mmm ORIGINAL SINNERS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. NEIGHBOURS OF OURS : Scenes of East End Life. IN THE VALLEY OF TOPHET : Scenes of Black Country Life. THE PLEA OF PAN. BETWEEN THE ACTS: Scenes in the Author's Experience. THE DAWN IN RUSSIA : Scenes in the Revolution of 1905- 1906. ESSAYS IN FREEDOM. ESSAYS IN REBELLION. THE DARDANELLES CAMPAIGN. LINES OF LIFE (Verse). ORIGINAL SINNERS BY HENRY W. NEVINSON LONDON CHRISTOPHERS 22 BERNERS STREET, W. 1 First Published in 1920 PREFACE r I IHEEE has been some discussion lately J- about '' The Fall of Man," and English ecclesiastics, appealing to higher authorities than the mere sciences of geology, morphology, biology, zoology, and the history of mankind, have confidently maintained the truth and value of that theological hypothesis. It is very natural. I suppose that every mythology, whether Hebrew, Greek, Eoman, German, Celtic, or Norse, has imagined a distant age of innocence and happiness to which those races looked back with a regretful yearning, such as many middle-aged people feel in looking back upon a childhood fondly pictured as innocent and happy. Every one knows how rapidly the past becomes idealised — ^how rapidly the black shadows of bodily pain, grief, fear, and anxiety fade from the picture that we recall. Unconsciously, and even unwillingly, memory works at her selection, and, hke a sun-dial which boasts 598430 vi PREFACE ** Nullas numero horas nisi serenas,'' she records only the feeHngs and incidents that were comparatively bright. The process of eUmination is so quick that almost every day of our lives we can say to ourselves, " To- morrow how I shall long for yesterday ! '* So it is no wonder that the traditions of mankind, extending over many thousand years, should often have called up dissolving visions of ancient peace and virtue and joy — an Age of the Elder Gods, a Golden Age, a Garden of Eden, where was neither grief nor pain nor parting nor any sin. Even historians, poets, and novelists, who limit themselves to more definite history than the theologians, love to dwell upon the imagined charms of the " Violet-crowned City,'* or of mediaeval chivalry, or Elizabethan spacious- ness, or even of our rollicking Civil Wars and the romantic 'Forty-five. It seems as though ** The Fall " were not merely a decline from Adam and a Saturnian Age, but a recurrent or perpetual process — as though man were for ever declining and falling down a slippery slope. Indeed, for any one who has survived the last six years and been PREFACE vii present at scenes of bloodthirstiness, lust, and cruelty far surpassing the imagination or capacity of any other animal, the continuous Fall of Man is a doctrine easily believed. There was a time when man could be described as a little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and honour ; but large numbers of our genus have lately shown themselves immeasurably lower than the beasts, amid the applause of many who were debarred by age or sex or religion from enjoying opportunities for similar conduct. And yet, however natural the doctrine of the Fall may be, it appears to me too like despair. If we have always to keep our backward-turning eyes fixed upon a retreating past of innocuous joy, while we drag at each remove a lengthening chain, what inducement has mankind for proceeding upon the way ? Let us, rather, leave the world to the superior wisdom, morality, and beauty of elephants, apes, and peacocks. Only if we remain obstinately deaf to the poetic allurements of the Fall and heroically cleave to the repellent old doctrine of Original Sin (its contrary, though many contrive to accept both) — only viii PREFACE then does the outlook grow a httle brighter. Take our sins as original, as part of man's very essence from the beginning ; assume, with Mephisto, that we have used our glim- mering light of reason only to become more bestial than the beasts ; put mankind at its worst within historic times, and in the present appaUing years ; still, we may now and again perceive in men and women something which makes us hold our breath, as at a sudden revelation of splendour. Kindliness, courage, laughter — all simple things, but how unex- pected and startling ! We talk of " common honesty ! " Ifc is so rare and so welcome that the merest touch of it makes one jump like the touch of an angel's hand. Fidelity, self-sacrifice, and shame — many animals and birds display those qualities, and many have a highly-developed sense of beauty and art. A dog can smile and laugh, or ** grin," as the Psalmist knew. Horses, asses, and cats maintain profound convictions. Camels and trek-oxen practise prudence and resource. But in all these characteristics man at times surpasses them, as he surpasses them in bestial ways. That is where the wonder comes PREFACE ix in. Compared with occasional revelations of man's humanity, honesty, self-sacrifice, and laughter, no miracle ever performed by god or saint or magician can appear marvellous, nor would I turn my head to see it. What recorded miracle can exceed in wonder the momentary transfiguration that any one with his own eyes can see any day of the week enacted in many a human soul by such a commonplace affair as love ? There is nothing to astonish us in Original Sin. What over- whelms us with incredulous amazement is the fleeting apparition of virtue. As to these tales and scenes, they were written at various times as they happened to come into my mind, without any order, and certainly without doctrinal intention ! But some one suggested that they illustrate this old doctrine of Original Sin, and I can only hope they may also show that man, plunged up to the neck in his black and tenacious sHme-pit, may yet, to his own astonishment, at times perceive lights as of constellations promising him some happier issue or future redemption. Those constellations, existing in his heart alone, are the twinkling lights of PREFACE his own unstable belief in beauty or love or magnanimity or uncompromising indepen- dence. In these scenes a glimpse of those flickering lights is sometimes just visible, however dim. Sometimes a light is perceived as a passionate mental courage, bringing to naught the pride and wisdom of the world and its governors ; sometimes as a redeeming friendhness and natural affection ; sometimes as that peculiar restraint called shame ; and once as a rudimentary quahty displayed in a creature vainly desirous of entering the path of humanity, as he hopefully conceived humanity to be. The details in ** QuaUs Artifex ! '* are derived from Tacitus and Suetonius ; those in ** Diocletian's Day " from Gibbon and my brief residence in Spalato. The idea of " Sly's Awakening *' is an imaginary continuance of the Prologue to " The Taming of the Shrew." H. W. N. London, 1920. CONTENTS I. " QUALIS ARTIFEX ! " II. sly's awakening . III. A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE IV. PONGO'S ILLUSION . V. " SITTING AT A PLAY " . VI. A TRANSFORMATION SCENE VII. " THE ACT OF FEAR " VIII. IN Diocletian's day PAGE . 1 . 27 . 55 . 78 . 103 . 131 . 157 . 173 ORIGINAL SINNERS ** QUALIS ARTIFEX ! " O UDDENL Y at midnight the blare of trum- ^pets sounded in the distance. It was the signal that the Emperor had issued from the doors of Rome's Golden Palace, where at last heaven-born genius had secured a worthy home. At the sound a murmur of expectation rose in the new theatre, constructed upon ruins left by the great fire. Too long had the city been deprived of the world's conqueror. Month after month the successive contests which had converted his progress through the province of Achaia into a series of triumphs had detained him in the Near East. After each event messengers were despatched to the Senate bearing staves entwined with laurel, and Rome listened mute with admiration to the record of hard- won victories. First prize in dancing, first prize in eloquence, in poetry, in chariot driving, and several first prizes in o.s. 1 ORIGINAL SINNERS music and singing — all had fallen to the Emperor's prowess. His adversaries were worthy of the conflict — no despicable or bar- barian foe, but highly trained champions in all the arts, the finest flower of Hellenic culture. At Olympia he was declared victor, though, Kke Phaethon's, his horses left the track. At the Isthmus the descendant of divine Caesar out-danced the traditions of Hippocleides. At Nemea he rivalled Hercules in wrestHng with a living lion, overcome by the Imperial glance and opiates. Arcadian maidens tripped to his lyre, as when Apollo led fche dances of the Nine. In him Greece applauded a new Demosthenes on the tribunal, a new Aeschylus in the theatre. The wardens of pristine religion listened in solemn conclave while he expounded to them the varied forms of abnormal pleasure. Everywhere the priest- hood suspected celestial aid, the populace boldly acclaimed divinity. Everywhere he came, was seen, and conquered. From such triumphs he had now returned to Rome enriched by his excesses, renovated, as once destroyed, by his artistic sensibiHty, QUALIS ARTIFEX!'* and released by his example from the tyranny of virtue. No previous conqueror, fresh from domination over Celtic savages or Germanic forests, had been received with comparable enthusiasm. Lo, he came enthroned in the chariot of his divine Fathers and wearing the Imperial purple studded with heavenly stars, his head adorned with the crown of wild olive, and waving in his hand the laurels of the Pythian. Forcing a passage through the Circus, he chmbed to Apollo's temple, encom- passed by five thousand troops, strictly dis- cipUned in applause. Beside him was seated one of the finest flute players of the age, and behind his throne a harlot, dressed as the Hebe of Olympus, offered wine from a silver bowl, now and again whispering in his ear the warning words, ** Remember — ^remember thou art a god." Rapt from the people's eyes, he had disappeared for three days into the shrine, and the moment of his second mani- festation was now approaching. In the new theatre, soon to be inaugurated in the joint names of the Emperor and God, the murmur of expectation was continuous. All day the audience had remained expectant, 1—2 ORIGINAL SINNERS for every seat had been filled in the early morning, and the doors then closed and guarded, so that none might be deterred from adoring the Emperor's presence owing to sickness, hunger, or other human frailty. The two back rows were occupied by prisoners. Each was chained to a warder, and encouraged to hope for nearer freedom in proportion to the vehemence of his admiration. A body of young nobles had also conspired to applaud, and both prisoners and profligates could be relied upon to remain stanch. But under the stress of prolonged anticipation, a few matrons of distinguished rank almost collapsed, their resolution being only supported by the know- ledge that grave reproof, supplemented by torture, awaited any one so indifferent to beauty as to faint. The music approached slowly, for nearly a mile of marble colonnade, winding among new gardens and along the shore of a recently created lake, had to be traversed between the palace and the stage. But at length the van- guard of the procession began to arrive. The sharp, mihtary orders of the Praetorians were heard outside, the tramping of the soldiers "QUALIS ARTIFEX! ceased, and a distinguished general entered, bearing the Imperial harp. He placed it in the centre of the stage, and withdrew. MiHtary tribunes followed, carrying gilded standards to which were affixed wreaths and other emblems of conquest, removed for the occasion from the Emperor's bed, where they habitually hung lest even in sleep he should forget his glory. The judges appointed to preside at the approaching struggle were heralded by a band of trumpeters. They took their seats upon thrones — ^the two Consuls, before whom Hctors carried the rods and axes of ancestral Rome ; and Tigellinus, com- mandant of the Praetorian Guard, equally conspicuous for his unmerited rank and his filthy reputation. When they were seated, the soldiers ranged themselves at the back of the stage in a semi-circle of gleaming arms, against which the white robes of the Roman Consuls stood out in strong relief. Numerous lamps illuminated the scene of impending strife, and at the wings two huge torches of pinewood added a barbaric flare. In front, the upturned faces of the Senate and the Roman people glowed. ORIGINAL SINNERS Deep silence fell, such as awes embattled hosts before the onset. A trumpet rang out a single blast, and from the side of the stage a human voice was heard imitating the pitch- pipe's note with fair success. At the sound, the whole audience, recognising the voice that breathed harmony over the world, rose to its feet in a tumult of impassioned applause, farther encouraged by the cracking of whips and the strokes of rods with which sentries, posted among the benches, stimulated the enthusiasm of the unmusical. When loyalty had reached its highest expression, a shy figure was perceived entering with hesitation from the left of the stage. Then indeed the noise of the whips and the profane exhorta- tions of the soldiery were drowned in re- doubled acclamation. At the uproar, the Emperor stopped and glanced around, as though Hstening in modest astonishment. Facing the audience with downcast eyes, he appeared to be on the point of retiring. His red face grew redder ; his yellow hair, gathered in plaits above his forehead, and hanging in loose disorder round his neck, was seen to tremble ; the feeble legs supporting "QUALIS ARTIFEX!" his protuberant figure trembled also, making the Hght drapery of his womanish garments quiver ; and he kept crossing and uncrossing his naked feet, like a frightened boy. Touched by these evidences of common humanity, and maddened by terror of the lash, the spectators shouted anew their devotion to his divinity, while the shrieks of sufferers swelled the clamour of approbation. Thereupon the Emperor, casting his eyes this way and that, hurried toward the judges, as though for refuge, and fell on one knee before them. So he remained, his head bowed low, his arms outstretched in submission. Again a trumpet sounded, and there was silence while Tigellinus, the Imperial wanton, standing between the Consuls, announced that a golden diadem was offered by the Vestal Virgins as a prize for the best recitation of an original poem. The first competitor was a rising young poet, named Nero Claudius Caesar, on whom the Senate was also pro- posing to bestow the title of '* the Saviour,'' for his eminent services in subduing the rival artists of Greece. The subject of the poem, which he had composed during intervals of ORIGINAL SINNERS public leisure, was the anguish of Orestes when first he perceived the approaching avengers who, pursuing him over land and sea, exacted the penalty of a mother's blood. At the announcement, a murmur of approval ran through the theatre, partly due to adoration of incarnate godhead, partly to artistic satisfaction with so appropriate a theme. For all remembered Agrippina's fate. The Emperor rose and unwound a protect- ing comforter from his thick and fleshy throat. He divested himself of a breast- plate, which he wore under his tunic, not to avert the weapon of an enemy, but to pre- serve the treasure of his voice from chill. Humbly saluting the judges and audience again, he plucked a few strings of the harp with considerable accuracy, and began the recitation. It was a medley of passages from the various dramas on Orestes, translated into Latin iambics by a poet recently executed for claiming the authorship. Inserted narrative connected the speeches, but the greater part consisted of soliloquies, uttered by Orestes while hesitating about the murder, or verging on the insanity of remorse. The Emperor's QUALIS ARTIFEX voice was harsh and uncertain. In chanting the lyrics and more solemn passages, he pitched the tone sometimes sharp, sometimes flat, but by striking an average the intended note could usually be conjectured. His gestures were inexpressive, though violent ; his memory required continual prompting ; and the sleeve on which, in accordance with theatrical rules, he wiped his face, was soon sodden with sweat. Nevertheless, in the soliloquy where Orestes first perceives the avengers lurking in dark corners, and feels the clutch of their talons on his heart as they hover round him, the Emperor obtained effects which would not have disgraced a pro- fessional actor of commonplace capacity. Quitting the harp, he raved about the stage, threatened the air with his fists, clutched at his copious locks, grovelled on the boards, and wrapped his tunic about his eyes to exclude the atrocious vision. Nor did the spectators fail to argue the cause of this rapid improvement, seeing that the Emperor shared, if not the remorse, at least the distinction of Orestes, and in matricide, at all events, was no amateur. The recitation lasted nearly two hours, but 10 ORIGINAL SINNERS the attention of the audience, already so long herded together, was from time to time encouraged by incense, and at frequent intervals, after some unusually emotional passage, or when the Emperor paused in forget fulness of the words, the marks of approbation were renewed, inspired by simu- lated pleasure, or by artistic anticipation of a satisfactory ending. At last the Imperial voice was hushed, and silence succeeded, hke the peace of God. Panting with excitement and the prolonged strain of the enterprise, the Emperor knelt again before the judges, and gazed from one face to another, like an anxious criminal expecting his doom. After pretended consultation the three judges rose and declared all competition would be vain. Upon the Emperor's head they placed a golden diadem, from which projected the sunlike rays of Apollo. With hand on heart, the victorious poet smiled his relief and gratifica- tion. Turning to the audience, the ruler of the world announced his triumph, and again the whole theatre rose in a turmoil of ecstasy. Already the gangways were crowded, and soldiers began loosening the barricaded doors. "QUALIS ARTIFEX!" 11 when the Emperor was seen raising his hand for silence. Bowing repeatedly, he gave out, with modest grace, that, in answer to a desire so cordially expressed, he would voluntarily offer for their approval a second recitation, which, unfortunately, must be brief, owing to the lateness of the hour. Stifling their groans under expressions of delighted surprise, the audience resumed their places. Two or three women, indeed, being of noble rank, took the opportunity of swooning, overcome by feminine susceptibiKty to emotion. And one Senator, with Roman daring, simulated sudden death, and was borne, a breathing corpse, into the outer air. Pleased thus freely to bestow upon man- kind the benefactions of genius, the Emperor selected the opening hnes in which the poet of " PharsaKa '' dedicated to him that long lamentation over the loss of constitutional freedom and pristine worth. " If, indeed," the poet had cried, '* if, indeed, no other way but through the horrors of civil war could be found for divine incarnation — if only after the strife of Titans could Jove enter into his kingdom — mankind had no cause to com- 12 ORIGINAL SINNERS plain, nor was any series of disasters too dear a price for so splendid a boon as the Emperor's existence." Pitching his voice a little lower, and assuming an attitude of profound rever- ence, the Emperor repeated the remaining lines with special solemnity. " And when thine earthly course is run " — so the poet continued his dedication — " when at long last thou shalt ascend into heaven, and, while the stars sing together, be received into the palace of the firmament — whether it be thy will to dominate the skies, or, mounted on the sun's flaming chariot, to course in light above an earth that fears not the change from Apollo's driving — then — oh, then each deity unto thee shall yield a part : — " Each deity unto thee shall yield a part. And nature grant the preference of thine heart Which god thou'dst be, where set thy kingdom's hold. Ah, choose not thou some realm of Arctic cold, Nor where the south pole turns, erect thy home, Thence, like a star oblique, to frown on Kome ! Should thy weight fall to either half of heaven, Our world would reel. Hold thou the balance even In the celestial scales, nor let wide air Drive murky clouds athwart, with Caesar there ! So shall the race of man lay down its arms, And universal love extend the charms Of rapturous peace. My one inspirer thou In these my strains ! Nor do I need to vow Fond prayers to Delphi, nor bid Bacchus come ; With thee alone, I raise the hymn of Rome." "QUALIS ARTIFEX!" 13 He ceased, and for a moment the theatre remained still, overcome by the fatigue of beauty and the miracle of Imperial generosity. For it was known to all that Lucan had attempted to rival the Emperor's fame as a poet, and for this reason rather than for his share in conspiracy had been driven to volun- tary execution. Yet Nero's clemency had not hesitated to recall his murdered rival's verses from oblivion, and to add their blood- stained honour to his other crowns. There was further cause for astonished silence in the reflection that the flushed and ungainly figure, whose harsh and quavering voice had kept the audience spellbound for so many hours, embodied the redemption of the world. Nor could the spectators refrain from admiration of the decrees of fate whereby the human being whom they beheld before them, already distinguished for superhuman deeds of murder, arson, and unnatural vice, was destined in due course to ascend into heaven and sit at the right hand of God, choosing his place with care lest, by the weight of his genius and moral qualities, he should disturb the equilibrium of the balanced world. 14 ORIGINAL SINNERS Such reflections were speedily interrupted by the renewed blows under which the popu- lace and prisoners were again excited to emu- late the hired enthusiasm of the plutocracy, and the graver approval of Senators, whose applause was ensured rather by fear of private assassination than by hope of gain. Under such conflicting motives, the testimony to the Em- peror's genius rose to a frenzy only restrained by the apprehension lest an excess of admira- tion might provoke a repetition of the display. Kneeling before them, the Emperor expressed his gratification with the usual modesty of suc- cessful entertainers, and immediately com- manded the Praetorian oJB&cers to throw open the doors and eject the spectators from the enchanted atmosphere of imaginative delight into the harsh reahties of everyday existence. As when a good shepherd at morning, fearing the wolf no more, tears a gap in the close stockade, and the sheep pour into the open fields ceaselessly bleating, so did the audience issue into the streets of Rome, under the con- stellations of Saturn, Jupiter, and Eastern stars, already paUid with the approaching sun. "QUALIS ARTIFEX!" 15 Into a marble chamber of the Golden House the light of morning also forced itself. Still wearing Apollo's aureole, the Emperor was seated upon a bed covered with embroidered purple. Supporting his head upon his two hands, he gazed at the streak of increasing light which entered between the curtains. His wanton favourite, together with one of the Consuls, an inferior officer, and two or three women stood silent in the room, un- wilhng to interrupt the Imperial meditation. " I heard it again,*' the Emperor said at last ; ** Tigellinus, I heard that voice again. It called to me from the tomb of Augustus. * Nero, Nero,' it said, * a place is vacant.' " " No wonder the gods are impatient," his minion answered. ** * With roseate hps Augustus quaffs the nectar of heaven ' — ^you know the hues. He desires a better comrade than God. But he must wait. It is not yet time for your ascension." " Oh, Tigellinus," the Emperor continued, without noticing the consolation ; ** if I should die before my task of redemption is fulfilled ! Sometimes I still question my 16 ORIGINAL SINNERS powers. Often I approach my art as though I were still a novice, and even after my grandest performance the torturing uncer- tainty remains. The doubt always returns, it crucifies me afresh. Only by perfection is the hideousness of mankind redeemed. Shall I ever be reckoned among the world's redeemers ? " " For fourteen years,'' Tigellinus repKed, *' you have stood at the summit of art. History tells of no parallel." " But if one reaches the summit and then declines ? " the Emperor anxiously inter- rupted, '* How exacting art is ! Worse than love, it must be reconquered every day, and to touch perfection is death ! " " Immortals live by their perfection," said the favourite. ** But I choose to be mortal," the Emperor coldly answered, and, as though rousing himself from depression, he cried : ** I am thirsty." A girl held him a cup, and when he had drunk, he cried again, " What report to- night ? " " From Marseilles and from Spain come "QUALIS ARTIFEX!" 17 rumours of increasing trouble," the Consul answered. ** I mean what report about the audience ? " said the Emperor, turning to a captain who had commanded in the theatre. *' Perfect order. Emperor," the captain replied. " One voice of uninterrupted applause." " The applause was then uncritical ? " asked the Emperor. " Criticism was silenced in wonder," said the officer. "Only two of the audience re- mained contumacious, and both were aliens — a Jew and a Greek." '' What fault did they find ? " the Emperor anxiously inquired. '* The Jew criticised the cadence — the modulation of the verses and music. The Greek ventured to question the Emperor's divinity," replied the captain. ** These Orientals have a different scale from ours," the Emperor murmured reflec- tively. ** That difference would account for his want of appreciation. Theirs is a bar- baric scale, but perhaps it contains some new element of beauty. Bring the Jew here." O.S. 2 18 ORIGINAL SINNERS ** Emperor, I gave orders/' stammered the captain. " Bring him alive or dead ! '* said the Emperor. " And bring the wretched Greek, too ! " he called out after the officer, who hurried away. ** Not that I have anything against the Greek,'* he continued more calmly, subsiding on to the bed again ; "as you know, I have always preferred not to be God. What credit has a god ? Who praises Jove for his thunder, or Apollo for his song? Of course Apollo sings well, and plays the harp well, and drives the sun to perfection. Being a god, perfection costs him nothing. But that a mortal man should sing — that a mortal man should have devised the harp string — that is cause for glory and amazement.'' ** In his person Caesar unites both God and man," said Tigellinus. " A god can feel no pain, whatever Homer says of his whimpering Venus," the Emperor continued. *' What should a god know of the artist's anguish, the hesitation and anxiety, the labour of practice, the misery of self-distrust ? With scarce one stride, the "QUALIS ARTIFEX!" 19 speeding god arrives — if you will accept an impromptu verse. He knows nothing of the uncertain start, the torture of choice when so many paths lie open, the timid advance, the despairing doubt, the evil spirits of scorn and criticism that laugh and howl from ditches and dark corners. It is as impossible for Apollo to miss his note as for Artemis to wanton, or Zeus to submit. And the one deserves no more praise for music than the others for chastity or fortitude. But that a mere mortal should conceive such beauty as lies in my verse : — '"A radiance glimmers on the rock-dove*s neck, Whene'er he moves ' — or that a son of man should stir the Eoman populace to rapture — that is a thing to marvel at. It is a miracle more than divine.*' " A miracle indeed ! " exclaimed TigeUinus. ** But no one questions the divinity of Caesars, especially when they die. For death releases the god." " In the course of years," the Emperor continued, with deeper melancholy, ** in the course of years I shall follow my predecessors into heaven, perhaps avoiding the painful 2—2 20 ORIGINAL SINNERS transition of death, perhaps rising almost at once from the dead, as Divine Augustus rose. But there is no call for haste, since eternity is not shortened by the loss of years. On earth alone the artist has his opportunity. How many more years have I before I become a god ? Nearly half my time is gone, and so little is yet accomphshed. My God, my God ! What if my genius should forsake me ! '' ** Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of your art," said Tigellinus. ** How can I know ? How can I know ? '* the Emperor repeated impatiently. " Per- haps it is worse to be Emperor than to be God. I may fall short of perfection and never know it. Whom can I trust ? Who will dare to criticise the commander of innumerable legions ? Bring me that Jew ! Bring me that Jew, I say ! Perhaps he is capable of criticism." " The captain has not returned," said the Consul, who was leaning wearily against the door. " It is late. It is almost day. Perhaps he could not find the prisoner." " Will you not sleep now, Prince ? " said a girl, coming sleepily towards him, and "QUALIS ARTIFEX!" 21 kneeling to cherish his bare feet against her breast. " I cannot sleep to-night," he said. " Some- thing is f aUing — falling. Is it the glory of my art that is faUing ? * Nero, Nero ! A seat is vacant ! ' cried the voice from the tomb. Is my seat among the poets vacant ? What chance has the world's ruler of reaching per- fection ? He is like old Seneca, always pretending to pursue middle-class moderation in the midst of his miUions. What avails a Golden House, a marble lake, with all the legions and girls of every shape and colour thrown in, unless my genius is fulfilled ? Oh, I will wander far away. I will sing from land to land. I will sing in the black tents of deserts. German forests shall judge me. My harp shall sound across the straits of misty islands. I will wear the skins of beasts. I will sleep in cattle-sheds, and eat the free gifts of stream and wilderness. At evening, the savages will gather round me. They will listen all night under the moon. If my singing fails, they will tell me. They will slit my beautiful, singing throat. Like a slaughtered thrush, I shall not sing any more. That will 22 ORIGINAL SINNERS be a nobler fate than rotting amid grandeur, uncertain of my powers.'* No one spoke. All but the Consul were asleep, leaning against the walls or chairs. Two girls leant against the bed itself. " Tell me ! " the Emperor whispered sud- denly to the Consul. '' Tell me ! What was that news from the West ? " " The news. Emperor, grows daily worse," rephed the Consul. '* In the south of Prance the army has gone over to Vindex, in Spain to Galba. It is thought they intend marching on Rome by the coast road, as they have no fleet." " Marching on Rome ! Marching on Rome ! " the Emperor repeated, meditat- ing. *' What themes for drama those words recall!" There was silence for a time, and then he continued in an eager whisper : — '* Listen, Consul. I know my purpose. The gods have granted me the supreme occasion to glorify their name. Listen. I will meet the army on its way. I will intercept it by boat at the Porum of Juhus before it enters Italy. There the legions shall behold "QUALIS ARTIFEX!" 23 the last of the Caesars an outcast upon the shore. Standing in the path of the columns as they march I will sing the glories of the Augustan race. I will declaim to them the VirgiUan praise of Italy. I will weep, I will tear their hearts with pathos. I will implore them to stay their sacrilegious hands. So at last I shall prove my artistic power. No one will flatter me there. My strength will come from art alone. And when Rome is saved, I shall be acclaimed throughout the world as its redeemer. What glory then to art, to music, eloquence, poetry, and to the God who is my Father ! " " Tigers and dolphins have yielded to music," said the Consul. '* It will be a greater miracle when legions and fleets yield to its enchantment." ** I will trust to art alone," the Emperor continued, " to art and the charm of per- sonality. I will dress in a threadbare tunic, with a ragged blue cloak over one shoulder. My wealth of sunny hair shall hang in careful disorder about my neck. What a vision of humihty I shall appear when I stand despised and rejected of men ! With what ecstasy 24 ORIGINAL SINNERS they will hear me tell that I am the Emperor of the world and the son of God ! Give me a mirror." The Consul handed him a decorated circle of silver, shot with blue so as to tone down the Emperor's fiery complexion. It reflected the first ray of the rising sun, which now pierced the curtains with a thin, crimson line, like a sword. At the same moment the captain returned. " Well ? " said the Emperor, indifferently, as he contemplated his face sideways in the mirror. ** Emperor, I have brought the Greek prisoner," said the captain. " It was the Jew I wanted," remarked the Emperor, still keeping his eyes on his own reflection, as he moved the mirror into various positions. *' Unhappily," said the captain, *' I was just too late for the Jew. The soldier to whom he had been chained at night for many months past, hearing his offence and my orders, beheaded him at once. He said he was sick of being kept awake by his super- stitious conversation." "QUALIS ARTIFEX!" 25 ** What a nuisance ! " said the Emperor, arranging his hair. *' The prisoner/' continued the captain, ** was only a Jew, though he boasted he was born in some Roman borough of Asia, and had taken the Roman name of Paulus. But I saw the head — ^hideous, unquestionably Jewish." ** So another artist suffers," sighed the Emperor. '* No, Prince," replied the captain ; " I was guilty of a slight confusion. It was the Jew denied the Emperor's divinity. He said your Majesty bore no resemblance to an incarnate god. The Greek ventured on criticism, and I have him here alive." " Oh, take him away," said the Emperor wearily. ** What is the use of another Greek critic to me ? A Greek can tell me nothing new. It was the Oriental I wanted. You may go. See that this does not happen again." *' Consul," he continued, as the captain went out, ** these Jews have always attracted me. They possess some curious secret that I must discover. If my appeal to the army fails, and I am driven from Italy, I shall 26 ORIGINAL SINNERS retire upon Syria, occupy Jerusalem, and become king of the Jews/' *' They are a priest-ridden people," the Consul answered. ** They object to mon- archical government, and are always on the look-out for some miraculous patriot to redeem them from union with our Empire." ** I will be their redeemer," Nero repKed. *' There is no calculating the miracles I could perform." *' But, come ! " he cried, rousing himself as though from a vision. '* Wake up, TigelHnus ! Wake up, all of you, and put your Emperor to bed ! The sun shines, and it is time for peace. Hang Apollo's golden diadem among my other prizes at the foot of the bed, so that I may gaze upon it till I fall asleep, and Apollo himself, peering through the curtains, may behold a crown of glory such as no deity wins." II sly's awakening npHE white mist of early autumn hung upon -^ the wandering river and low-lying meadows of Wincot ; but the stars were clear over- head, and a high moon showed the thin and broken hne of cottages along the road from Burton Heath. It was not late ; but the village had gone to bed at dark, and the silence was all the deeper for the heavy foot- step of a belated ditcher going home, and the caUing of sheep driven that afternoon into a new fold. Only at Mother Hacket's ale- house of " The Golden Fleece," just where the village ended and the heath began, a murmur of voices could still now and again be heard ; and a lighted window made a pale gleam upon the shadow thrown by the moon. On the bench below the window, four men were still seated, each with a big mug at his side. With expectant interest, they were gazing at a queer-looking heap which lay motionless upon the road, a little blacker than the darkness. 28 ORIGINAL SINNERS " Hear him breathe ! " muttered one of them. " Like a grampus in love ! " Balancing himself on his hands, he stretched out a foot till he touched the dark heap and for a moment raised a man's arm, which then fell Hmply over on the other side, throwing up a little puff of dust. " That's what I call royal drunk. YouVe never been as drunk as that, Henry Pimper- nell," he said, turning defiantly to a Httle man further along the bench. *' I couldn't say for as drunk as that, John Naps," answered the little man; "but I have been drunk." ** Never as drunk as that, was what I said, you white-faced weasel," said John Naps. ** It takes a man to be as drunk as that." *' You're right, John Naps, you're right," murmured Stephen Sly. *' It takes a man ; and Christopher's my own flesh and blood, praise God." " Why, I've not been so drunk as that myself," the big man went on, *' not more than ten or a dozen times. And one of those times was my second wedding, when I'd got to make Widow Wryneck believe there was SLY'S AWAKENING 29 only one thing I cared for in all this Varsal world, and that was beauty. It took a deal of drinking, that did/* ** Not such noble drinking as this before us now," said Peter Turf. " It's all sack, this is — best sack, soKd sack. Why, I tell you it's a heap of gold that's lying there — pure gold melted ! " *' Drunk is drunk, no matter for gold or pewter," John Naps retorted. " I tell you I've been as drunk as that ten or a dozen times. Anybody wishing to deny the same has only to say so." He glared round upon the other three ; but Pimpernell struck in peacefully : '* They say my lord's orders was he should swim in it. Good thing, 'twasn't me. For why, I'd have been drownded, bein' no swimmer." He laughed ; but, as no one else laughed, he was suddenly silent. ** Sack's not the only thing as my brother Christopher has swum in," said Stephen Sly. ** Smell him ? That's rosewater, that is, like my lord's. Why, Mother Hacket's old black bitch didn't so much as bark at him. His lordship's servants took and laid him down 30 ORIGINAL SINNERS there ; and she didn*t so much as bark. She snuffed a gentleman.'' ** I know the sniff well enough," said John Naps. ** IVe smelt of it myself at one time, through me being a gentleman born, albeit not bred." *' They say he got bread and beef enough to feed a troop of horse," said Pimpernell. " Aye, and that's a goodish gat," John Naps answered. ** I've been in a troop of horse myself. I could eat out all the rest. It was a raging, tearing company we were. We came pretty nigh going to Flanders for the wars." *' He seed the players beside, and cost him never a groat," said Peter Turf. ** Nor me neither when I was young," said John Naps. ** Never a groat. For why, I was one of them. I was dressed in a blanket ; and they called me Naps of Greece." " They say he kept on caUing out to his lady to make haste," Pimpernell went on. " Peter the Huntsman was teUing me of it. * Madam wife, be quick, be quick,' says Christopher ; and the page boy was dressed like a lady born, and keeps running in and SLY'S AWAKENING 31 saying : * There's no such hurry. Just one cup more, dear my lord/ she keeps on saying. * My lord has returned like the Prodigal from the swine/ she says, * and this is our wedding day over again.* So he tries to catch hold on her ; and she keeps on giving him more sack and more sack, till he goes right off. And there he lies." " Some folks have luck, some have not," said Peter Turf. " Don't you talk about luck till you see him come round," said Pimpernell. '* That's when the sport'll begin, won't it, John Naps ? Aye, that'll be the sport, to see him come round ! " " Stop your squawking," said John Naps ; *' it's just going to begin." All fixed their eyes upon the figure in the road. It groaned, it stirred, it drew up its legs. " You're right, John Naps, you're always right," whispered Pimpernell excitedly. "But how if we went on with the pretending? And I'll be madam wife, because I've got a pretty voice." " No, I'd best be madam wife," said John 32 ORIGINAL SINNERS Naps. ** IVe been among gentlefolks when I was a fighting man. IVe stood behind my lady's chair and heard her say * Grammercy ' and * Beshrew thy dear heart.' I've heard that with these very ears." ** You're a great man, John Naps ; but you don't sound female," Pimpernell pro- tested. ** I tell you what — ^you whisper me what a lady born would say, and I'll squeak it soft and sweet as any sperrit." The figure in the dust turned heavily on its side. ** Where is the Hfe that late I led ? " it sang, in a thick and tuneless voice. ** It's passing ofT," whispered John Naps. *' Good sack do pass off wonderful quick. I've drunk the fag ends of it after a castle feast. It's a ladylike drink — makes you merry and passes quick." *' Quick as my dinner," said Peter Turf. "Where is the life that late I led?" droned out the figure, now sitting up in the dust and gazing stupidly around. ** Take up the song, Henry Pimpernell, take him up at that," whispered John Naps, and at once began singing : SLY'S AWAKENING 88 " Where is the life that late I led ? And where are those of my company ? The bottle's dry and the rose is dead, A toad is couched in my lady's bed, And never a kiss for me." ** Well sung, actor, well sung," said the figure, peering about. '* He's a brave actor. See him lay on to that hussy Kate with a whip. * Serves her right,' says I. * Her*s a hussy,' says I. When's all done, madam wife ? There's many a kiss for me, praise God, when all's done. Hurry 'em along, madam wife. I can't hardly abide this tarrying." " Have patience, my gentle lord," whis- pered John Naps, while Pimpernell repeated the words in a high-pitched voice. ** The doctor said you must have patience. Else you'll go stark, staring mad again, and think yourself a dirty tinker." " Where are you, madam wife ? " said the figure. ** It's 'most dark, and all the folks gone. Is this our bedchamber? Bring me that smelling water, boy, in the silver basin. I'm going to my madam wife." ** You creep indoors and tell Mother Hacket to come out," whispered John Naps to Peter O.8. 3 84 ORIGINAL SINNERS Turf. " Say the sport's just starting off. And call out the wench Cicely too/' Peter Turf stole on tiptoe into the house, while Pimpernell covered his retreat by repeating squeakily : " Patience, my sweet lord, You must have patience. Only a little longer still.'* " No more o* that, I tell you ! " cried the man, struggling in the dust to get up. ** Fif- teen year is a long fast. I tell you, that's patience enough for me. I won't have no more patience. Let me clutch hold on you, madam wife, and I'll patience you, or my name's not Kit Sly." ** No more it isn't, most gracious lord," said John Naps, in a gentle tenor. " Your lordship's name be Christophero, Baron of Wincot-cum- Burton, Knight of the Golden Fleece, Armiger. Wherefore you must have patience, as befits a man of your quality." ** Bring me my woman, boy," cried Christo- pher. ** Bring me my madam wife, or I'll wring your scurvy neck ! I'd sooner be no quality and have my wench." ** Hark, hark, my lord ! " said John Naps. " Methinks I hear a fairy footstep fall. 'Tis SLY'S AWAKENING 85 she ! *Tis she ! The queen of beauty comes ! Blow up the sackbut ! Burst the thunderous drums ! Let doors be oped and marriage music roar ! Let burning bridegroom kiss expectant floor ! ** Pimpernell began to whistle with all his might, beating time with his quart pot upon the bench. The inn door opened, and Peter Turf was seen coming out backwards, bowing low at every step. In his right hand he carried a lanthorn, which threw a dim light upon the huge red face and sweUing figure of the hostess, before whom he made obeisance. ** Arise, my lord ! Salute your lady's hand ! " cried John Naps, taking the prostrate man by the arm. " See where it ghmmers like a clouded moon, battling with tempest ! Many's the time IVe seen it battle with old Racket's crown," he added, aside to Pimpernell. ** Look at him ! Look how he gapes on her ! " answered Pimpernell, rubbing his hands between his meagre thighs, and laugh- ing silently for joy'. ** Oh, this is what I call sport, rare sport. He's better sport than a bear with her snout tore off ! " 3—2 86 ORIGINAL SINNERS Mother Hacket had paused for a moment in the doorway, and was looking round with a fat smile of conscious triumph. Then, gather- ing up her red flannel petticoat hke a train, and displaying a colossal leg beneath, she swept slowly down the three brick steps. With proud gait and head erect she came. At every movement her breasts shook hke jelly. ** This way, sweet highness, to his lordship's chamber,'' cried John Naps, joining Peter Turf and bowing low before her. ** With yearning heart-strings he awaits you there." The man had risen from the dust, and stood crouching down, his head thrown forward, his eyes staring at the scene with horror and fear. " Not yet ! Not yet ! " he cried, running backwards as the woman approached. " I don't want no madam wife yet. It's too soon. You're quite right. I must have patience. You told me how it 'ud be if I didn't have patience. You're quite right. It's comin' true. Take her away ! Take her away ! I don't want my madam wife." John Naps and Peter Turf faced round towards him and held up their outspread hands in dismay, turning their eyes to heaven. SLY'S AWAKENING 87 ** Alas, great lordship/' cried John Naps, ** how is thy brain perturbed ! Too long's thine abstinence from female charm ; and beauty's aspect brings thy dreams again. Go to him, madam, set thy cheek to his, and whisper amorously : * Husband, sweetest heart ! What, wouldst thou fly before thy wedded love, nor seek the solace of these copious arms ? Rest on this bosom, it shall cherish thee. 'Tis thine, and thine alone — with space for three.' Perchance his wits by love may be restored ; for love's omnipotent, as poets tell." ** Come, husband," said Mother Hacket, waddling into the dusty road with outstretched arms. " Come to your wedded wife. She'll give you such a cherish as you never had before, nor you'll never get another hke it. Don't you keep runnin' off, love, as if you didn't know your own lawful bosom ! " ** Take her away ! Take her away ! " cried the man, backing along the road in terror. ** Boys, pages, huntsmen — oh, somebody keep her off ! I'm going mad again ! It's the fat ale wife — the filthy baggage of Wincot ! Where's my lady wife ? Keep her off, I say ! 88 ORIGINAL SINNERS Where*s my lady wife ? She's thin and clean. She has yellow hair and a violet shift. Oh, Where's my lady wife ? " "Aye, you rogue, you hedgerow thief!" shouted Mother Hacket, panting up the road after him, and shaking both fists in his face. ** I'll show you Where's your lady wife, you gallow's carrion ! I'll show you, you hog- wash ! * Filthy baggage ! ' was the word, was it ? And it's baggage I'll make of you, and filthy too ! But it isn't fat you'll be at the end of it, you spHt sKver, you unravelled thread ! Thought you were a lord, did you ? And an armiger, did you ? PU armiger you, you gutter broom, you variegated mop, you sodden dish-clout ! Just you pay me that fourteen pence for the beer. Aye, you know well enough what I mean, you tag-rag of creation ! I'll teach you to come here talking of fat and filth, and owing me fourteen pence, and me a suffering and helpless widow that hasn't so much as a husband to protect me, and four grown men standin' there and nothing but laugh to see me set upon, and put upon, and called names at, and bedraggled out of my warm bed to do them pleasure ! " SLY'S AWAKENING 89 A chorus of mingled deep and squeaky laughter went up from the four men who looked on from the ale-house steps. " It's sport, rare sport indeed," cried PimpernelL " You're right, John Naps, you're always right. No mortal man could hope to see better sport this side salvation." ** 'Tis but his passion hath distraught his wits," said John Naps soothingly to the hostess. " But madness yields to woman's gentle art. To him, sweet lady, calm his crazM brain." ** Brain ? " she cried, toilsomely starting upon another advance. ** Til brain him right enough ! I'll boil him in his own pot, the dirty tinker. Let me just catch you, you bear-herd, you dancing prong ! Let me just catch you, and I'll chop you up so as your own bears '11 eat you for putrid horse, and never know the differ ! " But the black figure down the road made a sudden dash past her, dodged under her arm, stumbled, and fell heavily among the others by the steps. ** Oh, save me ! " he cried. " Servants, pages, madam lady, where are you all ? I'm 40 ORIGINAL SINNERS going mad. Call the physician. Quick ! I tell you I'm going mad again ! Will nobody take pity on a lord ? '* Another outburst of laughter was the answer ; and Pimpernell went dancing round in a half circle, squeahng with deHght. ** My lord/' said John Naps solemnly, " your grievous fortune rends our very hearts. But now we'll bear you to * The Golden Fleece ' (so do we call your cell while madness lasts), and there commend you to your phan- tasies, — strange, boorish figments that you rave about, as Pimpernell and Peter Turf and one John Naps — a man distinct, and famed for noble parts — and Marian Hacket with her lubber maid, evil communications for a lord. Hark, how my lady doth lament thereat ! " ** You say right, John Naps, you say right," cried the hostess, standing over the moaning form. " Marian Hacket is my name ; and I'll let him know it, mad or not. Stand up, you finikin rogue, you gutted eel ! Call your- self a lord, and owe me fourteen pence for beer ! I'll teach you how to be a lord and smell like scent ! " Hooking her fingers Hke claws, she rolled SLY'S AWAKENING 41 forward, stooping for another assault. But the man sprang up again, and flung himself into the arms of Stephen Sly, who stood con- templating the scene with a vacant stare. ** Oh, save me ! save me ! '' he cried, hiding his face. " Aren't you my own brother Stephen ? You're not no dream. It's agen nature for an own brother to be a dream, nor yet a madness. For the love of Christ, Stephen, don't you let go of me ! " ** You're a' right," said Stephen in his slow drawl ; ** an' I'm a' right. Never you fret." Clinging to him for shelter, Christopher looked cautiously round till he saw the fat hostess, threatening violence still, but held back by John Naps. ** Be that a dream, Stephen ? " he whis- pered ; '* or be that a madness ? Or be that the hell-fire truth ? " " Her's a' right," drawled Stephen sooth- ingly. " Her's no more a dream than what a bag-pudden' be." ** A pair o' rogues ! " the hostess screamed, strugghng vainly against the arm round her body ; "a pair of sheep-rot rogues ! Two ticks from the same fleece ! " 42 ORIGINAL SINNERS " Nay, heed them not, my lady, they but rave," said John Naps, tightening his grip till the woman gasped. " Madness doth run in noble families. It runs with land, and blossoms in blue blood.*' " Isn't that John Naps of Sheppingdon ? " said Christopher, turning round and letting go his brother. ** And isn't that Henry Pimpernell, the scab doctor ? And Peter Turf ? And you be my own brother Stephen. All of you seems soUd enough. Which way is it I've been mad ? " '* You're a' right," said Stephen. " You've not been mad at all, neither way. You never was no other but Christopher Sly, the tinker, and my own flesh and blood. So you're a' right." ** I thought I were a lord. I couldn't rightly say for why," said Christopher ; and he moved away slowly, and sat down on the bench, with his face in his hands. All the others laughed again. " my sweet lord ! My six-hour lord ! " squeaked Pimpernell, peering into Christo- pher's face with his hands on his thighs. *' Drunk they took you up, and drunk they SLY'S AWAKENING 48 set you down ; and all the time between, you was a lord ; and a page-boy was your lady ! *' ** It's all over now, 1*11 be thinkin*," said Peter Turf, turning to go away. " I'm sorry it's all over. There's no wake nor Christmas gambol nor churchyard play I've enjoyed so hearty as this here sport. And now it's all done." " Not it ! " cried the hostess. ** That's not all done, not till that crawlin' knave pays me down my fourteen pence." ** Content thee, wife, thy lucre shall be paid," said John Naps, sitting down on the bench beside Christopher. ** There's Peter Turf stands yearning to disburse." ** Not me ! " cried Peter. " Not fourteen pence ! I'll give a groat. I reckon the sport was worth just about a groat to me. Let's all give a groat ; and then there's twopence over for a drink," ** 'Tis done, 'tis done ! In spirit it is done," said John Naps. " Go, Lady Marian Hacket of the ' Fleece,' bring out the drink ; we'll owe you four pence each ! Come, rouse thee, Christopher, look not so glum ! To have been a lord six hours is more than most ; and one 44 ORIGINAL SINNERS bright glimpse of heaven doth not mean death. Though lordship's gone, thou yet remainst a man ! Ah, well, well ! I always knew the Lord made me for a poet : " Give me the nut-brown ale, Give me a nut-brown maid, Give me a wench on an ale-house bench, Where never a soul's afraid. But leave to my lord his lady pale, To sit in the castle shade, To drink sweet wine in a goblet fine. And kiss in the castle's shade ; Till somebody comes with trumpets and drums And the blow of a shining blade." As he sang, he kept slapping Christopher cheerily on the back. ** What, Christophero ! " he cried. " Not a word to say to an old friend ? Aren't you glad to see us again after being a lord ? Wasn't it a bit thin and cold up there, my boy? " leave to my lord his lady pale. To sit in the castle shade. " While he was singing, the girl Cicely came out, carrying a jug of beer and a pewter mug on a wooden board. Naps filled the cup and held it under Christopher's nose. SLY'S AWAKENING 45 ** Here, lad," he said. " Here's something to comfort thy poor soul/* But Christopher kept his face covered with his hands, and did not move. ** It's better than sweet wine, boy," said Naps, " beside being more conformable with your state of Hfe." '* Not it," said Christopher, without looking up. '' He's righfc," said Peter Turf, ** it's puttin' the beggar atop of the gentleman, to drink small ale on top of golden sack. It's flat rebellion, that's what it is." ** Heaven above ! how fine we're all gettin'," said Pimpernell. ** We've took it all from Christopher. He was born to be a lord, was Christopher. He always did say the Slys came in with Richard Con- queror." " And it's true," said Stephen Sly. '* Good blood and old. Me and Christopher, we're full of it, like two butts of wine." ** Arouse thee, Christopher, said Naps, thumping the silent man again on the back. " Here's your true sweetheart come to welcome you back from glory. You set ORIGINAL SINNERS yourself down beside him, Cicely, and put your arms round his neck." " Oh, sir, I don't hardly Hke," said Cicely, sitting down at Christopher's side. " Tell him how true you've kept all day," Naps continued, ** for all his gadding among the mighty and making love to Lord knows what." ** I've always kind of fancied you. Master Sly, ever since we first kep' company," said the girl, leaning her head against his shoulder. *' And you've always been a-hankerin' after Cicely, Christopher,*' said Pimpernell, ** uncommon hankerin' you've been. I've watched you stand and stare at her through fchat winder all afternoon, sooner than do honest labour Uke me." ** Clutch hold on her, man," cried Naps ; ** you've got her now. It's the chance you've been waiting for like the day of glory. You kiss him, wench, kiss him quick. It's a wonderful reviving is being kissed. I speak what I know, God be praised." ** Oh, sir, I don't hardly hke," said the girl ; but she stretched out her chubby hps and kissed him hard on the cheek. ** Don't you SLY'S AWAKENING 47 know me, Christopher ? ** she said. ** Fm the maid you've been followin* after, these two year come bear-baitin'/' ** Why, Christopher,*' said Pimpernel!, en- couragingly, ** it was all along of her you gave up being bear-herd, because she said she couldn't never ado with bears in her kitchen." ** Look at me, ole man," said the girl, nestling up against his side, and putting an arm round him under his coat. " Let's come close up to you, ole man. I kind o' like the smell of you to-night, Christopher. You smells furrin'." Christopher moved at last. Almost un- consciously he leaned back and put one hand upon the girl's neck, feeling the softness of it along the edge of her canvas bodice. But sud- denly drawing his breath in hard through his nose, he started up with violence, shaking the bench from end to end and spiUing the beer. " There's that there stink upon me still ! " he cried. " Ain't there no dunghill round these ways ? " ** Aye, just adown the lane," said Peter Turf. ** You'll feel it warm and smoking hke the Last Judgment." 48 ORIGINAL SINNERS As Christopher staggered away in the dark, Pimpernell called after him : " Don't be high- stomached, boy, there's nobody means yoa no harm/' " High-stomached it is," said Peter Turf. "I'd a lurcher bitch like that once — ate a woodcock and never gnawed honest bone again. Pine-bred bitch too, same as bit Stephen for laughin' at her blind pups." " Aye, fine bred she were," said Stephen. " So be the Slys fine bred ; that's why." ** We'll make a marriage on it this very night," said John Naps, who had been silently contemplating the darkness where Christopher disappeared. *' Turf, summon fat old Hacket back. Oh, here you are. Mistress Marian, looming like rosy morn ! Bring more beer, and bread and onions therewith, mistress mine. We'll make a merry night of it ; and so to church by noon." " Not another bite or sup do you get from me, John Naps," said the hostess, planting her fists against her sides. ** And if that there indecent wench don't come to bed this very minute, she'll have to stay and marry in a ditch, as the saying is." SLY'S AWAKENING 49 ** I'm sorry I ever tried to make a lady of you, Mother Hacket," said John Naps, begin- ning to move slowly away. " I thought you'd make a good lady ; but you're a sow's ear, Mistress Hacket, — a sow's ear, though nobody wouldn't think it to look at you. I've always told the neighbours you were a real lady at heart, and good-looking, too, if dressed ladylike, as anybody could see for their selves. But it's no good — no good. And yet I've always thought there was the making of a fine lady in Mistress Marian Hacket. You'd say so to look at her." " What is it you're after now, you battered old carcase? " said the hostess in a gentler tone. *' Oh, nothing, madam ; nothing at all," said Naps, taking under his arm his rusty sword without a scabbard. ** A lady might have given us a thing or two to eat and drink after the merry time we've made her. But a lady's a lady ; and there isn't one here — ^for all I thought there was." ** I don't begrudge you nothing in reason. Master Naps," said the hostess, catching hold of his tattered cloak as he moved solemnly away. '* You always was a gentleman born." 0.8. 50 ORIGINAL SINNERS " It's not for myself, woman," said John Naps, turning slowly back, " it's for that poor varlet I make petition. Give him good cheer, woman. Make him remember the glories of our humble state. Spread out our frugal fare and peace therewith. Tear thyself awhile, fair Cicely, from dreams of future bhss, and lend thine aid unto the lady more mature." The two women bustled about, setting a rough table by the bench, and bringing bread and cold bacon and raw onions. Just as all was ready, Pimpernell cried out : ** Here he is a-comin' back. I always said he'd come back hke a kicked dog, through feelin' lonely." " Why, Christopher, what have you been doin' at yourself ? " said Peter Turf. " Have you been rolHn' on the dungheap or what ? My word, you don't smell furrin' now. You smell mighty homely, I'm thinkin'." But Christopher sat down at the end of the table without taking any notice. " Bring me my ale," he said in a sullen voice. Cicely put the great jug at his side, and watched him while be drank it to the bottom. SLY'S AWAKENING 51 Then she sat down Hke the others, and they began supper. *' That's right, boy," cried John Naps, holding up half an onion on the point of his knife. " Eat your food, and drink your drink, and kiss your girl. We'll never be younger, young as we all are, thank God. Ply him, girl, ply him. He always was one for victuals and drink, was Christopher — just like me." ** Take a bit, ole man," said Cicely, leaning against Christopher's side, and holding up a sHce of bacon in her fingers. " It's fair lean." Christopher looked at it for a moment, and then devoured it hungrily. " That's right," said Mistress Hacket. ** No dogs for me that sniff at their victuals, and think theirselves cats." The meal went on in hungry silence for a time. " You may kiss him again now, girl," said John Naps, leaning back at last. ** Kiss him again. He's blowin' out fuller and fuller, and kissing is very comforting so long as a man's full. I've always found it comforting, no matter with whom, so long as I'm full." 52 ORIGINAL SINNERS Thrusting a mouthful of bread and onions into the side of her cheek with her tongue, the girl leaned sideways, drew Christopher's arm round her neck, and put up her mouth to be kissed. Letting go the jug of beer with the other hand, he flung himself upon her, dragged her head backwards by the hair, and hid his face deep in her neck below the chin. There was a roar of laughter and applause from all the rest. "Have done! Have done. Master Sly!" cried the girl, spluttering with laughter. " You had ought to wait till we's alone." *' Now, that's what I call a good endin'," said the hostess. '' That's how a man ought to behave — any man worth callin'. That's what they'd all ought to do ; and I've seen something in my day, praise God." ** Didn't I tell you there' d be a marriage in the morn ? " shouted John Naps above the laughter. ** Well done, Christopher : we want more of you well-bred tinkers. You always were a rare one for the girls — ^just like me, for all my being a bit more particular. I'm for a lady born, glory be to God — not but what Cicely's a buxom wench." SLY'S AWAKENING 53 " I'd not mind takin* her," squeaked Pimpernell, ** albeit I'm her betters." *' Nor me," said Peter Turf, '' for all she's not the female that I'd choose." ** Never mind for whom you'd choose," said John Naps, standing up. ** It isn't you she has fixed her fond affections on ; and it isn't you to whom she vows her virginal devotion. Come, hostess, quit these ruins of a feast, and aid me deck the bridal chamber out. Strew roses on the threshold plenteously — roses for love ; but scatter poppies too, for poppies bring a sweet forgetfulness." Holding his bare sword upright, he moved solemnly towards the inn door, chanting in monotone hke a priest the words : — " He who would love must first forget, And he who loves remembers not ; Love and forgetfulness are set Together in love's garden plot ; For who would love must first forget, And he who loves remembers not." The other three men followed him in file, as in a procession, and ranged up on either side the door. Then came Christopher, supported between 54 ORIGINAL SINNERS the two women. One arm was round Mother Hacket's neck ; the other clasped Cicely's waist. Both held him firmly entwined, and cheered him on with endearments. For he rolled in his walk again, his eyeUds were half shut, and his head fell heavily forward. As they squeezed through the doorway together, his beery voice was again heard singing : ** Where is the hfe that late I led ? '* Then John Naps slammed the door and clouted Pimperneirs head for trying to look through the keyhole. *' They're a' right," said Stephen Sly. Ill A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE TTAVEE, sir ? Eeturn ? '' said the man at -■--■^the Waterloo ticket-office. *' No ; single, please/' Mr. Jenkins answered, and like a shudder the thought went through him that he would not want to return. ** First class on boat ? '' the man asked. *' No, thank you,*' said Mr. Jenkins, and again he shivered at the thought that first or second class would make no difference to him. He was soon gliding through the fields and heaths of Surrey. The may was in full bloom ; the pleasant gardens of suburb and village stood bright with lilac, laburnum, and chest- nut. It was beautiful Whitsuntide weather, and all the fragrant country gleamed with sun- shine, the more brilliant because a merry south-west breeze chased little white clouds across the blue, and beUied the clothes hanging upon the washing-hnes, like the sails of ships Mr. Jenkins stared upon the passing scene 56 ORIGINAL SINNERS as a plague-stricken man stares upon a city in festival. His throat was dry, a strange taste was in his mouth, and his eyes were blinded by the blank shadow of something approaching. He had determined to make an end, for he could endure the misery of his existence no longer. He was escaping — escaping from the hideousness of a position which covered him every day with contempt. But in front lay that horrible gulf which could not be avoided, and it lay close before him now. Every turn of the rushing wheels bore him nearer to it, and the telegraph posts as they whizzed past the window ticked off the yards upon the road. Each wood that was left behind, each butter- cup meadow full of cows, each village street with its children — they passed, and he would never see them again. But he was escaping. He could no longer endure the misery of his position, and to that thought he constantly returned as something sohd to hold by. It was that hateful school which had driven him to this, and as he thought of the school he remembered the very smell of the form-rooms and of the hall where they had meals. He had failed in everything he did. A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE 57 There was a time when he almost enjoyed teaching and had really tried to make himself liked by the boys. Year after year he had tried, and he recalled the days when he used to ask them to come for walks with him on half-holidays, and they had come. But that was long ago ; the generations of school are brief, and the boys who had known him when he still felt some kind of hope and pleasure in his work had gone out into the great world and left him to repeat the stale and weary lessons to others, who despised him. The train passed by a cavalry camp where the men were leading their horses down to water. They had only their trousers and gray shirts on, and they laughed among themselves with mere health and good spirits. How passionately Mr. Jenkins envied them as they stood there and laughed ! Surely that would have been the life worth living ! Their day's work was over, and it was almost time to picket the horses till morning. How soon, how naturally, the morning would come to them ! But between now and morning lay the night, and for him the terrible gulf was there. He knew the boys despised him. He could 58 ORIGINAL SINNERS not understand why, but a tradition had grown up that he was a sort of fool. With him they said and did things they would not have dreamed of with the other masters. Prom week to week they kept him in the expectation of some fresh humiliation, and almost every day a new insult took him by surprise. He had long known that they called him the WhistUng Oyster ; though, again, he could not imagine why. But custom had made him indifferent to it, until, in the previous term, he had found a placard on his pillow inscribed with the words, " Please Remember the Grotto ! " And when he got into bed there was a thick layer of oyster shells between the sheets. Next morning at history lesson he was explaining for the twentieth wretched time what ostracism meant in Athens, when the captain of football innocently inquired whether the Athenians kept oyster-beds on purpose. Instantly Mr. Jenkins perceived that the whole form was convulsed with laughter, and from that day he noticed that the captain of football never took off his cap to him if other boys were in sight. There could be no doubt the boys despised A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE 59 him. He thought he would not have minded being hated, but he knew he was a common butt, and he could not imagine why. He wondered now what the boys would say when they heard the news. The school would meet again ; he would not be there. It would strike them hard. They would all be talking about it soon — quite soon ! All of them would be startled ; some might be a little sorry ; and for that alone the thing was worth doing. Then there was that creature Simpson ! He would hear of it, perhaps the first, from the headmaster, and he would learn that the man he treated as a worm was at least not a coward ! It was all very well for Simpson to swagger because he was second master, and taught the highest form in Classics, and was known to have taken honours at Cambridge. No amount of learning would have given him the right to despise Mr. Jenkins or to bring him into contempt with the boys. They cared nothing about his reputed learning. But the thing that suddenly presented Simpson most bitterly to Mr. Jenkins's mind was a great country house with long carriage drives and a spreading park through which the train was 60 ORIGINAL SINNERS passing. Simpson was always telling the boys about the country houses in which he spent the holidays, and how he drove in motors and played golf and even went out shooting. It was well known in the school that Simpson had once shot a stag. In fact, he always carried in his waistcoat pocket the expanded bullet that had been extracted from the dead animal's heart, and he used to pass it round among the boys at meal-times. Mr. Jenkins knew he did this partly to maintain his influence and popularity, but chiefly out of contemptuous spite against himself. For Mr. Jenkins had never been out shooting, had no adventures to relate, and when asked where he had spent the hohdays could only say, *' In the neighbourhood of London," or at best, ** In Surrey." He was a naturally truthful man, and, as a matter of fact, he had hitherto always stayed with his mother near Clapham Junction, so as to save expense. But now his mother was dead, and he had no one to provide for. The train stopped at Winchester, and the platform was crowded with women carrying or leading their children, and with girls in gay A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE 61 spring frocks and hats all covered with roses. Mr. Jenkins stared at them as they hurried to and fro, greeting friends and lovers, helping the children with their spades and buckets, saying good-bye, and promising to write soon. It was no distance to the sea now — ^the sea, the yellow sands, the deep chasm of darkness that lay before him ! He thought of the time when his mother had helped him just hke that, and had bought him a little spade and bucket to dig on St. Leonards beach when they lived for one glorious fort- night in a back street within smell of the sea- weed. How careful she had been of him whenever he was ill, and how she had cried and comforted him when first he had a tooth out ! And now there was no one to care, though he had all his teeth out one after another. No one would really care when — Why, in a few hours now the thing would all be over, and no one would care in the least ! But the sight of the women and girls had reminded him of Simpson again, and his thoughts went back to his own miserable position compared with his enemy's. It was believed that women actually liked Simpson, 62 ORIGINAL SINNERS and he often talked about them in a very knowing . way. Only the Sunday before, Simpson and Mr. Jenkins had been to supper with the headmaster, and Simpson had talked all the time to the headmaster's wife about the dancing and dresses at a recent party in the town. But Mr. Jenkins had not learned to dance, and he was never invited out now because Simpson had spread the report that he was deadly dull and did not care about society. So he had sat silent through supper, or had spoken only a few words about Hutchin- son Junior's mumps to the headmaster, whose mind was very much occupied with that sub- ject. Indeed, it was for fear of the infection spreading that he had given the school a few days' holiday at Whitsuntide, and that was how the opportunity for this journey had come fco Mr. Jenkins — all through Hutchinson Junior's mumps ! Thought followed thought, and he seemed to be getting far away from the present, when suddenly he felt the brakes jammed on again, and the train rushed into a large station and stopped. Mr. Jenkins's heart also stood still. " Any luggage, sir ? " said the porter, fling- A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE 63 ing the door open. No, he had no luggage. Beyond threepence for a possible tip, he had left even his money behind. This he called burning his ships. Not that he needed any aid to his resolution. He was resolved. The steamer lay alongside the quay, and the little waves of Southampton Water were splashing against her iron plates with an ominous sound. It was the sea — almost the real sea — and he had reached it so quickly ! Everything was going as he expected, and his plans had been laid with great care. He had chosen this method because it was so certain and so clean. No one would be shocked by any horrible discovery, and there would be no trouble about inquest or burial. Besides, he had always been so fond of the sea. Even now he murmured to himself the lines which had haunted him for many days : " I will go back to the great sweet mother. Mother and lover of men, the sea." And so he went on till he came to the last line of the stanza — *' Set free my soul as thy soul is free " ; and then his heart stopped beating again, and he saw nothing but that impene- trable shadow of darkness. 64 ORIGINAL SINNERS It was sunset, but the boat was not to start for some hours, and he walked up and down the quay, watching the dockers bringing cargo on board, and the visitors settHng down to dinner in the Ughted hotels. He had been lonely for many years, but his loneHness was almost unendurable now. He longed to con- verse with every one he saw, and perhaps get some little word of sympathy for what he suffered. But it would be ridiculous to speak ; men and women passed him without a look, occupied only with their affairs as he was with his, and not one of them would have cared the cost of a dinner if he had died at their feet. Why should they care ? Then he thought he had better try to sleep, especially as he was growing very hungry. So he went on board and lay down on one of the berths in the second-class cabin. There were still a few hours yet, and this was his last sleep. His last sleep ! He thought of the accounts of executions he had read — how the condemned man always slept well and enjoyed a good breakfast before the jailer came to pinion him. At intervals he slept, but when any one came into the cabin he woke with a dim know- A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE 65 ledge that something horrible was going to happen, and that gradual return of the horror was so frightful that he found it better to keep awake. The passengers talked and sang, the crew shouted, the shuffling and stamping above his head increased. At last there came a hideous sound of grating and wrenching, and he knew the anchor was being hauled in. He heard the captain signalling the orders with his bell. The propeller began to turn and roar, the ropes fell into the water with a splash, the siren hooted, and, creaking and shivering from end to end, the ship set out upon her voyage. He had determined to wait for mid-channel, when every one would be asleep and there could be no fear of being stopped or rescued. So he had still two or three hours left of life. He half sat up in his berth and tried to think of the past. He looked back on it all with a half-affectionate regret, as though he were remembering a friend's story which had ended in disaster, and for himself he felt a yearning pity, such as one feels for a harshly used child. But to think of the past was almost as bad as sleeping, so terrible was the return of present o.s. 6 66 ORIGINAL SINNERS reality and that thing which stood only an hour or two before him now. He heard the ship's bell strike two half hours. He could not tell what time they might mean, but the creaking and vibration of the vessel increased, and she began to roll slowly from side to side. He could judge how much she rolled by the curtains, which themselves hung down straight from the door-posts and port-holes. He shut his eyes, for somehow he did not hke to watch them. But he knew the steamer must be on the open sea by now. In another hour the thing would have to be done, and he tried to look it in the face. He would go to the side when no one was looking ; or he could pretend to be seasick. Then he would cHmb the railings and jump. There would be a splash, a sudden feehng of cold, and that horrible taste of salt- water which he had always hated when his mother dipped him and he ran naked out of the waves screaming. But that would soon be over ; he could not swim, so that the struggle would not last. And then would begin the slow sinking — sinking down into the darkness, with water above his head and all around him. It A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE 67 could not be really much more terrible than falling asleep, if only the first part were well over. By the time he was fast asleep he would be dead — that was the only difference. So many people went through with it every hour of the day and night that it could not be very terrible. And when the last thought and feel- ing had gone, he would just sink deeper and deeper, carried gently about by currents, till at last he rested in darkness on the sand and above him stood a pure dome of water thicker than the mountains are high. Suddenly the ship's bell rang the time again. It seemed to be always ringing. He resolved that when next it rang he would creep silently out of the cabin and do it. Nearly all the men around him were snoring hard and would not wake till morning. A bitter envy came over him as he thought of them waking as usual in the morning and hav- ing their coffee and perhaps meeting their wives on shore. In all that ship he was the only one who would never see morning and never speak to a human creature again. To him no woman except his mother had ever given a thought, 6—2 68 ORIGINAL SINNERS Blind terror seized him. The ship rolled with increasing violence ; every plate and beam in her construction groaned ; the cur- tains swung out almost at right angles to her sides ; but he neither heard nor saw. In front of him gaped only that unknown abyss of nothingness, and around him all the crowds of boys who scorned and despised him drove him forward into the gulf with taunts and laughter. He knew there was one way to silence them, but only one. It would be very effective. They would instantly be still ; their mouths would shut, their hands drop down. They would stop laughing all in a moment. They would even be a httle ashamed, and perhaps a little sorry. As he thought of that, he felt a queer sensation as though he were going to cry. There was no escaping. Behind lay the long years of intolerable degradation and unmanly submission ; in front the black chasm yawned to receive him. He must prove himself now, or live with the consciousness of a deeper dishonour still. In his anguish he writhed upon the hard cushions of the berth and hid his face in the horsehair bolster. With A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE 69 every second the deathly horror increased. His Hmbs were cold with fear, his whole body was faint and powerless, and the swinging of the ship tossed him to and fro as the waves would toss the dead. The minutes were pass- ing, passing. Not more than five or ten could now be left. Suddenly he heard Simpson crying " Coward ! Coward ! " in his ear, and at the same moment the ship's bell sounded again. He knew it was the signal for death. He sat up calmly at once on the edge of the berth and put his feet on the cabin floor. He seemed to be an indifferent spectator watching himself from near at hand, and ready to applaud his coolness and resolution. All the men in the cabin were sound asleep — all except one who was horribly seasick and did not count. Mr. Jenkins knew exactly what to do, for he had rehearsed the scene so often. Feehng for his boots under the berth, he drew them on quietly and began lacing them up. He found it a very difficult task, for the ship kept roUing this way and that, and even by looking down he could hardly make out where the hooks were. No matter ! It made no difference 70 ORIGINAL SINNERS whether his boots were properly laced or not. Hurriedly tying the ends together, he stood up and made for the door. Instantly he was flung into the next berth, right on top of the seasick man, who cursed him feebly and groaned. Making a fresh start, he was sent staggering over to the other side of the cabin and then thrown violently back again upon the edge of his own berth. There he sat, faint and wretched. A horrible sweat broke from him, and the deathly weakness in his limbs increased. He could not endure to move, but nothing was accompUshed yet, and he was not an inch nearer the thing he had to do. Point by point his definite plan must be carried out. The steps lay clearly before him, and each must be taken in turn. He stood up again, resolved at all costs to reach the door. The ship reeled, the door reeled, the curtains swung in his face, and he fell back prostrate upon the cushions where those hours of tortured waiting had been spent. Of all the seasick men and women on that ship, none was so deadly ill as Mr. Jenkins, who had come on board to die. The pain of A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE 71 hunger increased his suffering. He could hardly move a hand, so wretched was his weakness. He was so violently ill that even the second-class steward took pity on him. The morning sun blazed over Havre when at last the steamer ceased to roll and glided into the blessed calm of the river's mouth. Giving the steward his only threepence, Mr. Jenkins went ashore with the other passengers and sat down on a heap of ropes. Hotel porters entreated his patronage, custom-house oJEcers asked him if he had anything to declare, passers-by stared at him uncomfort- ably. But what was to be done now ? It would be ridiculous to throw himself into the dirty harbour and be pulled out amid the excitement of the crowd, who would expect him to reward his rescuer. He could not go back and try to do it again at sea, for they would not let him on board without a ticket. He felt miserably ill ; perhaps he would die ** naturally '' if he only stayed where he was. But he could not stay, for the police were beginning to look at him suspiciously and to exchange remarks in whispers. At last one 72 ORIGINAL SINNERS of them began to approach, and Mr. Jenkins got up and walked feebly away. He did not know where to go or what to do. The sun was hot and he felt mad with thirst. He was hungry, too, and as he passed the caf6s along the harbour-side he longed to seize the great bowls of coffee, flasks of wine, rolls, little cakes — anything to stop his wretched sense of exhaustion and faintness. But he had not a penny to give, and he had left even his watch at the school because there was no reason why it should be sunk in the sea. Besides, it was not for him to be eating and drinking while he still had that thing to do. He must not forget that. Looking round, he saw a hill and a bit of cHff standing above the town. They were not very high or steep, but perhaps up there he could find a place for his purpose. He dragged himself along. The sun grew hotter and beat upon his back. His thirst became so terrible that he could not even think of hunger or of anything but thirst. If he could only drink something he thought he could go on, but he felt he must lie down somewhere first. He reached the foot of the A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE 73 hill and knew that he ought to climb it. As soon as he had eUmbed to the top, he knew he would have to do something great — some- thing really important. He could not exactly remember what. He was very sorry, he must lie down first. Unless he got something to drink he would die, but he must really he down somewhere first. So he lay down in the middle of the street. " Ah, what horror ! " cried the crowd, rushing in upon him from every side. " It is a sudden death ! It is a sunstroke — an apoplectic seizure — an enfeeblement of the heart — a collapse of the cerebral organs ! Take care ! He is a criminal — an escaped forger — an assassin ! He is the man the police are looking for ! He is walking toward the fortifications ! He is a spy ! Do not touch him ! Look out for a bomb ! He has an air entirely anarchistic ! He is a foreigner ! What a hat ! Look at his boots ! They are prison boots ! Look at his trousers ! He is an Enghshman ! '' The police arrived, and legal discussion began. They took notes, they demanded evidence, they wrote out the names and- 74 ORIGINAL SINNERS addresses of the principal witnesses. They examined the body ; they searched the pockefcs and found nothing, they tried to decipher the name on the pocket-handker- chief, they pulled open the eyes to see their colour, they agreed that the teeth would have to be noted and impressions of the finger-tips taken. They explained to the crowd how this was done. Amid growing excitement they unfastened the coat and shirt. Each felt the heart in turn, and called for water in unison. A bucket was brought. It was poured over Mr. Jenkins's head, and after a few deep breaths he opened his eyes with- out police assistance. As he had taught French for so many years, he understood a word here and there of the shouting around him. *• To the EngUsh Consulate ! " they cried, with threatening gesticulations. "He is an assassin ! He escapes ! He spies on our fortresses ! He has killed ten women ! He is Jack the Ripper ! Ah, the criminal EngUsh ! To the Consulate ! To the Consulate ! " A flat cart, drawn by a woman and a large dog, appeared, and Mr. Jenkins was carefully A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE 75 laid inside, his boots being removed to prevent his running away. Then, with two poHcemen on either hand, he was drawn back into the town, crowds of working-people streaming in from every side. It was a procession, a cortege, a pubhc affair ! Seldom had Havre enjoyed an incident so piquant, so intriguing, so suggestive of excitement to the spirit of human curiosity. That night Mr. Jenkins slept hke the dead, between clean white sheets in a cool and airy room, looking out upon a French garden full of the smell of lilac. The consul had received him into his house, which he said was only his official duty. At dinner the consul's wife had been present, and a son just going up to Oxford, and a daughter with a laughing mouth and sympathetic eyes. Flowers were on the table, the room shone with silvery lights, and the red wine went round. Mr. Jenkins was transfigured. The consul's son declared he was quite a decent sort ; the daughter said he was a dear. *' You can send me back the fare when yoa get home — when you get home," the consul had said ; ** and whenever you want another 76 ORIGINAL SINNERS change, I hope you'll make the trip again. It's so easy when once you've done it." Two days later, when Mr. Jenkins came into hall for breakfast, Mr. Simpson eyed him curiously and said to the boys nearest the head of the table : ** Mr. Jenkins looks quite pohshed up, doesn't he ? Looks hke a certain shellfish turned inside out to show the mother- of-pearl ! ** I say, Jenkins," he went on, while the boys pretended to stifle their laughter, ** you're quite smart this morning. What have they been doing to you at Clapham Junction this week ? " ** Oh, I wasn't in Clapham. I just took a run over to France," Mr. Jenkins answered, with an easy air, looking boldly round. " You ran over to France ! " cried Mr. Simpson, in scornful amazement. '* Yes," said Mr. Jenkins. ** I've been staying with my friends at the British Con- sulate in Havre — very charming people." There was no mistaking the impression produced by the words, and Mr. Simpson could only mutter something about hoping he had not been very ill on the passage. A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE 77 " Well, it certainly was a bit rough for landlubbers," said Mr. Jenkins, serenely ; ** but I've always loved the sea, and the rougher it is, the more alive I am." " Oh, I like a Httle yachtin' myself," said Mr. Simpson, trying to recover his position ; " when there's no shootin', I Uke a little yachtin'." " All right," said Mr. Jenkins, genially ; ** next time you're tired of lion-huntin', come and do a httle yachtin' with me on the steamer to Havre. I'll introduce you at the Consulate — charming people ! " From that day the moral and intellectual influence of Mr. Jenkins rapidly increased. For it became known that he was really very highly connected, but had run away to sea as a boy and had lived a life of maritime adven- ture. No doubt, that was why he had been called the Whistling Oyster. IV PONGO'S ILLUSION AMONG the chimpanzees inhabiting the forests which border a West African river he was conspicuous for intelHgence and adven- ture. He left his mother early, he married early, he fitted up a nice, cool cavern for his family and invented a method of cracking cocoanuts by hurling them down from the summit of a precipice upon the rocks beneath. No chimpanzee on the river was so agile in swinging from tree to tree, or in swarming up the slender trunks for palm-oil fruit and kernels. Before daylight his cheery chatter- ing began, and all day long he searched for food or lay basking in the jolly sunshine. Of an evening he came chattering back, always bringing plenty in his hands or mouth to support his wife and children, and all night he slept comfortably among them in the cave. He was considerably happier than a king. . But, like a king, he was always desiring to increase his happiness. Unsatisfied with his PONGO'S ILLUSION 79 enviable lot, he roamed far and wide through the forest, continually searching for unknown joys, and one day he even attempted to cross the river itself on a fallen tree-trunk, the roots of which had rotted away in the swamp. Leaping upon it, he gave the trunk a vigorous push off with his feet, and the strong, but placid, current whirled it out to the centre of the stream. There the full force of the water caught it and swept it onwards, down and down the river. It was carried swiftly along a winding course between the two black Unes of forest, and once it was dashed down a cataract, where he had to chng to the bark with hands and feet while the foam surged over his warm and hairy back. But the trunk came no nearer to one side or the other. It was always swept forward in the middle of the current. All that evening and through the dark night, sometimes turning round or roUing right over, it bore him along, cold and hungry, but he never let go his grip or fell off into the water. And in the morning he saw that the river had broadened out ; he was further than ever from the banks ; and right in front lay 80 ORIGINAL SINNERS an enormous stretch of water, where waves rose suddenly to a great height as they approached the shore, and then fell, crashing and roaring, in surf upon a long white beach. He stared at them in terror as the current drove him into their very mouth with increas- ing speed. But just as the white splashes of foam reached his face, an eddy carried the trunk aside and flung it against a narrow spit of sand which extended halfway across the river's course like a bar. CrawHng carefully along the tree, he stepped upon the solid surface and rolled himself dry in the sand, already hot with sunshine. When he had stopped shivering and had shaken off the sand, he looked about for something to eat. There was no forest here ; only the long strip of empty beach, upon which the surf fell heavily with regular crash and drag. But at the broad end of the bar he saw a cluster of palm-trees, which promised something. So he lurched towards them wearily on all fours, being exhausted with hunger and fatigue. As he approached, he saw other creatures moving about among the palms ; and he stopped in fear and amaze- PONGO'S ILLUSION 81 ment to watch them. They were something hke chimpanzees, but much larger and more erect. Their arms were shorter, their legs longer, and what astonished and frightened him most, next to their size, was their varie- gated colour. For some were dark black, except for patches of blue, and two had pale yellowish faces and arms, but the rest of them all white ; and these white creatures had queer heads, expanding into wide, flat circles at the top. His first thought was to run away and hide. But behind him lay nothing except sand, the river, and the roaring surf. In front there was a chance of something to eat, and, besides, he was adventurous by nature. For a long time he watched them from a distance — ^the figures in white standing in the shade and shouting, the dark black figures moving rest- lessly to and fro, carrying great burdens or arranging them in rows. Then he drew gradually nearer, hunger compeUing him ; for certainly, he thought, such animals must have something to eat. At last he came so close that he could see their faces plainly. The two white figures were now seated beside o.s. 6 82 ORIGINAL SINNERS a plank of wood, evidently eating. The black were lying about in the shade, eating too. The sight of their satisfaction induced him to draw nearer still. At last, driven by the recklessness of hunger, he reared himself up and, advancing to the table, made a clutch at a large bunch of bananas and held it tight. ** Good God ! It's a Pongo ! " cried the two startled traders, springing up. ** Hop it, you infernal brute ! " Much profane language followed, but the chimpanzee, not understanding the words, only sprang a few yards off and began stripping the banana skins, as he knew how, uttering the excited chatter usual at the certainty of food. " Ever see Winking swank like that ? '' cried the older trader. " Damned if I don't catch the beggar and scoop his inside out ! " There was no difficulty in catching him. Ravenously devouring the banana which he held in both hands, he kept looking from side to side, this way and that, lest some enemy should come and grab it, but of the creature before him he took little notice. Perhaps he thought no one enjoying such plenty could PONGO'S ILLUSION 83 envy his share ; perhaps he was stupefied by hunger and the splendour of food. He allowed the trader to come close up to him with a long West Coast " machet/' or cutlass, and did not stop eating when the man cried, " Say your prayers quick, you Kmb of Satan ! " Raising the cutlass, the trader was on the point of sweeping off his head. But the other one called out lazily from the table, " Say, Smithson ! Why not catch the devil ahve and keep him for society ? " " Any devil would make a proper chum for you," Smithson answered, letting the machet fall ; '* just get the other side of him." Looking this way and that, the chimpanzee went -on eating ravenously. Only when they came close and one of them stretched out a hand towards the banana bunch, he snarled fiercely, showing his great teeth, and leapt forward upon his hind legs. " Stow it, Pongo ! " cried Smithson, " or I'll roast you alive for the natives' chop. Fetch a rope, Taylor." The black figures with blue patches about their waists gathered round in the ring, 6—2 84 ORIGINAL SINNERS grinning and chattering, to watch the sport. A rope was brought, and Smithson threw a big noose round the chimpanzee's body. He jerked at it till it lay loose under the creature's arms, and then gradually drew it tight. ** Now I've got you, you old devil ! " he said, and he fastened the other end of the rope round the stem of a big palm tree. The natives laughed and shouted with pleasure, standing round in a circle at a safe distance. Alarmed at the sounds, which were not exactly the same cries as he was accustomed to, Pongo attempted to leap away, but the rope caught him tight round the chest, and he was flung violently on his back. The shouting and laughter increased, and the two traders stood on either side, cracking long whips to make him leap the more. Weakened by the night journey, and soon exhausted by his struggles, he cHmbed the stem of the palm as far as the rope allowed, and clung on there. The laughter and shouting were redoubled. *' You'll soon come down, my beauty ! " said Smithson, and flung a stone which hit him in the middle of the back. All the natives began throwing stones, and certainly PONGO'S ILLUSION 85 would have killed him if the other trader had not driven them back to work with loud reports of a whip. Then he laid the uneaten bananas at the foot of the tree and left the creature feebly cUnging there. As the trader had foretold, he soon came down, and now that he was alone, he tried again to escape, leaping in every direction, but always brought up sharply by the rope. At last he gave up trying and sat quiet, watching those big black animals still hurry- ing to and fro in the sun and carrying casks or other heavy burdens, while the two white figures walked up and down, shouting at them and prodding them with long staves. He fell asleep, and when he awoke it was evening. The traders were again seated beside the table, and behind each stood one of those black creatures — a female — ^who, from time to time, went away and returned, bringing them food, just as Pongo used to bring it for his family in the forest. Further along the beach he saw black figures squatting round a fire, which shot up long tongues of crimson and yellow flame. They were jabber- ing incessantly, and every now and then they 86 ORIGINAL SINNERS tore fragments off a cow's head, which was stewing on the fire in a great iron cauldron, and ate them. Then they all plunged scoops of cocoanut shell into the broth and drank it, for it was a kind of feast, or saint's day, because a steamer was expected to arrive. To-morrow they would need all their strength to load the barrels of palm-oil and bring back the gin, rum, and other goods in which their labour was paid. So they had received a cow's head to keep their spirits up. And Pongo, being conspicuous among chimpanzees for intelligence, watched both parties with admiration and astonishment, soon realising that he had fallen among beings superior to his kind. They were like his people — all the more like now that the white figures had laid aside their hats and shown their heads covered with fur— rand yet how unhke ! They never used their arms in walking. Their chattering was different. Their size overwhelmed him. The amount they ate filled him with awe. The two females kept bringing the white figures one kind of food after another, more varied than a cow's head and in greater quantity. As PONGO'S ILLUSION 87 Pongo sat watching them, a feeling of envy mingled with reverence grew in his mind. This, no doubt, was the life he had dimly sought to discover by all those enterprises and adventures in the forest. Here was the happiness which he could thoroughly enjoy. Obscurely he felt an attraction to these beings. With them he longed to associate — to become like one of themselves and share their grandeur. Desirous, not only of their abundant food, but of their companionship, he began again to leap towards the table, tugging vainly at his rope. " Best shoot the beggar," said Smithson, hghting a long, thin cigar. " He'll be a filthy nuisance." *' You leave him to me," said Taylor. *' I've got an idea about Pongo. There's money in that ape. I'm going to make a man of him." *' Are you a bloody organ-grinder ? " mut- tered Smithson. But Taylor had already gone towards Pongo, with a hippo sjambok in his hand. As he approached, he raised it above his head, ready to strike. But Pongo, full of friendH- ness and hope, flung himself down upon his 88 ORIGINAL SINNERS back before him, and began beating his hairy chest with his hands as a sign of submission and goodwill. When the trader stood for a moment hesitating where to strike, he rolled over and rubbed his face against the loose, white covering which flapped round the trader's legs. " You just bite, you devil ! " cried Taylor, ** And I'll knock the stuffing out of you ! " But Pongo had no intention of biting. His savage heart was filled with respectful fear and hesitating pleasure — such a mixture of exhilaration and apprehension as ambitious people feel when they begin to climb in the social world. ** The brute's half tamed already. Look at him ! " Taylor shouted to his companion. '* Chuck us a bit of something." ** Oh, blast you and your cursed ape," Smithson answered, sleepily, from the table ; " why don't you brain him and have done with it ? " But still, he flung a lump of warmish fat, which fell in the sand close to Taylor's feet. Pongo had never smelt or tasted anything so peculiar. Taking it in both hands, he PONGO'S ILLUSION slowly devoured it, looking to right and left, and spitting out the sand. If the gods gave us of their food, our grateful enjoyment might be as tentative and uncertain as his. ** There's money in that ugly brute ! I tell you there's money in it ! " said Taylor, return- ing to the table, and pouring out a liqueur brandy. *' There's more in niggers and palm-oil," said the other, and shouting to one of the females, he went into his corrugated iron hut. Taylor vanished into another. The natives crept into little shelters of branches and dry leaves, stockaded like a kraal, and the whole " factory " lay silent under the moon. Only the crash and drag of the surf could be heard, and Pongo slept happily, just Hke the human beings, except that he lay curled up, with his face between his legs. Before dawn he was awakened by a sudden boom from the sea. The expected steamer had fired a gun to show she had cast anchor. At once all the natives began chattering and running about. The white figures came out, shouting at them and prodding them with long sticks as before. A boat full of barrels was 90 ORIGINAL SINNERS pushed out through the surf, which tossed it high up on end, and let it fall with a crash into the hollow of the wave beyond. Pongo could hear the loud hiss the natives made to keep the paddles in time as they plunged them into the water, standing up, face to the bow. The sight of the boat as it heaved and splashed its way out into the flat sea beyond filled him with amazement. It became smaller and smaller. Then after a long while he saw it again, growing bigger and bigger. It heaved and sank again upon the surf, rushed forward on the crest of an enormous wave, and crashed down upon the sand. Instantly all the natives sprang into the water, which surged and foamed round their black bodies, and they dragged it high up the beach. Out of it they took great barrels, and rolled them up to the factory. So the work went on all day, the boat taking out barrels and bringing barrels back. And all day the white figures beat and prodded the natives on. So Pongo sat bewildered by the marvel of human industry, and his reverential longing to share in human life increased. But in the stress and excitement of trade, PONGO'S ILLUSION 91 his existence was forgotten. In vain he cried aloud, and bobbed up and down, and to and fro, at the end of the rope. He would have come near starvation again, if one of the dark females had not brought him a basin of mealy- meal. She was much afraid of him, but when he lay on his back again, patting his chest, and tried to rub his face against her legs, she put it within reach and ran away. Late in the evening, the last row of barrels was taken off. The steamer made three hooting sounds, and sailed away. The boat plunged through the surf for the last time, and great noise and turmoil arose in the native kraal. A loud drum began to beat. The black figures leapt about in circles, wriggling their backs, and moving their legs and arms up and down in jerks, while they uttered shrill cries and other peculiar noises, which filled Pongo with a terrifying and painful pleasure. For, like all the higher animals, he was sus- ceptible to music, and was impelled to join in the sounds with long, wailing outcries. He also began leaping about, wriggling his back, and throwing up his arms, just as he saw the other creatures doing. The drumming became 92 ORIGINAL SINNERS quicker, the dance more excited. The black figures reeled unsteadily, and many fell down flat. Two rushed from the circle and struck at each other with machets, uttering shrieks. The white figures staggered towards them, cursing, and slashing about with long whips. But just as they came up, the two black creatures fell heavily close in front of Pongo, and he could see Hquid running from them, and soaking in dark patches into the sand. The white figures kicked their heads and bodies, but they hardly moved. " Leave the blighters alone," said Smithson. " They'll either come to or die." ** All jolly well ! " Taylor answered, *' but these drunks are too expensive." They staggered off to the dancing circle, and with yells and lashing of whips drove the natives into the stockade and barred the entrance with logs. The sight of all these varied activities increased Pongo's admiration, and so far as he was capable of worship, he felt it. Day followed day, and Pongo enjoyed asso- ciation with higher beings more and more, as he became more worthy of it. Qwanga, the PONGO'S ILLUSION 93 dark female who had saved him from starva- tion, brought him food regularly, and swept his circle of sand around the tree, just as a housemaid dusts and empties the slops for a duke. At last she ventured to lead him about at the end of the rope, and in the daytime she tied him up to the doorpost of one of the trader's huts, where she found it easier to feed him. So the food came nice and fresh straight from her kitchen. After a week or two, Taylor brought an empty old barrel, and fixed it on its side as a kennel, substituting a fine iron chain for the rope, so that Pongo might not bite himself loose and wander helplessly away into the impenetrable forest. Over the top of the kennel he painted the words, ** Windsor Castle : The Eeward of Honest Toil," and there in the evenings he began to teach Pongo the lessons of civilisa- tion, instilling knowledge with the sjambok until each advance towards humanity was completely mastered. He easily taught him to grovel on all fours when he approached, and to rub his nose against his boots as though Hcking them. That was easy and natural. To stand up at the command, '' 'Shun ! " and 94 ORIGINAL SINNERS raise one hand to his head was more difi&cult, but a few weeks made Pongo ahnost as smart at it as an Australian private. He readily- learnt to drink, and at the command " Curse !'' would pour out a fine string of growls and shrieks. The hardest trick to teach him was, at the command ** Rent ! " to make him hand over part of the food he had just received. But under sharp blows from the sjambok, he was brought to learn even that. " I told you I'd make a man of him,'' said Taylor to the other trader when these lessons were completely acquired. Pongo was evi- dently proud of these accomplishments, and behaved as one gradually becoming initiated into the usages of society. But, unhappily, he suffered one serious relapse into the barbarism from which he appeared to be emerging. For the third time the monthly steamer had come and gone, and after the last boat had put to shore, the " fac- tory " gave itself up to the full enjoyment of its accustomed relaxation. The natives drank and danced beside the kraal ; the traders drank and smoked at the table, and one of them read aloud occasional extracts from a PONGO'S ILLUSION 95 book such as Antwerp supplied specially for the traders along the Coast. Suddenly Smithson got up and said, " I'm sick of this. What's the good of reading things ? Give me the soHd article. I want flesh and blood, and I'm going to have it. I want sport — thick, bleeding sport ! " *' Want away ! " said Taylor ; " there's no sport here. But there's drink. So here's luck ! " *' No sport ? You wait a minute ! " Smith- son retorted ; ** I'm going to dress down a woman, just to see how it feels." He staggered to his corrugated iron hut with the unsteady gait which characterised a day of commercial prosperity. At the entrance he passed the kennel of Pongo, who did obeisance, bowing down with face to the sand, as he had been taught, and was rewarded by a passing kick. Without going into the house, Smithson shouted for Qwanga. " You Kb to come ? " he cried. " Plenty well come quick one time ! " Qwanga came out, wearing a little blue apron with white spots, as usual, and carrying 96 ORIGINAL SINNERS a cup of hot coffee, which she supposed the master wanted. Smithson struck the cup out of her hand, dashing the scalding stuff upon her bare skin. Then he seized her, and with thin bits of rope began lashing her wrists and ankles to the doorposts of the narrow entrance, until she was extended Kke a St. Andrew's cross. Her cries of entreaty roused the Kraal, and the natives came rolling and staggering up till they stood around in a wide half-circle, keeping their distance out of respect for superior intelhgence. First drawing the lash of a heavy leathern whip through his fingers, Smithson brought it down diagonally across the woman's back. She shrieked. Her body writhed with sudden anguish. But she hung helplessly there, and at the sight all the semi-circle of natives burst into laughter, delighted that another suffered and not them- selves. Drawing the lash through his left hand again, Smithson laughed also, and cried ,*' Dat lib for plenty fine — fine too much ! " Steadying himself to take aim, he brought the whip down again almost along the same line of skin, and this time the back of the PONGO'S ILLUSION 97 little blue apron was cut nearly in half. Again the woman shrieked, and the natives rocked with laughter. But a yell from Smithson silenced them. Almost too swift to be seen, Pongo sprang upon him, and, clinging round his body, fastened his great teeth through the white netted " singlet " into his right arm near the shoulder. Blood poured from it, and dripped from the handle of the whip. ** Take the cursed brute off," shouted Smith- son, yelling with pain and striking round at Pongo's face with his left. Two or three of the natives sprang forward and, seizing the ape*s limbs, dragged him violently away, tear- ing the flesh into which the teeth were driven. They got their hands round his throat and flung him to the ground, holding him tight down on his back, while Smithson kicked him with his great boots till he was senseless. " Taylor said he'd make a man of you, did he ? " he shouted, so as to be heard by Taylor, who was still slouching over the table in a half- stupefied condition. '' I'll show you what it means to be made a man of ! " He ordered the natives to lift the ape and hold it up against the woman's back. Then 98 ORIGINAL SINNERS he tied its hands round her neck and its feet round her waist, so that it seemed to be riding pickaback, as a native woman carries her child. When Qwanga threw her head back, moaning with pain and terror, it knocked against the ape's senseless head, which hung limply forward over her shoulder, Kke a baby's whose neck is not strong enough to balance the weight. The semicircle of natives laughed again, more heartily than ever. " Make a man of you, would he ? You spawn of hell ! " Smithson shouted again ; " I'll show you what it means to be a man ! " Pain and rage had sobered him. Pausing a moment to measure distance and direction accurately with his eye, he violently brought down the lash so that it fell on Pongo's back and curled round the woman's body at the same stroke. Again and again he repeated the blow, and then, with growing frenzy, struck the hissing lash upon black flesh and hairy skin indifferently with savage joy. The woman's shrieks subsided into deep moans of agony. Her head fell forward Hke the ape's. Her blood and his mingled and dripped together upon the sand between her PONGO'S ILLUSION 99 extended feet. The brilliant moon illumi- nated the scene. Nothing was heard but the swish and blow of the lash, the woman's groans, and the roaring of the surf upon the beach. Even the natives ceased to laugh. " Stow this rotting ! '' cried Taylor's voice. He had roused himself from happy torpor, and was cutting his way through the black semicircle with blows of the sjambok. " Stow it, I tell you, Smithson ! " he said, catching hold of the other trader's wrist as his bleeding arm was raised for the next blow. ** Kill your woman if you Hke, but I'm damned if you shall kill my Pongo ! " '* Your Pongo has gone to hell already, and you can catch him there ! " cried Smithson, struggling with him and striking at his face. " Stow it," cried Taylor again, in a lower tone. " If one of us gets done in, the natives '11 chop the other." Smithson desisted, being himself exhausted with pain. Taylor cut the chimpanzee loose, and flung him, limp and unconscious, into the barrel. Then he untied the groaning woman, and together they dragged her into Smithson's hut and laid her on the matted floor. 7—2 100 ORIGINAL SINNERS *' Your bloody book was right," said Smithson, kneeling beside her and passing his hand over her smooth and shiny breasts. *' Now you can go and bury the filthy ape that has gone to hell ! " But Pongo did not go to the land where superior beings go. Two or three months later, I happened to be passing down the coast in the monthly steamer, and put to shore at the " factory " with the ship's doctor. Hissing to their paddles, the natives brought us through the enormous surf with the usual boat-load of spirits and other goods so skilfully that only one wave drenched us. Smithson and Taylor received us hospitably to lunch at the long plank table among the cluster of palms. As a curiosity, Taylor showed us a chimpanzee he was training for a Zoo in England. He gave a peculiar call, and the creature came out of a barrel and staggered towards us uncertainly upon its hind legs. It dragged a length of chain after it, but the chain was loose at the other end. ** Say good morning," said Taylor, and the creature bowed to the ground at our feet, and then held out a front paw. PONGO'S ILLUSION 101 " Now wash for lunch," said Taylor, and the creature crept unwillingly to a basin and rubbed a little water on its face. " Now brush your hair," said Taylor, and it took an old blacking brush and scrubbed its hairy sides. We all sat down to lunch, I being next the chimpanzee, which sat up quite well upon a wooden chair and laid its paws upon the table. But I noticed both the traders kept a heavy whip beside them and the end of the chain was fastened round a table leg. The chimpanzee had its share of all the dishes, and ate off a plate, but held the food in both paws and kept looking suspiciously to right and left. " Why do people talk of grinning apes ? " I said. ** This Pongo looks about as likely to grin as a well-paid mute." ** They're melancholy beggars, are apes," Taylor answered. " But I'll show you how to cheer him up." He produced a black bottle from under the table, and at sight of it the ape began bound- ing up and down on its chair and uttering eager little cries. It was given a tot in a 102 ORIGINAL SINNERS glass like the rest of us, and sipped it with intense enjoyment, holding the tumbler in both paws and looking this way and that. *' He's almost on the level of a Yahoo ! " cried the doctor, laughing at the creature's caricature of humanity. " Or of a Labour Member who has sold his birthright for a mess of aristocratic society," I added. Qwanga was standing behind her master's chair, gazing in front of her with the female negro's filmy and impenetrable eyes — eyes Hke a seal's. Taylor made a remark to the doctor which I did not catch, but the doctor laughed and answered : *' Certainly ; there's no scientific reason against it. In course of time you might develop a new race of man from an animal like that." " Could it possibly be a better one ? " I asked. We all laughed, and after a very happy afternoon, the doctor and I put back to the ship. '' SITTING AT A PLAY " rpHE orchestra had just begun, and the -'- whole house buzzed with the excitement of a first night. In those days anything might be expected at the Crown Theatre in Stanley Square, and every one of intellectual distinc- tion came. The writers, journahsts, noveKsts, dramatists, painters and art critics, together with all the more prosperous kinds of freak and crank, were there assembled. Scattered about the stalls sat the dramatic critics of the London papers, on whose favour the success of a play was thought to depend. The front row of the pit knew them all by name, and, with the pride of people habituated to the Town, pointed them out to the crowded rows behind them. They also pointed out other well-known figures, such as Mr. Cran- brook, whose agreeable looks and brightly grizzled hair always made him conspicuous. " Yes," cried one of that front row, in the eagerness of special knowledge, " there's 104 ORIGINAL SINNERS Cranbrook, M.P., him as they say is going to be made a Minister or something. You should hear him guy a witness in court ! Pair turn him inside out he does — cross- examine him till he don't know where he's standing, or what he's done, or who he is ! There's no such man as Cranbrook, M.P., for gettin' at the truth." " And that'll be his daughter along of him, I make no doubt," said a stoutish woman behind. " Don't you think it, mother ! " said the man of information, scornfully ; " that's his wife, that is. He knows a thing or two, does Cranbrook, M.P. ! " *' Poor young thing ! " said the woman, with a sigh of far-off memories. With greetings and smiles to acquaintances as they passed, Mr. and Mrs. Cranbrook made their way to their seats in the middle of the stalls. *' First-rate places ! " she said, looking round at her husband as he helped to take off her cloak, so that their eyes met with just a gleam of something more than affec- tion. " And we're in time, after all. Now "SITTING AT A PLAY" 105 we can enjoy the whole play from start to finish. Fm so glad we didn't hurry over dinner." '* It wasn't dinner that kept you so long dressing," he murmured, gazing with tender admiration on her beauty ; and with a happy little laugh between them they sat down. *' What's the play called, again ? " she asked, simply to bring herself back from intimacies into the public atmosphere. " ' The Heart of a Man,' " he answered. " I've only seen a puff preliminary, but it is said to be a kind of Worm's Progress — the development of the common scoundrel — the sort of man that most men are, the Westminster hinted, in an unusual fit of decisiveness and cynicism." " What stuff those newspapers talk ! " she said, looking up at him proudly. " Who is the author ? " ** That seems to be a dead secret," he replied. ** The Westminster said it only hoped for his sake the play was not autobiographical. If it is, I suppose it will begin, Hke a Chinese drama, with the birth of the hero on the stage. An author never tires of talking about 106 ORIGINAL SINNERS himself. No one tires of that ; it's only the listener who tires." ** I love to hear you talk about yourself," she answered. " But here's the curtain going up." " Well," he said, speaking low, " I'm glad there are only three short acts, and then we shall go home — ^home together ! " Again their eyes met for a moment, and they smiled fondly. The curtain rose, and Mrs. Cranbrook nestled down into her almost bridal dress of silvery white. Pale, dark, and very slight she was, and her bare arm lay along her husband's sleeve, so that he could feel its warmth. At first she did not take much interest in the acting, for she was thinking of things far more interesting to herself. She was thinking how happy she felt now, and how secure her happiness was. All through her girlhood she had longed to meet just such a man as her husband — so open-hearted and courageous. She had never thought much of cleverness, though he was clever too. Every one said he would be next Under Secretary at all events ; that was natural, and she was proud of it. But she knew that people really liked him for "SITTING AT A PLAY" 107 a certain frankness of manner — ^an impulsive friendliness that won even his opponents ; it was so unsuspicious, so ready to accept others at their own valuation, or even at a higher valuation than their own, if that were possible. The law courts had given him the barrister's clear-cut and decisive look, but his face was still amiable as a sunlit country, and his amenity and courteous compliance opened for him the gateways of opportunity. By his political friends and opponents aHke she knew he was regarded as a man certain to " run straight " on every question of principle, without rushing off into side issues or im- possibly Quixotic positions. His marriage into one of the leading families of his party had seemed only a natural step in a career of promise assured. But to herself how much more that marriage had meant ! She was proud of her husband — ^yes, proud, but a little jealous, too, perhaps, that every one should think so well of him. She would have liked to defend him against some dangerous imputation — ^for something inwardly honourable, of course ! But no one brought a single charge against 108 ORIGINAL SINNERS him, and there was nothing for her to do but join the chorus of praise. Never mind ! She alone knew his inmost heart. There she was safe, for a nature Hke his could never disap- point her. In rehance on that, her happiness was secure and could not be taken away. Through the last two or three years of her girlhood she had suffered a good deal from uncertainty ; for she had attracted many, and two or three of them had much attracted her. After all, one Hked different people for different reasons, and it was so difficult to choose ! But when the man came whom she could love for every reason or for none, she had not hesitated, and she was calmly certain now. Yes ! her husband had everything she had most desired, and this confidence added a profound tranquillity to her joy. Kealising the comfort of that tranquillity, she turned to him confidently again, but saw that he was following the play far more intently than herself, and wore a troubled look, as though something in it was difficult to understand. She also tried to fix her atten- tion on the stage. The first scene, hinting at a possible intrigue with a married woman of "SITTING AT A PLAY" 109 high political position, had passed, and no\y she only perceived a rather squalid representa- tion of a ruined household, a half-drunken gambler, a despairing wife, and two unhealthy, underfed children. Among them sat the hero, a correct and well-dressed gentleman who evidently regarded the situation as most unpleasant. He was excusing himself on the plea of business for not having been to call for such a long time. ** You see," he was saying, ** in my pro- fession a rising man has to work like a demon.'* " I*m not a rising man,'' said the decayed gentleman, trying with a shaky hand to make a cigarette out of dry tobacco-dust. " And then," the other continued, " I've been elected to my club committee, and I'm legal adviser to a hospital in a poor quarter. The post is purely honorary, but the hospital does a lot of good, so I don't grudge it. But it takes time doing all these things." ** I take time dying," said the other. At the words, Mrs. Cranbrook felt her husband's arm move as though with sudden pain. She looked up at him, but his eyes were still fixed intently on the stage. 110 ORIGINAL SINNERS *' Well acted, isn't it, dear ? " she said, leaning toward him so that her hair touched his shoulder. " That model prig is good. So is the poor drunkard." But he made no answer. He seemed to be following every word uttered on the stage, and she was astonished to see his lips moving in the semi-darkness, as though he were repeating the very sounds. The scene went on. The unhappy wife on the stage offered the visitor tea, which he rather impressively refused ; she manipulated her dress so as to conceal the holes in her boots ; she fondled the gaunt-eyed children, calling attention to such good points as she thought they possessed. Meantime her husband maundered confusedly about old days when his brother and he had been at school together, and what jolly times they used to have at the sea in the holidays. When at last the well- dressed visitor rose to go, his poKteness increased as the chance of escape approached. ** I am so very sorry, but I am already late for a most important business engagement in my chambers," he said, and he shook hands with his sister-in-law, who almost cried at "SITTING AT A PLAY" 111 being spoken to so gently ; he gave half-a- crown to each of the two children, saying it was an uncle's privilege and he was delighted to take it ; and finally he slapped his brother on the shoulder and wished them all a very merry Christmas. *' I'll lay you five to one in anything you Hke it's my last merry Christmas here on earth," said his brother, with a tremulous laugh, and again Mrs. Cranbrook felt her husband start as though he had been struck. The act ended in a struggle between the father and the two children for the half- crowns ; and as the curtain fell, Mr. Cran- brook sank heavily back in his stall. " Do you find it specially interesting ? " his wife asked him, brightly, although in the brilliant light she saw that his face was yellow, and his eyes were still fixed on the curtain as though watching something that might be going on behind it. " Interesting ? No, not at all," he answered almost roughly, and stood up suddenly, so that she could not see his face. " Any one would suppose you were en- thralled," she said, with a touch of offence. 112 ORIGINAL SINNERS But just then one of the dramatic critics came and sat in the stall left vacant beside her. ** Rather commonplace stuff, isn't it ? " he asked. " Oh no ! " she said, laughing. ** At least I hope that hero isn't commonplace." ** Yes, he is," said the critic. ** I think that must be the author's object." " Who is the author, really ? " asked Mr. Cranbrook, looking down on them almost savagely. " That's the queer thing about it — ^no one knows," said the critic. *' The manager swears he doesn't know himself. But he likes a bit of mystery. As I was saying, the author's object apparently Was to describe the tragedy of the average bounder." Mr. Cranbrook turned quickly away. " The average bounder you may call him, perhaps," said his wife, ** but he's not the average man, thank Heaven 1 " " My dear Mrs. Cranbrook," said the critic, languidly, ** the two are one." " Mr. Scott says that creature is only the average man ! " she cried, to her husband. "SITTING AT A PLAY" 113 ** Isn't that a libel on mankind ? Did you ever see any one more contemptible ? " ** Don't say that/' he said, sitting down again, but leaning far back. " Perhaps he wasn't really a bad sort of fellow. He wasn't unkindly — only very much occupied. If some members of a family won't work, the rest have to work for them. Don't be hard on the man ; you've only heard one side." " Oh, if you play the barrister, there's no more to be said," she answered, a little hurt. *' But whatever you clever people say, to me such a creature Would be intolerable ! Yes, intolerable ! " she repeated, with an indignant little shudder. But as the Hghts went down for the second act, she turned gently to her husband, and putting her Ups close to his ear in the momen- tary darkness, she whispered, ** Be nice to me, dearest ; do be nice ! " Leaning forward against the back of the stall in front of him, he made no sign, but again became absorbed in the play. She fixed her eyes on him, in such distress that she hardly understood what the acting was all OS. 8 114 ORIGINAL SINNERS about. It was only in spite of herself that she caught the general drift. The act opened on the evening of the same day, and the scene represented a political reception at a Cabinet Minister's house. The hero was moving about from one group of people to another, and everywhere he Was received with smiles and congratulations, for it was known that in all probability he would be chosen to stand as the party's nominee at a coming by-election. Then music was heard in the distance, and the room began to empty gradually, till at last the hero remained almost alone, leaning over a chair in which the beautiful woman who had appeared at the beginning of the first act was sitting. They conversed as casual acquaintances, but their looks and occasional words would have betrayed them to any observer who knew love. They began by discussing a poHtical cause that both Had very much at heart. *' Do you know," she then said, after the other guests had left them isolated for a time — ** do you know I passed quite close to you this afternoon and you never saw me ? I was so hurt. I thought I had enough magnetic attrac- "SITTING AT A PLAY" 115 tion to make you look, but your mind was fixed on something far away. I was in Notting Hill." '* I'm so sorry," said the hero, uneasily ; ** yes, I was down that way this afternoon — on business simply. It's a wretched district." ** Oh, I know that," she answered. " When I have a moment's leisure I do a little visiting there for the Charity Organisation Society. That sort of thing rather pleases our con- stituents, don't you know ! It's queer that, only an hour or two before, I had visited a miserable family of the same name as yours, and it isn't a common name. When I men- tioned the coincidence to the unfortunate woman, she looked embarrassed and claimed some sort of absurd relationship." " That's a very strange thing ! " said the hero. ** I know the people you mean. The poor woman was quite right. They are a kind of poor relation. It ought to be rather pleasant to have poor relations. It ought to make one feel quite prosperous and successful by contrast, you know," he added, with a smile. " But it doesn't. I suppose I shall have to go and look them up again." 8—2 116 ORIGINAL SINNERS " Oh, I'm afraid you'll find them far from deserving," she answered, lightly. '* The man seems to drink, and gamble besides. The C. 0. S. would never dream of helping them. But still, people are always telling us that blood is thicker than water." *' Only when they want our help," rephed the hero, laughing, "and then blood becomes uncommonly thick ! " ** Don't be bitter, dear," the woman said, in a lower voice ; " you know what you are to me, and I love you most because you are never hard on other people, no matter what they do. But I am going now. Say good- night to me prettily. Here are the politicians coming for you. They are incapable of happi- ness themselves, poor things ! and so a whisper of scandal would ruin your career — even more certainly than a poor relation. Oh, hush ! You mustn't look Hke that ! " And, with a lingering glance, she went. As long as she was on the stage, Mr. Cran- brook remained absolutely still, leaning on the back of the stall in front, with his head between his hands. He hardly seemed to breathe, he was so motionless. He was listen- ^'SITTING AT A PLAY" 117 ing with an almost terrified intentness^so absorbed that his wife felt a touch of relief when the politicians entered, and, as though a chain had snapped, her husband sat back in his chair and passed his handkerchief hurriedly over his face. The poHticians had come to offer the con- stituency to the hero, as was expected. They expressed the admiration and confidence of the party. They said all manner of flattering things, which the hero deprecated with smiling gratification. Then, quite unexpectedly, they attached one condition to their offer. They must ask him to make no mention at all of one particular cause which he was known to favour. It was a cause that the party leaders still con- sidered of dubious popularity. If his con- stituents questioned him about it, he must say that he had not fully made up his mind on the subject, or that it was not yet before the country, or that on a matter of such import- ance he would trust implicitly to the wisdom of his great leader. The hero hesitated. It Was a cause for which he felt some enthusiasm, and he had just promised the woman he loved to support it. The discussion lasted long. He 118 ORIGINAL SINNERS put forward his best arguments, but the politicians were firm. They assured him the whole question was in the ideahst stage. Would he join the impatient idealists, who not only wrecked parties, but ruined their own future ? He reminded them that a reputation for consistency and unselfishness was some- times useful, too. They replied they could nofc offer him the seat without the condition, and a footing in politics was almost essential to his career, to say nothing of the extra- ordinary value of his services to the country. During this dialogue Mr. Cranbrook, instead of sitting motionless as before, became more and more restive, and his wife again heard him muttering the words almost before they were spoken on the stage. When the hero main- tained the uses of a reputation for consistency and unselfishness, and the audience laughed with scorn, Mr. Cranbrook clenched his fists together and said, " What's there to laugh at ? " so loud that the people in front turned round and said, " Hush ! " *' Is anything the matter, dearest ? " whis- pered his wife, in great anxiety, when at last the curtain fell on the hero demanding time "SITTING AT A PLAY" 119 for consideration. " Is anything the matter ? Aren't you well ? " ** I suppose Fm not," he answered, looking at her sideways, with haunted eyes. *' I feel very strange." " Then we'll go straight home," she said, rising. ** No, we'll stay to the end," he answered. ** I must see the author, if he appears." ** Don't talk as if you were going to torture him to death," she said, laughing uneasily. " It's not much of a play, but it's not so bad as all that." They went for air into the corridor, where they found the critics discussing the act, but guardedly, lest they should give away points from their own " copy." One of them, how- ever, ventured to say to the Cranbrooks : '' The scale of tone is kept very low and quiet. There is nothing unusual. Nearly all of us would have done just what that man did. We are all made in water-tight compartments, shut off by iron doors, and we look all right as long as the doors keep shut. Everybody does that sort of thing at some time or other, and yet what a terror the man is made to appear ! " 120 ORIGINAL SINNERS " Not only to appear," retorted Mrs. Cran- brook, quickly. ** He is a terror." ** No ! " cried her husband, with sudden violence. ** I absolutely deny it." ** To disown his very brother — to sell his soul for a seat in Parhament — ^to make love, love of that kind — all within an hour ! " she expostulated, indignantly. *' One could forgive the love-making easily enough," said the critic, anxious to conciHate. ** One forgives a genuine and overwhelming passion." ** Yes," Mr. Cranbrook repeated, eagerly, " we forgive everything to a genuine and overwhelming passion. What right have we to judge the man ? We know nothing of his real motives." ** My dear Cranbrook, you are the only true Christian," said the critic, with an almost imperceptible sigh of boredom. ** I can't think how you keep up the higher morality in the law courts. But you must allow a mere pagan to call the fellow a reptile — ^not an exceptionally bad one, but always a reptile." Mrs. Cranbrook felt her husband's arm suddenly tighten upon hers. They walked ''SITTING AT A PLAY" 121 on, and she saw his eyes were closed and his lips pressed tight together. ** Do let us go home, dearest," she urged* ** You are not at all yourself to-night." " What self ? " he cried, with an almost insane laugh. " I tell you I must see it out." The call-bell rang and they returned to their places. The third act opened with the hero's triumph some months later. He was seated at his writing-table reading telegrams and letters of congratulation for his victory at the by-election. One telegram from his party leader expressed high satisfaction with his tact and good sense. An autograph letter from another Cabinet Minister foretold a great career for a man who could thus sacrifice his private prejudices for the public good, and it went on to hint congratulations on yet another hopeful avenue to success — ^a possible alliance with a most influential family of which he had heard rumours. The hero frowned a little, as though a secret had been detected too soon, and Mrs. Cran- brook felt her husband start as though he were going to spring up. 122 ORIGINAL SINNERS But the hero's poverty-stricken sister-in- law was immediately shown in the room, dressed with obvious efforts at tidiness, and she tearfully explained that her girl had died, not seeming to care about living any longer, and the doctor said her husband must be put under restraint, and she couldn't bear to think of sending him to a common asylum. The hero was quite sympathetic. An in- voluntary sense of relief made him distinctly benign, and with generous alacrity he offered to contribute enough to keep his brother in some inebriate Home, at all events for a year or two. After a pause, during which his sister-in-law pitifully sobbed her gratitude, he added only two small conditions : that the Home should be either in the country or abroad, and that the family should take a new name. " You see, my poor brother was always fond of foreign travel and country life," he urged, '* and it will be so much better for your boy to have a fresh start without any possibly unpleasant associations clinging to his name. Not, of course, that there is anything really to be ashamed of," he added, while the audience "SITTING AT A PLAY" 123 laughed in derision, and with hands tightly clasped together Mr. Cranbrook sat still as death. While the sister-in-law was tearfully accept- ing any conditions offered her, the woman so passionately loved in the first two acts entered, as though by right. Steeling himself for the worst, the hero introduced his poor relation as one already known to the lady, hoped her husband would go on better now, and led her to the door with polite assurances. Then he stood silent in the middle of the room and waited. Certainly the woman looked very beautiful. " Tm not at all surprised that you have been deceiving me about those people,'' she began, very quietly. ** A man Hke you is capable of any meanness, any deceit, especially where women are concerned." " It's not true ! I tell you it's not true ! " Mrs. Cranbrook heard her husband mutter, and again the people in front cried, " Hush ! '* and laughed among themselves. " So you are going to marry a pretty child ! " the woman on the stage went on, and putting her hands over her face, she uttered 124 ORIGINAL SINNERS one low cry of despair and anger that kept the house very still. Then followed reproaches, appeals to memories, and to the passion that was so recent, after all. In the end came violent outpourings of grief and shame — ^the grief of a woman who had staked all on one throw and lost — ^the shame of living on unloved while the man for whom she had risked everything was happy with a girl — an ignorant, inexperienced girl ! " What faith I had in you ! " cried the woman. " I worshipped you, I gave you all I had to give, and this is the thing you were !" One or two women in the pit began to cry quietly behind their handkerchiefs. Mr. Cranbrook sat motionless, his face turned away both from his wife and from the stage. The hero attempted explanations. He loved her still ; he was deeply grateful to her ; she had inspired him ; she had renewed his existence, and was the true cause of all his success ; he could never forget all she had done. But the position was becoming impos- sible. Such relationships could not last for ever ; they seldom lasted so long. He tried to approach her, but with a cry of "SITTING AT A PLAY" 125 horror she flung him away, while the gallery gave one shout of approval. ** Well," said the hero, still holding out both hands as though in a last appeal, "you may do and say what you Hke, I have never loved any one as I have loved you. You have been far more to me than my truest friend, and the very memory of you will be more to me than the love of any other woman." " No, no ! I never said that ! " Mrs. Cran- brook heard her husband mutter almost aloud. There was a knock at the door on the stage, and a footman announced : " Mrs. and Miss Jameson would be glad to congratulate you in person, sir, when you are disengaged." " Show them into the drawing-room for a moment," said the hero ; " I'll ring." *' Oh, please let them come up at once," said the woman, coldly. ** Our business is finished, and I shall be so glad to see the beautiful Miss Jameson, whom you find so attractive." When the footman was gone, she continued : *' You needn't have been afraid. I shan't betray you to your lovely bride. I thought 126 ORIGINAL SINNERS you so brave once, and now you see, dear, you have almost become a coward." For a moment all was still. Then voices were heard approaching from outside in gay conversation. The footman was heard saying, *' This way, madam ! " " Keep that door shut ! " shouted Mr. Cranbrook, springing to his feet and stretching out an arm to the stage. *' Keep that door shut ! Let no one come in, or I'll break up the piece ! The play is a libel, a foul Hbel ! I tell you the whole thing is a libel on me." Instantly the whole theatre was in a turmoil of curiosity and excitement. All stood up and began shouting and laughing and asking questions at once. A few made for the exits in panic. The play stopped. The actors stood silent in the middle of the stage. The manager came to the foothghts. He implored the audience to be calm. He called on the orchestra to play the national anthem. Mrs. Cranbrook stood with her arms flung round her husband, either to protect or restrain him. But he continued to gesticulate and shout incoherent words of defiance. Two attendants hurriedly made their way toward "SITTING AT A PLAY" 127 him along the stalls. Seizing him firmly by the shoulders, they began to conduct him out, amid the angry shouting and laughter of the pit and gallery. The hghts were turned up, and his wife was seen following him, still with one hand on his arm. A taxi was called. Mr. Cranbrook sat for- ward in the cab, his eyes staring at the window in front of him as though he still saw what was being acted on the stage. At last, without moving, he said, " If they had opened that door, it would have been you that came in!" But she lay huddled up in a corner, shaken with deep and quivering sobs. At the sound of his voice she sought his hand and cherished it in hers, but neither of them spoke any more. When they reached home, she led him to their room and set him down before the fire. Kneehng at his feet, she laid her arms round him and put her face against his, though he shrank from her. " What is it, dearest ? " she said. *' Oh, what is it ? What terrible thing has happened ? " But he was silent. At last, in a weak and 128 ORIGINAL SINNERS far-off voice, he said : " They don't under- stand ! Oh, they don't understand ! I'm not in the least like that." " Of course you're not, dearest ! " she cried. " Like that detestable creature ! You are so brave and honourable ! What on earth made you think of such a thing ? " Again he was silent. Then he said : ** I have done everything that man did, I have said everything that man said. Every word of that play was literally true of me. Some devil must have written it. But I'm not Hke that ! They don't understand. I'm not in the least Hke that ! " ** Of course you're not, dear love ! " she repeated. " No matter what you may have done, you're not in the least like that." " I have done everything exactly the same," he cried, aloud, " but I'm not a bad man really ! I'm not an average scoundrel ! I'm not a reptile or anything of the sort ! I'm not in the least like that, and yet I've done all these things." ** Dearest," she answered, " I am here with you, I love you. Feel where my heart is beating ! " "SITTING AT A PLAY" 129 **0h, tell me I'm not like that!" he repeated, leaning to her at last. ** Never, dearest, never could you be," she said, fondling him Hke a sick child. *' Do you think I should ever have let a man Kke that touch me ? Never, never could I have loved you if you had been Hke that ! " Next morning the papers cut their criticisms of the play very short. All agreed that the extraordinary incident, as they called it, had caused them to forget any dramatic interest the play might have possessed. One said that probably nothing so absurd had happened in a theatre since a man screamed because he was quite as terrified of the Ghost as Hamlet was. " After all," another sneered, *' if Heaven gave us the power to see ourselves as others see us, it would be a very dubious gift. The incident," it went on, " speaks much for the verisimilitude of the play and the acting ; nothing could have been a better adv . . . t. The mystery of the authorship remains unsolved. But may we hint with all possible delicacy that perhaps the distinguished barris- ter and poUtician himself knows a good deal more about that mystery than would appear ? '* o.s. 9 130 ORIGINAL SINNERS Another paper refused to touch upon the personal question, but added : " To sit in a theatre and watch one's own life enacted on the stage has always seemed to us a fitting torment for the lowest circle in hell. Who could endure it ? " VI A TRANSFORMATION SCENE KEEP her right on !— right on ! *' said the skipper to the man at the wheel, just glancing at the compass, and then back again at the waves that struck heavily against the port bow and flung the trawler's nose high out of water, letting her down with a splash of white foam into the trough. ** Eight on it is," repeated the man, methodically. *' The steamship Briton/' as her skipper delighted to call her, was a largish boat out of Grimsby. " Big enough to go to Iceland," her crew boasted. And, after a fortnight out, she was just returning from the Faroe Bank, full up with fish — big haddock, halibut each as big as a dining-room table, and cod — ^the " richest " cod now brought to market. For the Bank is a refuge to the big fish in the northern seas. It is deep — ^a hundred fathoms deep — ^and the heavy swell seldom lets the trawlers work 132 ORIGINAL SINNERS with long enough warps to reach it. So there the fish lie quiet, undisturbed by the trawl's wooden doors and the inextricable chasm of net behind them. '* Never you mind for the sea," the skipper said, as the man at the wheel put her head up to meet a breaking wave. ** It's nothing only the Firth having its game. Keep her right on ! We're always urgent going home." ** What for ? " said the man at the wheel, as he ran the spoke handles so hard round to starboard that the next wave hung for a moment high above the ship's side, and then crashed over the bulwarks, filling the deck with a swishing load of green water and foam that poured in torrents through the scuppers as she came up again and rose to the wave beyond. " What for ? " said the skipper. " There's a question for a man to ask ! Anybody could tell what's the matter with you, young man ! Keep her right on." " Eight on it is," repeated the man at the wheel. In silence they beat up through the Firth under a stiff easterly breeze, while the March A TRANSFORMATION SCENE 133 sunshine made the spray and swinging waves gleam with purple and white. As they came round the Head, the skipper set the course three points south, and the change seemed to bring to Hfe a thought that had been slowly forming in his mind. For his thoughts were not so rapid as his ship, and she could barely make ten knots. " I seed her once, Jim, on the pier-end at Hull when you was coming away," he said. " Now keep her south-south-east." " South-south-east it is," said Jim, just moving the wheel to and fro between his hands. " I seed her once on the pier-end when we was sailing from Hull," the skipper continued, some minutes later, " and I says to myself, * If that there female draws no more than one man's money on a Friday,* I says, ' it won't be for want of the asking,' I says ; * not if other men's mostly Hke me.' " Jim said nothing, but spat sideways and looked at the compass again. ** There's some females does, and there's some doesn't, and no offence meant," said the skipper, after a long pause. " Keep her up. 134 ORIGINAL SINNERS Don't get giving to the sea. How long was you married ? " " A year and three months," said Jim. ** There's them as would give something for three months, let alone a year," said the skipper, as though meditating to himself. ** It's a wonder, it's a fair old wonder," he added, slowly shaking his head. ** What's a bloody wonder ? " asked Jim. ** Keep her south-south-east till you've got Buchan Ness on the starboard bow, and then you send for me and I'll set her for the Long- stone," said the skipper. ** And the wonder is, my son," he added, slowly, shading his eyes as though he saw possible danger far in front ; ** the wonder is as she stayed with you so long." ** Oh, that's the bloody wonder, is it ? " said Jim, gripping the wheel savagely, and he held the bow steady to the compass, as, with jib and mizzen set, the steamship Briton plunged and rolled forward, the heavy water sweeping over her deck, and the clouds of spray mingling with her smoke when the stokers piled on the coal, so urgent was the skipper to get home. Day and night, day and night she fought A TRANSFORMATION SCENE 135 her way, past Longstone, past Plamborough Head, and whenever Jim saw the skipper those words came into his mind : ** The wonder is she stayed with you so long," and they filled him with a dull sense of anger. At last the trawler rounded the Spurn and entered the brown expanse of the Humber, making up for the old hydraulic tower that rises clear three hundred feet above the dock gates of Grimsby. It was early morning, and on the flood they passed into the trawlers' basin, without having to wait for tide, so closely had the skipper reckoned his time from his last trawl on the Faroe Bank ; he was always so urgent to get home. And as they glided into the dock Jim looked up to where the skipper was standing on the bridge, serene in his mastery over time and fish, and again the words returned : *' The wonder is she stayed with you so long." ** Blast him ! " said Jim, as he flung a rope ashore. *' And blast her, too ! " he added, giving the rope a vicious twist round the stays. Even before they had done tying up, the unloading began. To and fro, from ship to 136 ORIGINAL SINNERS pontoon, the baskets swung, piled with fish from the pens separated by boards and stuffed with ice in the hold below. As they swung, the baskets were caught by men with long iron hooks, who dragged them into place upon the pontoon or landing-stage. They were emptied under the sheds, and the piles of fish were sorted out, some tucked by force into open boxes, some laid in long, straight lines upon the flags — score after score of huge halibut, cod with gaping mouths, Hng, coal- fish, catfish, skate, and the " devils " of the deep that go with codlings and Httle haddock to make up ** offal " — just as, in a royal procession, the pickpockets are classed with the undistinguished citizens as ** crowd." The buyers passed up and down the sheds, fixing the prices, bargaining by the box — smartly dressed young men in leggings, wearing a peculiar horsey air, as though to disclaim any connection with the sea. By the time the buying was over and the pontoon-boys began decapitating the fish on the edge of the barrels, the Briton had been washed down with hose-pipes, and stood deserted by all but her watchman. He then A TRANSFORMATION SCENE 137 shut down the hatches, locked the door above his head, and went to sleep below, Hke a squirrel in its nest. The rest of the crew tramped off, filthy and tired, to their homes for a wash and a sleep. They were bound either for good homes in sober rows of red- brick houses, each exactly like the other, with lace curtains and an india-rubber plant in the front window, or for bad homes down black- ened courts, where the door stood open to let out the smoke and a confused smell of food, washing and children. But all were homes, and each of the crew was greeted by a woman of some sort, tidy or bedraggled, nice-looking or smudgy. All were greeted but Jim. Without saying a word to any one, he walked heavily along a few dull streets to a dull Httle house, where he had hired a room for himself. Some dusty tea-things and bread and cheese stood set out as usual on the table by the woman of the house, on the chance of his coming back at any time. It was too much trouble to boil the kettle, but he ate the bread and cheese, and throwing himself on a worn-out horsehair sofa, he went to sleep in his clothes. 188 ORIGINAL SINNERS It was afternoon when he woke, but he lay still, for if he got up there was nothing for him to do. It was no good walking about the streets, for he did not care to speak to any one, and he did not want to get drunk till the evening. He knew how he would end the night, and he looked forward with pleasure to its dirty debauchery. That was the thing he hved for, and it was coming. But there were many hours between now and night, and so he lay still and waited. Suddenly a great shout of " Jim, ahoy ! '* came from the street below. It was the skipper's voice, and at the sound of it those words again passed through Jim's mind : ** The wonder is she stayed with you so long." ** What does the old man want now, burn him ? " he said to himself. But he answered with another shout of ** Ahoy ! '* Uke an echo, and, slowly rolling off the sofa, he saw from the window the skipper holding a tiny boy by one hand and in the other carrying a bait-pot and some fishing-lines, wound round fire-sticks. " You come out, Jim, and learn to enjoy A TRANSFORMATION SCENE 139 yourself like a decent man," shouted the skipper, as though he were hailing a ship that passed in the night. " Where are you bound for ? " said Jim. ** Breakwater, for a bit of sport," shouted the skipper. " Had about enough of fishing," said Jim, shaking his head. " This ain't j&shing," shouted the skipper, lest the whole street might fall into the same mistake. ** This here's sport ! " No matter how many hundredweight of fish the skipper brought home each trip, he invariably spent his leisure time ashore sitting on the breakwater and dangling a line in the brown shallows, not far from a drain. Some- times he caught something. Jim looked at the sky and saw it was still much too early to begin the evening's pleasure. So he stretched himself, slowly filled his pipe, and went down. He took no notice of the boy, who clung to the skipper's hand and waddled along beside them, now and then looking round the skipper's legs at the big stranger with shy curiosity. Passing beside the oldest of the basins, they walked silently 140 ORIGINAL SINNERS out to the end of the long breakwater that forms the northern arm of the harbour. " Now, you stop here with Jim while I go below/' said the skipper to the child, going down some steps to a lower platform from which he could drop his line better. ** Don't want to stop with Jim ! Want to come with skipper," yelled the child, setting up a terrible howl. ** Oh, you onnatural little monster ! " said the skipper as he disappeared. " You stop that noise or I'll drownd you ! " said Jim, sitting down with his back against a post and his feet dangling over the edge of the breakwater. The child tried to keep from crying, and sat down within reach of Jim's side, still gulping with sobs. But Jim paid no more attention to it. He did not think of anything in particular. He just enjoyed sitting still, and now and then he wondered which public- houses he should choose that evening, and what prostitute he would find. He would not have long to wait, for the spring twilight was closing in, and here and there a boat at anchor began to hang out its A TRANSFORMATION SCENE 141 lamps. Suddenly the distant lighthouses flashed, all at the same moment, like lovers calHng to each other after the silence of a day. Footsteps increased upon the breakwater, for it was a favourite evening walk for lovers, and still leaning against the post, Jim swung himself round to look at them. Overcome with sleep, the skipper's child half leaned against his side. Most of the people were young men and girls from shops or offices. Sometimes a father passed, wheeling the perambulator because it was Saturday night, while the mother walked beside him, at leisure for once. Here and there a man strolled up and down alone, and sometimes a woman went by, wishing to attract attention, and yet ashamed. Jim's eyes followed each with indiscriminate desire, as the eyes of a hungry man devour a banquet not spread for him. He knew that every woman there would despise him as a common fisherman, but none the less he watched them hungrily. One especially he watched as she moved rather quickly along the farther side of the breakwater, closely followed by two men in straw hats, who were 142 ORIGINAL SINNERS evidently jeering at her and laughing at their own taunts and indecencies. Suddenly she stopped with a sharp cry of pain and turned upon them. " Leave me alone ! Leave me alone," she cried, stretching out her hands in helpless defence. They laughed as at an excellent joke, and tried to walk away, but others came running up and crowded round the group. ** What have they been doing to you, dear ? *' said one, in mock sympathy, and the rest all laughed. " Leave me alone ! " the woman kept repeating, as she faced the two youths, who laughed as hard as they could so as to win support. " What's the matter ? " asked a citizen in a respectable hat, pushing his way into the crowd, while his wife clung to his arm. " They jammed a cigar against my neck, and all the hot ashes are running down me," the woman said, nearly crying with anger and pain. " Indecent creature ! " said the citizen's wife. *' She ought to be ashamed of herself ! A TRANSFORMATION SCENE 143 Serve her right ! That's what I say ! Walk- ing about dressed like a guy ! " ** Oh, my poor neck ! my poor neck ! ** cried the woman, holding her hands before her face, as she saw the citizen join in the yelling derision of the crowd. ** Oh, my poor neck ! My poor neck ! ** the straw-hatted youths repeated, in squeak- ing imitation of her voice. ** Did it get hot ashes down it, did it ? Let's see if we can't make it well, same as mother does ! " The crowd screamed with delight and pressed round her, pulling at her dress, tweaking her hair, tilting her large hat with its feathers over her eyes, and pushing her from one to another. Sobbing with rage, the woman kept her face hidden in her hands and made no more resistance. ** You drop it or I'll drownd you ! " shouted Jim, shouldering his way through the thick of the crowd, like a barge swinging up-stream. " What's the matter with you ? Who are you a-shovin' of ? " cried the crowd. " Hullo ! 144 ORIGINAL SINNERS Here's her man a-comin' ! Below there ! Who said husband ? " " I said husband/^ said Jim, and swinging round his great arm he gave one of the straw- hatted youths a stunning blow on the side of the head that stretched him on the stone flags like a slaughtered ox. " Lord ! Lord ! " said the crowd, in much moderated tones, and they began to hurry away, pretending they had never been there. " Quite right, too, to stick up for a woman," said one. ** Shows a decent feeling,'' said another. *' More especially, he being her husband," said the citizen in the respectable hat. ** Husband, indeed ! " said his wife. " Well, I'm not that sort myself," said the citizen, ** but all I say is, if a man mayn't stand up for a female in distress, who may he stand up f or ? " " Female's right," answered his wife. So they dispersed. The youth picked up his straw hat and the cigar end, and staggered off, still dazed from the blow. Jim and the woman were left alone. A TRANSFORMATION SCENE 145 She had stopped crying and stood half turned away from him, staring out to sea, her eyes fixed upon the point where, every few seconds, the Spurn Hght flashed. Without looking at her or saying a word, Jim went back to his place beside the post, and sat down with his feet dangling over the water that lapped and gurgled faintly against the wall. The child still lay asleep on the stones. The woman pinned her hat straight, and pulled her jacket and dress into position. Then she followed and stood beside him so that her skirt just touched his arm. " Jim," she said, but he only moved his arm away, and made no answer. ** I only wanted to say thank you," she said. ** Go and drownd yourself," he replied, without moving. " I'm going," she answered. " I only wanted to say thank you. You always had a good heart." Jim said nothing, but kicked his great boots against the stone. ** Oh, my poor neck ! " said the woman, o.s. 10 146 ORIGINAL SINNERS as she drew her jacket more tightly round her. " My poor neck do hurt so ! " ** Never mind for your neck ! You go and drownd yourself," said Jim. " All right ; Fm going," she said, wearily, again. *' Why don't you go, then ? " said Jim, half turning round. " And if ever I catch you in Grimsby again, I'll drownd you with my own hands." ** How was I to know you was in Grimsby and had come away from Hull ? And what was you doing down on the breakwater, I'd like to know ? " she added, with sudden anger. ** It's always the same with you, I reckon, when you come ashore." " Never you mind for me ! " he cried, half getting up and turning toward her. " What was you doing yourself ? That's what I'd like to know. What was you doing your- self ? " She made no answer, but again stared out to the horizon, where the Spurn light was flashing. Jim returned to his position and settled himself down with the air of one who has done A TRANSFORMATION SCENE 147 with a troublesome business. At the same time he drew the child close up against him, pulling it over the stones by the aid of its pinafore. Half waking, it gave a little, babyish cry. "What's that? What child's that?" said the woman, in a whisper, and with a quick movement she came and leaned over it, as if she were going to take it up. " Don't you dare touch it," said Jim. " You're not fit to touch it." ** Oh, Jim," she said, staring down into the child's face ; " whose child's that ? " ** No matter for whose it is," said Jim, putting up an arm to keep her away ; " you're no more fit to touch it than if it was mine." " I nurse ours every day — ^mostly three times, and once at night," said the woman. Both were silent, and they heard the waves splashing softly against the foot of the break- water. ** You he," said Jim at last, spitting into the sea, as with the relief of a question settled. ** Me hearing that child cry," the woman 10—2 148 ORIGINAL SINNERS went on, continuing her own thoughts, " I thought it was him for the minute, and my breast started aching, for all that this one's four times the size of ours, him only rising six months." ** You He," Jim replied, conclusively. ** Don't you come playing none of your * ours ' on me ! " " You dare call my child out of his name ! " she cried, turning on him with fury ; ** him as you're the father of — ^yes, you yourself, if ever there was a father on God's earth ! And now you set there, spitting into the sea and saying your own child ain't yours, him as I went away to save when I was two months gone, there being some things as no woman '11 stand. Why don't you go and talk like that to some of your other girls ? " *' Don't you say nothing against me, or I'll black your eye," said Jim. "Do it!" cried the woman. "Do it! and I'll meet you at the * Imperial ' to-night and tell them all as you're the man that blacks his own wife's eyes and calls his child a barstud ! What'll your Janes and Susans and Ethels say to you then ? They'll say A TRANSFORMATION SCENE 149 the same as any woman would, no matter for her being decent or indecent. They'll spit at you, same as you spit in the sea.*' ** Don't you say nothing against them, or I'll blind you," said Jim. "I'm not saying nothing against them, God help us ! " answered the woman. " You'd best go and drownd yourself quick," said Jim, as though to end discussion. " I'm no worse than them other girls you're so fond of," she said, trying to keep from crying. " I'm no worse, and you was always after them. You never told them to go and drownd theirselves, I warrant." ** What have you been doing," he said, suddenly, " since that day I came ashore in Hull and found you was gone and the room empty, barring one day's food ? " *' There's some things no decent woman '11 stand," she answered. *' Where did you go that night ? Same as every time you came ashore ? " " Never you mind for me," he said. '' What have you been doing ? " She did not answer for a time. Then she said, ** I was drove, God help me ! " 150 ORIGINAL SINNERS ** Oh, you was drove, was you ? '* said Jim. ** And you might have been drawing my money every Friday ! " ** There's some things as a decent woman won't stand, no matter for money or no money," she persisted. " Call yourself a decent woman ! *' he said. ** You'd best go back to your blasted baby and drownd it ! '' " Fm going. Good-bye, Jim," she said, and began slowly to move away. *' Where have you got that child ? " he said, getting up and going after her. She made no answer. ** Are you keeping my child in the same room as yourself ? " he cried, gripping her arm to make her stop. ** He ain't your child. He's mine," she said, trying to shake him off. ** You give it to me ! " he said. " You ain't fit to touch it." *' Me give him to you ! " she cried, shaking herself free. " I'd see you dead first. It's you's not fit to touch him." ** You give it to me, do you hear ! " Jim repeated. " You say it's my child, so I've A TRANSFORMATION SCENE 151 got the call on it. You ain't fit to touch no child of mine ! '' " Who's you to talk of fit or not fit ? " she cried, holding out her hands against him. "Your child! What's he to you? He'd never be so much to you as half an hour with some poor girl. He'd never be no more to you than a glass of beer ! You have a call on him, indeed ! Did you carry him and feel him grow ? Did you feed him and put him to sleep ? Did you make his clothes and wash him, and see to him day and night ? Did you go with him up and down, up and down, and him crying all night long ? What are you to talk of being fit, and me not fit — me as bore him and keeps him alive ? Tell me that and take him from me if you dares ! " ** Pretty ways you've got of keeping it alive ! " said Jim. Her hands fell. ** I was drove," she said, and turned again to go. ** You give it me ! " said Jim, seizing her again. *' I'll have it kep' somewheres. I'm a decent man." *' Kep' somewheres ? Kep' ? My baby 152 ORIGINAL SINNERS kep' ? '' she said. ** I'd as lieve strangle him with my apron string ! " She tried to walk faster, but still he held her tight. " Oh, Jim,'* she said, *' you was good to me once." ** I'd better have cut your throat," he answered. " I'm not a bad woman," she murmured. " I was drove." " Your sort always says that," said Jim. " Give me the child ! " *' Let me go ! Let me go ! " she cried. *' I'd sooner kill you ! " and she tried to run. ** It's you wants killing ! " he answered, and, grasping her tight round the waist and arms, he held her so that she could not move. *' Ahoy ! Jim, ahoy ! " sounded a voice like the last trump, and the skipper's head suddenly emerged in the gathering darkness, as though from a trap-door on a stage. ** Jim, ahoy ! " he repeated, and, looking round, he discovered Jim standing immovable, with a woman in his arms. *' Hullo ! I beg parding, I'm sure," he A TRANSFORMATION SCENE 153 said, looking modestly away. He went where his child was still sleeping, and took him carefully on one arm, where he nestled drowsily, soothed by comfortable words. Then he set off on his walk back, but as he passed the silent group he could not resist one glance at them, and at the glance he stopped dead and looked again. " Hullo ! '' he said, slowly. " What's all this here ? Well, I'm damned ! I never did ! Why, if it isn't her — ^her come back and him holding on to her Hke a conger ! " He came nearer to them on the tip-toes of his enormous boots. At a few yards' distance he stopped and looked again. *' Well," he said, " if that isn't as fine a sight as ever I seed ! Them two standing there, thick and close as the bag end ! " Jim had relaxed his hold. The woman had ceased to struggle, and she turned her face away. ** Why, Jim, here's luck ! " the skipper went on. ** I always did say it was a wonder as she stayed with you so long. That's always the wonder with all of them to me. And now she's back, and that's a bigger wonder still ! Well, 154 ORIGINAL SINNERS I suppose you'll be coming along home together now ? " " Where else should we be coming ? '' said Jim. *' That's first rate," said the skipper, '* as first rate a thing as ever I knowed ! " They turned and walked along the deserted pontoon, where the trawlers lay all tied up against the wharf, ready for the Monday's voyage out, for things go fast with fishermen. The woman was crying quietly, holding her handkerchief on the far side of her face to hide it ; and in hopes of covering her distress the skipper continued in his loudest voice : *' Grand sport, grand sport to-day ! Never had better sport in all my life ! " ** Caught anything ? " said Jim. ** Three codling and a flounder ! " said the skipper, putting down the child to walk, and opening his bag with pride. They all looked at the little fish lying in it. " Grand sport ! " he repeated. " Perhaps your good lady would like them to her supper ? " " Thank you, kindly," she murmured, and began crying again. A TRANSFORMATION SCENE 155 ** It ain't to be called fishing/' the skipper went on, rapidly, pretending not to notice anything unusual. ** It's nothing only sport ! " As they crossed the top of one of the lowest streets in the old town by the docks, the woman turned suddenly aside. " You wait here a minute," she said hurriedly ; ** I've got to fetch something." The skipper took up his child again, and they stood waiting. Presently she returned, carrying a sleeping baby dressed in clean white hat and cape and all the splendours of the poor. " Well, I never did ! " shouted the skipper again. " It's a top-deck cargo now, is it ? Well, if that isn't a thing ! If that isn't a thing ! I never did ! Jim, lay hold of your infant and carry it, same as me mine, or any decent man." The woman held up the child. Certainly she was a sweet-looking woman, her figure sUght and full of attraction. At sight of her Jim was moved with a sudden warmth of happiness. To call it virtue would be chilling. ** Right ! " he said, and tucking the baby 156 ORIGINAL SINNERS under his arm, more like a dog than a child, he set off to walk rapidly. " Right it is/' said the skipper, striding after him, while the woman trotted beside. *' And all I wish is my old woman could see us coming home, Uke two mothers from a beano ! How she'd laugh!" VII *'the act of fear'* *' Distill'd almost to jelly with the act of fear." Hamlet, Act I., Scene 2. WHEN Mr. Clarkson, of the Education Office, went to the United States on a voyage of moral and intellectual discovery, he made only one resolution. Whatever hap- pened, he would not visit Niagara. ** What is there strange or new," he said, " in water falling over a cHff ? I could learn as much by emptying my waterbottle into a basin." But a man he met at the Republican Con- vention in Chicago was so insistent and took so much trouble to look out the trains and ** make a reservation " upon a sleeping car that Mr. Clarkson's resolution shook. ** These people are crude and untutored," he thought, '* their misuse of Hterature and language is deplorable. They are still pioneers, 158 ORIGINAL SINNERS still Puritan, still ironbound in the ethics of dissent. But how polite ! How childlike in behaviour ! How solicitous to please ! Sub- mission for an hour or so to a vulgarised water- fall is no great sacrifice in return." So he ** stopped off ** (atrocious phrase !) at the station called Niagara Falls, and wandered out by himself into the cool air of early morning. Guided by the roar of water, he crossed two bridges and came to a small island above the main fall. Tossing and swirling, the rapids rushed past it to their precipitous plunge. There he sat down upon a broad rock, his feet dangling close above the foaming torrent, and contemplated the scene. Now and then a tree trunk or plank of driftwood was carried by and swept towards that smooth, deep edge of solid-looking, greenish water. " Regardless of its doom," Mr. Clarkson quoted happily to himself. It was only a little past seven, and a grey mist, promising a hot and beautiful day, still hung over the breadth of river. Cool spray rose from the chasm and drifted pleasantly in Mr. Clarkson's face. Not a human soul was "THE ACT OF FEAR" 159 in sight, except one dark figure in whom Mr. Clarkson thought he recognised a fellow- passenger on the train from Chicago. But the man was seated on the grass some distance away, apparently as anxious as Mr. Clarkson himself to secure all the delight of solitude. ** This is really not so bad,'' Mr. Clarkson thought ; ** I can go away before the crowd arrives and still recall this scene of my child- hood's magic-lanterns without distress." Gazing upon the rushing water, he fell into a reverie about beginnings and endings. The rapids approaching the crash were more attractive to him than the crash itself, which he had no curiosity to see. Spring, he thought, is more interesting than summer. Art grows dull the moment it touches perfection. A biography loses its charm when the subject is forty or becomes an Under Secretary. ** It is the time of possibility, of dubitation, of unconscious approach to the crash or the climax that interests us," he meditated ; "I suspect that the advice * in all things to con- template the end ' is misleading. The end is uninteresting in its certainty. As Oscar Wilde said of this very water, the wonder would be 160 ORIGINAL SINNERS if it did not fall. One may say the same of a man." In the midst of these reflections, he per- ceived that the dark figure was approaching. Mr. Clarkson was apprehensive, but he re- tained hope until the man sat down close to his side. Then, in spite of his annoyance, Mr. Clarkson said, '* Good morning,'' with his habitual courtesy. The man made no answer, but sat there, gazing blankly into the water. He looked about thirty-five, and was fairly well-dressed, though he had not shaved nor put on a clean collar that morning. To Mr. Clarkson he seemed rather interesting — " not so infantile as most, not so bloated with ice-cream as usual, nor so heavy in the chest with rhetoric as those fellows in the Convention." After a long silence, the man, without look- ing up, suddenly said, *' Have you heard what the Indians used to do here ? " ** No," said Mr. Clarkson, ** but wherever I go in this country of yours I see a background of vanished Indians and Puritan pioneers. I like to imagine those solemn old Pilgrims feel- ing their way up unknown rivers Hke this." "THE ACT OF FEAR" 161 ** Once a year, about this time," the stranger continued, *' the Indians pushed a canoe out from this very island into the rapids. There was a young girl in it, and she went over the falls." ** Good heavens ! What a waste of young life ! " cried Mr. Clarkson. " I wonder why they did that." " Unchastity, I suppose," answered the stranger. " That's very unUkely," said Mr. Clarkson. " If the girls were habitually unchaste, this selection would have been difficult. And if they were not, in some years there might have been no victim. Primitive races, it is true, often exaggerate the importance of feminine chastity. So do many people to-day. But more probably the sacrifice was made to some totem — a bison or the spirit of the water — like the similar rite on the Nile. Tantum religio jpotuit suadere malorum. You remem- ber the poet's comment upon the sacrifice of Polyxena. The parallel is fairly close." " Do you think the importance of feminine chastity is always exaggerated ? " the stranger asked. 0.3. 11 162 ORIGINAL SINNERS *' That's an enormous question," replied Mr. Clarkson, smiling. *' Think how much of the greatest literature turns upon that very point, from the * Agamemnon ' through * Othello ' down to * Faust.' " *' Or masculine chastity ? *' asked the man. " Why, no," said Mr. Clarkson, '* it would be absurd to say we exaggerate the import- ance of that." The stranger raised his head for the first time, and gazed dreamily around. It was a scene of singular beauty. The sun was just peering through the mist, and gleams of rain- bow hung above the Palls, while the further bank was still invisible. *' I think the worst is over," he murmured ; " I feel a little happier now." Mr. Clarkson looked at him more sympa- thetically. '' Certainly the face is refined," he thought, " perhaps over-sensitive for this hemisphere." " I mentioned * Faust ' just now," he said aloud. *' You remember that after the piteous scene which ends the First Part with Gretchen in the prison, the Second Part opens amid mountains and cool waters in the morning "THE ACT OF FEAR" 163 before sunrise. Faust is lying prostrate there, but around him hover the spirits of Nature, pitying a mortal's sorrow, and they sing :— ' Ob er heilig, ob er bQse, Jammert sie der Ungliicksmann/ Nature is a kindly nurse, those spirits say. She can soothe the wretched, however guilty, even as Faust was. And perhaps we may call his offence unchastity.'' " Yes, I suppose I am guilty,*' said the man ; " but it is not guilt that makes me wretched." "That's all right," said Mr. Clarkson, cheerfully. *' A robust conscience, you know ! Never cherish an invalid conscience ! " " If it were only conscience," said the stranger, " I shouldn't much mind how invalid it was." Both^were silent, and then Mr. Clarkson said, " Unhappiness is a queer thing. I really believe nothing could make me unhappy about myself — I say, about myself — except the loss of reputation through something I had done — ^some stupid thing that made my friends avoid me, or look askance and hurry U— 2 164 ORIGINAL SINNERS past, saying, * Hullo, Clarkson,' and no more. Then I think I could not live." To Mr. Clarkson's astonishment and annoy- ance, the stranger uttered a deep groan, and dropped his dishevelled head between his hands. ** Why, what's the matter now ? '* Mr. Clark- son asked, with the bored expression that a husband uses to an irritating wife who finds some new grievance in the household. ** What you said ! " repUed the unhappy man. *' That is just the reason I couldn't Hve. If they found out, my friends would avoid me. They would look askance and hurry past. They would say, ' Hullo, Cleg- horn ! * and no more." ** Oh, come ! " said Mr. Clarkson, *' I'm sure it can't be as bad as all that ! " *' God ! What is to become of me if they find out ? " the other continued, paying no attention to the solace ; *' every one will despise me. I'm professor of ethics at a college for men and women. They'll hound me from my position. All my friends will say, * Hullo, Cleghorn ! ' and hurry past." The man groaned again, and, in spite of his "THE ACT OF FEAR" 165 strong objection to drama in private life, Mr. Clarkson felt he could not decently get up and walk away. " Well, won't you tell me what it's all about ? " he asked, and at last the man began to blurt out sentences interrupted by exclama- tions of self-pity and anger. ** You see," he said, ** I was at that con- founded Convention. I was in the gallery, and a girl was sitting next me. She was a pretty girl, blue-eyed, well-dressed. It was very hot, you know, and she had only some thin muslin stuff round her neck. Through that muslin I could see she had a very pretty — ^what is called figure, you know. We got talking. She smiled, and looked at me very nicely, and all the time I kept peering down through that muslin stuff." " Strange," murmured Mr. Clarkson, " in what queer places Venus lurks ! I don't mean between a girl's breasts. That's an old trick of hers. But who would have expected to feel the lure of beauty in a Republican Convention? I should sooner have sought it in a Baptist chapel." ** I am a Baptist," groaned the man ; " and 166 ORIGINAL SINNERS that makes it all the worse. I took her down to that counter below ground for lunch. I gave her a ham sandwich and coffee and an ice-cream. I never paid for it, because the man was too busy to take the money." "Oh, is that all?" cried Mr. Clarkson, much relieved. " That is soon put right. If you're short of money, I'll lend it you with pleasure, and you can send it by post — aright now, as you Americans say." *' We went back to our seats," the man continued, taking no notice of the suggestion. ** She seemed sweeter than ever, engaging and free, talking and laughing. And I kept peering down into that muslin stuff. It was so tempting." The stranger stopped and groaned again. " Well," said Mr. Clarkson, *' every one knows how beautiful the feminine bosom sometimes is. Look at our sculptors and painters ! They have treated that subject till it is almost trite and jejune. I often wish they would find something else equally attrac- tive to paint or sculp." ** I longed and longed," said the stranger. ** Oh, what a fool I was ! What earthly good "THE ACT OF FEAR" 167 could it do me ? Every woman has a figure much like that, I suppose ! " " Yes, I believe so," said Mr. Clarkson soothingly. ** A doctor or man of science would tell you that those adipose pro- tuberances have been evolved merely for the provision of nourishment to the young of the human species. It is very strange that the idea of beauty has become connected with them at all. Schopenhauer, it is true, sug- gests that our romantic love of mountains may be derived from a dim recollection of our childhood's delight in their prospect. But that is an idea that could have occurred to no one but a philosopher bred up among German women or Jewesses." ** Oh, if I had only left her then," moaned the stranger ! " What a happy hfe I should have had ! The sitting was suspended. The crowd began to swarm out. We were close together. She was very small. She was hidden in the crowd. No one could see. I slid my hand down the muslin. She looked up at me. Such a look ! She shrank away as if I had poisonedlher. She disappeared. I never saw her again." 168 ORIGINAL SINNERS "Oh, well," said Mr. Clarkson ; "that's nothing so very terrible. Most men have done much worse things than that. Even if they're found out, nobody thinks much the worse of them for it. After all, by far the greater part of our art and drama and poetry is an incite- ment to conduct of that kind." ** But I shall be found out ! " cried the stranger. " I gave her my name and address when I took her to lunch, and was as free and innocent as herself, and I am a Professor of Ethics at a college for young men and women ! " " Please don't worry any more about it," Mr. Clarkson urged ; " one could hardly Kve unless one assumed that possible misfortunes would never happen. Probably she was a nice girl and will say nothing about it." " Yes, she was a nice girl," the other replied, as though deliberating ; " but I can't decide whether that makes it worse or better." " Of course, she'll say nothing," Mr. Clark- son repeated ; " and, after all, no great harm was done. It will be a useful warning to her not to go out to lunch with every one she "THE ACT OF FEAR" 169 meets. Even though the man pays," he added, smiling. ** No great harm to her, perhaps," the stranger murmured slowly, ** but ruin to me, if it comes out." " It's a strange situation," Mr. Clarkson reflected. *' One does not admit any wrong. One does not regret any so-called sin. Yet one is unhappy and full of fear. It would make a fine theme for your next course of lectures on ethics." They were silent again for a time, both lost in diverse thoughts. Then the stranger got up stiffly, as though weary and cramped. " I am glad I met you," he said ; '' I feel better and more confident now." ** Yes," said Mr. Clarkson, rising, too, ** that is the secret of confession. How wise the old Church is ! What sources of human comfort she discerned long before the psychologists began talking of inhibitions and complexes and purgations of the soul ! De- lighted, as you nice Americans say, to have met you, sir ! And I hope you will forget that little incident and look this beautiful world again in the face with a free heart." 170 ORIGINAL SINNERS They were just turning to go when a boy- crossed the bridge to the island, crying a morning paper. ** It must have come with us from Chicago ! " said the stranger, reaching out a trembling hand. He gave two cents and received the enormous budget of *' printed matter " such as people in the United States devour on Sundays. He tore it hastily open and rum- maged in the contents. Suddenly he stopped, as though paralysed. He read for a moment, and then handed the paper to Mr. Clarkson. A headline ran : — "CHARGES MONSTER WITH ASSAULT." " A beautiful daughter of our noble City charges that a Brutish Satyr in Human Form assaulted and humi- liated her in a public place during the Convention, Gives the name of a Public Character holding a high position of notorious moral responsibility, and for good or evil controlling the Eternal Destinies of Young Persons of Both Sexes. Sleuths are Hot on the Trail ! " Mr. Clarkson read the paragraph twice over in real distress. When he looked up, the stranger had vanished. Mr. Clarkson turned "THE ACT OF FEAR" 171 to the rapids again, and there he beheld the man carefully wading out into the current, swaying his arms to preserve his balance. The water was already above his knees. ** Come back ! Come back at once ! " Mr. Clarkson shouted. ** For God's sake, don't be such a fool ! You'll repent it ! Eeflect a moment ! Come back ! For the love of God, come back ! " Hastily pulling up his trousers, he got into the water himself, boots and all. The stream gurgled round his ankles. He slipped, but steadied himself against the rock he had just left. Looking up, he saw the stranger suddenly caught by the main stream's irresistible torrent, swept off his legs, and borne down- wards Uke a log towards the terrible edge. One arm was raised for a second, as though in protest against earth and heaven. Next moment he was gone. At this point the fall is about a hundred and fifty feet. " Another appalling sacrifice to primitive conventions and the totem of the falls," thought Mr. Clarkson, as he struggled back to the rock where they had both been sitting. 172 ORIGINAL SINNERS Oh, Virtue, what crimes are committed in thy name ! " Searching the papers next day, he found a note describing the discovery of a suioide*s body four miles below the falls. There seemed no reason for the rash act, as the pockets contained a copious supply of dollar bills. The name " Cleghorn " was on the linen. In another part of the paper was a para- graph saying that the Human Monster who had humiliated an Innocent Young Maiden during the Convention had been tracked to his Lair, and proved to be a Large Employer of Female Stenographers, as the paper had anticipated. VIII IN Diocletian's day SO the old man wants to return to power/' said Diocletian, rolling up a letter and speaking rather to himself than to the officer who brought it. It was a cool autumn morning in Spalato, and they were walking side by side along an arcade which ran the whole length of the front of the new palace, looking south-west across the sea. For more than two hundred yards the corridor ran, and at either end it was flanked with massive towers. Sixteen of them protected the fortress walls of the huge quadrangle within which the palace was constructed. In the centre of the colonnade stood a spacious entrance-gate, with steps leading down to the water, which lapped gently against them. For the bay was never rough, the storms of the Adriatic being warded off by low outlying islands. 174 ORIGINAL SINNERS Beside the entrance-gate a heavy barge lay at anchor. It had come at great speed from the Eiviera, brmging the messenger of Maximian, ex-Emperor Uke Diocletian him- self. Tied to their pivots, the banks of oars still rested on the surface ;. the crews who had worked the ships were busy with breakfast, or lay sleeping in the newly risen sun. ** So the old man wants to return to power, and asks me to join with him," said Diocletian again ; and he stopped in his walk to look meditatively over the sea between the columns. " For twenty-one years I ruled the world — I, Diocletian, the slave boy from those Dalmatian hills down yonder. I saved the world — ^saved it from savages — Goths, Ger- mans, Persians, Parthians, and the rest. Continually, Hke clouds in storm, they kept pressing down over the sunlit prospect of the Empire, and I drove them back to the dismal regions which they inhabit. All that is worth preserving in mankind I preserved. The mists and obscurities which threatened to envelop the clearest reason of the world I also swept away, as with a health-giving IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 175 breeze. And now the old man wants me to return and begin all over again ! You must rest here, Julianus, for a few days, and I will give Maximian an answer." " All your commands I obey,'* answered the officer ; " to me you are always Emperor.'* ** Please don't talk like a courtier," said Diocletian, though he bowed with a gratified smile ; " I'm only a private citizen now — ^a self-made man enjoying well-earned repose, like any army contractor. And, like most retired speculators, I spend my declining years in planting trees I shall never see grow up, and in building a house I shall not long enjoy. At the best, I can feel the spring return only ten times more. For I suppose I am mortal, although I have long been declared divine." He smiled again, and led his guest through a vaulted vestibule, on one side of which stood a great dining-hall, and on the other a Hbrary, guest-chambers, baths, and the ex-Emperor's bedroom and private apartments. The vesti- bule opened into a broad causeway or street, crossed at the centre by another street running at right angles to it, so that the two 176 ORIGINAL SINNERS divided the quadrangle of the palace inside the surrounding walls into four interior quadrangles of about equal size. Turning to the right, Diocletian led the way up some steps to a large octagonal building, like a tower with a pointed roof, and pushed open the lofty doors of decorated bronze. In the centre of an empty floor stood a large stone sarcophagus, carved in deep relief with historic scenes — ^legionaries hewing shaggy ill-armed barbarians in pieces, executioners beheading prisoners like poppies in a row, and on one side an emperor entering Rome in triumph, the standards and the lictors' rods and axes preceding his chariot, the spoils and long lines of captive kings and queens dragged behind, amid an applauding populace. It represented Diocletian's own triumph of 303 a.d. — the last triumph ever to cHmb the Capitoline with the silent Virgin along the Sacred Way. ** As we were talking of mortality," Dio- cletian said, " I thought I would show you the tomb in which my carcass will He forever when, in the poet's words, my palsied head descends to heaven." IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 177 Again he smiled, and after contemplating the empty stone box for a while in silence, they turned to go. " Observe the architect's skill," said Diocletian. " Outside, the mausoleum is octagonal ; inside, it is circular. That is thought a clever piece of construction, and you can make what symbol you like of it — the circle of eternity at rest within the points of this angular life, or what you will. But these mysteries have no attraction for a rough old soldier like me. Look rather at the frieze running round the interior — a divine creature, you see, hunting boars and wild goats. That's more to my taste. I hold by the ancient gods as much as possible — ^partly, I suppose, because I am one.'* He expected his companion to laugh, but Julianus only bowed, as if at a commonly acknowledged truth. ** I can't quite say why I had such a lot of stuff brought from Egypt," Diocletian continued. " All those granite and marble columns are Egyptian, and so are those sphinxes on each side of the doors, all covered with incomprehensible writing ! They are O.S. 12 178 ORIGINAL SINNERS said to be twice as old as Rome. A woman's face and breasts on a lion's body with eagle's wings ! I suppose it all meant something to those old fellows. A queer country is Egypt ! Like a huge cof&n ! And the priests worship queer gods with the heads of hawks, cats, dogs, calves, crocodiles, and heaven knows what ! I'd like to ask them a question or two. But it's my belief that men and women will believe any- thing, provided it is ridiculous or impossible. *' You see those two statues in the pediment over the door," he went on ; *' one is myself, the other is my wife Prisca, the ex-Empress. When I married her she was a beautiful woman, complacent and devout ; born just to worship the genial goddess of production, the joy of gods and men. But now she is wrapped in fantastic superstitions, — ^a kind of Jewess, they tell me, — and has carried off our daughter Valeria with her. Heaven knows to what fate they are wandering through the world, now that I can no longer protect them. They are too distinguished to be fortunate." '* When last I heard of them, they were in the East," said Julianus, IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 179 " Howling over the crumbling ruins of Jerusalem, probably," Diocletian replied, with regretful bitterness. " Men are idiotic and swinish, but for real mania you must look to women. Notice that sarcophagus there, too. I had it brought here because of the beautiful workmanship : the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra — another instance of feminine mad- ness ! The thing is over a century old. I've forgotten whose bones moulder inside ; some one who was happy enough to live under the Antonines, I suppose, and saw the Empire complete and calm and uncorrupted. And there's a bust of Nero on that pedestal. What a fantastic man he was ! And yet attractive, and capable of religious zeal. But now I should like to show you the temple of more genuine gods." He led the way across a peristyle or roofless court surrounded by a colonnade of elegant arches, up the approach to an oblong temple, Corinthian in design, where they were met by a white-robed priest. He bowed profoundly to the ex-Emperor, extending his arms with hands turned down, and Diocletian answered the salutation with similar precision. The 12-2 180 ORIGINAL SINNERS great doors were thrown open by acolytes who served the temple — sweeping the floor, shaking out the curtains, and keeping the altar-fires alight. In the obscurity of the interior, into which a dubious light penetrated only through the open door, the visitor perceived a reduced imitation of the seated Zeus of Olympia, and the statue of a man in ancient Greek clothing, holding a scroll in one hand and a staff entwined with serpents in the other. " As this is my only temple," Diocletian said, speaking low, " I chose to dedicate it to the gods of Heaven and Health combined — ^the greatest and the most useful of gods. My title of Jovius almost compelled me to select the one ; and indeed what greater god could one worship than him who rules the sky and directs the course of the firmaments revolving round the earth and the Empire ? But my personal adoration is especially due to ^sculapius ; for though I am divine and immortal, where should I be now but for his aid when terrible sickness befell me a few years ago ? People who saw me even when I was recovering did not recognise the soldier IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 181 and saviour of the world in the shrunken and enfeebled figure to which sickness had reduced me. I vowed at that time daily to worship the Healing God, and indeed I was engaged in his service as I walked the cool length of the esplanade when your ship put in. Other exercises I perform in his honour, as you shall presently see. For what is life — what is the life even of Divine Being — without the blessedness of health ? " Taking a little incense from the priest, Diocletian raised both hands before the statues in turn and dropped it upon the smouldering fires of each altar. Tiny orange flames shot up from each, and a thin column of blue smoke arose. Julianus repeated the action before the statue of Jove alone, and as the ex-Emperor waited for him to perform the other sacrifice, he said, " I have no need of health, being well already.*' "Oh, youth, youth ! " laughed Diocletian as he turned to leave the temple ; and then he sighed and said little more as he conducted his guest around the rest of the palace build- ings — the stables, the galleries of cells for slaves, the apartments of the stewards and 182 ORIGINAL SINNERS cooks. Only when they reached the north- west quadrangle, which was built as barracks for the bodyguard, he said in his tone of sardonic irony, — " Yes, a thousand lusty men-at-arms are still required to preserve one life for a few years more. How many of the Caesars have died except by violence ? Hardly half a dozen since Augustus, three centuries ago. Conquest has not saved a Caesar ; pubHc service has not saved ; still less has virtue. Good or evil, they have shared the same hideous fate. Slaughtered, murdered, stabbed, poisoned, torn in pieces, one after another they have gone — ^they have gone. Nor is abdication a defence. Fear lurks in ambush always ; and yet, though Ufe is none too sweet, we cling to it." Ashamed of an emotion thus revealed, he turned smilingly to Julianus and said, " Now you have seen the pleasant resting-place I have constructed for the peace of old age. The sun is glowing hot in spite of autumn. The midday meal will be served you, and you must rest for a few hours. This afternoon we will drive round the neighbourhood. There is IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 183 a festival at Salona to-day. There will be the usual games and some necessary executions — no spectacle such as you young men-about- town are accustomed to in Rome, but just a simple entertainment good enough for us country folk/' II Through the breathless hours of noon the palace lay silent, basking in sunlight. Even the vast gray blocks of the outer walls glared in the heat, and the newly wrought marble of the colonnades and temple steps shone with dazzling whiteness. Except for the sentries at the main gates and on the corner towers, all the soldiers, household servants, and slaves slept or lay prostrate in the shade — all but two of Diocletian's secretaries, who, under his own direction, were cutting upon the marble wall of his inmost chamber a map of the Empire, the parts of which were variously coloured according to the dates of their acquisition or recent recovery. The regions which he had himself rescued from the bar- barians were dyed with brilHant scarlet. But toward four o'clock there was a stir 184 ORIGINAL SINNERS throughout the palace. The guard was changed, servants moved to and fro on the streets, and presently a covered carriage drawn by six horses stood waiting before the ex-Emperor's portico. Diocletian entered it with his guest and drove slowly down the carefully paved causeway to the Golden Gate in the centre of the northern wall. Passing through the tunnel of its deep and vaulted entrance, the carriage emerged upon a broad road, lined with young cypress trees on either side ; and directly the barriers of the fortress palace were left, an open country lay extended far in front, till rough lines of bare and rocky mountains closed the view. Like one escaping into free air, Diocletian leaned back with a deep breath of relief, and fixing his eyes on the mountains he said, " I am getting on fairly well with my map, but have little satisfaction in it. We talk about the Empire of the world, but what do we know of the world ? Look at those mountains ! I was reared among them, only a few days' journey farther south. They are my native country, but what do I know of the lands behind them ? They stretch away to the IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 185 Danube and the Euxine ; ridge after ridge of stony mountains, line after line of water- courses opening upon slips of plain, where outlandish people build little huts or pitch tents of skin; always on the move, always robbing and killing each other, speaking unintelligible and inhuman languages, and called by idle names which mean nothing at all. How shall I entitle that country on a map ? One is tired of writing * Land Un- known ' all round the hmits of our world.'* ** I once travelled along the great road which Rome built from Dyrrachium through such an unknown region," said Julianus. " We crossed terrible mountains and passed two big lakes. All was savage till we escaped through the ruined home of ancient Alexander to Thessalonica, and so to the city of the Bosphorus." *' And beyond that," Diocletian continued, " stood Nicomedia, where I once thought of erecting a new capital for the Empire. But the superstitious natives twice set fire to my palace after I destroyed their temple there, and I used that splendid site only to abdicate in despair. And beyond Asia lie Persia and 186 ORIGINAL SINNERS Mesopotamia and the gates of India, which your ancient Alexander actually reached. But beyond those frontiers, what do we know ? I have stood on mountain heights and looking eastward have seen again range after range of giant mountains, breadths of desert intermin- able, and unknown waters. You remember what some old Greek poet told about the wan- derers of Asia, and people who pitch beside the lake at the edge of the world, and spear- men watching like eagles from peaks above the gulf of nothingness. But as I stood there, I saw the world's edge was not reached, and there was no gulf of nothingness before me, but always land, and land, and lands unknown." " No doubt the surrounding world is larger than people used to think," said Julianus. ** But, after all, our world gathered about this lovely sea, so full of glorious memories, is the only world that counts. We need not trouble ourselves with those dwellers in outer Cim- merian darkness." " Yes, but we must trouble ourselves," Diocletian repHed impatiently, ** or they will trouble us. I've seen them out there upon the Eastern confines — tall brown men with faces IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 187 like hawks ; tall brown women too, large-eyed and athletic as Zenobia. And IVe seen hordes of hideous creatures — dwarfish, having slits for eyes, and long arms Uke apes. And who knows what strange monsters Africa may beget — ^ludicrous, black, inhuman ? No one has yet penetrated the farthest wilds of Britain or the islands west of it. But I have seen shaggy Germans beyond the Ehine, shaggy Scythians beyond the Danube. Innumerable they seemed. Mow them down by thousands, and next year there are thousands more, wait- ing for the sword. And beyond cold and misty seas dwell the Hyperboreans, from among whom the Goths descended upon us like a deluge of ice, devastating those bright cities of Asia, pillaging Thessalonica, Ephesus, and even Athens — Athens herself." He paused, overwhelmed hy the vision of those countless hordes. " Little more than a century ago," he con- tinued, " how secure and quiet the Empire lay ! If peace was broken, it was usually broken by civil war. At the worst Rome then fought Rome. The victory was Roman, and it did not matter to the Empire who was 188 ORIGINAL SINNERS Caesar. Men went unconcernedly about their business, hardly conscious of laws which stood firm and unquestioned behind them, the stronger because unnoticed. The inland sea was winged with merchant ships, always passing to and fro. Life passed in beautiful cities, or among the isolated villas which gladdened the shores of the Province, and of Egypt, Asia, and Greece ; to say nothing of pleasant Italy with her bays and rivers sKding under ancient walls. * Glory to thee, Satur- nian land, great mother of fruits, great mother of men ! ' as our old poet sang. Then decent people could lay out their course of years as they pleased, beautifying their homes, pursuing the arts, and cultivating their minds or their gardens without thought or care. Under time-honoured forms, the estabUshed gods were reasonably worshipped. New- fangled notions were regarded with smiling incredulity or tolerant contempt, and from birth to acquiescent old age no sensible being suffered a disturbing thought, or aimed at greater happiness than the hope of a to-mor- row repeating to-day. " But, my dear Julianus, how appalling IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 189 has been the change ! Prom every side an ignorant barbarism threatens to engulf that calm and placid world. Close beyond every frontier those huge clouds of savages are gathered, waiting to burst with inundation over all that Komans mean by the State, Civility, and Manners. For a few years I kept them back as ^olus once restrained the hurri- canes of storm. For a few years I redeemed the world and renewed the Empire's hfe. But our peace cannot last. Close before us I see an age of tumult and unceasing war. Not an age, but ages following ages, during which Roman public Hfe and civilised daily existence will disappear, perhaps, even from memory. ** Was it not time, then, that I turned from a ruining world to build my palace, and for my final years to be still ? You remember what the old Persian said : ' The worst torture man can suffer is to have many thoughts and no power.' I was unable to avert the evil I foresaw. We stand at the end of an age — the age of Rome. It has been a noble and benefi- cent age, blessing the heart and summit of the world. Egypt was not so great, nor was Assyria. Their ages passed ; the age of Rome 190 ORIGINAL SINNERS is passing now, and before mankind lies a whirlpool of savage obscurity." ** It is to save mankind," said Julianus, ** that my master Maximian calls on you to return." Diocletian made no answer. The carriage was entering the streets of a large and beauti- ful town, built beside a deep inlet of the Adriatic. *' Here we are in Salona," he said, rousing himself. ** Isn't it a splendid situation ? I intend to make it the capital of Dalmatia. You observe that I am strengthening the fortifications. Look at that mighty new wall ! I am building that against the bar- barians. Barbarians ! as if walls could keep out either barbarians or care or death ! " ni Diocletian descended at the gate of the large amphitheatre, from which the shouts of the audience could be heard. As he and JuKanus entered the imperial seats, the noise was hushed, and the spectators rose in silent reverence to the saviour of civiKsation. Even the gladiators paused in a mock engagement IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 191 and saluted. Diocletian settled himself with deliberation upon a kind of throne, and placed on his head a diadem, retained for public occasions as a memorial of former greatness. He signalled with his hand, and the games proceeded. There was nothing unusual in the pro- gramme. The amphitheatre was small — barely seventy yards long and barely fifty yards across. Within this narrow space trained athletes exhibited their strength and skill ; gladiators contested with blunted swords, or with nets and tridents ; wild bulls were incited to gore each other ; strange animals imported from Africa at Diocletian's own expense — ^giraffes, hippopotami, zebras, and apes — ^were crowded together in a terrified herd, while the audience shouted to increase their panic, and were convulsed with laughter at their awkward movements, their bewildered faces, and wild efforts to escape. When negroes with long whips had driven them back to their stalls, there was an interval during which slaves cleaned the arena and covered it with fresh sand, while the specta- tors drank from wine-flasks and devoured the 192 ORIGINAL SINNERS provisions they had brought with them in bags. ** The populace is awaiting the top of the cHmax," said Diocletian, looking round upon the crowded tiers with amused toleration. ** After all, death gives the common mind its keenest emotion ; you might almost say its one touch of poetry. To-day they celebrate a special sacrifice to Mars, and there are military executions in his honour. I take no pleasure in such things ; I have seen too many deaths. No death can interest me now — except perhaps my own," he added, with his characteristic smile. ** Let us go then, Sire," said JuHanus. " Oh, no ! I must see the end," Diocletian answered wearily. ** The people would be hurt if we went. They are only carrying out one of my own decrees, and * who wishes the end, wishes the means,' as the jurists say. Besides, you know old Martial's epigram — * Cato goes out from the theatre. Why, then, did he come ? Was it that he might go out ? ' But here come the criminals. First there is a pack of deserters, murderers, brigands, and malefactors in general, caught in this neigh- IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 193 bourhood or threatening the highways through the mountains." From one end of the arena a squadron of ten criminals, armed as Eoman legionaries, entered. They halted in single rank opposite the ex-Emperor, raised their short swords in salute, and clashed them upon their iron shields. The gate at the other end of the arena opened, and out swarmed a mob of thirty beings, leaping and shouting and brandishing stout spears and gleaming knives. They were decked like savages, with wigs of long fair hair, all matted and tangled, tunics and kilts of cowhide, bare legs, and oval shields of cowhide too. Without a pause, they rushed in a confused mass upon the supposed legion- aries, who rapidly wheeled right and stood shoulder to shoulder in line to confront them. At the clash of the meeting forces the amphi- theatre stood up and gasped with excitement. At once the work of killing began. Swords struck with edge and point. Spears were thrust into the joints of armour. Daggers stabbed at throats. Within a few seconds, dead and wounded fell. Arms and hands were sliced off. The sinews of bare legs were o.s. 13 194 ORIGINAL SINNERS severed. One head and then another and another rolled to the edge of the sanded oval. Screams of anguish mingled with the applause. The sand was stained with great patches of blood, bright red, crimson, and brown. The criminals who remained standing tripped over the bodies of the fallen. Within twenty minutes only four of the legionaries and one burlesque barbarian sur- vived. Slowly the four edged him back to one end of the arena, until they held him sur- rounded at the gate. Leaping upon him from right and left they clung to his arms while one quietly cut his throat, and the spectacle was over. The triumphant four saluted Diocletian, and received their pardon. ** This form of execution,'* the ex-Emperor observed to his guest, *' is a device of my own. It gives the worst criminal some small chance of life. Besides, it encourages recruiting, for the legionaries always come off better than the barbarians, and some save their lives. The sight of blood and conflict is wholesome, too. It checks enervation and effeminacy. And, after all, it is pleasanter to fight for one's life than be slaughtered Hke a sheep. IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 195 " But now," he added, looking down on the arena again, '' we shall be compelled to witness another execution. These are traitors who refuse to fight and actually prefer being slaughtered without resistance.'* Two grown men, a youth of about eighteen, and a woman were pushed out from one of the doors, the keepers of the arena thrusting at them from behind with long poles tipped with iron points. They were dressed in the ordi- nary summer clothes of the respectable middle-class. The woman wore a girdle of yellow silk, and her black hair was tied with a fillet of the same colour. The youth held her by the hand, and all four walked slowly into the midst of the arena, with eyes uplifted to the open sky. Attendants followed, carry- ing a wooden statue of Mars, which they placed in the centre of the arena, and with- drew. Straining their heads forward, the specta- tors watched what was about to happen. Taking one step toward the statue, the elder of the two men spat in its face, and in a loud voice uttered the words, " Get thee behind me, Satan ! " 13-2 196 ORIGINAL SINNERS A yell of execration rose from the crowded amphitheatre. All sprang to their feet, gesticulating, and shouting for death. ** I feared the experiment would be useless," Diocletian said, regretfully. " The obstinacy of superstition surpasses reason. The offence is a crime against the Mars of Rome. Those two men are centurions who threw down their arms refusing to fight for the Empire's safety. The youth refused the military oath because his superstition commanded its followers not to bind themselves by swearing nor to resist evil. The woman has been added for propa- gating the same treason against the State.'* Amid the storm of clamour, JuHanus could hardly hear the words. His eyes were fixed on the heavy barrier of the opposite gate. It was raised. Two young Hons and a leopard bounded upon the sand, and then stood still, bewildered by the light and noise. The two lions stooped to sniff the corpses still stretched in uncouth attitudes upon the scene of death. But the leopard, fixing his eyes upon the woman, cautiously advanced and crouched down for the spring. Instantly the youth snatched a bloody sword from the hand of a IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 197 dead legionary and plunged it into the woman's body low between her breasts. With a cry she fell. At the sight of the spouting blood, the leopard sprang, tore open her garment with one scratch of his claws, fastened his teeth in her side and with half-closed eyes drank in ecstasy. Absorbed in the pleasure, he was an easy prey. With the dripping sword the youth struck once more, and the wild beast rolled over dead beside the naked form. The spectators rocked with laughter. They yelled the obscenities common to mankind. They shouted admiration, too. Some called upon Diocletian to pardon the youth. But it was too late for pardon. A Hon sprang. The youth, still grasping the sword, made no resistance, and by one blow of a terrible paw his throat was torn out. One of the older men fell to the onslaught of the other lion, and the second centurion remained standing alone. ** Depart in peace, most Christian souls ! " he cried, raising his hands. But while he spoke, a darmg gladiator crept stealthily across the arena, seized him from behind, bowed his body down as if in mock 198 ORIGINAL SINNERS obeisance to the gods, and struck off his head so that it fell at the statue's feet. Again the audience shouted with pleasure and applause. *' That is the end of our humble festivity," said Diocletian, rising. '* Now we may go without offence." The deHghted crowd rose and cheered the ex-Emperor as he withdrew, saluting him with the title of Divus and Jovius. Looking back from the gateway, Julianus saw the bloodstained arena littered with dead bodies, and the two Hons snarHng with jealous satis- faction over their unwonted and delightful food. IV The air was now pleasantly cool, and the sun was setting in lines of orange and crimson clouds over the Adriatic. ** Drive slowly round by the garden," Diocletian said to the coachman ; and as the heavy carriage began to move, he turned again to JuHanus. *' Such performances add variety to provincial life," he observed, " and prevent the agriculturists from flocking to Rome. The female prisoner was condemned also for per- IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 199 sistently preaching the rites of an inhuman love likely to undermine our legitimate matri- mony and hinder natural procreation. These heated and orgiastic mysteries are continually sprouting in the East, Uke poisonous growths on steaming dunghills. In olden times those Asiatics worshipped Astarte and Cybele. Mythras came more recently to delude emo- tional minds, and now there is this. ** However, as I told you, it was merely for refusing to serve, or to continue service, in the army that the youth and the two deserters were executed. No more unpardonable trea- son to Eome could be imagined than a refusal to fight in her defence. These pitiful wretches enjoy the peace and splendour of Eome, but will not move a finger to protect or extend either. The City, the State, the Empire, are nothing to them. Such people brood only over their own condition and the preservation of their souls. They undertake no pubHc duties. They refuse to act as judges or magis- trates, and even their pleasures are private and selfishly concealed. They appear to live in a kind of ecstatic hysteria, scorning reason, avoiding social hfe, and looking forward with 200 ORIGINAL SINNERS joyous expectation to the speedy destruction, not only of our Roman world, but of the whole human race. For the protection of humanity, I resolved some five or six years ago to extirpate their desperate super- stition, and in that, at all events, I shall succeed." ** You are right," said Julianus ; " if such treasonable opinions spread, no state — ^not even the smallest city — could survive in this world of perpetual conflict. And the best way of silencing pernicious opinions is to silence those who hold them." *' If those unhappy criminals had but shown a little reasonable compliance," Dio- cletian continued, " they need not have suffered. They might, for instance, have dis- played a becoming reverence for myself," he added, smiHng once more. *' I make no pre- tensions to extraordinary virtue, but my private record compares well with my name- sake Jove*s. ** As you know," he went on, "I think it best to maintain the ancient pubHc gods. These new religions are too much occupied with personal states of mind, or else with IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 201 oracles and soothsayers and the movements of stars and planets. What do the stars know about us, or what do they care 9 Solemn old philosophers used to say the stars twinkled in their pity for mankind, and the music of the spheres could actually be heard if we Hstened long enough. My friend, it is all childish folly. Not even Jews believe it. *' Then there was worthy old Marcus — divine, but still worthy ; he always kept one eye turned inward upon what he called his soul. As though his soul mattered ! He helped to build some decent towns, like this of Salona here ; and he cleared the frontiers beyond the Danube. But all the time he kept grubbing into his own state of mind, his con- duct and thoughts, calling them up daily for examination. That is not the way to great- ness. He felt a kind of sympathy for all the world. He used to quote young Pliny's saying that, when one poor mortal assists another poor mortal, there is God. My dear Julianus, the gods are not pitiful and tender and effeminate. The gods are soldierly and civic powers. It was they who built the walls of Eome, and extended the empire of law and 202 ORIGINAL SINNERS reason into the realms of barbarous and obscene night." The carriage stopped at a large square enclosure surrounded by stone walls. '' Enough of these solemn abstractions/* said Diocletian, with relief. ** Here we are at my garden. Now I can show you something genuine — a real public service to the State." Within the walls a vegetable and fruit gar- den was spread out in ordered rows and rectangular patches. Slaves were digging the rows and watering the roots by a system of channels arranged with sluices and locks. " Isn't it magnificent ? " Diocletian cried. *' Look at those fennels, those onion-beds and cabbages, all in line ! Just Uke cohorts drawn up for battle. And there are apple trees and plums, and a good big patch of vineyard for my special wine which I may drink without fear of gout. I come here to dig and prune nearly every day. It is healthy exercise, and much more delightful than ruling the Empire. You can tell your master Maximian that ! And by the way, when I write my answer, remind me to put in a word of congratulation upon the marriage of Maximian's daughter to IN DIOCLETIAN'S DAY 203 Constantine, son of my old friend and suc- cessor Constantius. He seems a promising youth. They tell me that he is one of the Caesars already. But how many emperors exactly are there now ? Do you suppose I care to become just one more among the number — I, who saved the Empire once ? ** The carriage bore them to the Western or Iron Gate, and when they re-entered the palace the evening was almost dark, and the larger stars were already shining. The town of Spalato is now built inside Diocletian's palace and extends beyond the walls. His mausoleum was converted into a cathedral dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin about three hundred years after Diocletian's death. The High Altar marks the spot where his sarcophagus stood, and side altars sanctify the relics of Salona's first martyrs and of her first bishop. The temple of Jove and ^sculapius is now the baptistry, and the font, designed in the Lombardic style, has for six centuries served for the christening of the city's babies. 204 ORIGINAL SINNERS If you pass out through the Iron Gate and climb the steep and rocky height west of the town, you will discover a large stone cross upon the summit, and may read an inscription cut on the base in fine Roman characters : *' Jesus Christus Deus Homo vivit regnat IMPERAT." THB WHITKFRIARS PRESS, ITD., lONPOS AND XONBBIDQB 1.D21 ^50m .1'3^ m 33531 598430 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY