Chapter IV: Part 4

The dinner was excellent, but Vernon ate scarcely anything. He talked, however, a good deal, though hardly with his usual nerve and relish. When dessert was on the table, he said—

“Bring us our coffee here, Cragg; at least, one black coffee.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“I won’t take it,” Vernon said to me. “I’ve been sleeping wretchedly lately. Morphia would be more the thing for me than coffee.”

“I knew you had been suffering from insomnia.”

He laughed drearily.

“I don’t look up to much, do I?”

Cragg brought my coffee and cigars.

“You can leave us now, Cragg; go and have your supper; go downstairs.”

The man looked slightly surprised, but said nothing and went away.

When he had gone Vernon lit a cigar, puffed out some rings of smoke, watched them curling up towards the ceiling, then said—

“You wanted to have a look at the spaniel, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, if I bring him in, be careful with him, will you?”

“Careful with him! Why? Is he dangerous?”

“I don’t say that. But he’s got an odd temper. I keep him muzzled.”

“In the house?”

“Yes, always. I don’t want to be bitten. You remember how Deeming died? Well, I don’t want to die like that.”

His mention of Deeming gave me an opportunity of which I at once availed myself.

“That was a sad business,” I said. “Did you see much of him before he died, as you were living next door?”

“Oh,” he interrupted, “Deeming was not a friendly neighbour. Do you know that I took your advice?”

“What advice?”

“To get into his house as a patient.”

“You really did that!”

“Yes. One morning, as he never invited me in as a friend, I went in as a patient.”

“How did he take it?”

“Well, he could hardly decline to treat me. It happened that I was really unwell at the time, so I had a good excuse.”

“And—and—your strange suspicions”—I was almost stammering, conscious, painfully conscious of my own—“your strange suspicions—did you ever find out whether they were justified?”

“They were justified, fully justified. But the dog took its own part in the end and killed its persecutor.”

I felt a sensation of horror take hold upon me.

“Do you really mean that Deeming was treating his spaniel cruelly?” I asked.

“I do. He had the mania for persecution that I suspected. He was venting it upon his dog. The servants had some inkling of the truth, especially his butler. He knew, I believe, all that was going on. But—he was well paid, very well paid.”

I remembered my Sunday morning call, and the butler’s exclamation when the fox-terrier ran into the house.

“This is horrible, Vernon,” I said. “Are you sure of what you say?”

“Quite sure. I heard—well, I heard things at night, and at last I saw the dog.”

“How?”

“I got into the house when Deeming was out. I bribed his butler, paid him more than Deeming did, I suppose. Anyhow, I got in. I think the man was sympathetic; was anxious really that an end should be put to the disgusting business. I burst open the door of the room in which the spaniel was confined, and then I saw—no matter what. It was quite enough. While I was there Deeming came back unexpectedly.”

“Good God!” I exclaimed. “What a ghastly situation!”

“It was not exactly pleasant. I saw the man’s soul naked that night—stark naked. It was on that occasion the dog bit him.”

“Ouf!” I said.

Again nausea seized me.

Vernon looked at me steadily.

“Don’t you think Deeming deserved anything he got?” he asked. “Anything he could ever get?”

“But he was mad—he must have been mad!”

“I suppose that sort of thing is what might be called a form of madness. Unfortunately a good many sane people have it—people as sane as you or I in all other respects.”

When he said the words “or I” a flush, I think, came to my cheek. It seemed to me that he spoke with significance—as if he knew what Gernham and I had spoken of the day before.

“As sane as you or I,” he repeated. “This work I’ve been doing with Gernham has opened my eyes to a good deal in human nature that they were shut to before. I once said to you in Rome, to you and Deeming, that man’s cruelty sprang often from a lack of imagination. Sometimes it springs from just the opposite, from a diseased imagination that lusts for gratification in ways we won’t discuss.”

“But Deeming—that he should be such a man, he whose profession it was to make whole!”

“Yes, that made the thing more strange and, to him, more enticing.”

“Enticing!” I exclaimed.

My voice was full of the bitterness of disgust mingled with incredulity that I was feeling.

“Just that,” he said. “He healed, as it were, with one hand, and destroyed with the other. Deeming was one of the human devils who have an insatiable craze for contrast. They revel in virtue because it is so different from vice. They revel in vice because it is so different from virtue. Deeming quivered with happiness when the last patient was gone and he could steal to the room where the spaniel⸺”

“Enough! Enough!” I exclaimed. “I won’t hear any more! Thank God he’s dead! Thank God it’s all over now! Why did you do that?” Vernon had suddenly laughed.

“Why did you do that?” I repeated. “What is there to laugh at?”

“I was laughing at your certainty, Luttrell, at the calm assurance with which we—poor, ignorant beings that we are—assert this or that regarding the fate of a soul, without knowing anything of the purposes of the Creator.”

“I don’t understand.”

“And yet you say—‘Thank God, it’s all over now!’”

He looked at me so strangely that I was struck to silence. I opened my lips to speak, but, while his eyes were upon me, I could say nothing. He made me feel as if, indeed, I were plunged in a profound gulf of ignorance, as if he watched me there from some height of understanding, of knowledge.

“Now I’ll go and fetch the spaniel,” he said.

And he got up and quietly left the room.

I turned in my chair and sat facing the door. The room was softly lit by wax candles, and on the walls were the pictures of gentleness, of mercy, of goodness and adoration which had hung upon the walls of Vernon’s dining-room in Rome. My glance ran over them, while my mind dwelt upon the horrors of Vernon’s narrative—horrors that seemed all the greater because he had told me so little, had left my imagination so unfettered. Then I looked again towards the door, and listened intently. Presently I heard a door shut, the sound of a step. Vernon was coming with the spaniel. I had asked to see the dog; I had wished to see it. Yet now my wish was about to be gratified I felt an extreme repugnance invade me. I longed to escape from the fulfilment of my wish. I was seized with—was it fear? It was something cold, something that lay upon my nerves like ice, that surely turned the blood in my veins to water. But, I could do nothing now, nothing to escape. Something within me seemed to make a furious effort to take up some weapon and attack the cold heavy thing that was striving to paralyse me. I was conscious of battle. In the midst of the battle the door opened and Vernon came in.

He was carrying the black spaniel in his arms.

He walked in slowly, kicked the door backwards with his heel to shut it, came to the table and sat down, still keeping the dog in his arms.

The dog was muzzled, and had on a collar to which a steel chain was attached; but, for the first moment, the only thing that struck me was his thinness. He was excessively thin—almost emaciated. He sat on his master’s knee, with his chin on the edge of the table and his yellow eyes gazing at me. A long trembling ran through his body, ceased, and was renewed with a regularity that reminded me of the ticking of a clock. Vernon kept his two hands upon the spaniel. They shuddered on the dog’s back when he shuddered.

“Well,” Vernon said. “What do you think of him?”

“He’s horribly thin,” I said. “Horribly.”

I turned my eyes from the spaniel to Vernon’s face.

“Do you think⸺” I began and hesitated.

“What?” he asked calmly.

“Do you think you give him enough to eat?” I said.

“Oh, it’s very bad for dogs to overfeed,” he answered. “Nothing ruins their health like overeating, and spaniels are like pugs, inclined to be greedy.”

I noticed that he had not answered my question.

He lifted one hand, laid it on the spaniel’s head, and smoothed the black hair, moving his hand backwards to the neck. The dog turned its head back towards him and showed his white teeth, as if his master’s hand drew him but to a demonstration of hatred, not of affection. Vernon smiled, lifted his hand, and repeated the action. The dog gave a low growl ending in a whine.

“Now you haven’t told me what you think of him,” Vernon continued, “and I want to know. I want very much to know.”

I looked into the spaniel’s eyes, and again something cold lay upon my nerves like ice.

“Why?” I said. “What does it matter what I think?”

“Do answer my question!” Vernon said with unwonted irritation.

“There’s something about the dog,” I said, “that’s—that’s⸺”

“Yes?” he said sharply.

“That’s uncanny.”

“Ah!” The word was a long-drawn sigh. “You think that!”

“Yes, I shouldn’t care to have him about me. I shouldn’t care to sleep with him in my room.”

“Sleep! Heaven forbid!”

His exclamation was almost shrill. It startled me.

“Where does the dog sleep?” I asked. “Where do you put him at night?”

“There’s a dressing-room opening out of my bedroom. He’s shut in there.”

“And you—you say you’ve been sleeping badly lately?”

“I haven’t been sleeping at all.”

“Does he whine? Does he disturb you?”

“He never makes a sound at night. I think he’s afraid that if he did I should punish him. He’s evidently had an unkind master, poor fellow.”

There was something so hideously insincere in Vernon’s voice as he said the last words that I could not help expressing the thought, the suspicion that had been, that was haunting me.

“Has he got a kind master now?” I said.

I fixed my eyes on Vernon’s.

“Has he?” I repeated.

At that moment I wanted to force things. The entrance of the dog had deepened my sense of moving in mystery until it became absolutely intolerable. A hard determination took hold upon me to compel Vernon to explain—what? I did not know. But that there was something to be explained, some strange undercurrent of motive, of desire, of intention, deep and furtive, I seemed to be aware.

“What do you mean?” Vernon said. “Surely you know my feeling for animals.”

“I do.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“I mean that as regards this animal, this spaniel, I don’t—I can’t trust you,” I said. “I don’t know why it is, I don’t understand, I don’t understand anything. But I don’t trust you, Vernon. That’s the truth. It’s best to speak it.”

To my great surprise, he did not indignantly resent my words, nor did he look guilty or ashamed. Indeed, it seemed to me that an expression of something like relief flitted across his face as I finished speaking.

“I knew it,” he said. “I knew quite well you didn’t trust me. And Gernham? Have you spoken to him of your mistrust?”

“He knows I don’t understand why you bought this dog, and what you’re going to do to him. He knows I’m—I’m afraid of—of what you may be going to do.”

He was silent, and again drew his hand across the spaniel’s soft black coat. The dog struggled. He struck his open hand down on the dog’s head, and the dog lay still, cowering upon his master’s knees.

“Gernham doesn’t enter into this,” he said inflexibly.

“And I?”

“You! That’s different. You introduced me to Deeming.”

Again the dog began to struggle upon his knees, but this time more violently.

Vernon lifted his hand again.

“Put him down!” I said. “For God’s sake put him down! Don’t strike him!”

“Very well.”

He dropped the spaniel to the floor. The spaniel ran under the dining-table. I sprang up from my seat.

“Don’t, don’t!” I began.

“It’s all right,” said Vernon. “I’ve got him by the chain.” He dragged the spaniel out, and fastened him up to the sideboard at the far end of the room.

“Why, you’re trembling!” he said, as he came back to his chair.

“Am I?” I said, ashamed. “I’m not a coward, but—but this dog—I can’t stand him near me, close to me, when I can’t see what he’s doing.”

I cleared my throat, went to the window, threw it open, leaned out, and spat. Leaving the window open, I came back to the table. The spaniel was now lying down on the floor, close to the sideboard.

“What is it?” I said, almost fiercely, I think, in my inexplicable physical distress, “what is it that’s wrong with the dog? What is it that’s unnatural about him?”

“You have no idea?” said Vernon.

“Not the slightest. The poor beast seems harmless enough, though he’s terrified. One can see that.”

“Exactly. He is terrified.”

“And the strange thing is that his terror terrifies me.”

“Now you’re getting to it,” Vernon said. “Why should the spaniel be terrified?”

“Why? How should I know? Isn’t that for you to say?”

“Sit down again,” he said. “The dog can’t get to you now.”

As he spoke, he sat down. I glanced towards the dog, saw that what Vernon had said was true, and followed his example.

“The dog’s terror,” he said. “Think of that, Luttrell! Seek for an explanation in that.”

“I have, but I haven’t found one.”

“Whom is it terrified of?”

“Of you,” I answered. “The first time we saw him, I noticed that he was abjectly terrified of you.”

“Perfectly true. Why should that be? Is it natural?”

“Utterly unnatural,” I said. “Unless he’s been badly, brutally treated, and is afraid of everybody.”

“He is not afraid of everybody. He is only afraid of me. Was he afraid of Lord Elyn?”

“No.”

“He is only afraid of me.”

“Are you certain?”

“Would you like to test it?”

“How?” I asked.

“I will leave the room for a moment—leave you alone with the dog.”

“No!” I exclaimed.

“You are afraid?”

“I’m not a coward, but there’s something about this spaniel which horrifies my imagination as a spectre might horrify it.”

“Nevertheless, you must summon your courage. I wish it. I wish to know how the spaniel will be with you when you are alone together. Come, make the experiment.”

He got up and went towards the door. I did not try to keep him.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” he said.

And he went softly out of the room and shut the door behind him.

When he had gone, I sat where I was, looking at the black blot on the floor by the sideboard. A strong curiosity was awake in me fighting my strange physical repulsion. I longed to put the thing to the test, yet I feared to approach the spaniel. How long I sat there I do not know, how long I might have sat there I cannot tell had nothing occurred to bias me towards action. But something did occur. The spaniel suddenly whimpered softly, as if to attract my attention, whimpered again and struck his feathery tail upon the floor. Those natural sounds of an anxious dog reassured me. I got up quickly and went over to the sideboard. Instantly, with a sort of strangled wail, the spaniel sprang up, put his forepaws on my legs, and thrust his hot nose into my hand, pushing, pushing hard, as if he sought to hide himself in a friendly shelter. I felt a wetness on my hand, the wetness of an animal’s tears. Then all my horror vanished and only pity remained. I knelt down on the carpet. I put my arms round the dog. I felt his trembling body with my hands. He was thin, hideously thin. His piteous eyes begged something of me. Still holding him with one arm, I stretched out the other, and opened a door in the sideboard. Within I saw a basket with some cut bread in it. I took out the bread. The spaniel sprang upon it passionately, tore it out of my hand, and devoured it ravenously. Then a wave of hot indignation went over me. At that moment I hated Vernon with all my soul. I hated him so much that I lost all sense of everything except my fury against him. I held the dog tightly as I knelt on the floor, and, turning my head towards the door, I called out—

“Vernon! Vernon!”

Instantly the door opened and Vernon appeared. The dog looked as he had looked when he was being brought into the house.

“Vernon,” I said, “you’re a d⸺d blackguard!”

“Why?” he said.

“This dog is starving. You’re starving him! D’you hear? You’re starving him!”

“I know I am,” he answered.

I got up. The spaniel rushed against my legs and leaned against them as I stood.

“Then Gernham was right,” I said. “You are a madman.”

“Is it madness to see what is when others are blind to it?”

“To see—to see?” I exclaimed. “What is there to see but this dog, this spaniel that you are torturing?”

“There is this spaniel—yes. Look at him. Look into his eyes. Look at the soul in them.”

There was something compelling, something almost mystical, in his voice. I looked down into the yellow eyes of the spaniel. They met mine, then looked away from mine as if unable to bear my gaze.

“What is it?” I said, in a whisper. “What is it?”

Again I was assailed by the sensation which had come to me when I waited in the hall to know if Vernon would receive me, a sensation that, with the black spaniel, linked with it, mysteriously mingled with it, was something of the man who was dead—something of Deeming.

“Deeming!” I stammered. “Deeming!”

I did not know what I meant, but I was compelled to pronounce the name of my friend.

“Deeming?” I said once more, looking towards Vernon.

“Don’t you feel that he is here?” said Vernon.

“But he is dead.”

“Don’t you feel that he is here?”

“Yes,” I said. “But it can’t be. He is dead.”

“His body is dead—yes. But his soul, is that dead?”

When he said that, I understood what he meant, and I recoiled from the black spaniel as from a nameless horror.

“Vernon!” I said. “Vernon!”

“Do you understand now?” he asked. “Do you understand why I bought the spaniel, why I have kept the spaniel here in the house where he tortured his dog? It was to punish him as he punished it, to torture him as he tortured it. Directly I saw the spaniel crouching down in the Park, directly I looked into his eyes, I knew. Deeming died on the 30th of June, the spaniel was born on that very day. The soul of the dog-torturer passed at the death of the body of the man into the body of the dog. I am not mad—no. I am only just. I am the instrument of the justice of Providence. Deeming’s soul has been sent back into the world to pay its penalty. And I am here to see that the penalty is paid.”

There was blazing in his eyes the light which I had seen in them for the first time in the restaurant in Rome, the light which had made Deeming say that in Vernon there was the spirit of a black fanatic.

“It’s not true!” I said. “It can’t be true!”

“But Lord Elyn has felt it, Cragg has felt it, you have felt it—the strangeness of the spaniel. You know now, you know that what I say is true. Deny that you know it is true! Deny it then!”

I opened my lips to deny it, but they refused to speak. I was filled with a horror of the imagination, but I was resolved not to succumb to it. I seized the steel chain that was attached to the collar of the spaniel, and untied it from the sideboard.

“What are you doing?” said Vernon sharply.

“Good-night, Vernon,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm; “I am going to take the spaniel with me.”

As I spoke I moved towards the door. The spaniel slunk along beside me, with its belly close to the floor, trying to press itself against my legs.

“What!” said Vernon, “to happiness—to affection!”

I was close to the door. I had my fingers upon the handle.

“That!” he cried with violence. “No! Rather than that, let it end now and here!”

He made a rapid movement; the spaniel howled and cowered against the door. I heard the crack of a pistol-shot. I felt the chain leap in my hand as the spaniel sprang upwards and fell on the floor.

I bent down, touched him, turned him over.

He was dead.

Then I faced Vernon.

“Murderer!” I said. “Murderer!”

“But—he was only a black spaniel!” Vernon said, laying the revolver down on the table.

“Murderer!” I repeated.

Then I lifted up the corpse of the spaniel, and went out into the night carrying it in my arms.

_THE MISSION OF MR. EUSTACE GREYNE_

I

Mrs. Eustace Greyne (pronounced Green) wrinkled her forehead—that noble, that startling forehead which had been written about in the newspapers of two hemispheres—laid down her American Squeezer pen, and sighed. It was an autumn day, nipping and melancholy, full of the rustle of dying leaves and the faint sound of muffin bells, and Belgrave Square looked sad even to the great female novelist who had written her way into a mansion there. Fog hung about with the policeman on the pavement. The passing motor cars were like shadows. Their stertorous pantings sounded to Mrs. Greyne’s ears like the asthma of dying monsters. She sighed again, and murmured in a deep contralto voice: “It must be so.” Then she got up, crossed the heavy Persian carpet which had been bought with the proceeds of a short story in her earlier days, and placed her forefinger upon an electric bell.

Like lightning a powdered giant came.

“Has Mr. Greyne gone out?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Where is he?”

“In his study, ma’am, pasting the last of the cuttings into the new album.”

Mrs. Greyne smiled. It was a pretty picture the unconscious six-footer had conjured up.

“I am sorry to disturb Mr. Greyne,” she answered, with that gracious, and even curling suavity which won all hearts; “but I wish to see him. Will you ask him to come to me for a moment?”

The giant flew, silk-stockinged, to obey the mandate, while Mrs. Greyne sat down on a carved oaken chair of ecclesiastical aspect to await her husband.

She was a famous woman, a personage, this simply-attired lady. With an American Squeezer pen she had won fame, fortune, and a mansion in Belgrave Square, and all without the sacrifice of principle. Respectability incarnate, she had so dealt with the sorrows and evils of the world that she had rendered them utterly acceptable to Mrs. Grundy, Mr. Grundy, and all the Misses Grundy. People said she dived into the depths of human nature, and brought up nothing that need scandalise a curate’s grandmother, or the whole-aunt of an archdeacon; and this was so true that she had made a really prodigious amount of money. Her large, her solid, her unrelenting books lay upon every table. Even the smart set kept them, uncut—like pretty sinners who have never been “found out”—to give an air of hap-hazard intellectuality to frisky boudoirs. All the clergy, however unable to get their tithes, bought them. All bishops alluded to them in “pulpit utterances.” Fabulous prices were paid for them by magazine editors. They ran as serials through all the tale of months. The suburbs battened on them. The provinces adored them. Country people talked of no other literature. In fact, Mrs. Eustace Greyne was a really fabulous success.

Why, then, should she heave these heavy sighs in Belgrave Square? Why should she lift an intellectual hand as though to tousle the glossy chestnut bandeaux which swept back from her forcible forehead, and screw her reassuring features into these wrinkles of perplexity and distress?

The door opened, and Mr. Eustace Greyne appeared, “What is it, Eugenia?” upon his lips.

Mr. Greyne was a number of years younger than his celebrated wife, and looked even younger than his years. He was a very smart man, with smooth, jet-black hair, which he wore parted in the middle; pleasant, dark eyes that could twinkle gently; a clear, pale complexion; and a nice, tall figure. One felt, in glancing at him, that he had been an Eton boy, and had at least thought of going into the militia at some period of his life. His history can be briefly told.

Scarcely had he emerged into the world before he met and was married to Mrs. Eustace Greyne, then Miss Eugenia Hannibal-Barker. He had had no time to sow a single oat, wild or otherwise; no time to adore a barmaid, or wish to have his name linked with that of an actress; no time to do anything wrong, or even to know, with the complete accuracy desired by all persevering young men, what was really wrong. Miss Eugenia Hannibal-Barker sailed upon his horizon, and he struck his flag to matrimony. Ever since then he had been her husband, and had never, even for one second, emerged beyond the boundaries of the most intellectual respectability. He was the most innocent of men, although he knew all the important editors in London. Swaddled in money by his successful wife, he considered her a goddess. She poured the thousands into Coutts’ Bank, and with the arrival of each fresh thousand he was more firmly convinced that she was a goddess. To say he looked up to her would be too mild. As the Cockney tourist in Chamonix peers at the summit of Mont Blanc, he peered at Mrs. Greyne. And when, finally, she bought the lease of the mansion in Belgrave Square, he knew her Delphic.

So now he appeared in the oracle’s retreat respectfully, “What is it, Eugenia?” upon his admiring lips.

“Sit down, my husband,” she murmured.

Mr. Greyne subsided by the fire, placing his pointed patent-leather toes upon the burnished fender. Without the fog grew deeper, and the chorus of the muffin bells more plaintive. The fire-light, flickering over Mrs. Greyne’s majestic features, made them look Rembrandtesque. Her large, oxlike eyes were fixed and thoughtful. After a pause, she said:

“Eustace, I shall have to send you upon a mission.”

“A mission, Eugenia!” said Mr. Greyne in great surprise.

“A mission of the utmost importance, the utmost delicacy.”

“Has it anything to do with Romeike & Curtice?”

“No.”

“Will it take me far?”

“That is my trouble. It will take you very far.”

“Out of London?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Out of—not out of England?”

“Yes; it will take you to Algeria.”

“Good gracious!” cried Mr. Greyne.

Mrs. Greyne sighed.

“Good gracious!” Mr. Greyne repeated after a short interval. “Am I to go alone?”

“Of course you must take Darrell.” Darrell was Mr. Greyne’s valet.

“And what am I to do at Algiers?”

“You must obtain for me there the whole of the material for book six of ‘Catherine’s Repentance.’” “Catherine’s Repentance” was the gigantic novel upon which Mrs. Greyne was at that moment engaged.

“I will not disguise from you, Eustace,” continued Mrs. Greyne, looking increasingly Rembrandtesque, “that, in my present work, I am taking a somewhat new departure.”

“Well, but we are very comfortable here,” said Mr. Greyne.

With each new book they had changed their abode. “Harriet” took them from Phillimore Gardens to Queensgate Terrace; “Jane’s Desire” moved them on to a corner house in Sloane Street; with “Isobel’s Fortune” they passed to Curzon Street; “Susan’s Vanity” landed them in Coburg Place; and, finally, “Margaret’s Involution” had planted them in Belgrave Square. Now, with each of these works of genius Mrs. Greyne had taken what she called “a new departure.” Mr. Greyne’s remark is, therefore, explicable.

“True. Still, there is always Park Lane.”

She mused for a moment. Then, leaning more heavily upon the carved lions of her chair, she continued:

“Hitherto, although I have sometimes dealt with human frailty, I have treated it gently. I have never betrayed a Zola-spirit.”

“Zola! My darling!” cried Mr. Eustace Greyne. “You are surely not going to betray anything of that sort now!”

“If she does we shall soon have to move off to West Kensington,” was his secret thought.

“No. But in book six of ‘Catherine’ I have to deal with sin, with tumult, with African frailty. It is inevitable.”

She sighed once more. The burden of the new book was very heavy upon her.

“African frailty!” murmured the astonished Eustace Greyne.

“Now, neither you nor I, my husband, know anything about this.”

“Certainly not, my darling. How should we? We have never explored beyond Lucerne.”

“We must, therefore, get to know about it—at least you must. For I cannot leave London. The continuity of the brain’s travelling must not be imperiled by any violent bodily activity. In the present stage of my book a sea journey might be disastrous.”

“Certainly you should keep quiet, my love. But then⸺”

“You must go for me to Algiers. There you must get me what I want. I fear you will have to poke about in the native quarters a good deal for it, so you had better buy two revolvers, one for yourself and one for Darrell.”

Mr. Greyne gasped. The calmness of his wife amazed him. He was not intellectual enough to comprehend fully the deep imaginings of a mighty brain, the obsession work is in the worker.

“African frailty is what I want,” pursued Mrs. Greyne. “One hundred closely-printed pages of African frailty. You will collect for me the raw material, and I shall so manipulate it that it will fall discreetly, even elevatingly, into the artistic whole. Do you understand me, Eustace?”

“I am to travel to Algiers, and see all the wickedness to be seen there, take notes of it, and bring them back to you.”

“Precisely.”

“And how long am I to stay?”

“Until you have made yourself acquainted with the depths.”

“A fortnight?”

“I should think that would be enough. Take Brush’s remedy for seasickness and plenty of antipyrin, your fur coat for the crossing, and a white helmet and umbrella for the arrival. You have lead pencils?”

“Plenty.”

“A couple of Merrin’s exercise-books should be enough to contain your notes.”

“When am I to go?”

“The sooner the better. I am at a standstill for want of the material. You might catch the express to Paris to-morrow; no, say the day after to-morrow.” She looked at him tenderly. “The parting will be bitter.”

“Very bitter,” Mr. Eustace Greyne replied.

He felt really upset. Mrs. Greyne laid the hand which had brought them from Phillimore Gardens to Belgrave Square gently upon his.

“Think of the result,” she said. “The greatest book I have done yet. A book that will last. A book that will⸺”

“Take us to Park Lane,” he murmured.

The Rembrandtesque head nodded. The noble features, as of a strictly respectable Roman emperor, relaxed.

“A book that will take us to Park Lane.”

At this moment the door opened, and the footman inquired:

“Could Mademoiselle Verbèna see you for a minute, ma’am?”

Mademoiselle Verbèna was the French governess of the two little Greynes. The great novelist had consented to become a mother.

“Certainly.”

In another moment Mademoiselle Verbèna was added to the group beside the fire.

II

We have said that Mademoiselle Verbèna was the French governess of little Adolphus and Olivia Greyne, and so she was to this extent—that she taught them French, and that Mr. and Mrs. Greyne supposed her to be a Parisian. But life has its little ironies. Mademoiselle Verbèna in the house of this great and respectable novelist was one of them; for she was a Levantine, born at Port Said of a Suez Canal father and a Suez Canal mother. Now, nobody can desire to say anything against Port Said. At the same time, few mothers would inevitably pick it out as the ideal spot from which a beneficent influence for childhood’s happy hour would be certain to emanate. Nor, it must be allowed, is a Suez Canal ancestry specially necessary to a trainer of young souls. It may not be a drawback, but it can hardly be described as an advantage. This, Mademoiselle Verbèna was intelligent enough to know. She, therefore, concealed the fact that her father had been a dredger of Monsieur de Lesseps’ triumph, her mother a bar-lady of the historic coal wharf where the ships are fed, and preferred to suppose—and to permit others to suppose—that she had first seen the light in the Rue St. Honoré, her parents being a count and countess of some old régime.

This supposition, retained from her earliest years, had affected her appearance and her manner. She was a very neat, very trim, even a very attractive little person, with dark brown, roguish eyes, blue-black hair, a fairy-like figure, and the prettiest hands and feet imaginable. She had first attracted Mrs. Greyne’s attention by her devotion to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and this devotion she still kept up. Whenever she had an hour or two free she always—so she herself said—spent it in “_ce charmant_ St. Paul.”

As she entered the oracle’s retreat she cast down her eyes, and trembled visibly.

“What is it, Miss Verbèna?” inquired Mrs. Greyne, with a kindly English accent, calculated to set any poor French creature quite at ease.

Mademoiselle Verbèna trembled more.

“I have received bad news, madame.”

“I grieve to hear it. Of what nature?”

“Mamma has _une bronchite très grave_.”

“A what, Miss Verbèna?”

“Pardon, madame. A very grave bronchitis. She cries for me.”

“Indeed!”

“The doctors say she will die.”

“This is very sad.”

The Levantine wept. Even Suez Canal folk are not proof against all human sympathy. Mr. Greyne blew his nose beside the fire, and Mrs. Greyne said again:

“I repeat that this is very sad.”

“Madame, if I do not go to mamma to-morrow I shall not see her more.”

Mrs. Greyne looked very grave.

“Oh!” she remarked. She thought profoundly for a moment, and then added: “Indeed!”

“It is true, madame.”

Suddenly Mademoiselle Verbèna flung herself down on the Persian carpet at Mrs. Greyne’s large but well-proportioned feet, and, bathing them with her tears, cried in a heartrending manner:

“Madame will let me go! madame will permit me to fly to poor mamma—to close her dying eyes—to kiss once again⸺”

Mr. Greyne was visibly affected, and even Mrs. Greyne seemed somewhat put about, for she moved her feet rather hastily out of reach of the dependant’s emotion, and made her scramble up.

“Where is your poor mother?”

“In Paris, madame. In the Rue St. Honoré, where I was born. Oh, if she should die there! If she should⸺”

Mrs. Greyne raised her hand, commanding silence.

“You wish to go there?”

“If madame permits.”

“When?”

“To-morrow, madame.”

“To-morrow? This is decidedly abrupt.”

“_Mais la bronchite, madame_, she is abrupt, and death, she may be abrupt.”

“True. One moment!”

There was an instant’s silence for Mrs. Greyne to let loose her brain in. She did so, then said:

“You have my permission. Go to-morrow, but return as soon as possible. I do not wish Adolphus to lose his still uncertain grasp upon the irregular verbs.”

In a flood of grateful tears Mademoiselle Verbèna retired to make her preparations. On the morrow she was gone.

The morrow was a day of much perplexity, much bustle and excitement for Mr. Greyne and the valet, Darrell. They were preparing for Algiers. In the morning, at an early hour, Mr. Greyne set forth in the barouche with Mrs. Greyne to purchase African necessaries: a small but well-supplied medicine chest, a pith helmet, a white-and-green umbrella, a Baedeker, a couple of Smith & Wesson Springfield revolvers with a due amount of cartridges, a dozen of Merrin’s exercise-books—on mature reflection Mrs. Greyne thought that two would hardly contain a sufficient amount of African frailty for her present purpose—a packet of lead pencils, some bottles of a remedy for seasickness, a silver flask for cognac, and various other trifles such as travellers in distant continents require.

Meanwhile Darrell was learning French for the journey, and packing his own and his master’s trunks. The worthy fellow, a man of twenty-five summers, had never been across the Channel—the Greynes being by no means prone to foreign travel—and it may, therefore, be imagined that he was in a state of considerable expectation as he laid the trousers, coats, and waistcoats in their respective places, selected such boots as seemed likely to wear well in a tropical climate, and dropped those shirts which are so contrived as to admit plenty of ventilation to the heated body into the case reserved for them.

When Mr. Greyne returned from his shopping excursion the barouche, loaded almost to the gunwale—if one may be permitted a nautical expression in this connection—had to be disburdened, and its contents conveyed upstairs to Mr. Greyne’s bedroom, into which Mrs. Greyne herself presently entered to give directions for their disposing. Nor was it till the hour of sunset that everything was in due order, the straps set fast, the keys duly turned in the locks—the labels—“Mr. Eustace Greyne: Passenger to Algiers: _via_ Marseilles”—carefully written out in a full, round hand. Rook’s tickets had been bought; so now everything was ready, and the last evening in England might be spent by Mr. Greyne in the drawing-room and by Darrell in the servants’ hall quietly, socially, perhaps pathetically.

The pathos of the situation, it must be confessed, appealed more to the master than to the servant. Darrell was very gay, and inclined to be boastful, full of information as to how he would comport himself with “them there Frenchies,” and how he would make “them pore, godless Arabs sit up.” But Mr. Greyne’s attitude of mind was very different. As the night drew on, and Mrs. Greyne and he sat by the wood fire in the magnificent drawing-room, to which they always adjourned after dinner, a keen sense of the sorrow of departure swept over them both.

“How lonely you will feel without me, Eugenia,” said Mr. Greyne. “I have been thinking of that all day.”

“And you, Eustace, how desolate will be your tale of days! My mind runs much on that. You will miss me at every hour.”

“You are so accustomed to have me within call, to depend upon me for encouragement in your life-work. I scarcely know how you will get on when I am far across the sea.”

“And you, for whom I have labored, for whom I have planned and calculated, what will be your sensations when you realize that a gulf—the Gulf of Lyons—is fixed irrevocably between us?”

So their thoughts ran. Each one was full of tender pity for the other. Towards bedtime, however, conscious that the time for colloquy was running short, they fell into more practical discourse.

“I wonder,” said Mr. Greyne, “whether I shall find any difficulty in gaining the information you require, my darling. I suppose these places”—he spoke vaguely, for his thoughts were vague—“are somewhat awkward to come at. Naturally they would avoid the eye of day.”

Mrs. Greyne looked profound.

“Yes. Evil ever seeks the darkness. You will have to do the same.”

“You think my investigations must take place at night?”

“I should certainly suppose so.”

“And where shall I find a cicerone?”

“Apply to Rook.”

“In what terms? You see, dearest, this is rather a special matter, isn’t it?”

“Very special. But on no account hint that you are in Algiers for ‘Catherine’s’ sake. It would get into the papers. It would be cabled to America. The whole reading world would be agog, and the future interest of the book discounted.”

Mr. Greyne looked at his wife with reverence. In such moments he realized, almost too poignantly, her great position.

“I will be careful,” he said. “What would you recommend me to say?”

“Well”—Mrs. Greyne knit her superb forehead—“I should suggest that you present yourself as an ordinary traveler, but with a specially inquiring bent of mind and a slight tendency towards the—the—er—hidden things of life.”

“I suppose you wish me to visit the public houses?”

“I wish you to see everything that has part or lot in African frailty. Go everywhere, see everything. Bring your notes to me, and I will select such fragments of the broken commandments as suit my purpose, which is, as always, the edifying of the human race. Only this time I mean to purge it as by fire.”

“That corner house in Park Lane, next to the Duke of Ebury’s, would suit us very well,” said Mr. Greyne reflectively.

“We could sell our lease here at an advance,” his wife rejoined. “You will not waste your journey, Eustace?”

“My love,” returned Mr. Greyne with decision, “I will apply to Rook on arrival, and, if I find his man unsatisfactory, if I have any reason to suspect that I am not being shown everything—more especially in the Kasbah region, which, from the guide-books we bought to-day, is, I take it, the most abandoned portion of the city—I will seek another cicerone.”

“Do so. And now to bed. You must sleep well to-night in preparation for the journey.”

It was their invariable habit before retiring to drink each a tumbler of barley water, which was set out by the butler in Mrs. Greyne’s study. After this nightcap Mrs. Greyne wrote up her anticipatory diary, while Mr. Greyne smoked a mild cigar, and then they went to bed. To-night, as usual, they repaired to the sanctum, and drank their barley water. Having done so, Mr. Greyne drew forth his cigar-case, while Mrs. Greyne went to her writing-table, and prepared to unlock the drawer in which her diary reposed, safe from all prying eyes.

The match was struck, the key was inserted in the lock, and turned. As the cigar end glowed the drawer was opened. Mr. Greyne heard a contralto cry. He turned from the arm-chair in which he was just about to seat himself.

“My love, is anything the matter?”

His wife was bending forward with both hands in the drawer, telling over its contents.

“My diary is not here!”

“Your diary!”

“It is gone.”

“But”—he came over to her—“this is very serious. I presume, like all diaries, it is full of⸺” Instinctively he had been about to say “damning”; he remembered his dear one’s irreproachable character and substituted “precious secrets.”

“It is full of matter which must never be given to the world—my secret thoughts, my aspirations. The whole history of my soul is there.”

“Heavens! It must be found.”

They searched the writing-table. They searched the room. No diary.

“Could you have taken it to my room, and left it there?” asked Mr. Greyne.

They hastened thither, and looked—in vain. By this time the servants were gone to bed, and the two searchers were quite alone on the ground floor of their magnificent mansion. Mrs. Greyne began to look seriously perturbed. Her Roman features worked.

“This is appalling,” she exclaimed. “Some thief, knowing it priceless, must have stolen the diary. It will be published in America. It will bring in thousands—but to others, not to us.”

She began to wring her hands. It was near midnight.

“Think, my love, think!” cried Mr. Greyne. “Where could you have taken it? You had it last night?”

“Certainly. I remember writing in it that you would be sailing to Algiers on the _Général Bertrand_ on Thursday of this week, and that on the night I should be feeling widowed here. The previous night I wrote that yesterday I should have to tell you of your mission. You know I always put down beforehand what I shall do, what I shall even think on each succeeding day. It is a practice that regulates the mind and conduct, that helps to uniformity.”

“How true! Who can have taken it? Do you ever leave it about?”

“Never. Am I a madwoman?”

“My darling, compose yourself! We must search the house.”

They proceeded to do so, and, on coming into the schoolroom, Mrs. Greyne, who was in front, uttered a sudden cry.

Upon the table of Mademoiselle Verbèna lay the diary, open at the following entry:—

On Thursday next poor Eustace will be on board the _Général
Bertrand_, sailing for Algiers. I shall be here thinking of
myself, and of him in relation to myself. God help us both. Duty
is sometimes stern. _Mem_. The corner house in Park Lane, next the
Duke of Ebury’s, has sixty years still to run; the lease, that is.
Thursday—poor Eustace!

“What does this portend?” cried Mrs. Greyne.

“My darling, it passes my wit to imagine,” replied her husband.

III

The parting of Mr. and Mrs. Greyne on the following morning was very affecting. It took place at Victoria Station, in the midst of a small crowd of admiring strangers, who had recognised the commanding presence of the great novelist, and had gathered round to observe her manifestations.

Mrs. Greyne was considerably shaken by the event of the previous night. Although, on the discovery of the diary, the house had been roused, and all the servants closely questioned, no light had been thrown upon its migration from the locked drawer to the schoolroom table. Adolphus and Olivia, jerked from sleep by the hasty hands of a maid, could only weep and wan. The powdered footmen, one and all, declared they had never heard of a diary. The butler gave warning on the spot, keeping on his nightcap to give greater effect to his pronunciamento. It was all most unsatisfactory, and for one wild moment Mrs. Greyne seriously thought of retaining her husband by her as a protection against the mysterious thief who had been at work in their midst. Could it be Mademoiselle Verbèna? The dread surmise occurred, but Mr. Greyne rejected it.

“Her father was a count,” he said. “Besides, my darling, I don’t believe she can read English; certainly not unless it is printed.”

So there the matter rested, and the moment of parting came.

There was a murmur of respectful sympathy as Mrs. Greyne clasped her husband tenderly in her arms, and pressed his head against her prune-coloured bonnet strings. The whistle sounded. The train moved on. Leaning from a reserved first-class compartment, Mr. Greyne waved a silk pocket-handkerchief so long as his wife’s Roman profile stood out clear against the fog and smoke of London. But at last it faded, grew remote, took on the appearance of a feebly-executed crayon drawing, vanished. He sank back upon the cushions—alone. Darrell was travelling second with the dressing-case.

It was a strange sensation, to be alone, and _en route_ to Algiers. Mr. Greyne scarcely knew what to make of it. A schoolboy suddenly despatched to Timbuctoo could hardly have felt more terribly emancipated than he did. He was so absolutely unaccustomed to freedom, he had been for so long without the faintest desire for it, that to have it thrust upon him so suddenly was almost alarming. He felt lonely, anxious, horribly unmarried. To divert his thoughts he drew forth a Merrin’s exercise-book and a pencil, and wrote on the first page, in large letters, “_African Frailty, Notes for_.” Then he sat gazing at the title of his first literary work, and wondering what on earth he was going to see in Algiers.

Vague visions of himself in the bars of African public-houses, in mosques, in the two-pair-backs of dervishes, in bazaars—which he pictured to himself like those opened by royalties at the Queen’s Hall—in Moorish interiors surrounded by voluptuous ladies with large oval eyes, black tresses, and Turkish trousers of spangled muslin, flitted before his mental gaze. When the train ran upon Dover Pier, and the white horses of the turbulent Channel foamed at his feet, he started as one roused from a Rip Van Winkle sleep. Severe illness occupied his whole attention for a time, and then recovery.

In Paris he dined at the buffet like one in a dream, and, at the appointed hour, came forth to take the _rapide_ for Marseilles. He looked for Darrell and the dressing-case. They were not to be seen. There stood the train. Passengers were mounting into it. Old ladies with agitated faces were buying pillows and nibbling biscuits. Elderly gentlemen with yellow countenances and red ribands in their coats were purchasing the _Figaro_ and the _Gil Blas_. Children with bare legs were being hauled into compartments. Rook’s agent was explaining to a muddled tourist in a tam-o’-shanter the exact difference between the words “_Oui_” and “_Non_.” The bustle of departure was in the air, but Darrell was not to be seen. Mr. Greyne had left him upon the platform with minute directions as to the point from which the train would start and the hour of its going. Yet he had vanished. The most frantic search, the most frenzied inquiries of officials and total strangers, failed to elicit his whereabouts, and, finally, Mr. Greyne was flung forcibly upward into the _wagonlit_, and caught by the _contrôleur_ when the train was actually moving out of the station.

A moment later he fell exhausted upon the pink-plush seat of his compartment, realising his terrible position. He was now utterly alone; without servant, hair-brushes, toothbrushes, razors, sponges, pajamas, shoes. It was a solitude that might be felt. He thought of the sea journey with no kindly hand to minister to him, the arrival in Africa with no humble companion at his side, to wonder with him at the black inhabitants and help him through the customs—to say nothing of the manners. He thought of the dread homes of iniquity into which he must penetrate by night in search of the material for the voracious “Catherine.” He had meant to take Darrell with him to them all—Darrell, whose joyful delight in the prospect of exploring the Eastern fastnesses of crime had been so boyish, so truly English in its frank, its even boisterous sincerity.

And now he was utterly alone, almost like Robinson Crusoe.

The _contrôleur_ came in to make the bed. Mr. Greyne told him the dreadful story.

“No doubt he has been lured away, monsieur. The dressing-case was of value?”

“Crocodile, gold fittings.”

“Probably monsieur will never see him again. As likely as not he will sleep in the Seine to-night, and at the morgue to-morrow.”

Mr. Greyne shuddered. This was an ill omen for his expedition. He drank a stiff whisky-and-soda instead of the usual barley water, and went to bed to dream of bloody murders in which he was the victim.

When the train ran into Marseilles next morning he was an unshaven, miserable man.

“Have I time to buy a tooth-brush,” he inquired anxiously at the station, “before the boat sails for Algiers?”

The _chef de gare_ thought so. Monsieur had four hours, if that was sufficient. Mr. Greyne hastened forth, had a Turkish bath, purchased a new dressing-case, ate a hasty _déjeuner_, and took a cab to the wharf. It was a long drive over the stony streets. He glanced from side to side, watching the bustling traffic, the hurry of the nations going to and from the ships. His eyes rested upon two Arabs who were striding along in his direction. Doubtless they were also bound for Algiers. He thought they looked most wicked, and hastily took a note of them for “African Frailty.” Beside his sense of loss and loneliness marched the sense of duty. The great woman at home in Belgrave Square, founder of his fortunes, mother of his children, she depended upon him. Even in his own hour of need he would not fail her. He took a lead pencil, and wrote down:

Saw two Arab ruffians. Bare legs. Look capable of anything. Should
not be surprised to hear that they had⸺