything to be ashamed of in what she was pleased to do with her hand and person. It was startling to us of those days, it might be startling in these; what was more than startling was the manner in which the thing was done. That is known to very few persons indeed.

I had seen enough upon that April day, whose events form my prelude, to give me remembrance of the handsome telegraph boy. The next time I saw him, which was near midnight in July--the place Hyde Park--I knew him at once.

I had been sharing in Prince's Gate, with a dull company, an interminable dinner, one of those at which you eat twice as much as you intend, or desire, because there is really nothing else to do. On one side of me I had had a dowager whom I entirely failed to interest, on the other, a young person who only cared to talk with her left-hand neighbour. There was a reception afterward to which I had to stop, so that I could not make my escape till eleven or more. The night was very hot and it had been raining; but such air as there was was balm after the still furnace of the rooms. I decided immediately to walk to my lodging in Camden Town, entered by Prince's Gate, crossed the Serpentine Bridge and took a bee-line for the Marble Arch. It was cloudy, but not at all dark. I could see all the ankle-high railings which beset the unwary passenger and may at any moment break his legs and his nose, imperil his dignity and ruin his hat. Dimly ahead of me, upon a broad stretch of grass, I presently became aware of a concourse. There was no sound to go by, and the light afforded me no definite forms; the luminous haze was blurred; but certainly people were there, a multitude of people. I was surprised, but not alarmed. Save for an occasional wastrel of civilisation, incapable of degradation and concerned only for sleep, the park is wont to be a desert at that hour; but the hum of the traffic, the flashing cab lamps, never quite out of sight, prevent fear. Far from being afraid I was highly interested, and hastening my steps was soon on the outskirts of a throng.

A throng it certainly was, a large body of persons, male and female, scattered yet held together by a common interest, loitering and expectant, strangely silent, not concerned with each other, rarely in couples, with all their faces turned one way--namely, to the south-east, or (if you want precision) precisely to Hyde Park Corner. I have remarked upon the silence: that was really surprising; so also was the order observed, and what you may call decorum. There was no ribaldry, no skylarking, no shrill discord of laughter without mirth in it to break the solemnity of the gracious night. These people just stood or squatted about; if any talked together it was in secret whispers. It is true that they were under the watch of a tall policeman; yet he too, I noticed, watched nobody, but looked steadily to the south-east, with his lantern harmless at his belt. As my eyes grew used to the gloom I observed that all ranks composed the company. I made out the shell jacket, the waist and elongated limbs of a life-guardsman, the open bosom of an able seaman. I happened upon a young gentleman in the crush hat and Inverness of the current fashion; I made certain of a woman of the pavement and of ladies of the boudoir, of a hospital nurse, of a Greenwich pensioner, of two flower-girls sitting on the edge of one basket, of a shoeblack (I think), of a costermonger, and a nun. Others there were, and more than one or two of most categories: in a word, there was an assembly.

I accosted the policeman, who heard me civilly but without committing himself. To my first question, what was going to happen? he carefully answered that he couldn't say, but to my second, with the irrepressible scorn of one who knows for one who wants to know, he answered more frankly, "Who are they waiting for? Why, Quidnunc. Mister Quidnunc. That's who it is. Him they call Quidnunc. So now you know." In fact, I did not know. He had told me nothing, would tell me no more, and while I stood pondering the oracle I was sensible of some common movement run through the company with a thrill, unite them, intensify them, draw them together to be one people with one faith, one hope, one assurance. And then the nun, who stood near me, fell to her knees, crossed herself and began to pray; and not far off her a slim girl in black turned aside and covered her face with her hands. A perceptible shiver of emotion, a fluttering sigh such as steals over a pine-wood toward dawn ran through all ranks. Far to the south-east a speck of light now showed, which grew in intensity as it came swiftly nearer, and seemed presently to be a ball of vivid fire surrounded by a shroud of lit vapour. Again, as by a common consent, the crowd parted, stood ranked, with an open lane between. The on-coming flare, grown intolerably bright, now seemed to fade out as it resolved itself into a human figure. A human figure at the entry of the lane of people there undoubtedly was, a figure with so much light about him, raying (I thought) from him, that it was easy to observe his form and features. Out of the flame and radiant mist he grew, and showed himself to me in the trim shape and semblance, with the small head and alert air of a youth; and such as he was, in the belted tunic and peaked cap of a telegraph messenger, he came smoothly down the lane formed by the obsequious throng, and stood in the midst of it and looked keenly, with his cold, clear eyes and fixed and inscrutable smile, from one expectant face to another. There was no mistaking him whom all those people so eagerly awaited; he was my former wonder of Gray's Inn, the saviour of old Mr. Fowkes.

But all my former wonder paled before this my latter. For he stood here like some young Eastern king among his slaves, one hand on his hip, the other at his chin, his face expressionless, his eyes fixed but unblinking. Meantime, the crowd, which had stretched out arms to him as he came, was now seated quietly on the grass, intently waiting, watching for a sign. They sat, all those people, in a wide ring about him; he was in the midst, a hand to his chin.

Whether sign was made or not, I saw none; but after some moments of pause a figure rose erect out of the ring and hobbled toward the boy. I made out an old woman, an old wreck of womanhood, a scant-haired, blue-lipped ruin of what had once been woman. I heard her snivel and sniff and wheeze her "Lord ha' mercy" as she went by, slippering forward on her miserable feet, hugging to her wasted sides what remnant of gown she had, fawning before the boy, within the sphere of light that came from him. If he loathed, or scorned, or pitied her, he showed no sign; if he saw her at all his fixed eyes looked beyond her; if he abhorred her, his nostrils did not betray him. He stood like marble and suffered what followed. It was strange.

Enacting what seemed to be a proper rite, she put her shaking left hand upon his right shoulder, her right hand under his chin, as if to cup it; and then, with sniffs and wailings interspersed, came her petition to his merciful ears.

What she precisely asked of him, muttering, wheezing, whining, snivelling, as she did, repeating herself--with her burthen of "O dear, O dear, O dear!"--I don't know. Her lost girl, her fine up-standing girl, her Nance, her only one, figured in it as needing mercy. Her "Oh, sir, I ask you kindly!" and "Oh, sir, for this once ...!" made me sick: yet he bore with her as she ran on, dribbling tears and gin in a mingled flood; he bore with her, heard her in silence, and in the end, by a look which I was not able to discover, quieted and sent her shuffling back to her place. So soon as she was down, the life-guardsman was on his feet, a fine figure of a man. He marched unfalteringly up, stiffened, saluted, and then, observing the ritual of hand to shoulder, hand to chin, spoke out his piece like the honest fellow he was; spoke it aloud and without fear, evenly and plainly. I thought that he had got it by heart, as I thought also of another person I was to hear by-and-by. He wanted, badly it seemed, news of his sweetheart, whom he was careful to call Miss Dixon. She had last been heard of outside the Brixton Bon Marche, where she had been seen with a lady friend, talking to "two young chaps" in Volunteer uniform. They went up the Brixton Road toward Acre Lane, and Miss Dixon, at any rate, was never heard of again. It was wearing him out; he wasn't the man he had been, and had no zest for his meals. She had never written; his letters to her had come back through the "Dead Office." He thought he should go out of his mind sometimes; was afraid to shave, not knowing what he might be after with "them things." If anything could be done for him he should be thankful. Miss Dixon was very well connected, and sang in a choir. Here he stopped, saluted, turned and marched away into the night. I heard him pass a word or two to the policeman, who turned aside and blew his nose. The hospital nurse, who spoke in a feverish whisper, then a young woman from the Piccadilly gas-lamps, who cried and rocked herself about, followed; and then, to my extreme amazement, two ladies with cloaks and hoods over evening gowns--one of them a Mrs. Stanhope, who was known to me. The taller and younger lady, chaperoned by my friend, I did not recognise. Her face was hidden by her hood.

I was now more than interested, it seemed to me that I was, in a sense, implicated. At any rate I felt very delicate about overhearing what was to come. It is one thing to become absorbed in a ritual the like of which, in mid-London, you can never have experienced before, but quite another thing to listen to the secret desires of a friend in whose house you may have dined within the month. However--by whatever casuistries I might have compassed it--I did remain. Let me hope, nay, let me believe of myself that if the postulant had proved to be my friend, Mrs. Shrewton Stanhope, herself, I should either have stopped my ears or immediately retired.

But Mrs. Stanhope, I saw at once, was no more than _dame de compagnie_. She stood in mid-ring with bent head and hands clasped before her while the graceful, hooded girl approached nearer to the mysterious oracle and fulfilled the formal rites demanded of all who sought his help. Her ringed left hand was laid upon his right shoulder, her fair right hand upheld his chin. When she began to speak, which she did immediately and without a tremor, again I had the sensation of hearing one who had words by heart. This was her burden, more or less. "I am very unhappy about a certain person. It is Captain Maxfield. I am engaged to him, and want to break it off. I must do that--I must indeed. If I don't I shall do a more dreadful thing. I do hope you will help me. Mrs. ----, my friend, was sure that you would. I do hope so. I am very unhappy." She had commanded her voice until the very end; but as she pitied herself there came a break in it. I heard her catch her breath; I thought she would fall,--and so did Mrs. Stanhope, it was clear, for she went hurriedly forward and put an arm round her waist. The younger lady drooped to her shoulder; Mrs. Stanhope inclined her head to the person--not a sign from him, mind you--and gently withdrew her charge from the ring. The pair then hurried across the park in the direction of Knightsbridge, and left me, I may admit, consuming in the fire of curiosity and excitement which they had lit.

Petitions succeeded, of various interest, but they seemed pale and ineffectual to me. Before all or nearly all of the waiting throng had been heard I saw uneasiness spread about it. Face turned to face, head to head; subtle but unmistakable movements indicated unrest. Then, of the suddenest, amid lifted hands and sighed-forth prayers the youthful object of so much entreaty, receiver of so many secret sorrows, seemed to fade and, without effort, to recede. I know not how else to describe his departure. He backed away, as it were, into the dark. The people were on their feet ere this. Sighs, wailing, appeals, sobs, adjurations broke the quietness of the night. Some ran stumbling after him with extended arms; most of them stayed where they were, watching him fade, hoping against hope. He emptied himself, so to speak, of light; he faded backward, diminishing himself to a luminous glow, to a blur, to a point of light. Thus he was gone. The disappointed crept silently away, each into silence, solitude and the night, and I found myself alone with the policeman.

Now, what in the name of God was all this? I asked him, and must have it. He gave me some particulars, admitting at the outset that it was a "go." "They seem to think," he said, "that they will get what they want out of him--by wire. Let him bring them a wire in the morning; that's the way of it. Anything in life, from sudden death to a penn'orth of bird-seed. Death! Ah, I've heard 'em cringe to him for death, times and again. They crawl for it--they must have it. Can't do it theirselves, d'ye see? No, no. Let him do it--somehow. Once a week, during the season--his season, I should say, because he ain't here always, by no means--they gets about like this; and how they know where to spot him is more than I can tell you. If I knew it, I would--but I don't. Nobody knows that--and yet they know it. Sometimes he's to be found here two weeks running; then it'll be the Regent's Park, or the Knoll in the Green Park. He's had 'em all the way to Hampstead before now, and Primrose Hill's a likely place, they tell me. Telegrams: that's what he gives 'em--if he's got the mind. But they don't get all they want, not by no means. And some of 'em gets more than they want, by a lot." He thought, then chuckled at a rather grim instance.

"Why, there was old Jack Withers, 'blue-nosed Jack' they calls him, who works a Hammersmith 'bus! Did you ever hear of that? That was a good one, if you like. Now you listen. This Jack was coming up the Brompton Road on his 'bus--and I was on duty by the Boltons and see him coming. There was that young feller there too--him we've just had here--standing quiet by a pillar-box, reading a letter. One foot he had in the roadway, and his back to the 'bus. Up comes old Jack, pushing his horses, and sees the boy. Gives a great howl like a tom-cat. 'Hi! you young frog-spawn,' he says, 'out of my road,' and startled the lad. I see him look up at Jack very steady, and keep his eye on him. I thought to myself, 'There's something to pay on delivery, my boy, for this here.' Jack owned up to it afterwards that he felt queer, but he forgot about it. Now, if you'll believe me, sir, the very next morning Jack was at London Bridge after his second journey, when up comes this boy, sauntering into the yard. Comes up to Jack and nods. 'Name of Withers?' he says. 'That's me,' says old Jack. 'Thought so,' he says. 'Telegram for you.' Jack takes it, opens it, goes all white. 'Good God!' he says; 'good God Almighty! My wife's dead!' She'd been knocked down by a Pickford that morning, sure as a gun. What do you think of that for a start?

"He served Spotty Smith the fried-eel man just the very same, and lots more I could tell you about. They call him Quidnunc--Mister Quidnunc, too, and don't you forget it. There's that about him I--well, sir, if it was to come to it that I had to lay a hand on him for something out of Queer Street I shouldn't know how to do it. Now I'm telling you a fact. I shouldn't--know--how--to--do it."

He was not, obviously, telling me a fact, but certainly he was much in earnest. I commented upon the diversity of the company, and so learned the name of my friend Mrs. Stanhope's friend. He clacked his tongue. "Bless you," he said, "I've seen better than to-night, though we did have a slap-up ladyship and all. That was Lady Emily Rich, that young thing was, Earl of Richborough's family--Grosvenor Place. But we had a Duchess or something here one night--ah, and a Bishop another, a Lord Bishop. You'd never believe the tales we hear. He's known to every night-constable from Woolwich to Putney Bridge--and the company he gets about him you'd never believe. High and low, and all huddled together like so many babes in a nursing-home. No distinction. You saw old Mother Misery get first look-in to-night? My lady waited her turn, like a good girl!" His voice sank to a whisper. "They tell me he's the only living soul--if he _is_ a living soul--that's ever been inside the Stock Exchange and come out tidy. He goes and comes in as he likes--quite the Little Stranger. They all know him in Throgmorton Street. No, no. There's more in this than meets the eye, sir. He's not like you and me. But it's no business of mine. He don't go down in my pocket-book, I can tell you. I keep out of his way--and with reason. He never did no harm to me, nor shan't if I can help it. Quidnunc! Mister Quidnunc! He might be a herald angel for all I know."

I went my way home and to bed, but was not done with Quidnunc.

The next day, which was the first day of the Eton and Harrow Match, I read a short paragraph in the _Echo_, headed "Painful Scene at Lord's," to the effect that a lady lunching on Lord Richborough's drag had fainted upon the receipt of a telegram, and would have fallen had she not been caught by the messenger--"a strongly built youth," it said, "who thus saved what might have been a serious accident." That was all, but it gave me food for thought, and a suspicion which Saturday confirmed in a sufficiently startling way. On that Saturday I was at luncheon in the First Avenue Hotel in Holborn, when a man came in--Tendring by name--whom I knew quite well. We exchanged greetings and sat at our luncheon, talking desultorily. A clerk from his office brought in a telegram for Tendring. He opened it and seemed thunder-struck. "Good Lord!" I heard him say. "Good Lord, here's trouble." I murmured sympathetically, and then he turned to me, quite beyond the range where reticence avails. "Look here," he said, "this is a shocking business. A man I know wires to me--from Bow Street. He's been taken for forgery--that's the charge--and wants me to bail him out." He got up as we finished and went to write his reply: I turned immediately to the clerk. "Is the boy waiting?" I asked. He was. I said "Excuse me, Tendring," and ran out of the restaurant to the street door. There in the street, as I had suspected, stood my inscrutable, steady-eyed, smiling Oracle of the night. I stood, meeting his look as best I might. He showed no recognition of me whatsoever. Then, as I stood there, Tendring came out. "Call me a cab," he told the hall-porter; and to Quidnunc he said, "There's no answer. I'm going at once." Quidnunc went away.

Now Tendring's friend, I learned by the evening paper, was one Captain Maxfield of the Royal Engineers. He was committed for trial, bail refused. I may add that he got seven years.