Chapter I: Part 1

MASQUERADES

THE LATEST LIBRARY NOVELS

_Seven Shillings & Sixpence Net Each_

_A WISE FOOL_ _Edward Charles Reed_

_This is the Prize-Winning Novel in the John Long (2nd) £500 Prize Competition for the Best_ First _Novel. John Long’s previous £500 Prize Competition for the Best_ First _Novel was won by Emmeline Morrison with her Novel, “Good Grain,” probably one of the most popular novels published in recent years_.

THE WOMAN TEMPTED THE COUNTESS OF CATHCART
THE FACE IN THE NIGHT EDGAR WALLACE
THE MARQUISE RING E. W. SAVI
MASQUERADES SHANE LESLIE
THE CHALLENGE NAT GOULD
DESIRE OF THE DESERT ARTHUR APPLIN
BURNT BRIDGES TEMPLE LANE
THE HIDDEN HOUR J. B. HARRIS-BURLAND
THE ROSE OF ALGIERS CECIL H. BULLIVANT
THE VENUS GIRL LESLIE BERESFORD (“PAN”)
TIGER RIVER ARTHUR O. FRIEL
THE LAIRD WINIFRED DUKE
THE DAY OF RECKONING E. ALMAZ STOUT
THE SEA DEMONS H. M. EGBERT
THE BREAD OF DEPENDENCE EDMUND B. D’AUVERGNE
THE DANCING GIRL GASTON LEROUX
THE ARREST FREDERICK BROCK
THE INVISIBLE NET J. J. BELL
STORM HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE
THE WORLD OUTSIDE HAROLD MACGRATH
THE CRÊPE DE CHINE WIFE AMY J. BAKER
THE MYSTERY OF WO-SING A. G. HALES
THE COMPULSORY MILLIONAIRE W. HAROLD THOMSON
BARNEY S. B. H. HURST
THREE OF A KIND EMMELINE MORRISON
JOAN PETERSON--SPORT MARGARET ARMSTRONG
THE LEGACY FROM NOWHERE PETER GLADWIN
ROOM 13 EDGAR WALLACE
CHÉRI-BIBI, MYSTERY MAN GASTON LEROUX
THE END OF A CIGARETTE EDWARD GELLIBRAND
MARGOT’S PROGRESS (3s. 6d. net) DOUGLAS GOLDRING

JOHN LONG, LTD., Publishers, LONDON
And at all Libraries and Booksellers everywhere

MASQUERADES

STUDIES IN THE MORBID

BY

SHANE LESLIE

AUTHOR OF
“THE OPPIDAN,” “DOOMSLAND,” ETC.

London

John Long, Limited

12, 13 & 14 Norris Street, Haymarket

[_All rights reserved_]

Made and
Printed in
Great Britain
Copyright, 1924, by
John Long, Limited
All rights reserved

_Readers are requested to note that all the characters in this book
are purely fictitious, and the names are not intended to refer to any
real persons_

“Masks, masking and unmasking of masks; all is
Masquerade.”--APOCRYPHA OF SOLOMON.

“_Seigneur, mon Dieu, vous le Créateur, vous le maître; vous qui avez
fait la Loi et la Liberté; vous le Souverain qui laissez faire, vous
le juge qui pardonnez; vous qui êtes plein de motifs et de causes
et qui avez peut-être mis dans mon esprit le goût de l’horreur pour
convertir mon cœur comme la guérison au bout d’une lame; Seigneur,
ayez pitié, ayez pitié des fous et des folles! O Créateur! peut-il
exister des monstres aux yeux de Celui-là seul qui sait pourquoi ils
existent, comment ils se sont faits et comment ils auraient pu ne pas
se faire?_”--

FROM BAUDELAIRE’S FAMILY PRAYERS.

TO THE ENTERTAINING SOUL
OF THAT SUPERFINE WRITER
FREDERICK ROLFE BARON CORVO
IN PURGATORY

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE POPE’S TEMPTATION 11

CONNEMARA 24

INSPIRATION 43

BALTHASAR THE CRUEL 59

A SAVING PHANTASM 75

JEALOUSY 83

THE DRUMMER OF GORDONMUIR 96

THE SUPREME COMPLIMENT 110

A STUDY IN SMOKE 121

THE MISSIONARY 131

MIDIR AND ETAIN 169

KATHLEEN 177

JOHN SALTUS 197

LOADED DICE 214

AT THE HIGH TABLE 225

A SAINT 235

CANNES 252

THE NECROPHILE 264

THE BEAU GESTE 282

THE EVIL EYE 299

THE WEIRD GILLY 312

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

THE BIG LITERARY EVENT OF 1924

THE JOHN LONG £500 PRIZE NOVEL

A WISE FOOL

By EDWARD CHARLES REED

“A Wise Fool,” by Edward Charles Reed, the Prize-Winning Novel in the John Long (2nd) £500 Prize Competition for the Best First Novel, gained the distinction from among several hundred Novels sent in. It is an exceptionally brilliant Novel, written on really original lines. Revealing high literary quality, the story, which is modern in atmosphere, is such as to make the widest appeal. It is a throbbing tale in which love, adventure, romance and passion are skilfully combined. There is no gainsaying the ineffable charm of the narrative nor the lovableness of certain of its characters. In Edward Charles Reed, the publishers and their advisers have the firm conviction they have discovered an author destined to make an enduring reputation by his Novels. It will be recalled that John Long’s previous £500 Prize Competition for the Best First Novel was won by Emmeline Morrison with her Novel, “Good Grain,” probably one of the most popular Novels published in recent years.

_Ready Autumn, 1924. Crown 8vo, Cloth, 7s. 6d. net_
JOHN LONG, LTD., Publishers, LONDON

MASQUERADES

THE POPE’S TEMPTATION

Under the great Dome that floated like a golden bubble upon the red tranquillity of the sea of sunset lay the indecipherable shadow of a crumbling City. It was a City of secular silences, and yet it was filled with the murmur of the prayers of those who were long dead. It was a City of many mansions and narrow streets, of slow-filling fountains and great dumb doorways. Upon the time-eaten walls were set windows, whose dust-shrouded panes separated the twilight without from the twilight within. In that City was no sign of mart nor sound of amusement.

Under the Dome stretched the great palace. Through corridors of jacinth and chalcedony-coloured marble stirred a quiet and unending business. It was a business that seemed to have begun in the faraway centuries and to move towards slow fulfilment with the ending of the world. From time to time the noiseless shadows of men in sable-coloured dress moved through the corridors or passed into the darkness of the rooms. Some were slashed with sashes of scarlet as of hyssop or with purple as of grapes, all of which had high liturgical significance, but they made little show compared to the soldiery guarding the gates. Behind balustrades of alabaster and upon snowy marble floors stood the guardians of the gates. They were magnificently clothed in yellow and black and vermilion, as though to signify very clearly that their watch was not withdrawn in the golden morning nor in the red of noon nor yet in the pitchy darkness of the night.

Behind the gaudy metallurgic gates and past the long corridors of the colour of jacinth and chalcedony, fenced in an inner chamber by men, whose swords turned every way, an old man rested in a chair of cedar wood. The lineaments of his face and the folds of his garments were as white as fretted ivory. A white cap circled his silver hair. His eyes were like two wicks burning in a lamp of snowstone. His feet were shod with shoes whiter than wool. Upon each shoe was woven a crosslet of tinsel thread. At a little distance it gave the appearance of the print of a nail of gold. The old man sat resting.

Arranged upon shelves of camphor wood and behind crystal panes were a few very precious presents from contemporary but mundane rulers. The table, upon which the old man rested his arm, was a souvenir from the Emperor of the Sun in recognition of his recovery from water on the knee by the timely application of a miraculous medal. It was exquisitely inlaid with the solar radiations that Celestial Royalty affect on their notepaper. The old man was sometimes seized with a thought of irony. He himself was the only child of a sunburnt peasant. Nevertheless, since he had accepted the Pontifical Maximate, his Arms were the Keys of Heaven and of Hell, and his seal was the Seal of the Holy Fisherman.

Other very marvellous gifts there were. Upon the pallid marbles stretched carpets dyed azure with the blood of shell-fish found only in the Solomon Archipelago. They had been brought by the Queen of Sheba, a most devout soul, then living as a comfortable exile in Paris. In the corner stood a life-size lion of gilded bronze with eyes of red carbuncle sent from the King of the Sahara, who also was a god after his manner. His love of studied effect was well known to explorers, and was often mentioned in the Press. In an opposite corner was another table of pea-green marble all blurred and blotched in a pattern of streaks, the gift of the Lord of the Everlasting Snows in default of his ancient allegiance. From the old man’s girdle of white camel-hair hung a rosary of tawny beads which his devoted liegeman of the Isles in the North had robbed from the strange Hyperboreans, who are of such near kindred to the seals that they may be dispensed to take them in marriage when there is a shortage of their own stock. The floor was of worn pavement of onyx stone presented to the predecessors of the old man upon the Throne of the Fisherman by an Oriental Sovereign so long ago that his name had been forgotten among his own people. And his people in turn had been forgotten by the historians, which showed that they had deserved well of the gods.

The old man was glancing through some parchment papers, which his scribes had written in clear script but in a character without character. His scribes all wrote alike, and they wrote in a language that was dead. As the old man finished reading each parchment, of his spontaneous clemency he affixed his minuscule initials and the year of his Pontificate. The parchments showed that his duties were manifold, that he had the souls both of kings and of children in his keeping, that he was the anointed Reader of Scripture to the Nations, that the Calendar of the Saints was in his keeping and jurisdiction. One parchment was the Ban of the greater excommunication of the Great Mogul, who had audaciously removed the feet of the pontifical ambassador when he omitted to remove his episcopal sandals. A lesser excommunication there was directed unto the King of the Wends, who had married three wives albeit in his sleep, and his court chaplain had considerately forwarded a certificate that his Master was suffering from sleeping sickness. Over and above the scroll and screed of all these precious documents was inscribed in Stephens’ indelible blue-black ink the supreme style and bearing of the old man, to wit “THE SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD.”

As the night drew apace, the old man felt very tired, and his hands seemed weighed down as though with invisible chains. He had indeed spent a very tiring day. Before dawn had broken in streams of white fire upon the Dome, he had been roused from his slumbers to say his prayers. Chamberlains clad in dark green velvet with gold chains enlinking the pontifical cipher had led him to a velvet stool to meditate awhile on the four last things, which shall come to man and woman and priest. The ritual forbade him to eat until he had offered sacrifice upon the High Altar where none but he was allowed. He had been brought under the Dome on a palanquin of gilded lattice-work and carried by carriers in the gestatorial uniform into the Basilica of the Holy Fisherman. And at the High Altar facing the people he had sung the Liturgy, moving now to one side and then to the other behind the six golden candle-sticks. Like a huge-headed moth with heavy scaled wings he had seemed in the white blaze. And all the while the Holy College had stood and moved and prayed around him in scarlet, and the crying of the singers had never ceased. When he sat back upon the Throne that is above all earthly thrones he had felt faint for food. His secret Chamberlains had upheld him while his private flabellifers had fanned him with the great festal fans of ostrich plume. It had been the Feast day of Him whose emerald enamelled his waxen finger and whose Keys he carried in his consecrated girdle. The emerald had once served as an optic glass to the Fantastic World Emperor, who had been indiscreet enough to use the Servants of God to illuminate his gardens at night.

The hours had passed slowly for the old man watching his venerable acolytes and eminent assistants through the clouds of incense smoke. From time to time his closing eyes had lighted on the great Image of the Divine Fisherman, which was enthroned opposite to him. Time had made the Image as black as bitumen except for the feet, which the pious lips of pilgrims had burnished till they shone like molten bronze. And each time he had thought of the stupendous stewardship for which he must one day give account. He remembered too the quiet days of study in his hermitage before he was burdened with the nets of the Fisherman. Peace and happiness he had forfeited since the dread night when the three score and ten Princes of the Holy Blood had chosen him by secret balloting in a golden chalice to be Lord over them. Since that night men had come from the ends of the world to thrust their burdens upon him, though his own burden seemed sufficient. Tears had anointed his waxen cheeks and fallen like transparent drops upon his richly chased chasuble, upon the stellar stole and upon the jewelled maniple which hung from his wrist like some dead humming-bird.

But the multitude perceived not that he wept, for his eyes were turned away from them toward the great Image, which was clothed in the likeness of the vesture of God. Upon the head of the great Image the Acolytes had set a treble crown signifying the Sovereignty of the Gate that is Above and of the Gate that is Below and of the Gates of Twilight, which lead neither to Heaven nor to Hell. In the hands of the Image were clutched the Great Keys and, though the philosophers of the world made light thereof and though the rulers of the world acted as though it were otherwise, there was no doubt to the folk but that they symboled the Keys of Heaven and of Hell. From the shoulders to the sandals of the Image hung a cope of frosted gold, and it was fastened with a lock of living sapphire. Dire and doomful was the face upon the Image of the Fisherman, and the Image filled the shadow of one pillar of the Great Basilica. Now each pillar of the Basilica was about the thickness of a mortal man’s house.

When the Liturgy was finished, there arose a Deacon with archacolytes at his side in scarlet vestments, and bowed to the old man, and straightway the silver trumpets sounded through the Dome as it were the sound of a single reed of an organ or as the note of a sea-wave in the hollow of a sea-shell. And all the Princes of the Holy Blood arose and processed slowly before the old man as he was carried from the Basilica over the heads of the people. When he was lifted above the heads of the people he raised his hand higher to bless them. His fingers fluttered like the wing of a tired dove moving upon the face of many waters. And all the people moaned like the thunder of the tide, “O Priest and O King, live for ever!”

When they had brought him within the Palace, they disrobed him of his heavy vesture and gave him a piece of broiled fish to eat, and to quench his thirst a slice of pomegranate seethed in old wine. It was the hour when he should receive the pilgrims, who came from all over the World-that-is to beg his favour in the World-to-come, or to ask the eleemosynary aid or the autoscript of the old man; others for dispense to make forbidden espousals within the circle of blood and others to be annulled of theirs for ever. To each and to all he spoke softly but surely, saying, “This may I give to you, and I give it to you without price,” or “Of this it is not permitted to give you, and I give it to you not at all.” After the pilgrims had passed upon their way, the old man gave audience to his own ambassadors in the presence-chamber. They wore thin chains of gold and Symbols set with amethyst or emerald according to their degree in the Sacred Precedence. As each went his way, the soldiers of the guard raised and let fall their spears.

Lastly there had come to the door a Lord of the Most Holy, Indeviable and Undeniable Inquisition. He was clad in white samite and hooded, so that the guard looked not on his face. Him the old man bade be seated and do swiftly whatsoever he was come to do. And the Lord Inquisitor bowed himself to the ground and kissed the old man’s feet. Then he arose and heard the old man’s confession such as he was bound to confess daily, saying to him: “Let my Lord reveal whatever evil he hath done or caused other to do, and every evil word he hath spoken or caused other to speak and every evil thought that hath crossed the mind of my Lord’s Holiness even unto the shadow of the shadow.”

And the old man searched into his own mind and reported gravely, “O my Lord, thy Lord searcheth and findeth no evil done or deemed this day save the great weariness thy Lord felt in the continual presence of the Servants of God.” The Lord Inquisitor looked grave as in his duty bound and answered, “This even were a sin, O my Lord, for when the eyes of the Fisherman grow weary then are the nets broken.” And he bade him say the Seven Penitential Psalms and to pray for the soul of the Lord Inquisitor. And when he had received the Absolution of the Lord Inquisitor, the old man smiled for the first time that day. Then the Lord Inquisitor had knelt to receive the old man’s blessing and the great green emerald moved symbolwise upon the air. Delicately and discreetly as a dancing master, who had corrected the steps of an innocent child, the Lord Inquisitor passed into the corridor. His head was shrouded once more and bowed as though he had conned the pages of some very secret and sacred book. As he passed, the soldiers saluted him but fearfully, knowing the office which was his. It was his to unlock and lock the soul of him who kept the Keys of Heaven and Hell.

The old man was awearied and his Chamberlain brought him a little broth of bread and wine, saying to him as of set ceremony: “Gall He had to eat and vinegar to drink.” When he had eaten, they led him into a small ungarnished room to sleep. And the day was the thousandth day of his pontificate, and the night was the thousandth and first.

With the dawn of dark unto the dark of dawn the movement of men to and fro ceased under the Dome. The old man slept and forgot his visitors of the day. Yet there stood a visitor at the outer gates. For less than a moment of that which is called Time a Shadow darkened the Gateway. Through the corridors which were of marble, the colour of jacinth and chalcedony, passed the Shadow. And within the small ungarnished room it sank into shape. No legate announced this visitant, no Chamberlain ushered it past the doors, and no soldier of the many, who stood guarding the gates moved his spear-head in salute. The old man neither stirred nor spoke in his slumber. But on the horizons of sleep he beheld a vast panorama as of a desert stretching around and beyond him. Sands that glittered like yellow silk in the garish sunlight, rocks and caves there were, sands stretching endlessly. In the dead distance a dot of jet moved and grew larger and larger until it seemed to be like an eagle flying across the mirage of the air. When it was quite close it was grown to the stature of a man. And a Voice proceeded, saying to the old man who watched aghast: “Art thou not lonely in thy weariness and weary in thy loneliness?”--employing a remarkable zeugma of speech.

The old man answered: “Nay, for He Whose servants I serve is continually present with me.”

And the other answered: “There is none with thee, for in the wilderness every soul is one and alone, and here there is neither God nor Man--for even thyself art above all mankind and but a little lower than the gods.”

“I know not who or whence thou art,” cried the old man, “but thou speakest false, for I am not as God and I see the footprints of a man in the sands before me.”

And the other, laughing horribly, said: “The footprints that thou seest were left by One That was not Man.”

Then the old man grimly remembered his office and answered with the tongue that is indefectible from truth: “Nay, but most truly He also was Man, and let whosoever denieth be Anathema!”

The other, finding him not unwary, spoke again: “I know thee who thou art, thou holy one. Would’st thou not be set amongst thine own people again and see the place of thine own home?” To the old man’s anguish rose a vision of his father’s house and his mother’s hens feeding on the tiny midden under the little vineyard where he played as a child. With a parched tongue the old man would have made stress to answer him, but the plains swayed suddenly in his sight and he perceived the sun turn to blood and himself compassed by a cloud darker than darkness and felt himself carried through the thin air, unable to stir or speak, until he stood planted above the world upon a gilded pinnacle of the Great Basilica. Below his feet in the distances crowds of people vibrated as though the carcass of the earth had rotted and had become a moving mass of maggots.

And the Voice whispered to him: “I have set thee, O thou holy one, upon the pinnacle of the Temporal Power that thou mightest be a sign in the sight of all men and strengthen their faith. Cast thyself down from hence and the Angels of Him, Whom thou servest, shall watch over thee and keep thy foot lest it be dashed against a stone.”

The old man answered: “With desire have I desired to go down unto the multitudes, that I might become a servant where they have made me a Prince, but it is not given unto me to fulfil my own will in this generation.”

It seemed then as though seven vials of darkness had been loosed from the sky and that a cloud of iron hemmed the temples of his brain, and that he was being lifted whither he knew not. When his eyes were opened, he perceived that he was upon the top of an exceedingly high mountain and that a light shone at his feet, which was not the light of the sun nor of the moon nor yet of the stars. He beheld and lo! it was a great glamour from the jewelled crowns and diamond sceptres of the Kings of this world. They were all gathered at the foot of the mountain and their armies were ranged behind them across the plains as far as the eye could reach. And in the estuaries of the far-away seas the masts of their ships and galleons trembled like a forest of reeds. And again the Voice spoke to him, saying: “All the Kingdoms and Dominions and Principalities that you behold, these all will I give unto thee with all that they contain and possess if thou wilt genuflect to me but once.”

And the old man, knowing out of memory what his answer should be, murmured: “Get thou behind me, for it is written that thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God nor even the Servant of the Servants of the Lord thy God.” Then the Voice that had spoken to him out of the shadow fled away like a shrill wind moaning to itself in the wilderness. Beyond the plains of the earth and estuaries of the sea it passed into a wail of despair. And the wail died away.

In the dead of the night the old man cried out aloud, and the Chamberlains thrust their gold chains upon their necks and hurried to his side, and the guards lit their torches and crashed their spears to the salute. And the old man questioned his Chamberlains, saying: “Who hath come in, and who hath come out, and who hath questioned me when I slept?” They answered: “No one hath questioned the Holiness of our Lord, for no one hath entered in.” And the captain of the guards swore that not so much as a shadow had passed between the spear-points of his men. In the morning the old man sent for the Lord Inquisitor and revealed to him all that had happened in the night. With the answers to the dire Voice which had proceeded from the shadow the Lord Inquisitor was well satisfied. And he asked him how he had replied to the Voice tempting him to see again the place of his father’s house and the little cottage and the vineyard and the tiny midden and his mother’s hens, and the old man trembled, saying he had not known how to give answer, for his tongue had become parched to his mouth.

And the Lord Inquisitor, who was an apt theologian, said: “It was well that the Voice that spoke from the shadow passed to deal thee other temptation.”

“With desire that is greater than desire have I desired to return unto my own home,” said the old man, “but he that tempted me did not press me above my strength, carrying me away to the top of the Basilica when I could not give answer.” And the Lord Inquisitor answered: “He that tempted my Lord dared not continue lest he should remember his own home, for he too hath been separated from the place of his desire and of his beginning and of his love. And how shall he tempt others of temptation that he himself is worse than tempted of? For others may yield to temptation, but the Tempter cannot yield unto his, which is as a terrible desire possessing him. He can only be tortured, not tempted, for the home which he hath lost is eternal. The home which the Holiness of my Lord hath deigned to desire but hath consented not to revisit is but an earthly one.”

“Frankly, then,” said the Pope, “the Devil is home-sick.”

“Damned home-sick,” said the Grand Inquisitor.

CONNEMARA

I have been highly recommended in the scholastic world, though that is not what I have set out to say. I left the London Board School with a caseful of certificates, and later I gained the highest honours at the Training College before entering my mission as a teacher. There was only one phrase in my final dossier which might be read in a derogatory sense. It was to the effect that my extreme common sense supplanted all trace of imagination. Heaven knows that no such deficiency can be laid to my credit now. I am even supposed to have imbibed a little madness. But to return!

After several years passed in the normal teaching curriculum I began to experience a desire for change, to which the steadiest and least neurotic are liable. But I did not feel that I was indulging in anything fantastic when I applied for the post of governess abroad. The Agency replied that no suitable place was on their books, but that if I cared to consider Ireland among exotics, they could offer me occupation with an old Irish family on the Connemara borders. Though entirely (I am not sure whether to say blissfully) ignorant of Ireland, I felt that any change would save my mind from becoming rutted in the monotonous. The terms were generous and the work promised to be light. I was expected to accompany three children in their play-hours. There was no specific mention of lessons. I forwarded my formal acceptance with a selection of diplomas. A week passed before I received an answer in Early Victorian copperplate with all the flourishes of our ancestral script. It was written by some local schoolmaster presumably in the hedge, if not the liquor-shop, and was intended to convey the instructions of the fine old Irish family aforesaid:

“GREEK KALENDS, May, 1888,

“Gortinealy Schoolhouse.

“REVERED MADAM,

“I am instructed by my laudable and proficient patron, Mr. Sinnach,
hereditary proprietor of Gortinealy and _fundator optimus_ of the
above seminary, to write you word that your letter has been by me
examined and found syllabically correct. We have made trial of
your enclosed diplomacies and pending special consideration by Mr.
Halloran, our esteemed Curate, with whose sententious monograph
on the Irish Round Towers the London School Board is doubtless
acquainted, and by Mr. McGrath, the gombeen man down the road, we
duly pronounce them creditable to yourself and printer. These ensigns
of learning we duly return with our patron’s command to present
yourself at a near date (next fairday preferred) at Gortinealy
terminus.

“I remain your obedient and certificated _frère_,

TIMOTHEUS O’HUSSEY.

“_Postscriptum ad demonstrandum._--I may divulge that I have had Mr.
Sinnach’s children under mensal and manual instruction since last
lambing. They are already acquaint with Copying, Mathematics and
Dithyrambics.--T. O’H.”

I must say that I felt a little puzzled by this effusion and quite failed to perceive the pedantic jealousy of the local sage jutting between the lines. I went to our Carnegie library and read all I could discover about Irish Round Towers, including one of Moore’s Melodies which I learnt by heart. Mr. Halloran’s treatise was unfortunately unknown. I suspected that the Postscript was a variation of the poor old joke which includes Education under the three R’s, Reading, ’Riting, and ’Rithmetic. Mathematics no doubt corresponded with the latter. Copying was writing, but Dithyrambics was Greek to me. I hunted in a dictionary and found it really was Greek, in fact “an ancient Greek metre peculiar to Dionysian strains.” Even so it conveyed nothing to my mind. I afterwards discovered that it must have been meaningless to the writer no less, whose chief object had been to overawe a rival with his own knowledge.

Meantime I dispatched a telegram of acceptance, and shipped myself to a southern port of Ireland. I shall always remember arriving in the early dawn. It was a hot July, and a gossamer of greyish pink trailed from the inland mountains into the pearly bay. Behind the yellow tidal rocks the bright green branches of trees pierced the mist. It was like a picture at the Kensington Art School. As soon as it became day, it began to drizzle, and whether the sun was shining or not, it continued to drizzle at intervals all day. I realised that I had changed climates at least. I am prepared to admit that the Irish climate is as tropical as its admirers claim, but I add that it always remains at the rainy season!

On landing in the rain I discovered to my surprise that no inhabitant carried an umbrella. My sunshade (for it was July) was the only human contrivance besides the slates on the house-tops for baffling the elements. I passed down the unsheltered quays to a weather-beaten, groggy-looking building labelled TEMPERANCE HOTEL. A passing drayman kindly picked up my luggage, which would otherwise have been abandoned. At the hotel door I asked the host how much I should pay the driver. “Nothing at all!” he answered; “but come in and eat for the Glory of God, for you must be famished.” After breakfast I asked if I could be driven to the railway station, and again what fare I was expected to provide. “The old man will give ye a lift,” I was told, “he’s bound that way.” And as I stared in reply, my host continued: “’Tis a lone widdy woman he takes ye for, and he thinks it would be unlucky to take money off ye.” I thought of London busmen!

I was indignantly asserting my real state in life, but he explained that a fresh young woman travelling in black clothes could only be taken for a widow woman, and maybe seeking a mate! Again I expostulated as to my intentions, for he seemed interested in my welfare, and we chatted until my train was due and indeed long after, for he was sure that no train would ever be so inconvenient as to leave for Gortinealy at the right hour. By the time I was driven to the station I had learnt several lessons not often propounded in London Board Schools, including that of Irish Hospitality. I spent another hour at the station talking with the driver. I could not help asking him why we had not seen a single umbrella that day. Did nobody possess one? “Ye lie!” he answered kindly; “every son’s mother and mother’s daughter of them does trot out an umbrella on fairdays.”

“Why fairdays?” I asked.

“To keep the flour and the tea dry, of course,” was the reply. And I queried no more.

Then I boarded the train and after endless tours and detours, during which I vaguely dreamed I had crossed the Alps and the Steppes, I reached Gortinealy towards midnight. It was pitch dark and the atmosphere was filled with melting clouds. It was not till I saw it in the morning that I realised that it was not a place at all, at least not to London eyes, for it consisted of a sprawled line of cabins, some with thatch and some under slate, surrounded by driving mists and stationary swamps as far as the eye cared to reach. It was loose space rather than fixed locality.

A kind of deputation awaited me in the station. There was the Curate, and I felt that his bulging silk hat must be lined with the famous manuscript on the Round Towers. There were two grooms in faded hunting coats and top-boots, and a weird personage, whom I immediately recognised by the quill pens over each ear as my certificated _frère_, Timotheus O’Hussey. Their attentions overwhelmed me. The Curate patted my back, the grooms confiscated my luggage, and Timotheus burbled a little Latin. I heard him saying: “_Salve Domina!_” How I love the Irish, and yet I would rather teach conic sections to elfs in Hell than return as a governess to their country! They immediately offered me refreshment in their very refreshing way. When they discovered that I had found food at the port of entry they were immensely surprised, it not being a fairday. Still, they insisted on my eating home-made bread in the signalling box and gulping some tea as black as coaldust. “Is it far to the house?” I asked.

“Not far in daylight but a good step after midnight,” was the mystifying reply--“maybe getting on for ten miles.” And my heart sank, for I had been provided with the certain piece of mathematic knowledge that seven English miles went to five Irish. I climbed with set mouth into the high-braced trap. The Curate who had been sent to meet me made a charming little speech of welcome into the arms of the family, who, I was painfully aware, were still distant by fourteen miles. Then he stepped into the night. The two grooms threw my luggage into the rear and held it down as though it were a live thing. Timotheus sat at my side in front handling the reins as fantastically, I guessed, as the pen. And so we started to rock and crash through the night.

I immediately began to feel terribly silent and lonely. Thank heavens one of the axles creaked. It seemed like my last connection with the civilised world of streets and wheels. A trace of starlight struggled through the dripping cloudbanks, throwing a little silver gauze upon the country-side until I could discern a stretch of waste and wood on either side. One remote scrub was pointed out with a whip flick as the grandest corner in the world for finding a fox. There were no fences, but the road was lined by huge boulders, which so far from being there for macadamising purposes I learnt were lapidary trifles brushed out of the roadway itself. I began to wish I had taken a course of geology, which might have been more illuminating to me than geography at the moment. I was dead tired, but I pricked my ears when I heard Timotheus enlarging on the pleasures and magnificences of the Big House, to say nothing of the royal descents of his laudable patron, and his three children whom he alluded to as “bright-eyed Homerians.” With inspiring gravity he gave me to understand that he had recently introduced them to the Greek Syntax. I gathered as well that Mr. Sinnach was a mighty hunter and spent his time driving and tearing the foxes out of the woods and the mountains and the ditches. Timotheus assured me that he did not so much enjoy the fox-hunting as he hated the foxes “with the illustrious hate of a Lucifer crossed in love.”

For two hours we jogged and jolted through a stretch of that primitive void called Irish landscape before the carriage lights suddenly haled a whitewashed portico out of the gulf of night. “Welcome to Gortinealy,” I heard a soft voice say a minute later. It was Mr. Sinnach, the Master, as they called him. I shall never forget the first time I saw him standing with his red hunting coat in the lamplight. He had been waiting to receive me in all his war paint. He was a real gentleman, though I used often to shudder hearing him swear. As he led me courteously into his stronghold I looked round for my luggage. One of the grooms was throwing it to the other in the window. I looked back into the night. Between me and civilisation stretched a Sahara of Wet. Warm, however, was the oak-lined hall within, adorned with innumerable guns, skins and antlers. At the top of a rickety old stair they lit a silver candlestick for me and motioned me down a long passage. At the end was my room, which possessed a key that would have unlocked the Tower of London. I felt as tired as though I had been through examinations.

* * * * *

I was still in my travelling dress when I awoke the next morning and looked out of the window into a courtyard. Beyond the wall lay the end of the world. I changed and hurried downstairs, but there was no sign of human life. A servant appeared and familiarly informed me that my charges had celebrated my arrival by taking to the mountains on ponies, and that the Master himself always gave the clock a good start on mornings there was no hunt. Between his long hours in bed and his longer hours in the hunting field or among his horses and hounds, I used to see him very little during my stay at Gortinealy, for all his leisure time was divided between stables and kennel.

But the children, two boys and a girl, proved more delightful company than a whole Board School of London Cockneys. They knew more queer things about Natural History than a double course in Biology could have taught them. They must have been running wild for years, and certainly they were not guilty of the least education. They may have passed very learned hours studying Dithyrambics with Timotheus, but I had to begin by teaching them to spell English. I don’t think the London County Council inspector would have approved of them entirely. They seemed to have been taught to boycott correct English. But I grew to love them more than I can say, which is always the way in Ireland. There is very little lost there between loving and hating. Nothing is tepid except the soft rain, and the soft tepid rain--it raineth every day.

As soon as the children discovered that I could not ride or fish or shoot, they took a kind of pity for me and consented to appear on certain hours to hear what I had to say for myself. Apparently I interested them, for they consented to appear fairly often. In the evening I read them books of Natural History, which proved my sole means of winning their attention. Punishments were always out of the question, and they took no notice of my praise. I suppose I taught them something. But they could always be trusted and did not appear to get into trouble like most other children. They could shift amazingly well for themselves. The mornings were at the hazard of lessons, but every afternoon we went on the bogs or mountains. I gradually forgot the feel of the pavement and lost my street legs. I learnt the art of bog-trotting instead. But my real adventures were played in the minds of the children themselves. They had been brought up without playmates and had grown almost uncanny in their relations with animals and birds. The elder boy seemed to be able to charm them by his eyes. As for the girl, I used to call her Pocahontas, for she was more Indian of the woods than girl of the schoolroom. Their minds were quite uncramped by education, and the whispers of nature were audible to them. Their father took very little interest in their welfare. If he wandered out for a walk he always took one of his grooms or walked a couple of his horrible hounds--but never a child.

I could not understand his intense feeling for his smelly hounds, with their horrible yelping and slobbing mouths. One morning coming along the passage, I discovered that he actually kept one in his bedroom at night. He used to make me think that he was a lost soul for ever in search of his lost time. I never saw so much time lost as in that household. Mr. Sinnach had no real occupation unless you count fox-hunting, and between the hunts he showed no sense of rest. To me he was as gentle and harmless as a child. I sometimes thought his life was the life of a man who was followed, except there was nothing that would dare follow him in those woods and hill-sides, over which he was sovereign and squire. He never made the least inquiry as to the progress of his children’s lessons. Their sport alone interested him. I believe that the boys had never been punished for anything except for not riding straight or for spoiling a puppy. He must have been one of the world’s authorities on horses. Personally I had no interest in that direction except for a home for old bus-horses to which I used to subscribe. I once made this deserving charity the subject of conversation at dinner, but he only sniffed very fiercely and said “Dogsmeat! dogsmeat!” I am afraid I could guess what he meant, and it horrified me.

He became a different character when the fox-hunting began. His step grew smarter and his hoarse voice could be heard roaring in the small hours before sunrise as he shouted to the grooms and hounds out of his window. The hunt used to arrive from all quarters and all the early morning there was pandemonium getting them started for the distant meet. How often I was awoken by their stamping horses! How often I listened to the yelping hounds as the huntsmen flicked them into seething order! At night the Master used to return wearied out in body but a raging lion in his heart. I could always tell whether success had attended him by the sound of his voice. After a blank day he would curse man and hound, but if Reynard was dead he would ride up to the house cheering like a schoolboy. His hatred for the fox was almost inhuman. He used to brandish some blood-stained relic of the unfortunate animal through the house. Sometimes he used its fresh pad to stir the wine for his friends. I always stayed upstairs when they were drinking orgies over their success. At first I was excited enough by what our Board School Inspector would have called “giving vent to the passions of Neolithic Man,” but it became monotonous in the hunting season. I lived, worked and felt well, but I rather lost the sensation of time. Time stood rather still at Gortinealy and typically indeed there was only one motionless hand hanging on the face of the old clock on the stairs. The only use for clockwork in that strange old house was for timing the length of their runs after the wretched foxes. The number of minutes in each run was carefully scribbled in some loose sheets of paper that were generally left between the leaves of the Family Bible. I found them there one afternoon and spent an hour pasting them neatly into a copybook. But the Master was wild, when he returned that night, and for the first and only time he used bad language to me personally. He questioned me very carefully. Why had I been opening the Family Bible? Had I read anything besides the records of family sport? Had I read the private family entries? and so forth, until my curiosity was thoroughly aroused. He seemed scarcely to believe my denial. When I tried to find the Bible the next day it had disappeared. It was not for two weeks that I found it by chance lying at the back of a shelf of books. I opened it at the flyleaf. There were columns of births, marriages, and deaths. The death column was curiously divided into two sections and puzzled me. In some years there had been as great a mortality as fifty written in numbers, but I could not believe the clan was so considerable to include so many deaths. The other column was clear enough, a long list of ordinary entries. But two struck me with an odd thrill because I could not grasp their meaning:

“Edward Sinnach--1848--killed by them.
John Edward Sinnach--1871--killed and eaten.”

This was all I had time to read before the Master came in and began looking furtively at the shelf behind which I had replaced the Bible. I spent the whole night lying awake and trying to think sense or read purpose into those words. I went to sleep with a mild conviction that my employer was the degenerate descendant of a remarkable missionary family, one of whom had been killed by the heathen in the forties and another a generation later had not only been killed but eaten, as the familiar rhyme puts it;

“By a cassowary
On the plains of Timbuctoo
Prayer and Hymnbook too.”

For nights I wept silently for those two uncanonised martyrs. I used to picture their travels and their adventures, their sermons and their catechisms, and in more terrible moments the details of their deaths. But in what countries were they killed? It could only have been in the Cannibal Islands. And naturally my mind, which always seeks facts perpetually, returned to the one awful question: “Was Edward eaten as well as John?” It so preyed upon my mind that I used to wake with the grim query on my lips. It was a month before I gained additional information. I had asked the elder boy if he had ever seen his grandfather John. He replied that he had died when he was quite a baby and his father would never allow his name to be mentioned. I asked why? It was because he had died a disgraceful death. In a bed upstairs instead of in the hunting field or fighting or travelling abroad, like every other true member of the family. Of course this revelation put an end to my romance about a young and earnest missionary in the wilds of Africa and I could only conclude that Family Bibles, like so much else in Ireland, were used as vehicles for rather gruesome practical jokes.

Winter was fully and icily fledged, and snow made a welcome variation to rain. The winds swept the last leaves off the trees and ripped open the loaded clouds till they dropped in hail and flake out of the firmament. But between frosts the hunting continued, for the Master seemed unable to sleep if he had failed to have a run in the day. I think he was only happy after he had seen a fox torn to shreds on the fangs of his hounds. One stormy evening he returned in a terrible humour. Though they had enjoyed a wonderful run the fox had escaped, and the Master alone of the hunt had returned furiously dissatisfied, railing and roaring. I heard him snarling up and down the long passage all that evening. When I chanced to pass him he lowered his head, it seemed to me shamefacedly. The boys crept away from him and came to hear me read stories in my own room. They were afraid of him, though in his way he was fond of them. The first time they had been in at the death of the fox he had gone wild with praise and had dabbled their faces with gore. He used to say that they had not been properly baptised till that moment, which made them his true children. I don’t believe he would have recognised them as legitimate if they had not been hard riders before they were out of their teens.

On the following day there was a meet at the other end of the county, and the Master was out and riding long before I came down to breakfast. I remember hearing him shout to his hounds while I was still in bed, and their deep belling note in reply. I lay in a drowsy stupor, for sunrise was still two hours to eastward. Once again the house was full of stamping boots and clicketing spurs. Once again the old staircase creaked and rattled to the heavy sound of feet and I heard horses pawing the courtyard below. Then the whole party rode away, and I fell back into profound sleep. It was the last time that I ever slept in that terrible house at peace.

When I came down in the morning the children were waiting for me, as chivalrous and charming as ever. They condescended to listen to all I had to say in defence of the awkward rules of spelling which govern the English language. They were curious children. I could not call them wise or foolish, backward or advanced. They had had no education and yet they were grown up. They were little savages outwardly and yet angels to me. My heart always reaches to them with a sudden ache. That day I gave them the last lesson I was ever to give them.

All the morning the mist mildewed the window pane, slowly flushing the roof and choking the gutters and creating tiny waterfalls and leakages in every direction. I used to think that we were in that part of the universe where the rain itself is brewed. The sound of water dripping or running filled every corner of the old house. It was one of those days which cause sympathy with Noah. The whole afternoon I spent blinking over a book before a fire in the hall, while the children sat round me in their charming, chattering way. It had been too wet for them to hunt that day and they were soon yawning. They made no objection when I seized a chance to send them to bed early. There was nobody in the house except the old cook, for the whole household had departed the previous night, including the old gardener, with spade and terrier, to be in time at the meet. Darker and darker grew the evening while the turf fire flickered brighter and brighter until it collapsed into a tiny avalanche of white ash. It was late when I finally lost the thread of my reading and was roused by suddenly hearing a long, distinct howl outside.