r 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
.-', 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 BY 
 
 VIOLET FANE 
 
Mere wind-strewn foam, which tho' dispersed in spray 
 Is churned from depths of the eternal sea " 
 
 The Writer begs to express her 
 indebtedness to the several Editors 
 of the publications from "which, in 
 the main, these papers art taken, 
 
 for their kind permission to re- 
 publish the same in their present 
 
 form. 
 
 r.F. 
 
 THE BRITISH EMBASSY 
 ROME, April 1901 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 WITH OTHER PAPERS AND 
 SHORT STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 VIOLET FANE 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 THE EDWIN AND ANGELINA PAPERS," ETC. ETC. 
 
 ^ 
 
 LONDON 
 JOHN C. NIMMO 
 
 14 KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND 
 MDCCCCI 
 
felFT 
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON &* Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press 
 
S52 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 M865210 
 
 PAGE 
 
 TWO MOODS OF A MAN i 
 
 IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN BOOK-LISTS . . 49 
 
 THE TRUE STORY OF A MIDNIGHT 
 
 MURDER 65 
 
 A ROMANCE OF KENSINGTON GARDENS 
 
 (A FIN DE SINGLE EPISODE) . . 83 
 
 A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" . . 187 
 
 A PLEA FOR THE " GREEN - EYED 
 
 MONSTER" 217 
 
 THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE . 247 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 " When passion's trance is overpast, 
 If tenderness and truth could last, 
 Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep 
 Some mortal slumber, dark and deep, 
 I should not weep, I should not weep ! " 
 
 SHELLEY. 
 
 I 
 
 " PASSION'S TRANCE" 
 
 WHEN a man falls in love for the first time, 
 his symptoms may be said to resemble in 
 many respects those of a woman in the 
 same condition, and yet "with a difference" 
 the result of the different aspect from 
 which each has been taught to regard the 
 same subject. 
 
 When a woman feels for the first time 
 the delightful mystery which is called love, 
 or even when she only imagines that she 
 
4 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 does so, she encourages and confirms herself 
 in the sentiment with all her might and main, 
 without pausing to examine too critically the 
 being who has inspired the emotion. For, 
 besides the fact that it is in itself an en- 
 chanting revelation, is it not also a means to a 
 very desirable end ? To her it is associated 
 with the idea of a permanent home, with the 
 pleasures and duties of maternity, and with 
 the cultivation of all the cardinal virtues. 
 She revels in the visions that are evoked by 
 the bare possibility of a fortunate marriage ; 
 visions in which her future husband re- 
 garded as an individual has far less part 
 than even she herself would suspect. 
 
 But with a man the case is altogether dif- 
 ferent. Marriage, paternity, the duties and 
 pleasures of home-life, do not always appeal 
 to his more selfish nature in their most at- 
 tractive form. If he is young, he desires to 
 have what he terms his "fling" before he is 
 compelled to settle down and take his place 
 as a responsible being, and he resents, with 
 almost a sense of personal injury, the well- 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 5 
 
 meant efforts that may be made with the view 
 of turning him from his purpose. When, 
 therefore, he realises that he may be about 
 to fall a victim to "passion's trance," he re- 
 sists with all the strength of which he is 
 capable, for the visions that arise before him 
 are all unlike those of the tender maiden 
 when she finds herself in a similar situation. 
 To him the idea of marriage is too often 
 associated with loss of freedom, parental dis- 
 pleasure, and an increased expenditure. The 
 girl who may have pleased him for a moment 
 and who has constructed, it may be, quite a 
 three-volume romance out of a look, a smile, 
 a chance pressure of the hand, assumes all at 
 once the form of a dangerous and designing 
 siren ; a temptress, to whom it will be ad- 
 visable to give as wide a berth as possible. 
 In a word, he sets about opposing and coun- 
 teracting the very state of feeling which she 
 is so eager to foster and encourage. 
 
 Let us turn, on the other hand, to the 
 young man who has been ordered to marry 
 for family reasons. In what an insolent and 
 
6 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 aggressive spirit does he swagger into the 
 matrimonial arena and fling down his glove ! 
 He is under the impression, not often a mis- 
 taken one, that he may select whoever he 
 likes. He is upon the " marriage path," and 
 he is flattered and encouraged accordingly, 
 but personal affinity has generally very little 
 to do with his choice. Almost anybody will 
 "do" (he says to himself), so long as she 
 is sufficiently good-looking, and "cheery," 
 and well-dressed ; only he would rather not 
 marry a red-haired girl, because he has 
 heard that, like chestnut horses, people with 
 that coloured hair have "hottish tempers," 
 and he would prefer a wife who liked 
 hunting and lawn-tennis. Something of 
 this sort decides him, when he is not 
 influenced by the baser consideration of 
 money, and it is possible for a while that 
 he may even fancy that he is in love. In 
 love, indeed ! With no rivals, no memories, 
 and no obstacles, to rise up between him 
 and the maiden of his choice ! 
 
 No ; under the conditions in which we 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 7 
 
 live, and move, and have our being, it is 
 not often that a man lavishes upon the 
 woman who becomes his wife the passionate 
 and devoted affection which many women 
 feel for their husbands. There is too much, 
 when looked at from his point of view, to 
 lose upon the one hand, and too much to 
 gain upon the other, for him to regard his 
 marriage as anything but a one-sided bar- 
 gain, and his vows at the altar are generally 
 uttered, in consequence, with many a mental 
 reservation. 
 
 Love, in the sense in which a woman 
 would understand the term, usually comes 
 to him when he is thoroughly off his 
 guard, and when, maybe, it is uncon- 
 nected with any possibility of marriage. 
 His passion is, then, from the very first, 
 invested with many of the elements of 
 tragedy. It is dangerous, dramatic, for- 
 bidden. The word kismet, which he scarcely 
 comprehended before, seems now to be 
 fraught with a subtle and mysterious signifi- 
 cance. This is kismet ; this is the fulfilment 
 
8 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 of destiny : this is love ! It has nothing 
 whatever to do with expediency, with the 
 settlement of the family estates, or with 
 the compulsory continuation of his race. It 
 is far from my intention to assert that a 
 first passion, to be genuine, must of necessity 
 be either hopeless or unlawful. I would 
 merely call attention to the fact that, whether 
 from a survival of the primitive instincts 
 which led, in the old time, to the subjugation 
 of the selected female by capture, and which 
 still induces some savage tribes to carry on 
 their courting after the fashion of " Young 
 Lochinvar," man has generally seemed 
 disposed to rush in and win whenever there 
 were dangers to be encountered, or obstacles 
 to be overcome. But in our prosaic latter 
 days these dangers and obstructions have 
 come to assume often, when marriage is 
 concerned, too modified and conventional 
 a form to minister to his craving for the 
 romantic. We have no longer the stern 
 father who either starves or tortures his 
 daughter into an acquiescence with his sordid 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 9 
 
 wishes, or the jealous rival lurking with 
 his dagger by the door-post. The dis- 
 appointed wooer who would eagerly wel- 
 come any such stimulants to lend zest to a 
 lukewarm inclination, is obliged to rest con- 
 tented with such trifling objections as may 
 be furnished by an inequality of birth or for- 
 tune ; whilst a paltry difference of opinion 
 with regard to religion or politics has to do 
 duty for the far-famed family feud of old time, 
 which seems to have offered such wonderful 
 facilities for bringing a young couple to- 
 gether. This is scarcely sufficient (and 
 indeed this is all that I would advance) to 
 supply the dramatic and tragical element 
 which, to an imaginative nature, is so in- 
 dispensable to the existence of a grande 
 passion. 
 
 I would venture upon one more obser- 
 vation, with which let no youth or maiden 
 be offended. The man who desires to 
 experience the passion of love at its fullest 
 perfection, ought not to be too young. 
 Memories, regrets, the experience which 
 
io TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 furnishes the faculty for making comparisons, 
 do not spring into existence, like mushrooms, 
 in the course of a single night, and yet these, 
 likewise, are necessary ingredients in the 
 composition of true passion. And so with- 
 out going quite so far as that eminent 
 novelist who, as his own years advanced, 
 added proportionately to those of his heroes, 
 and was probably only saved by death from 
 depicting the loves of the absolutely senile 
 I should certainly not seek for the constant 
 and devoted heart beneath the striped 
 flannels of an undergraduate, any more than 
 I should look for it within the trim bodice 
 of the raw schoolgirl, whose voracious besoin 
 d'aimer might lead her to fall down and 
 worship the very first man that came across 
 her path. But what has the passing of the 
 actual years to do with falling in love, when 
 the whole matter lies centred in the in- 
 appreciable age of the heart? 
 
 In order to fall in love vigorously and 
 satisfactorily, a man must have arrived at 
 the age of reason. He must have outlived, 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN n 
 
 that is to say, all that went to make him 
 hare-brained, impetuous, or incapable of 
 gauging the strength of his own emotions, 
 whilst, at the same time, he must not have 
 entered that barren and desolate region 
 which is strewn with dead illusions and 
 shattered idols. He must have come to 
 know, of course, that "all is not gold that 
 glitters," whilst retaining his appreciation 
 of the precious metal when it is pure and 
 unalloyed. The sensation of heart-hunger 
 which comes to most men at some period of 
 their lives, must not have been succeeded 
 by that of either repletion or satiety, and 
 he should still be a believer in true and 
 disinterested affection whilst admitting and 
 deploring the rarity of the phenomenon. 
 
 "Wait till you come to forty year!" sings 
 Thackeray in his well-known ballad, after 
 which age, if we are to believe the great 
 novelist, a man ceases to care about any- 
 thing but "dipping his nose in the Gascon 
 wine." I should like to think that all this 
 modern march of intellect, which inculcates 
 
12 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 temperate habits and improved sanitary con- 
 ditions (with the result, as I hear, of increas- 
 ing the average of human longevity), may 
 have somewhat extended the limit of male 
 sensibility. Be this as it may, however, the 
 period of man's enlightened susceptibility 
 must of necessity be brief ; brief as the fleet- 
 ing months which intervene between seed- 
 time and harvest, when 
 
 " Ere the March-strewn grain shall be bound in the 
 
 sheaf 
 There is left us a little time to love," 
 
 whilst, in some practical and matter-of-fact 
 natures, this loving-time is reduced to what 
 Sterne has designated " only the breadth of 
 an hair." 
 
 But we will assume that, the soil having 
 been carefully prepared for the growth of 
 passion, he is in love at last this lord of 
 creation, this being who has been fashioned 
 in God's own image and for the first time ! 
 How does he comport himself, and in what 
 respect is his experience entirely a new one ? 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 13 
 
 It is an arbitrary law of nature that a 
 sentiment which waxes is altogether different 
 from one which is upon the wane, and so, in 
 the first quarter, as it were, of his infatua- 
 tion, a man is often led, quite unconsciously, 
 to assume a character altogether the reverse 
 of his own. His own nature will only re- 
 assert itself when his passion is on the 
 decline, and when the former object of it 
 will not unnaturally imagine that he is 
 undergoing some sinister process of trans- 
 formation, instead of merely reverting to his 
 original state. But the very things which 
 become irksome and galling to him in the 
 long run, are new and delightful to him at 
 the beginning ; anything, more particularly, 
 which partakes of the nature of a sacrifice, 
 for is not the duty of self-immolation one of 
 the first of love's irrevocable laws? He has 
 lived so long for himself, it may be, that the 
 process has become just a little insipid. It 
 is quite a refreshing change to feel that he is 
 regulating his existence with the view of 
 pleasing somebody else ! It ministers to his 
 
14 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 vanity, too, to know there is a being close 
 at hand who is interested in everything that 
 concerns him, from the minutest variation in 
 his health to the very sit of his shirt-front, 
 or the number of cigars that he is in the 
 habit of smoking at his club. He asks the 
 advice of his beloved upon almost every 
 subject, appeals to her judgment with regard 
 to the choice both of his acquaintances and 
 of his " neck-wear " (as the Yankees would 
 say), and confides to her, and consults her, 
 about the most trivial actions of his daily 
 life, little guessing that he is forging thereby 
 hundreds of invisible links and chains, which 
 may so gall and bind him in the future as to 
 make him feel as though they arrested all 
 free circulation in both body and mind. 
 
 Most women dearly love to establish a 
 dominion over any creature that is larger 
 and stronger than themselves, and a study 
 of history will show us how often they have 
 obtained their way where man is concerned. 
 Some men and not always those of the 
 weakest sort seem to take a real pride in 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 15 
 
 grovelling at the feet of their mistresses, in 
 running errands for them, and in submitting 
 to various forms of punishment whenever 
 they incur their displeasure. This love of 
 dominion in the female breast is developed, 
 it would seem, at a very early age. Only 
 the other day, when strolling in Kensington 
 Gardens, I perceived a little girl in a sun- 
 bonnet, a mere baby of three or four years 
 old, asserting her authority over an enor- 
 mous St. Bernard dog, who could have 
 " chawed her up " in a few minutes, sun- 
 bonnet and all. She had caught up a rotten 
 twig in her anger, with which she was be- 
 labouring him soundly with one infant hand, 
 whilst with the other she clutched at his 
 collar and appeared to be forcing him down. 
 The great, good - natured, noble - minded 
 beast was cowering and shuddering at her 
 feet, whining hypocritically (but surely with 
 a generous hypocrisy?), and pretending to 
 be dreadfully frightened. As I approached, 
 his indignant mistress, of course, began 
 hitting him all the harder, from that love of 
 
1 6 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 show-off which is peculiar to our sex, whilst 
 the victim just glanced up at me through 
 one of his half-closed eyes with an expres- 
 sion which said as plainly as words : 
 
 " I don't feel this in the very least. As 
 you see, I am only shamming ; but it is well 
 worth going through this public humiliation, 
 for I love her, and it does please her so 
 much to fancy that she's hurting me ! " 
 
 Then up came one of those unreflecting 
 nursery-governesses, of whom there are far 
 too many in the world, and shook the poor 
 little girl until she must have loosened every 
 milk-tooth in her head. It was now the 
 dog's turn to triumph, but in what way did 
 he display his gratitude at being thus de- 
 livered from the tyrant's power? By 
 wagging his great tail, and dashing and 
 floundering about exultant at having re- 
 gained his freedom ? Nothing of the kind. 
 With head bowed low as though in utter self- 
 abasement, he followed with leaden tread 
 and downcast eyes at the heels of his now 
 sobbing little mistress. He had offended 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 17 
 
 her, and she was in tears. Was this the 
 moment for him to frisk about and seem to 
 rejoice ? 
 
 " Happy little girl!" I thought, "to be the 
 mistress of such a kind and willing slave." 
 But there are few husbands or lovers who, 
 once they have become conscious of their 
 power over the " weaker vessel," will thus 
 bow the neck to the rod. Docility, they 
 fancy, might be mistaken for weakness, and 
 so they are apt to resent the application of 
 even a rotten twig. 
 
 In the very beginning, however, the man 
 who is really in love will glory in his servi- 
 tude, and may behave like the patient big 
 dog in this true story. During this period 
 of his " trance," too, what a sense of supe- 
 riority possesses him when he listens to the 
 ignorant dogmatising to the pessimistic 
 croaking of the unloving and the unbeloved ! 
 Nor yet, it may be, of these alone, to each of 
 whom may come, one day, the blessed light 
 of revelation and conversion ; but to the 
 dogmatising and croaking of those who are 
 
1 8 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 utterly incapable of ever loving at all, of 
 those who are hopelessly deficient in every 
 quality which might lead to their being 
 by any possibility beloved two wretched 
 sections of humanity, lamentable specimens 
 of Nature's scamped work, who, in spite of 
 being individually as incomplete and un- 
 achieved as was the celebrated Mr. Matthew 
 Buckinger ("the wonderful little man who 
 was born without either arms or legs "), go 
 about giving themselves airs of superiority, 
 and pluming themselves upon what is, in 
 reality, an unwarrantable omission upon the 
 part of the universal mother. The man who 
 is in love can detect this omission at a glance, 
 and can explain away all the dogmatising 
 and croaking. 
 
 Of course (he argues), everything that is 
 the very best of its kind must, of necessity, 
 be rare and difficult of attainment. This is 
 even the case with regard to the mere 
 material wants and luxuries of every day. 
 How many of us, for instance, can boast of a 
 first-rate cook, a perfect hack, or even a 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 19 
 
 superlatively good cigar? All these exist, 
 nevertheless, and are obtainable under certain 
 conditions, but those who have never suc- 
 ceeded in finding them, whose judgment has 
 been at fault, or who cannot, or will not, pay 
 the price necessary for their acquisition, will 
 declare that such treasures are not to be had 
 for love or money ! Is it to be wondered at, 
 then, if the great kohinoor of reciprocated 
 affection should only glisten upon the brows 
 of the elect ? and there is much sound logic 
 in his reasoning. 
 
 He feels, henceforth, that he has become 
 one of a superior secret society, the members 
 of which are strictly limited, and privileged to 
 enjoy all kinds of peculiar advantages. A 
 thousand things are suddenly revealed to him 
 which were even as sealed mysteries. He 
 can recognise his masonic brethren at once 
 by certain unmistakable signs and symptoms, 
 and perceive a motive in their actions which 
 lay hidden from him heretofore. He is sur- 
 prised into a sympathy with Nature in most 
 of her varying moods. Solitude no longer 
 
20 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 bores him, as the state of his feelings fur- 
 nishes him with ample food for reflection, 
 whilst no pen can adequately describe the 
 delights of a solitude d deux. He buys a 
 cheap edition 01 the poets, and finds that, 
 after all, he can understand poetry. Nay, 
 most of his own emotions have been actually 
 described to the letter, and set down in black 
 and white, by some of our very greatest 
 bards! He underlines the passages in 
 question, and lends the volume to his be- 
 loved. A day or two afterwards, and lo ! 
 he can do more than read and understand 
 poetry. He can actually write it! Only 
 upon one subject, of course ; but the verses 
 are so touching that they positively draw 
 tears from his own eyes, and a week ago he 
 could not, for the life of him, have made a 
 single rhyme! His education is advancing 
 with gigantic strides. 
 
 What new interests seem to awaken, now, 
 upon every side, always bearing, more or 
 less, upon his own case ! People appear to 
 have been falling in love ever since the 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 21 
 
 very beginning of the world ; and there is 
 nothing to be ashamed of in it, either, since 
 such a number of distinguished men have 
 become the slaves of the tender passion ! 
 He thinks over the names of some of these, 
 filling up the great gulf which yawns between 
 Marc Antony and Lord Nelson with as 
 many infatuated heroes as a limited acquaint- 
 ance with history will permit him to recall, 
 and is finally convinced that all the greatest 
 and noblest of God's creatures have found 
 themselves, at some period of their lives, 
 precisely in his own situation. 
 
 Whilst he is thus under the influence of 
 "passion's trance," he can perceive no fault 
 whatever in the being who has inspired it. 
 He wrongly imagines that this is because 
 his affection has its origin in something more 
 lasting than mere material sympathy, that it 
 was begotten in the higher and purer realms 
 of sentiment, and that it will endure, in con- 
 sequence, long after the passing away of 
 both youth and beauty in the woman he 
 adores. Indeed, one of his favourite day- 
 
22 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 dreams consists in picturing her when quite 
 old, and yet not unbecomingly wrinkled, with 
 nice fluffy white hair, draped with something 
 after the fashion of a mantilla, bending over 
 her knitting, whilst he is seated at her side, 
 in hand-worked slippers, reading to her 
 through gold-rimmed spectacles, and loving 
 her just as tenderly as he does now ! 
 
 Is it impossible that he should continue in 
 this enviable condition of mind, treading, as 
 it were, upon air, and feeling in such a 
 state of moral and physical exaltation that, 
 like the " High Health" man in Walker's 
 " Original," the dust seems scarcely able to 
 cling to the soles of his boots ? 
 
 It is not impossible, but, alas, it is 'im- 
 probable in the highest degree ! The word 
 "trance," applied to this phase of being by a 
 poet who was perpetually experiencing its 
 recurrence under varying conditions, is not 
 suggestive of a permanent state, any more 
 than is the word ''passion," with its associa- 
 tions of Sturm und Drang, highly strung 
 nerves, and concentrated emotion. " Trance, " 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 23 
 
 indeed (the good old lethargic trance of 
 Shelley's time), seems scarcely to describe 
 correctly a state which is active rather than 
 passive. But we know that in the modern 
 hypnotic trance people can be induced, by 
 suggestion, to lift enormous weights, stand 
 on their heads, swallow tallow-candles and 
 lamp-oil, and do all kinds of extraordinary 
 and astounding things, so that the term has 
 come to be altogether applicable to the 
 earlier stages of love-infatuation. 
 
 Passion, then, we will assume, cannot, 
 by reason of its very intensity, endure be- 
 yond a certain limit ; but why should not 
 its more platonic confederates " tenderness 
 and truth " survive for ever in the human 
 heart ? Perhaps the true explanation may 
 be that these three unite to form an in- 
 dissoluble trinity, the triple principle in 
 Nature which has been so fully typified in 
 the earlier religious cults, so that "when 
 passion's trance is overpast" " tenderness 
 and truth " are constrained, of necessity, to 
 depart likewise, being of one spirit and 
 
24 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 substance with passion, and that it was 
 this sad truth which made Shelley weep, 
 as well it might. 
 
 But I cannot help thinking that this 
 trinity in unity might be coaxed into re- 
 maining if not for ever at least for a far 
 longer period than is its wont, were it not 
 for the horror with which most men are 
 prone to regard every kind of sentimental 
 retrospection. " Raking up the past" is the 
 name they give to this chastened form of 
 contemplation when they wish to make 
 themselves unpleasant. But it is surely 
 profitable, with a view to the preservation 
 of quickening memories, to rake it up some- 
 times. Why should we treat our past as 
 though it were a mere unsavoury dust-heap, 
 from which nothing but decaying rubbish 
 can possibly be exhumed ? The male ima- 
 gination as a glance at our literature will 
 prove is far richer and more prolific than 
 that of woman. But granting that man has 
 hitherto surpassed all that woman has as 
 yet accomplished in the matter of creating 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 25 
 
 or inventing, to her at least must be con- 
 ceded the finer faculty for conscientious and 
 exhaustive recollection, for ignoring and 
 putting from her all that it were best that 
 she should not see, and for being able to 
 build herself a " lordly pleasure-house " out 
 of these very fragments of the past ; and 
 may it not be by reason of this faculty 
 that the triple principle will so often endure 
 in her breast long after it has departed from 
 that of the man who inspires it ? 
 
 A man, on the contrary, is perpetually 
 looking forward pressing on, as it were, in 
 advance of his own passion. At the outset 
 this seems only like racing with his own 
 shadow ; but, in course of time, he is pretty 
 certain to overtake and outstrip it. So 
 anxious does he appear to rush through 
 all the consecutive phases of emotion, and 
 to have done with them, that he reminds 
 one of a traveller who, when dining at a 
 public restaurant, will hurry over the differ- 
 ent courses of his repast because he knows 
 that the table at which he is sitting has 
 
26 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 been let to somebody else. But a woman 
 is only too well aware of how rapidly things 
 that have once been set in motion are apt 
 to roll on to their final accomplishment, and 
 so she would fain act as a kind of drag 
 upon the wheels of Destiny, and will far 
 rather revel in "the tender grace of a day 
 that is dead," than look forward to, and so 
 possibly forestall, the pleasures of a future 
 one ; just as some shipwrecked mariner, 
 who had been cast upon a desert island 
 with an enthralling novel, might read and 
 re-read its first volume over and over again, 
 from a dread of getting too soon to the 
 third. Thus, it will be far less difficult for 
 her should she arrive, in company with 
 the being she loves, at the evening of life 
 to recognise in the slippered and spectacled 
 fogey at her side 
 
 "The light-foot lover who, like Caesar, came 
 And saw and conquered," 
 
 than it will be for him to summon her before 
 him, arrayed in all her departed charms. 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 27 
 
 But I believe that if man could only over- 
 come his morbid dread of looking back and 
 recollecting, he would not so often miss 
 the pathetic note which sanctifies this very 
 mutability of earthly things, nor cast away 
 "tenderness and truth" upon the first little 
 display of sulkiness on the part of passion, 
 and then although it would be too late to 
 dry Shelley's tears many a poor soul who 
 is weeping now from the same cause might 
 take heart and be comforted. 
 
28 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 II 
 
 "WHEN PASSION'S TRANCE is OVERPAST" 
 
 I COME now to a contemplation of the phase 
 which made Shelley weep. " Passion's 
 trance is overpast," and " tenderness and 
 truth," following the flight of passion, have 
 departed likewise. We will suppose an in- 
 stance where the companion of a man's 
 more romantic moments has erred only in 
 loving him too well ; she has been his 
 heart's best beloved, the being he singled 
 out for himself from all the rest of the 
 world, and took possession of in the teeth 
 of every obstacle, the one woman whom 
 he has imagined for long that he could 
 not possibly be happy without. Gradually, 
 however, by degrees which were scarcely 
 perceptible at first, and from no fault of 
 hers, he awakens from his trance, and it 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 29 
 
 dawns upon him that he is once more 
 heart-whole and fancy-free. He can enjoy 
 himself quite as much when she is not with 
 him, since he is not then constrained to 
 evoke emotions which have now no actual 
 existence, and he realises, not without a 
 pang of self-reproach, that if she were to 
 be lying dead at the bottom of the Red 
 Sea life could be just as pleasant nay, in 
 some respects even pleasanter for him. 
 
 How is he to set about the work of his 
 emancipation ? What an intricate web will 
 have to be, thread by thread, unravelled ! 
 What an elaborate structure, brick by brick, 
 demolished ! How much there will be to 
 unsay, to ignore, to repudiate ! What a tax 
 upon his powers of dissimulation, of pre- 
 varication, upon his marvellous faculty for 
 forgetting ! He must call upon the keenest 
 resources of his intellect, and never flinch 
 for one moment from his purpose. Above 
 all for we will assume that he possesses 
 neither the moral courage nor the conscious 
 cruelty which would enable him to strike a 
 
30 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 decisive blow he must take time, for it 
 would not do for him to expose himself too 
 rashly to the reproach of fickleness or in- 
 consistency. He takes counsel with himself 
 and considers. He has tried temporising 
 long enough ; the hoping for something 
 unexpected to "turn up," which, somehow, 
 never does ! He must endeavour, by his 
 behaviour, to drive her into seeking some 
 desperate remedy. Perhaps he could ar- 
 range matters so as even to receive his 
 dismissal from her own lips, and thus bid 
 farewell to her for ever with a clear con- 
 science? At any rate he must break with 
 her somehow ! 
 
 All this occurs to him at odd moments, 
 and by slow degrees, whilst he is shaving, 
 and smoking, and driving about in hansom 
 cabs. There is no formal sitting in con- 
 clave, no "writing of divorcement," but a 
 decree has gone forth against her, irrevoc- 
 able as were those of the Medes and Per- 
 sians. Notwithstanding that his better 
 nature would recoil from the notion of any- 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 31 
 
 thing like physical ill-usage the remedy 
 too often adopted in like case by stupid 
 and impulsive persons of the lower classes 
 he commences, almost unconsciously, it 
 may be, a system of torture and humiliation, 
 calculated to shatter and undermine, if not 
 actually to destroy. 
 
 His system is ingeniously contrived, or 
 it appears so at least to his victim, for 
 necessity has rendered him cunning. He 
 seems determined to furnish her with no 
 ostensible grievance, nothing that, if com- 
 plained of, could seem to any rational being 
 to be deserving of complaint. He avoids 
 everything which might appear to her to 
 be aggressive. His sins are almost entirely 
 sins of omission. A vainer or a less sensi- 
 tive woman might not even perceive them ; 
 but, during the golden days, he has learnt 
 to know her so well ! She has poured out 
 her whole soul in oblation to her divinity, 
 and can no longer shroud any part of her 
 nature beneath that veil of mystery which 
 is so attractive to a man. He is aware 
 
32 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 of all her little peculiarities, her pet aver- 
 sions, her physical weaknesses, and of all 
 the " trifles light as air" that will either 
 please or grieve her. Every hole in her 
 armour is exposed to his all-seeing eye. 
 She can no longer appeal to his imagina- 
 tion, and her affection for him has merely 
 yielded him a monopoly in the infliction 
 of torture. 
 
 At first the woman's loyal heart repudi- 
 ates the notion that there can be any change 
 in his. She drives from her mind the sus- 
 picion that he intended to wound her by 
 his words, and makes fresh excuses for him 
 after every succeeding stab. Something 
 must have worried him, or he was suffering 
 from indigestion, or there was, perhaps, 
 thunder in the air ! She will " soothe him 
 with " her " finer fancies, touch him with " 
 her " lighter thought." But matters do 
 not rest here, for even with men who are 
 still sincerely attached the stupid habit of 
 thwarting and scolding the woman who 
 loves them best will grow apace if it be 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 33 
 
 encouraged. When he is not intensely 
 irritable and impatient of the slightest 
 contradiction, he assumes towards her an 
 attitude of stony indifference, a most exas- 
 perating form of torture to a woman ! He, 
 whose eye was wont to kindle with joy at 
 her coming, and dwell upon her every 
 movement with reverence and affection, 
 seems now to be often almost unconscious 
 of her presence. She looks into his eyes 
 appealingly. In what has she offended? 
 She might as well expect to derive solace 
 from gazing at a couple of oysters. 
 
 " Say something nice to me ! " she pleads 
 at last, with a woman's foolish craving for 
 loving words. Something between a grunt 
 and a groan is generally his only response. 
 As is but natural, whenever she expects to 
 meet him in public, she goes to some 
 trouble and expense in the arrangement of 
 her dress. He used to take such a pride 
 in her personal appearance ; no detail of 
 her toilet was ever thrown away upon him, 
 and her maid knows only too well the ter- 
 
34 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 rible scramble there has been to get that 
 pink ball-dress ready by a particular even- 
 ing ! But he takes no notice of it whatever. 
 "Pink used to be your favourite colour!" 
 the poor creature ventures, reproachfully, 
 when his callousness has become almost 
 past bearing. "What! another new dress ?" 
 he exclaims with quite the aggrieved manner 
 of a bill-paying husband. He appears to 
 be chiefly anxious to convince her that her 
 coming is by no means the event of the 
 evening ; that he has other interests, other 
 engagements, that the real enjoyment of 
 the evening, in fact, will only begin after 
 he has parted with her for the night. Then 
 he will awaken from his present apathy to 
 a sympathetic appreciation of his surround- 
 ings. The glum expression of martyrdom 
 which he now invariably assumes in her 
 presence, will give place to a sunshiny 
 smile. From a mood which is at once 
 animated and radiant, he may even rise to 
 one of tempered hilarity. What a merry 
 ringing laugh he used to have in the dear 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 35 
 
 old days, and how amused he used to ap- 
 pear to be at some of her very mildest jokes ! 
 Now her wittiest sallies only provoke a 
 contemptuous sneer, and very naturally, 
 for, alas, her gaiety is painfully forced, and 
 has he not heard her wittiest sallies hun- 
 dreds and hundreds of times? She can 
 see him in her mind's eye, upon this par- 
 ticular evening, after he will have bade her 
 good-night ; genial, responsive, caressing ; 
 pouring soft nothings into the sated ears 
 of frivolous and indifferent beauties, or 
 lavishing some of the thousand little atten- 
 tions which now no longer fall to her share 
 upon greedy and malevolent dowagers. 
 These are the forms that will afterwards 
 recur to him in his dreams ; her own will 
 be utterly excluded from them. What a 
 useless expenditure of time and energy ! 
 What a casting of pearls before swine ! 
 Was this what he led her to expect when 
 he went down upon his knees in that moon- 
 lit garden (utterly spoiling a brand-new 
 suit of dress-clothes), and told her that 
 
36 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 sympathy and mutual affection were the 
 only things worth having in this hollow 
 and deceitful world ? Or when he sent her 
 that beautiful poem of his own composition 
 beginning 
 
 " Two days without thee ; two long days ! " 
 
 These memories are too much for her, and 
 tears spring unbidden to her eyes. 
 
 "Is anything the matter?" he inquires 
 sharply. 
 
 " No ; nothing, nothing ! " she answers 
 hurriedly, quailing before the sternness of 
 that oystery eye, and so she separates from 
 him for what remains of the night, 
 
 " Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd," 
 
 like Hamlet's father before he turned into 
 the ghost. 
 
 Will he ever realise her sense of misery 
 and humiliation when she reaches her soli- 
 tary chamber, and when her maid, whilst 
 unlacing the pink dress, inquires whether 
 it has been much admired at the ball ? . 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 37 
 
 If he could only pursue a perfectly firm 
 policy of repression, he is conscious that he 
 might attain his end in half the time that it 
 will now take him to do so. But man is 
 human, and there are days when, in spite of 
 his irritating position, he feels so cheerful 
 and self-complacent that he would fain be 
 at peace with all the world. He dreads the 
 disturbing effect of tears, reproaches, and 
 melancholy looks above all, he dreads any 
 allusion to the eternal Past and so appears, 
 for a while, to experience a return of his 
 former tenderness. He accounts for his 
 previous coldness in a variety of ways : he 
 was overfatigued, had a touch of lumbago, 
 or the stopping had come out of a front 
 tooth. He curses his weakness a moment 
 afterwards, for she seems in the seventh 
 heaven at his words. There ' is a rap- 
 prochement ; he has merely ri vetted his 
 fetters, but she shall pay dearly upon the 
 morrow for these few fleeting moments of 
 comparative happiness ! . . . 
 
 Still, he gains certain advantages by the 
 
38 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 direction he has given to her fears. This 
 strange alteration in his temper proceeds, 
 she is now convinced, entirely from physical 
 causes. He must be indulged humoured, 
 amused. He should repair to some fashion- 
 able health-resort, or be entertained with 
 " varied company." She must cease to 
 intrude her own worries upon his notice, 
 and never tease him by consulting him 
 when she is in want of comfort or advice. 
 Should she feel ill herself she must "dis- 
 semble," and meet him with a honied smile, 
 since he alone must enjoy all the privileges 
 of the strong man and the invalid. Neither 
 overfatigue, dyspepsia, nor the coming of 
 storms will be counted as extenuating cir- 
 cumstances when she is concerned. What 
 a contrast to the time when she was wont 
 to fly to him in every difficulty ; when he 
 acted as a shield and buckler against all 
 human ills, and when his soothing influence 
 was as balm to every wound ! He comes 
 back from the fashionable health-resort, or 
 from the social gathering, as the case may 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 39 
 
 be, with all his previous symptoms greatly 
 aggravated. The mineral waters, or the 
 pine baths, or the massage, or the "varied 
 company " have evidently done him no 
 good, whilst the society of purposeless, 
 pleasure-loving people has only made him 
 more dissatisfied than ever with his own 
 position. He has rushed into several senti- 
 mental friendships, which occupy both his 
 thoughts and his leisure, and has involved 
 himself in more than one flirtation with 
 young and attractive women. 
 
 No one can talk sentiment better than 
 he can, when it suits his purpose. His long 
 " attachment " has given him a thorough 
 insight into the varying moods of woman. 
 His female friends are electrified at the 
 vast extent of his knowledge, and the result 
 of the lessons which she has drummed into 
 him with so much trouble is mistaken for 
 intuition. Towards the mistress who has 
 taught him all this he feels about as much 
 gratitude as does the schoolboy for the 
 master who has thrashed him. "What- 
 
40 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 soever a man soweth, that shall he also 
 reap." There are moments when she 
 wishes that she had not taught him quite 
 so much ! 
 
 He now causes her to pass through a 
 period which might be truly described as 
 purgatorial, were it possible for her to 
 regard it as the prelude to any happier 
 state. She is still terribly anxious about 
 his health. His restlessness, his irritability, 
 his occasional fits of torpid resignation, are 
 each in their turn alarming. He plunges 
 madly into society, fills up all his spare 
 moments with business or amusement which 
 must keep him apart from her, and metes 
 her out grudgingly only mere shreds and 
 patches of time. He teaches her to regard 
 the smallest concession upon his part as an 
 important sacrifice, and takes her to task 
 severely if she ventures either to interfere 
 with his movements or to criticise his 
 actions. Should she question him as to 
 his present engagements, or display any 
 interest in his future plans, she is informed 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 41 
 
 that her feminine curiosity has now arrived 
 at a pitch which renders his life almost 
 unendurable, and that no man of spirit 
 could possibly tolerate such a system of 
 espionage. His variations of temper are so 
 sudden and surprising that she now never 
 knows in what mood she may find him, so 
 that she hopes, fears, and despairs a dozen 
 times at least in the course of the same day, 
 and feels as though she were living upon 
 the brink of a volcano. 
 
 Of course he has long survived the phase 
 of adoring compliment. She is no longer 
 his "angel," his "queen," his "beautiful and 
 only love." This is as it should be, con- 
 sidering the time that has intervened. But 
 he now adopts a tone of brusqueness which 
 almost amounts to rudeness, and which is 
 rendered all the more offensive when con- 
 trasted with the courteous and deferential 
 manner which he assumes towards all other 
 women in her presence. She tries to per- 
 suade herself at first that this very want of 
 common politeness is a subtle compliment 
 
42 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 in itself, the most precious homage that a 
 woman in her situation could possibly de- 
 sire. He is treating her as most English- 
 men are in the habit of treating their wives, 
 whilst his seeming consideration for her 
 imaginary rivals is merely a cloak for his 
 indifference. Still, there are moments when 
 she winces. No man has ever spoken to her 
 like this before ! He guesses her thought 
 and accentuates the conjugal manner 
 until it attains to that of the bully. She 
 is cowed, terrified, bewildered, yet, whilst 
 smarting under a keen sense of injustice, 
 implores his forgiveness and promises to 
 amend her ways. He pardons her with 
 the manner of an Eastern satrap commuting 
 the sentence of an insubordinate slave, but 
 his eye is cold and implacable. They seem 
 now to be always confronting one another 
 after the fashion of two hostile forces. Which 
 side will be the first to surrender? To 
 whom will be given the victory? 
 
 She departs from his presence broken 
 and shattered both in mind and body. Her 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 43 
 
 nights are passed in sleeplessness and tears. 
 She flies for comfort to nerve-tonics, stimu- 
 lants, narcotics. Her health breaks down 
 under the mental and moral tension, and 
 her former good spirits entirely abandon 
 her. A marked change takes place in her 
 appearance. These few miserable months 
 seem to have aged her as though they had 
 been double the number of years. She 
 contemplates her face in the glass and con- 
 fesses, in her humility, that there is good 
 cause for some of his dissatisfaction. What 
 a difference happiness makes to one's looks ; 
 but how easily he could restore her to the 
 joy of living, if he would only condescend 
 to show sometimes "the quality of mercy"! 
 Half unconsciously, she comes to associate 
 their meetings with the visits she has occa- 
 sionally had to pay to her dentist. Who 
 knows what unexpected twinges he may not 
 cause her to undergo, what sensitive nerve he 
 may not probe and puncture ? He has crushed 
 and wounded her so cruelly of late that she 
 feels at length that she, too, is undergoing 
 
44 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 a change. She loves him, as he was in the 
 past, as tenderly and devotedly as ever, but 
 sadly, reverently, with "all regret," as one 
 might love a dead man over whose quiet 
 breast the blossoms of many changing 
 seasons have bloomed and withered, but 
 who is not yet forgotten. This new creature, 
 with his hard, unfeeling ways, who wears, 
 somehow, the outward air of her dead dar- 
 ling, she has discovered that she cannot 
 love. Sometimes she longs to fly to that 
 dead man for protection against the malig- 
 nant being who seems to have assumed his 
 shape. Surely he would turn in his grave 
 if he could only know of her agony ! Then, 
 suddenly, she recollects that these two are 
 supposed, by other people, to be one and 
 the same. It is a miserable experience. If 
 he would only change his outward shape as 
 well as his heart! she thinks. Far better 
 if he could become bald, or bottle-nosed, or 
 altogether repulsive of aspect ; for can any- 
 thing be more ghastly and unnatural than 
 to behold the acute pain-giver masquerading 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 45 
 
 thus in the likeness of the comforter and 
 consoler of all ills? This is what causes 
 her to break down nearly every time she 
 looks at him! He has now established a 
 real grievance against her, sufficient, in his 
 eyes, to justify almost any act of reprisal. 
 She is no longer cheerful or amusing when 
 she is in his presence. Instead of endeavour- 
 ing to entertain and distract him, she is now 
 nearly always in tears. He likes people 
 who are bright, and pleasant, and sociable. 
 Why cannot she behave like everybody 
 else ? What in the world does she com- 
 plain of? Has he not made sacrifices 
 enough for her? Why is it that she treats 
 him to all this peevishness and discontent? 
 After each fresh meeting with him, she 
 feels more wretched and disheartened. She 
 ends by agreeing with him that this state of 
 things cannot possibly continue. She has 
 endured so much pain that a sense of numb- 
 ness seems to be creeping over her. She 
 has become inured to suffering, and has 
 learnt to expect no more happiness in the 
 
46 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 future ; but, oh ! for peace, and calm, and 
 quiet, even if it were to be the peace, and 
 calm, and quiet of the dead ! . . . And then 
 it is, maybe, that in the solitude of her 
 chamber as she stares vacantly at the pages 
 of the book to which she may have turned 
 for consolation, or dwells, tearfully, upon 
 some old, tender letter that he had written 
 her in the days that are done the scales fall 
 suddenly from her eyes. The truth con- 
 fronts her in all its hideousness the truth he 
 has been trying to force upon her for all these 
 miserable months, but which she was too 
 blind to perceive, and which he was too kind 
 (as she imagines) to tell her in plain words. 
 He has ceased to care for her. He would 
 drive her out of his life, and continue his way 
 without her. " Passion's trance is over- 
 past!" 
 
 A thousand years seem suddenly to divide 
 him from her. At her feet opens an abyss, 
 which she feels it would be worse than folly 
 to cross. Hopelessly, wearily, but yet with 
 a returning flicker of her old pride, she 
 
TWO MOODS OF A MAN 47 
 
 makes up her mind. She will give him back 
 his freedom. He shall not taunt and torture 
 her any longer. His ring, his portrait, the 
 lock of his hair, shall be returned to him 
 upon the morrow in a registered parcel. 
 She is like a woman of marble. All sensa- 
 tion seems dead in her for the moment ; and 
 beyond the moment she will not dare to ad- 
 venture. Who knows whether there will be 
 any future at all for her ? 
 
 He accepts his dismissal with just one 
 little pang of unexpected regret. After all 
 the trouble they have both taken to construct 
 and preserve, it has actually come to this ! 
 . . . But it has come through her, as he de- 
 sired that it should, and at a moment when 
 it cannot even wound his vanity, for she had 
 ceased to minister to that several years ago, 
 if the truth must be told. It is all for the 
 best (he says to himself), or he will endea- 
 vour, at least, that it shall be so. He has 
 passed through the emotional period, and is 
 absolutely safe from many of the dangers of 
 life. It can never yield him anything better 
 
48 TWO MOODS OF A MAN 
 
 than he has had already perhaps, but it is a 
 comfort to know that he can smile now at a 
 good deal that might once have made him 
 weep. His imagination, too, which of late 
 seemed to have been almost paralysed, is 
 stimulated to fresh activity by the wider vista 
 which is now revealed to his gaze, and he 
 realises, not without a certain smug satisfac- 
 tion, that the reputation he has earned for 
 constancy and devotion may stand him in 
 good stead should any opening occur for 
 entering a more eligible connection in the 
 future. 
 
IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN 
 BOOK-LISTS 
 
IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN 
 BOOK-LISTS 
 
 As I look up at my crowded bookcase, I 
 find myself often thinking with commisera- 
 tion of those men and women who have 
 never enjoyed the sweet companionship of 
 books. It is so crowded that some of the 
 volumes have to assume the recumbent 
 position upon its shelves, above the heads 
 of their fellows, whilst others, like poor but 
 honest gentlemen whose raiment has be- 
 come out-at-elbows, or like that spendthrift 
 Plantagenet prince who was forced to re- 
 main in bed because he had no raiment 
 at all, are doomed to darkness and seclu- 
 sion behind the backs of their more showy 
 brethren by reason of their shabby or down- 
 right naked condition. 
 
 Here, in a foreign land, the very sight 
 
52 IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN BOOK-LISTS 
 
 of these familiar friends gives to the whole 
 room an air of home. How much have 
 they not seen us suffer and endure, or, for 
 how long (if they are old friends) have we 
 not looked at them whilst suffering and 
 enduring, and how have they not seemed 
 to sympathise with our joys and our sorrows. 
 Half unconsciously, it may be, we endow 
 them with the wisdom and penetration 
 which seem to belong to most silent and 
 self-contained objects, whether animate or 
 inanimate. How much they must have 
 come to know of our inner life, of our 
 secrets, supposing that we have any! It 
 is as well, perhaps, that they are not really 
 possessed of eyes and ears, for now, at 
 any rate, we can count upon their discretion ! 
 And then how superior they are, in many 
 respects, at least, to the friends that are 
 able to see and hear! They can never 
 deceive or disappoint us after we have once 
 made their acquaintance. We know them 
 at once for what they are ; they cannot sail 
 under false colours. The vapid and pre- 
 
IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN BOOK-LISTS 53 
 
 tentious book (and such a one may have 
 come to us, perhaps, as a gift, in an attrac- 
 tive binding) cannot, like the vapid and 
 pretentious guest, delude us with its smatter- 
 ing of clap-trap jargons into making us 
 think that it is wise. The witty and enter- 
 taining book, though we may not be always 
 in the mood for it, unlike the witty and 
 entertaining raconteur of flesh and blood, 
 is always, as the Yorkshire folk would say, 
 in "good fettle." It does not suffer from 
 gout, or from the weather, or turn sulky 
 just because a rival raconteur happens to 
 be upon the same shelf with it ! We know 
 exactly what it has to offer us, and can shut 
 it up the moment it has begun to be tire- 
 some. Then there is no sort of affectation 
 or caprice about a book. We can take 
 it up and find it just as we left it. Its 
 very silence is often eloquent, for, apart 
 from all literary merit, what sympathies 
 and what memories it can sometimes 
 awaken ! 
 
 I copied out the following lines, the other 
 
54 IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN BOOK-LISTS 
 
 day, from a poem addressed to a book-friend 
 by an anonymous poet : 
 
 " Old friend, so grey and wise, 
 
 Perceiving without eyes, 
 Teaching and preaching without voice or tongue, 
 
 Tender and true thou art, 
 
 For close against thine heart 
 
 The gift still folded lies 
 I gave when I was young ! 
 A rose, from ruin'd gardens, desecrate 
 
 And trodden into dust by hurrying feet 
 
 Where once the sweet 
 White blossoms garlanded the hidden ways 
 And cluster'd, bower-like, o'er the wicket gate ! 
 
 What hopes and dreams were those 
 
 That blossom'd with that rose, 
 Old friend, in those old days, 
 And shared the rose's fate ! " 
 
 But all this and more, in praise of books, 
 has been said, and much better said, before. 
 The friends whose praises I would set 
 forth are the books that are not really 
 " books," compiled by authors who do 
 not really pose as "authors," although 
 they have laboured to collect for us such 
 store-houses of information, such mines of 
 inexhaustible wealth. 
 
IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN BOOK-LISTS 55 
 
 My eyes rest gratefully upon them as I 
 write, standing out, here and there, in modest 
 undress, from the serried ranks of their gaily 
 bound shelf-mates, like white-coated recruits, 
 or khaki-clad irregulars, amongst a regi- 
 ment of fully caparisoned soldiers. I am 
 alluding to the lists of the works of other 
 authors, compiled by those generous and 
 unobtrusive men, who, as I have already 
 said, do not pose as authors themselves, in 
 spite of their vast knowledge, their wonderful 
 felicity and facility in imparting it, and who 
 have, for many years, so kindly sent me the 
 results of their labours, free of charge, from 
 nearly every part of the United Kingdom. 
 What masses of miscellaneous information 
 useful and the reverse what evidences of 
 erudition, what incentives to literary labour, 
 are to be found between the modest paper 
 covers of these books that are not really 
 " books"! . . . I have often wondered why 
 in these days of experiment and discovery 
 nobody has ever conceived the notion of 
 educating a child entirely upon book-lists 
 
56 IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN BOOK-LISTS 
 
 and then waiting to see what happened. 
 The child would thus become acquainted, 
 most assuredly, with many wonderful things, 
 some of which, I should fancy, could not fail 
 to serve as stepping-stones to further know- 
 ledge, or as branches that would blossom forth 
 like the rod of Aaron. For, apart from the 
 histories and descriptions of the books them- 
 selves, the mass of extraneous matter to be 
 extracted from a brilliantly compiled book- 
 list is really enormous. It seems to me that 
 an intelligent child, after reading only half 
 through one or two such lists, would find 
 the incentive to further research to the 
 reading of real books positively irresistible, 
 and the spontaneous desire for any profit- 
 able form of study would not, of course, be 
 discouraged, even in one that might have 
 been book-list bred. For example, I will 
 assume that I should have been well 
 acquainted with the daring exploits of 
 " George Castriot, better known as Scander- 
 beg," even if I had never come across him 
 in a book-list ; but without one of these 
 
IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN BOOK-LISTS 57 
 
 silent yet persistent aids to learning, is it 
 likely that I could have guessed that "the 
 last descendant of this great man was the 
 Marquis de Saint Ange, who perished on 
 the 24th February 1525, at the battle of 
 Pavia," or that, "it is stated by Paulus 
 Jovius that he met his death at the hand of 
 Francis I., who was taken prisoner at that 
 battle"? 
 
 The Marquis de Saint Ange would seem, 
 by his name, to have been a Frenchman. 
 How, then, came he to meet his death at 
 the hands of his own sovereign ? Was the 
 French King actuated by motives of private 
 vengeance, like so many of his race ; or was 
 the marquis a renegade, and, as such, richly 
 deserving his fate? Perhaps, after all, he 
 was an Italian? . . . 
 
 Whether or no, the curiosity is piqued, 
 the imagination excited, the study of history 
 encouraged. The interest of the inquiring 
 reader is gently diverted from the last of the 
 Macedonian heroes to the last of his heroic 
 descendants. From only one page of a 
 
58 IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN BOOK-LISTS 
 
 book-list, opened at random, I cull the follow- 
 ing interesting information : 
 
 1. That a work by John Hart, printed 
 by W. Seres in 1569, " contains the first 
 suggestion of the phonograph." 
 
 2. That " Cardinal York, the Henry IXth 
 of the Jacobites, had a son before he was 
 ordained a priest, who was educated in 
 Spain." 
 
 3. That the poet Southey wrote to a 
 friend at Norwich that his own profits from 
 the poem "Medoc" amounted to only 
 ^3, 175. id. in the course of twelve months, 
 whilst " in the same time Walter Scott sold 
 4500 copies of his ' Lay,' and netted over 
 ,1000. But," he continues with proud 
 confidence, "my acorn will continue to 
 grow when his Turkey beans shall have 
 withered." 
 
 After reading only these three paragraphs 
 the mind of an inquiring infant I use the 
 term purely in its legal sense might surely 
 be directed to scientific and historical re- 
 search, or at least to the works of the two 
 
IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN BOOK-LISTS 59 
 
 authors alluded to in the last of them, if 
 only with the view of forming an indepen- 
 dent opinion as to the relative merits of 
 acorns and Turkey beans. 
 
 It can be objected, of course, that like the 
 youth whose "only books were woman's 
 looks," the inexperienced inquirer might be 
 led by a too rash and promiscuous in- 
 dulgence in book-lists to acts of folly and 
 extravagance. That the volumes which 
 such a one might purchase would not, were 
 they to be brought to the hammer, realise 
 the prices expected, or that the information 
 derived from their perusal might prove some- 
 times more " curious" than edifying these 
 are objections which I see and sympathise 
 with, for I know all the dangers that assail 
 the young bibliophile whilst turning over the 
 pages of a really insidious book-list for the 
 first time. 
 
 . . . " No other copy seems to be 
 known." . . . " Specimens of this library are 
 seldom offered for sale." . . . " Probably 
 the best and largest copy in existence." 
 
60 IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN BOOK-LISTS 
 
 These, and like phrases, come to him as did 
 the temptresses to St. Anthony ; for he is 
 too inexperienced to discern the Machia- 
 vellian use of the words seems, seldom, and 
 probably, and he cannot be expected to 
 possess the self-control of a saint. Even 
 if he should pass through this first ordeal 
 unscathed, where is the young collector 
 who will be proof against the subtle fasci- 
 nation of " Not to be found in the British 
 Museum," or the still more potent spell of 
 "Evidently unknown to Lowndes"? . . . 
 
 It is essential, therefore, as in all worldly 
 matters, that the inexperienced reader of 
 book-lists should possess powers of discrimi- 
 nation. He should select his book-lists as 
 he selects his books, his books as he 
 selects his friends. Some will, no doubt, 
 prove worthless and untrustworthy. These 
 he can cast aside or spurn beneath his 
 heel. More particularly are those to be 
 mistrusted which profess to supply valu- 
 able wares at an unusually low rate, 
 thereby deluding their readers with the 
 
IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN BOOK-LISTS 61 
 
 belief that they may pick up real treasures 
 for a song. 
 
 . . . " A copy of this work went at the 
 Hamilton sale for ,68." . . . " The Sunder- 
 land copy, in a modern binding, was sold 
 for 150.". . . . And oh, wonder of won- 
 ders! he may obtain the first for i8s. 6d., 
 and the second for 6, los. ! It is quite 
 enough to turn the young bibliophile's head 
 for the time being ! But, alas, these book- 
 lists are like le panier de peches a cinq sous 
 of the younger Dumas. Examine their 
 contents minutely, and you will discover in 
 each one of them the toute petite tdche noir 
 which detracts so materially from their value. 
 " The frontispiece has been neatly supplied 
 in facsimile." " Pages 8, 10, n, and 24 
 are apparently wanting." " Some Vandal 
 has cut out the fine prints, possibly with 
 the object of making a screen." Notes of 
 a like kind, supplied by the compiler, prove 
 that these mutilated and discredited volumes 
 are, in reality, all too dear for the collector 
 even at the price asked. 
 
62 IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN BOOK-LISTS 
 
 But, apart from its merits as an instructor 
 of youth, the book-list may have other 
 claims to our grateful consideration as a 
 promoter of mental rest. I was once told 
 by a distinguished politician that when in 
 want of repose it was his custom to stretch 
 himself at full length upon his sofa and 
 endeavour to read an old Eton list turned 
 upside down. The gentle effort required 
 in order to decipher the well-known names 
 in such an unusual position, produced a cor- 
 responding reaction, and before he got half- 
 way down the first column he generally 
 found himself in the land of dreams. 
 
 For my own part, I would far rather 
 settle down, quietly, with some soothing and 
 sympathetic book-list, if ever I had leisure 
 to court oblivion. A book-list advertising 
 works dealing with some calm and un- 
 emotional subject for choice ; with miner- 
 alogy, edible fungi, or the like. Or else, 
 to spare myself "the hungry cravings of 
 desire," the catalogue of some book auction 
 that has already actually taken place. For 
 
IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN BOOK-LISTS 63 
 
 here is another merit which the book-list 
 possesses 
 
 " Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale, 
 Its infinite variety." 
 
 How often have I not taken up a book-list 
 " of a certain age " under the impression 
 that it was quite in its first youth, only to 
 find that its pages yielded me the same 
 wealth of useful or useless information as 
 when it first issued from the press ; or else, 
 as has sometimes happened, a slumber as 
 refreshing as any that might have been 
 obtained by trying to read an old Eton list, 
 even when it was turned upside down ! 
 And then we should remember that book- 
 lists come to us thus, as stimulants or 
 sedatives almost always uninvited in the 
 midst of the varying distractions and re- 
 sources of civilised life, when there is so 
 much so much too much ! to be seen, and 
 heard, and read, and remembered, and when 
 our very pleasures end too often by be- 
 coming the destroyers of our peace of mind. 
 
64 IN PRAISE OF CERTAIN BOOK-LISTS 
 
 Think of the warm welcome they must re- 
 ceive at a country parsonage miles away 
 from a railway station, or of how pleased 
 a poor 'castaway, upon some Crusoe island, 
 would be were he to see a consignment of 
 them floating towards him from the wreck 
 along with the tinned meats ! 
 
 Space does not admit of my enlarging 
 further upon this subject. It might not 
 admit, either, of the safe bestowal of every 
 book-list that finds its way to our address 
 by the post. I would plead, therefore, only 
 for the survival of the fittest ; but let these 
 fruits of patience and erudition at least, 
 which have taken so much time and trouble 
 to compile, be saved from the "common 
 fosse " of the waste-paper basket, even if we 
 are obliged to relegate them to "the dust 
 and silence of the upper shelf." 
 
 Rome, 1899. 
 
THE TRUE STORY OF A 
 MIDNIGHT MURDER 
 
 E 
 
THE TRUE STORY OF A 
 MIDNIGHT MURDER 
 
 IT was the "witching hour of night" nay, 
 it was later than the hour thus designated by 
 Shakespeare ; nearer to the dawn, and yet 
 an hour of intensest solitude to those who 
 chance to be keeping a lonely vigil. I had 
 been reading late, as is my habit, but my 
 book must have been more than usually 
 absorbing, for when I closed it and looked 
 up at the clock upon the mantelpiece, it was 
 just upon two. 
 
 I was living in a foreign land upon the 
 shores of the Bosphorus, to make no mys- 
 tery of my whereabouts ; and though we 
 were now at the beginning of the month of 
 September, the day had been oppressively 
 hot. The windows, in front of the closed 
 green shutters, were all wide open, as were 
 
68 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 also the doors leading from one lofty room 
 to another in the large apartments I occu- 
 pied. The house was a wooden one, built 
 as a protection against the earthquakes 
 which occasionally visit these Eastern lands, 
 and the slightest movement seemed to thrill 
 through the whole of its length and breadth 
 as though it had been some sentient creature. 
 Now, all was silent, with a silence that could 
 almost be heard. There was but little fur- 
 niture in the room only the bare necessities 
 of Eastern life ; yellow matting upon the floor, 
 with a few Persian rugs ; a round table, some 
 cane chairs, and light muslin window-curtains. 
 Upon the writing-table at which I was sit- 
 ting, a green shaded reading-lamp, my papers 
 and books, a bunch of old English seals, an 
 ebony-mounted fly-flicker, and a curious old 
 Turkish dagger with a curved damascened 
 blade and pale jade handle. There are 
 moments in life when the most trivial objects 
 seem to force themselves upon our observa- 
 tion, and this was one of them. I remarked 
 that in the exact centre of this jade handle 
 
A MIDNIGHT MURDER 69 
 
 there was a small gold-rimmed aperture in 
 which a gem of some sort had evidently once 
 been set, but which the wantonness of time, 
 or the cupidity of man, had ousted or filched 
 from the socket. The hole provoked me by 
 its vacuity. It seemed like an eye that had 
 been deprived of speculation. I next fell to 
 examining the blade. A kind of dorsal ridge 
 ran down the centre of it, whence it sloped to 
 a fine edge on either side, ornamented with 
 quaint figures and arabesques in gold tracery. 
 The original pattern had been worn away in 
 several places, and here and there it had been 
 blurred over by ominous patches of rust. It 
 was a weapon that had evidently been a 
 good deal used. How, and for what pur- 
 pose? (I began wondering). What would 
 be the sensation, with such a weapon in 
 one's hand, of plunging it into some firm but 
 unresisting substance ; a living, quivering, 
 substance, that would gape, and bleed, and 
 then turn into a helpless and inert mass, 
 whence the freed spirit had taken its wing ? 
 What were the motives, I asked myself, that 
 
70 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 might impel and urge a sane person to the 
 doing of such a dastardly deed ? Unbridled 
 jealousy? Some bitter wrong to avenge? 
 A desperate effort in self-defence, for the 
 protection of hearth and home, or the natural 
 desire to rid the world of some malignant 
 monster ? . . . I made up my mind that, as 
 regarded myself, one of these last two 
 motives would be more likely to have weight. 
 Jealousy, though " cruel as the grave," 
 seemed calculated to inspire rather a sense 
 of humiliation and discouragement. Humbled 
 and abased by its influence, I felt that I 
 should never have the nerve to harm the 
 most hated of rivals. . . . Revenge, too, so 
 dear, "especially to women," what did one 
 ever gain by taking the law into one's own 
 hands ? . . . The real wrong, the evil deed 
 begotten of the evil heart recoils, eventu- 
 ally, upon the head of the evil-doer, and is 
 sure, in the fulness of time, to bring about its 
 own punishment. Over and over again had 
 I watched the wonderful working of retribu- 
 tive justice. But, to defend the helpless, or 
 
A MIDNIGHT MURDER 71 
 
 to dash from the earth some venomous crea- 
 ture, some malignant specimen of what 
 Keats called "men -slugs and human ser- 
 pentry," who might not be tempted to strike ? 
 . . . Aye, and with such a weapon as this, 
 one might make pretty sure of being able to 
 strike home ! . . . 
 
 As these thoughts occurred to me I rose 
 from my chair, and, going to one of the 
 many windows, looked out upon the night. 
 The Bosphorus, usually so blustering and 
 boisterous in its course, was creeping by 
 with scarcely a murmur. Now and then a 
 dolphin, turning clumsy somersaults, or the 
 muffled sound of an oar, disturbed for a 
 moment the more than midnight quiet. 
 The weird cries of the fishermen, scaring 
 away from their nets any unwary craft that 
 might threaten to encroach upon them, had 
 long since died into silence. The waning 
 moon, like the ark on Ararat, or rather, in 
 shape resembling more some kind of lumi- 
 nous and aerial caique, seemed as though 
 it had been left stranded upon the " Giant's 
 
72 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Mountain," and the three red eyes on the 
 lighter-ship at the entrance of the Black 
 Sea were staring luridly across the water, 
 from the Asiatic side, like those of some 
 fabled monster of old time. 
 
 I have heard that two o'clock A.M. is 
 the hour when, according to persons of light 
 and learning, the vital energies of a human 
 being are usually at their lowest possible 
 ebb. Why, then, I asked myself, was it 
 the very one at which I had always felt 
 that my physical and mental perceptions 
 were so extraordinarily quickened and in- 
 tensified ? Was it, perhaps, because, 
 
 "... When half the drowsy world 
 Are made oblivious, by the chains of sleep, 
 To grief, and joy, and love, that through some 
 
 strange, 
 
 Mysterious compensating natural law, 
 The other half of human kind, who wake, 
 Made doubly sensitive, with keener force, 
 Feel those emotions which the sleeping world 
 Forget in dreams " ? 
 
 Elaborate calculations have been made 
 too, I have been informed, which go to 
 
A MIDNIGHT MURDER 73 
 
 prove that more people die at this particular 
 hour, all over the globe, than at any other in 
 the twenty- four. Now, in the time of our 
 forefathers, it is at the "midnight hour" 
 
 that 
 
 " On lonely halls 
 
 A spirit-thrilling sense of horror falls, 
 As some chill breath flutters the arras fold, 
 Just as the solemn ' witching hour ' hath toll'd " ; 
 
 because this was the moment when, accord- 
 ing to tradition, the family ghost would 
 probably put in an appearance, if he ever 
 intended appearing at all. But in those 
 days everybody seems to have taken Time 
 more determinedly by the forelock than we 
 do now. People rose earlier, dined earlier, 
 went earlier to bed in their family four- 
 posters, and, as a matter of course, the 
 domestic ghost could do no less than follow 
 the prevailing mode, and appear at a rea- 
 sonable hour. Now, however, surely two 
 o'clock A.M. this hour of fleeting breath 
 and ebbing pulses should prove more con- 
 genial to visitants from another world ! 
 
74 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 Somehow, during my four years' sojourn in 
 the East, I had well-nigh forgotten that ghosts 
 had ever been believed in at all. Perhaps 
 this may have been due, in some measure, 
 to bright colouring, sunny skies, or the 
 absence of all such time-honoured accessories 
 as old oak chests, ancestral portraits, tapes- 
 tried chambers, and the like ; and to the 
 presence, from time to time, of less spiritual 
 danger, to face which all one's nervous 
 energy might at any moment be required. 
 Ghosts, in fact, as far as I could make out, 
 were much scarcer in the East than else- 
 where, in spite of the tribe of wizards and 
 magicians that were ever ready to invoke 
 them. Perhaps those " chasers of the 
 wind " (the white seabirds, said to represent 
 wandering and erring human spirits, and 
 which are never seen to rest from their 
 incessant flitting) may have absorbed some 
 of them ; or they may have been sealed up 
 in copper flasks by Solomon the Wise, and 
 cast into the depths of the sea. Be this as 
 it may, I am told that nowadays it is the 
 
A MIDNIGHT MURDER 75 
 
 rarest thing possible to see a ghost in either 
 a fez or a turban. (I am alluding now 
 exclusively to Eastern spirits, for I have 
 seen "John King," a fashionable London 
 ghost who used to attend dark stances, 
 masquerading more than once in a tur- 
 ban ; but I fancy he merely assumed this 
 headgear as a means of concealing his ex- 
 traordinary resemblance to " Sludge, the 
 Medium," who, it seems, is obliged to use 
 some of his own features in the mysterious 
 process of materialisation.) Then again, as 
 the Ottoman Turks were originally nomads, 
 and as most of their modern wooden 
 dwelling-places are little better than tents 
 as regards their durability and solidity, 
 haunted houses would seem to be much 
 less common at this extreme edge of 
 Europe than they are farther in the in- 
 terior. Peris, djins, gnomes, will-o'-the-wisps 
 (many of them owing their existence to old 
 Arab or Greek tradition), abound, it is true, 
 in groves, gardens, and mountain solitudes, 
 but about this elfin crew there is nothing 
 
76 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 suggestive of the gruesome horrors of the 
 charnel-house, and one may think about them 
 in hours of solitude and darkness without 
 experiencing any flesh-creeping sensations. 
 
 The late Laurence Oliphant believed 
 (and who knows with what good reason ?) 
 that our passions and emotions, when they 
 have been concentrated and intense, may 
 leave their influence in our dwelling-places 
 long after we have departed to "the House 
 not made with hands." He believed that 
 there were happy and unhappy houses ; that 
 in some happy houses there were unhappy 
 rooms, and that in some happy or unhappy 
 rooms there might be happy or unhappy 
 beds, chairs, and other pieces of furniture ; 
 that the sense of cheerfulness or despondency 
 produced upon the minds of the inmates of 
 such houses, or upon those that were of an 
 impressionable kind, was not merely the 
 result as some ignorant persons might 
 suppose of climate or situation, of the tone 
 of the wall-papers or the disposal of the 
 furniture, but was entirely due to moral 
 
A MIDNIGHT MURDER 77 
 
 causes, and to the behaviour of the former 
 occupants of the place. 
 
 I could here relate an experience of my 
 own respecting a haunted arm-chair, a 
 garbled version of which, by an unknown 
 writer, appeared in a past number of the 
 British Review and National Observer; but I 
 feel that this is no place for such a digression. 
 These subtle exhalations or emanations, 
 however (we may call them what we will), 
 appear, like microbes, to require congenial 
 and appropriate surroundings, an atmosphere 
 in which they may make their influence felt, 
 and in most modern Turkish houses, these 
 do not seem to exist. Rudely shaken by the 
 arms of lusty hamals from the rugs and 
 wadded quilts which, in these parts, do duty 
 for beds ; forced in winter to perch for 
 warmth upon the slippery surfaces of red-hot 
 mangals of burnished brass, or reduced in 
 summer to the consistency of kippered 
 herrings by the fierce sun that beats down 
 upon flat roofs and crazy rafters ; it is small 
 wonder that these poor disembodied anachro- 
 
78 THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 nisms, deprived of the comforts of house and 
 home, should prefer to camp altogether out 
 of doors. 
 
 Now, seeing that this was the case, and 
 that the stalwart Montenegrin at the gate, 
 his girdle glittering with every kind of 
 picturesque weapon of defence, the sound 
 of whose snoring reached me from time to 
 time even where I was seated, would serve 
 as a protection against most material dangers, 
 it may seem strange that fear in any shape 
 should have possessed me ; and yet, do what 
 I would, I experienced a keen sense of terror 
 that thrilled me to the very centre of my 
 being. It dominated everything that I did 
 with the object of dispelling it ; haunting 
 me whilst I was reading, writing, thinking, 
 and toying with the Turkish dagger, and 
 keeping me wakeful and alert as those 
 should be who fear and anticipate the com- 
 ing of some secret foe. 
 
 Then, echoing through the stillness of the 
 lofty chamber to my left, the door of which 
 was wide open, / heard his voice a voice 
 
A MIDNIGHT MURDER 79 
 
 that had often caused me to start in horror 
 from my happiest dreams sounding shrill 
 and discordant now to my terror-stricken 
 ear, though pitched in a key that was, no 
 doubt, intended to be wheedling and con- 
 ciliatory. But I was too well aware of his 
 nature, and of his designs, to be decived by 
 any fair - seeming ! I knew his malignity, 
 his tenacity of purpose, his mad, insatiable 
 hunger for blood ! My right hand crept 
 stealthily towards the only weapon capable 
 of accomplishing his doom, for I felt that 
 I must strike now or never! . . . 
 
 Nearer and nearer! . . . and save for 
 him, I knew that I was probably the only 
 waking creature in the whole length and 
 breadth of that spacious and silent mansion ! 
 . . . When (had I just now decided) might 
 murder the shedding of another's blood 
 be said to be justifiable, morally, if not in 
 the eyes of the law ? Was it not, surely, 
 when something evil and venomous could 
 be thus banished for ever from the earth ? 
 When a blow might be struck, however 
 
8o THE TRUE STORY OF 
 
 hopelessly, in self-defence? when some 
 threatening peril could thereby be averted, 
 and when the secret foe, but for nerve and 
 promptitude on the part of his intended 
 victim, would be the first to strike? . . . 
 
 Nearer and nearer ! . . . A many another 
 bloodthirsty wretch has done before, he was 
 approaching his prey from behind. There 
 was not a moment to be lost, for I knew 
 that his aim was sure, and that he would 
 be quick to strike. . . . Suddenly, and be- 
 fore he could have been aware of my inten- 
 tion, I sprang to my feet and confronted 
 him. I felt nerved to a supreme effort ; for 
 the first time in my life I knew that /, also, 
 thirsted for blood ! . . . 
 
 I grasped my weapon firmly and struck ! 
 . . . He ducked .low, and my first blow 
 encountered only empty air. . . . Then, 
 raising himself, he made a desperate rush 
 at me, but recoiled after it to within about 
 an arm's length. . . . Now was my time ! 
 The light from the reading-lamp fell full 
 upon his hated form. As he was preparing 
 
A MIDNIGHT MURDER 81 
 
 for a second attack, I took steady aim, 
 raised my right arm, and struck ! . . . A 
 smear of red gore streaked my white 
 wrapper as I drew back my weapon ; I 
 had struck, aye, and this time I knew 
 that I had struck home! 
 
 When he was quite dead, I laid out his 
 body upon a sheet of writing-paper and 
 examined it under the microscope. He 
 was a large mosquito of what is termed 
 the " Zebra " variety ; very common during 
 the summer season at Prinkipo and the 
 other islands of the Marmora, and some- 
 times, as we have seen, paying a flying 
 visit to the shores of the Bosphorus. I had 
 slain him with the ebony-handled fly-flicker, 
 and not with the ancient Turkish dagger, 
 as I hope my readers may have wrongly 
 surmised. His body, I perceived, was 
 banded with dark stripes like that of the 
 nobler creature after which he had been 
 named, and I saw that he had a horrid 
 
 F 
 
82 A MIDNIGHT MURDER 
 
 proboscis, shaped like the bill of a wood- 
 cock. I flicked his body away from me in 
 disgust, and, in the pale grey of the early 
 morning, fell to wondering why such pests 
 had ever been created at all. 
 
 Therapia, 1897. 
 
A ROMANCE OF 
 KENSINGTON GARDENS 
 
A ROMANCE OF 
 KENSINGTON GARDENS 
 
 (A FIN DE SINGLE EPISODE) 
 
 I 
 
 LADY MALTRAVERS, wife of the man who 
 came so very near to distinguishing him- 
 self politically before he succeeded to the 
 family honours, had once been an exceed- 
 ingly pretty woman ; not beautiful accord- 
 ing to any classical order of beauty, but she 
 had a timid-fawn expression, as of some 
 lithe, wild thing, that had been captured 
 in the woods and tamed against its will, 
 which had combined with a soft voice, and 
 an appealing manner, to render her very 
 attractive to susceptible members of the 
 opposite sex. Above all, she had been 
 looked upon as an exceedingly young woman 
 
 8s 
 
86 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 for an exceedingly long time. To begin 
 with, she had been a child-wife in the first 
 
 instance ; a childhood which had trodden 
 
 
 
 upon the heels of maturity, and she had 
 always seemed to look too young for most 
 of the serious duties of existence. "A 
 child like you talking about its ' husband ' ! 
 Why, he ought to have been sent to the 
 pillory under the new Act ! " Then, in due 
 course, had arrived babies. " Why, you are 
 only a baby yourself! Can it be possible 
 that you have children?" . . . " Going out 
 for a drive with your 'son'! He is in his 
 perambulator, I presume?" " He has just 
 passed for the army," she had to make 
 answer, pride and shame struggling together 
 in her breast. Then these grown-up babies 
 began having babies themselves. "A toy 
 for your little * grandchild ' ? You a grand- 
 mother! No, no! you can't quite expect us 
 to swallow that!" But they had had to 
 swallow it now, notwithstanding ; and as 
 time went on the poor lady found that 
 the mention of her descendants in the 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 87 
 
 second degree seemed to occasion no 
 manner of surprise. Everybody appeared 
 to think it the most natural thing in the 
 world that she should be a grandmother ; 
 the fact had become utterly stale, flat, and 
 unprofitable ! 
 
 There seemed now only one means left 
 to her by which she might hope to astonish 
 the world. As dear " Sibbie " had married 
 from the schoolroom, entirely against her own 
 wishes, she might hope, perhaps, some day 
 to become an abnormally young-looking 
 ^ra^-grandmother, but for this there would 
 be so long to wait that, who knew, by the 
 time the experience came to her, whether 
 it might not seem to her friends to be 
 perfectly natural too? 
 
 But she was still a very good-looking 
 woman for her years, and, in a certain sense, 
 a remarkable-looking one. The expression 
 of the wild thing captured in the woods 
 was still there, at odd moments, though of 
 the wild thing that had been tamed for 
 some time, and comfortably stall-fed. Her 
 
88 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 step was still agile and her form lithe, 
 and her hair, which, with age, had come 
 to assume the rich golden hue so dear to 
 the old Italian masters, still grew prettily 
 about the temples and above the shell-like 
 ears. Short-sighted people admired her 
 even now, by candle-light, or under a white 
 veil with black spots, en profile perdu ; or 
 when the back was completely turned, she 
 might still have passed for quite a young 
 woman. Bald-headed old bores with bottle- 
 noses (said to have been wonderfully hand- 
 some in youth) were perpetually informing 
 her two daughters that their mother had 
 been quite the loveliest woman of her day, 
 and insinuating that tkey could not hold 
 a candle to her ; whilst foreigners, coming 
 from countries where women are full-blown 
 and passe'e at nineteen, spoke of her with 
 bated breath as though she had been one 
 of the seven wonders of the world. Still, 
 what a difference from the good old time 
 for all this! . . . 
 
 Upon one of the warmest mornings of a 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 89 
 
 past century, this lady might have been seen 
 leaving her luxurious home in Mayfair at 
 a somewhat unusually early hour. She 
 crossed quickly over into the Park, and 
 proceeding to Rotten Row then only occu- 
 pied by what was known as the " Liver 
 Brigade," continued her way along the edge 
 of the Serpentine until she reached the gate 
 at the top of Kensington Gardens, opposite 
 to the bun-house. Here she glanced timidly 
 to the right and left, gave a quick look over 
 either shoulder, and then, as though nerving 
 herself for some desperate purpose, held her 
 parasol closely over her face, and crossing 
 the burning Sahara of sunshine to west of 
 the bun-house, plunged into the grateful 
 shade beyond. Anybody thus watching her 
 anxious and seemingly guilty movements 
 the nervous manner in which she gazed 
 furtively up and down the public paths that 
 intersect the green Kensington savannahs, 
 might have suspected, with some reason, 
 that Lady Maltravers was bound upon a 
 nefarious errand. Had this been a real 
 
90 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 romance, instead of the ephemeral thing that 
 it is, she would most assuredly have been 
 hurrying to keep an assignation with a lover, 
 or, at best, with a drunken brother who had 
 been denied her husband's house, or a dis- 
 reputable old father who had committed 
 forgery or cheated at cards. But this, alas, 
 is no real romance, and poor Lady Mal- 
 travers, who was accompanied by her four- 
 footed favourite " Pekoe " (a small white and 
 tan spaniel of rare breed), was merely seek- 
 ing to evade the new muzzling order, which 
 was then, as now, raging with unwonted 
 virulence in the metropolis. It was true 
 that she had bought for her little favourite 
 the prettiest and most expensive muzzle she 
 could find, but he was a very exceptional 
 dog a dog with a face ; flat as that of an 
 eight-day clock and the accursed engine, 
 when adjusted, scrubbed his eye- balls and 
 confined his jaw like the brank of a mediaeval 
 scold. It was in vain that his mistress 
 (acting upon a suggestion in Punch} 
 alluded to it in his hearing as his " respira- 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 91 
 
 tor," and did all that she could to familiarise 
 him with the instrument of torture. The 
 little fellow could not abide the constraint 
 which seemed to paralyse all natural impulses, 
 and there was nothing for it, therefore, but 
 to evade the law. Her plan was to set forth 
 from home at a time when the police and 
 the park-keepers were, presumably, either 
 at their midday meal, or else, radiating in 
 after-dinner mood, their benevolence quick- 
 ened, and their perceptions possibly blunted, 
 by the genial influence of beer. The little 
 dog, who soon fell in with his mistress's 
 design, used to start from home every morn- 
 ing conscientiously muzzled, with the horrid 
 wires pressing upon his poor little sensitive 
 nose, but upon reaching Kensington Gardens 
 his penance ended. Here the villainous 
 instrument was removed, and firmly strapped 
 to the back part of his harness. If any 
 lynx-eyed myrmidon of the law were to 
 notice this, it could easily be explained to 
 him that the change had been effected by 
 the animal himself, but so well had Lady 
 
92 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 Maltravers' tactics succeeded up to the 
 present time, that although Pekoe had 
 never worn his muzzle in any green place 
 between the hours of 10 A.M. and 2 P.M., she 
 had never been either cautioned or fined in 
 consequence. 
 
 Upon reaching a secluded spot, Lady 
 Maltravers drew forward a chair from the 
 trunk of a gigantic elm and sat down, 
 placing her feet upon the lower bar of 
 another. Yes ; looked at from some dis- 
 tance, in her light summer dress, and flowery 
 hat, she was certainly still a very attractive 
 figure ! 
 
 Oh, those old trees in Kensington Gar- 
 dens, those gnarled elms, and sweet-smelling 
 limes, and blossoming chestnuts ! Upon 
 how many romances must they not have 
 looked down in their time ! What comedies 
 and tragedies have been enacted under 
 their branches ! As Lady Maltravers con- 
 templated the long vistas of sun-flecked 
 shade, a thousand memories connected with 
 her past youth crowded uninvited upon her 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 93 
 
 brain, and she yielded herself unconsciously 
 to their influence. 
 
 How well she could remember only, 
 what was the use of remembering ? that 
 year when Lord Maltravers had had his 
 Colonial appointment. . . . The climate had 
 disagreed with her so terribly that she had 
 been ordered home, and spent the season, 
 as a grass-widow of twenty-two, in London 
 (a pretty woman can make her doctor order 
 her anywhere !) ; and, upon just such a morn- 
 ing as this, how well she remembered com- 
 ing into Kensington Gardens with Pekoe's 
 great-grandfather of blessed memory, and 
 sitting down under this very same tree ! 
 . . . Suddenly she had looked up from her 
 book (she could read the very smallest print 
 then, without glasses), and there he stood 
 under that twisted chestnut, looking so 
 perfectly charming, and distinguished, and 
 different from everybody else ! ... He had 
 declared, the night before, at the ball, that 
 he would be there, but she had pretended 
 not to believe him ! . . . She wore a white 
 
94 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 dress at the ball (she remembered), em- 
 broidered all over with green beetles' wings, 
 and an ivy wreath on her head with gold 
 berries. ... He had told her that she looked 
 exactly like a wood-nymph. . . . (Looking 
 like a wood-nymph was just what she " went 
 in for " then !) . . . She wore her emerald 
 ear-rings, she remembered, and her pearl 
 necklace, and her large diamond star in the 
 middle of the ivy. . . . One might say what 
 one liked about the absurdity of crinolines 
 now, but they certainly showed off a pretty 
 dress to advantage, and made the waist look 
 quite extraordinarily small ! . . . How won- 
 derfully handsome he had looked, standing 
 just there, out of the sunlight ! . . . Men were 
 certainly handsomer in her young days, and 
 decidedly very much more carefully dressed. 
 . . . He had on a white hat, she remem- 
 bered, and grey trousers with horizontal 
 stripes, and lavender kid gloves with black 
 lines down the back of them. ... In his 
 button-hole was a large Malmaison car- 
 nation ; there was something pink, too, she 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 95 
 
 remembered, about his shirt collar. . . . She 
 was looking at the mummy of that very 
 carnation only the other day. . . . How 
 very foolish of her to have kept it ! . . . 
 Thank goodness, she had done nothing 
 more imprudent, but it had been a very 
 hard struggle! . . . She had come upon a 
 gardenia, too, in the same box, folded up 
 so carefully, but labelled with quite un- 
 remembered initials. . . . Who in the world 
 could have given her that flower? . . . 
 Dear me ! how the years slipped by, to be 
 sure, and what unexpected changes they 
 brought with them ! . . . But there were 
 some advantages, after all, in being middle- 
 aged. One could go out by one's self 
 without being subjected to impertinence, 
 sometimes even to insult. ... It was very 
 unpleasant never to be able to look into a 
 shop window, never to be able to get into 
 a hansom cab, without being annoyed in 
 some way. . . . And then, how dreadfully 
 jealous Lord Maltravers (" Charlie") used 
 to be of her! . What terrible scenes 
 
96 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 he made if she could not explain to him 
 exactly where she had been. ... Of course, 
 this was a compliment in itself a compli- 
 ment he never paid her now! . . . She 
 might remain away from home now for 
 the whole day, and nobody seemed to 
 suspect that she was doing anything she 
 shouldn't. . . . This was a grim reflection ! 
 The fact was, Charlie had arrived at the 
 thoroughly unemotional age. ... He never 
 treated her to violent scenes now ; but the 
 only way to approach his heart seemed to 
 be (as some cynical person once remarked) 
 " through his stomach" . . . How she wished 
 that her own impulsive and highly strung 
 nature could likewise have become toned 
 down and thus materialised with the years ! 
 . . . She would have been much, much 
 happier if she could have stifled for ever 
 her passion for the romantic her vague, 
 undying yearning for the mysteries of the 
 unknown. . . . "La femme" (as a witty, 
 and probably wicked, French writer has 
 truly remarked) " cherche toujours r Inconnu, 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 97 
 
 et pour la femme marine, flnconnu ce nest 
 
 jamais le mari ! " . . . Poor Lady Mal- 
 travers would probably have gone on with 
 these unprofitable reflections until luncheon- 
 time, had not some movement upon the part 
 of Pekoe recalled her to the present. As 
 she looked round in the direction of her 
 little favourite, she gave a quick start of 
 surprise ; and yet there was nothing what- 
 ever to be surprised at, after all. A chair 
 to the right of her own, which had been 
 empty when she began her reverie, had 
 merely become occupied "only this and 
 nothing more," except that Lady Maltravers 
 was in one of her most romantic and im- 
 pressionable moods. She had become of 
 late somewhat short-sighted, and the chair 
 in question, which was nearly on a level 
 with her own, was at least forty feet from 
 where she was sitting, but she arranged 
 her parasol in a particular way, and through 
 a convenient hole in its lace-trimming was 
 enabled to study the newcomer at her ease, 
 though even then she could not see his 
 
98 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 features very distinctly. He was an in- 
 teresting-looking, and, indeed, almost a 
 handsome man, apparently (but, as I have 
 said, Lady Maltravers' eyes were now 
 ornamental rather than useful) between 
 the ages of thirty and forty, tall, dark, and 
 of a commanding presence. He struck 
 her, in spite of her predilection for the 
 fashions of her own contemporaries, as 
 being exceedingly well-dressed, though 
 rather in country than in town costume. 
 He wore a soft grey felt hat, such as is 
 usually obtained in Vienna, upon which 
 was a narrow black band, indicative of 
 slight mourning, and he carried a gold- 
 headed cane with which he occasionally 
 tapped the tip of his well-made Oxford 
 shoe. What she could see of his face 
 looked earnest and intellectual. He had 
 a pointed chestnut beard and dark curling 
 hair, worn rather longer than is now usual. 
 The cast of his whole countenance was 
 decidedly melancholy. . . . Why had he 
 chosen this particular chair, in her imme- 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 99 
 
 diate vicinity, when there were so many 
 others standing about? ... Her first im- 
 pulse was to attribute his act to a revival 
 of some of those old impertinences about 
 which she had just been thinking. Then, 
 with a smile and a quick sigh, she dismissed 
 the ridiculous notion. . . . Alas, alas, Youth, 
 in spite of its foolishness, was a splendid 
 possession after all, whilst it lasted ! . . . 
 
 A sudden clearing of the gardens now 
 foretold as plainly as any timepiece the 
 approach of the luncheon hour, and sum- 
 moning Pekoe to her side, she rose from 
 her chair and took her homeward way, with- 
 out having arrived at any definite conclusion 
 with regard to the condition or motive of the 
 stranger, and by luncheon-time she had for- 
 gotten his existence altogether. 
 
ioo A ROMANCE OF 
 
 II 
 
 BUT upon the following day (a Tuesday) 
 history repeated itself, with this difference, 
 however, that when Lady Maltravers arrived 
 at her favourite spot, the stranger was already 
 established there. He leant forward eagerly, 
 and seemed to be scrutinising her attentively 
 as she came towards him from the glaring 
 sunlit glade. Then, as she seated herself 
 in her usual place, he averted his gaze with 
 well-feigned indifference. Of course, it would 
 have been easy enough for her to have taken 
 a chair in some other place, but this might 
 have been interpreted either as a foolish 
 abdication of her rights as a citizen, or else 
 as a sign of over-eagerness to defend what 
 nobody had as yet attempted to attack. . . . 
 It was braver and more dignified to sit 
 down, quite naturally, in her old place. She 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 101 
 
 had become so used to this particular tree 
 that she would have felt quite aggrieved if 
 any one had compelled her to abandon its 
 friendly shelter. 
 
 Lady Maltravers, like most women of an 
 imaginative turn, was, although very short- 
 sighted, extremely observant. Trifles light 
 as air arrested her attention, and just as a 
 late learned professor could construct a 
 Megatherium, or a Plesiosaurus, from a 
 mere rib-bone or dorsal fragment, so was 
 she prone to arrive at the most definite 
 conclusions from the cut of a waistcoat, or 
 from "a shoe-string loosely tied." Upon 
 this particular morning the stranger had re- 
 moved his hat, for the day was unusually 
 hot. The brow was certainly intellectual, 
 and Lady Maltravers observed, or fancied 
 that she observed (for it is not easy to make 
 sure of details when a person is seated just 
 on a level with one's own chair), that there 
 was no kind of parting to the hair. It was 
 simply brushed back from the forehead and 
 behind the ears, curling slightly at the ends. 
 
102 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 The head reminded her of something apos- 
 tolic, and yet, at the same time, it had an 
 artistic and operatic aspect. Yes ; there was 
 something in its pose that recalled Mario to 
 her memory, although the stranger had the 
 advantage of the celebrated tenor in point 
 of height, whilst a certain look of oriental 
 calm, combined with a slightly accentuated 
 profile, to suggest a favourable specimen of 
 the "Semitic alien." He was not reading a 
 morning paper, like the occupants of most 
 of the other chairs she had passed, and the 
 well-made Oxford shoe was of a squarer 
 cut than was generally fashionable in Eng- 
 land. He had discarded, to-day, the gold- 
 headed cane, and carried a white umbrella 
 with an olive-wood handle. It was lined 
 with green, and resembled those which are 
 to be bought upon the Riviera, or at Cairo, 
 as a protection from a more southern sun. 
 All seemed to point to the conclusion that 
 the stranger was a distinguished foreigner, 
 and Lady Maltravers straightway adopted 
 this theory. 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 103 
 
 But upon the following day this idea 
 was subjected to a rude revulsion. As she 
 was crossing the wide patch of sunny lawn on 
 her way to her favourite tree, she perceived, 
 in the shade beyond, two rough -looking 
 individuals engaged in close conversation 
 with the stranger, who was seated in his 
 usual place. The glare was almost over- 
 powering, and what with her white veil and 
 fatigued eyesight, she was unable to dis- 
 tinguish their features. She could see, how- 
 ever, that they were " fellows of the baser 
 sort," one seemingly taller than the other, 
 but both shabby, tattered, and disreputable- 
 looking. One of them was hugging a dark 
 mass under his arm a sack, or a bundle of 
 some kind. As the three apparently caught 
 sight of her, the stranger hurriedly held out 
 his hand to the taller of the two vagabonds, 
 who both shambled off in the direction of 
 the Bayswater Road, and by the time that 
 Lady Maltravers had taken possession of 
 her chair, her neighbour had resumed his 
 usual impassive demeanour. He probably 
 
io 4 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 flattered himself that the incident had escaped 
 her notice. 
 
 Lady Maltravers could not help feeling 
 perturbed by what she had just seen. That 
 this interesting and refined-looking person 
 should be upon terms of intimacy with two 
 such low wretches, shocked and perplexed 
 her. The stranger sank, at once, fathoms 
 deep in her estimation. He was probably 
 a dangerous member of the swell-mob, but, 
 fortunately, he was powerless for harm in 
 broad daylight, and in so public a place. 
 How impossible it was to judge by outward 
 appearances ! . . . What was the use of 
 making a favourable impression upon a crea- 
 ture like this ? So she boldly drew forth her 
 spectacles and began reading the book she 
 had brought with her. By-and-by, looking 
 up absently, she missed Pekoe from her side, 
 and glancing anxiously to the left, saw that 
 he had established himself upon the far side 
 of the stranger's chair, and that the stranger 
 was caressing him, snapping his fingers, and 
 patting him familiarly upon the back. Now, 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 105 
 
 if the stranger had been, as Lady Maltravers 
 had at first imagined, a respectable member 
 of society, who might one day have deve- 
 loped into a valuable and attached friend, 
 there could have been no simpler or more 
 natural manner of beginning an acquaintance 
 than through the instrumentality of this in- 
 telligent and engaging little animal. It 
 would not have been the first time, indeed, 
 that Pekoe, and his departed forebears, had 
 been the means of introducing her to plea- 
 sant and eligible acquaintances. These in- 
 troductions could take place in the most 
 decorous and respectful manner in the world ; 
 " Pray, Madam, may I venture to inquire 
 whether your beautiful little dog is a Blen- 
 heim spaniel?" . . . "Indeed, no, though 
 he has often been mistaken for one! He is 
 an apricot pug of the pure Mikado breed, 
 and came direct from Japan." . . . And 
 then the whole thing was done, and " no- 
 body seemed one penny the worse." But 
 this was altogether a different case, and Lady 
 Maltravers positively sickened at the suspi- 
 
io6 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 cion that now arose in her mind. The 
 stranger was evidently too evidently a 
 dog-stealer. His two low confederates, 
 one of them provided with that ominous 
 black bag, may possibly have been tracking 
 her footsteps for weeks. They had ac- 
 quainted him with her habits, her favourite 
 haunts. . . . Whenever she had come within 
 sight of him, she had always surprised him 
 leaning eagerly forward as though on the 
 lookout for her. . . . Afterwards, he gener- 
 ally leant back, pulled his hat over his eyes, 
 and feigned indifference, but no doubt he was 
 watching her all the time. " Watching her ? " 
 absurd notion ! Watching Pekoe ! and why 
 should she wonder at this, the wicked world 
 being what it is? For was not Pekoe an 
 apricot pug of the pure Mikado breed, and 
 was he not worth more than his own weight 
 in gold? . . . These thoughts crowded 
 through the poor lady's brain with the 
 rapidity of lightning. Once a suspicion is 
 aroused it is strange how everything seems 
 to confirm it. She now saw what she had 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 107 
 
 failed to perceive before, that the stranger 
 had a small black hand-bag under his chair, 
 and from this he was now taking some kind 
 of tempting morsel and offering it to the dog 
 under her very eyes ! . . . She called to 
 Pekoe in a trembling voice, and even nerved 
 herself to a faltering whistle, but the little 
 fellow whilst disdaining the proffered deli- 
 cacy for besides being extremely fastidious, 
 he was in a permanently over-fed condition, 
 seemed unable to tear himself away from 
 the blandishments of his new friend. " The 
 wretch is probably smeared all over with 
 something that attracts dogs ! " she said to 
 herself in horror. Then, calling in a more 
 peremptory tone, Pekoe obeyed her sum 
 mons, and came gaily towards her. On the 
 way home, "heedless of his doom, the little 
 creature played," but his mistress was quite 
 agitated by her alarming experience. 
 
 "Are there any dog-stealers about?" she 
 inquired of a friend in the police as soon 
 as Pekoe's muzzle had been properly ad- 
 justed. 
 
io8 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 " Dog-stealers ? " repeated the man with 
 a grim smile. "Why, there's whole gangs 
 of them about on the lookout for your 
 ladyship's little gentleman ! " and he in- 
 dicated Pekoe by a movement of his head, 
 whilst pointing with his thumb in the direc- 
 tion of Kensington Gardens. 
 
 " Oh, my precious poppet ! " exclaimed 
 her ladyship, when she was once more alone 
 with her little favourite. " What a terrible, 
 terrible danger you have escaped this morn- 
 ing!" 
 
 Next day, which was a Thursday, Lady 
 Maltravers felt so nervous that she was 
 nearly giving up her morning walk alto- 
 gether. It looked a little showery, too ; 
 perhaps it would be wiser to send out Pekoe 
 with one of the footmen ? . . . But he en- 
 joyed so much more going out with her, 
 and a morning walk in damp weather was 
 so particularly good for the complexion ! . . . 
 A fatal curiosity seemed to attract her to 
 Kensington Gardens, if only to see whether 
 that wicked wretch would be there again 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 109 
 
 after the marked manner in which she had 
 shown him that his villainous intentions had 
 been detected. Finally, without stating her 
 reasons, she asked Lord Maltravers whether 
 he felt inclined to accompany her for a 
 morning stroll ? He answered her, after the 
 manner of some husbands, with a sarcastic 
 laugh: "Why, really, my dear Addie, what 
 can be the matter with you? This is the 
 first time for nearly thirty years that you 
 have ever asked me to go out with you ! 
 No, no. Go your own way, as usual, and 
 let me go mine ! " 
 
 Pained, but not altogether surprised, 
 Lady Maltravers took her way to her 
 accustomed place. Before seating herself, 
 she looked sternly and fixedly at the 
 stranger, who was already established, and 
 then, summoning Pekoe to her side, at- 
 tached the leather strap to his harness and 
 fastened it securely to the arm of her own 
 chair. The stranger, who had evidently 
 schooled himself to betray no kind of 
 emotion, pretending, the while, not to notice 
 
no A ROMANCE OF 
 
 her defiant act. He waited until she was 
 seated, and then, backing his own chair 
 further into the shade, took up his position 
 somewhat in her rear, whence he could 
 observe her every movement. It made her 
 extremely nervous to feel that his gaze must 
 be rivetted thus upon the back of her neck 
 the very seat of the sensitive spinal- 
 cord but just as she decided that it was 
 past bearing, she felt a few drops of summer 
 rain. This gave her an excuse for chang- 
 ing her position, when she observed the 
 stranger in the act of unfurling his umbrella ; 
 not the white linen one she had previously 
 noticed, but one more suited to a showery 
 day. He did not offer it to her, as any- 
 body, she thought, except a confirmed 
 criminal, would have done under the cir- 
 cumstances, and as she had stupidly for- 
 gotten her own, there was nothing for it 
 but to beat a hasty retreat in the direction 
 of the bun-house, which she had hardly time 
 to gain before the rain descended in right 
 earnest. A good many people were as- 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS in 
 
 sembled under the verandah surrounding 
 this well-known kiosk, and Lady Maltravers 
 took her stand amongst them, still holding 
 Pekoe by his string. Their numbers in- 
 creased as soaking fugitives from the gardens 
 came rushing towards the convenient shelter, 
 until, at last, she found herself to the ruina- 
 tion of her summer toilette wedged in 
 between the wall of the building and a 
 mud-bespattered bicycle which was stand- 
 ing to the right of the doorway. The 
 passion for cycling being still in the ascend- 
 ant, several people were contemplating the 
 machine with attention. From their re- 
 marks, Lady Maltravers who had lately 
 been seriously thinking of taking to " bik- 
 ing " herself gathered that it was a machine 
 of great beauty and velocity, and she, too, 
 began examining the "iron horse" with 
 languid interest. As she was thus engaged 
 she gave a sudden start, and jerked ner- 
 vously at Pekoe's leading-string. She was 
 quite ignorant of the anatomy of the bicycle, 
 and so could not give to its different mem- 
 
ii2 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 bers their proper technical names ; she only 
 knew that, tied on to that part of it which 
 would have been its chest, if it had been 
 indeed a living creature, was a small black 
 hand-bag, exactly resembling the one she 
 had seen, only yesterday, under the stran- 
 ger's chair, and which had certainly not 
 been there to-day. An entirely new flood 
 of conjecture overwhelmed her at this dis- 
 covery. It was unlikely, she thought, that 
 a dog-stealer would fly about upon a bicycle. 
 Where and how could he dispose of his cap- 
 tives ? Yes ; it certainly was the same bag 
 as far as she could judge, at least. A 
 waiter dashed past her at this moment 
 with an empty tea-cup. 
 
 " Gentry like him needs a fast 'un ! " he 
 called out in reply to some one who was 
 remarking upon the bicycle. " He's got to 
 look after fast 'uns himself! " 
 
 "Gentry like him?" Impelled by some 
 kind of fascination, Lady Maltravers followed 
 the waiter into the bun-house. " That 
 bicycle is not for sale, is it ? " she inquired 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 113 
 
 tentatively of the young lady behind the 
 counter. 
 
 " I don't know," returned the young lady 
 haughtily ; "it belongs to a gentleman that's 
 sitting down under the trees. The waiter 
 knows him." 
 
 " I don't know nothing about his sitting 
 down, Miss," answered the waiter, assuming 
 a jocular tone (Lady Maltravers was still 
 constantly addressed as "Miss " by persons 
 in this class of life). "It all depends on 
 what they're doing as he's after catching 
 out!" 
 
 '"Catching out'?" 
 
 " Yes, Miss ; the ' guilty couples.' Thenis 
 who he's after ! There's his kodak all ready 
 to take a snap-shot at them when they're 
 doing what they didn't ought ! He's one of 
 Mr. Nailer's bicycle detectives." 
 
 The waiter dashed out through the open 
 door, leaving Lady Maltravers fairly para- 
 lysed with horror. The stranger, then, was 
 one of the most dangerous and redoubtable 
 
 of his sex ; one who collected evidence for 
 
 H 
 
ii4 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 the Divorce Court against those unfortunate 
 couples who loved not wisely but too 
 well ! . . . Lord Maltravers doubted her 
 fidelity, and had employed a bicycle detec- 
 tive to watch her movements ; to photograph 
 them, even, if they were in any way com- 
 promising ! ... His strange, almost brutal 
 manner in the morning ; the bitter, sarcastic 
 tone in which he had bidden her go "her 
 own way," all pointed to this conclusion ! 
 He was not, then, after all, so very in- 
 different ! There was something flattering 
 in this, at any rate ! . . . But what if he 
 had become tired of her? ... If he was 
 merely seeking for a pretext to free himself 
 from her for ever with the object of marrying 
 some one he liked better ? . . . 
 
 " He has begun rather late ! " she mur- 
 mured, with the sigh of one who suffers 
 rather from tempered remorse than from un- 
 profitable regrets : "Who knows but that, if 
 he had had this absurd notion some years ago, 
 one mightn't have given him some kind of 
 excuse for his horrid suspicions ! . . . And 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 115 
 
 to think that there may be some poor 
 wretches who are actually ' kodaked ' ! . . . 
 And yet, they call this the civilisation of the 
 nineteenth century! I declare it almost 
 makes one wish that one lived in the days 
 when people wore no clothes and walked 
 about painted blue, like the ancient Britons ! 
 . . . O Pekoe ! Pekoe ! " she exclaimed 
 aloud, as, the weather having cleared, she 
 tripped home through the now deserted Park 
 with a proud consciousness of injured in- 
 nocence, "the more I know of men (as 
 somebody once said in French), plus 
 faime les chiens!" 
 
 Lord and Lady Maltravers, whose town- 
 house was situated in Mayfair, had formed 
 their wedded life upon that kind of fashion- 
 able, latter-day model, which, if love's loss 
 is to be generally attributed to satiety, or to 
 a too greedy indulgence in domestic joys, 
 ought to have insured its eternal duration. 
 Lord Maltravers, who suffered from asthma 
 when it suited his purpose, occupied a 
 room upon a different floor from his wife's 
 
u6 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 Lady Maltravers being what is termed " a 
 light sleeper," whom snortings, hawkings, 
 and all guttural grunts and gaspings would 
 naturally be likely to disturb. He retired to 
 rest early and she late. She arose late and 
 he got up early. He partook of breakfast 
 at the Travellers' Club, she had hers sent 
 up to her, in her bedroom, upon a tray. 
 Now and then, but not often, they met at 
 luncheon, though upon these rare occasions 
 other people were generally present. In the 
 afternoon, his lordship walked about, drove 
 in hansoms, dropped in at the House of 
 Lords, or went to some of his favourite 
 clubs, whilst Lady Maltravers received 
 visitors or drove out to leave cards. When 
 Lord Maltravers came home his wife had 
 generally gone up to dress for dinner, and he 
 would as soon have thought of intruding 
 uninvited upon the Dowager Empress of 
 China, or the Grand Lama, as of knocking 
 at her door during the performance of this 
 mystic rite. It was their custom to* dine out 
 when not entertaining at home, and as Lord 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 117 
 
 Maltravers was the very soul of punctuality, 
 whilst his wife had earned for herself the 
 reputation of never being in time for any- 
 thing, he preferred starting off at the ap- 
 pointed hour, in a hansom-cab, and leaving 
 her to follow in the brougham at her leisure. 
 After dinner, Lady Maltravers usually went 
 to the opera, or attended some of the 
 numerous balls and parties to which they 
 were always invited ; whilst Lord Maltravers, 
 music being to him merely a noise, and all 
 crowded assemblies an utter abomination, 
 was wont, after looking in at the Turf Club, 
 to walk home through the Park when the 
 nights were not too dark and asthmatical. 
 When, therefore, Lady Maltravers sought 
 her solitary couch towards the small hours 
 of the morning, her husband had generally 
 been peacefully wheezing and snoring for 
 a considerable time in the room overhead. 
 This had gone on during the greater part 
 of a married life which had been mercifully 
 prolonged beyond what has been accounted 
 the mean average. Romeo and Juliet, 
 
n8 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 separated by bolts and bars, and with all 
 the tribe of Montagues and Capulets com- 
 bining together to "spoilsport," contrived, 
 as we all know, to see much more of one 
 another, so that it was pitiful and strange 
 indeed to think that " passion's trance," upon 
 which we dwelt at some length at the be- 
 ginning of this volume, should ever have 
 been " overpast " at all, or that the demons 
 of doubt and mistrust should have crept 
 in to mar what must have seemed such 
 a perfectly organised menage to the out- 
 sider ! 
 
 Lord Maltravers had only just left the 
 house when his wife reached home. Owing 
 to the storm she was a little later than usual. 
 
 "His lordship was in an 'urry," the foot- 
 man explained. "Went off to Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields upon business." 
 
 " Lincoln s Inn Fields ! " The grim 
 abode of the crusty old family lawyer ! 
 Poor Lady Maltravers saw in this the 
 confirmation of her worst fears ! 
 
 This was just one of the rare occasions 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 119 
 
 when she would have wished to find her 
 husband at home. She would have liked 
 to have scrutinised his face ; to have ques- 
 tioned him ; to have found out how much 
 he really knew about her ; to have said 
 something to touch him about the dear old 
 times (very, very old times indeed), just 
 as he was possibly contemplating an eternal 
 separation ! 
 
 But it was not to be ! . . . 
 
 She defied him to find out anything, now, 
 that would tell to her disadvantage! ... It 
 was just a little too late, as she had already 
 decided. ... Her love affairs, if she had 
 ever had any (and nobody is ever bound 
 to criminate themselves !), were as utterly 
 over and done with as those of Villon's dead 
 ladies; gone with " les neiges d'autan!" . . . 
 Charlie's inquiries would only end in smoke, 
 and might even serve, possibly, to draw them 
 closer together ; unless, of course, he had 
 taken up with some horrid, low creature, 
 who would persuade him to " stick at 
 nothing," and unless his seeming stolidity, 
 
120 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 and his very asthma itself, were merely 
 ruses to throw dust in his wife's eyes ! . . . 
 
 She went into his study before luncheon, 
 and examined, though without any result, 
 the letters and papers upon his writing-table. 
 The leather seat of his chair was still warm, 
 and the end of his cigarette still smoulder- 
 ing in an ash-tray. On the table lay a news- 
 paper, and as she glanced carelessly at the 
 date of it, her eyes lighted upon the following 
 advertisement, which may be read any day 
 by the curious : " Nailer's detectives for 
 divorce. Before commencing divorce pro- 
 ceedings, consult Nailer, who will obtain 
 all available reliable evidence ; successful in 
 every case in the Divorce Court for nearly 
 twelve years." 
 
 " After success sometimes comes failure ! " 
 murmured Lady Maltravers, smiling, and 
 she then continued reading 
 
 " ' Nailer's (bicycle) detectives : for ascer- 
 taining where people go, what they do, 
 the company they keep, whether the club 
 is responsible for late hours, and if shopping 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 121 
 
 alone occupies so much time/ . . . This 
 is dreadful ! " poor Lady Maltravers ejacu- 
 lated. But there was worse to come, as, 
 with haggard eyes, she continued 
 
 " ' Animatographe : Mr. Nailer carries out 
 this process of photography in all cases, 
 and produces the pictures in evidence in 
 court. Consultations free/ Pictures pro- 
 duced in court ! " she exclaimed in horror. 
 "With all the dreadful lawyers and one's 
 own husband looking on all the time ! 
 How too, too terribly appalling for words ! " 
 
122 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 III 
 
 LADY MALTRAVERS passed a disturbed night 
 after these events, and yet, at the same 
 time, one of self-congratulation and triumph. 
 In the morning, feeling that it was absolutely 
 incumbent upon her to refute all these unjust 
 suspicions, she took her accustomed way, 
 treading proudly and defiantly, as with the 
 footsteps of conscious innocence. 
 
 But life is indeed made up of surprises ! 
 
 As she neared the gate opposite to the 
 bun-house, she perceived a vulgar-looking 
 man in tight trousers, and with a cunning 
 expression of countenance, in the act of 
 coaxing across the intervening roadway the 
 very same bicycle black bag and all (as 
 far as she could judge, at any rate) that had 
 arrested her attention upon the previous day. 
 He deposited it in the verandah of the bun- 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 123 
 
 house, and then, after exchanging a few 
 ribald remarks with the waiter for she 
 heard several guffaws of coarse laughter 
 he lit a short pipe and plunged into the 
 adjacent shade. This, then, was the real 
 "bicycle detective" one of the most malig- 
 nant and pernicious outcomes of modern 
 civilisation ! As Lady Maltravers watched 
 him peering anxiously under the green 
 boughs, on the lookout for his prey, she 
 felt that she owed the interesting stranger 
 some sort of reparation for the manner in 
 which she had wronged him, though only 
 in thought! 
 
 Somewhat chastened in spirit, and much 
 softened towards the occupant of the neigh- 
 bouring chair, who was already in his place, 
 she sat down under her favourite elm. 
 Another surprise was now in store for her, 
 calculated still further to rehabilitate the 
 stranger, and prove how utterly absurd had 
 been some of her previous conjectures. She 
 had not been seated for more than five 
 minutes before the two men she had assumed 
 
124 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 to be confederate dog-stealers again entered 
 the gardens from the direction of the Bays- 
 water Road, and made straight for the 
 stranger's chair. There was the same guilty 
 start, upon his part, as they suddenly accosted 
 him, the same hurried colloquy, the same 
 furtive hand -shake, as upon the previous 
 occasion. But then, the two wretches (as 
 she had designated them in her ignorance), 
 instead of departing by the way they had 
 come, walked deliberately towards her and 
 stopped in front of her chair. 
 
 Merely a poor old blind man, led by a 
 boy holding an accordion ; presumably a 
 violinist violin evidently carried in ominous 
 black bag, whence the top of it could be 
 seen protruding! . . . Oh, sight of woman 
 when she is past her prime ! Oh, over- 
 heated and too luxuriant imagination ! Scales 
 seemed now to fall from her ladyship's fatigued 
 eyes. What more natural than that the 
 stranger, surprised in the midst of a reverie, 
 or even, perhaps, of a morning nap, should 
 have started when these poor mendicants 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 125 
 
 had addressed him asking him, as they 
 were now asking her, for alms wherewith 
 to relieve their necessities? What more 
 natural, too, than that the stranger well- 
 to-do, and sympathetic, as she now perceived 
 that he evidently was should have pitied 
 them and given them of his plenty, for what 
 she had taken for a familiar, though furtive, 
 greeting, was merely the passing of coin 
 from the hand of the rich man into that of 
 the poor. Had the stranger's chair been 
 only a little nearer to her own, she could 
 never have made such a ridiculous mis- 
 take ! . . . Determined not to be outdone 
 by the stranger in generosity, and as she 
 perceived that he seemed to be closely ob- 
 serving her, she drew a two-shilling piece 
 from her purse a larger coin than she 
 was in the habit of giving to beggars 
 and handed it somewhat ostentatiously to 
 the blind musician. His homely face be- 
 came illuminated as his palm closed upon 
 it, whilst the boy with the accordion began 
 capering for joy, after flinging upon the 
 
126 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 breeze a few wild notes from his abomin- 
 able instrument. 
 
 As Lady Maltravers walked home, she 
 set to work, like Penelope, to undo, stitch 
 by stitch, every shred of the elaborate 
 fabric she had been so ingeniously weav- 
 ing, so that, by the time she had retired 
 to her room for the night, the apostolic, 
 operatic, Semitic, dog-stealing, bicycle-de- 
 tective had developed into a generous and 
 chivalrous gentleman of high social stand- 
 ing. He had no designs upon her precious 
 Pekoe, neither had he been paid by an un- 
 grateful husband to watch her movements 
 with a view to her social undoing. . . . 
 But why, then, had he come every day, 
 for nearly a week, to this very same spot ? 
 . . . Why had he leant forward so eagerly 
 whenever he saw her approaching ? . . . 
 These questions would obtrude themselves 
 in spite of herself. They seemed to her 
 to admit of only one satisfactory answer. 
 
 " Tais-toi, mon cceur! " she murmured softly, 
 as she threw herself back upon her pillow, 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 127 
 
 quoting from an impassioned love - song 
 which had been fashionable in the days of 
 her youth, " Mon pauvre coeur! tais-toi!" 
 
 Upon the following day, which was a 
 Saturday, Lady Maltravers spent more than 
 usual time and trouble over the mysteries 
 of the toilet. Poor Celestine, the French 
 maid, could not imagine what fly had bitten 
 her mistress, who was not generally so 
 exigeante and difficile. Every hair had to 
 be in its place, every fold of her dress 
 becomingly adjusted. This was not right ; 
 that looked untidy : nothing seemed to 
 satisfy her. Her shoes had been smeared 
 over with common blacking instead of " kid 
 reviver," and the gloves that had been put 
 out for her had only two buttons instead of 
 three ! 
 
 " But Milady is not going to pay visits?" 
 ventured Celestine, looking surprised, "and 
 she has often said that le " leader" de Pekoe 
 spoilt her gloves, and that she preferred old 
 ones in the morning ? " 
 
 What did it matter to Celestine where 
 
128 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 she was going ? Celestine's mistress retorted. 
 Was it Celestine's place to dictate to her 
 what she was to wear when she went out ? 
 No ; she might take away that horrid old 
 parasol ! She would take her new white 
 one ! . . . 
 
 Poor Celestine, who was a girl from the 
 provinces, with none of the pluck or repartee 
 of a Parisian, at once collapsed, and Lady 
 Maltravers sallied forth at her accustomed 
 hour, ridiculously smart so Celestine 
 thought for the morning, and looking 
 quite as though she were a la recherche 
 de raventure, only, of course (the girl 
 added, mentally), she was much too old 
 to think about anything of that sort, now! 
 Upon coming within sight of the stranger, 
 Lady Maltravers observed that a man was 
 standing by his side, who, upon leaving 
 it, came briskly towards her. He turned 
 out to be a tall footman, in a neat livery. 
 Possibly the stranger who now rose still 
 higher in her estimation might have for- 
 gotten something which his servant knew 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 129 
 
 he would require, or he might have been 
 bringing him some telegram or important 
 letter. As he passed, the man touched his 
 hat to her respectfully. There was nothing 
 singular in this. As a member of the great 
 world, he had, no doubt, met her in society, 
 at the houses of some of her friends. One 
 does not always notice the face of the man 
 who opens the door to one when paying a 
 visit, or who waits behind one's chair when 
 dining out ! This man's face, however it 
 struck her as soon as he had passed 
 seemed to be more than usually familiar. 
 By the time she had seated herself under 
 her favourite tree, she remembered all about 
 him. He was no other than Thomas 
 Greenfield, who had once lived in her 
 service as first footman ; as her own par- 
 ticular footman, that is to say (called 
 " Thomas " because his real name was 
 ' 'Charles," a name her husband insisted 
 upon having the monopoly of in his own 
 house). He was a most respectable young 
 man, considerably over six feet high, as 
 
1 30 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 good as he was beautiful, who would 
 never have consented as he used to 
 express it to "take a rough place, hot 
 even to live with Royalty itself," and who 
 had only frequented "the very best 'ouses." 
 He left her service, she now remembered, 
 about two years ago, and, upon doing so, 
 had made her the kindest little speech in 
 the world, giving her the best of characters, 
 and alluding to his lordship with great 
 friendship and good feeling, "but (he had 
 concluded), "of course, as there wasn't no 
 billiard-room for the men, which was a 
 thing he had always been accustomed to, 
 it wasn't possible that he should go on with- 
 out ' making a change,' " and then, sadly, 
 though with a sentiment of mutual esteem, 
 the two had parted, as she had deemed, for 
 ever. That this young exquisite should 
 have now condescended to enter the service 
 of the stranger, seemed, in Lady Maltravers' 
 opinion, to be almost equivalent to a patent 
 of nobility in itself. A moment more, and 
 she had elaborated an entirely new theory, 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 131 
 
 suggested by merely this chance meeting 
 with her former servant. The stranger, she 
 now settled in her own mind, was an in- 
 teresting widower, possibly in delicate health : 
 this notion was evoked by the black band 
 upon his grey " wide-awake," by his ap- 
 parent sadness and isolation, and by the 
 unusually attentive manner in which Thomas 
 had bent over him when receiving his orders. 
 He was a widower, with just enough of the 
 invalid about him to drive him to intellectual 
 musings, and to prevent him from thinking 
 of nothing but sport and amusement. No- 
 body would be more likely to yearn for 
 female sympathy than a person in his lonely 
 position. . . . Thomas Greenfield, it was 
 evident, had entered his service ; quite an 
 exceptionally refined and fastidious young 
 man for the class to which he belonged 
 (too refined and fastidious, indeed, to remain 
 any longer in her own establishment) and 
 one that a solitary being, like the stranger, 
 might make something of a friend of. ... 
 What more natural than that he should 
 
132 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 sometimes enter into conversation with his 
 personal attendant, and question him about 
 his former places and employers ? . . . Now, 
 of course, Lady Maltravers was the very 
 last person in the world who would have 
 confided her private feelings to her foot- 
 man, but yet how much a really intelligent 
 footman, if only he keeps his eyes and ears 
 well open, must come to know of those 
 under whose roof he abides ! . . . Thomas 
 Greenfield must have known, in spite of 
 her assumed cheerfulness, that she was, in 
 reality, anything but a happy woman ! . . . 
 He must have known how lonely, how 
 terribly in want of sympathy she was, not- 
 withstanding the crowds she frequented ! . . . 
 He must have known all about Charlie's 
 callous, asthmatical nature, and her sad home- 
 comings in the first grey glimmer of the 
 summer dawn ! . . . Often and often, when 
 she had come back from a ball or party, 
 and when Thomas, after getting down from 
 the box and letting her in with the latch- 
 key, had respectfully handed her her flat 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 133 
 
 bed-room candlestick they two being the 
 only waking creatures in that silent mansion 
 he must have seen that there were tears in 
 her eyes tears that rose in spite of every 
 effort to restrain them, as she thought of 
 the difference between the balls and parties 
 of to-day and those of the glorious old 
 bygone times of chignon and crinoline ! 
 . . . Then, again, Thomas knew of all 
 her daily manners and customs during the 
 time that the family remained in town. 
 He knew that she was accustomed to go 
 with Pekoe every morning to Kensington 
 Gardens : the very spot she always selected 
 the very chair upon which she was 
 accustomed to sit. . . . The stranger, she 
 now felt certain, was not only acquainted 
 with her name and address, but with every 
 minute detail connected with her inner 
 life. . . . She need scarcely inquire now, 
 she said to herself, why he had been at- 
 tracted every morning to this same spot ! 
 . . . It was all very wonderful, and ro- 
 mantic, and unexpected, and the worst of 
 
134 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 it was or the best of it (this would depend 
 upon the sequel) the stranger, who would, 
 of course, assume that she knew with whom 
 her former footman was living, might 
 actually come to imagine that she, also, 
 had been magnetically impelled in the 
 same direction ! . . . She glanced round, 
 as these thoughts crossed her mind, and 
 perceived that he was leaning eagerly to- 
 wards her, hands clasped and eyes fixed, 
 as though in a state of wrapped and ecstatic 
 admiration ! . . . No ! she had certainly 
 not been mistaken this time, and the 
 question that now presented itself was, 
 how, after having apparently countenanced, 
 and even encouraged, his advances for the 
 whole of the inside of a week, ought she 
 to behave towards him ? 
 
 Now, if Lady Maltravers had been a 
 Puritan maiden, a country milkmaid, or 
 anything else that might have been supposed 
 to be quite ignorant and unsophisticated, this 
 question would have been very easily an- 
 swered. Nothing could be more unwise or 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 135 
 
 more immodest than for a young person in 
 such a position to play with fire. But with 
 her the case was altogether different. Some 
 people, as everybody knew, might steal a 
 horse, whilst others could not so much as 
 look over a gate. Lady Maltravers was an 
 intelligent and enlightened outcome of the 
 nineteenth century, living in an extremely 
 emancipated milieu, where consciences and 
 morals were possessed of an elastic quality, 
 and where almost everything was tolerated 
 except boredom. She was conversant with 
 the lighter literature of her day from the 
 decadents downwards ; had coquetted with 
 theosophy, hypnotism, and other pheno- 
 mena ; was a member of the Society for 
 Psychical Research, and knew all the mys- 
 tic jargon concerning " counterparts " and 
 " natural affinities." An adventure which 
 might be pretty certain to end in something 
 improper and unfortunate where the middle- 
 class young person was concerned would 
 merely result, in her own case, in some 
 delightfully new, and possibly dramatic, 
 
136 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 Ibsenish experience. . . . Not, of course, 
 that she intended doing anything really 
 wrong ; but yet, who could say, when once 
 one embarked upon an adventure of this 
 kind, how far one might be carried in spite 
 of one's self? . . . One became, as it were, 
 a mere straw upon the stream of Destiny ; 
 how could one tell where one would stop? 
 . . . Supposing that she went very, very 
 far indeed even to the length of break- 
 ing any of the Commandments and then 
 went even further still, and broke the last 
 Commandment of all, " Thou shalt not be 
 found out " ? . . . what a surprise, and what 
 a scandal the whole thing would occasion ! 
 . . . Fancy Charlie's astonishment, and poor 
 Sibbie's horror, who had become so dread- 
 fully prim and censorious just because she 
 was happy ! What would be the attitude, 
 she wondered, of Sibbie's husband, who 
 had declared (behind her back, of course) 
 that he believed her former beauty must 
 have been "a good deal overrated"? . . . 
 (Sons-in-law very seldom had anything 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 137 
 
 pleasant to say of their wives' mothers!) 
 It would be rather fun, she couldn't help 
 thinking, whatever happened ! . . . People 
 would talk about it a great deal, and 
 would know that only a very remarkable 
 woman could have led a dual, Hyde-and- 
 Jekyll kind of existence, without arous- 
 ing suspicion under the very eyes of 
 all London! . . . Many would under- 
 stand and sympathise, though they might 
 be afraid to admit it. ... All people who 
 knew Charlie well would be sure to under- 
 stand. . . . She did not wish to find fault, 
 or to pose as a femme incomprise. ... He 
 was what might be called a kind and ac- 
 commodating husband in many respects, 
 but his stolid insensibility was terribly try- 
 ing to one with a nervous emotional nature 
 like her own. . . . There were women, she 
 believed, who as long as they had a nice 
 house, and a comfortable bed, and carriages 
 and horses, and plenty to eat and drink, 
 would not mind in the least what sort of 
 dispositions their husbands had been blessed 
 
138 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 with, but she was altogether a woman of 
 a different stamp. . . . She was more 
 like someone in a French novel the 
 heroine of an M /?/fcafe"; she felt this more 
 and more every day! . . . She was one of 
 those women who must not be judged 
 by conventional standards because their 
 temperaments were altogether exceptional 
 and different from those of "the herd." 
 . . . There was one thing that presented 
 itself to her very clearly, and which she 
 felt ought to be borne in mind from the 
 onset. This experience if it ever ripened 
 into anything definite would probably 
 be the very last of its kind ; an experi- 
 ence, therefore, not to be entered upon 
 lightly, out of mere flippancy of spirit, and, 
 still less, to be lightly despised and rejected, 
 seeing that it might mark some really im- 
 portant epoch in her existence. The meeting 
 with the stranger had been from the first 
 romantic and unexpected : the whole thing 
 had about it an air of predestination. . . . 
 She had had a very curious dream, too, 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 139 
 
 upon the previous night, only she could 
 not quite recollect what it was about. . . . 
 If past experience had not taught her how 
 she ought to act in the present crisis, she 
 must indeed be a hopelessly confirmed 
 idiot! . . . 
 
 These thoughts, which occurred to her 
 with lightning rapidity, seemed only to 
 confirm her in her desperate resolve. She 
 would do something rash and altogether 
 reckless: make a "move" of some sort 
 a demonstration of some kind. . . . Only, 
 she must do it in the most discreet and 
 tentative manner . . . and, above all, she 
 must provide some correct means of beating 
 a retreat in the event of any unpleasant 
 or unexpected complication. Everything 
 seemed to point to Pekoe as the most 
 appropriate envoy to be employed in such 
 very delicate and unconventional circum- 
 stances, and summoning the little creature 
 to her side upon the impulse of the moment, 
 she whispered in his ear that he must "go 
 
140 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 fetch " something which she made a pre- 
 tence of throwing in the direction of the 
 stranger's chair. Pekoe, as I have already 
 said, was no ordinary dog, but an apricot 
 pug of the pure Mikado breed, and as 
 one contemplated his expressive goggle 
 eyes and broad Shakespearian brow, one 
 could well imagine him to be capable of 
 grasping the situation in all its bearings. 
 A moment more, and the stranger, leaning 
 towards the special envoy, was patting him 
 affectionately upon the back and lavishing 
 upon him every kind of endearing expres- 
 sion. From time to time, whilst uttering 
 all these tender names, he flung an im- 
 passioned glance in the direction of Lady 
 Maltravers' chair. . . . What was the next 
 thing to be done ? Events were rushing 
 on towards their culmination even faster 
 than she had anticipated, but the game 
 was still, fortunately, in her own hands! . . . 
 With a pulse considerably quickened by 
 nervous excitement, and with the stranger's 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 141 
 
 ardent gaze still fixed upon her face, she 
 endeavoured to bring to bear upon the 
 situation all her knowledge of woman's 
 strength and man's incorrigible weakness, 
 together with all the trifles light as air 
 which were calculated either to attract or 
 repel the one or the other. She recog- 
 nised, finally, that man for all his weak- 
 ness was a " pursuing animal," and that 
 prudence even in a strong woman was 
 the better part of valour. It was not likely 
 that the stranger's ardour would be one 
 whit diminished if she went home now, 
 and thoroughly considered the matter until 
 next day ! . . . Once things had proceeded 
 thus far, there was no need of indecent 
 hurry, and it would be well to find out a 
 little more about the stranger before doing 
 anything really irrevocable. He would 
 think her cruel and capricious, no doubt, 
 but to be cruel and capricious was one of 
 a woman's most sacred privileges, and later 
 on this could be counteracted if need be ; 
 
142 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 so, rising majestically from her place, she 
 summoned Pekoe to her side, and set forth 
 upon her homeward way, without casting 
 even a sidelong glance in the direction of 
 the stranger's chair. 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 143 
 
 IV 
 
 AFTER a solitary luncheon, Lady Maltravers 
 determined to interrogate Thomas Green- 
 field's successor, although he was quite as 
 dense and stupid as Thomas had been 
 bright and intelligent. 
 
 " Do you happen to remember, Fre- 
 derick," she asked, " where Thomas Green- 
 field went to after leaving his lordship's 
 service ? " 
 
 No ; Frederick did not remember. She 
 had hardly hoped that he would. All he 
 knew was that he had left that place and 
 gone to another. 
 
 "They was very good sort of people, 
 I believe," he said in a patronising tone ; 
 "Baronets somewhere down Hampshire 
 way ; only as Thomas didn't meet the 
 company he'd been accustomed to keep, 
 
144 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 and they only took an 'ired 'ouse in town 
 until Heaster, and wore cotton stockings 
 for full dress ; of course Thomas he gave 
 warning at his month." 
 
 " Of course," repeated her ladyship, who 
 was not without a gentle sense of humour. 
 " Thomas wouldn't have liked that! And 
 I dare say that there wasn't a billiard-table 
 either? . . . You don't know the name of 
 the family he is living with now ? " 
 
 No ; Frederick did not know, though 
 he could easily find out. He had heard 
 . . . it was a place where they didn't re- 
 quire characters if the footmen had lived 
 in " smart 'ouses and had a fine appear- 
 
 ance." 
 
 " They?" Thomas's master, then, was a 
 married man ? 
 
 No ; Frederick didn't think he was mar- 
 ried, because Thomas, who sometimes visited 
 at " the 'ouse," had said " how anxious 
 the ladies was to get 'old of him. Having 
 no lady always made the place a good bit 
 heasier. 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 145 
 
 " And this place is an easy one ? . . . 
 Thomas has now every comfort?" 
 
 " Oh yes, Thomas is as comfprtable as 
 possible, thank you. . . . There's nine 
 men in livery where he's living now. 
 . . . Electric light in the 'all and in the 
 servants' bedrooms. . . . Swimming-baths 
 and lorn-tennis for the men. . . . Three 
 kinds of wine at table, besides * hale ' ; and 
 champagne of a Sunday, and an electric 
 horgan that plays at meal-times all the latest 
 hairs from the hopera. . . . They haves 
 hices during the summer months, and when 
 the 'unting season commences, them as is 
 off duty is allowed to ride out upon saddle- 
 'orses. . . ." 
 
 Poor Lady Maltravers felt her breath 
 fairly taken away by this long list of ''com- 
 forts."' 
 
 "And this gentleman," she asked, "is 
 he an Englishman or a foreigner?" 
 
 "He isn't a foreigner nor yet English, 
 I believe," the provoking Frederick made 
 
 answer. 
 
 K 
 
146 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 (How difficult it seemed to find out any- 
 thing really definite with regard to this 
 extraordinary man !) 
 
 Just one question more, and then she 
 must desist, or even the obtuse Frederick 
 might become suspicious. 
 
 " And is this this person" she asked, 
 11 a nobleman, or only a gentleman ? " 
 
 ("Only" a gentleman! But when con- 
 versing with one's inferiors one must 
 adapt one's phraseology to the untutored 
 mind.) 
 
 "He isn't a nobleman nor yet a gentle- 
 man neither," returned Frederick. " I have 
 heard Thomas say as how he was the 
 King of something, but I don't remember 
 what. All I know is, that Thomas said 
 there was something very serious against 
 him, which quite took all the gilt off the 
 gingerbread, so that he wouldn't change 
 places with him himself, not for 'undreds 
 and 'undreds of pounds ! " 
 
 Ah! ... an example of the inexorable 
 law of compensation in which she had 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 147 
 
 always believed so firmly. But who would 
 have dreamed, for all his distinguished 
 appearance, of his being actually a crowned 
 head! . . . "A man's a man," says George 
 Eliot, "but when you see a King you see 
 the work of many thousand men. . . ." 
 
 Which King was he, and what country 
 did he reign over? . . . Frederick knew 
 only just enough to make all seem doubly 
 mysterious. . . . Was he, perhaps, only a 
 pretender to a throne? ... Or was he 
 really a Roi en eocil seeking for peace and 
 sympathy in a foreign land ? . . . What 
 was Don Carlos like? Was he not a tall, 
 dark man of majestic appearance? . . . 
 Older, though a good deal older and 
 stouter, too a good deal stouter than 
 the stranger. . . . Did not ex- Kings some- 
 times visit England incog. ? . . . Kings 
 were so very rare, and, what with absorp- 
 tion and revolution, they seemed to be 
 becoming rarer and rarer every day. . . . 
 If one eliminated all monarchs that were 
 either black or hopelessly barbaric it ought 
 
148 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 not to be very difficult to find out who 
 this one really was. . . . Then, too, it 
 looked as though he were neither a good 
 nor a wise king. . . . " There was some- 
 thing very serious against him which quite 
 took all the gilt off the gingerbread " ! . . . 
 So "very serious," indeed, that even one of 
 his own footmen would not have changed 
 places with him "for 'undreds and 'undreds 
 of pounds " ! . . . Possibly he was a wicked 
 usurper, like Kings Valoroso and Padella in 
 the "Rose and the Ring"? . . . This, again, 
 ought to furnish an important clue. . . . 
 
 Before going for her afternoon drive, Lady 
 Maltravers looked through some back num- 
 bers of the Morning Post with the view of 
 ascertaining, if possible, what foreign poten- 
 tates had lately visited our shores, but she 
 could find no record calculated to enlighten 
 her. Of course, Frederick's remark to the 
 effect that the stranger was neither "a 
 foreigner nor yet English," was made in 
 ignorance. What he meant to convey, pro- 
 bably, was that he was a foreigner of no 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 149 
 
 ordinary kind, and that he spoke English 
 as well, or better, than he did himself, 
 which was more than likely ! Kings, in 
 fact, what with their extensive family con- 
 nections and marvellous gift of tongues, 
 might almost be said to belong to a select 
 nationality of their own. 
 
 The Morning Post having failed her, 
 Lady Maltravers next turned to a limited 
 collection of postage-stamps (in which, how- 
 ever, most of the reigning sovereigns of 
 Europe were represented), which had been 
 left behind by one of her little grandchildren 
 when her daughter and her family had com- 
 pleted their visit to her in the spring; but 
 here again she encountered only disappoint- 
 ment, for, in spite of the "classic line of 
 brow and beard" of some of the reigning 
 monarchs, none of the heads depicted bore 
 any real resemblance to that of the mysteri- 
 ous stranger. Not one of them (truth to 
 tell, and with all due apologies to reign- 
 ing male sovereigns) was half handsome 
 enough, although the portraits upon postage- 
 
150 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 stamps are generally considerably flattered. 
 Perhaps he was only a " rightful heir," or 
 the president of a republic, after all ! 
 
 Next day, which was Sunday, Lady Mal- 
 travers decided that it was much too hot 
 to go to church. Still, as it was the Sab- 
 bath, when one might be supposed to be 
 going to drive down in the afternoon to 
 some fashionable al-fresco party in the 
 environs, there was a valid excuse for 
 something more than usually seductive and 
 Watteauesque in the way of costume. Once 
 again did Celestine venture to express her 
 surprise at her mistress's extraordinary ///- 
 gance, and once again did she receive a some- 
 what snappish reprimand for her trouble. 
 
 " Little worms wriggled down from the 
 trees in Kensington Gardens upon one's 
 parasol, and spoilt it. ... It would be 
 better to take the old black one lined with 
 pink, instead of the white moire with the 
 ivory handle." . . . 
 
 Then came the " snubbing." 
 
 What if little worms did wriggle down 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 151 
 
 and do their worst ? . . . Life was short, 
 and the fashion of all things passed away. 
 We should all be food for worms some 
 day. Who expected that parasols would 
 last for ever? . . . Did Celestine imagine 
 that they would be required in another 
 world? . . . 
 
 And with this scathing sarcasm, her lady- 
 ship departed for her morning walk, equipped 
 for conquest at every point. 
 
 Upon reaching Kensington Gardens, 
 she saw that his mysterious Majesty was 
 already established there. He had ex- 
 changed the grey felt wide-awake for a 
 tall hat of the same shade. It was nice to 
 think that this exalted personage, whatever 
 may have been his religious opinions or 
 political shortcomings, recognised the sanc- 
 tity of the British Sabbath, and marked 
 his respect for it thus. He was evidently 
 on the lookout for her, and as she 
 approached from the bun-house, she felt, 
 in spite of the protection afforded by her 
 white veil and moirt parasol, that his 
 
152 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 impassioned gaze was scorching her with 
 all the ardour of a tropical sun. This 
 projected magnetism affected her so acutely 
 that she took her seat trembling and 
 quivering with emotion in every limb. 
 But, upon glancing in the direction of 
 the stranger's chair, another, and, this time, 
 rather a painful surprise was in store for 
 her. He had altered the position of it 
 whilst she was taking her seat, and it was 
 now turned with the back exactly facing 
 her. What could be the meaning of this 
 unexpected and insulting " move " ? 
 
 Once Lady Maltravers began to specu- 
 late upon any subject, her active imagina- 
 tion, as we already know, was apt to rush 
 off with her like a runaway horse, and in 
 less than five minutes she had evolved 
 hundreds of reasons which might have very 
 properly influenced his behaviour. He was 
 a Roi en exit, and though keeping up so 
 large and expensive an establishment, he 
 might not wish to be perpetually recog- 
 nised and saluted. As it was Sunday, the 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 153 
 
 gardens were a good deal fuller than usual, 
 and most of the holiday makers were enter- 
 ing them by the bun-house side. Being a 
 foreigner although one of no ordinary kind 
 he was not perhaps aware that all these 
 fashionably dressed young men, all these 
 maidens in flowery hats and exuberant 
 blouses, were only representatives of la 
 haide bourgeoisie. He fancied, no doubt, 
 that they were exalted members of the 
 aristocracy. One must remember, too, that 
 there was " something very serious against 
 him," though the more she saw of him, the 
 more convinced she felt that this could only 
 refer to some bloodless political error of judg- 
 ment and so, not wishing possibly to be 
 seen by all these people, he had merely 
 turned his face for a while in an opposite 
 direction. But then, again, his conduct was 
 open to a more flattering interpretation. 
 . . . Noblesse oblige^ as we all know ; and 
 how much more, then, was Royalty bound 
 to study les convenances, particularly when 
 seated in a public place? The voice of 
 
154 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 calumny seems to be ever busy with the 
 names and affairs of princes. He might 
 not like to be seen sitting in close proximity 
 to so pretty a woman devouring her, as 
 it were, with his ardent glance. For her 
 sake, too, he naturally wished to be discreet. 
 She felt sure that he would soon give her 
 some friendly sign of intelligence. But the 
 moments went hurrying on, and those of 
 the haute bourgeoisie who dined barbarically 
 in the middle of the day left the gardens 
 and betook themselves to their respective 
 homes, and still the illustrious stranger sat 
 on, relentlessly and implacably, his back still 
 turned towards the one whose presence had 
 seemed, but a few hours ago, to evoke his 
 warmest and most chivalrous emotions. 
 Talk of the caprices of women ! What 
 were these in comparison to those of the 
 lords of creation when the mood was upon 
 them? But yet had not she, herself, upon 
 the previous day, behaved very much after 
 the same fashion? It may have been the 
 stranger's intention to punish her for this 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 155 
 
 playfully, of course, and without the slightest 
 idea of insult. Or, he may possibly have 
 been deeply offended with her, and have 
 argued thus 
 
 " Yesterday, in spite of my having mani- 
 fested my respectful admiration for you for the 
 whole of the inside of a week, remaining con- 
 stant to this one iron chair, fleeing the giddy 
 haunts of men, and passing morning after 
 morning in this not particularly amusing or 
 exhilarating spot ; although I had displayed 
 every sign of impatience whilst awaiting 
 your coming, of eagerness at your approach ; 
 although I had striven to begin an acquaint- 
 ance through the medium of your beautiful 
 little dog, and had stroked and caressed 
 him in your hearing and in your sight, 
 lavishing upon him tender names that were 
 equally applicable to his lovely mistress 
 although I had done all this, and would 
 have done far more but for the respect 
 that mingled with my adoration, you, 
 yesterday, rose majestically from your 
 chair, and without vouchsafing so much 
 
156 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 as a consoling glance, you turned upon 
 your heel with every indication of offended 
 dignity, and left these sylvan shades by 
 the way you had come. To-day, I am 
 anxious to show you that my unwelcome 
 attentions have ceased for ever. . . . From 
 this day forward they shall not annoy you! 
 ... I have fought the good fight, now 
 I am aweary ! . . . Farewell, beautiful but 
 prudish patrician daughter of perfidious 
 Albion ! I care not to batter my crowned 
 head any longer against a wall of adamant ! 
 . . . Who knows but that younger, fairer 
 women, maybe, might not scorn my atten- 
 tions, for am I not rich beyond the dreams 
 of avarice? . . . Do I not keep nine men 
 in livery, for whom I have provided swim- 
 ming-baths and lawn-tennis courts ? . . . 
 Are not three different kinds of wine, besides 
 "hale," and champagne on Sundays, served 
 in my servants' hall, where an electric organ 
 discourses sweet strains of operatic music 
 at meal-times ? . . . I am not of the sort 
 that, in the present circumstances, would 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 157 
 
 be likely to wear the willow ! . . . Thus, 
 and thus, do I turn towards you, proud 
 lady, the back of my iron chair ! Farewell 
 to you and to my fleeting dream ! . . ." 
 
 Lady Maltravers began asking herself, 
 next, what she had expected of this man, 
 and why it should matter to her whether 
 his back or his front was turned towards 
 her? . . . She had merely looked forward, 
 she said to herself, to some kind of amusing 
 adventure ; to an absurd mystification ; to 
 a mild flirtation, at most ; a sort of con- 
 solatory reminder of her departed youth. 
 She felt quite sure that she had really 
 intended nothing more blamable than this. 
 . . . She had certainly made no real ad- 
 vances, she had merely repelled them. It 
 was for this that she was suffering now : 
 " suffering," of course, was too strong a 
 term, but still, it was always mortifying to 
 a woman to be treated with downright rude- 
 ness, particularly a woman who only a very 
 few years ago had been so very much . . . 
 But what was the use of always going 
 
158 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 back to those times ? They were over 
 now, and so was this morning, and luncheon 
 would be ready at home and getting rapidly 
 cold ! The caterpillars had wriggled down, 
 as Celestine had predicted that they would, 
 and had done their worst with her new 
 white parasol, and her fresh Watteauesque 
 toilette had never been even noticed ! . . . 
 But what did it matter? Nothing really 
 mattered in this transitory world ! We 
 were not much better than caterpillars our- 
 selves, and our lives, and loves, and hates 
 were of very little more account than those 
 of these objectionable little creatures ! . . . 
 If, however, the stranger was behaving in 
 this offensive manner out of a feeling of 
 revenge because his attentions had been 
 spurned, then two could play at this game, 
 forsooth ! . . . Whilst he was seated with 
 his back presented thus rudely towards her, 
 she would simply get up and go home ! 
 After he had subjected her to what he 
 considered an appropriate term of chastise- 
 ment, he would, no doubt, condescend once 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 159 
 
 more to turn upon her the light of his 
 countenance, but then, oh, disappointment 
 and mortification of spirit ! oh, extraordi- 
 nary superiority of woman's wit ! ... His 
 countenance would only beam upon two 
 irresponsive iron chairs ! . . . 
 
 " Put not your trust in princes." . . . The 
 well-known words would keep on ringing 
 in her ears as she glided away noiselessly 
 in the direction of the bun-house gate, 
 treading like Agag, "delicately," so that 
 the stranger should not suspect her depar- 
 ture until she was actually out of sight. 
 
 How true most of those old texts were, 
 after all, she said to herself. Somehow one 
 always seemed to come back to them for 
 guidance in the end! 
 
160 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 JUST outside Kensington Gardens Lady 
 Maltravers again fell in with Thomas 
 Greenfield, coming from the direction of 
 the Albert Memorial. She determined to 
 stop and speak to him. 
 
 " Good morning, Thomas ! You are well, 
 I hope, and in a comfortable place, though 
 you did not apply to us for a character ? " 
 
 "Thank your ladyship kindly! Your 
 ladyship will be glad to hear I am very 
 comfortable" (and here he recapitulated 
 a list of the comforts enumerated by 
 Frederick). "Being called 'Charles' now 
 makes * Thomas ' seem a little strange to 
 me," he went on; "and it was considered 
 quite sufficient that I had lived with your 
 ladyship two years, as I had a fine appear- 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 161 
 
 ance, without troubling about no character. 
 We keep nine in livery." 
 
 " Really ; and you have a billiard-room 
 now, I am sure ? Your master this gentle- 
 man must be a very rich man ? " 
 
 "His wealth is enormous," returned the 
 footman. " But, as your ladyship knows, 
 such fortunes is always precarious. One 
 day you're the ' Klondyke King,' with the 
 whole univerge at your feet, and the next 
 you may find yourself in the poor'ouse ! " 
 
 " And this gentleman the person you are 
 with now is called the ' Klondyke King ' ? " 
 
 "He is ; your ladyship must have heard 
 of him. I intend leaving his service when- 
 ever things begin to look shaky." 
 
 Ah, a "self-made man"! . . . The kind 
 of person of whom she had always had 
 such a special horror ! . . . A speculator, 
 a prince of contraband and illicit finance, 
 who, in spite of his distinguished exterior 
 (which may have been a good deal owing 
 to good clothes), probably floored his "h's" 
 
162 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 and ate green peas with his knife ! How 
 thankful she ought to be that she had been 
 saved from committing any kind of indis- 
 cretion with such a person ! . . . 
 
 " And is he English f " she inquired of 
 Thomas, in a somewhat faltering tone. 
 Were he a foreigner, there would be 
 some hope that he might ere long leave 
 the country. 
 
 " Nobody wouldn't know that he wasn't," 
 returned Thomas, "for his ideers is all 
 English to the backbone ; but he's a natural- 
 ised American subjik by rights ; and though 
 he has such a gentlemanly appearance, and 
 all that, and wears good clothes, they do say 
 that he was reared in Whitechapel, and 
 worked his way out to the States as a 
 cabbing-boy." 
 
 " A cabbing-boy I ' Born in Whitechapel, 
 developing with the years into a vulgar 
 Yankee adventurer ! On horror's head 
 horrors accumulated. How could one ex- 
 pect that such a creature as this would 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 163 
 
 have decent manners? . . . And to think 
 that she had come very near to making 
 him the central figure in quite an im- 
 provised romance ! Providence had indeed 
 been good to her, for, in spite of her dis- 
 illusionment, there had been just a moment 
 a moment psychologique (she recognised 
 this now) for which she was no more 
 responsible than she was for the sunshine 
 or for the London fog, when she might 
 have been tempted to commit some kind 
 of imprudence ! . . . Even now, there was 
 something rather embarrassing in the fact 
 that she had been seated so near to a person 
 of this sort for a whole week ; that she 
 should have returned, day after day, to the 
 same spot, when he must have known that 
 she must have known that she would be 
 sure to find him, and that she should thus 
 have seemed to encourage his impertinent 
 advances! She had escaped unscathed, it 
 was true ; but who knew whether this 
 person, with the aggressive effrontery pecu- 
 
1 64 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 liar to his kind, might not take it into his 
 head to launch out with some form of osten- 
 tatious hospitality? . . . He might give 
 balls, or parties, or concerts upon so mag- 
 nificent a scale that it might become the 
 duty of all fashionable people to attend 
 them. If everybody belonging to her par- 
 ticular set agreed to go, she would have, 
 of course, to go too ; and then, just as 
 she would have wished to treat her host 
 with particular coldness and hauteur, in 
 order to show him that he must never 
 dare to presume upon the honour she was 
 doing him, would come, perhaps, a most 
 humiliating and embarrassing recognition ! 
 . . . Yes, every sacrifice must be made 
 to prevent him from knowing her again, 
 even if she had to let her auburn hair turn 
 grey and dress herself like the grandmother 
 that she really was ! . . . The voice of 
 Thomas Greenfield recalled her wandering 
 spirit. 
 
 "All the same," the voice said, "for all 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 165 
 
 his wealth and consequence, there's not 
 one of us nine, nor yet even the 'all boy, 
 that would change places with him, not 
 for 'undreds and 'undreds of pounds ! " 
 
 He touched his hat and was hurrying 
 away, but she detained him by a gesture. 
 " Thomas," she exclaimed feeling that if 
 this man were, indeed, some blackmailing 
 swindler, some low adventurer who had 
 been guilty of a disgraceful act, it would 
 be best to acquaint herself at once with 
 the fact and be prepared for the worst 
 " Frederick told me the same thing yester- 
 day ; how there was something serious 
 against your present employer. I hope, 
 for your own sake, you are not living in 
 the service of a person of bad character. 
 Surely no creature-comforts could com- 
 pensate for that ? " 
 
 (With her men-servants, provided that 
 they were young and good-looking, it had 
 always been her ladyship's habit to adopt a 
 highly moral and almost maternal tone.) 
 
166 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 "Oh, there's nothing particular against 
 his character" Thomas said, " although we 
 all know that k'lossal fortunes, like his is, 
 can't be made in no time, with perfectly 
 clean 'ands ! He's a gentleman in all his 
 ways, except his birth and parentage, which 
 he couldn't 'elp, and which he's been trying 
 to raise himself out of ever since. Frederick 
 and me was thinking of his personal afflic- 
 tion, for in consequence of an haccident 
 which 'appened in one of his minds, or 
 somethink, and though it don't make 
 much difference to his appearance (with 
 a good valet), he's been for more than 
 three years deprived of his hyesight. It's 
 astonishing how cheerful he is considering, 
 but they say as he wasn't a very great 
 book-reader, he feels his situation less 
 than another." 
 
 Lady Maltravers gave a quick start of 
 mingled relief and astonishment. 
 
 A blind man ! who had been all along 
 sublimely unconscious even of her presence, 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 167 
 
 upon whom her smart hats, and dresses, 
 and parasols, and three - buttoned gloves, 
 had been completely thrown away, and 
 who was quite unaware which part of his 
 person he had been turning towards her 
 upon this particular morning. . . . Why, 
 why had she never suspected this before? 
 ..." I take him into the gardens every 
 morning, nearly," Thomas Greenfield went 
 on, "and fetches him back again for a 
 late luncheon, unless he takes sandwiges 
 with him, for with all his French cooks he 
 likes plain living himself. ... He haves 
 smoking- concerts nearly every evening, 
 and something hextra of a Sunday, which 
 is sometimes attended by Royalty. After 
 the late hours, the morning hair seems to 
 pull him together. He likes to be left to 
 hisself, but for me just to keep a hye upon 
 him, only sometimes I have a little shop- 
 ping to do in the neighbourhood on my 
 own account, and he seems quite contented 
 sitting and thinking of his successful specu- 
 
1 68 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 lations. When the gentleman has been 
 deprived of his hyesight it makes the place 
 seem a good deal heasier!" 
 
 " Poor, poor man ! " exclaimed Lady 
 Maltravers in a tone of genuine compas- 
 sion ; " what a really terrible affliction ! " 
 
 Was it wrong, she asked herself, to feel, 
 as she was feeling now, some sense of relief 
 at the knowledge of this unhappy man's 
 misfortune, a misfortune for which she was 
 certainly in no way responsible, and which 
 she would have put an end to (now) had 
 the power to do so only rested with her? 
 . . . If it was, she would endeavour to do 
 penance for her fault in every way that 
 was not too difficult. She would give 
 something in charity (as this poor millionaire 
 had done, only a few mornings ago) when- 
 ever a blind beggar came in her way, if 
 she happened to have her purse in her 
 pocket, which was not very often. . . . 
 There was a blind beggar in Piccadilly, 
 in Belgrave Square, at the corner of Hans 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 169 
 
 Place, opposite the Knightsbridge Barracks, 
 near the turning to Rutland Gate, and a 
 blind woman who sat upon the kerbstone 
 within easy distance of Hyde Park Corner, 
 by the railings outside St. George's Hos- 
 pital. Blind beggars were not rare in 
 London, and some of these, at any rate, 
 should very shortly receive the benefit of 
 a little small change in coppers. She would 
 go to church, too, she determined, that very 
 evening, sending an excuse to the people with 
 whom she had been engaged to dine, and 
 ordering only a cold early dinner, first, and 
 some egg-sandwiches and biscuits upon her 
 return, where she would give thanks for 
 her providential escape, and make all sorts 
 of resolves to turn over new leaves, and 
 where no one would suspect what wild 
 unlawful thoughts had agitated her breast 
 "'twixt matins and evensong"! 
 
170 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 VI 
 
 UPON arriving at home, Lady Maltravers 
 found his lordship in his study, warming 
 the seat of his brown leather chair, and 
 puffing away at his cigarette. For a won- 
 der, he had not gone out immediately after 
 his luncheon. 
 
 "Ah, Addie!" he called out as she was 
 passing by the door, " I wanted just to speak 
 to you for a few minutes. . . . You re- 
 member those baths and wash-houses that 
 I agreed to start, some years ago, at Mud- 
 dlebury?" . . . 
 
 "Yes; and I remember how very foolish 
 I thought you," answered her ladyship 
 rather snappishly ; "you had to raise money 
 in order to do it, and there was no pos- 
 sible advantage to be gained. Those sort 
 of people like being dirty ! " 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 171 
 
 "But there was an advantage to be 
 gained, as I foresaw all along! In the 
 first place, I entirely recouped myself, and 
 made a very considerable profit, from the 
 electric-tramway which I started at the same 
 time, upon pretence of making the baths 
 and wash-houses more accessible to the 
 general public, and, secondly, we have en- 
 tirely re-established our popularity in the 
 place, which was decidedly upon the 
 wane. ..." 
 
 1 'You would have everything down from 
 London from the Stores," interrupted Lady 
 Maltravers, "and that very naturally an- 
 noyed the local tradesmen. I knew exactly 
 how it would be, and told you so. / was 
 always popular ! " 
 
 " Well, this money," his lordship con- 
 tinued, "which old Scruncher obtained for 
 me at only five and a half per cent., is now 
 paying. . . . Are you in a very great hurry ? " 
 
 " I am, rather," she replied impatiently ; 
 "the servants dine earlier on Sunday, and 
 
172 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 besides, I never could understand anything 
 about percentages or investments." 
 
 " Well, just sit down. I can explain the 
 whole thing to you in two minutes." 
 
 "If you particularly wish it, but Celes- 
 tine will be furious if she doesn't get out 
 at her usual time and I am already fright- 
 fully late," and with the object of showing 
 her husband that her stay was anything 
 but permanent, she perched herself upon a 
 corner of the writing-table with the bored 
 expression of countenance that St. Simon 
 Stylites might have assumed upon the top 
 of his pillar, if a morbid infatuation had 
 not prevented him from realising his true 
 position. 
 
 "Well, old Scruncher," his lordship went 
 on, "although he may be an old brute, is 
 an honest man, which is more than one 
 can say of every family lawyer. I went 
 through all the accounts with him last 
 Thursday at Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the 
 whole scheme is working beautifully. . . . 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 173 
 
 I have settled to open some more baths and 
 wash-houses upon the same system next 
 spring. . . ." 
 
 "What! more baths and wash-houses! 
 How very inconsistent of you to be always 
 complaining of our household expenditure and 
 then to go on throwing away money upon 
 these follies ! . . . How exactly like a man!" 
 
 "Not at all, my dear Addie ! I tell you 
 the plan is answering splendidly. ... I 
 am making a very good thing out of it, and 
 now," he added, assuming a curiously arch 
 expression, "do you happen to recollect 
 what day this is ? " 
 
 " Isn't it Sunday ? " she asked, looking 
 bewildered. " The servants have their 
 dinner at one instead of half-past? ..." 
 
 "Yes, yes, of course it's Sunday, but I 
 was alluding to the day of the month. . . . 
 Have you forgotten our wedding-day ? . . ." 
 
 "Ah, it's the 24th! . . . Fancy! . . . 
 Dear, dear old Charlie ! . . ." 
 
 "Yes, Addie! Thirty years ago, to-day, 
 
174 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 I led to the altar a young and blushing 
 being who ..." 
 
 " Good gracious ! you don't mean to say 
 that it's as long ago as that ! How dread- 
 fully quickly Time flies, to be sure ! " 
 
 "It does indeed, Addie! Particularly 
 when the years have been such happy 
 ones ! . . . Ours has been an exceptionally 
 happy married life, and so it occurred to 
 me that, taking into consideration what I 
 have just told you, we ought to mark the 
 occasion appropriately. . . ." 
 
 " How can we mark the occasion ap- 
 propriately," cut in Lady Maltravers with 
 a gesture of impatience, " at our time 
 of life ? " 
 
 " Well, at any rate, I said to myself that 
 I would have a try, and so, as this specula- 
 tion has turned out so profitably, what do 
 you think I decided to do ? " 
 
 " I can't imagine ! . . . To call the new 
 baths and wash-houses after your wife, 
 perhaps ? " 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 175 
 
 Lord Maltravers smiled at this ridiculous 
 suggestion. 
 
 " No, no ; I hope I understand women 
 a little better than that. I wanted really 
 to please you, and so. ..." 
 
 He slipped his hand into the writing- 
 table drawer, and drew forth a dark blue 
 velvet case of oval form. Lady Maltravers 
 gave a little feminine shriek of delight. 
 
 " O Charlie ! not not the beautiful 
 diamond and ruby tiara that I have coveted 
 for so long ? How much, much too dear 
 and kind of you ! " 
 
 It was, indeed, quite an imperial diadem, 
 well calculated to have covered, in the 
 eyes of almost any wife, a multitude of 
 conjugal shortcomings. Lady Maltravers 
 was genuinely enchanted with her present. 
 With an innocent bird-like movement, she 
 held up her face to her husband's. Lord 
 Maltravers removed his eye-glass and bent 
 down towards it. Probably some kind of 
 tender rapprochement might here have 
 
176 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 followed, but scarcely had he felt her 
 auburn fringe tickling the end of his nose, 
 before the butler, flinging open the double- 
 doors, announced that luncheon was served. 
 Life is made up of like contretemps! 
 
 "The fact is," his lordship remarked 
 as they went together into the dining-room, 
 " I never liked the notion of your not 
 having a tiara. ... It would have been 
 all very well in my young days, when 
 nobody under the rank of a Countess 
 seemed to expect one ; but nowadays, 
 when nearly all the wives of brewers, 
 and brokers, and bookmakers seem to 
 possess a whole assortment of them, and 
 when I have little doubt but that those 
 of the butcher, the baker, and the candle- 
 stick-maker will be soon following suit 
 I hardly liked to think that my wife, a 
 peeress of the realm . . ." 
 
 " Yes ; and / felt it too, dear, though I 
 tried to conceal it. ... You have never 
 heard me complain, have you? But yet 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 177 
 
 it certainly did give me rather a feeling 
 of humiliation to know that I was nearly 
 the only woman in London who hadn't 
 got one. . . . Sometimes I even thought 
 of buying one myself! " 
 
 11 That would have been a most unnatural 
 proceeding ! But, happily, all this is now 
 a thing of the past. . . . And now, Addie 
 now that you are pleased with me I 
 must risk your anger by making you a 
 confession. This invitation was given me 
 I haven't the slightest recollection who 
 by the other night at the club. It is 
 for you and me, and was said to be some- 
 thing requiring an answer very particularly. 
 You see that the ' R.S. V.P. ' is underlined 
 three times in red ink. . . . There was to 
 be first-rate singing, and you see it is said 
 to be to meet Royalty. I had clean for- 
 gotten all about it till this moment, when 
 I found it in my coat pocket, and the in- 
 vitation is for to-night." 
 
 "Good gracious!" exclaimed Lady Mal- 
 
 M 
 
1 78 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 travers, snatching at the card, which was 
 of three times the natural dimensions. 
 " It's an invitation from the ' Klondyke 
 King ' ! " 
 
 " Yes ; I wasn't aware that you knew 
 him. An awfully rich fellow ; wonderful 
 music ; best champagne in London ; supper- 
 table decorated with orchids at two guineas 
 apiece ! " 
 
 " I know about him through Thomas 
 Greenfield, who lived with us, you re- 
 member ? He is in his service at present. 
 ... I suppose if this concert is really such 
 a good one we ought to go to it ? " 
 
 " You ought, certainly, as we have left 
 the invitation so long unanswered ; but, as 
 you know, the best of music to me is only 
 a noise, and this east wind has played the 
 devil with my confounded asthma. ... I 
 am dining, too, with an old friend at the 
 club, and am afraid that I might not get 
 away till too late." 
 
 "Very well, I will go alone, and I will 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 179 
 
 wear my beautiful tiara. . . . What a pity 
 that the poor host is blind, and will not be 
 able to see it ! You know that the * Klon- 
 dyke King ' is a blind man ? " 
 
 " I remember hearing it. Well ! one 
 can't have everything in this world, but 
 there'll be plenty of other people to admire 
 you!" 
 
 " Yes ; and I know how furiously jealous 
 some of them will be ! It will be great 
 fun ! Dear old Charlie, how can I ever 
 thank you enough?" 
 
 (" I can go to church any Sunday," she 
 said to herself as she tripped upstairs after 
 luncheon, " and it would have seemed so 
 ungrateful to dear Charlie if I had not gone 
 to the concert. What a wonderful world 
 this is, to be sure!") 
 
 Celestine was loud in her lamentations 
 when she perceived the pitiable state of 
 the white parasol. 
 
 "Yes, I know," said her mistress flip- 
 pantly ; " it's completely done for, but what 
 
i8o A ROMANCE OF 
 
 does it matter ? ' Tout passe, tout casse, tout 
 lasseT Look what a beautiful present I 
 have just had from his lordship ! I shall 
 wear it to-night with my white satin em- 
 broidered with pearls, as I am going to a 
 party after dinner." 
 
 "Milady has the best husband in the 
 whole world," said Celestine, as with clasped 
 hands and many ejaculations she examined 
 the ornament. " I almost wish, after all, 
 that he hadn't been blind," Lady Mal- 
 travers said to herself, as some hours later 
 she drove off to dinner, a vision of rubies 
 and white satin. She kissed her hand 
 affectionately to her husband, who was 
 lighting his cigarette upon the doorstep as 
 the brougham drove off. The tiara had 
 certainly been the means of bringing them 
 much nearer together ! 
 
 " Shall I whistle your lordship a hansom?" 
 asked one of the footmen. 
 
 "Thanks; no. I'm a little too early 
 I'll walk and pick one up." 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 181 
 
 " Where to, sir ? " asked the hansom-cab- 
 man a few seconds later, as he looked down 
 at his fare through the trap-door. 
 
 " Oh, I'll direct you ! I know the house 
 but not the number," and he pointed with 
 his umbrella in the direction of the Marble 
 Arch. 
 
 Once started, he took a small velvet case 
 from his pocket. It contained a pearl ring, 
 in the form of two hearts linked together 
 by a diamond knot ; doubtless another out- 
 come of the Muddlebury baths and wash- 
 houses. As he shut the case with a click 
 and returned it to his pocket, his face 
 beamed with a smile as of pleasurable 
 anticipation. It were wiser, perhaps, to 
 follow the wearer of the queenly tiara. 
 
 There was a suppressed murmur of ad- 
 miration as she elbowed her way through 
 the dense crowd that thronged the marble 
 staircase of the " Klondyke King." Those 
 who had been fortunate enough to gain the 
 gallery above, and who could command a 
 
1 82 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 bird's-eye view of the fresh arrivals, were 
 expressing their opinions in louder tones 
 tones habitual to the guests at a fashionable 
 
 o 
 
 London assembly when they have been 
 invited to listen to really good music. 
 
 " C'est une femme superbe ! " exclaimed a 
 well-known chef de mission of exotic type, 
 as he adjusted his binocle in a singularly 
 black eye. " Quelle demarche de deesse ! Et 
 encore, comme elle est bien conservee ! . . . 
 Elle a du joliement faire de . . ." 
 
 " She is certainly very well preserved," 
 rejoined a priggish-looking young man at 
 his elbow, who turned out to be none other 
 than Sibbie's husband, "a term which, by 
 the way, always suggests to me something 
 pickled in a bottle ; but I doubt whether 
 she was ever better looking than she is 
 now. ... I've seen some old photos of 
 her in a most ridiculous get-up, and I can't 
 quite believe " 
 
 "My dear young friend," cut in Major- 
 General Lord Arthur Beaudesert, an elderly 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 183 
 
 gentleman with the bloated remains of manly 
 beauty, "you should have seen her in the 
 early sixties. ... By Jove ! what a lovely 
 creature! . . . You don't often see women 
 like that now. ... I can remember when 
 I was quartered at Knightsbridge long 
 before you were born strolling out one 
 morning into Kensington Gardens and see- 
 ing her, looking fresh as a rose, though we 
 had been dancing far into the small hours 
 at that house which has just been pulled 
 down at the corner of " 
 
 "She was always a beautiful dancer," 
 remarked a venerable dowager in a high 
 gown, who was accompanied by two elderly 
 daughters. " We used both to attend Miss 
 Wright's dancing academy at Brighton, 
 where she was the * show girl ' when I was 
 only a tiny little bit of a trot. ..." 
 
 "Is it true," inquired the exotic diplo- 
 matist, "that she is nearly seventy -two 
 years of age, and has been married for 
 more than fifty years?" 
 
184 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 Sibbie's husband was about to protest, 
 when Lord Arthur Beaudesert cut in 
 with 
 
 "No, no, Excellency! we're none of us 
 quite as old as that, and she was very 
 considerably my junior. Though she was 
 as playful as a kitten, there was never the 
 slightest " 
 
 "Never!" echoed the venerable dowager 
 emphatically; "and being almost my con- 
 temporary, although she was much older 
 than I was, we have always been the 
 dearest friends, for I feel certain that most 
 of those very ill-natured stories one has 
 heard about her were mere inventions, and 
 that she has been quite a model wife. . . . 
 You remember that horrible scandal, twenty 
 years ago listen, girls, to that delightful 
 music! when a captain in the army was 
 said to have been discovered concealed 
 in her bedroom chimney turned upside 
 down ? . . ." 
 
 The turn taken by the conversation was 
 
KENSINGTON GARDENS 185 
 
 probably what now induced Sibbie's hus- 
 band to reveal his relationship. 
 
 " Lady Maltravers is my wife's mother," 
 he announced sententiously. " I married 
 her eldest daughter about three years 
 ago, and it's not more than thirty years 
 since my mother-in-law was married, be- 
 cause to-day was her wedding-day, and 
 we've been drinking her health at dinner 
 in Swiss champagne Neuchdtel, a very 
 light, but perfectly pure wine ; only thirty- 
 six shillings a dozen highly recommended 
 by the faculty. . . . You should let me 
 send you a few samples. . . . I've lately 
 gone into partnership with " 
 
 But the young "tout" found himself, like 
 Lord Byron, "alone in a crowd," the bare 
 suspicion of his calling having served to 
 disperse his new-found friends. He caught 
 sight, in the distance, of the top of his 
 mother-in-law's tiara at the entrance to the 
 music-room, pausing for a while just where 
 the blind host was receiving his guests, 
 
186 A ROMANCE OF 
 
 and would have been somewhat astonished, 
 perhaps, could he have read what was pass- 
 ing through the head underneath it. 
 
 " I've indeed had a most merciful escape," 
 she was thinking to herself as she was pre- 
 sented to her entertainer. " His beard's 
 dyed, and I see that he isn't a bit good-look- 
 ing, near I ... He doesn't even look in the 
 least like a gentleman. . . . What a bless- 
 ing that he will never be able to recognise 
 me ! . . . Thus ends my ridiculous romance 
 of Kensington Gardens ! " 
 
A TURKISH "YOUNG 
 PRETENDER" 
 
A TURKISH "YOUNG 
 PRETENDER" 
 
 THERE is a tourbt, or mausoleum, at Brussa, 
 the ancient capital of the Ottoman Turks, 
 which is altogether so lovely to the outward 
 eye, and so satisfying to the artistic sense, 
 that one is almost tempted to wish that one 
 could repose in it one's self. A high 
 compliment this to any place of sepulture ! 
 But since we must all lie somewhere, 
 unless sealed up in cinerary urn, one 
 might well wish that it could be in a 
 spot so cheerful and so beautiful ; devoid 
 of all the ghastly and mouldy associa- 
 tions which generally go to make such 
 places disagreeable, and in one that the 
 beholder can contemplate with so much 
 
 true pleasure. 
 
 189 
 
1 90 A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 
 
 The tombs of Turkish Sultans and 
 princes of the blood as all who have 
 seen them may remember might, at first 
 sight, convey to a casual and uninquiring 
 visitor the impression that the bodies were 
 deposited above ground, enclosed in what 
 looks like a long wooden ark, draped 
 with rare silken brocades. This, how- 
 ever, is not the case ; the Prophet, 
 who enjoins many sound sanitary measures, 
 having commanded the Faithful to bury 
 their dead at least four feet below the 
 earth's surface ; in a grave wherein a 
 man of ordinary stature would be buried 
 to the shoulders were he to enter it 
 standing upright. The long ark is merely 
 for external ornament, adorned as it is 
 with its rich stuffs and embroideries ; and 
 under such an ark, thus draped, the chief 
 occupant of this beautiful tourbg is lying 
 in royal state, with some few of his kins- 
 folk sleeping around him. The Persian 
 tiles which ornament the walls of the 
 
A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 191 
 
 temple are hexagon in form, and reflect, 
 in hue, the plumage of the peacock and 
 the blossom of the rose, whilst the light 
 of heaven falls softly through panes that 
 seem set as though with glistening jewels. 
 Without, roses bloom and fountains trickle, 
 under the shade of such giant plane-trees 
 as are only to be met with in Asia. With 
 these mingle the more sombre spires of 
 the cypress (a grove of these trees very 
 Titans amongst their fellows towering 
 hard by is said to be of the same age 
 as the tourbt itself), and below, the wide 
 valley of Brussa stretches away to the base 
 of the far blue mountains. It is a spot that, 
 once seen, is likely to be ever remembered. 
 
 The tourbe-dar, or the white-turbaned 
 Imam who unlocks the carven door of 
 the temple, will tell you that this is the last 
 resting-place of " Prince Jem " ; but beyond 
 the slight sense of surprise occasioned by 
 meeting with what sounds like so familiar 
 an English' name in such a place, this 
 
1 92 A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 
 
 information will convey little to the mind 
 of the ordinary traveller. It is for the 
 benefit of the ordinary traveller, therefore, 
 and not with a view of insulting the cultured 
 student of history, who will, of course, know 
 all about him, that it has occurred to me 
 to set down briefly, and mostly from 
 memory, a few of the chief incidents in 
 the life of this interesting young man, 
 about whom so many wise and royal 
 personages were only too eager to occupy 
 themselves in bygone days, and who now 
 rests for ever from his troubles in so 
 pleasant a place. 
 
 As far as his misfortunes were concerned, 
 Prince Jem (often written "Djem," and 
 short for Jemshld or Djemshld ; also called 
 " Zizim " by Western historians) of the 
 Ottoman Turks may bear comparison with 
 some of the members of our own unhappy 
 House of Stuart. He might even carry 
 off the palm from Charles Edward himself, 
 if any kind of recompense could have been 
 
A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 193 
 
 awarded to the more unlucky of the two. 
 There is a certain analogy, indeed, between 
 the fates of these Princes, in spite of the 
 centuries that divide them. Jem, like 
 the more modern Pretender, came of the 
 blood royal of the land, and, like him, he 
 considered himself to be the rightful heir 
 to , a throne to which, but for certain 
 adverse combinations, he would, in all 
 probability, have succeeded. But the ad- 
 verse combinations triumphed, and, like the 
 Stuart Prince, after making several unsuc- 
 cessful attempts to advance his cause, he 
 passed the remainder of his days in exile, 
 aggravated in his case by imprisonment. 
 
 Things have come to such a pass in 
 these latter days of Ottoman degeneracy 
 (I refer here to the degeneracy of those 
 in authority), that it is almost impossible to 
 imagine a Turkish prince who was of the fine 
 old fighting order ; eager to dare and do ; one 
 who could lead a rough camp-life in rough 
 places ; who journeyed about, saw some of 
 
 N 
 
i94 A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 
 
 the wonders of the world, and displayed 
 signs of energy and virility. But Prince 
 Jem seems to have been all this, and more. 
 Let us follow some of his adventures, and 
 see by what tortuous ways he came at last 
 to this quiet resting-place. 
 
 When Mohammed the Conqueror was 
 gathered unto his fathers, he left two 
 surviving sons, Bayezid, the elder, and 
 this Jem, or Djem, who was then in his 
 twenty-third year, having been born, of a 
 Servian mother, in 1459. The fact that he 
 was the Conqueror's second son did not, of 
 necessity, preclude the chance of his succes- 
 sion in the good old times when Might 
 was Right, and when he who came first 
 was oftenest first served. Jem, indeed, 
 had always made up his mind that he 
 should enjoy the pleasures of empire, and 
 his friends were of opinion that he 
 possessed more of the qualities requisite 
 for the making of a successful Sultan than 
 did his elder brother. 
 
A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 195 
 
 But upon the death of Mohammed it 
 was Bayezid who arrived first at Constanti- 
 nople, and was forthwith proclaimed Sultan. 
 There had been some " hocus-pocus " about 
 this, whereat Jem felt aggrieved, for the 
 messenger who had been sent to apprise 
 him of his father's death had been way- 
 laid and murdered upon the road by a 
 partisan of his brother, and so had never 
 arrived at his destination with the news. 
 After this his affairs went from bad to 
 worse. Finding his brother established 
 upon the throne, he took up arms against 
 him, with the result that he was more 
 than once defeated. I have seen a curious 
 old wood - engraving representing one of 
 Jem's engagements with Bayezid. The 
 two brothers are depicted as having come 
 to close quarters ; everybody is hacking 
 and slashing at everybody else, and turbaned 
 heads are rolling about upon the field like 
 tennis balls. 
 
 After his second defeat Jem, with his 
 
196 A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 
 
 wife and family, took refuge in Egypt, 
 where he was received by the Mameluk 
 Sultan, Kaitbai, with royal honours. If 
 such pomps and vanities could have con- 
 soled him in his misfortunes they were 
 certainly not wanting, for his noble and 
 attractive bearing, together with the charms 
 of a highly cultivated mind, seem to have 
 impressed even his jailers with a due re- 
 spect for his princely dignity. 
 
 Jem is said to have resembled his father 
 in face, and to have been extremely hand- 
 some, though upon the question of beauty 
 opinions must always differ. " This brother 
 of the Grand Turk," says an old Italian 
 chronicler, "looks every inch like the son of 
 an Emperor." Another historian describes 
 him as having had a fair beard, a long 
 nose, somewhat loose morals, "but a most 
 noble disposition withal." Vertot (quoting 
 Bosio, " qui connaissait Djem personnelle- 
 ment"} says of him, " // avail le nez aquilin 
 et si courbt quit touchait presqua la levre 
 
A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 197 
 
 supJrienre" 1 He is said to have surpassed 
 most of the princes of his day as a marks- 
 man, in horsemanship, and in all athletic 
 exercises. He was a skilled musician, a 
 sweet singer, and above all a fact which 
 particularly attracted the present writer 
 an ardent lover of poetry, and accounted 
 the best ' Turkish poet of his time. Never 
 was there a truer exemplification of Heine's 
 well-known lines (" Aus meinen Thranen 
 spriessen" &c., &c.), for from his tears and 
 sighs uprose a very garden of blossoms, 
 a full choir of song. We find him during 
 his wanderings continually turning off some 
 ode or sonnet by the way ; some description 
 of an impressive scene ; some lamentation 
 at his sad destiny. His eye was perpetually 
 "in a fine frenzy rolling," and he trilled 
 and quavered through the thirteen years of 
 his imprisonment like a captive skylark. 
 
 1 The nose of Mohammed the Conqueror is said to have 
 been also so hooked as to come over his lips and partly hide 
 the mouth. A complimentary poet of the time compares it 
 to "the beak of a parrot resting upon cherries." 
 
198 A TURKISH " YOUNG PRETENDER" 
 
 He also translated from the Persian, 
 amongst other poems, that which is called 
 Khorshid and Djemshid, and did much to 
 enrich his national literature. 
 
 From Egypt Jem made a pilgrimage to 
 the holy cities of Mecca and Medina ; the 
 only member of the reigning Ottoman 
 family (with the exception of a daughter 
 of Mohammed the First) who has ever 
 undertaken this journey a curious fact, 
 when we remember what spiritual advan- 
 tages are supposed to accrue from the 
 pilgrimage. Bayezid the Second, who is 
 said not to have been at all cruel (for a 
 Sultan), would have willingly come to 
 friendly terms with his brother at about 
 this time. He proposed that the younger 
 Prince should draw the revenues of the 
 newly acquired province of Karamania, of 
 which he had been made Governor in his 
 father's lifetime, and promised him sundry 
 other advantages if he would only abide 
 in peace. But eagles do not bring forth 
 
A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 199 
 
 doves, and the ambitious blood of his 
 father coursed too impetuously in Jem's 
 veins for him to listen to reason. He 
 wanted too much ; all the Asiatic provinces, 
 with Brussa for a capital, where he was 
 to reside himself, whilst his brother was to 
 rest content with his European possessions, 
 and live at Constantinople. Whereupon 
 Bayezid made answer that "empire was a 
 bride whose favours could not be shared," 
 a saying that has been frequently quoted, 
 and proposed that Jem should go and live 
 quietly at Jerusalem, a town too open to 
 the reproach of provinciality to seem attrac- 
 tive to so learned and accomplished a prince. 
 A place, too, that had seen better days ; 
 whose glories had utterly departed. It was 
 much as though some impetuous spirit of our 
 own day were to be compelled to live perma- 
 nently at Bath at the deadliest moment of 
 its dulness, before its present revival or at 
 Dublin in the perpetual absence of a Vice- 
 Regal Court. It was not to be wondered 
 
200 A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 
 
 at if poor Jem did not altogether relish this 
 prospect. 
 
 We next find him anxious to proceed to 
 Europe, there to enlist the sympathies of 
 the Christian princes in his behalf, seeking 
 a temporary asylum at Rhodes with the 
 Knights Hospitallers of St. John. Pierre 
 d'Aubusson de la Feuillade (it is as well 
 to give the name of so distinguished a 
 scoundrel in full) was at this time Grand 
 Master in Rhodes of this semi-religious, 
 semi-military Order. He also received Jem 
 with royal honours ; we read that the whole 
 island was gaily decorated, and that beau- 
 tiful ladies, richly attired, leant down from 
 their balconies to look at the Turkish 
 Prince ; but he immediately set about mak- 
 ing arrangements with Bayezld, in order 
 that he might turn Jem's confidence in him 
 to good account. 
 
 It was finally settled that D'Aubusson 
 should receive from Bayezld the sum of 
 45,000 ducats, yearly, so long as his brother 
 
A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 201 
 
 remained in the custody of the Order, 
 whilst, with the Prince himself, the cun- 
 ning Grand Master came to an under- 
 standing whereby, in the event of Jem's 
 succeeding to the Sultanate, he was to be 
 paid 1,500,000 ducats in gold, and to 
 obtain several other important advantages 
 besides. 
 
 In the year 1482 Jem proceeded to 
 Nice, the Nice we all know and admire, 
 for D'Aubusson, fearful lest his island 
 might be besieged by the Sultan and his 
 prey wrested from his clutches, had the 
 Prince transferred, for greater security, to 
 a French branch of the Order. Here, 
 charmed with the beauty of the scenery, 
 though sad and disappointed at heart, he 
 composes a poem upon the view, and 
 sends a petition to the King of France 
 (Charles the Eighth), begging that he will 
 stand his friend. His messenger did not 
 return somehow Jem's envoys seem very 
 seldom to have reached their destination 
 
202 A TURKISH '-YOUNG PRETENDER" 
 
 and whilst he was awaiting him there 
 arose (as at this present) a " plague scare," 
 and his well-wishers, anxious not to lose 
 their advantages by his death, hurried him 
 off into the interior of France, out of the 
 way of the epidemic. The Christian princes 
 of the earth had become aware, by this 
 time, that Jem was a valuable prize, and 
 more than one of them would willingly 
 have had him in his safe keeping. Fore- 
 most amongst these were the Kings of 
 France, Naples, and Hungary, but even 
 the King of Scotland (this must have 
 been King James the Third) would have 
 liked to have had a finger in the pie. 
 Nor was it greed alone that influenced 
 them in this matter. 
 
 The "Sick Man" seeming now well- 
 nigh sick unto death was then a stout and 
 hardy young giant, most voracious and 
 destructive, " feeling his feet," as it were, 
 and eager to trample down and devour 
 whatever good thing came in his way. 
 
A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 203 
 
 Just as the French King, centuries later, 
 would have used Charles Edward to harass 
 and embarrass his good brother of Eng- 
 land, so would these European princes 
 have turned Jem into an instrument of 
 torture to the Sultan, whose growing 
 power was filling all Christendom with 
 alarm. Of our English King I do not 
 find that any mention is made in con- 
 nection with the Turkish Prince. Perhaps, 
 in his far-off island home, he felt less 
 concerned than his neighbours at the 
 dreaded Ottoman encroachments, or he was 
 busied with his own affairs, smothering 
 his little nephews in the Tower, or chop- 
 ping off the heads of his nobility in true 
 Turkish fashion. Poor Jem was lucky to 
 have escaped his tender solicitude. 
 
 Jem resided, after his departure from 
 Nice, at various French fortresses at 
 Roussillon, at Puy ; and then, fair of beard, 
 long of nose, and loose of morals, but of 
 "a most noble disposition withal," we find 
 
204 A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 
 
 him taking his way to the Chateau of 
 Sassenage, with a large and imposing 
 retinue. Alas, poor Jem ! unsuccessful 
 Pretender that thou wert ! Buffeted by 
 fortune, deprived of all natural ties of 
 affection, betrayed, outwitted, and sold by 
 all those in whom thou hadst trusted the 
 most! Thou, even thou, shalt yet "taste 
 a little honey ere thou diest " ! 
 
 For the bold Baron of Sassenage like 
 " this Turk " in the famous ballad of 
 Lord Bateman had " one only daughter," 
 Philippine Helena, accounted a lady of 
 surpassing beauty, who short of " setting 
 him free" behaved to her father's prisoner 
 very much as did " the fair Sophia " of 
 the ballad, with this difference : that here 
 we have the Christian damsel consoling 
 the interesting Moslem captive, and not, 
 as in Lord Bateman's case, the Turkish 
 maiden losing her heart to the Christian 
 "lord of high degree." The ancient 
 chroniclers describe this as a case of love 
 
A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 205 
 
 at first sight, and one would like to think 
 that, what with the delights of love- 
 making and verse-making, the days that 
 Jem passed at Sassenage may not have 
 been such very unpleasant ones after all. 
 
 Not a century before, another royal 
 poet, King James the First of Scotland 
 (grandfather of Jem's good friend King 
 James the Third), had thus beguiled with 
 song the weary days of his captivity in 
 an English castle, where he, too, had been 
 consoled by the sight of a fair face in 
 his case the face of her who was one day 
 to become his queen. Whether Jem's 
 Royal Lament equalled, as a literary com- 
 position, that of the author of The Kings 
 Quair, I am unable to say, never having 
 read any of the Prince's poems in the 
 original. Those who would read some of 
 them in English may do so in Mr. Gibb's 
 able translation. 1 
 
 But now, whilst Jem was thus passing 
 
 1 E. J. W. Gibb, " Ottoman Poems." 
 
206 A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 
 
 his time in poetry and dalliance, an in- 
 exorable fate was gathering together the 
 elements which were to combine for his 
 destruction. In spite of the fact that so 
 many kings were anxious to obtain posses- 
 sion of his person, he was transferred to 
 the fatherly care of the Pope, and in the 
 year 1489 (according to Von Hammer; 
 some other historians give a later date) 
 we find him, like our own " Young 
 Pretender" of the future, taking his way 
 to the Eternal City. 
 
 Jem made his solemn entry into Rome 
 on the 1 3th of March in the same year. 
 We read that the Prince's suite led the 
 way in the procession ; then followed the 
 Pope's body-guard, his pages, and the 
 retainers of the cardinals and principal 
 Roman nobles. The Vicomte de Montheil 
 brother of Grand-Master d'Aubusson a 
 captain of high renown, rode next, by the 
 side of the Pope's son, young Francesco 
 Cibo. Then came Jem himself, mounted 
 
A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 207 
 
 upon a charger, richly caparisoned, followed 
 by the French knights who had him in 
 their keeping, whilst the Pope's chamber- 
 lain, with the cardinals and prelates, 
 brought up the rear. These " desirable 
 young men, captains and rulers, great 
 lords and renowned, all of them riding 
 upon horses," must have made an im- 
 posing pageant, to which the turbans of 
 the Turks no doubt added a picturesque 
 note. 
 
 At his first interview with the Holy 
 Father (Innocent the Eighth), whilst 
 preserving a respectful attitude, the Turkish 
 Prince did not cringe or grovel before 
 the Pontifical chair. He kissed the Pope's 
 shoulder instead of his toe, kept on his 
 turban, and behaved with becoming dignity. 
 It was only when speaking of his solitary 
 existence, and of his absent wife (who 
 had remained all this time in Egypt, and 
 had been extensively mulcted by the 
 unscrupulous D'Aubusson for imaginary 
 
208 A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 
 
 travelling expenses for her husband), that 
 poor Jem, overcome by " a sweet self- 
 pity," fell to weeping, and the crafty old 
 Pope, too, managed to squeeze out a few 
 crocodile tears. We must assume that, 
 manlike, he made no mention of Philippine 
 Helena, or of the comparatively pleasant 
 time that he had passed at Sassenage. 
 
 Seeing the Prince thus apparently cast 
 down by adversity, the Pope now sought 
 to convert him, but the faith of the staunch 
 young Moslem was not to be shaken, 
 and he declared that neither for the Otto- 
 man Empire, nor for all the kingdoms 
 of the earth, would he abandon the religion 
 of Islam. And, indeed, the atmosphere 
 of a Pontifical Court in the Middle Ages 
 was not particularly calculated to impress 
 him with the superiority of Christianity 
 as it was then practised. 
 
 With Jem's arrival in Rome, any pos- 
 sible resemblance between him and our 
 own Stuart Prince is brought to an end. 
 
A TURKISH " YOUNG PRETENDER" 209 
 
 For him were reserved no ignoble domestic 
 bickerings, no drunken and premature old 
 age. Before Innocent the Eighth could 
 derive as much profit as he had anticipated 
 from his Turkish prisoner, he died some- 
 what unexpectedly, and Roderigo Borgia 
 reigned in his stead. One trembles, in- 
 stinctively, for the poor young Turk, upon 
 hearing the family name, even, of the newly 
 elected Pope, and not, indeed, without 
 reason. 
 
 Anxious to make hay whilst the sun 
 shone, Borgia at once despatched to Con- 
 stantinople one Georgio Bocciardo, as En- 
 voy-Extraordinary, to arrange advantageous 
 terms between himself and Bayezid an 
 ambassador who may be described as "a 
 strong man with an open mind," and one 
 capable of conducting with the Sultan 
 "negotiations which had become of a very 
 delicate character." 
 
 So "open," indeed, was the mind of 
 
 this ambassador, that, before leaving Con- 
 
 o 
 
210 A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 
 
 stantinople, he had " negotiated " with Ba- 
 yezid the precise terms for his brother's 
 assassination. This was the arrangement 
 agreed upon : The Pope was to receive 
 40,000 ducats a year so long as he kept 
 Jem a prisoner, and 300,000 "down" if 
 he had him secretly killed out of hand. 
 Whereupon this open-minded envoy de- 
 parted, laden with acceptable backsheesh, and 
 decorated (I make no doubt, though of this 
 I find no record in the ancient chronicles) 
 with what was the equivalent of one of 
 the most distinguished Turkish orders of 
 to-day. 
 
 That Sultan Bayezld, whom we are ac- 
 customed to look upon as a merciful man, 
 should have consented to such an arrange- 
 ment, will not come as a surprise to those 
 who are acquainted with Turkish customs. 
 One of the laws of his father, Mohammed 
 the Second, particularly advised and sanc- 
 tioned fratricide, and Jem had certainly 
 tried his patience to the utmost. " Most 
 
A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 211 
 
 lawyers have held " (so runs the Conqueror's 
 statute) "that to those of my illustrious 
 sons or grandsons who may come to the 
 throne, it shall be lawful, to execute their 
 brothers in order to assure the peace of the 
 world." 1 When Selim "the Grim" made 
 up his mind (in 1512) to massacre, for 
 "the peace of the world," all the male 
 members of his family, we are particularly 
 told that his idea was not an original one, 
 but that he was merely following an old- 
 established custom, and so largely, indeed, 
 did this habit prevail, even in compara- 
 tively recent times, that, I have been in- 
 formed, the present ruler of Turkey has 
 frequently reminded one of his brothers of 
 its existence, and of his own extraordinary 
 clemency in having departed from it. 
 
 Prince Jem remained at Rome, under 
 the Pope's paternal care, until the begin- 
 ning of the year 1495, when King Charles 
 the Eighth besieged the city with a large 
 
 1 " Constitution of the Ottoman Empire," vol. i. p. 99. 
 
212 A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 
 
 force, and the Holy Father took refuge, 
 with his charge, in the castle of St. Angelo. 
 When the French King dictated the terms 
 of peace, one of the articles insisted upon 
 the surrender of the Turkish captive, and 
 the Borgia Pope, seeing that he was about 
 to lose a large annuity, determined to 
 kill the goose with the golden eggs, and 
 turned to his famous collection of family 
 recipes. 
 
 The poison administered to Jem seems 
 to have worked somewhat slowly. Authori- 
 ties differ as to its precise nature, or by 
 whom it was actually administered. Some 
 say that his barber, a renegade Greek named 
 Mustapha, was bribed to wound him with a 
 poisoned razor. Others incline towards a 
 white powder, mixed, instead of sugar, with 
 his sherbet (with this same powder, accord- 
 ing to popular tradition, Pope Alexander 
 the Sixth was eventually poisoned himself, 
 having accidentally partaken of a strong 
 brew which he had concocted for ten of 
 
A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 213 
 
 his cardinals), whilst as in the case of 
 the hero of Lepanto, destined in less than 
 a century to strike the first decisive blow 
 at Turkish maritime power there are some 
 writers who have even hinted at poisoned 
 boots. 
 
 Be this how it may, the poor Prince had 
 only just time to reach Naples, whether he 
 went in charge of the French King, and 
 where he expired (24th of February 1495), 
 making a very pious ending, when in the 
 thirty-sixth year of his age and the thir- 
 teenth of his captivity. I am informed that 
 there exist numerous documents dealing with 
 Prince Jem in the library of the Vatican 
 which have never yet been examined, and 
 which might throw much additional light 
 upon his last years. Bayezld sent another 
 open-minded ambassador to recover his 
 body, which was borne with great pomp 
 to Brussa and placed in the beautiful 
 tourbe which I have endeavoured to de- 
 scribe. 
 
2i 4 A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 
 
 Thus ended, in the flower of his age, 
 the life of this unfortunate young Prince 
 "unfortunate," certainly, if we contemplate 
 only the failure of his ambitious schemes 
 and the sense of imprisonment, which, had 
 he been but a commonplace mortal, must 
 have oppressed him ; but still, let us hope, 
 not altogether unhappy. 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 Nor iron bars a cage," 
 
 to the favoured few, who, like him, can 
 soar upon the wings of the imagina- 
 tion to those enchanted realms which are 
 brightened by the love of song and the 
 appreciation of the beautiful ; and as the 
 north wind scatters the roses that are 
 blooming about his tomb, and the soft 
 white doves outspread their pinions above 
 it, one cannot help thinking when remem- 
 bering the terrible fates that have but too 
 often overtaken unsuccessful aspirants to 
 Empire in a semi-barbaric age that, in 
 
A TURKISH "YOUNG PRETENDER" 215 
 
 spite of his thirteen years of durance, poor 
 Jem did not get so very badly out of the 
 scrape of being a "pretender" after all, 
 and, more especially, of a pretender to the 
 Turkish Throne. 
 
 Constantinople, 1897. 
 
A PLEA FOR THE 
 "GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 
 
A PLEA FOR THE 
 "GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 
 
 " FAITES-MOI le compliment d'un pen de ja- 
 lousie" I came upon this phrase once in a 
 French novel, but have forgotten both the 
 name of the book and by whom the words 
 were uttered. I am pretty sure of one thing, 
 however : a woman must have been speaking. 
 Surely no man, however much he might have 
 been in love, would have condescended to 
 plead thus for "un pen de jalousie" any more 
 than he would have fully realised the uncom- 
 plimentary significance of its non-existence. 
 
 For, curiously enough, these large, strong, 
 bearded creatures, these men who have 
 somehow been put in authority over us, 
 who make the laws for us, and imagine that 
 they have got their heels upon our necks, 
 
 219 
 
220 A PLEA FOR THE 
 
 are either blinder and denser in many re- 
 spects than we are, or else, like Junius 
 Brutus, they occasionally feign idiotcy for 
 purposes of their own. 
 
 " It mayn't be good luck to be a woman " 
 (George Eliot makes one of her female 
 characters remark in " Felix Holt"), "but 
 one begins with it from a baby ; one gets 
 used to it. And I shouldn't like to be a 
 man to cough so loud, or stand straddling 
 about on a wet day, and be so wasteful 
 with meat and drink. They're a coarse 
 lot, I think ! " Now, in spite of having 
 begun with it from a baby, I have never 
 thoroughly got used to being a woman, and 
 if what I should regard as a decided " step " 
 in the matter of gender, were to be obtain- 
 able by purchase, I would willingly pay the 
 penalty of coughing loud, straddling about 
 on wet days, and being wasteful with meat 
 and drink, in order to secure my promotion, 
 even supposing that " coarseness" had to 
 be thrown in as a part of the bargain. 
 
" GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 221 
 
 I confess, however, that this which, I 
 take it, includes a coarseness or density of 
 perception, a difficulty of seeing and hear- 
 ing with the eyes and ears of the imagina- 
 tion anything that is not obviously staring 
 and glaring, or aggressively trumpeting and 
 blatant, and, as it were, upon the surface 
 of things is what I should appreciate the 
 least. Conceive how aggravating it would 
 be, after having been once a woman, after 
 almost hearing the flies cough and seeing 
 the grass grow, like the princess in the fairy 
 tale, to be only able to estimate the heart's 
 varying pulsations by means of a stetho- 
 scope, or the changes of the mind's com- 
 plexion through a magnifying-glass ! And, 
 above all, I should be sorry to misinterpret 
 and malign, as men so often do, the time- 
 honoured and highly respectable passion of 
 jealousy, which, in some of its numerous 
 phases, ought rather to be a credit to us 
 than a reproach. 
 
 Let us examine, first of all, what human 
 
222 A PLEA FOR THE 
 
 jealousy really is ; what it was in our fathers' 
 days, and in the old-time before them ; for, 
 in its romantically and artificially idealised 
 form, it bears as little resemblance to the 
 crude, primitive instinct from which it has 
 been evolved, as our elaborate modern ap- 
 parel does to the war-paint of the savage, or 
 as our stately architectural structures do to 
 his squalid wigwams and rock dwellings. 
 
 Its first development is easily disposed 
 of: a mere brutish instinct of intolerance 
 of anybody, or anything, that could interfere 
 with the gratification of an appetite ; the 
 fear lest what was scarcely more than a 
 prey should escape and pass into the pos- 
 session of a rival ; the jealousy, in a word, 
 of the tom-cat and the cock-sparrow, who 
 fight for their respective females as though 
 they were bones or bread-crumbs. Then, 
 slowly advancing with the ages, his brute 
 nature dying gradually within him but 
 dying hard, be it remembered, and harder 
 in some individuals than in others man 
 
"GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 223 
 
 arrived presently at some sort of higher 
 consciousness : at a smattering of poetic 
 'feeling ; an inkling of sentiment ; a yearning 
 after sympathy and congenial companionship 
 in his relations with the weaker sex. Appe- 
 tite grew into affection, the pursuit of plea- 
 sure into a quest for happiness ; but even 
 now he could perceive in woman no good 
 thing which he might not lock up behind 
 bolts and bars, and so make surely his own 
 no evil thing which he could not fell to 
 the earth and slay, and so annihilate. 
 
 We may observe to-day the effects of 
 the " green-eyed monster " upon communi- 
 ties and individuals that have got thus far 
 and no farther upon their upward way ; upon 
 the Oriental, who secludes his women-folk 
 behind latticed casements ; upon our own 
 " horny-handed sons of toil," who are wont, 
 upon occasions, to kick their selected females 
 to death with hobnailed boots. 
 
 But, alas ! how futile have been the en- 
 deavours of those who would attain to 
 
224 A PLEA FOR THE 
 
 happiness and peace of mind by main force ! 
 " They have sown the wind and they shall 
 reap the whirlwind ; " but yet that riper 
 culmination of love and experience, whereof 
 the fruit, in the form of a more complex 
 kind of jealousy, may come to be so exceed- 
 ing bitter, was not even for such as these 
 to taste! 
 
 This brings us down to the romantic 
 period the age of chivalry and religious 
 enthusiasm, of superstition, of illusion. The 
 naif impressions of the natural man had 
 become chastened and purified. With the 
 idealisation of the emotions, the awaken- 
 ing of spiritual yearnings, the " beloved 
 object," from a prey, a chattel, or, at best, 
 a prize, had come to be regarded as an idol, 
 an inspiration, a patron saint ; and to the 
 ardent and romantic lover who believed that 
 his earthly marriage was but the symbol of 
 an eternal union, mere material possession 
 did not seem to be nearly enough. Nothing 
 short of the threefold and absolute surrender, 
 
"GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 225 
 
 the threefold and absolute possession, could 
 satisfy his voracious craving. But we know 
 now that he was expecting and desiring too 
 much, like the greedy boy in the fable, who 
 tried to seize hold of so many plums that 
 he could not get his clenched fist out 
 through the neck of the jar. He had 
 created, by thus consecrating and exalting 
 a merely animal instinct, forces which he 
 could neither estimate nor control, problems 
 which he could not solve, missions which he 
 could not accomplish ! 
 
 The divine principle, the subtle and im- 
 palpable essence, could elude him, he now 
 realised, and escape through the merest 
 chink or cranny. He was striving to 
 know the incomprehensible, to clutch at 
 the unattainable, to have dominion over 
 the wayward spirits of the air ! How was 
 he to "clap a padlock" on the mind, to 
 put the immortal soul in fetters; and how, 
 by merely shattering an idol, could he hope 
 to destroy a religion ? 
 
226 A PLEA FOR THE 
 
 The age of romance and superstition, of 
 fetichisms and fancies, is now in its last 
 throes of dissolution. We can hear, as it 
 were, the very death-rattle in its throat, 
 and see it, bed-ridden and impotent, and 
 set upon one side, whilst an age of science 
 and invention, of positivism and exact know- 
 ledge, has tripped forward and stepped into 
 its shoes. And yet there are born to-day, 
 into this world of practical common sense, 
 some few deluded beings in whose bosoms 
 the impressions and associations of a by- 
 gone day seem to be lingering still. These 
 
 " Hearts born out of time, the fated few 
 Predestined, for their sorrow, to renew 
 The fervid sense of some old Pagan creed, 
 Which may not perish, whether false or true," 
 
 are, I am afraid, generally the hearts of 
 women, because women hitherto, for obvious 
 reasons, have been as a whole less affected 
 by the strong rush of new influences which 
 has borne in upon the male portion of the 
 
"GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 227 
 
 community, and overwhelmed it like a 
 torrent, and because they are of a less 
 rational habit of mind, and more prone to 
 cling with loving tenacity to the old tra- 
 ditions ; and it is they who chiefly feed 
 the lamps in the temple of the " green- 
 eyed monster," and keep them from going 
 out, whilst Love (poor Love !) is told off 
 to do duty at the altar, well knowing even 
 as he bares the sacrificial knife and fills 
 up the sacramental cup, that he is about 
 to eat and drink his own damnation. 
 
 For this is the worst of all our latter- 
 day illusions even the latter-day illusions 
 of women that we immediately know them 
 for what they are, and that, if we do not, 
 somebody is sure to enlighten us as to 
 the true nature of 
 
 " The golden idol with the feet of clay, 
 The glow-worm that we took to be a star." 
 
 We are saddened and disheartened by our 
 own growing power of discrimination by 
 
228 A PLEA FOR THE 
 
 what Charles Lamb called ''the accursed 
 critical habit " ; and yet we are loth to 
 abandon those douces tromperies which 
 would have made us all so confident and 
 happy if we could only bring ourselves to 
 believe in them ! To us, if we are of those 
 who have been born thus "out of time," 
 a day of doubt and discouragement has 
 indeed dawned, and the jealousy which is 
 the outcome of our mingled love and en- 
 lightenment, may indeed be termed "the 
 injured lover's hell." Because we know 
 that our idol has " feet of clay," we do 
 not bow down and worship it any the less, 
 nor cease to wish, from the very bottom 
 of our hearts, that it could become all pure 
 gold. And although we know that what 
 we have taken for a star is, in reality, 
 nothing better than a glow-worm, we have 
 not the heart to crush it, but go on hoping 
 and praying that, by some extraordinary 
 process of evolution, it may turn into a 
 star for us again some day. To us the 
 
"GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 229 
 
 beloved one may be still an idol, an in- 
 spiration, a patron saint. But the idol, if 
 it is to be conscientiously worshipped, ought 
 to be absolutely pure and undefiled ; and 
 what a tendency it has to topple over and 
 tumble into the mud! It is one man's 
 work, or one woman's (and, indeed, this 
 work generally falls to a woman's share), 
 to look after it and keep it clean ! And 
 the inspiration, too, if it is to be definite 
 and final, should be an inspiration from on 
 high. We must not be too credulous and 
 allow ourselves to be duped by lying spirits ! 
 And the patron saint, to be worthy of a 
 place in the sacred niche, must be a saint 
 indeed, who could resist all the temptations 
 of Saint Anthony ; though it would be just 
 as well, perhaps, that he should not be really 
 subjected to any of them ! 
 
 We, of these latter days, are jealous, in 
 a word, of what we now know that we can 
 never hold ; of what we strongly suspect 
 is not even worth the holding, and we are 
 
23 o A PLEA FOR THE 
 
 secretly conscious that idol, inspiration, and 
 patron saint, are, one and all of them, the 
 creations of our own brains. 
 
 What ceaseless striving and struggling, 
 what a terrible consciousness of absolute 
 hopelessness and helplessness, this fatal 
 faculty for doubting, discriminating, and 
 adoring, all, as it were, in a breath, has 
 given rise to ! whilst 
 
 "... Trifles light as air 
 Are to the jealous confirmation strong 
 As proofs of holy writ." 
 
 George Eliot makes Denner (the person 
 who, after she had been irrevocably doomed 
 to womanhood, declared that she would 
 rather not have been a man) remark that 
 it is " better to know one is robbed than 
 to think one is going to be murdered," and 
 I believe that most of the victims of these 
 visionary terrors would willingly exchange 
 them for the burden of some more definite 
 minor misery. It is this phase of morbid 
 
"GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 231 
 
 and romantic sensibility which has gener- 
 ated the jealousy that is retrospective as 
 well as prospective quick to recognise and 
 resent the influences which may seem to 
 have either marred or contaminated the 
 beloved one in the past, and ever upon 
 the alert to combat and counteract any 
 such influences in the future. 
 
 "Owen Meredith," in one of the most 
 beautiful of his last poems, gives expres- 
 sion thus felicitously to a kindred idea : 
 
 " In the old Piazza at Florence, a statue of David stands, 
 'Tis the masterful work of Michael Angelo's marvel- 
 lous art, 
 Yet a failure nevertheless ; for it came to the master's 
 
 hands 
 Not a virgin block intact, but already rough-hewn 
 
 in part. 
 And what Mino da Fiesole did to it, Angelo could not 
 
 undo, 
 So the work is but half his own. It is finished, yet 
 
 incomplete, 
 As that statue to Michael Angelo, hundreds of years 
 
 ago, 
 
 So are you at this moment to me, an achievement 
 and yet a defeat ! 
 
232 A PLEA FOR THE 
 
 'Tis that others have been before me, of whose touch 
 
 you retain the trace, 
 You are half my work, half theirs. Thro' your 
 
 spirit and flesh disperst 
 Is the mark of a love not mine, that my own love 
 
 cannot efface, 
 
 For you were not virgin marble when you came to 
 my hands at first ! " 
 
 Whether a man be a Michael Angelo 
 or a Mino da Fiesole, each one is inclined, 
 at any rate, to imagine the work of his 
 own hands to be the true touch of the 
 master. We women are, for the most part, 
 somewhat different in this respect : " on 
 veut faire tout le bonheur ou tout le mat- 
 heur de celui qrfon aime " ; and so long 
 as we can leave a mark upon the marble 
 which is ineffaceable for all time, we do not 
 always take much thought as to whether it 
 will be looked upon as a beauty or a blemish 
 by those who may try their hands upon 
 it afterwards. Those who have been cursed 
 with a superabundant fertility of imagina- 
 tion, a passionate intensity of human sym- 
 
"GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 233 
 
 pathy, an exaggerated perception and 
 appreciation of the emotions in which 
 they have had no share, will doubtless 
 have derived some measure of consolation 
 from the reflection that without dwelling 
 upon the divine precedent revealed to us 
 in the second commandment the wisest 
 monarch of his time, when he was "in all 
 his glory," seemed to have fully realised 
 the horrors of this form of jealousy. He 
 knew that it was " cruel as the grave," 
 that "the coals thereof" were "coals of 
 fire," and that they had "a most vehement 
 flame." And he, too, for all his wisdom 
 and glory, desired, as it were, to leave his 
 mark upon the marble. "Set me as a 
 seal upon thine heart," he exclaims, in the 
 beautiful and passionate love-song that bears 
 his name, "as a seal upon thine arm." 
 No, King Solomon the Wise was obviously 
 not one of the " coarse lot," of the loud 
 coughers, the straddlers about on wet days, 
 the men who are so wasteful with their 
 
234 A PLEA FOR THE 
 
 meat and drink, or who feign idiotcy for 
 ulterior motives ! 
 
 I would maintain, therefore, that the 
 jealousy which results from the undue 
 exaltation of a finite fellow - creature, 
 from a desire to enshrine, and adore, and 
 protect from every manner of evil com- 
 munication, the being we love, is directly 
 and essentially opposed to all that is 
 barbarous and purely sensual ; and that 
 the further we are removed from the 
 condition of "brute beasts that have no 
 understanding," the more mercilessly are 
 we exposed to some of its acutest tor- 
 tures. 
 
 " L 'amour" says Christina of Sweden 
 the Christina who inflicted such summary 
 vengeance upon Monaldeschi "fait naitre 
 la jalousie, mais la jalousie fait mourir 
 P amour" No one (no man, especially) 
 will be likely to dispute the truth of this ; 
 and yet, for the reasons which I have put 
 forward above, I would place the emotion 
 
"GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 235 
 
 of jealousy, when it is thus passionate 
 and exhaustive, a long way before the 
 emotion of love in any of its varying 
 phases. 
 
 It is so much more difficult to be 
 passionately and exhaustively jealous than 
 it is to be, or to fancy one's self, after some 
 sort of fashion, in love ! So much more 
 imagination is required in the one case 
 than in the other; added to which, the 
 emotion of love being, in most respects, 
 a pleasurable one, is liable to be, to a 
 certain extent, though often unconsciously, 
 artificially induced and encouraged ; whereas 
 nobody in his, or her, sober senses, would 
 ever be likely to artificially induce the 
 emotion of jealousy, or to encourage it, 
 assuming it to have been once thus in- 
 duced ; for 
 
 " Oh, what damned minutes tells he o'er 
 Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly 
 loves ! " 
 
236 A PLEA FOR THE 
 
 And as nobody, as far as I can remember, 
 has ever said a good word for it, or re- 
 garded it with any kind of indulgence, it 
 is not probable that it has ever been 
 simulated or assumed where it did not 
 actually exist, or that people have ever 
 boasted of, or plumed themselves upon, 
 their jealous experiences ; so that the out- 
 ward and visible manifestations of jealousy, 
 unlike the outward and visible manifesta- 
 tions of love, are pretty nearly certain to 
 be the outcome of genuine emotion. The 
 quality of jealousy, therefore, " like the 
 quality of mercy," " is not strained." Hydra- 
 headed and Argus-eyed, and provided with 
 the horrid feelers of the octopus, the 
 " green-eyed monster " rises unbidden from 
 its own particular Inferno, and has its 
 pleasure of us whether we will it or no. 
 It is twice cursed. It curseth "him that 
 gives and him that takes." Whilst it is 
 with us it consumes us like a malarious 
 fever. When it is gone from us, and we 
 
"GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 237 
 
 are once more made whole, we thank God, 
 and shake ourselves, and take up our bed 
 and walk ; and I believe that a really 
 virulent attack of "monster," like an attack 
 of smallpox, ought to guarantee the patient 
 from a recurrence of the disease. 
 
 Those whose natures have predisposed 
 them to its acutest tortures will fall in 
 with few genuine fellow-sufferers. Speak- 
 ing as a woman, I would wager that out 
 of every fifty persons of my own sex who 
 have been, or who have imagined them- 
 selves to be, in love, not more than one 
 has ever come to comprehend the intensest 
 and most exhaustive kind of jealousy ; and 
 that not more than one in a hundred has 
 attained to the intensest and most exhaustive 
 form of jealousy without cause, which, on 
 account of the luxuriance of imagination 
 involved in it, I take it to be the very 
 highest form of jealousy of all. 
 
 And now, to return to the point from 
 which I started, I humbly contend that 
 
238 A PLEA FOR THE 
 
 jealousy of this sort, implying, as it does, 
 the existence of an affection which will 
 admit of no manner of partage in the 
 possession of a treasure, is, most assuredly, 
 a compliment. It is ridiculous, unreason- 
 able, reprehensible. It is founded upon an 
 illusion, an absurdly romantic assumption, 
 and is desired of no man. It is artificial 
 and superfluous a mere extraneous after- 
 growth, which, fungus-like, has sprung out 
 of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 
 Finally, 
 
 " It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock 
 The meat it feeds on," 
 
 and it has not " a leg to stand upon " ; but 
 in all its accursed manifestations, it is a 
 compliment, nevertheless, the sincerest and 
 most spontaneous that can be paid by one 
 human being to another. 
 
 I fancy I can hear some one of the 
 "coarse" lot lifting up his voice and differ- 
 ing from me here. "The accursed mani- 
 
"GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 239 
 
 festations of jealousy upon the part of a 
 woman" (I think I can hear him saying), 
 " particularly when they occur in any public 
 place, render an unfortunate man supremely 
 ridiculous, and place him in altogether a 
 false position." 
 
 But, if we only take the trouble to 
 analyse this assertion to divest it, to use 
 Carlyle's words, of its " outside wrappages" 
 we shall find that, like so many of the 
 assertions of our " hereditary legislators," 
 it has its origin in specious and conven- 
 ient error. What is really the plain un- 
 varnished truth of the matter? Precisely 
 the reverse of what this coarse person 
 would have us believe. The " accursed 
 manifestations of jealousy," whenever a 
 woman is impelled to make a public dis- 
 play of them, render her at once supremely 
 ridiculous, whilst they exalt the man who 
 has inspired them upon a decided pinnacle 
 and invest him immediately with a mys- 
 terious interest. What does almost every 
 
240 A PLEA FOR THE 
 
 other woman say to herself, upon witnessing 
 a public manifestation of this kind ? Some- 
 thing of this sort, I take it, if she is made 
 at all after the usual pattern : " Dear me ! 
 there is a very ordinary-looking individual, 
 whom I never took the trouble to remark 
 until this moment, and yet it is evident, 
 from the way in which that unfortunate 
 woman is making a fool of herself, that 
 there must be something extremely attrac- 
 tive about him, after all. He must be 
 charming dans rintimite! She is evidently 
 anything but sure of him. I must try and 
 get him introduced to me at once ! " 
 
 And now, by way of conclusion, I would 
 entreat those who have suffered, either in 
 their own minds, or because this baleful 
 microbe has entered into the minds of 
 others and there found sustenance, to take 
 heart and be comforted. The "green-eyed 
 monster," in his last most agonising form, 
 is slowly but surely passing away from our 
 midst. He could not develop in utterly 
 
"GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 241 
 
 barbaric times. In the romantic period 
 he flourished and luxuriated, and claimed 
 many victims, and in some passionate and 
 imaginative hearts he has taken up his 
 abode even in these prosaic latter days. 
 But seeing that, as I have just said, he 
 is ridiculous and extraneous, and against 
 the dictates of common sense, he cannot 
 long survive the pitiless disenchantments 
 of a practical and scientific age, in which 
 he has no possible raison d'etre, and 
 wherein he will presently find that he has 
 no room for even the sole of his foot. 
 
 He will be scared by the shrieks of 
 steam-engines, smothered with the smoke 
 of factories, and run over by electric tram- 
 cars. The surgeon of the future will 
 have a turn at him with his probe and 
 scalpel, and the nerve-doctor will stupefy 
 him with morphia and bromide of potas- 
 sium, and the mad-doctor will declare that 
 he is hopelessly insane and incapable of 
 looking after his own affairs. And the 
 
 Q 
 
242 A PLEA FOR THE 
 
 American dentist will gag him, and grind 
 at him, and tear out his fangs, after the 
 man who has the laughing-gas strapped 
 on to his chest has administered to him 
 the anaesthetic which gives one a foretaste 
 of the very numbness of death. And he 
 will be "tried in the balance and found 
 wanting," and carted off to Woking by 
 parcel-post and cremated, and his ashes 
 will be scattered broadcast upon the land 
 for manure. 
 
 And so he will depart out of the world, 
 to the place where the bad monsters go ; 
 the evil genii, and the dragons, and the 
 yellow dwarfs, and the gnomes, and the 
 giants with three heads, and all the other 
 poor old played-out creations of a bygone 
 time ; and only one or two of those 
 amongst us who can feel and think and 
 foresee, will drop a tear for him, well 
 knowing that this will be the beginning 
 of the end. 
 
 Let the " coarse lot," therefore, make 
 
"GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 243 
 
 the most, whilst it is still with them, of 
 the sentimental and romantic and un- 
 reasonable jealousy of woman. We have 
 been sentimentally and romantically and 
 unreasonably jealous quite long enough. 
 Our education is day by day advancing 
 with gigantic strides. We are becoming 
 perceptibly finer and larger, and our 
 muscles are being developed at the ex- 
 pense of our hearts ; so that, long before 
 the final freezing of our emotions, we 
 shall probably learn to laugh at many of 
 our old follies. Those amongst us who 
 are scientifically disposed will discover, no 
 doubt, that man is, after all, only an 
 animated conglomeration of chemical in- 
 gredients, most of which can be purchased 
 by the pound at the co-operative stores 
 for a sum considerably under the horrible 
 old heart - rending price, and that to 
 evolve an idol, or an inspiration, or a 
 patron saint, out of such very common- 
 place materials, would be little short of 
 
244 A PLEA FOR THE 
 
 an absurdity. Those women who are 
 ambitious of parliamentary distinction, or 
 of becoming members of county-councils, 
 will be jealous, no doubt but it will be 
 of such rivals as have secured the greater 
 number of votes ; whilst those who possess 
 practical and utilitarian leanings will inquire, 
 "What is the good of jealousy?" seeing 
 that it cannot hoist weights, or propel 
 tramcars, or inflate flying machines. And 
 if the athletic and physically active sister- 
 hood continue to be jealous, it will be 
 more after the good old barbaric fashion 
 which prevailed before we were unwise 
 enough either to construct or demolish. 
 They will be jealous of those who out- 
 shine them upon the golf links, or in 
 the hunting field, of the gainers of gold 
 medals, and silver challenge cups, for 
 diving, or shooting, or high jumping ; of 
 the champions of football and tennis 
 clubs, or of the beaters of records in the 
 race of bicycles. ''Jalousie de metier" a 
 
"GREEN-EYED MONSTER" 245 
 
 very comfortable substitute for "jalousie 
 d'amour" inciting merely to a wholesome 
 spirit of emulation, will endure, no doubt, 
 to the very end of our coal-burning period 
 nay, for aught we know to the contrary, 
 until the spendthrift sun himself shall 
 shed his expiring beam ; but the jealousy 
 which is the outcome of sentiment and 
 illusion, of the infatuation begotten of a 
 great love and a little knowledge, the 
 haunting terror which is " cruel as the 
 grave," and whereof the coals are as 
 "coals of fire," having "a most vehement 
 flame," will pass away for ever into the 
 "limbo of forgotten things," and be no 
 more remembered of woman than the 
 suckling of fools or the chronicling of 
 small beer. 
 
THE IDEAL COUNTRY- 
 HOUSE 
 
THE IDEAL COUNTRY- 
 HOUSE 1 
 
 EVER since we Britishers emerged from 
 the semi-barbarism of the Middle Ages 
 there has been something distinctive and 
 characteristic about the country life of 
 those among us who still enjoy some of 
 the privileges of the feudal chieftain : and 
 the stranger who visits our shores without 
 seeing something of our country-house life 
 can scarcely be said to know much about 
 England at all. It is a life which has 
 been described in glowing colours by even 
 the most jealous of our neighbours. They 
 have paid us, too, the tribute of the sin- 
 cerest flattery, for the arrangements in most 
 
 1 This paper was originally written for an American 
 
 Public. 
 
 249 
 
2 5 o THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 
 
 of those Continental chateaux where any- 
 thing like hospitality is dispensed are obvi- 
 ously imitated from those of an English 
 country-house. 
 
 It would be advisable, nevertheless, that 
 the neophyte, anxious to drain the cup of 
 old English hospitality, should not accept 
 incontinently, as it were, the first invitation 
 that he or she may happen to receive. It 
 would be well, first of all, to consult some 
 thoroughly experienced person, some old 
 campaigner who has grown grey and cun- 
 ning in the pursuit of pleasure, and whose 
 scent has become keen as that of a truffle- 
 dog at sniffing out places where the best 
 of everything can be obtained at the least 
 possible cost and inconvenience. I re- 
 member such a one gone now to "a 
 house not made with hands" telling me 
 that just as an experienced gourmet can 
 judge by the quality of the soup what the 
 rest of the dinner is likely to be, so was 
 he able to discern, with absolute certainty, 
 
THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 251 
 
 the quality of a country-house party at 
 sight of only one of his fellow - guests. 
 There were those whose faces at once 
 inspired him with confidence, putting to 
 flight everything in the shape of a misgiv- 
 ing, while there were others whose appear- 
 ance was productive of a precisely opposite 
 effect. If, upon entering a house, he 
 chanced to catch sight of a certain dowager 
 of predatory instincts, of a particular racon- 
 teur who had long joined the steadily in- 
 creasing army of bores, or of an Irish 
 baronet who fancied that he had a talent 
 for pathetic recitation, he immediately ar- 
 ranged with his valet to send himself a 
 telegram which would enable him to beat 
 a hasty retreat upon the morrow, as. by 
 these outward and visible signs, he knew 
 full well that from this country-house party, 
 at least, no enjoyment for him could pos- 
 sibly accrue. 
 
 But if our fellow-guests can thus con- 
 tribute to either our pleasure or annoy- 
 
252 THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 
 
 ance, how much may we not gain or lose 
 by the special qualities of our hostess ! 
 "Give me," I would say, were I about to 
 start for a country-house visit, "neither 
 effusiveness nor neglect." The hostess 
 who dogs one's footsteps in order to anti- 
 cipate imaginary wants, invades the pri- 
 vacy of one's chamber at unexpected and 
 inconvenient hours, drags one off to see 
 sights one has no wish to look at, or to 
 meet people one has no wish to know, is 
 even more trying to a visitor of nervous 
 temperament than the one who "washes 
 her hands" of you altogether and seems 
 to think that the whole duty of woman to- 
 wards her guests has come to an end 
 when she has sent out her invitations. 
 
 I remember once, when going down to 
 stay at a well - known country - house for 
 the first time, inquiring of a fair habitude 
 who happened to be in the same railway- 
 carriage, what sort of a place it was 
 whether it was one at which visitors of a 
 
THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 253 
 
 quiet, contemplative turn would be allowed 
 to follow their own devices and amuse 
 themselves after their own fashion. "It is 
 a house entirely after your own heart," the 
 fair habitude made answer, " for you might 
 be dead in the best bedroom for a week 
 without either your host or hostess finding 
 it out, or caring a brass farthing suppos- 
 ing that they did ! " But between such 
 callous indifference and a fussy and irritat- 
 ing importunity there is surely a middle 
 way, which I now propose to indicate to 
 those of my readers who care to follow me 
 to the ideal country-house, presided over 
 by the ideal hostess. 
 
 In describing a beautiful and well-ordered 
 English country-house, such a one, or such 
 another, immediately presents itself to the 
 mind. But in England there are many 
 mansions, and it would be invidious to 
 particularise. Suffice it to say that I can 
 see in fancy the kind of country-house to 
 which I would conduct the appreciative 
 
254 THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 
 
 stranger. Although of a very respectable 
 age, it ought not to be too old. The first 
 country-house that I ever stayed at had 
 been built in the reign of one of our Saxon 
 kings. Most of its internal arrangements 
 dated from the time of the Heptarchy, and 
 it was anything but comfortable in conse- 
 quence. 
 
 Let us rather select one of about the 
 time of good Queen Bess ; before the over- 
 crowded Mayflower had breasted the billows 
 of the wide Atlantic, and when many of the 
 ancestors of my present readers may have 
 been treading the creaking floors of old Eng- 
 lish country mansions. A red-brick house 
 (let us suppose) faced with white stone, may- 
 be, its roof ornamented with quaint leaden 
 monsters and gilded vanes, standing at the 
 end of its noble avenue of gnarled lime-trees, 
 
 " 'Midst green old gardens, hidden away 
 From sight of revel and sound of strife, 
 
 Where the bird may sing out his soul ere he dies, 
 Nor fears for the night so he lives his day 
 
THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 255 
 
 And the high red walls that are growing grey 
 With their lichen and moss embroideries 
 Seem sadly and sternly to shut out life, 
 
 The life that is often as sad as they ! " 
 
 Or, we might journey together to one 
 dating from a less romantic epoch from 
 Queen Anne's reign, let us say, or the 
 early Georgian period standing among 
 " crow-crested elms," and furnished, within 
 doors, with marvels of old blue china and 
 Chippendale, a house soothing to the 
 troubled spirit from the potent spell of its 
 quaint Eighteenth Century calm. If it be 
 recognised that we can see with the mind's 
 eye, we may be permitted, I presume, to 
 smell with the mind's nose, and with that 
 figurative organ I seem to breathe anew the 
 delicious fragrance that clings to the rooms 
 of most old English country-houses. It is a 
 smell as of old-world flowers and freshly 
 mown meadow-grass, warmed by summer 
 sunshine ; of resinous exhalations from cedar, 
 sandal, and cassia woods ; of books bound in 
 
256 THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 
 
 old Russian leather and morocco ; of the pot- 
 pourri and lavender buds that are collected 
 in the old blue china bowls and ginger 
 pots. By no burning of scented pastilles 
 or distilled essences can this subtle aroma 
 be possibly imitated. It is as much a part 
 and parcel of the house as its foundation 
 stone, or as the family ghost (if there 
 happens to be one), and to those who have 
 ever been privileged to call such a house 
 their home, supposing that they possess 
 impressionable natures, it will seem to 
 surpass in fragrance all the vaunted spices 
 of Araby. An ancient race, we will assume, 
 
 " Here lived and died ; these hollow-sounding floors 
 
 And creaking doors, 
 Obeyed their hands and trembled at their tread." 
 
 Their portraits are still hanging on the 
 walls and seem to gaze down upon us with 
 curious and pathetic eyes, as though they 
 were making a note of the changes in mode 
 and manners which had taken place since 
 
THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 257 
 
 their own day. We feel, as we look at 
 them, more as if we were in the presence 
 of real people than of mere "counterfeit 
 presentments " ; of courtly ladies and gallant 
 gentlemen, who would bid us welcome, 
 could they but find the voice, to the house 
 that was once their home. And here I 
 would remind the reader that portraits 
 thus hanging upon walls within which their 
 originals have been born and bred be they 
 by Sir Joshua, Gainsborough, Romney, the 
 great earlier Dutch masters, or even when 
 they are of the more artificial school of Lely 
 and his disciples, 
 
 " . . . . Painted at the time 
 When every lady seemed to dress in blue " 
 
 gain immeasurably, both in charm and 
 distinction, when they are allowed to remain 
 in the places in which they were originally 
 meant to be. It is creditable to the taste 
 of the rich, self-made man the man who 
 
 has no ancestors of his own to speak of 
 
 R 
 
258 THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 
 
 that he should desire to possess those of 
 other people, particularly when they repre- 
 sent works of consummate art into the 
 bargain, and that when, as too often happens, 
 through the decay of some ancient house, 
 they are set up for auction, like negro slaves 
 in the olden days, he should purchase them 
 for high prices and take them to dwell with 
 him in his own newly furnished and luxurious 
 home. But the souls seem to go out of 
 them in the transit. They are degraded to 
 mere specimens, illustrating the method of 
 some particular painter, or the merits of 
 some particular school. They are no longer 
 in a home, but in a collection interesting 
 and valuable, it may be, as are those in 
 public galleries and museums but we lose 
 altogether that pathetic note of sympathy 
 and romance which clung to them as long 
 as they remained upon the scene of their 
 earthly pilgrimage. 
 
 I would select for our visit some time 
 in the spring, or summer, rather than in 
 
THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 259 
 
 the autumn or winter months one of 
 those brief breathing periods that occur 
 in the London season at Easter or Whit- 
 suntide first, because I should like the 
 fields to be flowery and the woodlands 
 in full leaf, and secondly, because in the 
 warm weather the men-folk of the party 
 would be less likely to be altogether 
 absorbed in ideas connected with hunting 
 and shooting, or in seeking to obtain an 
 action upon the skin, which most foreigners 
 regard as the " be-all and end-all " of an 
 Englishman's country existence. That a 
 man should be able to use a gun in self- 
 defence, or when in quest of sustenance 
 in a savage country, is quite as it should 
 be. Hunting and shooting, too, with their 
 attendant excitement and outdoor exercise, 
 may doubtless serve as salutary distractions 
 to those engaged for the greater part of 
 their lives in more important pursuits, but 
 the men who devote themselves exclusively 
 to so-called "sport" who talk, read, 
 
260 THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 
 
 think, and dream of nothing but the 
 wholesale slaughter of innocent and sen- 
 tient creatures are certainly not the most 
 entertaining additions to a country-house 
 party ! Walter Savage Landor, in a letter 
 to his sister, writes thus respecting the 
 shooting of feathered game for mere pas- 
 time : 
 
 " Let men do these things if they will. 
 Perhaps there is no harm in it ; perhaps 
 it makes them no crueller than they 
 would be otherwise. But it is hard to 
 take away what we cannot give, and life 
 is a pleasant thing at least to birds. No 
 doubt the younger ones say tender things 
 to one another, and even the old ones do 
 not dream of death." 
 
 Our country-house visit, then, shall be 
 paid in the summer, although, perhaps, a 
 winter visit would better acquaint the 
 stranger with an Englishman's country 
 tastes ; and I should wish to arrive at our 
 
THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 261 
 
 destination not later than five o'clock, so 
 that, before dressing for dinner, we might 
 have time to wander for a while in the 
 quaint old-fashioned flower - garden, and 
 breathe all the fresh country smells that 
 seem so delicious after a long residence 
 in town. In the diplomatic circles in 
 which the present writer now moves, 
 much importance attaches to whether a 
 guest is received at the entrance of the 
 drawing-room, at the top of the stairs, 
 at the bottom of the stairs, or at the 
 front door. Illustrious or well-beloved in- 
 deed must be the one whose advent 
 would occasion this last and highest mark 
 of respect or affection ! The ideal hostess, 
 in the course of her social experience, 
 has probably evolved some such graduated 
 scale of demonstrativeness. I should be 
 contented, for my own part, if, when dis- 
 covered comfortably seated at her well- 
 furnished tea-table, she merely rose from 
 her chair and welcomed us with a genial 
 
262 THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 
 
 smile, but I confess that I should like 
 our arrival to occasion some little flutter 
 of pleasurable excitement, whether real or 
 simulated, for it is disheartening after hav- 
 ing left home and taken, perhaps, a long 
 and fatiguing journey, to be received with 
 only the absent handshake and cold, 
 averted gaze which is all that some 
 hostesses condescend to vouchsafe. The 
 ideal hostess for all her ideality may 
 not really care .very much more than the 
 family to whom I have already alluded 
 if we were to be found dead in one 
 of her best bed-rooms, but, being both 
 enlightened and refined, she will at any 
 rate endeavour to dissemble her indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 At dinner prepared, it is needless to 
 say, by an irreproachable French chef- 
 what delightful surprises may be in store 
 for us surprises which are, as a matter 
 of course, altogether unconnected with 
 bodily food ! How rare is the feast 
 
THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 263 
 
 that has been furnished for the intellect ! 
 This is no mere "menagerie party" a 
 name I would give to those heterogeneous 
 gatherings at which princes of the blood, 
 archbishops, and lovely ladies of fashion 
 may be seen hobnobbing (whatever this 
 may mean !) with African monarchs in 
 their war- plumes, or the latest stars of the 
 opera-boujfe, and yet we will imagine that 
 every guest is cultivated and intelligent, 
 and animated, above all, by an amiable 
 desire to please. All bores and faddists, 
 all touchy and cantankerous people, all 
 sick persons and young children, have 
 been carefully eliminated from the party. 
 The predatory dowager, the tiresome old 
 raconteur, the reciting Irish baronet, all 
 " shine by their absence." What scintilla- 
 tions of playful and original wit ! What 
 easy and spontaneous repartee ! By the 
 time the roast has been reached we almost 
 feel as if we were all members of the 
 same family, Perhaps there may even be 
 
264 THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 
 
 one guest at the board who arouses a still 
 warmer sympathy ! . . . 
 
 After dinner, since England is not a 
 mosquito country, there is nothing but the 
 weather to prevent us from strolling about 
 upon moonlit terraces, or sitting in trellised 
 arbours, and we will suppose that the 
 weather is all that it should be. Those 
 who prefer to converse, to listen to the 
 strains of music, or to settle down to a 
 friendly rubber within doors, may also in- 
 dulge their pleasure, but in the ideal country- 
 house nothing is compulsory. We are not 
 compelled to sit up till any particular hour, 
 in order that we may march upstairs in bat- 
 talions, but may retire when we like without 
 exciting remark. I have come to mistrust 
 that hostess who, upon bidding one " good- 
 night," makes use of the hackneyed phrase, 
 "This is Liberty Hall!" As far as my 
 experience goes she says this merely to put 
 one off one's guard, and proceeds forthwith 
 to weave around one all manner of spells 
 
THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 265 
 
 and entanglements subtle as the charm 
 "of woven paces and of waving arms" 
 wherewith the wily Vivien succeeded in 
 subjugating the enchanter Merlin which 
 paralyse every natural impulse, and impose 
 upon one endless duties and obligations, 
 from early family prayers downwards. I 
 think I am even more interested than most 
 people are in ruined crypts, wishing-wells, 
 ancient cromlechs, and the like. Hot-houses, 
 too, containing rare orchids, mushrooms, 
 and pine-apples, may be also agreeable 
 objects of contemplation when one is in the 
 mood for them. But I resent having sights, 
 however interesting or instructive, imposed 
 upon me by force, and like to be left to 
 wade through the model piggery, or glide 
 down the nearest coal-pit, only just when 
 the spirit moves me. Horses and carriages, 
 however, are placed at the disposal of the 
 guests, and those who choose to visit any 
 of the local lions are, of course, at liberty 
 to do so. But we have little need of any 
 
266 THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 
 
 extraneous amusement. There is tennis 
 for those who desire to "urge the flying 
 ball," and croquet for those who prefer to 
 knock it about upon the velvet sward, and 
 shady alleys and bowers for those who pre- 
 fer to do nothing. The lawn looks like a 
 picture by Watteau or Lancret ; we feel 
 that we might go farther and fare worse ! 
 A few more such delightful days, 
 
 " With all hours seeming rosy-crown'd," 
 
 and a kind of charming freemasonry seems 
 to become established among the company. 
 We discover sympathies, tastes, a thousand 
 unexpected things in common. One among 
 the guests, maybe, has grown even into a 
 second self. How little did we dream of this 
 when we took our departure from home ! 
 We evolve certain jokes, catchwords, and 
 nicknames, some of which may recur to us 
 for years to come, or may even be handed 
 down to our remote posterity, to whom, per- 
 haps, they will not seem particularly funny. 
 
THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 267 
 
 They are the outcome, however, of light 
 and joyous hearts, taking their pastime in 
 holiday season, and as such have some 
 claims upon our remembrance. 
 
 And then after a period brief or pro- 
 longed, as the case may be comes the most 
 delightful day of all, the day of our depar- 
 ture for home ! For, say what one will, and 
 however enjoyable the party may have been, 
 there is still something a little fatiguing 
 to the nervous system in being thus con- 
 tinually before the public, no matter how 
 indulgent such a public may be. We feel 
 that we must not be cross, we must not be 
 dull, we must not be ill, we must avoid, if 
 possible, dying in one of the best bed-rooms ; 
 we must wear nice clothes and be always 
 trying to look our best. After a while, we 
 become conscious that all these restrictions 
 and obligations are gradually sapping our 
 vitality. It is, therefore, not without a sense 
 of relief, tempered by gratitude and regret, 
 that we take our places for the last time 
 
268 THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 
 
 at the hospitable breakfast table, already 
 equipped, it may be if our train happens to 
 be an early one in neat hats and becoming 
 dust-cloaks. 
 
 Our hostess (the ideal hostess), we ob- 
 serve, is more than usually radiant and ex- 
 pansive. Never before has she seemed to 
 us to be so attractive. The master of the 
 house, too, who, in spite of his moral worth, 
 had struck us as being rather a ponderous 
 man, how he wakes up and radiates at this 
 last breakfast! Can it be that they are 
 glad we are going away ? We cast from us 
 this disloyal suggestion as though it were a 
 scorpion ! Our hostess is merely wishing to 
 convey to us the knowledge that she has 
 liked us better upon a further acquaintance. 
 She is not a person who gushes over new- 
 comers at first, but now she wishes to show 
 us that we have been admitted to her inner 
 circle. Then, again, " Call no man happy 
 until after he is dead," and call no country- 
 house party pleasant until after it is over. 
 
THE IDEAL COUNTRY-HOUSE 269 
 
 This one has been a most brilliant success, 
 and both host and hostess are overflowing 
 with the natural triumph consequent upon 
 a benevolent and perfected achievement, 
 and at thought of the enjoyment afforded 
 by their hospitality. Yes, the whole thing 
 has been too absolutely delightful for words, 
 but still, for all that, "there's no place like 
 home." 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON &* Co. 
 Edinburgh &> London 
 


 
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